Blockade by Biden on the seizure of files by telephone communications and emails of journalists

THE Joe Biden He said he would not allow his government’s justice ministry to seize telephone records or journalists’ e-mails, saying any such move would be “simply wrong”.

The comments of the president of USA were made a day after CNN revealed that the Justice Department informed the network’s journalist, Barbara Starr, that the former Trump administration had secretly obtained her 2017 telephone records and two-month email records.

The Washington Post earlier this month reported that the Trump administration also secretly obtained in 2017 the transcripts of telephone conversations of three newspaper reporters who wrote about allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

“Absolutely wrong,” Biden told reporters after a joint news conference with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. “It simply came to our notice then. I will not let that happen. “

CNN presenter Wolf Blitzer hailed the US president’s comments as “really encouraging news”.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters earlier Friday that the Justice Department plans to meet with media representatives following CNN’s revelations.

“This president has a firm commitment to the rights to freedom of the press, as you have seen for decades, and to defend the rights of journalists,” he said.

He added that the Biden administration’s Department of Justice intends to use the “Holder model”, not that of the Trump administration, regarding its practices, in a reference to Eric Holder, the Obama administration’s Secretary of Justice.

Holder had revised Justice Department regulations in 2013 to limit the government’s ability to summon journalists’ files without the explicit consent of the ministry leadership, although he later criticized the seizure of the Associated Press and Fox telephone interview files. News.

Former President Donald Trump has taken a hard line against the press, with ongoing attacks on journalists and the media, often accusing them of spreading “false news”.

The National Press Association said earlier this month that the Trump administration’s moves to seize telephone records of journalists marked “another particularly disturbing example of a series of breaches by the Trump administration of American confidence in the government and an outright attack on Trump.” of the First Amendment “.

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