Tag Archives: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

The Harassment Continues

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On Tuesday, Scott Johnson at Power Line Blog posted an article about Attorney John Eastman. Attorney Eastman has an impressive record as an attorney. He is the founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the conservative think tank Claremont Institute. He is a former professor and dean at the Chapman University School of Law. He is also a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

His phone was recently seized by the FBI as he was leaving a restaurant. He was not shown a warrant for the seizure until after his phone was taken.

On Monday, The Washington Times reported:

Eastman said the agents who approached him identified themselves as from the FBI but appeared to be serving a warrant on behalf of the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General, which he contends has no jurisdiction to investigate him since he has never worked for the department. He said the cell phone that was seized contains emails that have been the subject of a months-long dispute between him and the House panel.

“That litigation has received extensive media attention, so it is hard to imagine that the Department of Justice, which apparently submitted the application for the warrant at issue here, was not aware of it,” wrote his lawyers, Charles Burnham and Joseph Gribble. 

There is little doubt that Attorney Eastman’s phone was seized because of his work on behalf of President Trump to investigate election fraud.

The article at Power Line Blog concludes:

The AP covers the story here. Orin Kerr takes up the legality of the search and seizure in a Twitter thread here. We remain to be illuminated on the criminal law for which the FBI claims it has probable cause against Eastman. Late in the thread he notes that the warrant does not extend beyond the seizure of John’s phone (i.e., it covers seizure only).

Eastman’s close encounter with the FBI last week was obviously coordinated with the close encounters of Trump Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark and Nevada GOP chairman Michael McDonald. The FBI appears to have taken up the role of the ruling party’s enforcement arm.

We are rapidly approaching banana-republic status if we have not reached it already.

 

 

Is Anyone Surprised?

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On Tuesday, NewsMax reported that a federal jury in Washington, D.C. has found Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann not guilty of lying to the FBI.

As I noted on May 22nd:

JONATHAN TURLEY: Durham faces a lot of challenges in this trial. The judge in the trial has hit the prosecution with limiting orders. This jury pool is a nightmare for the prosecutors. There are three Clinton donors on the jury. In the last 24 hours, the judge turned down a motion to dismiss a juror whose daughter is actually playing on the same team with the daughter of Sussmann. So I think for the prosecutors, it seems like the only thing that is missing on the jury is Chelsea Clinton. A jury of your peers is not supposed to mean other Clinton people. And so, I think that the prosecutors have quite a challenge with this pool.

Unfortunately we have reached the place as a country where equal justice under the law is a myth. Considering the people involved in his wrongdoing, there was no way Michael Sussman was going to be found guilty.

The article at NewsMax reports:

The trial focused on whether Sussmann, a cybersecurity attorney and former federal prosecutor, concealed from the FBI that he was representing Clinton’s campaign when he presented computer data that he said showed a possible secret backchannel between Russia-based Alfa Bank and Trump’s business company, the Trump Organization. The FBI investigated but quickly determined that there was no suspicious contact.

The bureau’s then-general counsel and the government’s star witness, James Baker, testified that he was “100% confident” that Sussmann had told him that he was not representing any client during the meeting. Prosecutors say he was actually acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign and another client, and that he hid that information so as to make it seem more credible and to boost the chances of getting the FBI to investigate.

Lawyers for Sussmann deny that he lied, saying that it was impossible to know with certainty what he told Baker since they were the only participants in the meeting and neither of them took notes.

They argued that if Sussmann said he wasn’t acting on the Clinton campaign’s behalf that that was technically accurate since he didn’t ask the FBI to take any particular action. And they said that even if he did make a false statement, it was ultimately irrelevant since the FBI was already investigating Russia and the Trump campaign and would have looked into the Alfa Bank data no matter the source.

Read that last paragraph again. Then consider what would happen to an ordinary citizen if he lied to the FBI. The defense is saying that even if he lied to the FBI, it really isn’t important.

Has America become a banana republic where justice is determined by political affiliation?

If You Believe This…

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On Tuesday, The Washington Times posted an article ‘explaining’ how a “typo” in an email led investigators in 2016 to believe that false allegations linking former President Trump to Russia’s Alfa Bank came from the Department of Justice rather than from Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann.

The article quotes testimony from the trial of Michael Sussmann.

FBI Agent Curtis Heide, who along with agent Allison Sands authored the internal communication, said the inaccuracy, sent out just weeks before the 2016 election, was simply a mistake.

“We may have conflated the Office of the General Counsel and the Justice Department,” Mr. Heide said on the witness stand. “I don’t know how that information got in there.”

On Monday, jurors in the criminal trial of Mr. Sussmann were shown the electronic communication sent in September 2016 by top bureau officials to field agents marking the opening of the case. The communication said the investigation was based on a “referral” from the Justice Department, rather than a tip from Mr. Sussmann.

On Tuesday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog reported the following:

I was skeptical that the Sussman prosecution would tell us much that is new, but some significant nuggets have come out. Like this one: “FBI brass were ‘fired up’ about now-debunked Trump-Russia ties.”

FBI leaders, including then-Director James Comey, were “fired up” about a potential connection between the Trump campaign and Russia — which ultimately was proven false, text messages and court testimony revealed Tuesday.

On Sept. 21, 2016, two days after Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann gave then-FBI General Counsel James Baker info about a supposed digital back channel between the Trump Organization and Moscow-based Alfa Bank, agent Joe Pientka texted colleague Curtis Heide: “People on 7th floor to include Director are fired up about this server.”

So there was zero evidence of any connection between presidential candidate Donald Trump and the Alfa Bank, or any other Russians of note, and all one of Hillary Clinton’s lawyers had to do was waltz into the Bureau with some fabricated “data” and FBI Director James Comey and others were “fired up.” The lust to defeat the interloper Trump and elect Hillary Clinton is palpable.

It’s a shame that they were not nearly so ‘fired up’ over the security problems involved in Hillary Clinton’s secret server.

Big Brother Doesn’t Need A Warrant

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On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported the following:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation performed potentially millions of searches of American electronic data last year without a warrant, U.S. intelligence officials said Friday, a revelation likely to stoke longstanding concerns in Congress about government surveillance and privacy.

An annual report published Friday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence disclosed that the FBI conducted as many as 3.4 million searches of U.S. data that had been previously collected by the National Security Agency.

Senior Biden administration officials said the actual number of searches is likely far lower, citing complexities in counting and sorting foreign data from U.S. data. It couldn’t be learned from the report how many Americans’ data was examined by the FBI under the program, though officials said it was also almost certainly a much smaller number.

The report doesn’t allege the FBI was routinely searching American data improperly or illegally.

