Senator Chuck Grassley, Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the following statement after the Department of Homeland Security settled a case with the Washington Times regarding documents of a Washington Times reporter that it had seized during execution of a search warrant to allegedly seize weapons and firearms belonging to the reporter’s husband.
Grassley wrote to the United States Coast Guard on March 27, 2014, and July 17, 2014, questioning the seizure of the reporter’s documents. Those letters can be found here (March 27, 2014) and here (July 17, 2014), while the Coast Guard’s responses can be found here (April 9, 2014) and here (August 1, 2014).
“This case seems to have had a positive outcome for the First Amendment, but the Department of Homeland Security’s claims that it did not record the names of individual whistleblowers before returning the documents cannot be checked. Homeland Security should continue to ensure that there is no reprisal against any whistleblower. Further, it’s outrageous that the Department of Homeland Security seized non-classified documents from any individual’s custody without the authorization of a search warrant. Government agencies must be reminded in the future that unless documents are classified or prohibited from distribution by Congress, internal protections of information do not give an agency the authority to seize documents once they are outside of its control”
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