Posted on 04/30/2019 10:56:50 AM PDT by Kaslin
“I was driving my then 11-year-old son somewhere, probably soccer practice, when he burst into tears and asked me, ‘is Donald Trump going to put you in prison?'” So claimed the embarrassingly serious Olivier Knox, the White House Correspondents Association president, at the association’s annual grub fest on Saturday.
What Knox should have said is, “No, son, President Trump is at least open in his hostility. The First Amendment gives him the same rights as it gives us. It was President Obama’s dirty, covert war on the media that had me worried.” At this point, little Knox should have asked, “Did this sneaky, back-door attack prefigure Obama’s subversion of the Trump candidacy?” Now, there is a correspondent’s dinner I would pay to watch.
In May 2010, when Obama signed the Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Law, few of America’s reporters and editors were aware that Obama as president represented the single greatest threat to press freedom in their professional lives. True to his reputation as messiah, Obama would soon make even the willfully blind see.
In May 2013, the illusion of an unfettered press disappeared like a magician’s bunny. It was in this month that the Associated Press learned Obama’s Justice Department had quietly seized all of the relevant records for twenty AP telephone lines a year earlier. These included the personal and professional lines of several reporters.
The seizure had to do with AP reporting on a covert CIA operation in Yemen. Although only five reporters were involved in that story, more than one hundred reporters used the lines and switchboards whose records were seized. AP President Gary Pruitt wrote Attorney General Eric Holder that the “government has no conceivable right to know” the content of those records.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The Press is free. It is free to support the Leftist regime, as embodied in the Deep State.
And the media, subservient to the end, refused to report on the seizure by bammy.
REMEMBER THIS?---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.
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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?
Preeminent journo Sharyl Attkisson Sues Obama-era DOJ
American Thinker ^ | 11/30/2018 | Elise Cooper
FR Posted on 11/30/2018, 9:31:20 AM by SeekAndFind
Stonewalled is the title of investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson’s first book – and stonewalling is what the Department of Justice is doing to her now. Determined to receive justice, she has a landmark lawsuit against the DOJ for electronically surveilling her computers. Multiple forensics exams have revealed the government-related remote efforts to monitor her. Government agents most likely did it because she had the “audacity” to dig into facts regarding wasteful green energy spending, as well as the Fast and Furious and Benghazi scandals.
Besides hitting a brick wall with those in the government who want to see the lawsuit eliminated, Attkisson also has to battle the enormous cost in terms of time and money.
“The government has unlimited taxpayer funds to fight my lawsuit,” Sharyl tells me. “As the expenses have grown, my primary attorney has let me go on account for his time because he considers this one of the most important cases regarding the numerous violations of a person’s rights. We have also had to hire multiple forensics experts and a constitutional law attorney.”
She went on to say, “We are arguing violations of the 4th and 1st Amendments and that of the Telecommunications Act. There are free press and privacy issues. A GoFundMe page has been set up by a diverse group of bipartisan supporters that include conservatives, liberals, and civil rights activists.”
As the organizers stated on that page, “[t]his is an extremely important case about the limits and consequences of government spying on Americans’ personal and work computers, and is being watched by many. It is in the public interest to seek accountability. It is at our own peril that we give up on the old fashioned free press and privacy notions set forth in our Constitution.”
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Multiple forensics exams revealed Obama ordered government-related remote efforts to monitor her.....a preeminent journalist. Obama was running scared b/c:
<><> she was getting too close to the facts regarding Obama’s green energy kickbacks,
<><> Holder’s Fast and Furious operation, and,
<><> Hillary’s role in the Benghazi killings.
Every third word out of his mouth was practically a lie.
That means that the president can question the press as freely as the press question the president.
Does the liberal press disagree? If they do, then maybe they need a lesion in civics. Also, with great power comes great responsibility. And when you get out of line (Press!), expect to be questioned.
What Knox should have said is, “No, son,..stop whining like a little wuss.
Thank you.
Michael Hastings. (RIP).
James Rosen.
Sharyl Attkisson.
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