fileevidence

Not good. Not good at all. There’s a reason why I refer to the Left and Obama specifically as tyrants of which this sort of action is a hallmark. They raided her home, btw, with the mission of seizing any firearms because her husband had been found guilty in 1986 of resisting arrest. 1986 people. So this gave them the warrant to go into their home to seize any firearms. All of this is outrageous and should sound a warning bell to everyone.

Via Daily Caller.

A veteran Washington D.C. investigative journalist says the Department of Homeland Security confiscated a stack of her confidential files during a raid of her home in August — leading her to fear that a number of her sources inside the federal government have now been exposed.

In an interview with The Daily Caller, journalist Audrey Hudson revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were involved in a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. Hudson is a former Washington Times reporter and current freelance reporter.

A search warrant obtained by TheDC indicates that the August raid allowed law enforcement to search for firearms inside her home.

The document notes that her husband, Paul Flanagan, was found guilty in 1986 to resisting arrest in Prince George’s County. The warrant called for police to search the residence they share and seize all weapons and ammunition because he is prohibited under the law from possessing firearms.

But without Hudson’s knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, she said.

Outraged over the seizure, Hudson is now speaking out. She said no subpoena for the notes was presented during the raid and argues the confiscation was outside of the search warrant’s parameter.

“They took my notes without my knowledge and without legal authority to do so,” Hudson said this week. “The search warrant they presented said nothing about walking out of here with a single sheet of paper.”

UPDATE:

Armed agents seize records of reporter, Washington Times prepares legal action

The Washington Times said Friday it is preparing legal action to fight what it called an unwarranted intrusion on the First Amendment.

“While we appreciate law enforcement’s right to investigate legitimate concerns, there is no reason for agents to use an unrelated gun case to seize the First Amendment protected materials of a reporter,” Times Editor John Solomon said. “This violates the very premise of a free press, and it raises additional concerns when one of the seizing agencies was a frequent target of the reporter’s work.

“Homeland’s conduct in seizing privileged reporters notes and Freedom of Information Act documents raises serious Fourth Amendment issues, and our lawyers are preparing an appropriate legal response,” he said.

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  1. Maynard says:

    Do we have the full, hard story yet? I’d like to be sure essential details are corroborated before forming a judgment. A pre-dawn raid by agents armed to the teeth? That’s what you do for wanted men who are clearly a threat to society, not to a journalist (or her husband) who cannot be reasonably expected to do violence, even if in violation of the law (and everyone is in violation of some law). Why did it take so long for her to find her papers had been compromised, and longer still for the incident to be reported? Is it on the record that the police seized material unrelated to the search warrant? Have charges been filed against her or her husband, and do they make any sense? Were there preliminaries to the raid — for example, some sort of court order that the family had ignored — or did it come out of nowhere as a complete surprise? These are the sort of questions I wonder about.

    • TheGreenHornet says:

      I don’t believe anything the government or law enforcement says. I did listen to the woman’s account of the story on Savage’s (I know, don’t throw anything at me)radio show. She said they came there is full battle gear looking for a potato gun. The lame stream media won’t touch this one, I’m sure.

      • Maynard says:

        Just to be clear, I’m not anxious to doubt this report. However, dammit, I’m always looking for the fundamental documented uncooked unspun important irrefutable facts. For example, we all “know” the IRS has been working with Obama to illegally subvert the democratic process, but how many of our “facts” are more than just rumors and anecdotes? Very few of us civilians on either side form an opinion that will withstand challenge. That’s why I thought it was interesting, as I blogged the other day, that Darryl Issa had posted documented proof of criminal collusion from the IRS to the White House. What counterargument can be made against such clarity? If that alone isn’t enough to send some of Obama’s people to jail, then there is no justice in America. That’s the sort of record I want to see set down in this case.

        By the way, I admit to being partial to Savage. This is not to say that I always agree. But I appreciate Savage’s framework, which is focused on life rather than politics. In that sense he’s more grounded in reality than the people that live and breathe politics. Love him or hate him, the guy is a human being trying to get through the day in an aggressively troubled world. That’s what I get out of his show, and I think he’s seeking common ground for all non-evil people.

  2. Pat_S says:

    Evidently the Coast Guard responded

    http://m.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/10/conservative-reporter-says-feds-took-her-files-while-searching-home-guns/70941/

    “In the course of a joint Federal &  Maryland State Police investigation, a lawful search warrant was served on August 6, 2013 in Shadyside, MD.  The  Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS) was asked to participate  since the search involved a Coast Guard employee.  During the course of the search, the CGIS agent discovered government documents labeled FOUO –  For Official Use Only (FOUO) and LES – Law Enforcement Sensitive.  The files that contained these documents were cataloged on the search warrant inventory and taken from the premises.  The documents were reviewed with the source agency and determined to be obtained properly through the Freedom of Information Act.  The CG employee was notified that the documents were cleared and the CG employee picked them up after signing for the documents.”

