Ezra Levant’s Rebel News received a two-page threat letter from Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Justice Department—lawyers Sean White and Jennifer Richards—demanding removal of an OPP officer’s torso photo used in their Fight the Fines campaign, despite it being publicly available for nearly a year. Levant exposed inconsistencies: no harassment was confirmed, no similar letters were sent to outlets like Toronto Star, and the officer’s anonymity claim contradicted earlier assertions. Accusing Ford of "stolen valor" and political intimidation, Levant vowed legal battle, framing this as part of a broader crackdown on dissent under Ontario’s lockdown policies. [Automatically generated summary]
Threat from Doug Ford's Justice Department00:01:46
Hello, my friend, special podcast today.
I was threatened by Doug Ford's Justice Department.
They sent me a crazy two-page letter.
So I phoned the Justice Department lawyers who wrote the letter.
I recorded the call because I'm not dumb.
I'll play that for you.
It might be a little hard to hear, so I'd invite you to watch the subtitled version, which is on our show, which you can get just by subscribing.
Go to rebelnews.com and click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month, which isn't bad.
And you get the video version of these shows.
Plus, you get shows every week from Sheila Gonrid, David Menzies, and New from Andrew Chapatos.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, Ontario Premier Doug Ford sends his Justice Department after Rebel News to stop our fight to fight.
It's January 25th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
You know, our Fight the Fines project We provide a lawyer for people who get charged under these abusive, unconstitutional lockdown laws.
We send a journalist to tell the story of the fine.
We then send a lawyer to fight for the person who got fined, and we crowdfund that lawyer's fees.
Officer's Photo Controversy00:11:19
We've made almost 100 videos about these cases, and we've actually taken several hundred such cases here in Canada, but also in Australia and the United Kingdom.
And we're about to launch a major expansion of this project.
We're just putting the final touches on that, but I'll tell you as soon as we can.
This is the homepage for our project.
Just type in fightthefines.com and you'll see it.
This is what it looks like on Twitter.
The same image we've been using since last April, almost a year now.
These images have been seen millions of times.
No big deal, right?
You're probably wondering what my point is, right?
Well, do you see that police vest there?
It's just a generic stock photo of a police vest.
A few days ago, I received an email from Doug Ford's Justice Department, though, threatening me to take down that photo immediately.
And if I don't, they would sue me in about four different ways.
I'm not even kidding.
Take a look at that.
That's one use of the photo there.
And that's another way we use the photo.
Same photo.
We've been using it for almost a year, literally millions of views.
And out of the blue, we get a threat letter from the Justice Department of Ontario, Doug Ford's lawyers.
Here's the email subject line that accompanied this letter to me.
Urgent photograph removal request.
And it said, good afternoon.
Please see the attached letter on behalf of the Ontario Provincial Police for your urgent attention.
I look forward to your swift action and response.
Regards, Sean White, Counsel, Ministry of the Attorney General, Civil Law Division, Legal Services Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat.
That's a big business card, isn't it?
So twice they said the word urgent.
Once they said the word swift.
For a photo that's been up for nearly a year.
Let me show you what they said in the actual letter that was attached.
Dear Rebel News legal team, re-unauthorized use of photograph depicting Ontario Provincial Police Officer.
I am counsel with the Ministry of the Attorney General representing the Ontario Provincial Police, OPP, with respect to the above-noted issue.
This letter is with regards to a photograph that Rebel News published in multiple locations on its website, ostensibly in support of a campaign entitled Fight the Fines Canada, and primarily located at the following URLs: rebelnews.com/slash fight the finds Canada, rebelnews.com slash help fight the fines.
Right, that's that's the photo I was showing you, right?
Here's another version of it.
Those are the two websites that they mentioned in their letter.
Now, let me go on to tell you what they say about those photos.
I showed you the photos.
It's just a torso of a cop.
It says police on it.
They say the photograph is also used in various other locations on Rebel News website as part of advertisements to raise funds from readers in furtherance of a stated goal to hire a team of lawyers to defend every single Canadian who gets a lockdown ticket.
Okay, that's true.
The photograph in question is of an OPP officer in their service uniform.
Presently, the origin of the photograph is unclear.
However, it is being used by Rebel News without the express authorization of either the OPP or the individual officer.
Now, let me stop there.
Do you see an officer?
I mean, there's the photo they're talking about.
