How Obama Admin tried to suppress a reporter
After CBS News aired a damaging report which suggested Attorney General Eric Holder had lied to Congress, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) press director worked overtime to suppress reporter Sharyl Attkisson’s story and called her CBS superiors to complain.
Attkisson published a blockbuster story on October 3, 2011, based on documents which demonstrated that AG Holder was briefed on the Fast and Furious gun-walking case starting in the summer of 2010. Those documents directly contradicted Holder’s claim that he first heard about Fast and Furious a few weeks before his congressional testimony in May 2011. Below is the video of Attkisson’s story as it aired:
Emails published by Judicial Watch after a multi-year FOIA request show that DOJ Public Affairs Director Tracy Schmaler worked hard to suppress the story. On the day after the CBS story aired, Schmaler sent an email to her White House counterpart Eric Schultz which read, “No stories from NYT, AP, Reuters, WaPo, NBC, Bloomberg.” Schmaler added, “I’m also calling Sharryl’s [sic] editor and reaching out to [CBS senior correspondent Bob] Scheiffer. She’s out of control.”