If Donald Trump Targets Journalists, Thank Obama
If Donald J. Trump decides as president to throw a whistle-blower in jail for trying to talk to a reporter, or gets the F.B.I. to spy on a journalist, he will have one man to thank for bequeathing him such expansive power: Barack Obama.
Mr. Trump made his animus toward the news media clear during the presidential campaign, often expressing his disgust with coverage through Twitter or in diatribes at rallies. So if his campaign is any guide, Mr. Trump seems likely to enthusiastically embrace the aggressive crackdown on journalists and whistle-blowers that is an important yet little understood component of Mr. Obama’s presidential legacy.
Criticism of Mr. Obama’s stance on press freedom, government transparency and secrecy is hotly disputed by the White House, but many journalism groups say the record is clear. Over the past eight years, the administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined. It has repeatedly used the Espionage Act, a relic of World War I-era red-baiting, not to prosecute spies but to go after government officials who talked to journalists.
Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases.
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Nah. Trump will do what Trump does on his own without any lessons or precedence by Mr. O.
Turn-around is fair play.
LOVE IT - now they’re starting to FINALLY get what they deserve for all the lies and fake news and fake tweets regarding Trump.
If memory serves, I believe Obama not only spied on all the calls of one reporter but also the calls of HIS PARENTS.
A mysterious move by the Senate Wednesday night is part of a Justice Department inquiry into a former Senate Intelligence Committee aide who may have leaked classified information.
The Senate unanimously approved a resolution allowing the committee to provide records to the Justice Department in response to a request related to the investigation.
The aide's identity and the lawmaker for whom he or she worked is not clear, but on Thursday, The New York Times published an article saying that federal investigators had seized years' worth of email and phone records relating to one of its reporters, Ali Watkins.
Watkins previously had a three-year romantic relationship with James A. Wolfe, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s former director of security, The Times reported, adding that the records covered a period of time before she joined the paper.
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Or - to paraphrase Paul Ryan and the rest of the Democrats:
“I don’t see a problem with an Administration rifling through the E-Mails and phone calls of a report, perhaps she had Borscht once.”
Wait until Trump follows the precedents Obama set in Election 2020.
I could be wrong, but I don’t see this as going after the reporter. Instead, they’re going after the leaker, i.e., the insider who was leaking privileged information. The reporter’s notes just make the case, but not against her. Instead, they make the case against the perp. The reporter was just doing her job. If she got an idiot to leak secret info to her, more power to her.