account-press. join on fifth us on twitter, in fact send fifth us your comments on twitter. go on facebook, in fact become our friend at facebookgom fifth.com/bill press show on this wednesday morning. yes did he agreed fifth indeed. fifth white house is under siege on three fronts, which was very apparent yesterday in a brutal press briefing where jay carney. i was there. on benghazi did he fifth white house still insists it is a political side show did he which everybody but john boehner, in fact darrel issa agree on, benghazi off of the front pages. on the irs did he fifth inspector general report now admits that the irs employees used inappropriate criteria in targeting tea party groups. but there is no way that the white house knew what the irs e up to. in fact on ap, that s fifth real schedule. no way to defend fifth department of justice snooping on the phone records things. would you over 100 reporters from the associated press. we will bring determine that up to date
investigating the irs to see if any laws were broken but add it to the controversy over the ap s phone records and gop leaders see an obama administration effort to silence critics. time and again white house officials said that s not so and never a good day when the spokesman has to respect defend the president s respect for the first amendment. thanks, jim. kathleen carol, good to have you with us. justice department says we didn t do anything improper. they say, look, we can get your records. you made the phone call. phone companies have them. we can get them. do you think something illegal was done? i don t know because we don t know anything. they have seized secretly the phone records for two months of ap phones, 20 different phone lines and, you know, i have no way to know if that s illegal or not. attorney general holder said
job. eric: maybe it is. they shield him from everything. he is just a face. they ve kind of worked the policy around. mr. president, you don t need to know about this. when i was board of directors of a company downtown, department of justice came to us and we re going wiretap phones and investigation on some people. you can t tell them. if you leak this to them you will be held for obstruction of justice. they would hold me. so we had to keep our mouth shut. they went in and did what they had to do. so for kathleen carol head a.p. she had no idea it was coming? i think they went did it the wrong way. andrea: i wonder if nixon had done this? bob: we sat around the table and called it scandalous the f.b.i. didn t report the information from russia.
in a second. kathleen, hold on, i don t know if you want to ask a question. it is outrageous, tote i all inexcusable. the object of it is to intimidate people who talk to reporters. this was an accident waiting to become a nuclear event. and now it s happened. there s no excuse for it whatsoever. there s no reason for this investigation, especially on this scale. is there statutory for it? probably. is there justification for it in terms of recognizing what the right to a free press is and what a free press means in this country? this is intimidation, it s wrong, the president of the united states should ve long ago put a stop to this in his presidency. and as the times reported today, carl, this administration has done this twice as often as all other previous administrations combined.
presidency that is interested in a truly free press and its functioning should permit this to happen. kathleen carol from the associated press, thank you very much. we appreciate it. joining us now from washington, nbc news senior investigative correspondent lisa myers. we re going to move on at one point to the irs scandal. but lisa, i d love for you to jump in and with your take on this story. well, i totally agree with what carl just said. this is extraordinary. you know, it s never good if you re an administration and your name appears in the same story as richard nixon twice in the same week. and this is what has happened now with the obama administration. i think the obama administration s critics would also say their prosecution of leaks is selective, that they didn t have that much problem when details leaked about the successful raid on the compound of osama bin laden, yet they have vigorously pursued leaks in