Vegas newspaper to comply with narrowed subpoena

LAS VEGAS — A Nevada newspaper reported Wednesday it will comply with a narrowed federal grand jury subpoena seeking information about the identity of two people who posted Web site comments about a criminal tax trial.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal said the U.S. attorney’s office in Las Vegas reduced its demand for information to “two comments that might be construed as threatening to jurors or prosecutors.”

One called jury members “12 dummies” and said they “should be hung” if they convict Las Vegas business owner Robert Kahre on charges of defrauding the Internal Revenue Service with a scheme involving gold and silver U.S. coins.

The other, since deleted from the newspaper Web site, offered a bet that one of the federal prosecutors in the case wouldn’t reach his next birthday.

Federal prosecutors told U.S. District Judge David Ezra they had issued a June 2 grand jury subpoena out of concern for juror safety. Ezra is presiding at the trial of Kahre and three others facing charges of tax evasion, fraud and criminal conspiracy.

Review-Journal Editor Thomas Mitchell said the June 2 subpoena, seeking author data about 100 Web posts, was overly broad and would likely chill public debate on an important topic.

Mitchell on Wednesday credited prosecutors with scaling back their initial request, adding, “We will give them what we have, which frankly isn’t much, since most postings are anonymous.”

Mitchell also brought up the 1995 plot by Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Oklahoma City federal building, saying, “I’d hate to be the guy who refused to tell the feds McVeigh was buying fertilizer” used to make the bomb.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada late Tuesday filed its own motion to stop the release of any author information, contending the original subpoena was unconstitutional.

ACLU attorney Margaret McLetchie said the civil rights organization filed the motion on behalf of three clients who posted anonymously on the Review-Journal Web site and who intend to remain anonymous during the legal action.

“The right to speak anonymously about politics is older than the Constitution,” McLetchie said, alluding to the Federalist and anti-Federalist papers, which were published under pseudonyms.

In the criminal trial before Ezra, which began May 19, the government alleges that Robert Kahre and two co-defendants arranged to pay workers at Kahre’s construction-related businesses in gold and silver coins based on their precious metal value, but used the coins’ lower face value for tax purposes.

The defendants claim ignorance of tax law as to the handling of gold or silver coins minted after 1985. Such coins are allowed to circulate as money.