A USA Today reporter on Friday pushed back on suggestions she coordinated with White House and Justice Department officials in 2011 to “target” House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., challenging comments made earlier this week by the president of right-leaning watchdog group.
Susan Davis, who reported for National Journal at the time of the supposed “targeting,” told the Washington Examiner: “In 2011, I was assigned a profile by my then employer National Journal. I spoke to many sources in the course of reporting the story, including Darrell Issa. Neither the White House nor DOJ approached me about this story, rather I contacted them in the course of my own reporting.”
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton was the first to suggest Davis and federal officials coordinated to go after Issa.
At the height of Congress’ investigation of “Operation Fast and Furious,” the Obama administration’s gun-trafficking scandal, Attorney General Eric Holder’s top press aide, Tracy Schmaler, and White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz apparently worked with Davis to “target” Issa, Fitton said Thursday.
Schultz “detailed to Schmaler that he was working with a journalist … to target [Issa], the House Republican leading the charge on Fast and Furious,” Fitton added, citing a trove of emails Judicial Watch obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The White House Deputy Press Secretary wrote to Schmaler in an Oct. 4, 2011, email, saying, “and I sent NJ’s Susan Davis your way. She’s writing on Issa/FandF and I said you could load her up on the leaks, etc.”
National Journal published Davis’ 3,500-plus-word Issa profile on Oct. 20, 2011, which Judicial Watch characterized Thursday as being “critical” of the California Republican, detailing the congressman’s new role as chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“The media-savvy Republican has carved out one of the highest profiles in Congress and fed a stream of stories that raised questions about how the administration does business,” Davis wrote in the profile.
“He’s omnipresent on television and radio, from The Rush Limbaugh Show to HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher. His press office is one of the largest and most aggressive on Capitol Hill, rivaling that of Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.”
The article characterizes Issa as ambitious and driven, and maybe too eager and a bit green.
“Issa, however, doesn’t want to exercise oversight on any one thing — he wants to examine everything. Many of his targets — such as TARP — had already been investigated for years,” Davis wrote.
“Allies attribute the problems to normal growing pains for an ambitious chairman who had to adjust to a majority mind-set. Detractors attribute the problems to a partisan lawmaker bent on a single goal: sticking it to the Obama administration.”
Davis’ Issa profile is not readily available online, she told the Washington Examiner, because it is behind a paywall. A Lexis search for the article successfully produced the profile in its entirety.
The email cited by Judicial Watch to suggest a possible anti-Issa conspiracy involving Davis and federal officials is the only one of its kind among the hundreds of emails obtained by the watchdog group.
The Washington Examiner contacted Judicial Watch and asked if Fitton intended with his use of the word “target” in a Thursday statement to suggest improper coordination between the press and federal officials.
“The document speaks for itself,” Fitton replied Friday. “I defer to Ms. Davis as to who she did or didn’t talk to about Congressman Issa. The document demonstrates that the Obama administration was out to get the congressman who ran the main investigative committee in the House of Representatives. I wonder who else is on the Obama enemies list?”
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This article has been updated to include comment from Judicial Watch.