The disclosure of the searches marks the first time a U.S. intelligence agency has published an accounting, however imprecise, of the FBI’s grabs of American data through a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that governs some foreign intelligence gathering. The section of FISA that authorizes the FBI’s activity, known as Section 702, is due to expire next year.

I think the Republicans need to be very careful about any law they pass that involves searching records, electronic or otherwise. This section of the FISA law needs to be allowed to expire next year. The fuse that began the use of government agencies for political purposes is found in the Patriot Act.

On Thursday, The Conservative Treehouse noted:

After the Patriot Act was triggered, not coincidentally only six weeks after 9/11, a slow and dangerous fuse was lit that ends with the intelligence apparatus being granted a massive amount of power. The problem with assembled power is always what happens when a Machiavellian network takes control over that power and begins the process to weaponize the tools for their own malicious benefit. That is exactly what Barack Obama was all about.

The Obama network took pre-assembled intelligence weapons we should never have allowed to be created, and turned those weapons into tools for his radical and fundamental change. The target was the essential fabric of our nation. Ultimately, this corrupt political process gave power to create the Fourth Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. From that perspective the fundamental change was successful.

The Wall Street Journal article concludes:

“For anyone outside the U.S. government, the astronomical number of FBI searches of Americans’ communications is either highly alarming or entirely meaningless,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), a privacy advocate, said. “Somewhere in all that overcounting are real numbers of FBI searches, for content and for nonconsent—numbers that Congress and the American people need before Section 702 is reauthorized.”

At a conference later Friday, Matt Olsen, the chief of the Justice Department’s national security division, said agencies were discussing what they could declassify about the use of Section 702 to demonstrate its value. He added that he expected to be able to share more information in the coming months.

The FBI has previously faced scrutiny for its oversight of how authorities plumb Section 702 data, including a rebuke from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2018 that found some searches violated the constitutional privacy rights of Americans.

In response, the FBI has imposed new safeguards meant to better ensure compliance. Those include a requirement that all searches involving 100 or more query terms get additional approvals and that analysts actively opt in to search Section 702 data, rather than passively allowing it.

Friday’s report also revealed four instances last year in which the FBI, due to specific factual considerations about a search of data, should have sought approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before performing a search and looking at the content of U.S. communications that were produced.

The FBI has never sought approval from the court since the requirement was adopted in 2018, officials said.

Please follow the links above to read both articles. Big brother is watching all of us.

Illustrating The Current Imbalance In Our Justice System

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On February 3rd, The Washington Examiner reported:

FBI Director Christopher Wray claimed the FBI is working just as hard to punish participants in the 2020 George Floyd riots as those involved in the Capitol riot, though neither the numbers nor his own boss’s words seem to back him up.

…Matthew Olsen, an assistant attorney general who heads the DOJ’s national security division, told the Senate in January that DOJ’s investigation into the Capitol riot is “unprecedented.” He also announced that his office had created a new “domestic terrorism unit” and said the Capitol riot is “being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism.”

The Justice Department said in January that at least 725 defendants have been arrested in connection with the Capitol riot and that more than 225 defendants had been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement officers. DOJ said in February that more than 165 defendants pleaded guilty to federal charges, including 22 felonies.

“The number of FBI [domestic terrorism] investigations over the past two years since March 2020 has more than doubled,” Olsen testified.

…McFadden (Judge Trevor McFadden), in a December ruling, argued there was a “troubling theme” in how prosecutors handled Portland riot cases compared to Capitol riot ones.

“The Government dismissed 27 cases brought against Portland defendants, including five felony cases,” McFadden said. “Dismissal of one felony case is unusual. Dismissal of five is downright rare and potentially suspicious. Rarely has the Government shown so little interest in vigorously prosecuting those who attack federal officers.”

On February 5th, The New York Post reported:

A man convicted of attempting to set fire to a high school during the Black Lives Matter riots in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd has been sentenced to five years probation.

Mohamed Hussein Abdi, 20, was handed the probation sentence in a U.S. District Court in St. Paul, Minnesota, Thursday after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit arson, according to court documents obtained by Fox News.

Abdi was also ordered to pay just over $34,000 in restitution to Gordon Parks High School in St. Paul.

Court documents state that the sentence was “imposed pursuant to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984.”

Draw your own conclusions.

The Swamp Is Deep

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The Washington swamp is deep. I am not sure if America is capable of cleaning it out. On Tuesday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article that illustrates how difficult it is to fight corruption in Washington.

The article reports:

Emphasis mine:

“#Durham filing reveals his team learned for first time, this month, the Office of the Inspector General had TWO cellphones for former FBI General Counsel who is central witness in Sussmann case, “the Government has been working diligently to review their contents.””

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) has known about the Durham probe of Michael Sussmann for how long?  And specifically, the criminal case against Sussmann revolved around the central witness, the point of contact with former FBI General Counsel, Jim Baker.  Yet the OIG said nothing to John Durham about their possession of Baker’s phones until this month?

Think about what that tells us?

TechnoFog has more details about the latest court filing SEE HERE.  He also notes the issue of the Durham team only recently being notified by the OIG in January:

…”There is also a curious paragraph discussing the fact that Durham, in January 2022 – learned from the DOJ Inspector General that they possessed “two FBI cellphones of the former FBI General Counsel to whom the defendant made his alleged false statement, along with forensic reports analyzing those cellphones.” Durham’s team is going through those cell phones now to analyze their contents.

And there will be more, with Durham stating, “the Government expects to receive additional information and documents in the coming weeks that may be relevant to the charged conduct.”

The article also notes:

The OIG is the internal watchdog, the internal police of the federal police apparatus. The guys who are supposed to be holding the justice system to account are the same guys who are keeping the justice system from accountability.

Chew on that for a few minutes while you contemplate all the previous OIG reports that resulted in exactly nothing, despite – or actually as a feature of their carefully worded content.

Yes, that would put the main office in charge of official justice obfuscation and damage control squarely in the hands of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Does that make all those OIG reports shade a slightly different, perhaps darker color grey?

Factually, the Trump-Russia collusion narrative was always a complete ruse perpetrated upon the American people, with the intended objective to stop candidate Trump, then hamstring President Trump, then cover up what they were doing to accomplish those goals, and then finally destroy the Trump presidency. Y’all know the story, I am not repeating it.

However, all of these tentacles of intrigue and rabbit hole exploration can get so intentionally complex that people lose sight of the bigger picture. The current question should be ‘why didn’t the DOJ-OIG inform Durham of the evidence they carried’?

