Last week, an attorney for Terrance Brown asked a federal judge to order the government to determine whether the NSA has phone call records that could help exonerate his client.

“The safety of the American people and safety of people in allied nations is at risk,” the Attorney General said during a U.S.-European Union ministerial meeting in Dublin.

The case could be the first of many such efforts by defendants who will argue they are entitled to access whatever meta-data is collected by the agency as part of their defense, say legal experts.

“Assertions in the press that our compliance with these requests gives the U.S. government unfettered access to our users’ data are simply untrue,” David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller.

The Guardian, which first broke the story, identified former CIA technical assistant Edward Snowden as the source of the leak.

House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte said the American people “deserve to hear” from the Attorney General directly regarding his knowledge of the criminal investigation into Fox News reporter James Rosen.

The president’s senior adviser also brushed aside talk of Eric Holder stepping down, predicting that the attorney general would “be in his position for quite a while.”

Foretelling a future congressional investigation, Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk told the Attorney General to make sure to keep all records of the surveillance order.

UPDATE: “I’m a Verizon customer, it doesn’t bother me one bit for the National Security Administration to have my phone number,” Graham said. “You keep up what you’re doing. And if you’ve gone outside the lane, you fix it.”

One theme was clear during the Georgetown Law Cyberesecurity Law Institute: lawyers need to contain the damage, and don’t tell anyone who doesn’t absolutely need to know.

Tom Perez, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, is nominated to be the next Labor Secretary.

The Labor Department nominee will appear before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee later this week.

The House Oversight Committee chairman subpoenaed the private emails of the nominee to lead the Labor Department ahead of his confirmation hearing next week.

But the department ultimately allowed the more than $3.5 billion deal go through.

The department is looking into whether cable companies are colluding to contend with online programming providers.

A Justice Department spokeswoman confirmed the Antitrust Division is looking into recent Verizon transactions.

Attorney General Eric Holder told Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) that the Justice Department is fully committed to attempting to stop the merger in court.

Ajit Varadaraj Pai is a former Office of Legal Policy senior counsel, who has also worked for Verizon and previously held positions at the FCC.

In concluding that Kevin Ring’s recommended sentence should be no more than 4 years 9 months, U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle suggested prosecutors had tried to retaliate against him for exercising his constitutional right to a trial.

Justice officials said Wednesday that they were suing to block the $39 billion merger of the nation’s second and fourth largest wireless telephone companies.

Holder met with the families Wednesday, amid rumors of hacking of the families.

Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and John Cornyn of Texas say the merger would be a positive step.

The SEC approved new rules, following a high-pitched lobbying campaign by business interests.

House Republicans are worried about SEC whistleblower rules.

Will the deal result in the return of “Ma Bell”?

The Iowa Republican said the proposal risks violating the “spirit and intent of the law” and provides too much “deference” to corporate compliance programs.

“I expect the Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission to conduct an exhaustive and careful analysis of this acquisition and its impact on competition,” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said in his opening statement.

Main Justice sifts through the potential candidates.