Author Topic: FBI, DOJ, SS Follies, Entrapment Attempts, & Stasi-Like Schemes (CIA & ATF, too)  (Read 11253 times)

Crafty_Dog

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JW: FBI provided Dems with info on Whistleblowers
« Reply #50 on: June 10, 2024, 11:56:12 AM »
Judicial Watch: Records Show FBI Provided Democrats with Information on Whistleblowers Who Testified at May 2023 Weaponization Hearing
PR
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it received 54 pages of records from the Department of Justice in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit which show the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Office of Congressional Affairs (OCA) provided a Democrat staffer with information on FBI whistleblowers who detailed the bureau’s targeting of political opponents and retaliation for their testifying at a May 18, 2023, hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

A May 23, 2023, email from Damon Marx, senior counsel in the office of New York Democrat Rep. Dan Goldman, shows that the FBI provided documents apparently pertaining to the whistleblowers that were “very helpful” to Goldman.

Marx writes to an FBI Office of Congressional Affairs (OCA) official whose name is redacted:

We spoke last week before the Weaponization hearing on Thursday. Thanks again for sending over those documents. They were very helpful to the Congressman.

Francesco (my colleague cc’ed here) and I will be good points of contact for you going forward. Both of us broadly cover law enforcement; however, in terms of specifics, I cover cybersecurity, counterterrorism, and much of the Congressman’s committee work, while Francesco covers issues ranging from immigration to gun violence.

We would love to meet in person next time you have the chance. Please let us know when you’re available for coffee or just to swing by the office. And don’t hesitate to reach out on any other matters!

The CC’d colleague is Francesco Arreaga, then a Democrat staffer on the House Homeland Security Committee and former Elizabeth Warren campaign staffer.

 On May 18, 2023, a hearing was held by the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Highlights of the hearing include:

It is clear from these disclosures, and especially in wake of Special Counsel John Durham’s report, that the FBI has become politically weaponized.

To date, the Committee and Select Subcommittee have received whistleblower testimony from several current and former FBI employees who chose to risk their careers to expose abuses and misconduct in the FBI. Some of these employees—Special Agents Garret O’Boyle and Stephen Friend, Supervisory Intelligence Analyst George Hill, and Staff Operations Specialist Marcus Allen—have chosen to speak on the record about their experiences.

 During the hearing, Allen was allowed to discuss the suspension he incurred for merely forwarding open-source news articles to his colleagues, as his job required:

Q. And why exactly did you send th[e] email?

A. I sent [the emails] just for awareness because the[y] . . . indicated potential problems with the investigation as far as informants were concerned, and our organization’s potential forthrightness about the utilization of informants there on that day. That might have some impact on our cases and the subjects that we’re looking up, and just a general awareness overall for the investigation as a whole, that there might have been some kind of potential Federal involvement with the activities on January 6th, and I thought it was important enough that it like warranted our attention, you know.

Q. Is it safe to say that you sending th[ose] email was part of your job at the time?

A. Yes.

The Committee explained that “ecause these open-source articles questioned the FBI’s handling of the violence at the Capitol, the FBI suspended Allen for ‘conspiratorial views in regards to the events of January 6th . . . .’”

The day before the hearing, the FBI revoked the security clearances of three agents who testified, Steve Friend, Garret O’Boyle, and Marcus Allen, according to a letter the bureau sent to congressional investigators and obtained by ABC News. Allen’s clearance was recently reinstated.

The records include a May 16, 2023, email to an FBI OCA official, whose name is redacted, from Marx, who writes:

It’s my understanding that you’re out this week, but if you have a moment to chat about some of the witnesses for Thursday’s Weaponization hearing, it would be super helpful. Please let me know if you’re available tomorrow when you have a chance.

The FBI OCA official responds:

Sure, give me a call when you can.

In a May 9, 2023, email to Goldman’s then-Deputy Chief of Staff and Legislative Director Erin Meegan, an FBI OCA official whose name is redacted writes:

I was disappointed I didn’t get the opportunity to meet you during our trip to Quantico. We are planning to take another trip there, maybe later this summer, so hopefully you’ll be able to join us then. I serve as [redacted]. OCA plays a key role in communicating with lawmakers and their staffers about FBI activities and is the primary point of contact for all Congressional matters.

I would like an opportunity to meet with you to properly introduce myself and tell you more about the mission of OCA, along with providing information about what OCA can offer your office. I would also like to know what issues Rep. Goldman and your office are interested in to see if there is any way I can assist in those areas. Additionally, based on my background, I think I may be able to provide insight or answer some questions about issues that do not require senior FBI leadership briefings or hearings.

The Judicial Watch October 2023 lawsuit that uncovered these documents was filed after the Justice Department failed to respond to a May 18, 2023, FOIA request (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:23-cv-03003)). Judicial Watch asked for:

All records of communication between any official or employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and any member of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, any staff member for the subcommittee, or any staff member for any subcommittee member between April 1, 2023, and the present.

For purposes of clarification, in the request, Judicial Watch provided the following link, which identified the members of the committee: https://judiciary.house.gov/subcommittees/committee-judiciary/select-subcommittee-weaponization-federal-government

“These troubling records show how the FBI colluded with Democrats hostile to FBI whistleblowers who were set to testify to Congress,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Judicial Watch is in the forefront of uncovering the weaponizing of the federal government against whistleblowers.

Judicial Watch represented Marcus Allen, a decorated veteran, FBI analyst and witness before the Weaponization Subcommittee, in a lawsuit against FBI Director Christopher Wray for violating Allen’s constitutional rights by falsely accusing him of holding “conspiratorial views,” stripping his security clearance, and suspending him from duty without pay. On May 31, 2024, Allen’s security clearance was  reinstated.

In June 2023, Judicial Watch sued for all FBI communications from bureau officials using several systems and databases regarding investigations carried out after an October 4, 2021, memo from Attorney General Merrick Garland instructing investigators to target American parents due to an alleged “increase in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school board members, teachers and workers in our nation’s public schools” In a March 21, 2023, report on the Garland memo, the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government cited FBI data which states that 25 inquiries under the threat tag “EDUOFFICIALS” had been opened since the bureau began tracking the alleged incidents.

In September 2022, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for all records in the possession of FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten regarding an August 6, 2020, briefing provided to members of the U.S. Senate. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) that raised concerns that the briefing was intended to undermine the senators’ investigation of Hunter Biden.

Judicial Watch recently sued the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for all agency records relating to the Department of Justice or Internal Revenue Service (IRS) investigations of Hunter Biden and all records relating to efforts to interview lawyer Patrick Kevin Morris regarding Hunter Biden.

Body-by-Guinness

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Garland’s DOJ: Nothing to See Here, Move Along
« Reply #51 on: June 14, 2024, 01:22:16 PM »
Let’s add the DOJ to the hall of shame. Imagine how differently The Hill would cover this if it were a Repub AG:

DOJ declines to prosecute Garland after congressional contempt vote
The Hill News / by Rebecca Beitsch / Jun 14, 2024 at 3:09 PM

The Justice Department (DOJ) issued a determination Friday that Attorney General Merrick Garland committed no crime in failing to meet the demand of House Republicans who subpoenaed audio of President Biden’s conversation with special counsel Robert Hur.

The determination is in line with a Wednesday memo from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel that stated Biden’s claim of executive privilege over the tapes protected Garland from prosecution. That memo was drafted hours before all but one House Republican approved a resolution to hold Garland in contempt of Congress.

However, such resolutions act as a referral to the Justice Department, which must then determine whether grounds exist for criminal charges — in this case with the DOJ strongly rebuffing the request in a three-page letter.

The DOJ under administrations of both parties has repeatedly declined to prosecute several attorneys general or other officials who have not turned materials over to Congress, the department noted in a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).

“Consistent with this longstanding position and uniform practice, the Department has determined that the responses by Attorney General Garland to the subpoenas issued by the Committees did not constitute a crime, and accordingly the Department will not bring the congressional contempt citation before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute the Attorney General,” Carlos Uriarte, the DOJ’s head of legislative affairs, wrote in the letter.

Republicans already have the transcript of the conversation, and while they’d publicly sought to connect the tapes to their impeachment probe, the transcript makes clear no items they marked as important to their investigation were discussed.

Garland after Wednesday’s vote had accused Republicans of using contempt as a partisan tool.

“It is deeply disappointing that this House of Representatives has turned a serious congressional authority into a partisan weapon. Today’s vote disregards the constitutional separation of powers, the Justice Department’s need to protect its investigations, and the substantial amount of information we have provided to the Committees,” he said.

