Obama Campaign Hires Vicious Former Staffer As Traveling Press Secretary

The Obama campaign has rehired Jen Psaki, Obama’s onetime Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Communications Director, to be to the new traveling press secretary with Obama for America. When she was named as the Deputy Communications Director, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer saluted her:

Today in our weekly communications staff meeting, I announced that Jen Psaki will be joining the communications department as the Deputy Communications Director. Most of you know Jen and have worked with her over the last year in the White House or during her two long years on the campaign. For those of you who haven’t, you will find her to be one of the most competent, smart, and pleasant people you will encounter.

Here’s how pleasant Psaki is; Judicial Watch reported in July 2011 on her role in excluding the Fox News Channel from being part of the news pool interviewing the Treasury Department’s “Executive Pay Czar” Kenneth Feinberg in 2009. Feinberg had served as the Special Master for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) Executive Compensation.

The Treasury Department denied they had excluded Fox, but the Obama Administration wasn’t so circumspect. First, Psaki, as the Deputy White House Communications Director, emailed Jenni Lecompte, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs in the Treasury Department: “…brett baier just did a stupid piece on it — but he is a lunatic.”

Then, the next day, after Dag Vega, Director of Broadcast Media, emailed LeCompte, that “… we’d prefer if you skip Fox please,” Psaki got involved, emailing LeCompte, “I am putting some dead fish in the fox cubby – just cause.”

As Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said at the time, “The juvenile Mafioso-talk in these emails has no place in any White House. For the Obama administration to purposely exclude a major news organization from access to information has troubling First Amendment implications.”

Mafioso talk from the woman who now is the new traveling press secretary with Obama for America? Everyone knows Obama’s Chicago background; there are no surprises here. The only question is exactly how vicious she will get.