Wed Sep 20, 2023 – 8:01 pm EDT
(LifeSiteNews) —Groundbreaking undercover journalist James O’Keefe is suing the governor of Hawaii over an “Emergency Proclamation” that prohibits taking photos of the fire-devastated area of Lahaina for investigative purposes.
Together with attorney Mike Yoder, the Project Veritas founder argues that Hawaii’s governor has violated the First Amendment by “unilaterally criminaliz[ing] the constitutional right to a free press” and free speech.
Their lawsuit describes how Yoder, referred to as “John Doe,” was criminally charged for taking photos while reporting on the recently deadly Maui fires despite his “well-established First Amendment right to report on matters of public concern.”
Yoder was charged under a revised statute recently added to Hawaii’s legal code that grants “additional powers” to the government in an “emergency period,” including the power to “suspend electronic media transmission.”
The emergency statute also allows the government to destroy property; suspend any law “detrimental to the expeditious and efficient execution of … emergency functions;” and quarantine anyone “believed to have been exposed to any infectious” disease or who is the “source of other contamination.”
O’Keefe and Yoder argue in their lawsuit that Democrat Hawaii Gov. Josh Green
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