Sounds like the Obama administration to me.

Via The Hill:

A spokesman for the family of Steven Sotloff, an American journalist killed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, said Wednesday that the family had been “hectored and bullied” by the Obama administration.

“We had meetings with the administration,” Barak Barfi, the spokesman, told “CBS This Morning.” “The family sat with the National Security Council officials. And basically he bullied and hectored them, and they were scared.”

Sotloff, who went missing in Syria a year ago, was killed in a video released by ISIS earlier this month. He was the second American journalist beheaded by the group.

The family has critized the administration through their spokesman, suggesting that officials did not cooperate to secure Sotloff’s release.

On Sunday, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough responded to reports that before Sotloff, and another journalist, James Foley, were killed, their families were threatened with prosecution if they paid ransoms to ISIS.

“In terms of what was communicated to the families in the midst of many, many meetings, over the course of this very difficult circumstance, we obviously made clear what the law is,” McDonough said on “Fox News Sunday.”