The three Rand Paul aides who were indicted earlier this month are doing their best to turn the government case against them into an example of government overreach, and Google has taken their side in the fight.
In the summer of 2014, federal investigators began probing whether Ron Paul's 2012 presidential campaign had paid Iowa state Sen. Kent Sorenson for his endorsement. After Sorenson confessed, investigators focused on three other men, including current presidential candidate Rand Paul's nephew-in-law, Jesse Benton, whose email account supposedly contained evidence.
After a brief skirmish with Benton's attorney about accessing Benton's emails, FBI agents got a search warrant that entitled them to read the emails without Benton's cooperation. But the plan did not go smoothly. Benton has a Gmail account, and Google's policy is to notify users when their accounts have been hit with a search warrant. Benton's attorney, Roscoe Howard, promptly filed a motion to block the search warrant, alleging that it was improper, and Google stopped cooperating with the FBI.
That was almost a year ago. Two weeks ago, Benton and two other top Paul aides, John F. Tate and Dimitri Kesari, were indicted on federal charges, including conspiracy, campaign finance violations, and making false statements. Prosecutors accused the men of paying Sorenson more than $73,000, hiding the payments by funneling them through a third party, and lying on campaign finance filings to cover them up.
The FBI still hasn't gotten ahold of Benton's emails. Last week, a judge ruled that the FBI had a right to the emails, but once again, Benton resisted and Google agreed.
"Frighteningly, the government still maintains that it has the right to trample Mr. Benton’s privacy rights and look through every single one of Mr. Benton’s emails, just as if his email account were a warehouse full of documents," Howard wrote. "The government’s statement underscores its true intent—to conduct a fishing expedition."
The government has now demanded that Google be held in contempt if the company doesn't immediately turn over the emails, and it has argued that Benton and his attorney can raise their concerns at trial if they don't like the way the search warrant was obtained. Most people don't learn they're the target of a search warrant until it has already been executed, which means they don't have the opportunity to challenge the warrant until the evidence appears in court. But accessing emails is not like kicking down a door and finding a gun: Google controls access to the emails on its server, so the company's refusal to comply with the FBI—and its willingness to tell Benton about the warrant—not only changes the dynamic in this particular case; it could also create a precedent for others.
