Tuesday, the Daily Dot reported on a number of right-wing Twitter users who’d taken it upon themselves to out the person they believed was behind the leak of a draft decision that said the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade.
The ruling was a shock across America, as Roe helped enshrine the right to abortions in the country, and a ruling to strip its protections would lead to abortions being effectively banned in nearly half the nation.
Instead, however, of celebrating a longtime goal of their party, numerous Republican operatives focused on whoever leaked the decision, trying to steer the conversation away from the drastic action the right-leaning court was possibly taking.
Republican strategist Matt Wolking thrust the blame on a clerk for one of the court’s left-leaning justices, sparking numerous vitriolic tweets directed at the person, who the Daily Dot is choosing not to name. The thread was without much evidence, focusing on the fact the person they were naming previously gave a quote in an article to the reporter who broke the story.
Now, a thread by another far-right operative is gaining steam, one in which the person pushing it, Will Chamberlain said, after posting his claim, that he has “no inside information. This thread is speculation, based almost entirely on publicly available information. I could easily be wrong.”
Regardless, it’s still racked up over 5,000 retweets and 11,000 likes. In it, Chamberlain uses similar tenuous ties from the clerk to the reporting, naming a person without evidence to his over 230,000 followers.
Similarly, the Daily Dot is not naming the clerk Chamberlain is alleging to have leaked the decision, as there is no evidence. Both threads led to numerous tweets and claims against these people, all based on pure speculation that’s gone viral.
Many on the right rushing to identify a clerk are also ignoring the very real possibility, speculated on in some threads without naming names, that the leak was perpetrated by someone on the right to lock in the court’s majority, or soften the blow when the actual ruling came down.
Those on the far-right’s rush to name people they believe responsible for the leak, run counter to the histrionic posts many of them made just last month, when the Daily Dot and the Washington Post identified the person behind the Libs of TikTok account.
Chamberlain himself called that “dox” “a wrongful act in search of a justification.”
He doesn’t seem to be abiding by that same principle this week, though.
