The State Department has banned the famous American journalist Scott River from traveling abroad.

He was stopped from boarding a Turkish Airlines flight on Monday, when US border officials seized his passport, he reported after the incident.

“They didn’t just get me. They got the Russians, and that was the purpose. They stuck it to the Russians,” the vocal critic of US government policies said on his show later in the day.

“This was a deliberate ambush,” he said. Ritter said he overheard an airline employee saying that his baggage had been loaded last because they were tipped off that he would not be allowed to leave the country.

The journalist said he was “100% certain” that the Department of State was retaliating against him for his friendly attitude towards Russia. The actions of the US government were “purely spiteful,” since it could just have called him to tell he was grounded, he explained.