The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, who has broken several bits of key news in the DOJ scandal, now reports that Eric Holder & Co. went to much greater lengths than previously thought to secure a confidential search warrant against Fox News reporter James Rosen. After being told by two separate judges that Rosen needed to be informed of the warrant, the Justice Department appealed to D.C.’s federal district court, which overturned the previous orders:
[Recently unsealed documents] show that two judges separately declared that the Justice Department was required to notify Rosen of the search warrant, even if the notification came after a delay. Otherwise: “The subscriber therefore will never know, by being provided a copy of the warrant, for example, that the government secured a warrant and searched the contents of her e-mail account,” Judge John M. Facciola wrote in an opinion rejecting the Obama Administration’s argument.
[U.S. attorney Ronald C.] Machen appealed that decision, and in September, 2010, Royce C. Lamberth, the chief judge in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, granted Machen’s request to overturn the order of the two judges.