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Telegram founder tells Tucker Carlson that US intel agents tried to spy on user messages

Published

10 months ago

13 minute read

Telegram’s Pavel Duroc

From LifeSiteNews

By Matt Lamb

Federal law enforcement tried to convince a Telegram engineer to change the software so law enforcement could read the messages of its users, Pavel Durov told Tucker Carlson during a recent interview.

Federal law enforcement tried to convince a Telegram engineer to change the software so law enforcement could read the messages of its users, the company’s founder told Tucker Carlson during a recent interview.

But he also warned the bigger threat to free expression comes from Google and Apple, which effectively control the use of apps on smartphones.

Telegram is a messaging app that founder Pavel Durov created with his brother after experiencing harassment by Russian officials. Durov remains the “sole owner” of the company. Users can set up “channels” to send mass messages. This function has been useful for political movements, including democracy activists in Hong Kong.

It now has 900 million monthly users worldwide. It uses encrypted messaging which protects users’ privacy.

Born in the Soviet Union in 1984, the entrepreneur had created another social media company; it predated Facebook but was similar in its networking functions. Russian officials demanded Durov hand over private data from groups on the platform, called VK, that were organizing against Vladimir Putin and the country’s leadership.

But in some ways, he faced similar problems from American officials when he was working in San Francisco.

“We get too much attention from the FBI, the security agencies, wherever we came to the US,” Durov said. “So, to give you an example, last time I was in the US, I brought an engineer [who] is working for Telegram, and there was an attempt to secretly hire my engineer behind my back by cyber security officers or agents, whatever they are called.”

Durov said the officials “were curious to learn which open-source library site integrated through Telegram’s app,” he said.

But furthermore, “they were trying to persuade him to use certain open-source tools that he would then integrate into the Telegram code that, in my understanding, would serve as backdoors.”

“The US government, or maybe any other government, because a backdoor is a backdoor regardless of who is using it. That’s right,” Durov said.

“You’re confident that happened,” Carlson asked, about the recruitment efforts.

Durov said yes, because the engineer wouldn’t have a reason to make up the story and Durov shared that he himself has been targeted by the intelligence agencies for recruitment.

He told Carlson:

There is no reason for my engineer to make up the stories. Also, because I personally experienced similar pressure in the U.S whenever I would go to the US, I would have, two FBI agents greeting me at the airport, asking questions. One time I was having my breakfast at 9 a.m. and the FBI showed up at my house that I was renting. And, that was quite surprising. And I thought, you know, we’re getting too much attention here. It’s probably not the best environment to run…

… They were interested to learn more about Telegram. They knew I left Russia. They knew what we were doing, but they wanted details. And my understanding is that they wanted to establish a relationship, to, in a way control Telegram better… I understand they were doing their job. It’s just that for us, running a privacy focused social media platform, that probably wasn’t the best environment to be in. We want to be focused on what we do, not on the government relations of that sort.

“Government relations,” Carlson said, laughing.

The company has now operated out of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates for seven years.

Durov said the company has had better experiences in the UAE. In addition to low taxes and few regulations, the “best part” is that country has not pressured the company to work with it to spy on users.

Carlson asked:

So, in the time that you’ve been here, there have been a number of wars and threats of war. Precursors to war. Have you had any pressure from the government here [in UAE)? Honestly, any pressure from the government here, to reveal a back door into Telegram or to ban anyone or to make any changes to your business?

“That’s the best part. For all the seven years we’ve been here, there’s been zero pressure coming from the UAE towards Telegram,” he said. “They’ve been very supportive, very helpful, and it’s a big contrast [to] whatever we’ve experienced before.”

He said the company has been “receiving a lot of requests” to work with governments. When there is clearly something like “terrorist activity,” the company does assist. In other cases where it was legitimate free speech, Telegram ignores them.

Asked to give an example of “censorship” and privacy violations, Durov related how his company received conflicting letters from American congressional leaders related to the investigation into the violence at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Democrats in Congress,”requested that we would share all the data we had in relation to what they called this uprising. And we checked it with our lawyers, and they said, you better ignore it,” Durov recalled. “But the letter seemed very serious. And, the letter said, ‘if you fail to comply with this request, you will be in violation [of], you know, the US Constitution or something.”

