Washington (CNN) The White House on Monday sought to project an image of productive forward momentum, even as President Donald Trump and many of his aides remain sidetracked and preoccupied by dual accounts of a warring and mutinous West Wing.

The suggestion that work continues apace inside the administration was belied by Trump himself, who spent much of the morning tweeting angrily about journalist Bob Woodward, whose book detailing dysfunction among Trump aides is released on Tuesday.

Woodward's account was reinforced by an anonymous op-ed by a senior administration official published last week in The New York Times that described staffers working to stave off Trump's destructive instincts.

Both have enraged the President and led to new levels of suspicion among his staff, many of whom were already at odds with each other. Trump raised the specter of launching a criminal investigation into the matter last week, suggesting the Justice Department look into who wrote the unnamed editorial.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders refused to back down from that idea on Monday, despite the fact that there's no indication any laws were broken. Instead, Sanders said just the notion the unidentified official may be involved in national security matters was grounds enough to launch a probe.

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