The Trump administration embarked on a war against government leakers yesterday amid fears that frequent spills of embarrassing and classified information are undermining the president.
Jeff Sessions, the attorney-general, said that prosecutors had charged four people with unauthorised disclosures of classified information or concealing contacts with foreign officials.
From its earliest days the Trump administration has been plagued by leaks. So often has sensitive information found its way into the papers that some Trump supporters argue that a “deep state” — an alleged cabal of career civil servants and intelligence officers — is plotting to topple the president. This week’s leaks included full transcripts of Mr Trump’s phone calls with two foreign leaders.
Action to stem the leaks was announced a day after another nugget of information made it into the press — that a grand jury had been enrolled in Washington as part of a special counsel investigation into whether the Trump election campaign colluded with the Kremlin.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that Robert Mueller, the former FBI chief leading the special counsel inquiry, has now formed a grand jury — 23 members of the public — who will be shown documents, hear witness testimony and decide whether there are grounds to bring criminal charges.
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Mr Sessions said that the FBI had created a counterintelligence unit to handle leakers. The Justice Department has more than tripled the number of leak investigations since the Obama administration ended, he added. “This culture of leaking must stop.”
The attorney-general added: “I strongly agree with the president and condemn in the strongest terms the staggering number of leaks.”
Last month Mr Sessions was the target of an extraordinary series of attacks by Mr Trump, who denounced him on Twitter for his “VERY weak position” on “intel leakers”.
The only criminal case made public under Mr Trump involves Reality Leigh Winner, 25, a government contractor. She has been accused of providing a news website with a top secret document describing an attempt by Russian hackers to compromise a company that provides voting machine technology to several states.
Under Barack Obama, nine cases were brought against leakers — more than under all his predecessors.
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On the campaign trail Mr Trump praised Wikileaks for disclosing hacked emails that had been stolen from senior advisers to Hillary Clinton. Now in the White House his attitude has changed.
Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as communications director at the White House, threatened to fire the entire communications staff unless the leaks were plugged.
Analysts said yesterday that use of a a grand jury, which typically operates in secret, suggested that Mr Mueller believes that he may have evidence of criminal conduct. It also indicated that his inquiry will grind on for months, if not years.
It does not mean that a prosecution will result. Grand jury subpoenas were issued last year in connection with an investigation into Mrs Clinton’s email server and no charges followed.