Unfortunately, when you start asking those types of questions, you start to get too close to the heart of the issue. The entire apparatus of the U.S. Dept of Justice and the FBI are corrupt. As to the bigger question: will the Durham probe finally outline all the evidence to prove all the years of deception and fraud perpetrated by the massive aligned system of corrupt government? My short and painful answer is, NO.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It does not paint an encouraging picture. Elections are the way to drain the swamp, but we need well-educated voters who will share what they know about the swamp in drain the swamp.

Lied To Again

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On January 14th, I posted an article about the fact that the FBI has broken trust with the American people. Unfortunately, the FBI has become an arm of the Democrat party. In recent years, they have investigated every time a Republican sneezed and ignored overt corruption by Democrats. I have no idea if they can be repaired. They don’t seem to be able to tell the truth. The latest example of this is the reporting on the recent attack on a synagogue in Texas.

On Tuesday, Townhall posted an article updating the facts on the attack.

The article reports:

British national Malik Faisal Akram took four people hostage at Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas. It lasted over ten hours. It had a good ending. All four hostages are alive and escaped injury. Akram is dead. Yet, we have new developments on how this whole saga ended. At least one was released, the other three were later released as well. That’s what was Initially reported.  Now, it seems like the rabbi created the situation in which the hostages were able to make a break for it. In other words, the FBI lied again.

The article includes the following screenshot:

I realize that it is a technicality, but the FBI did not free the hostages–they escaped. The Rabbi deserves credit for his quick thinking and bold action–not the FBI.

The article concludes:

The FBI already has egg on their face for suggesting that this attack might not have been related to anti-Semitism. Right, because synagogues have always been random targets for hooligans—said by no one ever. The FBI is sure Trump colluded with Russia, which was a Democrat-funded circus act grounded in zero evidence but not so sure that a leftist who tried to kill the entire GOP congressional baseball team in 2017 was politically motivated. The bureau also refused to investigate the horrid sexual abuse allegations lobbed against Larry Nassar by scores of American gymnasts possibly because they were too busy manufacturing fake evidence to support the shoddy Russian collusion myth. It’s clown town over there.

It really is time to drain the swamp.

Is It Possible To Restore Trust In The FBI?

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Yesterday The American Thinker posted an article highlighting how the FBI has broken its relationship with the American public.

The article notes:

All large organizations suffer from the occasional presence of bad actors.  The FBI is no exception.  But it managed to retain a good relationship with the public in spite of its flaws because it was still solving rather than creating crimes. 

But something fundamentally changed in the last five years.  The Comey clown car arrived in the center ring and unloaded under the spotlight.  As the public watched the comedy of James “The Cardinal” Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, searching for phantom Russian colluders under the bed, while actual Russian colluders cheered them on, we knew we needed to take a closer look.  The examination has been shocking.

The “Midyear Exam,” the bureau’s name for the Hillary Clinton email investigation, was a farce.  No subpoenas were issued, central figures were given immunity without cooperation, evidence was destroyed by the FBI, and then the attorney general had a clandestine meeting with “Slick Willy” Clinton — the husband of the target.  Surprise: No charges were filed.  “The Cardinal” Comey held a press conference and announced that even though Hillary had broken numerous laws, she didn’t mean it, so he was giving her a pass.  It must have been an accident that an email server, containing classified documents, appeared in her bathroom — with a support staff.

“Crossfire Hurricane” was the investigation into alleged Trump collusion with Russia to steal an election.  Within a couple of months, the bureau knew that the whole thing was a hoax created by Hillary, yet the investigation continued for three years — eventually transitioning into a special counsel investigation.  Peter Strzok called “Crossfire Hurricane” the bureau’s insurance policy — against a Trump presidency.  It was a good way to show off for his mistress, Lisa Page — a rabid anti-Trump FBI lawyer.

The “Midyear Exam” was a cover-up, and “Crossfire Hurricane” was a setup.  Both were exposed by the clown show the FBI put on.  Now the public is paying attention.  Conspiracies that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago seem entirely plausible now.

The article concludes:

The FBI will cease being the “plumbers” (the nickname for Nixon’s henchmen) for the Democrats and become the enemy of both parties.  Then either it or America will die.  A free people cannot coexist with a secret police force, using investigations for purposes other than law enforcement.  The contest will be epic.

A recent Zogby poll found that by 46 to 31 percent, members of the public think their sheriff’s department has more legal authority than the FBI.  Obviously, the legal authority of the bureau is not subject to opinion.  It is defined by statute.  But there’s an important message in that poll.  We are self-governed.  Legal authority, without moral authority, equals no authority — at least not over free people.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. We currently have a problem in the Department of Justice, and the FBI is only a small part of that problem. When anyone who disagrees with the Democrats is at risk of being investigated for being a domestic terrorist, we have entered the world of totalitarian governments. That is not a place I want to be.

Changing The Vocabulary To The Ridiculous

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The Hannity website posted an article today that featured a quote from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that indicates how the political left is attempting to change the vocabulary on the abortion debate.

The article reports:

Far-left Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez weighed-in Wednesday night on the issue of abortion; saying the US Supreme Court could move to “legalize forced birth” across the country.

“Reminder that Brett Kavanaugh *still* remains credibly accused of sexual assault on multiple accounts w/ corroborated details & this year the FBI admitted it never fully investigated. Yet the court is letting him decide on whether to legalize forced birth in the US. No recusal,” posted AOC on Twitter.

“Out of 9 justices, 3 were appointed by a man who tried to overthrow the US government (& elected via minority). Those 3 will decide whether the US will legalize forcing people to give birth against their will. Legitimacy requires consent of the governed. They are dismantling it,” she added.

Just a note–the charges against Justice Kavanaugh were dropped because there was no credible evidence to back them up. How quickly AOC forgot that. She has also overlooked the fact that the majority of Americans do not support unlimited abortion.

The article notes that there are a significant number of protesters in Washington because of this Supreme Court case:

The U.S. Capitol Police says its officers are arresting protesters for blocking roads near the Supreme Court.

“We are giving roughly 40 demonstrators warnings to stop violating DC Code § 22–1307- Crowding, Obstructing or Incommoding near First Street, NE and Constitution Avenue,” the USCP said in a tweet Wednesday.

“We have given the demonstrators three warnings and are now arresting them for violating DC Code § 22–1307- Crowding, Obstructing or Incommoding in an area where protesting is prohibited,” it added a few minutes later. “This does not affect the lawful demonstrators who are in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.”

