Judge won’t keep blocking use of NC law in probe of AG’s ad

RALEIGH, N.C. — A federal judge opened the door Tuesday for a district attorney to try to prosecute someone for a 2020 campaign ad by North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein using a specific criminal count that the Democrat contends is unconstitutional on free-speech grounds. U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles refused to issue a preliminary injunction two weeks after she signed an emergency order blocking temporarily enforcement of the state law by Wake County DA Lorrin Freeman because Eagles said Stein’s campaign committee would likely win on legal claims that it be struck down. O’Neill cited the law in his September 2020 State Board of Elections complaint against Stein’s campaign committee over the commercial, which asserted that O’Neill “left 1,500 rape kits sitting on a shelf” in Forsyth County. A signed statement by an SBI agent said Stein told him in a December 2021 interview that the “disputed ad was an important corrective” to false accusations by O’Neill that Stein had failed to act on over 15,000 untested rape kits during his time as attorney general. O’Neill said in an emailed statement late Tuesday that it was “an embarrassment to the people of North Carolina” that Stein was now trying “to extinguish the very law designed to prevent politicians like himself from lying to the public.” The statute of limitations on the misdemeanor -- punishable by up to 60 days in jail with fines -- is two years.