Newsmax blogger Lanny Davis on Thursday claimed that he too has been on the receiving end of threats from the White House as a result of columns he has written about President Barack Obama.
Davis, former special counsel to President Bill Clinton, said that his Washington Times editor, John Solomon, “received a phone call from a senior Obama White House official who didn’t like some of my columns, even though I’m a supporter of Obama.”
“I couldn’t imagine why this call was made,”
Davis told Washington radio station WMAL. “And he did threaten that if he continued to run my columns, he would lose, or his reporters would lose, their White House credentials.”
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Davis was speaking before Gene Sperling, economic adviser to the president, was identified as the White House official who last week told Washington Post editor Bob Woodward he would “regret” writing a column criticizing Obama’s stance on the sequester. Davis did not name the official involved in his case.
Politico on Thursday released the text of the email exchange between Sperling and Woodward. On February 22, Sperling wrote, “I do truly believe you should think your comment about saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim.”
The emails show that what Woodward referred to as a threat by the White House on CNN Wednesday night may not have been as menacing as he said.
Still, said Davis, “I don’t care what the intent was, and I’ll assume people are saying there is no intent, it doesn’t matter. The words ‘you’re going to regret it’ are threatening.”
As for his situation, Davis said Solomon “didn’t take it seriously, because he didn’t think that could ever happen.”
“I called three senior people at the White House, and I said, ‘I want this person to be told this can never happen again and it’s inappropriate,’” Davis revealed. “I got a call back from someone who was in the White House saying it will never happen again.”
He added that the person who called his editor is still in the White House.
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