Tag Archive for: FBICorruption

WATCH: FBI Shows Up at Childhood Home of Pro-Life Activist

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Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Two agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation visited the childhood home of a pro-life activist and told the woman’s mother that they wanted to speak with her, according to footage obtained by The Daily Signal.

Elise Ketch is a member of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, a group of mostly left-leaning activists who believe that abortion is the murder of a human child. PAAU particularly gained prominence after the group exposed the bodies of five premie-sized aborted babies, known as “The Five,” from the clinic of Washington, D.C., abortionist Cesare Santangelo.

The 26-year-old officially joined PAAU in December 2022 after volunteering with the group for a few months.

Her entrance into the pro-life group came as PAAU activists Lauren Handy, Jonathan Darnel, and Herb Geraghty faced charges from the Justice Department for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which “prohibits threats of force, obstruction and property damage intended to interfere with reproductive health care services” (the DOJ has commonly used “obstruction” in charging pro-life activists with blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic).

Ketch has participated in PAAU’s “Pink Rose Rescues,” wherein activists attempt to enter an abortion facility and “quietly hand out pink roses to people in the waiting room”—then leave upon being told that they are trespassing. The roses have information about pregnancy resources, such as the phone number for Let Them Live, Ketch explained.

She also participated in a nonviolent demonstration on March 23, 2022, where she and other PAAU members were arrested for blocking the street outside the Rayburn House Office Building as they sought to draw attention to “The Five.” It had been a year since their discovery of the baby bodies, and D.C. authorities have thus far stonewalled investigations into the babies’ deaths.

On April 18, around 2:45 p.m., FBI agents went to the home of Tracy Ketch, Elise Ketch’s mother. Ring camera footage provided to The Daily Signal shows two women standing on the front porch of Ketch’s childhood home in Woodbridge, Virginia. The women identified themselves as Ashley Roberts and Kathleen Brown.

“We are both with the FBI,” Roberts told Ketch’s mother. “We just need to speak with her regarding some information that was sent to us.”

When Tracy Ketch informed the agents that Ketch no longer lives at that residence, Roberts asked for Ketch’s residence or phone number.

“She’s not in any trouble,” Roberts assured Tracy Ketch with a smile, the footage shows. “We just have some information we need to ask her about.”

“We would tell you all the information because, like I said, she’s not in any trouble, but just out of respect for her, we’d like to speak with her first,” Roberts says, adding with a shrug, “and then, if she feels like talking to you, which I’m sure she will because it’s nothing … ”

The incidents that these activists were involved in all took place before they were members of PAAU, the group’s founder, Terrisa Bukovinac, told The Daily Signal. Ketch does not believe that she has ever been involved in any kind of activity that would allow authorities to bring FACE Act charges against her.

More Ring camera footage viewed by The Daily Signal shows Ketch’s mother stepping onto the front porch and calling her daughter.

“I have two FBI agents at the front door,” she tells her daughter.

“FBI agents,” Ketch can be heard repeating, as Roberts breaks into a smile. “Mom, don’t tell them anything.”

“Ok, what do you want me to do?” she asks her daughter. As Ketch speaks, her mother waves the agents off the porch and opens the front door, stress written across her face.

The FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Daily Signal for this story.

Elise Ketch told The Daily Signal that she has “no idea what information the FBI was sent” that would require her to talk to them. But she has a few guesses.

“My colleague at Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, Lauren Handy, is indicted under the FACE Act and is being prosecuted by the federal government,” she said. “It’s plausible that these FBI agents aimed to collect information from me to help build their case against her.”

“While they reassured my mother that I was not in trouble, it’s also possible that they see me as a threat due to my pro-life activism and intended to investigate me,” Ketch speculated. “Yet, to my knowledge, they never attempted to follow up with me or my attorney, so I believe the FBI’s true motive behind their visit to my parents’ home was to intimidate me and my team.”

