Anonymous critic charged with treason, executed

Is America headed the same direction as Saudi Arabia?

Bottom Line Up Front:

The Trump Administration is cracking down on free speech in ways that are eerily similar to Saudi Arabia.

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WHAT HAPPENED

Let me tell you a story.

A political insider writes an anonymous missive. He warns about abuses of power by a head of state. The warnings go viral. The head of state is enraged. Eventually, the writer is unmasked, accused of treason, and targeted by the government — not for spreading national security secrets, but for speaking out.

On the surface, that’s the story of Turki al-Jasser, a dissident executed last week by Saudi Arabia for criticizing the regime. But that exact paragraph could be used to describe my own fight with the Trump Administration.

To be clear, Al-Jasser’s situation is obviously more dire. He ran a satirical, anonymous Twitter account that criticized the Saudi royal family and spoke out about human rights abuses. That account was reportedly uncovered after Saudi agents infiltrated Twitter nearly a decade ago. Al-Jasser was arrested, detained for many years, and allegedly tortured in custody. His 2014 tweet was chillingly prophetic:

“The Arab writer can be easily killed by their government under the pretext of ‘national security.’”

Eleven years later, the Saudi state killed him for “treason.”

It is terrifying that this would happen anywhere in the world. And it’s even more terrifying that the Trump Administration is using the same language to crack down on dissenters by also accusing them of “treason.”

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WHAT IT MEANS

In America, criticizing the President isn’t a crime. At least, it didn’t use to be. When I wrote the Anonymous op-ed in The New York Times about Donald Trump’s presidency, I did it because the public needed to hear the truth from the inside. To know how bad it was getting. To understand that the President of the United States was behaving recklessly and at times unlawfully.

“He should be prosecuted!” the President raged. Everyone thought it was bluster.

But earlier this year, Donald Trump signed an Executive Order directing a federal investigation into me by name, labeling me a “national security threat,” and suggesting I was guilty of treason. Not for violence or espionage. But for criticism.

Unlike a Saudi dissident, I still have the freedom to write this. But that’s not the point. The point is that once any nation starts treating dissent as a threat to the country, the slope gets very slippery. What Saudi Arabia did last week is a warning sign of where we might be headed.

Let’s not pretend we’re safe from that descent.

In recent months, we’ve seen protesters in California accused of trying to overthrow the government … news organizations threatened with closure for unflattering coverage of the President … White House critics targeted for federal investigation … government agencies used to persecute the opposition … and much more.

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WHAT’S NEXT

I spoke a few days ago with my friend

Glenn Kirschner

about the President’s revenge-fueled executive orders and where it’s all headed. You can watch our whole conversation below.

One of the main points I made to Glenn is that this White House — for the first time in American history — is turning the justice system on its head. Rather than finding evidence of crimes and then prosecuting lawbreakers, the President decides that he thinks someone is guilty of a crime, he pronounces it, then he orders his aides to collect evidence to fit the crime. In the meantime, due process is laying somewhere in a ditch, beaten and dying.

This cannot become normalized. If it does, we will look a lot more like Saudi Arabia a lot quicker than we think.

We can honor the memory of dissenters like Turki al-Jasser by defending what they stood for. And that starts by making sure truth-tellers here at home don’t end up behind bars simply for exercising their rights.