People have never been forced to give birth against their will. In a sense, the difference between an abortion and what AOC calls a ‘forced birth’ is the fact that in a ‘forced birth’ the child is generally alive. So the problem isn’t giving birth–it’s whether or not the child is allowed to live. Pregnancy does not just happen. It is the result of decisions and actions. Sometimes it is accidental, but it can still be traced back to decisions and actions. To refer to having a child as a ‘forced birth’ is probably one of the dumbest things I have ever heard.

I Wonder What The Real Story Is

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Yesterday The Washington Examiner reported the following:

The FBI has conducted searches of at least two New York locations tied to the conservative investigative group Project Veritas, reportedly in connection with the alleged theft of a diary belonging to Ashley Biden, the youngest daughter of President Joe Biden.

“I awoke to the news that apartments and homes of Project Veritas journalists, or former journalists, had been raided by FBI agents,” Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe said in a statement posted on his website on Friday. “It appears the Southern District of New York now has journalists in their sights for the supposed ‘crime’ of doing their jobs lawfully and honestly. Or at least, this journalist.”

The Biden family claims the diary was stolen in a burglary in 2020, but that may or may not be the case.

The article notes:

A right-wing outlet called the National File published dozens of pages of 40-year-old Ashley Biden’s purported diary in October 2020, with the handwritten pages covering a number of salacious, personal topics. The outlet said at the time it “has obtained what a whistleblower has identified as a copy of the complete diary” belonging to Biden’s daughter with first lady Jill Biden, as well as an audio recording of Ashley Biden, “admitting this is her diary.”

O’Keefe said Friday, “Late last year, we were approached by tipsters claiming they had a copy of Ashley Biden’s diary. We had never met or heard of the tipsters. The tipsters indicated that the diary had been abandoned in a room in which Ms. Biden stayed at the time, and in which the tipsters stayed in temporarily after Ms. Biden departed the room.

“The tipsters indicated that the diary included explosive allegations against then-candidate, Joe Biden. The tipsters indicated that they were negotiating with a different media outlet for the payment of monies for the diary.”

O’Keefe added, “At the end of the day, we made the ethical decision that because, in part, we could not determine if the diary was real, if the diary in fact belonged to Ashley Biden, or if the contents of the diary occurred, we could not publish the diary and any part thereof. We attempted to return the diary to an attorney representing Ms. Biden, but that attorney refused to authenticate it. Project Veritas gave the diary to law enforcement to ensure it could be returned to its rightful owner. We never published it.”

So where is the diary now? Why is the FBI spending its time looking for a diary?

Just When I Thought John Durham’s Picture Belonged On A Milk Carton

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The New York Post is reporting today that Igor Danchenko has been arrested and accused of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The article reports:

A Russian analyst who was the key source behind the shady “Steele dossier” about former President Donald Trump was arrested in Virginia on Thursday as part of an ongoing special counsel investigation, the Justice Department said.

Igor Danchenko, 43, is accused of lying to the FBI when questioned about his work compiling the wild allegations about Russia and Trump ahead of his victorious 2016 presidential election, according to a grand jury indictment unsealed Thursday.

The shady analyst is now the third person to face charges in special counsel John Durham’s probe into the origins of the Russia investigation, which Trump has long insisted was a witch hunt.

The problem is that many Americans believe the Steele dossier was factual and many mainstream media outlets have not yet admitted it wasn’t.

The article notes:

Many of his other allegations, such as the claim that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen visited Prague to meet Russian intel operatives, have been subsequently disproven.

According to the indictment, the FBI interviewed Danchenko several times between January and November 2017 to determine if information contained in the dossier was true.

Danchenko allegedly lied to federal investigators about his sources for the dubious intel on at least five different dates during that time, the court document states.

For instance, the feds say Danchenko falsely claimed never to have spoken to a certain unnamed PR executive — who was also a longtime Democratic party operative — about any of the allegations in the report. 

But Danchenko actually used the exec as an anonymous source for one or more of the claims contained in the dossier, according to the indictment.

It will be interesting to see how far this investigation goes before it is shut down for one reason or another. The people most in danger from the investigation are the Clintons, and the fact that Terry McAuliffe lost the election in Virginia this week may be a sign that the power the Clintons wield in the Democrat party is waning. I suspect that the Bidens have no love for the Clintons, but they may want to see the investigation shut down before it does serious damage to the Democrat party.

Stay tuned.

Evidently Ethics Investigations Are Not Allowed In The Biden Administration

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The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today about the possible conflict of interest in the Attorney General Merrick Garland’s investigation of parents objecting to the actions of local school boards.

The article reports:

Representative Mike Johnson (R-LA) questioned U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland about his clear conflict of interest today surrounding the Attorney General’s instructions for FBI agents to investigate parents who question school board curriculum. Merrick Garland’s daughter is married to the co-founder of the Critical Race Theory educational material being purchased by the school boards. The exact CRT material being directly challenged by the parents Garland has instructed the FBI to investigate.

In a clear conflict of interest Merrick Garland is using his office to protect the income and investments of his son-in-law’s business. However, when questioned about this conflict today, Merrick Garland says he will refuse to accept any ethical review of his conduct.

The article includes the following video:

The article concludes:

Conflict of interest much?

Yes, the Attorney General is instructing the FBI to investigate parents who might pose a financial threat to the business of his daughter’s husband.

Every government official should be expect regular ethics reviews of his conduct regardless of political party or position. The Attorney General is not above the law.

I Wish I Were Surprised By This

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Yesterday I posted an article that included the following:

Citing an increase in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school board members, teachers and workers in our nation’s public schools, today Attorney General Merrick B. Garland directed the FBI and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices to meet in the next 30 days with federal, state, Tribal, territorial and local law enforcement leaders to discuss strategies for addressing this disturbing trend. These sessions will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment and response by law enforcement.

Please understand–I do not support threats of violence or other intimidation tactics against anyone–however, I do support the rights of parents to speak up against anything they disagree with in their children’s school curriculum.

An article posted at The Conservative Treehouse yesterday tells another aspect of the story.

The article at The Conservative Treehouse reports:

Well, well, well… This is interesting.  U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland recently instructed the FBI to begin investigating parents who confront school board administrators over Critical Race Theory indoctrination material. The U.S. Department of Justice issued a memorandum to the FBI instructing them to initiate investigations of any parent attending a local school board meeting who might be viewed as confrontational, intimidating or harassing.

Attorney General Merrick Garland’s daughter is Rebecca Garland.  In 2018 Rebecca Garland married Xan Tanner [LINK].  Mr. Xan Tanner is the current co-founder of a controversial education service company called Panorama Education. [LINK and LINK]  Panorama Education is the “social learning” resource material provider to school districts and teachers that teach Critical Race Theory.