The refusal is likely to tee up additional action from House Republicans.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said she would file a privileged motion to take up a previously filed inherent contempt resolution – legislation that if approved would greenlight the House sergeant at arms to bring Garland to the House to force him to turn over subpoenaed items.

“It hasn't been done since the early 1900s and was actually a pretty common practice for when people blatantly ignored and disrespected the authority of the House Representatives. So we hope that Garland does the right thing and we hope that the DOJ does the right thing,” she told The Hill ahead of Wednesday’s vote.

DOJ on Friday stressed the numerous documents turned over in response to the subpoena, including the transcript and two classified documents. They noted Hur himself also testified for hours about his investigation.

Leading into the vote, Republicans suggested that because Biden had shared the transcript he had little ground for holding back the audio. 

“The president has waived any executive privilege over these audio recordings by releasing a transcript of the entire interview to the public,” House Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said during a House Rules Committee meeting Tuesday.

But the 57-page memo from the department’s Office of Legal Counsel rejected that argument.

“Because the committees have the transcripts of the special counsel’s interviews, the needs the committees have articulated for the recordings are plainly insufficient to overcome a privilege claim grounded in these important separation of powers concerns,” according to the memo.

“The audio recording will not reveal any information relevant to the committees’ stated needs that is not available in the transcripts.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4722840-doj-declines-to-prosecute-garland-after-congressional-contempt-vote/

Body-by-Guinness

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Clinesmith Pleads Guilty re Russian Conspiracy Fables
« Reply #52 on: June 23, 2024, 09:49:47 AM »
If it were Trump himself on the chopping block they’d have found more than 1 felony to charge:

Former FBI attorney pleads guilty in Durham probe

Kevin Clinesmith admitted to altering an email used to seek surveillance warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
 FBI headquarters

FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. | AP Photo/J. David Ake

By JOSH GERSTEIN and KYLE CHENEY

08/19/2020 02:34 PM EDT

Updated: 08/19/2020 10:04 PM EDT

The Justice Department’s unusual probe into its own handling of the investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia netted its first guilty plea Wednesday as former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith admitted to altering an email used to seek surveillance warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Clinesmith, 38, tendered the guilty plea to a single felony count of making a false statement in an official proceeding by telephone during a virtual hearing that lasted less than half an hour before U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg.

The so-called colloquy between Boasberg and Clinesmith highlighted a nuanced defense on the part of the FBI lawyer, who played a key role in preparing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court applications to listen to Page’s phone calls, read his emails and search his property.

While Clinesmith acknowledged changing an email to indicate that Page was not a source for the Central Intelligence Agency, the former FBI lawyer insisted that he thought then that was actually the case, although he conceded he should not have doctored the message.

“You intentionally altered an email to add the language ‘and not a source’ with regard to Individual No.1 and you knew that that statement was not in fact true?” asked Boasberg, an Obama appointee.

A pause followed while Clinesmith consulted with his attorneys. The ex-FBI employee surfaced a short time later to try to clarify his stance.

“Sir, at the time, I believed that the information I was providing in the email was accurate but I am agreeing that the information I entered into the email was not originally there and I inserted that information,” Clinesmith said.

“In other words, you agree you intentionally altered the email to include information that was not originally in the email?” the judge asked.

“Yes, your honor,” Clinesmith replied.

In advance of the hearing, reports of the defendant’s nuanced admission prompted some criticism from critics of the FBI’s Russia probe, who suggested prosecutors might be acquiescing in a cover-up.

“Huge problem,” former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s lead attorney Sidney Powell wrote on Twitter last week after Clinesmith’s planned guilty plea was revealed. “Judge cannot accept that plea. Someone is not shooting straight. Highly suspicious. #Notbuyingit Indict him now on it all.”

However, Boasberg offered no indication Wednesday that Clinesmith’s explanation presented any concern about his plea or the deal he entered into with the Justice Department that precludes him from facing any other charges in the matter.

After inquiring about whether Clinesmith understood the rights he was giving up by pleading guilty and whether he understood that the maximum possible sentence in the case is five years in prison, Boasberg accepted the plea and set sentencing for Dec. 10.

Some of those who’ve railed against the FBI investigation suggested Wednesday that Clinesmith’s plea was a prelude to charges against others, despite recent signals that the prosecutor Attorney General William Barr selected to probe the origins of the Russia probe — U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham — isn’t planning any earth-shaking cases.

“The wheels of justice are turning,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) tweeted after Clinesmith’s plea. “It is imperative we restore trust to a broken system and the only way that is possible is for people to be held accountable for their actions. More to come.” But neither the official summary prosecutors offered of the facts surrounding Clinesmith’s actions nor the formal plea agreement between the prosecution and the ex-FBI lawyer’s attorneys indicated the government views him as part of a broader conspiracy.

The deal with Clinesmith does not call for him to provide ongoing cooperation with prosecutors, although he did agree to be debriefed by FBI personnel working on a review of the law enforcement agency’s filings with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The judge did note at the outset of Wednesday’s hearing that he currently serves as the chief judge of that secretive court, which he said could be considered the victim of Clinesmith’s false statement.

Boasberg said he flagged the issue to both sides in the case a couple of days ago, and he added that he’d be happy to recuse himself if either side objected. Neither did.

The altered email at the heart of the case against Clinesmith was among the most explosive findings in a review Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued last December of the FBI’s handling of the surveillance warrants against Page. He also found the initial warrant and three renewals were riddled with errors and omissions, some of them significant.

The findings led the Justice Department to rescind two of the renewal warrants, though Horowitz did not ultimately conclude that the FBI lacked a basis to surveil Page altogether.

Barr, who had previously tasked Durham with investigating the origins of the Russia probe, added the potential crimes uncovered by Horowitz to Durham’s mandate. As a result, the case against Clinesmith is being handled by Durham’s office, although the charge was filed in federal court in Washington.

The government was represented at Wednesday’s hearing by an assistant U.S. attorney from Durham’s Connecticut office, Neeraj Patel, along with Washington-based Assistant U.S. Attorney, Anthony Scarpelli.

The two prosecutors were joined at the virtual court hearing by a retired FBI agent who is assisting Durham’s probe, Timothy Fuhrman. Scarpelli described Fuhrman, the former head of the FBI’s offices in Mobile, Ala., and Salt Lake City, as a “Department of Justice investigator.”

Scarpelli said the government was not asking that Clinesmith be detained pending sentencing, but they did get the judge to order that Clinesmith surrender his passport and get prior approval for domestic travel outside specified states.

Attorneys Justin Shur, Megan Church and Emily Damrau appeared for Clinesmith at the hearing.

Although the government’s case against Clinesmith does not suggest a broader conspiracy to take down or damage President Donald Trump, it is likely however, to fuel the president’s allegations that the FBI abused its power to spy on his campaign and damage him after the election.

Trump blasted Clinesmith at a news conference last week, calling him “a corrupt FBI attorney.”

“So that’s just the beginning, I would imagine, because what happened should never happen again,” Trump said.

Trump has called for widespread prosecutions of those in the FBI and intelligence community he perceives as his political enemies, contending that the entire investigation of his campaign’s contacts with Russia was a “witch hunt” against him. Horowitz’s probe, despite its findings of wrongdoing by Clinesmith and problems with the FISA applications, concluded that the FBI had a legitimate basis to investigate the campaign’s contacts with Russia.

Clinesmith’s alteration of the email followed a discussion with colleagues about whether Page had a history as a CIA source.

Clinesmith, in internal messages, indicated that he believed Page was a “subsource” but never a source, and when a superior asked whether he had it in writing, Clinesmith forwarded an email from a CIA liaison but added his own words to it to underscore his view that Page was “not a source.”

“Relying on the altered email, [the supervisory FBI agent] signed and submitted the application to the court on June 29, 2017,” prosecutors said.

Clinesmith was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe after Horowitz discovered internal messages that revealed he espoused anti-Trump sentiment. Mueller also removed FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page after discovering similarly anti-Trump messages, though all officials have argued their personal political views did not influence their investigative decisions.

Among the messages Horowitz uncovered was one sent the day after Trump’s election in 2016:

“Who knows if the rhetoric about deporting people, walls, and crap is true. I honestly feel like there is going to be a lot more gun issues, too, the crazies won finally,” Clinesmith wrote. “This is the tea party on steroids. And the GOP is going to be lost, they have to deal with an incumbent in 4 years. We have to fight this again. Also Pence is stupid.”

