'It'll Be Brutal': Inside Trump's Planned War on Leakers and the Press

Source: Rolling Stone

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In reporting this story, Rolling Stone spoke with attorneys close to the president-elect, incoming Trump administration officials, and other Republicans who’ve talked to Trump about staunching embarrassing press leaks during a second administration. Two of the sources with knowledge of the matter specifically cited the Dec. 1 subpoena as a model, and something that Trump allies and lieutenants are expecting to issue more of during the second term — this time, with the benefit of years, not days.

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“Oh, it’ll be brutal,” says one conservative lawyer who’s discussed certain plans and ideas with Trump and his inner circle. “Gloves off [because] we’ve learned our lessons from the first time and one lesson is you have got to be even more aggressive.”

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Among committed Trumpists close to the president-elect, there has also been discussion of potentially creating new offices in the FBI or DOJ to focus exclusively on hunting for leaks and plugging the deluge of media leaks. In the summer of 2017, Trumps’ first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, mentioned that the FBI had formed a new unit to deal with leaks, including of classified info. Sessions also announced that the Trump administration had tripled the number of criminal leak investigations in the time since President Barack Obama left office.

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The sources close to Trump add that non-government actors will be integral to their plans for combatting who they deem overly meddlesome reporters. Multiple sources say that as sitting president, Trump still intends to have his small armada of personal lawyers who aren’t working in the administration handle his (often frivolous) lawsuits — or, more often than not, enraged legal threats that don’t result in suits — against media outlets that cross him during a new term.

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Read more: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-war-press-media-leaks-1235202909/