In 2008, my thinking, as best as I can recall, was that Barack Obama
was definitely the better of the two choices offered to us by the
Oligarchy Corporate Establishment. His ability to speak in a clear,
confident voice put him heads and shoulders above his predecessor. Of
course, as I've mentioned before, his dumping of Pastor White, his
children's God Father, had been a strong factor in my beginning to
mistrust his integrity. So as I watched this "Black" president become
Whiter and Whiter, I decided that he was merely a darker Bill Clinton.
Despite his noble words, Obama did not seem to connect with the
Working Class, much less Black Americans.
Then, much as Bill Clinton sold us out to the NAFTA, Barack Obama sold
Americans out to the Corporate Drug Czars with his Great Obama Care.
It will be interesting to watch where Barack Obama secures his future
following his stepping down.
One thing for certain, the Working Class cannot afford to provide the
same level of fine living that the Obama's have come to believe is
their right. When Obama is gone from the Capitol, my aim is to forget
he ever sat in the Oval Office. Don't look for him to be taking his
place among the peace-keepers and Earth Protectors, as Trump's Bully
Boys begin to crack heads in earnest.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/13/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
How the Obama Administration Laid the Groundwork for Trump's Coming
Crackdown on the Press
Published on
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
by
Freedom of the Press Foundation
How the Obama Administration Laid the Groundwork for Trump's Coming
Crackdown on the Press
by
Trevor Timm
(Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
In the summer of 2009, less than a year after President Obama took office,
one of the first orders of business for the newly empaneled Senate
Judiciary
Committee was passing a long-stalled federal 'media shield' bill, which
would finally provide a uniform level of protection to reporters who get
subpoenaed to testify against their sources in court.
The bill, which had previously been scuttled by Republican Congress, now
had
strong support in a Democratic Congress, and seemingly, a newly-elected
Democratic president, who had co-sponsored an almost identical bill when he
was a senator.
But just as it looked like the bill would sail through Congress and make
its
way to the president's desk, it was stopped in its tracks. President Obama
suddenly reversed course from his previous position and announced he would
oppose the bill if the Senate didn't carve out a giant national security
exception that would make the important protections within it all but
meaningless.
Sen. Arlen Specter, then a Republican, called Obama's reversal
"unacceptable" at the time, adding: "The White House's opposition to the
fundamental essence of this bill is an unexpected and significant setback.
It will make it hard to pass this legislation." The Democrat's main
sponsor,
Sen. Chuck Schumer expressed his dismay as well. National security leak
cases are usually the only cases the federal government prosecutes that
regularly ensnare journalists, so Obama's decision essentially killed the
bill.
Sadly, this incident was only the first of several moves by the Obama
administration that laid the groundwork for a potentially unprecedented
crackdown on the press by the incoming Trump administration.
In the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump was the most openly hostile presidential
candidate to press freedom we have seen in modern history. But many of the
tools that will be at Trump's disposal were entrenched and expanded by the
Obama administration.
While a strong federal shield bill quickly became a pipe dream under Obama,
there were still a patchwork of state laws and common law privileges in
some
federal court districts that did provide some protection to journalists who
get called to testify against their sources. Unfortunately, Obama's Justice
Department then moved to attack 'reporter's privilege' in the courts as
well.
When Obama came into office, New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize
winner James Risen had been facing a subpoena under the Bush administration
for a story in his book about a spectacularly botched CIA operation that
handed over almost complete nuclear bomb blueprints to Iran. Many were
expecting the Obama's Justice Department, led by then-Attorney General Eric
Holder, to drop the subpoena. Instead they renewed it, and in the process,
ended up destroying reporter's privilege in one of the most important
federal circuits in the country.
After a district court ruled that Risen didn't have to testify against his
source because he was protected by a common law reporter's privilege
previously established in the Fourth Circuit, the Obama administration took
their case to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. There, a three judge
panel reversed the prior ruling and held that reporter's privilege did not,
in fact, exist. Risen would be forced to testify-along with any other
reporter the Justice Department decided to subpoena in the future.
The Obama administration eventually dropped their subpoena against Risen
right before the trial because Risen was threatening to go to jail rather
than reveal his source, but the damage had already been done. Obama's
Justice Department had eviscerated important protections for journalists in
the federal court district that covers Virginia and Maryland, where
hundreds
of thousands of national security workers-and potential sources-live.
Under his newly-proposed Attorney General Jeff Sessions, also an avowed
hater of the press, Trump is now free to subpoena reporters working in the
Fourth Circuit at will. The Justice Department's "media guidelines" that
supposedly restrict the Justice Department from subpoenaing or surveilling
reporters-updated by the Obama administration after several other scandals
involving going after journalists-can potentially be ripped up on Trump's
first day in office. (Those guidelines also already contain gaping
exception
involving National Security Letters that the Obama administration is
fighting Freedom of the Press Foundation in court to prevent from
releasing.)
