Brandon Straka, a conservative activist, was confronted with a choice between pleading guilty to a crime he did not commit and facing serious charges with a long prison term related to the Jan. 6 Capitol rally. He chose to accept the plea deal because he felt he would not get a fair trial.

On Jan. 6, 2021, after then-President Donald Trump addressed the rally at the Ellipse, a park near the White House, Straka walked to U.S. Capitol where he was supposed to give a speech at an event planned to take place on the east side of the building, Straka recollected of that day.

While walking, he received messages from people watching the news at their homes saying that some people went inside the Capitol building, Straka told EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program.Play Video

He thought that something unusual might be happening, so when he was about three blocks away from the Capitol, he started shooting a video to record everything that happened from that point on, Straka said.

The breach of the Capitol occurred on the west side of the building, but he was heading to the east side where his speaking engagement was going to take place, said Straka, founder of the WalkAway Campaign. “There were people on all four sides of the Capitol.”

“As I’m entering the grounds [on the east side of the Capitol], there are no police officers present that can be visible anywhere in the video. People on the grounds are very, very calm.

“There’s a man on the top of the steps on the east side, sort of motioning down and hollering out. ‘They’ve opened the doors, they’re letting us in.’”

Straka said he walked to the top of the stairs and began filming while holding his camera fully above his head, as there were hundreds of people standing outside. Most people did not enter the Capitol, but some did, he added.

“The doors were wide open. … I never went inside the building, I just stood outside of the building, filming.”

After about eight minutes, a man with a bullhorn came outside of the Capitol, Straka continued. “He said into the bullhorn: ‘They’ve cleared Congress. Everybody’s left the building. Clear out, clear out.’”

“At that moment, I immediately turned around, I left,“ Straka said.

Straka then came to his hotel room, uploaded the video he shot to Twitter, and posted it with a comment similar to “This is what I witnessed today at the Capitol,” he said.

However, after seeing on TV the footage of what had occurred on the west side of the Capitol, he took his video down. “It was really shocking to me because I didn’t see anything like that with my own eyes…. I took my video down when I saw that because I didn’t want anybody to think that I was there or a part of it or somehow condoning whatever that was.”

“But for that hour or two that my video had lived on Twitter, Twitter trolls had copied my video, and they began mass posting it for the next several weeks and tagging the FBI.

“On Monday, January 25, I woke up to an FBI squad on my door. They came in and raided my apartment and put me in handcuffs. [They] presented me with a search warrant and they took me to jail.”

The FBI took his computer, iPad, phone, hard drives, thumb drives, camera, and clothing, Straka said.

Facing Charges

Straka said that being in jail really terrified him because it was just five days after the President Joe Biden’s inauguration when the Democrats had taken full control of the federal government, and he thought he could “be spending decades in prison for spending eight minutes outside of the Capitol on January 6.”

After two and a half days, he was released from the prison on a judge’s order, Straka said. He was charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor. The first felony was for occupying restricted grounds.

On the east side of the Capitol, where Straka was, there were no police and no barricades, he said. “There’s a very large sidewalk [there], very, very wide, so you could drive a truck down the sidewalk, and on both sides of it, there was bike rack in the grass, … but the sidewalk was wide open.”

“I think any logical person would not think that they weren’t allowed to be on that sidewalk, not to mention the fact that there were thousands of people everywhere. So I don’t know how on earth anyone would get the indication that they should not be there.”

Straka said he believed that the charges against him were not fair: “A lot of people, even people who went inside the Capitol, even people who crawled through a broken window and went inside the Capitol, are getting misdemeanor charges of being on restricted grounds or parading inside the Capitol. I was charged with a felony for that.”

He was also charged with a felony for “impeding an officer in the line of duty.”

“I was standing there with my arms above my head, my camera pointed toward the open doors of the Capitol and filming. And there’s a moment in my video … where a police officer comes to the doorframe of the east side Capitol doors … somebody grabs his shield out of his hand and they begin passing it back through the crowd. And as that’s happening, a few people in the crowd are shouting, ‘take it, take it, and take the shield, take the shield.’”

This happened about 35 feet in front of him with hundreds of people in between him and the Capitol doors, Straka explained.

The FBI said they “knew conclusively” that it was his voice, Straka said. “First, they said it was me shouting ‘take the shield, take the shield.’ And then they changed it to me shouting ‘take it, take it,’” he said.

Straka said he “vehemently denied” the charges. The government later offered him a plea deal that dropped the two felony charges but charged him with “a misdemeanor of disorderly conduct,” Straka said. However, there was a condition attached to the plea deal: “They put in my plea deal that I witnessed this police officer having his shield taken away and that I shouted ‘take it, take it’ to encourage the crowd to take the shield away.”

He was told that if he objected to the deal, he could go to trial facing the two felonies and the misdemeanor that he had already been charged with, and possibly an additional felony charge of “obstruction of Congress,” which carries a sentence of 20 years,” Straka said.

Facing such pressure, Straka signed the plea deal, which means he confessed to a crime he didn’t commit only to avoid facing charges with long prison terms that he believed would not be heard before a fair trial, Straka explained.

Trials of Jan. 6 defendants are held in Washington, D.C., and these judges do not release jurisdiction to somewhere else, Straka said.

“Every jury trial that has taken place so far on January 6 cases has resulted in the juries deliberating for a matter of two hours or less and coming back with guilty on all counts verdicts.

“I don’t believe that my case would have been any different. My opinion is that it does not matter if you’re innocent, and it does not matter if the evidence shows that you’re innocent. If you are a vocal Trump supporter who questioned the 2020 election and you’re going before a D.C. judge and jury, you’re going to be punished for making the decision to support Donald Trump and question the election.

“A lot of the judges in Washington, D.C., are liberal-appointed activist judges who also hate Donald Trump,” Straka said.

“I struggle every day—probably until the day I die, I’ll struggle with [this]: Did I make the right decision? But ultimately I have to believe that I did.”

Aftermath of Confession

 Straka said he has been “paying dearly” for signing the plea deal, as his reputation was destroyed.

He has been portrayed by media as an “insurrectionist” who “encouraged an attack on a police officer,” he said. He believes, however, that “nobody should ever take a shield from a police officer, and nobody should ever encourage anybody to take a shield from a police officer.”

In 2020, at the time when the BLM movement promoted defunding the police, Straka, a Democrat-turned-Republican, and his WalkAway Campaign organized “Rescue America” rallies across the country during which they raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support police officers, the activist said.

In December last year, WalkAway held a fundraising event to “refund the police” and “raised $30,000 to give to defunded police departments to help restore training and equipment,” Straka said.

The funds were raised through a limited email campaign aimed at his followers, Straka said. His audience supports the police, and they would have never supported Straka and his campaign if they had believed that he participated in or encouraged an attack on a police officer, Straka said.

The WalkAway Campaign “encourages and supports those on the Left to walk away from the divisive tenets endorsed and mandated by the Democratic Party of today,” the WalkAway website reads. Its mission is to bring Americans together to walk towards unity, civility, respect, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all, the website says.

Straka said that he and his organization have been permanently banned from online-donor and popular payment services.

“My name has been destroyed in the media. I am now synonymous with being an insurrectionist and a terrorist who went to D.C. on January 6 to try to overthrow the government and encourage an attack on a police officer, when in fact, I thought I was going to be speaking at a First Amendment-protected event,” Straka said.

“It’s been catastrophically destructive to my name and the name of my organization,” Straka said, but he added: “I’m a fighter, I’m going to fight my way back, I’m going to keep going, I’m not going to back down. … This is an uphill battle, but we’re going to win.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/brandon-straka-jan-6-confession-was-made-under-pressure-of-facing-charges-with-long-prison-term_4503300.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-01-4&utm_medium=email&est=TyNmerJodWiUcBZlbLbEmTm3qkjK9x41CXwA936vdF9Ga1vFR7ifjvlkKrCa29E9BA%3D%3D

What’s Happening:

Ever since a Supreme Court draft leaked to the public, radical abortion activists have been flipping out. They have violated federal law to harass the court, all so it would vote the way the mob wants.

(Not that Joe Biden is investigating these crimes.)

But news has come out that the protests have not changed the court’s opinion. So, one extremist group is hatching another scheme to “paralyze” the court.

From The Washington Free Beacon:

A radical leftwing group is laying plans to shut down the Supreme Court in response to a leaked opinion that overturns Roe v. Wade, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

#ShutdownDC is planning to block streets adjoining the Court to prevent the justices and their staff from reaching their chambers. Organizers acknowledged their operations go beyond constitutionally protected activity, and they referenced the likelihood of arrests and clashes with law enforcement during a Tuesday night briefing the Free Beacon monitored.

Uh, really? A group calling itself “#ShutdownDC” claims they are going to “shut down” the Supreme Court.

Sounds scary, right? How will this group of radicals do that? By blocking the roads into the building…

Oh…

They do know that the justices don’t have to be in the literal building to do their job, right? That, in the age of Zoom, they can virtually meet and give their rulings?

Blocking roads won’t stop the court from handing out a ruling the left doesn’t like. But I do find it ridiculous that these leftists feel empowered to do this.

Just a year ago, supposed conservatives bombarded the Capitol and are being treated worse than Gitmo prisoners.

The reason these idiotic leftists are even planning this, with seemingly no intervention from Capitol Police or the Feds, is because Democrats are allowing it.

This news is being circulated openly online. Where is the response from our law enforcement? This seems to go far beyond constitutionally-protected speech.

Why haven’t the local authorities warned them not to do this? Why isn’t the FBI investigation actions aimed at “shutting down the Supreme Court”?

Those are the real questions Americans must be asking.

Key Takeaways:

• A leftist group plans on “shutting down the Supreme Court” over Roe v. Wade.
• “ShutdownDC” will blockade roads to the court, cutting off access.
• This kind of protest is not protected by the First Amendment.

https://freebeacon.com/courts/shut-it-down-radical-leftwing-group-plans-to-blockade-supreme-court/

‘They only care about certain deaths’

The left’s push for more gun control omit the many cases that go against their narrative, such as instances where guns were used to neutralize shooters, according to Erich Pratt, the senior vice president of Gun Owners of America (GOA), a gun rights advocacy organization that represents more than 2 million Americans.

