Tag Archive for: FBICitizenAbuse

A ‘Spill’ of FBI Secrets

/in , , , /by
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

The FBI agent squirmed on the hot seat.

Confronted with messages the Justice Department attempted to conceal, Nicole Miller, one of the lead FBI investigators assigned to the Proud Boys case, was on the verge of admitting that the FBI monitored privileged communications between one defendant and his attorney in 2021.

“It appears so,” Miller responded when asked by defense attorney Nicholas Smith on March 8 to confirm she and another agent discussed the content of emails exchanged between Zachary Rehl, one of five Proud Boys currently on trial for seditious conspiracy, and his former lawyer.

Smith read aloud one of Miller’s texts: “I need to find other emails, but this one email definitely indicates that they want to go to trial, But don’t freak out, Jason and Luke.”

Smith turned to Miller. “Now, ‘Jason,’ you understand to be referring to the prosecutor in this case, Jason McCullough. Correct?”

But jurors never heard an answer. After prosecutors loudly objected, Judge Timothy Kelly abruptly dismissed the jury. He informed jurors that he wanted “to press pause, as we sometimes do when an objection hits,” and reconvene the morning of March 9.

But that didn’t happen either.

Instead, Kelly, outside the eyes and ears of the jury, held a hearing with both sides on March 9 to determine how to proceed after the defense team uncovered messages indicating FBI agents doctored internal reports, destroyed evidence, and tipped off prosecutors about defense strategy on the government’s highest-profile January 6 case.

Prior to her testimony, Miller had compiled a spreadsheet of so-called “Jencks” material that cataloged internal messages related to her work on the case. The spreadsheet contained 25 rows of messages—but roughly 12,000 rows were hidden behind a tab and found by the defense.

One message referenced editing a report on a confidential human source, commonly known as an informant: “You need to go into that report you just put and edit out that I was present,” one agent texted Miller. She complied.

Another agent told Miller an FBI supervisor instructed the unidentified agent to destroy “338 items of evidence.” To which Miller reacted, “OMG INSANE.”

In perhaps the most shocking revelations, Miller and another agent discussed emails between Rehl, who has been imprisoned under pretrial detention orders since March 2021, and his then-attorney, Jonathan Moseley. “Found an email thread with Rehl and his attorney, Moseley. The attorney raised some interesting points.”

“Hopefully all related to him pleading out,” Miller replied.

Another defense attorney later noted that “there appear to be missing FBI messages” in the same exchange.

Rather than express outrage at the fact that the FBI was spying on what is commonly considered privileged communications protected by the Constitution, Kelly instead gave prosecutors time to concoct a face-saving strategy—and that they did.

“It appears that the Jencks production to defense counsel may involve a spill of classified information,” assistant U.S. Attorney Joyelyn Ballatine told Judge Kelly. She added that the government needed to “claw back” the entire spreadsheet to review all the messages for allegedly “classified” material.

“[We] would ask them to return to us and confirm that they have deleted all copies of that spreadsheet from any electronic device or any hard drive that they have and then we would reproduce it to them,” Ballatine said. She further claimed that one agent in communications with Miller “works on a squad that does covert activity that is classified.”

Ballantine claimed the 338 items of destroyed evidence might “impact a classified equity,” Whatever that means.

Naturally, defense attorneys immediately objected to the government’s demand that incriminating materials be returned to the original source and, without any oversight or accountability, unilaterally decide which messages were classified and which were not.

“Everything has been a secret order where we can’t share any information,” Sabino Jauregui, the lawyer representing Enrique Tarrio, complained to Kelly. “Everything has been done under cover. And now, they come in here; they use this word ‘classified’ to try and delay the case. I think we should continue. I think Mr. Smith’s ‘gotcha’ moment yesterday was ruined, and he had every right to get that agent and destroy her on cross and, all of a sudden, the trial was stopped.”

Kelly, a longtime Justice Department employee who worked for years at the U.S. attorney’s D.C. office—the same office prosecuting every January 6 case—was unpersuaded by the defense argument and the totality of the evidence before him. “I think it makes sense for me to order the defense to do what the government’s asked,” Kelly concluded. The spreadsheet, which Ballantine later in the hearing described as a “classified document,” could not be reviewed, copied, or shared until further notice.

A flurry of motions followed. Defense attorneys filed motions to dismiss the case based on Sixth Amendment violations. The Justice Department informed the court on March 12 that 80 rows in the original spreadsheet had been removed after prosecutors determined the messages were “either classified or sensitive.” And the reference to a doctored FBI report? The government claimed the agent requesting the edit simply wanted to be removed from an email chain because he had been promoted and was no longer handling the informant. “The exchange concerns a routine clerical matter and does not suggest any wrongdoing on the part of the FBI generally or of Agent Miller personally,” prosecutors wrote.

Sure.

Oh, and the 338 items of destroyed evidence? Prosecutors insisted, without providing a scintilla of proof, that message referred to the routine “disposal” of evidence in a 20-year old case that had been closed. Always indignant, the Justice Department condemned the “potential for confusion and unfair prejudice here is obvious, given the inflammatory use defense counsel have already made of the ‘destroy evidence’ remark.”

But the government’s explanation as to why FBI agents were spying on email correspondence between a defendant and his attorney then apparently sharing that intelligence with prosecutors handling the case should alarm all Americans.

According to the Justice Department, individuals incarcerated at federal prisons—including defendants not convicted of any crime, as is the case with the Proud Boys, including Rehl, now on trial—are not entitled to protected communications with their lawyers. All emails and phone calls, the government explained, are conducted on a computer system operated by the Justice Department. Those in custody must agree to terms of use, including an acknowledgement that attorney-client discussions would be monitored. “Rehl waived any privilege by knowingly using [the Federal Detention Center]-Philadelphia’s monitored email system to communicate with his attorney.”

Prosecutors demanded that cross-examination of Agent Miller, which Kelly interrupted right before the line of questioning got juicy, be limited to “video, photographic, and message evidence from January 6, 2021, from midnight to shortly before 5:00 p.m.” Translation: Anything Miller discussed after January 6 should be off the table.

As expected, Kelly folded to nearly every government demand. He accepted at face value the explanation that the destroyed evidence pertained to an old criminal case and was not relevant to the Proud Boys’ trial. He also refused to take up arguments about violations of the defendants’ Sixth Amendment rights, declaring those discussions were not within the jury’s purview. And Kelly strictly limited cross examination about the edited report on the informant. If the government’s version of what happened related to the report is true, Kelly sniffed, the defense objections are “much ado about nothing.”

What Kelly must not realize is that the public does not view the dirty secrets accidentally “spilled” by an untrustworthy FBI and Justice Department as “nothing.” Kelly, and the Justice Department, can wave off due process rights, transparency, and the basic tenets of a fair trial. But as the American people come to terms with the phony narrative of January 6, they ultimately will hold shameless judges like Kelly and rogue federal officials, like Ballantine and Miller, responsible for the accelerating degradation of the U.S. justice system.

*****
This article was published by American Greatness and is reproduced with permission.

The FBI Targeted Patriotic Conservatives Exercising Their First Amendment Rights: ‘They’re All Bleeping Terrorists’

/in , , , /by
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Antifa? Black Lives Matter? Come on, man! You’ll find it comforting to know that the FBI has been busy tracking the real terrorists that threaten the safety of every decent, law-abiding American today: people who traveled to Washington for Trump’s rally against election fraud on Jan. 6, 2021, and Americans who dare to oppose the relentless sacrifices to Moloch that are the cornerstone of the Democrat Party’s program. The FBI has become so thoroughly corrupt and politicized that its agents apparently have no problem serving as attack dogs for the Left’s sinister agenda.

