|

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that anyone leaking information out of his own White House should face execution, in an escalation of violent rhetoric against leakers and journalists.

“Somebody leaked, some sleazebag. They ought to go to jail or be shot,” Trump told the audience.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Arizona on Wednesday, Trump framed his remarks in terms of the start of the war with Iran, “when they leak what time you’re going to attack a country,” the president said. However, no such “leak” has been confirmed to have occurred at that point in time.

After the war began, a White House leak revealed assessments from U.S. Defense intelligence that contradicted the president’s public claims about the impacts of initial strikes on Iran.

“The leakers should be dealt with very, very strongly. … To me, they’re the scum of the Earth,” the president added at the rally.

Trump also directed his ire against the free press, expressing disdain for journalists over their reporting on leaks from the White House.

“They’re almost as bad as a leaker,” Trump said.

Trump has previously attacked leakers within his own administration, bemoaning the publication of previously hidden information that casts him or others in his orbit in a negative light. In April, he threatened reporters with jail for reporting on details of a rescue mission near the start of the war.

“We have to find that leaker, because that’s a sick person. … The person that did the story will go to jail if he doesn’t say,” Trump said at the time.

In August, Trump threatened “leakers” with treason charges, stating in a Truth Social post that “Long term jail sentences will be sought!”

Treason is a charge punishable by death.

Reporting on leaks is critical for holding government officials accountable. The Pentagon Papers case in the 1970s, for example, divulged how “lies were the foundation of U.S. policy” in the lead-up to and during the Vietnam War, according to an explainer from Freedom of the Press Foundation.

The Pentagon Papers leak established an important Supreme Court precedent on press freedom, ensuring that government entities had to overcome a “very heavy burden” to deny publications of their right to print leaks for the public to see, including in instances involving national security or wartime secrets. Trump’s suggestion that leakers (and the press) should be jailed or even shot for their actions infringes on the right guaranteed by that decades-old precedent.