“The left is all about pushing gun control. It’s absolutely disgusting what they’re doing. They’re pushing gun control, they’re fundraising off of this within hours of the shooting,” Pratt told NTD’s Capitol Report, referring to the May 24 shooting that killed 21 people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

“And really, it’s despicable because it becomes clear they only care about certain deaths,” he said.

Politicians and activists pushing for gun control neglect to talk about cities that already have the policies they want to implement for the entire nation, he said.

“For example, more than 40 people have been shot and killed in Chicago this month. In the last 30 days, in Baltimore, there had been 20 people shot and killed. But the left is not talking about that. They’re not fundraising off of Chicago or Baltimore because they already have very strict gun control,” Pratt noted.

“Those cities don’t serve their cause—[they] have red-flag, gun confiscation orders, they have universal background registration checks, they have so-called assault weapons bans, they have everything that the left is trying to push on us, and yet they have murders out the wazoo in those two cities that they can’t control it.

“And what that tells us, obviously, is that gun control is not the answer,” he said.

Pratt noted examples of past deadly attacks that did not involve guns, and said that blaming a certain instrument for mass attacks is “short-sighted because no law that bans a certain object is going to stop an evil-determined heart from killing.”

“What’s amazing, and this is one of the things that the anti-gun left does, is they only talk about certain uses of a firearm, which fit their narrative when they’re used in a bad way. But then they won’t talk about firearms when they’re actually used to stop mass shootings,” Pratt said.

Pratt noted how, on May 25, the day after the mass shooting in Uvalde, a woman with a concealed carry permit in West Virginia shot and killed a man who had started firing an AR-style rifle into a crowd of people at a birthday-graduation party.

He accused the left-wing media of generating opposition to people’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms “by only selectively talking about certain stories,” and neglecting stories that show how guns may be used to avert more deaths.

“A lot of times where there has been a lot of killing … they are brought to an end by a good guy with a gun,” he said.

Pratt shared the story of Stephen Willeford, who is currently GOA’s spokesperson. As an armed citizen, Willeford in November 2017 stopped a shooter at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, from potentially killing more people.

“Sadly, everyone at that church in Sutherland Springs did not have a gun on that day except for the bad guy,” Pratt said. “But when Steven Willeford, who lived down the street heard the shooting, he ran out of his house barefoot with his AR-15 [and] called the guy out of the church. That guy came out and Steven mortally wounded him.”

“I mean, the guy got in his car, drove off but eventually took his own life because he was wounded so bad,” he continued. “The FBI cited that case and many other cases as examples where armed citizens use guns to stop attempted mass murders.”

Pratt argued against the concept of gun-free zones, saying they only serve to be places where shooters seek to go. The Uvalde shooting was an example of that, he noted.

“It’s really important to point out that in most cases, these killers will try to seek out a location where it’s a gun-free zone. You know, 81 percent of police agree that teachers and staff should be armed, and with good reason because no school has ever had a mass shooting where there were armed teachers and staff,” he said.

“But tragically, that wasn’t the case at the Texas School. Police were reportedly not quick to rush in. And this Texas school didn’t take part in the program that allows teachers to be armed, so it was a gun-free zone.

“And again, that’s what killers often choose to target. And why would 94 percent of mass shooters target gun-free zones? Because they don’t want bullets being fired back at them.

“That’s why they don’t target police stations or gun shows because killers love gun control. And sadly, that’s what enabled this killer in Texas.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/lefts-narrative-pushing-gun-control-omits-cases-where-guns-save-lives-erich-pratt_4498127.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-05-29-2&utm_medium=email&est=rmqruDxeEZaPbPc3DqACrT90FomHO7YcSYq53oiVFEA%2Fu4EEPGXINkUSnBakkckv5Q%3D%3D

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) spoke at a rally this month with a pro-Hamas newspaper publisher who urged Palestinians to attack Israel.

Tlaib shared the stage with Osama Siblani, the publisher of the Dearborn-based Arab American News, at the second annual Metro Detroit March for Jerusalem Palestine on May 15. Siblani, whose newspaper cosponsored the event, urged Arabs in Michigan and elsewhere to “fight within [their] means” against Israel, whether it be with “stones,” “guns,” or “their hands.” He sang the praises of the “fedayeen”—Islamic militants—for “striking [Israel] with knives and with their bare hands.”

In her speech, Tlaib railed against what she called the “apartheid” Israeli government and urged Arab Americans to run for office in order to advance the Palestinian cause in Washington, D.C.

Tlaib has emerged as one of the most vocal anti-Israel activists in Congress and is a strong backer of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which aims to inflict economic harm on Israel. Tlaib has accused Jewish supporters of Israel of holding dual loyalties, a term widely considered anti-Semitic in nature.

Siblani has an extensive history praising the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas. He told the Washington Post in 2003 that he viewed Hamas and Hezbollah as “freedom fighters” rather than terrorists. He told the Chicago Tribune in 2006 he would “be willing to go to jail” if the FBI decided to round up supporters of Hezbollah. Tlaib’s campaign has accepted $1,250 in contributions from Siblani since 2018, including $500 on March 13, according to Federal Election Commission records. Tlaib’s campaign spent $1,025 in 2020 on ads in Siblani’s paper, which has a history of publishing anti-Semitic content.

The Michigan rally featured other controversial speakers, including Rabbi Dovid Weiss. The anti-Zionist activist has attended Holocaust denial events with former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Weiss gave a gift to the head of Hezbollah at an event in Beirut in 2018.

The Michigan rally was held to commemorate “the Nakba,” a Palestinian phrase for Israel’s founding that loosely translates to “the catastrophe.” Tlaib and other House members affiliated with “the Squad” introduced a resolution a day after the rally calling for the U.S. government to recognize “Nakba Day.” Jewish lawmakers and pro-Israel groups called the resolution anti-Semitic.

“This resolution is just the latest in a long line of anti-Semitic, anti-Israel statements, policies and actions by the most radical voices in the Democratic Party,” Rep. Lee Zeldin (R., N.Y.), who is Jewish, said in a statement. “This group on the far-left never misses an opportunity to dangerously promote anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiments and agendas.”

The Coalition for Jewish Values, an advocacy group representing more than 2,000 rabbis, said Tlaib’s promotion of the Nakba resolution is an “indelible stain on Congress.”

“Every Member of Congress, especially those who are Jewish, has a moral obligation to repudiate this hateful resolution,” Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld, the group’s president, said in a statement, adding that “the real catastrophe is that we have reached the point that this was introduced.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition described the Nakba Day resolution as “another attempt by the most radical leftists in Congress to delegitimize our ally Israel and to promote anti-Israel and frankly anti-Semitic efforts to destroy the only democracy in the Middle East.”

During Nakba Day demonstrations in Ramallah and other Palestinian territories, speakers advocated for Israel’s destruction and committed themselves to conducting terrorism operations against the Jewish state.

Tlaib came under fire in August 2021 when she claimed that wealthy pro-Israel forces are “behind the curtain” controlling U.S. policy. The statement was widely condemned as an anti-Semitic dog whistle by groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the Conference of Presidents, which represents major Jewish-American advocacy organizations.

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/meet-rashida-tlaibs-favorite-anti-israel-publisher/

WASHINGTON—Testimony that suggested the Donald Trump-Russia claims given to the FBI by a Hillary Clinton lawyer may have been fabricated will be struck from the record, along with mention of the email that triggered the testimony, a judge has ruled.

On Tuesday, FBI agent Curtis Heide was presented with an email sent by Rodney Joffe to researchers with the Georgia Institute of Technology dated Sept. 14, 2016. Joffe discussed one of the white papers Michael Sussmann, a lawyer representing both Joffe and the Clinton campaign, later handed over to the FBI alleging a secret link between Trump and a Russian bank.

“Please read as if you had no prior knowledge or involvement, and you were handed this document as a security expert (NOT a DNS expert) and were asked: ‘Is this plausible as an explanation?’” Joffe wrote. “NOT to be able to say that this is, without doubt, but to merely be plausible.”

DNS stands for Domain Name System, or the type of information that Joffe and the researchers said linked Russia’s Alfa Bank and Trump’s business in the papers they compiled. Sussmann gave those papers to the FBI shortly after the September email.

Asked about the language in the message, Heide said that “it appears, from this email, that this report may have been fabricated.”

Sean Berkowitz, a defense lawyer, said while the jury was out of the room that the answer was “prejudicial” to his client.

“I did not want to draw attention to it. But given the parameters of the court’s prior ruling and the way that they went through that, I think that was improper to elicit, and nonresponsive,” Berkowitz said.

Jonathan Algor, a prosecutor with special counsel John Durham’s team, said asking Heide about the email was “legitimate” because it followed a series of questions from the defense about David Dagon, one of the researchers Joffe emailed, and the source for the paper in question.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, the Obama appointee overseeing Sussmann’s case, on May 24 ordered Heide’s quote struck from the record. His justification was that the answer was “at odds” with his earlier ruling that prosecutors could not delve into whether the data was concocted or “spoofed” because Sussmann was said to not be involved in the research itself.

On Wednesday, Cooper said the email itself can no longer be an exhibit.

Cooper had allowed the document to be admitted because he said it was not hearsay since it had a statement and a question.

Berkowitz, Sussmann’s lawyer, argued the “fabrication” quote from Heide had been reported by some media outlets and the only remedy would be to strike all mention of the email in addition to the email itself, as well as forbid prosecutors from bringing it up again.

“We think the probative value of that document at this stage is minimal, and I expect that if it is published to the jury and used in any way, the jurors will associate it with the fabrication comment,” he said.

While “the bell can never be unrung,” jurors “should not be reminded” of the email and the comment, he added.

