Free Speech
Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): “Free Speech Rules,” My New YouTube Video Series — Episode 3 (Fake News) Now Out
By Eugene Volokh
Thanks to a generous grant from the Stanton Foundation, and to the video production work of Meredith Bragg and Austin Bragg at Reason.tv, I’m putting together a series of short, graphical YouTube videos — 10 episodes to start with — explaining free speech law. Our first two videos were “7 Things You Should Know About Free Speech in Schools” and “The Three Rules of Hate Speech and the First Amendment”; our third, just released today, is “Fake News and the First Amendment” …
Our next video, which we hope to get out in three or four weeks, will be on the right of publicity and “life story rights”; future videos in the series will likely include most of the following, plus maybe some others:
– Alexander Hamilton: free press pioneer.
– Free speech at college.
– Free speech on the Internet.
– Money and speech / corporations and speech.
– Speech and privacy.
Online Speech Platforms
Cato: Why Mark Zuckerberg Is Mistaken to Welcome Federal Regulation of Facebook (Podcast)
Featuring John Samples and Caleb O. Brown
John Samples is author of the new Cato paper, “Why the Government Should Not Regulate Content Moderation of Social Media.”
Congress
Wired: In Congressional Hearing On Hate, The Haters Got Their Way
By Issie Lapowsky
Tuesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on the rise of hate crimes and white nationalism devolved into a four-hour squabble over who’s most hated, and who’s doing the hating, in America. The members of the committee and some of the eight witnesses who sat before them battled over whether anti-semitism or anti-black hate is most deserving of their attention, and whether it’s white supremacists or Muslims or Democrats or the President who harbor the most hate. Meanwhile, in cyberspace, the comment section on the YouTube livestream of the hearing filled up with so much filth that YouTube had to shut it down.
Like so many congressional hearings before it, the committee failed to reach any meaningful bipartisan consensus or elicit illuminating answers from the representatives from Facebook and Google who sat before them. Instead, by the time it ended, it seemed the hearing had succeeded in doing just one thing, and that is, as Representative Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pennsylvania) put it, pitting minority groups against each other. The haters, in other words, got their way-and the tech giants that have allowed those hatemongers to fester and find each other got off scot free…
As all this unfolded, the tech industry representatives-Neil Potts of Facebook and Alexandria Walden of Google-mostly sat back, fielding overly simple questions about whether Facebook allows people to report hate or how YouTube spots videos that violate its policies. Even those committee members who seemed serious about holding tech companies accountable lacked the time needed to pin the companies down on, for instance, whether they have historically policed white supremacist content as fiercely as they’ve monitored, say, ISIS content…
On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will have a chance to follow up on some of these questions in another hearing with Potts and Twitter’s director of public policy Carlos Monje, Jr.
DOJ
Bloomberg: Barr Says He’s Starting an Inquiry Into ‘Spying’ on Trump Campaign
By Chris Strohm and Billy House
Attorney General William Barr said that he’s starting his own inquiry into counterintelligence decisions that may have amounted to political “spying,” including actions taken during the probe of the Trump campaign in 2016.
“I think spying did occur,” Barr told a Senate Appropriations panel on Wednesday. “But the question is whether it was predicated, adequately predicated.” He added: “I need to explore that.”
The comments, confirming a report by Bloomberg News, indicate that Barr is looking into allegations that Republican lawmakers have been pursuing for more than a year — that the investigation into President Donald Trump and possible collusion with Russia was tainted at the start by anti-Trump bias in the FBI and Justice Department.
Barr said he wasn’t opening a broad investigation into the FBI — vouching for the bureau and current Director Christopher Wray — but added that “there was probably a failure by a group of leaders there at the upper echelon.”
Barr’s inquiry is separate from a long-running investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general. Barr told a House Appropriations panel on Tuesday that he expected the inspector general’s work to be completed by May or June.
Wall Street Journal: Hush-Money Probe Gathered Evidence From Trump’s Inner Circle
By Nicole Hong, Rebecca Ballhaus, and Rebecca Davis O’Brien
The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office has gathered more evidence than previously known in its criminal investigation of hush payments to two women who alleged affairs with Donald Trump, including from members of the president’s inner circle.