I see a torso of an officer with the photo cropped so as not to show his face.
It wasn't about a particular officer, it's just the vest that said police.
So did the police officer whose torso we showed, did he really complain?
I mean, this threat letter says the OPP complained and that the cop complained, but they say they don't know where the photo came from and they clearly can't see the face on it.
Is this a real letter or a shakedown?
Well, let me read some more and get a load of this.
The officer's first initial and last name clearly appear on their uniform in several of the crop versions of the photograph across the Rebel News web domain, as well as on the URLs listed above, particularly when viewed from a mobile browser.
Now, is that true?
It is not true.
It is not visible at all here.
It's not legible here.
Now, here's the mobile image they're talking about.
You simply cannot read the name.
There is no face.
We cropped it out.
You cannot read the name.
I magnified that to maximum resolution.
It is not readable.
It's just not.
Do you know what that name says?
I don't think the Justice Department lawyers do either, actually, because they say they can't even identify the photo.
So how do they know who the cop is?
But based on the above, a blurry photo of a policeman's vest with an illegible name tag only in a couple of them, face cropped out in all of them, Doug Ford's Justice Department is threatening to sue us.
But for what?
Sue is for what?
Well, you're going to laugh.
It appears that the photograph of the officer is being commercially exploited by Rebel News to raise funds for a cause without the express consent of the officer or the OPP.
Oh, it gets better.
As such, the unauthorized use of this photograph constitutes a tortious misappropriation of personality and invasion of primacy.
Depending on the exact origin of the photo, it may also constitute a copyright violation.
Oh, really?
Oh, it gets better.
Further, the unauthorized use of this photograph in a media and fundraising campaign may create a threat to the individual officer's personal safety and is a violation of their right to be free from harassment, really.
Just slow down for a second.
Do you believe that the officer here in this photo, a photo you don't even really notice because it's just in the background, it's faded, his face isn't shown, you can't read the name tag.
I tried.
Do you believe that officer has been harassed or even could be harassed?
Do you believe his personal safety is in jeopardy?
They then say if we don't take the photo down or make it even blurrier, they're going to sue us.
We look forward to hearing from you shortly and reserve our rights to pursue any and all illegal proceedings considered advisable should Rebel News decline this request.
What do you think?
Do you think this cop has been harassed, this faceless, nameless cop?
How could he be?
We don't show his face.
We don't know his name.
You can't actually read it.
Do you think this is a real complaint?
Or do you think this is actually an attempt by that oaf, Doug Ford, and his lockdown bullies to try to intimidate us in some way, specifically for our Fight the Finds project that they hate?
Well, before you answer it, look at this.
It took me about 30 seconds using Google Image reverse search, if you know what I'm talking about, literally 30 seconds, to find the photo we were using.
It's a giant PR photo handed out by the OPP itself.
This is it right on the OPP's website.
Now, because I'm trying to make a point here, I have blurred out the face of the cop, but you can go to the OPP's own website and see the cop, very handsome young man, and see his beautiful face for yourself.
It was a posed PR photo shoot that the officer involved obviously consented to, got paid to do, was done explicitly to be published to the world.
And in case you don't know this, what is published by a government is in the public domain.
There's no copyright attached to it.
This was an official handout by the OPP.
Now, as I've shown you half a dozen times already, we don't actually use the cop's face in our image.
We cropped it out because it wasn't relevant.
We weren't trying to show that cop.
We were trying to show a cop.
And you can't read the cop's name, not even on the OPP website version.
You just can't.
But look at this.
Another 30 seconds on Google search, and you can find a whole bunch of other places that have used that exact same photograph either in the news, where they make money by selling ads or even selling things.
Stores use it.
Anyone wanting a royalty-free photo of a generic cop in a tough guy pose, they all use the OPP stock photo.
And the OPP is fine with that, even though all those uses have the face of the cop on it, which is obviously fine because it was published to the world by that cop in the OPP.
And I don't know if you know this.
It's not illegal to show someone's face on TV or in a newspaper.
It's not illegal to show even a cop's face or his name every single day in newspapers.
You see cops, their faces, their name tags every day, because like every other human being in public, they have no reasonable expectation of privacy.
You can be photographed on the street.
That's just the law.
Now, if there was an undercover cop, some sort of special forces or something, and his anonymity was really important, you could understand why he would want to be low-key and not have his face on the website.