DeFilippis noted that the court had cleared the document before prosecutors presented it to Heide. He also said prosecutors had never shown Heide the email prior to when it was presented, and “did not anticipate that he was going to speculate that it could be fabricated.”

“So we think the appropriate remedy here, Your Honor, is to cut off the response—the speculation—but not the document itself, which is highly probative” because of when it was sent—just days before Sussmann met with Baker, and on the same day Sussmann billed the Clinton campaign for drafting a white paper.

Cooper sided with the defense, citing how Joffe and the three researchers he emailed have not testified in the trial. Dagon and colleague Manos Antonakakis were on the prosecution witness list, but were never called. According to the judge, that means there is no basis to admit the document. He said the government, which has spent years on the investigation, had plenty of time to interview the researchers and call them as witnesses.

Cooper previously barred prosecutors from introducing emails from Fusion GPS, a firm that specializes in opposition research. Fusion operatives helped promote the Alfa Bank-Trump allegations to media outlets, and were part of the team that compiled the Trump-Russia dossier known as the Steele dossier. He also turned down a request from prosecutors to introduce other messages, including one that featured Joffe saying he was promised a position in the U.S. government if Clinton won the 2016 election.

The string of unfavorable rulings for the prosecution has led some legal observers to say the treatment of Sussmann differs from past high-profile cases, such as that against Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.

“While the judge in Flynn’s case was eager to remove obstacles from the prosecution’s path, the judge in Sussmann’s case seems to have created a virtual obstacle course for Durham,” Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said in a recent op-ed. “Durham may be able to jump the legal hurdles, but he will do so without much of his evidence. To paraphrase Charles Dickens in ‘A Tale of Two Cities,’ for a prosecutor D.C. can be the best of venues or it can be the worst of venues.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/judge-strikes-email-testimony-suggesting-trump-russia-claims-may-have-been-fabricated_4491341.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-05-27&utm_medium=email&est=flN%2FrQKry13R8zxoqUBd1i%2Fi0oMMuugwwTIOm9xsKS7QHvs9n0A8fsAjCwq5VoWkXQ%3D%3D

An interesting pattern emerged at the trial of Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann. While we may have expected special counsel John Durham to challenge the official media and establishment narrative that the Trump-Russia investigation was properly predicated and carried out, it is Sussmann who is now challenging that narrative, not Durham.

In fact, Durham made it clear from day one of the trial that he is running with the opposite narrative, that the FBI was a victim. In essence, Durham has forced Sussmann’s team to attack the FBI in order to exonerate their client—and Sussmann’s team has embraced the challenge.

In possibly the biggest bombshell admission of the past year, Sussmann’s team revealed an internal FBI text message that proves that FBI leadership was vigorously pushing the Trump-Russia collusion hoax despite the flimsiness of the evidence.

It is the first public acknowledgment backed by documentary evidence that FBI leadership was focused on taking out Trump.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-internal-fbi-text-message-reveals-fbi-leaderships-desire-to-get-trump-truth-over-news_4492007.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-05-26-4&utm_medium=email&est=%2BOQFe%2Fs2necxfrFHAy1h0iHK1d46sV8dNBC%2Ft43HqGhrUVYpR5OgnuRp8JVOXBQadw%3D%3D

Every student who was killed in a mass shooting in Texas on Tuesday was in the same classroom, according to a law enforcement official.

Lt. Christopher Olivarez of the Texas Department of Public Safety told the “Today Show” and CNN on Wednesday that the child victims were in the same fourth-grade classroom at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. At least 19 students were killed in the incident, which also left the suspect and another adult dead, officials have said.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday identified the gunman as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, who attended a high school in the city.

Ramos “barricaded himself by locking the door and just started shooting children and teachers that were inside that classroom,” Olivarez said. “It just shows you the complete evil of the shooter.”

“It’s a small classroom, you can have anywhere from 25 to 30 students in there, plus there were two teachers in there. … So don’t have exact number of how many students were in that classroom, but it could vary … It was a classroom setting, a typical classroom setting where you have mass groups of children inside that classroom altogether, with nowhere to go,” Olivarez added.

There are still many unanswered questions, Olivarez said.

“That’s why we’re working with FBI right now to kind of look back to see if there were any indicators, any red flags, looking at social media. What we know about the shooter is that he is a resident here in Uvalde, he did attend one of the local high schools, he lived with his grandparents, was unemployed, no friends, no girlfriend that we can identify at this time, no criminal history, no gang affiliation as well,” he said.

Dillon Silva, whose nephew was in a nearby classroom, said students were watching a movie when a bullet shattered a window. Moments later, their teacher saw the armed assailant walk past the door.

“Oh, my God, he has a gun!” the teacher shouted twice, according to Silva. “The teacher didn’t even have time to lock the door,” he said, reported The Associated Press.

Ramos legally bought two AR-style rifles just days before the attack, soon after his 18th birthday, state senators briefed by law enforcement said.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden responded to the incident and pushed for gun control laws. In a Twitter post, the president noted that gun-control measures won’t “prevent every tragedy” but still wants them passed.

“We know common sense gun laws can’t and won’t prevent every tragedy. But we know they work and have a positive impact. When we passed the assault weapons ban—mass shootings went down. When the law expired—mass shootings tripled,” Biden wrote.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/police-recount-disturbing-details-of-texas-elementary-school-shooting_4490297.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-05-26&utm_medium=email&est=%2B5vsUZIpUrfTGpbzUo%2FgcUjFocIMWWE5LzujLNnAU5iZpVW1JdP%2BkUG6OD00W9xBJg%3D%3D

UVALDE, Texas—The man who killed 19 children in a Texas elementary school on May 24 posted three times to Facebook before arriving at the facility, Gov. Greg Abbott said during a press briefing on May 25.

About 30 minutes before Salvador Ramos, 18, entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde and opened fire, he wrote on social media, “I’m going to shoot my grandmother.”

Another post, minutes later, “I shot my grandmother.”

A third, around 15 minutes before the massacre began, “I’m going to shoot an elementary school.”

Apart from the posts, there was “no meaningful forewarning” of the mass shooting, Abbott, a Republican, told reporters during the briefing.

Andy Stone, a spokesman for Facebook parent company Meta, said in a statement that the posts were private one-on-one text messages. The messages “were discovered after the terrible tragedy occurred,” he said, adding that the company is closely cooperating with law enforcement in their ongoing investigation.

The posts were located by the FBI, which is assisting local and state authorities with the investigation, according to Texas officials.

An online search turned up no criminal history, and authorities have so far found no indication of prior criminal incidents.

Ramos was a dropout who had attended Uvalde’s high school. It’s unclear if he attended Robb Elementary School.

After Ramos shot his grandmother, 66, at her home where he lived, his mother called the police. She also ran for help for her mother, who was airlifted to a hospital in San Antonio, where she’s listed in critical condition.

Ramos then took his grandmother’s car and drove about three miles before crashing. He exited the vehicle with a backpack and one of the semi-automatic rifles that he purchased legally from a local sporting goods store in March, before moving to the west side of the school campus. As he was approaching, a school resource officer engaged with him. No gunfire was exchanged, and Ramos was able to make it into the school.

He turned right, then left, before reaching two adjoining classrooms and gaining access to them, where he opened fire.

Ramos tried entering at least one other classroom but moved on after finding a locked door, Joe Daniel, a Uvalde resident who lives near the school, told The Epoch Times. Daniel’s 8-year-old daughter was inside that classroom.

Chris Vasquez, a teacher at a nearby private school, said she spoke with a parent whose child was shot during the mayhem. The child, a boy, told his parents that the shooter walked into the classroom and said, “Okay everybody, goodnight.”

A tactical team of law enforcement officers, including Border Patrol SWAT agents and a Uvalde deputy, breached the classroom door and killed Ramos.

In addition to the shooter and 19 children, two teachers were killed. Other individuals were wounded.

The motive remains unclear, officials said.

Texas leaders largely framed the problem as a mental health issue, as opposed to one regarding access to firearms.

Any person who conducts such an attack has mental health issues, Abbott said.

“We as a government need to find a way to target that mental health challenge and do something about it,” he said.

“There are ‘real gun laws’ in New York. There are ‘real gun laws’ in Chicago. There are ‘real gun laws’ in California. I hate to say this, but there are more people that were shot every weekend in Chicago than there are in schools in Texas. And we need to realize that people who may think we just need to implement tougher gun laws, it’ll solve it—Chicago and LA and New York disproves that thesis.

“Our job is to come up with real solutions that we can implement.”

The state legislature will, when it reconvenes, discuss legislation to tackle mental health issues, Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican, said.

Abbott said that laws that were passed in 2019 aimed at preventing school shootings would be closely examined to make sure there were no shortcomings in the language or implementation.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/texas-elementary-school-shooter-posted-to-facebook-three-times-before-massacre-governor_4490873.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-05-25-4&utm_medium=email&est=%2BbdkW%2FNtT6PIrrhAcLUyGclrvAdur9D5v4Ta756nXW41SUznSjZjwtQ%2F4etQkGgyHA%3D%3D

Top House Republicans are demanding answers from the FBI after court-ordered information came to light showing that the federal agency had collected the information of over 3 million Americans without a warrant.

In a May 25 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mike Turner (R-Ohio) asked Wray to explain why his agency had wiretapped and gathered personal information on over 3.3 million Americans without a warrant (pdf).

Limited authority to gather foreign intelligence information is granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Specifically, section 702 of the bill says: “the Attorney General (AG) and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) may jointly authorize the targeting of (i) non-U.S. persons (ii) who are reasonably believed to be outside of the United States (iii) to acquire foreign intelligence information.”

However, this power can grant an expanding circle of possible searches to the FBI and other intel agencies, who can use the same power against American citizens who had any interaction with targeted foreigners.

Historically, insight into how FISA has been used against American citizens has been limited and hidden behind classified reports.

However, a November 2020 decision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)—which serves as a watchdog for U.S. intelligence agencies—required that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) report “the number of U.S. person queries run by the FBI against Section 702-acquired information.”

