Fox News correspondent James Rosen recounted on Sunday when the Obama administration labeled him a "conspirator" and sought legal authority to look through his emails.
Rosen appeared on Fox News to describe his personal experience after President Donald Trump accused the Obama administration of wiretapping his phones while he was running for office. FBI Director James Comey reportedly asked the Justice Department over the weekend to publicly reject the president's allegations.
Rosen said he and his parents were not wiretapped but that the government did try to access his personal communications under the Obama administration.
While Barack Obama was president, then-Attorney General Eric Holder requested that a judge authorize federal authorities to look through Rosen's personal emails and obtain his phone records. The administration had designated Rosen a "criminal co-conspirator and a flight risk," the Fox reporter said, because of stories he published on North Korea that contained sensitive information.
Rosen recounted how both Obama and Holder were upset with his reporting after the fact and that what happened to him was unprecedented.
"Not even Neil Sheehan, who is the New York Times reporter back in 1971 who published the Pentagon Papers, 7,000 classified documents, was designated by the Nixon administration as a criminal co-conspirator in a violation of the Espionage Act," Rosen noted. "So that was an honor I had all unto myself."
Rosen was asked if Trump's wiretapping claim was possible as the government had attempted to monitor Rosen.
"It's entirely plausible," Rosen said. "This is the nature of the age in which we live, the age of Eric Snowden."
He also reminded viewers that Trump's allegation is currently unproven.