By far the biggest attack on press freedom in the US -- it's not even close -- is the attempted prosecution and extradition of Julian Assange, started by Jeff Sessions and continued by the Biden DOJ. The theory used to criminalize him endangers journalists everywhere:
In May, 2019, I wrote a @washingtonpost op-ed on why the Assange indictment threatens all journalists. Two weeks later, my Brazilian source contacted me that led to exposés that caused the Brazilian Govt to try to prosecute me using that exact theory:
50 years ago today, the NYT began publishing the Pentagon Papers, which my childhood hero and current friend, @DanielEllsberg, risked his liberty to provide because they showed a decade of lying by the US Govt to its own citizenry about the Vietnam War:
Journalism isn't Jim Acosta and Ken Dilanian repeating CIA scripts on the TV. Journalism is about exposing the secret crimes, deceit and corruption by the world's most powerful actors: what Ellsberg enabled & Assange does. And nothing endangers it more than Assange's prosecution.
There's only one reason Julian Assange is still wasting away in a high-security prison in the UK: because the Biden DOJ appealed the British judge's rejection of the US's extradition request. That means the greatest threat to press freedom now is the Biden Administration.
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One authoritarian misconception that emerges when Assange is mentioned: "he's not a journalist!"
The premise aside - he's won journalism awards, broke major stories, etc. - press freedom, like free speech, is for everyone, not just a credentialed priesthood called "journalists."
Everyone is guaranteed free speech by the Constitution. Same with free exercise of religion, due process, a jury trial, and the right of assembly.
And same with press freedoms: it's not just for a tiny group of professionals. The right to freely use the press is for everyone.
On Saturday -- the five-year anniversary of the horrific slaughter -- politicians and activists again ratified the outright fiction that Omar Mateen was motivated by anti-LGBT hatred.
It is well past time this lie stop. It dishonors the victims and obscures the real motive.
Instantly, politicians seized on this tragedy to politicize the attack. Obama claimed it was anti-LGBT hatred, not his bombing raids, that caused it. So did Hillary and even Trump. Liberal journalists like @HeerJeet lied, saying it proven it was a hate crime. This was all false.
Jake Sullivan confirmed that Biden confused Syria and Libya three times in less than 90 seconds. Just be honest and watch this clip and decide for yourself.
Given this genuinely disturbing videos and others like it, it's a good day to remind everyone that the warnings that Biden is suffering from serious cognitive decline came *not* from MAGA people or Bernie supporters, but from worried establishment Dems:
Those who tried to demonize Ellsberg for revealing government lies to his fellow citizens -- such as Kissinger and John Ehrlichman -- strongly implied Ellsberg was a Kremlin agent serving Moscow and leaked the documents to help Russia. That's where liberals learned to do this:
In order to accuse their political adversaries (& whistleblowers) of being Kremlin agents and serving Moscow, current-day US liberals obviously borrowed from the McCarthyite script of the 1950s, but also the Kissinger smears of Ellsberg. See for yourself:
Democratic Senators and activist groups promoting a false, conclusively disproven narrative about the Pulse shootings for their own benefits. Anti-LGBT animus was not part of that massacre. It dishonors the memory of the victims - & the LGBT cause - to lie about what happened.
This tweet is an absolute lie. Every journalist who covered the PULSE shootings and trial will tell you this. It's infuriating to watch Senators blatantly lie this way.
Omar Mateen had no idea PULSE was a gay club. He spent the prior day looking at Disney locations, but they were too secured. He entered "Club, Orlando" in Google - not "gay club" - to find it. He never uttered an anti-LGBT syllable, saying his motive was US bombing in Iraq/Syria.
Jen Psaki and Joe Biden were part of the administration which had its John-Brennan-led CIA spy on the Senate as it investigated the CIA's interrogation programs. Where was the outrage then about this highly respected third branch of government?
Not only did MSNBC star @JohnBrennan have his Obama-era CIA spy on the Senate as it tried to investigate the CIA, he always blatantly lied about it over and over, and only apologized once the proof emerged and he was caught.