Hardcore Blasts Shotgun-Firing FBI

Max Hardcore dropped by AVN's offices Thursday sporting the section of flooring from one of his offices that had been punctured by a shotgun blast. The shot was fired by one of the more than 15 FBI agents and other law enforcement agents who invaded his Altadena home on Oct. 5 to seize records involving sales of five features that aren't even sold in this country.

"That shot went through six layers of three-quarter inch plywood," Hardcore noted. "It also went completely through one of the floor joists, which is at least two inches thick."

The incident took place early in the six hours that the feds and locals had the street in front of Hardcore's house blocked off while they rummaged through his belongings and files.

"The thing that really most concerns me now and scares me is the fact that the FBI accidentally discharged a shotgun round into a section of floor which was located in an office," Hardcore told AVN.com in an exclusive interview. "I have no idea why, but I know that it's definitely not standard law enforcement practice in a situation like this to have a round in the chamber and the safety off, which would have been the only way that this gun would have been discharged. It was only a couple of feet away from where my editor would normally be sitting, and he would normally have been there had he not been late coming in. So this is just an outrageous act by these guys. They didn't apologize. In fact, when Jeffrey [Douglas, Hardcore's attorney] asked them about it, they didn't even give him the dignity of a response; they just turned around and walked away."

The blast scared Hardcore's housekeeper, whom the authorities had stashed in a downstairs room while they conducted their search. The explosion apparently didn't do much for one of the female officers, either: She reportedly ran "screaming and hyperventilating" from the house just after the shotgun discharged.

"Even under the very best of circumstances, the incompetence, the negligence involved in this, whoever pulled the trigger could have blown off his own foot," Douglas, who accompanied Hardcore, added. "A very common reaction when shots are fired in the execution of a search warrant is for officers to pull out their guns and be ready to shoot. The one thing I bet that they were certain when they heard that shot go off, was that it was not from one of their own agents. They would have assumed there was somebody lurking in the location that fired a gun. So it's fortunate and it's remarkable that the only thing that was injured was the floor, because there was a high likelihood that it was going to be another officer that got injured, shot due to the incompetence, negligence and insanity of going into a location with a round in the weapon with the safety off. It's beyond belief."

Hardcore considers himself lucky: "I'm just a single guy, a pornographer, and these guys come ready to kill me, and who knows what could have happened if I'd been there. Maybe that bullet would have ended up someplace else."

As it happens, the raid came while Hardcore was exhibiting at the FICED show in Barcelona, Spain, commonly known as the Barcelona sex show.

"I was alerted, of course, right away, and my crew, to their credit, weren't intimidated by it," Hardcore explained. "They called Jeffrey right away, called me in Europe, and needless to say, it was pretty upsetting, but I didn't change my plans; I came back according to schedule. I was there for the entire show. I had a booth over there, and Layla was with me, by the way. That's as far as I know so far."

Hardcore isn't a stranger to police searches, since the L.A.P.D. pulled one about five years ago, which led to a failed prosecution on child porn charges, since Hardcore doesn't shoot underage performers, no matter how young the gals may claim they are on camera.

"At least some of them had been there before," Hardcore opined. "I don't know how many of the guys that were there this time were there originally, but I do recognize the name 'McDermott' from somewhere. There was some mention about, 'Oh, the place looks much better than it did five years ago.' They left the place in pretty good condition, but then again, everything was out in the open."

"As the agent in charge was leaving the location," Douglas added, "she called me to let me know that they were leaving, and she thanked me because she did not see her name on AVN.com. They had checked AVN.com while they were still at the location, to see how [the raid] was being covered. So I guess the lesson there is, 'The FBI stays up-to-date by reading AVN.com; why shouldn't you?'," he chuckled.

The titles named in the search warrant were Pure Max 16: Euro Version, Max Hardcore Fists of Fury 3, Max Hardcore Extreme Schoolgirls 6: Euro Version, Max Hardcore Golden Guzzlers 5 and Max Hardcore Golden Guzzlers 6, which, despite the lack of notation in some of the titles, were in fact versions intended only for foreign markets. (The warrant also asks for records regarding several websites.)

"I'd like to assure all U.S. distributors that only the European versions of my movies are involved in this action," Hardcore stated, "and that no U.S. versions, which they sell, are involved, other than that they happen to be made by the same producer."

Hardcore also explained that he does not sell his product directly to stores or individuals, only through distributors with whom he's dealt for several years.

Of course, that raises the question, if these features weren't being sold in the U.S., what jurisdiction issued the search warrant?

