Blanche Appears to Confirm DOJ Is Investigating Rescue Leak, Day After Trump Threatened to Jail Journo

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche took questions from the press on Tuesday and was asked about President Donald Trump’s claim the day before about hunting a leaker, who the president claims divulged sensitive information about the rescue of a downed airman over Iran last week.

“The President yesterday said he was prepared to jail a reporter over who, as they search for a leaker behind reports about the downed Air Force officer. Is there an ongoing leak investigation?” asked an off-camera reporter.

“I mean, I can say it as many times as folks ask — I will never comment on ongoing investigations,” replied Blanche before appearing to confirm the investigation is indeed happening:

I think that, to the extent that we have seen a series of leaks that necessarily involve classified information and putting the lives of our soldiers at risk, or the lives of agents at risk, that is something that we will always investigate.

And we will investigate — if it means sending a subpoena to the reporter, that’s exactly what we should do and that’s what we will be doing. If it means doing regular investigations to identify who within the government feels like it’s okay to leak classified information, to put lives at risk, then we’ll try to root him or her out as well. So I’m not going to talk about ongoing investigations, except to say that yes, we will always investigate those types of leaks. I’ll just take one more question.

Trump fumed during a presser on Monday at the White House, accusing a leaker of tipping off the media that only one pilot had been rescued last Friday – endangering the safety of the second pilot.

“But we have to find that leaker, because that’s a sick person. Probably didn’t realize the extent of how bad it was — I can’t imagine that the person did. But we’re going to find out. It’s national security,” Trump said.

“And the person that did the story will go to jail if he doesn’t say. And that doesn’t last long. And I think everybody would understand that. They put this mission at great risk,” he added.

Notably, Trump’s comments came before the Q&A part of the presser, and no journalists in the room later asked him about the leak allegations. The identity of the journalist whom Trump threatened to jail remains a mystery.

Watch the clip above via Fox News.

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