Our live coverage has ended. Scroll through the posts below to see how the day unfolded.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, seizing on the New York Times op-ed from an anonymous Trump administration official, told CNN that it’s time to use constitutional powers to remove President Trump from office.
Senator Rand Paul just said that anyone with a security clearance who works in the White House should undergo a lie detector test to fish out who wrote the op-ed. Here’s the full exchange:
Reporter: What do you make of this op ed in the NYT…?
Sen. Rand Paul:
An administration official said White House aides were struggling this morning to get ahead of the anonymous New York Times op-ed, as various cabinet and other top officials were releasing their own statements throughout the day.
The official said the White House “wanted a more coordinated response” to the op-ed.
Instead, there were statements coming from a slew of top officials at all hours of the morning even as the press secretary was posting a tweet attacking the New York Times.
“Didn’t seem very organized,” is how the official described the process.
Two more Trump administration officials joined the chorus to say no, they did not write the stunning anonymous New York Times op-ed.
White House Counsel Don McGahn, on the Hill for the Kavanaugh hearing, just told CNN’s Daniella Diaz that he did not write the op-ed in the New York Times.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos didn’t write it either, a spokesperson for the department tweeted.
High-ranking officials in the Trump administration are denying they or their offices authored the infamous anonymous op-ed in The New York Times.
Here are a few administration officials:
First lady Melania Trump, in a statement to CNN, defended the press, but she went on to criticize the anonymous author of the New York Times op-ed.
Read her statement:
Vice President Mike Pence, speaking to reporters in Orlando, Florida, reacted Thursday to the anonymous New York Times op-ed.
Here’s what he said:
Pence was also asked how important it is to “weed out” elements that would undermine the administration.
“Well, look anyone who would write an anonymous editorial smearing this President who’s provided extraordinary leadership for this country should not be working for this administration, they ought to do the honorable thing and they ought to resign,” he said.
Watch:
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders advised anyone who was curious about the identity of the anonymous op-ed to reach out to the New York Times’ opinion desk.
“They are the only ones complicit in this deceitful act,” she tweeted.
Read Sanders tweet:
President Trump loves a strongly-worded denial – and he’s closely watching a string of statements come in today from members of his Cabinet, all insisting they didn’t write the anonymous essay assailing his presidency in The New York Times.
Vice President Pence. Secretary of State Pompeo. Director Coats. Secretary Nielsen. Attorney General Sessions, Secretary Mnuchin – and that’s all before lunchtime, with the list sure to grow.
A top White House official tells me these denials are being printed out and delivered to the president as they come in. The statements, of course, are intended to have an audience, above all, of one – him. And few Cabinet members likely want to be among those NOT issuing denials, the official said.
There hasn’t been a specific request: While there has not been a formal request for them, the official said, by this point in the administration Cabinet members are well aware of how he appreciates these messages of support.
This official points me to the president’s own words on Wednesday in the Oval Office and later in the Roosevelt Room, where he thanked chief of staff John Kelly and Defense Secretary James Mattis.
“He wrote the most beautiful statement,” Trump said of Mattis.
“I appreciated the statement of John Kelly,” Trump added. “And I appreciated the statement of many others.”
Today, a US official who works in an agency that issued a denial said there was no real internal debate or perceived downside over issuing a statement.
“We didn’t write it,” the official said. “We’re happy to say so.”
Tony Sayegh Jr., assistant secretary for public affairs at the US Treasury, tweeted that Secretary Steven Mnuchin was not the author of the op-ed. “It is laughable to think this could come from the Secretary,” he tweets:
Mnuchin joins Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Department of Homeland Security head Kirstjen Nielsen, and Director of National Intelligence chief Dan Coats in denying the op-ed was theirs.
A Justice Department spokesperson says Attorney General Jeff Sessions is not the author of the NY Times op-ed.
He joins Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Department of Homeland Security head Kirstjen Nielsen, and Director of National Intelligence chief Dan Coats in denying the op-ed was theirs.
Chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana White tells CNN Defense Secretary James Mattis did not write the New York Times op-ed.
“It was not his op-ed,” he said when asked if Secretary Mattis wrote it.
He joins Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, DHS head Kirstjen Nielsen, and DNI chief Dan Coats in denying the op-ed was theirs.
Department of Homeland Security press secretary Tyler Q. Houlton tells CNN Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is focused on her work, and not on writing “false opinion pieces for the New York Times.
