Carlos Barria/Reuters
President Trump on Friday morning lashed out at the FBI in a Twitter rant calling on the agency to find and punish leakers in the wake of a CNN report casting his administration in a negative light. According to the cable-news outlet’s Thursday evening report, the FBI rejected a request from the White House to knock down reports alleging communications between Trump allies and Russian officials during the 2016 presidential campaign. According to CNN, White House officials specifically sought out FBI and other agency officials to claim the reports were untrue. “The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security ‘leakers’ that have permeated our government for a long time,” Trump wrote in response. “They can’t even find the leakers within the FBI itself. Classified information is being given to media that could have a devastating effect on U.S. FIND NOW.” A Friday morning White House pool report on a background briefing by senior administration officials revealed that on February 15, assistant FBI director Andrew McCabe allegedly told chief-of-staff Reince Priebus that The New York Times story on the FBI investigating contacts between Trump’s team was “B.S.” and that when asked if FBI officials could help squash the story, McCabe said, “We’d love to help but we can’t get into the position of making statements on every story.”