I am debating about covering this — on the main bio-science sites, as a tangent (at least). As this convoluted twisting of reality — and outright lying — by the hard right, simply must end. [This stuff is bleeding over, into public health law now, with allegations of private health care information… being sold to the highest bidder. UGLY.]
The freedom of the press is ironically postured here — with “Veritas”, according to several MSM reports, reasonably suspected by the FBI of having helped in the stealing, and attempted “fencing” of a private diary, reputed to belong to the daughter of the 46th President.
Yet it is “Veritas” that now seeks to prevent the gray lady from reporting on it. A pure “prior restraint” case (under a dubious allegation that the NYT might be receiving leaked documents from inside the FBI).
But this is where we are today.
Political spying organizations (serial law breakers, themselves — according to Hindereker’s own property, in 2017), claim to be journalists, while (allegedly) helping to arrange the sale of private diaries of prominent people that they have reason to know were… stolen (a felony, BTW — if true), and try to prevent actual journalists from ever disclosing the truth — in all this silly Kabuki theater. Here is the Times‘ lawyers’ take, at Cahill Gordon, as of last night:
…Prior restraints bear a “heavy presumption against… constitutional validity,” “may be imposed only in the most exceptional cases,” and can only be issued “upon a showing on the record that such expression will immediately and irreparably create public injury.” Porco v. Lifetime Entertainment Services, LLC, 116 A.D.3d 1264, 1266 (3d Dep’t 2014) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted) (reversing order enjoining the broadcast of a movie claimed to violate NY Civil Rights Law Sections 50/51 and finding the order to be an unconstitutional prior restraint). Plaintiff’s proposed Order to Show Cause requests, among other things, that the Court enter an order directing The Times to “refrain from further disseminating or publishing” information that Project Veritas asserts, without evidence, that The Times obtained improperly.
Such an order is, on its face, the paradigmatic example of an unconstitutional prior restraint. See, e.g., Alexander v. United States, 509 U.S. 544, 550 (1993) (“Temporary restraining orders and permanent injunctions — i.e., court orders that actually forbid speech activities — are classic examples of prior restraints.”); Organization for a Better Austin v. Keefe, 402 U. S. 415 (1971) (vacating order “enjoining petitioners from distributing leaflets anywhere in the town of Westchester, Illinois” as impermissible prior restraint); Vance v. Universal Amusement Co., 445 U. S. 308, 311, 317 (1980) (per curiam) (striking down, on prior restraint grounds, Texas statute that authorized courts, upon a showing that obscene films had been shown in the past, to issue an injunction prohibiting future exhibition of films that had not yet been found to be obscene); Porco, 116 A.D.3d at 1266….
We shall see — but I will follow it here, on this “side-car” site of mine — since Hinderaker and his minions have weighed in on it, without (in John Hinderaker’s telling of it) even a rudimentary understanding of the applicable law, and clearly completely unacquainted with the facts… as alleged in the FBI’s warrant application.
So onward, we go. Ever… onward — grinning….
Powerline Lies... 