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Telegram founder Pavel Durov criticizes French authorities in first statement after his arrest

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From LifeSiteNews

By Andreas Wailzer

The Telegram CEO implied that French authorities had not tried to reach out to him before his arrest and stressed that if a government was dissatisfied with how an internet service operates, it should start legal action against the company instead of arresting its owner.

Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov criticized French authorities for his surprising arrest in Paris.

In his first public statement after being released from jail on bail, Durov said that he was questioned by French police for four days and he “was told I may be personally responsible for other people’s illegal use of Telegram, because the French authorities didn’t receive responses from Telegram.”

The Telegram founder said that his arrest was “surprising for several reasons” because Telegram employs a representative that replies to legal requests from the EU and French authorities “had numerous ways to reach me to request assistance,” implying that they had not tried to reach out to him before his arrest.

Moreover, he stressed that if a government was dissatisfied with how an internet service like Telegram operates in its country, it should start legal action against the company instead of arresting its owner.

“Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a simplistic approach,” Durov wrote. “Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools.”

The Telegram CEO said that “the right balance between privacy and security is not easy” and revealed that Telegram had often been at odds with governments and that if they were not able to find this balance between security and privacy, “we are ready to leave that country.”

“We’ve done it many times,” he recalled. “When Russia demanded we hand over ‘encryption keys’ to enable surveillance, we refused — and Telegram got banned in Russia.”

“When Iran demanded we block channels of peaceful protesters, we refused — and Telegram got banned in Iran.”

“We are prepared to leave markets that aren’t compatible with our principles, because we are not doing this for money. We are driven by the intention to bring good and defend the basic rights of people, particularly in places where these rights are violated.”

“However, we hear voices saying that it’s not enough,” he said regarding censorship on the platform. “Telegram’s abrupt increase in user count to 950M caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform. That’s why I made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard.”

Durov was arrested on August 24 after his private jet landed at Le Bourget airport just outside of Paris. The billionaire entrepreneur had been under an arrest warrant as part of a police investigation in France into alleged lack of moderation and “criminal activity” on Telegram.

French President Emmanuel Macron denied the charges of Durov’s arrest being politically motivated. However, many have called that into question.

READ: Does anyone believe Emmanuel Macron’s claim that Pavel Durov’s arrest was not political?

While most large social media companies, specifically Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Google (YouTube) and Twitter before Elon Musk’s takeover, censored true information regarding COVID-19, vaccines, LGBT, and other issues in the past years, Telegram remained a mostly censorship-free area for dissidents all over the world.

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COVID-19

Sen. Rand Paul: ‘I am officially re-referring Dr. Fauci to the DOJ’

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Fr0m LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

‘Perjury is a crime,’ Sen. Rand Paul declared on X. ‘And Fauci must be held accountable.’

Sen. Rand Paul announced Monday that he is again pressuring the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to launch a criminal probe of Dr. Anthony Fauci after The New York Times revealed his 11th-hour pardon by the Biden administration is likely invalid.

“Today, I will reissue my criminal referral of Anthony Fauci to Trump DOJ!” declared Paul, later adding, “Perjury is a crime. And Fauci must be held accountable.”

By late in the afternoon on Monday, the Kentucky senator had composed a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi citing the times he believed Fauci had lied under oath during congressional hearings and urging the DOJ to finally investigate Fauci.

“In July 2023, I referred Dr. Anthony Fauci to the Department of Justice for lying under oath to Congress. His own emails directly contradicted his sworn testimony,” Paul wrote X.

“NYT reports Fauci was quietly pardoned by an autopen, operated by Biden’s staff. If the President didn’t authorize this pardon personally, then the Department has a duty to investigate and prosecute as it would any ordinary citizen,” Paul said.

“Fauci has been sainted by the extremist Left, but it doesn’t erase his lying before Congress,” Paul said. “I am officially re-referring Dr. Fauci to the DOJ.”

Sen. Paul concluded his letter to Bondi by explaining that his autopen pardon is now seen to be illegitimate:

On January 19, 2025, Dr. Fauci was issued a full and unconditional pardon for any offenses that he may have committed or taken part in since 2014. Dr. Fauci was included among a group of individuals granted unprecedented preemptive pardons on President Joe Biden’s final day in office. However, new information has revealed that these pardons were executed via autopen, with no documented confirmation that the President personally reviewed or approved each individual grant of clemency.

