That’s the advice Article III Project senior counsel Will Chamberlain shared on American Family Radio Monday after weekend news that Telegram CEO and co-founder Pavel Durov was taken into custody by French officials upon landing in his private jet at Le Bourget Airport near Paris.
Authorities maintain the arrest was part of a preliminary investigation into allegations that Telegram, the social media platform, facilitates criminal activity. A warrant had been issued for the arrest of Durov, Russian by birth. He was to be questioned further.
Telegram functions primarily as a broad-based instant messaging service. It offers functions such as group chats, secret chats and end-to-end encryption. It has a reputation for a mostly hands-off approach to content moderation.
Critics see the arrest as an attack on free speech. The question is: How responsible should Telegram be for the communication of its users?
“Is this the telephone company, or is this like Google where you have this massive repository of information that governments are making requests on?” Chamberlain told show host Jenna Ellis.
“I would be suspicious of these rationalizations provided by the government. You don’t know what information is on it, so it’s really bizarre to try and hold people liable on theory. The real problem is Telegram is one of the few free-speech platforms in the world where anybody can say what they want to say,” Chamberlain noted.
The ability to say what you want is coming under fire, especially in Europe, Chamberlain says.
He sees the U.S. currently as a safe zone – but argues how safe would be questionable under a Kamala Harris administration.
Musk himself had a recent free speech dust-up with another overseas official, Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for Internal Market, who sent a letter to Musk warning him about European Union laws under its Digital Services Act. The letter was dated Aug. 12, and Breton was concerned about possible “harmful content” in Musk’s upcoming interview with Donald Trump.
Musk responded on X with a meme and a vulgarity – and in return was just threatened online while on friendly soil. Durov, however, was detained.
EU: Hostile free-speech zone
Chamberlain’s advice is to just stay home and avoid the drama “in the European Union. It has to be treated like a hostile free-speech zone, something like Soviet Russia would have been in the ’80s.”
He continued: “I mean our government's getting worse and worse by the day, and I worry under a Harris administration what that will look like. But we still do have a robust rule of law in this country and a judicial system that generally respects the First Amendment. So, I think this is really the only safe place for any of these CEOs to be.”
For clarity, Chamberlain predicts that should the Democratic nominee win the office, Harris as president would do everything she could to silence opposing viewpoints.
But the judiciary still matters, and there could be some courtroom wins for free-speech protection.
“You should expect a Harris administration to engage in unrestricted lawfare against the people like Elon Musk, who have essentially declared themselves in opposition to Harris,” Chamberlain said. “Under Biden, the Democrat administration has used the criminal justice system and weaponized it against its ideological enemies. I expect that will continue even more forcefully under a Harris administration.”
It’s likely Musk would win a free-speech standoff in the U.S., because the “courts would shut that down,” Chamberlain said. With that in mind, attacking Musk might not necessarily be done regarding his speech.
“Elon has a ton of other business interests. Many of them do business with the federal government. I expect basically a Harris administration would try to find every lever, every bit of leverage over Elon Musk and exercise it to try to get [him] to behave.”
Ultimately Elon would not end up in jail over comments on X, but a Harris administration could find a way to prosecute him for something “ridiculous,” Chamberlain suggested.
Still, long-term courtroom protection of free speech would also be jeopardized in that climate as the president has the power of judicial appointments.
“It’s a hugely important voting issue,” Chamberlain said.
Harris doesn’t have a list, but her friends do
Vice President Harris hasn’t released names of who she would appoint for key judicial positions if elected, but her current team provides a clue.
“She hired as her director of communications, a guy named Brian Fallon, who was previously the head of an organization called Demand Justice – a far-left-leaning Supreme Court advocacy organization.”
Demand Justice has its own Supreme Court wish list, No. 1 being Philadelphia District Attorney Lawrence Krasner. The group earlier endorsed Joe Biden Supreme Court appointee Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“Lawrence Krasner is the guy who's turned Philadelphia into a drug-infested war zone. They think he should be a Supreme Court justice,” Chamberlain said.
“I want to communicate just how damaging that would be to the country. He’s the guy who thinks prosecution offices are prosecuting too many criminals and that there are way too many people in jail. It would make criminal prosecution difficult in every jurisdiction in this country.”
