Justice Department says it will resume practice of obtaining reporters'
records in leak inquiries
[April 26, 2025]
By ERIC TUCKER and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is cracking down on leaks of
information to the news media, with Attorney General Pam Bondi saying
prosecutors will once again have authority to use subpoenas, court
orders and search warrants to hunt for government officials who make
“unauthorized disclosures” to journalists.
New regulations announced by Bondi in a memo to the staff 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.
Under the new policy, before deciding whether to use intrusive tactics
against the news media, the attorney general is to evaluate whether
there's a reasonable basis to believe that a crime has been committed
and that the information the government is seeking is needed for
prosecution. Also, deciding whether prosecutors have first made
reasonable attempts to “obtain the information from alternative sources”
and whether the government has first “pursued negotiations with the
affected member of the news media.”
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 this week that she
was making a trio of “criminal” referrals to the Justice Department over
intelligence community leaks to the media.
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The policy shift also comes amid continued scrutiny of the highest
levels of the Trump administration over their own lapses in
safeguarding sensitive information. National security adviser
Michael Waltz was revealed last month to have inadvertently added a
journalist to a group text using the Signal encrypted messaging
service, where top officials were discussing plans to attack the
Houthis. Hegseth has faced his own drumbeat of revelations over his
use of Signal, including a chat that included his wife and brother,
among others.
In a statement, Bruce Brown, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of
the Press, said in a statement that “strong protections for
journalists serve the American public by safeguarding the free flow
of information.”
“Some of the most consequential reporting in U.S. history — from
Watergate to warrantless wiretapping after 9/11 — was and continues
to be made possible because reporters have been able to protect the
identities of confidential sources and uncover and report stories
that matter to people across the political spectrum,” he said.
The policy that Bondi is rescinding was created in by then-Attorney
General Merrick Garland in the wake of revelations that the Justice
Department officials 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 of a
practice of phone records' seizures that had 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.
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