A federal appeals court sharply rebuked President Donald Trump's Justice Department over a secret effort that reached far beyond its target.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the government's secret orders forcing LinkedIn to turn over 18 months of journalists' records, while gagging the company from telling anyone, were "substantially overbroad" and threatened to expose confidential sources with "no conceivable relationship" to the leak investigation behind them.
The case stems from a probe into a news outlet's article "purporting to describe a top-secret United States military operation in a foreign country," according to the opinion written by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson and joined by Judges James Wynn and Nicole Berner.
The court, which kept the outlet's name under wraps, found that the journalists targeted by the order published nearly 1,000 articles during the 18-month window, and fewer than 5 percent appeared to have anything to do with the leak.
"The government is entitled to discovery to the full extent permitted by law," the court wrote. "It is even entitled to a broad disclosure order. But it is not entitled to carte blanche."
The panel faulted U.S. District Judge Elizabeth W. Hanes for giving "blanket approval to the government's broad request" without weighing how much of it swept in irrelevant records. It warned that it is "not appropriate for district courts to approve requests purely because the records requested are logistically feasible to compile."
The judges also took aim at what the order would do for newsgathering. "Confidentiality of sources is the lifeblood of a free press," Wilkinson wrote, adding that "respect does not translate into license to round up indiscriminately the identities of confidential and unrelated newsgathering sources."
The opinion went further, noting that press freedom "is among those things viewed by autocrats worldwide as a threat to their grip on power."