The Trump administration spied on the phones of New York Times journalists

The Department of Justice of the Government of Donald Trump spied on the telephone records of four reporters from The New York Times newspaper for almost four months, in 2017, as revealed by the current administration of Joe Biden.

The New York newspaper reported this Thursday on these actions by the Trump government to try to discover the sources used by the spied journalists. Last month, Democrat Biden's Justice Department already released Trump-era email and phone checks on reporters working for The Washington Post and CNN..

Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, condemned this action by the Trump administration. “The seizure of journalists' phone records profoundly undermines press freedom,” he said in a statement adding that “it threatens to silence the sources we depend on to provide the public with essential information about what the government is doing”.

Last month, after revelations about the seizures of communications records involving Post and CNN reporters, Biden called it “just wrong.”. Anthony Coley, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, said, according to the newspaper, that the officials in charge of the matter obtained the records in 2020 and added that “members of the media have now been notified in all cases” of the investigations. of leaks from the 2019-2020 period in which their calls were spied on. That department informed The New York Times that law enforcement officers had seized the phone records from January 14 to April 30, 2017, of four Times reporters: Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eric Lichtblau, and Michael S.. Schmidt.