Justice Department to resume issuing subpoenas to journalists as part of leaks crackdown, Bondi says
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is poised to crack down on leaks of information to the news media, authorizing prosecutors to issue subpoenas to news organizations as part of leak investigations, serve search warrants when appropriate and force journalists to testify about their sources.
New regulations, announced by Attorney General Pam Bondi in a memo to the workforce obtained by The Associated Press on Friday, rescind a Biden administration policy that protected journalists from having their phone records secretly seized during leak investigations — a practice long decried by news organizations and press freedom groups.
The new regulations assert that news organizations must respond to subpoenas “when authorized at the appropriate level of the Department of Justice” and also allow for prosecutors to use court orders and search warrants to “compel production of information and testimony by and relating to the news media.”
The memo says members of the press are “presumptively entitled to advance notice of such investigative activities,” and subpoenas are to be “narrowly drawn.” Warrants must also include “protocols designed to limit the scope of intrusion into potentially protected materials or newsgathering activities,” the memo states.
“The Justice Department will not tolerate unauthorized disclosures that undermine President Trump’s policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people,” Bondi wrote.
The regulations come as the Trump administration has complained about a series of news stories that have pulled back the curtain on internal decision-making, intelligence assessments and the activities of prominent officials such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said Wednesday that she was making a trio of referrals to the Justice Department over disclosures to the media.
The policy that Bondi is rescinding was created in 2021 by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland in the wake of revelations that the Justice Department officials ls alerted reporters at three news organizations — The Washington Post, CNN and The New York Times — that their phone records had been obtained in the final year of the Trump administration.
The new regulations from Garland marked a startling reversal concerning a practice that has persisted across multiple presidential administrations. The Obama Justice Department, under then-Attorney General Eric Holder, alerted The Associated Press in 2013 that it had secretly obtained two months of phone records of reporters and editors in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into newsgathering activities.
After blowback, Holder announced a revised set of guidelines for leak investigations, including requiring the authorization of the highest levels of the department before subpoenas for news media records could be issued.
But the department preserved its prerogative to seize journalists’ records, and the recent disclosures to the news media organizations show that the practice continued in the Trump Justice Department as part of multiple investigations.
___