Government Strategies issued the following announcement on Oct 16.
When they went in to seize the computer of one of Alison Lundergan Grimes' employees last month, they didn’t have a subpoena or a search warrant.
Kentucky State Police, working along with Garrard County Attorney Mark Metcalf, a Republican appointed as independent counsel by Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear, just took it.
Three plain-clothed officers.
One stood watch. One sat at the desk where the computer was. The other crawled around on the floor unplugging cables, according to an affidavit. And then they just took it.
Grimes' employees asked to see warrants. Nope.
They wanted to know what authority the state police were acting under. “We’ve got it,” was essentially the answer. “Now go away.”
It was only after an outside lawyer for Grimes complained to Metcalf and Beshear in emails that the state police obtained a search warrant — after the fact — that gave them the right to grab the computer and a thumb drive and to look at whatever was on them.
Who knows what, if anything, they found.
Background: State Police seize computer in Secretary of State Alison Grimes' office
We also don’t know what Franklin District Judge Chris Olds knew when he signed off, after the fact, on the search warrant. Did he know that state police officers had already violated the Constitution when they went in and grabbed the computer?
Olds was out of town and couldn’t be reached for comment.
What we do know is that it’s troubling.
Police have all kinds of access to lots of information about people. Why do they need to push the limits?
Does it have anything to do with an authoritarian president and an authoritarian governor and public acceptance of them flouting laws and generally accepted standards of those who went before them that makes police think they too can overstep?
Metcalf hasn’t responded to emails from Kenyon Meyer, Grimes’ lawyer. Beshear’s office hid behind Metcalf and said it has no power over what a special prosecutor does.
The office has apparently lost its voice and can’t say, “This was wrong.”
So all we know is that the state police took the computer and said they had the right to seize anything that belongs to the state.
No subpoena, no search warrant necessary.
And when Grimes' lawyer pushed for an agreement from Metcalf that he wouldn’t interview Grimes’ employees without communicating with Meyer or take their computers without a court order, Metcalf wouldn’t do that.
On Monday, Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd had to step in and order Metcalf to stop seizing computers, books and records without a warrant and to stop setting up interviews with Grimes’ employees without alerting Meyer. He also ordered the state police to stop violating the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on warrantless searches.
Why in the world did Shepherd even have to do that?
The investigation of Grimes grew out of complaints by Jared Dearing, the executive director of the State Board of Elections, that Grimes or her staff were illegally accessing the state’s voter data base for political purposes.
Grimes is an easy target these days.
Republicans gleefully point out that her father, Jerry Lundergan, was convicted last month of illegally funneling corporate contributions to Grimes' 2014 U.S. Senate Campaign.
And it's not a stretch to imagine that Beshear, whose family has long warred with the Lundergans, shed few tears when he learned that Grimes' dad would be headed off to the federal pokey.
I don’t know whether Grimes or her employees did anything illegal or not, but we should point out that the state’s voter database is a public record that you or I could obtain by requesting it from the Board of Elections.
You can bet your bippy that both Republican and Democratic parties have copies of that database.
But even if Grimes and her staff did do something to break the law, we should all be wary about this kind of overreach by the state police and the prosecutor who allowed it.
Gerth: Bevin owes taxpayers an explanation about how he uses their plane
It’s hard to imagine that the Kentucky State Police, which is part of the executive branch of government and serves under Gov. Matt Bevin, has the right to walk into another elected official’s office and seize anything without the prior approval of a judge.
To believe that would suggest the state police could also seize computers from Beshear’s office without a search warrant, or conversely, that Beshear’s office would have the power to take Bevin’s computer without a judge’s say-so.
Or for that matter, that the attorney general could head over to the state Department of Revenue and grab a copy of Bevin’s tax returns, which the governor once promised to release but then upon his election, refused.
Believe me when I tell you that neither Beshear nor Bevin would agree that their political opponents should be allowed to seize their records and computers in the manner that Metcalf and the state police did.
Original source here.
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