"What is particularly striking about subparagraph (b)(i) [of the warrant]," Douglas said, "is, they're asking for sales records everywhere. It's not limited to a particular jurisdiction where they presumably made an allegation that the material was obscene."

"The traditional structure that we've seen over the last 20 years is that the search warrant says, 'Seize records of shipments to the Western District of Tennessee, the Northern District of Kentucky and the Northern District of New York,' say, and from this, we deduce that an affidavit has been provided to a judge saying, 'I am an officer; I have experience and expertise; I know what the community standards are in a particular area. I have reviewed these films and I believe that they violate the community standards of my community'," Douglas continued. "Here, by that omission, it suggests that there's an allegation that these titles would be found obscene anywhere in the United States, which is a difficult proposition to support, given the nature of materials that are available over-the-counter in places such as Oregon which do not have obscenity laws."

"Moreover, the notion that there is a national standard for obscenity is inconsistent with every court ruling as well as the position that the government has absolutely refused to accept, that there's such a thing as a national standard. They like the idea of there being 120 or more different standards because of the self-censorship impact that it has, so the omission of a particular location means that either the warrant is overbroad because they're asking for records of shipping when there's no reason to believe that a crime has been committed – for instance, if the material had been shipped to Portland, Oregon. Or the other possibility is, they are claiming that these materials would be obscene in every state. One way or another, they've got problems."

Douglas would not discuss his strategies in defending the case when and if charges are filed, but he indicated that the defective warrant would certainly play a part in some of them.

"No one's been arrested; no charges have been filed," Douglas noted. "We're at the pre-grand jury stage, so we're very, very early. There's been no accusation about anything. And in my conversation with the Department of Justice attorney, Jennifer Leonardo, of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), she specifically stated to me that they had no information that there was an underage performer and said that that was contained in the sealed affidavit; that is, they made a representation to the magistrate that there were no underage performers."

Even more chilling was the answer Douglas got when he asked where Hardcore would be prosecuted if an indictment were returned by a grand jury: "I specifically asked Ms. Leonardo that, and she said, 'We have not yet decided,' which was the most astonishing words that I could imagine."

The only conclusion that can be drawn from such a statement is that the Justice Department is out to get Hardcore; it just hasn't yet figured out in what jurisdiction it stands the best chance of conviction.

However, the U.S. magistrate who signed off on the warrant, Hon. James W. McMahon, serves in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, based in Los Angeles, which would suggest that the government intends to try Hardcore here – a very difficult proposition, considering that just three years ago, Douglas won Hardcore a mistrial by convincing a large majority of an L.A. Superior Court jury that Max Extreme 4 was not obscene under California law. The city attorney, apparently recognizing the weaknesses of the city's case, thereafter declined to re-try Hardcore. And the geographical area from which those jurors were chosen would be the same area from which the district court would select its jury pool if a case against Hardcore were filed here.

Douglas made a point of the fact that both Leonardo and another Justice Department attorney who's involved, William Hall, are both from CEOS rather than the newly-formed Anti-Obscenity Task Force. A case of intra-departmental rivalry? No one yet knows.

It is likewise unclear who made the original complaint regarding the features. The "affiant" who provided the information for the search warrant appears to be based in Florida, and indeed, the government raided the location in Florida where Hardcore's Web servers are located, but copied their hard drives and returned the original units promptly.

Not so, however, with the computers seized from Casa Max.

"An agreement was reached that the agents would either copy the hard drives at Max's house on-site or at their offices, but in any case would not keep the computers for any extended period of time," Douglas said. "They then violated that agreement because the computers A) have not yet been returned, and B) upon my further inquiry, I was told that the unit in L.A. had not done anything but instead had overnighted the computers to Washington, D.C., and at the end of our negotiations, it was agreed that they would do what they said they would do, which was simply mirror the computers and return them promptly."

"We've got back-ups of stuff, but some things aren't replaceable," Hardcore said. "You just don't back up everything every day. This slows us down but it doesn’t stop us."

"We won before and we're going to win again," he continued, "because they picked the wrong guy with the right attorney, and I stand up for our rights to view this material and I intend to keep distributing it. My attorney's gotten a lot of calls from people in the industry who've expressed their support for my situation, and I want to say thanks to everybody who's behind me."

"It is noteworthy how broad and deep that support was," Douglas affirmed. "I've heard best wishes and offers of assistance from the full spectrum of the industry, from the most conservative components of the industry to the other side."

Added Hardcore, "I'd also like to express my appreciation to my U.S. distributor, Exquisite Multimedia, or EXP.com, and also to find out more about this story as it goes on, I'm keeping a running press release section on my website, maxhardcore.com."

AVN.com will continue to provide up-to-date information as this situation develops.