Gabe Rottman on the Justice Department's New Guidelines on Press Subpoenas
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2023
⏱️ 40 minutes
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Summary
It's been about six months since the Attorney General issued new guidelines on compulsory process to members of the press in criminal and national security investigations, and two officials of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press—Bruce Brown and Gabe Rottman—wrote a detailed analysis of the document in two parts for Lawfare.
Rottman joined Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to go through the document carefully: the long history that led to it, the shifting policies that have gotten more restrictive over the years since the Supreme Court ruled in Branzburg v. Hayes, the ramp-up of leak investigations and reporter subpoenas in the Obama and Trump administrations, and the new policy that creates a red line policy against them under most (but not all) circumstances. They talked about the document, about why the Justice Department has forsworn a historic and upheld authority, and about what it means for reporters and criminal investigations going forward.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
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| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | The change is to that balancing test. |
| 0:37.0 | The main question in the policy now becomes whether the activity at issue |
| 0:43.0 | is within the scope of news gathering as defined. |
| 0:46.0 | So the new policy defines news gathering, and if you're within |
| 0:49.0 | that news gathering line or on that news gathering side of the line, |
| 0:52.0 | then process is not available. |
| 0:55.0 | I'm Benjamin Wittis, and this is the LawFair podcast June 5, 2023. |
| 1:02.0 | It's been about six months since the attorney general issued new guidelines |
| 1:07.0 | on compulsory process to members of the press in criminal and national security investigations, |
| 1:14.0 | and two officials of the reporters committee for freedom of the press, |
| 1:19.0 | Bruce Brown and Gay Brotman, wrote a detailed analysis of the documents |
| 1:24.0 | of the document in two parts for LawFair a couple of weeks ago. |
| 1:29.0 | Gay Brotman joined me in the Goat Roadio studio to go through the document carefully, |
| 1:35.0 | the long history that led to it, the shifting policies that have gotten more restrictive |
| 1:42.0 | over the years since the Supreme Court ruled in Brandsburg, V. Hayes, |
| 1:48.0 | the ramp up of leak investigations and reporter subpoenas in the Obama |
... |
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