Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., on Sunday condemned any ally of President Trump who knowingly leaks classified information, including the identity of FBI informants.
Individuals behind such disclosures, he added, should be prosecuted for breaking the law.
“The first thing you learn when you get involved with the intelligence community is you have to protect sources and methods. People’s lives depend upon it,” Warner said during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“President Trump’s own FBI director this week, Christopher Wray, said when officials or elected officials go out and start exposing classified information, exposing informants that work with our government, America is less safe. That is illegal if you reveal this kind of information,” the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee continued.
Warner on Trump’s claim that an FBI informant was planted in his campaign: “If any individual, elected official or otherwise, knowingly reveals a classified piece of information about an FBI source, you are breaking the law and should be fully prosecuted” https://t.co/Ntk5UG48lo
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 20, 2018
Two reports published Friday evening, one by the New York Times and the other by the Washington Post, described an FBI source, an a American academic teaching in the United Kingdom, who met with up to three members of the Trump campaign ahead of the 2016 election. The identify of the FBI informant was leaked to at least two media outlets, but the newsrooms refrained from publishing the individual’s name out of concern for national security and the safety of the person and his or her sources. The reports follow Republican furor this week about a possible effort to spy on Trump’s 2016 campaign.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., who has sought information from the Justice Department about the Russia investigation, and is reportedly trying to zero in on an FBI informant who had contacts with the Trump campaign. When it was suggested Nunes was an example of someone who knowingly leaks classified information, Warner reiterated that Trump allies in the House were endangering national security by sharing such information with reporters.
Warner also said he hadn’t seen any evidence to support Trump’s claim the FBI informant was planted in his campaign to drum up reasons to investigate Trump for possible collusion with foreign actors.
“I find that extraordinarily hard to believe,” he said, adding that he wouldn’t comment on the role the alleged FBI source played in prompting the bureau’s Russia investigation.
