Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest in France, along with the US administration’s encouragement of it, bear “the hallmark of dictatorship,” American journalist Tucker Carlson has said.
The comments were made during an interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has recently announced the suspension of his campaign as an independent candidate for US president.
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Durov was arrested in Paris last week, and is being held for questioning in connection to a broader cybercrime probe into illicit activities on the billionaire’s end-to-end encrypted social media platform, the French authorities have said. Telegram generally refuses to share user data and chat logs with law enforcement, and Durov has claimed that this privacy-first approach has drawn attention from intelligence agencies around the world.
In the interview on Monday, Kennedy said the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects the right to freedom of expression from government interference, should also protect “misinformation,” as well as information that “no one wants to hear.”
Carlson replied that the administration of US President Joe Biden currently views anything that criticizes the “job that they’re doing” as misinformation.
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“With that in mind, you see the Biden administration encouraging France, [French President Emmanuel] Macron to arrest the owner and founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, who is, as of now, in a French prison,” Carlson said, adding: “that’s the hallmark of dictatorship.”
“We’ve lost Europe,” Kennedy replied. “Europe now does not have free speech.”
He went on to draw a comparison between Durov and X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk, blasting the Democratic Party for its lack of actual democratic values.
“Elon Musk should be the hero of the Democratic Party,” Kennedy said. “He was actually the only one that would allow free speech on his platform, and he’s now become a villain because of it.”
Russia’s top human rights official, Tatyana Moskalkova, said Durov’s arrest is a blow against free speech, claiming it is “an attempt to shut down Telegram, the platform where you can find the truth about world affairs.”
Telegram’s official statement on the arrest of its CEO noted that the platform complies with EU laws, and that its content-moderation policies are in line with industry standards.