"Currently, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. are barred from using compulsory legal processes, like subpoenas and search warrants, to go after reporters’ information..."

"... including by asking third parties, like phone and email companies, to turn over their data, or to force them to testify about their sources. But that limit is in a rule issued by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. Should Mr. Trump’s attorney general rescind that regulation, the F.B.I. would be freed to go after reporters’ information. Internal guidelines also flatly ban investigating someone on the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment. And there are strict limits around opening investigations into members of Congress or reporters. But an F.B.I. director, especially if there is a like-minded attorney general, could interpret those limits so narrowly as to make them meaningless, or even throw them out. Mr. Patel has also called for using the Justice Department more aggressively to uncover who in the government is providing information to news reporters, and said that leakers should be prosecuted. He wrote in his book that all federal employees should be forced to submit to monthly scans of their devices 'to determine who has improperly transferred classified information, including to the press.'..."

From "Kash Patel Has Plan to Remake the F.B.I. Into a Tool of Trump/President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the F.B.I. has called for firing the agency’s top officials, shutting down its Washington headquarters and prosecuting journalists" (NYT).