WASHINGTON – The Justice Department is destroying the news of news media information, with Prosecutor General Pam BONDI saying that prosecutors will once again have authority to use leaflets, judicial orders and search orders to pursue government officials “unauthorized discoveries” for journalists.
The new regulations announced by BONDI in a memorandum for staff taken from the Associated Press on Friday, give up a Biden administration policy that protected journalists from their seized telephone records – a long -running practice by news organizations and press freedom groups.
New regulations claim that news organizations must respond to calls “when authorized to the appropriate level of the Department of Justice” and also allow prosecutors to use court orders and search orders to “force information and evidence by and in relation to news media.”
Memo says that members of the press “rightly rightly have the right to advance the notice of such investigative activities”, and calls must be “closely withdrawn”.
Guarantees should also include “protocols designed to limit the area of intervention in potentially protected materials or news collection activities”, reads the memorandum.
“The Department of Justice will not tolerate unauthorized disclosure that undermines President Trump’s policies, victimizing government agencies and will cause harm to the American people,” Bondi wrote.
According to the new policy, before deciding whether to use intervening tactics against the news media, the Attorney General is to assess whether there is a reasonable basis to believe that a crime has been committed and that the information the government is seeking is necessary for prosecution.
Also, deciding whether prosecutors have first made reasonable efforts to “obtain information from alternative sources” and whether the government first “has followed negotiations with the affected media member”.
The regulations come after the Trump administration has complained about a series of news that has attracted the curtain for internal decision -making, intelligence assessments and activities of prominent officials such as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said this week she was making a trio of “criminal” references to the Department of Justice on the flows of the Intelligence Community in the media.
The policy change also comes between the continuous control of the highest levels of the Trump administration over their mistakes in protecting sensitive information.
National Security Advisor Michael Waltz was revealed last month to inadvertently add a journalist to a group text using the coded signal messages service, where senior officials were discussing plans to attack Houthis.
Hegseth has faced his discoveries for his signal use, including a conversation involving his wife and brother, among other things.
In a statement, Bruce Brown, the press release committee on freedom of the press, said in a statement that “strong protection for journalists serve the American public by protecting the free flow of information.”
“Some of the subsequent reports in US history – from Watergate to Water Wireless Wapter after September 11 – was and continues to be possible because reporters have been able to protect the identity of confidential resources and discover and report stories that matter to people throughout the political spectrum,” he said.
The policy that BONDI is giving up was created by the then general, Merrick Garland, in the wake of the discoveries that justice department officials warned reporters in three news-wing, CNN and New York Times, were obtained in the final year of the Trump administration.
The new regulations from Garland marked a startling overthrow of a practice of seizures of telephone registries that had continued in numerous presidential administrations.
Obama’s Department of Justice, under the then lawyer, Eric Holder, warned the Associated Press in 2013 that he had secretly received two months of telephone records of reporters and editors in what the senior executive of the news cooperative called a “massive and unprecedented intervention” in news activities.
After hitting, Holder announced a revised set of guidelines for leakage investigations, including the search for higher levels of the department before leaflets can be issued for news media recordings.
But the department retained its prerogative to capture journalist data, and recent disclosures for news organizations show that practice continued in the Trump Department of Justice as part of numerous investigations.
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