The Trump administration seized the phone records of multiple New York Times reporters shortly after taking office, adding to the list of journalists Trump monitored and whose civil rights were potentially violated.

According to the New York Times, the Trump administration secretly obtain four months worth of reporters’ communications records in an effort to uncover their sources.  The seizure happened for records of communications the journalists made just four months after Trump took office.  The Biden Administration disclosed the action of the Trump administration on Wednesday.  Previously, the Biden Administration disclosed that Trump seized records from multiple reporters at the Washington Post and at least one reporter at CNN.

“Seizing the phone records of journalists profoundly undermines press freedom,” Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the Times, said in a statement. “It threatens to silence the sources we depend on to provide the public with essential information about what the government is doing.”

The Trump Administration was a sieve of information, with numerous White House staffers leaking information over the four years Trump was in office.  Trump himself was disclosed to have provided information to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post relating to the coronavirus pandemic that contradicted the official position of his administration and also was completely opposite what he was telling the public during multiple media statements.

The Department of Justice informed the Times that law enforcement officials had seized phone records from January 14 to April 30, 2017, for four Times reporters:  Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eric Lichtblau and Michael S. Schmidt.  The government also secured a court order to seize logs — but not contents — of their emails, it said, but “no records were obtained.”

The Justice Department also announced that all reporters who had been seized by the Trump Administration in 2019 and 2020 had been notified.

The Times reports that their employees’ records were sought in the investigation of a story the reporters wrote, but it did not have information on which specific story was in question or what sources were being investigated.