Just The News reported Saturday that the feds have “politicized cases regarding Jan. 6 defendants and pro-lifers while retaliating against internal whistleblowers” as some of those same whistleblowers testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. And Fox News reported Thursday that according to another whistleblower, “the FBI created a threat tag following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year, but it later ‘shifted’ to focus on pro-life individuals,” as if they were the real threat.

George Hill, a retired supervisory intelligence analyst in the FBI’s Boston field office, testified that “the Washington Field Office pressured other field offices to investigate citizens for activities protected by the First Amendment.” The Washington feds wanted the Boston office “to open cases on, first, seven individuals who came up in a sweep of bank records served up by the Bank of America, and then a larger group of 140 Americans guilty of nothing more than riding buses to D.C. to attend former President Trump’s Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6, 2021.” Nor was this pressure singular: “Washington, Hill believes, applied similar pressure on the Philadelphia Field Office.”

Hill testified that on a nationwide call with all 56 FBI field offices, Steve Jensen, who was at that time the chief of the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Operations Center Section, asked the Philadelphia feds about their investigations of three individuals. “The Philadelphia office said the individuals had posted on social media about being pro-Second Amendment and anti-abortion, but that it didn’t mean they were ‘insurrectionists seeking to overturn our democracy,’ Hill recalled.” This cut no ice with Jensen, who shot back: “I don’t give a blank, they’re all bleeping terrorists, and we’re going to round them up.”

When the feds did round them up, they did so in the most brutal manner possible. Former FBI SWAT team member Steve Friend testified “that after raising concerns about using a SWAT team to arrest a subject of the Jan. 6 investigation, he was ordered off the job for a day. Friend explained that the Jan. 6 subject was cooperating with the FBI and willing to surrender voluntarily, so he was concerned that the bureau wasn’t using the least intrusive methods possible to arrest them.” Clearly the feds were not interested in being non-intrusive. They wanted to send a message, and they did with the arrests of pro-life activist Mark Houck.

Meanwhile, another FBI whistleblower, Garret O’Boyle, was suspended after he testified to Congress about the feds’ politicization. He explained: “I thought the FBI was being weaponized against agents or anybody who wanted to step forward and talk about malfeasance inside the agency prior to this. But now, after what has happened to me, I don’t think I can ever be convinced that it’s anything different than that.”

O’Boyle “testified that following the Supreme Court’s​​​​​​ decision to return abortion to the states in​ Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the FBI prioritized possible threats against the justices from pro-lifers, focusing on ‘pro-life adherence.’” O’Boyle recounted: “Why are you focusing on pro-life people? It’s prochoice people who are the ones protesting or otherwise threatening violence in front of Supreme Court Justices’ houses.” But the FBI even wanted pregnancy centers investigated. O’Boyle remarked: “Why would we go and talk to these people about threats when, if somebody is going to be getting threatened, it would be them?”…..

*****

Continue reading this article at PJ Media.

Read more…

Biden’s ‘Cooperation’ With The FBI Is Meaningless And Misleading

/in , , , /by
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

The media want you to believe that Biden’s mishandling of classified documents is acceptable because he’s ‘cooperating’ with the investigation — but it’s a transparently dishonest argument.

 

It’s hard to read the news and not keep coming to the conclusion that the media think you’re stupid.

Case in point: On Wednesday, it was reported that the FBI was at President Biden’s home in Rehoboth, Delaware, once again scouring the place as part of its investigation into Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. It is at least the third time the FBI has searched Biden’s effects as part of the investigation, and one of those searches was done so discreetly it wasn’t public knowledge until months after the fact.

In addition to his home, classified documents were also found at the Penn-Biden center, the president’s Chinese-funded think tank. The Justice Department has also graciously trusted Biden’s personal attorneys — who did not have security clearances — to sift through his papers and identify any potentially incriminating documents without DOJ supervision.

These searches of Biden’s home and private papers came just a few months after the FBI raided former President Donald Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago for the identical crime of mishandling classified documents. The Biden situation is arguably worse since he allegedly retained classified documents from his Senate tenure, which doesn’t have any declassification authority that comes with the presidency. But now after weeks of breathless speculation about how the Justice Department prosecution could be used to keep Trump from running for president again, the media are at pains to explain why Trump’s crimes are somehow worse than Biden’s.

And so the media haven’t coalesced so much as collapsed around a central narrative: Biden’s violations of the law are somehow excused because he’s fully cooperating with the FBI investigation. As Exhibit A, here’s The New York Times write-up on the latest FBI search of Biden’s home:

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. is conducting a search of President Biden’s vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., the president’s personal lawyer said on Wednesday morning, as investigators continue looking into his possession of classified documents.

The search, like at least two others conducted at locations associated with Mr. Biden, was undertaken with the cooperation of the president and his legal team. It was not clear whether any documents were recovered at the beach house.

“Today, with the president’s full support and cooperation, the D.O.J. is conducting a planned search of his home in Rehoboth, Del.,” Bob Bauer, Mr. Biden’s personal lawyer, said in statement.“Under D.O.J.’s standard procedures, in the interests of operational security and integrity, it sought to do this work without advance public notice, and we agreed to cooperate.”

So yes, they are downplaying that a sitting president is at the center of a months-long FBI investigation. This mere fact was routinely cited as disqualifying when Trump was president, regardless of how meritless the FBI’s Russia-collusion investigation proved to be. But you almost have to admire the chutzpah of framing the entire story around Biden’s exculpatory excuses, replete with a generous quote from Biden’s lawyer explaining as much.

Do note the sophistry of declaring that this was all done “under D.O.J.’s standard procedures” as if the FBI repeatedly, albeit reluctantly, digging through a sitting president’s house for evidence of crimes is just another day at the office.

Then there’s the declaration that “it sought to do this work without advance public notice, and we agreed to cooperate.” There’s a big difference between “without advance public notice” and being given no notice at all when armed federal agents show up over the same crime and start going through your wife’s underwear drawer. Similarly, you can detect a subtle difference between the way The New York Times runs ostensible press releases from Biden’s lawyer in the third paragraph, versus media outlets running with grossly misleading and possibly illegal leaks from the feds about what they found in their surprise raid of Trump.

Prior to Mar-a-Lago being raided, Trump’s attorneys had been communicating with the DOJ about their concerns that Trump might be illegally retaining classified documents. Were Trump and his legal team uncooperative? If Biden is allegedly cooperating more than Trump in parallel investigations of mishandling classified documents, how would we know? “Cooperation” in this context appears to be solely defined by Biden’s mouthpieces: a largely unaccountable federal agency that previously investigated Trump on demonstrably false charges and the credulous media.

Suffice to say, if you’re not a sitting Democratic president, don’t expect such deference — cooperation with the feds often doesn’t end well for ordinary citizens seeking justice. Earlier this week, pro-life activist Mark Houck was acquitted in one hour by a jury after being prosecuted for violating an obscure federal law — one with troubling First Amendment implications — that makes it a crime to “injure, intimidate or interfere with anyone providing abortion services.” Houck frequently protested in front of abortion facilities, as is his constitutional right, and got involved in a physical altercation with a volunteer Planned Parenthood escort.

Rather than blocking access to the facility, however, Houck says the altercation occurred because the volunteer was harassing his young son. Local authorities in Philadelphia declined to charge Houck with assault. Eventually, Planned Parenthood officials admitted the volunteer Houck said was going after his son had been spoken to “numerous times” about violating their “non-engagement policy.” A federal judge eventually said the application of federal law appeared “to be stretched a little thin here.”

Anyway, after being strung up on federal charges, a handful of Republican senators looked into the egregious prosecution of Houck. It’s quite clear that he did everything he reasonably could to cooperate with the federal investigation, in spite of the fact that the charges against him were vindictive and baseless from the start. And this is what that cooperation got him:

Mr. Houck retained an attorney, Matt Heffron, who is a former federal prosecutor. Mr. Heffron informed the committee that he communicated to Assistant U.S. Attorney Anita Eve twice via phone and left voice messages after she didn’t pick up. After not receiving a return call, Mr. Heffron emailed Ms. Eve to note that he left voice messages on May 21, 2022, and June 7, 2022, and said in his email that if the Department intended to indict Mr. Houck, he would receive the summons on Mr. Houck’s behalf and that he would appear voluntarily. According to Mr. Heffron, Ms. Eve did not respond. Mr. Heffron made clear to the committee that he and Mr. Houck were cooperative with the Justice Department; however, in return the Justice Department failed to communicate with them.

