US President Donald Trump has declared that the federal Department of Justice should try to identify the writer of a bitingly critical New York Times opinion piece.
Trump cited "national security" in an interview with reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday as he called on US Attorney General Jeff Sessions to open an investigation to unmask the author.
He also said he was exploring the potential of bringing legal action against the newspaper over the publication of the essay two days earlier.
The opinion piece was purportedly submitted by a member of a Trump administration "resistance" movement straining to thwart his most dangerous impulses.
"Jeff should be investigating who the author of that piece was because I really believe it's national security," Trump said.
If the person has a high-level security clearance, he said, "I don't want him in those meetings."
It's all but unthinkable that the Justice Department could open an investigation into the newspaper article.
Though the article was strongly critical of Trump, no classified information appears to have been revealed by the author or leaked to the newspaper, which would be one crucial bar to clear before a leak investigation could even be contemplated.
Still, Trump's call is the latest test of the independence of the Justice Department, which is supposed to make investigative and charging decisions without political interference from the White House.
A day earlier, Trump's top lieutenants stepped forward to repudiate the piece in a show of loyalty to their incensed boss, who has ordered aides to unmask the writer.
By email, by tweet and on camera, the denials paraded in on Thursday from Cabinet-level officials - and even Vice President Mike Pence.
Senior officials in key national security and economic policy roles charged the article's writer with cowardice, disloyalty and acting against America's interests in harsh terms that mimicked the president's own words.
In an interview on Thursday with Fox News, Trump said the author "may not be a Republican, it may not be a conservative, it may be a deep state person who has been there for a long time."
White House officials did not respond to requests to elaborate on Trump's call for the writer to be turned over to the government or on the unsupported national security grounds of his demand.
Rudy Giuliani, the president's attorney, suggested that it "would be appropriate" for Trump to ask for a formal investigation into the identity of the author.
"Let's assume it's a person with a security clearance. If they feel writing this is appropriate, maybe they feel it would be appropriate to disclose national security secrets, too. That person should be found out and stopped," Giuliani said.
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