The hits just keep on coming for the Land of the Free.
Last week, government alchemists conjured a 34-felony conviction for the leading presidential candidate out of an eight-year-old misdemeanor that had already run the statute of limitations — like magic.
This week, the State Department reportedly nabbed an American citizen’s passport wholly outside of any legal framework; they just did it because they could, allegedly, as Bill Clinton infamously admitted about his ethical depravity.
Via Newsweek (emphasis added):
[Scott] Ritter, a former United Nations Special Commission weapons inspector, U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer, and a convicted sex offender, told Russian state-run news agency Tass on Tuesday that he was removed from a flight from New York to Istanbul. He said he planned to travel to Russia to attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).
He claimed authorities offered no explanation for preventing him from traveling, but that they said they were following instructions from the U.S. State Department…
Due to privacy considerations, we cannot share information about the passport status of private U.S. citizens without their consent," a State Department spokesperson told Newsweek*.
"There are situations where a U.S. passport may be revoked. These include, but are not limited to, laws and regulations affecting passport usage by individuals with active warrants or criminal records, fraud concerns, tax debt, and child support arrears," the spokesperson added.
*So much for the “most transparent administration in history,” right? The “we don’t have Ritter’s permission to share how we revoked his passport” appears to be nonsense as it was Ritter himself who initially reported the action.
Whether or not Ritter’s passport was actually confiscated remains to be confirmed, but it would by no means be out of character for the lawless American federal government to do this.
Consider the public freakout, replete with accusations of treason, in the corporate state media after Tucker Carlson went to Russia to talk to the president of the country — you know, like journalists are supposed to do, as protected by the First Amendment.
Ritter’s far from the first passport casualty in recent history.Via Yale Law Journal (emphasis added):
On June 22, 2013, Edward J. Snowden, a Hawaii-based computer specialist and contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), had his passport revoked by the United States State Department. While working for the NSA, Snowden had secretly downloaded classified documents detailing NSA surveillance operations. By May 20, 2013, Snowden had left Hawaii for Hong Kong, where he started releasing the top-secret material in his possession to the press.
On June 14, the U.S. Justice Department filed criminal charges against Snowden in federal district court. The following day, the Justice Department formally requested that Hong Kong authorities issue a provisional arrest warrant for Snowden. Eight days later, on the very morning—Hong Kong time—that his passport was revoked, Mr. Snowden was able to board a flight to Moscow. He remained in Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport’s transit zone until August 1, 2013, when Russian authorities granted him a one-year temporary asylum along with an identity document.
The State Department reaffirmed that Snowden remained an American citizen. However, according to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Snowden only remained eligible for a “limited validity passport good for direct return to the United States.” The State Department had thus effectively voided Snowden’s U.S. passport. Only if and when he decides to return to the United States will the State Department grant him an official document permitting his return to the U.S.; it will not grant him a passport of the common kind, which allows a U.S. citizen to remain abroad.
Snowden’s is not the only passport of an American citizen that the U.S. State Department has recently revoked. According to the Washington Post, the State Department revoked the passports of a few dozen—if not a hundred—Yemeni Americans after arguing that because these individuals were illegally naturalized, their passports were also obtained illegally.
From an analysis of historical and legal precedents, it seems clear that the State Department has acted in violation of the Constitution in each of these cases.
As usual, it’s the American citizen blowing the whistle on government criminality and none of the government criminals who get the legal shaft.
