Jonathan Turley: Biden arguably most anti-free speech president since John Adams
Fox News contributor reacts to the president's efforts to police 'disinformation' on 'America Reports.'
President Biden's administration is revealing itself to be the most anti-free-speech White House since the 18th Century, GWU law professor Jonathan Turley told Fox News on Monday.
The advent of the Department of Homeland Security's "Disinformation Governance Board" is the latest in a "chilling" record of counter-First-Amendment behavior, he said.
The office's inaugural leader, Nina Jankowicz, is therefore "pitch perfect" for the role, he said.
"President Biden… is arguably the most anti-free-speech president since John Adams," Turley commented, adding DHS chief Alejandro Mayorkas ironically said it well when he has spoken about the new appointment.
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Biden, Raimondo, Buttigieg, Mayorkas (Getty)
"When the secretary says, ‘She has a long background here’ -- Well, it's the wrong background. It's like saying a book burner has a background in literacy: Yeah, he works with books, but that's not the background you're looking for."
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Adams (Gilbert Stuart/UniversalImagesGroup via Getty)
Of Mayorkas' defense of Jankowicz' role, Turley said while she may be tasked with "offer[ing] best practices on how to fight disinformation, many of us in the free speech community respond with, Yeah, we can pretty much guess what those are."
Of Adams, the Sedition Act of 1798 was passed during his tenure in the name of national security amid tensions with France -- which eventually led to a sitting member of Congress being jailed.
Jankowicz/composite (Arkadiusz Warguła/iStock)
Rep. Matthew Lyon of Vermont, a Jeffersonian Republican, was prosecuted after writing Adams had "an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp."
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