new york times. but something important happened after the justice department did under eric holder who the is attorney general. president department recognized that they had gone too far and put in place a series of regulations that are supposed to prevent this from happening without the justice department going to the media organization and trying to negotiate some sort of a accommodation in advance. and it is obvious that didn t happen in this case. what s supposed to happen under the new regulations is that the justice department before it subpoenas a reporter as information because this is important. this is different from subpoenaing a reporter s testimony. the reporter doesn t know if you ve gotten the emails or gone and gotten phone records. they have no ability to go to court to block it. roo it. the justice department under holder put in new regulation that is would allow for some kind of negotiation between the media the outlet and the justice department and give the
has been resistant about turning over information to the justice department. i think one of the things we don t know here is what leak the justice department is investigating. and this really is important. because there are leaks i would argue that are important leaks that do compromise national security that should be investigated. and at times people should be prosecuted for those leaks. but then there are other leaks that just embarrass the administration. they re not leaks that compromise the national security but they embarrass the president. we know that president trump has been outraged by some leaks. outraged by leaks of confidentials he had with foreign leaders. and he wanted the justice department to go after the people who are responsible for the leaks and hold them accountable. i think we we still need to know what this leak was before we we are able to answer, you know is this an appropriate investigation? i m leaving aside whether some of the tactics are appropriate or
under different majorities, this senate senate intelligence committee staffer was reportedly being investigated by the justice department for unauthorized disclosure of information. that s what we had as of last night in this sort of reporting that was bubbling up through the day. now we ve got a very unexpected turn in this from the new york times. i think we got the headline here. if here it is. justice department seizes new york times reporter s email and phone records in leak investigation. quoting from the times. federal law enforcement officials secretly seized years worth of a new york times reporters phone abemail records this year in an investigation of classified information leaks. now, this reporter having records seized this is the same story apparently on that- that news that we got last night and into today about something being leaked by a staffer on the
to her for years while she reported on serious national security matters for a number of different u.s. publications. reporters do not expect that to happen to them in this country. joining us now is matt miller. former justice department spokesman under eric holder. thank you for joining us on short notice. we called you when you saw this. you ve only had as much time to digest it as i have thanks for being with us. of course. the times notes in the second appraise of the story that under president obama there had been aggressive tactics to crack down on leaks, including tactics that made some reporters uncomfortable and some news organizations unhappy with the way that reporters were were pursued essentially ford to track down leaks. is this a continuation of that or is this a depart yur? it s a continuation of what happened early in the obama administration. basically exactly what the justice department has done here it did to one of the reporters who wrote this story adam g
question. matt miller form justice department spokesperson joining us on short notice. much appreciated matt thank you. thank you. again, we re absorbing the new information just reported from the new york times. we had seen some intrigue coming in the senate around a potential investigation that involved the senate handing over information to the justice department about some unauthorized disclosure of information by a staffer on the senate intelligence committee. that was intriguing enough heading into this night s broadcast. but then as soon as we got on the air the new york times posted this report that the justice department has been secretly seizing and surveilling records, phone records and email records from one of the national security reporters. it is reportedly related to this investigation. but this is a big deal in terms of freedom of the press. we ll have much more to come tonight. stay with us. hey blue. i brought you something.