The Trump administration is considering rolling back the sharing of some classified information with Congress due to concerns over leaked documents, a White House official confirmed to NOTUS on Wednesday.
The plans, first reported by Axios, come just a day after The New York Times and CNN obtained a leaked intelligence report that suggested the bombings of Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend were not as successful as the president suggested in his public remarks.
Those documents were reportedly shared with Congress on Monday through a network called CAPNET that is used to disseminate classified information to the legislative branch.
“Go figure: Almost as soon as we put the information on CAPNET, it leaks,” an administration source told Axios. “There’s no reason to do this again.”
The report, compiled by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, found that initial bombings did not completely destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, and that the country’s nuclear programs had only been set back by a matter of months.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that the strikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program and painted any assessment to the contrary as an attack on those who carried it out. He also called for the reporter who wrote CNN’s story on it to be fired.
Other White House officials lashed out at the reports, suggesting that the findings had been cherry-picked to make Trump look bad.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that the Pentagon was launching a criminal probe into the leaked documents.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also characterized the leak as “illegal,” and said the FBI was investigating the leak. She said Wednesday that the person who shared the documents with media organizations “should go to jail.”
NEWS: @PressSec says the @FBI is investigating the intel source of the CNN Iran bomb report that claims US strikes didn't really destroy the nuclear program.
— Marisela Ramirez (@mariselapenny) June 25, 2025
She says the leaker, 'should go to jail' pic.twitter.com/5Km4ifDgko
“They took bits and pieces from a leaked top secret intelligence report,” Leavitt told reporters.
The suggestion that the White House planned to tighten the sharing of classified information set off some in Congress who rely on that information to make decisions. Sen. Roger Wicker, the Republican chair of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, told reporters Wednesday that he did not support the idea.
“I understand the president’s frustration,” Rep. Michael McCaul, the Republican chair emeritus of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said when asked about the reports during an interview on Fox News.
But he added that Congress should protect its right to access classified material from the executive branch. McCaul said the Defense Intelligence Agency might also be to blame for the leaked documents.
“Those who are in the intelligence, national security-related committees like myself should have access to classified information. We are the policy makers, so for us to make wise decisions we need access to that material,” McCaul added.
McCaul also said that the documents leaked Tuesday are only low-confidence initial assessments and that the damage to Iran’s nuclear program might be bigger than indicated by the DIA report.
Democrats, for their part, used stronger language to denounce the move to cut off Congress from certain classified information.
“President Trump has no right to withhold from Congress classified information regarding the Iran strikes,” Sen. Michael Bennet of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence wrote on X. “He should never have delayed briefing Congress in the first place.”
—
Samuel Larreal is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.