The visit made her concerned for her family’s safety, Ketch said, adding, “I refuse to back down.”

“This weaponization of our government institutions protects the abortion industrial complex, and it reinforces that we must disrupt these unjust power structures,” she said. “The most prevalent domestic threat to our country is the murder of thousands of preborn people by abortion each day. It is not terrorism to nonviolently intervene and rescue these powerless children before their slaughter. I’m willing to risk my own freedom and sacrifice my rights in order to secure theirs.”

Bukovinac, PAAU’s founder, told The Daily Signal that she believes “the feds are desperate to find a reason to shut us down and they’re not above coming to our parents’s homes to try to find what they’re looking for.”

“The FBI is targeting PAAU members because our activism challenges the property lines of and disrupts commerce for the abortion industrial complex,” Bukovinac said. “We are especially a problem for them because we are nonviolent and therefore our efforts and ideas are rapidly catching on.”

The incident comes as Republicans accuse the Department of Justice of targeting pro-life activists, like Catholic father Mark Houck, who was arrested at gun point in front of his children (a jury later found him not guilty of the DOJ’s FACE Act charges).

Meanwhile, despite over 100 leftist attacks on Catholic churches and pro-life pregnancy centers across the nation since the leak of the draft opinion showing Roe v. Wade would be overturned, the DOJ has only charged four people with FACE Act violations for these offenses.

And in December 2022, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said herself that the DOJ has been targeting pro-life activists through the FACE Act as a response to the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision to overturn of Roe v. Wade.

The associate attorney general described the overturn of Roe v. Wade as a “devastating blow to women throughout the country” that took away “the constitutional right to abortion” and increased “the urgency” of the DOJ’s work—including the “enforcement of the FACE Act, to ensure continued lawful access to reproductive services.”

As of early May 16, there have been at least 87 attacks on pregnancy resource centers and 157 attacks on Catholic churches since the May 2022 Dobbs leak, according to CatholicVote trackers. Many of these buildings have been vandalized with threats such as, “If abortions aren’t safe, neither are you,” making the attacks incidents of suspected pro-abortion violence.

Pregnancy resource centers are typically run by pro-life women who seek to offer expectant mothers alternatives to abortion. Such centers provide diapers, baby clothes, and resources for both mothers and fathers, empowering them to care for their children, overcome addictions, build community, and find jobs.

Houck and his wife Ryan-Marie previously told The Daily Signal that they believe they were targeted by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department in an effort to intimidate, silence, and scare the family for their pro-life work—praying outside abortion clinics for the women headed inside to abort their unborn babies.

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

EXCLUSIVE: Biden Bribery Allegation Could Mean Impeachment, Republican Policy Chair Says

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Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Impeachment is the only recourse if a government whistleblower’s allegation that President Joe Biden was part of a bribery scheme is true, said Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Ala., chairman of the Republican Policy Committee.

“You can’t prosecute a sitting president for crimes, so the only recourse—if this document exists, and we believe it does—is for the House to bring articles of impeachment,” Palmer told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Friday.

Palmer stressed that members of Congress need to see an FBI document that the unnamed whistleblower says alleges a scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national related to an “exchange of money for policy decisions.”

The House Oversight and Accountability Committee subpoenaed the document from the FBI on Wednesday.

Palmer, a member of the oversight committee, said further review could “vindicate” the president, but the country won’t know unless the FBI promptly releases the subpoenaed information.

“I will look at this without a political lens to see if there were any impropper actions taken,” Palmer said. “It is incumbent on the FBI to hand over this document and let the evidence speak for itself.”

The House committee’s subpoena gives the FBI until Wednesday to respond. Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., issued the subpoena after the whistleblower made a legally protected disclosure to the office of Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee.

Grassley has a long history of working with government whistleblowers. The FBI document, called an FD-1023 form, was created or modified in June 2020, about five months before Biden was elected president, according to the subpoena.

