The Obama Department Of Justice (DOJ) said on Friday that officials, including Attorney General Eric Holder “vetted a decision to search an email account belonging to a Fox New reporter whose report on North Korea prompted a leak investigation.” Ah, yes the old dump important information on a long holiday weekend ploy!
According to Reuters,
The May 2010 search warrant for a Google email account belonging to James Rosen was revealed on Monday by The Washington Post and drew immediate concern from journalists because it describes Rosen as a suspected “co-conspirator” in the leak of secret government information.
take our poll - story continues belowCompleting this poll grants you access to DC Clothesline updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to this site's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.Prompted by the Rosen search and a separate seizure of Associated Press phone records, President Barack Obama said on Thursday that Holder would begin a new review of Justice Department procedures related to media records.
The latest Justice Department statement said the highest levels of the department were involved in the search warrant used in Kim’s case. The process included discussions Holder took part in, according to the statement.
Wait, what? Obama is having his Attorney General review his own office? Now how has that worked out in the past? Remember Fast and Furious? We still don’t have answers in that fiasco due to the DOJ looking into, and I might add covering, itself. But hey, that is just how this administration works.
“We must keep information secret that protects our operations and our people in the field,” Obama said. Obviously, questions arise here when it comes to keeping operations concerning our Special Forces secret, right Mr. Obama?
“But a free press is also essential for our democracy [and] I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable,” he continued.
“Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs … [and] I have raised these issues with the Attorney General, who shares my concern. So he has agreed to review existing Department of Justice guidelines governing investigations that involve reporters, and will convene a group of media organizations to hear their concerns as part of that review,” Obama added.
According to Obama, Holder is to report back by July 12. I’m sure he’ll get some highly redacted documents from his AG.
If that isn’t enough the administration argued that they might need to monitor Rosen’s account “for a lengthy period of time,” possibly “many years.”
Townhall’s Guy Benson comments:
One stunner after the next. The Justice Department wanted to “repeatedly” monitor Rosen’s personal emails for a “lengthy period of time” — years possibly — in order to track his “contacts with other government officials” beyond the source at the center of the North Korea leak investigation. In other words, they wanted to troll Rosen’s contacts and news-gathering methods indefinitely. And the Attorney General of the United States didn’t just sign off of it. He personally “vetted” it. That would seem to preclude relying on the “I don’t read my own memos” excuse of which Holder is so fond. Good thing the president has put Eric Holder in charge of investigating the alarming things Eric Holder has done. A final point: Katie raised the possibility that Holder perjured himself during last week’s House Judiciary hearing. The Justice Department’s admission locks another piece into that puzzle. To review: Holder swore an oath at the beginning of a hearing at which he said he’d *never* been a part of, or even heard of, any *potential* prosecution of a journalist. Now his own department has confirmed that he personally reviewed and approved a warrant that explicitly treated a reporter as a criminal co-conspirator. I’ll leave it to the legal experts to determine whether that constitutes perjury, but it certainly looks profoundly dishonest. The Huffington Post (!) called for Holder’s ouster this morning, and that was before DOJ confirmed NBC’s report.
Tim Brown is the Editor of Freedom Outpost and a regular contributor to The D.C. Clothesline.