Two weeks later, when a colleague asked Clinesmith about whether he was rethinking his commitment to serving in the Trump administration, Clinesmith replied “Hell no” and added “Viva le resistance.”

While the false-statement charge Clinesmith admitted to carries a maximum punishment of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, defendants typically get more lenient sentences in accordance with federal sentencing guidelines. Many who plead guilty to a false-statement charge receive no prison time.

Court filings indicate that the non-binding sentencing guidelines will call for Clinesmith to receive between zero and six months in prison and a fine of $9,500 or less, although the plea agreement allows prosecutors to argue for a sentence above the guidelines range.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/19/former-fbi-attorney-pleads-guilty-durham-398605

Body-by-Guinness

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FBI: Chapters and Verse
« Reply #53 on: July 04, 2024, 02:55:19 PM »
An interesting history of a politicized FBI:

What Rhymes with FBI?
Publius
JUN 29, 2024

Mark Twain has been credited with the quip that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”  When it comes to corruption and the FBI, he may have been right. 

In the late teens to early twenties, evidence began to trickle out in the media suggesting that an individual within the Executive Branch of the United States Government had profited significantly from his official position.  Over the course of several years, it became clear that money had flowed from an energy company looking to secure favorable business deals to a self-dealing Executive Branch official.  Millions changed hands and the Bureau was called in to investigate.     

Yet, the Bureau wasn't actually there to investigate the corrupt official.  They were there to investigate any person asking questions about the corruption. They were there as part of an effort to protect the high-level official from rightful scrutiny for his unexplainable wealth.  They were there to intimidate those bringing to light misdeeds and corruption.     

If this sounds familiar, it should.     

You just may have the century wrong.       

The Teapot Dome Scandal rocked the Republican administration of Warren G. Harding.  The self-dealing and fraud that gave rise to the Teapot Dome Scandal ultimately resulted in the indictment, conviction, and imprisonment of a member of the President’s cabinet.  And the behavior of the Bureau during the scandal resulted in the Attorney General being fired following President Harding’s death.     

J. Edgar Hoover was brought in to reform the Bureau.  By the time he took control of the law enforcement agency that would eventually become the FBI, the agency had been exposed as having been involved in spying on members of Congress in connection with Congressional investigations into the Teapot Dome Scandal.  In the short 20 years of its history, the soon-to-be FBI had devolved from a professional law enforcement agency focused on combatting criminal behavior that crossed state lines to a tool for the party in power to harass and investigate political rivals.     

Director Hoover purged the ranks. He saw the purge as a necessary step to change the politicized culture of the Bureau by removing agents and staff hired not on merit, but based on ideology.  His later misdeeds aside, Hoover was right about the connection between personnel and policy and the need for a personnel reset at the Bureau.     

Despite the fact President Harding was a Republican, it was a Republican Senator who arranged for the Senate to investigate the Teapot Dome scandal.  And it was that same Republican who had his office ransacked—presumably by the Bureau—in response.  The investigation into the Teapot Dome scandal was shockingly bipartisan.  Yet it wasn’t the last time Republicans would demonstrate a willingness to investigate the apparent misdeeds of the Bureau under a Republican Administration.       

50 years after the Teapot Dome scandal came to light, evidence again began to trickle out in the media. Questions again were raised whether the Bureau and the broader intelligence community were abusing their authorities and had been used by the Nixon Administration to spy on, investigate, and harass political opponents.  Once again, Republican members of Congress rose to the occasion, recognizing the risks that the politically-driven abuse of law enforcement and intelligence authorities posed to the Republic.  Republicans participated in the congressional investigations into Watergate and the accompanying abuses of Executive Branch authorities by the Bureau and the intelligence community.  Republicans again put party aside and stepped forward and supported an investigation into a Republican Administration.  The investigations resulted in significant changes to the Bureau, the broader intelligence community, and how Congress conducted oversight of both.       

And here we are today.  Another 50 years have passed.  Again, evidence of misdeeds has trickled out in the media. Again, questions have been raised about the activities of the Bureau and whether the FBI’s authorities have been usurped for political purposes.       

Yet, history has not actually repeated itself.  Disappointingly, although not surprisingly, there is no Democratic Party support for a bipartisan investigation into the misdeeds of the Bureau under a Democrat Administration.  They are unwilling to investigate one of their own, lacking the same fortitude, honor, and will to put the Republic over party that was demonstrated by Republicans following the Teapot Dome scandal and Watergate.       

Unfortunately for our Republic, some in the halls of power appear to have read George Washington’s farewell address as instructions rather than words of caution.  As the second greatest man ever to walk the earth once said, political parties are “likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.”  We near the 250th anniversary of our nation's declaration of independence from a nation and king where abuse of authority was the norm.  Despite the passage of time, the words of our founding fathers are more important than ever.

We return to where we started and the quote from one of the greats of American literature:  “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”  We are 50 years removed from the second major scandal involving the politicization of the Bureau, which itself happened 50 years after the first major scandal involving the politicization of the Bureau.  Is anything rhyming yet?

https://peternavarro.substack.com/p/what-rhymes-with-fbi

Body-by-Guinness

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Mueller Investigation in Light of Recent SCOTUS Ruling
« Reply #54 on: July 08, 2024, 02:39:11 PM »
Perhaps a stretch, but an interesting analysis of the Mueller investigation in light of the recent SCOTUS finding re executive powers. The takeaway? Mueller’s clown show would not have survived the new standard.

A lot of formatting I’m unwilling to reproduce so give it a gander here:

https://reason.com/volokh/2024/07/08/revisiting-the-mueller-report-in-light-of-trump-v-united-states/

Crafty_Dog

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Nice attention to conceptual detail.

Body-by-Guinness

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The Process is the Punishment
« Reply #56 on: July 11, 2024, 02:49:00 PM »
Not sure this fits with the letter of this thread, but certainly its spirit:

The Government Spent 5 Years Trying to Shut Down the Freedom Center
What Are They So Afraid Of?

by Daniel Greenfield

July 10, 2024 at 4:00 am

[W]e have been left suspended in a state of permanent investigation because.... there's no basis for shutting us down....

[T]he only thing we were ever accused of was providing a forum for political opinions the government didn't like.

And that's not a crime. Unless the government succeeds in making it one.

Since the last presidential election, hundreds of people, from Trump on down, have been dragged through legal proceedings for their political activism based on distorted laws, newly invented charges and abuses of process reminiscent of Franz Kafka's The Trial.

What are they afraid of?

We have conducted deep dives into the Chinese business ties of the Biden family in our new digital pamphlet, Beijing Biden: The Secret Relationship With China That Threatens America, and we have another coming on the Islamic connections in this administration. That's not because we're 'electioneering' but because we're engaging in investigative journalism that explores the conduct and misconduct of those in power.

And the government would rather that we didn't.

Instead of folding, as some other groups in our position might have, we investigated the government and came away with shocking revelations about the enemy nations, foreign and domestic terrorists, pedophiles and every kind of abusive entity being harbored by the IRS.

Those are not places we would have even looked if we had not been targeted in the first place.

That's what they're so afraid of. They're afraid of us. And they're afraid of you.

While Freedom Center Investigates has documented multiple cases of terrorists benefiting from nonprofit status, the IRS ignores and continues to pursue the David Horowitz Freedom Center's nonprofit status. Pictured: The Internal Revenue Service headquarters in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
Since its confused retreat from Afghanistan, the Biden administration has spent more time trying to shut down the David Horowitz Freedom Center than fighting Al Qaeda.

While Freedom Center Investigates has documented multiple cases of terrorists benefiting from nonprofit status, the IRS ignores and continues to pursue the Freedom Center's nonprofit status.

Five years should have been more than enough to decide the issue one way or another, but instead we have been left suspended in a state of permanent investigation because while there's no basis for shutting us down, bleeding us from a thousand cuts makes it harder for the Freedom Center to do our work, to raise money and to keep holding the Left accountable.

Five years is a long time. It's the statute of limitations for most federal crimes. But the only thing we were ever accused of was providing a forum for political opinions the government didn't like.

And that's not a crime. Unless the government succeeds in making it one.

The government accused the Freedom Center of 'electioneering' because we had criticized Hillary Clinton. Compared to what happened to some Hillary critics, we probably got off lightly with a 5-year investigation. And we haven't stopped criticizing Hillary (we have two recent articles about her, including an investigative piece that traced her organization to funding for attacks on art around the world and even on the Constitution at the National Archives).

But the perpetual investigation, which has been covered by the Daily Wire and other conservative media outlets, has become a disturbing feature of life and not just for us.

