Fox News host Jeanine Pirro really wants the SCOTUS leaker charged with something, anything. But as for what crime the unidentified person committed, well, the former judge has no idea.
Pirro followed in the steps of other Republicans and right-wing pundits on Tuesday, demanding on-air that the person who leaked the bombshell draft opinion suggesting a Supreme Court majority intends to overturn Roe v. Wade must be hit with criminal charges.
Immediately after Politico reported that Justice Samuel Alito drafted the opinion reversing the landmark 1973 decision establishing the legal right to abortion, conservatives began calling the leak an “insurrection” and demanding the FBI hunt down the source.
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On Tuesday, an irate Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the draft was authentic and said he’d directed the marshal of the court to hunt the leaker. Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, refused to talk about the repercussions of the court overturning Roe v. Wade, instead branding the leak the real “story of the day” and urging unspecified criminal charges.
“I don’t have the slightest idea who leaked it but I will tell you this: Whoever leaked it did something that is unheard of in American history,” Pirro raged on Tuesday’s broadcast of The Five. “You just don’t leak a decision by any judge, let alone a Supreme Court justice!”
After bemoaning that the leak may have damaged the camaraderie on the court itself, Pirro insisted the leaker be quickly identified and charged. With what crime, though, she’ll have to get back to us.
“Whoever leaked this we have to find out who the person is and charge them with a crime,” she exclaimed. “ I don’t know what the crime would be, whether it’s some kind of fraud on government property.”
While sifting through her papers on the desk, the Fox host continued: “I heard there is a statute, fraud on a government, that’s very broad and could include this kind of act.”
Legal experts, however, have said that the leak of a draft opinion is almost certainly not illegal and that the Department of Justice would be unlikely to charge anyone with a crime.
Nevertheless, Pirro went on to claim Democrats were responsible for the leak, alleging that “if they want to gin up the left” ahead of the midterm elections, “there is no better way to do it than with Roe v. Wade.”
