The Associated Press scandal just keeps getting worse, and we haven't even started yet. AP CEO Gary Pruitt informed staffers Wednesday that the Department of Justice monitored, not one, not twenty, but "thousands and thousands" of phone calls made by reporters and editors.
Associated Press president and chief executive Gary Pruitt told staff at a Wednesday town hall meeting that the phone records obtained by the government included "thousands and thousands" of calls in and out of the news organization, according to a staffer who attended.
Pruitt said Wednesday that the Obama administration acted as "judge, jury and executioner" in secretly obtaining the news organization's records, a criticism he also leveled in a recent appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation."
During the town hall, Pruitt reiterated that the AP did not report on a CIA-thwarted terrorist plot in May 2012 out of national security concerns until sources indicated the Obama administration was going to announce it publicly.
Meanwhile, calls for Attorney General Eric Holder to resign are getting louder....from liberals. Over to you, Jonathan Turley:
The attorney general has done little in his tenure to protect civil liberties or the free press. Rather, Holder has supervised a comprehensive erosion of privacy rights, press freedom and due process. This ignoble legacy was made possible by Democrats who would look at their shoes whenever the Obama administration was accused of constitutional abuses.
On Thursday, Obama responded to the outcry over the AP and Fox scandals by calling for an investigation by ... you guessed it ... Eric Holder. He ordered Holder to meet with news media representatives to hear their "concerns" and report back to him. He sent his old sin eater for a confab with the very targets of the abusive surveillance. Such an inquiry offers no reason to trust its conclusions.
The feeble response was the ultimate proof that these are Obama's sins despite his effort to feign ignorance. It did not matter that Holder is the sin eater who has lost his stomach or that such mortal sins are not so easily digested. Indeed, these sins should be fatal for any attorney general.
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You can bet this isn't the end of this. We still don't have the answer to the question: How many reporters from how many media outlets did DOJ monitor?
Drip drip.
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