Earlier this month, a federal judge ordered Glenn Beck to disclose the names of the confidential sources that his network relied upon when he spent a month in 2013 accusing Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi, a Saudi man who was injured in the Boston Marathon bombing, of being an al Qaeda “control agent” and the “money man” who financed the terrorist attack and recruited the Tsarnaev brothers to carry it out.
Alharbi has since sued Beck for defamation and slander and now Beck and his producers are refusing to abide by the judge’s order to reveal the sources who provided the information he used to smear Alharbi so that Alharbi’s lawyers can depose them.
On his radio show today, Beck said that this order is part of an effort by the government to “shut people up” and declared that he is willing to go to prison rather than reveal his sources.
“There is an effort from the government to shut people up,” Beck said. “You have the government under Barack Obama, investigating reporters who are leaking things, investigating whistleblowers. You currently have a case that I’m involved in in Boston where the judge is saying I have to release my confidential sources.”
“First of all, I’m happy to say I don’t know the confidential sources,” Beck claimed. “I specifically said the entire time, ‘I don’t want to know any facts I can’t go on the air with and I certainly don’t want to know the names of the confidential sources.’ I was asked by a reporter today, ‘So, this could mean jail time for somebody … Are you willing to go to jail for [it]?’ Yes! And every reporter in America should be willing to go to jail for confidential sources. Every one in America. And everyone in America, left or right, better protect that, otherwise journalism is you know it is over.”
