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The Associated Press says it will not attend this week's off-the-record meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder unless the Justice Department decides to change its mind and conduct the meeting on the record. "We believe the meeting should be on the record and we have said that to the Attorney General’s office. If it is on the record, AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll will attend. If it is not on the record, AP will not attend and instead will offer our views on how the regulations should be updated in an open letter," AP spokesperson Erin Madigan said in a...

Eric Holder, who committed perjury when giving testimony to Congress about the AP-tapping scandal, has agreed to talk to the press. He only has one condition: it must be off-the-record, and no one outside of the room must ever know what happened. In response, the New York Times has decided to boycott the presser, with Executive Editor Jill Abramson stating, "It isn’t appropriate for us to attend an off the record meeting with the attorney general." Well, the Democrat party is none-too-pleased with the NY Times' stand. In fact, Democratic Party Communications Director Brad Woodhouse decided to not only lash...

House Judiciary panel launches official probe into whether Holder lied By Jonathan Easley - 05/29/13 11:02 AM ET The top two Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee have initiated an investigation into whether Attorney General Eric Holder lied under oath during his May 15 testimony on the Justice Department’s (DOJ) surveillance of reporters. Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), the chairman of the subcommittee on investigations, sent a letter to Holder on Wednesday detailing specific aspects of his testimony that they say conflicts with subsequent media reports about Holder’s involvement in the surveillance of James Rosen,...

According to an interview with the Daily Beast, Attorney General Eric Holder felt a sense of "remorse" when the Washington Post ran a story about "how agents had tracked Rosen’s movements in and out of the State Department, perused his private emails, and traced the timing of his calls to the State Department security adviser suspected of leaking to him." Aides reportedly told the publication that Holder felt "a creeping sense of personal remorse" upon reading the affidavit obtained by the WaPo describing Rosen as "at the very least ... an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator." I guess Holder didn't feel...

The Justice Department begged a federal judge to not tell Fox News reporter James Rosen that it was tracking his telephone calls and emails in a probe regarding a national security leak. U.S. Attorney Ron Machen argued in 2010 that the traditional 30-day notice period did not apply to Rosen as Justice secretly monitored his Gmail account, according to new exhibits unsealed this week and disclosed by The Hill. “Where, as here, the government seeks such contents through a search warrant, no notice to the subscriber or customer of the e-mail account is statutorily required or necessary,” Machen wrote in...

Even before the F.B.I. conducted 550 interviews of officials and seized the phone records of Associated Press reporters in a leak investigation connected to a 2012 article about a Yemen bomb plot, agents had sought the same reporters’ sources for two other articles about terrorism. In a separate case last year, F.B.I. agents asked the White House, the Defense Department and intelligence agencies for phone and e-mail logs showing exchanges with a New York Times reporter writing about computer attacks on Iran. Agents grilled officials about their contacts with him, two people familiar with the investigation said. And agents tracing...

Attorney General Eric Holder signed off on a controversial search warrant that identified Fox News reporter James Rosen as a “possible co-conspirator” in violations of the Espionage Act and authorized seizure of his private emails, a law enforcement official told NBC News on Thursday.

An obscure November 2012 Wikileaks email dump points to former White House counterterrorism adviser and now-CIA chief John Brennan as the person behind the “witch hunt” of journalists who reported unflattering Obama administration leaks. A little over a week after President Barack Obama’s reelection, Wikileaks released an email dump of global intelligence files from the private intelligence company Stratfor. One particular email, dated September 21, 2010 discussed President Obama’s “Leak Investigations.”

EXCERPT The Rosen case follows other signs that the administration has gone overboard in its zeal to find and muzzle insiders. The Associated Press revealed last week that the government had secretly seized two months’ of records for telephones used by the agency’s staff, partly to determine the source of a leak about a report involving a foiled terrorist plot in Yemen. At least two other major leak investigations are continuing. Six current and former administration officials have been indicted under the old Espionage Act for leaking classified information to the press and public. In 2010, a federal judge in...

How often do we see Kirsten Powers, Eugene Robinson, and Brit Hume agree on a major issue? Not often, but when the government violates the First Amendment and in particular on reporting, probably more often than not. Let’s start with the least surprising criticism, which comes from Brit Hume, former Fox anchor and colleague of James Rosen, who was investigated as a co-conspirator in an espionage case for doing what reporters in Washington do all the time. Hume argues that the Obama administration’s actions speak a lot louder than their words about respecting the freedom of the press:CLICK ABOVE LINK...

