Police stage ‘chilling’ raid on Marion County newspaper

[GMDino]

tl;dr

Paper got a "tip" about a well-connected person's DUI from years ago. They verified thru state records...but did NOT publish because they felt it was fishy AND NOTIFIED THE POLICE. Said person complained about them publishing something they did not and then the entire police force took everything from the paper's offices AND the homes of the reporters in a raid.

It's still all who you know.

https://kansasreflector.com/2023/08/11/police-stage-chilling-raid-on-marion-county-newspaper-seizing-computers-records-and-cellphones/

Quote:MARION — In an unprecedented raid Friday, local law enforcement seized computers, cellphones and reporting materials from the Marion County Record office, the newspaper’s reporters, and the publisher’s home.


Eric Meyer, owner and publisher of the newspaper, said police were motivated by a confidential source who leaked sensitive documents to the newspaper, and the message was clear: “Mind your own business or we’re going to step on you.”


The city’s entire five-officer police force and two sheriff’s deputies took “everything we have,” Meyer said, and it wasn’t clear how the newspaper staff would take the weekly publication to press Tuesday night.


The raid followed news stories about a restaurant owner who kicked reporters out of a meeting last week with U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, and revelations about the restaurant owner’s lack of a driver’s license and conviction for drunken driving.


Meyer said he had never heard of police raiding a newspaper office during his 20 years at the Milwaukee Journal or 26 years teaching journalism at the University of Illinois.


“It’s going to have a chilling effect on us even tackling issues,” Meyer said, as well as “a chilling effect on people giving us information.”


The search warrant, signed by Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, appears to violate federal law that provides protections against searching and seizing materials from journalists. The law requires law enforcement to subpoena materials instead. Viar didn’t respond to a request to comment for this story or explain why she would authorize a potentially illegal raid.


Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association, said the police raid is unprecedented in Kansas.


“An attack on a newspaper office through an illegal search is not just an infringement on the rights of journalists but an assault on the very foundation of democracy and the public’s right to know,” Bradbury said. “This cannot be allowed to stand.”


Meyer reported last week that Marion restaurant owner Kari Newell had kicked newspaper staff out of a public forum with LaTurner, whose staff was apologetic. Newell responded to Meyer’s reporting with hostile comments on her personal Facebook page.


A confidential source contacted the newspaper, Meyer said, and provided evidence that Newell had been convicted of drunken driving and continued to use her vehicle without a driver’s license. The criminal record could jeopardize her efforts to obtain a liquor license for her catering business.


A reporter with the Marion Record used a state website to verify the information provided by the source. But Meyer suspected the source was relaying information from Newell’s husband, who had filed for divorce. Meyer decided not to publish a story about the information, and he alerted police to the situation.


“We thought we were being set up,” Meyer said.


Police notified Newell, who then complained at a city council meeting that the newspaper had illegally obtained and disseminated sensitive documents, which isn’t true. Her public comments prompted the newspaper to set the record straight in a story published Thursday.
[color=var(--dark_gray)][url=https://kansasreflector.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/SearchWarrant2.jpg][/url][img=962x1350]https://kansasreflector.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/SearchWarrant2.jpg[/img] Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar signed a search warrant authorizing the police raid of the newspaper office. (Sam Bailey/Kansas Reflector)[/color]


Sometime before 11 a.m. Friday, officers showed up simultaneously at Meyer’s home and the newspaper office. They presented a search warrant that alleges identity theft and unlawful use of a computer.


The search warrant identifies two pages worth of items that law enforcement officers were allowed to seize, including computer software and hardware, digital communications, cellular networks, servers and hard drives, items with passwords, utility records, and all documents and records pertaining to Newell. The warrant specifically targeted ownership of computers capable of being used to “participate in the identity theft of Kari Newell.”


Officers injured a reporter’s finger by grabbing her cellphone out of her hand, Meyer said. Officers at his home took photos of his bank account information.


He said officers told him the computers, cellphones and other devices would be sent to a lab.


“I don’t know when they’ll get it back to us,” Meyer said. “They won’t tell us.”


The seized computers, server and backup hard drive include advertisements and legal notices that were supposed to appear in the next edition of the newspaper.


“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he said. “We will publish something.”


Newell, writing Friday under a changed name on her personal Facebook account, said she “foolishly” received a DUI in 2008 and “knowingly operated a vehicle without a license out of necessity.”


