Susan Walsh / AP

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has told associates he wants to put the entire National Security Council staff through a lie detector test to root out leakers. It's unclear whether this will ever happen, but Sessions floated the idea to multiple people, as recently as last month.

Sessions' idea is to do a one-time, one-issue, polygraph test of everyone on the NSC staff. Interrogators would sit down with every single NSC staffer (there's more than 100 of them), and ask them, individually, what they know about the leaks of transcripts of the president's phone calls with foreign leaders. Sessions suspects those leaks came from within the NSC, and thinks that a polygraph test — at the very least — would scare them out of leaking again.

Sessions has told associates he likes the idea of targeting the foreign leader phone calls because there's a small enough universe of people who would have had access to these transcripts. Also, the idea that the President of the United States can't have private conversations with foreign leaders was a bridge too far, even for Democrats.

Ian Prior, a spokesman for Sessions, declined comment when presented with the details of this report.

Why this matters: That Sessions would seriously entertain such a startling action reveals how frustrated he's become about the rampant leaking of classified information. Leak probes like the one Sessions announced at a big press conference on August 4 have happened under previous administrations, and rarely with any significant success. In fact, they can even backfire – look no further than the leak probe that ensnared James Cartwright, Obama's favorite general. Obama later pardoned Cartwright. So much for cracking down on leakers.

Bottom line: Sessions seems to understand that it's extremely tough to successfully prosecute leakers, especially when they are career intelligence professionals who are skilled at covering their digital tracks.

Go deeper

30 mins ago - Health

Coronavirus infections rise in 23 states and D.C.

Expand chart
Data: The COVID Tracking Project, state health departments; Map: Andrew Witherspoon, Sara Wise/Axios

The pace of coronavirus infections increased last week in 23 states plus Washington, D.C., and only declined in four states and Puerto Rico.

The big picture: The virus is not under control, or anywhere close to it.

Updated 2 hours ago - Politics & Policy

Coronavirus dashboard

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

  1. Global: Total confirmed cases as of 3:30 a.m. ET: 36,164,596 — Total deaths: 1,055,815 — Total recoveries: 25,242,930Map.
  2. U.S.: Total confirmed cases as of 3:30 a.m. ET: 7,550,204 — Total deaths: 211,828 — Total recoveries: 2,999,895 — Total tests: 111,077,086Map.
  3. Health: Top medical journal calls for U.S. leaders to be voted out over COVID response.
  4. VP debate: Harris calls Trump's COVID response greatest presidential failure in U.S. history — Pence defends hosting Barrett Rose Garden ceremony
  5. Trump: President calls getting virus "a blessing in disguise" — White House physician: Trump "symptom-free for over 24 hours" — President returns to Oval Office despite infection.
  6. States: Wisconsin to open field hospital as COVID-19 surges.
  7. World: Brazil becomes third country to surpass 5 million infections
    Cases soar across Europe: Countries tighten restrictions

JPMorgan commits $30 billion to fight the racial wealth gap


Data: Fortune 500, Axios analysis of company statements, get the data; Chart: Andrew Witherspoon, Naema Ahmed/Axios

JPMorgan Chase announced Thursday a $30 billion investment over the next five years that the company says will address some of the largest drivers of the massive wealth gap between Black and white Americans.

  • The commitment makes the bank by far the largest monetary contributor to efforts by businesses to fight systemic inequality and racism in the U.S.