But the by far the biggest danger from the Trump administration is how they
will decide to use the Espionage Act, the draconian and unconstitutional
World War I-era law, which was originally meant for spies-not sources and
whistleblowers.
Soon after taking office, Obama's Justice Department began to prosecute
more
sources and whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all other
administrations combined. Before 2009, only three prosecutions had ever
been
attempted. One those prosecutions, Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame
(and one of our co-founders), ended in mistrial due to government
misconduct. The other two were quirky cases that didn't seem to provide
much
in the way of precedent.
Starting in 2009, at least nine cases were brought under Attorney General
Holder, and national security journalists have described an unprecedented
'chill' to their investigative reporting ever since.
Prosecuting journalists' sources under the Espionage Act is now built into
the system. As Politico's Peter Sterne detailed last week, while Donald
Trump has made a lot of noise about "open[ing] up our libel law," it's
Trump's ability to use the Espionage Act that journalists should really be
scared about.
And it's not just sources that will have to be worried about Espionage Act
prosecutions under the Trump administration; it's journalists as well.
While
we believe the law is patently unconstitutional when applied to the
publishers of secret information, at least three grand juries have been
empaneled in the last 70 years with the intention of prosecuting
journalists
under the law. While no indictment has followed, there's nothing stopping
the Trump administration from attempting to be the first.
Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department took the
unprecedented step of naming Fox News reporter James Rosen (different than
James Risen) as an unindicted "co-conspirator" to Espionage Act charges in
another leak case. The move was met with swift backlash from press freedom
advocates, and former Attorney General Eric Holder later said he regretted
the move. But it's now a blueprint that could easily be followed by the
Trump administration to stifle adversarial reporting.
There's no doubt that adversarial investigative reporting will be crucial
to
hold the Trump administration accountable. As our board member Glenn
Greenwald has written, leaks and whistleblowing have never been more
important or more noble. This is why at Freedom of the Press Foundation, we
are stepping up our efforts in 2017 to build encryption tools and train
journalists how to use digital security techniques to protect their sources
in the Trump era.
But unfortunately, in part due to moves made by the Obama administration,
reporters covering national security issues-and the whistleblowers who are
critical to the process-have never been under more threat. And under Trump,
it looks like it will only get worse.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Trevor Timm
Trevor Timm is a co-founder and the executive director of the Freedom of
the
Press Foundation. He is a writer, activist, and legal analyst who
specializes in free speech and government transparency issues. He writes a
weekly column for The Guardian and has also contributed to The Atlantic, Al
Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Harvard Law and Policy Review, PBS MediaShift, and
Politico. Follow him on Twitter: @TrevorTimm
Skip to main content
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. Bernie Sanders
How the Obama Administration Laid the Groundwork for Trump's Coming
Crackdown on the Press
Published on
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
by
Freedom of the Press Foundation
How the Obama Administration Laid the Groundwork for Trump's Coming
Crackdown on the Press
by
Trevor Timm
. 5 Comments
.
. (Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
. In the summer of 2009, less than a year after President Obama took
office, one of the first orders of business for the newly empaneled Senate
Judiciary Committee was passing a long-stalled federal 'media shield' bill,
which would finally provide a uniform level of protection to reporters who
get subpoenaed to testify against their sources in court.
. The bill, which had previously been scuttled by Republican Congress,
now had strong support in a Democratic Congress, and seemingly, a
newly-elected Democratic president, who had co-sponsored an almost
identical
bill when he was a senator.
. But just as it looked like the bill would sail through Congress and
make its way to the president's desk, it was stopped in its tracks.
President Obama suddenly reversed course from his previous position and
announced he would oppose the bill if the Senate didn't carve out a giant
national security exception that would make the important protections
within
it all but meaningless.
. Sen. Arlen Specter, then a Republican, called Obama's reversal
"unacceptable" at the time, adding: "The White House's opposition to the
fundamental essence of this bill is an unexpected and significant setback.
It will make it hard to pass this legislation." The Democrat's main
sponsor,
Sen. Chuck Schumer expressed his dismay as well. National security leak
cases are usually the only cases the federal government prosecutes that
regularly ensnare journalists, so Obama's decision essentially killed the
bill.
Sadly, this incident was only the first of several moves by the Obama
administration that laid the groundwork for a potentially unprecedented
crackdown on the press by the incoming Trump administration.
In the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump was the most openly hostile presidential
candidate to press freedom we have seen in modern history. But many of the
tools that will be at Trump's disposal were entrenched and expanded by the
Obama administration.