“We have tremendous confidence in the whistleblower,” Palmer said. “This is an American who stepped up, at personal risk, to expose how dangerous this was for the country.”

Comer told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday night that he knows both the policy position and the country involved in the alleged Biden bribery scheme, but was not yet at liberty to disclose that information.

The Kentucky Republican said he did not know the amount of money that allegedly changed hands.

Palmer said he hoped the chairman would share the information with more committee members. But ultimately, the FBI has to repond to the subpoena.

“There has been a tremendous loss of confidence that federal law enforcement has been politicized and serious concerns that the president has been compromised,” Palmer said. “The FBI had a file with very specific information and didn’t do anything about it. Was it because of politics?”

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, tweeted Thursday: “Article II explicitly states that bribery is an impeachable offense.”

It’s not a mitigating factor against impeachment that the alleged bribery occurred before Biden was president, Palmer added.

“No, he was vice president at the time. It could depend on what the policy was that changes,” Palmer said. “This is clearly a bribery situation. We don’t yet know what the exchange of money or the policy decision was for. If the foreign national was a state actor, this could be even more serious.”

Biden was elected twice as President Barack Obama’s vice president, serving from 2009 to 2017.

There is precedent for impeachment over offenses committed before taking public office. In 2010, the House impeached and the Senate removed U.S. District Judge Thomas Porteous of the Eastern District of Louisiana on four articles of impeachment involving corruption.

Particularly relevant is the fourth article of impeachment in that case, which said Porteous “knowingly made material false statements about his past” to the Senate and the FBI during his 1994 nomination and confirmation process, which occurred before the Louisiana jurist was confirmed as a federal judge.

The other charges against Porteous were over alleged misconduct after his confirmation to the federal bench.

Further, Palmer noted, as vice president Biden had the ear of Obama and as a U.S. senator from 1973 to 2009 he held increasing sway with fellow lawmakers. So, he said, the foreign national cited in the FBI document could have had a significant impact on policy.

“A vice president has a lot of influence on policy,” Palmer told The Daily Signal. “Joe Biden wasn’t just any vice president. He was in the Senate for years and could influence how his former colleagues voted.”

The FBI’s national press office, in an email to The Daily Signal, said: “The FBI received the subpeona and accompanying letter.  We don’t have any additional comment.”

Ian Sams, a special assistant to the president in the White House Counsel’s Office, issued a statement to select media outlets Wednesday evening, as The Daily Signal previously reported.

“For going on five years now,” Sams said, “Republicans in Congress have been lobbing unfounded, unproven, politically motivated attacks against the president and his family without offering evidence for their claims or evidence of decisions influenced by anything other than U.S. interests.”

However, when the topic emerged Thursday in a White House press briefing, national security spokesman John Kirby simply referred reporters to the Justice Department. Apparently referring to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Kirby added, “And I’m getting the hook.” He then walked away from the lectern.

Comer’s subpoena asks the FBI for “all FD-1023 forms, including within any open, closed, or restricted access case files, created or modified in June 2020, containing the term ‘Biden,’ including all accompanying attachments and documents to those FD-1023 forms.”

An FD-1023 is an FBI document that memorializes meetings or information gathered from confidential sources, so it could include criminal allegations from a source, even if the information wasn’t verified by the FBI.

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

Trump’s Real Crime Is Opposing Empire

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Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Within 24 hours of former President Donald Trump’s arrest on 34 overhyped felony counts related to hush-money payments made to conceal an extramarital dalliance, his re-election campaign raised $4 million, and he widened his lead in the Republican primaries to almost 30 percentage points. Yet a CNN poll also found that 60 percent of Americans approve of the indictment. These numbers are probably less important than they might appear. The trial will likely mobilize the base in both parties and pull swing voters in both directions—for a net effect of zero.

