Posted on 11/11/2018 12:40:45 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
FULL TITLE: Dems to probe Trump's treatment of CNN, Amazon, Washington Post in triple-threaded abuse-of-power inquiries
The incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee this week said that when the new Congress is seated in January, Democrats plan to scrutinize whether President Trump abused his authority by taking adverse action against retail giant Amazon and two of his bitter left-leaning media rivals: CNN and The Washington Post.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said in an interview with "Axios on HBO" that he and his colleagues will employ committee subpoena powers -- which are backed by the legal threat of contempt of Congress -- to conduct the triple-threaded inquiry into Trump's possible use of the "instruments of state power to punish the press."
Specifically, Schiff charged that Trump "was secretly meeting with the postmaster [general] in an effort to browbeat" her into "raising postal rates on Amazon," whose founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, separately owns The Washington Post.
"This appears to be an effort by the president to use the instruments of state power to punish Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post," Schiff said in the interview.
The president signed an executive order earlier this year mandating a review of what he called the "unsustainable financial path" of the United States Postal Service (USPS). And he has reportedly met with Postmaster General Megan Brennan several times to push for hikes to the shipping rates paid by companies like Amazon, although there are no indications he did so to seek political payback.
Trump has long derided the political coverage at the Post, which is fiercely and relentlessly criticial of the White House, as a lobbying tool for Bezos. Most recently, the White House has contradicted the Post's claims that it "doctored" a video...
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
And, of course, Obama can attack Fox News, conservative businessses and conservatives in college campuses with impunity and the dems didn’t care.
This will not end the way the dems think it will.
Sure does sound like a good time to release ALL FISA Docs and Arrest all of those in CONgress that leaked “Classified” material to the press.
Bye Bye Adam!!
Ask Eric Holder how that works out for Congress...
The Dems are a malignancy that needs to be excised as they are incompatible with the concept of a civil society.
That a complicit media does nothing to call them out or stop this idiocy is a revealing for their true color(s).
REALITY CHECK----N-o-o-o-o, Obama didnt do that....he just unleashed the full force of the DOJ, in the person of AG Eric Holder, to pounce on Fox reporter James Rosen AND to intimidate Rosen's family. Holder and Obama issued a court order for Fox News reporter James Rosen's emails, that labeled Rosen a criminal "co-conspirator." More likely Fox News said things or published stories Obama didn't like.......or got too close to unveiling his criminality.
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SOURCE theguardian.com
Circa 2013
Obama and AG Holder did more than seize a Fox News reporter’s emails while suggesting he was a criminal “co-conspirator” in a leak case — it did so under one of the most serious wartime laws in America, the Espionage Act. It is now well known that the Obama justice department has prosecuted more government leakers under the 1917 Espionage Act than all prior administrations combined - in fact, double the number of all such prior prosecutions.
But as the controversy over the Obama and Holder’s pursuit of the phone records of AP reporters illustrated, this obsessive fixation in defense of secrecy also targets, and severely damages, journalists specifically and the news-gathering process in general.
New revelations emerged yesterday in the Washington Post that are perhaps the most extreme yet when it comes to the DOJ’s attacks on press freedoms. It involves the prosecution of State Department adviser Stephen Kim, a naturalized citizen from South Korea who was indicted in 2009 for allegedly telling Fox News’ chief Washington correspondent, James Rosen, that US intelligence believed North Korea would respond to additional UN sanctions with more nuclear tests - something Rosen then reported. Kim did not obtain unauthorized access to classified information, nor steal documents, nor sell secrets, nor pass them to an enemy of the US.
Instead, the DOJ alleges that he merely communicated this innocuous information to a journalist - something done every day in Washington - and, for that, this arms expert and long-time government employee faces more than a decade in prison for “espionage”.
The focus of a Post report is that the Obama DOJ’s surveillance of Rosen extended far beyond even what Obama did to AP reporters. The FBI tracked Rosen’s movements in and out of the State Department, traced the timing of his calls, and - most amazingly - obtained a search warrant to read two days worth of his emails, as well as all of his emails with Kim. In this case, said the Post, “investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material.” It added that “court documents in the Kim case reveal how deeply investigators explored the private communications of a working journalist”.
But what makes this revelation particularly disturbing is that Obama's DOJ, in order to get this search warrant, insisted that Fox's Rosen - a journalist - committed serious crimes. The DOJ specifically argued that by encouraging his source to disclose classified information - something investigative journalists do every day - Rosen himself broke the law.
