Attorney General Jeff Sessions has a stark message for the media and their government sources: Playtime is over at the Department of Justice.
Sessions announced Friday that DOJ is stepping up investigations and prosecutions for illegal government leaks, which have swelled from a trickle to a flood since President Donald Trump took office.
“In the first six months of this administration, DOJ has already received nearly as many criminal referrals involving unauthorized disclosures of classified information as we received in the last three years combined,” Sessions said.
The attorney general cautioned potential leakers that their actions would not go unnoticed.
“Today, I have this message for the intelligence community: The Department of Justice is open for business. And I have this warning for would-be leakers: Don’t do it,” Sessions said. “The Department will not hesitate to bring lawful and appropriate criminal charges against those who abuse the nation’s trust.”
The speech comes just one day after a particularly embarrassing leak made headlines: transcripts of the president’s phone calls with two foreign leaders in which, among other things, Trump called New Hampshire a “drug-infested den” and begged Mexican’s president Enrique Peña Nieto to stop telling the press Mexico wouldn’t pay for the border wall.
But Sessions’ speech wasn’t directed only at leakers. He took aim at reporters as well. He implied that his department might consider legal action to force media organizations to reveal their anonymous sources in cases of criminal leaks. It’s a move that evokes Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama, whose Justice Department engaged in a seven-year legal battle with the New York Times’ James Risen over anonymous sources and investigated Fox News’ James Rosen as a potential criminal “co-conspirator” in violation of the Espionage Act.
“One of the things we are doing is reviewing policies affecting media subpoenas,” Sessions said. “We respect the important role that the press plays and will give them respect, but it is not unlimited. They cannot place lives at risk with impunity. We must balance their role with protecting our national security and the lives of those who serve in our intelligence community, the armed forces, and all law-abiding Americans.”