“Journalists have become the dirty politicians of today, twisting narrative for bias agendas, full of muddied half-truths,” Newell wrote.  “We rarely get facts that aren’t baited with misleading insinuations.”


She said the “entire debacle was brought forth in an attempt to smear my name, jeopardize my licensing through ABC (state Alcoholic Beverage Control Division), harm my business, seek retaliation, and for personal leverage in an ongoing domestic court battle.”


At the law enforcement center in Marion, a staff member said only Police Chief Gideon Cody could answer questions for this story, and that Cody had gone home for the day and could not be reached by phone. The office of Attorney General Kris Kobach wasn’t available to comment on the legal controversy in Marion, which is north of Wichita in central Kansas.


Melissa Underwood, communications director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, replied by email to a question about whether the KBI was involved in the case.


“At the request of the Marion Police Department, on Tuesday, Aug. 8, we began an investigation into allegations of criminal wrongdoing in Marion, Kansas. The investigation is ongoing,” Underwood said.


Meyer, whose father worked at the newspaper from 1948 until he retired, bought the Marion County Record in 1998, preventing a sale to a corporate newspaper chain.


As a journalism professor in Illinois, Meyer said, he had graduate students from Egypt who talked about how people would come into the newspaper office and seize everything so they couldn’t publish. Those students presented a scholarly paper at a conference in Toronto about what it has done to journalism there.


“That’s basically what they’re trying to do here,” Meyer said. “The intervention is just like that repressive government of Egypt. I didn’t think it could happen in America.”

Try that in a small town?

[GMDino]

More.

http://marionrecord.com/

[Dill]

(08-12-2023, 06:30 PM)GMDino Wrote: More.

So is there a probable cause affidavit or not? 

Can there a legal warrant if that is not on file at the District court?

[*pally*]

And there is more…

https://www.marionrecord.com/direct/updated_illegal_raids_contribute_to_death_of_newspaper_co_owner+5447raid+555044415445443a20496c6c6567616c20726169647320636f6e7472696275746520746f206465617468206f66206e657773706170657220636f2d6f776e6572

Saturday, less than 24 hours after her home was raided and left in shambles, Joan Meyer, the otherwise healthy 98 year old co-owner of the paper collapsed and died

[GMDino]

(08-12-2023, 07:08 PM)Dill Wrote: So is there a probable cause affidavit or not? 

Can there a legal warrant if that is not on file at the District court?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/marion-county-record-affidavits-kansas-newspaper-search-warrant-raids/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7e&linkId=230788362

Quote:Kansas newspaper releases affidavits police used to justify raids
BY ALIZA CHASAN
AUGUST 20, 2023 / 5:56 PM / CBS NEWS

• [/url]
• [url=https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?related=cbsnews,CBSNews&via=CBSNews&text=Kansas%20newspaper%20releases%20affidavits%20police%20used%20to%20justify%20raids&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbsnews.com%2Fnews%2Fmarion-county-record-affidavits-kansas-newspaper-search-warrant-raids%2F]
• [/url]
  

The three affidavits used as the basis for an Aug. 11 [url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kansas-newspaper-police-raid-marion-county-record-joan-meyer-dies/]police raid on a small Kansas newspaper and other related locations were not filed until three days after the search warrants were executed, records provided by the paper's attorney show. 
The affidavits were signed on the day of the raids by Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody, but they were not filed until Aug. 14. 


They were filed for the office of the Marion County Record and the homes of the newspaper publisher and Marion Councilwoman Ruth Herbel.


"While the affidavits purport to be signed before Magistrate Viar on the day of the illegal searches, no explanation has been provided why they were not filed prior to the execution of the illegal searches," Bernie Rhodes, the Record's attorney, said.


The affidavits reveal Cody's reasoning for the searches. He alleges that reporter Phyllis Zorn illegally obtained driving records for local restaurateur Kari Newell. According to the Record, Newell had accused the newspaper of illegally obtaining drunk driving information about Newell and supplying it to Herbel. 


"The Record did not seek out the information," the newspaper wrote. "Rather, it was provided by a source who sent it to the newspaper via social media and also sent it to Herbel."

While investigating the tip, the Record verified the information about Newell using public records. 

In the affidavit, Cody wrote that the Department of Revenue told him the information about Newell had been downloaded by Zorn and someone using the name "Kari Newell." 


"Newell said she did not download or authorize anyone to download any information from the Department of Revenue and someone obviously stole her identity," Cody wrote in the affidavit.


