Max Blumenthal: I Went to Iran and Was Detained by the Trump Admin

Max Blumenthal, thank you for doing this. So, I guess it shouldn't surprise anyone that if you're a journalist and you've been taking a position and reporting on stories that are in direct contradiction to the official story in Washington that at some point, you know, someone's going to get heavy with you. And so, um, I want you to just describe, if you don't mind, a couple of things that have happened to you recently, so everyone knows what the stakes are. So, you got detained at a US airport recently. Can you explain what happened? >> Yeah, and this wasn't the first time the Trump administration had gotten heavy with me over my reporting. Um, I was actually arrested and jailed on first false charges that were dropped quickly uh during the first Trump term. That's a long story, but we've reported on it at the Grey Zone. And uh I was >> You spent a couple days in jail. >> Spent a couple days in DC jail over completely false bogus charges. Uh my house was essentially raided by like the police surrounded my house, took me out into a wagon and took me to jail for completely false charges that I had assaulted a woman who was an ally of Juan Guyaido at the time. That's like to make the long story short. And you know, I wish I had had uh legal representation that encouraged me to sue at that time because it was just completely fake. Uh right after Trump came in in January, I was stopped coming back from a vacation abroad with my family and shown a list of names and asked, you know, basically, do you know these people, which is far beyond the scope of authority of Customs and Border Protection? And I said, >> did they pull you out of customs line? >> Yeah. Yeah. They were waiting for me, Mr. Blumenthal and they said, "Uh, we've been watching you on Judge Npalitto. I've been I watched your last appearance on Judge Npalto." Referring to Judge Andrew Npalitano, but kind of like, you know, a tap on the shoulder, like big brothers watching. And I remember those names. I actually didn't recognize them um until afterwards. One of them was Susan Benjamin, who h which happens to be the birth name of Code Pink co-founder Media Benjamin. And then the other names were like Arab names or Muslim names. And I think one of them might have been Mahmud Khalil who is now was like arrested and was one of the Colombia students who was arrested and they tried to deport him and put him in an ICE facility for a long time. Um I didn't know but but it signaled to me that once it started it started to all make sense once I saw what they were doing. Israel's in charge now and they want some they want a crackdown. They want to criminalize activism and even journalism that contravenes their objectives. So, you know, the war breaks out in Iran on February 28th. It doesn't break out. Trump executes Israel's wishes and Netanyahu's greatest fantasy attacking Iran. Um, we can talk about why that happened later, but I was observing it closely, reporting on it. I you know as as you were as well. So I wanted to go there and I had gone the year before without any incident coming back. I participated in a public media festival. I >> in Iran >> in Iran. I did a documentary on Iranian Jews and what life is like for them in the Islamic Republic. Um I did reporting. I interviewed negotiators like top negotiators um as the negotiations were about to collapse. This is a like a a month before Israel launched its first war on Iran which ended with Operation Midnight Hammer. So anyway, the the the the major war, Operation uh Epstein Fury or Epic Fury breaks out and I'm observing it very closely. So I wanted an opportunity to go. I got that opportunity because Iran's foreign ministry was giving out press passes to mainstream reporters, uh, you know, from NBC, from CNN, as well as, uh, quote unquote influencers who wanted to go and cover the funeral of the man that Trump assassinated on February 28th, Ayatollah Ali Khani. And it was going to be the largest funeral in history. And indeed, it was. Um, I witnessed it as a reporter. I covered a lot of things there which I can talk about in detail, but you know what what one of the things I was reporting on was evidence of US and Israeli war crimes. For example, I visited a neighborhood in eastern Thran that had been just completely destroyed Gaza style and it, you know, was destroyed without much reporting. Um, I actually hadn't been aware of this neighborhood where it was just block after block of destruction and speaking to people on that street with tears in their eyes, telling me how entire families were liquidated in their sleep. Going to the home where a family what was left of the home, a family of 12 was killed and finding the clothes of small children on the ground, the clothes that resembled the clothes that I dress my children in every day, the same age. Uh, it was very upsetting and I've had an obligation to report on this. There was actually graffiti on the wall by a building, a giant apartment building, civilian apartment building that had been completely destroyed in the middle of the night. It said evidence of US crimes. And that's what I was producing uh providing as a reporter on