Last week, theNew York Timesran an alarming house editorial called “Politicians Are Trying To Control The News,” outlining how the “shadow of press repression” is now expanding to “onetime bastions of press freedom” like Hong Kong, Israel, and Donald Trump’s United States. Written in the grave tone the paper brought when itpublished a history-altering essayby Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov fifty years ago, it was all true, except it left out our country’s strangest and most shameful example, one in which theTimesplayed a regrettable part: the case of Dimitri Simes.

In August, 2024, the FBIraided the Virginia home of Simes, who defected to the United States in 1973 after being expelled for protesting Soviet involvement in the Vietnam War. A huge team of agents swooped into the empty home — both Simes and his wife were away — and took almost everything, including an icon “which my mother got from Andrei Sakharov.” For Simes and his wife Anastasia, it was devastating. “Look, I lived in the United States for fifty years,” he said Monday. “It was all our possessions.”

The FBI left one thing. “My handgun,” Simes said. “They put it on my night table.”

A month later, on September 5, 2024, Simes was indicted on a series of charges that have no precedent. Technically, he was charged with violating theInternational Emergency Economic Powers Act(“IEEPA”), a sanctions regime that allows the president to take action against any “unusual and extraordinary threat” to national security. The law is intended to allow the U.S. to seize or block assets of foreign powers deemed hostile or belligerent, in this case Russia.

The offense that triggered the Simes indictment was that he “continued … hosting and producing the television program ‘The Great Game’ for Channel One Russia, and received compensation and services from Channel One.” Simply put, he hosted a Russian TV program and was paid to do so. U.S. government sourcestold theNew York Timescharges were filed “to crack down on Russia’s attempts to influence American politics ahead of November’s presidential election.”Timesreporters Julian Barnes and Steven Lee Myers added that the Justice Department believed that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “devised a plan to target swing state voters in favor of Mr. Trump and against further support for Ukraine.”

The Great Gameis a political debate show broadcast on Russia’s Channel One in Russian, for Russians. No one in America watches it, in swing states or anywhere else, but even if they did, it’s still extraordinary that the Biden government charged an American citizen in criminal court with the overtly political offense of potentially supporting his opponent, or opposing American involvement in the Ukraine war. Anyone reading that September, 2024New York Timesstory would assume that Donald Trump by now would have handed Ukraine to Putin, and certainly dropped the charges against Simes.

Neither proved true. Simes remains under indictment, threatened with forty years in prison, for the crime of hosting a Russian TV show. It’s not a partisan problem, as this case (like the Assange case) was brought under Democrats and continues to be prosecuted under Donald Trump. Hundreds if not thousands of people in America work for foreign news organizations, some of them for sanctioned countries, but Simes alone has been criminally charged in this way. Why?

One of the lawyers for Simes is the eminentMichel Paradis, well known for representing Guantanamo detainees and for authoring a number of provocative books, including most recentlyThe Light of Battle,about Dwight Eisenhower’s role in building America’s superpower status. I asked Paradis if there was any precedent for criminally charging someone for working as a journalist. Typically in speech offenses the ostensible offense is different: incitement, discrimination, causing harm, etc. With Simes, it was his employment status alone.

“It is a totally unprecedented use of the sanctions laws,” said Paradis. “The closestanalogies over the past 100 years are the prosecutions ofJohn W. Powellfor sedition for editingChina MonthlyReviewduring the Red Scare (which ended in a mistrial), andof Tokyo Rosefor treason during World War II.”

Simes was pursued relentlessly in the Trump/Russia investigation, but the government never found wrongdoing. The biggest revelation about him in the Mueller report, in fact, disproved two media myths. After Trump was elected in 2016, Alfa Bank Petr Aven attempted to set up a line of communication with the new president by reaching out to former U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Burt, who in turntried to broker a connection to team Trumpthrough Simes.

Source: Racket News