According to reports, White House staff authorized the use of the autopen to issue the clemency documents. This raises serious constitutional and legal concerns about the legitimacy of Dr. Fauci’s Pardon.

President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that the constant reliance on the autopen by the Biden administration is “one of the biggest scandals that we’ve had in 50 to 100 years.”

“I guarantee (Biden) knew nothing about what he was signing,” Trump asserted.

Fauci’s mendacious relationship with Congress 

The senator from the Bluegrass State and Dr. Fauci have long had a combative relationship.

In 2021, Sen. Paul alleged that Fauci, who then served as director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and as medical adviser to former President Joe Biden, “lied to Congress” when he claimed that the National Institutes of Health (NIH), of which the NIAID is a part, was not funding and had never funded “gain-of-function” research in Wuhan, China.

Then in 2023, Paul again filed a criminal referral to the DOJ against the White House COVID czar for lying to Congress about his role in subsidizing controversial gain-of-function (GOF) research that was suspected of contributing to the COVID outbreak.

“We have him dead to rights, the problem is this: we have Merrick Garland who I think is a pure rank partisan,” Paul said at the time. “I don’t think he’ll ever be prosecuted. We also have a Democrat Party that is happy to have paid him more than the president, more than any president makes and he actually got a million dollars from a private foundation while he was still a public servant. Everything about this is rotten to the core and if we don’t bring him to justice we’ll never get the control we need on this type of research to try and prevent it from happening again.”

Paul has said multiple times that Dr. Fauci should “go to prison” for lying to Congress.

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Education

Trump praises Supreme Court decision to allow dismantling of Department of Education

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President Trump hailed the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing the continued dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education and the return of its authority and functions to individual states, “a Major Victory to Parents and Students across the Country.”

In a decision issued on Monday, the high court blocked an order by a federal judge in Massachusetts that would require the Department of Education to reinstate nearly 1,400 employees who had been terminated by the Trump administration in March. 

“The United States Supreme Court has handed a Major Victory to Parents and Students across the Country, by declaring the Trump Administration may proceed on returning the functions of the Department of Education BACK TO THE STATES,” wrote the president on Truth Social.

“Now, with this GREAT Supreme Court Decision, our Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, may begin this very important process,” said Trump. “The Federal Government has been running our Education System into the ground, but we are going to turn it all around by giving the Power back to the PEOPLE.”

“America’s Students will be the best, brightest, and most Highly Educated anywhere in the World. Thank you to the United States Supreme Court!” added the president.

“Today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: the President of the United States, as the head of the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies,” noted Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon. “While today’s ruling is a significant win for students and families, it is a shame that the highest court in the land had to step in to allow President Trump to advance the reforms Americans elected him to deliver using the authorities granted to him by the U.S. Constitution.”

“The U.S. Department of Education will now deliver on its mandate to restore excellence in American education,” explained McMahon. “We will carry out the reduction in force to promote efficiency and accountability and to ensure resources are directed where they matter most – to students, parents, and teachers. As we return education to the states, this Administration will continue to perform all statutory duties while empowering families and teachers by reducing education bureaucracy.”

When leftist Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren took to X to decry the court’s decision and attempted to take the moral high ground by saying, “Every kid in America deserves access to a good public education,” Sec. McMahon used a deft bit of jujitsu to respond.

Sen. Warren wasn’t the only one issuing hyperbolic prophesies of disaster following the court’s decision.

“Trump and his allies” are taking “a wrecking ball to public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban, and urban communities across America,” asserted Becky Pringle, president of the nation’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association.

In her written dissent, in which she was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor predicted nothing short of disaster.

The majority’s decision “will unleash untold harm, delaying or denying educational opportunities and leaving students to suffer from discrimination, sexual assault, and other civil rights violations without the federal resources Congress intended.”

“The Supreme Court has handed Trump one victory after another in his effort to remake the federal government, after lower courts have found the administration’s actions probably violate federal law,” lamented a report by the Associated Press. “Last week, the justices cleared the way for Trump’s plan to significantly reduce the size of the federal workforce. On the education front, the high court has previously allowed cuts in teacher-training grants to go forward.”

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