the ground uh visited a synagogue, 50-year-old synagogue that Israel had bombed. Nothing was bombed around it really that I could see. uh these kinds of things were >> Was it a an active synagogue? >> It was an active 50-year-old synagogue called the Rafinia Synagogue in central Thrron. I was one of the first American reporters to visit it or my colleague Wyatt Reed had also visited it and you know several other sites. Gandhi Hospital. >> Anyone ever explain uh in the coalition, US or Israel, why we would bomb a synagogue in Iran? Well, Israel always offers the excuse there was some IRGC site nearby and it was a mistake, but it wouldn't have been the first synagogue that Israel's bombed in the region in order to compel Jews to move out of their historic home in order to seek sanctuary within the so-called Jewish state. Uh, and it raised serious questions about what would have motivated them to do it. And I raised those questions in an explainer that I filmed there. It's the kind of thing that would piss Israel off, especially when it's a Jewish reporter, an American Jewish reporter. Um, so as I was, >> yeah, bombing synagogues was not kind of on the program, I thought. >> No, this the the synagogue didn't seem to present a national security threat to Israel. What does threaten Israel is to have a community of 10,000 Jews in a Muslim country like the Islamic Republic of Iran who are recognized as a national minority under the constitution and who are not experiencing anti-semitism there. It kind of stands at odds with what Zionists want us to believe about Muslims and the Muslim world. >> Kind of. Yeah. So they might they might want to frighten them to leave as they did with the Jewish community in Iraq when >> the Zionist underground with Israeli help bombed Jewish community centers in Baghdad as the Israeli historian Avi documented in 1952 1953. Um so so anyway I'm I'm doing this reporting I'm reporting on the I reported from the funeral. Uh Trump has previously said, you know, that these large crowds you see at funerals of um Islamic Republic leadership who he or Israel assassinates are AI. So they don't want actual American reporters on the ground there, especially me when my perspective is very well known. So while I was there, I was targeted online by a collection of entities and figures who are in completely connected to Israel and no one else. like it was it was an Israeli propaganda operation targeting me. Um Laura Loomer was obviously leading the way on >> this was not an organic uprising of American citizens online. >> Yeah. I mean it was funny when I went in 2025 it I was you know tweeting from Iran. I was producing journalism the same way and nothing like this happened. Um but this time it was different and it wasn't organic in the sense that a foreign state was guiding this and they wanted to um character assassinate me online. Um so besides Laura Loomer who we talk about in a second there was Canary Mission. They were targeting me. They created a dossier about me. They said um something like I dedicated my life to the Ayatollah. some really insane statement and that I was there >> officially endorsed him. >> What they were Yeah. Essentially that I endorsed him for like leadership of the world that I was there to basically pray at his at his grave. And by the way, if I had done that, if I had converted to Shia Islam and and prayed and made homage paid homage to the late Ayatollah, that would not have been against the law in the United States as far as I know. I think I would have been within my rights, but I was just there to report and that's all I did there. In any case, Canary Mission attacks me. This is a group based in Israel, based in a foundation. It's like a front group called Megumat Shalom. And its writers come out of many of them come out of the Wexner Foundation named for the best friend of Jeffrey Epstein. And they are American Israeli dual citizens. >> Bought all, you know, bought his house on Fifth Avenue. That same guy. >> That same guy. Yeah. And who I think uh helped Howard Lutnik buy the house next door. Um, so I'm being targeted by vice grad people. >> May I ask you, is there evidence that he helped Howard Lutnik buy the house next door? >> I'm I'm pretty sure that that that they um helped him buy the townhouse next door. If not, uh, you know, we can edit it out or I'll retract it, but I'm pretty sure that's the case. >> Amazing. >> Uh, they definitely shared a wall. >> Yeah. >> Um, but that's this is totally peripheral to the story I'm telling. The story I'm telling, the point I'm making is I was targeted by a foreign government for contravening their propaganda objectives as a reporter. Canary mission has been used by the State Department under Trump to determine which um green card holding students they should arrest in the street and deport like writing an op-ed criticizing Israel for their student paper. >> Home ownership has always been at the center of the American dream. 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No judgment, but it doesn't make any sense to borrow money at that rate. If you want out, call 800685-55696. 