Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird has threatened five news outlets with the possibility of prosecution over their coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas. Bird is the leader of a group of 14 Republican state attorneys general who allege some of the reporting on the conflict by the New York Times, Associated Press, CNN and Reuters may constitute “material support for terrorism.”
Bird sent a letter, which was also signed by the attorneys general of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia, to the top executives of the five news outlets on Monday.
“On October 7, designated terrorist organization Hamas began a massive terror attack against Israel,” the letter begins. “Hamas terrorists murdered and kidnapped many Americans. Supporting Hamas in any way is reprehensible. We, the chief legal officers of our respective States, also remind you that providing material support to terrorists and terror organizations is a crime.”
Bird then goes on to repeat at length unsupported allegations that some freelance photographers in Gaza used by the news companies are essentially agents of Hamas. Paying these photojournalists for their work would therefore constitute “material support for terrorism,” according to Bird.
These allegations have been circulating in rightwing political and social media circles for weeks, despite the complete lack of evidence to support them, and the flat rejection of the claims by the photographers, the news organizations and other journalists involved in covering the war.
Iowa Code defines “material support for terrorism” as “knowingly assisting or providing money, financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, safe houses, false documentation or identification, communication equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel, transportation, and other physical assets, except medicine or religious materials, for the purpose of assisting a person in the commission of an act of terrorism.” All such laws, at both the federal and state levels, require the actions to be done “knowingly.”
The letter isn’t credible as a good-faith legal warning from the 14 Republican officials. None of them will bring a serious case against any of the five companies, and any case they might bring based on the allegations in the letter would be quickly dismissed. But the letter does serve as an attempt to intimidate news organizations covering the war in Gaza, something many parties have engaged in since the start of the fighting. It also reads like an attempt to discourage news outlets in general from using Palestinian reporters and photographers to cover the war.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said November was “the deadliest month for journalists” since it first began collecting data in 1992 due to the war.
According to the latest update from the committee, as of Wednesday, Dec. 6:
• 63 journalists and media workers were confirmed dead: 56 Palestinian, 4 Israeli, and 3 Lebanese.
• 11 journalists were reported injured.
• 3 journalists were reported missing.
• 19 journalists were reported arrested.
• Multiple assaults, threats, cyberattacks, censorship, and killings of family members.
Since becoming attorney general in January, Brenna Bird has routinely joined other Republican state attorney generals in issuing threatening letters that don’t result in legal actions, but serve to advance a political agenda by trying to pressure groups or companies to conform to Republican policy preferences. The letters also allow Bird and the others to engage in self-promotion at a national level while claiming to just be performing their official duties.
The “terrorism” letter isn’t the only threatening letter Bird has issued recently.
Less than two weeks ago, Bird sent a letter to two major firms that provide analysis and advice for investors, one based in New York and the other based in California, warning them to “quit recommending woke investment strategies,” as the Iowa Attorney General’s office phrased it in its summary of the letter.
The actual letter, dated Nov. 29 and signed by 22 other Republican state attorneys general, never uses the term “woke,” a political buzzword whose definition easily changes depending on what its user wants to condemn. But that didn’t stop Bird from leaning heavily on the word in her announcement regarding the letter.
“Woke Wall Street is sabotaging businesses and gambling millions of Americans’ retirement savings,” reads a Dec. 4 news release from Bird’s office. “But not on my watch. We’re calling out Woke Wall Street and demanding they follow the law.”
That wasn’t even Bird’s first “anti-woke” threatening letter. In July, Bird was one of a group of Republican state attorneys general who sent letters to the CEOs of the companies on the Forbes 100 list, warning them they may face legal action from the AGs if they don’t eliminate their company’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs. None of the companies are headquartered in Iowa. The next month, Bird and some other members of the groups sent a recycled version of that letter to the managing partners of the nation’s 100 largest law firms. None of those firms are located in Iowa.
Bird signed her first of these threatening letters just one month after taking office. In February, the attorney general joined a group of Republican colleagues in sending letters to the CEOs of Walgreens and CVS threatening the pharmacy chains with unspecified legal action if they followed FDA regulations and made a prescription drug commonly used in medical abortion more readily available.
So far, Bird has not taken any legal actions pursuant to any of these letters.