In accordance with these new requirements, ODNI’s recently-released Annual Statistical Transparency Report included data on how often the FBI gathered information on American citizens using section 702 in 2021.

In total, queries against U.S. citizens came out to a jaw-dropping 3,394,053 searches. By comparison, only 1,324,057 such queries were made in 2020, representing around a 250 percent increase during President Joe Biden’s first year in office.

According to ODNI more than half of these queries—approximately 1.9 million—were part of the larger investigation of alleged Russian attempts to target or weaken U.S. critical infrastructure.

The ODNI report also admitted that on at least four occasions, the FBI failed to get FISC approval before accessing the contents of information collected under section 702.

This is not the first time the FBI has been caught red-handed overstepping its legal authority under section 702.

In November 2020, the FISC announced that “the government … reported numerous incidents” in which the FBI reviewed information gathered under section 702 without obtaining proper permission from the court.

On other occasions, the FISC noted, the FBI used section 702 for issues entirely unrelated to foreign intelligence. These included queries for criminal investigations about healthcare fraud, transnational organized crime, violent gangs, domestic terrorism involving racially motivated violent extremists, as well as investigations relating to public corruption and bribery.”

“None of these queries was related to national security, and they returned numerous Section 702-acquired products in response,” the FISC noted.

“Rigorous Congressional oversight of the FBI’s Section 702-related activities is essential given FBI’s track record utilizing its FISA authorities,” Jordan and Turner ruled in view of the FBI’s past overreach.

In their letter to Wray, Jordan and Turner laid out a laundry list of questions about the report, demanding further transparency and explanations on the revelation that the FBI has often overstepped its legal authority to spy on American citizens.

Among other questions, they requested a full accounting of all 3,394,053 citizens who showed up in FBI queries and “[the] number of preliminary or full investigations into any U.S. citizens the FBI has initiated as a result of information obtained through any of these U.S. person queries, and the nature of the predication for each such investigation.”

They also asked for information on the 1.9 million Americans queried over alleged Russian efforts to compromise U.S. critical infrastructure. Specifically, they asked for, “The rationale for why these queries were found to be compliant with the FBI’s Section 702 querying procedures [and the] total number of U.S. citizens the FBI identified as victims of these compromises(s) pursuant to these queries.”

In addition, they demanded “A detailed statement about the FBI’s investigation, including the status of the investigation and any information uncovered about the identity of the Russian actors and their involvement with or connection to the Russian government, if any.”

Additionally, they asked for information gathered under FISA rules in the years between 2015 and 2020, as well as for an explanation of the FBI’s overreach of authority on various occasions.

The letter demands that Wray provide a written response by no later than 5 p.m. on June 7.

FISA Section 702 was last authorized by Congress for a six-year period in 2018 and will be up for reauthorization in 2024.

The FBI could not be immediately reached for comment.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/report-shows-fbi-spied-on-3-3-million-americans-without-a-warrant-gop-demands-answers_4487840.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-05-25-1&utm_medium=email&est=vli%2F%2BW%2FgQrRjLIdkkxbFMyzxKpcA%2BDebemQsdj4sQOEpQoPOVavfXJGhd2ry63Fvhg%3D%3D

WASHINGTON—Then-FBI Director James Comey and other bureau leaders were “fired up” in 2016 about allegations that Donald Trump’s business was secretly communicating with a Russian bank, according to internal FBI messages revealed in court on May 23.

“People on the 7th floor to include director are fired up about this server,” Joseph Pientka, an agent based in Washington, told Curtis Heide, a colleague working from the bureau’s Chicago office, in a message dated Sept. 21, 2016.

“Reachout [sic] and put tools on,” Pientka added. “Its [sic] not an option—we must do it.”

The message was sent just days after Michael Sussmann, a lawyer representing the campaign of Hillary Clinton—Trump’s rival for the presidency—met with an FBI lawyer and passed along information that he alleged showed a secret backchannel between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank.

Even as FBI cyber experts deemed the allegations false within a day—and the CIA would later do the same—the bureau’s counterintelligence arm continued to probe the claims, a move backed by senior bureau officials such as Comey.

James Baker, the former FBI general counsel who met with Sussmann in 2016, quickly handed the information to higher-ups and personally briefed Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, both of whom were eventually fired by Trump’s Justice Department.

“It seemed to me of great urgency and seriousness that I would want to make my bosses aware of this information,” Baker said.

He recounted that both men were “quite concerned” about the allegations.

Pientka’s message was made public for the first time in federal court during the trial of Sussmann, who is charged with lying to the FBI for saying he wasn’t bringing the allegations on behalf of a client. Prosecutors say he was acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign in a bid to influence the 2016 presidential election. Clinton campaign officials have testified that they didn’t approve Sussmann taking the allegations to the bureau; they preferred to have them promoted in media reports.

Bill Priestap, who was on the stand when the message was read, said he hadn’t seen it before.

Priestap was the FBI’s assistant counterintelligence director in 2016. He retired in 2019 and founded Trenchcoat Providers, which bills itself as helping safeguard businesses against cyber intrusions.

Priestap testified that he “does not recall” why there was “no choice” but to begin an investigation, and was unsure whether the bureau did open a probe. The only reason he knows they did is that there was an official file opened. The file said the probe was approved by four officials, including Daniel Wierzbicki, an official at the FBI’s Chicago office.

Priestap was the first person Baker spoke with after meeting with Sussmann and receiving the Trump–Russia allegations. Priestap claimed not to remember taking notes of the conversation, but, while on the stand, he was presented with notes he had taken.

The notes show that Priestap wrote that he was told that Sussmann wasn’t representing any clients in bringing the information to the FBI, bolstering special counsel John Durham’s case.

The motivation of the person bringing allegations is of interest, but isn’t the only factor the FBI uses to assess what steps to take regarding information, Priestap said. The bureau would want to know if a political campaign was behind any allegations, and if a confidential FBI source was behind them.

Rodney Joffe, another Sussmann client, was a confidential source but, according to prosecutors, utilized Sussmann to convey the information to the FBI, as opposed to taking it himself to his handler.

Joffe was terminated “for cause” in 2021 as a source, prosecutors have revealed.

“It was not something that I was regularly briefed on, and if I recall correctly, at end of the day, it didn’t amount to much,” Priestap said regarding the allegations.

The probe of the allegations primarily took place at the FBI’s Chicago office. Ryan Gaynor, an FBI agent there, recounted on May 23 how he volunteered to track the progress of the probe for the bureau’s headquarters in Washington.

Gaynor learned that Sussmann was representing Democrats but chose to withhold that information from agents performing the analysis of the data. However, he also said that knowing Sussmann brought the data on behalf of a confidential FBI source would have likely led him not to volunteer.

Allison Sands, one of the agents who performed the analysis, determined that the data, which was contained on thumb drives that Sussmann dropped off with Baker along with several white papers, didn’t support the allegations.

Sands said she was prevented from knowing the source of the data because of Gaynor’s decision to keep it shielded. She would have wanted to speak to the source’s handlers if she knew. The team did figure out that David Dagon, a researcher with the Georgia Institute of Technology, authored one of the papers, but the team didn’t interview Dagon.

Sands said she was “either told not to, or to focus on the logs” on the thumb drives.

She said she knew only that the probe was ordered by officials from “someplace in headquarters land.”

Heide testified that the team had to open a full investigation because of demands from FBI leadership. He also said that the bureau headquarters rebuffed requests to interview the original source during the investigation. That led to frustration, and the feeling that the probe was incomplete even after being closed.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/fbi-leaders-including-comey-were-fired-up-about-trump-alfa-bank-claims-agent_4486824.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-05-24-2&utm_medium=email&est=th86%2F4L7GC4bzml2itPYQxTfVgz0DC9MNEFQEJKR9Q%2BRsmDVOVGkrg8fa9D6MobTPA%3D%3D

A pair of scientists pleaded guilty to illegally importing potentially toxic lab chemicals and forwarding confidential mRNA vaccine research to China, according to a statement released by the Justice Department (DOJ).

Wu Chenyan and Chen Lianchun, a husband and wife who worked as research scientists for a major American pharmaceutical company, pleaded guilty on May 19 to charges related to their efforts to illicitly gather confidential mRNA research from that company and use it to advance the husband’s own competing laboratory research in China.

Wu worked for multiple pharmaceutical companies throughout his career, including a major corporation unnamed in court documents. Chen also worked at the same company. Wu moved to China in 2010 and opened a laboratory there in 2012 which focused on mRNA vaccine research.

Chen remained in the United States and continued working for the company while Wu was in China from 2012 through 2021. During that time, her research for the company also focused on mRNA vaccines.

Chen repeatedly accessed the company’s computers and copied confidential materials between 2013 and 2018, according to DOJ. She then emailed those materials to her husband in China using her personal email account. The materials included PowerPoints and Word documents with DNA and mRNA sequencing data, and confidential vaccine research & development information.

“The defendants used their placement and access to obtain and illegally share confidential lab research for their own benefit,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Stacey Moy said in a statement.

Wu first appeared on the FBI’s radar in 2019, when one such PowerPoint with his name on it was discovered by authorities while investigating a Chinese man convicted of violating U.S. export controls.

In 2021, Wu closed his lab in China and attempted to move it to the United States. He packed its contents into five separate suitcases and flew to America. He did not declare any of the biological materials on his customs form, nor to the customs officer while passing through inspection.

Nevertheless, customs agents discovered chemical and biological samples in Wu’s possession, along with medical equipment and research documentation, as it had all been found to be improperly packaged.

In all, Wu was carrying nearly 1,000 unlabeled centrifuge tubes, which appeared to contain proteins, and multiple containers of unknown chemicals, the DOJ said. Some samples were even labeled as hazardous, and one bore a skull and crossbones image and the word “harmful if swallowed … toxic if inhaled.”

“These are serious computer fraud and smuggling crimes,” said U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman. “One defendant failed to protect her employer’s confidential and important research, and instead used it to her and her husband’s advantage.”

