The police searches appear to have been prompted by a complaint from a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell, who accused the newspaper of invading her privacy after it obtained copies of her driving record, including a 2008 drunken driving conviction. Newell says the newspaper targeted her after she ordered Meyer and a reporter out of her restaurant earlier this month during a political event.
Meyer says a source gave the newspaper the information unsolicited and that reporters verified it through public online records. The paper eventually decided not to run a story, but it did report on Newell’s complaints about the newspaper’s investigation at a city council meeting, where she publicly confirmed she’d had a DUI conviction and that she drove after her license was suspended.
The search warrant names Newell as a victim and lists the underlying reasons for the searches as suspicion of identity theft and “unlawful acts concerning computers.”