Trump considers making staff take lie detector test amid more leaks coming out of White House
President Donald Trump has considered making his staff take lie detector tests amid an increasing number of leaks come out of his White House, according to reports. The Republican has been under heavy scrutiny recently after varied unflattering details emerged from the White House, including his desire to buy Greenland, his wish to build a moat for his border wall with snakes and alligators in them, and the details of his calls with foreign leaders.
Four White House officials, on conditions of anonymity, told Politico that the president has become so obsessed with the leaks that he frequently discusses ordering polygraphs of White House staffers.
"He wanted to polygraph every employee in the building to unearth who it was who spoke to the press," one of the officials told the outlet. Reports state that the more true the leaked account was, the angrier the president became, with some staff volunteering to take polygraph tests to show that they were not the leaker.
Trump has been concerned about the White House leaks ever since he assumed the presidency in 2017. Reports state that his frustration with the leaks is often linked to press coverage he considers unfavorable. The president, previously, has also tried to bring in new people in an attempt to remove the leakers from the office. However, the leaks from the administration continue to plague him.
Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, in July 2017, had vowed to remove all the leakers from the White House. "What I want to do is I want to f***ing kill all the leakers and I want to get the President's agenda on track so we can succeed for the American people," he had told The New Yorker in an infamous interview.
Trump, after an anonymous White House staffer published the "resistance" memo in The New York Times in September 2018, was reported to have railed against the "snakes" in his administration and was believed to have carried a list of staffers he suspected of leaking information. "When he was super frustrated about the leaks, he would rail about the 'snakes' in the White House," a source told Axios at the time.
The latest revelations from the White House have contributed to the launch of an impeachment inquiry against Trump after a whistleblower, a CIA agent, alleged that the president had abused his power by asking Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, during a phone call, to investigate his political rival Joe Biden allegedly in lieu of military aid.