Clay Wirestone
·5 min read
I’ve had it.
Nearly 10 months after law enforcement officials raided the Marion County Record and two private residences, officials have yet to tell us the results of their investigations. That’s nearly a full year since a flagrant assault on free speech in Kansas, one signed off on by a list of city, county and state officials. True, a handful of individuals implicated in the scandal have left their roles in the intervening time. Lawsuits have been filed.
But we have not heard from those in charge. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation, perhaps realizing it had been compromised by involvement in the raid, passed the entire affair over to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. They originally said results would come in April. We’re at the beginning of June, and those results still haven’t come.
On Thursday, the CBI told me that its follow-up work (requested by special prosecutors) will take three more weeks, at a minimum.
“You may want to check back with me in late June or follow-up with the special prosecutors in Kansas,” wrote Rob Low, CBI strategic communications director.
I could well be proved wrong in my take on the situation. Perhaps next month we will see Marion County Record journalists officially cleared — as they should have been in August — and appropriate charges leveled against those who broke the public trust. Perhaps justice finally will be done.
Count me skeptical. Officials sure appear to have dragged out this investigation, perhaps hoping that the attention of the press and public will turn elsewhere.
Fat chance.
I’m still watching, and I’m incensed. With each day that passes, I fear more and more that investigators have concerned themselves more with saving face than pursuing justice. Because let’s be clear about one thing: The raids on Aug. 11, 2023, involved multiple law enforcement agencies, on multiple levels of Kansas government. Read Kansas Reflector editor Sherman’s Smith blistering account from November about how they either eagerly agreed with attempts to crush free speech or averted their eyes.
That’s not a good look. Not for Marion, not for Marion County and certainly not for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.
I have held my tongue these many months, weighing in from time to time but overall content to allow my coworkers on the news side to do their jobs in tracking the story. Lawrence media lawyer Max Kautsch wrote about the delay in March. I wanted to wait until results.
The results haven’t come.
In the meantime, Marion County Record editor and publisher Eric Meyer has kept printing his newspaper. Both Police Chief Gideon Cody and restaurateur Keri Newell have departed, depriving the news media of two colorful personalities driving the entire affair. Colorado agents have conducted interviews and apparently collected 10,000 pages of documents, all in service to special prosecutors Barry Wilkerson and Marc Bennett.
Those who have followed this from the beginning could be forgiven for wondering if the case truly possesses so many layers of depth or complexity. The contours of the situation have been clear since the first few days. All you had to do was call Meyer, and he would be more than happy to lay it out for you.
At this point, the delays serve only to undermine faith in the Kansas justice system.
Perhaps officials want to make themselves appear less culpable in chilling free expression not only in Kansas but across the entire United States. Nevertheless, they have done so, and the stain they left on the state’s democratic fabric won’t come out so easily.
At a minimum, officials must clear the staff of the Record. They did nothing wrong. Having the threat of prosecution looming over them these many months should shock and appall everyone. They simply did their jobs, and the abuse done to them by the system has yet to be remedied.
“It took the Warren Commission 300 days to investigate the assassination of John Kennedy. It now appears it will take at least 314 days to investigate what happened in our newsroom,” Meyer told me last week via email. “Meanwhile, we are allowed to swing in the wind, constantly having to worry that we might be arrested at any moment on baseless allegations — reiterated repeatedly in court filings by the city and the county — that we somehow violated a law in a way disputed by every responsible authority in the western hemisphere, including the keeper of the records we supposedly ‘stole.’
“The one and only time anyone from any law enforcement agency talked to me or obtained evidence from me was Dec. 8, 2023 — half a year ago — when I was interviewed for about an hour by two CBI agents. We have repeatedly expressed our willingness to provide any additional information anyone might desire. We have absolutely nothing to hide. But no one appears to want to hear from us. What, precisely, it is that they are investigating is unknown.”
I’m angry. You should be angry, too. The fact that officials in Marion County and the KBI and the CBI don’t appear to share that outrage at a brazen miscarriage of justice should sicken and appall every Kansan. We deserve better. Meyer and his reporters deserve better.
Our First Amendment rights, those shared by both journalists and the entire American public, deserve better.
Clay Wirestone is opinion editor of the nonprofit Kansas Reflector, where this commentary originally appeared.
