But Mr. Biden’s comment — which came before the Justice Department notified the same four Times reporters this week that it had secretly seized their phone records in 2020 — was seemingly off the cuff, and contradicted existing department regulations that dated back to the Obama administration.
Those regulations permitted going after such data in leak investigations so long as there was high-level approval for the tactic. The Justice Department had refused to comment on whether it was formally changing its policy in light of Mr. Biden’s remarks, but on Saturday, Anthony Coley, a department spokesman, said that it had now done so.