Since the last presidential election, hundreds of people, from Trump on down, have been dragged through legal proceedings for their political activism based on distorted laws, newly invented charges and abuses of process reminiscent of Franz Kafka's The Trial. And even though we are journalists and were not active in the election, we are still being subjected to an endless process because of the reporting and opinion pieces we ran in the 2016 election.

The 2024 election is almost here, and we're being persecuted for journalism from 8 years ago.

How long can this go on? Unlike Josef K, the protagonist of The Trial, we refuse to let it define us. We've cut costs and refocused on our journalism because it's what the government fears.

Unlike The Trial, we know that there's nothing irrational or coincidental about what we're going through. Our investigations of the IRS and weaponized nonprofits have made it all too clear that the government calculatedly turns a blind eye to nonprofits that electioneer and act as voter turnout operations for the regime. Those investigations have only made us a bigger target.

The five years of the government trying to shut us down has become a badge of honor.

When we uncovered a letter by the former IRS Chief of Exempt Organizations, a crony of the infamous Lois Lerner best known from the Obama's Tea Party targeting scandal, denouncing the Freedom Center and Front Page Magazine because according to him our articles, including one about the Paris Climate Accord, were not "sufficiently full and fair", it was a validation of our work.

This is not about anything except the fact that the government fears our reporting.

What are they afraid of? In the 5 years since the government has been investigating us, we exposed the terrorist sympathies of Biden administration appointees, the fundraising links between Antifa and the DNC, the intersections between cryptocurrency, terror money and smuggled gold bars of the Biden family, and the relaunch of the Clinton Global Initiative.

And that's just a small sampling of the investigative journalism that we do on a regular basis.

We have conducted deep dives into the Chinese business ties of the Biden family in our new digital pamphlet, Beijing Biden: The Secret Relationship With China That Threatens America, and we have another coming on the Islamic connections in this administration. That's not because we're 'electioneering' but because we're engaging in investigative journalism that explores the conduct and misconduct of those in power.

And the government would rather that we didn't.

After five years and legal expenses of over $600,000, the Freedom Center has struggled, but we know that there are others in prison who are far worse off than we are. If the IRS thought that subjecting us to an indefinite investigation would cause us to rethink our convictions or fall apart, the organization's politicized figures had underestimated us and this country.

Instead of folding, as some other groups in our position might have, we investigated the government and came away with shocking revelations about the enemy nations, foreign and domestic terrorists, pedophiles and every kind of abusive entity being harbored by the IRS.

Those are not places we would have even looked if we had not been targeted in the first place.

Last month, Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyoming) quoted our work at a congressional hearing to Attorney General Merrick Garland.

"I actually think that Daniel Greenfield, a contributor to Front Page Magazine, may have said it best when he said that a justice system can survive those who challenge the prosecutors, but it can't survive those who prosecute the challengers which is kind of the situation with the Biden administration."

We have challenged and we have been prosecuted. And it is important for Attorney General Garland all those in power to know that we are going to continue investigating those in power.

Despite being targeted for our criticism of Hillary, Front Page Magazine has outlived her political career. And of many others. We're not about to be intimidated into stopping. Not now. Or ever.

That's what they're so afraid of. They're afraid of us. And they're afraid of you.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20772/government-trying-to-shut-down-freedom-center

Crafty_Dog

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I'm thinking the Lawfare thread an apt place for it as well.


Body-by-Guinness

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Placed here as there are links to a number of FBI investigative failures at the original piece:

It’s Biden’s Fault

JULY 2024BY ADAM MILL

President Joe Biden is in charge of protecting his political rivals. He’s in charge of the Secret Service. Elections need candidates. The assassination attempt against Trump was a literal attack on the integrity of America’s elections. If the president won’t vigorously protect his rival candidates, then he’s not protecting American democracy.

Instead of taking responsibility for what happened, President Biden has repeatedly expressed full confidence in Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas who, in turn, has expressed full confidence in Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle. Unlike in the cases of the attacks on sitting Presidents Kennedy and Reagan, former President Trump and candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cannot, as candidates, direct the federal government to provide adequate protection. It is President Biden who is responsible for providing that protection.

Biden is also responsible for providing the American people with a prompt and accurate explanation of what went wrong. Unless he fires the responsible officials, he is tacitly endorsing what happened in Butler, Pa., and inviting repetition. It’s up to him, not the American public, to restore public faith in the federal government by prying the truth from his subordinate agencies.

We’re still learning key facts about the attempt on President Trump’s life. Where did the ladder come from? Why is there no apparent social media for this 20-year-old? Why wasn’t the shooter’s vantage point, an obvious point of attack, covered by the Secret Service? The gap in security far exceeds anything that Lee Harvey Oswald or John Hinckley, Jr. had to exploit. We’re not talking about a window overlooking a speeding motorcade. The rooftop should have been secured—nobody disputes that.

The glaring security lapse is made more problematic by Biden’s heated rhetoric, calling Trump a dictator who will end democracy. He has repeatedly suggested the urgent need to “stop” Trump. Trump, according to Biden, is an “existential threat” to American Democracy. His speech blaming Trump for violent rhetoric has no credibility. Trump is not responsible for the assassination attempt. Trump doesn’t invoke the urgency of rising fascism in 1930s Germany. The anti-Trump hysteria created an environment in which many people warned of the gathering conditions that put Trump at risk of exactly what happened. Almost everyone saw the attack coming.

The FBI has swooped in to take control of the case. Unfortunately, the agency has given the American public ample reasons to be skeptical that it will handle the investigation in a professional and nonpartisan manner. We can predict this outcome because the FBI has a long history of abusing its role in investigating high-profile cases. The examples of the FBI mishandling high-profile cases are much longer than the list of their successes:

The Robert Hanssen case
the Atlanta bombing case
the Anthrax attack investigation
the Ted Stevens corruption case
the DC sniper case
Midyear Exam (the Clinton email investigation)
Crossfire Hurricane (the Trump/Russia collusion investigation)
the Mueller probe
FBI agent David Harris (sexual predation of multiple children)
the Seth Rich investigation
the Epstein “investigation”
the Larry Nassar investigation
the Las Vegas mass shooting
the Hunter Biden laptop

Each of these examples follows a common pattern. The FBI rushes in to control the narrative but fails to timely deliver a bona fide criminal case or provide a clear picture of the facts. In political cases, the FBI has repeatedly used its authority to influence domestic politics. But rarely, if ever, has the FBI handled a high-profile case in a manner that fosters confidence. These aren’t exceptions. The pattern is almost uninterrupted.

There’s really no hope that the FBI will help Americans gain a greater understanding of the attack on Trump. The case is political and the FBI, at its core, is a political operation cosplaying as a law enforcement agency.

The FBI’s long pattern of misconduct has become so obvious that serious people are asking whether the rogue agency does more harm than good. Many have detected a contemptuous, dismissive attitude from FBI Director Christopher Wray towards the FBI’s constitutional masters. In light of the recent ascendance of its most famous victim, Donald Trump, skepticism of the FBI will only grow.

We all remember FBI Agent Peter Strzok promising his anti-Trump lover, FBI attorney Lisa Page, that he would use his authority as an FBI agent to “stop” Trump from being elected. Many believe this attitude persists within FBI leadership. This time eight years ago, the FBI had already started hatching plans to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power to Trump. If the FBI bungles the assassination investigation, we should treat it as a last straw and get rid of the agency.

The lack of a coherent explanation for what happened in Butler breeds conspiracy theories. When we hear the head of the Secret Service explain that the slope of the roof prevented the Secret Service from closing off the threat to candidate Trump, we know we’re being lied to. The roof’s slope was no greater than that used by the Secret Service counter-snipers who shot the assassin. While important, the safety of the Secret Service officers is never paramount to the safety of a current or former president. 

Will we find emails and texts among Secret Service personnel like the ones exchanged between Strzok and Page? Will we uncover denials of requests to boost Trump’s security detail? The stonewalling hints that the truth is more terrible than we already know.
But there’s no question who is at fault. President Biden is in charge of both the FBI and the Secret Service. He is responsible for providing answers to the public questions about this attack on our election. If he won’t answer the questions, it’s because the answers would make him look even worse than he already does.

https://chroniclesmagazine.org/online-feature/its-bidens-fault/


Body-by-Guinness

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A Catalog of Extra-Constitutional Acts
« Reply #61 on: July 21, 2024, 08:25:55 PM »
Nothing new here, though there are links within to deeper explorations of some of the FBIs more atrocious entrapments. And the piece’s main point is worth mulling: is the FBI any longer able to actually investigate, rather than set up political entrapment schemes?

