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.)
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.