He said two weeks later Republican leaders sent the company a letter telling the company that complying with the request for data would also violate the US Constitution.

“So, we got two letters that said, whatever we do, we’d be violating the US Constitution,” he said.

Biggest censorship threat is from Google, Apple

Even after going through numerous requests to hand over data or install spying software on Telegram, Durov said the biggest threat to free speech is not even from governments, but from Big Tech platforms Google and Apple.

“I would say the largest pressure [on] Telegram is not coming from governments. It’s coming from Apple and Google,” Durov said. “So, when it comes to freedom of speech, those two platforms, they could basically censor whatever is you can access on your smartphone.”

The companies can remove Telegram from the app stores, which would hurt the company.

“Obviously a big chunk of the world’s population would lose access to a valuable tool,” he said.

The “application of the rules” seems political at times, Durov said. The “rules themselves” are “pretty general,” such as no “violence” or “publicly available child abuse materials,” he said. “It’s hard to disagree with that.”

But Telegram and the Big Tech platforms clash over the “interpretation” of the rules.

“And sometimes they do agree, to their credit,” he said.

However, Durov said he is “hopeful” that past censorship of political movements is truly in the past, saying he does not ” necessarily believe that things are going to get worse.”

He contrasted the platform’s neutral position when it comes to the politics of its users with companies such as Facebook.

“I think Facebook in particular has a lot of reasons apart from being based in the US for doing what they’re doing. I think every app and platform plays its own role,” he said. “You know, we believe that humanity does need a neutral platform like Telegram that will be respectful to people’s privacy and freedoms.”

Durov affirmed he does not want to get involved in any specific political side, when Carlson asked if he wanted to be a “player in world politics.”

He still avoids the United States due to his past experiences with law enforcement.

Company would not take down content skeptical of COVID restrictions

While other platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, would remove or throttle content critical of COVID measures (such as forced masking and COVID jabs), Durov said Telegram did not.

He told Carlson:

We’re a neutral platform. We were helping governments to spread their message about the lockdowns and masks and vaccines. We got dozens of governments who we really [helped with], you know, some of their information, but we also didn’t want to restrict the voices that were critical of all those measures. We thought it made sense for…opposing views to collide and hopefully, you know, see some truth come out of those debates. And of course, we got criticized for that. But, looking back, I think it was the right strategy.

“During the pandemic, we I think were one of the few or maybe the only major social media platform that didn’t, take down accounts or that were skeptical, in relation to some of these measures,” he said.

Durov also said he thinks Elon Musk is doing a good job running X (formerly known as Twitter).

“What X is trying to do is in line [with] what we are building: innovation, trying different things, trying to give power to the creators, trying to get the ecosystem economy going,” he said.

“Those are all exciting things. And I think we need more companies like that,” he said.

“I don’t know if it’s good for humanity that Elon is spending so much time on Twitter making it better, but it’s definitely good for the social media industry.”

Carlson ended by telling Durov he is “rooting” for the company. Carlson’s show has since opened its own Telegram channel.

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‘Dark Truth’ Of USAID: House Lawmakers Spotlight Biden’s Foreign Aid Abuses In Fiery Oversight Hearing

Published on February 27, 2025

By

 

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Adam Pack

House Republicans zeroed in on the Biden administration’s use of foreign aid to bankroll left-wing causes that undermine American interests across the world in a heated oversight hearing Wednesday.

House Republicans, led by Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) Subcommittee chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, sought testimony from experts to outline how the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) advanced a left-wing policy agenda during the Biden administration that in turn alienated U.S. allies and made the world less safe for Americans. Democratic lawmakers struggled to defend the worst abuses of USAID funding, such as pushing far-left ideologies on countries with conservative cultures and indirectly financing terrorist groups.

House Oversight Republicans’ hearing on foreign aid comes after President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency has effectively dismantled USAID and left its future in limbo. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday the Trump administration cut roughly $60 billion in USAID and State Department grants and multi-year awards that it determined did not align with American interests.

