White House Emails Show Staffer Calling Fox News' Bret Baier A 'Lunatic'

A cache of emails released by a conservative watchdog group on Thursday shows White House staffers complaining about Fox News and calling one of its anchors a "lunatic."

Judicial Watch released 81 pages of email correspondence from October 2009 that it obtained through a FOIA request. The emails mostly show the back-and-forth between various White House aides, Treasury Department staffers and members of the media over a series of interviews with Kenneth Feinberg, who had been tapped to provide oversight of the TARP bailout program.

One email shows a White House staffer emailing a Treasury colleague, saying it would be better "if you skip Fox News" in a group of media outlets that was conducting a pooled interview with Feinberg.

Other members of the White House press pool balked at this, and Fox News' Major Garrett ultimately interviewed Feinberg. At the time, though, the White House and the Treasury strongly denied that there had been any attempt to exclude the network. Most of the emails show staffers coming up with a response to the flurry of emails and published reports about the controversy from various journalists (including HuffPost's own Michael Calderone, then working for Politico).

Another email lashes out at "Special Report" anchor Bret Baier: "Bret Baier just did a stupid piece about the [rumored exclusion] -- but he is a lunatic."

Click here to read all of the emails.