The publisher of a Kansas newspaper that was raided by police in August is now suing officials involved in the controversial move, accusing them of retaliating against the paper and violating its First Amendment rights.
Multiple Marion, Kan., officials have since resigned as news outlets descended on the town in the wake of the raid. The nearly 130-page lawsuit — the fourth filed against officials accused to have been involved in the raid — alleges a tense history between those who carried it out and the weekly newspaper. It names the city, Marion County Sheriff Jeff Soyez, Marion County Detective Aaron Christner, the Board of County Commissioners, acting police chief Zach Hudlin, former police chief Gideon Cody and former mayor David Mayfield as defendants.
The county and acting police chief declined to comment, citing pending litigation. The city attorney’s office and Board of County Commissioners did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday evening, nor did Mayfield, the former mayor, and Cody, the former police chief. Attempts to reach Christner, who the lawsuit alleges drafted the affidavits for Cody before the raid, were unsuccessful Wednesday evening.
Meyer described the raid as “a weaponizing of the criminal justice system to settle personal scores” in a statement Wednesday, adding that it “proved fatal to my 98-year-old mother.”
“With the same spirit she showed in standing up to the seven bullies who spent hours raiding her home, we must now continue her fight for the most cherished of American traditions — freedom of expression and freedom from abuse by those acting under the color of law,” Meyer wrote.
Three other lawsuits have been filed over the raid:one from a current reporter, another from a former one and a third from the newspaper’s office manager.
Days before the August 2023 incident, a Marion restaurant owner who was seeking a liquor license alleged that the Record had illegally obtained information about a previous drunken driving conviction, which would jeopardize the application under Kansas law.
On Aug. 11, Marion police raided the Record’s newsroom, Meyer’s home and the home of a city council member who had also received the information about the restaurateur. They seized newsroom computers and reporters’ cellphones, according to the lawsuit.
While officers were searching the home where she lived with her son, Joan Meyer confronted them.
“You know,” she said, according to the lawsuit. “If I have a heart attack and die it’s going to be all your fault.”
To Cody, the former police chief who led the raid, she said: “Boy, are you going to be in trouble,” the complaint states.
Afterward, Joan Meyer was “traumatized,” the lawsuit said. She refused to eat or drink and “repeatedly told her son that her entire life was meaningless if this is what Marion had become,” according to the complaint.
The next day, she died of cardiac arrest, which the lawsuit claims was “brought on by the stress” of the raid.
It describes the raid as an “ill-fated attempt to silence the press,” accusing officials of basing the search warrants on “false statements and material omissions.” The lawsuit also alleges that the raid was conducted by officials seeking retribution against the Record, noting instances of growing tension between the paper and the officials it reported on.
In February, about six months before the raid, Mayfield, the former mayor, allegedly shared a social media post from his wife who had written about a petition that would “silence the MCR,” according to the lawsuit. In May, Cody told a reporter he would “invest in a competing newspaper” if the reporter left the Record, the lawsuit alleges, adding that he expressed to the same reporter and other staffers at the paper that he wanted to see a “new, more positive newspaper” in the area.
Bernie Rhodes, an attorney for Eric Meyer, said those and other examples included in the lawsuit demonstrated a “much larger, much deeper problem that infected local government in Marion.”
Rhodes told The Post Wednesday that the lawsuit should remind authorities to “think twice” before carrying out similar operations against the press.
In another filing Monday addressed to city and county officials, Rhodes estimated that the raid cost the paper and the Meyers more than $10 million in damages, an amount that exceeds the city’s 2023 budget of $8.7 million.
“The last thing we want is to bankrupt the city or county,” Eric Meyer wrote in his statement. ”But we have a duty to democracy and to countless news organizations and citizens nationwide to challenge such malicious and wanton violations.”
Jonathan O’Connell and Jon Swaine contributed to this report.