8006855696 or visit americanf financing.net/tucker. >> Wait, an Israeli propaganda outfit funded by Epstein's financeier has worked with the State Department to decide who to deport. It's been reported that Marco Rubio's State Department was relying in part on Canary Mission to target students. And Canary Mission was founded in 2015 to ruin the lives of US college students who were participating in Palestine activism on campus by doxing them and preventing them from gaining future employment. And this is an Israeli group uh that's meddling in our society and trying to ruin the lives of Americans who are uh exercising their first amendment rights. So now they're targeting me. Another group was ViceGrad 24, which seems to be, you know, shilling for the UAE as well as Israel. And then Laura Loomer comes in and demands that Mark Wayne Mullen arrest me, uh have me hauled off the flight, that my passport be revoked. uh basically that I'd be denaturalized as a natural-born US citizen for for what? For what? Uh for simply reporting from Iran and you know then they maybe they can find some facts later with which they can use to criminalize me. >> So she said this in public. >> She tweeted this. She said, you know, if Mark Wayne Mullen is worth anything, he will do this. Um she called for my home to be raided at 5:00 a.m. She called She specifically called for Rubio to yank my passport. She boasted that she had called the FBI, the State Department, and uh DHS on me. >> How does she have this? Okay. >> She's boasted of calling law enforcement on over a thousand people in the US. Um so this is well this this this is like typical behavior. And so I come back and I'm like, uh, kind of knowing what to expect. What did you say? They're going to get heavy with me because Laura Loomer has become their go-to propagandist and they use her. They kind of outsource her, but also she's able to uh frighten people in the administration like Mark Wayne Mullen, who she was attacking a week later, calling him Mark Wayne Muslim. And I I I think she was calling him all sorts of names because he wasn't doing enough deportations. So, it's like his ass is on the line from someone who just a couple of years ago was chaining themselves to Twitter headquarters. Uh someone who was because she her Twitter account had been pulled. Uh someone who earlier this year justified the a mass shooting at a US mosque. someone who I mean we know you know she called some black Democrats black ghetto and she's seen as so outlandish but people in the Trump administration are frightened of her and other people are using her. So >> why would they be frightened of her? >> Because there are powerful forces behind her including some extremely powerful Zionist crime bosses. I mean >> you're absolutely right. They're afraid of her. I have seen it. I mean, you who who's behind her? Who who who who is behind her trip to Ukraine? I mean, how do how do you get an audience with Zalinski like that? And then you're meeting with Andre Bletki, the leading neo-Nazi in Ukraine, and whitewashing him. And then you're going to a um energy plant for a company called DTEK, which just seems completely random, whose board member is Jeffrey Pott, the guy who was handing out cookies in the Maidon in 2014 with Victoria Nuland, who owns DTEK. It's Reinad Akmatov, who is one of the richest men in Ukraine, who's like a de facto crime boss in Kiev, is involved in all kinds of corrupt activity. Uh, you know, who's who's got her uh pushing for the removal of sanctions on Venezuela's government even when Maduro was in power? Uh, probably some pretty powerful businessmen who might own Venezuela's sovereign debt, who want to collect on their debt. who's pushing her to target anyone who gets in the way of Israel's genocidal agenda in the Middle East. I mean, we could choose between any number of major Israeli or pro-Israel warlords from Miriam Madison to Bill Aman. Uh I I I don't know who they are, >> but I think we could all agree this is not the way like a country does diplomacy, right? >> Well, this is what happened to MAGA. They've driven out everyone who believed in anything Trump campaigned on in 2016 2024. Like national sovereignty, for example, America first rather than Israel first. Uh not not continuing the Ukraine proxy war. Zilinski is now asking for $28 billion from the US. All of these things were what I think motivated you to campaign for Trump. And now you're being targeted as one of their main enemies. Uh Laura Loomer is attacking you right now along with other figures who have a very murky relationship with the Trump administration like this Jennica Pounds character data Republican who was just exposed or exposed herself as a special Pentagon employee, but we thought she was just a pro MAGA influencer. So what is MAGA? >> What do you mean a Pentagon employee? like a special employee of the Pentagon who's been hired by the Pentagon and has a civ email. >> Uh this was reported in the Washington Post. Yes. >> So So this is someone who's like attacking people politically online all the time. >> Yeah. >> Who's getting paid in US tax dollars to do that? >> I don't know how much she's being paid, but she exposed herself as such. >> Um let me make this point about just this is where MAGA is. Like Laura Loomer is the face