From the New York Times (thanks to reader Matthew Elkin for the pointer):
Facing growing public pressure from civil liberties advocates, federal prosecutors on Tuesday dropped subpoenas that they issued last week ordering antiwar protesters to appear before a grand jury and ordering a university to turn over information about the protesters. . . .
On Monday, prosecutors defended their inquiry, saying it was limited to the narrow issue of whether a protester trespassed on Iowa National Guard property on Nov. 16.
A subpoena compelling Drake University to provide information about an antiwar forum on its campus on Nov. 15 was also withdrawn, as was an earlier court order that barred Drake officials from speaking publicly about the case. . . .
The school received a subpoena last week that demanded a broad range of information about the sponsor of the forum on Nov. 15, the Drake chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. The subpoena included its leadership lists, annual reports and location. That subpoena was later narrowed somewhat, university officials said on Tuesday, to include the names of people at the forum and records from campus security that might describe “the content of what was discussed at the meeting.” . . .
I hope to blog a bit more about the court order that barred Drake officials from speaking about the case — that order, I think, was indeed a First Amendment violation, though unfortunately far from an unprecedented one.
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