Glenn Beck - FOX News: ACLJ's Jay Sekulow Addresses Report That DOJ Asked For News Site's Visitor Lists
An official from the U.S. Justice Department says the department regulations were violated in the case of an independent online news site ordered to hand over visitor lists.
According to the Justice Department officials, the subpoena that required the Web site to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day was not authorized by the attorney general.
Under longstanding Justice Department guidelines, federal subpoenas to members of the news media are supposed to receive special treatment, and therefore, don't need to give up this kind of information. Is this legal? Or is it an outright unconstitutional invasion of privacy?
Guest Host Judge Andrew Napolitano discusses the issue with ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow.
You can watch the interview here.
You can read a transcript of the interview below.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO, GUEST HOST:
An official from the U.S. Justice Department says the department regulations were violated in the case of an independent online news site ordered to hand over visitor lists.
According to the Justice Department officials, the subpoena that required the Web site to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day was not authorized by the attorney general.
Under longstanding Justice Department guidelines, federal subpoenas to members of the news media are supposed to receive special treatment, and therefore, don't need to give up this kind of information. Is this legal? Or is it an outright unconstitutional invasion of privacy?
With me now is Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice. Jay, welcome to the GLENN BECK PROGRAM.
JAY SEKULOW, CHIEF COUNSEL FOR THE AMERICAN CENTER FOR LAW AND JUSTICE: Hi, judge. Good to be with you.
NAPOLITANO: Thank you. So what happened here? The Justice Department in Philadelphia served a subpoena on a Web site called "IndyMedia.us" and said ...
SEKULOW: Right.
NAPOLITANO: ... give us a list of everybody that has visited your Web site. What are they looking for? Has something like this ever happened before?
SEKULOW: Well, this is the worst example - well, I call it at least a U.S. attorney's totalitarian snooping, because they didn't just ask for the people who they were. They asked for bank records, social security numbers, their IP addresses.
I've trained U.S. attorneys before. I've been on the faculty at the Department of Justice and trained lawyers in the Justice Department. I know, judge, you have worked with Justice Department lawyers, too. They are very well-trained.
NAPOLITANO: Right.
SEKULOW: They are very smart. And there are very specific procedures all of which were violated here. Complicating that even more is the fact that you've got a situation where this is a political type of news Web site.
That's the core of the First Amendment. That's where it is at its highest protection. So between the anonymous nature of people allowed to put out information anonymously between the political speech involved here and then complicating even another issue, of course, is freedom of association. People are allowed to go to these Web sites.
What the U.S. attorney was doing was intimidating this independent news site which is definitely left of center. But the White House has to be careful, judge. They have gone after FOX News. They had this fishy E-mail issue back in the summer.
NAPOLITANO: Right.
SEKULOW: They are playing very dangerously with media and with the new media. Very, very dangerous.
NAPOLITANO: Why are they after this "Indy Media" site if it's a left wing site? And why did they tell "Indy Media" when served the subpoena, "Don't tell anybody we served you with a subpoena"?
SEKULOW: Well, they told them not to. They told them they didn't want it disclosed because they ultimately are withdrawing the subpoena here. And judge, that's the irony of this.
They withdrew the subpoena because lawyers started getting involved and said, "Listen, you can't do this. Under the First Amendment, you're violating the Constitution. You're violating your own administrative guidelines within the Department of Justice. You're violating political speech."
We don't know the context of what they were investigating, but here is what I want to let everybody know. If there was a real criminal engaged in illegal activity, the Justice Department - and you know this judge - could easily issue a directive subpoena for that individual's information either with the news site and there is a procedure they go through.
That is not what they did here. They went through everything.
NAPOLITANO: The right to go on a Web site - couldn't you say that that's the 21st century version of anonymous pamphleteering, of putting literature out and nailing it to a tree, which is the way freedom in this country started?
SEKULOW: Absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, you go back to the 1930s, the initial cases on anonymous pamphleteering came out of just that. There were political campaigns, political speeches or issues that people wanted to address and they didn't want to disclose themselves.
The Founders recognized that. In fact, it's clear to say that the right of anonymous pamphleteering, which is the modern-day version of going to these Web sites is, in fact, as old as the Constitution itself.
And this idea that you can now issue these overbroad requests for subpoenas is wrong. If I was in front of a judge like you, I'd know what you would do. You'd quash it in a minute.
This U.S. attorney was wrong. He ultimately pulled it back, but after the damage is done and threatened the directors of the media site saying that if they continued this kind of work and disclosed that the subpoena was issued, they would be putting people's lives in jeopardy. People could get hurt, he said.
You know, this is a complete overreach. Again, totalitarian snooping at its worst.
NAPOLITANO: Jay, I want you to stay on this one. My guess is that Glenn will want you to follow it for us and tell us how it ends up.
SEKULOW: Thanks for having me, judge.