Glenn Greenwald Resigns From The Intercept, Claims Biden Story ‘Suppression’

Glenn Greenwald, founder and editor of The Intercept website, gestures during a hearing at the Lower House's Human Rights Commission in Brasilia, Brazil, on June 25, 2019. Evaristo Sa/AFP via Getty Images

Journalist Glenn Greenwald announced that he’s leaving The Intercept, a publication he helped found, due to perceived censorship of an article regarding corruption allegations surrounding Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Greenwald posted a resignation letter on Twitter on Oct. 29, saying editors at the left-leaning publication refused to publish an article of his unless he deleted “all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.”

The journalist, who helped break news on classified NSA surveillance programs leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden about a decade ago, asserted that The Intercept’s decision and his choice to resign shows there is a trend of “repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles.”

The Intercept, in response, claimed Greenwald is presenting a false narrative.

“The narrative Glenn presents about his departure is teeming with distortions and inaccuracies — all of them designed to make him appear as a victim,” read the article. “It would take too long to point them all out here, but we intend to correct the record in time. For now, it is important to make clear that our goal in editing his work was to ensure that it would be accurate and fair. While he accuses us of political bias, it was he who was attempting to recycle the dubious claims of a political campaign — the Trump campaign — and launder them as journalism,” the article read.

Greenwald, in recent years, said he’s taken umbrage with mainstream outlets quashing alternative viewpoints on certain news stories, saying it’s created political conformity in the press.

“The censored article, based on recently revealed emails and witness testimony, raised critical questions about Biden’s conduct. Not content to simply prevent publication of this article at the media outlet I co-founded, these Intercept editors also demanded that I refrain from exercising a separate contractual right to publish this article with any other publication,” he wrote in a letter on Oct. 29.

Before President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, Greenwald’s reporting and commentary were influential among anti-war and civil liberties groups on the left. However, since the last election, he has drawn criticism for his appearances on Fox News.

“All this time, as things worsened, I reasoned that as long as The Intercept remained a place where my own right of journalistic independence was not being infringed, I could live with all of its other flaws,” Greenwald said in conclusion. “But now, not even that minimal but foundational right is being honored for my own journalism, suppressed by an increasingly authoritarian, fear-driven, repressive editorial team in New York bent on imposing their own ideological and partisan preferences on all writers, while ensuring that nothing is published at The Intercept that contradicts their own narrow, homogenous ideological and partisan views: exactly what The Intercept, more than any other goal, was created to prevent.”

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden participates in the final presidential debate against President Donald Trump at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., on Oct. 22, 2020. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Before his resignation, Greenwald also drew flak from mainstream commentators for his critical views about whether Russia interfered in the U.S. election in 2016.

Greenwald said that when he dismissed the reports that asserted Trump’s campaign colluded with Moscow—which was disproven during then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation—he was branded as a Trump supporter.

“These kinds of scandals get conflated into tribalistic and ideological litmus tests, so that you’re required to say that you’re on the side of the anti-Trump forces and believe things that you don’t actually believe are true upon pain of being accused of being a Trump supporter,”  he told The Hill in 2019 about the Russia investigation.

Over the past several weeks, since the New York Post published a report that cited alleged emails belonging to Joe Biden’s son Hunter, there has been scant coverage of the report by legacy news outlets. Biden also has fielded few questions about the allegations, although he stated during last week’s debate that he has “not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.”

On Oct. 27, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson interviewed former Hunter Biden associate Tony Bobulinski, who claimed that Joe Biden could be compromised by the Chinese Communist Party due to his brother James Biden and Hunter’s business dealings in the country.