The Justice Department's pledge that it will no longer secretly obtain the records of journalists has left a number of unanswered questions about the department's handling of leak investigations initiated under the Trump-era.It's not clear what high ranking Biden officials knew and when as DOJ proceeded with cases involving reporters from three different media outlets or why the department continued to push for gag orders in two cases even.
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For the Biden administration, who counts as news media?
First implemented in 1970, the Department of Justice’s news-media guidelines were meant to restrict the use of certain investigatory tools, like subpoenas and court orders, that might “unreasonably impair newsgathering activities.” The information sought by the DOJ had to be “essential” to an investigation, and the agency must have tried all other “reasonable alternative[s]” to obtain it. The agency was also generally required to give affected journalists advance notice of the surveillance.
Despite these rules, the Trump DOJ nevertheless obtained court orders for communications records of eight journalists, delaying notice until after the fact. The past month brought a series of revelations that, under the Trump administration, the DOJ had secretly seized communications records of three