US President Donald Trump on Friday called on Justice Minister Jeff Sessions to open an investigation into the New York Times after publishing an article by an unnamed administration official.
Trump told reporters on the US presidential plane that the article should be investigated as a matter of national security and he was considering taking action against the newspaper.
Under the headline "I am part of the resistance within the Trump administration," a member of the administration wrote in the article how he worked hard with others to deal with "the worst slaps" of a president with "poor" and "reckless" leadership abilities.
"The dilemma that Trump can not fully understand is that many senior officials in his administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst tendencies." He also described the president's leadership style as "reckless, antagonistic, trivial and ineffective."
Trump responded to the article as "meaningless and truly shameful" and published a tweet with a single word "treachery" in reference to the article.
He then published another tweet asking whether the senior government official who wrote the article actually existed or who invented the newspaper, calling for his extradition to the authorities for national security if he existed.