Press freedom concerns raised after Max Blumenthal's devices seized at US border on return from Iran
Glenn Diesen interviews Max Blumenthal, editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, about the seizure of his electronic devices by US Customs and Border Protection upon returning from Iran.
Summary
Glenn Diesen speaks with Max Blumenthal, editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, following Blumenthal's reporting trip to Iran, where he covered what he describes as the largest gathering in human history and documented the aftermath of US and Israeli strikes on civilian sites. Upon returning to the United States, Blumenthal's phones were seized by Customs and Border Protection without a warrant after he refused to unlock them — a seizure he describes as unconstitutional and driven by viewpoint discrimination rather than any suspicion of criminal activity. Blumenthal identifies Laura Loomer and Canary Mission as having publicly called for his arrest, passport revocation, and financial investigation, and argues these calls reflect Israeli government influence over the Trump administration. He reports that a lawsuit filed by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee prompted CBP to return his devices without the matter going before a judge. Blumenthal also describes receiving a death threat letter postmarked in Buffalo, and says he has since heard from others across the country who received similar letters from the same sender.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction and device seizure at the US border
Glenn Diesen: Welcome back. Max Blumenthal joins us today — editor-in-chief at The Grayzone — to discuss a recent trip of his to Iran. Thank you for coming back on. I see that coming home from this trip to Iran, to report on the funeral of Ayatollah Khamenei — initially I want to ask you about some of your takeaways, which I will, but first I thought it was interesting that the US government seized your electronic devices upon returning, which is an important issue in terms of press freedom. What exactly happened here?
Max Blumenthal: It relates to the whole story. We're facing a new, more intense framework of repression in the United States, which is being administered by a kind of class of white-collar criminals who are under the influence of Zionism and the state of Israel. In some ways it wasn't entirely shocking, but it is completely illegal what they did to me.
I went on this reporting trip on July 4th and reported from the largest gathering in human history. I gained insights I would have never gained from the ground there. I interviewed officials, academics, influential people, including negotiators, and participated in a public press event. All I did there was reporting, and no one denies that I'm a journalist. I've been doing journalism for 25 years.
I don't pretend to be impartial. I'm not objective. Objectivity is a fake concept, which is defined according to the parameters of the militant Zionist ruling elite that controls the corporate media and upholds the mantle of objectivity. Regardless, I am entitled to certain constitutional protections under the First Amendment, which protects the freedom of the press and freedom of speech, and the Fourth Amendment, which forbids illegal search and seizure.
The United States government is increasingly using the border and airports as a kind of zone of exception where the Constitution does not apply. The Department of Homeland Security has declared they do not need even suspicion of criminal activity to seize your phone. This needs to be challenged at the highest level. When I returned, my phones were seized on that basis after I refused to open them. There was never any basis to suspect criminal activity on my part. However, if there had been a basis for that, the government could have gone before a judge and gotten a warrant. This was a warrantless seizure — something they would not have been able to validate in any other space outside of that secondary screening area in the airport, which is why they're using it so promiscuously.
Now, what triggered that? I'd been to Iran. We were there together at the So International Media Festival. It was a public festival. I did reporting from there. I produced a documentary on Jewish Iranians and their community. I interviewed negotiators back then in May 2025. I went around the country freely. When I returned from that trip, I was not subjected to any harassment. So what changed? What was different? First, obviously, there's a US-Israeli war imposed on Iran. But also, Israeli interests put me in the crosshairs this time.
Laura Loomer — who is the creation of Zionist billionaires in many ways, and is probably the client of them if not the Israeli government through its various influencer channels — declared that I should be arrested and hauled off the flight by US Marshals when I returned. She called me the leading voice of communism in the United States, which would come as a surprise to many of the leaders of the tiny communist organisations that still exist in the US. She called me an Islamist, basically a terrorist, and every other "-ist" she could think of, in order to trigger some kind of harassment. She dared Mark Wayne Mullen, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, to have me arrested. She called for my house to be raided at 5:00 a.m. She called for Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, to withdraw my passport. She was declaring that Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, should investigate my finances.
It was clear that some interests had put her up to this. Not that she doesn't believe in what she's saying, but there was a script, and the script was echoed by Canary Mission — an organisation founded in 2015 to destroy the lives of college students who participate in Palestine solidarity activity. It's an anonymous organisation based out of Jerusalem. It's an Israeli intelligence cutout. They put crosshairs on me, declaring that I'm an extremist who's there to honour Khamenei and not do journalism. Everything flowed from there. It became very clear who wanted me to face harassment and repression when I came home.
It looks to me like I was targeted because of my viewpoint, because of my journalism, and because these elements — which effectively control the Trump administration and its policy towards Iran, and which emanate from Israel — needed to be satisfied that I was subjected to questioning that tracked with a lot of the attacks on me, as well as the seizure of my devices.
Two other points I want to make up front. One: they didn't seize all my devices. If they were really looking for criminal activity, why wouldn't they take my laptop? I also had a digital camera. They just weren't interested in it at all. And two: I was in Iran on a press visa, around all these other journalists. None of them were subjected to this level of harassment, and they were in many of the same places as I was. So what explains that disparity in treatment? Again, it's viewpoint discrimination.
