Barack Obama’s former ethics lawyer warned President Trump that his tweets criticizing CNN could be used as evidence in an antitrust lawsuit involving CNN’s parent company, Time Warner.
“Dear Dodo-in-Chief: u realize that this tweet is going 2 be an exhibit against u in the DOJ -TimeWarner antitrust case right?” Norm Eisen tweeted. “It also smacks of collusion since u did it on day when Vlad cracked down on US networks. For that reason, it may open u to other civil liability.”
Eisen made the comments while responding to President Trump’s tweet trashing CNN’s “fake news” coverage.
“CNN International is still a major source of (Fake) news,” Trump tweeted. “The outside world does not see the truth from them.”
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/934551607596986368
That’s when Norm Eisen, the White House ethics attorney under Obama, weighed in with his crackpot conspiracy theory.
Eisen suggested — without evidence — that Trump had something to do with the Department of Justice’s recent lawsuit to stop AT&T’s $85 billion takeover of CNN’s corporate parent, Time Warner.
The DOJ says the merger of the media giants would create a monopoly and hurt consumers by limiting competition. That’s Antitrust Law 101.
The DOJ does not take orders from the president, unless Eisen is saying that’s not how things operated between Obama and his loyal attorneys general Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch.
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Dear Dodo-in-Chief: u realize that this tweet is going 2be an exhibit against u in the DOJ -TimeWarner antitrust case right? It also smacks of collusion since u did it on day when Vlad cracked down on US networks. For that reason, it may open u to other civil liability. G’night! https://t.co/acyCYYSYeK
— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) November 26, 2017
CNN contributor David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, jumped into the fray by playing the victim card.
“Trump’s words are a direct attack on those international journalists’ freedom and even safety,” Frum tweeted.
Inside the US, CNN’s reporting is protected by the First Amendment and the courts. Outside the US, US-affiliated journalists do ultimately depend on the protection of the US government. Trump’s words are a direct attack on those international journalists' freedom & even safety
— David Frum (@davidfrum) November 25, 2017
David he is not attacking the First Amendment – he is attacking you and your ilk for the hate and fake news.
You and your liberal elite pajama boy friends (and you being a Canadian (eye-roll)) can say the crap you do with impunity because you are free to be as stupid as you wish— Tony Shaffer (@T_S_P_O_O_K_Y) November 26, 2017
President Trump’s feud with the mainstream media is no secret. He called them out long before he became president, trashing their nonstop characterizations of him as a white supremacist, a Nazi, and a racist. If Trump were a private citizen, those epithets could be grounds for defamation lawsuits.
The media have whined around the clock about Trump calling them “fake news,” but obediently acquiesced when Obama repeatedly trashed Fox News during his 8 years in office.
Things actually got so bad that current CNN pundit Brian Stelter commented on the vicious war in 2009, when he was a reporter for the left-wing New York Times (see excerpt below).
Stelter wrote: “Attacking the news media is a time-honored White House tactic but to an unusual degree, the Obama administration has narrowed its sights to one specific organization, the Fox News Channel, calling it, in essence, part of the political opposition.”
In other words, Obama trashed Fox News during his presidency just as much as Trump rips CNN now, but the mainstream media was far less outraged by Obama because they liked him.
Moreover, Obama took things much further than Trump has to silence media he didn’t like. In 2013, the Obama administration spied on Fox News chief Washington correspondent, James Rosen, and his parents.
The Obama Justice Department also reportedly hacked the computer of former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson after she wrote stories criticizing Obama. In 2015, Attkisson filed a federal lawsuit against the Obama Justice Department for breaking into her personal computer. That lawsuit is still pending.
Meanwhile, here’s a flashback to the countless times Obama trashed Fox News during his eight-year presidency (see video starting at 1:21). Where was the collective media outrage then?
CNN wants to ban the term ‘fake news’ now that everyone associates them with the label
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Samantha Chang is a senior staff writer for BizPac Review. She is a financial editor and lawyer based in New York City.
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