During Trumps presidency DOJ prosecutors didnt follow their own guidelines while getting phone records of reporters in media leak cases (as shown in a fresh watchdog report)
The Inspector Generals office found that DOJ staff went around standard procedures: they grabbed data from news-people and congress workers without proper checks-and-balances. Some House staffers got caught in this data-sweep just because they worked with top-secret stuff — which was their actual job description
The report points to a notable case: Kash Patel who later became Trumps pick for FBI chief had his records taken while working at the House Intelligence Committee. Tech-giant Google stepped in and told him about the secret subpoena; this led to Patels legal action vs the department bout a year ago
The findings raise questions about DOJs methods in leak probes — showing how govt agencies sometimes bend rules when looking into classified info leaks. These practices which seemed to target both media-folk and government staff might come back despite past criticism