“First Amendment auditing” has come to Ulster County.

Simply put, First Amendment auditors are ordinary citizens who enter public spaces – government buildings, typically – and film or photograph the building's interiors, the public officials they encounter, and the officials' reactions to the act of recording. The auditors are frequently met with suspicion and/or outright hostility.

Suspicion and hostility are exactly what erupted when one self-described auditor from Western New York, Daniel Warmus, came to the Town of Hurley last week. A January 6 Capitol riot defendant, Warmus has taken his practice to 57 of New York's 62 counties and is working his way down to New York City and Long Island.

Footage of what happened in Hurley can be seen on Warmus's YouTube channel, Auditing Erie County, a project now going into its fifth year with 885 videos,174,000 subscribers, and a companion channel called Corruption Cruiser AEC: “Cop watching and exposure of corrupt policing ...Kinda like the old show ‘Cops’ but without BOOTLICKING!”

In the Hurley video, which has 52,000 views, Warmus announces to viewers that he's in Hurley because he's “Looked at their Google reviews and they seem to have very, very, very poor customer service and customer skills.”

Warmus's “employee conduct check” (his words) begins with Deputy Clerk Jeffrey Mann, who asks why he's being recorded. Warmus says that he's “investigating the town.” Mann asks for further explanation and Warmus replies he can't say “because it's an ongoing investigation.” He asks Mann what his name is and Mann declines to say.

Things escalate from there. Town Supervisor Mike Boms shows up, asks Warmus to turn off his camera and asks him what he's doing. Warmus replies pretty much as he did to Mann, refusing to identify himself other than as “an independent journalist” and asking why the town's Google reviews are so bad.

Boms says he “has no idea” and asks Warmus to leave, brushing past him as he turns to ask Mann to call the police. “Don't you ever touch me again,” Warmus says and threatens Boms with arrest.

Councilwoman Debbie Dougherty appears and goes through the same routine, declining to disclose Mann's name without Warmus filing a public records request. Warmus says FOIL requires disclosure and “simply states that anything that's available, readily available, you have to provide.”

Dougherty says she's “not comfortable” disclosing Mann's name since “I don't know why you're here and what your goal is and I have to protect our employees.”

“I'm uncomfortable paying my taxes,” Warmus replies. “You need to leave your comfort at home.”

Boms returns and tells Warmus a state trooper is on his way “to escort you out.” Warmus says he's broken no law. Boms accuses him of trespass.

Warmus and Dougherty go back and forth about the need for Warmus to file a FOIL request. “You work for the taxpayers,” Warmus says, exasperated. “What is the name you write on the deputy clerk's paycheck?”

More such ensues and Warmus says “This is a bad look for you guys.”

“I'm sorry you feel that way,” Dougherty replies.

“I'm sorry you guys are sh-tbags, to be honest,” Warmus replies.

“There's no need for that,” Dougherty says.

“It's protected speech, isn't it?” Warmus says. “You swore an oath to protect my speech to call you sh-tbags, right?”

“You can call me whatever you like,” Dougherty says.

“That's fine,” Warmus says. “So what's the deputy clerk's name?”

“I don't feel comfortable giving that out,” Dougherty says.

Two cops arrive – State Trooper Santiago and Ulster Sheriff's Deputy Steinfeld – and the action moves outdoors, where a long debate takes place about Constitutional rights, the upshot of which is deadlock. The police counsel Warmus to take a less aggressive approach. He stands his ground, verbally, but relents in his pursuit of Deputy Clerk Mann's name and finally agrees to leave the grounds if the police do so first. All depart, but not without Warmus addressing the camera, filming more of the building's interior and taking a few stabs at baiting Boms “thinking you're above the law.”

“I got everything I need in this building,” Warmus tells the police. “It's just to prove the point that the supervisor thinks he can trespass somebody just because he didn't like me asking the clerk's name.”

There's more in the nearly hourlong YouTube post, including comparison footage of Warmus's visit to the town of Hastings, in Oswego County, where officials greeted him amicably and little happens beside chit-chat and pleasantries.

Supervisor Boms take on the incident? In a phone call he told Kingston Wire that what set him off was

“He wouldn't give his name, I mean, if you're a reporter you come in and say your name, show credentials. This could be any Joe off the street ...And he was very aggressive. Pointing at a town employee and says “I want his name. I want his name. I want his name,” like that...And I realized that he's in here on a false pretext. He said he's investigating our poor Google reviews, and yet he has not even asked a question about that...He's trespassing, harassing, intimidating, not allowing us to work...I called the cops.”

Boms further noted that he closed all the office doors since “We're in middle of tax season, so we have a lot of money that's coming in right now, people paying taxes with cash and checks also on credit cards...We have to be very protective because I don't want people getting ideas they can come in here and walk around and hold us up, right?”

“He's done this in other places,” Boms said. “And what he wants, basically, is to be an agitator... The next day we start getting all of these, like, 150 phone calls, calling my executive assistant, called the clerk's office, calls to the building department, and finally we just turn the phones off and go back to voicemail.”

Boms said emails to the town have included personally insulting sexist comments about Dougherty and one that he considers a possible threat of violence.

“He's hiding behind the shield of the Fourth Amendment but won't afford the town employee that same constitutional right. I understand that he's a public employee, but he's still entitled to his privacy in that respect. And the thing is, why would you want to know his name?”

Warmus, in a phone call with Kingston Wire, made his case.

“There's tyrants out there in these positions and they need to be reminded who they work for,” he said. “About 70% of the buildings I go into are good interactions and there's tons of it on my channel, which is why it isn't huge, A lot of channels are huge because they only show the people yelling at them.”

Warmus, who has an auto repair shop in Orchard Park “near Bills Stadium,” has monetized the channel by advertising. “I make decent money,” he said, “enough that I used to work full time and do the channel part time and now its reversed.”

His channels include ads for attorneys who have represented him in lawsuits related to his “audits” but he denies being a front for the law firms. “I could file a lot more lawsuits than I do,” he said. “I'm never a fan of suing the government because the person violating my rights never pays. It comes from the taxpayers' pockets or the insurance company and then the premiums go up and the taxpayers pay again. But sometimes suing is necessary because all they understand is money.”

Warmus, a 42-year-old registered Republican, said “Auditing changed my political beliefs. I used to be a hardcore Republican ‘back the blue’ bootlicker.” When he started, he said, he thought “Maybe 25% of police are bad. Now I'd say about 60-75% are sh-tbag bad.”

That includes ICE, he said, describing them as “Absolutely wrong. Problem is how do you track them down? It's not like they're going to tell you where they're going. Their base is probably locked off, locked doors. All of the federal government is like that.”

Warmus took a misdemeanor plea deal in September 2022 for his role in the January 6 Capitol riot. He was sentenced to 45 days behind bars, two years’ probation, sixty hours of community service and a $500 fine. He said he took the plea to “get [the case] over with.” The sentence was enhanced by U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman in light of Warmus's “auditing,” which Friedman described as “a threat to the community.”

Warmus, along with all other Capitol riot defendants, was pardoned by President Trump. Since then Warmus says, he “broke with Trump over the Epstein files… We all know it's not 'fake news.' If he's willing to say that, what good is the man? What else is he lying about? First term, greatest president of my lifetime. Second term, I haven't seen him do different than Biden would be doing.”

At the same time, Warmus says his “auditing” taught him “It doesn't matter Republican or Democrat. When you walk in the doors you got Republicans that are tyrants, you got Democrats that are tyrants, and you got both of them that are so nice that they're too nice to be mean. Some of these places you can tell you're making them uncomfortable by being there with the camera, but they're so nice, they couldn't be mean about it.”