But the Washington Post followed up, citing “nine current and former officials” who claimed that Flynn had discussed exactly that. The New York Times reported that there was a transcript of the call. Eventually, it became impossible to deny that Flynn had lied, and caused Pence to lie. If the Trump administration had been able to deny reality, as it so often does, Flynn would likely still have his job. But good reporters, aided by government sources, made that impossible. As the Columbia Journalism Review notes, “it wasn’t the lying that got him [Flynn] fired; it’s that his lying leaked to the press”

That’s been happening a lot. “Leaks,” notes CJR, “are coming out of the White House at a seemingly record pace,” and “some of these leaks have halted a Trump appointment and controversial policies in their tracks.” According to The New York Times, leaks led Defense Secretary James Mattis to shelve plans to have US sailors board an Iranian ship in an attempt to stop Tehran from arming the Houthi rebels in Yemen—an act that could have led to war.

Another leak to the Times forced the Trump administration to abandon an executive order re-opening the CIA “black sites” that the Bush administration used to torture suspected terrorists. And according to the Times, it was a leak that alerted Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner to a draft executive order repealing protections for LGBT federal employees, which they then quashed. Trump and his top advisors are so alarmed by the leaks that, according to Politico, they’re searching the phones and computers of NSC staff.

But no president faced with a dissatisfied bureaucracy and a vigorous press has been able to keep the internal workings of government secret. And Trump is facing the most energized American press corps in decades. America’s prestige newspapers have seen dramatic increases in circulation over the last year. The Post alone recently announced that it was hiring sixty new journalists. Trump, in Jack Shafer’s words, “is making journalism great again,” and great journalism is, to some degree, restraining his power.

The other forces restraining his power are the judiciary and the progressive public. During the campaign, some observers suggested that Trump might cow the courts. In a New York Times op-ed last June, University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner warned that Trump would benefit from the judiciary’s “longstanding practice of deferring to the president in matters of foreign affairs and domestic regulation.” And even if the courts “declare an entry bar on Muslims unconstitutional,” Posner worried, “it’s hard to predict how Mr. Trump would respond.” So far, Posner’s fears have not come true. Trump has tried to implement a limited Muslim ban. But he’s been rebuffed by a series of federal judges, some of them appointed by Republicans. And neither Trump nor his staff have responded by refusing to abide by the courts’ rulings. To the contrary, they’re reportedly recasting the travel ban in hopes that it will pass judicial muster.