Tag Archives: SWAT team

The Jury Gets It Right

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On Monday, Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article about the federal court jury that found Mark Houck not guilty. As you may remember, Mark Houck was arrested in an early morning raid on his house by an armed swat team in front of his children. What was his crime? He was charged with violating the The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act). Mr. Houck leads a pro-life group that provides sidewalk counseling at abortion clinics in Philadelphia. The incident in question involves one of the abortion clinic escorts harassing Mark Houck’s son. When the case was originally brought to court, the court threw it out. Then the federal government decided to get involved.

The article at Hot Air reports:

By the way, this isn’t over yet. Eleven others face prosecution for FACE Act charges for allegedly blocking access to abortion clinics, as Greg points out in a subsequent tweet. The Daily Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan covered this in October:

…Amid accusations that it is targeting pro-lifers to silence and intimidate, the Justice Department has charged 11 more pro-life activists with violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act for blocking the entrance of an abortion clinic in 2021.

The 11 activists were charged with FACE Act violations stemming from their 2021 “blockade” of an abortion clinic in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. This blockade was peaceful, pro-life activist AJ Hurley told The Daily Signal on Wednesday evening.

Several of the activists were arrested on the day of the blockade, after reportedly successfully preventing abortions from taking place at the clinic for most of the day, but police reportedly released these activists later in the day after they posted bail for misdemeanor charges, the pro-life news outlet Live Action reported.

The article also notes:

Meanwhile, the FBI has done little to pursue actual acts of vandalism and political violence that targeted pro-life clinics. Two people got indicted last week in Florida. but most other victims have barely heard from the FBI — and the 30-agent raid model somehow didn’t get deployed in these cases, either.

It seems that the process is the punishment at the Department of Justice. It’s yet another good reason that Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans have established a new select committee on the weaponization of federal law enforcement. Mark Houck will no doubt provide chapter and verse on that subject, starting with the astonishing raid over an argument.

 

Is This Now A Hostile Work Environment?

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On Sunday, Just the News posted an article about FBI Special Agent Stephen M. Friend, who serves as a SWAT team member, who has been suspended in recent days because of his status as a whistleblower.

The article reports:

An FBI whistleblower has reported to the Office of Special Counsel that he believes the bureau and Justice Department are violating the constitutional rights of Jan. 6 defendants, falsifying statistics on domestic extremism and misusing SWAT teams to make misdemeanor arrests, according to a copy of the complaint reviewed by Just the News.

Special Agent Stephen M. Friend, who works for the FBI in Florida and serves as a SWAT team member, told the main federal whistleblower office in Washington he had an “exemplary” work record since he joined the bureau in 2014 and even won awards but was suspended in recent days after he began raising concerns about the FBI’s and DOJ’s conduct in the Jan. 6 investigation

“I believed the investigations were inconsistent with FBI procedure and resulted in the violation of citizens’ Sixth and Eighth Amendment rights,” Friend wrote. “I added that many of my colleagues expressed similar concerns to me but had not vocalized their objections to FBI Executive Management.”

The FBI national press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent on Friday.

Although I have very little doubt that what Agent Friend is saying is true, I am not optimistic that the problems he points out will be dealt with. Although there are Congressional committees charged with overseeing various aspects of the FBI, the Director, Christoper Wray, is accountable to the Attorney General, Merrick Garland. Both the Director and the Attorney General are known for the politicization of their organizations. Since the prosecutions relating to January 6th are purely political, I suspect the civil rights of those accused will continue to be violated. As for the SWAT teams, there have be a number of incidents when SWAT teams and other tactics were used to intimidate political enemies of the Democrat party.

I don’t mean to be negative, but I am beginning to wonder if anyone can put right our totally corrupt FBI and Department of Justice.

There Seems To Be Something Of A Double Standard Here

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On Monday, The American Thinker reported the following:

An account was published Sunday in the San Marcos Record of a massive late June raid on a couple in rural Hays County, Texas that resulted in no arrest. The scale of forces deployed and the tactics used seem designed to intimidate and punish, especially considering the fact that the couple never entered the US Capitol on June 6, and were guilty only of being Trump supporters who were peacefully demonstrating.  

The article recounts the event:

Lora DeWolfe and Darrel Kennemer were startled when FBI agents, during the pre-dawn hours on June 22, broke through their gate leading up to their home which sits on seven acres in rural Hays County. (snip)

Kennemer, concerned, sprung out of bed, grabbed his AR-15 and stepped onto the porch wearing only his briefs.

The couple watched as several other vehicles, estimated between 20-30, poured onto the property, including one armored vehicle with a battering ram.

