Lee Lawmaster, a Monroe County resident, posted "86" to the Facebook pages of Indiana officials. Then came a knock at the door. It was Kurt Spivey, Director of Investigations for the Indiana Attorney General.
In a conversation caught on Lawmaster's door camera, Spivey told him to "tone down the rhetoric" or face indictment.
Now Lawmaster and the ACLU of Indiana are suing Spivey for allegedly violating his First Amendment rights.
Ken Falk, legal director for the ACLU of Indiana, said they're seeking damages and an injunction to block him from intimidating Hoosiers.
"If someone who's law enforcement (says) you could be indicted right now if you do this again, people aren't going to do it again," Falk said. "And when that thing that they're not doing again is exercising their First Amendment rights, that is very serious."
"86" has long been shorthand for "get rid of," but since former FBI Director James Comey used it in an Instagram post apparently referring to President Trump, critics have pointed to a less common secondary definition, "to kill." It served as the basis for two indictments against the former official.
Attorney General Todd Rokita's office declined an interview, but in an emailed statement spokesperson Joshua DeFonce said, "With death threats against elected officials being very prominent across the nation and in our state, the Attorney General and his family are a top target."
Lawmaster and Falk say that wasn't the intent.
"Given what you see on social media, no one can possibly construe this as an actual threat," Falk said. "It was someone saying these are politicians who he would like to no longer be in office."
Besides protecting Lawmaster, the ACLU sees the case as an opportunity to learn more about practices within the Attorney General's office.
"Is there someone else in the office who is making this decision, or is this a decision that he made independently of anyone else?" Falk asked. "We're also going to be curious to see how widespread this practice is."
DeFonce said censorship was not the intent.
"If this office wanted to freeze political speech, why would this be the one comment out of the thousands of haters that we picked?" he said. "It's simply ridiculous."
