Trump administration seized phone logs of NY Times reporters over possible classified info leak

The New York Times reporters had all written extensively about FBI Director James Comey.
New York Times
By Nicholas Sherman

The Trump administration in 2017 seized the phone records of four New York Times reporters as part of an investigation into the publication of potentially classified information.

The records were seized by the Justice Department and covered the period of Jan. 14 to April 30 in 2017, the Biden administration announced Wednesday.

The reporters were Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eric Lichtblau and Michael S. Schmidt, who had all written extensively about then-FBI Director James Comey, according to The New York Times.

The Justice Department did not say which article was being investigated. But the reporters and the time period suggested that the leak investigation related to classified information reported in an April 22, 2017, article about how Comey, handled politically charged investigations during the 2016 presidential election.

"Seizing the phone records of journalists profoundly undermines press freedom," Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet said Wednesday. "It threatens to silence the sources we depend on to provide the public with essential information about what the government is doing."

This revelation comes a month after it was revealed the Trump administration had also obtained phone and email records of a CNN reporter and Washington Post reporters.