Finally, we have the one real potential sharing of data. It's with the majority leader of the Senate at midnight the night before the release. Freeman gives this quote from Senator Harry Reid that appeared in the Senate record:
"Mr. REID. Mr. President, around midnight last night I was in conversation with the President and some others, and the President indicated that this morning, unemployment numbers would come out, and they would be somewhat scary. That was absolutely true. At 8:30 this morning, the unemployment numbers were reported for January, and they hit a 16-year high of 7.6 percent."
Let's assume Reid's account is accurate. The majority leader of the Senate is cleared to receive a wide variety of classified information under the assumption that they can be counted on not to disclose it inappropriately. Did Obama commit an ethical breach by discussing the jobs report with Mr Reid the night before its public release?
I don't know all the details on the rules about sharing these data, but I feel comfortable in saying that discussing the report with someone who has been cleared to see our most important national security secrets is not the same thing as sharing it with 50 million Twitter followers.
Long and short, to say that Obama did it too is a lie and distraction. Anyone who is making this sort of assertion deserves nothing but ridicule and a serious newspaper would not publish it.
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