White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has been charged with tracking down leakers in the Trump White House. The Trump administration has been plagued by sensitive information being divulged anonymously to journalists.
One leaker famously wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post saying that they, along with others, are actively working from within the administration to thwart President Trump’s agenda. They even wrote and published an entire book about the subject.
Meadows, a former congressman from South Carolina, has reportedly been feeding information to certain staffers, in a test to see which information leaks out.
“Meadows told me he was doing that,” one former White House official told Axios. “I don’t know if it ever worked.” Multiple officials have told Axios that Meadows has been “unusually vocal about his tactics.”
President Trump is especially furious about two recent leaks: that Russia was paying “bounties” to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan to kill U.S. soldiers, and that the Secret Service had to rush the President down to the White House bunker as riots erupted near the White House last month.
Meadows is concentrating more on national security information than workplace gossip according to reports. He is “focused on national security leaks and could care less about the palace intrigue stories,” said a source.
So far Meadows tactics have tracked down one minor leaker. A federal employee who leaked information about a White House social media executive order has been caught – and fired.
Photo by Gage Skidmore