Here’s my speculation about how this all went down:

1. Using a burner phone, The Leaker contacted the Politico reporters through a secure, encrypted communications app like Signal—which Ward, a national-security reporter who needs to protect his sources of classified information, uses regularly. Because The Leaker used a burner phone, nothing untoward would be revealed even if they complied with the Marshal’s request for cellphone records (because obviously The Leaker would turn over records for their regular phone only, not the burner).

2. Why Politico? As I previously suggested, it’s respected and credible but not ideological, so the identity of the outlet would not distract from the story. It has a superb legal-affairs reporter in Josh Gerstein. And as a relatively young outlet that has devoted the past 15 years to pulling back the curtain on the inner workings of Washington, Politico would (a) do an excellent job with a story of this nature and (b) publish the draft with less hand-wringing over the propriety of doing so compared to certain more established publications.

3. Without revealing their identity, The Leaker offered the Dobbs draft to the Politico reporters for publication—who eagerly accepted, subject to the caveat that they wouldn’t publish until they were comfortable with its authenticity.

4. The Leaker offered a physical or hard-copy version of the draft.