James Rosen on being the target of surveillance under the Obama administration

With the Trump administration claiming Trump Tower may have been wiretapped and a spokesman for Obama denying he was involved in such a thing, some are recalling the targeting of Fox News reporter James Rosen by the Obama Department of Justice. Rosen appeared on Fox News today to discuss his experience.

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“I have to clarify that I was not wiretapped, my parents were not wiretapped, which is where you place a listening device on someone’s telephone line and you listen to their conversations,” Rosen said. He continued, “What happened to me was that the Attorney General, Eric Holder, under Barack Obama as president secretly designated me a criminal co-conspirator and a flight risk and thereby had a federal judge give the government permission to rifle through all my gmails.

“They could read the emails, and then also to get all the phone records associated with about 20 phones that I used at that time in my reporting. All of those phone lines were 202 or 703, which are the area codes associated with Washington and the Pentagon, northern Virginia area. One of those 20 phone lines was 718 and that referred to my parent’s house on Staten Island at that time.”

As to whether his case could shed any light on the claims being made by President Trump, Rosen said, “There’s just a lot we don’t know.” He added, “If it’s true that the Obama administration went to the FISA court to get some kind of surveillance at Trump Tower, whether it was of a computer tower or whether it was of the president’s telephone as he seems to believe when he uses terms like wiretapping, we would like to know what basis of probable cause would have been asserted in order to secure that permission for that surveillance.” if he thinks something like what Trump is alleging could happen, Rosen replied, “It’s entirely plausible. This is the nature of the age in which we live.”

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Given his own experience, Rosen was asked if he thinks something like what Trump is alleging could happen. Rosen replied, “It’s entirely plausible. This is the nature of the age in which we live.” But Rosen added it “remains unproven.”

Here’s the full interview with Rosen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvpN_tKMWjw

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