NAPOLITANO: Gestapo-like Police Raid on Marion Newspaper Should Scare You
There is a federal statute that prohibits the police from doing this, Napolitano says
Gerald Celente and Judge Andrew Napolitano held their “Celente and the Judge” YouTube broadcast on Wednesday and spoke about the police raid at a newspaper in Marion, Kan.
BACKGROUND: The Associated Press reported that the raid at the office was over access to a local restaurant owner’s personal information. Authorities also raided the home of Eric Meyer, the editor and publisher. His mother, 98, died the following day, the report said. He said the stress from the raid caused his mother’s death.
Freedom is dying by 1000 little cuts and this is one of them.
Napolitano wrote on his website that the restaurant owner wanted to strike back at a reporter who discovered that the restauranteur — though holding herself out as a municipal paragon while applying for a liquor license — had a DWI conviction. So the restauranteur told the police that the only way the reporter could have learned of the DWI conviction was by stealing the restauranteur’s identity, pretending to be the restauranteur, looking up “her own” driving record and then writing about it.
Napolitano noted that these are public records in the state of Kansas.
NAPOLITANO: There is a federal statute that prohibits the police from doing this. If they want information from the media — that's you, that's me, that's a small town newspaper, that's the New York Times — they have to present evidence of a crime to a grand jury and get a grand jury subpoena — that subpoena can be challenged, they can't just break down your door. What kind of society do we live in where the government can threaten the press like this? Freedom is dying by 1000 little cuts and this is one of them.