That is the basis of the lawsuit filed by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee on my behalf, led by its president, Janine Younis, who is doing an incredible job representing so many targets of the Israel lobby and its censorship frenzy. Soon after that lawsuit was filed, Customs and Border Patrol called me up and said, "We have your phones. Come get them." In my opinion, they didn't want this to go before a judge. The media pressure was beginning to get to them.
Press freedom, propaganda labels, and political targeting
Glenn Diesen: In Europe as well, if they want to crack down on press freedom and freedom of speech, they usually use that magical word — propaganda. Once someone throws that out, they don't have to define what it means. It's just opposing the government narrative. They can throw out the word propaganda and suddenly all of those freedoms which one thought were carved into stone suddenly mean nothing.
Max Blumenthal: Exactly. It's all buzzwords. That's why the word communism was used — because the Trump administration, really under the influence of Marco Rubio, who is the king of the gusano industrial complex of South Florida, has launched this new initiative against communism. It relates to Cuba. They're now targeting American left-wing activists. It's a way they're going to try to neutralise and criminalise the left. The word communism was used on me to try to paint me as some kind of threat who needed to be investigated without a warrant, in an extrajudicial, unconstitutional, and fundamentally illegal fashion. And I'm not knocking communists — I'm not issuing a critique of communism — but I've just never represented myself as a communist or participated in organising along those lines. So it really just shows how desperate they are.
Reporting from Iran: what Blumenthal found on the ground
Glenn Diesen: What was it about your reporting? What is it that you uncovered or reported on from Iran? I've seen some — well, you were there at the funeral. I saw you have a discussion with the creator of the LEGO movies, which are excellent, by the way. But what is it that you discovered from your trip in Iran? What was the mood among the people? Because the assumption in the media when the bombing began appeared to be a consensus that the people would topple the government — or the regime, as they say — and that citizens would welcome the US and Israel as liberators, much like the argument made about Iraq.
Max Blumenthal: It's funny. I was just on Piers Morgan, and he was asking me, "Why didn't you investigate all the thousands of people who were slaughtered in the riots?" And I did — they just didn't like the way I investigated it. I went and looked for police officers to talk to about having their police stations surrounded by MEK members with automatic weapons and shotguns who were attempting to kill them, burn them, and behead them. It all started with police stations being attacked because it was a regime change attempt, which was being instrumentalised by foreign intelligence from Israel and the West.
I'm doing the kind of critical reporting that exposes the criminal machinations of Western countries that have wanted regime change in Iran, and I'm showing a different side of Iranian culture. For example, I talked to women who are supporters of the Islamic Republic, who are out there participating in these patriotic rallies, and asked them, "Do you need to be liberated?" And they told me: "I'm a university professor, and it was our leader, Ali Khamenei, who gave me the space to be able to move to that place of leadership in our society. There are more women in universities than there are men now in Iran. And we don't want to be commodified and have our bodies objectified like women in the West are." You're not supposed to show that.
I went to the scene of US war crimes. I think I was the first American reporter to report on an entire eastern Tehran neighbourhood just being bombarded with eight missiles. At least 40 people were killed. An entire family was killed in one strike except for two members who were out of town. I went to some other sites that others had previously visited — including my colleague Wyatt Reed — but also to highlight the criminality of the bombing of the Gandhi Hospital, which happened to be next door to the IRIB media complex, which was the target. Five hundred staff of the hospital are out of work. The IVF clinic was destroyed. The ICU was destroyed. It was pretty upsetting to see.
I went to the Raffi Nia Synagogue, which was totally destroyed in an Israeli strike. You would think this would be a huge story in US media. If Iran had firebombed a synagogue in London, it would be front page. But Israel bombed a 50-year-old congregation in Tehran and it barely registered. I went to expose that. I also visited the Azadi Stadium's volleyball and wrestling complex, where international competitions were held. I think I was one of the first reporters to visit that. That's a truly titanic crime, considering how important wrestling is to Iran's athletic infrastructure — and you could even say its soft power, because they win so many competitions on the world stage.
It was of a piece with the attack by FIFA and the US government on Iran's World Cup soccer team, which they sought to strip of visas for their training staff and prevent from staying in the United States. It was pure oppression and, I would say, rigging.
Being able to do that reporting before a very large audience — we have a big platform at The Grayzone, and we're consistently one of the top 20 Substack sites in world politics — I think that was a threat. But it's also my entire portfolio of reporting that I've been doing since 2009, when I started focusing on the region, that has put me in their crosshairs. They're looking for an opportunity to have me harassed and persecuted by the government, and to cast a pall of suspicion over me — like I'm some sort of Iranian agent collecting a paycheck to be there. When I came back, Customs and Border Patrol asked me whether I was paid to conduct interviews, which echoed the kind of sleazy smear attacks I was getting.
Why would I need to go all the way over there, travelling 20 hours, to collect some money, when I can sit right here and monetise all of our content, which average Americans and people across the West support because they want to see this kind of independent and critical journalism — unlike a corporate press that has been discredited?
