Donald Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem pledge to prosecute CNN over their reporting on an app that tracks ICE agents operations and airstrikes on Iran nuclear facilities.
Last week, CNN reported on an app that would help users track activities of immigration detention officials. During a tour of a new immigration detention facility in Florida on Tuesday, Noem suggested taking legal action against the network, though she could not say which crime the network committed.
“We’re working with the Department of Justice to see if we can prosecute them for that. Because what they’re doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities, operations, and we’re going to actually go after them and prosecute with the partnership of Pam [Bondi] if we can, because what they are doing we believe is illegal,” Noem said.
But CNN has said in a statement that nothing about its report was unlawful, given that the ICEBlock app is publicly available and they did not promote its use on their network.
Trump also suggested prosecuting the network over their reporting on a leaked preliminary report produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, saying the strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months.
The report shows that Trump and members of his administration lied when they insisted that the strikes “completely obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear program and set it back decades.
“They may very well be prosecuted also for having given false reports on the attack in Iran,” Trump told reporters in Florida Tuesday. “They were given totally false reports. It was totally obliterated. And our people have to be celebrated.”
“So they [CNN] may very well be prosecuted for that,” he added. “What they did there, we think, is totally illegal.”
CNN released a statement saying they stood by the reporter who broke the story, stating in a social media post that its reporting made “clear that this was an initial finding that could change with additional intelligence.”
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, has since come out and said while the strikes on nuclear sites in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan caused “severe” damage, Tehran’s nuclear program wasn’t obliterated as Trump claims.
“The capacities they have are there. They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that. But as I said, frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there,” he said, according to a transcript of the interview.
The Washington Post also revealed that U.S. intelligence sources intercepted a call between top Iranian officials commenting on the strikes and describing them as less destructive than Tehran was expecting.