But then he'd probably not be posing for PR photos for the OPP website.
But even if he was super secret, we didn't show his face.
I found all of this really weird.
Now, I get phone calls from police or ex-cops, I don't know, once a week maybe.
And in one instance, here in Toronto, a cop phoned me up and made the case to me why I was wrong to have published certain things on Twitter about that cop.
And you know what?
I listened to him and I actually was persuaded by him.
And I took down the tweets, no fuss.
And I, you know, I'll admit it, I actually said sorry to the cop himself because he was right.
I was wrong.
He persuaded me.
I really actually appreciated the call.
I like the fact that he phoned me up, man-to-man, friendly, and he didn't threaten me or try and play tough guy.
He appealed to my reason.
He just said, look, I think you've got this one wrong.
Here's why.
And you know what?
I couldn't have been happy.
I feel really great about how that whole thing ended.
I'd call that cop an ally now.
That did not happen here.
Obviously, the cop we use in this ad hasn't been harassed at all.
You can't even see his face.
The image has been on our website for almost a year.
It took the idiots at Doug Ford's Justice Department a year to get moving.
And even then, they said they couldn't even locate the original photo.
I mean, come on, maybe get your kids to internet search.
I found it in 30 seconds, and I'm not even that tech savvy.
Presumably, that photo being on the OPP website has been in the public eye for years.
Threat Letters Controversy00:03:39
I don't know, maybe a decade.
This whole thing was a stitch-up.
So I just got on the phone and I called the lawyer who threatened me.
I mean, wouldn't you?
Well, maybe you wouldn't.
I mean, the whole point of a threat letter is to threaten someone, right?
To scare them.
They threatened to sue me in about four different ways, that I violated copyright.
I didn't.
That I was illegally profiting off the cop's image.
I'm not.
That I was harassing him.
Stop lying.
And that I somehow breached his privacy.
What a joke.
So it's a really, really embarrassing letter, really stupid letter, but it was a threat letter written from the Attorney General.
Urgent, important.
We're going to sue you.
I think most people, though, would be scared a little bit.
I mean, wasn't that the point of the letter to try to scare us off from criticizing that stupid premier, Doug Ford, possibly Ontario's stupid premier?
I don't know.
I just really embarrassed that I ever supported Doug Ford.
And this proves I was right.
This is a shakedown.
They don't like the fact we're criticizing their lockdown.
And so they're trying to get us to stop our Fight the Fines campaign.
And this is their plan.
So I just called up Sean White, the lawyer from the Justice Department, who threatened me on behalf of stupid Doug Ford.
And because I'm a journalist and I'm obviously dealing with an attempt to threaten me, I thought it would be wise to record the phone call just for my own protection.
So here's how that call went.
I was playing phone tag with Sean White for a while, but I finally got him on the line.
And then this was weird.
He immediately put me on hold while he rushed around and got his big boss to join the call too.
Her name is Jennifer Richards.
Now that was weird.
She didn't sign the letter.
Who was she?
I looked her up after the call.
According to her public LinkedIn page, she is nothing less than the deputy director of her whole branch in the Justice Department.
That's a big boss.
It was clear that she was the boss and Sean White was just the guy who had to sign the stupid letter.
This whole thing was being dealt with by very senior people in the government.
I mean, come on.
A deputy director?
I think that's a little creepy and a little embarrassing to them.
But let me just start playing you the call.
Here's how it started off.
Hey, Ezra, can you just hold for one second?
Yeah.
Hi, Ezra.
Are you still there?
Yeah, I checked my voice.
Well, you didn't leave me a message there, did you?
No, I sent you an email.
I've just patched in Jennifer Richards to my office.
She's going to join us on the call.
Okay, Jennifer, hi.
Hi, I'm Jenny.
Sorry, go ahead.
I was just going to introduce myself.
I'm Ezra Levant with Rebel News.
And Jennifer, are you with the Attorney General as well?
Yes, I am.
Anyway, so this big boss, the deputy director, joins the call.
I don't care.
I want to talk about their threat letters.
So I just jumped right in and started asking them about it.
I started reading the letter.
All right.
Well, nice to meet you.
And are you in the same department?
I'm in the same branch as Sean.
All right.
So I've just got the letter in front of me here.
Do you have the letter in front of you guys?
