Criminal law, Free Speech, Media, Politics

“A Better Deterrence”: Hillary Clinton Suggests the Possible Arrest of Americans Spreading Disinformation

Hillary Clinton has long been one of the most anti-free speech figures in American politics, including calling upon European officials to force Elon Musk to censor American citizens under the infamous Digital Services Act (DSA). She is now suggesting the arrest of Americans who spread what she considers disinformation. It is 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. Presumably, that disinformation would not be treated as criminal viewpoints.

Speaking on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show this week, Clinton was asked about continued allegations of Russian efforts to disseminate Russian propaganda in the United States. Clinton responded:

“I think it’s important to indict the Russians, just as Muller indicted a lot of Russians who were engaged in direct election interference and boosting Trump back in 2016. But I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda. 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 interview was chillingly consistent with Clinton 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.

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 efforts were so obvious by July 2016 that former CIA Director John Brennan briefed former President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s alleged “plan” to tie then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” The Russian investigation was launched days after this briefing.

(MSNBC/via YouTube)

Her general counsel, Marc Elias, his former partner Michael Sussmann, and the campaign were later found involved in not just spreading the false claims from the Steele dossier but other false stories like the Alfa Bank conspiracy claim.

It was Elias who managed the legal budget for the campaign. We now know that the campaign hid the funding of the Steele dossier as a legal expense.

New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said that Elias denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said that Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”

Elias was also seated next to John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, when he was asked about the role of the campaign, he denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Even assuming that Podesta was kept in the dark, the Durham Report clearly shows that Elias knew and played an active role in pushing this effort.

The Clinton campaign lied to the media, spread false claims of Russian disinformation, and was accused of being a conduit for Russian intelligence. So would the “better deterrence” have been for Clinton herself to be arrested?

Sussmann ultimately did stand trial but was acquitted. Notably, John Durham noted that “no one at Fusion GPS … would agree to voluntarily speak with the Office” while both the DNC and Clinton campaign invoked privileges to refuse to answer certain questions.

For a person who is on her fourth memoir, Clinton is remarkably hostile to free speech. Notably, in all of these memoirs, she does not address her prominent role in calling for the censorship and now arrest of those with opposing views. She also does not discuss how her campaign lied to the media and funded the Steele dossier. Perhaps that is coming in the fifth memoir.

What is clear is that Clinton herself has no fear that such prosecution would ever await her.  She is one of those who may silence others but not be silenced. The public is to be protected from views that she deemed disinformation, misinformation, or malinformation.

To that end, as one of the guardians of truth, Clinton chastised the media for not being more consistently anti-Trump, a daunting prospect since the media has been accused of running almost 90 percent negative stories on Trump.

Nevertheless, shortly after the second assassination attack on Trump, Clinton called Trump a danger to the world and added that “I don’t understand why it’s so difficult for the press to have a consistent narrative about how dangerous Trump is.”

Ideally, between the arrests of those accused of disinformation and an effective state media, Clinton hopes to rein in errant thoughts and viewpoints.

In the interview, Maddow did not have even a slight objection to the implications of arresting people with criminal viewpoints. Censorship and criminal prosecutions are such mainstream concepts that they are as unsurprising as a fourth Clinton memoir.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster).

346 thoughts on ““A Better Deterrence”: Hillary Clinton Suggests the Possible Arrest of Americans Spreading Disinformation”

  1. “A Better Deterrence”: Hillary Clinton Calls for the Arrest of Americans Spreading Disinformation

  2. You’d think that Jonthan Turley would be interested in covering the ban against free speech in California? But no. So, we’ll cover it here:

    1. * Thank you for Shauer reference. The democrats have successfully demonstrated free speech and its ability to harm if it includes lies and defamation by perjury. People with good will and common sense would not have done that but for the founders were also slave owners , an economic system worldwide from the beginning of time.

      The United States took a giant step forward and outlawed the system. It had never been outlawed before in human history. It’s the true reason Abraham Lincoln is revered. The United States economic system moved to mercantile(ism). The rest is history.

      1. * Schauer

        On perjury mentioned, forms of perjury are done by ordinary people or news readers and others in gossip and relating unverified stories as to factual information. It’s common as bias or what is being called activist journalism when creative writing is more appropriate. Perjury isn’t referenced here as only lies while under oath if the lie is meant to harm another or is reckless disregard of another.

        Perhaps officials when taking an oath of office might include a promise to tell the truth so help me God to be brave enough to do so. Hillary certainly is perjury by any name it seems.

