Republican Senator Rand Paul made national headlines Thursday after he suggested the Trump administration should administer lie detector tests to anyone in the White House with a security clearance in order to unearth the anonymous author of The New York Times op-ed.
The Obama administration forced some of its members to undergo lie detector tests and seized phone and email records between reporters and intelligence community members.
The Obama administration’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper, announced in June 2012 that members of the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and 13 other intelligence agencies would be subjected to more stringent polygraph tests. In response to a series of intelligence leaks at the time, Clapper said the question of whether a person had disclosed classified information to members of the media would be added to a lie detector test, The Hill reported.
Under the Obama administration, sources began talking to reporters through a middle-man so that they could pass polygraphs when asked if they talked with reporters, wrote former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. in a 2013 report for the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Trump told reporters Friday he now wants Sessions and the DOJ to investigate the identity of the senior administration official behind the Times op-ed for national security reasons. The author painted Trump as erratic, impulsive and potentially dangerous, claiming to be part of a “quiet resistance.”
The President also said he was “very strongly” considering legal action against the paper for publishing a piece he deemed a “disgrace.” He did not specify any grounds for either action, and legal experts said the threats were likely without grounds.
In a statement issued Friday afternoon, the Times said a DOJ investigation would be a “blatant abuse of government power” and that Trump’s threats “both underscore why we must safeguard the identity of the writer of this Op-Ed and serve as a reminder of the importance of a free and independent press to American democracy.”
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