Given their cooperation with federal law enforcement, the family did not expect to be awakened at 7 a.m. with reportedly over 20 FBI agents surrounding their home wearing armor plated tactical vests, ballistic helmets and holding ballistic shields and long guns.

Mrs. Houck reportedly stated that “[t]hey said they were going to break in if [my husband] didn’t open [the door]. And then they had about five guns pointed at my husband, myself, and basically at my kids.” Based on allegations, when Mr. Houck opened the door he was handcuffed and arrested. Mr. Houck allegedly asked his wife for his rosary and a sweatshirt before being transported to jail.

The Justice Department does not care about “cooperation” — if it wants to prosecute you, it is going to prosecute you. Anyone who thinks it’s meaningful that Biden is said to be cooperating with the investigation into him is either knowingly making excuses or willfully blind to just how political the Justice Department has become.

*****
This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

The FBI Must Be Disbanded

/in , , , /by
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

It is not often this column takes a position that is at least semi-quixotic, but sometimes one must take a stand and hope that some others join the cause. The FBI is so out of control and counter to its real mission that a new agency needs to be formed with new leaders, new personnel, and a revised mission.

The FBI is akin to a federal police force, meaning a group of detectives enforce federal laws while working in conjunction with municipal and state law enforcement, particularly where criminal activities cross state borders.

Recently the agency’s mission has significantly changed.

9/11 was the catalyst for the organization’s change. Robert Mueller took over as FBI director on September 4, 2001. To state the obvious, the events soon after were a startling beginning to his career (as the agency’s sixth director).

As he stated in his presentation to a House subcommittee on September 14, 2006, “After the September 11 attacks on America, the FBI priorities shifted dramatically. Our top priority became the prevention of another terrorist attack. Today, our top three priorities—counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and cyber security—are all national security related. To that end, we have made a number of changes in the Bureau, both in structure and in the way we do business. We have recently announced the realignment of our organizational structure to create five branches: National Security, Criminal Investigations, Science and Technology, the Office of the Chief Information Officer, and Human Resources.”

What we did not need was another CIA-like operation as there are sixteen of them already. What we do need from the FBI is to focus on the basics of law enforcement.

The problem came to the forefront during the directorship of Mueller’s successor, James Comey. He became infamous not for taking on Donald Trump, with whom he went to war, but for his opponent in the presidential election, Hillary Clinton. He held a news conference telling America about the problems with her elicit computer system which was outside the bounds of her appointed governmental position and should never have existed.

After telling us of her misdeeds, he did not turn the case over to the Justice Department. Instead, he made the stunning statement, “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” As a cop he now became a prosecutor and kneecapped any attempt by the DOJ to evaluate the strength of any case and whether it should be brought.

Matters have since escalated since due to the war with Trump and the various high-level FBI employees like Peter Strzok and his paramour, Lisa Page, working to undermine President Trump and others through their political agendas.

You have to wonder why the FBI offered $1 million of our money to Christopher Steele “to prove his explosive claims” in what has become known as the Steele Dossier. Of course, he was never able to validate the dossier and did not get the money. The FBI thereafter used the disproved dossier disinformation to request warrants from the FISA court.

Then there is the amazing case of the Hunter Biden laptop. They seized the laptop from the owner of a computer repair shop where it was abandoned. They sat on it for almost a year until the owner turned a copy of the laptop hard drive over to Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani then provided a copy of the hard drive’s contents to the oldest newspaper in America, The New York Post.

That is when the world (at least the part of the world interested in finding out the truth about what is on the computer) met Tony Bobulinski. He is the only real businessman involved in the Biden business dealings. He validated the authenticity of what was on the laptop with his own copies of emails in which he was included. Yet in further evidence of the politicization of the FBI, they met with him once and never followed up. They did not want to know what he knew because that would validate the very questionable behavior of the family Biden and help his opponent.

This was not a last-minute dirty trick because it was not a dirty trick at all. Since they had this laptop in 2019, they could have easily brought forth the information early in the election cycle and not been seen as partisan. Instead, they hid it and thus suppressed the truth.

The Twitter Files have provided an entirely new twist as we have learned that the FBI corralled Twitter from the inside. We have come to find out that James Baker — who gave an FBI hall pass to Michael Sussman (Hillary’s campaign lawyer in 2016) — was now in a pivotal position at Twitter. He and his cluster of former FBI agents were behind killing the laptop story in coordination with current members of the FBI. Along with other acts of suppression of Twitter members, it is now clear there were violations of the First Amendment. The current FBI has lied about why they paid Twitter $3.5 million of our money to silence voices on the platform.

If the FBI were not slanted, then what is the explanation for the disparate treatment of pro-life vs. pro-choice individuals? Person after person who peacefully protested at abortion clinics is having their homes raided months later by a team of heavily armed FBI agents. While since the Dobbs ruling overturned Roe v Wade there have been 230 attacks on churches and pregnancy centers and not one person has been arrested. Recently, the FBI offered a $25,000 reward for information on these cases. Then they finally charged two people. This seems like a mirage to appear as if they are actually interested in pursuing these cases. I blind man can see there is something wrong here.

We keep hearing about the fact that agents in the field are really good people; it is just the folks running the operation in Washington who are the “bad apples.” How could the field agents not have been affected by the attitudes and positions taken by the FBI leadership? If they are such fine people, why have none publicly resigned? The only ones we now know who left are the ones who went to Twitter to create a cabal to suppress free speech.

The current director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, has been an unmitigated disaster. Trump appointed him to clean up the operation and he has done nothing. Under his regime errant agents were not fired, the Hunter Biden laptop story was buried, and the manipulation of social media occurred. The protection of the organization was paramount instead of the protection of the Constitution.

In the recent boondoggle, omni-bust us bill, $400 million was allocated for new FBI headquarters. This is a perfect time for a clean break. Start a new agency with a clear agenda that takes the organization back to its roots, focusing the efforts on law enforcement and the protection of constitutional norms.

Trash this deeply misguided, dangerously out-of-control organization.

*****

This article first appeared in FlashReport and is reproduced with permission from the author.

The Bigger the Government The Smaller the Democracy

/in , , , , /by
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

Dennis Prager is always a source of wisdom. One of his more pithy axioms is “the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.” We would like to add a corollary. The bigger the government the smaller the space in which democracy can function.

During much of this year, we have been bombarded by Democrats about the “threat to Democracy” or “the end of Democracy” in America.

Usually, this is in the context of criticizing anyone who questions the veracity of election results or procedures, or the January 6th incursion into the US Capitol building. We only wish their concern extended beyond these narrow topics.  We think they are missing the broader crisis.

We would like to take a view from 20,000 feet. We will purposely avoid the definitional debate about a democracy versus a republic.  Our concern here is the degree to which voters can determine their own fate either directly or through their elected representatives. 

People are free when most aspects of their life and under their control, subject to their judgment, facing the consequences of their decisions based on their circumstances and their life philosophy. Democracy is really the freedom to choose, especially the freedom to choose who runs the government.

So, our working definition of democracy is the freedom to choose on the maximum level possible the terms of one’s own life, and the freedom to choose one’s government through voting.

By our definition, a country is more democratic if both individuals and their representatives largely control policy in the country. We say this recognizing our republic has a Constitution that stipulates “Congress shall make no law”, whether the majority wants it or not. There are limits to what democratic processes can do in our system.

Thus, we are a constitutional republic.

