How is this legal?

[Rom TottaM]

https://youtu.be/qXMwCk8J4-Y?si=d6F91BuZGNWvtqh9

As far as I know mcp has never posted any other cop interrogation yet they posted yours? I don't much agree with you but this right here feels wrong. Almost like a smear campaign

[Willy]

If I remember correctly that video was posted on the Torch by X when members of this forum were accused of making threats against City officials. All false of course.  He voluntarily submitted to being questioned and did a fine job of presenting the facts. All of that nonsense was because of bogus accusations by the corrupt City officials. They were hoping to do damage against X for his revealing how badly the City was being ran.    Needless to say not much has changed  since then, which shows how ingrained the corruption was and still is because Ludington is still in the control of airheads.

 

https://ludingtoncitizen.ning.com/forum/topics/ludington-city-counc...

[XLFD]

Rom,

A smear campaign was what it was.  If you recognize the time it was published back in September 2016 it was deep into my political campaign to be Third Ward Councilor, the last time my name was on the ballot.  Delicate then-City Manager John Shay felt threatened by two of our members when they posted oblique comments obviously protected by the First Amendment.  As I stated immediately after the day this became an item:  

"As WMOM reported on the radio, this was an unprecedented move by the City of Ludington to get information out to the media, and for what purpose?  To effectively tell them that there would be no prosecution of some undefined crime because any perceived threats lacked clear substance or intention. 

The three officials there (Barnett, Shay, Krauch) took a half hour of my time to stand there and insult and make wild accusations against me (a witness) and my website in front of the chief news editors of three local media when there was nothing of substance in their investigation other than two individuals who were very sorry that their words were interpreted the way they were.  There was clearly subtle and not-so-subtle intimidation and threats, but they were all coming from the witch hunt tribunal that I saw yesterday."

The owner and the news leader at WMOM at the time both confided to me that he thought it was an incredible overreach of the city, a hostile act against one media outlet, but as you can see, the MCP with Rob Alway was quick to put it up without any context.  In that meeting, which I recorded, me and the current mayor of Ludington had this memorable exchange:

Barnett:  "Mr Rotta, as the curator (sic), chief administrator of the Ludington Torch, do you have any thoughts on the matter relative to how your website is to be used, was used here..."

Rotta:  "No, but I am curious on what sort of..."

Barnett:  "The question was 'Do you have any thoughts relative of how your website is used, was used against..."

Rotta:  "I fronted my response with 'no'. What I am wanting to find out is what sort of statute were these guys going to be charged with for this particular language on the website?"
Barnett:  "I'm sorry?"
Rotta:  "In the police report there had been said the complaint would be forwarded to the prosecutor's office to request charges for Thompson and Chippi for making threats on the internet and using a computer to commit a crime.  Where are those statutes?"
Barnett:  "There are no statutes because they are not being charged..."
Rotta:  "What were they trying to get charged with, beyond that? What are the statute numbers?"
Barnett: "750.81 I think [MCL 750.81 is an assault statute not applicable here], I need to double check on that and let you know, 750. something.... It's up to the prosecutor to determine what charges to be prosecuted under. So going back to my question, do you have a comment as to how you would like to administer your website so that this type of thing, which I believe is pretty frequent, do you have any idea as to how you're going to make modifications to keep this from happening again?"
Rotta:  "No; this is First Amendment, protected speech and this whole investigation is a witch hunt..."

With Shay at the end of this 'press conference' making wild accusations about me taking pictures of his house and watching his children go to school (both fully false and unsubstantiated) which were dutifully reported in the local paper, it was amazing I pulled in 30% against vanilla incumbent Les Johnson.