Attorney General Knudsen to media outlets: Material support of terrorist organizations is illegal
HELENA – Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen joined a coalition of 14 attorneys general demanding media outlets stop providing material support to terrorists and terrorist organizations, following several credible and concerning reports that news outlets had hired individuals with ties to Hamas and that may have even participated in the terrorist organization’s October 7 attack on Israel.
The attorneys general sent a letter Monday to leadership at The New York Times, Associated Press, CNN, and Reuters reminding them that it is illegal to provide material support to terrorists and terrorist organizations and demanding the outlets halt any hiring practices that have led them to do so.
In one instance, an individual who worked for the Associated Press and Reuters is accused of posting a video showing that he was carrying a grenade on a motorcycle during the assault. That same individual also posted a picture being kissed by Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who “masterminded” the October 7 attack. Further, the individual was identified to AP in 2018 for his relationship with Hamas but remained employed by AP through the October 7 massacre.
“Material support of terrorist organizations is illegal. You should ensure that you are taking all necessary steps to prevent your organizations’ from contracting with members of terror organizations. We urge you in the strongest terms to take care that your hiring practices conform to the laws forbidding material support for terror organizations,” the attorneys general wrote. “We will continue to follow your reporting to ensure that your organizations do not violate any federal or State laws by giving material support to terrorists abroad. Now your organizations are on notice. Follow the law.”
Federal law has long prohibited the knowing provision of material support to designated foreign terrorist organizations like Hamas. Material-support statutes recognize that organizations like Hamas “are so tainted by their criminal conduct that any contribution to such an organization facilitates that [criminal] conduct.”
In the letter, the attorneys general call on the media organizations to follow the law and to change their hiring practices if those practices have led them to give material support to terrorists, and ensure they are not paying individuals associated with terrorist organizations.
“Outlets such as yours cannot avoid their responsibility by refusing to perform hiring due diligence and then using that willful blindness as a basis to pay terrorists. If your outlet’s current hiring practices led you to give material support to terrorists, you must change these policies going forward. Otherwise, we must assume any future support of terrorist organizations by your stringers, correspondents, contractors, and similar employees is knowing behavior,” the letter states.
The law also distinguishes material support for terrorism from protected speech and the attorneys general recognize that the First Amendment protects the right to hold disgusting views.
For example, the letter does not call for any action regarding the New York Times’s decision to hire an individual to cover the ongoing war in Israel even though the individual has praised Adolf Hitler and the “state of harmony” Hitler achieved while perpetrating the Holocaust. Rather, the attorneys general are writing regarding individuals hired by the news outlets who were embedded with Hamas and were present at the October 7 massacre, furthering Hamas’s goals.
“One of Hamas’s goals included magnifying and publicizing its effects, as evidenced by its terrorists’ own behavior. For example, they used victims’ own phones to post videos and images of their savage invasion as it was ongoing,” the attorneys general wrote. “Paying embeds for their publicity efforts furthers Hamas’s goals.”
Click here to read the letter.
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