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Barbara Starr, the longtime Pentagon correspondent for CNN, is departing the network.

She wrote in a memo to staffers, “To my many colleagues and friends, With the expiration of my contract in the coming days I have made the decision to move on. Let me say this…you never say goodbye to your friends, so I won’t.” CNN’s Oliver Darcy first reported on her exit, and the network confirmed it.

Starr joined CNN in 2001, having joined from ABC News where she worked as a producer.

Her exit follows the layoff of hundreds of employees last week, including veteran correspondent Martin Savage and political analyst Chris Cillizza. Another on-air figure, Ana Cabrera, also is looking to leave the network when her contract expires, according to sources.

In 2021, it was revealed that the Justice Department under President Donald Trump obtained a gag order that kept top CNN executives from disclosing...

“Reporting 9/11 and Why It Still Matters,” a new documentary about the experiences Tom Brokaw, Savannah Guthrie and other journalists had covering the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and its companion docuseries, “Women Journalists of 9/11: Their Stories,” will debut on SVOD platform Wondrium in September, TheWrap has learned exclusively.

Produced in collaboration with the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, “Reporting 9/11 and Why it Still Matters” “provides a definitive account of what journalists encountered at the attack sites, traveling with President Bush and aboard Air Force One, reporting from the anchor desk and the sky above Manhattan, at New York’s Ground Zero, at the Pentagon, and in the fields of Shanksville following the crash of United Flight 93,” per the film’s description.

Executive produced and directed by journalists Allison Gilbert and Phil Hirschkorn, co-editors of “Covering Catastrophe: Broadcast Journalists Report September 11,” the nearly two-hour film includes interviews with 45 broadcast and print journalists who “shared their urgent,...

The Justice Department formally announced new rules designed to greatly limit prosecutors’ ability to obtain phone and email records of journalists.

The rules, unveiled Monday by Attorney General Merrick Garland, came after the revelation that the DOJ subpoenaed information from reporters for CNN, Washington Post and The New York Times, part of an effort that started during Donald Trump’s administration and largely played out without the journalists’ knowledge. The journalists were not targets of an investigation but were believed to be part of an effort to probe the source of leaks to the news media.

Garland wrote in a memo (read it here) that the department “will no longer use compulsory legal process for the purpose of obtaining information from or records of members of the news media acting within the scope of newsgathering activities.”

President Joe Biden called the practice of reporters’ records being seized “simply, simply wrong,...

Updated, with comment from the Post’s Fred Ryan: Representatives from CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post met with Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday to talk about new rules designed to limit prosecutors from subpoenaing journalists’ records in an effort to find their sources.

The meeting came after the three media outlets reported that some of their journalists had received notice that federal prosecutors had secretly obtained phone and email data starting during the Trump administration. The disclosure apparently was connected to leak investigations.

President Joe Biden has called such a practice “simply, simply wrong,” and the Justice Department subsequently announced a change in policy to no longer seek subpoenas to obtain such records during leak investigations. But the news outlets and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said that they had a series of unanswered questions as to how the seizure of records happened,...

Former President Trump really doesn’t like leakers. He repeatedly deemed Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee throughout Trump’s time in office, the worst of them. “He’s the biggest leaker in Washington,” Trump said of Schiff in 2019. “He’s a leaker like nobody has ever seen before.”

It probably shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, then, that in 2018 Trump’s Justice Department secretly subpoenaed Apple for Schiff’s data as part of a leak investigation, The New York Times reported Thursday night.

The Justice Department under President Donald Trump obtained a gag order that kept top CNN executives from disclosing the government’s pursuit of reporter Barbara Starr email and other records as part of an apparent leak investigation.

According to CNN, the effort started in July of last year and was only revealed until Wednesday, when a federal judge unsealed parts of the case. CNN’s general counsel David Vigilante went on air to explain that he was unable to reveal details of the case even to Starr herself. She and reporters from The Washington Post and The New York Times were informed last month that the government had seized their records without their knowledge.

Vigilante described a protracted legal battle that ultimately resulted in the DOJ agreeing to a much narrower disclosure of records, after the tens of thousands originally sought over a span of two months in 2017.

It’s...

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Saturday that the Justice Department would no longer subpoena the phone and email records of reporters during leak investigations, after recent revelations that prosecutors secretly sought such information from journalists at The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN.

In a statement, Psaki said, “As appropriate given the independence of the Justice Department in specific criminal cases, no one at the White House was aware of the gag order until Friday night. While the White House does not intervene in criminal investigations, the issuing of subpoenas for the records of reporters in leak investigations is not consistent with the President’s policy direction to the Department, and the Department of Justice has reconfirmed it will not be used moving forward.”

On Friday, the Times reported on a legal battle that played out in the final weeks of the Trump administration and...

CNN is parting ways with contributor Rick Santorum, the former Republican Senator and presidential candidate who has come under fire for remarks he made last month about Native American culture.

Speaking to an audience last month at an event organized by Young America’s Foundation, Santorum suggested Native American people had little influence on U.S. culture. “We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here,” he told a gathering of students. “I mean, yes, we have Native Americans, but candidly, there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”

The comments drew criticism from groups like the National Congress of American Indians. Santorum didn’t help matters when he appeared on CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time” and declined to apologize for the remarks or how they were interpreted, simply telling the anchor they were taken out of context. CNN confirmed a previous report in The Huffington Post...

Update, 3:53 Pm Pt: Joe Biden told reporters Friday that it was “simply wrong” and that he would not let the Justice Department seize phone or email records from reporters during his tenure.

Biden told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that the practice was “absolutely, positively, it’s wrong. It’s simply, simply wrong.”

“I will not let that happen,” Biden said.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer responded, “That is really encouraging news, especially those of us, we are all biased,” referring to concerns among journalists that such actions stifle the reporting process.

CNN reported on Thursday that its Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr, was informed that during the Trump administration, prosecutors had secretly obtained her phone records, presumably as part of a leak investigation. The Washington Post reported recently that three of its journalists also had their phone records for that year also seized.

Biden’s remarks are significant because White House...

Update, 6:53 Pm Pt: President Donald Trump responded to the news of Iran’s retaliatory missile strike on two Iraqi air bases with a surprisingly upbeat message: “All is well!”

“All is well! Missiles launched from Iran at two military bases located in Iraq. Assessment of casualties & damages taking place now,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “So far, so good! We have the most powerful and well equipped military anywhere in the world, by far! I will be making a statement tomorrow morning.”

All is well! Missiles launched from Iran at two military bases located in Iraq. Assessment of casualties & damages taking place now. So far, so good! We have the most powerful and well equipped military anywhere in the world, by far! I will be making a statement tomorrow morning.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2020

His response did not indicate whether he would order a Us response to the Iranian attack,...