Election 2024: Blue censorship vs Red censorship.

An examination of Trump and Biden's records on free speech

I recently published a piece titled “Election 2024: Blue Warmonger vs Red Warmonger” where I compared Trump and Biden’s equally abysmal records on foreign policy, specifically on Ukraine and Palestine. This article will be a sequel to that article which will examine the candidate's equally abysmal records on free speech and their treatment of whistleblowers, dissident journalists, and activists.

Joe Biden: from prosecuting whistleblowers to creating a ministry of truth.

Obama/Biden’s unprecedented war on whistleblowers

The Barack Obama administration where Biden served as vice president used the “espionage act” to prosecute more whistleblowers than all other administrations combined. These whistleblowers documented by the American Prospect are the following.

Shamai Leibowitz: An FBI contractor who leaked documents proving criminal activity done by the FBI. The documents were never published but the Obama/Biden DOJ still prosecuted him under the Espionage Act.

Thomas Drake: An NSA whistleblower who leaked information about illegal activities and mismanagement in the NSA to the press.

Stephen Jin-Woo Kim: A State Department arms expert who leaked information from an intelligence report about North Korea responding to UN sanctions with a nuclear weapons test to journalist James Rosen.

Chelsea Manning: A U.S. intelligence analyst who leaked information to Wikileaks proving the U.S. committed war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Manning was kept in solitary confinement for a year which the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Torture chief called “cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment”.

Jeffery Sterling: A former CIA official who leaked information to New York Times journalist James Risen about “Operation Merlin” a CIA operation that intentionally gave Iran bad design information for a nuclear weapon.

John Kirakou: A CIA official who revealed the agency used torture during the “war on terror”.

James Hitselberg: A Navy linguist accused of printing classified documents.

Edward Snowden: An NSA contractor who revealed that the agency was illegally spying on Americans. Obama/Biden went so far as to ground the plane of the Bolivian president Evo Morales because they thought he could be harboring Snowden.

In all of these cases, the whistleblowers were not leaking information that would hurt the country but were instead leaking information about corruption, human rights abuses, and unconstitutional activity that the American public has a right to know. This is considered by most to be a heroic and patriotic act. Still, the Obama/Biden Whitehouse used the Espionage Act to prosecute these whistleblowers to stop insiders from leaking information about government secrets and corruption. As president, Joe Biden has continued the war on whistleblowers he took part in as vice president. The Biden DOJ sentenced whistleblower Daniel Hale to 45 months in prison for leaking information about America’s drone strike program including the fact that they kill innocent civilians 90 percent of the time. Until recently Joe Biden continued the prosecution of Journalist Jullian Assange started by the Trump administration (more on that later). Assange has thankfully been freed on a plea deal, but the deal creates a precedent that could be used to prosecute more journalists for publishing classified information.

Joe Biden creates a ministry of Truth headed by a Russiagate lunatic.

As president Joe Biden created a division of the Department of Homeland Security called the “Disinformation Governance Board”, a name eerily reminiscent of the “ministry of truth” in George Orwell’s 1984. The division head was given to Nina Jankowicz, someone who herself has a long history of spreading pro-security state misinformation. In 2018 she shared an article from the Western intelligence-connected outlet Bellingcat which blamed Assad for the alleged 2018 chemical attack in Douma, Syria. This allegation was used as justification for the U.S. bombing of Syria and almost triggered a full-scale war with Syria. This allegation was later contradicted by OPCW whistleblowers who found evidence that the gas canisters in Douma were placed and that the victim’s symptoms did not match up with those of a chemical attack. These findings strongly imply that the attack was staged to trigger Western Military intervention. Jankowitz was also a proponent of the absurd Russiagate theory claiming Trump was “soft on Russia'' (despite lethal arms to Ukraine, sanctions on Nord stream etc. ), spreading a theory that Trump was doing the bidding of Putin if he did not overthrow the government of Venezuela and spreading the debunked “Russian bounties on American troops in Afghanistan” theory. Jankowitz also repeated the debunked claim that the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop were “Russian disinformation”. The most disturbing fact of Jankowitz's past was reported by the Nation’s Lev Golinkin who revealed that while working for the U.S. government-funded “anti-disinformation” group “Stop Fake” in Ukraine she whitewashed neo-nazi paramilitary groups who have well-documented histories of human rights abuses. Jankowitz also had a long history of attacking dissident journalists by name. She called Wikileaks "scum” and accused it of being “a cog in a much larger operation”. She claimed Glenn Greenwald was “Disgusting” and responsible for “Online harassment against women” because he critiqued New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz for her bad reporting. She has also called the anti-war outlet the Grayzone a “Russian influence op” and a “source of disinfo” because she took issue with their reporting and criticism of American foreign policy. While the disinformation governance board was eventually shut down after facing widespread backlash, journalists Lee Fang and Ken Klippenstien revealed that the DHS continued to police speech online.

Under Biden, Democrats ignore the Twitter Files and shoot the messenger.

