In an apparent demotion, Ali Watkins, the New York Times federal law enforcement reporter whose email and phone records were secretly seized by the Trump administration, will be transferred out of the newspaper’s Washington, D.C., bureau and reassigned in New York City, The Times said. Watkins, 26, had been the subject of an internal review by the Times after revelations that she had a three-year affair with staffer James Wolfe of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which she covered for several news organizations before joining the Times in December. Wolfe, 57, who handled classified material, was arrested last month as part of a leak investigation in which the Justice Department also seized Watkins’s communications, an unusually aggressive move against a journalist that prompted an outcry from press advocates.
Wolfe was charged with lying to the F.B.I. but not with leaking classified information. Watkins will be assigned a mentor and moved to a new beat “for a fresh start,” said Dean Baquet, the paper’s executive editor. “We hold our journalists and their work to the highest standards,” Baquet said. “We are giving Ali an opportunity to show that she can live up to them. I believe she can.” The story of Watkins’ affair rattled journalists and raised questions about prosecutorial overreach and journalistic ethics. Baquet said that, “As an institution, we abhor the actions of the government in this case … other Times journalists have noticed sources “clamming up because of this assault of on how we do our jobs.” As for Watkins, Baquet said, “For a reporter to have an intimate relationship with someone he or she covers is unacceptable.”