Looking to stem the tide of bombshell news reports linking Russian operatives with associates of President Donald Trump, U.S. intelligence agencies have taken the significant step of formally referring as many as six recent leaks to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Word of the criminal referrals comes as President Trump tries to use growing hostility toward the press as a means of making money for the Republican National Committee.
"Do your part to fight back against the media's attacks and deceptions," the president said Friday in a fundraising email blasted out by the RNC and obtained by ABC News. "They don’t care about the truth."
Meanwhile, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein may issue a private memorandum to his entire workforce in the coming weeks, reinforcing department guidelines that govern when employees can engage with members of the media, according to Justice Department insiders.
For months, President Trump and key Republican lawmakers have been calling on the Justice Department to investigate who told reporters about classified information uncovered during the U.S. government's ongoing probe of Russian meddling in last year's presidential election. But there's only one voice that can really prompt a Justice Department leak investigation: the U.S. intelligence community.
So I guess now that Trump has his people running the intelligence agencies, the obstructionism can begin in earnest.
Of course this is not without precedent as Richard Nixon once asked his FBI Director to be as ruthless as the Nazis in attempting to find Deep Throat.
And we all know how well THAT worked out.
By the way those leakers might be closer than Donald Trump dares to suspect.
Oh my God! It's coming from inside the house!Wow. @JoeNBC says Steve Bannon bragged about having damaging info about Kushner days before Kushner meeting w/ Gorkov leaked to the NYT.— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) June 2, 2017
Source http://ift.tt/2rtND2r
