The following article by Andrew Restuccia, Eliana Johnson, Christopher Cadelago and Annie Karni was posted on the Politico.com website September 5, 2018:
The New York Times op-ed came as the president was already struggling with fallout from Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book.
The hunt for the mole began as soon as The New York Times published an anonymous op-ed by a senior Trump administration official declaring that many in the government are working to thwart the president they serve.
One senior administration official described a White House in “total meltdown” by Wednesday evening, after the president went on television to directly attack the author and the Times, an assessment corroborated in interviews with more than a dozen current and former White House officials and outside advisers.
The op-ed, whose author described top aides working to restrain a reckless and amoral president and Cabinet officials considering constitutional measures to remove Trump from office, landed a day after excerpts from Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book “Fear” quoted senior aides dismissing the president’s capacity for office — and on the heels of Trump’s exile from official Washington during the weekend’s funeral services for onetime Republican standard-bearer John McCain.