Greenwald Torches FBI Director For Failure To Define ‘Disinformation’
On Wednesday, independent journalist Glenn Greenwald slammed FBI Director Christopher Wray after he refused to provide an actual definition for a commonly used word by the Biden administration: “disinformation.”
During a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) asked Wray for a firm definition — but the FBI director evaded the question.
“The evidence shows that you, your agency, the people that directly report to you, suppressed conservative-leaning free speech about topics like the laptop, the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origin, the effectiveness of masks and COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccines, speech about election integrity in the 2020 presidential election, security of voting by mail, even parody about the president himself, negative posts about the economy,” the Republican congressman explained.
“The FBI made the social media platforms pull that information off the internet if it came from conservative sources,” Johnson added. “They did this under the guise that it was ‘disinformation.’ Can you define what disinformation is?”
Wray deliberately avoided answering the question.
“What I can tell you is that our focus is not on disinformation, broadly speaking —” the FBI director began.
Johnson cut him off, pushing back on his attempt to evade the question — but Wray then falsely claimed that the only “disinformation” the bureau was focused on was from “malign foreign actors,” and still refused to provide a definition of the word.
Greenwald responded to Wray’s testimony in a tweet, replying to the video shared by the Heritage Foundation.
“The reason FBI Director Chris Wray can’t define ‘disinformation’ — even though that’s the basis for the FBI’s pressure campaign on Big Tech to censor Americans — is it’s a bulls—t, concocted term with no fixed meaning. That’s what gives it its power (like ‘terrorism’),” the independent journalist wrote.
Greenwald then explained that the vague nature of the word “disinformation” — as well as the refusal to provide a definition — was a feature rather than a bug, allowing people in power to use the word to define anything they dislike.
“There’s a whole array of terms that have no real, fixed meaning except for however those in power decide subjectively to apply them, on an ad hoc basis. ‘Disinformation’ — ‘Hate speech’ — ‘Terrorism,’ he wrote.
Greenwald went on to argue that the “ambiguity” of these words is “intentional” because people are then able to exploit them to suit their needs.
“However one defines ‘disinformation,’ it’s beyond reasonable dispute that the FBI always has been, and continues to be, one of the most prolific disseminators of it. The same is true of corporate media and the establishment frauds they’ve christened as ‘disinformation experts,’” he concluded in a follow-up tweet, sharing a screenshot of a tweet from former White House press secretary Jen Psaki — where she shared the false news story claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story was “Russian disinfo.”