The article notes:

Yes, the Attorney General is instructing the FBI to investigate parents who might pose a financial threat to the business of his daughter’s husband.

The article includes the following screenshot and link to the memo from the Department of Justice to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarding parents protesting what is being taught in our schools:

If only the Department of Justice had been this conscientious about investigating Antifa and the Black Lives Matter movement, we might still have intact downtown areas in some of our major cities.

This Would Be Funny If It Were Not So Serious

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One of the problems with the political left’s claim that January 6th was an insurrection is that none of the ‘insurrectionists’ had weapons. The only person shot was an unarmed civilian by a policeman, and there are a lot of questions surrounding the incident. I somehow think real insurrectionists might have been armed. I also wonder why they are called insurrectionists when there is public video showing the police waving them into the building. But a narrative is a narrative I guess. At any rate, the political left is not done with January 6th. Their next step is somewhat unbelievable.

Yesterday BizPacReview posted the following:

The FBI has previously stated that no firearms were found in connection to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, but despite that contention, the media is now breathlessly reporting that authorities have found guns in the homes of protesters.

“Numerous people arrested in connection with January 6 have also had weapons in their homes, including this latest case just today — 3 pistols and an AR-15,” Mother Jones explosively tweeted in reference to an NBC report.

“Some January 6 defendants, including additional Oath Keeper members charged with conspiracy, have lied to investigators and went to significant lengths to destroy evidence of their communications related to the insurrection, according to court documents. Others have kept weapons in their homes in violation of pretrial orders. And some defendants have threatened future attacks,” they reported.

The defendants have not been found guilty of anything yet. They still have Second Amendment rights. I seriously doubt the part about future attacks since there was never an attack to begin with.

The article continues:

NBC New York is reporting that a man named Antonio Vuksanaj was arrested Thursday in connection with the Jan. 6 protest on federal trespassing-related charges. An AR-15 as well as three other guns were allegedly found in his home. The media outlet notes that it is unclear if these were his and if they were possessed legally. It should have been fairly simple for a major media outlet to find out if that was or wasn’t the case but it apparently doesn’t make for as good a headline.

Vuksanaj was turned in by a tipster and has pleaded not guilty. He’s facing trespassing and disorderly conduct-related charges which don’t appear to have any connection to possessing firearms. Nevertheless, outlets such as Mother Jones are seizing on the fact that he had guns at home which may or may not have been perfectly legal.

The article also notes:

Sanborn (Jill Sanborn, an FBI official) contended at the time that nobody from the riot was facing weapons charges, though a firearm was recovered from a van containing Molotov cocktails found near the Capitol. It is not publicly known whose van that was and if those involved were actual protesters taking part in the riot.

Please follow the link above to the article. The tweets in response to the Mother Jones article are hilarious. Mother Jones needs to go back to her days of Acapulco Gold and give up on the magazine.

Haven’t They Got Better Things To Do?

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The Gateway Pundit is reporting today that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating the U.S. Veterans’ groups that are going into Afghanistan that are going into Afghanistan and rescuing Americans and Afghans who were stranded there by our government.

The article reports:

The FBI has contacted veterans’ groups which helped evacuate Americans and at-risk allies left behind after the chaotic Afghanistan evacuation last month to make sure they did not violate federal laws.

Agents have enquired about financial records and flight manifests, and visited at least one group leader at home, Politico reported.

Agents are reportedly looking at whether any groups solicited money, offered bribes, or hired for-profit contractors for security and escort services.

The controversial private military contractor Erik Prince, who founded Blackwater, offered to safely evacuate people for $6,500 each, sparking allegations of profiteering. It is unclear if Prince has been contacted by the FBI.

Dozens of private groups made up of veterans and workers with experience in Afghanistan cropped up to aid those looking to flee the country.

Many were coordinated over messaging apps like WhatsApp, and some have continued their work since American military forces left the country for good on August 31.

This is amazing after the State Department has been accused of blocking the take-offs of some refugee  planes and then giving the names of the passengers to the Taliban. If the State Department is not willing to rescue Americans, they should at least get out of the way and let someone else do it!

The Roots Of January 6th

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The Constitution does not grant us our rights–it specifically states that our rights come from God. The Constitution is there to protect those rights. Unfortunately, many of our leaders have forgotten that. Those on the political left have begun to use our federal agencies as an arm of the Democrat party. They have also learned to use the media to blunt the blow when information about their questionable activities is about to come out.

Yesterday American Greatness posted an article that noted the role played by The New York Times in downplaying the pending indictment against Michael Sussman. Sussman, as you probably remember, was instrumental in getting the idea that Donald Trump was colluding with the Russians out into the public square. Well, The New York Times is at it again.

The article reports:

On Saturday, the Times published a carefully constructed bombshell intended to soften the blow of an explosive scandal in the making: the FBI had at least one informant among the group of Proud Boys who marched on the Capitol on January 6. The informant, according to “confidential documents” furnished to the paper, started working with the FBI in July 2020 and was in close contact with his FBI handler before, during, and after the Capitol protest. 

“After meeting his fellow Proud Boys at the Washington Monument that morning, the informant described his path to the Capitol grounds where he saw barriers knocked down and Trump supporters streaming into the building, the records show,” reporters Alan Feuer and Adam Goldman (the Times reporter most responsible for priming the ground for news that was unfavorable to the Russia collusion narrative) wrote on September 25. “In a detailed account of his activities contained in the records, the informant, who was part of a group chat of other Proud Boys, described meeting up with scores of men from chapters around the country at 10 a.m. on Jan. 6 at the Washington Monument and eventually marching to the Capitol. He said that when he arrived, throngs of people were already streaming past the first barrier outside the building, which, he later learned, was taken down by one of his Proud Boy acquaintances and a young woman with him.”

In other words, one of the informant’s Proud Boy “acquaintances” was removing temporary barriers to allow a crowd to enter the restricted grounds around the building.

Sounds legit.

The article also notes that there was another informant who took part in the sacking of the Capitol.

The article concludes with the following story:

In fact, after Beattie’s articles posted in June, Alan Feuer, the same reporter who co-authored this weekend’s spin story, wrote a piece disclosing Rhodes had been interviewed by the FBI in May. (Feuer’s article, conveniently, was posted after FBI Director Wray testified twice on Capitol Hill this week.)

Further, in my interview with him this week, Thomas Caldwell, one of the first people arrested in the Oath Keepers case, told me Rhodes approached him during a Stop the Steal rally in Virginia last November. Rhodes told Caldwell the Oath Keepers provided security for conservatives and asked if he’d be interested in assisting in the future.

