WATCH: Body Cam Footage Shows NBC Being Nailed For ‘Following’ Rittenhouse Jury Bus

The Kenosha Police Department in Wisconsin released video this week of the police traffic stop of NBC News freelance journalist James Joseph Morrison, who was stopped for following the jury bus from the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.

The video shows the journalist admitting that “yes” he was “following” a vehicle, per orders from New York. An officer involved in the stop also concludes that Morrison has “no ties” to Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Neither Morrison, nor anyone at NBC, was ultimately charged with the crime of jury tampering “because police interrupted any opportunity to do so,” the Kenosha department told Law & Crime.

“Were you following a vehicle?” an officer asks Morrison, per video footage. According to a police report, the reporter was only one block away from the unmarked bus.

Here’s how some of the interaction unfolds, according to Law & Crime:

“I was trying to see — I was being called by New York, going, maybe these are people you need to follow, but I, I don’t know,” Morrison said.

“I was trying to . . .”

He trailed off.

“You was trying to what?” an officer asked.

“Just do what they told me to do,” Morrison responded.

“New York told you to follow a vehicle?” the officer asked.

“Yes.”

Morrison was eventually asked about those instructing him to follow the vehicle. He calls a woman named Irene Byron, a booking producer at NBC, and has the officer speak to her. Here’s some of Byron’s explanation for the reporter following the vehicle, per Law & Crime:

Um, we — we — we were just trying to respectfully, um, just trying to see if it’s, um, if it’s possible to, um, to try and get any leads about — um — about the, the case, and so we were, we, uh, we were just keeping our distance, um, just to see, like, where, um, peop — people involved in — in the — in the trial, um, are positioned. By no means were we trying to get in contact with any of — any of the jury members or whoever’s in the car. We just were, um, trying to see, like, where, um, where key players in the trial may be at.

When the officer asks Morrison if he has any personal ties to Kenosha, the reporter says he “loves” the community and talks about his reporting. The officer dismisses the response and declares that Morrison “has no ties” to the area.

As highlighted by The Daily Wire last month, Judge Bruce Schroeder, the Wisconsin judge overseeing the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, banned MSNBC from the courthouse over the incident.

“The jury in this case is being transported from a different location in a bus with the windows covered so that they aren’t exposed to any signs by one side or another or interests in the case, so I’m going to call it a sealed bus, and that’s been done every day and they’re brought here to this building,” the judge told the courtroom.

“Police, when they stopped him because he was following at a distance of about a block and went through a red light, pulled him over and inquired of him what was going on. He gave that information and stated that he had been instructed … to follow the jury bus,” Schroeder added.

WATCH:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=E2-eoaAEnfw&feature=oembed

Related: Rittenhouse Judge Bans MSNBC From Trial After Man Claiming To Be Employee Tails Jury Bus

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