In the lawsuit against MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, there is the defendant, the plaintiff and the judge. And now there’s Evan Gahr.
Gahr isn’t directly implicated in the lawsuit — Schultz is being sued by a former business partner, Michael Queen, who claims Schultz owes him money for the success of his MSNBC show — but his name is coming up in court hearings due to his reporting on the case as it makes its way to trial.
A court transcript from a May 1 hearing quotes Schultz’s lawyer, John Hayes, complaining to the judge about Gahr’s reporting tactics, while Gahr sat just a few feet away.
“I mentioned Mr. Gahr earlier this morning,” Hayes said during the hearing, according to a transcript. “He’s in the courtroom. When you took the recess, I was doing things, but he loudly wanted to know why I was lying about him again.”
The judge for the Washington, D.C.-based lawsuit replied that she had “alerted the [court] marshals to watch him carefully.”
Gahr is known in some media circles for relentlessly pursuing his targets with confrontational questions both in person and on the phone. He has been covering the Schultz lawsuit for the Daily Caller news site for the past three months, antagonizing and mocking Schultz with columns that include juicy details from the lawsuit. (Evidence from the trial includes an old email from Schultz to Queen, wherein Schultz says that Chris Matthews, also an MSNBC host, spits on himself when he talks; Gahr wrote about the email with glee.)
Later on during the hearing, Hayes alerted the judge that Gahr had previously reached out to one of the names on the defense’s witness list— Jonathan Alter, a left-leaning columnist and MSNBC contributor.
“I have a concern because I think it’s inappropriate for somebody to be reaching out to people on the witness list,” Hayes said of Gahr, who had previously written about his own correspondence with Alter. (At the time, Alter had denied knowing that he was even listed as a witness for Schultz.)
Hayes went on to say he wasn’t sure what “relief” the court could give the defense from Gahr but that he wanted the judge to be “aware” of him.
Previously, Schultz’s lawyers sought to bar anyone from serving in the jury who had read Gahr’s reporting on Schultz. Subsequently, the judge ruled that out as a factor for who can serve.
Neither Gahr nor Hayes returned requests for comment.
