Breaking: WikiLeaks Now Opposed to Leaks

There should be some things in the world on which you can utterly rely. The sky is blue. The earth is an oblate spheroid. The Washington football team will disappoint. WikiLeaks likes leaks.

Apparently not.

The Obama admin/CIA is illegally funneling TOP SECRET//COMINT information to NBC for political reasons before PEOTUS even gets to read it. — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 6, 2017

Lest you think this is entirely hypocritical, WikiLeaks later clarified that they are not against leaks, but rather pseudo-leaks.

#PseudoLeak (n): Where the White House authorizes officials to funnel anonymous claims to pet 'journalists' for political advantage. — WikiLeaks Task Force (@WLTaskForce) January 6, 2017

If a leak benefits the current White House, it is a pseudo-leak. If it benefits the Kremlin, however, it is just a good, old-fashioned, noble leak.

Trump, for his part, took to Twitter to call for a congressional investigation — not of the Russian interference in the election, but rather the leaking of that intel to NBC News.

I am asking the chairs of the House and Senate committees to investigate top secret intelligence shared with NBC prior to me seeing it. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

It’s not the first time Trump’s asked for some investigative help. On the campaign trail, he urged Russia to hack his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, who was embroiled in a scandal over using a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State. Russia, it appears, was all too happy to comply.

He hasn’t called for a follow-on investigation into the hacking and leaking of Democratic emails, though it appears the Senate has him covered. But then, those were evidently leaks, not pseudo-leaks.

Photo credit: Tolga Akmen/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images