Rand Paul: Use Lie Detector to Find Out Who Leaked Flynn Transcript

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul suggested on Sunday that the federal government should employ lie detector tests in order to determine who leaked transcripts of former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s communications with Russia’s ambassador to the United States.

“It is very, very important that whoever released that go to jail because you cannot have members of the intelligence community listening to the most private and highly classified information and then releasing that to The New York Times,” Paul said on ABC’s This Week. “There can only be a certain handful of people who did that. I would bring them all in. They would have to take lie detector tests.”

Paul went on to warn of a “deep state” in which the intelligence community has “enormous power” and top officials are blackmailed. President Donald Trump fired Flynn after less than a month on the job when it was revealed through media reports that Flynn had misled Vice President Mike Pence about the content of his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S. The transcript Paul referred to in his ABC interview was the subject of a New York Times story from early February which revealed that Flynn, during his calls with Kislyak, discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia—despite telling Pence otherwise. The Justice Department reportedly warned the White House that Flynn himself could be subject to Russian blackmail.

—Andrew Desiderio