President Trump suggested that federal investigators would coerce reporters to tell the government who leaked the “low confidence” preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment that his strikes on Iran may only set the regime’s nuclear program back by a few months.
Trump repeated his demand that the leaker be prosecuted and speculated that Democrats may have been behind the report going public.
“They could find out easily. And you go up and tell the reporter, ‘National security, who gave it.’ You have to do that. And, I suspect will be doing things like that,” Trump told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” in a pre-taped interview.
The president has been adamant that the strikes he ordered against three of Iran’s nuclear facilities “obliterated them.”
“They did obliterate it, it turned out,” Trump complained. “We had to suffer the fake news with the fake news of CNN and the New York Times, [which were] saying, well, maybe it wasn’t as good as Trump said. Maybe it wasn’t totally obliterated.”
“It turned out, no, it was obliterated like nobody’s ever seen before. And that meant the end to their nuclear ambitions, at least for a period of time.”
CNN was the first to report on the DIA assessment, followed by the New York Times. Fox News also reported on the leaked intel.
