Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, urged the Trump administration Thursday to hunt down, fire, and prosecute whoever leaked the transcripts of President Donald Trump's post-inaugural calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia.
"Whoever leaked these needs to be found out and needs to be reprimanded," Lee told Fox News. "This is unacceptable and should never happen."
The transcripts of Trump's January phone conversations with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull were obtained by The Washington Post and posted Thursday.
The conservative Utah Republican argued for Trump's communications with foreign leaders to be effective, both he and the person at the other end of the line "need to have a degree of confidence that they're having a conversation and not a press conference."
"In many cases doing something like this could not only and should not only result in termination, but also criminal prosecution to the extent there's classified information involved that someone is publicly disclosing that," he added.
"That is a very serious felony offense. This should never happen. The president has every right . . . to be furious about this. We've got to get to the bottom of this."
But Lee said he is confident the source of the leaks will be found.
"There are only so many people who could have gotten that information and then released it to the public in that amount of time," he said, adding Attorney General Jeff Session has "access to all kinds of tools that I think could help get to the bottom of it."