The DOJ Secretly Ordered LinkedIn to Hand Over 1,900 Messages From Six Users, Including a Reporter, in a Leak Hunt and Barred the Company From Telling Them. The Fight Only Became Public When Google, Apple and Meta Joined It.

For ten months, the Justice Department and Microsoft-owned LinkedIn have been fighting in sealed proceedings over a court order that would force the company to turn over records of roughly 1,900 interactions among six users, at least one of them a journalist, as part of what prosecutors call a "criminal national security investigation" into a leak. The fight surfaced on Tuesday, September 15, when a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond heard arguments in open court, with Google, Apple, Meta and X on LinkedIn's side and the ACLU and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filing briefs against the government. Politico first reported the case; the identity of the reporter, the outlet and the leak under investigation all remain under seal.

The case was filed last November. In June, a federal judge in Virginia approved the department's demand and imposed a nondisclosure order barring LinkedIn from notifying the affected users that their data had been sought. LinkedIn is not refusing to comply outright. Its lawyer, Ari Holtzblatt, told the panel the company wants permission to make a limited disclosure to the account holders so that investigators can narrow the request to records actually relevant to the leak, rather than sweeping in a reporter's entire network of contacts. "They have demanded all of the records," Holtzblatt said. Microsoft's chief legal officer, Jon Palmer, said in a statement that "customers deserve to be notified when the government seeks their data."

The judges seemed troubled by the breadth of the order. Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, appointed by Ronald Reagan, asked what happens to sources who have nothing to do with the leak. "If the confidentiality of its sources is going to be broadly compromised by an overbroad disclosure order that reveals sources," he asked, "doesn't that compromise a reporter's interest?" He added later that he was "looking for a balance" between the government's life-and-death security interests and the First Amendment. Judge James Wynn, an Obama appointee, said flatly, "We need some kind of governing rule," a sign the panel may try to set a standard for how much a third-party platform can say when prosecutors come for a journalist's communications.

The dispute lands in the middle of the most aggressive campaign against leaks in decades. Attorney General Todd Blanche, who succeeded Pam Bondi, and FBI Director Kash Patel have both said they are not trying to prosecute journalists but do not regard reporters' data or testimony as off limits when hunting for the officials who talk to them. Earlier this year the FBI searched the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson in a leak case. In July, the department withdrew subpoenas it had served on three New York Times journalists after a backlash. Patel was grilled by Senate Democrats on Tuesday over the journalist investigations at an oversight hearing that had little to do with the LinkedIn case but everything to do with its atmosphere.

There is precedent for the government winning fights like this one. In 2023, Special Counsel Jack Smith obtained a nondisclosure order forcing X to hand over data from Trump's own account without telling him; X fought it to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear the appeal. The Justice Department, represented at the hearing by attorney Joshua Ferrentino, has maintained that notifying the account holders would compromise a criminal investigation into the disclosure of national security information.

The panel did not indicate when it would rule. Whatever it decides will govern not just LinkedIn but every platform served with a sealed demand for a journalist's contacts in the Fourth Circuit, which covers Virginia and Maryland, home to the CIA, the NSA, the Pentagon and most of the officials who might be the subject of a leak investigation.