{"id":30580,"date":"2026-06-04T19:03:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T19:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/30580\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T19:03:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T19:03:20","slug":"top-trump-official-slams-germany-again-over-verdict-for-man-who-called-merz-a-liar-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/30580\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Trump official slams Germany (again) over verdict for man who called Merz a liar \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Under a provision of Germany\u2019s criminal code \u2014 which designates it an offense to insult or belittle political figures \u2014 such investigations are not uncommon<\/a>, although most cases are dropped.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time<\/a> Rogers has weighed in on free speech in Germany. In February, she commented on another widely reported investigation involving a retiree who wrote \u201cPinocchio is coming\u201d under the very same Facebook post by Heilbronn police.<\/p>\n

According to German newspaper Tagesspiegel<\/a>, prosecutors checked 38 comments for possible insults but dropped many of the cases, including that of the retiree. For some of the other defendants, including one man who described Merz as \u201cLackaffe\u201d \u2014 a showboat \u2014 proceedings were closed after a required payment of \u20ac100.<\/p>\n

In her comments, Rogers argued the issue stretched beyond Germany\u2019s borders. \u201cThat argument would be cleaner if European courts had not repeatedly claimed the prerogative to censor the entire, worldwide internet,\u201d she wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is these issues of extraterritorial enforcement are still being worked out. We won\u2019t let foreign governments compromise our First Amendment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution does not exempt foreign citizens from punishment under their own countries\u2019 laws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Under a provision of Germany\u2019s criminal code \u2014 which designates it an offense to insult or belittle political…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1803,6759,393,5,2971,26690,29521,2296,29522,481],"class_list":["post-30580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-courts","tag-democracy","tag-friedrich-merz","tag-germany","tag-media-freedom","tag-platforms","tag-sarah-rogers","tag-social-media","tag-society-and-culture","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}