Leaks in the White House have become so commonplace that Trump aides attempt to route out so-called traitors by dropping false information in meetings to see where it ends up, a new book claims.
A Warning, penned by senior Trump administration official known only as "anonymous," outlines fears of disloyalty in the White House—so pervasive that many meetings are described as being for "politicals only," to the exclusion of anyone other than presidential appointees.
The book also describes meetings that are not classified but are still held in the Situation Room in order to avoid conversations being overheard by people not inside the president's circle.
"The president is alert to this as well, as he is wary when he sees faces he doesn't recognize. If ever experts from within the administration's bureaucracy are brought into sensitive White House discussions, they must be the 'trusted' ones," the book states.
"Skepticism about career staff is so intense that sometimes Trump aides deliberately disclose false information in meetings to see if it ends up in the press so they can root out suspected traitors. (The people who do this are the ones you'd expect, and I've seen them hypocritically leak to the press to promote themselves, despite running their own anti-leak operations.)," it continues.
The book's "anonymous" author also claims that well-informed public servants with detailed subject knowledge are being ignored in the White House, with their opinions and work "frequently left on the cutting room floor."
"What this means is that Trump is limiting information he hears from within his own government to more inexperienced political types who tend to agree with him in the first place and who he perceives are personally loyal," the book said.
The president has long shown a preference for employing people he knows personally in White House roles, from his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, who have both assumed positions in the administration, to former Apprentice contestant Omarosa Manigault-Newman, who for a time had a role in Trump's White House, only to become a thorn in the president's side after the pair parted ways on bad terms.
Indeed, leakers became such an issue in the White House in 2018 that there were leaks about leakers, with everyone from White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway to Deputy Communications Director Raj Shah suggested as potential leakers.
At the time then press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders suggested that White House leakers should be fired. "I think it's disgusting and some of the most shameful behavior you can ever engage in," she said.
