Recently released police body camera footage shows MSNBC producer James J. Morrison admitting to following a jury vehicle during the Kyle Rittenhouse case at the behest of Irene Byon, a New York-based booking producer for NBC News.
The footage begins when Officer Jerel Jones-Denson of the Kenosha Police Department pulls over Morrison for a red light violation and asks if he lives in the area before inquiring, “Were you following a vehicle?” Morrison explains that he is a producer for MSNBC and said he “was being called by New York.”
He continues to explain that someone from NBC’s New York office told him that “these might be the people that you need to follow,” in reference to a vehicle that was carrying members of the jury from the Rittenhouse trial.
Jones-Denson clarifies and asks, “New York told you to follow a vehicle?” to which Morrison responds “yes.” Morrison also tells the officer that he was being “discreet” and wasn’t trying to “talk with anybody,” but was instead trying to “find a location.”
Morrison later calls New York-based NBC producer Irene Byon and puts the police officer on the phone. In her exchange with Jones, Byon struggles to explain why she had told Morrison to follow the vehicle, repeatedly tripping over her words before telling him the MSNBC staffers were hoping to “find any leads … about the case” and discover “where people involved in the trial are positioned.”
Byon also explains “we had our people positioned in different areas of the courthouse” so they could follow those involved in the case. Jones-Denson then chastised Byon, telling her to stop telling reporters to follow those involved with the case, saying this “put people in dangerous positions” in reference to Morrison’s alleged violation of traffic laws.
Before this body camera footage was released, the incident prompted Judge Bruce Schroeder of the Rittenhouse case to ban MSNBC from the courtroom. The media company has a history of doxxing normal people.
See the police report on this incident here.
Source: The Federalist
