Glenn Greenwald, the maverick anti-corruption reporter who found himself at the center of controversy surrounding NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, resigned from the website he co-founded over attempts to censor his reporting on Joe Biden‘s corruption.
Greenwald said the editors of The Intercept, which the Pulitzer-winner helped start in 2013 amid the aftermath of the Snowden story, “refus[ed] to publish” a recent article “unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.”
In announcing his departure, he said he will continue to publish his work—including the disputed Biden article—via a personal website on the platform Substack.
“I could not sleep at night knowing that I allowed any institution to censor what I want to say and believe—least of all a media outlet I co-founded with the explicit goal of ensuring this never happens to other journalists, let alone to me, let alone because I have written an article critical of a powerful Democratic politician vehemently supported by the editors in the imminent national election,” Greenwald said in his announcement.
“But the pathologies, illiberalism, and repressive mentality that led to the bizarre spectacle of my being censored by my own media outlet are ones that are by no means unique to The Intercept,” he added. “These are the viruses that have contaminated virtually every mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and newsroom.”
Greenwald, long regarded as a left-wing reporter due to his critical stance on authoritarian governments and surveillance, has increasingly drifted toward a more conservative-libertarian stance during the Obama and Trump administrations.
He has been particularly critical of the suppression effort in the scandal surrounding Hunter Biden‘s laptop, calling Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., “the most pathological liar in all of American politics” after the House Intel chair falsely suggested the laptop was a Russian disinformation plot.
“He just fabricates accusations at the drop of a hat the way that other people change underwear,” Greenwald told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson according to The Hill.
Snowden sought political asylum in Russia during the Obama administration and has continued to live there, presumably, as an ex-patriot due to the fact that his revelations about illegal NSA surveillance operations involved stealing classified material.
Since the hacking of Democrat servers by unknown actors during the 2016 election, Schiff and others have made baseless Russia conspiracies their stock-and-trade, often attempting to link President Donald Trump to the rival superpower.
But the Left and its media allies have been aggressively mute over the damning evidence that Biden used his family members to secure lucrative business deals with foreign powers, including China, while he was overseeing US policy in those regions as vice president.
Twitter recently declared it was blocking access to the story due to a heretofore unknown policy on “hacked” materials that it claims to have implemented in 2018.
It does not appear to have applied the standard while permitting information recently about Trump’s illegally obtained tax records, first reported by the New York Times.
Greenwald has been a vocal advocate of transparency and open access to information, sometimes paying a personal cost for his commitment to the truth.
In January, federal prosecutors in Brazil, where he lives, charged him with cybercrimes for allegedly hacking into the cell phones of public officials to write pieces that were critical of the conservative Bolsonaro administration.
Nonetheless, he has frequently stood behind Trump as the swamp-draining political outsider faces unprecedented attacks from the elitist establishment.
Greenwald recently accused mainstream media of “elevating fear levels” with false accusations linking Trump to white supremacy, and he referred to the Lincoln Project, a group of NeverTrump GOP defectors, as “grifters.”
He also had harsh words for far-left MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, whom he lamented as being a former comrade-in-arms during a 2018 New York magazine interview.
“I used to be really good friends with Rachel Maddow,” he said. “And I’ve seen her devolution from this really interesting, really smart, independent thinker into this utterly scripted, intellectually dishonest, partisan hack.”
