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Lying s.o.b!
Eric
Holder, the character behing this has just being in New Zealand,
conferring with other ministers of “Justice” - giving directions
as how to proceed with the Kim Dotcom case?
White
House claims no knowledge of AP investigation
The
White House has denied having any prior knowledge of the Justice
Department’s criminal probe of the Associated Press, but lawmakers
appalled by the revelation are nonetheless lashing out at United
States President Barack Obama.
26
January, 2013
Just
hours after the AP reported
on Monday that the Justice Department secretly obtained two months of
telephone records of reporters and editors employed by the news
agency, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, “Other
than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the
Justice Department to seek phone records of the AP.”
"We
are not involved in decisions made in connection with criminal
investigations, as those matters are handled independently by the
Justice Department,”
said Carney. “Any questions
about an ongoing criminal investigation should be directed to the
Department of Justice.”
Meanwhile,
US Attorney General Eric Holder defended the probe during a Tuesday
afternoon press conference, but said he recused himself from the
investigation because he was interviewed earlier by the FBI on the
matter and didn’t want to provoke a conflict of interest.
"I
don't know all that went into the formulation of the subpoena,”
Holder said, adding that actions were taken after a leak was of great
severity was discovered that “put
the American people at risk.”
"I'm
confident that people involved in this investigation...did all things
according to DOJ rules,”
said Holder, although he admitted that some matters regarding the
probe were beyond his knowledge. Holder also admitted that a deputy
attorney general approved of the probe. Later on Tuesday, US Deputy
Attorney General James Cole declined a request made by the AP to
return the seized phone records.
According
to the AP, Cole told the agency that the records were "limited
to a reasonable period of time" and did not seek the content of
any calls.
"These
records have been closely held and reviewed solely for the purposes
of this ongoing criminal investigation,"
Cole wrote.
Attorney General Eric Holder (Win McNamee/Getty Images/AFP)
The
remarks from both the Justice Department and the White House were
made after the AP sent a letter to the attorney general lashing out
at the latest revelation. In it, AP President and Chief Executive
Officer Gary Pruitt condemned the probe as a "massive
and unprecedented intrusion"
into how news organizations operate.
"There
can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of
the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its
reporters,”
Pruitt wrote.
Before
the Justice Department weighed in on the scandal, lawmakers from both
sides of the aisle were up in arms over the news. Even as the
administration attests that the White House and Justice Department
weren’t in cahoots, politicians that are peeved by the matter are
making it known that the Obama administration isn’t off the hook.
Regardless of who approved the probe, many are saying the blame
ultimately falls on the president, who campaigned on a promise of
transparency yet oversees an administration that investigates
journalists.
Senator
Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), a staunch constitutionalist, told Fox News on
Monday, “This sounds like a
president somewhat drunk on power, not cautious about how he uses
power.”
Obama,
Paul told Fox host Sean Hannity, is “using
the power of his government to investigate his enemies, he’s
tapping the phones of the press, and it turns out last year he signed
legislation that allows him to detain an American without a trial and
send them to Guantanamo Bay.”
The
White House is indeed currently fighting a lawsuit filed by Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges and others that challenges that
law, the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. Under Section 1021
of the NDAA, the president can authorize the indefinite detention of
US citizens based off of vaguely defined associations with
terrorists. Hedges said
the NDAA puts him at risk of being sent to a facility like Guantanamo
because his line of work regularly requires him to correspond with
persons considered terrorists by the US government.
Senator
Rand Paul of Kentucky.(Reuters / Kevin Lamarque)
“I
met regularly with leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. I used
to visit Palestine Liberation Organization leaders, including Yasser
Arafat and Abu Jihad, in Tunis when they were branded international
terrorists. I have spent time with the Revolutionary Guard in Iran
and was in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey with fighters from
the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. All these entities were or are
labeled as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government,”
Hedges wrote in protest last year. “I
have had dinner more times than I can count with people whom this
country brands as terrorists. But that does not make me one.”
The
Obama administration’s attorneys have fought relentlessly to keep
the NDAA on the books, even filing appeals to petition a federal
judge after Section 1021 was deemed unconstitutional. Now with the
AP’s latest revelation, though, members of the same Congress that
approved of that bill only a year-and-a-half ago are attacking the
White House.
“This
is obviously disturbing,”
House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa
(R-California) told reporters. “Coming
within a week of revelations that the White House lied to the
American people about the Benghazi attacks and the IRS targeted
conservative Americans for their political beliefs, Americans should
take notice that top Obama administration officials increasingly see
themselves as above the law and emboldened by the belief that they
don’t have to answer to anyone.”
In
a tweet, Issa added that he found the revelation “disturbing.”
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ИЗБРАННЫХ
"Whether
it is secretly targeting patriotic Americans participating in the
electoral progress or reporters exercising their First Amendment
rights, these new revelations suggest a pattern of intimidation by
the Obama Administration,”
weighed in Douglas Heye, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric
Cantor (R-Virginia).
Michael
Steel, a representative for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio),
said, “The
First Amendment is first for a reason. If the Obama Administration is
going after reporters’ phone records, they better have a damned
good explanation.”
Even
members of Obama’s own Democratic Party were disturbed by the AP’s
report.
“The
burden is always on the government when they go after private
information – especially information regarding the press or its
confidential sources,”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) told
reporters. “I
want to know more about this case, but on the face of it, I am
concerned that the government may not have met that burden. I am very
troubled by these allegations and want to hear the government’s
explanation.”
Sen.
Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) told the AP the Justice Department
"must
be forthcoming with the facts as soon as possible."
The
AP reported that the investigation is likely in regards to a May 2012
exclusive the agency published in which a covert CIA operation was
exposed. Earlier this year, CIA Director John Brennan told Congress
that the FBI asked him if he was the source for the AP article.
Brennan denied the allegation and said the release of information
pertaining to a terror plot was an "unauthorized
and dangerous disclosure of classified information."
The
AP wrote Monday that the letter notifying the agency of the
investigation arrived last Friday, and acknowledged that subpoenas
were used to obtain phone records from reporters and editors.
Matthew
Miller, a former top spokesman for Holder, defended the department’s
actions to reporters for the Huffington Post.
"This
is how leaks get investigated,"
Miller said. "Leaking
classified information is a crime, and there are usually only two
parties who know who committed the crime, the leaker and the
reporter. Getting access to phone records allows investigators to see
who the possible source might have been and confront them with
evidence of a crime."
During
Tuesday’s press conference at the White House, Carney fielded a
handful of questions on the probe by repeatedly differing journalists
to a statement summarizing the president’s thoughts.
“I
can tell you that the president feels strongly that we need the press
to be able to be unfettered in its pursuit of investigative
journalism,”
Carney said. “He
also believes strongly as a citizen and president on the need to
ensure classified information is not leaked.”
http://prorevnews.blogspot.com/2013/05/eric-holder-as-we-were-saying.html
ReplyDeleteAs you were saying...