DHS Skips Judge for Reporter's Phone Records: GovBrief #576

Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security used a tariff audit form to subpoena a Minneapolis reporter’s phone records.

In February a federal judge twice refused agents a warrant for Georgia Fort’s YouTube account because they could not show she had committed a crime. He also ordered them to tell her if they tried again. Weeks later they sent Google a customs summons that needs no judge’s signature. Google refused. T-Mobile got one too and complied, and Fort learned in discovery that the government has six months of her calls and texts.

The same summons went after the YouTube records of Democracy Now and Megyn Kelly, a conservative who broke with Trump over the Iran war, and neither faces any charges. The law they used is for checking whether an importer paid the duty on a shipping container. The judge set the conditions for a warrant, so the agents picked a process that bypassed the judge.

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🟢 GovBrief Intensity Score 48

Quiet Day. Weekend and holiday level.

Volume: Low (6)

Severity: Low (1.33)

Defining Moments: 0

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Today's Quote

When we learned that the family — First of all let me just say, our campaign had nothing to do with it, and as soon as we learned that the family didn’t like the ad, we told the people who put it up to take it down. So I’m with them on this. They’ve suffered enough, they don’t need to suffer anymore.

Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH), after the family of three Ohioans killed in an April highway crash asked the National Republican Senatorial Committee to pull an ad that used their deaths to attack his opponent, Sherrod Brown. The ad was still on YouTube Saturday night.