Caldwell gave Rhodes his contact information, which led to Rhodes connecting Caldwell with other Oath Keepers; plans were made to travel to D.C. and meet near the Capitol after Trump’s speech on January 6.

Caldwell’s home was raided and he was arrested on January 19, just two weeks after the protest. Prosecutors already had a trove of evidence against Caldwell, which is highly curious considering Caldwell never entered the building and was charged with no violent crime.

How did the government get Caldwell’s information so quickly? It certainly suggests the involvement of someone working on the inside, someone who immediately provided investigators with incriminating evidence.

Someone like an FBI informant.

One thing is certain; the Times damage-control article is just the tip of the FBI iceberg. And more proof January 6 was an inside job.

How are the actions of the FBI considered Constitutional?

When Your False Flag Event Doesn’t Happen

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I firmly believe that the rally held in Washington, D.C., yesterday was supposed to be a ‘false flag’ event. I am sure that those on the political left were hoping a large crowd would show up and act like the ‘protesters’ at Black Lives Matter protests. Despite the fact that the rally was for a good cause–there are people in Washington, D.C., jails that as you read this are being denied their Constitutional rights–the rally was small. Many people who are aware of the situation of the January 6th political prisoners were not willing to take a chance on being part of a ‘false flag’ event. Although that was probably wise, it is obvious that a damper is being placed on the free speech of conservatives.

Today, Townhall posted some tweets about the rally. Below are two of them.

 

 

Some Good News

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On Saturday, The Epoch Times posted an article about the successful rescue of 47 human trafficking victims in twelve states.

The article reports:

A human trafficking operation joined by 12 states has rescued 47 victims and arrested 102 people, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced on Aug. 27.

“Using both buyer-centric and victim-centric ‘sting’ human trafficking operations, Missouri and participating states were able to rescue 47 victims and sex workers and provide needed medical services to 41, and arrested 102 across the country in connection with human trafficking,” the Missouri Attorney General’s Office said in a statement.

According to the information provided by the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, the operation rescued victims and made arrests in 12 states.

Missouri: four victims rescued, two arrests made.

Illinois: one victim rescued, three arrests made.

Iowa: 11 arrests made, a large amount of currency has been seized.

Kentucky: 21 adult victims rescued, two minor victims rescued, 46 arrests made.

Minnesota: eight victims rescued, three arrests made.

Nebraska: seven arrests made.

North Dakota: six victims rescued, three arrests made.

Oklahoma: one victim rescued, seven arrests made.

Tennessee: four arrests made.

Texas: four victims rescued, two arrests made.

Wisconsin: five arrests made.

South Dakota: nine arrests made.

The article concludes:

“Operation United Front was an unprecedented human trafficking operation that brought together law enforcement agencies from different jurisdictions—something that rarely happens. When we all come together, we can affect change and more effectively fight human trafficking, a crime that is often multi-jurisdictional in nature,” Schmitt said.

According to data collected by the FBI, there were 1,883 human trafficking offenses reported in 2019, with 875 of the offenses cleared or closed, including 18 offenses that involved minor victims under the age of 18.

The terms “cleared” or “closed” usually mean that law enforcement departments have made arrests, the suspects have been charged, cases have been turned over to the court for prosecution, or the offender has been identified.

This is a national problem that is being exacerbated by the border policies of the Biden administration. Many of the so-called family units coming in are cartel members bringing in young victims of sex trafficking. We need to close the southern border and increase our efforts to end this horrific crime.

The Friday Night News Dump

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If you are a political person who has to report on a story that does not support the media narrative, the best time to leak the story is on a Friday night. It is really advantageous to leak the story on a Friday night when something like the fall of Afghanistan is occurring. The chances of anyone seeing your story are minuscule compared to what they normally would be. So it is not surprising that the following story was posted by Reuters at 5 pm on Friday, August 20th.

Reuters reports:

The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.

Though federal officials have arrested more than 570 alleged participants, the FBI at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump, according to the sources, who have been either directly involved in or briefed regularly on the wide-ranging investigations.

“Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,” said a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. “Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”

This is not news to anyone with a brain. There were a lot of eyewitness accounts about people who were not dressed like the Trump supporters at the rally and did not have the attitude that was prevalent at the rally. There was also the fact that the attack on the Capitol occurred before the rally was over. There was also the fact that President Trump instructed those at the rally to go to the Capitol to show their support for the Congressmen protesting the possible election fraud and to do it peacefully. This news article goes against the picture the Democrats and some Republicans were attempting to paint. Therefore it was released at dinnertime on Friday.

The article continues:

Stone, a veteran Republican operative and self-described “dirty trickster”, and Jones, founder of a conspiracy-driven radio show and webcast, are both allies of Trump and had been involved in pro-Trump events in Washington on Jan. 5, the day before the riot.

FBI investigators did find that cells of protesters, including followers of the far-right Oath Keepers and Proud Boys groups, had aimed to break into the Capitol. But they found no evidence that the groups had serious plans about what to do if they made it inside, the sources said.

The article includes a picture of one aspect of what happened in the Capitol that day with a predictable caption. There are no pictures taken from the video of the police waving the protesters in.

The article notes:

Prosecutors have filed conspiracy charges against 40 of those defendants, alleging that they engaged in some degree of planning before the attack.

Many of those defendants are still being held in intolerable conditions in the Washington, D.C., jail without bail or visits from their families. They are essentially political prisoners in America.

The article includes the usual spin, failing to mention that the assault on the Capitol began before President Trump told his supporters to peacefully march there and referring to the President’s speech as incendiary.

Again, the article at Reuters is a classic example of a Friday-night news dump. They spun it as best they could, but a well-informed reader will see right through the spin.

This Really Is Not Surprising

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Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article about what is happening at America’s southern border.

The article reports:

Unprecedented numbers of known or suspected terrorists have crossed the southern border in recent months, the outgoing Border Patrol chief said.

The head of the Border Patrol, Rodney Scott, told his 19,000 agents before retiring on Aug. 14 that their national security mission is paramount right now despite the Biden administration’s focus on migrant families and children who are coming across the United States-Mexico boundary at record rates.

“Over and over again, I see other people talk about our mission, your mission, and the context of it being immigration or the current crisis today being an immigration crisis,” Scott said in a video message to agents, obtained by the Washington Examiner. “I firmly believe that it is a national security crisis. Immigration is just a subcomponent of it, and right now, it’s just a cover for massive amounts of smuggling going across the southwest border — to include TSDBs at a level we have never seen before. That’s a real threat.”

TSDB refers to known or suspected terrorists, as identified in the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database.

The article concludes:

The Washington Examiner was first to report in June that Biden administration officials were forcing out Scott at Border Patrol headquarters in Washington after 16 months on the job.

