Retired Lieutenant Colonel. Alexander Vindmanwho caused a stir as a key witness in the impeachment proceedings against former President Donald Trump, issued a warning to Elon Musk on Sunday after Pavel Durov, CEO of the messaging app Telegram, was arrested in France.
According to TF1 TV and BFM TV, Durov was served with an arrest warrant in Paris on Saturday evening following a preliminary police investigation into his alleged failure to adequately restrict criminal activity on Telegram.
While experts and industry leaders raised alarm about the international impact of his arrest on free speech, Vindman supported the move, reaching out to X to warn the CEO about the “growing desire for accountability” before suggesting Musk could be next.
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“Although Durov holds French citizenship and was arrested for violating French law, this has far-reaching implications for other social media, including Twitter,” Vindman wrote. “There is a growing intolerance of disinformation and malign influence on platforms and a growing desire for accountability. Musk should be nervous.”
Musk denounced Durov’s arrest in several posts on X over the weekend and shared the hashtag #FreePavel on social media.
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“Dangerous times,” Musk wrote in a post referring to government-imposed censorship.
Telegram, which has over 900 million users, is a messaging app comparable to WhatsApp, but according to The New York Times, also enables large groups of people to communicate via different channels.
The New York Times also reported that the app was “on the radar of law enforcement agencies around the world because terrorist organizations, drug smugglers, arms dealers and far-right extremist groups use it to communicate, recruit and organize.”
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Prominent politicians and industry leaders rallied behind Durov and accused the French government of violating freedom of expression by arresting him.
“The need to protect free speech has never been more urgent,” RFK Jr. wrote on X.
Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski commented: “France threatened Rumble and now they have crossed a red line by arresting Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, allegedly for not censoring free speech,” he wrote.
Conservative commentator Ian Miles Cheong argued that the arrest was part of a witch hunt.
“It’s about silencing dissidents and controlling information. They want to turn the internet into another arm of their propaganda machine. We are watching freedom of speech being attacked right before our eyes,” he wrote.
Vindman’s warning to Musk apparently met with considerable backlash, prompting him to go one step further in a follow-up post, railing against “nutcases who insist on absolute freedom of speech.”
“Enforcement will likely only increase…” he wrote, adding that those involved in Durov’s arrest should focus their attention on “the fact that your candidate for US President is a sex offender…”
Vindman and his twin brother Eugene Vindman gained national attention in 2020 during Trump’s first impeachment trial when, with Eugene’s help – both worked for the National Security Council under the Trump administration – he uncovered Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about his first son Hunter Biden’s business dealings in the country. Alexander later testified against the former president and retired from the military.
Hanna Panreck of Fox News and Jasmine Baehr of Fox Business contributed to this report.
Source of the original article: Vindman: Musk should be ‘nervous’ after Telegram CEO’s arrest: ‘Champion of absolute freedom of speech, nutcase’
