The Democrats are dealing blows to sorely needed constitutional freedoms with their barrage of prosecutions aimed at stopping Donald Trump from regaining the White House in 2024. Alongside this, they’re stepping up use of the FBI — the capitalist rulers’ main political police outfit — and the courts to frame up political opponents, claiming they’re illegal “foreign agents.”
On Aug. 7 the FBI raided the home of Scott Ritter — a former United Nations weapons inspector and an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign — after seizing his passport at the airport in June as he was about to board a plane for a planned speaking tour in Russia.
The search warrant for the FBI raid on Ritter’s home in Delmar, New York, was granted by a federal district court. It rubber stamped the FBI’s seizure of his “computers, computer equipment, cellular telephones and/or any other electronic media.” Going beyond the court order, they also seized paper files.
During the raid, Ritter says an agent told him he was being investigated for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. He says the agent made him aware that the FBI was spying on his correspondence, telling him one of his emails “suggests that you were taking instructions from the Russian Embassy.”
“It shows no such thing,” Ritter replied, pointing out he had contacted the embassy to check the accuracy of a quote from the ambassador that he was using in an article he was writing.
The raid was “a fishing expedition,” Ritter says. So far no charges have been filed against him.
Ritter is a former Marine major and was a prominent U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. Claims by Washington that the Saddam Hussein regime had weapons of mass destruction were used to justify a brutal U.N. embargo of the country and for launching the U.S.-led 2003 Iraq War.
Ritter quit the “weapons inspection” racket in 1998, accusing Washington of not being tough enough on Saddam, before having a political change of heart and becoming a critic of U.S. intervention in the Middle East.
Since then, he’s become an enthusiastic apologist for Vladimir Putin’s regime and its murderous war in Ukraine. Ritter claims the Ukrainian government had carried out “crimes against humanity” after Putin’s invasion in 2022. He wrote that Ukrainian forces carried out a false flag operation in Bucha, killing hundreds of their own people and blaming Moscow — a patently false accusation. Since 2020 Ritter has been a contributor to Russia Today, a publication financed by Moscow.
Defense of Ritter from FBI harassment has nothing to do with support for any of his political views, but with safeguarding his right to hold them and to speak and write about them. It is not a crime for his views and those of the Russian government to be similar. It’s free speech.
Use of ‘foreign agents’ law
These frame-up moves against Ritter come at the same time the Justice Department has filed Foreign Agents Registration Act charges against two Russia Today reporters and to frame up leaders of the African People’s Socialist Party and its support group UHURU.
Adopted on the eve of World War II, the Foreign Agents Registration Act was used by the Democratic administration of President Franklin Roosevelt to target the Socialist Workers Party for organizing opposition in the working class to U.S. entry into the second imperialist world war over markets and spheres of influence. The Justice Department admits the law was one of the reasons it gave for continuing to target the SWP into the 1950s.
Washington justifies stepped-up use of the law today as part of going after a “Russian government-sponsored foreign malign influence operation.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced media like Russia Today Sept. 13 as “a de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus,” claiming it is trying to “undermine democracy in the United States.”
This led Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to ban Russia Today from using its platforms, as did Alphabet, the parent company of YouTube.
In a related case, journalist Dmitri Simes and his wife Anastasia were indicted Sept. 5 for alleged violations of U.S. sanctions against Russia and for money-laundering, charges that carry up to 20 years in prison. The FBI had raided the Simes’ home in Virginia Aug. 13, seizing paintings by Russian artists.
Simes is a former adviser to President Richard Nixon. He campaigned for Trump in 2016. Now resident in Russia, he hosts a weekly chat show there on state-controlled TV.
Simes told the Washington Post he’s being prosecuted for doing nothing more than “presenting my point of view.” Adding, “I thought the First Amendment was designed exactly to protect unpopular views.”
The government attacks on free speech echo the “Russia-collusion” hoax used by Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016, the FBI and the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives to smear and later to try to impeach Trump. Their targeting of political opponents is aimed not just at people whose views mirror those of the Kremlin. They’re aimed at setting a precedent to be used against the working class and our unions as the class struggle heats up.