DOJ Omits NYT Reporter's Records Seizure in Report

Federal prosecutors' seizure of The New York Times reporter's email and phone records reportedly was not mentioned in a Justice Department list of law enforcement tools used to collect journalists' communications records over the past five years.

The March 5 letter from the Justice Department was in response to an October 2017 request by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., BuzzFeed News reported.

But Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd's response listed only two instances of those kinds of seizures from "January 2012 to the present" — one that apparently referred to subpoenaed phone records from Associated Press reporters in 2013, and the other to the subpoena of former Times journalist James Risen to testify at a former CIA agent's trial, BuzzFeed reported.

Boyd never mentioned the digital and phone data taken from Times reporter Ali Watkins as part of a leak investigation into former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer James Wolfe, who has been charged with lying to the FBI about his contacts with reporters.

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