Tag Archives: FBI Agents

Some Of The Swamp Is Being Held Accountable

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Charles McGonigal was one of the FBI agents who was involved in trying to frame President Trump as working for the Russians. On December 14th, Charles McGonigal was sentenced to more than four years in prison for violating sanctions on Russia and working for a Russian oligarch.

On Friday, The National Review reported:

A former FBI counterintelligence chief who played a pivotal role in launching the Trump-Russia probe was sentenced to just over four years in prison for assisting a sanctioned Russian oligarch after leaving his post in 2019.

In August, Charles McGonigal, a 22-year veteran of the bureau’s field office in New York, was found guilty of a count of conspiracy for working with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire with close ties to President Vladimir Putin. During his stint with the bureau, McGonigal received classified information that Deripaska would be designated a Russian oligarch with close ties to the Kremlin, the indictment alleged. McGonigal was legally obligated to inform the FBI of his relationship with foreign officials, which he violated by continuing communication and establishing business ties with Deripaska.

Judge Jennifer Rearden argued that McGonigal “repeatedly flouted and manipulated the sanctions regimes vital” to American security interests. “The undeniable seriousness of this and the need to respect the law,” Rearden continued, “compels a meaningful custodial sentence.”

The FBI official admitted during the hearing that he has a “deep sense of remorse and sorrow for my actions.”

Maybe the FBI needs to clean up its own backyard.

Regaining Our Rights Guaranteed By The Fourth Amendment

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The U.S. Constitution was not written to give Americans their rights. It was written to insure that the government respected the God-given rights of Americans. The Constitution was written to limit the rights of the government–not the rights of Americans. That concept seems to have gotten lost in recent years.

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The government in recent years has violated that amendment by spying on Americans without cause or has invented causes (see Carter Page). Now that it has come to light that some Congressional staffers were spied on, Congress has decided to do something about it.

On Friday, Just the News reported:

House Judiciary Committee Republicans are pressing ahead with sweeping reforms to the government’s FISA surveillance powers that among other things would would prohibit the FBI from searching through Americans’ phone records without a court-approved warrant. 

The effort is on track to be wrapped up by the end of the year when several Patriot Act powers expire. Republicans and Democrats are coming together on this matter in rare bipartisan cooperation, lawmakers told Just the News.

“We’ve got, I think, strong agreement amongst members of the Intel Committee and members of the Judiciary Committee. And frankly some Democrats as well, that there needs to be stronger penalties if you abuse the system,” Judiciary Committee Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told the “Just the News, No Noise” television show in an interview aired Friday night.

Jordan said he was focused on what is known as the Section 702 system “where they can create this database” of phone communications metadata that currently can be searched by agents without a warrant. 

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court earlier this year declassified a report revealing that FBI agents had inappropriately searched Americans’ phone records more than 270,000 times over a two year period, alarming civil liberty experts and generating bipartisan condemnation.   

I hate to be cynical, but it seems that Congress is only getting around to dealing with this problem when it affected them. That’s okay. I just hope they successfully end unwarranted government spying on American citizens.

Ruby Ridge Redux?

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Some of us are old enough to remember what happened in August 1992 at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. An FBI sniper killed Vicki Weaver while she was holding her baby daughter. If she was holding her daughter, how was she a threat? She was shot because the family refused to surrender to the authorities. The details of the siege and the killing are public information if you are unfamiliar with them. They are easy to find.

On Friday, The Daily Wire reported:

The 75-year-old Utah man who was shot dead by FBI agents on Wednesday morning for making online threats against President Joe Biden and other government officials was a pillar of his local church community and posed no real threat to anyone, a former neighbor and friend told The Daily Wire.

Tim Rich first heard of the incident through a neighborhood Facebook group, where households posted about hearing gunshots, and later that a SWAT team had raided the home of his friend, Craig Robertson. Rich immediately “had an inkling of what the nature” of the raid was — he was Facebook friends with Robertson and saw his political posts, which included one last week in which Robertson said he had to “dust off” his sniper rifle in preparation for Biden’s arrival in Utah for a political fundraiser.

That is a threat, and the man should have been arrested. However, I believe excessive force was used.

The article concludes:

Robertson was largely immobile — standing just about five feet six inches and weighing roughly 300 pounds — the elderly man would hobble around with a cane. He was known to drive to his church, which was only about 200 yards from his home. And law enforcement presumably knew all of these details — as Robertson had been under surveillance for months, and two agents had already interacted with him before the fatal Wednesday morning raid.

Rich believes that “busting in” to the home of a man that they knew had a defensive mindset was reckless.

“It seems like a much lower risk to detain or arrest in the middle of the day as he’s hobbling out of his vehicle or in a parking lot somewhere,” Rich said.

Is this an intimidation tactic? Again, the man should have been arrested, but breaking into his house was using excessive force.