Greene also said the DOGE Subcommittee will consider recommending investigations and criminal referrals to those it believes have abused foreign aid. The subcommittee is expected to release a post-hearing review on USAID’s foreign aid abuses next week.

“USAID has been transformed into an America-last foreign aid slush fund to prop up extremist groups, implement censorship campaigns and interfere  in foreign elections to force regime change around the world,” Greene said in her opening remarks. “That is the dark truth about USAID.”

“Taxpayer funds have literally been used to undermine U.S. interests and counter American foreign policy goals under the guise of foreign aid,” Greene continued. “This is unacceptable, and the American people agree.”

More than 60% of Americans believe that U.S. foreign aid is being “wasted on corruption or administration fees,” according to a survey published by the Financial Times on Feb. 17.

Democrats appeared unable to confront the worst USAID abuses that occurred under Biden, and at times, sought to deflect attention to unrelated topics.

After Greene outlined how USAID funding had been funneled to terrorist groups, Democratic New Mexico Rep. Melanie Stansbury, the top Democratic lawmaker on the subcommittee, began her opening remarks with the statement, “Welcome to the Elon Musk chainsaw massacre.”

Stansbury then proceeded to rail against Musk for weighing into Germany’s recent parliamentary elections, Vice President J.D. Vance scolding European elites for abandoning core civil liberties and the president’s recent comments on the Russia-Ukraine War.

Democratic lawmakers’ witness Noam Unger, director of the Sustainable Development and Resilience Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, struggled to answer a question posed by Texas Republican Rep. Brandon Gill if spending more than $3 million “for being LGBTQ” in the Caribbean aligned with American values.

Stansbury and other Democratic lawmakers on the panel appeared to have learned few lessons about USAID’s abuses. Stansbury notably defended former USAID director Samantha Power’s push to turn the department into a de-facto “climate agency” and attempted to get the experts testifying to agree that USAID should continue to push LGBTQ rights on the rest of the world.

“If we want to do counter China, there’s nothing more that has alienated billions of people than pushing an ideology that they resent,” Max Primorac, who served as USAID’s acting chief operating officer, senior agency vetting official and regulatory reform officer in the first Trump administration, told Stansbury in response. “None of this is counter China. This is counter America.”

“A resounding ‘yes’ that foreign aid can be a powerful tool of diplomacy to promote freedom, prosperity and peace in accordance with our national interest and our values, but not as an instrument of progressive imperialism,” Primorac continued. “Aid officials must ensure that every single foreign aid program can pass the Middle America smell test on waste, fraud and abuse.”

Primorac previously told the Daily Caller that USAID’s left-wing agenda under former President Joe Biden weakened the United States’ influence abroad.

Experts also tore into the Biden administration’s use of foreign aid for damaging the United States’ standing in the world. Biden notably left office with an increasingly unstable world stage, with ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East.

“It [USAID] has been doing harm while spending more on aid,” Primorac told lawmakers.

“There is more world poverty and hunger today, more political instability, and developing countries are more beholden to our adversaries.”

“The fiduciary duty of our aid officials over the past four years has done tremendous damage to foreign aid’s credibility and America’s standing in the world,” Primorac continued.

Despite Trump moving to cut the vast majority of USAID contracts and shut down the agency, most lawmakers on the panel — Republican and Democrat —  still believe the U.S. government should be doling out some foreign aid to counter China’s influence in developing countries and provide relief in humanitarian crises. But foreign aid practices must align with American interests as outlined in the president’s executive order on foreign aid, according to Republican lawmakers.

“That’s just hyperbolic nonsense that we do not recognize that there’s a role to play for the United States in the federal aid space,” Republican Texas Rep. Pat Fallon said Wednesday. “But what we want to expose is $164 million going to radical organizations — $122 million of it to organizations that have aligned, or at least tied to terrorism.”

A DCNF analysis found that more than $1.3 billion taxpayer dollars doled out by the Biden administration ended up in terrorist groups’ coffers.

The hearing was disrupted on two occasions by left-wing protestors in the crowd. An elderly woman was removed after making an “obscene gesture” to an unnamed lawmaker while South Carolina Republican Rep. William Timmons spoke. Another person attending the hearing was promptly removed by police after shouting at lawmakers to stop DOGE.

