Police Get a Search Warrant for Alec Baldwin's Phone but Reportedly He's Not Giving it to Them
Source - Embattled actor Alec Baldwin left home alone Friday — seemingly still toting the cellphone that investigators have issued a search warrant to get.
The 63-year-old actor ... left his downtown apartment hours after the warrant turned the heat up on his role in the deadly shooting of 42-year-old cinematographer Halyna Hutchins [and] was alone as he loaded personal items into a waiting SUV — including his ever-present cellphone. ....
His phone took a central role in the two-month investigation into Hutchins’ death on Thursday when the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office in New Mexico issued a search warrant for it.
Investigators were forced to issue the warrant because the star — who was also a producer on the deadly “Rust” set — refused to hand over his phone without one, the sheriff’s department said in the document. ...
Officials found conversations about prepping for the fatal movie dating back to July 14, more than three months before Baldwin accidentally shot Hutchins dead during rehearsals for the Western.
Those messages included Baldwin requesting “a bigger gun,” settling on the “period” Colt that he brandished during the deadly scene.
If there are any principles we need to cling to more than anything as this bizarre tale of tragedy and perhaps true crime unfolds. The first is the presumption of innocence. The second is freedom from self-incrimination.
Whether Alec Baldwin is one of the great actors of any generation, with incredible good looks in his younger days and a beautiful speaking voice with a rich, leathery timbre that should be the sound of the words that invite up into a shaft of light to your afterlife or a homeless man going to bed every night in a puddle of his own filth, he is innocent until proven guilty. And, he has the right to privacy. He cannot be compelled to hand over his private correspondences, texts, or conversations to anyone. And it's not right for any of us to assume that by exercising that right, he's covering up evidence of his guilt in all this.
With one notable exception. And this would be it.
I'm no lawyer. If I was, I'd be putting a phony neck brace on some scam artist and raking in the billable hours instead of talking to you. But I know enough to know that a search warrant isn't a request. Nor is it an invitation, an inquiry or a polite question. It's a fucking court order. It carries with it the full weight of the law. Or is supposed to. Either that's an entirely different phone in Baldwin's baggy joggers or he's ignoring a judges subpoena to produce evidence and provide it to the police investigators.
"Subpoena," by the way is Latin for "under penalty." Meaning that if he doesn't cooperate, he can be arrested. So IF that is, as the New York Post is presuming it is, the phone that's the subject of the warrant, it's a ballsy move to walk around in public with the thing like you're just a suburban dad running errands and not the subject of an investigation into someone's death. Ballsier even than talking down to a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as you tell him you think Captain Ramius is defecting and bringing the Red October with him. It's also the opposite of what he told George Stephanopolous when he said he didn't do anything wrong and he's being told he has nothing to worry about from this inquiry.
Again, I'm not saying that he's defying a court order. That's just what's being reported. Allegedly and supposedly and all that. But if it is, this already surreal story is going to go into a whole new level of craziness. And he and his pretend Spanish wife who grew up in Boston will only be in for a much tougher time dealing with the paps.
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Stay tuned. This is getting more surreal by the day. And it feels like we're only just getting warmed up.