UPDATE: David Menzies was not taken to jail, he was held in the police car and eventually released. 

Moments ago David Menzies was arrested in Brampton, Ontario.

We’ve got a lawyer on the case right now. We don’t know yet if David will have to post bail and if so, how much it will be. We don’t yet know when his first appearance in court will be. But we need your help.

David wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was doing his job — in this case, working on a news report about Patrick Brown. (You’ll remember Brown — he’s the Ontario mayor who shut down public hockey arenas for kids, but was secretly playing private hockey games in one of those same arenas with his buddies. And David caught him red-handed.)

David and I went back to same the arena today, doing a follow-up story. We were on a sidewalk on public property, doing accountability journalism in the public interest. But then police pulled up and ordered them to stop, and to leave.

Except that’s not how a democracy works — peaceful journalists doing journalism on public property can’t just be shooed away by politicized cops running an errand for an angry mayor. We don’t live in China or Iran.

I'm a former lawyer so, I know our rights; but we brought along another top lawyer, Guidy Mamann, to help make the case. We know the law for public places. It’s not the same as for private property — police can only kick people out of public property under limited circumstances, such as for breaking noise bylaws. Obviously none of that applied.

David was literally put in a police car for trying to do his job and report.

We intend to fight this like hell. And to investigate the role of Patrick Brown, the mayor, as to why a whole squad of police cars were dispatched to arrest a peaceful journalist. That doesn’t sound like a police decision. That sounds like a political decision.

I’m furious right now, but I know we’ll win, and justice will prevail. We’ve got a team on lawyers working on this full tilt.

If Patrick Brown thinks that arresting David will stop us from investigating his misconduct, well, they simply don’t know David as well as I do.

Please help us get David free. 

Yours truly,

Ezra Levant

P.S. There’s no-one in Canada who fights harder for freedom of speech than Rebel News. It was just a matter of time before they arrested one of our journalists. But it will take more than handcuffs to stop us. 

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