This isn’t about intimidating Don Lemon. It’s about establishing the precedent that journalism equals criminal conspiracy when the regime decides it does.
Notice the pattern:
Federal magistrate judge denies warrant (no evidence of crime). Appeals court denies DOJ request (no evidence). Career prosecutors refuse the case (can’t win in court). But DOJ keeps pushing until a grand jury indicts anyway.
That’s the mechanism. When legal procedures don’t produce the outcome you want, you bypass them until something works.
The conviction doesn’t matter. The arrest is the punishment. The process is the deterrent.
Hannah Natanson getting her devices seized for reporting leaked information follows the same logic. No journalist has ever been prosecuted for receiving classified information, but the regime is testing whether they can change that precedent. Not because they’ll win the case, but because seizing devices and threatening prosecution makes other journalists think twice before publishing.
It’s constructing the enforcement apparatus for selective prosecution. The regime doesn’t need to arrest every critical journalist. They need to arrest enough high-profile ones that the rest self-censor.
That’s how authoritarian capture of media works…you don’t shut down every outlet, you make everyone afraid to push boundaries.
The people who stayed in DOJ after the purge are the ones willing to bring these cases. Career prosecutors refused. The apparatchiks who replaced them or who calculated compliance was worth it, they’re the ones making this operational.
That’s the leverage structure at work. Not everyone gets arrested. Just enough to send the message.
—Johan
I also wrote about this leverage structure in my piece yesterday.
President's cannot establish precedent by violating our Constitution. At most, they merely manipulate perception about what our Constitution permits them to do. That's why it's important for us to know what our Constitution does and how.
The First Amendment was written in 1789 and ratified by 1791 to secure every individual's right to oppose abusive (purported) public servants and to protect us as we do so. It was written and ratified to encourage Americans of every generation to be as active and outspoken as the first generations of Americans were.
Multiple SCOTUS decisions have highlighted a highly enlightening statement by the First Continental Congress in 1774 about the meaning of our freedom of expression, communication and association ("the freedom of speech" and "press" and "the right of the people" to "assemble" declared in the First Amendment). That Congress included such lions of liberty as George Washington and John Adams (our first two presidents), John Jay (the first SCOTUS Chief Justice), Patrick Henry (first governor of independent Virginia), Samuel Adams and John Dickinson.
In a letter to the people of Quebec (to try to recruit them to join the United States) they declared our “five great rights.” One of the “great rights” was “the freedom of the press.” Fortunately, the First Continental Congress did more than merely write that right. They shed vital light on its power and purpose:
"The importance of this consists," in very significant part, in the "diffusion of liberal sentiments on the administration of Government, its ready communication of thoughts between subjects, and its consequential promotion of union among them, whereby oppressive officers are shamed or intimidated, into more honourable and just modes of conducting [public] affairs."
SCOTUS justices included the foregoing in majority opinions in Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931) and Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957), as well as in in Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88 (1940) (where SCOTUS substituted “ashamed” for “shamed”) and in a dissenting opinion in Herbert v. Lando, 441 U.S. 153 (1979).
The Thornhill SCOTUS justices faithfully supported our Constitution with the following crucial elaboration:
"The freedom of speech and of the press guaranteed by the Constitution embraces at the least the liberty to discuss publicly and truthfully all matters of public concern without previous restraint or fear of subsequent punishment. The exigencies of the colonial period and the efforts to secure freedom from oppressive administration developed a broadened conception of these liberties as adequate to supply the public need for information and education with respect to the significant issues of the times. . . . Freedom of discussion, if it would fulfill its historic function in this nation, must embrace all issues about which information is needed or appropriate to enable the members of society to cope with the exigencies of their period."
Just imagine the screams if the Biden administration had even investigated someone in Fox News, OAN or Newmax, let alone charged them after losing twice in court.
Your closing sentences brought tears to my eyes. Thankful for all who are standing up to this regime in public ways (including you and all at PN). Proud to do my part, as well.
As always with Trump, it’s loud threats and blaring headlines — he knows he cannot, and has not, win on the merits. Isn’t this what got him impeached the first time?
This isn’t about intimidating Don Lemon. It’s about establishing the precedent that journalism equals criminal conspiracy when the regime decides it does.
