The Republicans are investigating the weaponization of government–you know, going after parents, censoring dissent, political prosecutions, putting FBI agents into Catholic Churches. Stuff like that.

A few weeks ago Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified before the committee about the censorship industrial complex.

Guess what? They are getting a firsthand view of the government being weaponized by Democrats, who are threatening Taibbi with jail for their testimony.

No, I am not kidding. They really are threatening him with jail, claiming he committed perjury.

House Democrats Have Lost Their Minds: https://t.co/3b9TFsccuK

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) April 21, 2023

It really is remarkable when you think about it. The Democrats, in trying to prove that the government is not being weaponized against the American public, are weaponizing the government against journalists and threatening them with 5 years in prison.

Wow. When I think this iteration of the Democratic Party can’t sink any lower, it does.

I learned yesterday Virgin Islands Delegate and Ranking Member of the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government Stacey Plaskett is threatening me with prison, over her own error. Just after I ran a piece called “The Press is Now Also the Police” about the New York Times and Washington Post boasting of roles in delivering a leak suspect to the FBI, MSNBC’s new attack-caster, Mehdi Hasan, got his wish, inspiring first Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and then Plaskett to trumpet his incredibly vicious and mistaken claim that I lied to Congress.

The threatened penalty is five years:

Before we consider the actual evil of doing this, let’s get something out of the way: Taibbi did not lie to the committee, either by making an error or through intention. The claim is based upon a false assertion by Mehdi Hassan–an MSNBC commentator who is pushing for Democrats to silence Taibbi and company–that Taibbi made an error in his testimony.

There was no error, and Taibbi has the receipts. I’m not even going to waste time litigating the claims because even if they were true it would have been an error requiring correction, not an intent to deceive Congress. If Taibbi had made an error (even if the error itself is minor, having to do with a dropped letter in an acronym), it would have warranted a correction, not a prosecution. Journalists hate making corrections, but they do it regularly because it is the nature of human beings to make errors.

But no error occurred in this case, so that is moot.

https://t.co/zYQbYy6tII

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) April 21, 2023

Now, back to the issue: what the Democrats have done here is not “lose their minds,” as Taibbi too generously claims. They know exactly what they are doing, and that thing is weaponizing government. They are using the power of government to intimidate people into either silence, at minimum, or total compliance.

You don’t need to actually put anybody in jail to force them to comply. Putting somebody through a long, painful, and expensive legal investigation is sufficient. Get into a fight with a prosecutor and it can cost you everything, even if you “win” in the end.

That is the point of what the Democrats are doing, and they are doing it with malice aforethought.

Taibbi isn’t going to give up, but the threats have indeed had an effect. He is now on notice that powerful people in the government have put a target on his back, and that is scary.

At the moment I still can’t quite wrap my head around this, and hope others will be able to make more sense of it. I’d laugh, but I have three kids, and these people might be serious. It’s like waking up in a H.U.A.C. hearing. Have they all gone mad?

No, they haven’t, They have gone fascist.