Newly uncovered court documents show the Justice Department seized phone records associated with several Fox News lines as part of a leak investigation — a revelation that comes as the White House Correspondents’ Association spoke out against the administration’s monitoring of reporters.
Documents from October 2011 appear to show exchanges that match the specific locations of Fox News’ White House, Pentagon, State Department and other operations. The last four digits of each of the phone numbers listed are redacted in the government filing so it is impossible to know the full numbers.
Meanwhile, the Correspondents’ Association spoke out on incidents involving two news organizations. The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of phone records from the Associated Press and obtained a search warrant for the personal emails of Fox News’ James Rosen. The information about the phone records was uncovered Tuesday.
In the latter case, an FBI agent also claimed in an affidavit that Rosen was possibly a criminal “co-conspirator.”
Though no charges were brought against Rosen, the White House Correspondents’ Association said no journalist should even face that threat for doing their jobs.