Following Nournews’ previous report on the real reasons behind the departure of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (https://nournews.ir/n/338197), new information from informed media sources in Washington has emerged, raising serious questions about the official account of her resignation. According to this information, the White House spokeswoman’s departure had nothing to do with Leavitt wanting to spend more time with her family. Rather, it was part of a power struggle within Donald Trump’s inner circle that intensified after confidential information about the condition of US weapons and the damage caused by the war with Iran was leaked.
One senior NBC reporter, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, said in an interview, referring to Nournews’ previous report, that the information published by Iranian sources about the reason for Leavitt’s departure was “accurate.” According to the reporter, Leavitt had already clashed with Secretary of State Marco Rubio several times, and Rubio had long been looking for an opportunity to settle the score with her.
According to this account, the turning point came when information about US weapons shortages and the extent of the damage caused by the war with Iran was leaked. After the information became public, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth formed a team to identify the person or persons responsible for the leak. Rubio was also a member of the team.
The team’s investigation lasted only five days. At the end of it, three senior government officials who were either Cabinet members or had access to classified information comparable to that of Cabinet members were identified as suspects.
One of the three was Kelly Loeffler, one of Trump’s 22 Cabinet members and the administrator of the US Small Business Administration, who had previously attracted attention because of her careless handling of classified information and what has been described in Washington as her tendency to “talk too much.”
The other two suspects were one of Pete Hegseth’s senior aides and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. The significance of Leavitt’s inclusion on the list was heightened by the fact that she and Hegseth’s senior aide had attended a meeting at which Brad Cooper had briefed them on the condition of US weapons and the damage caused by the war with Iran. Both therefore had access to information that was later partially leaked.
But the main dispute within the Trump administration began over how the findings of the investigation should be handled. Despite Rubio’s insistence that the findings should first be provided to him and Hegseth, the head of the investigative team presented the report directly to Vice President JD Vance.
Vance, however, did not consider the findings credible. He believed the leak may have originated with one of Rubio’s aides and therefore called for a new investigation by the White House Inspector General’s Office. This effectively called the five-day investigation into question and showed that even at the highest levels of the Trump administration there was no consensus over who was responsible for the leak.
Despite Vance’s opposition, Rubio took the report directly to Trump. The following day, Trump raised the issue of the three suspects in a closed-door meeting attended by Vance, Rubio and Hegseth and asked Rubio and Hegseth which of the three they considered the main suspect.
Their answer was the same: Karoline Leavitt.
Trump did not react immediately at the meeting and did not order any action against his spokeswoman. He asked Rubio and Hegseth to take no action on the matter and stressed that he would make the final decision personally.
From that point onward, however, Trump’s treatment of Leavitt changed noticeably. According to informed sources, the president’s interactions with the White House spokeswoman became harsh and humiliating on several occasions, signaling to Leavitt that Trump’s support for her was no longer what it had been.
One such incident occurred on July 2, several days before Trump traveled to Turkey for the NATO summit. At that meeting, Leavitt was mocked and reprimanded by Trump for arriving three minutes late to a briefing attended by the president.
In the presence of several of Leavitt’s aides, including White House Communications Director Steven Cheung and Leavitt’s deputy, Anna Kelly, Trump addressed her and said: “Do you think the job of White House press secretary is compatible with your role as a woman who is supposed to change your baby’s diapers?!” A senior CNN reporter quoted Jason Miller, a senior White House strategic messaging aide, as saying, “I had never seen Ms. Leavitt so angry and humiliated.”
By late June, Leavitt had suspected that Rubio and Hegseth were laying the groundwork to discredit her with Trump. Initially, however, she believed she could maintain the president’s trust by increasing her support for and praise of Trump. After the July 2 incident, she concluded that she had become the inevitable victim of the power struggle within Trump’s inner circle and that the president might soon dismiss her in a humiliating manner.
From that point, the issue for Leavitt was no longer simply keeping her position; the manner of her departure from the White House had become important. According to the sources’ account, she was looking for an opportunity to resign herself, before Trump could dismiss and humiliate her, and thereby retain control over how she left.
Signs that Leavitt’s tenure was coming to an end had even become apparent among the staff in her office. Her aides were almost certain that her dismissal was imminent, and a noticeable competition had even emerged between Anna Kelly and Steven Cheung to succeed her.
The situation became more apparent on July 5 at a private gathering attended by several White House reporters. Steven Cheung, considered one of Trump’s closest aides, said sarcastically that Leavitt preferred to focus on household duties and that Trump would probably not object to that choice.
The remark was significant for one reason: within the US government structure, employees generally avoid making such public comments about a superior, even when they disagree with them. Such a sarcastic remark could therefore have been a clear signal to reporters present that Leavitt’s authority within the administration had largely collapsed and that those around her were no longer particularly concerned about undermining her position.
But the most important part of the story concerns the official account of why Leavitt left — an account that, according to the new information, may be the exact opposite of reality.
After Leavitt’s departure, some unofficial reports, which may have been a cover story intended to conceal the real reason for her dismissal, attributed her resignation to her anger over Trump’s handling of a presidential aircraft transfer. According to this account, she was upset that Trump had left her behind on the presidential aircraft and continued his journey on a cargo plane, and that this had ultimately prompted her resignation.
According to the new information, however, the reality was exactly the opposite.
Leavitt herself was responsible for leaking the story about Trump’s use of the cargo plane.
In that case, the aircraft story was not the reason for Leavitt’s departure, but rather part of an action that resulted in the disclosure of a sensitive issue involving the US president. The story was politically costly for Trump because it portrayed the US president as concerned, vulnerable and operating under unusual circumstances in the midst of the war with Iran.
According to this account, by leaking the story, Leavitt effectively delivered her final blow to Trump. But she knew the move could provide grounds for her dismissal. For that reason, before Trump had an opportunity to remove her from the White House in a humiliating manner, she resigned herself.
Thus, the narrative that she “resigned because of her family” or because she was “upset about the aircraft switch” may have been a cover for a more complicated reality: after becoming caught in a power struggle between Rubio and Hegseth on one side and Trump’s inner circle on the other, Leavitt realized that remaining in the White House was no longer possible. At the same time, by leaking the cargo-plane story, she sought to increase the political cost of the confrontation for the president.
From this perspective, Leavitt’s removal should not be viewed as an ordinary personnel change at the White House. It was the final stage of a chain of conflicts that began with Leavitt’s personal and political disputes with Rubio, entered a security phase with the leak of information about weapons shortages and the damage caused by the war with Iran, escalated into an internal power struggle following the five-day investigation and identification of three suspects, and ultimately led to the removal of one of Trump’s closest media figures.
But the significance of this case goes far beyond the fate of one spokeswoman. The information circulating within the Trump administration about the state of its weapons, the damage caused by the war and the true extent of US vulnerability during the conflict with Iran was so sensitive that its disclosure turned into a security and political crisis at the highest levels of government.
In fact, the main question now is not why Karoline Leavitt resigned. The more important question is what information existed inside the Trump administration about the true state of US military capabilities and the damage caused by the war with Iran that its disclosure triggered such a power struggle inside the White House.
In this context, although Leavitt left the White House before becoming the formal victim of this purge, her departure was more than a resignation. It marked the end of an internal struggle over control of information, the official narrative surrounding the war with Iran and the true extent of the Trump administration’s vulnerability.
NOURNEWS