Describing an affidavit from FBI agent Reginald Reyes filed by the DOJ, the Post reports [emphasis added]: “Reyes wrote that there was evidence Rosen had broken the law, ‘at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator’. That fact distinguishes his case from the probe of the AP, in which the news organization is not the likely target. Using italics for emphasis, Reyes explained how Rosen allegedly used a ‘covert communications plan’ and quoted from an e-mail exchange between Rosen and Kim that seems to describe a secret system for passing along information. . . .
However, it remains an open question whether it’s ever illegal, given the First Amendment’s protection of press freedom, for a reporter to solicit information. No reporter, including Rosen, has been prosecuted for doing so.” Under US law, it is not illegal to publish classified information. That fact, along with the First Amendment’s guarantee of press freedoms, is what has prevented the US government from ever prosecuting journalists for reporting on what the US government does in secret. This newfound theory of the Obama DOJ - that a journalist can be guilty of crimes for “soliciting” the disclosure of classified information - is a means for circumventing those safeguards and criminalizing the act of investigative journalism itself.
These latest revelations show that this is not just a theory but one put into practice, as the Obama and Holder submitted official court documents accusing a journalist of committing crimes by doing this. ---Snip---
Obama and Holder wouldnt lie to a court of law. Would they?
Republicans had the chance to go after google/twitter/Facebook and pissed it away.
What a pile of horse hockey.
The media will try to make each investigation seem like a big deal in Stark contrast to how they handled Republican investigations. Hopefully Trump and his admin slow walk everything. Two years of grid lock... meh, could be worst
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Cali.
He has been added to the list of people I would like to see in a dark alley.
I’m not a stalker, but if by Providence we should ever meet under such circumstances, I might feel compelled to bust an epic smackdown on that fool for our beloved One Nation Under God.
Aint nuthin’ like pissing away taxpayer money over nonsense. Way to go dims...
Despicable turds.
Lord have mercy, just open and serve some of the 61,000 indictments...They are ripe enough on the vine. I’m sick k of the Left’s tactics and non-stop chatter.
Taking a break probing each other?
“Republicans had the chance to go after google/twitter/Facebook and pissed it away.”
That’s what Republicans do! When I think what might have been had the GOP even remotely supported this President, I get angry all over again. The only really good news in this election, is that a bunch or RINOs retired or were voted out of office to be replaced by RATs. Now it remains for us to replace the RATs with Nationalists not Republicans!
Republicans won’t fight to save the Republic like the Democrats will to destroy it. We are not going to get out of the current war without bullets without a real French revolution type purge.
Republicans won’t fight to save the Republic like the Democrats will to destroy it. We are not going to get out of the current war without bullets without a real French revolution type purge.
MSM will bitch about Trump no matter what. If he takes too much time to take a pee...they’ll gripe. I hope Trump don’t care & carries on.
The press in the Constitutional sense is a device that can be used by people to publish their thoughts and opinions.
Every American, including those who run or work for CMOs, has a right to freely use a press to disseminate his or her views on any subject at any time.
But the reporters at NPR, NYT, Washington POS, CNN, MSNBC and all the other networks (including Fox News) do NOT have any constitutional right to have access and be heard at White House "Press" conferences.
They don't have that right, because neither I nor anybody else who posts opinions in print, by broadcast or online has that right, even though we use the press to publish our opinions, as I do regularly on Free Republic. (After all, the Internet is a means of publishing thoughts and opinions and therefore is a "press" in the Constitutional sense.)
And another "right" that these CMOs definitely DO NOT have, is the right not to be insulted by the President, who did not surrender his own First Amendment right to free speech when took the oath of office.
Being invited to participate in a White House "press" conference is therefore a privilege that can be extended or withdrawn purely at the discretion of the White House (or Congress, or the Judiciary in their own venues).
I so wish that at Trump's next "press conference," he will state this reality once and for all. And then I hope he will take a question from Jim Acosta, after prefacing it with the following statement:
"I'm going now to take a question now from Jim Acosta purely as a courtesy, albeit an undeserved one, because this is going to be his last White House 'press conference' during my administration. Additionally, I am revoking the press credentials of CNN,the racist New York Times, and a number of other Corporate Media Organizations who will soon be notified of their change in status. OK Jim, what's your question?"
Then I hope that in the future the White House will issue "Media Passes" to other respectable press users - bloggers, authors, YouTubers, etc. who will be invited to future Media Conferences, provided that they show courtesy, intelligence and respect.
And as for the CMOs, they can watch the President's Media Conferences on C-SPAN and then write whatever the hell they want to about them.
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