Here’s the statement:
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, spoke to CNN this morning about how the New York Times op-ed illustrates the fundamental issue facing many of the staffers in the Trump administration.
On the anonymous op-ed: “I think this anonymous op-ed underscores the fundamental conundrum of anyone working in this administration. How do you serve a deeply unethical president? Some are doing it by resigning, some are doing it by staying and thinking they can curb his worst impulses. Some are doing it by writing anonymous op-eds.”
On Trump’s reaction: The President “may push back even hard harder on these impulses give than he’s reading that people have resisted it and there’s some in his view malign purpose in resisting it, when in fact they’re resisting it because they think the president is enacting in a way that could endanger the United States.”
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said that neither he nor his deputy Susan Gordon were the authors of the op-ed.
“Speculation that The New York Times op-ed was written by me or my Principal Deputy is patently false,” he wrote in an emailed statement. “We did not.”
He added, “From the beginning of our tenure, we have insisted that the entire IC remain focused on our mission to provide the President and policymakers with the best intelligence possible.”
Why Coats? In his story tracking the potential authors of the op-ed, CNN’s Chris Cillizza wrote that Coats is very much a part of the long-term Washington establishment, having spent not one but two stints in the nation’s capital as a senator from Indiana. He has also shown a tendency to veer from the Trump songbook. Exhibit A: Informed of Trump’s plans to invite Russian president Vladimir Putin for a summit in the United States this fall, Coats said “That is going to be special” – a line that drew the ire of the President.
President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager said the unnamed senior Trump official who claimed in a New York Times op-ed to be part of a “quiet resistance” against the President should quit their job and speak publicly about their concerns.
“If you don’t like your job and you’re disgruntled, because of what this President has done, you can find another job,” Corey Lewandowski told CNN’s John Berman on “New Day” Thursday.
He went on to say later, “If you don’t like your job, you have a right to air that grievance, but you do so in public. And if you want to quit your job, you can do that. But attacking someone anonymously is not helpful or beneficial to anybody and it doesn’t solve problems.”
Lewandowski told CNN he thinks “it’s wrong and disingenuous” to write a New York Times op-ed “without your name attached to make accusations that are unfounded and clearly can’t be responded to.”
The anonymous senior Trump official claimed in the Times op-ed published Wednesday to be part of a “resistance” inside the Trump administration, “working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”
Lewandowski pointed to this as proof of a “deep state.”
Lewandowski said he does not know who penned the op-ed.
He seemed to suggest that the op-ed’s author is an Obama administration holdover, choosing not to answer whether someone is to blame for hiring Trump administration officials who are part of a “resistance,” as the op-ed claims.
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham that the suspected writer isn’t limited to just the White House based on their title alone.
“It’s not clear to us in any way that it was someone in the White House,” she said. “It says, ‘senior administration official,’ that could be many people. There are thousands of political appointees and hundreds of folks that would qualify for that title alone,” she said of the unnamed senior Trump administration official.
The President’s lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, responded to a random Twitter user speculating on the identity of the op-ed writer.
“If it could be anyone at such a high level he probably has top security clearances and a history of leaking,” Giuliani said.
“He’s been elected to nothing, but at anytime he could substitute his judgment for our elected politically accountable President. Very dangerous person.”
See it:
Several days ago a senior official in the Trump administration used an intermediary to contact New York Times op-ed page editor Jim Dao.
Through the go-between, the senior official expressed interest in writing an explosive piece for the paper, describing a “resistance” to President Trump within the government that works overtime to protect the United States from the president’s worst impulses.
The result, published on the New York Times’ website on Wednesday, prompted speculation all across Washington about who the official is.
Dao, of course, isn’t saying. In a telephone interview, he was careful not to share any identifying details, even the person’s gender.
“The person contacted me through an intermediary,” he said. Dao said it happened “several days ago,” declining to be more specific.
But how to identify the author: Later, there was a discussion within the Times about protecting the person by granting them anonymity. The agreed-upon description was “senior official in the Trump administration.”
Many officials within the administration can be considered “senior,” even if they do not work in the West Wing or interact directly with Trump.
Dao declined to characterize just how “senior” the whistleblower is.
“We were simply trying to abide by the standard that the Times in general would use when referring to someone who’s not named,” he said.
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