Attorney General Jeff Sessions floated the idea of using lie detectors to track down potential leakers within the National Security Council, according to a report Sunday.
The plan would be to have interrogators sit down with each of the more than 100 members of the NSC, strapped to a polygraph machine.
Sessions suspects there to be officials leaking transcripts of phone calls President Trump has had with foreign leaders. Axios reported he told associates about the idea as recently as last month. Even if he weren’t able to obtain information on leaks, he hoped it would scare officials away from the idea of leaking, the report added.
Ian Prior, a spokesman for Sessions, declined comment to Axios and the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs did not immediately return the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
Sessions announced in early August that the DOJ was ramping up its efforts to investigate and prosecute government leakers, a day after transcripts of Trump’s calls with two foreign leaders were leaked to the Washington Post. The Post report released the transcripts of the calls with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and noted they had notes indicating the NSC had classified them.
“Criminals who would illegally use their access to our most sensitive information to endanger our national security are in fact being investigated, and will be prosecuted,” he said in a press conference.
