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Dating in the nation's capital has always been difficult. But people who work for the federal government now face a new obstacle, being recorded by undercover activists. Some of those cases are making their way to court, where judges must decide what counts as free speech. NPR's Carrie Johnson reports.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Brandon Wright was fresh off a brutal divorce when he joined a dating app in Washington, D.C. A woman who called herself Heidi caught his attention right away.
BRANDON WRIGHT: The very first thing she asked me when she connected, she said, so you're like the James Bond of IT?
JOHNSON: Actually, Wright was a rank-and-file tech worker at the Department of Homeland Security, a public servant for eight years. Eventually, he met Heidi for dinner.
WRIGHT: And as things went on, as we continued to sip cocktails, she kept steering the conversation back to politics. And that's not weird in D.C. That's - in fact, talking politics is called a date in Washington, D.C.
JOHNSON: Heidi excused herself, and when she came back, Wright says she moved her phone camera in a way that faced him.
WRIGHT: She sat down and immediately began asking me about - so is there anything else you want to tell me about your political views? And at that moment, my body started going, something's wrong.
JOHNSON: Something was wrong. Wright was on tape saying Kristi Noem, President Trump's nominee to lead the Homeland Security Department, was not a smart person. He added that cabinet secretaries set priorities, but they don't personally tell employees what to do. A week later, the threats began.
WRIGHT: I got people sending me texts with the geolocation of my ex-wife's house, where my children spend half of their time, threatening me, saying things like I hope you can talk to Kristi Noem as well as you can talk to a honeypot.
JOHNSON: The activist, James O'Keefe, known for undercover stunts, had posted a recording of Wright's date, part of a series he calls Dating the Deep State. That video has been viewed more than 2.5 million times. Wright's boss put him on administrative leave and then fired him. DHS didn't respond for a request for comment about the firing. Now Wright's suing the DHS for violating his rights to free speech and due process. His lawyer is Mark Zaid.
MARK ZAID: You still have First Amendment rights when you work for the government. You can still have your own private opinions. You can have your own private beliefs.
JOHNSON: Zaid's been closely following these kinds of undercover operations that mostly target mid-level federal workers and contractors. Few of those men have sued, mostly because, Zaid thinks, they haven't been able to find lawyers.
ZAID: We want this practice to stop. It's unfair. It's slimy, sleazy.
JOHNSON: James O'Keefe shows no sign of stopping. He recently posted more undercover videos that feature people who work at the Secret Service and the FBI. His lawyer, Benjamin Barr, says O'Keefe and the women working with him are reporters.
BENJAMIN BARR: I think James consistently refers to himself as a muckraker, and in that proud tradition, sort of an activist journalist. I see him as an independent journalist.
JOHNSON: Barr says the videos he's seen show bureaucrats trying to pump the brakes on President Trump's policies or to block his agenda. That's news, he says.
BARR: Even if you don't buy that, I think the act of their very willingness to share political opinions and information about their government jobs to someone they barely know is an item of newsworthiness.
JOHNSON: If Brandon Wright and other men captured on video got hurt, Barr says it's because of words that came out of their own mouths. The men ensnared in these honeypot stings are testing lots of different legal theories. Sometimes they argue the women who do the recording committed fraud. Aaron Terr is director of public advocacy for the free speech group known as FIRE. He doesn't think that fraud argument will fly in court.
AARON TERR: Now, fraud, in the legal sense, means lying to obtain money, property or something of tangible value from the person you're deceiving.
JOHNSON: Terr reckons that doesn't quite fit what James O'Keefe and the women working with him are up to. The First Amendment strongly protects gathering and publishing information on issues of public concern. And what's legal may not be moral or ethical. But, Terr says, investigative journalism sometimes involves deception. Consider it the jungle, he says.
TERR: Now, imagine Upton Sinclair said during his job interview, so my goal here is to investigate and write an expose about unfair labor practices and unsanitary conditions at your meatpacking plant, right? That wouldn't have gone over so well.
JOHNSON: As for Brandon Wright, he's trying to move on.
WRIGHT: It's been very difficult on my family, on me personally. I had to start taking antidepressants again, which I thought I was done with for a while after my divorce.
JOHNSON: One bright spot? He's now engaged. O'Keefe didn't respond to requests for comment. Barr, his lawyer, says he's too busy pursuing other exposes, some of which involve older men meeting with younger women. Carrie Johnson, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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