Even so, the indictment does real harm to the American body politic. It has already set off another Trump-centric media feeding frenzy, at the expense of issues far more serious than the former executive’s half-remembered infidelities, and it creates a dangerous precedent, further politicizing the judiciary and inviting escalation. Above all, it is a reminder that Trump has been investigated, impeached, and indicted not because of the crimes of which he is accused, but because he has dared to oppose the imperial foreign policy favored by elites.

Fans of the indictment insist that no man is above the law, not every case creates a precedent, and other countries indict their leaders. For example, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced to jail, and France is still a democracy. But the Trump indictment is of a piece with other developments that should be cause for worry. Just to name one example, a few weeks before the former president’s arrest, Internal Revenue Service agents visited the home of journalist Matt Taibbi while he was testifying at a hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

The IRS’s visit to the home of a prominent critic of the establishment on the same day he was testifying about government overreach is a highly unusual occurrence, and almost seems like the Biden administration flipping the bird to its critics. Outrageously, the mainstream and left media by and large have ignored the IRS bullying of Taibbi. Federal law enforcement has long been deployed in blatantly political ways against the activist left. Heterodox critics like Taibbi are now also targets, and there is ample evidence that it is also being wielded against the MAGA right.

The Trump arrest is an act of sheer desperation, based on a tortured legal theory that seeks to turn mislabeled payments into federal election meddling. It should force us to ask once again: Why do they hate Trump so much? Alvin Bragg’s prosecution is part and parcel of a multifront war waged against the former president by the entire US establishment and its institutions. While in the White House, Trump gave the ruling class massive tax cuts and sweeping deregulation, so what’s the beef? His foreign-policy heresies. To the frustration of those who benefit from it, Trump worked to unwind the American empire. Indeed, he has done more to restrain the US imperium than any politician in 75 years.

Within a few months of his arrival in the Oval Office, it became clear that Trump’s seemingly preposterous rhetoric about ending America’s “forever wars” wasn’t a joke. Yes, he ordered a few missile and drone strikes here and there, but unlike all of his recent predecessors, he didn’t start any new wars. Indeed, he wound down numerous small wars and negotiated a peace settlement in Afghanistan, even if the dirty work of the final withdrawal fell to President Biden.

By early summer 2017, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had become so worried that they held a meeting with Trump at the Pentagon at which they attempted to explain how America’s informal empire functions. Trump didn’t dig the presentation. Calling his generals “dopes and babies” and “losers,” he demanded to know why the United States wasn’t receiving free oil from the Middle East. “We spent $7 trillion; they’re ripping us off.… Where is the fucking oil?” After the meeting, Trump continued to take an executive-branch-sized hammer to the elaborate political, diplomatic, economic, and military architecture of US global hegemony.

Trump’s assault on the foreign-policy status quo is all the more remarkable for the near total lack of literature discussing it. Here is a very brief sketch of what he did: Trump ordered the withdrawal of one-third of all US military personnel from Germany, which is a central fulcrum for the entire American imperial project. The 40 German military installations housing US troops support American military operations in 104 countries and contain an estimated 150 nuclear weapons; among other projects, the military’s Africa Command is headquartered in Germany. Trump also ordered the Pentagon to explore withdrawing troops from South Korea, which plays a similar role to that of Germany as a central, high-tech node of US power projection throughout the entire East-Asian region.

Trump likewise drew down the US military role in Syria, even as the foreign-policy establishment urged him to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. He withdrew troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, refused to escalate in Libya, and withdrew almost all US special forces from Somalia. In the rest of Africa, he mused about closing all US embassies—important nodes of Central Intelligence Agency operations…..

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Continue reading this article at Compact.

FBI Shielded Identities Of Undercover Assets Who May Have Been Inside Capitol On Jan. 6, Whistleblower Says

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Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

The FBI’s Washington Field Office (WFO) affirmed that there may have been “undercover officers” and “confidential human sources” inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to whistleblower testimony obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The FBI’s Washington Field Office requested the Boston Field Office open investigations into 140 individuals who took buses from Massachusetts to D.C. on Jan. 6., but denied the office’s request to see video proving those individuals were inside the Capitol, FBI whistleblower George Hill said during a Feb. 10 interview with the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The office claimed they needed to “protect” the identity of possible undercover agents, according to Hill.

