The first Trump administration launched a sprawling campaign to ferret out leakers, which targeted reporters at CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, plus members of Congress and their staff. But a watchdog report released to The Intercept shows that just days before the 2020 presidential election, senior Justice Department officials signed off on leaks to two favored newspapers with conservative reputations, both owned by the biggest name in right-wing media.

The report, which The Intercept obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, sketches the anatomy of a politically expedient leak authorized at high levels. Such leaks were frequent during Trump 1.0 — as in every other administration, in a tradition dating back to Benjamin Franklin’s days as colonial postmaster — and will certainly continue during Trump 2.0.

So will investigations of embarrassing leaks and prosecutions of disfavored leakers. Conservatives have urged Donald Trump, in the words of the Project 2025 manifesto, to “use all of the tools at [the Justice Department’s] disposal to investigate leaks.”

In late October 2020, three senior Justice Department officials leaked information and documents to the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, both owned by conservative magnate Rupert Murdoch. The leaks concerned investigations into Covid deaths at nursing homes in New York and New Jersey. At the time, state officials alleged that the investigations and the strategic leaks were politically timed.

The inspector general found that the Department of Justice officials leaked “to select reporters, days before an election, non-public DOJ investigative information regarding ongoing DOJ investigative matters,” per a high-level

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