Cody determined that accessing the document involved "either impersonating the victim or lying about the reasons why the record was being sought."

The license records, normally confidential, can be legally accessed under a variety of circumstances. Rhodes said the way 
Zorn accessed the records was legal under both state and federal law.


"Zorn had every right, under both Kansas law and U.S. law, to access Newell's driver's record to verify the information she had been provided by a source," Rhodes said. "She was not engaged in 'identity theft' or 'unauthorized computer access' but was doing her job."


In the days since the raid, Marion County Attorney Joel Ensey said that his review of police seizures from the Marion County Record found "insufficient evidence exists to establish a legally sufficient nexus between this alleged crime and the places searched and the items seized."


The investigation into whether the newspaper broke state laws is now being led by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.


Police have faced pushback in the aftermath of the search. The federal Privacy Protection Act protects journalists and newsrooms from most searches by law enforcement, requiring police usually to issue subpoenas rather than search warrants. The raid appears to have violated federal law and the First Amendment, according to Seth Stern, advocacy director of Freedom of the Press Foundation. 


"This looks like the latest example of American law enforcement officers treating the press in a manner previously associated with authoritarian regimes," Stern said on Aug. 11. "The anti-press rhetoric that's become so pervasive in this country has become more than just talk and is creating a dangerous environment for journalists trying to do their jobs."

[GMDino]

Some video on the riad on the 98-year old woman's home has been released also.

https://www.tiktok.com/@cnn/video/7270155617531383086?_r=1&_t=8f3d7QtiK7O

At least they didn't taze her and arrest her for "resisting".

[GreenDragon]

(08-12-2023, 12:27 PM)GMDino Wrote: tl;dr

Paper got a "tip" about a well-connected person's DUI from years ago. They verified thru state records...but did NOT publish because they felt it was fishy AND NOTIFIED THE POLICE. Said person complained about them publishing something they did not and then the entire police force took everything from the paper's offices AND the homes of the reporters in a raid.

It's still all who you know.

https://kansasreflector.com/2023/08/11/police-stage-chilling-raid-on-marion-county-newspaper-seizing-computers-records-and-cellphones/



Try that in a small town?

What happened to the First Amendment? 

Constitution people? Where are you on this one? 

[BigPapaKain]

(08-23-2023, 01:42 PM)GreenDragon Wrote: What happened to the First Amendment? 

Constitution people? Where are you on this one? 

Rules for thee.

[GMDino]

(08-23-2023, 01:42 PM)GreenDragon Wrote: What happened to the First Amendment? 

Constitution people? Where are you on this one? 

Try that in a small town. 

[Mike M (the other one)]

Sounds like this paper has been doing some heavy character assassinations in their community and not just those mentioned currently.

[GMDino]

(08-24-2023, 10:42 AM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Sounds like this paper has been doing some heavy character assassinations in their community and not just those mentioned currently.

You mean reporting the news? In a newspaper?

The horror. 

But this time they were raided over a story they did NOT print because they thought the tip was fishy...even if the story was true.  

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

One thing in the story that isn't mentioned by a single poster, a judge signed off on the warrant. That means that law enforcement had enough evidence to convince a judge to sign off on it. That's a major hurdle in the checks and balances of the criminal justice system. I'm not saying judges are infallible, they certainly are not, but the fact that a search warrant was approved lends me to believe there's more to this story than is currently available.

[GMDino]

(08-24-2023, 11:01 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: One thing in the story that isn't mentioned by a single poster, a judge signed off on the warrant.  That means that law enforcement had enough evidence to convince a judge to sign off on it.  That's a major hurdle in the checks and balances of the criminal justice system.  I'm not saying judges are infallible, they certainly are not, but the fact that a search warrant was approved lends me to believe there's more to this story than is currently available.

It was in the story from the first post.

Quote:The search warrant, signed by Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, appears to violate federal law that provides protections against searching and seizing materials from journalists. The law requires law enforcement to subpoena materials instead. Viar didn’t respond to a request to comment for this story or explain why she would authorize a potentially illegal raid.

The whole story is there too:

Quote:Meyer reported last week that Marion restaurant owner Kari Newell had kicked newspaper staff out of a public forum with LaTurner, whose staff was apologetic. Newell responded to Meyer’s reporting with hostile comments on her personal Facebook page.



A confidential source contacted the newspaper, Meyer said, and provided evidence that Newell had been convicted of drunken driving and continued to use her vehicle without a driver’s license. The criminal record could jeopardize her efforts to obtain a liquor license for her catering business.