But within the confines of what voters can do, there seems to be ever-diminishing space for actual decision-making. 

Moreover, we supposedly operate in a system where the just powers of government come from the consent of those governed. However, that consent is now increasingly subject to a flawed election system.

The more actual power that voters have to decide who governs is in fact a fair measure of the degree of democracy in any given nation. If democracy is regarded as good, then most things should be controlled by “we the people” as long as they don’t violate the rights of others.

Let’s look at the budget decisions made by the US Congress. Government cannot function without money and the appropriation of funds is a key power of the House of Representatives.

It is estimated that about 85% of the current budget is in fact on “automatic pilot”. Previous decisions have erected a vast array of welfare state, pension, and medical benefits. People qualify for these benefits often just because of reaching a triggering age or income level, and thus Congress has little to say in actuality on budget matters. The partisan battles that you see are over a diminishing 15% slice of the total budget?

Is that really democratic?

We would contend it is not.  If elected representatives don’t even vote on most of the budget, how much control indirectly do citizens actually have on the process? Not much. Who has power, in reality, is the automatic pilot flying the budget, not a pilot elected by the passengers.

Younger voters never got to say how their tax dollars are being spent thus in the vast majority of programs. Two or three previous generations made the decision for them. The opinions and consent of more recent generations were never part of the process. How “democratic” is that? Does one generation have the right to impoverish another generation? Are these major budgetary items forever off limits to democratic scrutiny?

But digging a bit deeper, even the sliver of 15% we get to fight over is conducted in a way that is very undemocratic. We see it operating right now before our eyes. So-called omnibus legislation, where everything is lumped together in one giant “take it or leave it” proposition. Either voting for a lot of wasteful special interest spending or “we will close down the government” are the parameters under which the decisions will really be made. That really narrows the range of choices of our “elected representatives.”

Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs has noted the recent McConnell pact with Democrats effectively removed the leverage the House of Representatives had to investigate the abuses of both the FBI and the Department of Justice. In fact, the omnibus bill gave them both huge raises, a reward for bad behavior.

Under the current system, Congressional budgetary votes are largely symbolic. Symbolic of a system that is not democratic.

In fact, the legislation is usually introduced at one in the morning and voted on at five in the morning without anyone really having a chance even to read the legislation. The real job of legislating is actually done in secret by special interest lobbyists and party leadership.  

Thus, we have no control whatsoever over 85% of the budget, and barely any control over the remaining 15%. 

If democracy is “we the people” having much to say about what happens, then our present system cannot be regarded as very democratic, can it?

Moreover, a vast portion of our lives is determined by unelected bureaucrats that run the fourth branch of government, the regulatory agencies within the ‘administrative state’ and under the control of the Executive branch. These agencies exercise legislative, executive, and judicial functions, all without the proper division of power. We have little if anything to say about what they will order us to do.

With so much of our lives ruled by the permanent bureaucracy, it is difficult to describe this as a democracy in action. And as previously noted, with hardly any control of the budget, Congress has little power to reign in the bureaucracy.

Therefore, regulatory agencies exercise powers without the consent of the governed.

This unelected bureaucracy now extends to international organizations to which no one is elected.  We are speaking about organizations like the United Nations with their global warming agenda. This may determine our standard of living, the reliability of our electrical grid, our competitive position in the world, even the choice we have of automobiles.

The same can be said for the World Economic Forum. When is the last time you voted for Klaus Schwab or Bill Gates to lord over you or the planet?

This is a huge exercise of power over us, and we have no democratic influence on them at all.

Finally, as to the “democratic process” by which we do get to elect our representatives, the last few years have been revelatory.

Democrats pay for bogus opposition research, which is then turned into two impeachment proceedings and multiple legal actions. The FBI helps finance this bogus research and keeps an office with the law firm representing the Democrats. The FBI further lies to the FISA courts and illegally spies on a Republican campaign and a Republican administration. They even spy on Congressman Nunes and his staff, looking into their ‘abuses’!

After years of telling us Russia was interfering in our elections we find it is our own government, largely the unelected part of that government that interferes in our elections.

Lawyers who hatch these schemes get hired by social media companies, which then use their power to suppress information and influence election outcomes. The FBI actually pays millions of dollars to social media firms and employs over 80 agents to stifle our right to free speech. Even the CIA gets into the act of influencing social media.

Hundreds of former employees of our intelligence agencies get hired by social media companies, who then get subsidized by those same agencies and follow government orders. While technically  Congress “makes no law abridging the freedom of speech”, the government outsourced the violations to “private” companies, that live and die by the regulatory relationship they have with the government.

This is just one step shy of state-owned and controlled media companies.

Do you get to vote on policy for these private media partners in government?

Private companies and the government blend together under the fascist ideal and work together impervious to democratic input. Our present system would make Benito Mussolini proud.

The election process by which we choose our representative is then rigged by Federal agencies which use our own tax dollars to suppress our own democratic choices.

If our representatives actually survive that process, they don’t get to vote on much that is relevant, and that which they do get to vote on, they are not allowed to read and have little choice but to follow party leadership in giant omnibus legislation.

Meanwhile, most of our lives are determined day to day by rules and regulations written and enforced by people we neither vote for nor can fire.

No wonder there is a populist backlash building.  People feel the government is no longer listening to them because they aren’t.

The citizen is getting smaller and smaller, and the control of government is now largely out of the control of our elected representatives.

 

 

FBI, Justice Department Twist Federal Law to Arrest, Charge Pro-Life Activist

/in , , , , /by
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

In an early morning raid Friday in Kintnersville, Pennsylvania, about two dozen FBI agents with weapons drawn pounded on the door of Mark Houck’s home, where he lives with his wife and seven children.

The FBI agents arrested Houck based on a federal indictment. Sounds serious, right? Is Houck a domestic terrorist, an American jihadist, a dangerous militia member, a violent felon, or someone with a prior history of violence toward law enforcement who would require such an overwhelming show of force?

Not even close.

Houck is a pro-life activist and president of The King’s Men, a Catholic ministry. He has no prior criminal record. He was arrested Friday morning for an alleged violation of the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, known as the FACE Act.

Again, sounds potentially serious. But given the Obama-Biden administration’s prior abuse of the FACE Act, as well as what we know already about the facts, we have serious reasons to doubt that this is a legitimate case and prudent use of federal law enforcement resources. More likely, it is a politically motivated abuse of federal law by both the FBI and the Justice Department. 

It is not a coincidence, we suspect, that this takedown of someone who, at best, committed a misdemeanor assault came almost exactly three months after the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overruled Roe v. Wade and abortion on demand in America. The FBI’s raid of Houck’s home was designed to send a warning to pro-life activists engaging in activities protected by the First Amendment.

The FACE Act (18 U.S.C. § 248) forbids physically obstructing, injuring, intimidating, or interfering with anyone “obtaining or providing reproductive health services.” But Congress specified that the FACE Act doesn’t “prohibit any expressive conduct (including peaceful picketing or other peaceful demonstration) protected from legal prohibitions by the First Amendment to the Constitution,” including the “free speech or free exercise clauses,” occurring “outside a facility.”  

Houck apparently would regularly drive two hours from his home to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Philadelphia to pray and speak outside the facility, often taking his 12-year-old son with him.

The federal indictment claims that almost a year ago, Houck “verbally confronted” and “shoved” an escort for an abortion patient “to the ground” and “intentionally injured, intimidated and interfered” with the escort.

What the indictment fails to mention, say Houck’s wife and a family spokesman, is that on multiple occasions this pro-abortion escort said “crude … inappropriate and disgusting things” to the Houcks’ son, such as “your dad’s a fag” and other vulgar slurs.

Houck kept telling the escort to stop harassing his son, they say, but the escort refused to stop and when the foul-mouthed vulgarian got too close to his son, Houck protected him by shoving the escort away.