Yep.
Okay.
So, okay, I know that you're talking about.
I checked it out when I got your letter.
Yeah, we use it a lot of places.
We do use it for fight defines.
Threat Letters Debate00:15:39
The photograph in question is of an OPP officer.
Yes.
The origin of the photograph is unclear.
It's from your website, the OPP website.
Do you want me to send you a link to it?
Sure.
It can't hurt.
Okay.
I mean, you can find it quick.
Yeah.
I'm pretty sure that's where we took it from.
The OPP officer was like, was you know, unaware that he certainly, but it's certainly not information that we received.
Okay, I'm sorry.
Could you say unaware of what?
That the photo is being used.
Yeah.
Okay, was he aware that he posed for the photo?
I'm not sure if you, I mean, it was certainly not information.
We are not aware that it was on the OPP website, but they may have our clients have known that.
Does that change your point of view at all?
I don't think so, no.
You don't think so?
So in my point of view, it was a PR photo posed on purpose and published to the world from a government website.
So they're claiming that the officer involved didn't know he was in a photo being used, but I asked them if they dispute the fact that it's actually a PR photo that he posed for and that they published and that is in the public domain.
Obviously, there was no concerns about privacy.
And I would naturally take the point of view that if it's published by the government, it's in the public domain.
Do you dispute either of those?
Do you disagree with me on either of those two points?
Well, we'll go back to them.
Like, I'm happy to bring it back to them, to the OPP, and to ask them whether or not this changes anything from their perspective.
I think what would be helpful, though, if you could confirm whether there's any appetite on your end to even blur his name.
Hang on.
So the picture is literally on the OPP website.
The name is blurred already.
You can't read it.
You can try.
You won't.
But whatever is showing is showing on their own PR photo on their own website.
And they want me to blur a name that's blurred already or something.
Did they even look at the photo?
Did they know that we cropped out his face, right?
He actually hasn't had any problems at all, has he?
This is just a shakedown by Doug Ford's stupider staff, isn't it?
Now, can I ask you, No Bologna, did he actually complain?
Because I don't think his face is there.
Now, his initial might be there.
Did he actually complain or was this a political complaint?
I don't think we're going to get into that, Ezra.
But this is the that.
They have two lawyers, including the deputy director.
Write me a threat letter claiming this cop is being harassed for a picture that they published that we cropped out the cop's face.
And my question is: Has the cop actually had any problems?
And they say they won't get into that, but that's the whole thing here.
That's what they claim is why they're writing to me.
These Doug Ford lawyers are wicked liars, aren't they?
Here, listen to some more.
Okay, I think that's a particular answer there.
Has he received any hassle?
Like, has he actually received any abuse?
I think you mentioned something like that.
Yeah, here we go.
Further, this may, quote, create a threat to the individual officer's personal safety and is a violation of their right to be free from harassment.
Can you tell me, has this officer received any threats?
Because that's very important to me.
I definitely don't want to cause that.
Has that happened?
I don't think we're aware of that occurring to date.
So there hasn't been a problem.
The cop hasn't had any harassment.
Not sure how he could, given that we cropped out his face and you can't read his name.
He's been on the OPP website for years with his face, so there's that.
I think that these lawyers at Ontario's Justice Department are just unethical liars, like Doug Ford.
They're telling me the truth here, I think, now that I pressed them, but their threat letter to me was deliberately deceptive, wasn't it?
They're just as corrupt as their oafish boss, Doug Ford.
I said, Have you even talked to the cop?
Is he even aware that you're complaining on his behalf?
And here's what the liar said.
So, whether or not, okay, now you've just represented that.
Can you tell me how you did?
Yeah, and I'm glad you tell me that.
And how do you know that?
Or how would I be assured of that?
Well, I mean, I wouldn't misrepresent the position of the government.
So I wouldn't think.
Was it the cop who retained you, or was it the OPP?
Well, the cop's not our particular client.
This is a shakedown.
This is a threat because we're fighting the fines for hundreds of people because we're not bought off like the other media who take the government bailout.
We're independents.
So I asked them, have you ever threatened anyone else like this?
Listen.
Now, can I ask you a question?
Because can I tell you why I think you're picking on me politically?
You just say it's not political, and I'm sure you're speaking the truth from the information you know.
But let me throw something back at you.
