When we left each other last week, Eric Meyer, the publisher of the local newspaper in tiny Marion, Kansas, was reeling from the town cops raiding his home and newspaper offices.

And then his 98-year-old mom dying the day after, right after she told the cops, it's on video.

This raid is going to kill me.

You're going to be responsible for my death.

I have to arrange for a funeral.

I have to put out a newspaper.

And by God, I'm going to put out the newspaper.

There is no frigging way that I'm going to let them seize our equipment and keep us from publishing that week.

My mother would have skinned me alive if I had.

Today on Question Everything, we continue the story.

Who was behind the raids of the Marion County record?

We want to get us on a transit. of the Marion County record.

That Friday, August 11, 2023, as the cops were packing up the records computers and hard drives in Marion, across the state line in Kansas City, Missouri, another journalist, TV reporter Jessica McMaster, was multitasking, getting dinner ready for her kids and scrolling through Twitter.

When she saw word that a local paper in a tiny town, a couple hours away from her, had been raided by the police.

I wasn't familiar with Marion at all. That's not actually even part of our coverage area over here in Kansas City.

What piqued my interest, there was all this chatter on social media about who was behind this.

A refresher on the suspect list.

There was the mayor of Marion who'd been clashing with Eric Meyer and the newspaper for years and had just made a nasty post online about journalists.

There was the local restaurant owner, who was also mad at the paper about their reporting

and whose name was included on the warrants.

There was the judge, maybe, who appeared to be a fill-in for the normal district judge

and who signed off on the search of the newspaper.

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