 Biden DOJ indicts four Americans for weaponized free speech. The Biden administration's Department of Justice has just charged four members of the African People's Socialist Party, APSP, for conspiring to act as agents of Russia by using speech and political action in ways the DOJ says weaponized the First Amendment rights of Americans. The Washington Post reports, quote, Federal authorities charged four Americans on Tuesday with roles in a maligned campaign pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda in Florida and Missouri, expanding a previous case that charged a Russian operative with running illegal influence agents within the United States. The FBI signaled its interest in the alleged activities in a series of raids last summer, at which point authorities charged a Moscow man, Alexander Viktorovich Ianov, with working for years on behalf of Russian government officials to fund and direct fringe political groups in the United States. Among other things, Ianov allegedly advised the political campaigns of two unidentified candidates for public office in Florida. Ianov's influence efforts were allegedly directed and supervised by officers of the FSB, a Russian government intelligence service. Now, authorities have added charges against four Americans who allegedly did Ianov's bidding through groups including the African People's Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement in Florida, Black Hammer in Georgia, and an unidentified political group in California, part of an effort to influence American politics, end quote. AFP reports that the conspiracy charges carry a sentence of up to 10 years, with three of the four APSP members additionally charged with acting as unregistered agents of Russia, which carries another five years. Russia's foreign intelligence service allegedly weaponized our First Amendment rights. Freedom's Russia denies its own citizens to divide Americans and interfere in elections in the United States, said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olson in the DOJ's press release regarding the indictments, adding, the department will not hesitate to expose and prosecute those who sow discord and corrupt US elections in service of hostile foreign interests, regardless of whether the culprits are US citizens or foreign individuals abroad. Looks like the United States has decided to dispense with those freedoms as well. The superseding indictment containing these charges consists of a lot of verbal gymnastics to obfuscate the fact that the DOJ is prosecuting US citizens for speech and political activities in the United States, which happened not to align with the wishes of the US government. The grand jury alleges that the aforementioned Ianov directed these Americans to publish pro-Russian propaganda and information designed to cause dissension in the United States, which is about as vague an amorphous an allegation as you could possibly come up with. For the record, O'Malley Yeshetaila, the founder and chairman of the African People Socialist Party and one of the four Americans named in the indictment, has adamantly denied ever having worked for Russia. Earlier this month, before charges were brought against him, the Tampa Bay Times quoted him as saying, I never worked for a Russian, never ever ever ever. They know I have never worked for Russia. The problem is, I've never worked for them. What is important to note that that should not matter. Under the First Amendment, the government is forbidden to abridge anyone's freedom to speak however they want and associate with whomever they please, which necessarily includes being as vocally pro-Russia as they like and promoting whatever political agendas they see fit, whether that happens to advance the interests of the Russian government or not. The indictment alleges that the four Americans engaged in agit-prop by writing articles that contained Russian propaganda and disinformation, but even if we pretend that's both A, a quantifiable claim, and B, a proven fact, propaganda and disinformation are both speech that the government is constitutionally forbidden from repressing. It's not reasonable for the government to just dismiss the First Amendment on the grounds that it is being weaponized. You can't have your government dictating what speech is valid and what counts as agit-prop and disinformation because they'll always define those terms in ways which benefit the government, thus giving more power to the powerful and taking power away from the people. You can't have your government dictating what political groups are legitimate and which ones are tools of a foreign government because you can always count on the powerful to set such designations in ways which benefit themselves. There's also the brazen hypocrisy of it all. The U.S. government is constantly engaging in foreign influence operations with outfits like the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up to help ferment coups and color revolutions and advance U.S. information interests overtly in ways the CIA used to do covertly. As commentator Brian Berletik noted on Twitter, the U.S. through the National Endowment for Democracy has created armies of organizations carrying out malign influence operations around the world, including here in Thailand. When the Thai government attempts to stop this activity, the U.S. Embassy shouts free speech. Thailand's government and others around the world could easily cite this move by the U.S. Justice Department to target and uproot U.S.-funded organizations doing exactly this and worse. So for the U.S. government to now claim it's legitimate to start throwing U.S. citizens in prison for a decade because they published propaganda for another country is absurd and more than a little scary. The most powerful government in the world needs more political dissent at home, not less, and here they are trying to turn it into a crime. When they claim the members of the APSP published propaganda and promoted dissension, what they really mean is that they engaged in speech and political activism that the U.S. government does not like. The spin-meisters will try to spin it. The legal mumbo-jumbo will try to obfuscate it, but that's what's happening. Don't let them conceal this from you.