Every single day, the Toronto Star, the Toronto Dunn, carry photos of OPP officers with not only their badge visible, but their face visible.
Have you ever sent a letter like this to the Toronto Star, the Toronto Sun, or any TV station?
I'm not sure.
So you're not, so you can't recall one.
How about you, Sean?
Can you recall?
There's a lot of American government.
You're unaware of that.
That's fair enough.
I'm unaware.
Sean, are you aware of any other letters?
I'm also unaware.
There are literally hundreds of lawyers that work for the government.
That's the rest of them.
You've got the deputy director here and a young lawyer, and neither has ever sent such a threat letter to any journalist before, and neither has ever heard of one being sent to a journalist before.
Of course not.
Would be crazy writing letters to the media saying don't show pictures of our police.
That's just not a thing.
They must really think I'm stupid to believe that's against the law.
They must really think I'm scared.
I'll let you decide if I'm stupid, but I tell you I am not scared.
But I wanted to be 100% sure if this cop really was being picked on because his anonymous torso appeared in a background image, I'd be open to fixing it.
I mean, I know that's insane, but we're just playing devil's advocate here.
Let me humor them.
Did he really complain?
Well, actually, they had never even spoken with him.
Can you put yourself in my shoes just for a second?
I tried to put myself in your shoes.
I thought, boy, if that cop is getting picked on, that is extremely bad.
And even though that sometimes comes with the turf of being a cop, I don't want to be hardened on.
But you say you don't have any info about that.
So I put myself in the office.
I don't know.
I don't know, but there's a difference.
But instead, there is a difference between the particular police officer being subject to harassment and a police officer.
Whether or not he's complained is something that we would never disclose because that would be confidential between him and his employer, the OPP.
But for concern, there's obviously a difference between him actually being subjected to harassment or to retaliation or him being the target of whatever it is.
That image has been him simply being, yeah, and him simply maybe having a concern about that, or the OPP as his employer having a concern.
There's a difference.
So, you know, our current-that photo has been up for nine months.
Right.
That photo has been up for nine months.
It's been seen, I'm going to guess a million times.
And you're saying, as far as you know, there's never been a harassment of this officer despite a million views over nine months.
It's a fake.
It's a scam.
The cop didn't complain.
They've never actually even spoken to the cop.
This whole thing was a false pretext.
These lawyers were falling apart in a five-minute phone call with me.
So they wanted me to do things.
But I turned it around.
I asked them to do two things for me.
First, I asked them to undertake to do two things, two undertakings.
I mean, they work for me after all.
I'm a taxpayer.
I don't work for them.
Yeah, by Sean and I.
So put yourself in my shoes.
Right.
But you guys are top dogs.
You're top guns.
You're like the legally guns.
Here you are.
No.
Put yourself in my shoes.
Do you see why I might think that you guys are trying to roll me?
No, I actually don't.
And at the end of the day, I mean, I think all we know, if you're going to take it down, if you're going to blur his name, or if you're not.
And then we can at least go back to our clients and advise them.
I think that's like the most constructive part that can flow from this conversation is instead of debating.
I mean, I wasn't aware it had been up for nine months.
I think that's helpful context.
We're happy to bring that information back to our client.
The fact that Sean and I are not aware of other sort of, let's just call them seasoned assist letters, really doesn't mean anything.
Our role that we play is very narrow.
We deal with labor and employment issues.
You know, our focus is more narrow, perhaps, other areas in government.
There are, you know, quite literally hundreds and hundreds of lawyers.
So I really do not want it to be, you know, misunderstood that somehow, because we don't know, that means it just happened.
That it's quite the opposite.
Okay.
So if you want to just confirm your position, that's helpful.
And then we can talk to our clients.
Can you undertake to me to do a couple of things?
Number one, can you undertake to confirm that this officer has not actually, and I think you have said this, but that this officer has not actually had any harassment?
Can you undertake to confirm that for me?
Well, what I'll undertake is to discuss it with our clients and may or may not provide additional information to you.
So I flag that as being a question.
And the second thing is, can you undertake to see if you or your colleagues in the very large department you work have sent a threat letter like this to any other media in Ontario?
But on this very specific ground, like involving this particular officer?
Well, of course not.
It's all facts.
It's all facts.
Any officer.
Have you, like I say, this officer, we don't use his face.
