Turley: ‘Menacing’ for FBI to Label Free Speech Advocacy as Disinformation It Says It Fights, We Have ‘State Media’

On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox News Live,” George Washington University Law Professor and Fox News Contributor Jonathan Turley stated that given that “the FBI has said that combatting disinformation is one of its priorities” “it’s a menacing thing when you have the largest law enforcement agency attacking free speech advocates” as peddlers of disinformation in reaction to the Twitter files.

Turley said, “What’s interesting is that there is really a loss of space in the last few weeks for many of the censorship apologists that are in Congress and the media. For years, they denied there was any censorship, that there was any shadowbanning, there [were] any blacklists, all of that was just formally denied. And because of Musk, we now know that all of that were lies, that, in fact, there was an extensive censorship system that was being directed in part by the FBI. So, one of the questions that we have is whether Twitter became an agent of the FBI for purposes of the First Amendment. The First Amendment applies to the government, obviously, but it can also apply to agents of the government, people who are acting on the government’s behest. You now have the company itself saying, yeah, we did become an agent of the FBI. We were being directed by the FBI. And that makes things tougher for people who have really struggled to tell the public there is nothing to see here. And one of the things that is most disturbing, quite frankly, is that, when these files came out, the FBI attacked many of us who were raising free speech concerns and called all of us collectively conspiracy theorists spreading disinformation. It was highly inappropriate, because the FBI has said that combatting disinformation is one of its priorities. So, it’s a menacing thing when you have the largest law enforcement agency attacking free speech advocates.”

He later added, “Well, we’ve learned some really chilling things in the last couple of years, perhaps most chilling is that you can have a state media without having censorship by coercion. You can have censorship by consent.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett