The most interesting thing about Stephen Breyer’s retirement announcement was that initial reports that Breyer would step down after the term ends of his current Supreme Court term were not directly from Breyer.
Per SCOTUS sources at the time, Breyer was either “surprised” and/or “upset” (depending on which reporter you talked to) that word leaked out to the mainstream media of his retirement before he’d gotten a chance to make it official via a public statement. These matters are usually handled directly by the Justices themselves, who make it official in their own way and in their own time (usually later on in whatever term they’re currently serving).
Speculation ran high as to who the leaker was, with some suggesting maybe it was a left-wing court snitch who got a little too eager to share the news with their media contacts considering the very public pressure that had been put on Breyer by the radical left to retire within the first two years of Biden’s term to keep that SCOTUS seat “safe” in the left’s hands.
The truth is that the left-wing snitch was actually involved, though not any staff member of SCOTUS. According to the Senate’s second in command Dick Durbin, the person who shared Breyer’s retirement news was White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who told a select group of people the news Wednesday morning, a day before Breyer would make it official. Durbin said that President Biden requested this information.
“So I think it must have been Wednesday morning when I received a surprise call at 9:30 a.m. from Ron Klain, not a usual person to call me. I think the first time he’s ever called me,” Durbin, D-Ill., said. “He said the president wanted me to know that Stephen Breyer was about to announce his retirement from the court and they were telling a limited number of people and that I should keep it confidential.”
Soon afterward, media reports began to appear. “That’s where confidential on Capitol Hill leads to, I guess,” Durbin stated, according to Fox News.
Though Klain, a longtime close friend and political ally to Biden, likely isn’t the only senior White House official who knew, it makes sense that he’d be the one who blabbed it – whether at Biden’s urging or not. Next to press secretary Jen Psaki, Klain has been a prominent public face of this administration since Biden was sworn into office, and is always chomping at the bit to try and spin negative stories into positives as well as trying to prove that the Biden White House has the backs of the “woke” progressives who helped propel him into office, with issues like future SCOTUS nominees being to priority for those activists.
All of that being said, I think it was still a bad move. Breyer ought to have been treated with the respect due and allowed to announce when he chose. In my opinion, the way to counter what happened would have been for Breyer to say he has no such plans, which would’ve Biden and Klain right, and which would have antagonized fretting leftists a little while longer.
But Breyer was clearly motivated at least in part by politics and the pressure put on him by the activist left to bow out well before the 2022 midterms, so reversing course in his mind to teach the White House a lesson obviously wasn’t an option.
Related:All Eyes on Sinema and Manchin After Breyer Retirement Announcement
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