News executives protest Trump-era probe with Garland

WASHINGTON (AP) — Executives with CNN, The New York Times and Washington Post met with Attorney General Merrick Garland to protest the Trump-era Justice Department’s efforts to seize phone and email records of journalists. The records sought were from eight journalists who in 2017 were writing about investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 general election. The journalists are concerned that it represented an attempt to find out their sources, and would have a chilling effect on people wanting to give them information in the future. The Biden administration has halted that effort, but news organizations want a permanent policy to prevent a future administration’s ability to do the same thing.