Via the Chris Stigall Show and WPHT in Philadelphia. Two weeks ago, this wouldn’t have been worth posting; Attkisson herself, I suspect, wouldn’t have mentioned it publicly. Even if she’s right about something fishy going on, there are other plausible culprits besides the U.S. government when it comes to reporters’ computers being infiltrated. Two weeks later, though, knowing now that the DOJ was willing to order a dragnet of AP reporters’ phone records and actually read James Rosen’s e-mails, there’s no way around the obvious suspicion. If the feds were willing to monitor Rosen and the AP in the name...

The president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press on Sunday called the government's secret seizure of two months of reporters' phone records "unconstitutional" and said the news cooperative had not ruled out legal action against the Justice Department. Gary Pruitt, in his first television interviews since it was revealed the Justice Department subpoenaed phone records of AP reporters and editors, said the move already has had a chilling effect on journalism. Pruitt said the seizure has made sources less willing to talk to AP journalists and, in the long term, could limit Americans' information from all news outlets.

Boy, oh boy. What many called the worst week yet for the Obama White House has spilled over into another, with news that the Department of Justice secretly obtained telephone records of Associated Press reporters and editors to root out the cause of a (rare unwanted) leak of national security information. Is it a fishing expedition, a witch hunt or something in between? Time will tell — if, that is, anyone ever comes forward with an explanation. Whether on Fast and Furious or Benghazi, the typical M.O. of the administration has been to slow-play answers and hope that we all...

Attorney General Eric Holder will appear before the House Judiciary Committee at 1 PM EST today. This appearance had been scheduled some time ago, but is drawing huge attention because of the rapidly unfolding scandals about the IRS and the DoJ seizure of the AP telephone records. These are crucial, very important hearings, but nevertheless, we can expect to be treated to a side-show spectacle of three of the stupidest Democrat House members competing to see who can say the absolutely dumbest things. Of course, I am speaking of John Conyers, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Hank Johnson....

From spinning Benghazi to politicizing the IRS to spying on the AP, a raft of embarrassing revelations is crippling the president President Obama has had a tough week, and it's about to get a lot worse. The past few days have seen a cascade of evidence that the administration not only feigned transparency, but may have covered up the politicization of the IRS and the response to the terrorist attack on the Benghazi consulate. Whistle-blowers on the Benghazi response moved that story back into the headlines, but not for long. Because on Friday, the IRS admitted that it had targeted...

The DOJ’s U.S. Attorneys’ Manual is quite clear on this point: The Attorney General’s authorization is normally required before the issuance of any subpoena to a member of the news media or for the telephone toll records of a member of the news media. However, in those cases where the media member or his or her representative agrees to provide the material sought and that material has been published or broadcast, the United States Attorney or the responsible Assistant Attorney General may authorize issuance of the subpoena, thereafter submitting a report to the Office of Public Affairs detailing the circumstances...

Eric Holder just ended a press conference. As previously reported by Fox News: Attorney General Eric Holder is recusing himself from the investigation into leaks made to The Associated Press, Fox News has learned. Also, as CNN reported, Holder previously had recused himself from consideration of issuance of the subpoenas: Attorney General Eric Holder recused himself from the decision to subpoena the phone records of Associated Press reporters, a source told CNN’s Jessica Yellin on Tuesday. The approval fell to Deputy Attorney General James Cole, the source said. White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday that the White House had...

Lisa Myers, NBC's investigative journalist, told "Morning Joe" that the administration has a "history" of "coming down hard" on those who talk to the press that don't "tow the line" of the Obama administration's desired narrative. Video @ link

USBC News Wire- Another scandal has hit the already affair-ridden Obama administration. This scandal has come to light the heels of the shocking scandal in which the IRS was used to target US citizens, but in this case it is the Department of Justice (DOJ) which was used in an intimidating way against people who may have not agreed with the Democratic administration. While only now coming to light, the DOJ reportedly seized phone records of at least 20 AP journalists over an extended period of time without proper procedures. While Obama has continued to deny that he knew anything...