Newly released footage by the Marion County Record shows the alarming raid on the home of 98-year-old newspaper owner Joan Meyer, which resulted in her tragic death.
Earlier this month, The Gateway Pundit reported that the city of Marion’s five-officer police force, along with two sheriff’s deputies, conducted the raid on the Marion County Record’s office and the home of owner and publisher Eric Meyer.
The shocking operation left Joan Meyer, Eric’s mother who lived with him, and co-owner of the paper, dead, and has been characterized by Meyer as an assault on press freedom.
12 News reported:
The in-home surveillance video shows Joan, obviously upset by the officers wearing blue gloves and using flashlights to search through items in the home.
“Don’t you touch any of that stuff,” Joan can be heard saying to the officers. “This is my house.”
Joan, shown wearing a house coat and using a walker, then approaches an officer and tells him to order the officers out of her house. When he doesn’t move, she tells him to get out of the house and stand outside while the search is being conducted.
“I want to see what they’re doing,” says Joan as she makes her way around the couch where officers continue to search what she calls “personal papers.”
This portion of the video is about one-and-a-half hours into the police presence. Eric Meyer said it’s one of 82 captured on his mother’s home security cameras.
At the start, you can hear her asking her smart speaker to call her son who had left to go to the newspaper office and deal with the continuing situation there.
Meyer said the video ends when police pull the plug on her internet connection.
WATCH:
The raid came on the heels of a bitter feud between the Marion County Record and a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell. The newspaper had reportedly acquired sensitive documents potentially leading to the revocation of Newell’s liquor license. These documents included evidence of drunk driving convictions and operating a vehicle without a license.
While the paper decided not to report the story, it did notify the police about the documents, suspecting they were leaked by someone close to Newell’s ex-husband.
According to Daily Mail, a woman named Pam Maag tipped off Marion County Recorder reporter Phyllis Zorn about Newell’s DUI.
Maag claimed that she got the files from Kari’s ex-husband, Ryan Newell.
In response, Newell publicly accused the paper of illegally obtaining and disseminating the information. The newspaper published a story to clarify its position, but this was quickly followed by Friday’s raid.
The search warrant against the Record authorized the seizure of a wide array of items, including computer hardware and software, digital communications, cellular networks, servers, hard drives, utility records, and documents related to Newell. Specifically, the warrant focused on the ownership of computers that could be involved in the alleged “identity theft of Kari Newell.”
During the raid, police not only seized computers and internet routers from the Meyers’ home but also dug through Eric Meyer’s personal bank and investment statements. Joan Meyer, waiting for a Meals on Wheels delivery at the time, reportedly watched tearfully as the police conducted their search. The distressing event left her unable to eat or sleep, contributing to her death, according to the newspaper.
In addition to Joan Meyer’s death, one of the newspaper’s reporters was injured when an officer grabbed her cellphone out of her hand.
Despite the outcry and the tragic outcome, the Marion Kansas Police Department has defended its actions. They claim that federal protections did not extend to the journalists, as they were suspected of criminal activity.
In a statement per New York Post, the department emphasized its commitment to ensuring justice, stating, “The victim [Newell] asks that we do all the law allows to ensure justice is served. The Marion Kansas Police Department will [do] nothing less.”
Daily Mail reported:
Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody wrote in an affidavit that Marion County Record reporter Phyllis Zorn either impersonated Newell or lied about her reasoning to retrieve the records.
But Zorn, publisher and editor Eric Meyer and the newspaper’s attorney said on Sunday that no laws were broken when she accessed a public state website for information on the restaurant owner.
Publisher and editor Meyer said Zorn actually contacted the Department of Revenue before her online search and was instructed how to search records.
The reporter, asked to respond to the allegations that she used Newell’s name to obtain Newell’s personal information, said, ‘My response is I went to a Kansas Department of Revenue website and that’s where I got the information.’
She added: ‘Not to my knowledge was anything illegal or wrong.’
Eric Meyer, 69, the Record’s owner and publisher, has vowed to seek legal retribution against the City of Marion and those involved in the raid. Legal experts consulted by the paper reportedly agree that the city violated federal laws and the team’s Constitutional rights.
“Our first priority is to be able to publish next week,” Meyer said during the incident, “but we also want to make sure no other news organization is ever exposed to the Gestapo tactics we witnessed today. We will be seeking the maximum sanctions possible under law.”
Rhodes, the attorney representing the newspaper, argued that Zorn’s actions were entirely within the bounds of both state and federal laws.
“Using the subject’s name ‘is not identity theft,’” Rhodes said. “That’s just the way of accessing that person’s record.”
Meyer, the newspaper’s owner, explained that the paper had come into possession of Newell’s driver’s license number and date of birth through an unsolicited source. They had chosen not to write about Newell’s record initially.
However, when Newell publicly admitted at a City Council meeting that she had operated a vehicle while her license was suspended, the newspaper felt it was in the public’s interest to report on the matter.
This story originally appeared on TheGateWayPundit
