risk “criminal charges” –

US hunts for “foreign agents” with searches of homes of two American commentators for Russian TV. The US Department of Justice is investigating two Americans who work for Russian media as part of an operation to combat foreign influence in the upcoming presidential election, the New York Times reports. The newspaper, citing US officials familiar with the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the FBI searched the homes of commentators Scott Ritter and Dimitri K. Simes this month, and suggested there will be more searches and perhaps “criminal charges” against them.

So far, the investigation against the commentators, who have not been arrested or charged, focuses on potential violations of U.S. economic sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and a law requiring disclosure of lobbying work for foreign governments, he adds. However, the investigation is expected to run afoul of the constitution’s First Amendment protections for free speech, since these are Americans working in the media, he says.

Who are the two commentators? Ritter, a former UN inspector critical of US foreign policy, is a contributor to Russian state television RT, which the US government required to register as a “foreign agent” in 2017. Simes, who emigrated from the former Soviet Union in his youth, served as an informal adviser to President Richard Nixon and also to Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, is a well-known figure in foreign policy debates and has a weekly show on Russia’s Channel One.

In the case of Ritter, who told the New York Times that the investigation is an “assault on the Constitution,” the FBI showed him a warrant related to rules for lobbying foreign governments before searching his home and seizing his cellphones, computers and hard drives. For his part, Simes, who has lived in Russia since 2022, told Sputnik on Friday, which reported on the search of his Virginia home, that the search was an attempt to “intimidate” “anyone who goes against official policies and especially the deep state.”