The escort fell down, but, according to Houck’s family, the only injury he suffered required “a Band-Aid on his finger.”

The incident occurred Oct. 21, 2021. The assault claim against Houck is so weak that not only did Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Soros-backed rogue prosecutor, refuse to file any misdemeanor charges against Houck, but, the family says, a civil lawsuit filed by the escort was thrown out of court.

Now, almost a year later, the FBI shows up at Houck’s home in force and the Justice Department charges him with two felonies for an injury that required a Band-Aid. His conviction could result, according to the Justice Department, in a maximum penalty of “11 years in prison, three years of supervised release and fines of up to $350,000.”

No doubt, Houck’s defense attorney will explore any and all defenses, starting with whether the man shoved by Houck even falls within the “obtaining or providing” requirement of the federal statute. It also may be a clear case of self-defense, since Houck apparently was defending his 12-year-old son from an adult who was harassing and intimidating a minor.

The fact is that the Justice Department, under Democratic administrations, has a history of misusing the FACE Act to go after abortion opponents.

In 2012, for example, a federal judge in Florida tossed out a FACE Act indictment against Mary Susan Pine, a  pro-life activist who had been conducting peaceful sidewalk counseling outside an abortion clinic for many years. The judge excoriated the Justice Department for the behavior of its lawyers, saying that the indictment seemed to be the “product of a concerted effort between the government and the [abortion clinic] … to quell Ms. Pine’s activities” rather than to enforce the statute.

The timing of this indictment of Houck also is suspect and calls into question the motive behind the Justice Department’s move. If this situation played out the way the Justice Department claims, even viewed in the light most favorable to the government this was, at best, two minor incidents of misdemeanor assault.

It’s significant that local authorities, including the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, decided not to file charges against Houck. It means that, for whatever reason, they didn’t even think Houck’s conduct warranted a misdemeanor assault charge, much less the two felony charges that he now faces.

Most likely, the local authorities didn’t file charges because, upon examining the facts, it was, at best, a case of “mutual combat” in which two adults got out of hand and ended up in a minor scuffle. In such cases, typically neither party is charged, and the case goes away. 

If this was such an important violation of the FACE Act, what took the Justice Department 337 days to indict Houck? This is the simplest of simple, factual cases. Houck either pushed the escort twice, unprovoked, or he didn’t.

Perhaps the more important number is 91. That’s how many days elapsed between the day the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs and Houck’s indictment. Or maybe it’s 49—the number of days between Houck’s indictment and the mid-term elections.

And why did the Justice Department decide to send armed FBI agents to Houck’s house in a show of force? Houck has no criminal record, is a man of faith, and is the father of seven children. He is no threat whatsoever.

Contrast this prosecution with the fact that vandals physically have attacked and damaged roughly 70 pro-life pregnancy centers, which also are protected under the FACE Act’s definition of a facility that “provides reproductive health services.”

So why hasn’t the Justice Department filed a single FACE Act indictment against anyone for those crimes?

Clearly, the leadership of the FBI and the Justice Department should be asked these and other important questions surrounding this case, as well as their lack of action against real threats.

*****

This article was published by Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

The FBI Has Not Earned the Benefit Of The Doubt

/in , , , /by
Estimated Reading Time: 17 minutes

A look at the FBI’s last six years shows a pattern of irredeemable corruption.

 

Can the FBI be trusted? A Federalist analysis of agency lies over the last decade is an unequivocal no.

FISA Warrants

In the summer of 2016, FBI bureaucrats launched a deep-state operation, known as Crossfire Hurricane, to thwart then-candidate Trump’s presidential ambitions. It began by targeting Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos and quickly branched out as bureaucrats expanded their surveillance. The spy agency used the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as a legal pretext to investigate and spy on Papadopoulos, in addition to former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, and former Trump adviser Carter Page. Several were interviewed by undercover FBI informant Stefan Halper, whose own investigation would prove a bust.

According to a declassified transcript between Papadopoulos and a Crossfire Hurricane confidential human source (CHS), Papadopoulos repeatedly denied the Trump campaign was working with Russian-backed entities to capture the 2016 election. The FBI, however, wrote off Papadopoulos’s recorded answers as rehearsed and omitted his denials of campaign collusion with overseas actors in FISA court warrant applications and renewals. These were two of the 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” identified in the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general’s blockbuster report on the investigation in December 2019.

Papadopoulos, who pled guilty to making a false statement to the FBI in a perjury trap, was far from the only individual to face political persecution from the federal government’s dystopian investigation.

Not one of the four FISA warrants obtained by the FBI was legally justified, according to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report. In fact, at least two of the warrant applications to spy on Page were declared illegal by a federal judge. Following Horowitz’s blistering report outlining FBI misconduct throughout the entire operation, another federal judge declared that agency malfeasance “calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.”

Subsequent reporting revealed gross abuses of power within the FBI to prosecute political opponents. According to Horowitz, the FBI’s FISA warrants “relied entirely” on DNC-funded opposition research compiled by former British intelligence official Christopher Steele known as the “Steele dossier.” The dossier, which outlined supposed Trump-Russia collusion and has since been thoroughly debunked, included salacious allegations such as supposed “pee tapes” featuring Trump engaging in golden showers with Russian prostitutes at a Moscow hotel.

The FBI knew the dossier lacked credibility as early as January 2017 and knew Steele’s material itself contained Russian disinformation. Desperate to continue their deep-state operation, however, officials lied to the FISA court about Steele’s credibility and hid incriminating info related to the former British intelligence official who was later fired over leaks to the press. An 18th omission, overlooked by the inspector general’s report but documented by Federalist Senior Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland, was that Steele’s sources did not include the ones he developed as a British official.

Even after Steele’s termination as a reliable source, DOJ attorney Bruce Ohr continued to feed information from Steele to the FBI over the course of its investigation. Steele met with Ohr 12 times after the former’s tenure ended as a confidential human source for the bureau, according to the inspector general. Ohr also promoted his wife’s opposition research to FBI investigators and did not disclose she was paid by Fusion GPS, the DNC-contracted firm that commissioned the Steele dossier.

The FBI never told the FISA court that the Trump dossier written by a source who was fired for lying, did not undergo independent verification, and was funded by Hillary Clinton and the DNC.

Despite the overt abuse of the nation’s surveillance apparatus to spy on political opponents, only one FBI official has faced criminal conviction for his role in the probe. In January last year, former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith was sentenced to just 12 months probation after pleading guilty to fabricating evidence to obtain a FISA warrant. By December, Clinesmith was re-admitted to the D.C. Bar Association in good standing.

Steele’s primary sub-source, Igor Danchenko, was indicted in November on five counts of making false statements to the FBI. In May, a D.C. jury acquitted former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann on charges of lying to the FBI when submitting supposed evidence of Trump-Russian collusion to federal investigators.

Misleading Congress

Following the collapse of the grand Russia-collusion hoax, lawmakers on Capitol Hill began demanding answers about FBI misconduct. Former FBI Director James Comey lied to Congress, claiming the bureau was just investigating four individuals, not the Trump campaign, in a dubious spin.

“Late July of 2016, the FBI did, in fact, open a counterintelligence investigation into, is it fair to say the Trump campaign or Donald Trump himself?” asked then-Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., in a 2018 hearing.

“It’s not fair to say either of those things, in my recollection,” Comey said. “We opened investigations on four Americans to see if there was any connection between those four Americans and the Russian interference efforts. And those four Americans did not include the candidate.”

Horowitz also contradicted the FBI in a December 2019 hearing on the release of his report documenting FISA abuses. In September 2017, the FBI told Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that the bureau gave the Trump campaign a defensive briefing about Russian interference in the 2016 race.

“In August of 2016 the FBI provided a counterintelligence defensive briefing to then-candidate Donald Trump and other senior campaign officials,” wrote FBI Assistant Director of Congressional Affairs Gregory Brower in response to a letter from Grassley. “This defensive briefing was conducted by an experienced FBI counterintelligence agent and focused on the broad range of threats posed by foreign intelligence entities.”

