The Justice Department said it followed proper protocol last year when the FBI secretly seized the communications records of a reporter who was in touch with a former Senate aide, who this week was charged in a case related to leaking classified information to the news media.
The New York Times said Thursday the FBI obtained years’ worth of phone and email records of the paper’s reporter, Ali Watkins, as part of its investigation of James Wolfe, who the FBI has accused of lying to authorities about unauthorized leaking of information belonging to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The Times said Watkins was informed of the seizure by Justice Department in February, though the Times organization only found out Thursday.
Justice Department guidelines state that when private, third-party communication records of reporters are obtained through a subpoena, “the affected member of the news media shall be given reasonable and timely notice of the Attorney General’s determination” before those records are seized.
The guidelines say, however, that the attorney general can bypass prior notification if he or she “determines that, for compelling reasons, such notice would pose a clear and substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation, risk grave harm to national security, or present an imminent risk of death or serious bodily harm.”
A Justice Department official told the Washington Examiner on Friday that the FBI had determined advance notice to Watkins would have jeopardized its investigation.
Watkins had been in a romantic relationship with Wolfe, according to the Times, and the records showed she had been in contact with him.
In April 2017, Watkins broke a story at the website Buzzfeed, where she worked at the time, that said Russians had attempted in 2013 to recruit Carter Page, who served as an adviser on President Trump’s 2016 campaign.
A source at Buzzfeed told the Washington Examiner that the publication had not been informed by the Justice Department about the seized records before or after they were obtained.
Watkins joined the news site Politico in May 2017 as a national security correspondent and remained there until December. Brad Dayspring, vice president of communications for Politico, said that it was also never contacted by the Justice Department about the record seizures.
The Times report said Wolfe had also been in touch with other reporters to allegedly leak more classified information.
The Obama administration drew scrutiny for similar practices in monitoring the contacts of journalists. In 2013, the Associated Press reported that the Obama Justice Department, led by Eric Holder, had in 2012 secretly obtained the phone records of more than 20 phone lines used by the agency and its reporters.
The AP was informed after the fact but said at the time that the government had not provided an explanation for why it obtained the records.
