It will be revealed within the week, and it can not be contained.
Pence is a suspect - due to the use of the word Lodestar
Gen Kelly & Mattis - already on record to be disgruntled.
White House Searches For Anonymous Inside Critic
Aides chase rumors of who could have written opinion piece on alleged effort within administration to thwart Trump’s impulses
By
Michael C. Bender
Sept. 5, 2018 7:17 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON—White House aides launched a search for the anonymous author of an opinion column who claimed Wednesday to be part of a secret group of officials inside the administration acting as a check on President Trump’s “worst inclinations.”
An angry president called the New York Times piece “a disgrace” and slammed its author as “gutless.”
The writer was identified only as a senior administration official. A New York Times spokeswoman declined to comment when asked for a description of that term.
“This is the stuff we have to deal with, and, you know, the dishonest media,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House when asked about the column. The president was ready for the question, pulling a sheet of paper from his suit-jacket pocket and responding with a list of what he said were his administration’s accomplishments, including low unemployment.
Later in the afternoon, Mr. Trump tweeted a video of his response to the op-ed and followed it with a second tweet that read simply, “TREASON?”
Inside the West Wing, top officials canceled afternoon meetings and huddled behind closed doors to strategize about how to expose the author, White House officials said. Some officials called reporters to chase down rumors about who was behind the op-ed, and whether it came from inside the White House or a cabinet-level agency.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement that the op-ed was written by a “gutless, anonymous source.” Both she and Mr. Trump referred to the Times as “failing,” despite statistics from the company showing subscriptions have increased since his election.
“The individual behind this piece has chosen to deceive, rather than support, the duly elected president of the United States,” Ms. Sanders said. "He is not putting country first, but putting himself and his ego ahead of the will of the American people. This coward should do the right thing and resign.”
Since its inception, the Trump administration has included some senior officials—both conservative and more liberal—who have sought to curb Mr. Trump’s direction, according to people familiar with the matter.
Steve Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist and a self-described economic populist, directed junior staffers to ignore direct orders from the president, these people said. On trade policy, Gary Cohn, his former top economic adviser and a registered Democrat, often slowed the president’s attempts to implement his protectionist instincts, these people said.
The hunt for the anonymous writer came on a day when the White House was busy responding to the author of the latest critical book about the Trump presidency.
Coverage of the new manuscript from Bob Woodward, a Washington Post editor and author of a dozen best-selling nonfiction books, was being closely monitored by the president.
In the White House earlier on Wednesday, reporters asked Mr. Trump about a trade deal he plans to sign with South Korea later this month. The president responded by referring to a passage in Mr. Woodward’s book alleging that Mr. Cohn removed papers from the Oval Office desk that would have pulled the U.S. out of the Korea Free Trade Agreement before Mr. Trump could sign them.
“I read another phony thing in the book about the trade deal, that certain people didn’t want me to look at,” he said. “That was another thing in the book that was just totally false.”
Mr. Trump on Wednesday also referred reporters to a pair of statements released on Tuesday from chief of staff John Kelly and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis that disputed the disparaging quotes in the book that they allegedly made in private about the president. Mr. Trump’s former attorney, John Dowd, also disavowed statements attributed to him in the book.
Mr. Mattis, who was cited in the book as saying the president’s understanding of global affairs was that of a “fifth- or sixth-grader,” called the passage a “product of someone’s rich imagination.”
“The contemptuous words about the president attributed to me in Woodward’s book were never uttered by me,” he said in the statement.
Mr. Trump Wednesday offered differing accounts about how those statements came to be released.
At about 2 p.m., he told reporters that he was surprised by the statements from Messrs. Kelly and Mattis, saying they were released “without my even knowing about it.”
Two hours later, he told reporters he had approached Gen. Mattis about the book and his defense secretary offered to put out a statement disputing the book’s descriptions of him. “And I said, ‘Thank you very much, that’s very kind,’” Mr. Trump told reporters.
Mr. Woodward’s book, entitled, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” is scheduled for publication on Sept.
