File this under the heading Not Surprised In The Least. The Trump administration was plenty worried about Russia and especially when it became obvious that somebody or more than one person, was leaking details to the press. So the DOJ secretly obtained phone logs of Washington Post reporters who were on the Russia beat and they were looking to obtain information on the reporters’ email exchanges as well. Jeff Sessions, who as you recall, discussed the Trump campaign with Russian ambassador Sergei Kisylak, was trying to cover his butt. Or, somebody was trying to cover a lot of peoples’ butts. Ask Bill Barr, he would know. Washington Post:
News organizations and First Amendment advocates have long decried the government practice of seizing journalists’ records in an effort to identify the sources of leaks, saying it unjustly chills critical newsgathering. The last such high-profile seizure of reporters’ communications records came several years ago as part of an investigation into the source of stories by a reporter who worked at BuzzFeed, Politico and the New York Times. The stories at issue there also centered around 2017 reporting on the investigation into Russian election interference.
It is rare for the Justice Department to use subpoenas to get records of reporters in leak investigations, and such moves must be approved by the attorney general. The letters do not say when Justice Department leadership approved the decision to seek the reporters’ records, but a department spokesman said it happened in 2020, during the Trump administration. William P. Barr, who served as Trump’s attorney general for nearly all of that year, before departing Dec. 23, declined to comment.
And if you are waiting for a Deep State defense, you will not be disappointed.
“While rare, the Department follows the established procedures within its media guidelines policy when seeking legal process to obtain telephone toll records and non-content email records from media members as part of a criminal investigation into unauthorized disclosure of classified information,” said Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for the Justice Department. “The targets of these investigations are not the news media recipients but rather those with access to the national defense information who provided it to the media and thus failed to protect it as lawfully required.” […]
In early August 2017 — days after the time period covered by the search of The Post reporters’ phone records — Sessions held a news conference to announce an intensified effort to hunt and prosecute leakers in government. […]
“This culture of leaking must stop,” Sessions said, noting that the number of leak investigations had tripled since the end of the prior administration. That announcement seemed aimed at appeasing Trump, who had publicly complained about leaks that made him look bad, and branded Sessions “weak” on hunting leakers.
Justice Department policy dictates that investigators in leak cases should exhaust all other possible sources of information before considering trying to examine journalists’ records.
This isn’t to say that the concept of somebody leaking national secrets isn’t a legitimate concern or that other administrations haven’t investigated the very same thing. It is to say that like everything else Trumpian this was handled in a clandestine manner, ignoring protocol. The word protocol doesn’t exist in the Trump lexicon — or in any fascist lexicon. That was always the problem with the Trump administration, it was a group of shady amateurs playing fast and loose with the law and eroding democratic norms in the process.
Another day, another revelation about corruption from 2016 to 2020. Ho hum.
Damn, so many crooks in Trump’s lair … it is mind boggling that such a simple minded, uneducated dork like Trump could gather so much crap into his swamp … the damage done to all important aspects of our security and just plain safety, via the parts of government that kept eyes on food quality, air and water quality, polluter’s oversite and limits … but the worst thing he did, was to cut the pandemic lab system out of the CDC, simply because it was established by Obama … fortunately, they kept communication open to China labs, unlike the claims of Trump, China sent the identifiers for covid to the remaining CDC, which immediately, through remaining lab techs, formed the working structure of needed vaccinations, sharing info with the big maker’s labs to start productions ASAP, Trump in all his stupidity and ignorance did NOT whip up the local companies from scratch, they already were on Obama’s attack schedule in secret, to avoid any more delays or collapse of labs via Trump …
It was so sad that Trump still sat on his hands for so long, even messed up building tests and hiding all the frontline PPE’s which killed over a thousand nurses and doctors without proper PPE’s …
Such a sick SOB, should be rotting in a desert prison, no cellphone, no visitors, no regular deliveries from the golden arches or other fast food services …
Absolutely no contact with any broadcast services or websites, not even love notes from L. Graham …
Nothing politics at all, no Republicans allowed as visitors as well, meeting with Trump for any reason, all this current BS going on with the big lie and the probable ousting of the only Congressperson to tell the truth about the failing Republicans is simply outrageous …
There is a very simple reason for the quislings to stay by his side, Darrel: they have nowhere to go and will not for years to come. So they’re delaying the inevitable for as long as they can, again in imitation of the lazy slob they let in the front door.
Who is surprised by this? I’m not. Besides, no one is going to have to answer for it, ever. No case is going to be opened, no lawyer is ever going to be billed, no judge is ever going to wave his or her hammer around. Just another minor incident in the “Land Of The Free.”
I’ll remember that statement in the event things go another way. In fact, I will likely be rather…boisterous about it.
Yeah, given that he stole half of his playbook from the Mafia and the other half from Nixon, no surprise at all.