of MAGA right now. >> Yeah. >> Um >> and when that's the face of your movement, >> it doesn't stand for anything anymore. >> Except raw the raw Machavellian exercise of power. >> Yes. >> And and looting. >> And looting, corruption, and genocidal bloodlust, which is something she represents. Uh she's she, you know, after the after this mass shooting that killed three people at a mosque in San Diego this May, she called for ICE to raid the homes of the victims. >> What? Yeah. And in addition to saying the whole thing was a false flag to illicit sympathy for Muslims and that all Muslims in America should be deported. So this is the person who you know people are answering to in the administration and everyone's seeking to use her as well. >> Then then what's the difference between saying that and like all Jews should be deported? Like what's once you decide that an entire ethnic group or religion is evil because of how they were born? How is that different from any other variety of that? It doesn't seem any different to me at all. And it all seems disgusting. It it it it I think it disgusts most people. Um and but this is what they've been reduced to. And who is so who is using her? You know, how is Israel able to mo move this administration to the point where they're even that focused on me that they're willing to not just detain me, but confiscate my phones on my way back with no suspicion of any criminal activity? >> I've stepped on your story like 10 times. What happened when you got back? >> It's my fault cuz I told I told it the long way. >> Well, there's so much going on. I mean, it's >> But I wanted to kind of prompt everyone watching this like help them understand why this happened. Yes, >> it happened explicitly because Israel didn't want me reporting from inside Iran and they thought that I could be uh that they could exploit my vulnerability coming back from Iran to have something terrible happen to me at in this area in our country where you are told when you enter you have no constitutional rights which is a huge problem when you >> you're an American citizen. >> I'm an American citizen. You're an American citizen. You have no rights. You have no other passport. Correct. >> Correct. >> So, how do you forfeit your American constitutional rights? >> Once you uh so once you are called in for secondary inspection or questioning by Customs and Border Protection when you arrive from another country, you know, you get like the red X and then they put your passport in a plastic box and they send you back there. CBP tells you you do not have you essentially do not have the same constitutional rights. And so after questioning, >> but you're on US soil. This is what airport was this? >> This was Dulles, appropriately named international airport. >> And so I come back and uh you know that all happens to me. I got the four S's on my uh ticket coming back. >> Um I I am questioned and they're asking me questions that seem to follow the same line. um that Loomer or whoever was handling her or uh backing her was pursuing and you know I was very cooperative with them and polite. I figured you know I I I don't really have like I I I can be transparent here and be polite with them rather than if I refused and you do have the right to refuse those questions but then you're just going to be there for hours and hours and hours and they're going to use that essentially to punish you. At the end of the questioning, they and they searched my bags and everything, which you know, they wouldn't have a right to do to you outside of there without a warrant and individualized suspicion, >> right? >> They then demanded that I open my phones. And, you know, anyone watching this, if you're concerned about having your phones opened or seized, pay close attention to what I'm saying. They said, uh, we're just going to check for evidence of criminal activity and CSM. And uh so just give us your passcodes, >> which >> and I said I that's what I said. And they said uh it's child sexual material and and you're looking at you like and so your natural reaction would be like >> I I don't have it. I don't have that on my phone. Were you calling me a you're calling me a pedto? Like what the hell's wrong with you? No. Here just take my phone. There's >> just those are my kids. You know, but I'm not stupid. So I was like no that is a violation of my constitutional rights. And they said well then just give us your phones. Imagine crawling into bed and you feel like you're floating and then wake up rested with no soreness from a stiff mattress. Well, you could do that. All you got to do is switch to Brooklyn bedding. 