Thursday, February 9, 2017
FAU Professor Fired for Blogging about Sandy Hook gets First Amendment Trial
INTERVIEW: FAU Professor Fired For Blogging About Sandy Hook Gets First Amendment Trial 1
On
Jan. 5, AMERICAN FREE PRESS spoke with Tracy’s attorney, Louis F. Leo
IV, to discuss the many aspects of the case. He started out by
explaining how the attack began.
The original complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern
District of Florida, revealed in great detail how Tracy was harassed,
hated, and even hunted for having unconventional opinions on several
alleged mass shootings.
Because Tracy espoused views different from those offered by the
controlled corporate media and the government, he was targeted for
attack and removal.
The mainstream media set their sights on Tracy a few days after the
Sandy Hook event, as a warning to others to never dare question the
official version of events.
“There was this media blitz against Professor Tracy that was a result of
his personal blogging,” Leo began. “He was on his blog on his own time
writing about a matter of public importance, this mass casualty event,
and he provided coverage to the American people that the national and
international media failed to. And for whatever reason they targeted him
and his job.”
What Tracy wrote “was constitutionally protected, so regardless of what
his opinion was on the lack of evidence of the shooting, he had the
right to say it,” said Leo.
“On Jan. 11, 2013, CNN dedicated 15 or 20 minutes just to Professor
Tracy,” Leo said, “shaming him, showing the entire United States where
Professor Tracy lives. They were literally outside his house.”
CNN’s Anderson Cooper led the charge against Tracy, stating in the aforementioned broadcast, “shame on you, FAU, to even have someone like this on your payroll.” Cooper,
who has no formal journalistic education, spent two summers following
his sophomore and junior years at Yale—a well-known recruiting ground
for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)—interning at their
headquarters, in a program for students interested in intelligence work.
CNN, which confirmed details of Cooper’s CIA involvement to “Radar
Online,” claims his involvement with the CIA ended there, although it is
more likely he was trained by the spy agency as part of their ongoing
Operation Mockingbird, a large-scale program begun in the early 1950s
whose purpose is to propagandize the media to influence public opinion.
“That was really the gist of all the media publications about Professor
Tracy,” Leo explained. “None of them talked about his research or the
basis for his opinions. They just called him crazy.”
Leo did his due diligence before he took on the case.
“I discovered really quickly that he’s not crazy,” Leo said. “I explored
extensively his blog and his opinions and I’ve read the Newtown Police
report, I’ve looked at all the evidence, heavily redacted reports, I
should say. And I was extremely disturbed by what I read. Not only what I
saw, but what I didn’t see.”
Although the process of discovery—a pretrial procedure in a lawsuit in
which each party obtains evidence from the other party—has not yet
begun, it appears that the faculty union, ostensibly there to protect
Tracy, was actually hurting him.
“It remains to be seen exactly what the reasoning of the union was in failing to represent him, misleading
him, misadvising him, not to mention discouraging him, coercing him,
and really acting in a way that FAU was acting,” Leo explained. “They
were basically doing FAU’s bidding by subjecting him to unlawful
directives and ultimately violating his civil rights and his right to
freedom of speech, and academic freedom, as well as his right to due
process.”
Records were obtained utilizing Florida’s “Sunshine Laws,” which
generally refer to Florida’s freedom of information legislation, the
most expansive laws of their kind in the U.S. Specifically, Florida’s
“Government in the Sunshine Law,” which passed 50 years ago but with
precedent back to 1905, “requires that all meetings of any state,
county, or municipal board or commission be open to the public, and
mandates that any official action taken at the closed meeting not be
binding.”
AFP asked how much was received.
“Hundreds
and hundreds of pages of internal communications, records, and his
personnel file,” Leo said, “and what we did receive and review was
pretty shocking. These internal communications show that they’re really
not firing him because of a policy that he didn’t comply with. He’s
being fired because of the controversy surrounding his personal
blogging.”
Leo highlighted the significance of this case beyond FAU and Florida.
“This is alarming because it’s not just happening at FAU, and this case
is not going to affect just this one university,” Leo explained.
“This is really a test case. This is something that universities are
going to be using in the future when shaping their policies or dealing
with the speech of their faculty members, as well as other employees and
students,” he said.
“This is the First Amendment under attack,” Leo said. “If
you allow Professor Tracy to be disciplined and fired for his personal
blogging, what’s next, and where does it stop? And what is the First
Amendment if this can happen to somebody like Professor Tracy, who has
an unblemished academic record, literally has no complaints about his
teaching?”
Contributions to this case can be submitted in the form of personal
check or money order, payable to James Tracy Legal Defense Fund, 300 NW
36th Court, Boca Raton, FL 33431. You may also visit Tracy’s website at tracylegaldefense.org.
Dave Gahary writes for American Free Press.
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