September 15, 2009

The Ellis County Observer’s publisher, Joey G. Dauben, was arrested for publishing the mug shot of a Combine, Texas reserve police officer. The mug shot, sent to Dauben via e-mail from an unknown person, was allegedly accessed illegally.

The CPD officer, who works as a reserve in the city southeast of Dallas, was mocked as William Akey”Breaky Heart.” He was arrested for allegedly impersonating an officer, according to sources in Kaufman County, where Combine is located.

In a prepared statement before his arrest, Dauben said news tips and government documents are sent to him daily, and that it’s “really not my blog’s job to find out whether some government agency has restrictions on what can be released.”

“The Texas Open Records Act stipulates what can and cannot be released, but information given to a reporter, blogger, publisher or whatever is considered just that, information,” said Dauben, the author of a recent article syndicated by Infowars.com about an Ellis County town releasing Federal Emergency Management Agency reports that had a section for “population relocation” missing. “The Observer gets e-mails all the time about all sorts of tips and rumors. My blog acts as the water cooler for our area. We publish every rumor and tidbit, and let readers make their own judgments. It’s against the Open Meetings Act law to reveal the location of potential sites for where a governing body is going to build. So if that’s leaked out and published, are we to assume that any blogger or journalist will be breaking the law?”

The 28-year-old also publishes The Plymouth Review, a conservative newspaper in Plymouth, New Hampshire, where Dauben now lives and attends school.

Dauben, with an army of “best friends who just happen to be lawyers,” said he’s not guilty of anything.

“Do you realize how powerful the First Amendment is?” Dauben asked rhetorically. “The New York Times can publish where the U.S. keeps its nuclear warheads, or a columnist can publish the name of a covert Central Intelligence Agency spy, and despite all the non-disclosure laws, the First Amendment has won out every time. What’s jailing a journalist going to do? My blogs and my supporters will light up every Web site and call this totally bogus, and then they’ll make the government look like total inept idiots because one of their own inept idiot employees leaked so-called ‘classified’ information.”

Though no stranger to controversy or attacking government corruption, Dauben said he’s not worried.

“The more attention I get, the bigger my audience, and the more people I get to show what’s really going on in both Ellis County and the nation,” Dauben said. “I fear no man. Life is too short to worry about stuff like this.

“If anything, what happened to me just made me that much more popular, and gave me the biggest podium I would ever want. Free advertising for every corrupt cockroach I’ve ever exposed, and for a cause I really want to preach to the people. Some might call it martyrdom, but I call it an opportunity.”

The mug shot appeared on Dauben’s main blog, The Ellis County Observer, and a sister blog, The Kaufman County Observer.

***LATEST NEWS***
From the Ellis County Observer:

So far, according to Grafton County Jail, Joey Dauben is being held without bail on fugitive from justice charges.

Which means, even though this investigation started this summer and he has been GONE since February to establish residency for law school, he is being held on fleeing from the law basically.

According to the press release sent from the Combine Police Department, he is currently being held in the Grafton County Jail in Plymouth, New Hampshire awaiting the extradition process back to Texas.

Probable cause affidavits for the warrants of his arrests presented to Judge John Creuzot, Criminal District Court #4 are as follows:

Engaging in organized criminal activity, a second degree felony
Obstruction or Retaliation, a third degree felony
Misuse of Official information, a third degree felony

These charges are stemming from a drivers license photo posted on this very site of John Hoskins, a Combine police officer and alleged monetary transactions received from Michael Meissner, former chief of police in Bardwell, to Dauben, thus him being paid to “slander” Hoskins on the blogs.

The unlawful misuse of information charge stems from Dauben posting information he allegedly obtained from Meissner."