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. Yep, the brat’s Brownshirts and gestapo are on the move against anyone who would dare to criticize his imperial, totalitarian government. If memory serves, both Stalin and Hitler were strong advocates of intimidation and physical violence.

  2. I’m not going to blame a nice lady for your activities. You’re prolly under NSA surveillance too. I’m not going to blame her for that either.
    Free will, buddy. You have it.

  4. What kind of a question was posed by the Coast Guard? You’ve got to be kidding. I hope her response is something to the effect of “None of your f***ing business. If you need to know, show me the subpoena. Otherwise, get out. Here is the potato thing.”

  7. A search warrant must specify the items to be seized. If in the lawful conduct of the search, evidence of other crimes is discovered, it may be seized and used in prosecution. But files can’t be considered evidence without examining them, and examining them should surely be beyond the scope of a warrant for “weapons.”

    Now, we understand that unlawfully seized evidence cannot be used at trial, but that isn’t the point. There was no basis for the seizure at all. This is police state tactics. There need to be congressional hearings, the officers involved need to be questioned under oath as to why they would seize something so clearly unrelated.

  10. This explains why the NPS had to get their feet wet as street Sturmabteilung, freeing up other assets for search and seizure duties.

  11. One wonders how “wife’s papers and/or files” wound up on a search warrant for the “husbands potato launcher”. For that matter are potato launchers illegal? At any rate the warrant will never be challenged in court as Audrey and probably her husband will not be charged. They just want names of people talking to her.

  13. How convenient that a Coast Guard person, who just happened to be an Ex Air Marshall, was there to find the notes and sources of her expose of the…wait for it……Air Marshalls. Yes, indeed, what a coinky dink.

  14. What in the hell was the “Coast Guard Investigative Service” doing there in the first place? Just because they lived in a Bayside community?

  15. … a search warrant for a potato launcher …

    Is a potato launcher illegal under federal or state law ?
    Was the husband using illegal hairspray to launch the potatoes ?

    What idiot judge signed a warrant for a potato launcher ?

  17. What good will hearings do? To paraphrase Napoleon, how many battalions does Congress have? Congress has no battalions, no jails, and no electric chair.

  18. I totally agree with your point and your righteous anger. At the same time you’ll probably agree that absolutely nothing will be done about this. The MSM will ignore the story and the administration will stonewall (the only thing they’re good at). And nation will take one more step toward totalitarianism.

  20. What idiot judge? Hopefully not the same one presiding over Kimberlin’s federal lawsuit of Everyone.
    Maryland’s infatuation with fascism reminds me of Obi Wan’s description of Mos Eisley.

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