The RT contributor is reportedly being investigated as a “foreign agent”
Federal agents and state police have searched the house of former US Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter in New York state on Wednesday.
State Police and FBI agents descended on the street of Bethlehem township, south of Albany, around noon, according to the local outlet Times-Union. They carried “more than two dozen boxes” out of the house just before 5pm local time.
The law enforcement executed a search warrant “related to concerns apparently the US government has about violations of the Foreign Agent Restriction Act (FARA)” Ritter told reporters gathered outside the house after the agents left.
He denied any allegations of wrongdoing and said the federal government was trying to intimidate him.
Ritter is a former US Marine Corps major who served as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq during the 1990s. He opposed the 2003 US invasion, insisting that Saddam Hussein’s government did not have weapons of mass destruction, as Washington claimed at the time.
He has also been an RT contributor and saw his passport seized by the US government when he tried to attend the St Petersburg International Economic Forum in June.
For what I can tell you; this tactic is an extremely common one not even only used against political opponents or “targets of interest” in that category but even local police precincts can leverage these claims against you. The problem is that it’s hard to prove so it often gets dismissed, but it’s enough to get someone in a station to “talk” for 24 hours with no food or water and have irreparable social damage if it is made public. It’s not always sexual shit either; they’ll make up that you were talking to a “suspected criminal online” and just use it as carte blanche to comb through your shit.
In high-school I had a “friend” (more so a dealer) that slung all sorts of goodies, mostly hash and weed though. They hit him with “talking to a suspected criminal” and brought him into the station for like two days straight. Told me exactly as I said above, no food or water and constant vague threats of “what we found on your computer”. Me and a couple others were brought in for questioning and asked about him. Case ended up getting dismissed but he lost a shitload of friends. Guy ended up starting an arbor business after that.