Leak Investigations Triple Under Trump, Sessions Says
The Trump administration has been bedeviled by leaks large and small
that have brought to light information ranging from White House infighting and the president’s rancorous phone conversations with foreign leaders to what surveillance showed about contacts by Mr. Trump’s associates with Russia — and even what Mr. Trump said to Russian visitors in the Oval Office about his firing of James B. Comey, the former F. B.I.
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Friday
that the Justice Department is pursuing about three times as many leak investigations as were open at the end of the Obama era, a significant devotion of resources to hunt down disclosures that have plagued the Trump administration.
Mr. Trump has continued to periodically demand a crackdown, including criticizing Mr.
On July 25, for example, the president tweeted, “Attorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a VERY
weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes (where are E-mails & DNC server) & Intel leakers!”
In May, Mr. Trump himself disclosed sensitive intelligence to visiting Russian officials about an Islamic State plot, blurting out details
that had been shared by Israel — a disclosure that some intelligence officials worried might have exposed an important Israeli government source.
In 2013, after a backlash in Congress and the news media over aggressive tactics to go after reporters’ information in leak investigations, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. decided to revise
those rules to further tighten limits on when the government is allowed to subpoena telephone companies for logs of a reporter’s phone calls, which could reveal their confidential sources.
Speaking to reporters in a subsequent briefing, Mr. Sessions’s deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, demurred when asked whether the administration would prosecute reporters in relation to leaks, saying he would not “comment on hypotheticals.” He also said the review of the leak investigation guidelines had just begun
and it was not clear what, if anything, would be changed about them.
