Small-town feud led to a raid that sent a shock through U.S. journalism; weekly paper is 'perhaps a little emboldened'

The first post-raid issue of the Marion County Record
(Photo by Chase Castor, The Washington Post)

"A police raid without precedent on a weekly newspaper alarmed First Amendment advocates. The real story of how it happened, though, is rooted in the roiling tensions and complex history of a few key community members," The Washington Post says above the most comprehensive report of the episode at the Marion County Record, written from Marion, Kansas, by Jonathan O’Connell, with help from Paul Farhi and Sofia Andrade in Washington.

Many of the details have been reported; Kari Newell, a business owner and restaurateur, and a newly hired police chief, Gideon Cody, wanted to avoid having their pasts investigated and possibly exposed by the newspaper. Newell said the Record is "like Geraldo [Rivera] meets the National Enquirer," the Post reports, and when Record reporter Deb Gruver asked Cody "about the career change that had brought him to this prairie community of 1,900 people," he set an initial "print that and I'll sue you" tone and stopped releasing the daily police logs, Publisher Eric Meyer said. "Cody told The Post that his review led him to believe these disclosures could violate privacy laws," an assertion that appears to have no basis in fact since the logs had been published for decades.

"At an Aug. 7 city council meeting, the tension among Cody, Newell and the Record exploded into public view," the Post reports. "During a hearing about her liquor-license application, Newell furiously alleged to the room that the Record had illegally obtained her driving record." The Post explains: "A couple of Marion residents — including Newell’s estranged husband — had circulated a screenshot of a page from a state database showing that the restaurateur had 15 years ago lost her driver’s license following a drunken-driving conviction." A later police affidavit alleged that a City Council member "intended to use the document to challenge Newell’s attempt to renew a liquor license," and the screenshot also made it to Record reporter Phyllis Zorn. To confirm the information, Zorn "went to the website for the Kansas Revenue Department and searched Newell’s name, plugging in certain personal information gleaned from the screenshot — Newell’s date of birth and driver’s license number — so she could access Newell’s record."

At that time, before the council meeting, "The Record decided against publishing a story — just as it had taken a pass on the murky accusations about Cody last spring. Meyer said he was uneasy with how the newspaper’s original tipster had obtained Newell’s record. Instead, he said, he privately let the police chief know that he had received some information about Newell that the original sources may have accessed illicitly. He said he also volunteered to the chief his suspicion that Newell had been driving without a license." When the matter went public, the paper published a story quoting Newell as "saying after the meeting that people all around Marion were high-fiving her for 'finally standing up to the Record'," the Post notes. The next day came the raids on the newspaper, the council member's home and the home Meyer shared with his 98-year-old mother (who died the next day), based on Cody's affadavit saying that Zorn was “either impersonating [Newell] or lying about the reasons why the record was being sought,” which are limited under Kansas law. The alleged crimes were unlawful use of a computer and felony identity theft, but the Revenue Department said later that Zorn's use of its website was legal.

"By day’s end, the story of how police swarmed the Record’s brick storefront offices and Meyer’s nearby home — walking off with computers, servers and a backup hard drive . . . was major news in Kansas and drawing attention beyond the state," the Post reports. Gabe Rottman of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press told the Post, "I think everyone realized how much of an existential threat this was." Such groups have "raised concerns about an overt strain of antipathy toward the media increasingly displayed by some politicians and public officials since the dawn of the Trump era," the Post notes. "Yet an actual raid by police represented a kind of government intrusion on media operations that none could remember seeing in this country. Federal law generally protects journalists from search warrants or raids, requiring law enforcement investigating a crime that reporters may have information about to use subpoenas or voluntary cooperation instead."

In an interview with Brooklyn-based journalist Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket, a Substack newsletter, Meyer "revealed the until-then-secret fact that the Record had been investigating Cody’s career in Kansas City and implied a possible connection to the raid," the Post reports. Cody told the Post, "I have no vendetta against them" and said, “How am I supposed to look the other way when I have a victim who says, ‘Are you going to do anything about this?’” Cody "noted that he had no unilateral power to launch the raid, which he said was approved by a county attorney and a local judge," but five days later the county attorney withdrew the warrant and the police returned seized items to the paper, promising to destroy a copy they made of one hard drive, which Meyer fears may have contained confidential information about the newspsper;s investigations.

"The Record continued its work as usual — or perhaps a little emboldened," the Post reports. "Gruver finally began publishing the reporting she had gathered about Cody’s Kansas City tenure last spring, including blistering, subjective and highly personal criticism attributed to sources who remained anonymous. It was the kind of reporting that previously gave the Record ethical hesitations — but that it now was going ahead with because 'other news organizations have begun publishing similar accounts from unnamed sources,' she wrote."

When Meyer welcomed reporter O'Connell to the office last week, "another visitor walked in, using a wooden cane for support," he reports. "Sporting cowboy boots and a red Donald Trump ball cap, the man eagerly shook Meyer’s hand," and urged him, “Don’t stop! Keep going!”

O'Connell ends the story: "Out front, a spontaneous memorial had popped up, surrounded by flowers. In the middle sat a framed photo of Joan Meyer," whose death her son blamed on stress caused by the raids.