Trump DOJ seized phone records from New York Times journalists reporting on Comey leak investigation

The New York Times revealed the Justice Department under the Trump administration obtained phone records from four of its reporters, making it the third news outlet to announce similar seizures from its journalists following the Washington Post and CNN.

Like with the prior revelations, the Justice Department declined to share what was the subject of investigation, but the New York Times reported on Wednesday that law enforcement seized phone records from Jan. 14 to April 30, 2017 from four reporters — Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eric Lichtblau, and Michael S. Schmidt — at a time when they were reporting on former FBI Director James Comey and his handling of the Hillary Clinton email inquiry. The report also noted that the Justice Department received court authority to obtain logs, but not the contents, of these reporters' emails, but the government said “no records were obtained.”

“Seizing the phone records of journalists profoundly undermines press freedom. It threatens to silence the sources we depend on to provide the public with essential information about what the government is doing.” said Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times.

The New York Times report noted “the lineup of reporters and the timing suggested that the leak investigation related to classified information reported in an April 22, 2017 article the four reporters wrote” about how Comey, who was fired by President Donald Trump in May 2017, handled controversial 2016 investigations as head of the FBI.

“Today, the Department of Justice notified four journalists that it obtained their phone toll records and sought to obtain non-content email records from 2017 as part of a criminal investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information,” Anthony Coley, the DOJ director of public affairs and a senior adviser to Attorney General Merrick Garland, told the Washington Examiner. “The records at issue were sought in 2020 under Department regulations that apply to records of members of the news media, and the journalists were neither subjects nor targets of the investigation. Forthcoming annual public reports from the Department covering 2019 and 2020 will indicate that members of the news media have now been notified in every instance in this period in which their records were sought or obtained in such circumstances.”

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>>13818611

President Joe Biden condemned this practice in May, telling reporters, “Absolutely, positively it's wrong. It's simply, simply wrong. I will not let that happen."

In its April 2017 article, the New York Times contended that “during Russia’s hacking campaign against the United States, intelligence agencies could peer, at times, into Russian networks and see what had been taken” and that in early 2016 “FBI agents received a batch of hacked documents,” including a dubious Russian intelligence document that was said to have factored into how Comey handled the FBI investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's email server.

The outlet said Comey “sought advice from someone he has trusted for many years” and “dispatched his deputy to meet with” longtime DOJ official David Margolis, who died from heart issues shortly thereafter. Citing a former official, the report said “some time after that meeting, Mr. Comey began talking to his advisers about announcing the end of the Clinton investigation himself.”

The New York Times on Wednesday cited “three people briefed on that investigation” related to Comey, which it said was code-named “Arctic Haze.” The report said the Justice Department looked into whether Comey could be charged with disclosing his private discussions with Trump and whether the former FBI chief was involved with leaking the existence of the Russia document. The FBI subpoenaed Google for information on emails between the New York Times and Daniel Richman, a Columbia University law professor who leaked the contents of some of what Comey's memos documenting his discussions with Trump, the report added.

The report said that “by November 2020, some prosecutors felt that the FBI had not found evidence that could support any charges against Mr. Comey, and they discussed whether the investigation should be closed” and in early 2021 “prosecutors were informed that the FBI was not willing to close the case — in part because agents still wanted to interview” Comey. The New York Times report said “the FBI asked Mr. Comey’s lawyer whether he would be willing to sit down for an interview” last month but it was “a request that Mr. Comey declined.”

Lawyers representing Comey in a lawsuit brought by Trump campaign associate Carter Page declined to comment.

In January 2020, it was reported that federal prosecutors were investigating a yearsold leak to the media about the dubious Russian intelligence document that was said to have been obtained by hackers working for Dutch intelligence officials and provided to the FBI. This document reporedly included what appeared to be an email between Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was the Democratic National Committee chairwoman at the time, and Leonard Benardo, an official with George Soros's Open Society Foundations, in which the former suggested that then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch would ensure Clinton would not be prosecuted for her use of a private email server to conduct government business.

Both Wasserman Schultz and Benardo have denied being in contact, raising the prospect that the document was fake.

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley asked Comey about the document in 2017. “The subject is classified, and in an appropriate forum I’d be happy to brief you on it," Comey replied.

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>>13818615

In his memoir, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, Comey said "unverified" information discovered by the U.S. government in 2016 from a classified source "would undoubtedly have been used by political opponents to cast serious doubt on the attorney general’s independence in connection with the Clinton investigation."

Also weighing on his mind when holding his July 2016 press conference when he stated the FBI recommended charges not be pressed against Clinton, according to Comey, was how Lynch asked him to call the investigation a "matter" and the controversial June 27, 2016, tarmac meeting Lynch had with former President Bill Clinton.

Lynch denied ever coordinating with Democrats on a message for the emails investigation via an April 2018 statement.

In a report released in the fall of 2019, Comey was harshly criticized by the Justice Department inspector general for violating FBI policy for his efforts to disclose notes memorializing his conversations with Trump without authorization in the hopes of sparking a special counsel investigation.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz discussed this alleged document in his June 2018 report on the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation, noting, “As discussed in more detail in the classified appendix to this report, Comey told the OIG that the FBI had obtained highly classified information in March 2016 that included allegations of partisan bias or attempts to impede the Midyear investigation by Lynch.”

“Numerous witnesses we interviewed — including Comey — said that the FBI assessed that these allegations were not credible based on various factors, including that some of the information was objectively false. For example, the information also suggested that Comey was attempting to influence the investigation by extending it to help Republicans win the election, which witnesses said the FBI knew was not true,” Horowitz wrote. “By mid-June 2016, the FBI had obtained no information corroborating the Lynch-related allegations. When asked about this information, Comey stated that he knew it was not credible on its face because it was not consistent with his personal experience with Lynch… However, Comey said that he became concerned that the information about Lynch would taint the public’s perception of the Midyear investigation if it leaked, particularly after DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 began releasing hacked emails in mid-June 2016.”

Last month, the Justice Department said its leaders planned to meet with reporters to discuss a recent flurry of notices about secret records seizures during the Trump administration that has prompted alarm in the media industry.

The statement came after a CNN Pentagon correspondent was notified prosecutors sought and obtained her phone and email records from the summer of 2017 through the courts last year. This followed a trio of Washington Post reporters being notified of similar seizures last year through use of subpoena power.

The letters sent to each of the reporters said that prosecutors obtained "non-content" information, meaning that senders, recipients, and time stamps would be disclosed, but not the content of their conversations.

William Barr, who was attorney general throughout 2020 until just before Christmas, has declined comment to multiple outlets about the situation. During Senate testimony in May 2019, he said the Justice Department had "multiple criminal leak investigations underway” related to the handling of the Trump-Russia investigation.

Grassley, an Iowa Republican, sent a letter to the Justice Department in January demanding an explanation about the reported ending of an investigation into the leak of potentially classified information from former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn’s calls with a Russian ambassador to the media.

The Justice Department previously defended the process by which it would seek such records for a criminal leaks investigation.

"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," Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for the Justice Department, told the Washington Post last month.

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