The FBI is made of snitches, often trapping Americans into committing crime

By Michael Walsh

Published July 24, 2021

 Updated July 24, 2021, 7:50 p.m. ET

Back in 1935, tough guy James Cagney cemented the image of the incorruptible FBI agent in the movie “G Men.” The film played on Cagney’s outlaw image — honed in pictures like “The Public Enemy” and “Blonde Crazy” — but flipped the script and put his character, Brick Davis, on the side of the good guys. Same Cagney, cracking wise, firing guns and socking jaws, but this time from behind a badge.

What a difference a new century makes. Leading up to the events of 9/11, there was probably no federal agency with a higher public stature than the FBI: a predominantly Irish-Catholic agency of armed lawyers recruited from Fordham and St. John’s (as opposed to the Ivy League-heavy, Protestant CIA). But today, after two decades of failure, embarrassment, mendacity, favoritism, political partisanship, incompetent leadership and exasperating sanctimony about a “higher loyalty,” the Bureau’s moral reputation lies in tatters.

Whether it was former Director James Comey sanctimoniously dithering in public over Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016, to former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s misleading of investigators about his role in leaking confidential memos to the news media, to the illicit lovebirds Peter Strzok and Lisa Page cooing about an “insurance policy” against a Trump victory that year, the FBI has destroyed its squeaky-clean public image.

But wait — there’s worse. It’s become an organization of snitches and spies, borderline entrapping the angry and the weak-minded into committing crimes. Nearly a decade ago, New York Times’ David K. Shipler listed a series of would-be terrorist plots thwarted by the FBI — only to find that the vast majority of them were facilitated by agents and informers posing as terrorists themselves. They even chauffeured some of the suspects to the would-be crime scenes themselves, only to foil the “plot” at the last minute.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe (from left) and agents Lisa Page and Peter Strzok have all helped damage the FBI's reputation.

It’s unethical, immoral, shameful — but not illegal. And it’s still going on, with the conservatives right now in the crosshairs instead of lone-wolf Muslims and cranky survivalists.

Consider the Gretchen Whitmer “kidnapping” plot. Conveniently timed to break just a month before the 2020 election, the FBI announced it had disrupted a conspiracy to kidnap the dictatorial governor of Michigan. Fourteen alleged members of a right-wing militia called the Wolverine Watchmen were arrested, and six were charged in federal court.

Problem was, the Gang that Couldn’t Scheme Straight was heavily infiltrated, if not actually entrapped, by a dozen or so undercover informants, to the extent that the G-men became more provocateurs than agents. According to reporting by Buzzfeed News, they went far beyond monitoring the group’s activities, instead covering hotel and travel expenses and otherwise egging them on in a crazy plan to grab the governor at her vacation home and somehow maroon her on a boat in Lake Michigan.

FBI agent Richard Trask was arrested for domestic assault last week.

The farce peaked last week when one of the lead FBI agents on the case, Richard Trask, was arrested and charged with smashing his wife’s head against a nightstand and choking her after a swingers’ party they had both attended. But the damage in the crucial swing state had been done: The implication that Trump supporters were dangerous white nationalists and domestic terrorists no doubt cost the former president’s votes in a state he lost by only 154,188 votes.

A politicized Bureau with no moral compass is one of the lasting legacies of the rise of the national-security state, pioneered by a panicky George W. Bush in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and now seemingly with us forever. The G-men who once shot it out with bank robbers in Kansas City and rolled up Russian spy networks are now acting more like a domestic security service, enforcing the whims of the party in power.

After 9/11, the nation was shocked to learn that the intelligence agencies had ample warning of al Qaeda’s malign intentions but somehow failed to “connect the dots.” Twenty years on, those dots are now being connected — and they’re pointing straight at the American people.

Michael Walsh is an author and screenwriter. His latest book, “Last Stands: Why Men Fight When All Is Lost” (St. Martins), is out now.

https://nypost.com/2021/07/24/todays-fbi-of-snitches-often-traps-americans-into-committing-crimes/



Crafty_Dog

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FBI and Crook?!?
« Reply #64 on: July 22, 2024, 04:28:05 PM »
third

https://x.com/OversightPR/status/1815446054428352591

Please give this a close read!
« Last Edit: July 22, 2024, 04:44:05 PM by Crafty_Dog »


Body-by-Guinness

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The Fisk Stinks From the Head Down
« Reply #66 on: July 26, 2024, 12:05:42 AM »
It’s not that Wray lies, it’s that he does it so casually, publicly, and smugly:

https://x.com/ronnyjacksontx/status/1816591560491876589?s=61



Crafty_Dog

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Exactly so.

Body-by-Guinness

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Juking the Crime Stats
« Reply #70 on: July 30, 2024, 05:29:00 AM »
Those of us that have watched The Wire have seen a fictional treatment of this very real effort to minimize spiking crime by ... not reporting it:

Bad data from the FBI mislead about crime
By
Mark Morgan
and
Sean Kennedy
April 5, 2024 6:00 am
The fourth quarter 2023 crime report from the FBI, the federal government’s keeper of crime data, is unreliable at best and deceptive at worst.

The FBI’s preliminary 2023 data show murder declined by 13.2% across the country and violent crime dropped 5.7% compared to 2022 levels. Various news headlines have reported the FBI’s numbers unquestioningly, claiming murder is “plummeting” and violent crime “declined significantly” to pre-pandemic levels.

But these latest figures warrant skepticism, as we outline in a new report. In fact, violent crime is up substantially from 2019 levels, and last year’s apparent drop is less significant than it appears.

Part of the problem is how police departments report offenses to the FBI. The FBI asked, then demanded, that law enforcement agencies “transition” away from the system they used for decades to a new, more detailed but onerous one. The 2021 mandate to use NIBRS to submit crime data proved a disaster as overstretched departments, especially in large cities, failed to reach compliance and thus did not submit data.

In 2019, 89% of agencies covering 97% of the population submitted data, but by 2021, that coverage plummeted to less than 63% of departments overseeing just 65% of the population. Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City all failed to submit crime data. To increase participation, the FBI relaxed the NIBRS requirement in 2022, allowing agencies to report via the legacy system.

But many other cities, such as St. Louis, which had transitioned to the new method, still struggle to comply and submit partial or faulty data. The FBI compensates by relying more heavily on “estimation,” or informed guesswork, to fill in the gaps and produce aggregated data.

That method of inferring offense totals is based on similar jurisdictions and past trends but is prone to error since it cannot compensate for local factors or events. For example, comparing Baltimore’s 2015 homicide total to similar cities’ trends would produce a skewed result. Baltimore, beset by riots and a police stand-down, saw murder rise 62% that year. In peer cities, murders rose in Cleveland only 15% and fell in Detroit by 1% and Memphis by 4%.

And the figures the agencies do report to the FBI do not match the agencies’ publicly reported figures. For Baltimore, the FBI reported 225 murders in 2023, but the city reported 262 — which means the FBI left out 37 murders. In Milwaukee, the police department reported a 7% increase in robberies, but the FBI showed a 13% drop. Nashville’s own data tallied more than 6,900 aggravated assaults in 2023, but the FBI counted only 5,941, leaving almost 1,000 of those offenses “missing.” This trend is consistent across the board: While 2022’s FBI city-level figures track the police’s own data, the 2023 numbers consistently undercount offense totals. Any year-to-year comparison overstates decline.

Other measures of crime levels undermine, or at least muddle, the veracity of the FBI’s data, which rely on “reported” offenses by victims and law enforcement themselves. The federal government’s own victims’ survey, which attempts to capture the gap between the number of actual offenses and the number reported to police, shows much higher offense rates than the FBI does. Moreover, a rising share of victims are failing to report their victimizations at all. In 2022, only 42% of violent crime victims and 33% of property crime victims bothered to report the crime to police.

That underreporting reduces the reliability of FBI numbers in measuring actual offense levels. For example, robbery offenses, which constitute roughly 25% of all violent crime by volume compared to 5% for murder, declined 18% between 2019 and 2022, according to the FBI, while the victim’s survey suggests a 30% rise.

Another complicating factor is underreporting by the police themselves, who might be under pressure to “downcharge” offenses or dissuade the victims from reporting the crime at all. While the prevalence of underreporting by the police is hard to quantify, an investigation found that between 2005 and 2012, the Los Angeles Police Department erased thousands of crimes, mostly violent assaults, by reclassifying them as lesser offenses or not capturing them at all. The fuzzy math artificially reduced the city’s crime rate by 7%. Any such malfeasance, when officials are under immense pressure to show progress in fighting crime, would inject bad data into the FBI’s estimation model, only compounding its errors.

