Leaked and classified Situation Room conversations call for criminal investigation into ‘angry’ Trump

What took them so long?

Reports are emerging that White House aides are suddenly alarmed about the possibility that top-secret conversations about national security were recorded and leaked to the New York Times.

Axios quotes an administration source as saying, “We fear that some of our sensitive conversations were being recorded, and we don’t know which ones.”

The outlet also wrote, “We hear President Trump is angry about accounts being struck.”

The president has every right to be angry, but he should not stop there.

The Situation Room meetings are classified, and the possibility that details of the discussions, including those about Iran’s military objectives and strategies, were leaked warrants a criminal investigation.

But so far, there has been no outrage from the Department of Justice, despite the fact that Pam Bondi, then the attorney general, and Kash Patel, the head of the FBI, were talking by phone in one of the secret meetings, according to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.

Play by play

The White House’s mild and belated anger seems to be fueled by the fact that their book is scheduled to be published next week.

Titled “Regime Change,” it promises to delve “Inside the Presidency of Donald Trump.”

Published by Simon & Schuster, it is advertised on the same Amazon page as three other anti-Trump screeds.

One is titled “Empire of Lies,” the second compares the president to the leader of the opposition and another asserts that Trump is following in “the footsteps of Adolf Hitler.”

What, did you expect fair and balanced publishers?

The Situation Room’s focus for Times writers, according to articles published in the paper, included three important meetings there.

The first is said to take place on July 17, 2025, around 6 pm when Trump’s rally meets there.

The paper did not publish anything about that meeting until the day before, when it said that “Trump’s top advisers were gathered – without him – to find out how to get control of the kind of problem that threatens to consume the president: the Epstein files.”

To add credibility to their report, Haberman and Swan details the spotlight, writing, “Vice President JD Vance took a seat at the top of the table in the John F. Kennedy Conference Room of the Situation Room complex.

“‘This is a big problem,’ he told the group.”

Then followed a list of other attendees: White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, White House adviser David Warrington, press secretary Caroline Leavitt, deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich, communications director Steven Cheung, then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and Bondi and Patel on the phone.

The first sign of trouble

When the Times published details in April of two February meetings about the Iran attack, that was when alarm bells should have gone off and it was time to find the leaker.

But once the book is published, it will be too late to put the genie back in the bottle.

If the White House tries to act then, sales will stick out like a sore thumb for Trump.

Besides, as Axios noted, “None of the reports have been disputed” by anyone in the White House.

Disobedience is surprising.

As I wrote in April, a few days after the Times published an article under the headline, “How Trump Is Taking the US to War with Iran.”

It started with Netanyahu’s arrival in February at the White House, where he reportedly met privately with Trump, before the situation shifted to the Situation Room, where the US national security team met with the two leaders.

Ironically, the Times wrote that “the meeting was deliberately kept small to prevent leaks.

Journalists wrote that Trump did not sit in his usual seat at the head of the table, but instead sat to one side, facing the large screens mounted on the wall, and directly facing the Israeli leader.

Some Israelis, including the director of the Mossad, are said to be featured on screen behind Netanyahu as he lays out his vision of how the regime can be overthrown and the war won.

As the Times reported, the reaction from Trump’s team was even worse at a second meeting the next day that involved only Americans.

They were identified as the president and vice president, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Susie Wiles.

Again, this article contained what were thought to be direct quotes from almost everyone in the room.

The most prominent were from Ratcliffe, Rubio and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

The article said Ratcliffe described Netanyahu’s claim at the first meeting that the attack would lead to immediate regime change in Tehran as “a hoax.”

Then, according to the Times, Rubio added, “In other words, it’s a capital t.”

What followed was a long quote said to have been said by Gen. Caine while talking to the army commander: “Sir, this is, in my experience, the normal operating procedure of the Israelis.

Trump is reported to have said he is most interested in carrying out two parts of Netanyahu’s proposal, which is described as “killing the Ayatollah and the top leaders of Iran and disbanding the Iranian military.”

Undercut in Iran

The article’s emphasis on Netanyahu’s plan helped fuel the narrative from the left that Netanyahu had gotten Trump into the war, and that America was doing Israel’s dirty work in attacking Iran.

That view carries different tones of classic antisemitism as it blames Jews for everything wrong with the world, and consistently holds Israel to a relative double standard in other countries, even national security.

The Times also ignores the important fact that Trump has been consistent throughout his public career in arguing that Iran cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons.

Some presidents thought that was a good policy, but they were not willing to take military action even when the mullahs persisted in promising to get nukes and destroy Israel and the US.

That senseless failure to act explains how Iran has been able to terrorize the region for almost 50 years with its armed groups and terrorist groups.

Clearly, Trump is not done yet, and not everything has gone according to plan or promise.

His constant claims that lasting peace was at hand, when it was not, hurt his standing.

But it must also be said that he is the only president who had the courage to use American firepower to break the arms of the mullahs and the murderous intentions of the regime.

All Americans, even those at the New York Times, should hope and pray that he succeeds.