Justice Department says it will no longer seize reporters' records for leak investigations

The Justice Department on Saturday said it will no longer seize reporters' records in leak investigations, a notable policy shift on the heels of disclosures that federal prosecutors aggressively pursued communication data from reporters to identify their sources.

"Going forward, consistent with the President's direction, this Department of Justice -- in a change to its longstanding practice -- will not seek compulsory legal process in leak investigations to obtain source information from members of the news media doing their jobs," Anthony Coley, the department's director of public affairs, said in a statement. The commitment from the department comes just a day after The New York Times reported a top lawyer for the paper had revealed that the Justice Department, under the Trump and Biden administrations, had sought to obtain the email logs of four of its reporters. The disclosure was the latest in a series of revelations about the Justice Department secretly obtaining records from journalists, including a CNN reporter, as well as reporters from The Washington Post and other news organizations.