The warrant did not give the power to rummage through the journalist’s files ... there is no indication of why all this information needed to be seized

I don't want to speculate at this point in terms of who was responsible for this.

Nobody needed the US Constitution to guarantee press freedom so that journalists could befriend, amplify and glorify political leaders; the guarantee was necessary so that journalists could do the opposite.

We had no ambition for more land or power, and nothing in the religion commands us to conquer non-Yazidis and spread our faith.

“No thefts of free will reported.” (Hays translation)

Assange is not a 'journalist,' any more than the 'editor' of al Qaeda's new English-language magazine Inspire is a 'journalist'...Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?...Did we use all the cyber tools at our disposal to permanently dismantle WikiLeaks?

[Mr Assange's application did not raise] an arguable point of law

No warrant, literally dragged me out of the house. Our neighbors are looking out going what's going on here. They searched my house without a warrant, literally terrorized my husband for five days. They said 'if you don't find the notebooks, if you don't find the material which was not in my possession but planted in my house … it was intended to appear as if I took confidential material, names and intellectual property from the laboratory, and I could prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that I didn't. The heads of our entire HHS colluded and destroyed my reputation. The Department of Justice and the FBI sat on it and kept that case under seal, which means you can't say there's a case, or your lawyers are held in contempt of court. So you can't even get a lawyer to defend you. So every due process right, was taken away from me and to this day remains the same, I have no constitutional freedoms or rights.

The making of a journalist: no ideas and the ability to express them.

The making of a journalist: no ideas and the ability to express them.

There weren’t details, and there was nothing in there that compromised. And it had no impact on the attack, which was very successful. A thing like that — maybe Goldberg found a way. Maybe there’s a staffer, maybe there’s a very innocent staffer, but we’ll get — I think we’ll get to the bottom of it very quickly, and it’s really not a big deal.

Information has no scent.

I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it.

Congress imposed a warrant requirement in 1978 which JFK didn’t use when he went after the Klan. He put the Klan out of business, but he didn’t do it with -- by going through the courts. He did it by burglarizing Klan offices. I think we need to use hardcore tactics against a hardcore threat.