So you can imagine literally every day in the star and the sun and on TV, there's officers with their name and face, which I would imagine would make all these issues more acute.
Have you ever, ever, ever, or your colleagues, can you undertake to see if you ever sent a threat letter to other media or is it just us?
Like I said, we'll raise the question with our client and we may or may not respond to it.
So I asked them, is this normal for them to threaten journalists like this?
Does it actually work with anyone?
Do they think I'm that stupid or cowardly, so easy to roll over?
I asked them in sort of a goofy way.
I'm goofy once in a while.
I said, why are you being so mean?
Seriously, if there was a problem, why not have the cop call me up as some cop probably does once a week?
Why did you just pick up the phone?
They have my phone number.
I gave them my phone number.
Like, phone me up.
Why these legal threats?
Why senior staff in Doug Ford's Justice Department, why put the deputy director on the phone to threaten me with, what, four lawsuits?
Why are you being so mean?
Is that a question that you wanted to answer?
Yes, sir.
You got two lawyers sending me a threat letter on stationery, threatening to sue me.
Why didn't you just pick up the phone?
Like, why are you threatening to sue me?
Surely you know that I have to defend our freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
I mean, like, do you want to fight with me or do you want to resolve a real problem?
I don't think in any way we were looking for a quote-unquote fight.
I think it was important, as we always do, to outline our legal position and to put it in writing so that there's no misunderstanding with respect to the issue.
Well, there's a lot of misunderstandings.
You didn't even do your research.
You didn't even know where the photo was found in like a minute just by Googling your site.
You, you know, like you didn't even do your homework on that.
You're obviously, you know, you didn't even know it was your own photo.
You didn't do any homework here.
You ran straight to the threat letter.
There's two lawyers on this file.
When you could have just picked up the phone and said, hey, Ezra, you know, just you went straight for the threat letter.
And you know what that does to me?
That puts me on my back feet because now I'm thinking I'm being threatened.
And I'm a journalist, and the only thing a journalist can do is being threatened by cops is to push back.
So you see the pickle you've put me in?
This threat letter and your hostile tone of the letter, and you're very friendly on the phone.
I'll give you that.
But this letter feels like a shakedown.
Put yourself in my shoes for a minute.
You've never sent this letter to anyone else that you know.
You didn't do any of your research.
I think you confirmed for me this cop hasn't had any harassment.
You didn't even know this photo is being out for nine months.
But you spent hours being instructed by clients and writing this letter.
And you got two of you on the call.
Am I going to take from this other than you're trying to roll me?
And you should Google me, and you'll find out that I don't react well to threats.
Do you want to start over again on this whole thing?
No, I mean, at the end of the day, we have.
No, okay.
No, let's rumble.
Let's rumble.
Let's rumble.
Please let me just finish my sentence.
No, I can't believe you said no.
That was my call to branch.
And you said no.
I'm mad.
If there was a real problem, let me know.
But there was no real problem here.
There were no complaints by the cop.
How could there be?
He's anonymous on our website.
His picture was cropped to show his, you know, so his face isn't shown.
His name tag was blurred on the OPP website, and they admitted they've never even spoken to the guy.
They didn't even know where the photo was from.
So they, so they say, I don't know, can they really be that stupid?
But they threaten me four ways?
Yeah, no, not me.
Wrong guy.
Here's how the call ended.
I told them to have a cop only.
Threats and Silence00:04:13
And I asked these two Doug Ford lawyers for an apology.
All right.
Well, here's what my position is.
You go back to your client and you do what you have to do.
I would be grateful if you helped me out on these two undertakings to see if he has been harassed and to see if you've ever sent a threat letter to other media.
And I would like you to come back to me with an apology for this threat letter.
And I'd like you to deal with me as a fellow Ontarian that is interested in resolving a problem if there's a real problem to resolve.
But if this is your attempt to, you know, to chill my reportage, then my message to you is you're going to have to proceed to litigation.
And not only will we be fighting in the court of law, we'll be fighting in the court of public opinion.
And I will show what I'm sure I will be able to show, which is that your office has never threatened a journalist like this ever, that your legal theories about the copyright of a public domain photo are fake.
It's junk law to say that this officer had a reasonable expectation of privacy when he's literally posing for a publicity photo.
And that generally this is you trying to roll me.
And you will find out that that is not as easy as perhaps you think.
