Kamala’s press chief tried to censor me

by James Bovard, August 5, 2024

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is not missing any chance to condemn Republicans for threatening to censor libraries and school textbooks. But she is overlooking the heavy-handed record of her chief spokesperson, Brian Fallon. Unfortunately, a recent Supreme Court decision opens the floodgates for far more federal censorship.

When Fallon was press chief at the Justice Department in 2015, he was outraged at my USA Today op-eds bashing Attorney General Eric Holder, including “Eric Holder’s Lawless Legacy,” [Feb. 3, 2015] and “Eric Holder’s Police Shooting Record? Dismal,” [Aug. 20, 2014]. I thumped Holder for championing “a Nixonian-style legal philosophy that presumed that any action the president orders is legal” (the same point that President Biden is using nowadays to condemn Donald Trump).

Holder championed Barack Obama’s power to assassinate people — including Americans — solely based on the president’s secret decrees. On March 6, 2012, Holder defended presidentially ordered killings: “Due process and judicial process are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process; it does not guarantee judicial process.” TV comedian Stephen Colbert mocked Holder: “Trial by jury; trial by fire; rock, paper, scissors, who cares? Due process just means that there is a process that you do.” For Holder and the Obama administration, reciting certain legal phrases in secret memos was all it took to justify extrajudicial executions.

Holder insisted that drone attacks “are not [assassinations], and the use of that loaded term is misplaced; assassinations are unlawful killings … the U.S. government’s use of lethal force in self-defense … would not be unlawful.” The new definition of “lawful killing” became any termination secretly approved by the president or his top advisers. Holde reassured Americans by stressing that Capitol Hill was overseeing his boss’s targeted-killing program. House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King (R-Village Idiot) proclaimed: “Drones aren’t evil; people are evil. We are a force of good and we are using those drones to carry out the policy of righteousness and goodness.”

Fallon repeatedly emailed my editors urging them to cease publishing me because of my “consistently nasty words about Mr. Holder…. I don’t understand why USA Today would provide a platform on repeated occasions for his Holder bashing.” Fallon groused that Bovard “has an agenda” and “has never had a kind thing to say about Holder.” So, journalists are supposed to throw bouquets to federal poohbahs?

My USA Today editor, David Mastio replied, “As an opinion section, much of what we publish is written by writers with agendas…. Just as our door is open to writers who want to say nasty things about the attorney general, our door is wide open to the attorney general when he wants to write about the top issues of the day.” Mastio assured Fallon, “I can guarantee you that I return phone calls and emails from the attorney general’s representatives a hell of a lot faster than aging libertarians.” (Me and Rodney Dangerfield – no respect!) USA Today did not cave to federal pressure and cease publishing my pieces when Mastio was editor.

I heard scuttlebutt that DOJ had pressured my editors, so I filed a Freedom of Information Act requests for any emails between the Justice Department press office and my USA Today editors for that month. The Justice Department effectively ignored my request. In 2019, I filed another request for DOJ emails with a lucky guess on the day and hour and minute they were sent. Bureaucrats finally found those emails and sent them to me in 2020. (Reposted here)

After I posted the FOIA response on my blog, the Washington Times reported, “The Justice Department targeted Mr. Bovard for his opinions, which would become a harbinger for future government action seeking to eliminate speech online.”

In June, the Supreme Court tacitly endorsed closed door machinations to suppress Americans’ speech in its ruling in the case of Murthy v. Missouri. The court ruled that the plaintiffs — including two state governments and eminent scientists banned from social media for their skepticism on Covid policies — did not have “standing,” because they had not proven that all the federal intervention and string-pulling had injured them. But the justices apparently ignored much of the evidence in the case – conveniently for the Censorship Industrial Complex.

The Supreme Court gave the benefit of the doubt to federal intervention against free speech – regardless of the clandestine nature of the intervention. A far better standard was enunciated by federal judge Don Willett when the appeals court heard oral arguments on the censorship case. Willett said that federal agencies are entitled to publicly condemn whatever they consider disinformation, especially when it imperils public health or safety. But that wasn’t how Team Biden played the game: “Here you have government in secret, in private, out of the public eye, relying on . . . subtle strong-arming and veiled or not-so-veiled threats.”

There were tens of thousands of pages in that court case documenting federal interventions to pressure social media companies to suppress Americans’ comments. How many more covert interventions have occurred by federal officials to silence criticism in American newspapers and websites?

Unfortunately, there is a de facto iron curtain shrouding such interventions. I have no idea how many other publications have been pressured by politicians or federal agencies to not publish or to muzzle my work. Unfortunately, I am unlikely to hear such details when the federal elbows succeed and editors kowtow.

In 1995, FBI chief Louis Freeh publicly condemned a Wall Street Journal piece I wrote on the coverup of the FBI killing of Vicki Weaver, an Idaho mother standing by a cabin door holding her baby. (The Ruby Ridge coverup unraveled and a top FBI official was sent to prison for destroying evidence.) Fifteen years later, I filed a FOIA to see what the FBI had on me in their files. The FBI responded that they had nothing – despite the FBI chief writing multiple letters to the editor condemning me. Alas, private citizens have no way to compel government agencies to obey federal disclosure laws.

Harris’ press boss Fallon obviously has no hesitation to use elbows to silence criticism of federal officials. Will the Supreme Court decision help turbocharge covert censorship if Harris wins in November? Unfortunately, the media did shameless cheerleading for Team Biden’s repression of its Covid critics. Federal officials will likely be immune from criticism unless they send in U.S. marshals to sledgehammer a newspaper’s printing press.