The Boston office initially opened cases on two individuals that “definitive evidence” showed were in restricted areas of the Capitol, Hill said. Because those individuals organized the buses to D.C., the WFO wanted cases opened on every individual on the bus.

Boston’s Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) declined to open cases on everyone who went to D.C. because they were “going to a political rally, which is First Amendment protected activity,” according to Hill.

“[People] think of the unlawful events that took place later on in the day on January 6th, but up until that time, it was a rally,” Hill said. “People were, you know, either driving to it, flying to it.”

When another SSA asked to see where they were inside the Capitol, the WFO declined to show the footage unless they knew “the exact time and place those individuals were inside the Capitol.”

“Why can’t you [give us access] to the 11,000 hours of video that’s available?” the SSA asked.

The WFO responded that there “may be” undercover officers or confidential human sources “on those videos whose identity we need to protect,” according to Hill, who said he heard the conversation firsthand.

Many have speculated FBI agents were among the crowd on Jan. 6. In November, FBI Director Christopher Wray refused to say whether or not the bureau had confidential human sources among Jan. 6 protestors when asked by Republican Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins. Executive Assistant Director of the FBI National Security Branch, Jill Sanborn, similarly dodged the question when it was posed by Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at a Jan. 11, 2023 Senate hearing.

“Our whistleblowers are brave individuals who risk their reputations and livelihoods to expose wrongdoing,” House Judiciary Chair and Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “There are already immense obstacles in place deterring whistleblowers from coming forward and we hope Democrat leaks and partisan criticisms don’t chill other whistleblowers from coming forward.”

The FBI declined to comment.

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

A ‘Spill’ of FBI Secrets

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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.

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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’

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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?”…..

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Continue reading this article at PJ Media.

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EXCLUSIVE: The Daily Signal Demands Documents on FBI Targeting ‘Radical Traditional Catholics’

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Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

The Daily Signal filed a Freedom of Information Act request this week demanding that the FBI turn over all documents related to “radical traditional Catholics” and the Southern Poverty Law Center, as news broke that the FBI had published an internal memo about “radical traditional Catholics” citing the SPLC, which brands mainstream conservative and Christian nonprofits “hate groups,” putting them on a map with the Ku Klux Klan.

Although the FBI has since rescinded the memo, the FOIA request, submitted by the Heritage Oversight Project on behalf of The Daily Signal, should turn up related documents and shine more light on the situation.

FBI whistleblower Kyle Seraphin, who published the memo on UncoverDC.com Wednesday, had teased the release on Twitter: “Wait just a moment: the @FBI is writing intel products about ‘radical traditional Catholics’ (RTCs) and disseminating that that [sic] some Catholic Churches are a platform to promote violence?!”

“Because the FBI is Constitutionally prohibited from defining, issuing judgements on, or investigating non-violent religious practice and religious groups, the reported FBI intelligence product(s) suggest that the FBI is in possession of evidence that a nebulously ill-defined group of Catholics, to include some Catholic churches, have engaged in acts that fall within the elements of domestic terrorism violations of the United States Code,” Mike Howell, a senior adviser and investigative columnist at The Daily Signal, wrote in the FOIA request.

“Otherwise, it appears the FBI would not have undertaken any such analysis for a valid purpose,” Howell added.

The FOIA demands all documents with the terms “Southern Poverty Law Center” and “Catholic”; “SPLC” and “Catholic”; “traditional Catholic”; “RTC”; “Latin Mass” and “extremist”; and more.

The Daily Signal filed the FOIA on Wednesday, around the time that Seraphin, the FBI whistleblower, published the document he had earlier teased on Twitter.