      2. LOL
        Slavery was an abhorrent practice however at the time it was a general practice prior to mechanized labor equipment. It was and is wrong, it’s still going on just in a different fashion, financial slavery through taxation and banks.

        Whereupon Lincoln then followed by Grant after fighting their noble fight to end slavery by killing thousands of fellow countrymen and forcing them to surrender at gun point from their legal right to remove themselves from a tyrannical federal government, moved westward and practiced mass extermination of the native population. Sherman openly advocated for genocide of men, women and children.
        History is distorted by the victor.

        1. * As another astute commentor pointed out, was your history written by National Geographic or another? Publisher? Seriously…

  4. News Flash: the federal government has censored and punished political speech for at least 70 years covertly (Cointelpro type tactics). Both parties do it!

  5. trump and JD vance are making dumb and dumber look like genius and superstar.

    Can they make stuff up to be any dumber? Based on past experience I fully expect trump and JD to be heralded as the dumbest people on planet Earth by Nov 4. Are they intentionally trying to lose?

    2. Where’s Mr. 81 Million votes Biden and his DEI hire Kamalunist? When is the cackling shrew going to quit evading any response on her failed policies and come clean on her (Obama’s) Marxist agenda? The Democratic line up is so putrid it would make ANY conservative opposition appear as superior brainiacs in comparison.

      1. * Her policies are hugely successful. Her policies are to destroy the USA. you must mean Her lies aren’t successful. True, they’re simply an annoyance.

        1. Traveler’s comments were concise and to the point. Did pointing them out make you sick to your stomach? They should have.

    1. * Two people are dead because of the migration, protected status policy of the Biden Harris government. When policies cause domestic deaths that would have not been but for reckless disregard of law humor is impossible.

      It’s nearly certain the Biden Harris government would simply reply, people die everyday.

      1. “Two people are dead because of the migration, protected status policy of the Biden Harris government”

        If you are attempting to assess the total direct cost in U. S. citizens’ lives of the Biden-Harris (Obama, actually) immigration policies, you are at least three orders of magnitude too low, quite possibly four.

    1. * true. Evil leaves a calling card. You’ve got 3 repeated letters–> KKK

      So odd…I’d add a 4th as John Jr.

      1. Yep
        That old KKK has been burning crosses and lynching people of color all across this land. Burning down businesses, shooting people, destroying private property, taking over blocks of cities, defacing public property, shouting down opposition arguments…
        Oh wait, that was BLM and Antifa.
        Didn’t Kamala Harris assist funding in gaining their release when arrested for their anarchy?

        Try again

  8. Liberal activists deface Benjamin Franklin statue at an Ivy League campus. They sound like 1960s commie radicals, who have not become any more mature in the last 55 years.

    https://www.campusreform.org/article/anti-israel-activists-vandalize-ben-franklin-statue-upenn-call-symbol-imperial-violence-colonialism/26358

    Meanwhile, liberal Governor Gavin Newsome has signed a law outlawing political memes in an election year:

    https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1836199502669320611

    There is a mental disorder sweeping our land, called “liberalism.” It renders its victim simultaneously out of touch with reality and hungry for total power.

    1. Das Kapital, by Karl Marx, published as three volumes in 1867, 1885, and 1894.

      It’s been spreading every since.

    2. “There is a mental disorder sweeping our land, called “liberalism.” It renders its victim simultaneously out of touch with reality and hungry for total power.”

      Only someone with extremely deep mental and emotional malfunctions would even want (or accept) that kind of power.

  9. Headline: Fed Drops 50 Basis Points

    The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.

    The Fed is invalid, illegitimate, and unconstitutional.

    The Deep Deep State “Swamp” Regime Blob’s Federal Reserve Board makes a massive corrupt move to help Kamala “The Incompetent” Harris 47 days before the election.

    The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 must have been immediately struck down by the Supreme Court for enjoying no legal basis in the U.S. Constitution and denying individual rights and freedoms provided to citizens by the Bill of Rights.

    Just like rents, wages and prices, interest rates must be determined by free market forces, not the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” or the dictatorship of the Deep Deep State “Swamp” Regime Blob.

    1. The ‘narratives’ are not working anymore.
      Everything isn’t ‘Warm-N-Fuzzy’, We are not in a “Good Place”.
      Come November 6th 2024, We will see just how good of a place We are in.

    2. If the US had a truly free market, it would resemble the Philippines… 5% wealthy, 10% middle class and 85% impoverished. Countries with minimal regulation have high Gini coefficients, a measure of income inequality. Nations with laissez-faire principles score higher, reflecting a greater divide between the wealthy and the rest of the population.

