Trump warns SCOTUS leak 'cheapens the court'

Former President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the unprecedented leak of the Supreme Court’s draft majority opinion sets “a very dangerous precedent” that serves to “cheapen the court.”

During an interview with Fox News, Trump said the leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion was “surprising.”

"It was so surprising to see coming out of the Supreme Court, because Washington is a city of leaks and yet the Supreme Court, I’ve never seen a leak and people haven’t seen leaks and that's for decades, so it was so surprising to see," he said.

"It is a very dangerous precedent—a very dangerous precedent," he added. "It was disconcerting to see that. It cheapens the court."

The Republican businessman and politician also noted that the country’s highest court presently finds itself in “a very hard position.”

"Something came in, and looked like it was final, and now, if they change it, it is going to look like they changed it," Trump said. "They are put in a very bad position."

Fox News also asked the former president if he believed the leak was a desperate effort to sway the court’s final decision.

"You would never know, because it also made a lot of people very happy,” he replied.

"This is very much a 50-50 issue, it is a tough issue," he added. "There are a lot of people that are beyond thrilled, and there are a lot of people that are not that way, and it can go both ways in a sense."

Following the unprecedented leak of Justice Alito’s draft abortion rights decision on Tuesday, the Supreme Court issued a statement to the press strongly condemning the leak.

Politico first obtained a draft of conservative Justice Samuel Alito’s majority decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a controversial Mississippi case which could effectively overturn Roe v. Wade and almost 50 years of legal precedent guaranteeing a woman’s right to an abortion.

According to the document, Justices Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and possibly Chief Justice John Roberts support Justice Alito’s decision.

Should the court vote to overturn the current precedents, abortions would be left for the states to decide. 

"We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled," Justice Alito wrote in the opinion. "It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives."

Alito also noted that 30 states had active bans on abortion throughout pregnancy at the time Roe was decided and Americans still hold “sharply conflicting views” on the subject.

"Some believe fervently that a human person comes into being at conception and that abortion ends an innocent life. Others feel just as strongly that any regulation of abortion invades a woman's right to control her own body and prevents women from achieving full equality. Still others in a third group think that abortion should be allowed under some but not all circumstances, and those within this group hold a variety of views about the particular restrictions that should be imposed," Alito wrote.