New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the lone Senate Democrat to publicly come out against the Iran deal, suggested Tuesday that the White House deliberately leaked his decision to oppose the agreement Thursday night before he had a chance to explain his "no" vote to colleagues.
"I told the president the day before and I don't think he leaked it, but maybe somebody in the White House did, maybe somebody else did. I'm not pointing fingers," Schumer told reporters after a speech at New York University on Tuesday.
Congress will hold a vote on the Iran deal in September. While the White House is confident that they have enough votes to sustain an expected presidential veto should Congress reject the deal, they are counting every body.
Schumer raised the issue of a possible White House leak himself Tuesday in response to a question about the timing of his lengthy post on Medium that outlined his concerns about the deal. The leak of his decision came out in the middle of the Republican presidential debate last Thursday night, presumably when it would receive less attention, and the Medium piece appeared soon after.
The New York Democrat said he planned to publish the piece the day after the GOP debate, but his hand was forced by the leak.
Even though he was the one to aim the blame at the White House, Schumer appeared to downplay the episode Tuesday, saying, "Things always leak in Washington. So I don't begrudge anybody for doing it."
And he also minimized the split with the President. "The President and I had a very serious discussion about it," he said. "We like each other, respect each other, work together on 95% of the issues."
The President's allies, though, are taking the breach seriously. David Plouffe, a former senior official in the Obama White House, continued the Democrat-on-Democrat war against Schumer late on Monday when he tweeted out a link to a story quoting Schumer urging the administration to try to negotiate a better deal.
"Mitch McConnell will have a field day with this kind of naïveté. We will miss Harry Reid," Plouffe tweeted.
The current Senate Democratic Leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, announced his retirement in March and Schumer quickly locked up commitments from fellow Democrats to ascend to his post in January 2017.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, however, denied the White House had any part in the leak at a press briefing Friday.
An administration source also told CNN on Tuesday that they learned about Schumer's opposition from sources on Capitol Hill before the senator informed them, implying several people knew of his position and raising the specter that others had leaked the information.
