AP-GATE: Obama Administration Secretly Tapped AP Phone Records For Two Months … Media Outraged

Good grief, another Obama administration scandal, AP-GATE – Talk about irony, the AP finds itself reporting on itself … Richard Nixon Barack Obama Administration secretly Obtains AP Phone records.

MORE CHICAGO-STYLE POLITICS … From the AP comes the following, the Obama administration’s Justice Department secretly obtained phone records of the Associated Press for two month. The Justice Department seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists from its offices in New York, Washington, DC and Hartford, Connecticut in April and May of 2012. Hmm, right in the midst of a presidential election. The AP is calling it a ”massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news. Once again the Obama administration is sounding a bit “Nixonian”. The MSM has been a lapdog for Barack Obama in the not covering and holding this president’s feet to the fire, now the shoe is on the other foot and they are being abused by this paranoid White House. The Justice Department has a lot of explaining to do as to why this is not to be interpreted as government intimidation. Which is beginning to become a daily patters of Obama administration scandals.  First we hear that the IRS is operating against Conservatives and political enemies of Obama and now the Justice Department is secretly tapping the AP, all during the run up and during a presidential election. Can you say Barack “Nixon” Obama.

The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls.

In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

In a phrase, It’s an Obama world, and now the MSM knows what it feels like to be a Conservative in America and on the Obama enemies list. The AP and other media outlets are livid as they called the Justice Department’s seizing of AP phone records over a two month period “chilling” and a “dragnet to intimidate the media.” Gary Pruitt, the president and CEO of the AP sent a scathing letter in response to the revelations. Calling it a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” that is “a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights.”

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially 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,” Pruitt said.

Journalists and the MSM were already starting to turn on the Obama administration and now they learn about this intrusion into “Freedom of the Press” as the Politico pens, Journalists fume over DOJ raid on AP. If Obama loses the very people who have been complicit in not informing the American people as to the complete failure of this president, he will be destroyed. Sorry, but there is no way that Attorney General Eric Holder did not have to sign off on this for approval.

What is stunning is the breadth of the seizure!” Van Susteren said. “If you read the AP President’s letter to DOJ, and if his letter is accurate, the seizure was very broad: 2 months of telephone records involving many who work at AP! 20 phone lines, home and cell? NY, DC, Connecticut employees? That doesn’t sound like a criminal investigation, that sounds like a dragnet to intimidate the media. The US Attorney’s issued statement about the secret seizure was blah, blah, blah. It doesn’t say anything. The DOJ better be following the law and the Constitution.”