Federal Judge Thinks The Best Fix For An Accidentally Unsealed Court Doc Is Prior Restraint
from the welcome-to-America,-your-honor dept
The Chicago Sun-Times dropped a bombshell on city residents late last month with an article detailing the FBI’s secret recordings of an Illinois politician’s shady business dealings.
The FBI secretly recorded Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan trying to get business for his private law firm from a developer brought to him by Ald. Danny Solis, who was weighing the developer’s request to build a hotel in Chinatown, according to a federal court affidavit obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
The affidavit makes clear for the first time that the federal investigation that has snared powerful Chicago Ald. Edward M. Burke extends beyond City Hall and into the Illinois statehouse, examining politicians’ longstanding practice of merging personal and political business.
The FBI’s affidavit connected the conversational dots for those reading the court documents.
An FBI agent alleges in the 120-page affidavit: “I understand Solis to mean that by hiring Madigan’s private firm, [the developer] would ensure that Solis and Madigan would take official action benefitting [the developer] in their capacity as public officials.”
Normally, there’s be no story here (meaning here at Techdirt) since this appears to be nothing more than the corruption we’ve come to expect from Illinois politicians. It’s a fine tradition dating back to the city’s founding, but hardly in our wheelhouse.
This would have stayed outside our wheelhouse if not for the judge presiding over this case. No one other than the judge and the involved parties were meant to see the details of these secret recordings. The details are the juiciest parts, though: the FBI got Alderman Solis to wear a wire by leveraging his personal life, which was apparently filled with “massage parlors and Viagra.”
The affidavit submitted by the FBI was supposed to be filed under seal. A clerical error left it exposed and unsealed on the PACER docket for an unknown amount of time. That’s how the Chicago Sun-Times got its hands on it. Greg Hinz at Chicago Business has more details — this time coming from the judge himself.
None of that sat well with Magistrate Judge Young Kim, who court records indicate has been presiding over the Solis matter.
According to my sources, Kim re-closed the affidavit and ordered the Sun-Times not to print what was in it, presumably on grounds that premature publicity could undermine what appears to be an extremely wide-ranging federal probe into City Hall that has been underway for four years or longer.
Here’s where we come in, along with the First Amendment. Judge Kim likely knows his prior restraint is unconstitutional. It couldn’t have escaped him that this is not the proper response to accidentally unsealed court documents. Unfortunately, he’s not the only judge who thinks the First Amendment doesn’t apply to the end result of court clerical errors. But Kim had advance notice from the prosecution side.
Knowledgeable sources also say that Kim’s order came despite sentiment within the U.S. attorney’s office here that a ban on publication, known as prior restraint, would be on shaky legal ground and likely inconsistent with past U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the famed Pentagon Papers case and others.
Kim did it anyway, resulting in the US Press Freedom Tracker taking notice of this unconstitutional blip on its radar. Judge Kim’s order blows right past Supreme Court precedent and attempts to do damage to the First Amendment protections the Chicago Sun-Times enjoys.
Not that any of Kim’s courtroom bluster matters… at least not at this point. The Chicago Sun-Times published its article anyway using the source document the court system failed to keep sealed. And now Chicagoans know yet another of their politicians engaged in questionable — if not illegal — business dealings. Readers are likely unsurprised, but even so, there’s a strong public interest in political corruption, which should easily outweigh anything Judge Kim might try to summon in support of his free speech blindside hit. It’s apparent the US attorney’s office won’t be backing him up, so he’s going to have to go it alone if he’s going to take a run at contempt of court hearings. Good luck with that.
Filed Under: corruption, fbi, free speech, illinois, michael madigan, prior restraint, sealed court documents, young kim
Companies: chicago sun times
Comments on “Federal Judge Thinks The Best Fix For An Accidentally Unsealed Court Doc Is Prior Restraint”
The court is correct. An error needs to be undone.
Re: Re:
You can’t put humpty back together again
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you can’t get the water back into the dam
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You’ve seen it; you can’t un-see it!
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You have my “LOL” vote bro. You are hilarious!
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So how would you suggest doing that? Use a time machine?
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"The court is correct. An error needs to be undone."
Sorta like those fools who demand that the Internet return all copies of whatever – immediately – or else! … LOL
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That cure is waaaaay worse than the disease.
The only person liable is the clerk
The only person the judge could reasonably site is the clerk who made the error. Assuming it was just an error and was not done maliciously, I don’t see why he is so upset. It isn’t as if everyone who needed to know about the corruption investigation wasn’t fully aware of the next steps already. Their corruption is next level once you realize it got to control the Whitehouse for two terms.
Contempt
Interested to see what the shakeout is. Even if it’s clearly protected speech that won’t stop an angry judge from dragging people into court on contempt charges.
Fire-Up the Gutenberg
Judge Kim’s order blows right past Supreme Court precedent and attempts to do damage to the First Amendment protections the Chicago Sun-Times enjoys.
First Amendment protections apply not only to the Chicago Sun-Times and/or other media outlets/platforms but to individual persons as well.
When the US Bill of Rights was authored the term "press" referred to a printing press which was/is a machine that could be owned by all persons not solely the media of the era – newspapers.