You'll probably win in the end because you've got the biggest law firm in the province and unlimited resources.
But I don't think I'm going to go quietly.
So let's start again.
I need an apology letter from you guys retracting the tone here.
And frankly, if the cop want to call me off, if the cop wants to call me up man to man and say, hey, Ezra, you know, I'm getting some flack on this.
Can you help me out?
I would say, of course, mate.
Of course.
You'd have to be a cad not to do that.
So if there's a real problem, have the cop give me a phone call.
You've got my phone number.
I'll solve it in five minutes with the cop.
And if it's not that, let's have a five-year fight.
Let's have a five-year charter fight.
And by the way, can you preserve all your internal records on this?
Because I think there's going to be a lot of interesting legal procedures if it's abuse of office, if it's abusive process.
I want to know who the complainant really is.
I want to know who gave you the impetus to put two cops on this.
So we're going to really get granular here.
Or you could just come back with an apology from you two and a phone call from the cop.
So those are my two points of view.
You can take whatever steps you like because it sounds like there's a big strategy behind this letter.
But call anytime.
Have the cop call me.
I'd probably prefer talking to him.
Other than that, let's just go from there.
Understood.
Yeah, we'll pass along the information.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Take care.
Well, after the call, I wrote to them to confirm my two requests for undertakings and to ask for that apology.
I told them to write back to me on a deadline by Monday night.
That was last night.
And to my surprise, they did.
And then they wrote back to me again today after an email.
Exchange, no surprise.
They weren't allowed to apologize to me, even though I think they know they were being a bit mean.
Also, not a surprise, they didn't answer the two questions I asked them to undertake to answer whether the cop actually was harassed or also whether they had sent a threat letter to anyone else in the media, which means if you're not going to answer those questions, it's pretty obvious no and no.
They tell me they refuse to answer my questions.
It still sounds like they haven't actually spoken to the cop to this day.
I'm skeptical that the cop actually complained or even knows about us using his torso.
Remember, I told them to have the cop phone me up.
Not only did they refuse, but they said he wants to remain anonymous.
That's what they wrote to me actually today.
Anonymous.
Stolen Valor Lawsuit00:06:54
But I thought they said he was getting harassed for the use of his torso in a picture.
I think they have to pick Elaine.
Is he anonymous, as they now say, or did we violate his privacy?
These Doug Ford Justice Department lawyers can't even keep their own story straight.
I guess the A students become judges.
The B students go work for the fancy firms.
And the C students go work for Doug Ford.
Oh my God, the law schools these days.
And they ended their emails to me by reiterating their threats to me.
You know what, guys?
Bring it.
Sean, Jennifer, bring it.
Come.
Come and get me.
Come, You're little thugs, just like your ofish boss, Doug Ford.
You're running a political errand for him, and you know it.
And you know you don't have a legal case.
There is no copyright law here.
There's no privacy violation here.
This isn't a real thing.
Police are photographed every day.
Never before has a media company been threatened for simply publishing a photo, let alone a photo of a chest.
But there's something much worse and much more gross here.
And it should deeply shame Doug Ford if he had any shame.
It's a kind of stolen valor.
Do you know what I mean by the phrase stolen valor?
Stolen valor is like what that liberal Harjit Sajjan did, Trudeau's defense minister, when he lied and claimed that he was the architect of the master plan to destroy the Taliban in Afghanistan, but he wasn't.
He exaggerated.
He lied.
He stole the credit for that from the real heroes who did that.
Stolen valor.
Stolen valor can be simple, like wearing a uniform you're not entitled to wear or wearing medals that you didn't earn, because those uniforms mean something.
Those medals mean something.
Quite often they mean that someone was wounded or someone who was in great danger but showed courage.
They're the mark of heroes and to fake that isn't just a lie.
It's a counterfeit.
It's stealing from the honor of the men who really did do those things.
If there really was a cop who really was being harassed because of our use of this torso only picture, I'd be shocked.
I'd be skeptical.
But if a real cop called me up and said it really happened, I'd be a man and I'd say, all right, I'll take it down right now.
I'd take it down myself.
But that's obviously not the case here.
This photo has been up for nearly a year on our website, for years on the OPP website.
Doug Ford's stupid lawyers only noticed now.
It's just their lame, lying way to threaten us.
Don't post this cop's face.
