Politico boosted security and warned its staff members to take extra care online following the news organization's major scoop in publishing a Supreme Court draft decision that would strike down the Roe v. Wade precedent for abortion rights.
The news organization says it has restricted access to its offices. While the company hasn't reported specific threats, its story was already the subject of rampant speculation — some of it malevolent — about its sources. The 15-year-old Politico is a well-known brand name for those who closely follow news of politics and government, and its scoop left organizations with bigger public footprints chasing it.
The Federalist, a conservative website, published a story with the headline “The SCOTUS Abortion Decision Leak is what Actual Treasonous Insurrection Looks Like.” The site said it believed the news was leaked as a way to bully justices into changing votes, the Associated Press reported.
Journalist Emily Kaplan wrote on Twitter, “I gasped and reflexively put my hand over my mouth,” she said. “Haven’t done that since Election Night 2016.”
The story was written by Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward, who said the Supreme Court had already voted to eliminate Roe as a precedent. The story linked to a copy of the draft decision. The document had a stamp on it, and was written by Justice Samuel Alito and circulated within the high court on Feb. 10, 2022.
