A yearslong focus on multiple criminal prosecutions targeting Donald Trump and investigations of President Joe Biden and son, Hunter, has left swaths of the Justice Department uncovered, raising an uncomfortable question for a weary press corps:
What have we missed?
“One of the really odd parts about DOJ right now and federal law enforcement right now is…it’s never had this many reporters on it. And paradoxically, the place has never been less covered than it is right now because everyone is covering three things,” said Devlin Barrett, justice correspondent at The Washington Post. “Two (cases) are named Trump, one of them is named Biden. And we’re all hunting in that space.”
Former president Trump is charged with unlawful retention of classified documents in a Florida federal court and with election interference in a separate federal case in Washington, D.C. (Trump also is facing state charges related to election interference in Georgia and for allegedly falsifying business records in New York to conceal hush money payments to a mistress prior to the 2016 election.)
Last month, a Justice Department special counsel concluded that President Biden shouldn’t be prosecuted for mishandling government documents following his tenure as vice president. Hunter Biden, meanwhile, faces a June trial on federal tax charges in California.
The unprecedented multiple prosecutions and investigations, scattered across the country, have necessarily consumed much of the time and attention of reporters assigned at Justice.
“It worries me because to me it feels dangerously, structurally imbalanced as a way to operate over the long run,” Barrett said.”
The comments came in a wide-ranging discussion with the National Press Foundation’s Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship class. Barrett was joined by Pierre Thomas, chief Justice correspondent at ABC News and Anthony Coley, a former Justice spokesman and senior adviser to Attorney General Merrick Garland. They talked about how the beat has dramatically changed and what remains crucial to its continuing coverage.
“There are … topics that you can cover that are under-covered right now that are so important to the public,” Coley said. “It’s just there because nobody has the time and the resources.”
The sprawling Justice Department includes the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, U.S. Marshals Service and U.S. Bureau of Prisons, in addition to its continuing pursuit of the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history—the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
What hasn’t changed on the beat, Thomas said, is the central role of long-term relationships in news gathering and source development.
“I would just say at base it’s all about interpersonal relationships,” Thomas said. “You have to think of your job as about interpersonal relationships…
“I’ve just found that the way you treat people over time really does matter,” Thomas said. “And one of the things that I would encourage you to do is wash out of your system that people have to tell you anything. They don’t. They really don’t have to tell you anything. And the key is whether you can convince them that you’re doing the job the right way, professionally and thoughtfully. And that will be one of the greatest things that you can do in terms of standing out in your profession.”
Access the full transcript here.
