Press Freedom Groups to Congress: Drop Subpoena of Journalist Over Reporting on Venezuela Attack

A coalition of press freedom and civil liberties groups on Tuesday implored US lawmakers to immediately rescind their subpoena of investigative journalist Seth Harp, who named the commander of the elite Army Delta Force unit that carried out the illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife earlier this month.

In a letter to House leaders, Defending Rights & Dissent, the ACLU, Freedom of the Press Foundation, PEN America, Reporters Without Borders, and more than a dozen other organizations warned that "by issuing this subpoena, Congress is undermining one of the most cherished American freedoms."

"The subpoena has few parallels or precedents in recent history and poses a grave danger to the First Amendment’s guarantee of press freedom," the letter reads. "There is zero question that Harp’s actions were fully and squarely within the protections of the First Amendment, as well as outside the scope of any federal criminal statutes."

The effort to subpoena Harp was led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who accused the journalist of the "doxxing a US Delta Force operator" by posting to X a then-publicly available bio of Col. Chris Countouriotis. Harp identified Countouriotis as "the current commander of Delta Force, whose men just invaded a sovereign country, killed a bunch of innocent people, and kidnapped the rightful president."

The House Oversight Committee approved the subpoena—with the support of Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the panel's top Democrat—in a voice vote last week.

X, a platform owned by self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" Elon Musk, locked Harp's account and required him to delete the post on Countouriotis before he could regain access. Luna also referred Harp to the US Justice Department, urging it to "pursue criminal charges" against him.

Harp, an Iraq War veteran who authored a book exposing crimes committed by US Special Forces units, dismissed Luna's "doxxing" accusations and said the identities of military officers who "participated in this illegal and provocative act of war" against Venezuela are "the legitimate subject of journalistic scrutiny."

"I'm not the only one they're going after with these bogus 'doxxing' allegations," Harp wrote on X, "but they would have to radically restructure the fundamental architecture of US law to criminalize reporting the names of government officials involved in breaking news stories."

In their letter to House leaders on Tuesday, the press freedom coalition stressed that while "journalists have a right under the First Amendment to publish even classified information... none of the information published by Harp was classified."

Chip Gibbons, policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent, said in a statement that Luna attack on Harp "is clearly designed to chill and intimidate a journalist doing some of the most significant investigative reporting on US Special Forces."

"Her own statement makes clear that far from having a valid legislative purpose, she seeks to hold a journalist ‘accountable’ for what is essentially reporting she dislikes," said Gibbons. "This is a dangerous assault on press freedom, as well as the US people’s right to know. It is shameful it passed the committee."