Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that he isn’t sure how many times he’s seized reporters’ records.
“I’m not sure how many of those cases … I have actually signed off on,” Holder said in an interview with NPR’s Carrie Johnson. “I take them very seriously. I know that I have refused to sign a few [and] pushed a few back for modifications.”
Holder’s answer serves as confirmation that the Justice Department’s secret seizure of The Associated Press’s phone records is not an isolated incident.
Though the decision to subpoena information from media organizations normally falls to Holder, he insists that he recused himself from the AP case, leaving Deputy Attorney General James Cole to make the decision.