President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Nothing blithe about what I posted. Sorry you read it that way.

She was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States. Not with what you posted. The indictment makes no link to the Russian government that I saw, as much as we can all conclude that she was working at the behest of Putin to try to foment discord here. Which actually shouldn't be criminal either, to be honest. We are all bombarded with information, much of it propaganda, all day long. You fall into an Orwellian trap when you try to regulate information because someone decided one message is good and another isn't.

What she was charged with was running troll farms and social media and e-mail campaigns. Or as the indictment put it, she is accused of trying to "create and amplify divisive social media and political content."

I am honestly not comfortable with that kind of prosecution, and I don't think others should be. I don't want the government deciding who the good guys are and who the bad ones are, or what information is valid or what isn't. That has serious free speech ramifications.

The way to deal with Putin's dirty tricks isn't to randomly criminalize information by calling it a conspiracy to defraud. You fight propaganda with truth and vigilance and with people learning to be skeptical when they read something. That is how free and open societies should work.

 

The indictment doesn't implicate the Russian government. They are alleging unlawful foreign interference. She is alleged to have been the money person for something called “Project Lakhta,” which they said is a Russian umbrella effort funded by an oligarch named Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin and two companies he controls, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, and Concord Catering. According to them, Project Lakhta targeted foreign audiences in the United States, members of the European Union, and Ukraine, among others.

The nature of their disinformation isn't the point. When you pursue this kind of prosecution, you have to be honest about what you are doing. You are criminalizing speech. And we're supposed to be better than that. If we don't like Putin fucking with us, this is not the way to act. Fight disinformation with TRUTHFUL information. That is how its done in a free and open society. When you start criminalizing speech -- foreigners or otherwise -- you are undermining a core value that is supposed to define us. It's supposedly what makes us better than Putin.

 

I understand the law -- they are trying to get her on any expenditures she made that had to do with their activities. But I am saying that that kind of law shouldn't be on the books. It has put us in the position of effectively prosecuting speech. And I will stand by my opinion that that is a very slippery slope. For what it's worth, I also think anyone should be free to spend their money however they want with regard to political activity. I find most efforts at "campaign finance regulation" to be ridiculous, and kind of unAmerican.