Federal Judge Goes after Shauna Cox’s Rights of Free Speech: Warns Her not to Speak Publicly about Oregon Standoff

On Tuesday, a federal judge threatened Shauna Cox with jail is she made any public comments about the Oregon standoff.

According to US District Judge Robert E. Jones said, "She's not going to make any public comment, at all, period, or she could sit in jail."

Cox was released from custody on January 29. However, she has been under home detention since that time.

Oregon Live reports:

The judge told Cox she must refrain from making any comments by phone or social media about her case "or any future protest movements.''

Tiffany Harris, Cox's lawyer, objected to the scope of the order, but said her client would abide.

…

Shortly after her release, Cox was allowed to attend Finicum's funeral in Kanab. Otherwise, she was ordered placed on GPS monitoring, home detention that permitted her to leave home only for work, medical appointments, religious services or other activities permitted by a pretrial services officer. She also isn't permitted to possess any firearms and can only travel to Oregon for court.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Gabriel said Tuesday that Cox "has incited people to travel to Montana to help in harboring'' co-defendant Jake Ryan, who has not yet been arrested.

Cox also went on a YouTube video on March 23 for more than an hour talking about the pending case and who she believed to be a government informant, Gabriel said.

Oh, we can't have that now, can we? We can't have those who were closest to what was going on outing a potential mole, can we? Everyone that I've spoken to believes there was a mole and that he was in the convoy on the day of the arrests. According to my sources, this man was carrying a gun in the vehicle. Yet, within a very short period of time, he was allowed to go free. This raised suspicions among many people and this same person was one that I provided his video commentary on and immediately thought that he didn't sound believable. His name is Mark McConnell.

Since the US Constitution provides that "Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech," I do wonder how this judge is not, in essence, legislating from the bench by claiming that Cox cannot speak out about the criminal activity that has been going on by the Bureau of Land Management, the Oregon State Police and the FBI.

In either case, Ms. Cox agreed by phone from her home in Kanab, Utah.

A curfew was also imposed upon Ms. Cox. I do have to say, all of this smacks of a violation of the Fifth Amendment, which states clearly that "No person… shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."