The Justice Department began an ultimately unsuccessful "secret legal battle" under the Trump administration to obtain the email logs of four New York Times reporters in the hopes of identifying their sources and continued it after President Biden took office, the Times reported Friday, citing David McCraw, a top lawyer for the paper.
The department finally told a "handful" of Times executives about the effort once Biden was in the office, but, in what McCraw described as an "unprecedented" move, officials imposed a gag order (which has been lifted by a federal court) on the situation "to shield it from public view."
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