White House cracks down after leaks of Trump’s phone calls

Stung by leaks, including President Trump’s phone calls with leaders of Australia and Mexico, the White House is considering drastic measures including, according to one aide, a lie detector.

The justice department has tripled the number of investigations into unauthorised leaks of classified information and four people have already been charged, attorney general Jeff Sessions told reporters.

The latest leaks of transcripts of the president’s phone conversations with Mexico’s Enrique Pena Nieto and Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull, is being treated as a “national security matter” that “prevents the President from being able to do what he does best and negotiate with foreign leaders”. In his call with Pena Nieto, Trump sought to play down his key campaign promise of a wall, saying it was “the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important to talk about.”

And he asked the Mexican president to find a way to couch his rejection of Trump’s proposal to make Mexico pay for the wall. “I would like to recommend is ...we will work out the wall. They are going to say, ‘who is going to pay for the wall, Mr. President?’ to both of us, and we should both say, ‘we will work it out.’ As opposed to you saying, ‘we will not pay’ and me saying, ‘we will not pay.’”

On his call with the Australian prime minister Turnbull, he complained about honouring an agreement by President Barack Obama to taken in refugees kept by Australia on offshore holding facilities, and said it would make him “look like a dope”.