re: Trump DOJ secretly seized journalists' phone records in 2017 to find leakers

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In early August 2017 — days after the time period covered by the search of The Post reporters’ phone records — Sessions held a news conference to announce an intensified effort to hunt and prosecute leakers in government.

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The letters do not say when Justice Department leadership approved the decision to seek the reporters’ records, but a department spokesman said it happened in 2020, during the Trump administration. William P. Barr, who served as Trump’s attorney general for nearly all of that year, before departing Dec. 23, declined to comment.

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