While a strong federal shield bill quickly became a pipe dream under Obama,
there were still a patchwork of state laws and common law privileges in
some
federal court districts that did provide some protection to journalists who
get called to testify against their sources. Unfortunately, Obama's Justice
Department then moved to attack 'reporter's privilege' in the courts as
well.
When Obama came into office, New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize
winner James Risen had been facing a subpoena under the Bush administration
for a story in his book about a spectacularly botched CIA operation that
handed over almost complete nuclear bomb blueprints to Iran. Many were
expecting the Obama's Justice Department, led by then-Attorney General Eric
Holder, to drop the subpoena. Instead they renewed it, and in the process,
ended up destroying reporter's privilege in one of the most important
federal circuits in the country.
After a district court ruled that Risen didn't have to testify against his
source because he was protected by a common law reporter's privilege
previously established in the Fourth Circuit, the Obama administration took
their case to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. There, a three judge
panel reversed the prior ruling and held that reporter's privilege did not,
in fact, exist. Risen would be forced to testify-along with any other
reporter the Justice Department decided to subpoena in the future.
The Obama administration eventually dropped their subpoena against Risen
right before the trial because Risen was threatening to go to jail rather
than reveal his source, but the damage had already been done. Obama's
Justice Department had eviscerated important protections for journalists in
the federal court district that covers Virginia and Maryland, where
hundreds
of thousands of national security workers-and potential sources-live.
Under his newly-proposed Attorney General Jeff Sessions, also an avowed
hater of the press, Trump is now free to subpoena reporters working in the
Fourth Circuit at will. The Justice Department's "media guidelines" that
supposedly restrict the Justice Department from subpoenaing or surveilling
reporters-updated by the Obama administration after several other scandals
involving going after journalists-can potentially be ripped up on Trump's
first day in office. (Those guidelines also already contain gaping
exception
involving National Security Letters that the Obama administration is
fighting Freedom of the Press Foundation in court to prevent from
releasing.)
But the by far the biggest danger from the Trump administration is how they
will decide to use the Espionage Act, the draconian and unconstitutional
World War I-era law, which was originally meant for spies-not sources and
whistleblowers.
Soon after taking office, Obama's Justice Department began to prosecute
more
sources and whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all other
administrations combined. Before 2009, only three prosecutions had ever
been
attempted. One those prosecutions, Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame
(and one of our co-founders), ended in mistrial due to government
misconduct. The other two were quirky cases that didn't seem to provide
much
in the way of precedent.
Starting in 2009, at least nine cases were brought under Attorney General
Holder, and national security journalists have described an unprecedented
'chill' to their investigative reporting ever since.
Prosecuting journalists' sources under the Espionage Act is now built into
the system. As Politico's Peter Sterne detailed last week, while Donald
Trump has made a lot of noise about "open[ing] up our libel law," it's
Trump's ability to use the Espionage Act that journalists should really be
scared about.
And it's not just sources that will have to be worried about Espionage Act
prosecutions under the Trump administration; it's journalists as well.
While
we believe the law is patently unconstitutional when applied to the
publishers of secret information, at least three grand juries have been
empaneled in the last 70 years with the intention of prosecuting
journalists
under the law. While no indictment has followed, there's nothing stopping
the Trump administration from attempting to be the first.
Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department took the
unprecedented step of naming Fox News reporter James Rosen (different than
James Risen) as an unindicted "co-conspirator" to Espionage Act charges in
another leak case. The move was met with swift backlash from press freedom
advocates, and former Attorney General Eric Holder later said he regretted
the move. But it's now a blueprint that could easily be followed by the
Trump administration to stifle adversarial reporting.
There's no doubt that adversarial investigative reporting will be crucial
to
hold the Trump administration accountable. As our board member Glenn
Greenwald has written, leaks and whistleblowing have never been more
important or more noble. This is why at Freedom of the Press Foundation, we
are stepping up our efforts in 2017 to build encryption tools and train
journalists how to use digital security techniques to protect their sources
in the Trump era.
But unfortunately, in part due to moves made by the Obama administration,
reporters covering national security issues-and the whistleblowers who are
critical to the process-have never been under more threat. And under Trump,
it looks like it will only get worse.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
/author/trevor-timm
/author/trevor-timm/author/trevor-timm
Trevor Timm is a co-founder and the executive director of the Freedom of
the
Press Foundation. He is a writer, activist, and legal analyst who
specializes in free speech and government transparency issues. He writes a
weekly column for The Guardian and has also contributed to The Atlantic, Al
Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Harvard Law and Policy Review, PBS MediaShift, and
Politico. Follow him on Twitter: @TrevorTimm
