Newsmax host Grant Stinchfield ludicrously accused incoming Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson of leaking the court’s majority draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, confidently declaring Tuesday night that “she would be my first suspect when it comes to the leak.”
There’s just one problem with Stinchfield’s theory: Jackson doesn’t even join the court until after the current term ends this summer.
Ever since Politico reported on the bombshell draft opinion that would reverse the landmark 1973 decision establishing a legal right to abortion, Republicans and right-wing media, rather than engage on the potential ruling at hand, have raged about the “unprecedented” nature of the leak itself. While calling the leak an “insurrection,” conservatives have urged the FBI to hunt down the source and charge them with a crime to be determined later.
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Additionally, with the right convinced the leaker is a liberal attempting to energize Democratic voters and intimidate conservative justices, it was only a matter of time before right-wing provocateurs and wannabe Twitter sleuths began recklessly accusing random law clerks of leaking the document.
In that vein, Stinchfield unveiled his latest conspiracy on Tuesday night.
“I find it suspect that the first leak coming out of the Supreme Court in history come shortly after Judge Jackson is confirmed,” the Newsmax host declared during his primetime show. (There is history of the court leaking to the press, including the original Roe v. Wade decision.)
“I want to know if her law clerks—who, I am sure, have already been hired, possibly even working at the high court already before her swearing-in—have access to these draft decisions,” he continued, without any evidence of course.
“She would be my first suspect when it comes to the leak because Ketanji Brown Jackson is a radical left-wing activist, more radical than any other justice in the history of the Supreme Court,” the Newsmax star concluded. “I believe she is capable of undermining the court this way.”
Of course, it is patently ridiculous to suggest that Jackson or her clerks, who will not be with the court until Justice Stephen Breyer officially steps down later this summer. Furthermore, the opinion was originally drafted in February by Justice Samuel Alito—more than a month before Jackson was even confirmed by the Senate.
This is far from the first time that Stinchfield has tossed out bonkers claims about the Supreme Court. Shortly after Breyer announced his retirement earlier this year, the former NRA-TV host insisted that it was all part of a nefarious scheme to somehow install Hillary Clinton as president.
