Que Twilight Zone theme. Scott Johnson of the conservative blog Powerline has been served a draft subpoena ordering that he preserve records of items he noted in his blog posts.Judge James Robart, presiding over the Hawaii v. Trump “travel ban” case, authorized the move.Johnson writes:
These are strange days. I seem to have been caught up in the so-called “travel ban” litigation challenging President Trump’s executive orders “Protecting the nation from foreign terrorist entry into the United States.” Yesterday I was served with a letter and draft subpoena from one Tana Lin of the Keller Rohrback law firm’s Seattle office alerting me to my “document preservation obligations with respect to documents that are relevant or potentially relevant to this litigation.” Lin represents plaintiffs in Doe v. Trump, venued in the federal district court for the Western District of Washington.Although this action has been stayed pending a ruling from the Ninth Circuit in the parallel Hawaii v Trump “travel ban” case, Judge Robart has authorized Lin to notify me of her lawsuit and seek my confirmation by June 15 that I will preserve potentially relevant documents until such time as she sends me a formal subpoena or the lawsuit is formally resolved.
The documents Lin wants preserved are Johnson’s notes on a Trump speech.
Johnson continues:
Leafing through the draft subpoena to ascertain what documents I could possibly have that would be relevant to the stayed “travel ban” lawsuit, I find this (capitalization in the original indicating defined terms):
1. All Documents and Communications Concerning President Donald Trump’s comments about Muslims, Christians or refugees during the April 24, 2017 reception for media at the White House which you and/or your colleagues attended. This request includes but is not limited to contemporaneous notes or recordings you made or taken [sic] of the event.2. The notebook referenced in one of Your blog post entries regarding the April 24, 2017 reception in which You state, “Although there was some degree of difficulty writing while standing, I took notes on the questions and Trump’s answers in my new notebook from CVS.”3. Documents reflecting Your Document retention policies or procedures in effect from January 1, 2017 through the present.
The two footnotes I have omitted from the requests above cite “At the White House with Trump” (reporting on Trump’s remarks) and “Not at the White House with Trump” (mentioning my notebook).
The April 24, 2017 media reception in question was for right-leaning media, including online media such as Breitbart and Powerline, those excluded from Obama’s similar media confabs that included leftist sites like HuffPo and Mother Jones.
It’s not clear how much—if any—of the April 24th meeting between conservative media and the President was originally intended to be off-the-record, but after the president spoke, Johnson reports that the meeting was declared on-the-record.
In his initial report of the event, Johnson doesn’t mention the “travel ban,” so it either didn’t come up, or if it did, nothing new and noteworthy was shared.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY