This seems simple enough
According to The Guardian, which covered the story earlier this week following the court’s first hearing on Monday, Atlanta resident Samuel Tunick is fighting the charges. Tunick’s attorneys said that it was unlawful for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to seize his phone as he arrived back in the U.S. last year and that any evidence — including the alleged wiping of his phone — should be thrown out.
Also for context, the resident was targeted for connection to protests
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/23/cop-city-protester-phone
The US Department of Justice is attempting to prosecute an Atlanta resident in connection with the movement against the police training center known as Cop City because he had GrapheneOS on his phone, an open-source operating system that enables users to enter a passcode and wipe a phone clean.
The defendant, Sam Tunick, was stopped for interrogation at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport on 24 January last year, after vacationing in the Dominican Republic. Unbeknown to him, federal authorities had put him on a terrorism watchlist because of his alleged association with the movement against Cop City.
Opposition to the $109m police training center, which opened last spring, came from a wide range of local and national organizations and protesters, centered on concerns around police militarization and clearing forests in an era of climate crisis. Atlanta police said the center was needed for “world-class” training and to attract new officers.
Several state attempts to prosecute Cop City protesters have foundered in the last several years, while this is the second recent federal effort, after the justice department announced another indictment last month.
So it’s illegal to not help the feds investigate you? I’ll give em my password. It’s FuckUFascistScum8647
Well, yes. If you didn’t know by now that impeding a federal investigation by destroying records is illegal, then I don’t know what to tell you. (Edit: That said, this was charged under a somewhat different statute. I was trying to answer specifically your question.)
The point in dispute here is that the search was an illegal violation of the Fourth Amendment in the first place, and consequently the wipe proceeding that cannot be prosecuted because the government had no legal right to access that information to begin with – that is, it was always defendent’s to do with whatever they wanted, and they were under no obligation to preserve records.
Edit: I will say I haven’t directly read the defense’s arguments, so there could be more nuance here/I could be outright wrong about the grounds of the argument thanks to the telephone game.
I’d assume based on the specific charge that the hitch the defense is arguing is based on the word:
for the purpose of preventing or impairing the Government’s lawful authority to take such property into its custody or control
If the Government has no lawful authority, then no crime, it’d seem.
It is on the government to prove that the password given caused the wipe which is going to be difficult to do since they seemingly damaged the phone while they had it. All they noted was some flashes and a rebooting phone, so what did they do to fuck it up a private citizens property while they had it in custody?
And to prove he knew he was under investigation. Because their case seems to hinge on the idea that he destroyed evidence while under investigation. They didn’t ask him about the protests. They asked him about CP/CSAM. Is he under investigation for CSAM?
Exactly. Even then, many phones including those by Google and Samsung have the option to wipe themselves after too many failed attempts. Whose to say they didn’t type it in wrong or the individual under duress couldn’t remember their password? Or that the cops intentionally wiped the device to claim the individual was hiding something that they weren’t. I don’t see how any reasonable judge can believe anything the feds claim after they’ve already admitted to lying in court, when they ignore the law and judges orders, oh and on top of it all they protect pedophiles like Trump!
