You’re only free to speak your mind in the US if you are saying what the authorities want you to say, RT contributor and former aide to Joe Biden, Tara Reade, has claimed.

Reade appeared live on RT on Thursday to comment on the search carried out by federal agents and state police at the home of former US Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter in New York state on Wednesday.

She and Ritter, who is now a journalist, had both been invited to speak at the 27th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in June, but “unfortunately the federal agents took him off the plane and confiscated his passport,” Reade recalled.

She said Ritter’s passport was never returned to him by the US authorities. “Usually, that indicates that someone is under investigation because they take away your passport,” she said.

The government in Washington has been “going after Scott Ritter for years” since “he spoke out against the war in Iraq and revealed that… the US government lied about the weapons of mass destruction,” the former Biden aide claimed.

The persecution of the journalist and commentator – whose views on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, as well as Israel’s war in Gaza, contrast sharply with those of the White House – is “just a pattern of what you are seeing in the US, which is the surveillance state and authoritative government,” she argued.

"We have the illusion of free speech. We have that illusion of a right to travel. But in reality, it is only allowed if we say what the US wants people to say, otherwise you are at risk,” Reade said.

She also suggested that, since Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate last month, the party is “going back to the old Russiagate hysteria.”

Ritter, who is also an RT contributor, described the search of his property as an “act of intimidation” against him. The authorities appear to be “primarily concerned” about his “relationship” with RT and the news agency Sputnik, the journalist said in a video message on Telegram on Thursday.

The 61-year-old revealed that FBI agents blamed him for working “on behalf of the Russian government” to manipulate the opinions of the American public. Ritter rejected those accusations as “absurd in the extreme.” He insisted that he was “doing nothing wrong,” and was just “an American citizen, holding my government accountable and exercising the rights given to me by the Constitution.”

In 2020, Tara Reade accused then-Senator Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her when she worked as an aide on his team in 1993. She moved to Russia last year due to concerns for her safety in the US.

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