Journalist Tim Burke charged with leaking Tucker Carlson clip

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Tim Burke, a freelance journalist and media consultant, was charged with 14 federal crimes, including conspiracy. According to reports, Mr. Burke was arrested this morning. tampa bay times.

Last May, Burke’s home in Tampa, Florida, was raided by the FBI as part of an investigation into how unaired Fox News clips were aired. tucker carlson tonight It was leaked to Vice and the liberal watchdog group Media Matters.

The clip includes footage of Kanye West repeating anti-Semitic tropes, as well as embarrassing footage of Carlson making inappropriate comments to a makeup artist and discussing his deposition in the Dominion defamation case. It also included — an experience, he says, “triggered my mind to go crazy” — and was carried out by a lawyer whom Carlson called a “slimy son of a bitch.” (Carlson was later removed from the network.)

The leak was a huge embarrassment for Fox News, whose executives were “absolutely horrified” about the Kanye video in particular, The Daily Beast reported. Fox News’ lawyers then sent Media Matters a cease-and-desist letter, warning it to stop publishing the clip. “Reporting newsworthy leaked material is a cornerstone of journalism. For Fox to claim otherwise is absurd and further dispels any pretense of being a journalistic operation,” said Media Matters President. Angelo Carusone said in a statement at the time.

A number of devices, including cell phones, computers and hard drives, were seized during a raid on Burke’s home last year, which reportedly began at dawn and lasted nearly 10 hours. At the time, the affidavit was not made public and Burke’s lawyers did not know what crimes their client allegedly committed.

Burke, a former Deadspin reporter, exposed Notre Dame football player Manti Te’o’s elaborate catfishing, and how dozens of local Sinclair broadcast anchors read the same script to tell viewers they were “one-sided news.” He was credited with discovering and piecing together footage that warned of this. Stories that plague our country. After Deadspin, he worked as a video director at The Daily Beast before starting his own business sourcing video content for his media clients.

Burke’s lawyer, former federal prosecutor Mark Rusch, who pursued the case for the Justice Department’s fraud division, said the Fox News clip was obtained legally and that Burke was not allowed to act under the First Amendment. claimed to be a protected journalist.

Rush described the method Burke used to obtain the video in an August interview. Columbia Journalism Review. “Fox, like many other broadcasters, is live streaming on an ongoing basis to a number of different parties (such as affiliates), and these live feeds are high resolution and encrypted. “At the same time, we also broadcast low-resolution, unencrypted feeds. These are internet addressable and do not require a user ID or password. All you need to know is the URL,” Rasch said. says.

He added in that interview that Burke made no attempt to hide his activities.[E]A quick look reveals the source of the data, pointing directly to Tim Burke’s IP address. why? Because he wasn’t secretive about this. He was accessing public URLs from his own IP address. he didn’t try to hide it. He didn’t evade anything. But Fox said he never authorized this and that the government acted on that theory. ”

“Finding and reporting newsworthy content is not a crime, no matter who is embarrassed by the reporting,” Burke said in a written statement. tampa bay times The first public comments on the issue were made in July. A legal fund has been set up to help Mr Burke fight the charges.