Police State: Feds Raid Investigative Reporter @AudreyHudson, Seize Notes

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As soon as I saw the headline, I called Audrey, whom I worked with for years at The Washington Times. Audrey said she was “terrified” when she learned that police who raided her home in August — believe it or not, they had a search warrant for a potato launcher her husband had bought online — had taken notes containing information about sources for some of her reporting on TSA scandals.

By the way, you can blame Audrey for my career as a blogger. The day in January 2008 it was announced that the Times had hired a new executive editor from our hated rival — passing over veteran newspaperman Fran Coombs as replacement for retiring Wes Pruden — Audrey and I went outside for a smoke break. “If I had wanted to work for a Postie, I’d have applied at the f–king Post,” she said, and I resolved at that very moment to resign, which I did the next day.

While I hesitate to suggest a political motive for the raid on Audrey’s house, Alex Pappas’ report at the Daily Caller raises suspicions:

A veteran Washington D.C. investigative journalist says the Department of Homeland Security confiscated a stack of her confidential files during a raid of her home in August — leading her to fear that a number of her sources inside the federal government have now been exposed.
In an interview with The Daily Caller, journalist Audrey Hudson revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were involved in a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. . . .
At about 4:30 a.m. on Aug. 6, Hudson said officers dressed in full body armor presented a search warrant to enter the home she shares on the bay with her husband. She estimates that at least seven officers took part in the raid.
After the search began, Hudson said she was asked by an investigator with the Coast Guard Investigative Service if she was the same Audrey Hudson who had written a series of critical stories about air marshals for The Washington Times over the last decade. The Coast Guard operates under the Department of Homeland Security. . . .

Read the whole thing by Alex Pappas. Discussing the story with me, Audrey praised Alex’s reporting — high praise, indeed.

UPDATE: Now a Memeorandum thread, with more commentary by Bryan Preston at PJ Tatler and Rick Moran at the American Thinker.

 

133 comments

  1. This is sickening! Where is the fucking ACLU? Why isn’t this story on the front page of every damn newspaper in this country? If they don’t call for Congressional investigations on this, we have lost this nation. This is the kind of shit that happens under Putin.

    I seriously want to throw up.

  2. Clearly a fishing expedition directed against her, and not her husband. Assuming he’s precluded from owning or possessing a firearm, a potato launcher does not fall within that category under federal law, anymore so than a July 4 roman candle.

  3. Through the eye of the tater, Homeland watches the right,
    Risin’ up to the bidding of Obama.
    And the other McCain stalks his scoop in the night,
    While the Prez sees us all through the eye of the tater.

    (Sorry.)

  5. This is why we have the NSA and Homeland Security spying on Americans: it’s being used to hunt down those who dare to criticize the Administration.

    Is the search and seizure illegal? Totally. And there won’t be any consequences.

  6. And so we move ever further into our new status as a police state. There is a new outrage almost daily. Fascism has arrived in what was once the USA. We cannot survive as a free nation with Obama at the helm over the next three years. He must be impeached.

  9. A 4:30 AM raid by a freaking SWAT team? Seriously? What were they expecting? The tyrants are obviously afraid of something.

    This sounds disturbingly close to the midnight raids of Stalin’s Cheka rounding up “enemies of the State”.

  10. Oh, there will be consequences alright. Just not the kind where paper gets pushed around. The most important consequence is the lessons the rest of us are learning.

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