In June 2025, Mark Blankenship, Brad Jackson’s attorney in his suit against the city of Maplewood, Mayor Barry Greenberg, Kate Bethel and Isaac Chosich, served Doug Miner, editor of 40 South News, with a subpoena to testify at a deposition, hoping to discover the identities of the 31 anonymous commenters in the article, “Maplewood resident Brad Jackson files second suit against city.”
What was requested:
(1) The IP address, email address, account user name and account password for each individual who has posted on the comment section of 40 South New’s online story entitled, “Maplewood resident Brad Jackson files second suit against city”, from April 28, 2025 to present.
(2) All website cookies used by 40 South News from April 28, 2025 to present.
Miner contacted Lisa S. Hoppenjans, Associate Professor of Practice, Director, First Amendment Clinic at Washington University St. Louis, hoping to have the subpoena dismissed.
Hoppenjans objected to the subpoena to the court:
She began, “Mr. Miner objects that this request seeks specific information and is not a request for documents. To the extent Plaintiff requests documents that contain the information above, this request seeks documents that are outside the proper scope of discovery under Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1) because they are not relevant to any party’s claim. Plaintiff’s operative complaint contains no allegations regarding any comment on the cited article and contains no allegations connecting any defendant with any of the 31 comments from the 18 accounts that posted on the cited article.”
She continued, the “request for documents to unmask anonymous online commenters fails to satisfy the heightened standards required by the First Amendment.”
On June 18 Hoppenjans called Miner to say she had talked with the Ott Law Firm and the subpoena had been dropped.
40 South News subpoenaed for IDs of anonymous commenters. This case is with Maplewood, and Brad Jackson has as many twists and turns as the one that is going on with the Department of Justice and the Epstein case, which centers on Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of underage girls, his criminal convictions, and the subsequent investigations into his network of powerful associates. Transparency is critical. The people using anonymous comments will remain anonymous to the public, allowing the court to view only. Why not cooperate? Both the City of Maplewood and the United States of America will benefit by understanding the Truth and Nothing But the Truth. So Help ME! GOD. Does a network of powerful associates exist in Maplewood, MO? The word fascism comes from fascio, the Italian word for bundle, which in this case represents bundles of people. We’re living in a time when fascism is getting rehabilitated. The fact that this is coming back now is disturbing.
wow-how very Communist China of them to attempt this…smdh.