Judge orders stop to FBI search of devices seized from Washington Post reporter
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"
I suspect we're witnessing the justice department tear itself apart in an effort to both appease and resist the fascists that have taken over.
I suspect we're witnessing the justice department tear itself apart in an effort to both appease and resist the fascists that have taken over.
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I'd say I'm just happy to see the Post get the future it editorialized for, but I can't really be happy about our current leaders speedrunning the 1930s.
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And disseminated it to Trump's Gestapo 'loyalty' police, aka ICE, for 'corrective' actions.
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chaos215bar2
Ars Praefectus
It's more the judiciary (minus the Supreme Court) vs. the justice department.
DOJ is part of the executive, and is fully onboard with Trump at this point. The courts are a separate, co-equal branch of government, though they obviously lack enforcement authority. (Which is where Congress would come in to tell the DOJ to shape up or face consequences, if they were doing their job.)
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Nobody will face any consequences for not complying. Why, then, would they comply?
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Anyone who did comply would be fired. So again, why would they comply?
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Hey now, Congressional Democrats might send them a strongly worded letter. That'll really show them.
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And now that the have the info, the parallel evidence chain(s) will be easy to build.
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No, it’s a way of saying a team who sole job is to filter through materials for what is legally relevant to the case and pass it on to the investigative team.
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Duh... That was the whole point to it.
Fascist fucks fucking folks' freedoms.
I hope I live long enough to see these bastards land in prison.
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Too little; too late.
They already have the list of 1100+ private channel, government contacts on Signal -- which almost certainly was their main goal in the first place.
This just means that in courts and investigative actions they'll have to lie about where/how they received that information, and any other information they've managed to acquire. (What are the odds they've already copied and/or imaged everything of possible use already?)
Yes, exactly.
They already have the list of 1100+ private channel, government contacts on Signal -- which almost certainly was their main goal in the first place.
This just means that in courts and investigative actions they'll have to lie about where/how they received that information, and any other information they've managed to acquire. (What are the odds they've already copied and/or imaged everything of possible use already?)
Yes, exactly.
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I see this refrain often... but seriously... what the heck else are they supposed to do? It's not like they have a majority in Congress or any actual authority over the executive branch.
So this is one of those things that is kind of meaningless when you consider the options available to them. The alternative is that they do nothing at all.
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This administration has violated the 1st Amendment numerous times and we can expect it to violate it again. We can’t trust the Supreme Court to protect these rights because the Constitution in their hands has turned into Calvin Ball.
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Why hasn't ICE invaded Oklahoma yet? Statistically it has an extremely high per capita murder rate and a high rate of illegal immigrants.
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Since the Trump administration has ignored Congress repeatedly, it’s not clear what consequences you expect here. In the administration’s view (taken from Vought and Project 2025), the president is the only actual power (at least as long as the president is a republican that they approve of).
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Yup. It's a popular 'technically legal' method of building cases -- use illegal and/or unconstitutional actions to acquire inadmissible evidence, then using that as a scaffold to find admissible 'versions' of that evidence after the fact.
But the real purpose here is to figure out and expose who the reporter's contacts and information sources are, so that the Trumpanzee gang can fart out 'crimes' they can use to prosecute and imprison anyone disloyal to Trump. The only way fascist regimes can hold onto power is if they make the public afraid too take a stand against them. Public destruction of anyone who does take a stand is one of the chief methods used to achieve that goal. But you can't do that unless you know who those people are. And reporters aren't going to hand that information over willingly.
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Nice window you have there. It'd be a shame if you fell out of it.
I agree to a point, but both parties have the same set of rules applied to them. One party simply doesn't give a fuck and is choosing to ignore what seem to be pretty much non-enforcable rules at this point. When Democrats did have control over things, they acted like everything was business as usual and ignored the fact that the other party was very much not playing by the same set of old rules any more. They basically took no concrete steps to try to stop any of this, perhaps naively thinking none of this would happen even though it was right in front of their faces. If we were in any sort of normal reality, all of what is going on would most certainly guarantee the Democrats would win next time. I don't know that there will be a next time. I'm not one to say "fuck the Democrats", but the Democrats did have their chance, and they did fuck up. Hard. Inaction, complacency, fragmentation - even when everything was on the line. Take your pick. The last president could have, and should have taken firmer action, but chose not to. So here we are.
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chaos215bar2
Ars Praefectus
Not immediately folding and giving up their leverage the moment there's the slightest hint that things might get a little spicy would be a start.
