O'Reilly on Associated Press-DOJ scandal: Not 'that big a deal

On ABC's Good Morning America Tuesday, Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly said the news of the Department of Justice seizing phone records of several Associated Press reporters will likely amount to little if any trouble for the Obama administration.

"I don't think that's going to amount to much," O'Reilly said, "because it looks like they went through the warrant process and they had authorization to look at these records, the Justice Department did."

The APreported Monday evening that the DOJ secretly obtained two months of telephone records of the news organization's reporters and editors.

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters," AP President Gary Pruitt said at the time. "These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know."

"I don't think the AP is gonna be that big a deal," O'Reilly said. He added, however, that the DOJ would "have to say why they wanted the records."

@eScarry