But on March 31, “Reddit got another message from the feds,” The Intercept reported. “This time, instead of subpoenaing an individual user, the government ordered Reddit to appear before a grand jury in Washington, D.C., not California.”
The subpoena was issued by prosecutors in the US attorney’s office in D.C., and “the records in question were released for approximately three times longer than ICE originally requested,” the article said. The US Attorney for the District of Columbia is Jeanine Pirro. Lauren Regan, executive director of the CLDC, told The Intercept that the grand jury subpoena is a new tactic used by the Trump administration after repeatedly losing attempts to subpoena it.
Grand jury proceedings are not public. A grand jury can issue an indictment after evaluating evidence presented by prosecutors to determine whether there is probable cause that someone has committed a crime. Witnesses may be called to testify. If an indictment is issued, the accused will be tried.
“The only valid use of a grand jury is to investigate federal crimes,” Regan told The Intercept. It’s not clear that Doe’s Reddit posts are evidence of a crime, and the administration “is able to cover up what they’re doing under the guise of a federal grand jury,” he said.
Although the now withdrawn subpoena is open, we do not have a copy of the subpoena. The CLDC told Ars today that it had no further comment on the case, noting that grand jury subpoenas are issued in secret.
Reddit: “We do not voluntarily share information with any government”
David Greene, senior counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “was not aware of any instance of a leading tech company being called to appear before one of the secret panels during the recent wave of immigration investigations,” The Intercept article said. “Free speech protections are at their weakest in the context of grand juries, he explained: Proceedings are not adversarial; their purpose is to allow the prosecutor to bring charges.”