Greene told the crowd that private individuals, including those in the crowd, were free to fund far-left causes around the world, but no longer would the government be bankrolling left-wing activism on the taxpayer’s dime.

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Crime

FBI releases incomplete set of files on sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, triggering public outcry

Published on February 27, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

Attorney General Pam Bondi and the public are demanding that the FBI release the full set of files related to the investigation of reported intelligence asset Jeffrey Epstein.

The FBI released about 200 pages of files on Thursday pertaining to sex trafficker and reported intelligence asset Jeffrey Epstein, a mere fraction of the thousands of pages of files said to be in the FBI’s possession.

After a request by the recently created Congressional “Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets” for the complete declassified Epstein files, the FBI issued to Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office what she described as “approximately 200 pages of documents, which consisted primarily of flight logs, Epstein’s list of contacts, and a list of victims’ names and phone numbers.”

Conservative commentator Jack Posobiec, who was among several media pundits spotted on Thursday outside the White House with binders reading “The Epstein Files: Phase 1,” confirmed in a Thursday podcast immediately afterward that the binder contains flight logs and a “rolodex of some of names we already knew from Epstein Black Book.”

Commentator Liz Wheeler, who also received Thursday’s Epstein file binder, confirmed the same, telling on X how Bondi did not discover until Wednesday night that the Southern District of New York “was hiding potentially thousands of Epstein files, defying Bondi’s order to give them all to her.”

“We’re talking recordings, evidence, etc. The juicy stuff. Names,” Wheeler added.

“These swamp creatures at SDNY deceived Bondi, Kash, and YOU. Be outraged that the binder is boring. You should be. Because the evil deep state LIED TO YOUR FACE,” she continued.

In light of this withholding, Bondi on Thursday ordered FBI Director Kash Patel to deliver the “full and complete Epstein files” to her office by Friday at 8 a.m.

She noted in her letter that she learned from a source that “the FBI Field Office in New York was in possession of thousands of pages” of Epstein files.

While some Epstein flight records have been released in previous litigation, they remained limited, as does other information regarding Epstein’s associates. U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn filed a subpoena in late 2023 to obtain the complete flight logs, and in January 2025 accused Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of blocking her request.

Investigative Journalist Whitney Webb has discussed in her book “One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime That Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein,” how the intelligence community leverages sex trafficking through operatives like Jeffrey Epstein to blackmail politicians, members of law enforcement, businessmen, and other influential figures.

One example of evidence of this, according to Webb, is former U.S. Secretary of Labor and U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta’s explanation as to why he agreed to a non-prosecution deal in the lead-up to Epstein’s 2008 conviction of procuring a child for prostitution. Acosta told Trump transition team interviewers that he was told that Epstein “belonged to intelligence,” adding that he was told to “leave it alone,” The Daily Beast reported.

While Epstein himself never stood trial, as he allegedly committed suicide while under “suicide watch” in his jail cell in 2019, many have questioned the suicide and whether the well-connected financier was actually murdered as part of a cover-up.

These theories were only emboldened when investigative reporters at Project Veritas discovered that the major news outlets of ABC and CBS News quashed a purportedly devastating report exposing Epstein.

On December 18, 2023, Senior U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska of the Southern District of New York issued an order to unseal hundreds of documents revealing the identities of individuals who hold various connections to Epstein.

The 4,553 pages of documents then released to the public were heavily redacted and included the names of more than 150 people identified during the investigation of Epstein and his sex trafficking operation. However, many of these individuals had already been identified in previous public documents and interviews, and many were not accused of crimes.

In the final batch of unsealed documents, Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre said he paid her $15,000 in 2011 to have sex with Britain’s Prince Andrew, and that she had sex multiple times with retail mogul Leslie Wexner, who was a financial client of Epstein’s for at least 20 years.

A full list of the names of people mentioned in the previously released Epstein files, including many who have not been accused of any crimes, can be found here. Previously published Epstein flight logs show that former President Bill Clinton along with Secret Service members, actor Kevin Spacey, comedian Chris Tucker, and British model Naomi Campbell all flew on Epstein’s private plane central to his sex trafficking case, dubbed the “Lolita Express” by the media.

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