Obama's Justice Department Obtained Massive Amounts of Press' Telephone Records

"Look, let's not make a big deal out of nothing. Okay? Or else I'll sick the IRS on you-- Oh, wait. I didn't say that. It was just a joke."

When it rains it pours.

The AP is reporting that Obama's Justice Department "obtained" extensive phone records of the news agency.

From the AP (via Drudge):

The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.

In all, the government seized those records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices whose phone records were targeted on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

[...]

Prosecutors have sought phone records from reporters before, but the seizure of records from such a wide array of AP offices, including general AP switchboards numbers and an office-wide shared fax line, is unusual and largely unprecedented.

In the letter notifying the AP received Friday, the Justice Department offered no explanation for the seizure, according to Pruitt's letter and attorneys for the AP.

Hmm. I wonder if the AP is going to continue to carry water for Obama now. Probably. They're like that.