Three individuals identifying themselves as with the FBI showed up at the home of a Stillwater, Oklahoma woman regarding Facebook posts that she had posted that were allegedly critical of President Joe Biden.
Rolla Abdeljawad, a 43-year-old Muslim woman, had the following harrowing interaction with “speech police” regarding her Facebook posts.
Transcript follows below:
Homeowner: Can we just move in front of the house so the dogs don’t go crazy?
Speech Police: Sure we can. Yeah.
Homeowner: I need you to identify yourself and let me take imagery of your Ds.
Speech Police: I’m not going to show you my credentials on the phone.
Homeowner: So you said you were with the FBI?
Speech Police: That’s correct.
Homeowner: And why won’t you show me your credentials?
Speech Police: We did.
Homeowner:: I showed you my credentials. I didn’t take a look at them. I said one second, I’ll be right back. Are you going to show me your credentials or no?
Speech Police:: Yeah, we did already and we identified ourselves. So what we’d like to do is just…
Homeowner: I didn’t look at your credentials again. I didn’t verify them. I told you to wait and I went inside.
Speech Police: Okay. That’s correct. What we’d like to do is just have a conversation with you about some social media posts that you’ve made. Would you be willing to talk to us today?
Homeowner: About that? No, I would not. I would like you to later talk on with my lawyer.
Speech Police: Okay. Do you have identification cards? Do you have a card of something to your attorney that we can reach out to you?
Homeowner: No, no. I’ll get back to you.
Speech Police: Okay. Alright. Do you mind just having your attorney contact the FBI office? Oklahoma City?
Homeowner: What’s the number? What are the names of the agents?
Speech Police: I’ll Google it for you.
Homeowner:: So you’re freezing to identify yourselves?
Speech Police: No, we’ve already identified Myself
Homeowner: Again. I did not take a look.
Speech Police:: Okay. So the phone number for the FBI in Oklahoma City is 405-290-7770.
Homeowner: Okay.
Speech Police:: If you just call and give, name your contact with us and on behalf of
Support and tell him that Facebook flagged me for posts. Facebook gave us a couple screenshots of your accounts.
Homeowner: Okay. So we no longer live in a free country and we can’t say what we want.
Speech Police: No, we totally do. That’s why we’re not here to arrest you or anything like that.
Homeowner: Well, you can’t arrest me for freedom of speech. We live in America. Correct. Exactly. So it’s kind of weird that you want to come talk to me about me exercising my freedom of speech.
Speech Police: We do this every day, all day long. Talk to people. It’s just an effort to keep everybody safe, make sure that nobody has no ill will or intent or anything like that. And we’ve got no reason to believe necessarily that that’s you and that’s why we just wanted to have a conversation.
Homeowner: So do you have a conversation with everybody on the neighborhood?
Speech Police: Do you have information of anybody else in the neighborhood?
Homeowner: I mean, all I’ve done is exercise my right as an American citizen on a public social media platform with my personal opinions. Correct. Okay. Most of the individuals Right in America, especially older generation. Right. Have Facebook, are you questioning all the citizens in America?
Speech Police: We certainly would if we had any sort of concerns.
Homeowner: Okay. So you have concerns about my personal opinions.
Speech Police: If you don’t want to talk to us, then you can.
Homeowner: I’m definitely not going to have a talk with you. Well, thank
Speech Police: Well, thank you for your time this morning and feel free to reach out tp us.
Homeowner: Okay. They’re ‘so-called’ FBI. This is Rolla Abdeljawad in Stillwater, Oklahoma. This is America.
Rolla Abdeljawad’s Facebook page confirmed that she received the “FBI” visit.
“Just verified with local law enforcement that, the indivs who came to my home, really were FBI per their license plate,” she wrote on Facebook. “My lawyer will contact the OKC field office. The lawyer did inform me that, these instances are now common but, the lawyer doesn’t believe that FB sent them the screenshots of my posts. Rather, it seems like a fishing expedition.”
“I do not fear them,” she added. “My only concern as, I told the cop is that, someone in my state will do something or that they would and then then use my posts in a malicious attempt to ‘smear’ me. Just *remember, I am a Muslim, an obligated protector of creation. I enjoin what is good and forbid what is wrong.”
In her most recent Facebook posts, she expressed support for #FreePalestine and also expressed disappointment in Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his position on Israel and Palestine. The incident allegedly took place on March 19.
It is not clear what Facebook post triggered the visit from the speech police identifying themselves as with the FBI.
