Police conduct armed raid on home of U.S. journalist and seize documents revealing her sources

Friday, November 01, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: police raid, journalist, illegal seizure

(NaturalNews) It's getting so that it is downright hazardous to be a journalist in America these days. Or is it "Amerika"?

In a country where there is a specific provision of our founding document that acknowledges and guarantees freedom of the press, our federal law enforcement agencies are beginning to act more like the Gestapo of Hitler's Nazi Germany than protectors and defenders of the Constitution.

The most recent example of jack-booted treatment of a journalist was reported by The Daily Caller:

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. Hudson is a former Washington Times reporter and current freelance reporter.

Agents stole - yes, stole - her reporter's notes

A search warrant that was obtained by the news website indicated that the raid in August permitted law enforcement personnel to search for guns inside Hudson's home.

The document says that her husband, Paul Flanagan, was convicted in 1986 of resisting arrest in Prince George's County, a region of Maryland that borders the District of Columbia. The search warrant permitted cops to search the couple's residence and seize all weapons and ammunition, because of his prior conviction, under the law, Flanagan is prohibited from exercising his Second Amendment rights.

The DC reported, "But without Hudson's knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, she said."

Understandably angry about the seizure, Hudson is now speaking out about it. She has said that no subpoena for her reporter's notes was presented to her during the predawn raid. And as such, she says the confiscation was well outside the scope of the search warrant.

"They took my notes without my knowledge and without legal authority to do so," Hudson said. "The search warrant they presented said nothing about walking out of here with a single sheet of paper."

She provided The DC with a picture showing the stack of file folders in a bag marked "evidence/property."

Recently, a spokesman for the Maryland State Police would not provide any specifics about the search.

"Due to the ongoing criminal investigation and the potential for pending criminal charges at the state and/or federal level, the Maryland State Police will not discuss specific information about this investigation at this time," spokesman Greg Shipley said in a statement.

Protect us, please, from the potato gun

So - not only do cops and the Feds get to steal a reporter's notes, they don't feel they have to answer for it, either.

Here's more of what happened, as reported by The DC:

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.

Sounds an awful lot like political retribution now, doesn't it?

As for the part in the search warrant about the guns, Fox News and The DC reported that agents were looking for a "potato gun."

This would be comical if it weren't so serious.

Sources:

http://dailycaller.com

http://www.foxnews.com

http://www.theatlanticwire.com