JUSTICE DEPARTMENT/MEDIA/TRUMP PEOPLE: “The Justice Department is demanding identifying details about the senior Trump administration official who denounced the president in a New York Times Op-Ed last year under the byline Anonymous, according to a letter from a senior law enforcement official on Monday [11-4-19] ahead of a forthcoming book by the still-unnamed writer. Assistant Attorney General Joseph H. Hunt asked the book’s publisher and the author’s book agents for proof that the official never signed a nondisclosure agreement and had no access to classified information. Absent that evidence, Mr. Hunt asked that they hand over information about where the person worked in the government, and when…Though a Justice Department official insisted that the letter was simply part of the typical fact-finding that officials do when executive branch employees plan to write about their government service, Anonymous’s representatives cast it as an effort to unmask their client, and a warning.”
–Maggie Haberman, “Justice Dept. Asks for Identifying Details on Anonymous Op-Ed Author,” The New York Times online, November 4, 2019