Horowitz testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that there was no briefing given.

Misleading DOJ Leaders

Not only was Congress led astray as FBI officials conducted a rogue operation to defend the incumbent regime, but so was senior leadership in President Trump’s DOJ.

Handwritten notes revealed in the Sussmann trial exposed how FBI agents sought to cover up malicious misconduct, wherein DOJ leaders tasked with FBI oversight were misled about the investigation’s progress. The notes show FBI agent Peter Strzok wrongly told DOJ supervisors the surveillance warrant on Page had been “fruitful.” Strzok also concealed knowledge that Steele’s sources were not credible and claimed instead that the dossier was “CROWN reporting” from MI6, the CIA’s British counterpart. The FBI said the dossier was being used to examine the RNC and Trump campaign’s effort to soften the GOP platform on NATO and Crimea for Russian energy stocks, but the document made no mention of NATO or Crimea.

Strzok also said Trump’s 2016 joke about Russia uncovering Clinton’s 30,000 deleted emails triggered Crossfire Hurricane, with an Australian diplomat tipping off the government about Papadopoulos at the American embassy in London. The tip that Papdopoulos was coordinating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, however, came before Trump made the joke.

Strzok is the same agent whose text messages show he conspired with his mistress and FBI colleague, attorney Lisa Page. Strzok, a lead investigator for Crossfire Hurricane, assured Page of a mysterious “insurance policy” in place if Trump were to be elected, likely in reference to the agency’s inside operations. Page, according to the DOJ inspector general’s 2019 report, told colleagues to go easy on investigating Clinton because “she might be our next president.”

When Page fretted that Trump might actually win the 2016 contest, Strzok assured his romantic partner, “we’ll stop it.”

Misleading Trump

Comey thought the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was important enough to brief outgoing President Barack Obama on the probe but kept Trump in the dark. In fact, Comey later confirmed that he told Trump three times the president was not being investigated and refused to tell him Clinton funded the dossier.

Michael Flynn

In June 2020, a federal judge ordered that all charges be dropped against Flynn, whom Trump subsequently pardoned in the waning days of his administration. Prior to his exoneration, Flynn was facing heavy fines and prison time for making false statements to federal officials in another perjury trap orchestrated by Comey, who bragged about the setup in the first week of the Trump White House.

According to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Flynn lied to a pair of FBI agents about conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak as the incoming national security adviser. Flynn, prosecutors claimed, spoke with Kislyak about financial sanctions against Russian individuals after the 2016 election and then lied about it during an interview with Comey’s agents. Sending a pair of agents to question a senior White House official in the Situation Room, Comey said at a 2018 conference, was “something I probably wouldn’t have done or even gotten away with in a more organized investigation, a more organized administration.”

“We placed a call to Flynn and said, ‘Hey, we’re sending a couple guys over, hope you’ll talk to them.’ He said ‘sure,’” Comey explained at the 92nd Street Y conference. “Nobody else was there, they interviewed him in a conference room at the White House situation room, and he lied to them.”

Flynn initially pled guilty to making false statements to the FBI before firing his attorneys and hiring new representation to withdraw his guilty plea. His reversal followed the release of declassified transcripts, which revealed Flynn never spoke with Kislyak about sanctions. The two only discussed expulsions of Russian individuals under a different process. Handwritten notes from the FBI agents also revealed the sole purpose of their questioning was “to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired.” A bizarre 2017 inauguration day email by Susan Rice to herself also revealed Comey knew there was no legitimate reason to question Flynn.

Andrew McCabe

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was fired from his top role at the bureau for lying to the agency inspector general four times over multiple abuses during his tenure in senior leadership. Those abuses included efforts to set up former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus for obstruction charges, the sabotage of an investigation into Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop before the 2016 election, and failure to report conflicts of interest. While running for a Virginia state Senate seat in 2015, McCabe’s wife accepted a political donation from a close Clinton ally as her husband was tasked with investigating the former secretary of state.

A 2018 DOJ inspector general report blasted McCabe as a serial leaker who lied about it. That same year, a letter from Grassley shined a spotlight on McCabe’s purchase of a $70,000 table on taxpayers’ dime that the agency sought to cover up.

Clinton Emails

The FBI repeatedly told journalists there was no evidence that a foreign power had reviewed Clinton’s emails that she improperly handled on a private server. According to an inspector general report in 2018, however, texts show they almost certainly did, “at least one of them classified,” as Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi wrote.

“It is more accurate to say,” read a text from Strzok, “that we know foreign actors obtained access to some of her emails (including at least one Secret one) via compromises of the private email accounts of some of her staffers.”

Weiner Laptop

In 2018, Comey told lawmakers over the course of the investigation into Clinton’s emails that agency officials thoroughly reviewed the laptop belonging to Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her now-ex husband Anthony Weiner. The FBI was able to accomplish such a feat within a short timeframe “thanks to the wizardry of our technology” enabling agents who worked “night after night after night” to comb through the remaining material before the 2016 election.

“But virtually none of his account was true,” explained RealClearInvestigations’ Paul Sperry.

In fact, a technical glitch prevented FBI technicians from accurately comparing the new emails with the old emails. Only 3,077 of the 694,000 emails were directly reviewed for classified or incriminating information. Three FBI officials completed that work in a single 12-hour spurt the day before Comey again cleared Clinton of criminal charges.

Roger Stone

In 2019, former Trump associate Roger Stone was raided by the FBI after being indicted by Mueller. A CNN camera crew happened to be the only network present at Stone’s Fort Lauderdale home before the sunrise raid, suggesting the friendly press had been tipped off in advance. The FBI, however, refused to comply with a Federalist open records request for any and all emails to or from CNN on the day of the raid.

Jan. 6 Capitol Riot

The Jan. 6 saga has become the sequel in Democrats’ efforts to indict Trump, before FBI agents hatched a plot to go after the former president over supposed espionage.

In October, the bureau refused to offer House Republicans conducting their own independent investigation of the Capitol riot the same material given to congressional Democrats. The FBI’s refusal, the agency claimed, was because officials were already working with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Select Committee on Jan. 6. Pelosi’s committee, however, was established in violation of House rules. Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., the minority appointment as ranking member, is entitled to the documents presented to Democrats.

Senior FBI officials have also refused lawmakers’ questions about how many informants were present at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and stonewalled inquiries surrounding Ray Epps, the mysterious figure who disappeared from the most-wanted list after he encouraged rioters to swarm the Capitol.

At an Aug. 4 Senate hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray sought to downplay agency negligence, claiming “we did not have any credible intelligence that pointed to thousands of people breaching the Capitol.” But according to Newsweek, the agency deployed commandos with “shoot to kill authority,” and even Capitol Hill parking attendants knew there were going to be mass protests. The FBI has also been less than forthcoming about a pair of pipe bombs planted at the RNC and DNC headquarters.

At the same time, the FBI has embarked on a nationwide manhunt, to incarcerating demonstrators who have been declared such a threat to the republic over trespassing that they’ve been denied a fair and speedy trial and held in detention for more than 18 months.

Julian Khater, one of two accused of assaulting a Capitol Police officer with pepper spray and whose case has been documented by Julie Kelly at American Greatness, appears to have been outright coerced into making an unconstitutional confession. Khater was detained in March 2021 and has remained in federal custody ever since after intense interrogation without an attorney present.

Kamala Harris on Jan. 6

The presence of Vice President Mike Pence and then-Sen. Kamala Harris at the U.S. Capitol has been the basis for nearly 800 people being charged with at least one count of violating 18 U.S. Code, section 1752, according to Kelly, which indicates that any building or complex hosting the vice president is a restricted area and therefore closed to the public.