The document, “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities,” characterizes RTCs by “the rejection of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) as a valid church council; disdain for most of the popes elected since Vatican II, particularly Pope Francis and Pope John Paul II; and frequent adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology.”

The memo suggests that the FBI should monitor these Catholics through “the development of sources with access,” including in “places of worship,” and it cites a list of “hate groups” published by the SPLC.

As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC took the program it used to bankrupt organizations associated with the Ku Klux Klan and weaponized it against conservative groups, partially to scare donors into ponying up cash and partially to silence ideological opponents.

After the SPLC fired its co-founder amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal in 2019, a former staffer claimed that the SPLC’s accusations of “hate” are a “cynical fundraising scam” aimed at “bilking northern liberals.” Critics across the political spectrum have voiced opposition and alarm at the organization’s hate group smears.

In 2012, a terrorist targeted the Family Research Council’s headquarters in the nation’s capital, entering the lobby with a semiautomatic pistol and then shooting and wounding a guard. The man told the FBI that he found the conservative organization on the SPLC’s “hate map” and intended to kill everyone in the building. That man pleaded guilty to committing an act of terror and received a 25-year prison sentence. The SPLC condemned the attack, but has kept the Family Research Council on its hate map ever since.

After The Daily Signal reached out to the FBI for comment on the document Wednesday, the FBI responded with a rare public retraction.

“While our standard practice is to not comment on specific intelligence products, this particular field office product—disseminated only within the FBI—regarding racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI,” the FBI told The Daily Signal in a statement emailed Thursday.

“Upon learning of the document, FBI Headquarters quickly began taking action to remove the document from FBI systems and conduct a review of the basis for the document,” the bureau added.

Current and former FBI sources told The Daily Signal that the FBI has long considered the SPLC unreliable. “We got briefings that SPLC was not legitimate when I was at Quantico,” said Seraphin, the FBI whistleblower who released the memo.

George Hill, whose 11 years at the bureau included a stint as a supervisory intelligence analyst, called the memo “poorly sourced from sources who use unsubstantiated data to draw their own conclusions and not in compliance with FBI publication guidelines.” He said the Directorate of Intelligence released guidelines barring analysts from relying on the SPLC.

The Daily Signal FOIA may turn up documents revealing whether the FBI rejected that guidance and why. It may also reveal what led the FBI’s Richmond office to focus on traditional Catholics and whether any agents actually infiltrated Catholic churches.

On Friday, Virginia Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares and 19 other state attorneys general sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, demanding that the Department of Justice and FBI “desist from investigating and surveilling Americans who have done nothing more than exercise their natural and constitutional right to practice their religion in a manner of their choosing.”

The attorneys general threatened legal action otherwise, promising to “take all lawful and appropriate means to protect the rights of our constituents as guaranteed by our Constitution.”

The attorneys general demanded that the DOJ release the full report, produce any documentation used in drafting it, produce any supporting documents and investigate how the report was drafted, and divulge whether the FBI has been using operatives to infiltrate houses of worship.

“Virginia has always protected our inalienable right to worship freely—without interference or intimidation,” Miyares told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday. “The leaked anti-Catholic FBI memo from our state capital that labeled Catholic Virginians as ‘violent extremists’ because of their religious beliefs is simply un-American and the suggestion that agents should recruit Catholics to spy on their fellow parishioners is just wrong.”

“Virginians should not and will not be targeted by their government because of their religious beliefs,” he added.

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

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

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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

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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.

Destroying American Democracy – An Inside Job

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Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

Over the last few years, there has been much written about the destruction of American democracy. Frequently the threat has been of alleged interference in U.S. elections by Russia, China or other state actors. Government agencies, in the name of election integrity, were assigned to identify and disrupt these foreign intrusions. As more and more information is revealed about these agencies, it seems that America’s Intelligence Community participated in these activities domestically, and in a way that poses a grave threat to both election integrity and American democracy.

