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A petition with 100,000 signatures on behalf of Risen is delivered to the DOJ. | M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO James Risen: 'Happy to carry on the fight'

While New York Times reporter James Risen claims he didn’t start the fight over press freedom with the Obama administration, he said Thursday he is more than happy to continue it.

“The Justice Department and the Obama administration are the ones who turned this really into a fundamental fight over press freedom in their appeal to the Fourth Circuit,” Risen said at an event advocating for the federal government to stop legal action against him in Washington. “I’m happy to carry on the fight, but it wasn’t really me who started it.”

Risen, who was joined by multiple press freedom organizations, is refusing to testify in the prosecution of a CIA officer accused of leaking classified information about U.S. efforts to undermine Iran's nuclear program. The Supreme Court recently denied his petition to reverse a federal appeal’s court decision rejecting his argument to avoid testifying.

The day started in front of the Department of Justice, where organizers gathered to present a petition with at least 100,000 signatures arguing that the department should stop prosecuting Risen. The petition, nearly 4,000 pages and neatly packaged in red, white and blue ribbon with curled ends as a nod to the First Amendment and the Founding Fathers, sat on a stepladder.

Department of Justice spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle carried the stack into the building. He took no questions.

Later at a panel, speakers painted the Risen case as part of an ongoing battle for essential press freedoms, coming on the heels of the arrests of two reporters in Ferguson, Mo. It’s another front, speakers said, in the ongoing struggle for press freedom. Risen himself expressed his support for the journalists being arrested and harassed.

“I think what the central question we’re all facing now is how does the First Amendment and the freedom of the press survive in a post-9/11 age?” Risen said, expressing support for the journalists arrested. “It’s all part of the same issue.”