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Leak Investigations Triple Under Trump, Sessions Says Leak Investigations Triple Under Trump, Sessions Says
(about 4 hours later)
Washington — Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Friday that the Justice Department was pursuing three times as many leak investigations as were open at the end of the previous administration, a significant devotion of law enforcement resources to hunt down the sources of unauthorized disclosures of information that have plagued the Trump administration. 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. Sessions vowed that the Justice Department would not hesitate to bring criminal charges against people who had leaked classified information. He also announced that the F.B.I. had created a new counterintelligence unit to manage these cases. Mr. Sessions vowed that the Justice Department would not hesitate to bring criminal charges against people who had leaked classified information. He also announced that the F.B.I. had created a new counterintelligence unit to specialize in such cases.
“I strongly agree with the president and condemn in the strongest terms the staggering number of leaks undermining the ability of our government to protect this country,” he said. The announcement by Mr. Sessions comes 10 days after President Trump publicly accused his attorney general of being “very weak” on pursuing these investigations.“I strongly agree with the president and condemn in the strongest terms the staggering number of leaks undermining the ability of our government to protect this country,” he said. The announcement by Mr. Sessions comes 10 days after President Trump publicly accused his attorney general of being “very weak” on pursuing these investigations.
Mr. Sessions also said he had opened a review of Justice Department rules governing when investigators may issue subpoenas related to the news media and leak investigations. “We respect the important role that the press plays and will give them respect, but it is not unlimited,” he said. “They cannot place lives at risk with impunity.”Mr. Sessions also said he had opened a review of Justice Department rules governing when investigators may issue subpoenas related to the news media and leak investigations. “We respect the important role that the press plays and will give them respect, but it is not unlimited,” he said. “They cannot place lives at risk with impunity.”
The news conference came against the backdrop of repeated pressure by Mr. Trump, in public and in private, for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to search for people inside the government who have been telling reporters what was happening behind closed doors. The news conference came against the backdrop of repeated pressure by Mr. Trump, in public and in private, for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to search harder for people inside the government who have been telling reporters what was happening behind closed doors.
The Justice Department declined to disclose specific figures for the number of open investigations it is now pursuing. 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. director.
President Barack Obama’s administration oversaw a crackdown on people who talked to reporters about government secrets without authorization, bringing more leak-related criminal cases than all previous presidents combined. Not all leaks are illegal, and many of the disclosures about palace intrigue at the White House that have irritated Mr. Trump violated no law. However, the Espionage Act and several other federal laws do criminalize unauthorized disclosures about certain national security information, like surveillance secrets.
But Mr. Trump has suggested an even harder line. Officials declined to discuss which specific leaks are under investigation or who the suspects may be.
In February, Mr. Trump told James B. Comey, then the F.B.I. director, that the bureau should consider prosecuting reporters for publishing classified information, according to one of Mr. Comey’s associates. Mr. Sessions on Friday did not respond to a question about whether such a step, which would raise First Amendment issues, was under consideration. Several advocacy groups for reporters and First Amendment issues sharply criticized the statements made during the news conference, as did Martin Baron, the executive editor of The Washington Post.
The department’s rules require investigators to exhaust all other ways to obtain the information they are seeking before subpoenaing journalists for notes or testimony that could force them to help investigators identify their confidential sources. “Sessions talked about putting lives at risk,” Mr. Baron said. “We haven’t done that. What we’ve done is reveal the truth about what administration officials have said and done. In many instances, our factual stories have contradicted false statements they’ve made.”
In 2013, after a backlash in Congress and the news media over aggressive tactics to go after reporters’ information in leak investigations, then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. decided to revise those rules to 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. The Post declined to comment when asked if it had been contacted by the government about any leak investigations.
The changes made it harder for law enforcement officials to obtain such logs without providing advance notice and giving news organizations a chance to contest the request in court. Matt Purdy, a deputy managing editor of The New York Times, said: “There’s a distinction between revelations that make the government uncomfortable and revelations that put lives at risk. We have not published information that endangers lives.”
Mr. Sessions’ deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, said the review of the guidelines had just begun and it was not clear what, if anything, would be changed. The Times also declined to comment about whether the government had contacted it regarding leak investigations.
Mr. Sessions was joined in the news conference by Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence. The two are co-chairmen of an insider threat task force first established by the Obama administration in 2011 after Chelsea Manning’s leak of hundreds of thousands of diplomatic and military files to WikiLeaks. Mr. Coats threatened to administratively discipline people suspected of leaking, apart from any prosecution. In February, Mr. Trump said at a news conference that he had told Mr. Sessions to look into leaks — an unusual thing to say, since presidents generally try to avoid appearing as if they are asserting political control over law enforcement. Mr. Trump has continued to periodically demand a crackdown, including criticizing Mr. Sessions in Twitter posts for not doing more. 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!”