A reporter with the Marion Record used a state website to verify the information provided by the source. But Meyer suspected the source was relaying information from Newell’s husband, who had filed for divorce. Meyer decided not to publish a story about the information, and he alerted police to the situation.


“We thought we were being set up,” Meyer said.


Police notified Newell, who then complained at a city council meeting that the newspaper had illegally obtained and disseminated sensitive documents, which isn’t true. Her public comments prompted the newspaper to set the record straight in a story published Thursday.

Sometime before 11 a.m. Friday, officers showed up simultaneously at Meyer’s home and the newspaper office. They presented a search warrant that alleges identity theft and unlawful use of a computer.

Story written.
Tip given.
Research done.
Story NOT published...AND police notified by the paper.
Police tell subject of unpublished story that someone looked at their record...legally...but didn't publish a story about it.
Subject complains at public meeting.
Newspaper defends their NOT publishing the story that never would have been public if not for the subject talking publicly about it.
The next day the police have warrants.

UNLESS the paper had been under some kind of investigation for quite a while and the warrants were already being worked on I think we have the story.

Maybe new information will come out...eventually.

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(08-24-2023, 11:35 AM)GMDino Wrote: It was in the story from the first post.

Yes, like I literally said in the post you quoted.  I said no one in this thread mentioned it and it's a rather important detail.

Quote:The whole story is there too:




Story written.
Tip given.
Research done.
Story NOT published...AND police notified by the paper.
Police tell subject of unpublished story that someone looked at their record...legally...but didn't publish a story about it.
Subject complains at public meeting.
Newspaper defends their NOT publishing the story that never would have been public if not for the subject talking publicly about it.
The next day the police have warrants.

UNLESS the paper had been under some kind of investigation for quite a while and the warrants were already being worked on I think we have the story.

Maybe new information will come out...eventually.

No, the whole story cannot possibly be there because we don't know what evidence convince the judge to issue the warrant.  Do you know?  Does the story tell you?  Hence my saying there's likely more to the story than is currently available.  Judges don't sign off on search warrants without deliberation.  Again, could the bench officer have made an error, or could they have been presented with false information?  Yes, but we don't know and it's a rather important detail.

[*pally*]

maybe the Magistrate was afraid the newspaper would go searching into her record like the Wichita Eagle did this week.  She has to run for her job next year (she was appointed to fill a term of a retired magistrate) and probably didn't want her own history of DUIs and driving under a suspended license coming out

https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article278237263.html

Quote:The Kansas magistrate judge who authorized a police raid of the Marion County Record newsroom over its probe into a local restaurateur’s drunken-driving record has her own hidden history of driving under the influence. Judge Laura Viar, who was appointed on Jan. 1 to fill a vacant 8th Judicial District magistrate seat, was arrested at least twice for DUI in two different Kansas counties in 2012, a Wichita Eagle investigation found. She was the lead prosecutor for Morris County at the time.



 The first arrest — in Coffey County, about an hour and 15 minutes southeast of her home in Council Grove, on Jan. 25, 2012 — has not been reported.



 The second — in Morris County on Aug. 6, 2012 — came amid an unopposed reelection bid for Morris County attorney. She was not supposed to be driving because her driver’s license was suspended in the Coffey County case, court records show. She reportedly drove off-road and crashed into a school building next to Council Grove’s football field while driving then-8th District Magistrate Judge Thomas Ball’s vehicle. The Morris County arrest likely would have been a violation of her diversion agreement in Coffey County. But court records indicate prosecutors in Coffey County didn’t know about the Morris County case. And the earlier Coffey County DUI was not disclosed to the public in Morris County, where she was standing for reelectio


It’s unclear what happened next. The case does not exist in the state’s court records system, and no follow-up articles appear in any publicly available newspaper archives. Marek did not immediately respond to questions sent to the 2nd District. In Coffey County, Viar, who went by Laura E. Allen at the time, was charged and entered a diversion agreement — which was extended six months because she refused to get an alcohol and drug evaluation and stopped communicating with her lawyer.


 

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(08-24-2023, 01:27 PM)pally Wrote: maybe the Magistrate was afraid the newspaper would go searching into her record like the Wichita Eagle did this week.  She has to run for her job next year (she was appointed to fill a term of a retired magistrate) and probably didn't want her own history of DUIs and driving under a suspended license coming out

https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article278237263.html

Possibly.  Is there any evidence of this?  Also, do you think DUI's from over a decade ago are election killers?  The Dems and O'Rourke didn't seem to think so when Francis ran for office only eight years after his arrest.  He also tried to flee the scene according to the officers that arrested him.  Note this is not "whatabout" this is a direct comparison about such an incident impacting on a person's electability.

