With an $800 daily fine soon going into effect over her 2024 civil contempt ruling, Fox News alum Catherine Herridge‘s legal team has petitioned for a stay after she was ordered to reveal her sources for her 2017 stories about Yanping Chen.
After the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit upheld judge Christopher R. Cooper’s ruling on Tuesday, Herridge’s appellate attorney Paul D. Clement filed the petition on Friday, to which supreme court chief justice John Roberts issued a stay of the appeal’s courts rulings, giving Chen until July 1 to file a response.
As free press advocates rail against the privacy act lawsuit, Fox News commended the stay in a statement shared with The Guardian.
“We are pleased with the supreme court’s decision to temporarily stay the deeply troubling contempt order,” a spokesperson said. “Fox News stands firmly behind the first amendment and the principle that reporters must be able to do their jobs without the threat of crippling fines or forced exposure of their sources.”
Meanwhile, Chen’s attorney Andy Phillips said, “Both the district and circuit courts have now ruled five times over that Ms Herridge has no privilege to continue to shield the identity of a federal official who broke the law and abused his or her position to cause harm to an American citizen by leaking protected materials. We are confident that the supreme court will reach the same result.”
In February 2024, Judge Cooper found Herridge in civil contempt of his order that she reveal the source of stories that reported on a federal investigation of Chen, a naturalized U.S. citizen who founded the University of Management and Technology in Virginia. The stories had to do with Chen’s affiliations with the Chinese military. The FBI investigation examined statements she made on immigration forms about her work in China in the 1980s.
Chen was not charged, but sued the federal government, claiming that someone leaked information about her to Herridge and Fox in violation of the Privacy Act.
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