◼ THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT AND FOX NEWS’S PHONE RECORDS - Ryan Lizza/The New Yorker
Fox Host Shepard Smith: Gov't 'Went Into Our Computer Servers At Fox News,' Didn't Tell Us mediaite.com/tv/fox-host-sh… via @mediaite
— Kirsten Powers (@kirstenpowers10) May 22, 2013
◼ Fox Host Shepard Smith: Gov’t ‘Went Into Our Computer Servers At Fox News,’ Didn’t Tell Us - Meenal Vamburkar/Mediaite
◼ This Time, It’s Personal: DOJ vs. Rosen Another Ugly Chapter Of Obama vs. Fox - Joe Concha/Mediaite
◼ Looking more and more like a DOJ war on Fox News, not just James Rosen - Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion
◼ Krauthammer says Obama admin TRASHED First Amendment as a ruse to get Fox reporter emails, calls it ‘a travesty’ - The Right Scoop
◼ How much news has the Obama administration successfully suppressed? - Philip Klein/Washington Examiner @philipklein
On the heels of news that the Obama administration Department of Justice was spying on reporters at the Associated Press, Monday brought the startling disclosure by the Washington Post that the DOJ had also targeted Fox reporter James Rosen for surveillance in an effort to plug up leaks.
Additionally, the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza obtained the full application for a search warrant of Rosen’s personal email account, in which the DOJ accused him of being “an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator.” As Lizza put it, “Rosen was not charged with any crime, but it is unprecedented for the government, in an official court document, to accuse a reporter of breaking the law for conducting the routine business of reporting on government secrets.”
These investigations are shocking when taken alone, but as as Reason’s J.D. Tuccille notes, it’s important to consider these events in their broader context of the Obama administration’s long-running war against the free press.
◼ NEW: Judge apologizes for lack of transparency in James Rosen leak probe - Ann E. Marimow/Washington Post
The investigation of Rosen was first reported Monday, after The Washington Post obtained court documents containing details of the case.
A federal judge had ordered the documents unsealed in November 2011, but they were kept sealed for 18 months and not posted on the court’s online docket until last week, after The Post inquired about them....
Rosen has not been prosecuted, but the Justice Department’s characterization of him in the search-warrant affidavit as a possible “co-conspirator” has alarmed civil libertarians as well as First Amendment watchdogs.
◼ DOJ invoked Espionage Act in calling Fox - Judson Berger/FOX
The Justice Department 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's the same law used by the Nixon administration to go after The New York Times and Daniel Ellsberg over the leak of the Pentagon Papers. It's the law used to charge the Rosenbergs, American communists, for allegedly passing secret information to the Soviet Union -- they were executed for the offense in 1953.
One Washington attorney, who represents two defendants recently charged under that World War I-era law, told FoxNews.com that the decision by the Justice Department to invoke it in the current case is "beyond chilling" -- and could set a dangerous precedent for going after reporters.
"This kind of puts us into the deep freeze," attorney Jesselyn Radack said. "I feel like we're back to the Dark Ages."
Previously: A recap of the posts on this site, each one chock full of links...
◼ CBS FAST AND FURIOUS/BENGHAZI REPORTER SHARYL ATTKISSON SAYS HER COMPUTERS COMPROMISED: ‘THERE COULD BE SOME RELATIONSHIP’ TO WHAT HAPPENED TO FOX REPORTER
◼ Not just Rosen: A livid Megyn Kelly reports 2 reporters, 1 producer at Fox News targeted by DOJ
◼ Shredding the Constitution: Obama’s attack on the media
◼ AP boss: Our sources now ‘fear they will be monitored by the government’
◼ JOE SCARBOROUGH, PIERS MORGAN: OBAMA SCANDALS PROVE GUN ADVOCATES AREN'T CRAZY
◼ Krauthammer: Obama “Understands He’s Losing His Constituency – The Media” (Video)
◼ Would You Believe The Administration Got Phone Records of The House Of Representatives? Along with AP reporters'...
◼ Media turn on Obama in response to AP probe
◼ First they came for FOX News: Obama Justice Department Seizes AP Phone Records
◼ ‘B—H,’ ‘C–T’: REPORTERS OPEN UP ABOUT OBSCENITIES AND ABUSE FROM OBAMA SPOKESPEOPLE
◼ Michael Hastings: "There Are People Waiting For Woodward To Die So They Can Dish Stuff On Him"
◼ Meanwhile Obama maintains plausible deniability, keeping himself removed from the dirty work that continually swirls around him, and of which Bob Woodward is hardly the only recipient. He just may be the one who’s talking about it.
◼ LANNY DAVIS: WH threatened me, too... UPDATED
◼ WHITE HOUSE THREATENS BOB WOODWARD: 'YOU WILL REGRET DOING THIS'