When Elon Musk bought Twitter he leaked a trove of internal documents to reporters such as Matt Taibbi, Lee Fang, and Michael Shellenberger. Some of the biggest scandals revealed by these documents were that the FBI, DHS, DNI, and NSA worked with Twitter to censor Americans’ speech, a direct violation of the First Amendment. Other stories of censorship revealed by the Twitter files were that Twitter worked with the government-aligned think tank “Virality Project” to censor people going against the official narrative around covid including, reports of vaccinated people contracting COVID-19, natural immunity, saying COVID was leaked from a lab and “stories of true vaccine effects”. They also revealed that Big Pharma-funded think tanks were pressuring Twitter to take down people pushing for a generic vaccine and those opposed to vaccine mandates. When journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger testified to the House Judiciary democrats on the committee led by Joe Biden undermined the contents of these documents and defended the censorship policy. Democratic representative Collin Allred said to Taibbi “If you can take off the tinfoil hat, you will see that there is not a vast conspiracy, but that ordinary folks and national security agencies responsible for our security are trying their best to find a way that our online discourse doesn’t get people hurt or see our democracy undermined”. Democratic Representative Sylvia Garcia demanded Taibbi reveal that Musk as his source for the Twitter files, a direct violation of journalistic ethics. Democratic representative and Democratic primary rigger Debbie Washerman Shultz accused Taibbi of “hitting the jackpot” for reporting this story while ignoring the content. The Democrat’s reaction to the Twitter files went even further than this. The Federal Trade Commission tried to demand that Elon Musk turn over the names of all journalists who received Twitter files. Taibbi “coincidentally” received a visit from the IRS the same day he testified on the Twitter Files. As the Wall Street Journal put it

The curious timing of this visit, on the heels of the FTC demand that Twitter turn over names of journalists, raises questions about potential intimidation…

The Wall Street Journal also noted it is not typical for the IRS to show up unannounced at people’s houses saying:

Typically when the IRS challenges some part of a tax return, it sends a dunning letter. Or it might seek more information from the taxpayer or tax preparer. If the IRS wants to audit a return, it schedules a meeting at the agent’s office. It doesn’t drop by unannounced.

When Matt Taibbi was interviewed by MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, Hasan attacked Taibbi for a few minor errors in the Twitter files reporting while ignoring the bulk of the revelations. Disturbingly this interview was used by democratic representative Stacey Plaskett to accuse Taibbi of perjury and threaten him with up to five years jail time. Plakett accused Taibbi of perjury for a few honest mistakes which Taibbi corrected and did not undermine the bulk of the story.

Donald Trump: From Torturing and trying to kill Julian Assange to threatening to deport anti-genocide activists

The Gravest Threat to Press Freedom

While the Obama administration prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other administrations combined, the one line they did not cross was going after Assange and Wikileaks. This was because they understood they could not do this “without prosecuting U.S. news organizations and journalists”. This line was crossed by the Trump administration who brought espionage charges against Assange for publishing documents leaked to him by Chelsea Manning. This was a grave threat to press freedom, as reporters without borders put it “This would set a dangerous precedent for all journalists who publish classified information that is of public interest.” The case was condemned as a threat to free speech by human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, civil liberties organizations like the ACLU and even the New York Times. Because of this charge, Assange was forced to be in solitary confinement in Belmarsh prison which the UN special rapporteur on torture and two other medical experts concluded “constituted psychological torture, a form of torture aimed at destroying the personality of an individual”. The Trump administration attempted to go even further than prosecuting and torturing a journalist for releasing classified material about war crimes and tried to kidnap and kill him. Yahoo news reported that Trump administration officials and the CIA plotted to kidnap Julian Assange and even discussed Assassinating him “at the highest levels of the Trump administration”. Trump even put whistleblower Chelsea Manning back in jail after being released in 2017 because she refused to testify against Assange in this bogus case. Trump’s supporters insist he is “fighting the deep state” but his administration went even further than Obama/Biden in the war on whistleblowers by prosecuting not only whistleblowers but reporters who publish information leaked by them. Trump also did not pardon any of the whistleblowers prosecuted in the Obama/Biden administration and prosecuted whistleblower Reality Winner using the Espionage act.

Trump threatens to crack down on the Palestine solidarity movement

While Trump and his supporters claim to support free speech, they abandon this view when it comes to people protesting the genocide in Gaza. The Republican 2024 platform says it wants to “Deport pro-hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again”. This is a clear threat to deport foreign students protesting the genocide in Gaza and to crack down on the rights of American students protesting the genocide. In the education section, the platform says it will “fire Radical Left accreditors” on college campuses, a clear threat to the First Amendment and something that will certainly be used to crack down on professors critical of Israel and their repression and slaughter of Palestinians. Journalist Max Blumenthal reported that on the pro-Trump Fox News, former NYPD inspector Paul Mauro said pro-Palestinian protestors on college campuses were responsible for the attempted Trump assassination and needed to be investigated. This is a good insight into how the Trump administration will crack down on anti-genocide protestors if he is elected in 2024.

Final Thoughts

Like on many other issues, both candidates in 2024 are abysmal on the issue of free speech and censorship. The Democrats have gone full authoritarian under Biden trying to censor the internet and crack down on dissident journalists and whistleblowers. While Trump supporters believe he is the antidote to this, his record on freedom of the press and his threats to crack down on anti-genocide protestors show he will not be any better.