Tech CEO Imprisonment May Threaten U.S.-French Alliance

As free speech is dealt another devastating blow in France with the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov, the Biden administration has responded with barely a shrug. But Americans have good reason to be alarmed about the government of the United States’ oldest ally and longtime ideological partner embracing a totalitarian censorship regime.

Durov was arrested on Saturday just moments after his plane touched down at France’s Le Bourget Airport, about five miles north of Paris. Authorities then held Pavel for 96 hours – the maximum allowed under French law – before charging him on Wednesday with a litany of crimes, including enabling the distribution of child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking, and fraud. His bail was set at $5.5 million, and he is not allowed to leave France.

Incredibly, all of the charges against Durov stem from illicit activity allegedly taking place on Telegram that he had no direct knowledge of. As many commentators were quick to point out, the French government’s argument is akin to imprisoning the owner of a car dealership if someone runs over a pedestrian, or locking up a pharmacist if someone abuses prescription drugs.

Durov, 39, is a Russian-born entrepreneur with a long anti-establishment streak. In 2006 he launched VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook. When the Russian government sent police to Durov’s house to demand he remove the profiles of opposition politicians, Durov refused to answer the door and posted a photo of a dog wearing a hoodie with the caption, “Official response to the intelligence services to the request to block groups.”

Unsurprisingly, Durov became a top target of the Russian regime and eventually sold his stake in VKontakte. He moved to Dubai, where he founded Telegram, an instant messaging app that offers end-to-end encryption for private communication. The platform has nearly one billion users worldwide.

In reality, Durov’s arrest and looming court battle have nothing to do with illicit activity on Telegram. Facebook and Instagram have been exposed for doing nothing about a vast network of child predators exploiting minors on the app, despite knowing about the problem. Criminals use those platforms to coordinate and execute illegal acts every day. Yet Mark Zuckerberg is still free to flit in and out of Paris whenever he wishes.

The difference is that while Facebook and Instagram have willingly complied with the edicts of the global left’s censorship regime, Telegram has not. Durov has steadfastly refused to turn his platform into another tool for liberal governments to silence free speech and shut down the opposition. As a result, he now faces up to a decade in prison.

As Tucker Carlson pointed out in a post on X, it wasn’t Putin and the Russian regime who arrested Durov “for allowing the public to exercise free speech.” Instead, it was “a western country, a Biden administration ally and enthusiastic NATO member, that locked him away.”

Durov has become “a living warning to any platform owner who refuses to censor the truth at the behest of governments and intel agencies,” Carlson continued. “Darkness is descending fast on the formerly free world.”

As Carlson points out, Durov’s arrest has the potential to reverberate throughout the tech space. The European Union has already charged X owner Elon Musk for refusing to censor speech on his platform. Does he now have reason to fear arrest should he travel to Europe?

For the United States – the first country in the history of the world to inscribe a right to free speech in its founding document – France’s arrest of Durov should be something of a crisis moment. While Western European liberals have for years now been chipping away at freedom of speech in the name of “combatting hate” and “fighting crime,” arresting the CEO of a messaging app and criminally charging him for how some people abuse his platform is a dangerous inflection point.

Yet the Biden administration has remained conspicuously silent on the matter. As Mike Benz, a former Trump State Department official who has now become a leading voice on online censorship, pointed out in an appearance on Carlson’s podcast on Wednesday, the Biden State Department’s involvement in censorship operations elsewhere in the world creates at least some reason to believe that the White House had advance knowledge of the arrest – and perhaps even encouraged it.

Benz also called on the House Foreign Affairs Committee to seek those answers given the alarming precedent the French government has set. “We don’t know if it was participation, approval, or nothing,” Benz said, referring to the potential of the Biden administration’s involvement. “An entity like the House Foreign Affairs Committee, if it was committed to free speech, would be interrogating whether or not there was a U.S. embassy backchannel to French law enforcement or French intelligence or the French government.”

With the House still away on August recess and the November general election now just over two months away, the prospect of a hearing anytime soon seems remote at best.

Nonetheless, Durov’s case – and the reaction of U.S. political leaders to it – is something Americans should pay close attention to. Every Western politician professes to be committed to free speech. But how those leaders respond now that a core member of the Western alliance has imprisoned a principled defender of free speech for refusing to submit to the left’s censorship cabal will be a telling test of that commitment.

Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.