Dan McLaughlin of National Review Online highlights counterparts who leaped to false conclusions about the recent U.S. Supreme Court leaj=k.

My assumption, … on the Dobbs leak investigation, was that the justices themselves had been among the 97 people questioned. They fit all the criteria, the report noted the questioning of 97 people when there were 82 employees plus the justices who had access to the draft opinion, and the report went out of its way to list among the rules precluding disclosure the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges, which imposes no obligations on anyone else inside the Court besides the justices. It could have been written clearer, but that seemed the likeliest reading of how the report was written. Yet, because the report did not explicitly mention the justices as being questioned and referenced “permanent employees” of the Court (a term typically not used to describe the justices, although they are employed to work at the Court and are as permanent as it gets), a whole lot of people went out on a limb with varying degrees of certainty in claiming that they were not questioned, or at least treating it as likely that they were not. This came disproportionately from progressives who have taken the position all along that, so long as no leaker was caught, they could claim that it was one of the conservative justices (ideally Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas) or perhaps their wives (especially Ginni Thomas). …

… [T]he marshal sawed that limb off: “During the course of the investigation, I spoke with each of the Justices, several on multiple occasions. The Justices actively cooperated in this iterative process, asking questions and answering mine. I followed up on all credible leads, none of which implicated the Justices or their spouses..” …

… We still don’t know who the leaker is, but I continue to believe … that it was unlikely that the leak came from a justice on either side of the ideological divide.