[Salon] NY Post: Biden's Deepfake War on Truth

[Jim Bovard <jbovard@his.com>]

https://nypost.com/2024/06/03/opinion/bidens-deepfake-dodge-to-keep-hur-interview-secret-reveals-his-war-on-truth/

New York Post, June 3, 2024
Biden's deepfake dodge to keep Hur interview secret reveals his war on truth

James Bovard

On Thursday, a Manhattan jury convicted Donald Trump of 34 felonies after prosecutors hustled a harebrained legal theory that claimed the former president had “hoodwinked” voters in the 2016 election.

On Friday, the Department of Justice told a federal judge that accurate, authentic audiotapes of President Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur should not be released because someone might hoodwink voters with manipulated deepfake versions created by artificial intelligence.

But citizens were already hoodwinked when Biden proclaimed in a White House press conference that Hur’s report showed he hadn’t violated federal law.

Hur recommended not filing charges against Biden because jurors would view him as simply an “elderly man with a poor memory.”

White House officials vehemently denied that conclusion. They claimed Biden had done a good job in the Hur interview — until the transcript was released, showing a president often lost in his own mental weeds.

The White House now asserts the president has “executive privilege” to refuse to release the audio file of his Hur interview, despite congressional subpoenas.

The DOJ admitted last week that redactions or other changes were made to the interview transcript it publicly released.

But Team Biden claims it is entitled to boundless deference while maintaining that the administration’s modifications did not modify the truth.

Does the White House fear that hooligans will insert “pause” and “end of quote” into audio clips of the Hur interview? Too late — Biden already committed those blunders in his own speeches when he slipped into his Teleprompter Zombie mode.

Team Biden offered a damn near demented Catch-22 to justify its perpetual coverups of presidential crime sprees. Releasing the Biden audio file would be “exceedingly harmful” because Biden is an “uncharged individual,” the DOJ declared.


And who decides whether Biden is charged? The DOJ. So as long as Biden isn’t indicted, his Justice Department can refuse to disclose evidence of his guilt.

The specter of AI-assisted deepfakes is simply the latest pretext to drop an iron curtain around the Biden White House — at least until Election Day, or until the swing states finish counting enough un-postmarked late ballots to assure a Biden victory.

According to Team Biden, the DOJ must be allowed to selectively censor in the name of truth.

That’s in essence the same argument it secretly made to social-media companies during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the platforms were forced to suppress admittedly true postings by Americans that might spur “vaccine hesitancy.” Does the same standard now apply for “re-election hesitancy”?

Prosecutor Alvin Bragg proclaimed that Trump was guilty of taking steps with “the end of keeping information away from the electorate.” But the same pretext is tacitly invoked by the DOJ to pretend that modifications to Biden’s voice could mislead the public. Perhaps the White House believes it deserves a monopoly on exploiting Biden’s words to deceive Americans.

The worse that Biden mentally falters, the more rights Americans seem to lose — especially freedom of speech and press.

Team Biden is effectively proclaiming a perpetual national emergency to suppress anything that would make citizens doubt the competence of the commander-in-chief.

A deepfake veto on government disclosures is especially perilous when Democratic prosecutors are targeting Republicans like Trump for alleged falsehoods. Americans are justifiably appalled at brazen lies from Trump and other politicians. But to permit the ruling party to selectively punish the supposed dishonesty of their political opponents while absolving their own deceits will destroy any semblance of democracy.

The Supreme Court will soon pass judgment on the Ministry of Truth that the Biden administration helped erect to censor Americans’ opinions on COVID, elections, Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal and other topics. But any ruling the court delivers may not be enough to stop the official whitewash of Joe Biden for the 2024 election.

Who knew that Biden’s presidency could be epitomized by his lawyers effectively screaming, Jack-Nicholson-style, at the American people: “You can’t handle the truth!” Citizens should be wary of statements from any politician with or without high-tech manipulation. But the most dangerous deepfakes will likely emerge from the Oval Office.