The conservative website Legal Insurrection has received documents from the District of Columbia detailing the preferential treatment given to David Gregory, previous host of the NBC News “Meet the Press” program, who held an illegal ammunition magazine in the show’s Washington studio, conservative news website Human Events said on December 22.
“What surprised me was that NBC having been warned, nonetheless went ahead and used or possessed the illegal magazine, ” said Professor William A. Jacobson, a leading contributor at Legal Insurrection, and the director of Cornell Law School’s Securities Law Clinic, in an exclusive interview with Guns & Patriots.
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District of Columbia’s then Attorney General Irvin B. Nathan declined to prosecute Gregory.
Before the Dec. 23, 2012 broadcast – less than two weeks after the spree-shooting at Newtown, Connecticut – NBC employees traded emails with the Metropolitan Police asking if they were allowed to use an actual outlawed magazine, he said.
Gregory waved the magazine in the face of National Rifle Association Executive Director Wayne LaPierre, while taunting him about the deaths at Newtown.
NBC was told flat out they could not bring such a magazine into the District of Columbia and they suggested using a theatrical prop, he said.
“I have no idea from these e-mails whether David Gregory himself was aware of the Metropolitan Police warning, ” he said. “But there certainly were producers, and other individuals at MBC who are aware of it.”
Jacobson said he requested the documents from the District of Columbia, supported by Judicial Watch, the Washington-based watchdog, which functions as an activist law firm for conservative causes and candidates.
The law professor said sought the internal communications between NBC and the district regarding the Dec. 23, 2012 stunt because the 30-round magazine is both illegal in the district’s municipal ordinances and because the district has been otherwise absolutist in its enforcement of its rules against guns, ammunition and gun-related accessories.
“The DC prosecuting office is very aggressive in how it treats gun law violations, ” he said.
“Nonetheless on a televised clear violation of the law, after a warning by the police not to do it, did not bring a prosecution against anybody, ” he said.
In fact, it was a violation of the district’s laws witnessed live by millions of Americans and as a video on the Internet, he said.
Gregory was removed as host of “Meet the Press” in August after several years of poor ratings.