I was targeted because I was exposing the criminals, not because I was committing any crime. Others who have been targeted in relation to Iran could say the same thing. That's why The Grayzone has consistently been targeted and harassed by Five Eyes elements. It's not because we're criminals — it's because we're against the criminals who are setting the world on fire right now, not just in Iran, but also through the Ukraine proxy war, which is provoking Russia to retaliate against a NATO state. We're in a very dangerous time, and it's a dangerous time for independent journalism. We're on the front lines of that at The Grayzone, and we are being targeted for that reason.
Israeli influence over US politics and the threat of escalating repression
Glenn Diesen: You're quite critical of Israel's influence over American politics and society, and indeed the people who harass you personally, as well as The Grayzone, also have their ties with the Israeli state. How do you see this development going now? Because on one hand, one gets the impression that more people are sharing your sentiment — there's a big split now, or at least much more criticism of Israel. But at the same time, we're also seeing Israel integrating further with the United States — for example, the fusing of the two militaries. It seems to be heading in two directions at once.
Max Blumenthal: There's a new Washington Post/Ipsos poll out today that isn't being reported correctly. The way the corporate press is reporting it is by focusing on how just 23% of Americans think Trump will be able to get a better Iran deal than Obama did with the JCPOA, and how only 11% of independents have confidence in Trump. But if you look deeper into the poll, it shows that almost no one outside the Republican Party in the United States supports this war. Not just a majority, but a whopping majority sees no value in the US war on Iran. And if you go back to a Quinnipiac poll from two months ago, almost no one outside the Republican Party supports the war or aid to Israel. A whopping majority opposes aid to Israel and thinks the current level of US support for Israel is too much.
So I'm pretty much in line with the majority of the American public, and that's another reason why there's this crackdown.
When you say Israel, what are we talking about? We're talking about a borderless country that has based its political system along ethno-supremacist lines, that has no internationally recognised borders that it respects, in a permanent state of war with eight countries — the eighth being the United States, and it's a cognitive war as Netanyahu defines it. We know where the occupation starts but we don't know where it ends. So when we talk about Israel, we're talking about the Trump administration. We're talking about the Department of Justice. We're talking about, in many senses, the leadership of the FBI and other major government institutions, as well as state governments across the US, especially in red states.
How far will they go? That was the question you asked me last time, and I said my fear is that as they lose support and the public starts to turn against them and begins to actually organise against them — electing officials who, like the New York mayor, are considering arresting Netanyahu when he comes to New York according to the ICC warrant, or who want to suspend aid to Israel — they're going to take the same kind of actions we've seen them use in the region, in southern Lebanon and in Gaza. We're talking about assassination, kinetic action, terrorism, sabotage — worse than the kind of character assassination we're being subjected to every day here already.
As I was away, a letter sat at my address, addressed to me from "Your Dead Meat" — Y-O-O-R-D-E-D-M-E-E-T — trying to be funny. It read: "Hey, capo, you are moving up on the list. Signed, the committee." The return address was the field office of Representative Rashida Tlaib, who is the only Palestinian member of Congress — which means it's effectively a threat to her as well.
I publicised this letter, and I've started to hear from people across the country who received the same death threats from "Your Dead Meat," postmarked in Buffalo. They're always postmarked at 2:00 a.m., which is interesting. These are people who have been previously targeted by major Zionist institutions — Zionist media organisations or campus Zionist organisations — and then they receive these letters. One person I spoke to who received this letter has actually received 20 threatening letters. The letters they showed me were shocking compared to what I received. One contained powder which was rat poison, and another contained a rusty nail.
We have a real problem on our hands in the United States. We have an element which is primed for terrorism, which is entitled, which is accustomed to having four billion dollars of aid a year sent to the apartheid colony that forms the central pillar of their identity. The American public is moving away from them and moving against them politically, and wants to push towards an end to this disastrous special relationship — which has been so costly to Americans, as we see through the economic cost of the Iran war and now the death toll of US service members. As that contradiction grows, I think we're going to see an increasing threat of extremist violence in the United States.
Has the FBI been so thoroughly penetrated that they cannot crack down on it? I reported that letter to the postal inspector and have heard nothing back. Fortunately, Representative Tlaib has reported the letter to the US Capitol Police. I wonder what they're going to do. Is there a manhunt for the person sending these letters? Is there an investigation? As far as I know, the only person investigated in the last week or two around this whole scenario is me — for doing journalism.
Closing thoughts on democracy and legal recourse
Glenn Diesen: This is a problem when a country starts a war. It's very hard to maintain basic civil liberties, freedom of speech, and not be intimidated or threatened in this way. Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Max Blumenthal: Yes. Democracy is not fundamentally defined by our system — it's defined by the rights that we force our system and our government to provide to us through mobilisation and through action. It's only thanks to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and its president Janine Younis and their team that I've had any legal recourse against this action. These are the true democratic fighters in our country, against a system that is shredding the Constitution right before our eyes. I just wanted to highlight the important work they're doing for me and for so many other people who are facing the consequences of this massive censorship frenzy, which is guided by a foreign apartheid state.
Glenn Diesen: Well, Max, thank you so much for your time.
Max Blumenthal: Thanks a lot, Glenn.