(NewsNation) — “You can say anything, but you just have to declare it.” That’s how retired FBI agent Robert D’Amico sums up the Foreign Agents Registration Act requirement that people who speak at the behest of another country declare their status.
“You have to declare what you’re doing. You have to declare how much you’re getting paid to do it. And he didn’t register.”
“He,” in this case, is former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter. FBI agents searched his upstate New York home earlier this week and removed several boxes of documents and devices.
“I’m being targeted because I have made an effort to try and improve relations between the United States and Russia, try to bring about arms control, try to bring about peace,” Ritter told reporters outside his home as agents conducted the search.
Ritter has made pro-Russian comments about the war in Ukraine, and those comments have been covered by Russian news outlets. That, D’Amico says, is not illegal.
“There’s no law against that. But it did come out as propaganda.”
“You can say whatever you want, (but) if you’re saying it because a foreign government is telling you to say it, and they’re telling you who to talk do … that’s when it (turns) into as a crime.”
In June, the State Department seized Ritter’s passport, preventing him from attending an economic forum in Russia. That, says D’Amico, may have crossed the line from free speech to an action that could be prosecuted.
“Going to the airport with a ticket to Russia and probably some communications that were intercepted — that’s probably why they took his passport — is that overt act.”
