More Charges
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Attorneys for a journalist threatened with prosecution for being at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, are challenging federal prosecutors to try his case outside the District of Columbia, suggesting prosecutors are seeking retribution for his recent reporting on possible Capitol Police perjury and the Jan. 6 pipe bombs.
Six attorneys who said they volunteered to represent Stephen Baker of Raleigh, N.C., released a statement on Jan. 22 expressing belief that the DOJ is seeking even more serious Jan. 6 charges as retaliation.
Mr. Baker, a former independent journalist, now writes for Blaze Media.
“We now have information that Steve’s reporting has so agitated officials in multiple federal agencies that an effort is now underway to find a basis to charge Steve with more serious crimes and to use those more serious crimes as a pretext for early morning raids to execute search and arrest warrants on him and his family,” the statement read.
“If this is true, and search and arrest warrants are used to drag Steve out of his house in the early morning hours someday soon, that will be evidence of retaliation against a journalist exercising his First Amendment rights to report information that is embarrassing to government officials.”
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J Jolly referenced this topic on
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The charges:
Were any other members of the media in the Capitol building at that time?
Asking for a friend, of course.
@George-K said in More Charges:
The charges:
Were any other members of the media in the Capitol building at that time?
Asking for a friend, of course.
Wasn’t there a Mother Jones Investigative Reporter there pretending to be pro-Trump and riling up the crowd?
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Power trip.
Officers need to be slapped down, much of management needs to be fired.
Besides judges, one of the primary reasons to elect Trump.
@Jolly said in More Charges:
Power trip.
Officers need to be slapped down, much of management needs to be fired.
Besides judges, one of the primary reasons to elect Trump
LOL
https://nodebb.the-new-coffee-room.club/topic/30069/the-george-floyd-justice-in-policing-act/7
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Baker was arrested for covering what he viewed as a citizen protest defying the government and demanding justice. He did not hide his support for their cause as he reported on what became a riot.
Baker, however, is a conservative journalist and the protest that he was covering became the Jan. 6th riot. Now, the Biden administration has arrested Baker on four misdemeanor charges linked to his entry into the Capitol on that day.
Baker would later not only supply stories to his main media outlet, Blaze News, but also sell videos to The New York Times and HBO.
Journalists often accompany protesters and even mobs as stories unfold. Indeed, there were many reporters in the crowd that entered the Capitol. But Baker, the conservative journalist, was charged while others were not.
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Would the government have charged an NPR reporter who accompanied Black Lives Matter rioters in the police station they occupied in Seattle? If not, then what exactly is the dividing line between crime and advocacy journalism? Is it an ideological line?
In the George Floyd riots, at least 126 journalists were arrested or detained in 2020. Virtually all of the charges against them were dropped. Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri was tried on simple misdemeanors for failure to disperse and interference with official acts. She was acquitted.
The difference is that a long list of journalistic organizations came to her aid. That is not the case for Baker.