You may remember the prosecution of two men we wrote about over the sale of AutoKeyCards. Those are the, uh, “bottle openers” that Matt Hoover and Kristopher Ervin were selling through a couple of websites that have since been seized by the ATF.
Both men were found guilty of conspiring to transfer unregistered machinegun conversion devices (among other charges) back in April. They are due to be sentenced on September 6.
But Assistant US Attorney Laura Cofer Taylor, one of the prosecutors in the case, doesn’t like the fact that John Crump has been reporting about the trial at Ammoland and via his podcast and YouTube channel.
In fact, it upset her enough that she filed a complaint with the presiding judge in the case about Crump’s reporting, citing the fact that he’d apparently been privy to information about the case that was given to him by someone inside the courtroom. Public information.
The judge — properly — denied Taylor’s specious complaint about Crump’s reporting.
Taylor wasn’t finished, however. On Monday night, the AUSA filed another motion with the court regarding a pre-sentence investigative report that Crump has obtained from one of the defendants and has talked about in his YouTube program. Taylor has apparently taken exception to a number of the more vitriolic comments directed at her by readers and viewers under Crump’s YouTube videos and under the articles published on the case at Ammoland.
This has infuriated Taylor to the point that she’s now asking the judge to issue an order commanding Crump to destroy the report he has in his possession. Taylor cited case law involving these PSR reports that prohibit officers of the court from disseminating them. There is nothing, however, to prevent a defendant from sharing a pre-sentence report with anyone they choose.
Last night, Crump — who’s represented by three very capable attorneys — filed his own emergency motion to intervene in the case to respond to Taylor’s attempt to gag him. The matter will be argued before the court in a hearing in Jacksonville, Florida on Friday afternoon and Crump’s attorneys will be there, something AUSA Taylor probably didn’t anticipate.
We talked to Crump this afternoon. He has no intention of backing down. This is a naked attempt by a thin-skinned AUSA to try to intimidate him and keep him from reporting on a public criminal trial.
Taylor is apparently unaware that the Streisand Effect is real. That’s part of why we’re calling all of this pathetically poor behavior by a DOJ prosecutor to your attention. And it would be a darned shame if you shared this news with other people you know.
Read the full report including Crump’s highly entertaining emergency motion at Ammoland HERE.
(And please try to keep the comments civil, okay?)
