The Trump administration has been deploying an obscure legal maneuver to try to obtain private information on journalists, non-profits and unions, raising alarm over a power the government has asserted without judicial oversight.
In one instance, the government obtained six months of telephone records for Georgia Fort, a Minneapolis journalist. Fort was not notified of the request for her information, nor was she given a chance to contest the government’s effort to obtain them, her lawyers said in court papers.
