Judge Liles Burke missed the chance to remind the Justice Department that it, too, must respect First Amendment rights, writes QuinHillyer. Given President JoeBiden’s politicized DOJ, that reminder is very much needed.
The Justice Department suffered an epic smackdown last night when an Alabama-based federal district judge quashed its abusive subpoena against the Alabama chapter of the Eagle Forum. Still, Judge Liles Burke left one important thing unsaid: the First Amendment should be openly, not merely implicitly, defended.
The subpoena was abusive on three fronts. Judge Burke did a good job of castigating the Justice Department on the first two fronts, but he left the final front unaddressed.The first question was whether the subpoena was even relevant to the case. The second was whether, even if relevant, it was properly limited rather than an unnecessarily burdensome fishing expedition.
Burke was more specific about why the subpoena was abusively voluminous. “The burden of the requested material greatly outweighs any slight relevance it may have,” he wrote. “Eagle Forum [and another subpoenaed group] are nonprofit organizations staffed almost entirely of volunteers….