Are Intelligence Leak Indictments About To Be Announced? And Will They Include Wikileaks?

Fox News and the Washington Post are reporting this item which is sort of nebulous

The Washington Post:

Officials said Sessions is due to announce in coming days a number of criminal leak investigations based on news accounts of sensitive intelligence information.

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FoxNews:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions will soon announce several criminal leak investigations, Fox News has learned.

A U.S. official familiar with the discussions said Tuesday that the planned announcement surrounding stepped-up efforts on leak investigations has “been in the works for some time and will most likely happen sometime in the next week.”

To me, and I’m open to correction here, this seems to imply that Justice is about to announce indictments in ongoing leak investigations. I say this because Justice doesn’t, as a matter of policy, announce that it is investigating specific things and we know for a fact that there are several leak investigations underway.

Back in February, Trump asked Justice to investigate leaks. Also in February, Jason Chaffetz and David Nunes asked Justice to investigate intelligence leaks. In March, then-FBI director James Comey said intelligence leaks are a crime and “should be investigated.”

In April, Politico reported on the leak investigations. First, there is Sessions:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the Justice Department is aggressively investigating recent leaks of classified information and wants to put “some people in jail” over the disclosures.

“Whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail,” Sessions said in El Paso, Texas, during a border-security visit with Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly.

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So it seems unlikely and improbable that Justice is going to announce that it is investigating specific intelligence leaks. This is the potential bombshell, via a May 2017 Reuters story:

Federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia, have expanded a long-running grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks to include the leak of Central Intelligence Agency documents to the website, a source familiar with the inquiry said.

The source, who is familiar with the investigation and requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information, said the probe is focused on who leaked descriptions and technical information on techniques and tools the CIA has used to eavesdrop on intelligence targets to the website.

U.S. agencies have made only vague public comments on the latest WikiLeaks disclosures, but security and law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation said in the wake of the leaks that it is focused on whether an intelligence contractor was responsible. At this point, they said, investigators do not think Russia or another foreign government was involved.

U.S. officials have confirmed that Alexandria-based prosecutors have been conducting a federal grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks and its sources. Some court documents on elements of the inquiry have been made public.

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The irony of the first batch of indictments targeting a group that Trump lauded (October 10, 2016: “I love Wikileaks”) would be Jeff Sessions’ most awesome form of revenge.

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