The problem Democratic leadership has is that even now, they still don't seem to really understand what they're fighting and what's at stake, when it should have been obvious years ago. And they're unable to take a stand, because they're so worried they might offend someone in the process that they always, almost invariably back down before they really get what they want. Sometimes simply showing a willingness to fight is more important than winning every battle.
Bernie and AOC always understood this. What the rest of the party misses is, there's still plenty of opportunity to be seen publicly standing up for your constituents and what you believe even without taking what some would consider to be such extreme left positions.
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4th Amendment violation is on brand.
Immigration officers assert sweeping power to enter homes without a judge’s warrant, memo says (AP News)
Immigration officers assert sweeping power to enter homes without a judge’s warrant, memo says (AP News)
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The alternative is to stand up and clearly articulate what's wrong and what they'll do about it when returned to power.
Additionally, they have power right now. The government will shut down next week if Dems don't fund it.
Unfortunately, they'll pay lip service to resisting fascism and then they'll vote to fund it in full.
There's even Dem talk of increasing ICE funding, for "training." Because that's their response to people being shot in the streets and doors being broken down without a warrant, more money for "training."
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Man if I were a journalist talking to gov sources I'd only communicate with them over Signal on a Pixel running GrapheneOS that I power down every night. Granted, that's kind of unreasonable for a less-technical person (and inconvenient), but once Desktop Mode gets out of beta, it really might be the best approach for people doing this kind of work.
Sad that this is the kind of thing journalists need to consider it this country.
Sad that this is the kind of thing journalists need to consider it this country.
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Even though the Feds have no doubt archived copies of everything they could get into, the journalist still has an interest in getting her devices back, because she’s lost a huge amount of her personal data and access tied to those devices.
Now, that said, if/when she does get the hardware back, I hope she engages an expert for advice on how to most safely recover her accounts and data - because I for one would assume that the seized hardware is now running spyware applications to monitor her activities.
Now, that said, if/when she does get the hardware back, I hope she engages an expert for advice on how to most safely recover her accounts and data - because I for one would assume that the seized hardware is now running spyware applications to monitor her activities.
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its not remotely like that because the Supreme Court which rules above this court is already filled with sycophants
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No, a separate team that are not doing the actual investigation that looks through the material and selects only the parts relevant to ensure the unrelated information does not leak.
In this case with a journalist, even that is probably illegal, but in corporate cases its used, a third party not related to either part in the case gets access to a full set of materials and a list of either specific documents or terms or similar that are supposed to be relevant and approved by the court and then picks out just those document to be shared by the other part in the case, avoiding leaking for example unrelated business secrets that might be in the data.
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The option the Democrats have is to pound the message home that this behavior by Trump and the "Justice" Department is illegal because it violates the Constitution. The citizenry need to hear this message time and again on every media outlet they can access including FOX et al.
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Nope. Here’s to hoping that a future democratic president gets aggressive and pursues the fuck out of all of the people in this administration and throws them all in jail
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The administration MO on every single one of these cases was to keep working as long as possible, evade and complicate rulings, then if a final judgement ruled against them argue it's now impossible to fix.
So absolutely not.
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Yeah. It's kind of ignoring that these lawless, ruthless 'ICE agents' are using exactly the 'training' they've been given, exactly the way that ICE and the Republican party wants them to use it. Spending more money to make them 'better' terrorists isn't money well spent.
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And that letter might even show “concern”, how could they ever withstand that onslaught?
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Oh, another thought I had later is how this might fly if it's forced on them.
Let the fascist have equal time. Let them go on the shows, with panels of experts to eviscerate their views asking them leading questions and make their on-air appearance a living hell for them.,
You know, like Fox News did to liberals.
They want equal time. Give it to them. And make them regret forgetting the adage, "beware of what you want, you just might get it.."
Let the fascist have equal time. Let them go on the shows, with panels of experts to eviscerate their views asking them leading questions and make their on-air appearance a living hell for them.,
You know, like Fox News did to liberals.
They want equal time. Give it to them. And make them regret forgetting the adage, "beware of what you want, you just might get it.."
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I read about that earlier today. Just gonna do the wrong things until someone tells them to stop, and then complain about activist judges.
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And even if they did comply. Even if the journalist got her devices back and the FBI really did delete any copies; the message has been sent... to her. YOU comply, or we send the goon squad to your door again.
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