[Mike M (the other one)]

While the info is Public information (in regards to the Online DL DB), how you use that info gained is very specific especially if you download the document which the site shows it was downloaded by whom and with an address. It lists that either this document being downloaded can only be used by Self or a creditor to help collect on a debt (which is not the case so that leaves option a).

The info was used as a means to block this person's access to being granted an alcohol license for their business and apparently planned to make this publicly known in the next edition of the news paper.

According to the State Dept, this was a legal raid as there is NO Exceptions as to how this info is used, even if used by the media.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/kansas-bureau-of-investigation-takes-over-case-that-led-to-marion-county-record-police-raid

Kansas’ top law enforcement agency will now lead the criminal investigation that led police in the city of Marion to raid a local newspaper last Friday, seizing devices and—according to the paper’s publisher—causing the stress-related death of its 98-year-old co-owner. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation confirmed to The Kansas City Star late Monday that it was the “lead law enforcement agency” on the case. “As we transition, we will review prior steps taken and work to determine how best to proceed with the case. Once our thorough investigation concludes, we will forward all investigative facts to the prosecutor for review,” a bureau spokesperson said in a statement. The move comes after a local ABC affiliate reported that the Marion Police Department and the Marion County Attorney requested that the bureau join the investigation. The KBI reportedly assigned one agent to the inquiry last Tuesday; that agent was not present during the raid on the Marion County Record, according to the affiliate. On Sunday, the bureau’s director, Tony Mattivi, implied in a statement that the raid—the result of a search warrant—was justified, saying that though he believed “freedom of the press is a vanguard of American democracy,” members of the media were not “above the law.”

[GMDino]

(08-24-2023, 01:27 PM)pally Wrote: maybe the Magistrate was afraid the newspaper would go searching into her record like the Wichita Eagle did this week.  She has to run for her job next year (she was appointed to fill a term of a retired magistrate) and probably didn't want her own history of DUIs and driving under a suspended license coming out

https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article278237263.html

Ain't that funny.

The paper doesn't print the original story AND notifies the police about the fishy tip they got and because the subject of the story got mad now everyone knows about her DUI and NOW the papers are looking into everyone else.

The cover up is always worse.

[Mike M (the other one)]

(08-24-2023, 02:09 PM)GMDino Wrote: Ain't that funny.

The paper doesn't print the original story AND notifies the police about the fishy tip they got and because the subject of the story got mad now everyone knows about her DUI and NOW the papers are looking into everyone else.

The cover up is always worse.

That's not really what it's all about.
I doubt the DUI and so on would have a ton of effect on voting. 
however using that info to block her restaurants ability to continue to serve Alcohol is the real issue.

This same paper did this:

Jared Smith, a lifelong Marion resident, said Monday that he supports the police raid. Smith accused the newspaper of ruining his wife’s day spa business opened only a year ago by digging into her past and discovering she had appeared nude in a magazine years before. That fact was repeated in the Record more than 20 times over a six-month period, Smith said.


https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/police-chief-who-raided-local-30712183





So in a way, it seems they were borderline abusing their power. I see zero purpose (other that being malicious) why they reported the nude info so often but that's a separate issue. 

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(08-24-2023, 02:36 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: That's not really what it's all about.
I doubt the DUI and so on would have a ton of effect on voting. 
however using that info to block her restaurants ability to continue to serve Alcohol is the real issue.

This same paper did this:

Jared Smith, a lifelong Marion resident, said Monday that he supports the police raid. Smith accused the newspaper of ruining his wife’s day spa business opened only a year ago by digging into her past and discovering she had appeared nude in a magazine years before. That fact was repeated in the Record more than 20 times over a six-month period, Smith said.


https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/police-chief-who-raided-local-30712183





So in a way, it seems they were borderline abusing their power. I see zero purpose (other that being malicious) why they reported the nude info so often but that's a separate issue. 

Notice how quickly some will rush to validate a hypothesis with no proof?  You even provided a link that stated the state police supported the raid as entirely legal, yet no mention of that.  Odd, is it not?  It's almost like some people have an agenda and the truth isn't necessarily important.