Although members of the media in our current era may like to delude themselves into believing it is otherwise the term "press" as used in the US Bill of Rights does not refer to them but to a type set printing press.
https://owlcation.com/humanities/Johannes-Gutenberg-and-the-Printing-Press-Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press
https://www.gutenberg.org/
Re: Fire-Up the Gutenberg
While that may be accurate, what matters is case law in the interim years, which have expanded the definition of "press" from the original meaning in the legal interpretation of the First Amendment.
https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/freedom-press
The quoted case on that page has a brief summary here, with additional links:
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1970/1873
Re: Re: Fire-Up the Gutenberg
I love it when they forget about the intervening 200 odd years of case law.
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I really wish they wouldn’t.
Re: Re: Re:2 Fire-Up the Gutenberg
Almost everybody does it when it’s convenient.
Re: Re: Re: Fire-Up the Gutenberg
I love it when they forget about the intervening 200 odd years of case law.
Caselaw? Also known as.. Common Law!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
Re: Re: Re: Fire-Up the Gutenberg
You mean like distributor liability for libel?
Re: Fire-Up the Gutenberg
You are exactly right. That is why the cases are so important – they protect the common people from the government just as much as newspapers and other publishers.
They do not, however, protect ANYONE from getting their flyers put in the trash when they are nailed to private property. If you want to put your poster on a privately owned bulletin board, you have to have the owner’s permission, and you have to follow their rules.
The rules don’t change just because things are digital. A privately owned bbs is no different than a corkboard in front of your house. Just because you can read it from the road, and maybe even reach it over the fence, doesn’t mean it suddenly belongs to you.
If you’re not our regular troll who cannot distinguish between restrictions on the US gov’t’s ability to censor the public and the public’s ability to exercise their right of association, please forgive me for stating the obvious.
Re: Fire-Up the Gutenberg
Even back then, they used the phrase "freedom of the press", and I don’t think they were suggesting that inanimate objects have freedoms. It was always about the freedom of people to gather and disseminate news; whatever the large news companies may think, it’s the courts that count and they’ve long upheld that it applies to everyone.
Re: Fire-Up the Gutenberg
Funny that that same literal standard never seems to apply to "arms" isn’t it?
Well at least the Judge is on the same level as the politicians, pretending to have absolute power & authority no matter what the law says…
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More like an absolute "check" against absolute "balance."
Sympathy for the prosecution
I concur that the judge has no legal standing to forbid this publication. However, I can sympathize with the government’s desire to keep this quiet until they finish ensnaring all the targets. The government should have sent a nice letter to the Sun-Times informing them that publication endangered the investigation, making clear that there would be no attempt at repercussions for publishing, and politely asking them to sit on the story in the interest of fighting public corruption. Maybe even bribe the Sun-Times with an offer for a first chance exclusive interview about the investigation, to be given and published as soon as the documents are intentionally unsealed.
Re: Sympathy for the prosecution
That was the plot of Deep Impact.
Thanks for reminding me that some producer actually cast Tea Leoni as a female lead in a film once.
Re: Re: Sympathy for the prosecution
Would you have preferred if they cast her as a male lead or something?
Re: Sympathy for the prosecution
The government should have sent a nice letter to the Sun-Times informing them that publication endangered the investigation
Ah yes, the perfect accompaniment to "I was afraid for my life." It cannot, by its very nature, be proven or disproven, but it evokes a sufficiently strong emotional response that our (all too human) judges and juries often legitimately believe that it not only can be proven, but that it actually was.
Re: Sympathy for the prosecution
Maybe even bribe the Sun-Times with an offer for a first chance exclusive interview about the investigation…
Absolutely! No way this could backfire. No way that this might even prove the point about corruption. Great suggestion!
Am I the only one bothered by the fact that the FBI blackmailed someone into becoming an informant by threatening their morality?
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Huh? Doesn’t sound like the guy in question had much morality to threaten!
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Reading the article, it seems that he was getting that stuff as bribes. So it wasn’t just the FBI getting dirt on his personal life; it was a cooperation deal. (It would still, of course, be blackmail if anyone else did it.)
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Corruption and Chicago politicians – can anyone name a more iconic duo?
How can it be contempt of court though?
The judge does not out-rank the Supreme Court, and his ruling directly contradicts SCOTUS precedent. His order is unconstitutional, and he derives his authority to issue orders from that Constitution.
So how can it be contempt to disobey an order he actually committed a federal crime when he issued it?
https://www.justice.gov/crt/deprivation-rights-under-color-law
Re: How can it be contempt of court though?
This order would certainly be overturned on appeal. However, it has to be appealed first.
IANAL but it seems extremely unlikely to me that this qualifies as deprivation of rights under color of law. I don’t think it meets the "willful" standard.
If every order that misinterpreted or ignored Supreme Court precedent were deprivation of rights under color of law, there would be a lot of judges in a lot of trouble.
Re: How can it be contempt of court though?
I will ignore for the moment that you have failed to identify any federal crime committed when issuing the unconstitutional order.
Instead, turning directly to your question: the correct remedy for an unconstitutional prior restraint is to appeal it, not to disobey it. Disobeying even an iunconstitutional court order is punishable. Gompers v. Buck Stove, 221 U.S. 418,450 (US 1911).
Oddly enough, disobeying an unconstitutional law is not punishable, assuming you raise and preserve the issue. It is only court edicts that have the magic power of punishment despite the constitution.
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