Dem: Probe prez on news ‘abuse’
A top House Democrat wants to probe President Trump’s attempts to punish media companies that give him negative coverage.
Rep. Adam Schiff (DCalif.), the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told “Axios on HBO” that he wants to see if Trump abused his power in his handling of companies associated with The Washington Post and CNN.
Schiff wondered whether Trump used “the instrument of state power to punish the press” when he publicly suggested that Amazon — whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post — was ripping off the US Postal Service.
Schiff told Axios the president “was secretly meeting with the postmaster [general] in an effort to browbeat the postmaster [general] into raising postal rates on Amazon.”
Former officials additionally told Axios that despite telling Trump the Postal Service’s financial hardship had nothing to do with Amazon, the president couldn’t be convinced.
“This appears to be an effort by the president to use the instruments of state power to punish Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post,” Schiff said.
Trump has said he’d consider antitrust action against Amazon.
Schiff also wants Congress to probe whether the president tried to block the AT&T-Time Warner merger as a way to get back at CNN, which he consistently labels as a purveyor of “fake news.”
“We don’t know, for example, whether the effort to hold up the merger of the parent of CNN was a concern over antitrust, or whether this was an effort merely to punish CNN,” Schiff said.
His comments came just days after one of the president’s biggest flare-ups with the press. At a Wednesday press conference on the heels of the midterm elections, the president became angry at CNN’s Jim Acosta for asking about the migrant caravan and the Russia investigation.
“I’ll tell you what: CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them. You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn’t be working for CNN,” Trump told Acosta.
The White House later announced it was pulling Acosta’s White House press pass “until further notice,” accusing the reporter of “placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern.”
The White House alleged that Acosta had acted brutishly toward the intern, who was responsible for handling the press conference’s handheld microphones.
Later, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted out an Infowarsproduced video clip of the incident in which it looked sped up, making Acosta’s moves more jarring.
The badge suspension didn’t stop Acosta, who traveled to Paris to cover Trump’s trip.