FBI can't examine devices it took from Washington Post reporter for now, judge rules

Where was judge Porter (the savior of freedom of the press / S) when president Obama was monitoring journalist James Rosen?

Where was judge Porter when president Obama was monitoring journalist James Rosen?

You're absolutely correct on the Obama Admin and Fox News reporter case. It should never have happened in the way it did. It was a chilling blow on the 1st Amendment. No one should support that. Rosen was never charged and shouldn't have been. State Dept security contractor, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim did plead guilty to giving Rosen classified information though.  

the savior of freedom of the press

I'm going to need citation that anyone ever said that. The Obama admin targeted more than just this one journalist using warrantless wiretapping and dragnet record seizures to catch people suspected of divulging classified information. I certainly commented my displeasure on this at the time. 

Now that we have that covered. Is it okay with you that since past admins have abused their authority that this one can do it too? 

You are kind of missing the point. Obama didn't go after Rosen to stymie freedom of the press. He wanted the leaker and in the end he got him.

Trump wants the same thing. A judge protecting information doesn't help the Post reporter. We know who he is. It protects the leaker and that's who we want.

You are kind of missing the point. Obama didn't go after Rosen to stymie freedom of the press.

Nowhere did I even attempt to imply it.

Trump wants the same thing.

Yes, and he's likely to get it... eventually. Doesn't make how they are going about it right. The courts have largely said this is unconstitutional and I agree.

You are kind of missing the point.

Not missing the point at all. You, on the other hand, are studiously misrepresenting the point. 

Press protections exist to restrain government power, not to make investigations easier. If the government can trample First Amendment safeguards whenever it says the “real point” was something else, then the protections are meaningless.

Don't call out hypocirsy.  It makes some people cry.

Yeah, because hypocrisy really sucks, doesn't it? 

Because you love hearing from ChatGPT, I asked it to compile the differences between DOJs of the past several administrations.

Below is the same integrated summary, now explicitly incorporating the Biden DOJ as its own phase, followed by updated tables that show the full arc clearly.

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Integrated summary (four-phase comparison)

After the James Rosen controversy, the Barack Obama administration rewrote U.S. Department of Justice guidelines to hard-code restraint in leak investigations involving journalists. These rules required personal Attorney General approval, narrowed the use of “co-conspirator” theories, mandated exhaustion of alternatives, favored advance notice, and explicitly stated that ordinary newsgathering is not criminal conduct. The philosophy was institutional self-discipline: leak investigations could proceed, but journalism was constitutionally distinct and should almost never be burdened directly.

During the Donald Trump administration, those rules largely remained intact on paper but weakened in practice. Prosecutors were encouraged—implicitly and sometimes explicitly—to pursue leaks aggressively, notice was delayed more often, exceptions were read broadly, and internal resistance diminished. The shift was cultural rather than statutory: the DOJ moved from “last resort” to “available tool,” even while formally citing the same guidelines.

The Biden DOJ, under Merrick Garland, marked a sharp reversal. In response to revelations that Trump-era prosecutors had secretly seized journalists’ phone and email records, Garland imposed the strongest press protections to date. The DOJ adopted a near-categorical ban on using subpoenas, warrants, or court orders to obtain journalists’ records in leak investigations, with only extremely narrow national-security exceptions. This went further than Obama-era restraint by turning internal policy into something close to a bright-line rule.

The current DOJ framework has rolled back those Biden-era prohibitions. While Attorney General approval and judicial oversight remain formally required, compulsory legal process against journalists is again permitted in leak investigations. The presumption now favors enforcement over press protection, returning the DOJ closer to— and in some respects beyond—its Trump-era posture. Courts remain the primary check, rather than DOJ self-restraint.

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Table 1. DOJ posture toward journalists by administration

Dimension	Obama DOJ	Trump DOJ	Biden DOJ	DOJ Today
Governing philosophy	Institutional restraint	Leak deterrence	Press protection	Leak enforcement
Status of guidelines	Revised, protective	Retained but loosened	Strengthened sharply	Revised again
Role of self-restraint	High	Low	Very high	Low
Journalism treated as constitutionally special	Explicitly	Formally, weakly	Explicitly and strongly	Weakly

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Table 2. Leak-investigation rules affecting journalists

Issue	Obama	Trump	Biden	Today
AG approval required	Yes, meaningful	Yes, routine	Yes, rarely invoked	Yes, readily granted
Subpoenas/searches of journalist records	Technically allowed, rare	Allowed	Generally prohibited	Affirmatively allowed
“Co-conspirator” theory	Discouraged	Revived	Disfavored	Available
Advance notice to journalists	Presumptive	Often delayed	Strongly favored	Often delayed
Bulk metadata collection	Disfavored	Increased	Barred	Permitted
Journalist protections relative to others	Higher	Lower	Highest	Low

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Bottom line

• Obama DOJ: built brakes into the system.

• Trump DOJ: kept the brakes but drove harder.

• Biden DOJ: installed a governor that nearly stopped the engine.

• DOJ today: removed the governor and relies on courts instead.

Across all four eras, the critical constant is that none of these protections are statutory. Because Congress has never enacted a federal press shield law, every administration has been able to recalibrate the balance between national-security enforcement and press freedom through internal DOJ policy alone.

I know, you don't care. Bully on you.

Is that supposed to make me change my statement?

Sorry, I did not connect the dots for you.

1. The Obama administration recognized the overreach and took steps to curtail it. Actually, factually, and in written policy because they realized that a strong, factual press is essential for democracy. 
2. The first Trump administration left the rules in place, but with a nudge and a wink. They also went after factual reports and reporters of facts because little Donnie Dangle got his pee-pee hurt when someone told the truth about his shithole life choices both in and out of office. "Fake news" was his tantrum chant, and a lot of gullible people ate it up. From before his time in office he was using the fake news mantra and his "alternate facts" (ie:lies) to undermine the reporters who had the gall to say anything not totally obsequious about the Donald.
3. The Biden administration reversed this trend to the point of almost no investigations of journalists.
4. The second Trump administration ignores most all of the rules protecting journalists and instead waits until the cases are adjudicated. This is attempting to chill reportage on every front that deals with the government. It is just one more way the administration is attempting to cow the public at large and reporters specifically to say only nice things and do not worry about the man behind the curtain.

 And yet here you and some of your friends are trying to make Obama look bad when you should be worrying about the state of the freedom of Speech, the Press, and of Expression of the general public. 

worrying about the state of the freedom of Speech, the Press, and of Expression of the general public. 

That would mean they greatly revere the Constitution.  But as I've seen they want to tear it up for toilet paper much like their Dear Leader does

And yet here you and some of your friends are trying to make Obama look bad when you should be worrying about the state of the freedom of Speech, the Press, and of Expression of the general public. 

No matter how you spin it, Demcrats already showed they don't care about any of that.  The last 2 Democrat administrations stepped all over that.  

Far right-wing fascists can't stand the light of day. Intelligent folk see Trump's cabinet for what it is. Liars and criminal fascists.

A federal judge has barred the FBI from examining the electronic devices its agents seized last week from the Virginia home of a Washington Post reporter until he can review the controversial case."The government must preserve but must not review any of the materials that law enforcement seized pursuant to search warrants the Court issued," U.S.

lucky for us we have patel and bondi heading up the agencies charged with enforcing US law, like they have all along ... /s

So glad that I saw the /s. Thought you'd lost your mind for a second.