One person with firsthand knowledge of Scott’s decision said in May that Scott was told to retire, resign, or move away from headquarters. The decision by Scott’s bosses was “completely driven by politics,” even though Scott’s position is apolitical and he is a 29-year employee of the Border Patrol.

“I did choose to retire, but I am not retiring to run away from this crisis. I’m just going to fight for you from a slightly different angle,” Scott said in his message to agents, though he did not explain his future plans.

“I am asking each one of you to look in the mirror and remind yourself, and if you haven’t thought about it before, think about the fact that you are not immigration police and our job is not immigration on the border,” Scott said. “Our job is to know who and what comes in this country and then to filter it out based on the rules applied by Congress and by law. That’s critically important, and when you put it in the context of immigration only, I think you miss the bigger fight. This job is extremely important. Your mission’s very important.”

Firing competent people is not the path to good government.

This Needs To Be Repeated Every Day Until It Ends

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The Federalist posted an article today about the contrast between how the Justice Department is treating those arrested in Washington on January 6th and those arrested during the riots in America’s major cities last summer.

The article reports:

One would think a major report from a group representing America’s top law enforcement leaders analyzing the widespread riots of 2020 would have garnered significant media attention. One also would think such a report would garner widespread discussion after the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capital due to the parallels between it and the 2020 riots. Given our hyper-partisan environment, however, one would be woefully wrong.

Specifically, back in October 2020, the Major Cities Chiefs (MCC) released a comprehensive report full of data from dozens of cities that provides deep insights into the 2020 riots that plagued America after George Floyd’s death in Minnesota. The MCC’s “Report on the 2020 Protests and Civil Unrest” served as an excellent after-action report that cities, states, and the federal government could use to reform their practices and, equally importantly, to prepare for future riots.

The article notes the difference in the events of last summer and the events of January 6th:

Now here’s a prime example of dissimilar treatment for far worse actions. The January 6 riot involved no guns or fires among protesters, only makeshift weapons like flag poles, batons, and objects from the area.

In contrast, the 2020 riots involved guns, incendiary devices, lasers, paint bombs, and fireworks that were used to torch buildings and cars, hurt police officers, and destroy meaningful parts of many U.S. cities. Despite the far greater violence and destruction the 2020 rioters perpetrated, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) haven’t hunted those rioters down with anywhere near the vigor and vim used against what are in many cases at most trespassers.

…In stark contrast, the left and the media continue to falsely claim law enforcement officers were killed on January 6. While some law enforcement officers were certainly injured during that riot, the numbers and severity are far below the law enforcement injuries from the 2020 riots.

More than 2,000 law enforcement officers were injured during the 2020 riots, with numerous officers being shot and one, retired captain David Dorn, brutally murdered while protecting his friend’s shop from rioters. The 2020 rioters also shot other protestors.

In contrast, the only person violently killed on January 6 was the unarmed protester Ashli Babbitt, at the hands of a Capitol Police officer whose identity still remains unconfirmed by public officials.

The article notes:

Left-wing rioters wisely did their acts in cities controlled by Democrats and with Democrat district attorneys, who went soft on them despite their disproportionate violence. In contrast, those who rioted on January 6 had the great misfortune of being in a jurisdiction controlled by anti-Trump Democrats and zealously left-wing U.S. attorneys looking to impress their fellow leftists.

Most of the people involved in the civil unrest that took place last summer have had their charges dropped. Many of the people involved in the January 6th unrest have been refused bail. Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is a chilling commentary on what has happened to our justice system in recent years.

Big Brother Is Watching

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On July 22nd, Forbes posted an article about one method the Federal Bureau of Investigation is using to spy on Americans. The article is technical, but very important.

The article reports:

The FBI is using a controversial technology traditionally used to locate smartphones as a car tracking surveillance tool that spies on vehicles’ on-board WiFi.

Known as a Stingray or a cell-site simulator, the tool masquerades as a cell tower in order to force all devices in a given area to connect into it. Agents can then pick the number they’re interested in and locate the device. Normally that would be a mobile phone, but a search warrant application discovered by Forbes shows it can also be used to find vehicles, as long as they have onboard Wi-Fi. That’s because car Wi-Fi systems act like a phone, in that they reach out to mobile networks to get their data. So it makes sense that police would use it to find a car, though this appears to be the first case on record of it happening.

The application to use the Stingray was filed by the FBI in Wisconsin in May, as it sought to locate a vehicle – a Dodge Durango Hellcat – it believed was being used by a man indicted for drug dealing and firearms possession crimes.

The FBI had already been given permission to use other kinds of surveillance to locate another vehicle, a “black Jeep,” associated with the suspect, according to the warrant application. Again, they were surveillance techniques traditionally used to track cellphones, the first being a pen register, which gets data from a cellphone provider to monitor connections made by the device to other phones or electronic devices. The second was a so-called “ping warrant,” which shows the locations of cell towers used by a device. That gave them the location of a car dealership, where they learned the suspect had traded in the Jeep for the Dodge, the FBI wrote in its application.

The article concludes:

The case highlights how cars are no longer just vehicles, but networks on wheels, and all that data can be useful to government agencies. As Forbes recently reported, police can and have acquired location data from a car’s airbag system or brake light module. They’ve also previously requested location data from companies that have in-car systems that track millions of vehicles’ GPS coordinates every day, including GM OnStar, and fleet management providers Geotab and Spireon.

“Many people don’t realize that modern cars aren’t just wheels and an engine anymore, they are computers and cellphones too,” says Nate Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “These features offer convenience and efficiency to drivers, but they also generate sensitive information about where we go and what we do. Strong privacy protections are important for this kind of vehicle information, just as they are for information generated by our cell phones and laptops.”

I am all for giving law enforcement all of the tools they need, but this seems to me to be a bit much. Unless I have broken a law, it is none of the government’s business where I am. I fear that this technology could easily be used to track innocent people in the future. It has the potential of being another step in the government’s efforts to limit the freedom of Americans.

Creating Further Division In America

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On June 16th, I posted an article about Biden administration’s plan “to create ways for Americans to report radicalized friends and family to the government, in an effort to fight domestic terrorism.” I am sure that the idea that your family and neighbors (or children for that matter) could report you for anything you say will help bring Americans together ((note sarcasm).

Well, it’s getting worse.

Yesterday The Daily Caller reported the following:

The FBI took to Twitter Sunday to encourage families to watch out for “homegrown violent extremism.”

“Family members and peers are often best positioned to witness signs of mobilization to violence. Help prevent homegrown violent extremism,” the FBI’s tweet read in part.

