On Tuesday, Chuck Todd and Joe Scarborough sharply questioned the Justice Department over its reported effort to secretly obtain two months of phone records from Associated Press journalists.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: The timing of these revelations and Jon Karl’s revelations on Friday morning following up Weekly Standards report a week earlier. Friday afternoon of course you have the IRS scandal and now yesterday afternoon when I saw the AP report, I could not believe yet another -- and the DOJ have made a terrible mistake and we don't know why.
CHUCK TODD: it's chilling and they owe us an explanation. The broad scope of what they subpoenaed in going after phone records. They potentially tapped reporter’s phone records from a bunch of news organizations in the broadways they went on and subpoenaed to Capitol Hill pressroom. Any reporter from any news organization could have been using this. Here they claim they were going after the Associated Press.
SCARBOROUGH: Can you talk about when you can the AP phone in the capital?
TODD: It's just that they went to the capital pressroom. There is shared communications there. The idea of going after people's personal cell phones which by the way is where a majority of reporting is done when you do the telephone reporting these days. It seems over the top and you wonder, they better have a very good explanation of whatever fish they are trying to smoke out. Let’s realize they put it well a little while ago. This has been an attempt, a concerted effort to spook anybody that might leak, anybody that might be a source or a whistle blower in government and sort of keep them from ever talking to the press.
SCARBOROUGH: They talked about this and this is all about intimidation.
TODD: This is intimidation and that's what it feels and looks like and unless they have a different explanation, there is no other conclusion to draw than a way to intimidate whistle blowers.