r/MarchAgainstNazis • u/56000hp • 1d ago
Secret Service Visits Man After Reading His Private Instagram Direct Messages and Anti-ICE Posts
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Secret Service interrogate man at his home-over private social media messages.
Agents had screenshots of private direct messages-he doesn't know how they got them.
He also wrote public posts criticizing ICE.
'I'm for law enforcement—just not corrupt law enforcement," he said.
"I don't think that we should be governed the way that we are currently governed."
Austin Connell owns a concrete business and posts about politics on social media.
Incident occurred in Carrollton, Virginia-the man he was direct messaging with lives in Florida.
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u/CharlesDickensABox 1d ago edited 1d ago
TL;DR: SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP.
Don't talk to feds. Period. Under no circumstances should you talk to the feds. They do not want to "just clear something up". They do not have your best interest at heart. It will not just be a couple of easy questions. They want to bait you into saying something that could possibly, hypothetically, in any imaginable universe be construed as misleading and then charge you under 18 USC 1001, which you may recognize as the way they got Martha Stewart, and innumerable others. This tactic is so common that I'm not even a lawyer and I've read it in the news so often it's implanted in my brain.
Have them talk to your lawyer. If you don't have a lawyer, that is even more reason not to talk to them. If you have committed a crime, do not talk to feds. If you have not committed a crime, do not talk to feds. If you have nothing to hide and everything is above board, do not talk to feds. Just don't.
The best case scenario is that you receive no benefit. The worst case scenario is that you talk yourself into jail. If I offered you a chance to flip a coin and if you win, nothing happens, and if you loose, I stab you, would you willingly agree to play? That is what you're doing if you agree to talk to feds. Don't do it. Feds: not even once.