Trump says government leakers should be shot

President Donald Trump told supporters at a campaign rally in Arizona that government workers who leak sensitive information to the news media should face severe punishment, including execution, as he described what he said was a leak involving a U.S. attack on Iran.

“In my opinion, leakers should be shot,” Trump said Wednesday in Bullhead City. “In the old days, we used to shoot leakers, you know, when they leak what time you’re going to attack a country.” He urged the crowd to vote in the November 3 midterm elections, Al Jazeera reported.

Trump said someone had disclosed the departure and arrival times for a planned raid on Iran, forcing him to change the schedule. “They leaked the time we were leaving, the time we were arriving,” he said. According to Al Jazeera, Trump claimed he rescheduled the bombing campaign for two days later. NBC News reported that Trump described having to call off a planned raid, although the U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025 went ahead.

“Somebody leaked. Some sleaze-bag, they ought to go to jail or be shot,” Trump said. “For the rest of their life, they should be in jail.” He named The New York Times and CNN while accusing news outlets of publishing the information. “Leakers should be dealt with very, very strongly,” he added. “To me, they are the scum of the earth.”

Trump also pointed toward journalists covering the rally and compared them to leakers, NBC News reported. “Those same people up there, they’re almost as bad as a leaker, because they leak,” he said. “Oh, they leak false information. That makes them a leaker, right?”

The remarks appeared to refer to Operation Midnight Hammer, the June 2025 U.S. attack on Iran during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, according to Al Jazeera. After the strike, news outlets published findings from a preliminary, nonpublic Defense Intelligence Agency report suggesting that Iran had moved some enriched uranium away from the targeted sites and that damage to its nuclear facilities was less extensive than Trump had asserted. Trump blamed Democrats for leaking information about the flight to the sites and called for them to be prosecuted, Al Jazeera reported.

The administration has pursued a broader campaign against leaks. It has proposed requiring new and current federal employees to sign nondisclosure agreements, NBC News reported. The New York Times reported last month that federal investigators had given polygraph tests to about 50 members of the military’s Joint Staff, asking whether they had shared classified information with journalists.

In January, Trump authorized a search of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home in an investigation of a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified material. A federal magistrate judge later barred the administration from examining data seized there; a district court judge upheld that ruling on appeal, and no further appeal followed, according to NBC News.

The administration also sought grand jury testimony in June from three Post journalists and one Wall Street Journal journalist, then dropped the subpoenas after the newspapers objected, NBC News reported. Separately, Al Jazeera reported that a federal court struck down many of the Pentagon’s new access requirements for journalists after much of its press corps refused to sign an agreement not to publish unauthorized material.