Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, on Wednesday blamed the explosive Supreme Court leak on “one little woke left-wing twit,” arguing that the perpetrator should be disbarred or possibly jailed.
Mr. Cruz said he believed the person responsible for the first-ever leak of a draft majority opinion is a clerk working for one of the court’s three liberal justices, adding that it was “difficult to overstate how destructive this is to the Supreme Court.”
“In over 200 years of our nation’s history, that has never happened,” Mr. Cruz told Fox Primetime host Brian Kilmeade. “And there was one woke little left-wing twit who decided, to hell with his or her obligations to the justice they work for, to hell with their obligations to the court, to hell with their obligations to the rule of law, that they would instead try to sneak it out in order to put political pressure on the justices and intimidate them into changing their votes.”
The Supreme Court marshal is investigating the unauthorized release of the draft opinion published Monday in Politico, which showed a majority of justices in favor of overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide.
Mr. Cruz said he believed the leak came from a clerk, not a justice. Each justice has four clerks.
“I think the chances are zero that it is a justice,” Mr. Cruz said. “I cannot believe any justice would be [party] to such a grave betrayal of the institution. I think it is a law clerk, and I think it is very likely a law clerk for one of the three liberal justices. That means there are 12 likely suspects.”
He also said he was optimistic that the leaker would be identified, predicting that the person had left a paper trail and wasn’t a “master criminal.”
“We’re going to find this person, and when they’re found, they’re going to be fired on the spot, they will be disbarred if they’re a member of the bar, or they will never be admitted to the bar to be a lawyer, and to the extent that they’ve broken criminal laws, they need to be prosecuted and sent to jail,” Mr. Cruz said.
He also blamed Democrats for what he called the “culmination of a multi-year campaign” to politicize the court system.
“The left is bound and determined to tear down the institutions of our country, to destroy the Senate, where they want to end the filibuster and blow it all up,” Mr. Cruz said.
Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the authenticity of the draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and ordered an investigation into the “egregious breach of trust.”
The draft signed by Justice Samuel Alito said that “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.” The case centers on the constitutionality of Mississippi’s 2018 law barring most abortions after 15 weeks’ gestation.
