A journalist in Florida has been apprehended and accused of committing fourteen federal offenses for disseminating videos featuring Tucker Carlson from Fox News.
Timothy Burke, a 45-year-old individual, was charged with one count of conspiracy, six counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer, and seven counts of intercepting or disclosing wire, oral, or electronic communications.
If found guilty on all charges, Burke could potentially face a maximum sentence of 62 years in a federal penitentiary.
Following his release on bail, Burke must refrain from any communication with his alleged co-conspirator.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that Burke and his accomplice obtained and exploited compromised credentials, such as usernames and passwords, to gain unauthorized entry into computers owned or utilized by the victimized entities.
According to the indictment, Burke and his co-conspirator managed to pilfer unaired video clips of Carlson by hacking into StreamCo, an American-based online media streaming company employed by Fox News.
Federal prosecutors have accused Burke and his accomplice of acquiring and stealing proprietary information from StreamCo’s website.
Subsequently, they allegedly employed this purloined data to intercept, download, and preserve the streams of StreamCo’s broadcaster customers.
The suspects purportedly obtained videos of Carlson captured on a hot microphone after the conclusion of the “Tucker Carlson Tonight” program.
In May 2023, Media Matters, a left-wing propaganda organization, released candid videos of Carlson engaging with Fox News personnel.
These videos were leaked one month after Carlson’s termination from Fox News.
Furthermore, unaired video clips from Tucker’s interview with Kanye West surfaced online in October 2022.
The technology blog Motherboard originally posted the videos.
“Fox News recently aired a two-part interview between Tucker Carlson and Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West,” the article reads.
“Motherboard has obtained portions of the interview that were edited out of the final broadcast.
“These include numerous anti-Semitic sentiments from Ye, a strange and lengthy digression about ‘fake children’ he claimed were planted in his house to manipulate his own children and a statement that he’s vaccinated against COVID-19.”
Burke’s lawyers issued a statement:
“This investigation apparently began after former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson’s interview with Kanye West, in which Mr. Carlson heavily edited out racist and anti-Semitic remarks by West.
“These reprehensible remarks were exposed by Mr. Burke’s intrepid — and perfectly legal — reporting on the information he found in public sources, on websites accessible without any user IDs or password credentials.”
Burke’s lawyers sent a letter to an assistant U.S. attorney stating:
“It was embarrassing because Mr. Burke was able to find and expose information about the Carlson/West interview.”
The letter added that Fox News “was embarrassed because it had made those feeds available to the public in a way that Mr. Burke could — and did — find them and disseminate them.”
Maddux told the Tampa Bay Times:
“It’s not hacking; it’s just good investigative journalism.
“We obviously emphatically deny these charges, and we’re looking forward to the opportunity to defend him and exonerate him.”
Burke’s legal representatives refuted the allegations of hacking into the Fox News database and instead asserted that the journalist accessed the videos through a hyperlink leading to live video feeds that were freely accessible without the need for passwords or encryption.
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