The federal case against former Deadspin video editor Tim Burke has been ongoing for years now. But in recent days, Burke claimed a significant legal victory.
In 2022, Vice News published a story featuring an unaired interview between Tucker Carlson and Kanye West that featured the rapper making antisemitic remarks that Burke had accessed. A year later, the video journalist was the subject of an FBI raid on his home. And last February, he was hit with fourteen federal charges that he improperly accessed the raw feeds.
Burke and his lawyers have defended his actions as the work of a journalist and that he found passwords and other information for the videos on the open internet. And in one of the first developments in the case in some time, US District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle threw out half of the charges against Tim Burke relating to First Amendment and free speech issues according to the Tampa Bay Times.
A federal judge this week dismissed several charges against Tampa media consultant Tim Burke, citing free speech violations — a ruling that greatly reduced the number of charges he faced after his unauthorized obtaining of video files from Fox News.
Specifically, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle said it was Burke’s indictment under a federal privacy law that violates the First Amendment right to speech free from government restriction.
In a 37-page order on Thursday, Mizelle weighed the merits of the government’s argument that Burke illegally obtained the files against a possible “chilling effect” on free speech.
With these charges against him dropped relating to use of the Wiretap Act, Burke now faces seven of the original fourteen counts against him. These include one charge related to conspiracy and six related to computer hacking. While he has seen several charges against him dismissed, the ones that remain could still result in years in prison and a felony if convicted.
Additionally, the thrown out charges could be brought again if prosecutors amend their legal theories around them and remove some of the first amendment issues.
Several groups came out celebrating the judge’s decision as a defense of the freedom of the press. But given Tim Burke and his team have not denied the conduct that took place in accessing the files, the remaining charges still presents a challenging road ahead in what could be a landmark case for digital media.
Burke made his name in the sports world as a video editor and the author of Deadspin’s famous Manti Te’o catfishing story. He then worked for multiple outlets before starting his own media consulting company, Burke Communications.
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