US Secretly Issued Subpoena To Access Reporter's Phone Records

The US justice department secretly issued a subpoena to gain access to details of the phone account of a Guardian reporter as part of an aggressive leak investigation into media stories about an official inquiry into the Trump administration's child separation policy at the southern border. From a report: Leak investigators issued the subpoena to obtain the phone number of Stephanie Kirchgaessner, the Guardian's investigations correspondent in Washington. The move was carried out without notifying the newspaper or its reporter, as part of an attempt to ferret out the source of media articles about a review into family separation conducted by the Department of Justice's inspector general, Michael Horowitz. It is highly unusual for US government officials to obtain a journalist's phone details in this way, especially when no national security or classified information is involved. The move was all the more surprising in that it came from the DoJ's inspector general's office -- the watchdog responsible for ethical oversight and whistleblower protections. Katharine Viner, the Guardian's editor-in-chief, decried the action as "an egregious example of infringement on press freedom and public interest journalism by the US Department of Justice."

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