Right-Wing Media's Fake Narrative About Rosen Warrant Now Even More Incoherent

[ProSense]

Right-Wing Media's Fake Narrative About Rosen Warrant Now Even More Incoherent

SERGIO MUNOZ

Right-wing media are wildly distorting facts and criminal procedure to pretend Attorney General Eric Holder "lied" to Congress when he testified about government surveillance of journalists and prosecutorial discretion at a May 15 hearing...right-wing media have resorted to misrepresenting search warrant procedure, criminal law, and basic facts of what the Department of Justice (DOJ) actually did in their investigation of how a State Department employee may have violated the Espionage Act of 1917.

Specifically, right-wing media claim Holder's May 15 testimony is inconsistent with a two-year-old affidavit DOJ filed in support of a search warrant request for an email account associated with Fox News' James Rosen, as part of their investigation into the government official's unauthorized disclosure of classified information. Fox News host Sean Hannity was the most recent example, who showed a clip of the testimony on his May 29 show and then stated "what you just witnessed was the United States Attorney General lying while under oath before Congress."

Continuing in a vein set by Fox News host Megyn Kelly on the May 28 edition of America Live when she complained "it is one thing for the DOJ to go into a courtroom and try to get your records, your phone records, your email records. It's quite another for them not to give you any notice(,)" right-wing media is complaining that the underlying legal rationale behind the warrant request was incorrect. In support of this argument, the Drudge Report has been pushing claims made on Breitbart.com that Holder went "judge shopping" in pursuit of approval for this supposedly flawed search warrant.

But these claims ignore the clear text of the underlying law. As explained by Fourth Amendment expert and professor of law Orin Kerr in the conservative/libertarian legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy, the statue that supports the DOJ warrant request plainly states notification for the surveilled subject is not required.

The relevant law, the Stored Communications Act, does not require notice to the customer or subscriber when the government obtains a search warrant to search an online account. Under the statute, prior notice is required if the government obtains contents with less process than a warrant. But when the government obtains a warrant, no notice is required.

<...>

Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41 has a notice requirement, to be sure, but it is only that the notice be served where the property was taken -- which in the case of an e-mail account held by an ISP, means notice to the ISP not the customer.

- more -

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/05/30/right-wing-medias-fake-narrative-about-rosen-wa/194269

The RW creates its own reality and then begin salivating: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022921734

[The Magistrate]

1. It is Amazing How Little Even People On The Left, Ma'am, Seem To Understand About This

And if the 'Volokh' people are poking holes in the Faux narrative, they have less than nothing....

[ProSense]

2. A lot of it is being driven

by the media's self-righteous and disingenuous posturing and some is just opportunistic hits at Holder.

You're right, "they have less than nothing," and so their best hope is to make noise and try to confuse people.

[ProSense]

3. Kick! n/t

[uponit7771]

4. +1

[ProSense]

5. Um,

let it sink.

[ProSense]

6. Another. n/t

[kelliekat44]

7. Don't you mean RT and LT wing media? On this, they all seem to push the GOP meme. nt