The Libertarian Party has questions for the Department of Justice after the FBI claimed that a “foreign threat” had accessed its Facebook account. A preliminary analysis by the LP was hindered by Meta, which has offered little clarity on the incident.
In a statement published on Friday, LP chair Angela McArdle shared a letter the party received from the bureau warning of the alleged breach. “The FBI maintains active investigations that seek to identify the activities of hostile foreign governments and their intelligence services who target the US government, private sector, and political processes,” the letter says. “The FBI recently obtained information showing that one of these foreign threat actors was in control of various IP addresses that the group used to log into a Facebook account controlled by your organization. The group accessed the account sometime between August 2023 and February 2024.”
One LP employee with knowledge of the letter told the Libertarian Institute that roughly 10 people have access to the Facebook account. The party has not changed access to the page within the past two months.
The employee said the LP was unable to access the user archive for its Facebook account to determine if it had been hacked and has so far received no assistance from Meta in resolving the issue. The organization plans to do what it can to learn more about the supposed “foreign threat actor” and why the FBI was surveilling the account in the first place.
While the source acknowledged that the letter could be the result of “good police work,” the party is concerned the move could amount to a veiled threat from federal agents. Those worries are significantly heightened as two members of the party’s leadership have been contacted by the FBI within the past year, the employee added.
McArdle expressed similar fears in her statement. “We do not trust the FBI. Stories of aggressive FBI field agents have been popping up all over the country. The Biden administration seems to be cracking down on dissenting voices in preparation for the general election.” She continued, “We will continue to dissent, and we will call out the corruption of the current DOJ and Biden administration.”
“The greatest threat to freedom in the US isn’t an anonymous ‘hostile foreign government.’ It is the United States Government. It is the current administration, who has engaged in an unprecedented amount of censorship, coercion, and Orwellian control tactics.”
The letter to the LP came after multiple pro-Palestinian activists said they received visits by FBI agents interested in their social media posts. Rights group Palestine Legal said the house calls amounted to efforts to “intimidate and censor” activists as the US heads toward an election in which Libertarian voters and supporters of Palestine could play a crucial role.
More than 100,000 democratic voters in Michigan voted “uncommitted” in last month’s primary to protest US support for Israel, while LP presidential hopeful Jo Jorgenson received more votes than the margin between Donald Trump and President Biden during the 2020 general election.
