'Gloves off': Trump to be 'even more aggressive' in 'terrorizing whistleblowers and leakers'

12 December 2024

In his first term, then-President Donald Trump constantly battled against leaks from within the executive branch. But according to a new report, the president-elect is making it clear that leakers — and the journalists they leak to — will be aggressively pursued.

Rolling Stone's Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez reported Thursday that Trump is prioritizing a crackdown on leakers in his second term. They began their article by referencing a December 2020 subpoena the lame duck Trump administration's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent to BuzzFeed News demanding that the outlet reveal its sources.

"Failure to comply with this summons will render you liable to proceedings in a U.S. District Court to enforce compliance with this summons as well as other sanctions," the subpoena read. “You are requested not to disclose the existence of this summons for an indefinite period of time. Any such disclosure will impede this investigation and thereby interfere with the enforcement of federal law.”

Of course, the ICE subpoena was ultimately toothless, as President Joe Biden assumed office the following month and had a much less adversarial tone with the media. But Suebsaeng and Perez noted that the 2020 ICE subpoena would be the model going forward, and that he will have "the benefit of years, not days" to hound journalists with threats of prosecution.

“Oh, it’ll be brutal,” an unnamed conservative lawyer who has discussed anti-leak policies with Trump and his inner circle told Rolling Stone. “Gloves off [because] we’ve learned our lessons from the first time and one lesson is you have got to be even more aggressive.”

Aside from his likely plans to undo Biden's legislative legacy, Suebsaeng and Perez noted that Trump is also poised to roll back Biden's policies as it pertains to how much the government can "can terrorize whistleblowers and leakers." After he was confirmed, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Department of Justice (DOJ) would no longer allow federal prosecutors to seize journalists' phone records and private communications, outside of a few exceptions. Rolling Stone's sources said that policy would be "going in the trash can."

The second Trump administration may not stop at subpoenaing journalists' communications. CNN reported earlier this week that during his first term, Trump's DOJ seized private communications from members of Congress and their staffers — in addition to those of journalists at outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN — in its efforts to track down leakers. The DOJ's Office of the Inspector General warned that this would naturally have a "chilling" effect on Congress to do its Constitutional duty of conducting oversight of the executive branch.

Click here to read Suebsaeng and Perez's full report in Rolling Stone (subscription required).

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