Our analysis of 40 jurisdictions that both reported data to the FBI and the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which collects data from the largest police departments, shows that homicide declined 10.2% across 40 major cities in 2023 since 2022, but the FBI reported a 12.8% decline in those same jurisdictions. Similarly, the FBI reported a 6.6% decline in violent crime since 2022, but the same cities reported only a 4.5% drop, with the FBI counting 3,200 more violent crimes in 2022 than the MCCA and 2,600 fewer in 2023 — a net discrepancy of almost 5,900 offenses. That gap conveniently results in a more significant drop in crime levels year to year.

In reality, violent crime is up substantially from 2019 levels. In big cities, murder is still elevated — up 23% since 2019 across all 70 cities tracked by the MCCA and up 18% according to a 32-city analysis by the nonprofit organization Council on Criminal Justice. For aggravated assaults, CCJ’s 25-city sample found those up 8%, while the MCCA larger sample of cities reported a 26% increase over the same period.

To say crime is down is like descending from a tall peak and standing on a high bluff and saying you are closer to the ground — a true but misleading statement. Worse, the FBI’s crime data serve as a poor altimeter to judge how high (or low) crime actually is.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/2953562/bad-data-from-the-fbi-mislead-about-crime/
« Last Edit: July 30, 2024, 11:24:40 AM by Body-by-Guinness »

Crafty_Dog

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Good to have precise answer to this lie of theirs.

Body-by-Guinness

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Good to have precise answer to this lie of theirs.

As the piece notes, a lot of jurisdictions don’t even report their data, while the FBI’s new system, as also noted, is complex and hence prone to error, while there is also the GIGO issue (old geek programming term for “garbage in, garbage out”), meaning a lot of the people submitting stuff are juking the stats to begin with. Throw in strong political motivation to conceal spiking crime and you end up with “uniform” stats that are anything but.

Body-by-Guinness

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Patriot Front or FBI Front & Center Entrapment Operation?
« Reply #73 on: August 01, 2024, 08:13:56 AM »
A lot of links and formatting that don’t translate well, but make quite clear the FBI has infiltrated the group while those that join it end up in the maw of an entrapment machine:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/07/surprise-fbi-declassifies-950-pages-suspected-fed-front/

Body-by-Guinness

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Secret Service: Destroying Evidence Will Fix this Problem, Yeah....
« Reply #74 on: August 05, 2024, 10:15:40 AM »
When I first started this thread I had no inkling the Secret Service should be included in its title. After the assassination attempt Trump survived it now appears obvious it should have been included at the outset. Imagine a law enforcement official counseling the destruction of evidence! It certainly demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that Cheatle's loyalty lay with the Biden's rather than the institution she, clearly poorly, led:

Former Secret Service Chief Wanted To Destroy Cocaine Evidence

By Susan Crabtree - RCP StaffAugust 05, 2024

Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and others in top agency leadership positions wanted to destroy the cocaine discovered in the White House last summer, but the Secret Service Forensics Services Division and the Uniformed Division stood firm and rejected the push to dispose of the evidence, according to three sources in the Secret Service community.

Multiple heated confrontations and disagreements over how best to handle the cocaine ensued after a Secret Services Uniformed Division officer found the bag on July 2, 2023, a quiet Sunday while President Biden and his family were at Camp David in Maryland, the sources said.

At least one Uniformed Division officer was initially assigned to investigate the cocaine incident. But after he told his supervisors, including Cheatle and Acting Secret Service Director Ron Rowe, who was deputy director at the time, that he wanted to follow a certain crime-scene investigative protocol, he was taken off the case, according to a source within the Secret Service community familiar with the circumstances of his removal.

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi did not immediately return RCP’s request for comment.

The discovery of the bag of cocaine posed an unusual problem for Cheatle, who resigned in the face of bipartisan pressure after the July 13 assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

Hunter Biden had a well-documented addiction to cocaine, crack cocaine, and other substances for many years but repeatedly claimed to be sober since 2021, an assertion that has prompted President Biden to often proclaim how “proud” he is of his son. While neither Joe nor Hunter Biden were at the executive mansion when the cocaine was found, it was discovered after a period when Hunter had been staying there.

Cheatle became close to the Biden family while serving on Vice President Joe Biden’s protective detail – so close that Biden tapped Cheatle for the director job in 2022, in part because of her close relationship to first lady Jill Biden.

When the cocaine was first discovered, Cheatle apparently knew it would spark a media firestorm. The incident prompted viral memes about Hunter Biden’s addictions and accusations from Republican political figures, including Nikki Haley, that the Secret Service knew whose cocaine it was and was trying to cover it up.

Normally, the discovery of cocaine or another illegal narcotic in the White House complex or in and around the first family and their staff wouldn’t come to light at all.

That’s because the president’s and first lady’s, as well as family members’ protective Secret Service details, the inner-most ring of protective agents assigned to the first family, would simply dispose of illegal drugs or other “contraband” found in the White House, personal residences, or other private areas of the president, his family, and White House staff, according to three sources in the Secret Service community.

But it wasn’t a member of President Biden’s regular detail who found the bag of cocaine just two days before the July 4 holiday last year. Instead, a member of the agency’s Uniformed Division, which is charged with protecting the facilities and venues for presidents and other agency protectees, discovered the substance in the White House complex while conducting routine rounds of the building.

The exact location where the officer found the bag changed several times during the first weeks of media reports on the incident. Initial reports said the cocaine was found in a reference library. Later reports indicated it was in a “work area” of the West Wing, which is attached to the mansion that houses the president and his family, the Oval Office, the cabinet room, the press briefing room, and offices for staff. CBS News, citing law enforcement sources, then reported it was found in a facility used by White House staff and guests to store phones.

An official Secret Service statement, issued at the conclusion of the agency’s internal investigation into the cocaine discovery, said a Uniformed Division officer found the bag in a “vestibule leading to the lobby area of the West Executive Avenue entrance to the White House,” a well-trafficked area used on the weekend for White House tours. That statement was released on July 13, eleven days after the cocaine’s discovery.

The officer who first found the bag with a white substance immediately flagged it as a potentially hazardous substance, worried that the bag of white power could contain deadly anthrax or ricin.

A Technical Security Division, or TSD, investigator would normally be deployed to the scene. These investigators, sometimes wearing hazmat suits, can identify different types of hazardous substances and explosives and work to quickly remove or defuse them. However, the TSD investigator was not called in on a Sunday evening of a holiday weekend. Instead, a Secret Service officer or agent called in the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Service Department, who evacuated the White House complex while they tested the white substance on site, determining it was cocaine.

Because the press was part of the evacuation, there was no way to hide the information about the discovery, and the Secret Service leaders quickly shifted to crisis communications mode. Meanwhile, the substance and packaging were treated as evidence and sent to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center, which again analyzed it for biothreats. Those tests also came back negative for hazardous material.

Then, the Secret Service sent the plastic bag and its contents to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s crime laboratory for fingerprint and DNA analysis. While there were no latent fingerprints detected, the FBI lab found some DNA material, according to three sources in the Secret Service community. Several sources, citing private statements by a special agent in the Forensics Services Division who supervised the vault containing the cocaine evidence, said the agency ran the DNA material against national criminal databases and “got a partial hit.” The term “partial hit” is vague in this context, but in forensics lingo usually means law enforcement found DNA matching a blood relative of a finite pool of people.

“The Congressional oversight committees need to put White under oath and confirm the ‘partial hit,’” a source told RCP. “Then the FBI needs to explain who the partial hit was against, then determine what blood family member has ties to the White House or what person matching the partial hit was present at the White House that weekend.”

Other sources familiar with the investigation and Cheatle’s alleged push to destroy the cocaine didn’t know if anyone at the Secret Service ran the DNA material found on the cocaine against a national criminal database.  In January, federal prosecutors urged a judge to reject Hunter Biden’s efforts to dismiss gun charges against him, revealing that investigators last year discovered cocaine residue on the pouch the president’s son used to hold his gun. In June, a 12-member jury found Hunter Biden guilty on charges related to his purchase and possession of the firearm while he was addicted to crack cocaine.

But Secret Service leaders, under pressure from Cheatle and other top agency officials, chose not to run additional searches for DNA matches or conduct interviews with the hundreds of people who work in the White House complex.

“That’s because they didn’t want to know, or even narrow down the field of who it could be,” a source stated. “It could have been Hunter Biden, it could have been a staffer, it could have been someone doing a tour – we’ll never know.”

