Justice Department says it will no longer seize reporters' records for leak investigations
CNN
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.President Joe Biden on Sunday delivers his first commencement address of the 2024 season at Morehouse College, where the president may for the first time in months have to confront the angst that’s been percolating on college campuses nationwide toward his administration’s policies on the Israel-Hamas war.
Arab and Palestinian Americans left a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday night frustrated they did not have a clear understanding of how the Biden administration might act upon their concerns as the Israel-Hamas war devastates the civilian population in Gaza, participants told CNN.