Trump says federal officials who leak to media ‘should be shot’

President Donald Trump told a campaign rally Wednesday that any official who leaks sensitive information to the media should face fatal consequences.

“The leakers should, in my opinion, be shot,” Trump said. “You know when they leak, what time are you going to attack a country.”

Trump described what he said was a planned raid on Iran that he had to call off after someone “leaked the time we left, the time we arrived.” He appeared to be referring to the US military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025, which has still continued.

“Someone leaked, sleazy. They should go to jail or be shot. For the rest of their lives, they should be in jail, but they leaked that we were leaving Missouri at 12:07 a.m., and it was in the New York Times, CNN.”

“Now the leakers must be dealt with very, very firmly. They are real. To me, they are the scum of the Earth,” he said.

Trump, who called the news media “the real enemy of the people,” then pointed the finger at reporters covering his rally in Bullhead City, Ariz., and compared them to leakers.

“Those same people up there are almost as bad as a leaker, because they’re leaking,” Trump said. “Oh, they’re leaking false information. That makes them leakers, doesn’t it?”

Since Trump returned to office, his administration has sought to crack down on information leaked to the media, including proposing to order federal agencies to make “new and existing employees” sign nondisclosure agreements.

Federal investigators subjected about 50 members of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff to polygraph tests, pressing them on whether they shared classified information with journalists, the Times reported last month, citing officials briefed on the move.

In January, Trump authorized a search of the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally possessing classified documents. A federal magistrate judge ruled a month later that the administration could not review the data that FBI agents seized there. The administration appealed the decision, but it was upheld by a district court judge. There were no further calls.

In June, the administration attempted to demand testimony from four journalists, three from the Post and one from the Wall Street Journal, before a grand jury, an official familiar with the matter told NBC News at the time. The administration dropped the subpoenas after newspapers pushed back.