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CNN revealed Wednesday that the Department of Justice fought a secret legal battle to obtain the email records of one of its reporters — and that as part of the battle, the government imposed a gag order on the network’s attorney and chief, Jeff Zucker.
The news network’s revelation came less than a week after a lawyer revealed to the New York Times that he and a handful of lawyers and newspaper executives had been gagged as part of a similar battle sparked by a leak investigation.
The battle for CNN reporter’s email data began in July 2020 under the Trump administration and was resolved on January 26, after the Biden administration took power directly, in a deal with prosecutors under which the network turned over a “limited set of email records,” he said. He. A judge recently lifted a gag order on the matter.
The disclosure was the latest involving aggressive steps taken by the Justice Department in leaking inquiries late into the Trump administration, and the second now-known investigation spilling over into the early Biden administration.
The Justice Department had revealed in recent weeks that, during the Trump administration, it had succeeded in seizing the phone records of 4 Times reporters, a CNN reporter, and several reporters of The Washington Post as part of the leak investigations. All relevant record from 2017.
In the fallout from the disclosure, President Biden ordered the department to stop the practice of seizing correspondents’ communications records in an effort to identify their sources. State Attorney Merrick B. Garland held a meeting with the leaders of the three news organizations on Monday.
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