Trump administration announces leak investigation after New York Times article

Washington: The Trump administration said Friday that it had opened a leak investigation, a day after The New York Times reported that US intelligence findings disagreed with a key assertion used to justify President Donald Trump's invocation of a wartime law to rapidly deport Venezuelan migrants.

In a statement, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, said the criminal inquiry related "to the selective leak of inaccurate, but nevertheless classified, information from the intelligence community."

Last weekend, Trump issued a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act, declaring that a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua had invaded the United States and was now subject to summary deportation under that contentious law.

In doing so, he stated that the gang was committing crimes in the United States in coordination with Venezuela's political leadership.

The Times reported Thursday that Trump's assertion was at odds with findings in a Feb. 26 intelligence document. The assessment indicates that the nation's spy agencies believe the gang is not controlled by the Venezuelan government or committing crimes on its orders.

Analysts said they had "moderate" confidence in that assessment, a view that was shared by the CIA and National Security Agency, the Times reported. The article also described how one agency, the FBI, partly dissented, expressing the view that the gang had a connection to Venezuela's authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, based on information the other agencies did not find credible.

In his statement, Blanche decried what he called "politically motivated efforts" to undermine the president's agenda. He also defended the administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act, which is being challenged in court.

A spokesperson for the Times warned of the consequences of leak investigations.

"Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of democracy and critical for citizens to hold their government accountable. Leak investigations are meant to chill communications between journalists and sources, and undermine the ability of a free press to bring out vital information that may otherwise be hidden," the spokesperson, Danielle Rhoades Ha, said in a statement.

"Our story raised fundamental questions about whether the American people were getting a straight story about an important national security issue," she continued. "That is precisely what journalists should be doing, no matter which party is in office."

The announcement by Blanche comes as administration officials move to fire, demote or reassign people across the government whom they frequently refer to as members of the "deep state" -- their term for what they claim is a layer of bureaucrats who try to use government systems to harm or limit Trump's agenda.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.