Trump Administration Follows Obama Template In Targeting Journalists’ Sources

The announcement of charges June 5 against a federal contractor for allegedly leaking a top secret National Security Agency document to a news website is giving journalists flashbacks to leaker prosecutions under President Barack Obama. The charges, tweeted New York Times reporter Scott Shane, followed “the precedent of Obama, whose administration set the record for leak prosecutions.” Adam Goldman, a Times colleague who had his phone records secretly seized during a 2012 leak investigation, asked whether President Donald Trump would top the number of leak prosecutions set during the previous administration.