MEL GIBSON - TMZ FOUNDER SAYS HE'LL TAKE ACTION AGAINST L.A. SHERIFF

TMZ FOUNDER SAYS HE'LL TAKE ACTION AGAINST L.A. SHERIFF

Harvey Levin, the attorney who founded the tabloid website TMZ, has indicated that he plans to take action against the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office for obtaining his personal telephone records in their investigation of TMZ's story of Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic tirade after he was arrested on drunk driving in 2006. Speaking to the Radio and Television News Association of Southern California at UCLA Monday, Levin called the sheriff's action "a brutal assault on freedom of the press." The TMZ report, he told the group, demonstrated that the arresting deputy, James Mee, had been ordered to rewrite his original arrest report, removing all mention of Gibson's remarks. That demand, said Levin, "was indefensible. It was corrupt." But even more ominous, he suggested, was the sheriff's attempt to discover the source of TMZ's information by obtaining his phone records. "It breaks federal law. It breaks state law," he declared, indicating that he has reason to believe that he is not the only journalist whose phone records have been obtained by the sheriff's department. "We have met with lawyers and we are charting our course of action," Levin said. "I can only imagine the Pandora's Box that will open up."

20/10/2009