After being publicly scolded by the president to do more leak investigations, Sessions has apparently risen to the challenge and will announce later this week a big jump in leak cases they are pursuing.
From Axios:
Late this week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions plans to release figures showing a jump in the number of leak cases pursued so far this year, compared to all of last year. The figures will be finalized today.
- Administration officials believe the increase is because there’s more leaking going on (including by Obama appointees who remained in government), and because the Justice Department is being aggressive in going after them.
- The event announcing the leak war is expected to include officials from both the DOJ and intelligence community.
- A senior administration official said one purpose of the public announcement of the figures is to try to curtail the “culture of leaks”: “Leaks beget more leaks.”
According to Fox News this morning, Sessions has announced a press conference for the leaks on Friday:
Attorney-General Jeff Sessions will hold a press conference on leaks on Friday pic.twitter.com/R2vfFhkuSC
— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 1, 2017
Now I suspect that Sessions was already deeply involved in these leak investigations while being publicly scolded by Trump, so I don’t think this is a result of Trump’s tweeting. After all, Sessions takes his job very seriously.
We’ll post the press conference here on Friday for you to watch.