But the whistle-blower is just the tip of the iceberg. In Mr. Trump’s presidency, there have been unprecedented disclosures from the intelligence community on his behavior. While overturning longstanding intelligence community norms, Mr. Trump has repeatedly charged it with partisanship. But members of the intelligence community swear allegiance to the Constitution, not the president. They serve their country regardless of the party in the White House.

From the start, Mr. Trump trampled on longstanding intelligence community ideals of nonpartisanship and the importance of presenting the unvarnished truth to politicians. As his conversations with both the president of Ukraine and the prime minister of Australia indicate, Mr. Trump sees Bill Barr, the attorney general — a man charged with dispatching impartial justice in the United States — as his personal lackey.

The experience with Mr. Barr is hardly an isolated case. For example, Mr. Trump had similar aspirations for James Comey. An F.B.I. director typically serves a 10-year term, spanning multiple presidential administrations. Barack Obama met only twice with Mr. Comey before his confirmation as F.B.I. director, once to interview him for the job and the second time to inform him of his imminent nomination. At their second private meeting, the president told Mr. Comey it would be their last, since impartial justice requires an F.B.I. director to be independent of the president.

In contrast, in the short four months before Mr. Trump fired Mr. Comey without informing him first on May 9, 2017, he met with him without others present no fewer than four times.

Because of Mr. Trump’s disturbing and unprecedented repeated attempts to secure loyalty to him from members of the executive branch rather than to the truth or to the Constitution, many have leaked — like Mr. Comey, who leaked some of the contents of his memos chronicling his interactions with the new president.