U.S. Department of Justice says it will no longer take over journalists’ records Freedom of the Press News

U.S. news reports that the Trump administration has tried to hide journalists ’records as part of the leaked probes.

The U.S. Department of Justice has said it will no longer obtain hidden journalist documents in the leak investigation after former President Donald Trump’s administration said it secretly obtained journalists ’phone and email documents.

Speaking on Saturday, Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said that “changing the long-standing practice” of the department “will not require mandatory judicial proceedings to obtain the source of members of the media who do their job in leakage investigations.”

“The department highly values ​​the free press, which upholds the values ​​of the First Amendment, and is committed to providing appropriate measures to ensure the independence of journalists,” Coley said.

The announcement was made by CNN and The Washington Post that the Trump administration had secretly tried to hide the phone records of some journalists in 2017 after they tried to hide them.

On Friday, the New York Times reported that the Justice Department, under the command of both Trump and current U.S. President Joe Biden, had “conducted a secret legal battle” to get the e-newspapers of four New York Times journalists, including a gag order about directors.

The legal struggle to access journalists ’four e-mail newspapers began in the final weeks of Trump’s presidency, and the newspaper has sought to disclose journalists’ sources.

“Although the Trump administration never reported the effort to The Times, this year the Biden administration continued to fight, telling about a few senior Times officials, but imposing an order to protect them from the public’s point of view,” the report says, citing Times lawyer David McCraw.

In an extraordinary statement on Saturday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said no one in the White House had heard of the gag order until Friday night.

“Sending citations to reporters’ records in leakage investigations is inconsistent with the policy addressed by the President to the Department and the Department of Justice has confirmed that it will not be used to proceed, ”Psaki said.

Biden said last month that it was “simply wrong” to intercept journalists ’records and that his Justice Department would stop the practice.

Bruce D Brown, executive director of the Press Freedom Reporters Committee, said he was pleased with the Justice Department’s policy change, but that serious unanswered questions remain about what happened in each of those cases.

“To prevent this from happening again, we hope to carry out additional policy reforms with the Biden administration to further protect these fundamental rights,” he said in a statement.

The New York Times reported that the Justice Department is awaiting an explanation as to why it “moved aggressively to seize the records of journalists.” [File: Julio Cortez/AP Photo]

“This is a good step in protecting the capacity of the press to provide people with key information about what their government is doing,” AG Sulzberger told the New York Times.

“However, much more needs to be done and we are waiting for the Department of Justice to explain to reporters the records of why it moved so aggressively.”

Washington Post executive director Sally Buzbee said the newspaper had asked the Biden administration and the Justice Department to “provide full accounting of the chain of events in both administrations and establish permanent protections to prevent it from happening again in the future.”

Democratic and Republican administrations have used tactics to obtain citations and court orders to obtain journalistic documents in an attempt to identify sources of classified information.

The practice received new scrutiny last month as Justice Department officials warned reporters at The Washington Post, CNN, and The New York Times that their phone records were obtained under the Trump administration.

U.S. journalists denounced Trump for what they called him “permanent attack” while in the media office. Former President of the Republic journalists were regularly attacked selling “fake news” and being “enemies of the people”.