Posted on 02/25/2017 12:48:40 PM PST by grundle
James Rosen is a law abiding reporter for Fox News. However, the Obama administration falsely labeled him as “an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator” in a criminal investigation when it applied for a warrant to read his emails.
The New York Times wrote of this:
With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible “co-conspirator” in a criminal investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.
Leak investigations usually focus on the source, not the reporter. But, in this case, federal prosecutors also asked a federal judge for permission to examine Mr. Rosen’s personal e-mails, arguing that “there is probable cause to believe” Mr. Rosen is “an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator” in the leak.
Though Mr. Rosen was not charged, the F.B.I. request for his e-mail account was granted secretly in late May 2010. The government was allowed to rummage through Mr. Rosen’s e-mails for at least 30 days.
Michael Clemente, the executive vice president of Fox News, said on Monday that it was “downright chilling” that Mr. Rosen “was named a criminal co-conspirator for simply doing his job as a reporter.” Bruce Brown, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, added on Tuesday that treating “routine news-gathering efforts as evidence of criminality is extremely troubling and corrodes time-honored understandings between the public and the government about the role of the free press.”
Obama administration officials often talk about the balance between protecting secrets and protecting the constitutional rights of a free press. Accusing a reporter of being a “co-conspirator”… shows a heavy tilt toward secrecy and insufficient concern about a free press.
The Washington Post wrote of this:
The Rosen affair is as flagrant an assault on civil liberties as anything done by George W. Bush’s administration, and it uses technology to silence critics in a way Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of.
To treat a reporter as a criminal for doing his job — seeking out information the government doesn’t want made public — deprives Americans of the First Amendment freedom on which all other constitutional rights are based. Guns? Privacy? Due process? Equal protection? If you can’t speak out, you can’t defend those rights, either.
Beyond that, the administration’s actions shatter the president’s credibility and discourage allies who would otherwise defend the administration against bogus accusations such as those involving the Benghazi “talking points.” If the administration is spying on reporters and accusing them of criminality just for asking questions — well, who knows what else this crowd is capable of doing?
My Post colleague Ann E. Marimow, who broke the Rosen story, obtained the affidavit by FBI agent Reginald Reyes seeking access to Rosen’s private e-mails. In the affidavit, Reyes stated that “there is probable cause to believe that the reporter has committed or is committing a violation” of the law against national security leaks. The affidavit detailed how the FBI had monitored Rosen’s comings and goings from the State Department and tracked his various phone calls with the suspected leaker, analyst Stephen Jin-Woo Kim.
Rosen’s supposed crime? Reyes got his evidence from an e-mail from the reporter: “I want to report authoritatively, and ahead of my competitors, on new initiatives or shifts in U.S. policy, events on the ground in [North Korea], what intelligence is picking up, etc. . . . I’d love to see some internal State Department analyses. . . . In short: Let’s break some news, and expose muddle-headed policy when we see it, or force the administration’s hand to go in the right direction, if possible.”
That is indeed compelling evidence — of good journalism.
Obama is establishing an ominous precedent.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder lied under oath. He said that he had nothing to do with monitoring Rosen’s emails. But it turns out that it was Holder’s own signature on the search warrant.
Even the liberal Huffington Post is saying that Holder should be fired.
Holder could get five years in prison.
Obama did not fire Holder. Instead, Obama asked that Holder be investigated – not by an independent investigating committee – but by Holder himself.
Yes, it was a really, really big deal. However, very few republicans had the nerve to push the topic all the way, (cowardly behavior that Obama was banking on) so nothing of any consequence ever happened. The GOP should not expect the same hesitation from the Dems. That would be a serious mistake.
Bttt.
5.56mm
Watchoo talkin' bout? That don' mean nothin!
Just because his signature on the warrant, that don' mean he didn't have nothing to do with it!
You just don't understand Democrat logic, man!
So you’re recycling your own blog post from 4 years ago?
Your hit counter must be really low.
Or broken.
But what can we expect from a Gooch?
Well, it sets precedent. It remains to be seen if Trump will push it the OTHER way when it is dead-to-rights obvious that malfeasance has occurred. Here, Obama was just trying to suppress normal inquiry.
So, you are saying “conservatives” are hypocrites?
Scraping the bottom of the old blog-barrel huh?
yeah, and the obamites weren’t simply freezing him out of a gaggle, they were flirting with throwing him in prison for reporting on The Messiah with insufficient adoration.
people forget that sh*t
“You can’t just listen to Rush LImbaugh...”
I hope Jeff Sessions has the same kind of attitude Donald Trump has.
Grundle (aka "The Gooch" or "Taint") is no friend of Conservatives.
He's a Paultard Libertardian who has shilled for not only Gary Johnson, but also the Goofy Greeny, Jill Stein.
Why he is allowed to pimp his blog and spew his lunacy on FR is beyond me.
Usually I would say here “thank God for The Urban Dictionary”.
In this case, I’m sorry I looked. (I did lol though)
I think that everyone is a hypocrite. I just wanted to remind people about what Obama had done.
In 2012, I tried to convince liberals to vote for Jill Stein instead of Obama. In 2016, I tried to convince liberals to vote for Jill Stein instead of Hillary Clinton.
My username is the name of the green dragon in the video game “Adventure” on the Atari 2600.
With all the criticism being directed at how Trump treats the media, I just wanted to remind everyone that Obama treated the media much worse.
A product no doubt of one of your rare moments of introspective clarity.
"In 2012, I tried to convince liberals to vote for Jill Stein instead of Obama. In 2016, I tried to convince liberals to vote for Jill Stein instead of Hillary Clinton."
My point then stands as stated - you shilled for Jill Stein.
"My username is the name of the green dragon in the video game “Adventure” on the Atari 2600."
So you say ... but Enquiring Minds know the truth, Gooch.
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