House Democrats To Investigate Trump For Targeting ‘Washington Post,’ CNN
Midterm wins in the House of Representatives seem to have galvanized the Democratic Party, which appears adamant to curb, control, and direct President Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s agenda.
House Democrats are gearing up to launch a series of investigations into Donald Trump’s targeting of two mainstream media outlets: CNN and the Washington Post. This was revealed by incoming House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff in an interview with Axios.
According to Schiff, House Democrats are set to launch a series of investigations in an effort to find out if Donald Trump was using “the instruments of state power to punish the press.”
Schiff claims that Trump “was secretly meeting with the postmaster [general] in an effort to browbeat the postmaster [general] into raising postal rates on Amazon.”
The information revealed by Schiff hardly comes as a surprise, given Trump’s crusade against Amazon and the Washington Post, both of which are owned by multi-billionaire and one of the richest men on the planet, Jeff Bezos. In a series of tweets posted in March this year, Trump accused Amazon of “scamming” the United States Postal service, and argued that the Washington Post is acting as a lobbyist for its owner’s e-commerce firm.
But the president’s effort against Amazon are more than just Twitter provocation and banter. As detailed by a previous Inquisitr report, Trump announced last week that his administration is “looking at” antitrust proceedings against tech companies, Amazon included.
https://twitter.com/jonathanvswan/status/1061597093259816965
Furthermore, according to Schiff, House Democrats are looking at launching another probe into Donald Trump’s alleged targeting of the press. The U.S. Congress, according to the incoming House Intelligence Committee chairman, needs to examine “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.”
President Trump, who often refers to the media as “the enemy of the people,” has targeted CNN on multiple occasions, accusing it of not covering his presidency accurately, and of being a biased “fake news” outlet.
Most recently, as the Guardian reported, the White House revoked CNN journalist Jim Acosta’s credentials, after accusing the journalist of “putting his hands” on a White House intern who was attempting to take the microphone away from Acosta as he and Trump took part in a vicious verbal exchange.
Axios points out that the investigation Schiff is referencing would be in relation to alleged efforts by President Trump to obstruct AT&T’s merger with Time Warner, CNN’s parent company.
