By: Kimberley A. Strassel – wsj.com – March 27, 2025

Now that Democrats agree secrecy is important, let’s see some investigations.

Two Washington Post reporters last August revealed a “secret criminal investigation” into a presidential administration with a story based on “thousands of pages of government records, including sealed court filings and exhibits,” as well as interviews with at least “two dozen” people with knowledge of the Justice Department and FBI probe, some of whom referenced “classified U.S. intelligence.”

By all means, let’s talk about “leaks” in the wake of this week’s Signal fiasco. It would be about time, given Washington’s decadeslong epidemic of information ooze. Democrats and the media certainly want to turn the Signal flap into the shame of 2025. Rep. Seth Moulton (D., Mass.): “Incompetence so severe that it could have gotten Americans killed.” The New York Times: “Democrats Call for [Pete] Hegseth and [Mike] Waltz to Resign.” Rep. Chris Deluzio (D., Pa.): “This is an outrageous national security breach and heads should roll.” The Washington Post: “Attorney General Pam Bondi avoids questions about investigating leak.”

Washington should be concerned that Trump officials blunderingly added a journalist to a Yemen war-planning chat conducted on a publicly available messaging app. Quite aside from security concerns, the episode looked decidedly junior-varsity. National-security officials are supposed to bring to mind situation rooms and faraday bags, not group chats on unsecure phones.

But if we’re going to have a discussion about the importance of sensitive government information, let’s bring the outrage consistently. And let’s take the time to make the all-important distinction between mistakes or whistleblowing and the purposeful leaking of damaging or false information with the goal of advancing a political narrative. The latter makes up the vast majority of Washington’s “leak” plague yet rarely receives the condemnation or investigation it deserves.

The Signal chat was a “leak” in the most literal sense. Information meant to be tightly held was sloppily allowed to bleed to a journalist. It was unintentional. This case is rare in that we know who did it and how it happened.

Compare that with the torrent of leaks that began in the runup to Mr. Trump’s first election—nearly all of them via unnamed officials who planted selected information in credulous media outlets, with the purpose of manipulating politics. These weren’t folks who accidentally touched the wrong phone button or carelessly handled a document. Nor had they stumbled across actual government abuse or untruths and felt compelled to bring it out.

These were leaks about a scandalous, fact-free “dossier” and FBI investigation into “Trump-Russia collusion,” to sway the 2016 election. Leaks about Michael Flynn’s call with a Russian ambassador, to further the “collusion” narrative. Dozens more leaks out of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, most as wild as they were false. Leaks about Mr. Trump’s confidential phone calls with foreign leaders, to cast him as chaotic, a dolt, dangerous. Leaks about Jared Kushner’s path to a top-secret security clearance, to try smearing him as captive to foreign influence. Later, after Mr. Biden was in the White House, leaks of a Supreme Court draft opinion.

The Justice Department says there were 120 criminal referrals for leak prosecutions in 2017—up from 37 in 2016 and 18 in 2015. Sen. Ron Johnson, as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, published a report in July 2017 that found at least 125 news articles containing leaked government information potentially damaging to national security in the first four months of Mr. Trump’s term—nearly one a day, or a rate about “seven times higher than the same period during the two previous administrations.”

Whatever the motivation behind a breach, all leaks cause real national-security harm. Government attorneys in a 2019 court filing noted that leakers, who give their information to the world, cause more damage than even spies, who pass info to a single foreign government. Foreign allies grew wary of speaking candidly to the Trump White House or sharing intelligence. The national cost was as great, requiring costly special-counsel investigations, congressional hearings, resignations, and endless drama. Yet Democrats and the media doggedly insisted on feting those leakers as patriots, heroes, truth-tellers.

So, hallelujah that the left—and the media!—now think leaks are a problem. Though as they pursue their calls for an investigation into the Signal oops, let’s see them also join, say, with Mr. Johnson and Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley in their latest request that the Justice Department investigate the partisan leakers behind that August Washington Post story. No more leaky double standards.

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Source: The Leaky Double Standard – WSJ