Report: Obama’s Spying On The Press Was Far More Extensive Than Previously Thought

President Trump might be openly hostile to the mainstream media, but it was the Obama administration that was engaged in a widespread effort to thwart the media. Which do you think is more harmful to a free press?

The full extent of Obama’s actions against the press are only now coming to light.

The Columbia Journalism Review reports on a newly released government document showing that the Obama Justice Department engaged in a far more sweeping effort to spy on the Associated Press than previously believed.

“In 2013, the Justice Department launched a brazen attack on press freedom,” the CJR notes, “issuing sweeping subpoenas for the phone records of The Associated Press and several of its reporters and editors as part of a leak investigation. At the time, the subpoenas were widely seen as a massive intrusion into newsgathering operations. Last month, we learned that they told only part of the story.”

The spying came in the wake of the AP’s reporting on a thwarted Yemen-based bomb plot, which contained classified information about the CIA operation. Months later, the AP learned that the DOJ had vacuumed up two-months of phone records on 21 different lines trying to find the leaker.

Unprecedented Intrusion Upon learning this, the AP blasted the Obama Justice Department. AP’s President and CEO Gary Pruitt said the records collected could “reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.”

Turns out, Pruitt should have been even more outraged. The new report, obtained by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, finds that the DOJ...

AG Barr revealed DOJ investigations into media leaks .....determining how MSM had scoops
on the Trump-Russia investigation long before Congress was aware of the subject matter.

The linchpin is the Clintons.

ITEM <><> Journalists Dined at Top Clinton Staffers Homes Days Before Hillary’s announcement of her candidacy
Wikileaks via Breitbart ^ | October 17 2016 | Ezra Dulis / FR Posted by grey_whiskers

Several top journalists and TV news anchors RSVPed “yes” to attend a private, off-the-record gathering at the New York home of Joel Benenson, the chief campaign strategist for Hillary Clinton, two days before she announced her candidacy in 2015, according to emails Wikileaks published from John Podesta’s accounts.

ITEM <><> The guest list for an earlier event at the home of her campaign manager, John Podesta, was limited to
reporters who were expected to cover Clinton on the campaign trail. —snip—

ITEM <><> Wikileaks revealed earlier that late night talk host Stephen Colbert, and his team at Comedy Central, were making TV episodes at the request or order of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) back in April of 2013. So, viewers thought they were vote-smart because they’re informed by a comedian, yet same said comedian was doing Hillary’s bidding the whole time.

ITEM <><> Hillary frequently used the Democrats' "wrap-up smear."......leaking false info about her opponent to the media. When the obedient press published the smear, Hillary would wave it around indicating she was the superior candidate.

===================================

The Clinton Foundation listed "notable past members" they were cozy with.
This page was carried in the Clinton Foundation archives........until recently.

Page has since been deleted from Clinton Foundation archives.

Wikileaks Reveals All the Journalists Who Schmoozed With Clinton Campaign

According to a list first published in The Intercept, there to learn what they should think about Clinton’s announcement, expectations for the launch period and the framing of her message was an all-star cast of mainstream media denizens.

There were Cecilia Vega, David Muir, Diane Sawyer, Jon Karl and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News; John Heilemann and Mark Halperin of Bloomberg; Norah O’Donnell and Vicki Gordon of CBS News; Brianna Keilar, David Chalian, Gloria Borger, Jeff Zeleny, John Berman, Kate Bouldan, Mark Preston and Sam Feist of CNN; Savannah Guthrie of NBC; and Alex Wagner, Beth Fouhy, Phil Grifin and Rachel Racusen of MSNBC. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was listed as TBD.

There were five staffers from the New York Times – Amy Chozik, Gail Collins, Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman and Pat Healey, as well as Alyssa Mastramonoco of Vice, Jon Allen of Vox, Mike Allen of Axios, and Glenn Thrush of Politico, who was later found to have submitted stories to the Clinton campaign for approval.

A similar group attended a dinner the night before at John Podesta’s house. Podesta, then Clinton’s campaign manager, now writes a column for The Washington Post.

