Supreme Court clerks want to lawyer up?

[jimnyc]

Of course they do, who wants to get busted for one of the biggest leaks in our times?

Personally, I also think it should be a crime to do so.

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Supreme Court clerks reportedly consider lawyering up as Roe leak probe escalates

The hunt for the source of the leaked draft ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade is intensifying inside the Supreme Court, where officials are “taking steps to require law clerks to provide cell phone records and sign affidavits,” CNN reported Tuesday. This unprecedented move is reportedly rattling some law clerks, who are “apparently so alarmed,” notes CNN, that “they have begun exploring whether to hire outside counsel.” CNN adds that “the exact language of the affidavits or the intended scope of that cell phone search—content or time period covered—is not yet clear”; it’s also unclear whether court officials are asking employees within the nine chambers, other than the one-year law clerks, to turn over phone records.

The news is a dramatic development in the probe that Chief Justice John Roberts called for earlier this month, hours after Politico published a stunning leaked draft opinion indicating that the Supreme Court was poised to obliterate the constitutional right to an abortion. Roberts’s demand that the high court’s marshal “launch an investigation into the source” of this “singular and egregious breach” raised questions from the get-go; the Supreme Court, with its decades-long resistance to transparency and accountability measures, seemingly lacks the tools to conduct such a probe. “It’s not clear [Roberts] has the right to order anybody to cooperate,” Politico’s Josh Gerstein, one of the two reporters who broke the story, told Yahoo News’s Skullduggery podcast a few weeks ago. Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern emphasized that lack of authority in response to the reported demands for phone data. “If any law enforcement official ever asks you to hand over your phone or phone records without a warrant, the answer is ‘no,’ then ‘talk to my lawyer.’ Supreme Court clerks know this better than most,” he tweeted Tuesday.

Stern, who earlier this month described the Supreme Court’s leak investigation “a sham,” reiterated his criticism in light of the latest reporting from CNN. What “makes this whole operation even more of a sick joke,” Stern tweeted, is that “the marshal isn't demanding Ginni Thomas' phone records even though those records are being investigated by a congressional committee at this moment.”

Rest - https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022...roe-leak-probe

[fj1200]

^I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't already a crime.

But I wonder if they're going after everyone's records or if they have narrowed it down and are looking for more evidence. You'd think a bunch of constitutional lawyers wouldn't already know the answer for what they want protection from.

[jimnyc]

^I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't already a crime.

But I wonder if they're going after everyone's records or if they have narrowed it down and are looking for more evidence. You'd think a bunch of constitutional lawyers wouldn't already know the answer for what they want protection from.

I think someone or a few are running scared right about now. But I need to know more about any potential penalties besides loss of job.

[fj1200]

I think someone or a few are running scared right about now. But I need to know more about any potential penalties besides loss of job.

Loss of a job. Possible loss of a career because you've just proven to future legal employers a lack of ethics, no respect for your firm's work product, and a disregard of lawyer/client privilege. Outweighed by brief media darling status which will probably be shorter lived than Avanetti.