Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, said the Justice Department is hoping the public will focus on the personal life of a reporter he previously employed rather than on the FBI secretly seizing her communication records in order to identify one of her sources.
The New York Times reported last week that the reporter, Ali Watkins, was implicated in the investigation of a former Senate Intelligence Committee aide, James Wolfe, who was charged with lying to the FBI about sharing confidential committee information.
The indictment against Wolfe revealed that Watkins and Wolfe were romantically involved and that her communication records were used to ask about the nature of her relationship with him.
“I would also say this, by the way, is the conversation the Department of Justice wants us to be having,” Smith said Sunday on CNN. “I don’t see why else there are paragraphs of that in an indictment about a guy who allegedly lied to the FBI.”
He said that the focus should instead be on how the Justice Department took extreme measures in obtaining Watkins’ records without giving her prior notice.
“I think that they would love to have a conversation you know, about a reporter’s personal life … rather than a conversation about what they were doing,” Smith said, “what impelled them to use this kind of last resort tool of covertly spying on journalists.”
Justice Department guidelines state that when private, third-party communication records of reporters are obtained through a subpoena, “the affected member of the news media shall be given reasonable and timely notice of the Attorney General’s determination” before those records are seized.
The guidelines say, however, that the attorney general can bypass prior notification if he or she “determines that, for compelling reasons, such notice would pose a clear and substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation, risk grave harm to national security, or present an imminent risk of death or serious bodily harm.”
A Justice Department official told the Washington Examiner on Friday that the FBI had determined advance notice to Watkins would have jeopardized its investigation.
