FPC’s coverage of the prosecution of publishers Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin on charges related to Backpage.
“We are like the French troops in Russia when the snow started falling. The difference is we have winter coats and better lawyers.” –Michael Lacey, Backpage defendant, veteran newspaperman, and First Amendment stalwart A federal judge in Phoenix has rejected…
The FBI agent put a gun on me. He wore a flak jacket more appropriate to a raid on a terrorist’s bomb factory than on my suburban Phoenix home. He stood at the glass door to my office on the…
Maggie McNeill possesses an intellect as acerbic as a vat of hydrochloric acid. Watching as it devours the objects of her scorn is one of the great pleasures of reading her blog, The Honest Courtesan, which she takes to daily…
A federal judge in Phoenix, Arizona, handed defendants in the Backpage case a victory on Friday, October 12, when he denied a government motion to disqualify a prestigious contingent of First Amendment attorneys from the defense team. In a ten-page…
Attorneys for veteran newspapermen Michael Lacey, Jim Larkin, and their co-defendants in the Backpage.com case jousted with federal prosecutors in Phoenix over a government motion to disqualify a team of First Amendment lawyers from the prestigious firm of Davis Wright…
The Federal Government Has Been Waging a Trojan-Horse Assault on Sex Workers U.S. officials couched the passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) in March 2018, coupled with the FBI’s takedown of the online listings giant Backpage.com weeks later,…
In an in-depth profile by Elizabeth Nolan Brown published this week on the website Reason.com, veteran newspaper publishers and former Backpage.com co-owners Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin spoke out candidly about their arrests on federal charges of money laundering, conspiracy,…
Federal prosecutors in Phoenix recently filed a new, superseding indictment against seven former owners and executives of the online listings giant Backpage.com. Dated July 25, the complaint largely reprises the dozens of allegations that formed the basis of the original…
The smile on Michael Lacey’s face as he exited the Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse in Phoenix, Arizona, at a little after noon on Friday was worth a million dollars. Literally. That morning, Lacey posted a $1 million bond, secured…
If you didn’t know that the Backpage case was about online classified advertising, you might think the U.S. Department of Justice was mounting a prosecution against the Mafia. Late on Thursday, the DOJ announced that it has turned Backpage CEO…