Just last week it was revealed that the FBI again withheld pertinent information from the American public, for past two months, until after the November 8, 2022 federal election. As with the Bureau’s reported cover-up of evidence influence-peddling reportedly found on Hunter Biden’s laptop, agents knew, since November 2, 2022, about at least some of the three sets of classified material that illegally found their way into the garage and library of President Joe Biden and into the Penn Biden Center think tank at the University of Pennsylvania — to which anonymous members of the Chinese Communist Party have donated $54.6 million.

Their existence only became known this week, after the newly elected Republican-majority House of Representatives announced that it would hold hearings on “how the [Justice] department handled investigations into classified materials found at former President Donald Trump’s Florida home and those found at President Joe Biden’s office in a Washington think tank bearing his name and his Delaware home…”

In addition, the recent release of the “Twitter Files” has raised at least two major concerns regarding actions by the Intelligence Community. The first is that the wall of separation between the Intelligence Community and the U.S. media has not only sprung a leak, it has totally collapsed. The report that officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) met weekly with Twitter executives to coordinate information is totally inappropriate. Would officials from the ODNI review, affirm or label certain sets of information as false? When ODNI was created, no one intended its officials to have a role in these types of discussions.

It also appears that intelligence officials in recent years have politically weaponized intelligence. The combination of a politically weaponized Intelligence Community, operating hand-in-hand with organizations that are the main gateways for information to millions of Americans, poses a serious threat to American democracy and the integrity of our elections.

Let us just briefly look at the steep slope of lying, deceit and corruption that has seeped into the leadership of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

First, there are not enough words to praise our Intelligence Community and the men and women who risk their lives to keep America safe. These are the rank-and-file professionals that form the core of the Intelligence Community. Most are dedicated to the mission of gathering the necessary information to protect our nation. Their leaders have a responsibility to serve these individuals. Too often, however, as the current array of whistleblowers indicates, those leaders have let these individuals down.

Imagine their reaction in 2013 when, in response to a question from Senator Ron Wyden to then-Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper about whether the National Security Agency (NSA) collects “any type of data on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans,” Clapper answered, “No sir, not wittingly.” Clapper, who had been given the question the previous day, was asked after the hearing if he wanted to amend the answer, and declined. It was shortly thereafter that a massive NSA program containing millions of pieces of Americans’ data was revealed. Clapper was caught in a huge lie — to U.S. Senator Wyden and the American people.

On January 12, 2017, CNN reported that President-elect Donald Trump had been briefed by DNI Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Michael Rogers. The topic: “Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Donald Trump.” It was intended to inform the President-elect that these allegations “are circulating among intelligence agencies, senior members of Congress, and other government officials in Washington.” The briefing also touched on other major allegations they claimed were “circulating.”

Having this false information — some of which the FBI actually altered — in the public domain was evidently intended to damage Trump. The Russian “hoax” allegations would haunt and damage the Trump presidency for almost two years. Clapper himself stated:

“I express my profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press … they are extremely corrosive and damaging to our national security.”

Clapper also released a statement that neither he nor anyone else in the Intelligence Community were responsible for the leaks. How did this highly classified information, then, get into the public domain?

A House Republican investigation provides the answer. Clapper denied leaking the dossier but admitted to discussing the dossier with CNN correspondent Jake Tapper and perhaps other journalists in early January 2017. Later in 2017, Clapper would go on to join CNN as a “national security” contributor and CNN would receive an award for its reporting at the White House Correspondents’ dinner.

Today we know that the “Russia hoax” was a lie. After a 22-month investigation, no evidence of collusion between any element of the Trump campaign and Russia was uncovered. The supposedly compromising evidence had never existed; the information in the “Steele dossier” was false — and the FBI had known it was from the start. The entire fabrication had been an attempt to attack and politically weaken Trump.