FBI agents demanded Kennemer “drop his rifle” as they exited the approaching vehicle. Kennemer responded asking if officials had a warrant, and to show him.

Agents instead began tossing a series of flashbang grenades at the 67-year-old after which Kennemer realized a group of targeting lasers on him that forced him to lay down his weapon.

The couple was placed into handcuffs, taken away from their house, and questioned while their home was being searched.

Kennemer said it wasn’t only members of the FBI present, but ATF and SWAT, too.

“All present I would say upwards of 100 agents, at an astronomical cost to the taxpayer, were on site,” Kennemer said. “The warrant wasn’t even a ‘no knock’ warrant. It could have been served with a simple knock on our door during daylight hours.”

This is abuse of power by the federal government. At the present moment, the Department of Justice is so out of control that they are willing to do this to anyone who is a Trump supporter. That is not America.

Meanwhile, Just the News reported the following on Monday:

The same U.S. Attorney’s office that has prosecuted scores of Jan. 6 protesters for trespassing and other crimes has declined to prosecute nine members of TV comedian Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show production team for unlawful entry into a congressional office building, Capitol Police announced Monday evening.

“The United States Capitol Police (USCP) has been working with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia on the June 16, 2022, Unlawful Entry case that involved a group of nine people associated with The Late Show,” the department said in a press release.

“The United States Capitol Police was just informed the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia is declining to prosecute the case,” they added.

Capitol Police said they arrested the nine producers on unlawful entry charges, saying “members of the group had been told several times before they entered the Congressional buildings that they had to remain with a staff escort inside the buildings and they failed to do so.”

So a couple that did not enter the Capitol building on January 6th has their house invaded by the FBI with a SWAT team, and a group that entered the Capitol unlawfully is not charged. Meanwhile, some prisoners who were arrested in connection with January 6th are still sitting in jail with no bail and no trial.

If we don’t begin to undo this in the November election, we will no longer have a country.

How Many Times Did Scott Walker Have To Run For Governor During One Term?

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The American Thinker posted an article today about the legal attack on Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in recent years. The opponents of Governor Walker have used “John Doe” investigations against the governor and midnight SWAT team raids on Walker’s political supporters.

The article reports:

Yesterday, Judge Lee S. Dreyfus of the Waukesha County Court unsealed a trove of documents in  he civil lawsuit being brought by the Wisconsin Club for Growth against the GAB (Government Accountability Board).

The article lists some of the information in the documents:

Staff members engaged in the probe seem to have defied their own board. Documents show the board voted on July 21, 2014 refused to reauthorize the investigation, on a 3-2 vote.

Documents show the GAB staffers were preoccupied with their own legal exposure rather than whether those staffers were engaged in a lawful investigation. As late as May, they urged the board to continue to fund the agency’s probe because “terminating the investigation could undermine the position of the Board’s investigators in the civil case, exposing them, and potentially Board members to civil liability with no legal support.” (snip)

Under state law, the agency’s board must meet “at least once every 90” days to review the progress of the investigation. The board must approve the reauthorization of the investigation or the probe is considered closed.

The GAB is not authorized under law to prosecute criminal investigations, such as John Doe probes.

GAB spokesman Reid Magney earlier this week told Wisconsin Reporter, “John Doe investigations are initiated by district attorneys and controlled by a judge, not the Government Accountability Board.”

Asked whether the board has reauthorized the probe, he declined to comment, citing confidentiality laws.

Technically, the GAB’s involvement in the investigation should have been terminated over a year ago.

According to documents, the GAB voted to authorize the probe on June 20, 2013 but did not vote to reauthorize until Sept. 25, 2013 – 97 days after the GAB’s investigation was officially launched.

GAB Judge Harold Froehlich extensively discussed the lapse at a board meeting in May 2014.

But the GAB, according to court documents, had been admitted as a party to the probe and assisting prosecutors 10 months prior to the board’s formal vote to begin its investigation.

The unsealed documents show GAB director and general counsel Kevin Kennedy and Jonathan Becker, administrator of the agency’s ethics division, involved the accountability board in the secret probe without the approval or even knowledge of the judges. Board members were not informed of the involvement until Dec. 18, 2012, some three months after Kennedy and crew jumped on board.

And it seems Kennedy and Becker misled the board about precisely when they had “learned” of the John Doe investigation, according to a Dec. 18, 2012 memorandum.

“Since the time of the October 23, 2012 Board meeting, staff has learned that the Milwaukee District Attorney has opened another John Doe investigation,” the memo states.

It is not a crime to be a conservative governor. Hopefully the people who attempted to make it a crime will find themselves defending their actions rather than attacking people for their political views.