However, on March 31, The Intercept reported that “Reddit received another message from the feds.” “Rather than seeking information about a single user this time, the government compelled Reddit itself to appear before a grand jury—not in California, but in Washington.”
The subpoena came from prosecutors in the US Attorney’s Office in DC, and, the article noted, “the records sought spanned a period roughly three times longer than what ICE had originally requested.” The US Attorney for the District of Columbia is Jeanine Pirro. CLDC Executive Director Lauren Regan told The Intercept that the grand jury subpoena is a new strategy the Trump administration has adopted after repeatedly failing to secure information through court subpoenas.
Grand jury sessions are confidential. They can return indictments after evaluating evidence presented by prosecutors to decide whether there is probable cause that a crime occurred. Witnesses can be summoned to testify. If an indictment follows, the accused would face trial.
“The only valid use of a grand jury is to investigate federal crimes,” Regan told The Intercept. She said it’s unclear how Doe’s Reddit posts amount to proof of a crime, and that the administration is “able to hide what they are doing under the guise of a federal grand jury.”
Although the summons that has since been withdrawn is public, we do not have a copy of the subpoena. The CLDC told Ars today it had no further comment on the matter and noted that grand jury subpoenas are issued in secret.
Reddit: “We do not share information with any government voluntarily”
David Greene, senior counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Intercept he “knew of no examples during the recent wave of immigration enforcement-related investigations in which a leading tech company has been called to appear before one of the secret panels.” He explained that “free speech protections are at their weakest in the context of a grand jury: the proceedings are not adversarial; their purpose is to permit a prosecutor to file charges.”
