Judge rejects Alachua County Today’s lawsuit to stop Mainstreet Daily News from publishing FDLE memorandum

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Judge George Wright has denied a motion from Alachua County Today that asked the Court to prevent Mainstreet Daily News from publishing an FDLE memorandum that revealed information about an investigation targeting Adam Boukari and involving sexual acts with juvenile victims.

Click here to read our article about the FDLE memorandum, including excerpts from the warrant.

Click here to read our article about the FDLE search of the office occupied by Boukari Law and Alachua County Today in July 2024.

Motion for emergency injunctive relief

Bryan Boukari filed the motion for emergency injunctive relief on behalf of Alachua County Today (as Alachua Today, Inc.) on May 1, after learning that Mainstreet Daily News had a copy of the memorandum and intended to publish an article about it.

Mainstreet published its article on May 3, before Judge Wright’s order was filed. However, the memorandum was emailed to Alachua County Commission Chair Chuck Chestnut by a citizen and was available for download from the County’s email portal by April 30.

Memorandum was filed as part of an unrelated court case

The FDLE memorandum was filed as part of an unrelated court case involving Alachua County Today and DW Ashton Catery; after Alachua County Today argued that the document should be removed from the case docket, the Clerk ordered it sealed for 10 days. DW Ashton Catery has since argued that the memorandum is relevant to that case because the FDLE Inspector concluded in the memorandum that no legal records were inside an attaché case that was taken in the search, but Bryan Boukari was granted a continuance in the DW Ashton Catery case after he said he was delayed by the loss of those records. Judge George Wright agreed to remove the memorandum from the court docket, but DW Ashton Catery has filed a motion to vacate that order.

The FDLE memorandum states that Adam Boukari is the target of an FDLE investigation, that agents were looking for semen from “many victims,” and that the investigation involves juvenile victims. Alachua County Today’s complaint argues that the memorandum contains “private, sensitive, or otherwise legally protected information not intended for public dissemination and which this Court expressly ordered to be withheld from public view.”

Alachua County Today also argued that Mainstreet Daily News had obtained the memorandum “through unauthorized means or via parties in violation of the Court’s sealing orders” and that publication would lead to irreparable harm because “[o]nce disseminated, the information cannot be made confidential again.”

Mainstreet’s motion to dismiss

Main Street’s motion to dismiss the case, filed by Attorney Frank Hamner, argued that Alachua County Today sought “an improper prior restraint on a competitive publication without adequate grounds.” Hamner also argued that Alachua County Today had no standing in the case because “[a]ny supposed scandalous information in the document is related to allegations against an individual, not the newspaper. Alachua Today, Inc. is mentioned only to the extent that it is the office that was searched in furtherance of an FDLE investigation.”

Mainstreet’s motion stated that the newspaper received the memorandum “from someone who downloaded the memorandum while it was available to the public. Mainstreet did not obtain the information illegally.” The motion also states that Alachua County Today’s complaint was filed before the order to make the documents confidential was entered, and it cites two Supreme Court cases (Bartnicki v. Vopper and New York Times Co. v. United States).

FDLE memorandum resulted from a complaint made by an attorney who shared the Boukari Law office

Hamner noted the “irony” of Alachua County Today’s argument: “It was a lawyer, Linda Rice Chapman, who at the time appeared to practice ‘of counsel’ in Plaintiff’s counsel’s office who made a separate, private complaint to the FDLE about the way the underlying search was carried out and some of the after search conduct of FDLE agents. Absent that complaint, wholly separate from the underlying investigation against one of Plaintiff’s employees or officers, no inspector general memorandum would have been generated. Now, Plaintiff seeks to have this Court enter a prior restraint of a story of public interest based on that publicly available memorandum that resulted from the complaint of a member of its own counsel’s office.”

Judge Wright’s order

Judge George Wright’s order notes that Alachua County Today “fundamentally misunderstands… [the] Rule [that] involves public access to judicial records. If the Court determines that a document is confidential, then the only effect of the ruling is as to the public’s right to access a record of the judicial branch of government. The determination of a court record’s confidentiality has no effect on whether the
public through other means has a right to obtain, possess, or publish the document.”

The order states that an emergency injunction “would operate as a prior restraint on the First Amendment rights of [Mainstreet Daily News] and is therefore presumed unconstitutional… Even assuming [that Mainstreet] illegally obtained the document at issue, the First Amendment forbids injunctive relief to prevent publication of the document.”

Judge Wright wrote, “Florida courts have made clear that ‘[i]njunctions may not be employed to prohibit the making of defamatory statements’ because ‘a free society prefers to punish the few who abuse rights of speech after they break the law than to throttle them and all others beforehand.'”

Judge Wright concluded, “Having cited no legal authority, and presented no facts to overcome the presumption of unconstitutionality, [Alachua County Today] has failed to meet its heavy burden that would allow the Court to issue a prior restraint on the free speech rights of [Mainstreet].”