Prosecutors interviewed Hope Hicks, a former close aide to Mr. Trump and White House communications director, last spring as part of their campaign-finance probe, which ultimately implicated the president in federal crimes.
They also spoke to Keith Schiller, Mr. Trump’s former security chief. Investigators learned of calls between Mr. Schiller and David Pecker, chief executive of the National Enquirer’s publisher, which has admitted it paid $150,000 to a former Playboy model on Mr. Trump’s behalf to keep her story under wraps.
In addition, investigators possess a recorded phone conversation between Mr. Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen and a lawyer who represented the two women.
The prosecutors’ campaign-finance investigation is based on the theory that the secret payments to keep women quiet were illegal contributions, because they were intended to influence the election. New details of the investigation-gleaned from interviews with 20 people familiar with the probe and from nearly 1,000 pages of court documents-show prosecutors had gathered information about Mr. Trump’s alleged involvement in the payments weeks before Mr. Cohen asserted it in open court…
What federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York might do with the information they’ve gathered on Mr. Trump couldn’t be determined. The office has proceeded in adherence to a Justice Department policy that sitting presidents can’t be indicted. Prosecutors have given no indication they would seek to charge Mr. Trump after he leaves office.
Candidates and Campaigns
Washington Examiner: Democratic 2020 hopefuls’ feel-good, anti-PAC pledges leave plenty of room for huge PAC benefits
By Emily Larsen
A banner on Sen. Kamala Harris’ website says that she “refuses to accept donations from corporate PACs.” Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s site says: “We aren’t taking any corporate PAC or federal lobbyist money. This is a campaign powered by you.” …
Refusal of corporate PAC money “is, shall we say, a feel-good pledge that no one is going to have worry about the consequences of adhering to,” Walter Shapiro, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and columnist at Roll Call, told the Washington Examiner…
Several candidates have said that they will discourage support from super PACs in the primary…
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who flaunted that he did not have a super PAC when he ran for president in 2016 presidential bid, said he was appreciative of support from a nurses’ union super PAC…
Like Sanders with the nurses’ union PAC in 2016, under the right circumstances, candidates could welcome support from super PACs that overwhelmingly support them.
Yet even if candidates don’t want super PAC support, they are essentially powerless to stop it. One Democratic donor created a super PAC in support of Sen. Cory Booker and plans to raise $10 million for the super PAC, even though Booker said he does not want the support.
O’Rourke’s campaign said it is “not interested in the help of any super PACs or special interest groups” and doesn’t “want their involvement in this race.” But a super PAC called Texas Forever benefited O’Rourke late in his 2018 Senate race, spending $2.3 million to oppose Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. After the election, FEC filings revealed that Texas Forever was almost entirely funded by the Senate Majority PAC, which has ties to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The States
National Review: States Need to Ensure Donor Privacy – It’s Crucial to Freedom of Speech
By Jon Pritchett
Private citizens should not be subjected to government harassment for supporting causes they believe in, and charities should not have to worry about their funding drying up because donors fear reprisals. Yet many policy pundits on the left, and even a few on the right, have been doing all they can to convince lawmakers across the country that the government has a compelling interest in knowing to whom you give your after-tax money…
While transparency is what citizens require of their government, privacy is the constitutional right afforded to citizens. Conflating public requirements and private rights is clever but disingenuous. We should not allow proponents, from the Left or the Right, to get away with such sophistry…
Mississippi, where I live and work, has now become the second state, joining Arizona, to protect the privacy of non-profit donors. Governor Phil Bryant signed House Bill 1205 into law at the close of the legislative session last month. The bill codifies a long-standing practice of barring the government from demanding or releasing publicly the personal information of donors to 501(c) non-profits. At a time when partisanship seems to reign, the publication of personal information can expose citizens to intimidation and harassment from those who want to shut down speech with which they disagree. Fortunately, two states – and may others follow – have taken steps to ensure the fundamental American right of donor privacy.
“In recent years, charitable donations have been weaponized by certain groups against individuals to punish donors whose political beliefs differ from their own,” Governor Bryant said at the signing of the bill. “I was pleased to sign HB 1205, which protects free-speech rights of Mississippians who make charitable donations.” Let’s hope more governors and state legislatures follow suit.
