Originally Authored at TheFederalist.com
CBS confiscated the records of an acclaimed investigative journalist it laid off this last month who is embroiled in a First Amendment lawsuit. On Thursday, Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor and frequent Fox News legal analyst, reported that CBS News seized the “files, computers, and records” of Catherine Herridge upon her termination.
Herridge joined CBS from Fox News in 2019 and was one of the few journalists among legacy outlets who doggedly reported on myriad major Democrat corruption evidence.
“I have spoken confidentially with current and former CBS employees who have stated that they could not recall the company ever taking such a step before,” Turley wrote in a Hill op-ed Thursday. “One former CBS journalist said that many employees ‘are confused why [Herridge] was laid off, as one of the correspondents who broke news regularly and did a lot of original reporting.’”
“The timing of Herridge’s termination immediately raised suspicions in Washington,” Turley added. “She was pursuing stories that were unwelcomed by the Biden White House and many Democratic powerhouses, including the Hur report on Joe Biden’s diminished mental capacity, the Biden corruption scandal and the Hunter Biden laptop. She continued to pursue these stories despite reports of pushback from CBS executives, including CBS News President Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews.”
In a pending First Amendment lawsuit, Herridge refused to reveal her sources to a federal judge related to an investigation she ran in 2017 when she still worked for Fox News.
“She could be ordered to personally pay fines that could total as much as $5,000 a day,” the New York Post reported. “Insiders said that there are concerns that CBS could be subpoenaed to reveal her source’s identity, which would threaten free press principles.”
One network source who spoke to the Post called the file seizures “extraordinary.”
“The source said the network boxed up all her personal belongings except for Herridge’s notes and files and informed her that it would decide what — if anything — would be returned to her,” the Post reported.
Turley wrote in The Hill that her records “may contain sources who were given confidentiality by Herridge. The company is suggesting that the privilege of confidentiality (and the material) rest ultimately with CBS. As a threshold matter, that cannot be the case with regard to files that were generated during Herridge’s long stint with Fox News. Yet CBS appears to be retaining those files, too.”
A CBS spokesperson rejected claims the network planned to review Herridge’s personal material.
“We have respected her request to not go through the files, and out of our concern for confidential sources, the office she occupied has remained secure since her departure,” CBS told the New York Post.
Herridge was included in layoffs ordered by CBS’s parent company, Paramount, that affected 20 CBS employees out of approximately 2,000.