A DOJ spokesman announced on Saturday that the department would no longer go to court to obtain media records.
The New York Times revealed on Friday that both the Trump and Biden administrations attempted to subpoena its reporters’ emails to identify sources. The DOJ introduced a gag order on March 3 to prevent the Times and Google, which operates the Times’ email servers, from publicly discussing the subpoena attempts.
“While the White House does not intervene in criminal investigations, the issuing of subpoenas for the records of reporters in leak investigations is not consistent with the President’s policy direction to the Department, and the Department of Justice has reconfirmed it will not be used moving forward,” Psaki continued.
Psaki did not deny that the White House knew about the subpoenas, which targeted New York Times reporters Matt Apuzzo, Michael S. Schmidt, Adam Goldman, and Eric Lichtblau.