In Targeting Reporter, Justice Dept. Backs Trump's Anti-Press Rhetoric

The revelation on Thursday that the Justice Department had seized years of phone and email records from Ali Watkins, a New York Times journalist, raised concerns that the Trump administration was adopting a highly aggressive approach, continuing a crackdown that ramped up in the Obama years.

“We’ve had other presidents who took action against the press,” Mr. Abrams said. “But we’ve never had a president who was more publicly engaged in the denigration on a daily basis of the press, in attacking its product and its good faith.”

He added, of the Watkins case: “One asks, one wonders, is this the first of much more to come?”



https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/10/business/media/justice-department-press-first-amendment.html