On Tuesday, NPR reported that a lawyer hired by Trump appointee Michael Pack to probe the federal media agency Voice of America has an active restraining order against him stemming from a complaint that he made death threats against his father.
"In June, Pack hired a lawyer with no background in news to investigate his agency's coverage for potential anti-Trump bias, in a way that appears to violate Voice of America's legal protections of journalistic independence," reported David Folkenflik. "That investigative attorney has a potentially problematic record himself: he remains under a court order to stay away from his father and to surrender all firearms due to a complaint that he made detailed death threats against his father."
"These details appear in publicly available documents from a court proceeding held just 35 miles up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway from USAGM's headquarters," said the report. "It raises questions about how rigorously the security-minded CEO had vetted his own newly hired legal counselor. And this is not an ancient episode: the court order was filed in early February. It remains in effect through February 2021."
Pack, a conservative filmmaker, was Trump's pick to lead VOA, a news agency which handles the U.S. government's external broadcasting to foreign countries. Trump has blasted VOA as "disgusting," claiming that they broadcast anti-American content.