“But the Justice Department recently was forced to admit that Harris was not in the building for most of the day on January 6,” Kelly reported, highlighting that Harris, at the time, remained a U.S. senator, not vice president. In the late morning, Harris was moved to the DNC headquarters where a pipe bomb had supposedly been planted.

“Prosecutors have begun amending language in court filings to reflect the fact Harris was not inside the Capitol despite making the assertion in thousands of charging documents,” Kelly wrote.

March 4, 2021

The FBI released a joint memo with the Department of Homeland Security warning that “domestic extremists” were preparing to launch an insurrection by overwhelming the Capitol and removing Democratic lawmakers “on or about the 4th of March.”

Nothing happened.

Hunter Biden Suppression

In July, Grassley’s office published a blockbuster whistleblower report wherein senior agency officials alleged that the bureau is actively trying to sabotage Trump and provide cover for President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.

“Multiple FBI whistleblowers, including those in senior positions,” Grassley’s office wrote in a press release, “are raising the alarm about tampering by senior FBI and Justice Department officials in politically sensitive investigations ranging from election and campaign finance probes across multiple election cycles.”

Washington Field Office Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault and Director of Election Crimes Branch Richard Pilger, the whistleblowers alleged, coordinated to amplify defamatory information against Trump while giving cover to Hunter Biden, dismissing Biden intelligence as disinformation.

The agency reportedly knew of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop full of incriminating information on the first family as early as 2019, and Grassley’s whistleblower report highlights how officials may have undermined DOJ investigations into Hunter Biden’s finances in Delaware and Pittsburgh. In March, FBI Assistant Director of the Cyber Division Bryan Vorndran told lawmakers he did not know the whereabouts of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Gretchen Whitmer Plot

In October 2020, the FBI revealed that a plot to kidnap Michigan Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had been heroically foiled by federal law enforcement. A group of far-right militiamen, the story goes, conspired to kidnap the governor and try her as a “tyrant” in Wisconsin. In July last year, however, BuzzFeed revealed that at least 12 people involved were FBI informants orchestrating another entrapment.

“The problem with the case is that it appears the FBI, through informants and undercover agents, hatched the kidnapping plot, served in the key leadership positions of the militia group, trained the militia members in military tactics, actively recruited participants, and funded much of the militia’s activities,” reported former CIA Paramilitary Operations Officer Max Morton. “Then, when various members of the Watchman militia became uncomfortable with the kidnapping plot, with several quitting, the FBI’s primary informant pushed the plot along, eventually becoming the militia group’s leader.”

In April, a jury refused to convict four of the 14 defendants charged. Two were found not guilty, another two concluded the trial with no verdict, and another two took plea deals.

Ralph Northam Plot

Dan Chappel, the primary informant in the Whitmer kidnapping conspiracy, targeted a senior disabled veteran named Frank Butler using the same formula to go after then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, another Democrat.

“Just as in the Whitmer plot, Chappel lured Frank Butler into attempting to build an explosive device,” Kelly explained in American Greatness. “Chappel also invited Butler to a field training exercise in Wisconsin during the last weekend in October, an excursion attended by some defendants in the Whitmer caper.”

Unlike the FBI’s victims in the Whitmer plot, however, Butler did not participate and has not been charged with any crime.

Sen. Ted Stevens’ Conviction

Former Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, became the victim of FBI corruption in 2008 when forced to defend himself on charges of false statements to federal officials. Stevens lost his seat as the scandal played out, only to be later exonerated when a judge conducting an independent investigation concluded that prosecutors inappropriately hid evidence.

Prosecutors indicted Stevens on charges that he had concealed that he did not pay full value for renovations on an Alaskan cabin less than 100 days out from the 2008 election.

“In fact, Ted Stevens and his wife had paid more than $160,000 for renovations that independent appraisers valued at less than $125,000 at the time,” Roll Call reported.

Prosecutors, however, secured a conviction by hiding evidence that incriminated their own witnesses, one of whom came up with testimony right before trial, with inconsistent statements concealed from the defense, according to the D.C. paper.

Likewise, the government concealed evidence that its star witness had suborned perjury from an underage prostitute with whom the star witness had an illegal sexual relationship. And the government concealed evidence that another witness — whom the government flew back to Alaska away from the Washington, D.C., trial after their mock cross-examination of him went poorly — had told the senator that the bills he received and promptly paid included all of the work that was done. Government prosecutors mocked Stevens when he explained that on the stand — all the while knowing that they had a witness who would have supported him, but whom they had removed from the trial.

Rep. Jeff Fortenberry’s Conviction

Former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., was sentenced to two years of probation with a $25,000 fine and 320 hours of community service in March after a Los Angeles jury convicted him of lying to the federal government after he was entrapped by the FBI.

The saga began in 2019 when a pair of FBI agents showed up at Fortenberry’s Nebraska home ostensibly over a national security issue, not a criminal investigation. Prosecutors ultimately convicted Fortenberry for scheming to conceal material facts to federal officials and two false statements to the FBI.

One false statement was attributed to Forteberry not recognizing a person whose 10-year-old picture was presented to him by agents on their trip to his Nebraska residence. In July 2019, the FBI lied to Fortenberry and his attorney, Gowdy, claiming Fortenberry was not under federal investigation when he was. Fortenberry resigned from the House during his ninth term following his conviction.

Pulse Nightclub Shooting

In June 2016, a 29-year-old gunman named Omar Mateen stormed the gay Orlando nightclub Pulse, killing 49 and injuring 53 more in the name of Islamic terrorists killed in Iraq and Syria. Mateen’s father, Seddique, was an FBI informant, whom documents published by The Intercept suggest convinced the bureau to stop investigating his son.

The bureau turned instead to charging Mateen’s widow, Noor Salman, with material support and obstruction of justice. Prosecutors sought to conceal the father’s status as an FBI informant, according to the Intercept, in pursuit of Salman’s conviction.

“Seddique Mateen has not faced criminal charges despite a tip to the FBI that he raised money for terrorism in Pakistan, and an ongoing investigation into money transfers he allegedly made to Turkey and Afghanistan,” the Intercept reported. “Omar Mateen was researching flights to Turkey at the same time that his father was sending payments there, according to defense lawyers’ summary of FBI evidence.” Salmon was apparently unaware of their possible plans to travel to either country.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported on Salmon’s 2018 trial:

Testimony from an F.B.I. agent revealed that prosecutors knew early on, but did not reveal, that one of their crucial initial pieces of evidence — that Ms. Salman had admitted driving by the nightclub with her husband in the days before the attack — most likely did not happen.

Salmon was ultimately acquitted after a 12-hour jury deliberation.

Texas Synagogue Attack

On Jan. 15, 44-year-old Malik Faisal Akram took hostages in a Texas synagogue near Dallas and demanded the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani national also known as “Lady Al Qaeda” serving an 86-year sentence for assault and attempted murder of federal agents and military personnel.

Matthew J. DeSarno, the FBI’s special agent in charge of the Dallas field office, said the attack on a synagogue had nothing to do with targeting Jews.

“We do believe from our engagement with this subject that he was singularly focused on one issue, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community,” DeSarno said at a press conference.

But as Chuck DeVore of the Texas Public Policy Foundation reported, Akram “was heard to say via the live stream that operated from the synagogue for much of the incident that he chose it because he thought it was the closest assemblage of Jews to the federal facility holding Siddiqui.”

“There are about 1,000 churches in the Fort Worth area within a half-hour drive of Siddiqui’s place of incarceration, compared to seven Jewish centers of worship,” DeVore wrote. “But sure, Special Agent DeSarno, the terrorism was ‘not specifically threatening to the Jewish community.’”

Congressional Baseball Shooter

The FBI designated the death of a shooter who attempted to gun down Republican lawmakers at a 2017 congressional baseball practice as motivated by a desire to commit “suicide by cop.” Last year, the bureau doubled down on the designation.