“Compounding the harm, the other defendant put travelers in harm’s way by illegally transporting his laboratory’s hazardous chemicals back to the United States.”

The saga is just the latest continuation of the DOJ’s ongoing struggle to curb an ever-rising number of China-related economic espionage and intellectual property theft cases. According to the FBI, there are currently over 2,000 active cases related to China-based attempts to steal vital technology and information from the United States.

The department was engaged in a Trump-era effort to curb such cases in a program known as the China Initiative, but the Biden administration scrapped that initiative following allegations of racial bias. The department clarified that an internal review found no evidence of bias, but that its “harmful perception” meant the initiative had to end.

Wu and Chen are both scheduled to be sentenced in August of this year.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinese-couple-pleads-guilty-to-stealing-mrna-vaccine-info-smuggling-biological-materials-doj_4484944.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-05-23-4&utm_medium=email&est=ZaEVmvdt9FWonox%2FJgV%2Bk5goN8WileCkDampAis0jPjauPW8QrvaK7BYf48zTmxfVg%3D%3D

Bobby Powell thought someone would be interested in his video evidence showing two “suspicious actors” taking part in events on the east side of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

He was in for the surprise of his life.

The semiretired Michigan radio journalist and podcaster has spent the past 16 months trying to get politicians, media personalities, pundits, and the FBI to view his video footage and identify the two “suspicious actors.”

He wants to see those men charged with the destruction of government property and assault.

Almost no one, it seems, wants to listen.

Powell has learned that his video isn’t welcome in many places; some people view it as a threat. In Michigan, he said a politician friend suggested he take a six-figure bribe to keep quiet. When he flatly refused, he says his life was threatened.

The 29 minutes of high-definition video have turned Powell’s life upside down.

In Search of an Audience

As the smoke at the Capitol cleared from the Jan. 6 unrest, Powell began his long quest to find an audience for his video evidence. He was in Washington that day as a credentialed reporter representing his news podcast “The Truth is Viral” and radio station WCHY in Cheboygan, Michigan.

After he called the FBI on Jan. 15, 2021, an agent from the bureau’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) called him back and took his information. He also contacted the U.S. Secret Service and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS).

Powell provided the address to his website where agents could view his Jan. 6 videos, and offered to come in for an interview. Even after nearly a half-dozen follow-ups with the FBI and other agencies, there has been no reply from any law enforcement officer.

He also thought photos of the men would eventually appear among the 1,558 individuals on the FBI’s Jan. 6 most-wanted page. That never happened, nor have they been arrested or charged.

“These are two men that are pulling windows out of the Capitol and pushing people inside the doors,” Powell told The Epoch Times. “Okay, so why isn’t the FBI interested? That is the key question.”

“The FBI has no comment on the ongoing Jan. 6 investigation,” the agency’s national press office said in an email in response to an inquiry by The Epoch Times about the video and Powell’s claims.

Meanwhile, Powell has posted a video link to the Twitter page of the U.S. Capitol Police with the question, “Who are these men?”

About five minutes later, his Twitter account was permanently suspended. Twitter didn’t respond by press time to a request for comment about the action.

Google, meanwhile, demonetized his “The Truth is Viral” YouTube page and Facebook took down his live streams and drastically cut the reach of his videos. Powell had been broadcasting on the internet since 2008.

Based on what he says he witnessed on Jan. 6, the grizzled radio veteran and honorably discharged Marine believes the men in the video are FBI or other government agents who were assigned to draw then-President Donald Trump supporters into the Capitol building so they could be arrested.

If proven true, Powell’s allegation would be the latest explosive evidence suggesting that federal agencies played a role in the Capitol riots.

“I’ve been giving speeches in New York, North Carolina, Florida, for the January 6 defendants,” Powell said. “And you know, I flat out come out and say it:

“The FBI led the insurrection of the Capitol.

“I have proof, and, you know, the FBI didn’t want to hear anything about it.”

Defense attorney Brad Geyer sees great value in Powell’s video and its potential exculpatory role for defendants charged with myriad crimes for being at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

“Bobby Powell presents important visual evidence suggesting facts and context that fall outside the accepted narrative,” Geyer told The Epoch Times, “a narrative upon which seemingly every Washington D.C. constituency seems unanimous: it was 100 percent the fault of the person attending a rally who engaged in a criminal act by entering the Capitol.”

Geyer, who represents Oath Keepers defendant Ken Harrelson, filed a motion on May 6 to compel prosecutors to help him identify 80 “suspicious actors” and “material witnesses.” Most of those on Geyer’s list were located at or near the Columbus Doors on the east side of the Capitol.

Geyer’s motion documents criminal behavior by some of the suspicious actors, such as removing security fencing and signage, breaching police lines, attacking officers, and inciting crowds to storm into the Capitol. Powell’s video is more evidence that adds weight to the argument, he said.

“Let’s forget about the rally being overrun by people who look like inauthentic rally attendees at best who also seem to be ghosts as far as investigative agencies are concerned,” Geyer said.

A Day That Changed Everything

Powell was supposed to retire after his assignment on Jan. 6. He went to Washington to cover then-President Trump’s rally and ended up at the Capitol, documenting the unrest and rioting.

He was on the terrace on the east side of the Capitol, when a 20-year-old California man ran into his field of view. Dressed mostly in black, Hunter Allen Ehmke jumped up on a window sill and started kicking in the glass in the multi-pane window.

After smashing several of the lower panes, Ehmke made a fist and punched the upper glass. Police officers who sprinted into view knocked Ehmke off his perch and swarmed over him on the ground. As Ehmke was placed into handcuffs, a hostile crowd started to gather.

The eight police officers involved in Ehmke’s capture left as quickly as they had arrived. Powell was surprised to find himself guarding the broken window. The scene didn’t sit well with some of the bystanders.

“Does this make any [expletive] sense to y’all? a man with a red beard asked bystanders. “I’m like, this is a [expletive] trap,” the man added in reference to the window.

A man off-camera said, “That is definitely a trap.”

As he picked up glass shards that littered the window sill, Powell heard a voice from behind.

“Why don’t you guys open up the rest of it?”

Powell replied, “Because I think that would probably be illegal.”

The stranger’s dress and demeanor stood out among the protesters passing by the window; he was wearing a black ball cap with an American flag patch. His face was covered with a black and gray striped neck gaiter. He walked onto the east terrace carrying a large white stick. It’s not clear what became of the stick.

He had a radio attached to a strap on the left-center of his chest. On his left chest was a bite valve attached to a hydration pack on his back.

As he pondered what the man was up to, Powell finished toying with the splintered glass.

“I’m just picking up garbage,” he told the man.

To Powell, the man was out of place.

“I knew he was an operator of some kind right away,” he said. “He was no protester. He was there on a mission.”

Powell took a few steps to his left and turned around with his camera rolling, just in time to see the man pull out one of the lower glass panes and drop it on the ground. After the glass came loose, it appears the man realized he was being filmed. He unceremoniously dropped the glass and stepped away, the video shows.

Gavin Crowl ran into the scene and shoved the man in black away from the window. Powell gave Crowl a stern warning to stay away from the window: “Do not go in there!”

As Crowl attempted to walk away, the man in black pursued him and gave him a shove that almost knocked him off his feet. It can’t be heard on the video, but Crowl later said the man shouted at him, “Why are you breaking that window? Who do you think you are? Get out of here!”

Crowl seemed incredulous at being accused of what the man in black had just done. The man shoved Crowl again, then made a fist as if to strike him. Crowl put up his hands in surrender and walked away.

“Obviously, the guy in black was trying to cover his own [expletive] because he had seen my press helmet and the fact that I was pointing the camera right at him,” Powell said.

“So he didn’t know how long I had been recording,” Powell said. “He was just trying to cover his own butt. And then the guy leaves. He just leaves. Never to be seen again.

“I’ve watched surveillance footage; he just melts off into the crowd and I can’t see him anymore.”

Second Suspicious Actor Acted as Doorman

Powell moved over to the nearby Columbus Doors, where a large, rambunctious crowd was trying to get into the Capitol Rotunda. He saw about a dozen men come running out or being shoved out of the entrance by police.

Some of the men had been maced. Clouds of tear gas streamed out of the entry.

As Powell moved to the front line, a man who was holding the doors open used his right arm to shove Powell toward the entrance.

“Hold the line!” the man shouted. Someone else screamed, “Hold the line!”

Like the first suspicious actor, this man had a calm demeanor and a military efficiency about him, according to Powell. He wore a green fleece zip-up jacket, a brown checkered neck gaiter, a camo-pattern cap, and dark sunglasses. His gloves had bright lime-green tape on them. To Powell, he looked out of place.

Powell apparently didn’t notice, but the first suspicious actor who broke the glass was directly in front of him, crouched down behind another man. To his right was Matthew Perna of Sharon, Pennsylvania, who—after becoming distraught over being threatened with years in prison for being at the Capitol on Jan. 6—committed suicide nearly 14 months later.

An Uphill Battle

Powell estimates he has spent more than $20,000 over 16 months trying to get his story out. He spoke to producers of some of the biggest names in broadcast news, including one who told him flat-out they weren’t interested in a story about alleged government agents attacking the Capitol.

Powell has a podcast and publishes news on Substack, but the loss of revenue from YouTube struck a heavy blow. Days after he appeared on a Newsmax program, PayPal shut down his donation account. Since then, he has turned to GiveSendGo to help support his efforts.

“I called PayPal and spoke to a supervisor who told me they could find no policy I had violated, just that my account was marked, ‘Do Not Reinstate,’” he said.

Due to the loss of income, Powell sold his home to avoid foreclosure.

“So they’ve taken away all my sources of income except for my social security disability,” he said. “So I had to sell my house.”

He feels the weight and stress of Jan. 6.

“I was gonna pack in my microphone and go fishing. Boy, here it is 16 months later, and I am still going,” Powell said. “I’ve had four heart attacks in 16 months, the last one damn near killed me. If I hadn’t been in the ER when it happened, it would have.”

