Jodi Kantor

It was a complete—so I did cover the Kavanaugh hearings and the story of Christine Blasey Ford, and it's part of the book, She Said.

And I thought that was like the last contact I would ever have with the Supreme Court.

What happened is that in April of 2022, in the wake of the Dobbs leak—

I got a phone call one night from somebody I did not know very well.

So let me tell you a trick of investigative journalism, which is that if you want to get information, you don't want people to know what relationships you have.

This tip came from a prominent person.

With whom I had been in like a pretty public setting and she had asked me something and later I said to her, you know, listen, I refuse to answer you because I don't want anyone to know that you and I have a link because someday you might be in a position.

to tell me something and I don't need to like broadcast a relationship with you.

So anyway, that person came to me one night in April and said, Jodi, there's this guy.

He has a story.

You need to get it.

And she gave me his name.

So the guy turned out to be Reverend Rob Shank, ex-anti-abortion activist.

He had been very extreme about his anti-abortion activities.

He was a minister, and he wanted to confess that he had led a secret influence operation inside the Supreme Court.

This was...

Mind-blowing.

He had recruited wealthy donors to befriend the justices to try to influence them.

So through that story, which, like, I initially resisted doing, why?

Because I was working on, like, I'm also obsessed with employment, and I was working on other employment stuff that I was really interested in.