Rep. Peter King says Attorney General Eric Holder's initial denial of involvement in the targeting of Fox News reporter James Rosen "could be perjury."
In an wide-ranging interview Tuesday with Newsmax TV's "The Steve Malzberg Show," King also discussed:
- President Barack Obama's "moralizing" speech on the closing of Guantanamo Bay, saying the terror threat is more dangerous now than on 9/11;
- The Obama administration's need to exercise "extreme caution" in evaluating the possible sale of Sprint Nextel Corp. to a foreign company.
King, a Republican from New York, was highly critical of Holder, who previously said he would never be part of targeting a reporter and didn't think it was good policy when he actually approved a search warrant on James Rosen.
The House Judiciary Committee reportedly is looking into whether he perjured himself in steadfastly denying a role in the Rosen subpoena when he OK'd the seizure of the Fox reporter's phone records.
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King comments: "To me, on its face, that certainly could be perjury. And the reason I'm saying 'could be' — I know there's always precise standards to meet — that certainly warrants a full investigation as to whether or not perjury was committed there. There've been other people over the years indicted for perjury or tried for perjury on a lot less evidence than that."
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King insists that the closing of Gitmo can fuel more terror acts against the United States.
"In many ways, the terror threat is more dangerous now than it was on Sept. 11, 2001, and for the president to be saying what he did last Thursday — somehow we can declare victory in this or we can phase it down — in many ways it's more dangerous.
"What we saw in Boston we've seen in London, we've seen in Paris; that is the face of al-Qaida. That is the face of Islamic jihad. [We need to] face up to it and realize that's going to be here for a long time, until we stop it, until we make sure that we have the strongest possible defenses and we're going on offense. We have to go out in front, we have to be preemptive, we have to stop them before they get to us."
Obama in his speech said the Muslim community is cooperative and wants to help. King doesn't entirely agree.
"The overwhelming majority of Muslims are good Americans. The fact is we've had case after case where there are plots coming from within the Muslim community where we have not gotten the assistance from the Muslim community," he says.
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"For instance, it's my understanding, and this is what I've been told by law enforcement people, that when the picture of the two jihadists in Boston was put up, not one person in the mosque in Boston came forward to identify them. It's impossible to believe with the whole world knowing about what happened, the whole world looking at those faces, that not one person in that mosque recognized either one of those brothers.
"It's the reason why police and law enforcement have to use so many undercovers, why they have to penetrate into the community, because we are not getting the level of cooperation that we should be getting."
Finally, King said he is skeptical that a foreign company should own the third-largest cellphone provider in America. The Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Corp. announced in October that it was seeking approval from the United States for a $20 billion purchase of a 70 percent stake in Sprint.
SoftBank's bid has raised concerns due to the firm's close financial ties to the Chinese telecom company Huawei. In October 2012, the House Intelligence Committee, after an 11-month investigation, concluded that Huawei posed a major cybersecurity threat to U.S. intellectual property.
Last month Dish Network, an Englewood, Colo.-based satellite TV company, challenged SoftBank's bid for Sprint, offering $25.5 billion for the entire company.
Asked if the administration should use "extreme caution" in this matter in light of the cyber-warfare threat, King responds: "Absolutely. There's no doubt at all.
"This is a new form of warfare. It's a warfare that we have to accept. We have to accept that it's there and then go after it.
"What's going to happen in this particular case I can't say, but I can say we cannot allow corporate profits to come first. We have to make sure our national security, our homeland security is there and we have to do all we can to make sure that we are protecting our people against this type of cyberinvasion."
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