According to SCOTUS expert David Lat at Above the Law, the John Roberts resignation "rumor" AMI's RadarOnline.com posted earlier today was part of a law professor's lecture on not trusting supposedly credible sources. It almost makes sense!

Two separate first-year Georgetown Law students told Above the Law that Professor Peter Tague opened class today with the "news" that John Roberts would be stepping down.

Our criminal justice professor started our 9am lecture with the news that roberts will be resigning tomorow for health reasons- that he could not handle the administrative burdens of the job. He would not say how he knows- but halfway through our lecture on the credibility and reliability of informants he revealed that the Roberts rumor was made up to show how someone you ordinarily think is credible and reliable (ie a law professor) can disseminate inaccurate information.

So, according to this version of events, some law student/AMI "source" texted the breaking news to someone at RadarOnline.com as soon as they heard it, and they just ran with it. Professor Tague has taught us all an important lesson, today.

But there is still some weirdness. Like: the Professor "broke" the "news" around 9 a.m. EDT, and RadarOnline.com's first post has a 6:10 AM (PDT, we assume) timestamp. Which makes sense. The professor revealed the truth a half-hour later, and RadarOnline.com retracted "updated" their story a half-hour later, with a post with a 6:36 AM timestamp. That also makes sense.

But no one saw the post until almost 1 pm EDT, and their "retraction" story didn't appear on the site until almost 1:45 pm. We emailed RadarOnline.com Executive Vice President David Perel, and he said the timestamps are "off," giving another example of a story that went up at a time that had nothing to do with the timestamp.

So. Maybe the post was drafted this morning but RadarOnline.com didn't publish it until literally hours after they knew it was false? Maybe RadarOnline.com's servers are located on the LOST island? Or maybe—and don't put it past the little bastards—the law students are hoaxing us!