Everything About The Catherine Herridge Contempt Case Stinks

For more than four years, independent investigative journalist Catherine Herridge has been fighting to maintain the confidentiality of her sources in a case Yanping Chen filed against the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security. And presiding over the case is a federal judge whose wife represented (or represents) multiple high-profile subjects whose misconduct Herridge exposed in her reporting, such as Lisa Page and Joe Biden.

Making matters worse, in holding Herridge in contempt for refusing to divulge her sources, the lower court has kept key documents under seal, thereby preventing the public from both assessing the propriety of the contempt decision and learning the DoD’s basis for canceling a Memorandum of Understanding it had entered into with the University of Management and Technology (“UMT”) — a university founded by Yanping Chen.

On Monday, the United States Supreme Court will conference on a Motion attorneys for Herridge filed before the high court seeking “leave to file a petition for a writ of certiorari under seal with redacted copies for the public record filed.” What precisely that Motion argues, however, is unknown because it currently remains under seal too. And that is one of the problems with the entire case again Herridge.

That case didn’t begin against Herridge, but against the FBI, DOJ, DoD and DHS, when Chen on December 21, 2018, filed a Privacy Act claim against those federal defendants. Chen had previously sought sanctions against the government for its alleged violations of the Privacy Act in a case docketed United States v. 2122 21st Road North Arlington, VA, in a federal court in Virginia following the FBI’s submission of a search warrant application and affidavit for Chen’s business and residence. The judge in that case, however, rejected Chen’s request for sanctions, concluding “a proceeding for the issuance of a search warrant cannot provide the relief sought by the movant under the Privacy Act.”