White House correspondent Maggie Haberman, one of four New York Times reporters who penned the paper’s Tuesday bombshell that President Trump asked his Acting Attorney General to have the U.S. Attorney in charge of the Southern District of New York – a Trump ally – unrecuse himself over the SDNY’s investigations into Trump, his family, and his businesses.
As several experts have pointed out, that’s tantamount to obstruction of justice, and perhaps the clearest example to date.
The President went ballistic, claiming that the Times never contacted the White House, while denying the story is true.
“That’s a lie,” Haberman said, pushing back on the President’s claim the paper of record did not reach out for comment before the article ran. “I don’t know if he knows it’s a lie or whether he is telling himself this is true, whether his staff doesn’t tell him we are reaching out.”
She notes she contacted the White House on Friday, and her emails “went unanswered until yesterday,” when the article had been published. Haberman also says she sent the White House a “detailed list of what we were reporting,” and they still did not respond.
“They chose not to engage,” she notes, “and then afterwards, the President acts surprised.”
Meanwhile, Trump went on the attack against the free press Wednesday morning, and, for the first time ever, labeled a single news outlet, the Times, “the enemy of the people.”
He has used the term “enemy of the people” close to two dozen times on Twitter, but never before has he targeted just one outlet with the Soviet-era slur.