Attorney General Todd Blanche’s Department of Justice is engaged in an extraordinary attempt to break into a reporter’s LinkedIn DMs without them knowing.
The secret snooping campaign was exposed when a court battle, which Blanche’s attorneys had fought to keep private, exploded into the open because LinkedIn is fighting to keep the DMs from being handed over to the DOJ.
But Blanche’s attorneys are still keeping secret the identity of their target, and why they are going after the journalist, other than to allege it is to catch a “leaker.”
The case comes amid a crackdown on supposed “leakers” ordered by Donald Trump, which has been enthusiastically embraced by, among others, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, who has been rocked by leaks about his personal conduct and whistleblower accounts of his handling of the war in Iran. Damagingly, those include photographs of damage to U.S. military assets in the Middle East—including a destroyed E-3 Sentry Air Force jet—which cast doubt on the truthfulness of Hegseth’s claims about the progress of the war.
At the same time as the court case was playing out, Blanche was conducting a combative press briefing in the Rose Garden at the White House.
In the largely secret case, the DOJ is seeking details about 1,900 LinkedIn interactions from six users “for a criminal national security investigation,” attorney Joshua Ferrentino told the court on Tuesday. But LinkedIn is fighting back against the agency’s “excessively overbroad” order, and has received support from other tech giants.
In June, a Virginia judge granted the DOJ’s request and issued an order requiring LinkedIn to turn over information while prohibiting the Microsoft-owned company from informing the users about it. But Ari Holtzblatt, a lawyer for LinkedIn, argued Tuesday that parts of the order were too broad.
“They have demanded all of the records. We have not said you can’t get any records,” he said.
Details of the case remain sealed, though the docket shows it was filed in November last year. Both lawyers and judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit spent most of the public session on Tuesday skirting over specifics to keep it all under wraps.
“I also want to indicate maybe it would be a good idea if each side recognized the legitimate interests that are being put forward by the other,” Judge Harvie Wilkinson, a Ronald Reagan appointee, said. “I’m looking for a balance.”
“I think that this case, from my standpoint, requires us to acknowledge how significant and grave the government security interest is but at the same time to acknowledge also the need for means that do not trample our values as a country,” he continued, later telling the DOJ that reporters have “a basic interest” in maintaining the confidentiality of their sources.
“I would submit that the path to strike that balance is to reject the absolutist position that the government has advocated in this court,” Holtzblatt said.
Jon Palmer, Microsoft’s chief legal officer, said Tuesday that the tech titan will “continue to support lawful investigations while standing up for customer privacy, transparency, and the rule of law.”
“We recognize law enforcement’s important role in protecting public safety and investigating crime, and sometimes that does need to be done covertly. We respond to lawful legal requests,” he said. “At the same time, customers and users deserve meaningful limits and independent oversight through an adversarial process. And, customers deserve to be notified when the government seeks their data, unless the government clearly establishes the need for secrecy under statutory and constitutional standards.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly targeted journalists in its crackdown on so-called leakers. Earlier this year, the Kash Patel-led FBI raided the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson as part of a probe into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government information.
Natanson was reportedly told she was not the focus of the investigation. A federal judge later told the FBI not to review electronic devices that it seized from her home.
In July, the DOJ was humiliated by a federal judge after it issued subpoenas against three New York Times journalists who reported on President Donald Trump’s Qatari-gifted luxury jet. The agency later withdrew the subpoenas.
