Hillary Clinton’s call to throw the book at Americans promoting election disinformation was panned as both antithetical to free speech — and shockingly oblivious.
The Democratic eminence grise said that Americans participating in election-related “propaganda” should face civil or even criminal charges in response to a question from MSNBC host Rachel Maddow about Russian election interference.
“I think it’s important to indict the Russians, just as [former FBI director Robert] Mueller indicted a lot of Russians who were engaged in direct election interference and boosting Trump back in 2016,” said Mrs. Clinton in the Monday interview.
“But I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda,” she continued. “And whether they should be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged is something that would be a better deterrence, because the Russians are unlikely, except in a very few cases, to ever stand trial in the United States.”
The former Secretary of State was promptly accused of seeking to stifle the free speech of her political foes, as well as having a short memory.
It was her 2016 presidential campaign that funded, along with the Democratic National Committee, the Steele dossier, the discredited opposition-research document tying the Trump campaign to Russian intelligence.
George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley said on his blog that the “interview was chillingly consistent with Clinton’s long antagonism toward free speech.”
“Clinton, of course, was not challenged by Maddow on the fact that her campaign was the conduit for disinformation linked to Russian intelligence services,” he added. “Not only did U.S. intelligence believe that the Clinton campaign was used to make the debunked claims, but it was clearly done for purely political purposes.”
Clinton’s call to arrest people for disinformation was a crushingly ironic moment since it was her campaign that funded the infamous Steele dossier and spread false stories of Russian collusion during her presidential campaign…https://t.co/gxe33x5VuA
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) September 18, 2024
Journalist Glenn Greenwald said on X: “If Hillary’s insanely repressive measure were implemented — people spreading disinformation could be imprisoned — the first two to share a prison cell should be her and Maddow, who drowned the country in the Steele Dossier, [Alfa] Bank servers and other demented debunked lies.”
The Babylon Bee, the conservative Christian satire site, chimed in with: “Hillary Clinton Says First Amendment is Russian Disinformation.”
Billionaire Elon Musk described the Babylon Bee headline as “almost real.”
This is almost real https://t.co/OSNCDxYXlG
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 18, 2024
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the 2024 Independent presidential candidate who recently threw his support to former President Donald Trump, noted that Vice President Kamala Harris has described free speech as a “privilege.”
“We had Hillary Clinton yesterday making this extraordinary statement, endorsing this censorship of speech in our country. We had Kamala Harris saying free speech is a privilege, it’s not a right,” Mr. Kennedy said Tuesday at the Turning Point Action conference. “I think that that is disqualifying for anyone who wants to be President of the United States.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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