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FEDERAL PROSECUTORS ATTACKED ME FOR MY REPORTING — AND THEY’RE DOING IT TO HIDE INFO FROM THE PUBLIC

Archive link

THIS IS A story about a story — one that I haven’t finished reporting.

Federal prosecutors are so consumed by my efforts to report on a terrorism court case that they accused me in a recent filing of having “improper motives.” They said that, by doing routine reporting, I was somehow colluding with a terrorism defendant to “taint the jury pool and undermine the fairness of the trial.”

These dangerous claims are the subject of an evidentiary hearing in U.S. District Court in Detroit on Thursday.

Although President Joe Biden boasts that his administration defends press freedoms around the world, his Justice Department’s public claims are an egregious attack against me filled with baseless assumptions and statements taken wildly out of context.

Prosecutors appear to have subjected me to this attack for no reason other than that I was doing journalism in the public interest. (Lawyers for The Intercept submitted a letter to U.S. District Judge Jonathan J. C. Grey and will be present at the hearing Thursday.)

Pfeffy ,

I’m with the prosecutors. This seems like some rookie journalist is just parroting the stories he’s told by a criminal before trial without providing any evidence. He could have at least talked to some scholars or lawyers or get somebody to agree but it’s really just a story that seems to be made up.

Dkarma ,

How is that different from local news stations just parroting often verbatim, from police reports?

Pfeffy ,

Why does it have to be different from that and how does that have anything to do with what I said?

Treczoks ,

Screaming does not really help your point. On the contrary.

Thekingoflorda ,
@Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world avatar

Could you maybe edit your post to have it not be all caps?

qx128 , (edited )

> mfw the paywall is preventing me from reading his “story” more than the Biden administration 🙄🥱😂

girlfreddy OP ,
@girlfreddy@lemmy.ca avatar

I’ve added an archive link to the summary.

Thanks for the head’s up.

BradleyUffner ,

Sorry to say this, but regardless of the validity of your claims, the way you present your story, like having everything in capital letters, kinda makes you sound a little like a conspiracy nut. You may want to work on your presentation a bit.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

What's with the all caps

If the Biden administration is serious about protecting press freedoms, officials from Washington might want to have a stern talk with federal prosecutors in Detroit.

Biden's officials absolutely should not have a stern talk with prosecutors from anywhere; the DOJ's day to day business is totally separate from being dictated by any political official for very good reasons.

If you told me the FBI and federal prosecutors were overreaching and being wildly way too aggressive, I'd agree with you, but that has not a lot to do with Biden and it bloody well should stay that way.

Even that being said, I don't see all that much in this other than them aggressively investigating and prosecuting. That's their job. There's all this stuff like:

When Naser returned to the U.S. from the trip, he found himself subjected to intense FBI questioning and surveillance. And he wasn’t alone. Dennison was an unwitting pawn for the FBI. Anyone who communicated with him became a target.

In April 2023, federal prosecutors complained in a court filing that Naser “gleefully shared information” with me. My calls with Naser became a central focus of a hearing in June 2023, during which prosecutors admitted that the protective order did not prohibit Naser from talking to me about the evidence in his case.

“He did not improperly distribute this information,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Dmitriy Slavin in the June 2023 hearing. “Because information that is general discovery which is still concerning this case, there’s no limit on him sharing that information with the media, and he has made it his mission to share that information with the media.”

So basically, they asked him questions and served him with search warrants, and then they charged him with a crime. When he talked to journalists, the prosecution asked the judge to make him stop (and from the fact that he didn't stop, it kind of sounds like the judge told them no.)

And, while doing so, they cooperated with local law enforcement to do their investigation, which they had some ability to do because the guy pepper-sprayed his boss and took money (which he "believed he was owed") from the cash register.

I am sure that it is not fun being questioned by the FBI or charged with a federal crime, but this guy's using all this language like "Prosecutors appear to have subjected me to this attack" (their court filings). I mean it's their job to attack the defendant. And then it's the defendant's job to defend themselves (which is often an unfair battle if you're in a foreign country and the full weight of the federal government is trying to fuck you over). The prosecution doesn't get to decide if you go to prison; that's the judge's job to sort out with the prosecution doing their best to attack you. I get that it's an unfair process that needs reform but I don't see what is so outlandish about them in this case doing a prosecution of the guy they're trying to prosecute.

Senokir ,

Paywall link + no context given as to what actually occurred other than someone claiming that they are being silenced. That very well may be true but without more context I can’t make that determination. It may also well be true that the claims by the DoJ are true and that the narrator of this article is an unreliable narrator.

If you want me to think or feel a particular way then don’t lock the article behind a paywall and give actual context so that I can come to my own conclusions.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

They're not being silenced or anywhere close to it. The prosecutors asked the judge to order the defendant to stop talking to them about some aspects of the case, I guess because they don't want anything that might build any sympathy for the guy they're prosecuting, and the judge (apparently, from all appearances, since they wrote the story and seem to still be talking to the guy uninterrupted) said no.

And then the guy wrote a story like "hey it seems like every single action these prosecutors are taking is like they want to put him in prison, what the fuck is that, that's not balanced."

FWIW it's not a paywall; they just want your email address

Senokir ,

Thank you. That’s about what I suspected. And an email may not technically be a paywall but imo if they’re going to sell it or even just use it to spam me with shit that’s just another form of payment. I could make a fake email address or something but honestly I’m not going to go through all of that for what seems like a clearly shitty article from that parts that I can see.

PoolloverNathan ,

What the fuck, US?

Also, it appears said prosecutors are here and downvoting this.

PahassaPaikassa ,

Ehh, maybe readjust a bit. Do you really think that the prosecutors are even aware of your comment, this thread, or even lemmy? They probably have more important stuff to do than downvote a comment in a 12 comment thread in a small social media platform.

PoolloverNathan ,

It was a joke…

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