John Mark Dougan

John Dougan (Russian: Джон Марк Дуган) is a former police officer who fled the United States for Moscow, Russia to obtain political asylum in 2016. Dougan was running a website that had been critical of Ric Bradshaw, the sheriff of Palm Beach County, Florida. Dougan fled after his home was raided by law enforcement authorities on March 14, 2016.

Dougan stated that after the raid on his home, the FBI was following him and his family, so he decided that he needed to escape from them and flee the country. He did so by wearing various disguises, sneaking into Canada, so that he did not have to go through American Customs, who he suspected had him on a no-fly list. Dougan then took a flight from Toronto to Istanbul, and boarded another flight to his final destination, Moscow, Russia.

An anonymous source told independent television station WHDT that the website, PBSOTalk.com, was taken down by GoDaddy after being pressured by law enforcement agencies. The site was moved to PBSOTalk.ru and hosted in the Russian Federation.

Dougan started PBSOtalk in 2009 and began making public records requests bases on tips from readers and anonymous posters on the website. In 2012, he received information, and public records, that the elected Sheriff of Palm Beach County was using taxpayer money to take campaign contributors, some with ties to organized crime, to dinners. After filing a complaint with the Florida Commission on Ethics, the Sheriff was cleared "because he didn't know it was a violation of the law." However, the Commission stated the money he used to take those people to dinner was "inconsistent with the proper performance of his public duties".

Shortly after the ethics complaint was filed, the Chief Deputy of Palm Beach County filed a SLAPP (Strategic lawsuit against public participation) suit against Dougan after the Sheriff's office tried unsuccessfully to purchase the web site from Dougan.

In what was billed as a digital election-day dirty trick the night before the November 2012 elections, an email was sent out to the A-list of voters in Palm Beach County from BurtAaronson.com, a domain owned by Dougan. The email stated that BurtAaronson.com no longer endorsed the Sheriff as a candidate and instead endorsed the other candidate in the race. The real Burt Aaronson, who was, at the time, a county commissioner, stated he was outraged and had no knowledge of the email. He accused Dougan of identity theft, and attempted to have Dougan arrested. The Palm Beach County State Attorney's office, however, determined since Dougan owned the domain, he was legally justified in using it, however, called the email "outrageous conduct," further saying that laws have not kept up with mischief that can be wreaked on the Internet.

In 2015, Dougan obtained and posted a collection of audio recordings of a Palm Beach County detective speaking to an unidentified woman. The recordings revealed targeted retaliations and investigations against the Sheriff's political enemies, including Dougan, that speak critically of the Sheriff. The FBI and Palm Beach County raid on Dougan's home was motivated by the posting of these audio files, which was deemed to be wiretapping. The other reason listed on the warrant was for suspected hacking, and posting of names, of thousands of names, addresses and phone numbers of law enforcement officers, judges and FBI agents, though the property appraiser claimed nothing was ever hacked. Dougan claimed it was merely a reason to seize his computers and attempt to locate the sources of his information as well as to shut down his web site.