During the feverish speculation in the days and weeks after the cocaine’s discovery, the White House refused to answer whether the cocaine came from a Biden family member and labeled as “irresponsible” reporters who asked about a possible link to Hunter or another Biden family member.

In announcing the conclusion of its investigation into the cocaine incident, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the agency determined that interviewing all 500 people could be a strain on resources, might infringe upon civil liberties, and would likely be fruitless without corresponding physical evidence tying any person to the drugs.

“On July 12, the Secret Service received the FBI’s laboratory results, which did not develop latent fingerprints, and insufficient DNA was present for investigative comparisons,” Guglielmi said. “Therefore, the Secret Service is not able to compare evidence against the known pool of individuals.”

“There was no surveillance video footage found that provided investigative leads or any other means for investigators to identify who may have deposited the found substance in this area,” Guglielmi continued. “Without physical evidence, the investigation will not be able to single out a person of interest from the hundreds of individuals who passed through the vestibule where the cocaine was discovered.”

“At this time, the Secret Service's investigation is closed due to a lack of physical evidence,” the spokesman added. “The U.S. Secret Service takes its mission to protect U.S. leaders, facilities, and events seriously, and we are constantly adapting to meet the needs of the current and future security environment.”

Over the last month as the agency has come under fire for a series of mistakes leading to an assassination attempt against Trump, Guglielmi has been forced to correct a previous press statement that the agency did not deny repeated requests for additional security assets from the former president’s staff in the months leading up to the assassination attempt.

It’s unclear exactly when Cheatle and other top officials tried to persuade the Forensics Services Division to destroy the evidence. At some point during the investigation, Matt White, the vault supervisor, received a call from Cheatle or someone speaking on her behalf asking him to destroy the bag of cocaine because agency leaders wanted to close the case, according to two sources in the Secret Service community.

“Protocol is, whether you act on the [DNA] hit or not, we still have to maintain evidence for a period of up to seven years,” a source told RCP. “It became a big to-do.”

White’s boss, Glenn Dennis, the head of the Forensics Services Division, then conferred with the Uniformed Division, which first discovered the cocaine.

“A decision was made not to get rid of the evidence, and it really pissed off Cheatle,” a source in the Secret Service community said in an interview.

At the time of the cocaine’s discovery, Richard Macauley was serving as the acting chief of the Uniformed Division after the recent retirement of Alfonso Dyson Sr., a 29-year veteran of the agency. When Dyson left his position, Macauley, who is black, became the acting director. Despite Cheatle’s push to hire and promote minority men and women, Macauley was passed over for the job of Uniformed Division chief in what many in the agency view as an act of retaliation for supporting those who refused to dispose of the cocaine, according to several sources in the Secret Service community.

In 2018, Macauley was named the Secret Services Uniformed Division Officer of the Year. In an interview with Federal News Network, a news talk show focused on issues of interest to federal government workers, a host lauded Macauley for receiving the award and credited him with tightening operations, increasing diversity, boosting officer training, and improving working conditions, “all while taking care of his own shift operations.” Macauley would go on to serve one year, from February 2022 to January 2023, as deputy assistant sergeant at arms at the U.S. House of Representatives.

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics' national political correspondent.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/08/05/former_secret_service_chief_wanted_to_destroy_cocaine_evidence_151392.html
« Last Edit: August 05, 2024, 11:44:21 PM by Body-by-Guinness »

Crafty_Dog

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SS now in the thread subject line.


Body-by-Guinness

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TN Repub Congressman’s Home Raided
« Reply #77 on: August 06, 2024, 11:45:44 PM »
Congressional author or articles of impeachment against Harris has TN home raided by FBI due to campaign finance “irregularities.” FBI Director Wray, moreover, visited TN the day before. All a coincidence, no doubt:

https://tennesseestar.com/politics/kamalawfare-politicized-fbi-executes-search-warrant-on-gop-rep-andy-ogles-who-leads-impeachment-of-vp-harris/tpappert/2024/08/06/


Body-by-Guinness

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Another Hairy Situation
« Reply #79 on: August 12, 2024, 02:38:24 AM »
SS picks lock of hair salon without authorization so Harris, others, can tinkle the, after 2 hours depart leaving door unlocked and security cams disabled:

https://x.com/yashar/status/1822446668333416826?s=61

ETA more: https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2024/08/11/why-the-secret-service-had-to-apologize-to-a-local-salon-owner-n2643238
« Last Edit: August 12, 2024, 02:48:12 AM by Body-by-Guinness »



Body-by-Guinness

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The Bureau Calls Out the Bureau ][]a
« Reply #82 on: August 13, 2024, 08:12:57 AM »
Check out this memo written by the FBI’s ombudsman calling out the Bureau’s (abbreviated “Bu”) political hacks:

https://x.com/julie_kelly2/status/1823052418625454082?s=61

Crafty_Dog

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FO
« Reply #83 on: August 22, 2024, 08:32:21 AM »
IIRC Ritter is a fg snake and know nothing about Simes:

================

According to Biden administration officials, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is beginning a broad criminal investigation into Americans with connections to Russian state media. The FBI searched the homes of former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter and former Trump adviser Dimitri Simes earlier this month, and the officials said more searches are expected soon.

Crafty_Dog

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Imprimis: Our out of control federal law enforcement agencies
« Reply #84 on: September 19, 2024, 06:54:58 PM »


https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/our-out-of-control-federal-law-enforcement-agencies/

August 2024 | Volume 53, Issue 8

Our Out-of-Control Federal Law Enforcement Agencies
Ryan Cleckner
Businessman, Attorney, and Author

 
 
The following is adapted from a talk delivered on July 23, 2024, at Hillsdale College’s Blake Center for Faith and Freedom in Somers, Connecticut.

In March of this year, Bryan Malinowski, the executive director of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, Arkansas, was killed by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) during a pre-dawn raid of his home. It was an unwarranted and indefensible killing of a kind that should never, ever happen in a free country like the United States. Because we have a media that no longer serves in its traditional role as a government watchdog, this incident was not widely reported. Because too many members of Congress no longer take seriously their responsibility to protect the rights of those who elect them, the ATF has suffered no repercussions.

How and why did this killing take place?

Bryan Malinowski grew up as an avid collector of coins and, more recently, firearms. He took to displaying his coin and firearm collections at gun shows, where he would occasionally purchase and sell firearms.

Under federal law, it is perfectly legal to buy and sell firearms as a collector or hobbyist, even without a Federal Firearms License (FFL). An individual doesn’t need to obtain an FFL unless he is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms. Congress has defined “engaged in the business” to apply to those who deal in firearms “as a regular course of trade or business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit” as opposed to those who make “occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby.”

Malinowski already had a livelihood—indeed, as the executive director of the airport, he was one of the highest paid city employees in Little Rock. Buying or selling firearms was something he did in his spare time. So it makes sense that he did not see the need to obtain a license. At some point, however, the ATF came to the view that Malinowski had crossed over the nebulous line from hobbyist to “engaged in the business” and that he therefore did need to obtain an FFL.

Leaving aside the question of whether the ATF was right about this—a moot issue now, given the fact that the ATF killed him—the obvious thing for the ATF to have done was to contact Malinowski through the mail, by phone, or in person, to inform him that it had determined he needed a license. If it had, he could have decided whether to stop selling firearms or to pay the nominal annual fee of $65 for an FFL.

But the ATF didn’t do the obvious thing and contact Malinowski. Here is what we know happened instead. Multiple undercover ATF agents were sent to observe Malinowski selling firearms at a gun show, a GPS tracker was secretly placed on Malinowski’s car, and a search warrant was obtained for his home. Malinowski wasn’t home the first time ATF agents showed up to serve the warrant, so the second time they left nothing to chance. Dressed in SWAT gear, together with Little Rock police, they showed up in ten vehicles at Malinowski’s house before dawn on March 19. They cut the power to his house and put a piece of tape over the doorbell camera so that Malinowski couldn’t see who they were. Less than a minute later, after an exchange of gunfire, Malinowski was dead. And in violation of both ATF and Little Rock police policies requiring body cameras, not one of the law enforcement agents involved in this deadly raid was wearing an activated camera.

After the killing, Malinowski’s wife was forcibly taken outside in her nightgown in 34-degree weather and was kept outside for over four hours despite multiple requests to see her husband and use the bathroom. In an audio recording from a police vehicle she can be heard sobbing, asking why they killed her husband, and insisting that the agents must have the wrong house because she and her husband are honest, law-abiding people.

