Pavel and Tucker, together again Telegram founder Durov returns for hour-long interview with Carlson to discuss France’s criminal charges
On Monday, June 9, Tucker Carlson shared his latest interview with Pavel Durov. The American pundit last spoke to the founder of the messaging platform Telegram in April 2024. About four months after that conversation, police in Paris arrested Durov. The charges included ignoring information requests from law enforcement agencies, complicity in the distribution of hacking programs and child pornography, and laundering illicit money. In his follow-up interview, Carlson questioned Durov about his case in France, “Europe’s mission to make privacy illegal,” and government surveillance. Meduza briefly summarizes the exchange.
Pavel Durov told Tucker Carlson that the French investigation into Telegram is ongoing and could continue for two more years if it proceeds to trial. Durov clarified that he’s no longer under arrest in Paris, though he does need permission from French officials to leave the country. Durov also said this has created obstacles to seeing his children, who live in Dubai, and his mother, whom he described as gravely ill.
Durov described his arrest in Paris as “very surprising,” arguing that Telegram “actually did nothing wrong.” He accused French police of ignoring “the process that should be followed for these requests to be processed,” claiming that prosecutors could have found Telegram’s correct contact information in “about six minutes” by searching the Internet for terms like “Telegram police contact” and “Telegram E.U. corporation.” “For some reason, they didn’t Google it,” Telegram’s founder said, insisting that Telegram never ignored a “legally binding request.”
Addressing claims that Telegram facilitates criminal activity, Durov said allegations of his complicity rely on “a very extensive interpretation of complicity even for the French legal and judicial system.” He told Carlson that Telegram’s lawyers are aware of French cases against much smaller messaging apps that are allegedly designed for criminal activity. Telegram doesn't belong in this category, Durov said. “It's pretty much obvious that Telegram is not such a company, right? It has a billion users — every eighth person on the planet is a regular user of Telegram. And it's incomprehensible to assume that all these people are criminals.” Arresting Telegram’s founder, said Durov, is “friendly fire” that damages France’s global image.
Carlson spent a significant portion of the interview asking Durov to describe his four days in jail after being arrested on August 24, 2024. Telegram’s founder said the French police confiscated his phone, but he’d barely used it except to test some Telegram features. “I didn’t have a SIM card in the phone,” he explained. “I don’t use a phone regularly. I probably own a phone, but I don’t use a phone. I don’t carry a phone with me because I find it extremely distracting. I find it also potentially harming my privacy.” On the subject of privacy, Durov recalled that his name appears in a list of more than 50,000 phone numbers entered into a system used for targeting by Pegasus, a sophisticated spyware product made by the Israeli company NSO Group.