      1. The ascent of legalized online sports gambling (Daft Kings and FanDouche) into cooperation with MLB, NFL is the perfect example of predatory middle-class destruction by the business elites.

        1. “legalized online sports gambling…”
          says it all. That “business” as it is structured would be completely infeasible if it was not propped up by government regulation/prohibition of gambling in the first place.

  10. Just stop and think about it. If Hillary had been elected you wouldn’t be allowed to speak your mind today. She says so in her own words. Just like with Trump America dodged a bullet in 2016. Meanwhile the would be dictator of what is allowed to be said just keeps on firing. Are there Democrats out there who recognize who the real threats to our freedom are? Freedom of speech is the bedrock on which all the other freedoms rest. Have the American people been dumbed down enough by the leftist educators or will they have eyes to see and ears to hear? We don’t need more woke we need an awakening.

      1. You need to wake up, Sleepy! The evidence is every where and spewing directly from the demon’s Word Salad mouth.

      2. Facebook censorship during the pandemic maybe? Twitter censorship during the run up to the rigged mail in ballot 2020 election maybe?

  11. Here’s some of the disinformation that Hillary doesn’t want you to see. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eswk7dmrBEY. 15,000 people from Haiti bused to a city with a population of 50,000. If they were in California they would be allowed to vote. This is what Hillary wants for all of America. You should remember that if you refuse to comply she’ll put you away.

    1. “If they were in California they would be allowed to vote”

      How certain are you that they won’t be voting in California no matter where they are living? Not that there is much doubt how California’s electoral votes will be awarded.

    2. * The problems with the open door policy are background checks. Two people have had their lives cut short. One was an 12 year old. Both people would be alive and well but for the disastrous policy. Because there aren’t background checks people should leave Springfield. Reckless disregard of laws.

  13. Here’s a description of “Lucky Loser”, a new book about Trump and his alleged financial savvy:

    “From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters behind the 2018 bombshell New York Times exposé of then-President Trump’s finances, an explosive investigation into the history of Donald Trump’s wealth, revealing how one of the country’s biggest business failures lied his way into the White House

    Soon after announcing his first campaign for the US presidency, Donald J. Trump told a national television audience that life “has not been easy for me. It has not been easy for me.” Building on a narrative he had been telling for decades, he spun a hardscrabble fable of how he parlayed a small loan from his father into a multi-billion-dollar business and real estate empire. This feat, he argued, made him singularly qualified to lead the country. Except: None of it was true. Born to a rich father who made him the beneficiary of his own highly lucrative investments, Trump received the equivalent of more than $500 million today via means that required no business expertise whatsoever.

    Drawing on over twenty years’ worth of Trump’s confidential tax information, including the tax returns he tried to conceal, alongside business records and interviews with Trump insiders, New York Times investigative reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig track Trump’s financial rise and fall, and rise and fall again. For decades, he squanders his fortunes on money losing businesses, only to be saved yet again by financial serendipity. He tacks his name above the door of every building, while taking out huge loans he’ll never repay. He obsesses over appearances, while ignoring threats to the bottom line and mounting costly lawsuits against city officials. He tarnishes the value of his name by allowing anyone with a big enough check to use it, and cheats the television producer who not only rescues him from bankruptcy but casts him as a business savant – the public image that will carry him to the White House.

    A masterpiece of narrative reporting, Lucky Loser is a meticulous examination spanning nearly a century, filled with scoops from Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago, Atlantic City, and the set of The Apprentice. At a moment when Trump’s tether to success and power is more precarious than ever, here for the first time is the definitive true accounting of Trump and his money – what he had, what he lost, and what he has left – and the final word on the myth of Trump, the self-made billionaire.”

      1. Go to Amazon and type in the book title— you will find the above description of the book.

        1. And You Say You Are really a lawyer?!?!?!?!?!? Do you know that even if you use quotation marks, you must CITE the source from which you lifted it. Basic, gigi, that’s basic. Doesn’t even require legal education. You get scarier the more I read your comments. I cannot believe it. that you practiced law. That would be scary. Then again maybe that’s why you have so much time on your hands…

          1. Tom: how does attacking ME make the description above inaccurate? I don’t know WHO wrote the description–it’s what you get when you go to Amazon–so there wasn’t any author to which to attribute the quote; but, as usual, you ignore the substance of the post to attack me, as if that, somehow, makes the description of the book and the contents inaccurate.