***

What happened to Bryan Malinowski is not an isolated incident. It is part of a growing pattern of KGB-style behavior by U.S. federal law enforcement agencies. Let me mention briefly just a few other cases.

Back during the Trump presidency, Roger Stone, a Republican political consultant since the Nixon era, was targeted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for obstruction of justice and making false statements regarding the WikiLeaks release of Hillary Clinton’s emails. These are non-violent crimes, and the nattily dressed, 72-year-old Stone has given no indication over his long life that he is prone to violence of any kind. But on January 25, 2019, the FBI conducted a pre-dawn raid at Stone’s Fort Lauderdale home in a manner befitting a raid on an armed compound of a Mexican drug lord. Nearly 30 heavily armed agents swarmed Stone’s home at 6:00 a.m. With guns aimed at his entryway, they pounded on the door until Stone showed up barefoot in his pajamas. Topping things off, there was a boat offshore behind Stone’s home manned by armed agents and equipped with floodlights.

In October 2021, pro-life activist Mark Houck and his twelve-year-old son were conducting a weekly prayer vigil near an abortion clinic in Philadelphia. Their standard practice was to hand out literature and, if women were interested, to help them find alternatives to abortion. Bruce Love, a volunteer escort at the facility, began to harass Houck’s son using vulgar language. During the ensuing argument, Houck pushed Love and Love fell to the ground. Philadelphia police reviewed the incident and no charges were filed. Love later pressed charges, but the case was reviewed and dismissed. Soon thereafter, Houck received notice that he was the target of a federal grand jury investigation for violating the FACE Act, which prohibits blocking access to abortion clinics. Houck’s attorney offered video evidence that Houck had not blocked access. He also told federal prosecutors that if they insisted on bringing charges, Houck would voluntarily surrender. The FBI ignored the offer, and on September 23, 2022, at 6:30 a.m., roughly two dozen FBI agents and Pennsylvania law enforcement officers showed up at Houck’s home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Houck’s wife and seven children were still sleeping when five agents armed with rifles, tactical gear, and battering rams, began pounding on the door. Additional agents surrounded the property. Houck came to the door and his wife wandered down in her bathrobe. Houck was not allowed to say goodbye to his screaming children. Taken to a federal building, he was belly chained and had his wrists shackled to a table for six hours. Four months later a jury found him not guilty.

Craig Robertson was a 75-year-old Air Force veteran from Provo, Utah, likely demented, who made online threats against elected leaders, including President Biden. Neighbors described Robertson as “barely [able to] get around with a cane.” But instead of confronting Robertson on his regular outings to church or to the grocery store, the FBI again decided on a pre-dawn raid. At 6:00 a.m. on August 9, 2023, FBI agents first attempted to break down Robertson’s door with a battering ram, then resorted to using an armored vehicle to smash a hole in his house. The FBI claims that Robertson shot at agents before its agents shot and killed him—though the agency has refused to release any bodycam footage. Robertson’s body was moved to the sidewalk and left unattended for hours.

Other cases could be cited—including the FBI’s unprecedented raid on President Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, in which the use of “deadly force” was authorized—but the point is clear enough. Such actions by federal law enforcement agencies go far beyond what is justified by law and custom in America. The agencies involved respond to criticism by saying that their actions are “by the book.” But this lie, parroted by corporate media, is preposterous on its face. If such a book exists, it represents a radical departure from the historical constraints of constitutional authority and the idea of equality before the law.

I served in the military as a Special Operations sniper and Sniper Team leader in 1st Ranger Battalion. I could have gone on to become a sharpshooter on a police SWAT team or even joined the FBI or one of the other three-letter federal agencies that were widely considered, in the past, to be the cream of the crop in terms of law enforcement. Sadly, they are no longer thought of in the same way.

The flip side of the increasingly thuggish character of these agencies is their diminished effectiveness in fulfilling their core missions, to the point that the American public cannot help but notice. Consider the recent assassination attempt—very nearly successful—on President Trump. The U.S. Secret Service and the FBI are being anything but transparent about their investigations and seem to be going out of their way to make it as difficult as possible for Congress and the public to learn what happened. But the most obvious fact about it, which cannot be covered up, is that the Secret Service allowed a 20-year-old shooter to access the most ideal location for a sniper, even after he had been spotted acting suspiciously and using a laser rangefinder and had been watched for almost 30 minutes. This alone is enough to know the Secret Service that day was more Keystone Cop than cream of the crop.

***

In closing, let me return to the agency I know best, having a lot of first-hand experience dealing with it—the ATF. Like all these federal law enforcement agencies, the ATF was created by Congress and is tasked with executing laws passed by Congress. Congress, in turn, represents and acts on behalf of the American people. In this context, the first and most important thing in bringing the ATF and these other agencies back under control is to impress firmly upon them the fact that they are accountable to Congress and are the servants and not the enemies of the American people—and in the case of the ATF, the fact that one of the people it would still be serving, had ATF agents not killed him, is Bryan Malinowski.

Most of the cases in which I have dealt with the ATF have to do with companies that are licensed to sell firearms—companies that have FFLs—and are under threat of losing their license and thus being put out of business. The Gun Control Act of 1968 is the main body of law concerning this, and in 1986 this law was amended to allow the ATF to revoke an FFL only for a “willful” violation of the law. The willfulness standard was added “to ensure that licenses are not revoked for inadvertent errors or technical mistakes.” In recent years, however, the ATF has adopted what it calls a “Zero Tolerance Policy” that flies in the face of the willfulness standard—and therefore in the face of laws passed by Congress on behalf of the American people.

The ATF’s egregious treatment of Point Blank Firearms, a Michigan company that it is trying to put out of business, provides an example of the harm caused by ATF overreach.

During compliance inspections, the ATF is largely concerned with determining three things: if there are any missing firearms, if all the required records have been filled out and kept properly, and if the licensed company is doing its job as the front line of defense against the criminal possession of firearms.

In the case of Point Blank, the ATF makes three claims, one of which amounts to an inadvertent clerical error. The other two are provably false. The first is that Point Blank was missing firearms transaction forms, which, if true, would be serious. These forms are filled out by the purchaser of a firearm and contain information about the gun, the purchaser, and the background check results. They are the only way for the ATF to prove who ended up with a firearm or who possibly lied on the form. But every single form at Point Blank has been accounted for, complete with the customer’s signature and background check information.

The second claim is that Point Blank transferred a firearm to someone more than 30 days after his background check was run. Again, if true, this is a violation of the law. However, it has been proven that the firearm was transferred on the very same day as the background check. Yet the Detroit field division of the ATF continues to threaten Point Blank with the loss of its license.

Point Blank is a client of mine, so I understand if you don’t take my word on faith. But if you look into it, you will see that the ATF is not only overreaching, but is violating the very rules it requires everyone else to follow. Indeed, of the many ATF inspections I’ve been a part of, not once have the ATF’s records been accurate.

Do you remember Operation Fast and Furious, a program in which the ATF used licensed firearms dealers to funnel thousands of American firearms to Mexican drug cartels? Due to sheer incompetence, most of those firearms were lost and never recovered, and none of the high-level Mexican drug cartel members who ended up with the firearms have been arrested. When U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in a shootout at the border, the weapon that was used to kill him was one of the guns that the ATF intentionally gave to the drug cartels. Needless to say, no heads ever rolled at the ATF as a result.

Another area in which the ATF is violating federal law is in keeping a firearms registry. The Firearms Owners Protection Act passed by Congress in 1986 specifically prohibits the ATF from having an electronic database of firearms and their owners. But Georgia Congressman Andrew Clyde recently visited the ATF records center in West Virginia and discovered that the ATF currently has over 900 million such records scanned and stored electronically.

So how do we regain control over the ATF and other federal law enforcement agencies? It is not going to happen through congressional hearings that provide a forum for political showboating and partisan posturing and that go nowhere. We the American people must demand that Congress, on our behalf, either reassert its authority over these agencies in a way to make it stick or else abolish the agencies and start anew.

If we don’t, Bryan Malinowski will have died in vain and the rest of us, as if we are no longer Americans, will be looking over our shoulders.


Crafty_Dog

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FBI deleting J6 pipe bomb footage
« Reply #85 on: September 26, 2024, 01:59:13 PM »


https://revolver.news/2024/09/breaking-fbi-letter-to-dhs-ig-confirms-agency-deleted-j6-pipe-bomb-footage-by-early-march-2022/

Do we have a good list of all the various deleted/lost federal footage in all the various cases?