Since its confused retreat from Afghanistan, the Biden administration has spent more time trying to shut down the David Horowitz Freedom Center than fighting Al Qaeda.
While Freedom Center Investigates has documented multiple cases of terrorists benefiting from nonprofit status, the IRS ignores and continues to pursue the Freedom Center's nonprofit status.
Five years should have been more than enough to decide the issue one way or another, but instead we have been left suspended in a state of permanent investigation because while there's no basis for shutting us down, bleeding us from a thousand cuts makes it harder for the Freedom Center to do our work, to raise money and to keep holding the Left accountable.
Five years is a long time. It's the statute of limitations for most federal crimes. But the only thing we were ever accused of was providing a forum for political opinions the government didn't like.
And that's not a crime. Unless the government succeeds in making it one.
The government accused the Freedom Center of 'electioneering' because we had criticized Hillary Clinton. Compared to what happened to some Hillary critics, we probably got off lightly with a 5-year investigation. And we haven't stopped criticizing Hillary (we have two recent articles about her, including an investigative piece that traced her organization to funding for attacks on art around the world and even on the Constitution at the National Archives).
But the perpetual investigation, which has been covered by the Daily Wire and other conservative media outlets, has become a disturbing feature of life and not just for us.
Since the last presidential election, hundreds of people, from Trump on down, have been dragged through legal proceedings for their political activism based on distorted laws, newly invented charges and abuses of process reminiscent of Franz Kafka's The Trial. And even though we are journalists and were not active in the election, we are still being subjected to an endless process because of the reporting and opinion pieces we ran in the 2016 election.
The 2024 election is almost here, and we're being persecuted for journalism from 8 years ago.
How long can this go on? Unlike Josef K, the protagonist of The Trial, we refuse to let it define us. We've cut costs and refocused on our journalism because it's what the government fears.
Unlike The Trial, we know that there's nothing irrational or coincidental about what we're going through. Our investigations of the IRS and weaponized nonprofits have made it all too clear that the government calculatedly turns a blind eye to nonprofits that electioneer and act as voter turnout operations for the regime. Those investigations have only made us a bigger target.
The five years of the government trying to shut us down has become a badge of honor.
When we uncovered a letter by the former IRS Chief of Exempt Organizations, a crony of the infamous Lois Lerner best known from the Obama's Tea Party targeting scandal, denouncing the Freedom Center and Front Page Magazine because according to him our articles, including one about the Paris Climate Accord, were not "sufficiently full and fair", it was a validation of our work.
This is not about anything except the fact that the government fears our reporting.
What are they afraid of? In the 5 years since the government has been investigating us, we exposed the terrorist sympathies of Biden administration appointees, the fundraising links between Antifa and the DNC, the intersections between cryptocurrency, terror money and smuggled gold bars of the Biden family, and the relaunch of the Clinton Global Initiative.
And that's just a small sampling of the investigative journalism that we do on a regular basis.
We have conducted deep dives into the Chinese business ties of the Biden family in our new digital pamphlet, Beijing Biden: The Secret Relationship With China That Threatens America, and we have another coming on the Islamic connections in this administration. That's not because we're 'electioneering' but because we're engaging in investigative journalism that explores the conduct and misconduct of those in power.
And the government would rather that we didn't.
After five years and legal expenses of over $600,000, the Freedom Center has struggled, but we know that there are others in prison who are far worse off than we are. If the IRS thought that subjecting us to an indefinite investigation would cause us to rethink our convictions or fall apart, the organization's politicized figures had underestimated us and this country.
Instead of folding, as some other groups in our position might have, we investigated the government and came away with shocking revelations about the enemy nations, foreign and domestic terrorists, pedophiles and every kind of abusive entity being harbored by the IRS.
Those are not places we would have even looked if we had not been targeted in the first place.
Last month, Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyoming) quoted our work at a congressional hearing to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
"I actually think that Daniel Greenfield, a contributor to Front Page Magazine, may have said it best when he said that a justice system can survive those who challenge the prosecutors, but it can't survive those who prosecute the challengers which is kind of the situation with the Biden administration."
We have challenged and we have been prosecuted. And it is important for Attorney General Garland all those in power to know that we are going to continue investigating those in power.
Despite being targeted for our criticism of Hillary, Front Page Magazine has outlived her political career. And of many others. We're not about to be intimidated into stopping. Not now. Or ever.
That's what they're so afraid of. They're afraid of us. And they're afraid of you.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