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And if you see a survey after checkout, let them know who sent you, which is us. And from there, if you don't give your phones, they they have, I've been told, re revoked people's passports temporarily. So, they took my they took two phones I had. Oddly, they didn't take my other devices or seem that interested in them, like my laptop. Like, if you think I'm this criminal and I'm some IRGC agent, why wouldn't you take my digital camera or my laptop? You know, you had Hunter Biden on a few weeks ago. Like, what if I have the laptop from hell? No, it was just like they were trying to harass and punish and intimidate me and to satisfy Laura Loomer and whatever Zionist crime bosses are behind her. Um, a few days later, I go to Janine Ununice, who is a lawyer, who is a true >> So, what happened at the end of the story? Did you get your phones back? >> Well, I'm I'm going to tell you how I come back. >> So, I go to Janine Ununice. She's a true free speech warrior. like not like the fake free speech warriors who only um defend the free speech of conservatives or you know whatever interest they represent. >> Yeah. Whatever. And then and then when you know when someone says uh Israel did a naughty thing then they want them to be uh imprisoned. >> But she's not Alan Dersuit. >> She's not Alan Dersuit or Ben Shapiro. Um her feelings only care about facts. She's argued at the Supreme Court against the Biden administration's policy of banning social media accounts that had criticized Biden in a lawsuit filed by Republican governors. Uh she was one of the major critics of the whole COVID lockdown mandate policy from a constitutional perspective. Now she is the president of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and she's doing these very important legal actions defending the rights of Americans who are basically being targeted for criticizing Israel. Um and so we she filed a lawsuit demanding my phones and all the data they had taken back a few I I would say within 24 hours I got a call from CBP telling me my phones were ready for pickup. So they were holding them for days and days and days. >> Your phones? Yeah. And they said, "We're going to hook them up to machines." And what I understand that they do is they they do hook them up to machines and run a program called Celebrite >> through the phones to brute force open them. That's that's an Israeli technology. So they're using Israeli technology to get into your phone. Once they get in, >> they can scrape metadata, access deleted text messages, deleted your whole life, >> your whole life. and um without a warrant. Warrantless seizure is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. So, we filed this lawsuit. We actually went to court um at the Fourth District in Northern Virginia. Not the fourth, yeah, the Fourth District in Northern Virginia. A veteran judge declared her opinion, stated her opinion that my Fourth Amendment rights had been violated and that the government was going to have to produce some level of discovery to explain what they did with my phones. >> Yeah. And we've expanded the lawsuit. It's now a fourth amendment and first amendment based lawsuit uh seeking injunctive relief basically that they stop harassing me. And this is for everybody. This is for every journalist. This is for every American who believes they're entitled to their Fourth Amendment constitutional rights at the border. If you have if if the government suspects that you've committed a crime, they can get a warrant very easily and search into your phone. But without it, they can't. And that's what the fourth uh district has found in cases like Belmonte Cardardo versus the US government, which uh the government lawyer wasn't even familiar with. So, we're enforcing president and we're trying to establish and and reinforce the president to protect the constitutional rights of Americans, which I was denied because a foreign government did not like me reporting from a country which they have attacked, where they have committed war crimes and where they seek to commit further crimes and to basically carry out regime change. That's what this all comes down to. So the the whole um situation has escalated because >> escalated from that >> yeah since uh we filed this lawsuit the I I don't even know what to call them. These Israel first forces in the US are retaliating against me. Uh, weirdly on Shabbat, uh, two weeks ago, three of the biggest Israel first Neanderthalss in Congress, Randy Fine, Randy Weber, and someone I'd never heard of before, Keith Self, released a letter under on congressional letterhead through Laura Loomer's Twitter account calling for me to be investigated. And they didn't produce any evidence that I had done anything criminal. They just pointed to my journalism from Iran uh and my journalism in general which had upset Israel including my investigations into what really happened on October 7th. Me being one of the first reporters in English language or US media to produce massive amounts of evidence or point to the evidence that Israel had killed many of its own citizens on October 7th by initiating something called the Hannibal directive, which enables the Israeli army to kill its citizens if they believe they are going to be taken captive and become political collateral because the price of letting them go over the Gaza border alive is more than the price of killing them. And I was heavily attacked for that in Israeli media. Even Haret, the supposedly left Israeli publication called me. Yeah. >> Is that a real a real concept? >> Yeah, it's a real concept that's been confirmed. Um it's been confirmed even by the former Israeli defense minister. Um a colonel serving on that day said they enacted a mass Hannibal. Um, it's bee