Report: Trump administration censored journalists

DrGovernment of the former US president Donald Trump It secretly spotted reporters’ phones four years ago, according to a report in the Washington Post. As the newspaper reported on Friday, journalists Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller, as well as their former colleague Adam Entous, were informed that the Justice Department had personal, professional and mobile phone data from April to July 2017.

“We are extremely concerned about this use of judgment to access communications from journalists,” said chief editor Cameron Barr. The Ministry of Justice must immediately provide the reasons for this “interference” in the work of journalists. Journalists operate under the protection of the First Amendment to the US Constitution that guarantees freedom of the press. The civil rights organization ACLU accused the ministry of “spying on” the reporters. “This should never have happened,” the American Civil Liberties Union wrote on Twitter. “When a government spies on journalists and their sources, it endangers freedom of the press.”

The Justice Ministry messages did not tell the journalists the reason for the wiretapping. During the period the recordings were released, the three reporters wrote an article, among other things, about a subsequent meeting of Trump’s advisor and Attorney General Jeff Sessions with the Russian ambassador before the 2016 presidential election.

I have also written about President Barack Obama’s administration’s attempts to stop Russian interference in the elections. According to US intelligence estimates, Russia interfered significantly in the US presidential election campaign in 2016 – above all through hacker attacks and the spread of manipulative messages to internet networks. The Russian interventions were specifically directed against then Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.