    • Maynard says:

      Okay, that article states (as Hudson had said) that the search warrant was for weapons. This in itself raises a question, and it certainly has an answer, but I don’t know what it is: If her husband can’t possess a weapon, does this disarm her as well? As far as the search warrant goes, as far as I understand the law, they couldn’t seize a document unrelated to the target specified. So is this an on-the-record illegal act by law enforcement, or is there a valid excuse? In any case, it should at least raise eyebrows when a warrant is executed against a man for a weapon, but the raid ends up seizing his wife’s research for the free press. That smells like a serious 1st Amendment violation on the face of it. Then you get back to the pre-dawn raid by armed officers; was that degree of force justified? It all seems to bear an uncomfortable resemblance to intimidation of the free press. I’d be curious to hear someone put a benign spin on it.

      • Pat_S says:

        Ostensibly ordering a “potato launcher”, a toy, back in 2005 prompted this search warrant. The term is sometimes used for a silencer.

        So many questions. How did the government come to know about this purchase? More NSA spying? Is “potato” a key word that may end in a pre-dawn raid on your house eight years later? Did everyone who ordered this toy get a visit from a SWAT team or only those who resisted arrest 30 years ago? Wouldn’t a closer look at the details of the purchase reveal it to be harmless? Are we to assume from the Coast Guard statement that government documents marked as sensitive or for official use only may be confiscated no matter what the search warrant says? It is the tactic of an authoritarian regime to fake a pretext for their thuggery.

        I know the media is politically biased, but when it comes to a threat against their profession, they usually put bias aside. Silence from the media elites so far is strange and eerie. There is a nagging sense that either this story doesn’t add up or we have stepped into the abyss.

        • Maynard says:

          I know the media is politically biased, but when it comes to a threat against their profession, they usually put bias aside. Silence from the media elites so far is strange and eerie. There is a nagging sense that either this story doesn’t add up or we have stepped into the abyss.

          Yes, these are my key questions too, and I fear an element of both. I get the impression that, with respect to intimidation and suppression of the free press, the media has been concerned on a small problem here or there, but has been unworried about anything systematic. Sort of like the recent IRS abuses are attributed to a couple of rogues, and doesn’t touch the White House or its IRS political appointees, and never mind the pesky documentation. Or the focus on Treyvon as typical rather than exceptional.

          I look at the liberal establishment in horror, because these are people who have used their considerable intellect to willfully blind themselves to reality. Fixated upon their glorious dreams, they’ll ignore terrible things. Historically, this is the attitude that leads to hell on Earth.

          By the way, this trap of self-inflicted blindness is a threat to us too. I *try* not to fall into the trap of knee-jerk disagreement with Obama. Yes, I look upon everything he does with suspicion. But I’m not going to manufacture a disagreement on every point. I don’t want to become the ugly mirror of the ugly people I stand against.

          As far as whether this story adds up…yes, as I say, I’m waiting to hear whether anyone can offer a reasoned explanation for what happened. I’m sure someone’s going to defend the police here; I want to hear their best argument.

          Speaking of eerie, do you realize how weird this all is? Seems to me we (that is, our side of the political divide) were once defenders of the police against the thugs and criminals; meanwhile it was the other side that was calling them “pigs” and was generally anti-police. These days, with the whiff of a police state in the air (all the things that the Left of the 60’s used to warn us about, only now it’s coming true!), we’re the one’s expressing concern, and they’re the side urging the authorities to move against us because we’re enemies of the state. This is of course an oversimplification, but there’s truth at the heart; I think you know what I mean. Yes, eerie indeed!

  3. Alain41 says:

    In other suburban Maryland news; some students at Friendly High School wore pink shirts as a breast cancer awareness act, which had been done the previous 2 years. 75 students were given in-class suspensions (they weren’t sent home but their attendance and participation were marked down as a zero). The pink shirts violate the uniform policy and the principal said created security concerns. (security concerns ?) Sounds to me like the school authorities were concerned with possible (or real) complaints relative to I don’t want to wear a pink shirt (or even they don’t own one) and/or what if we get other requests like orange shirt day in support of people born in a bar. I wonder what CBS news Fred Friendly would think of unfriendly Friendly High.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/prince-georges-students-suspended-for-wearing-pink-in-support-of-breast-cancer/2013/10/25/5e2009d4-3d90-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story.html

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