Trump and DeSantis on a tear to track down leakers -- you know, the people who told on them -- just like Nixon did

News and commentary from Florida for all Americans

By J.C. Bruce

Tropic Press

Leakers are the worst.

Just ask Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. They’re both on a tear to track down and punish anyone who tells on them.

Leakers are tattletales. They snitch on people. They spill the beans. And nobody likes them.

Except, of course, reporters. They love informants. But as Trump so often tells us, the news media is the “enemy of the people,” so who cares what journalists think?

Turns out, reporters aren't the only ones who like tipsters. So do those pesky and litigious do-gooder organizations, such as Common Cause, Democracy Docket, and the hated ACLU. They love stoolies. So do their lawyers.

And lawyers—they’re the worst, too.

Unless they’re your lawyers, like Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is happy to work out secret deals to funnel $1.776 billion into your pocket and launch witch hunts against your political enemies like U.S. Rep. Illhan Omar. Those lawyers are good.

Other good lawyers would include Pam Bondi, Trump’s former A.G., but he had to fire her, so maybe not. Perhaps his new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, qualifies, but there seems to be a small problem with her never having passed her Bar exam, so the jury’s still out.

But back to reporters. Trump just hates, hates, hates the Fourth Estate. Unless it’s that dark, damp corner of the estate where subterranean creatures like Breitbart News, Newsmax and Fox reside. But he even sometimes hates Fox when they don’t toe the MAGA line.

So, it was unsurprising that at a campaign rally this week, Trump told an adoring crowd of red-hatted cultists that “leakers are the scum of the earth” and that “in my opinion leakers should be shot.”

He went further:

“In the old days, we used to shoot leakers, you know, when they leak what time you’re going to attack a country.”

It makes you wonder if he was referring to that time when he shared the Pentagon’s plan to attack Iran with a gaggle of admirers at his Bedminster golf club in 2021? That kind of leaking?

Or when, in 2025, senior national security officials (including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz) used a Signal group chat to discuss and coordinate impending U.S. airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen—and included the editor of The Atlantic magazine in the chat?

Closer to home, DeSantis is after leakers too. He’s called for a criminal investigation to find out who shared a Leon County grand jury report criticizing his administration for misappropriating $10 million for political purposes that should have gone to help sick children.

We call it the Hope Florida Scandal.

Note that DeSantis hasn’t called for a criminal investigation into how those millions of dollars were misspent, or into his role in it. He also hasn’t called for the prosecution of Attorney General James Uthmeier, whom the grand jurors said ramrodded the money laundering, or U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody, who, at the time, was the state’s A.G. and could have stopped it. But didn’t.

Nope. The real crime is the leak. It’s just wrong to tell on public officials when they are looting the state’s treasury.

But these guys are amateurs compared to Richard Nixon.

After The New York Times and the Washington Post published stories about the Pentagon Papers—secret files that showed the American people were lied to about the Vietnam War—Nixon assembled a special team, known as the White House Plumbers, to plug the leaks of top-secret information.

The Plumbers eventually morphed into a “dirty tricks” squad, and operatives tied to the group were arrested while breaking into the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.

They may have gotten away with it, too, but for confidential sources that reporters cultivated who ratted them out. The most famous was a secret source Bob Woodward of the Washington Post dubbed “Deep Throat.”

That leaker helped bring down a presidency.

So, yeah, leakers are just the worst. If you’re a corrupt politician.

Definitions:

Fourth Estate. The concept comes from the old European social structure divided into three “estates”: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. The phrase is commonly attributed to British statesman Edmund Burke, who supposedly noted that the reporters’ gallery in Parliament acted as a “Fourth Estate” more important than all the others.

Watergate: President Nixon's re-election campaign operatives broke into Democratic headquarters at Washington’s Watergate Hotel in 1972. The administration covered up the crime, leading to revelations of abuse of power and President Richard Nixon's 1974 resignation. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein relied heavily on unnamed sources, including a ‘leaker” known as Deep Throat. Nixon resigned in disgrace.

Leaks versus backgrounders: Leaks are unauthorized disclosures of information that public officials prefer to keep under wraps. Backgrounders are authorized but “off the record” briefings to reporters. Sometimes leakers and backgrounders are the same people, often high-ranking public officials.

Hope Florida Scandal. It involves allegations that the DeSantis administration misappropriated $10 million from a Medicaid legal settlement. The funds were routed through First Lady Casey DeSantis’s charity foundation to political committees to defeat a 2024 recreational marijuana ballot initiative and another that would restore Florida’s abortion rights. A secret grand jury report was leaked to a Miami TV station.

Uthmeier and Moody. James Uthmeier served as Ron DeSantis’ chief of staff when the Hope Florida scandal went down. Ashley Moody was the state’s attorney general. When U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio resigned to become U.S. Secretary of State, DeSantis gave Moody the job. Then he elevated Uthmeier to her old position. This happened shortly after the administration diverted $10 million in Medicaid funds to TV ad campaigns. Both Uthmeier and Moody are running to keep their appointed positions in the Nov. 3 general election. Uthmeier is opposed by Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez, and Moody is opposed by Democratic State Rep. Angie Nixon.

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