The White House is narrowing down the list of suspects who could have written the New York Times op-ed.
- Since The New York Times published an op-ed written by a "senior White House official" on Wednesday, the Trump Administration has been trying to identify the anonymous writer.
- As of Thursday, the White House had created a list of 12 potential suspects, an outside adviser told The Times.
- The president has said that the op-ed, which details efforts to thwart his agenda, amounts to treason.
The White House has allegedly compiled a list of 12 senior officials who may have written the anonymous New York Times op-ed, an outside adviser told The Times on Thursday.
Ever since the op-ed was published on Wednesday, the White House has been working to identify the culprit who wrote that there's a "resistance" inside the administration working to thwart the president's "worst inclinations."
Sources told the Daily Beast that the president "exploded" on Wednesday after reading the op-ed. Publicly, Trump has suggested that the op-ed amounts to "treason."
He called on The New York Times to "turn over" the op-ed writer for "National Security purposes." If the newspaper's leadership doesn't, he says Times reporters should investigate who the leaker is themselves.
"That would actually be a good scoop," Trump said at a rally in Montana Thursday night.
Sen. Rand Paul is said to have suggested to Trump that he make his officials take a lie detector test to root out the dissenter, while others close to the president are considering making senior officials sign sworn affidavits that could be used in court, The Times reported.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the writer an "anonymous coward" and a "gutless loser" who is "recklessly tarnishing the reputation of thousands of great Americans who proudly serve our country and work for President Trump."
She tweeted the general phone number for The New York Times and encouraged anyone curious to know the identity of the writer to call the newspaper and ask for themselves.
"They are the only ones complicit in this deceitful act," she said.
Following the op-ed's publishing Wednesday afternoon, the denials started rolling in. So far, almost all of the administration's top officials have issued statements denying writing the op-ed, from Vice President Mike Pence to the ambassador to Russia.