US Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday vowed to crack down on leakers who reveal classified or sensitive national security information, branding such actions a betrayal of the country.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly fumed about "illegal leaks" and even lashed out publicly at Sessions last week for taking what he called a "very weak" position on the issue.
Four people have already been charged with "unlawfully disclosing" classified material or concealing contacts with federal officers, he said.
Active leaks triple
Active leak investigations this year have tripled compared with the number before Trump took office, Sessions added.
"We are taking a stand. This culture of leaking must stop," he said.
His remarks came just hours after yet another stunning revelation leaked to the media: a report by the Wall Street Journal that special counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury to investigate Russia's interference with the 2016 presidential election.
Grand jury proceedings are typically secret, and the exposure only highlighted the leaky sieve that Washington has become.
A prominent civil rights group warned that clamping down on leakers signaled a crackdown against democracy itself.
"Every American should be concerned about the Trump administration's threat to step up its efforts against whistleblowers and journalists," said Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Trump takes 'extended' vacation
Meanwhile Donald Trump, who once asked "what's the point" of vacations and often admonished his presidential predecessor for taking them while in office, embarked Friday on a 17-day holiday to one of his golf resorts.
As he headed to Bedminster, New Jersey for an extended break, the president leaves behind a capital grappling with a Russia scandal and buffeted by extraordinary leaks from government officials.
He has also failed to seize any major legislative victories in his first seven months in office, and is at odds with several Republican lawmakers on multiple fronts.
The White House said Trump's Bedminster stay would be a "working vacation," and cited scheduled upgrades of the West Wing's creaky heating and cooling system during the steamy Washington summer as a reason why Trump was leaving town.
It comes after a leak that was unusual even by the standards of this administration - the publication by The Washington Post of the contents of private phone calls between Trump and foreign leaders.
The newspaper published the full transcripts Thursday of conversations the Republican billionaire leader held in January with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
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