Family members and peers are often best positioned to witness signs of mobilization to violence. Help prevent homegrown violent extremism. Visit https://t.co/bql36iSbig to learn how to spot suspicious behaviors and report them to the #FBI.

This is the tweet:

The article continues:

The link included in the tweet takes readers to the 2019 edition of the Homegrown Violent Extremism Mobilization Indicators report.

The report separates extremism into three groups based on whether the action is highly, moderately, or minimally diagnostic on its own.

Behaviors that are considered highly diagnostic include taping a martyrdom video or last will, preparing travel in order to join a terrorist group, or “communicating intent to engage in violent extremist activity,” especially on social media. (RELATED: DOJ Considering New Domestic Terrorism Laws Aimed At Violent Domestic Extremism)

In June, Attorney General Merrick Garland said white supremacy was the greatest “domestic violent extremist threat” facing the U.S. as he announced President Joe Biden’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.

This is frightening. We currently have an open southern border allowing members of MS-13 and other violent gangs to enter America and the FBI is worried about politically incorrect opinions being expressed on social media. Wow.

I realize that a lot of this is a reaction to what happened on January 6th, when some unarmed people forced their way into the Capitol. However, I firmly believe that January 6th is being used as an excuse to shut down any opposition to the current administration–on social media or elsewhere. We have watched the media censor news they didn’t like (Hunter’s laptop, election fraud, coronavirus deaths in nursing homes in various states, etc.). What is being proposed here is the next step to creating a one-party government which punishes political dissent.

Yesterday The Epoch Times noted:

Richard Grenell, a former acting director of national intelligence, wrote that the FBI’s tweet “is outrageous” because the agency “has a growing credibility problem and this type of sinister snitching is clearly unhelpful.” Several Republican lawmakers also criticized the tweet, saying the FBI is encouraging Americans’ family members to spy on one another.

“In both Cuba & China, they also ask children to spy on their parents,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wrote.

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-Texas) wrote: “These people protected Hillary, abused NSA surveillance databases against Americans, used known, unreliable DNC-funded propaganda to spy on Trump, perpetuated the Russia hoax, & lied to the FISC repeatedly. And now they tell you that you should spy on your family.”

It’s not clear if the FBI posted the tweet in reference to the Biden administration’s campaign against “domestic violent extremists” or the longstanding intelligence operations against Islamist terror groups. Officials at the agency didn’t respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment by press time.

 

Score One For The Good Guys

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NewsMax posted an article today about a global sting operation to catch members of organized crime in action.

The article reports:

The operation by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Australian and European police ensnared suspects in Australia, Asia, Europe, South America and the Middle East involved in the narcotics trade, the officials said.

Millions of dollars in cash were seized in raids around the world, along with 30 tonnes of drugs including more than eight tonnes of cocaine.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the operation had “struck a heavy blow against organized crime – not just in this country, but … around the world.”

Operation Greenlight/Trojan Shield, conceived by Australian police and the FBI in 2018, was one of the biggest infiltrations and takeovers of a specialized encrypted network.

It began when U.S. officials paid a convicted drug trafficker to give them access to a smartphone that he had customized, on which he was installing ANOM, also styled An0m, a secure encrypted messaging app. The phones were then sold to organized crime networks through underworld distributors.

The FBI helped to infiltrate 12,000 devices into 300 criminal groups in more than 100 countries, Calvin Shivers of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division told reporters in The Hague.

The article concludes with some of the numbers involved:

Australian police said they had arrested 224 people, including members of outlawed motorcycle gangs, and disrupted 21 murder plots.

On Monday alone, they seized 104 firearms, including a military-grade sniper rifle, as well as almost A$45 million ($35 million) in cash, including A$7 million from a safe buried under a garden shed in a suburb of Sydney.

In Europe, there were 49 arrests in the Netherlands, 75 in Sweden and over 60 in Germany, where authorities seized hundreds of kilograms of drugs, more than 20 weapons and over 30 luxury cars and cash.

Finnish police not only detained almost 100 suspects and seized 500 kg of narcotics but also found a warehouse with 3-D printers used to manufacture gun parts.

The operation also revealed that gangs were being tipped off about police actions, which prompted “numerous high-level public corruption cases in several countries,” according to an affidavit from an FBI agent.

Kershaw said the Australian underworld figure, who had absconded, had “essentially set up his own colleagues” by distributing the phones, and was now a marked man.

“The sooner he hands himself in, the better for him and his family.”

Please follow the link above and read the entire article. It is amazing.

Quietly Correcting What Was A Noisy Mistake

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The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about the FBI’s reclassification of the June 2017 shooting attack on Republican Congressmen playing baseball in Eugene Simpson Stadium Park near Washington, D.C. The shooting had been classified by the FBI as “suicide by cop.”

The article notes:

In June 2017, James Hodgkinson shot a number of Republicans who were at Eugene Simpson Stadium Park after asking GOP Rep. Jeff Duncan, who was leaving practice there, if the remaining players were Republicans or Democrats, signaling he was looking for a certain profile.

…According to the FBI, in an official report that was released on Friday, the brutal 2017 attack at the Alexandria, Virginia, baseball field that nearly killed Rep. Steve Scalise has been classified as “domestic terrorism” carried out by a “domestic violent extremist” targeting Republicans after the bureau previously classified it as “suicide by cop.”

…In late April of 2021, a US House representative instructed a reluctant Christopher Wray to investigate the origins of that odd report.

The article concludes:

Then the event was quietly updated to a domestic terrorist event.

Friday’s revelation was buried deep in the middle of a long FBI release and reversed that decision that was made by Andrew McCabe in 2017.  McCabe was apparently trying to soften the scrutiny of the motivation for the attempted murder of Republicans at the hand of a far-left radical activist.

The Washington Examiner reported on the matter, telling us where to find the information:

The revelation appears in the middle of an appendix on page 35 of a 40-page FBI-DHS report released on Friday titled “Security Strategic Intelligence Assessment and Data on Domestic Terrorism.” In a section describing approximately 85 different “FBI-Designated Significant Domestic Terrorism Incidents in the United States from 2015 through 2019,” the Alexandria baseball field shooting appears, with the FBI categorizing the perpetrator as a “Domestic Violent Extremist” and describing the incident thusly: “An individual with a personalized violent ideology targeted and shot Republican members of Congress at a baseball field and wounded five people. The subject died as a result of engagement with law enforcement.”

It’s interesting when the FBI does things like that and forgets to update the public.

I realize that most FBI agents are honest, hardworking people who love their country. However, it sounds as if we need to remove an awful lot of the top brass at the agency.