            Suzanne Craig has written for years about Trump and his finances, the fact that he has never been anywhere near as wealthy as he tries to claim, which is why he keeps trying to hide his tax returns, and that he was always propped up by his father following one business failure after another. In a recent interview regarding the building of the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, N.J., one of two Trump casinos that went bust, Ms. Craig relates that a prospective investor wanted to see proof of his claim that Trump had started building the casino before investing his money. Trump had NOT started building because he was broke, but what he did do was get multiple pieces of earth moving equipment brought to the site, and hired operators to push around dirt, to create the illusion that the project was being built. That was a total scam. The casino failed and the building was eventually imploded.

            You say I am getting “scarier”–how laughable. What i find scary is people who are so deep into Trump discipleship that they not only are unwilling to hear the truth about their hero, they attack anyone who tries to tell them the truth. I’m not the one who wrote this information–the authors are. I cite their work as a source of well-investigated information about Trump and his lack of financial savvy. How does that make me “scary” or not competent to practice law? I think every American should look at what the authors found before being willing to hand over the reins of power to someone like Trump. Economists say that his proposed tariffs and tax cuts are not only ill-advised, they will cause rampant inflation, increase the national debt, jack up the cost of living, and cause the Social Security Fund to go broke years sooner than projected. That may result in retirees being forced to wait longer to start receiving benefits, cuts to current recipients and cuts to Medicare. That would work an extreme hardship on those seniors whose sole source of income is Social Security. According to the book, Trump has NO financial savvy. Then, on the other hand, he may just be lying again, just like he did in 2016 when he promised that “Mexico will pay to build the wall”–saying whatever he thinks will get gullible people to vote for him. Read the book–then tell me who’s scary.

        2. Or as an alternative to the NY Slimes

          Peter Schweizer
          Profiles of Corruption

          A plethora of books authored by a reputable and renowned author.

    5. “For decades, [Trump] squanders his fortunes on money losing businesses, only to be saved yet again by financial serendipity.”

      That quote is everything you need to know about this smear campaign. Trump’s failures (real or imagined) are his own fault. His successes are the result of blind luck.

      The best defense is to pull a Phryne: Look at his vast commercial and residential portfolio.

      1. Sam: The authors HAVE looked at his portfolios, their value, how much they are underwater–meaning that he owes more than they are worth, and the games he plays to re-finance–which is how he got the huge judgment against him in New York–lying about the value of his collateral. In fact, the Judge said the degree of misrepresentation of his assets was “shocking to the conscience”. Why not read the book and look at the evidence they obtained before dismissing their opinions? It is a fact that the following business ventures of Trump’s failed:

        Trump University ($25 million payout for fraud); Trump the Game; Trump Vodka; Trump Airline; Trump Steaks; Go Trump (travel bureau); Trump Mortgages; Trump Ice; Trump Tower Tampa; Trump So Ho Hotel; Trump Marina; World’s Fair at Trump Tower; Trump Baku Hotel; Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino; Trump International Hotel and Tower–Dubai; Trump Tower New Orleans; Trump Tower Palm Beach; Trump Tower Charlotte; Trump Institute (to teach real estate); A professional football team; Trump Foundation (shut down by the NY AG for fraud–$2 M ordered to be paid in restitution for helping himself to funds earmarked for charity); Trump Winery; Trump Cologne; Truth Social.

        Look at the facts before deciding whether this person should have control over the financial future of America. Also, listen to what the economists say. Even the Heritage Foundation says that tariffs are passed on to American consumers in the form of higher prices.

  15. And the head of it all:  

    Barack Obama and the Obama Enemy Army, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” 

      1. I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.

  16. KNOW THE ENEMY (STOP SUCCUMBING IN EVERY BATTLE)
    _________________________________________________________________

    “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

    “If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.”

    “If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

    – Sun Tzu, The Art of War
    _____________________________

    Hillary Clinton is a direct and mortal enemy of the American Thesis of Freedom and Self-Reliance, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, actual Americans, and America.

    1. We do love some wikipedia…

      There are a number of treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, including medications, therapeutic activities, and person-centered care:
      Medications
      These can help with symptoms and slow the progression of the disease:
      Cholinesterase inhibitors: These drugs can help with memory and thinking by increasing levels of acetylcholine in the brain. They are often the first drugs tried, and include donepezil (Aricept, Adlarity), galantamine (Razadyne), and rivastigmine

  20. I always thought of Hillary as political herpes and a danger to democracy.

    Of course she wants to destroy free speech and many other freedoms.

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