In early May, Powell hand-delivered a memory stick with his videos to Trump attorney Peter Ticktin. The attorney had put out a statement asking the public to submit January 6 video footage.

“I’m gonna see—I guess the entire country is going to see—how well they will be able to ignore it, now that I’ve given a video to [former] President Trump.”

WASHINGTON—The FBI lawyer who served as a conduit for flimsy allegations against Donald Trump said May 19 he would have acted differently if he knew Trump’s rival for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, was behind the claims.

James Baker, who now works for Twitter, said that he likely would not have have met with Michael Sussmann, who is accused of passing on data that allegedly linked Trump’s business to a Russian bank, if he knew Sussmann was acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign.

“I don’t think I would have,” Baker said on the stand in federal court in Washington.

Knowing Trump’s opponent was behind the allegations “would have raised very serious questions, certainly, about the credibility of the source” and the “veracity of the information,” Baker said. It would also have heightened “a substantial concern in my mind about whether we were going to be played.”

The testimony bolsters a key piece of special counsel John Durham’s case against Sussmann—that knowing the sources propelling Sussmann to meet with Baker would have altered how the FBI analyzed the information, which the bureau ultimately found did not substantiate the claims of a secret backchannel between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank.

“Absent Sussmann’s false statement, the FBI might have taken additional or more incremental steps before opening and/or closing an investigation,” prosecutors said in Sussmann’s indictment, which charged him with lying to the FBI.

Defense lawyers have argued that the impact of Sussmann’s alleged lie was “trivial or negligible.”

Sussmann met Baker in the FBI lawyer’s office on Sept. 19, 2016, just weeks before the presidential election. No other persons were present.

Baker said Thursday that would not have been the case if he knew the Clinton campaign’s involvement. He said he likely would have directed Sussmann to other FBI personnel—bureau lawyers don’t typically receive information—or would have still met with Sussmann, but made sure other personnel were present.

“I was willing to meet with Michael alone because I had high confidence in him and trust,” said Baker, who has described Sussmann as a friend. “I think I would have made a different assessment if he said he had been appearing on behalf of a client.”

Sussmann told Baker in a text message the night before the meeting that he had sensitive information he wanted to pass on but that he was doing so on his own accord, not on behalf of any clients. Baker testified that Sussmann repeated the lie during the meeting. Sussmann later told a congressional panel that the information was given to him by a client.

“I think it’s most accurate to say it was done on behalf of my client,” Sussmann said, apparently referring to Rodney Joffe, a technology executive who has said he was promised a position in the government if Clinton won the election.

While Sussmann, Joffe, and others worked on the white papers that he ultimately passed to Baker, the lawyer was billing the Clinton campaign, according to billing records. Sussmann also told the campaign about the allegations before he met with Baker, though the campaign allegedly did not approve the meeting.

Sussmann was well-known to the FBI, having worked with the bureau on multiple cases, including the alleged hack of Democratic National Committee servers. Sussmann “had a vibrant national security practice that had contact with the FBI a lot,” Baker said. Sussmann worked for Perkins Coie, which was the Clinton campaign’s law firm during the 2016 election, and has a long history of working with Democrats.

On cross-examination, Sean Berkowitz, representing Sussmann, hammered Baker over inconsistencies in his testimony and what he’s said before.

Baker, for instance, told the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General in 2019 that Sussmann said he had information stemming from “people that were his clients.” Baker said he was using a “shorthand way” of describing the cyberexperts with whom Sussman was working.

In 2018, testifying to a House of Representatives panel behind closed doors, Baker said he couldn’t remember whether he knew at the time that Baker was representing the Clinton campaign. “I don’t know that I had that in my head when he showed up in my office,” Baker said at the time.

“I just find that unbelievable that the guy representing the Clinton campaign, the Democrat National Committee, shows up with information that says we got this, and you don’t ask where he got it, you didn’t know how he got it,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) responded.

“I was uncomfortable with being in the position of having too much factual information conveyed to me, because I’m not an agent. And so I wanted to get the information into the hands of the agents as quickly as possible and let them deal with it. If they wanted to go interview Sussmann and ask him all those kinds of questions, fine with me,” Baker said.

According to Baker’s testimony and previous remarks from Sussmann, no agents ended up asking those kinds of questions.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/fbi-lawyer-knowing-clinton-was-behind-trump-allegations-would-have-changed-things_4478501.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-05-20-1&utm_medium=email&est=ArKq6sff9EIj3uA1BKp27aswgTL%2FO5yK8%2B9vEmjKaqzIeBuGliayP5PZlRd8WP4Tug%3D%3D

WASHINGTON—Former FBI Director James Comey and his top deputy were briefed on claims against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump brought to the FBI by a lawyer working for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the bureau’s former general counsel testified in court on May 19.

James Baker, who was the bureau’s top lawyer at the time, met with Michael Sussmann, the Clinton campaign lawyer, on Sept. 19, 2016.

During the meeting, which took place in Baker’s office, Sussmann handed over white papers and thumb drives that allegedly contained data proving a secret back channel between Trump’s business and a Russian bank—claims that were later deemed false by the FBI and CIA.

Baker, testifying during Sussmann’s trial on a charge of lying to the FBI, said Sussmann repeated what he had told his friend the night prior—that he was bringing the information on his own accord, not on behalf of any clients.

“It was part of his introduction to the meeting, ‘I’m not here on behalf of any particular client.’ I’m 100 percent confident that he said that,” Baker said.

Sussmann told Baker that media outlets were preparing to publish stories on the claims. Within minutes of getting the data, Baker picked up the phone and called Bill Priestap, a top FBI official.

“It involved Russia, and this bank had links to the Kremlin. That seemed to me, on its face, to be a potential national security threat,” Baker said, noting that the bureau was already investigating alleged connections between the Trump Organization and Russia. “It was a very high priority for me.”

During a meeting with Priestap, Baker vouched for Sussmann, who he has described as a friend. The pair met while working in the same Department of Justice division.

Baker repeated Sussmann’s claim—which led to a criminal charge against Sussmann and the trial—that he wasn’t bringing the information on behalf of a client, but noted that Sussmann had represented the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.

Baker said he gave the data the next day to Peter Strzok, another top FBI official.

“I wanted to get rid of this material as quickly as possible. I hated having it on my desk. I didn’t want to have this material any longer than I needed to,” Baker said.

The FBI lawyer soon spoke to Comey, the bureau’s director at the time, and Andrew McCabe, the bureau’s deputy director, about the allegations.

“It seemed to me of great urgency and seriousness that I would want to make my bosses aware of this information,” Baker said.

He recounted both men being “quite concerned” about the allegations.

FBI experts who analyzed the data found that it didn’t support the claims, FBI agent Scott Hellman testified earlier this week. The CIA in early 2017 determined that the allegations weren’t only “untrue and unsupported,” but that the data was “user created” and “contained gaps.”

It became clear “that there was nothing there,” Baker said.

Priestap came back to Baker, who was thinking of publishing an article, to inquire about the report and Baker reached out to Sussmann to get the identity, which turned out to be Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times.

Baker met twice with Lichtblau. During the first meeting, the reporter agreed to delay the story. In the other, FBI officials conveyed that the bureau had concluded the materials didn’t substantiate that there was a surreptitious connection between Trump’s business and the Russian bank.

“We concluded there was no substance,” Baker said.

The New York Times, in an article published on Oct. 31, 2016, said the FBI “ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation” for the purported link. It hasn’t been updated to include information that has entered into the public sphere since its publishing, such as the CIA’s conclusion.

Defense lawyers after a lunch break tried to portray Baker as an unreliable witness, as they have in hearings and filings entered before the trial began.

Sean Berkowitz, one of the lawyers, pointed out that  Baker told the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General in mid-2019 that Sussmann told Baker in the meeting that he had information “that he said related to strange interactions that some number of people that were his clients, who were, he described as I recall it, sort of cyber-security experts, had found.”

Baker also told prosecutors with special counsel John Durham’s team in 2020 that the topic of Sussmann’s clients didn’t come up during the meeting.

On the stand, Baker said his statement to the inspector general’s office was mistaken and that the truth is that Sussmann told him in person that he wasn’t bringing the information on behalf of a client. He said he didn’t consult his texts or otherwise prepare before speaking to the DOJ watchdog or prosecutors.

“Did it ever occur to you … to look at your phone for any text messages?” Berkowitz wondered.

“For better or worse, it did not occur to me,” Baker said.

Prior to the trial, Durham’s team revealed that it had obtained a text that Sussmann sent Baker asking him to meet, in which Sussmann stated that he had “time-sensitive (and sensitive)” information and that he was “coming on my own—not on behalf of a client or company—want to help the Bureau.”

Baker also challenged notes taken of a DOJ meeting involving him and high-ranking officials in 2017, during which the Alfa Bank allegations were raised. According to the notes, said to have been taken by a DOJ lawyer, McCabe said that the allegations were sourced from an “attorney” who “brought [them] to [the] FBI on behalf of his client.”

Baker said he did not recall that moment during the meeting.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/fbi-lawyer-says-he-briefed-mccabe-comey-on-sketchy-trump-russia-claims_4477481.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-05-20&utm_medium=email&est=M299vLir3hQZiNeN3sklragZbFIc45LrmZGMqcXOBFUrxySxWOEjEXXh8m%2BhQxi3fg%3D%3D

WASHINGTON—The technology executive who was one of Michael Sussmann’s clients when Sussmann took sketchy claims to the U.S. government was terminated as a confidential informant by the FBI in 2021, prosecutors revealed during Sussmann’s trial on May 17.

Rodney Joffe, the executive, exploited his access to non-public data at multiple technology companies to conduct opposition research into then-presidential candidate Donald Trump ahead of the 2016 election, according to court filings. The firm Joffe worked for, Neustar Security Services, had a Domain Name System (DNS) contract with the office of the presidency in 2016.

Joffe was a confidential informant for the FBI but was terminated “for cause” in 2021, prosecutors said.

