Reporter Blasts Josh Hawley, Right Wing Pundits for ‘Verifiably False’ Accusation He’s the SCOTUS Leaker: ‘Nasty, Deceitful, Possibly Psychotic Bullies’

By Sarah RumpfSep 1st, 2022, 4:51 pm
 
Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

No good deed goes unpunished, the saying goes, and a Slate reporter learned that the hard way when he shared information he got from a Supreme Court email list and faced wild accusations — amplified by a U.S. Senator — that he was connected to whomever leaked the draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The trouble started when Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern, who covers court cases and other legal topics, tweeted a link to a new case entry on the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket,” the procedure used for certain emergency orders and summary decisions made without oral argument. Nicole Russell, a reporter for conservative outlets including the Washington Examiner and Daily Signal, tweeted a reply to Stern saying the document he posted was “timestamped 10:09 but wasn’t up on the SCOTUS site until at least 11:00 am EST” and asking him how he was “getting a hold of these so fast” because she “obviously need[ed] some tips.”

Stern replied “DMing you!”

What started as a friendly bit of advice to a fellow journalist set off a flurry of conspiracy mongering among conservative commentators.

Matt Whitlock, who previously did communications work for the NRSC, tweeted a screenshot of Russell’s tweet with a comment that “I think we’d all like to know how liberal reporters like [Stern] are getting news out of the Supreme Court before it’s public.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) retweeted Whitlock’s tweet.

Josh Hawley tweet

The Federalist CEO Sean Davis posted a similar comment: “I think we’d all like to know how a left-wing blogger at Slate is getting leaked SCOTUS documents before the [sic] appear on the SCOTUS website.”

Twitter troll Shashank Tripathi, better known by his handle @ComfortablySmug, retweeted Whitlock’s tweet with “Wowowowow” and siren and eye emojis to his more than a quarter million followers.

So how did Stern get access to this Supreme Court document so quickly and easily? What diabolical cabal is operating behind the scenes to feed confidential court documents to liberal reporters?

No offense to Stern, but it didn’t require Woodward and Bernstein-level journalism to get access to this document. Turns out it’s an incredibly mundane answer: the court’s own Public Information Office (PIO) and their email list. Stern has covered SCOTUS topics for awhile, subscribed to their emails, and was emailed the document by the PIO.

Stern messaged this information to Russell with instructions on how she could subscribe to the list herself. After he started getting this flurry of unfounded accusations, he posted a screenshot of what he sent Russell.

“I’m sure she and I disagree on many important issues, but I am always eager to help journalists navigate the Supreme Court’s strange press rules,” Stern wrote, but now Whitlock was “fomenting a conspiracy theory that I leaked Dobbs.”

“This is just pathetic,” he added.

In subsequent tweets, Stern commented that Davis was “spreading a malicious and objectively false lie about me” and noted that Whitlock had “refused to delete his lie and now [Hawley] retweeted it.”

“I’m really at a loss,” wrote Stern. “It’s not funny at this stage. A senator is telling every crazy person on the internet that I’m a SCOTUS leaker. What am I supposed to do? The accusation is objectively false!”

University of Texas law professor Steven Vladeck backed up Stern’s description of the Supreme Court PIO, and lamented “I guess it’s more fun to make it sound like a liberal conspiracy.”

Multiple Twitter users replied to the tweets accusing Stern pointing out it was a simple matter of subscribing to an email list, not any conspiracy and certainly not any evidence he was the SCOTUS leaker or somehow involved in that, but so far — hours later! — none of these tweets have been deleted, nor their errors acknowledged.

Hawley’s press secretary Abigail Marone finally responded Thursday afternoon, calling Stern a liar and saying the accusations were a “[t]otally fair question but you responded with a little meltdown,” telling him to “Grow up.”

“I want to remind everyone that this saga began with me showing a conservative journalist how to add herself to a Supreme Court call-out list that any reporter can access,” Stern replied. “And it’s ending with Hawley’s flak calling me a liar.”

Your friendly neighborhood Mediaite contributing editor blocked Davis and Tripathi years ago over for many, many reasons, and sees little utility in attempting to contact them when public calls to correct their baseless tweets have gone unheeded. I did reach out to Whitlock but did not receive a reply.

Mediaite also reached out to Stern, who remains flabbergasted that this “verifiably false allegation” got the oxygen that it did, and that none of the accusers have yet to delete their tweets, much less apologize. Stern provided this statement, which we are quoting in full:

Matt Whitlock, Shashank Tripathi (Comfortably Smug), Sean Davis, and Josh Hawley are promoting a verifiably false allegation against me, despite their knowledge that it is a defamatory lie. If they had the capacity for shame, I’d say they should be ashamed of themselves. But I know their souls and minds are too curdled with hate, fear, and bigotry to access the emotional depths necessary for such self-reflection. So I will simply express my relief that I will never reach the depths of moral depravity and intellectual bankruptcy to which they have fallen. And I will share my pride in being the kind of journalist who attracts the ire of such nasty, deceitful, possibly psychotic bullies.

—

Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com

Filed Under:
Sarah Rumpf - Contributing Editor

Sarah Rumpf joined Mediaite in 2020 and is a Contributing Editor focusing on politics, law, and the media. A native Floridian, Sarah attended the University of Florida, graduating with a double major in Political Science and German, and earned her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the UF College of Law. Sarah's writing has been featured at National Review, The Daily Beast, Reason, Law & Crime, Independent Journal Review, Texas Monthly, The Capitolist, Breitbart Texas, Townhall, RedState, The Orlando Sentinel, and the Austin-American Statesman, and her political commentary has led to appearances on the BBC, MSNBC, NewsNation, Fox 35 Orlando, Fox 7 Austin, The Young Turks, The Dean Obeidallah Show, and other television, radio, and podcast programs across the globe.