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NYT Reassigns Reporter After Affair With Senate Aide

The DOJ seized Ali Watkins’ email and phone records.

The New York Times announced Tuesday that it has reassigned reporter Ali Watkins, whose three-year affair with a Senate aide came to light as part of a leak investigation by the Justice Department. Watkins, 26, had a relationship with Senate Intelligence Committee aide James Wolfe, who’s been charged with making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with journalists. Her phone and email records were seized by the Department of Justice as part of the leak probe. The Times said Watkins will be assigned a mentor and transferred to a beat in New York. The newspaper’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, wrote in a memo to staff that the paper “also bear[s] some responsibility: Our inquiry found that during the hiring process she disclosed aspects of her past relationships to some editors.”