Brittain Shaw, one of the prosecutors on Special Counsel John Durham’s team, revealed the information during the questioning of FBI agent David Martin.

The termination was because of how Joffe was involved with the scheme to compile information on the alleged connection between Trump’s business and a Russian bank, Andrew DeFilippis, another prosecutor, said later.

Sean Berkowitz, an attorney for Sussmann, raised concerns during closed session, or without jurors in the room, with remarks about Joffe’s status, asserting they were “prejudicial,” Reuters reported.

U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper, the Obama appointee overseeing the trial, agreed.

Cooper, speaking while jurors weren’t in the room, ordered prosecutors not to discuss the topic again. He said how Joffe handled the information was not part of the trial, and noted the termination did not come for years after the events that are being explored during the trial. In 2016, Joffe was a respected expert, the judge said, echoing the defense.

Joffe was one of Sussmann’s clients, a group that included Hillary Clinton’s campaign, at the time. Joffe has said he was offered a position in the U.S. government if Clinton won the election, which she did not.

According to prosecutors, Joffe not only conducted opposition research on Trump but enlisted researchers from a university, identified as Georgia Institute of Technology, to help him.

Prosecutors said Joffe, Sussmann, and Perkins Coie, the campaign’s legal firm, engaged in a coordinated scheme to distribute the opposition research to the FBI and media outlets in an attempt to influence the 2016 election.

As part of the effort, Sussmann passed sketchy data alleging a link between Trump’s business and a Russian bank to an FBI lawyer in September 2016. Sussmann claimed he was not bringing the information on behalf of a client, which was false, prosecutors say. Sussmann was charged with lying to the FBI.

Steve DeJong, an executive with Neustar, took the stand later Tuesday, telling the court that Joffe was “very well respected.” He said Joffe asked him, as a favor, in August and September of 2016 to look through data logs to find queries for names in political campaigns.

“In retrospect, it was mostly around the Trump campaign,” DeJong said.

DeJong said he was also doing things for Joffe like gathering data on “DNS traffic between utility companies during a hurricane.” Sussmann, to his knowledge, was not “in any way involved” in collecting or analyzing the data. He had never heard of Sussmann before.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/technology-executive-who-pushed-clinton-lawyer-to-go-to-fbi-terminated-by-bureau-prosecutors_4474180.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-05-18-2&utm_medium=email&est=PWR180bF6033mNsBkF4ujbGokX58ZPPsAE2LKn7Fftq3ZtIFWVu2ufSyFQGmh1K2dg%3D%3D

As the trial of former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann approaches, The Epoch Times presents a comprehensive timeline of Sussmann’s activities before and after the 2016 election. The cybersecurity lawyer faces one count of lying to the government for allegedly claiming to an FBI official that he was providing information while not representing any clients, when in fact he was representing the Clinton campaign. As a result of the alleged lie, the FBI was put at a disadvantage in grasping “the politically-laden and ethically-fraught nature” of the information, according to special counsel John Durham, who’s been tasked to review the FBI investigation into supposed collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to sway the 2016 election. The FBI investigation, partly concerned with the information provided by Sussmann, discovered no such collusion.

Sussman joined the Department of Justice in the early 1990s and for 12 years fulfilled several roles, mostly related to prosecuting cybercrime. He then became a partner at Perkins Coie—a large law firm whose lawyers often represent the Democratic Party—where he advised tech companies mainly on cyber-related issues such as compliance with government surveillance requests. One of the companies Sussmann advised was Neustar, which used to provide Domain Name System services and had access to non-public and proprietary internet traffic data.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/infographic-durhams-first-trial_4460742.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-05-16&utm_medium=email&est=3tY9ugz3okSSEC0quQggLLXhbFSmIBRotJuofgVILLiHs2FhVvr1y%2BQEiDyZz1M4cQ%3D%3D

New DOJ Notes From 2017 Reveal FBI Panic After Trump Tweeted That He Knew He Was Being Spied On | Truth Over News

TRUTH OVER NEWSJEFF CARLSON AND HANS MAHNCKE

Newly released notes taken by high-level Department of Justice officials at a March 6, 2017 meeting with FBI leadership expose some of the lengths the FBI went to, to cover up their corruption and malfeasance in spying on President Donald Trump.

The notes were released earlier this week by lawyers for Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann as part of an effort to clear Sussmann for having lied to the FBI. In reality, while the notes do little to exonerate Sussmann, they provide quite a bit to incriminate the FBI.

The meeting at which the notes were taken took place just two days after Trump’s infamous March 4, 2017 tweet in which he accused former President Obama of having wiretapped Trump Tower. Trump’s tweet panicked FBI leadership, who were unsure exactly how much Trump knew about their efforts to set him up. In response to Trump’s tweet, they tried to cover their tracks with another layer of lies and deception.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-doj-notes-from-2017-reveal-fbi-panic-after-trump-tweeted-that-he-knew-he-was-being-spied-on-truth-over-news_4462943.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-05-15-4&utm_medium=email&est=K2xL6aqW16WjKDpTo4BBSCSOS9KPbEyJ0ACArIvrsznIwnB3x9CZJFTlcsx3P4KoGA%3D%3D

Kash Patel: Newly Released FBI Notes Expose Their Own Lies and Conspiracy Against Trump | Kash’s CornerKASH’S CORNERKASH PATEL AND JAN JEKIELEK

Get your copy of The Epoch Times’ Spygate poster, personally signed by Kash Patel. (Subscriber-only special discount.) 

Not subscribed but want a signed poster? Subscribe TODAY for $99/year and get a FREE Spygate poster personally signed by Kash Patel with your 1-year subscription. 

“In March of 2017 … [then-FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe] is admitting—in a meeting with the team running the Russiagate investigation—that there is no connection between Alfa Bank and Trump Tower,” according to newly released FBI notes, says Kash Patel.

These handwritten FBI and DOJ notes incriminate top officials and expose a conspiracy against Donald Trump, Kash says.

“As the lead Russiagate investigator, I never saw these notes. We asked for them. And they told us—they, the Department of Justice, the FBI—told us they did not exist.”

In this episode, Kash explains what he’s found in these newly released documents and why the judge’s recent order in the Michael Sussmann case was not a huge blow to special counsel John Durham’s case, unlike what many have claimed.

Kash and Jan also take a look at the firestorm of protests occurring outside the homes of Supreme Court justices since the leak of a draft ruling on Roe v. Wade. Will the justices be influenced?

https://www.theepochtimes.com/kash-patel-newly-released-fbi-notes-expose-their-own-lies-and-conspiracy-against-trump-kashs-corner_4465416.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-05-13-3&utm_medium=email&est=mOXhewh%2FW0CZEgWE1wnAfIMSi69EQsbvvlzuiLV7feTyv7TYRnhmGdTZ5%2BuKmFoCsQ%3D%3D

A panel in Missouri on May 10 recommended St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner be found guilty of violating ethics rules while investigating former Gov. Eric Greitens.

The Missouri Disciplinary Counsel said Gardner’s misconduct included failing to intervene when former FBI agent William Don Tisaby, who Gardner tapped to help investigate Greitens, falsely claimed that a document filed with the courts was the product of his work when it actually contained findings from Gardner.

Tisaby also gave false statements during a deposition but Gardner did not correct him even though she was in the room.

“Each of those statements was false, and respondent knew the statements were false,” the panel said.

Gardner has said she was not sure at the time what to do in response to Tisaby lying but now acknowledges she should have addressed the matter by telling Tisaby to tell the truth.

Tisaby pleaded guilty in March to a tampering with evidence charge.

Giving the proper evidence to defendants is “one of the most basic responsibilities of a prosecutor,” the panel said.

On the other hand, the charges against Greitens, for allegedly taking a seminude picture of a woman who did not give permission, were eventually dropped, so a wrongful conviction did not happen, panelists noted. They also said that Gardner does not have a criminal history and that the dispute over the disclosure and production of documents “was more an issue of negligence than intentional non-disclosure,” which means that conduct did not rise to the level of “a potential breach of public trust.”

The panel is recommending Gardner be publicly reprimanded, but no further punishment be given.

The Missouri Supreme Court will review the panel’s recommendation and decide whether to issue a reprimand.

Gardner’s office and re-election campaign, and Greitens, did not respond to requests for comment.

Gardner is a Democrat who received major backing from billionaire George Soros while Greitens is a Republican who resigned from office and is now running for a U.S. Senate seat.

The panel findings stemmed from an April hearing in which Gardner admitted she violated rules but described the violations as “mistakes.” She reached a preliminary agreement then with the panel to avoid criminal charges.

Grand jurors in Tisaby’s case recently said in a letter that Gardner’s conduct “was not inadvertent nor inconsequential but was calculated deceit and/or outright incompetence; neither of which is acceptable behavior for a person holding this public office.” They said they were disappointed with the agreement.

Greitens told The Epoch Times in an email after the hearing that the agreement “reaffirms what we have known all along—Soros funded prosecutor Kim Gardner conducted a political witch hunt.”

“From hiring former FBI agent William Tisaby, who just plead[ed] guilty to evidence tampering, to lying and engaging in a coverup to conceal her misconduct, Gardner is the worst type of public official, corrupt and crooked,” he added.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/soros-backed-prosecutor-violated-ethics-rules-in-pursuit-of-former-governor-panel_4459807.html?utm_source=Morningbrief-ai&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2022-05-12-ai&est=k%2BNqJusjJHI10QdmLK1qernZwKdcvrHLcRX5qBfhQsi5%2BYPF6Qs8OWP31KgKhXibRA%3D%3D

A source within the Federal Bureau of Investigation has come forward to expose the FBI’s targeting of members of the “news media” including information about what the FBI calls a Special Investigative Matter (“SIM”) regarding their investigation into Project Veritas over Ashley Biden’s abandoned diary.

