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TBN to judge: Stop Watchdog blogger

We've been talking about "extravagant" spending at the nonprofit Trinity Broadcasting Network these last few days -- something Trinity tried to stop us from doing.

It is not often that we, personally, are called out in court documents. But last week, Trinity filed an emergency motion in Orange County Superior Court seeking to, among other things, block the Register from publishing stories based on the declaration of Brittany Koper, the granddaughter of Jan and Paul Crouch.

The rather explosive internal records in Koper's declaration were stolen, TBN said. The 180-page document was filed on Thursday, May 10, the day we got it; and sealed on Friday, May 11, until the court decides its fate. Trinity tried to convince the court that we at The Watchdog obtained it illegally, after it was sealed, and that the court should thus stop us from writing about it.

We'd like to note that there was no threat involved; we simply contacted Trinity's lawyer, Colby May, on Friday, and told him we'd be putting our story together on Monday and would like Trinity's take on it all.

That, apparently, set off quite a stir. Trinity rushed into court, seeking a contempt order against Koper's attorney -- charging him with leaking the documents after the seal order was issued -- and seeking some sort of action against us for allegedly unlawful news gathering.

"What to do with the Orange County blogger, Teri Sforza, is a more challenging problem," Trinity's motion read. "But this Court can issue some orders that case law supports, at least to keep the status quo to determine if these records are in fact stolen and/or are forgeries...."

Trinity proceeded to argue that, while news reporting is Constitutionally protected, "unlawful news gathering...does not enjoy constitutional protection to the same extent."

"The Court has the power to issue an order preventing Ms. Sforza from publishing the TBN contents, at least temporarily, to determine if the above cases apply," Trinity said.

All this is faintly reminiscent of the arguments Trinity made back in 2004, when it marched into the same courthouse and asked a judge to stop the Los Angeles Times from publishing stories on Enoch Lonnie Ford, a former TBN employee who was paid $425,000 to keep quiet about claims of a homosexual tryst with Paul Crouch. Trinity had argued that LAT reporter William Lobdell "aided and abetted" Ford in violating an April 2003 court order barring Ford from discussing his allegations. (The judge recused himself after making a crack from the bench about removing Lobdell from the courtroom "in shackles with a big ball chained to his foot so they can get a picture of that in the paper and how noble they are.")

This being a nation with a free press -- where the Pentagon Papers sort of set the bar -- Trinity was not successful in halting publication either time.

And in this instance, Koper's attorney was not held in contempt -- though the hearing featured tremendous animosity between both sides, our colleague Larry Welborn told us.

We would like to take this opportunity, however, to explain a bit about the process of news gathering to Trinity.

The only two scenarios it could imagine under which we could have obtained the documents were:

• The Security Hold was breached and the Register was able to access the Records after the May 11,2012 order locking down the public access at 10:30 a.m." or
• "(Koper) Attorney Tymothy MacLeod knew at all times on Friday May 11, 20 12 when he stood in front of this Court, that the Register had some or all of the records. He then deceived this Court and counsel allowing all to believe that no known distribution of the TBN internal files had been turned over to the media prior to the Order.

"Any other explanation is implausible," Trinity said. "No reporter randomly checks filings unless tipped off."

Every court reporter in America would tell Trinity that the job does, indeed, include randomly checking court filings. Every. Single. Day.