US Sen. Tom Cotton has demanded a federal probe and possible criminal charges against US news outlets accused of working with photographers embedded with Hamas ahead of the terror group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
The Arkansas Republican accused The New York Times, CNN, the Associated Press, and Reuters of having prior knowledge of the massacre, which left roughly 1,400 Israelis dead.
The story exploded into public view this week after the nonprofit Honest Reporting revealed several Gaza-based photojournalists seemingly coming along for the ride during the terrorist rampage.
Cotton wrote to the US Department of Justice Friday, warning, “Providing material support or assistance, including funding, to a terrorist organization such as Hamas is a federal crime.”
All four media groups insisted they had no warning of the terror attack.
Honest Reporting said Friday it accepted the news organization’s denials.
“We raised questions, we didn’t give answers,” the group’s executive director, Gil Hoffman, said. “I still very much think that the questions were legitimate and the answers were adequate from the media organizations themselves.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the news outlets for working with the Hamas embeds calling them “accomplices in crimes against humanity.”
CNN and the Associated Press both said they would no longer work with photo freelancer Hassan Eslaiah — who was captured in a photo receiving a smiling kiss on the cheek from Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who is now known as the “Butcher of Khan Younis.”
“No employee of The Times was embedded with Hamas, or had advance knowledge of the attack, or played any role in the savage massacre of that day,” the Times said, accusing Cotton of spreading “disinformation”
A rep for the Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment from The Post.
With Post Wires.