Former President Obama has come under fire for what many have viewed as a hypocritical condemnation of President Trump during a Friday acceptance speech for his Ethics in Government award at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
(…)
To that end, Greenwald links to a scathing 2016 Op-Ed from James Risen in the New York Times – long before Trump’s feud with the mainstream media (or “opposition party” as Steve Bannon calls them) kicked into high gear.
Via the New York Times: If Donald J. Trump decides as president to throw a whistle-blower in jail for trying to talk to a reporter, or gets the F.B.I. to spy on a journalist, he will have one man to thank for bequeathing him such expansive power: Barack Obama.
Mr. Trump made his animus toward the news media clear during the presidential campaign, often expressing his disgust with coverage through Twitter or in diatribes at rallies. So if his campaign is any guide, Mr. Trump seems likely to enthusiastically embrace the aggressive crackdown on journalists and whistle-blowers that is an important yet little understood component of Mr. Obama’s presidential legacy.
Criticism of Mr. Obama’s stance on press freedom, government transparency and secrecy is hotly disputed by the White House, but many journalism groups say the record is clear. Over the past eight years, the administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined. It has repeatedly used the Espionage Act, a relic of World War I-era red-baiting, not to prosecute spies but to go after government officials who talked to journalists.
Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sourcesand testify in criminal cases. – READ MORE
[divider][/divider]The former president was clearly criticizing Trump for his attacks on the media, but the comments were immediately undermined by those who remembered Obama’s own less vocal, but more legal, attacks.
“Did substantially increase leak prosecutions, however,” Maggie Haberman of the New York Times objected.
“Leak prosecutions were a big deal under Obama. It wasn’t a frontal attack, but it was a stealth one,” she added in a response to someone defending Obama.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins responded with a quote from the New York Times summing up Obama’s actions against the freedom of the press.
“Under Obama, the DOJ and FBI spied on reporters by monitoring phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to others to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify,” the excerpt read.
Former President Obama: “I complained plenty about Fox News, but you never heard me threaten to shut them down, or call them ‘enemies of the people.’” pic.twitter.com/8zvwngP9L2
— NBC News (@NBCNews) September 7, 2018
Other critics were less moderate, like former governor Mike Huckabee, who retorted, “You wiretapped the AP and reporter @JamesRosenTV and even his parents! The IRS persecuted multiple conservative groups as did DOJ. You may not remember, but we do.”- READ MORE
[contentcards url=”https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-08/nyt-flashback-if-donald-trump-targets-journalists-thank-obama” target=”_blank”]