Notice the pattern:
Federal magistrate judge denies warrant (no evidence of crime). Appeals court denies DOJ request (no evidence). Career prosecutors refuse the case (can’t win in court). But DOJ keeps pushing until a grand jury indicts anyway.
That’s the mechanism. When legal procedures don’t produce the outcome you want, you bypass them until something works.
The conviction doesn’t matter. The arrest is the punishment. The process is the deterrent.
Hannah Natanson getting her devices seized for reporting leaked information follows the same logic. No journalist has ever been prosecuted for receiving classified information, but the regime is testing whether they can change that precedent. Not because they’ll win the case, but because seizing devices and threatening prosecution makes other journalists think twice before publishing.
It’s constructing the enforcement apparatus for selective prosecution. The regime doesn’t need to arrest every critical journalist. They need to arrest enough high-profile ones that the rest self-censor.
That’s how authoritarian capture of media works…you don’t shut down every outlet, you make everyone afraid to push boundaries.
The people who stayed in DOJ after the purge are the ones willing to bring these cases. Career prosecutors refused. The apparatchiks who replaced them or who calculated compliance was worth it, they’re the ones making this operational.
That’s the leverage structure at work. Not everyone gets arrested. Just enough to send the message.
—Johan
I also wrote about this leverage structure in my piece yesterday.
President's cannot establish precedent by violating our Constitution. At most, they merely manipulate perception about what our Constitution permits them to do. That's why it's important for us to know what our Constitution does and how.
The First Amendment was written in 1789 and ratified by 1791 to secure every individual's right to oppose abusive (purported) public servants and to protect us as we do so. It was written and ratified to encourage Americans of every generation to be as active and outspoken as the first generations of Americans were.
Multiple SCOTUS decisions have highlighted a highly enlightening statement by the First Continental Congress in 1774 about the meaning of our freedom of expression, communication and association ("the freedom of speech" and "press" and "the right of the people" to "assemble" declared in the First Amendment). That Congress included such lions of liberty as George Washington and John Adams (our first two presidents), John Jay (the first SCOTUS Chief Justice), Patrick Henry (first governor of independent Virginia), Samuel Adams and John Dickinson.
In a letter to the people of Quebec (to try to recruit them to join the United States) they declared our “five great rights.” One of the “great rights” was “the freedom of the press.” Fortunately, the First Continental Congress did more than merely write that right. They shed vital light on its power and purpose:
"The importance of this consists," in very significant part, in the "diffusion of liberal sentiments on the administration of Government, its ready communication of thoughts between subjects, and its consequential promotion of union among them, whereby oppressive officers are shamed or intimidated, into more honourable and just modes of conducting [public] affairs."
SCOTUS justices included the foregoing in majority opinions in Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931) and Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957), as well as in in Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88 (1940) (where SCOTUS substituted “ashamed” for “shamed”) and in a dissenting opinion in Herbert v. Lando, 441 U.S. 153 (1979).
The Thornhill SCOTUS justices faithfully supported our Constitution with the following crucial elaboration:
"The freedom of speech and of the press guaranteed by the Constitution embraces at the least the liberty to discuss publicly and truthfully all matters of public concern without previous restraint or fear of subsequent punishment. The exigencies of the colonial period and the efforts to secure freedom from oppressive administration developed a broadened conception of these liberties as adequate to supply the public need for information and education with respect to the significant issues of the times. . . . Freedom of discussion, if it would fulfill its historic function in this nation, must embrace all issues about which information is needed or appropriate to enable the members of society to cope with the exigencies of their period."
Just imagine the screams if the Biden administration had even investigated someone in Fox News, OAN or Newmax, let alone charged them after losing twice in court.
That pesky 1st Amendment stands in their way. man, does this regime ever confirm that the Bill of Rights was necessary.
Your closing sentences brought tears to my eyes. Thankful for all who are standing up to this regime in public ways (including you and all at PN). Proud to do my part, as well.
Thank you for this true article Paul.
As always with Trump, it’s loud threats and blaring headlines — he knows he cannot, and has not, win on the merits. Isn’t this what got him impeached the first time?