On Tuesday, June 24, 2025, news outlets led by CNN reported details of a preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency assessment suggesting the U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear sites may have set the program back by only months, undercutting Trump's claim that the sites were “obliterated.” Two days later, on June 26, Trump blamed Democrats and demanded their prosecution.
Trump wrote on Truth Social, “The Democrats are the ones who leaked the information on the PERFECT FLIGHT to the Nuclear Sites in Iran. They should be prosecuted!” Axios reported that he made the accusation without evidence, and the New York Post wrote that it was unclear whether Trump had evidence pointing to a culprit while the FBI investigated. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier that day that the leaker could have been someone in the intelligence community or on Capitol Hill, and that the FBI was searching for that person.
Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said leaks of any kind should be prosecuted and added that he wished the administration kept classified information off non-classified channels like Signal.
In a Fox News interview with Maria Bartiromo that aired June 29, Trump repeated that “they should be prosecuted.” Asked “Who specifically?”, he answered, “You can find out – if they wanted, they could find out easily.” He also suggested going after reporters to unmask their sources, saying, “You go up and tell the reporter, 'national security – who gave it?' You have to do that. And I suspect we'll be doing things like that.” Compelling journalists to reveal confidential sources runs up against the reporter's privilege that generally protects them.
Correction (October 14, 2026): All five links originally cited for this entry were dead or never existed and have been replaced with coverage we loaded and checked. The summary previously said Trump blamed Democrats “immediately”; the leak was reported June 24 and his post came June 26. It also described the assessment as showing the nuclear program was “only partially damaged”; it has been reworded to what the coverage reports, that the program may have been set back only months. A paragraph describing a “familiar pattern” of blaming opponents, which no cited source supported, was removed.