We don't show his name other than the unreadable blurred version.
The lawyers say he's actually anonymous, which proves the point, doesn't it?
And from the phone call and their passive aggressive letters to me, it's pretty clear they haven't actually ever spoken with him.
But they're using his status as a police officer to try to intimidate and threaten us, but it's false.
They've never spoken to the guy.
They've lied about him.
That is a form of stolen valor.
Doug Ford had his Justice Department lawyers and his OPP brass have several meetings about how to get us, how to threaten us, how to intimidate us, because he hates the fact that we're standing up to him with our fightthefines.com project.
So they cooked up a scheme and they used an anonymous cop as their weapon.
They stole his valor to make the complaint against us in his name falsely, to make it seem real.
They stole his valor because Doug Ford has no valor, has no honor of his own.
And these two disgraceful Justice Department lawyers went along with the scheme.
That is unethical.
That is an abuse of process.
That is an abuse of office.
And so I say to you, Sean White and Jennifer Richards, you bring it on, you deceitful cheaters.
You stole this officer's valor to make a false claim where there was none.
You threaten me and my company with fake lawsuits because you have no real case.
You are wicked people, and I will not bend the knee to you.
You come and you come and get me, and you preserve all your records because if you dare to bring your abusive, vexatious lawsuits against me, stealing Officer X's valor because you have no case, if you dare to abuse taxpayers' dollars in the courts to silence our voice as journalists and to stop our public interest civil liberties lawsuits, well, get ready for the fight of your lives.
Not just us defending against your nuisance suits, but us suing you.
That's right.
Suing you for abusing your office.
That's right.
For violating your professional ethics.
That's a real thing, unlike your fake lawsuit.
And suing your corrupt bosses too.
You tell the clowns at the OPP brass and the premier's office, you tell them to preserve their records too.
All of their emails, all of their notes from their meetings.
Because if I ever see you around here again, expect a lawsuit that turns the tables on your attempted shakedown of us.
You know, Doug Ford is too stupid to know about it.
But you, you, Sean and Jennifer, you must have learned in law school.
A thuggish premier named Maurice Duplessis hated the Jehovah's Witnesses and kept having police arrest them and charge them with crimes.
But there was this restaurant owner named Ron Corelli who kept posting their bail.
And Duplessis was furious that this guy in a restaurant was getting in his way.
So he ordered the province to cancel Ron Corelli's license for his restaurant.
Ron Corelli sued, and it went all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada.
And they ruled that thuggish premiers cannot be thugs.
They cannot abuse their power for political reasons.
You can't cancel a liquor license because you're a bigot against Jehovah's Witness and some guys posting bail.
You can't do that, especially if a guy's involved in civil liberties law.
You can't do that, Doug Ford, you moron.
So my message to you, Sean and Jennifer, is to tell Doug Ford and to tell Thomas Carrick of the OPP that if they dare to bring their stolen valor case against us, we will bring a Ron Corelli lawsuit against them.
Not just you, against them.
And like Ron Corelli, we will not stop until the Supreme Court hears this case.
Cannot Cancel Civil Liberties00:01:36
My friends, if you share my fury at this and do something positive about it, what are you going to do about it?
I know what I'm going to do about it.
I'm going to fight.
What can you do about it?
You can go to fightthefines.com.
Clearly, Doug Ford hates it.
We have helped literally hundreds of people fight back against that bully, Doug Ford.
That's why he's trying to set us up.
That's trying to silence us, but we're smarter than him.
All we need is your help to pay for the lawyers to defend citizens.
And God forbid, if that bastard comes for us, I'm going to ask for your help to fight him too.
Give us the tools, and we'll finish the work.
Go to fightthefiance.com.
That's the whole show today.
I can't tell you how mad I am.
I don't know if it's because it's unfair or because they think I'm that stupid or they think I'm that cowardly.
Each of those three things pricks me in a different place.
I think the unfairness is the worst of it.
I mean, I think those lawyers may just be weak and cowardly themselves.
If they're ordered by a boss to send me a threat letter, they probably said, oh, no.
But listen, you work for the justice minister.
He orders you to do it.
I guess you do it or you lose your job.
So they're weak and they're cowardly.
I can't believe they think they have a legal case here.
It's the unfairness, I think, that bothers me.
But I swear on the altar of God, I will fight this until I am dead.