“It’s fair to say the shooter was motivated by a desire to commit an attack on members of Congress and then knowing by doing so he would likely be killed in the process,” Jill Sanborn, the executive assistant director of the FBI, told the House Appropriations subcommittee.

“The FBI still doesn’t know exactly what the shooter was up to,” McCabe, now a CNN contributor, said last summer. “They never really uncovered the sort of detailed evidence that laid out a specific plot or an objective.”

On the contrary, the 66-year-old shooter who almost killed House GOP Whip Steve Scalise left behind a long record of extremist social media posts dripping with contempt for Republicans, even branding them as the “Taliban of the USA” on Facebook. The FBI also found a list of six congressmen in a rented Virginia storage locker but refused to call it a “hit list.”

Inflating Extremism Cases

Whistleblowers claim the FBI is inflating the number of “domestic violent extremism” cases to fit President Biden’s overarching narrative that home-grown extremism is the nation’s worst national security threat.

“From recent protected disclosures, we have learned that FBI officials are pressuring agents to reclassify cases as ‘domestic violent extremism’ even if the cases do not meet the criteria for such a classification,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, wrote in July, detailing whistleblower allegations in a letter to Wray. “Given the narrative pushed by the Biden Administration that domestic violent extremism is the ‘greatest threat’ facing our country, the revelation that the FBI may be artificially padding domestic terrorism data is scandalous.”

Ignoring Larry Nassar Abuse

The FBI turned a blind eye as former USA gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar abused dozens of young female athletes. According to the DOJ inspector general last year, “senior officials in the FBI Indianapolis Field Office failed to respond to allegations of sexual abuse of athletes by former USA Gymnastics physician Lawrence Gerard Nassar with the urgency that the allegations required.”

“We also found that the FBI Indianapolis Field Office made fundamental errors when it did respond to the allegations, failed to notify the appropriate FBI field office (the Lansing Resident Agency) or state or local authorities of the allegations, and failed to take other steps to mitigate the ongoing threat posed by Nassar,” the inspector general added.

Kyle Rittenhouse

Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of politicized charges brought against him last summer when he shot three men in self-defense. Two died, and contrary to the media’s racialized coverage of the trial, all three were white.

During the proceedings, wherein an 18-year-old Rittenhouse (now 19) faced life in prison, prosecutors used aerial footage from FBI surveillance in their effort to convict Rittenhouse. When the defense tried to access “the rest” of the FBI footage from the night in question, however, the bureau claimed it no longer existed.

Demonizing James Rosen

In 2010, the Obama administration began aggressive surveillance of journalist James Rosen who was working for Fox News at the time. The Justice Department tracked Rosen by falsely claiming the reporter was a potential terrorist collaborator and accused him of violating the Espionage Act.

The Obama administration tracked Rosen’s movements and, according to Fox News, even seized the phone records of his parents.

Deadly Wrongful Conviction

A 2007 ruling against the government cost the FBI $102 million after agency misconduct resulted in the deaths of two men. In order to protect a mob informant, the FBI was caught deliberately withholding evidence in a case that led to the wrongful convictions of four men, three of which were sentenced to death, two of whom died before true justice was served.

Martha Stewart

Most Americans today believe Martha Stewart was convicted 20 years ago on charges of “insider trading.” Her actual conviction that sent her to federal prison was conspiracy to lie about the crime for which she was never charged over a trade that had already taken place.

Stewart’s quarter-million-dollar sale of ImClone stock served as the pretext for which federal prosecutors, led by none other than Comey, went after the media mogul. Comey’s case, however, was so weak that prosecutors pursued a novel legal theory to secure a conviction.

According to the theory they pursued, Stewart engaged in “securities fraud” when she declared that she was innocent, which prosecutors said was designed to prop up the value of her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. In other words, Stewart’s proclamation of innocence was declared a crime by federal law enforcement, and she spent six months incarcerated.

Mar-a-Lago Raid

The Department of Justice appears to be following the same playbook agency officials have used for years in the Democrats’ series of manufactured scandals to bring down Trump.

Last week, the FBI executed an unprecedented raid of the former president’s Florida residence ostensibly conducted to enforce the Presidential Records Act. Federal officials confiscated more than a dozen boxes from the 128-room mansion pursuant to the rarely prosecuted law, claiming Trump harbored classified information related to the nation’s nuclear secrets. Leaked claims to the Washington Post that Trump possessed sensitive nuclear records, which came hours after Attorney General Merrick Garland professed the agency’s professionalism, however, showcase the sensationalism crafted by officials desperate to justify the raid, which included more than 30 agents.

At a press conference last week, Garland admitted to personally signing off on the raid he called “narrowly scope[d].” An examination of the warrant, however, reveals that it authorized FBI agents to seize any and every document Trump came into contact with as president. Furthermore, none of the three criminal statutes the DOJ cited in the warrant required the material to be classified, according to Cleveland.

The FBI also attempted to dispel claims that federal officials stripped the president of his passports, telling CBS News that the agency was not in possession of the documents after Trump blasted that they had been confiscated. An email made public by Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich, however, exposed the FBI’s lie. The email from Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence and export control section in the DOJ’s National Security Division, confirms that “the filter agents seized three passports belonging to President Trump, two expired and one being his active diplomatic passport.”

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

‘Identify Patriotic Americans As Suspects’: Sen. Ted Cruz Confronts Wray On Project Veritas Leak

/in , , , , /by
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz confronted FBI Director Christopher Wray about a leak of alleged FBI material by the conservative activist group, Project Veritas, at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday.

Cruz tried to make the case that the FBI has a repeated pattern of targeting conservatives and “patriotic Americans.” He pointed to a copy of FBI training material obtained by Project Veritas that allegedly listed the Betsy Ross, Gadsden, and Gonzales Battle flags as themes “indicative of militia violent extremism.”

“Director Wray, what are you all doing?” Cruz asked. “This makes no sense. Do you agree with this FBI guidance that the Betsy Ross flag and the Gadsden flag and the Gonzales Battle flag are signs of militia violent extremism?”

“Senator, I am not familiar with the document behind you and I’m not in the practice of trying to comment on a document that I haven’t recognized. But, I will tell you that when we put out intelligence products, including ones that reference symbols which we do across a wide variety of contexts, we usually make great pains to put caveats and warnings in the document that make clear that a symbol alone is not considered evidence of violent extremism.”

The senator said the document does not include symbols connected to Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

“Instead, you identify patriotic Americans as suspects,” Cruz said.

The senator said this has become a pattern by the FBI, pointing to the National School Board Association requesting U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland use the Gun-Free School Zones Act and the USA PATRIOT Act to stop threats and violence that could be “the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” The organization later apologized for the letter. (RELATED: ‘You Need To Follow The Law’: Ted Cruz Grills DOJ Official On The Handling Of Pro-Abortion Attacks)

“How many moms and dads who have spoken up at school boards have the FBI interviewed or investigated since the memo for the attorney general?” Cruz asked.

“I’m not aware of any,” Wray said. “Second, let me address the issue—”

“You’re not aware of any? Like the House of Representatives has written and they have asked you about it,” Cruz interjected.

“Let me say to you and to this committee the same thing I said to every FBI field office after I read the memo, which was that the FBI is not going to be in the business of investigating speech, to policing speech at school board meetings or anywhere else,” Wray answered. “And that we’re not about to start now, that threats of violence, that’s a different matter altogether and there we will work with our state and local partners as we always have.”

After Cruz repeated his question, Wray said there have been “small assessments and investigations” of people making threats. The senator said the House sent Wray oversight letters detailing dozens of investigations directed at parents attending school board meetings to oppose mask mandates and critical race theory.

The senator pointed to the case of four men conspiring to kidnap Republican Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, which he called a “total debacle.” Two men were acquitted and the others received mistrials. He asked about the number of FBI agents reprimanded over the case, to which Wray would not comment on.

*****

This article was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.