A senior Trump administration official revealed Tuesday what they called “one of the worst-kept secrets at the White House,” one that has left President Donald Trump “livid and paranoid” but persists due to an assurance of “mutual destruction,” Zeteo reported Tuesday.
Back in April, Trump “loudly demanded” to know who in his administration had leaked information to two New York Times reporters, a leak hunt that went on to become a “big deal” and a top priority for the president, one Trump administration official previously told Zeteo, speaking on the condition of anonymity. In May, it was reported that a “paranoid” Trump pushed his Justice Department to raid the Times reporters’ homes to identify the leakers.
As of June, however, Trump’s leak hunt has fizzled, Zeteo learned after speaking with “an array of sources working in or close to the Trump White House,” and due to one “big” reason: “way, way too many Cabinet-level appointees and senior administration officials leaked to the Times reporters to make a leak hunt truly effective,” Zeteo’s Asawin Suebsaeng wrote.
“According to sources with direct knowledge of the situation, too many of the people Trump had asked about finding the leakers had themselves, well, leaked to the [Times reporters],” Suebsaeng wrote.
“I cannot possibly pretend that it isn’t hysterically funny how Trump has put himself in a position where it’s very hard for him to find the leakers because the senior personnel he tapped to be the leak-hunters-in-chief are also the ones who’ve been doing the leaking. Good help is hard to find!”
One Trump administration official told Zeteo that they had “started making a list of likely suspects,” but the list had “got too long” to be useful.
Another official, described by Zeteo as a senior Trump administration official, admitted to having leaked information to the Times reporters.
“It’s one of the worst-kept secrets at the White House,” the official told Zeteo, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “I’m not ratting myself out; that would be ridiculous.”
Another source Zeteo spoke with on the condition of anonymity, described by the outlet as an “adviser to the president,” explained why so many officials in the Trump administration felt comfortable leaking to the press, despite Trump describing such an act as “treason.”
“[The adviser] compared the Trump-ordered leak hunt to the scene at the end of the Quentin Tarantino movie ‘Reservoir Dogs,’ in which the different characters have loaded guns pointed at one another, ensuring mutual destruction,” Zeteo reported.