It's hard to say the person who leaked the U.S. Supreme Court's draft opinion in the Dobbs case--you know, the one that a few folks were talking about last summer--got away scot-free.
Leaking an opinion from the nation's top court should be a fire-able offense, for sure, but no laws were broken. Thank God. Remember that the nation's justices were threatened in the leak's aftermath, and oh yes, there was that thwarted assassination attempt.
A 20-page report released last week by SCOTUS Marshal Gail Curley indicated only that the evidence leads to an inside job and "reveals no suggestion of improper outside access."
The Dobbs leak resulted in no injuries or deaths, but the breach of trust--considered the worst in SCOTUS history--casts serious doubts on the way the court handles its business.
That it is an inside job is almost certain. Either the marshal and her team couldn't sniff out the culprit, or revealing the culprit's identity carries too much baggage. Both seem plausible. Notable in the report is the absence of any information related to whether Supreme Court justices were interviewed as part of the investigation.
The report indicates that emails, cellphone records, "clues from printers and even a fingerprint on an undisclosed item" were investigated, according to the wire services. The report also notes as obstacles the expansion of remote working, gaps in the court's security policies, and an internal environment in which it's too easy to remove sensitive information, be it from the building or the court's IT networks.
Besides, we suspect the perp had the unspoken blessing of at least half the building.
Eventually, the perp will ID himself or herself and attain instant folk hero status with half the country. And probably get a book deal, too.
So much for decorum, which certainly has taken a back seat to self-interest in the modern world. Maybe it always did, but these days decorum has been bounced from the back seat to the trunk.