There is only a small number of people who would have had access to the information that ultimately has turned up in media reports from the White House, and pressure needs to be put on them to determine who has been making the damaging leaks, Rep. Trey Gowdy said Friday.
"It's a small universe of people who would have had access to the underlying conversation, any summaries, and then what ultimately ended up in The Washington Post," the Tennessee Republican, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" anchor Steve Doocy.
"You're not talking about 300 million people," Gowdy continued. "You might be talking about 30. So you need to find those 30 and apply whatever pressure is necessary from a legal standpoint through your investigation, because leaks are going to destroy these programs."
On Thursday, there was a Congressional hearing about a surveillance programs up for reauthorization, said Gowdy, but the tools that are needed to keep the nation safe are in jeopardy if the leaks aren't stopped.
"I get that people are interested in the content," said Gowdy. "I am too. But leaks are illegal and they are dangerous and they are deleterious to our national security, and I wish that all facets of the media showed the same interest in finding the identity of the leaker as they did the content of the leak."
Gowdy also spoke about the ongoing probe into Russia and the 2016 presidential election, saying his committee needs to see evidence behind the government's response to the matter.
"I come from a background that is evidence-centric," said Gowdy. "I'm not interested in summaries. I can't deal with anonymous sources. I need witnesses, I need facts, and I need evidence."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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