Under the orders of the US Justice Department, the home of former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter was raided this week under allegations of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. More than two dozen boxes were pulled from his home, including an archive that backed Ritter's allegations that there were never any WMDs in Iraq in 2003.
The US' latest effort to target Scott Ritter have fully put on display the government's hypocrisy as it picks and chooses when to stay its hand and when to weaponize the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) against Americans, US attorney John Jackman told Sputnik.
The Wednesday raid took place at Ritter's home in New York as investigators have sought to argue that the former weapons inspector's journalistic work is being framed at the direction of the Russian government. However, the claims could not be further from the truth.
"FARA, kind of by its very nature, is enforced ambiguously, which leads to very unequal levels of enforcement and basically, you know, there's potential for it to be weaponized against political speech that the United States, especially our foreign policy establishment, finds problematic," Jackman told Radio Sputnik's Fault Lines on Friday.
Potential FARA offenders are flagged by the US government if they fall under certain specifications, such as an individual who is documented as having been directed at the sole discretion of a foreign principal. That said, there are exemptions that protect "bonafide" media services, which Jackman noted its exact definition is "somewhat ambiguous."....more below