“Understand this: if you improperly disclose classified information, we will find you, we ill investigate you, we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law, and you will not be happy with the results,” Mr. Coats said. 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. But presidents have the authority to declassify and disclose information at their discretion.
The Trump administration has been bedeviled by leaks large and small that have disclosed infighting inside his administration, including the president’s rancorous phone conversations with foreign leaders. Information shared with reporters brought to light 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 Mr. Comey, the former F.B.I. director. Once rare, leak cases have become far more common in the 21st century, in part because of electronic trails that make it easier for investigators to determine who had access to a leaked document and was in contact with a reporter. In early 2006, after The Times revealed the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program, the Bush administration created a dedicated task force to go after high-level leaks — making it a kind of predecessor to the new F.B.I. unit Mr. Sessions announced.
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 effectively exposed an important Israeli government source. The president does have the authority to declassify and disclose information at his own discretion. The Obama administration oversaw around nine or 10 leak-related prosecutions, depending on how they are counted. That was more than all previous presidents combined, although two of them were investigations inherited from the Bush-era task force. And Mr. Trump has encouraged taking an even harder line.
Not all leaks are illegal, but the Espionage Act and a handful of other federal statutes criminalize the unauthorized disclosure of certain categories of national-security related information that could harm the country or aid a foreign adversary. In February, Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, then the F.B.I. director, that the bureau should consider prosecuting reporters for publishing classified information, according to a contemporaneous memo Mr. Comey wrote about the conversation. The government has never charged a reporter for publishing restricted information, and Mr. Sessions on Friday did not respond to a question about whether such a step was under consideration.
In February, Mr. Trump said at a news conference that he told Mr. Sessions to look into leaks — an unusual thing to say, since presidents generally try to avoid appearing as if they are asserting political control over law enforcement. 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.
Mr. Comey also wrote in a memo, recounting one of his conversations with Mr. Trump, that the president had told him to consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information. The department’s rules require investigators to exhaust all other ways to obtain the information they are seeking before examining reporters’ phone logs or subpoenaing journalists for notes or testimony that could force them to help investigators identify their confidential sources, or face imprisonment for contempt. F.B.I. agents have long chafed under that restriction, which can slow their investigations but is intended to limit any chilling effect on the news gathering process.
It would be unusual to prosecute a journalist for publishing government secrets, a step that would raise significant First Amendment issues. Mr. Sessions took no questions, but Mr. Rosenstein afterward demurred when asked whether he would prosecute reporters for doing their jobs, saying he would not “comment on hypotheticals.” 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. The changes made it harder for law enforcement officials to obtain such logs without providing advance notice and giving news organizations a chance to contest the request in court.
Mr. Trump has continued to periodically demand a leak crackdown, including criticizing Mr. Sessions in Twitter posts for not doing more. On July 25, for example, the president posted on Twitter, “Attorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes (where are emails & DNC server) & Intel leakers!" The tripling of open investigations since January, Mr. Sessions indicated, was driven by a surge in complaints by security agencies about unauthorized disclosures of classified information. He said that during the first six months of the Trump administration, the Justice Department received nearly as many criminal referrals as it did during the three previous years combined.
Once rare, leak cases have become far more common in the 21st century, in part because of electronic trails that make it easier for investigators to determine who had access to a leaked document and was in contact with a reporter. Depending on how they are counted, the Obama administration brought nine or 10 leak-related prosecutions. Two problems complicated assessments of those ratios. First, the department declined to disclose specific figures for the number of such referrals and open investigations. Moreover, its method of tracking such numbers conflates leaks to the news media with other types of unauthorized disclosures, like spying for a foreign power. It was not clear whether the ratios would shift if only leaks to journalists were considered.
To date, the Trump administration has brought one new criminal leak case. In June, it arrested and charged Reality Leigh Winner, a contractor working for the National Security Agency, with sending a classified intelligence report about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election to the news media. The department’s conflation of different types of unauthorized disclosure investigations led to confusion when Mr. Sessions said the Justice Department has already handled four such cases this year, because there has been only one known new leak case in the Trump era so far: the charging in June of Reality Leigh Winner, a contractor working for the National Security Agency, with sending an intelligence report about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election to The Intercept.
Mr. Rosenstein later clarified that only one of those four unauthorized disclosure cases specifically involved a leak to the news media.
Mr. Sessions was also joined in the news conference by Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence. The two are co-chairmen of an insider threat task force first established by the Obama administration in 2011 after Chelsea Manning’s leak of hundreds of thousands of diplomatic and military files to WikiLeaks. Mr. Coats threatened to administratively discipline people suspected of leaking, apart from any prosecution.
“Understand this: If you improperly disclose classified information, we will find you, we will investigate you, we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law, and you will not be happy with the results,” Mr. Coats said.