Attorney General Eric Holder personally signed off on the warrant that allowed the Justice Department to search Fox News reporter James Rosen's personal email, NBC News' Michael Isikoff reported Thursday.
The report places Holder at the center of one of the most controversial clashes between the press and the government in recent memory. The warrant he approved named Rosen as a "co-conspirator" in a leak investigation, causing many to warn that the Justice Department was potentially criminalizing journalism. The warrant also approved the tracking of Rosen's movements in and out of the State Department, as well as his communications with his source, Stephen Kim.
The Justice Department later said that it did not intend to press any charges against Rosen.
The attorney general is usually required to approve requests to search journalists' materials, but that rule does not extend to email records.
(Holder recused himself from the investigation into the Associated Press, meaning that he absolved himself of that responsibility.) Holder has previously said that he was not sure how many times he had authorized the search of journalists' records.
Fox still isn't 'news', but that's not the point. The DOJ has been spying on critics of all political persuasions for some time now.
As the Obama administration faces criticism for the Justice Department’s spying on journalists and the IRS targeting of right-wing organizations, newly released documents show how the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and local police forces partnered with corporations to spy on Occupy protesters in 2011 and 2012.
Detailed in thousands of pages of records from counter terrorism and law enforcement agencies, the spying monitored the activists’ online usage and led to infiltration of their meetings. One document shows an undercover officer was dispatched in Arizona to infiltrate activists organizing protests around the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the secretive group that helps corporate America propose and draft legislation for states across the country.
So as it happens, Eric Holder's Justice Department is an equal opportunity organization. If you're a-protestin', we're infiltratin'.
The mainstreamers are irate at the administration for this business and justifiably so. They are turning on Obama as a result. The long-awaited (by conservatives) end of the honeymoon is nigh. The fact that Medea Benjamin's protest during his drone clarification speech -- an attempt to distract from the week's bad headlines -- has been extensively covered is but one example.
I still encounter far too many Democrats who meet this description, but their fealty makes a difference to no one except them any longer.
The worst of the "scandals" swirling around the president goes away as soon as Eric Holder does. His departure is past due.
And the longer they wait, the worse it's going to get.
Update:
