Federal prosecutors in Washington have opened a criminal investigation into the 2022 leak of the Supreme Court's draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, issuing grand jury subpoenas for testimony and seeking information from people who
worked at the court at the time, The New York Times reported Thursday. The probe has ramped up over the past few weeks, four and a half years after someone inside the court handed the draft to Politico.
US Attorney Jeanine Pirro is overseeing the investigation, which is being handled primarily by career prosecutors, a source familiar with it told the Washington Examiner. The Justice Department declined to comment, saying it would neither confirm nor deny the existence of an ongoing investigation.
It is uncharted ground. The case raises separation-of-powers questions about prosecutors reaching into the judiciary's internal workings, the Times reports.
Sen. Mike Lee was quick to cheer it:
Thank you, Jeanine Pirro, for investigating the Dobbs leak.
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) November 6, 2026
The fact that this has never been thoroughly investigated is inexcusable.
It’s time to find out who did this—in an apparent attempt to influence the outcome of the case, potentially subjecting the Dobbs majority to… https://t.co/3quJRK7wnz
The court's own hunt came up empty. After Politico published Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion on May 2, 2022, Chief Justice John Roberts ordered the court's marshal, Gail Curley, to find the source. Eight months later, the court admitted it couldn't, as we reported at the time.
Investigators interviewed 97 court employees, brought in forensic experts to trace who printed or emailed the draft, and collected sworn affidavits from everyone with access to it. A few employees admitted telling their spouses how the case came out and how the justices voted. But "at this time, by a preponderance of the evidence standard, it is not possible to determine the identity of any individual who may have disclosed the document or how the draft opinion ended up with Politico," the Jan. 19, 2023, report concluded.
The report blamed pandemic-era work-from-home and gaps in the court's security policies, which it said made it "too easy to remove sensitive information from the building." Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff reviewed the probe and said he couldn't "identify any additional useful investigative measures." The report never said whether the justices themselves were questioned.
A grand jury has the tool the marshal lacked: its subpoenas can force witnesses to testify under oath.
Alito, who wrote the opinion, made clear last month that he hasn't let it go. The leak was "a grave breach of the trust that everybody who worked in this building had before that point," he said in an interview clip posted Oct. 4. "It very predictably made the five of us in the majority targets for assassination and nearly resulted in the assassination of my colleague Brett Kavanaugh."
Asked whether he has an opinion about who the leaker was, he answered: "I do have an opinion. But the evidence available at this time is not strong enough for the court or for me to say this is the person who was responsible."
🚨 WOW! Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito is LIVID about whoever leaked the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, saying it made the 5 conservatives TARGETS OF ASSASSINATION
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 4, 2026
Alito says HE THINKS HE KNOW WHO DID IT — but can't definitively say
"It was a grave breach of the… pic.twitter.com/mmdrZThPek
The Kavanaugh threat was real. Weeks after the leak and before the ruling came down, Nicholas Roske, now known as Sophie Roske, was arrested near the justice's Maryland home armed with a gun, a knife and zip ties, and was sentenced in October 2025 to eight years in prison for attempting to assassinate him.
Finding the leaker may still be the easy part. Even if prosecutors identify who did it, the Times reports, it remains unclear what crime they could charge.
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