In October 2020, shortly before the elections 51 former intelligence professionals had even signed a joint letter stating that the Hunter Biden laptop had “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” They stated that their national security experience made them “deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.” They went on:

“If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we strongly believe that Americans need to be aware of this.”

The New York Times raised questions about the authenticity of the materials found on the laptop. Bill Evanina, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director, had indicated in August that Russia was trying to denigrate the Biden campaign. All these manufactured “facts” were apparently intended to create circumstances where reasonable people would have to conclude that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.

Signatories of the 2020 letter included Clapper, Brennan, Michael Hayden, Jeremy Bash and David Buckley. Clapper and Brennan are familiar names. They were involved in the January 2017 briefing to President Donald Trump on the fake Steele dossier. Jeremy Bash and David Buckley are worth mentioning because they continue to play significant roles in domestic and national security areas in the U.S. government. Buckley was the majority staff director on the House Select Committee investigating January 6th. Bash has been named to co-chair a government commission to review the war in Afghanistan.

The fraudulent efforts by the U.S. government, Clapper, Brennan and the 49 others — along with Hillary Clinton, her campaign committee, the Democratic National Committee and the suppression of the media and social media (here and here) — to influence the public unfortunately met with some success. For almost two years, the authenticity of the material found on Hunter Biden’s laptop was questioned. Today, its authenticity has been verified; the information is real and damning. As summarized by the New York Post:

“Yes that letter from the Dirty 51 had all the classic earmarks of a disinformation operation, all right – one designed to ensure Joe Biden won the presidency. And it was essentially a CIA operation, considering 43 of the 51 signatories were former CIA.”

One final example of the Intelligence Community involving itself in domestic politics comes from the recent release of the “Twitter Files.” According to tweet #20 of the third tranche released:

“This post about the Hunter Biden laptop situation shows that Roth not only met weekly with the FBI and DHS, but with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.”

Tweet #17 states: “executives were also clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content.”

Finally, the FBI paid Twitter $3.5 million reportedly to “handle requests from the bureau.”

We now know what happened. Twitter suppressed discussion of the Hunter Biden laptop story and suppressed conservative messaging, while at the same time it appears the FBI, DHS and the ODNI had literally had set up shop at Twitter.

The American people should be outraged. This level of collaboration between federal law enforcement and a private sector company on controlling speech is terrifying. Having our Intelligence Community, which is supposed to be focused on foreign intelligence collection, involved is even more terrifying.

DNI James Clapper lying to the American people in 2013 about government surveillance of them, the promoting of the Russian hoax theory in 2017 by CIA Director Brennan, DNI Clapper, FBI Director Comey and others, the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story by 51 former intelligence professionals, and the close working arrangement between the FBI, DHS and the ODNI in 2020-2022 raises a staggering series of questions:

Can our government, law enforcement, and the Intelligence Community still be trusted?
Have those federal government agencies literally weaponized law enforcement and intelligence against political opponents in the U.S.?
Has more than one solitary person — former FBI attorney Kevin Clinemith, for altering an email — been held accountable for these egregious abuses of power?
Why wasn’t there a more powerful response from the Intelligence Community and the law enforcement community about the disinformation from the 51 former intelligence professionals?
Who authorized the cozy relationship between law enforcement, the intelligence community with Twitter?
Who in these government agencies reviewed and approved of the output and decisions coming from these joint efforts?
Were political appointees in the review loop?
Who has the records, notes and decisions that emanated from these groups?
It is clear that our law enforcement community needs to be investigated, but most importantly we need to investigate how our Intelligence Community has evolved from having literally a non-existent relationship with speech in America to being inside the room determining what speech is allowed.

There also needs to be a significant investigation by an outside, non-government group to understand how far this massive government overreach into free speech and election manipulation went. Clearly the government has been influencing what we get to see and hear. It needs to stop — now — before our democracy is destroyed.

*****
This article was published by Gatestone Institute and is reproduced with permission.