Attendees at the Podesta dinner included Liz Kreutz of ABC, Julie Pace, Ken Thomas and Lisa Lerer of the Associated Press; Jennifer Epstein of Bloomberg, April Ryan of the American Urban Radio Network, Rudy Cramer of Buzzfeed, Mike Memoli and Evan Handler of the Los Angeles Times, Alex Seitz-Wald of MSNBC, Mark Murray of NBC, Anita Kumar of McClatchey, Amy Chozik and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, Tamara Keith ofNPR and Annie Karni and Gabe Debenedetti of Politico.

No Fox reporters attended either of these meetings.

Barack Obama went after journos with the full force of theUS govt......
He unleashed Eric Holder and the US Justice Dept on a Fox reporter.

At another of his comebacks to repaint his miserable 8-year term a brighter color, Obama lacerated Pres Trump, saying: " I complained plenty about Fox News, but you never heard me call them enemies of the people.” (Source —--comeback rally at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign).

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.

==================================================

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?

Swalwell's Dem Trio Unveil Bill To "Protect Journalists"
Townhall ^ | 3/13/2019 | Beth Baumann / FR Posted by BadLands59

A handful of Democrats on Tuesday introduced the Journalist Protection Act, which makes it a federal crime to cause bodily harm to a journalist or intimidate him or her from gathering information for a news report. The bill was brought about by Rep. Eric Swalwell (CA), Sen. Richard Blumenthal (CT) and Bob Menendez (NJ).

According to the trio, it was important for them to introduce this bill because of President Donald Trump's "extreme hostility toward the press." The group cites Trump's standoff with CNN over "fake news" and him calling the press “the enemy of the American people,” as examples.

The group believes Trump's so-called rhetoric on the mainstream media is to blame for Americans' stance on reporters and the news media. And, without coming out and directly saying it, they're blaming Trump for journalists getting attacked in the field. In these legislators' mind, these attacks wouldn't take place if Trump didn't use his rhetoric to wind people up.

“From tweeting #FakeNews to proclaiming his contempt for the media during campaign rallies, the President has created a hostile environment for members of the press,” Swalwell said.

“A healthy democracy depends on a free press unencumbered by threats of violence. We must protect journalists in every corner of our country if they are attacked physically while doing their job, and send a strong, clear message that such violence will not be tolerated. That is what my bill, the Journalist Protection Act, would do.”

“Under this administration, reporters face a near-constant barrage of verbal threats, casting the media as enemies of the American people and possible targets of violence. This bill makes clear that engaging in any kind of violence against members of the media will simply not be tolerated," Blumenthal said. (Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com …

"I think a question that would take less time to answer: Who didn't these expletives-deleted surveille?!"

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Sad but true.

That is the crime that had to be covered up, the criminal use of law enforcement and signal intelligence by the Obongo Mafia. They were spying on everyone they perceived as a threat.

When Admiral Rogers discovered their routine use of NSA monitoring of political opponents in March of 2016 using FBI contractors and his work with the FISA Court in April 2016, forcing a halt to this criminal behavior endangered the Obongo cabal from use of that weapon at a critical time. So Crossfire Hurricane served the duel purpose of gaining access once again through a thinly disguised "counter intelligence" operation as well as creating the "insurance policy" of capturing what they hoped would be dirt to destroy Trump in the unlikely event he won the election.

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Any bill written by SwallowsWell, Danang Dick and "Slip me a percentage" Menendez is gonna have a dishonest intent.

"......Under this administration, reporters face a near-constant barrage of verbal threats, casting the media as enemies of the American people and possible targets of violence...

You can tell that was written by their SJW lacky staffers because they are using all the libtard key words to to express the notion that the President is committing violence upon them by disagreeing with them. Disagreement is the same as a physical attack for the new libtards and justifies ANY ACTION in retaliation against their conservative attackers.

In their best Alinsky style they are projecting their own actions, accusing Trump of the crimes they have been guilty of.

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