CNN reports a federal judge tore into the Justice Department on Friday for failing to inform him of a law that could have undermined a federal search warrant. The law that government lawyers omitted applied to protections granted to journalists to protect them from government searches and seizures.
The Privacy Protection Act of 1980 is designed to protect journalists and newsrooms from government searches and seizures of a reporter’s work product materials unless the reporter is personally the subject of a criminal investigation or prosecution. But CNN reports federal lawyers failed to cite it.
“How could you miss it? How could you think it doesn’t apply?” Magistrate Judge William Porter asked a DOJ lawyer at a hearing in Alexandria, Virginia. At the time, Trump’s attorneys were requesting permission to raid a Washington Post reporter’s home.
“I find it hard to be that in any way this law did not apply,” Porter sniped later during discussion before refusing to approve the warrant for materials from reporter Hannah Natanson. “… I find it hard to be that in any way this law did not apply.”
In a seeming plea for mercy, Justice Department attorney Christian Dibblee argued that the decision to omit the pertinent info was made by department superiors
“That’s minimizing it!” Porter snapped.
Dibblee said he understood the judge’s “frustration.”
CNN reports that federal agents raided Natanson’s home last month and seized a phone, two computers and a Garmin watch. Porter temporarily blocked investigators from examining the devices after Natanson and the Post sued in an effort to get them back.
“Dibblee and DOJ attorney Gordon Kromberg tried to tell Porter on Friday that the department didn’t believe the law was applicable in this case, with Dibblee at one point saying it’s not the kind of ‘adverse authority’ that lawyers are typically required to raise with a court when making requests for such warrants,” CNN reported.
“You don’t think you have an obligation to say that?” Porter replied eventually. “I’m a little frustrated with how the process went down.”
