The Right Way To Plug Leaks

‘W e’re after leakers, not journalists,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Sunday. Cancel the panic over a supposed Team Trump media crackdown.

Yes, the Justice Department is “ramping up” efforts to ID and prosecute leakers, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Friday. After all, Justice in the past six months has “received nearly as many criminal referrals involving unauthorized disclosures of classified information” as in the prior three years combined.

That prompted hysteria like the Politico headline “Jeff Sessions’ Attack on the Media Is Worse Than You Think.”

But Rosenstein put the kibosh on that: “Reporters who publish information are not committing a crime.” And while he wouldn’t rule out the possibility of press wrongdoing, “I’ve not seen any [such cases] to date.”

In fact, Team Trump’s policy is far less hostile to the media than the Obama crew was in its early years: Until a backlash in 2013, Attorney General Eric Holder aggressively pursued material from reporters.

Even many Democrats are publicly appalled by some anti-Trump leaks, since they don’t just hurt the president’s image, but illegally undermine his ability to do the job he was elected to do.

New no-nonsense White House Chief of Staff John Kelly may be able to reduce the leaks on his own, and the continued departure of Obama holdovers should help, too.

But the prospect of criminal prosecution is a fine deterrent, too. And entirely merited.