Speaking to a crowd of UW-Madison students, Eric Holder pointed to the press covering the event and reportedly told the assembly: We like the media. Unlike our current president.
.@EricHolder points to reporters: We like the media. Unlike our president.
— Molly Beck (@MollyBeck) March 16, 2018
But the former attorney general, who coincidentally was found in both civil and criminal contempt of Congress, needs to understand that the feeling was never mutual. Holder liked the press in exactly the same way a crazed stalker likes his ex-girlfriend—way too much.
Holder was absolutely obsessed with a couple of journalists in particular, and a scandal related to his treatment of them will forever shape his legacy. Under Holder’s leadership, the Department of Justice subpoenaed the work and home phone activity of Associated Press reporters. It also and labeled James Rosen of Fox News a “criminal co-conspirator” in a 2013 case in a bid to seize personal phone records and emails.
If the attorney general thought that the AP and Fox News would be flattered by all that attention, he was wrong. What Holder must have considered casual and friendly advances, everyone else saw as a serious assault on the First Amendment.
“Today we learned of the Justice Department’s unprecedented wholesale seizure of confidential telephone records from the Associated Press,” The Newspaper Association of America said, giving the final word in a statement. “These actions shock the American conscience and violate the critical freedom of the press protected by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”
If Holder can’t take the hint, and still thinks reporters will see his overtures as playful little shenanigans, he really is crazy. The press should get a restraining order.
