DOJ Seeks Access to LinkedIn Messages in Leak Investigation

Kevin Lamarque / REUTERS Attorney General Todd Blanche’s Department of Justice is engaged in an extraordinary attempt to break into a reporter’s LinkedIn DMs without them knowing.

The secret snooping campaign was exposed when a court battle, which Blanche’s attorneys had fought to keep private, exploded into the open because LinkedIn is fighting to keep the DMs from being handed over to the DOJ.

But Blanche’s attorneys are still keeping secret the identity of their target, and why they are going after the journalist, other than to allege it is to catch a “leaker.” The case comes amid a crackdown on supposed “leakers” ordered by Donald Trump, which has been enthusiastically embraced by, among others, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, who has been rocked by leaks about his personal conduct and whistleblower accounts of his handling of the war in Iran.

Damagingly, those include photographs of damage to U.S. military assets in the Middle East—including a destroyed E-3 Sentry Air Force jet—which cast doubt on the truthfulness of Hegseth’s claims about the progress of the war.

At the same time as the court case was playing out, Blanche was conducting a combative press briefing in the Rose Garden at the White House.

In the largely secret case, the DOJ is seeking details about 1,900 LinkedIn interactions from six users “for a criminal national security investigation,” attorney Joshua Ferrentino told the court on Tuesday .

But LinkedIn is fighting back against the agency’s “excessively overbroad” order, and has received support from other tech giants.

In June, a Virginia judge granted the DOJ’s request and issued an order requiring LinkedIn to turn over information while prohibiting the Microsoft-owned company from informing the users about it.

But Ari Holtzblatt, a lawyer for LinkedIn, argued Tuesday that parts of the order were too broad.

“They have demanded all of the records.

We have not said you can’t get any records,” he said.

Details of the case remain sealed, though the docket shows it was filed in November last year.

Both lawyers and judges on the U.S.

Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit spent most of the public session on Tuesday skirting over specifics to keep it all under wraps.