Here are some of the highlights from today’s video:

• Document reveals the FBI labeled Project Veritas as “news media,” and categorized the probe as a “Sensitive Investigative Matter” due to Veritas being journalists. This is a direct contradiction of the U.S. government’s in-court position that Project Veritas are not journalists.
• The whistleblower, who has several years of experience as an FBI Special Agent and is still on payroll with the Bureau, came to Project Veritas with the document after seeing what he calls “a number of troubling things that are happening in the FBI.”
• The document also shows the federal investigation was launched into Project Veritas the same day Ashley Biden’s Attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said, “This is insane. We should send to SDNY” in response to a request for comment on the contents of Ashley Biden’s abandoned diary.
• Additionally, the FBI categorized the investigation into an abandoned diary under Threat Band I, which is usually reserved for “threat issues that are likely to cause the greatest damage to national interests or public safety in the coming year.”
• The Whistleblower also revealed how the document shows surveillance of Project Veritas included use of CAST tools, an analysis which includes cellular geolocation tracking of phone devices.

• FBI Whistleblower: “Tyranny happens incrementally, and it happens by a bunch of people agreeing to small injustices over and over simply to keep their paycheck and their pension…to maintain your paycheck and pension that gives you the Holocaust”

[NEW YORK – May 11, 2022] A source within the Federal Bureau of Investigation has come forward to expose the FBI’s targeting of members of the “news media” including information about what the FBI calls a Special Investigative Matter (“SIM”) regarding their investigation into Project Veritas over Ashley Biden’s abandoned diary.

According to a document obtained and published by Project Veritas, the FBI opened an investigation into Project Veritas knowing full well they were journalists as the document is labeled under a “news media” classification. This classification is a direct contradiction to the government’s court filing where they argued that actions taken by the government to surveil, raid and seize materials from Project Veritas journalists were appropriate. The government’s filing stated, “Project Veritas is not engaged in journalism within any traditional or accepted definition of that word,” because its reporting is “non-consensual.”

The whistleblower, who has several years of experience as an FBI Special Agent, came to Project Veritas because, “The direction that the agency has headed troubles a vast majority of the agents.”

Something else the whistleblower called “alerting” was the fact that the FBI categorized the investigation into Ashley Biden’s diary under Threat Band I, which is usually reserved for “threat issues that are likely to cause the greatest damage to national interests or public safety in the coming year.”

The document, which lacks certain information due to the restricted classification of the file, also shows the investigation was launched the same day Ashley Biden’s Attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said, “This is insane. We should send to SDNY,” in response to a request for comment on the contents of Ashley Biden’s diary.

The FBI also used its Cellular Analysis Survey Team (CAST) tools, which includes cellular geolocation tracking of phone devices, to secretly surveil Project Veritas journalists, according to the whistleblower and as revealed on the leaked document.

The whistleblower, who is still on the Bureau’s payroll, sat down for an interview with Project Veritas CEO and Founder, James O’Keefe.  “Tyranny happens incrementally, and it happens by a bunch of people agreeing to small injustices over and over simply to keep their paycheck and their pension,” said the whistleblower, adding, “To maintain your paycheck and pension that gives you the Holocaust.”.

At the time of this writing, the FBI has not yet responded to a request for comment.

READ THE LEAKED SPLASH PAGE HERE.

About Project Veritas

James O’Keefe established Project Veritas in 2010 as a non-profit journalism enterprise to continue his undercover reporting work. Today, Project Veritas investigates and exposes corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions to achieve a more ethical and transparent society and to engage in litigation to: protect, defend and expand human and civil rights secured by law, specifically First Amendment rights including promoting the free exchange of ideas in a digital world; combat and defeat censorship of any ideology; promote truthful reporting; and defend freedom of speech and association issues including the right to anonymity. O’Keefe serves as the CEO and Chairman of the Board so that he can continue to lead and teach his fellow journalists, as well as protect and nurture the Project Veritas culture.  

https://www.projectveritas.com/news/breaking-fbi-whistleblower-leaks-document-showing-bureau-targeting-news/

NEWLY RELEASED EVIDENCE IMPLICATES PARTISAN OPERATORS AGAINST JOURNALISTS.

Ashley Biden’s attorney — who privately pushed for the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York to subpoena journalists — has long-standing ties to former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and one of his top aides, who also happens to be the daughter-in-law of the U.S. attorney behind a number of politically motivated subpoenas.

The newly unearthed connections between individuals attempting to suppress stories about President Joe Biden’s daughter’s diary reveal a wildly immoral weaponization of America’s legal institutions against journalists.

The news follows the FBI raid of guerilla journalists at Project Veritas and its founder James O’Keefe at his home.

New reporting from the group sheds light on the players – including their ties to Democratic politics – involved in the approval of 19 secret subpoenas levelled at the activist group.

Veritas had been emailing in October of 2020 with the Biden campaign and its family lawyers seeking to interview then-candidate Joe Biden about the diary, which Ashley Biden’s lawyers likened to an “extortionate effort.” As a result, one of Ashley Biden’s representatives, progressive lawyer Roberta Kaplan, asserted: “This is insane; we should send to SDNY.”

Roughly three weeks later, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) approved the first of 19 subpoenas against Project Veritas.

Kaplan, 56, appears to have connections to the U.S. District Court for the SDNY, as she was a lawyer for former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, advising the disgraced politician on how to discredit one of his alleged victims.

“She has continuing legal ties to a former Cuomo aide accused of leading that effort,” explained The New York Times, in reference to Melissa DeRosa.

DeRosa also happens to be married to the son of former Acting U.S. Attorney for the SDNY Audrey Strauss, who was responsible for authorizing subpoenas against Project Veritas.

The news raises fresh concerns about conflicts of interest involved in the persecution of Project Veritas.

“There’s clearly a disparate treatment at the Department of Justice,” remarked O’Keefe while testifying in front of Members of Congress about the warrants and subpoenas issued for Project Veritas.

Watch:

Special counsel John Durham filed court papers on May 10 saying that the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies are slowly producing documents related to his case against Igor Danchenko, who prosecutors say lied to investigators about how he obtained information that later appeared in the controversial and discredited Steele dossier that was used against former President Donald Trump.

Durham asked U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga (pdf) to set a new deadline for June 13, from May 13, to turn over classified materials to Danchenko’s attorneys. So far, most of the classified documents have been handed over to Danchenko’s lawyers, although Durham said that “recent world events continue to contribute to delays in the processing and production of classified discovery,” possibly referring to the Ukraine–Russia conflict.

“In particular, some of the officials preparing and reviewing the documents at the FBI and intelligence agencies continue to be heavily engaged in matters related to overseas activities,” Durham wrote in the filing, adding that his team is “continuing to press the relevant authorities to produce documents in classified discovery as quickly as possible and on a rolling basis, and no later than the proposed deadline set forth below.”

Danchenko, a Russian analyst, was indicted in November 2021 for lying to the FBI as it was investigating the alleged Trump–Russia collusion probe. Namely, he’s accused of misleading FBI officials regarding the sources of information that he provided to former UK intelligence agency Christopher Steele as he was interviewed several times by bureau officials in 2017 while the agency was attempting to corroborate allegations in the Steele dossier.

Steele himself was hired by opposition research firm Fusion GPS to look into claims that were made against Trump and members of his campaign in 2016. Fusion GPS was retained by Democratic Party-aligned law firm Perkins Coie, which was working for the Clinton campaign.

Collectively known as the Steele dossier, the former UK spy wrote notes and documents that asserted Trump had ties to Russian intelligence officials to defeat then-candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016. However, numerous claims in Steele’s work were false, triggering congressional, criminal, and inspector general investigations.

Trump has said the claims were part of a longstanding witch hunt to denigrate his administration and reelection campaign.

Durham’s team alleges that Danchenko intentionally misled the FBI when he denied in 2017 that his primary source for the Steele dossier was former Clinton aide Charles Dolan. His trial is scheduled for November.

In November 2021, Danchenko pleaded not guilty, according to his attorney Mark Schamel. At the time, Schamel said that Danchenko’s work as an analyst is “above reproach.”

“For the past five years, those with an agenda have sought to expose Mr. Danchenko’s identity and tarnish his reputation while undermining U.S. National Security,” Schamel said in a statement. “This latest injustice will not stand.”

But, according to the indictment, Danchenko’s alleged false statements to the bureau “were material to the FBI because … the FBI’s investigation of the Trump Campaign relied” on the dossier to obtain warrants to spy on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

“The FBI ultimately devoted substantial resources attempting to investigate and corroborate the allegations contained in” the dossier, including whether Danchenko’s sub-sources were reliable,” the indictment stated. Steele’s dossier and other information provided by Danchenko “played a role in the FBI’s investigative decisions and in sworn representations that the FBI made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court throughout the relevant time period.”

In the May 10 filing, Durham stated that the government has produced about 5,000 classified documents and some 61,000 unclassified documents to Danchenko’s lawyers. Durham said he believes he has turned over most of the classified materials.

The court filing comes as the trial of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who had worked for Perkins Coie, is scheduled to start later in May. Sussmann is accused of lying to the FBI; he’s pleaded not guilty.

House Republican lawmakers say that whistleblowers have come forward to allege that the FBI is trying to terminate bureau employees who were present at a rally on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol.

“The employees did not enter the United States Capitol and have not been charged with any crime,” but are allegedly still being fired, the House Judiciary GOP wrote in a Twitter post on May 6, citing unnamed whistleblowers at the bureau.

In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Republicans confirmed reports that the Department of Justice’s Inspector General’s Office is considering investigating whether the FBI revoked the security clearances of agents who attended the rally last year. Republicans in previous letters had argued that revoking their security passes essentially forces them out of a job because clearance is needed to work at the FBI.

“FBI employees do not give up their rights to engage in political speech activity,” reads the May 6 letter, which was signed by House Judiciary Committee ranking GOP member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). “We have serious concerns that the FBI appears to be retaliating against employees for engaging in political speech disfavored by FBI leadership.”

An example cited in the letter was an employee who had worked for the FBI for more than a decade and had previously served in the U.S. military for 20 years. While on leave, this unnamed employee and others attended public events in Washington, and they didn’t enter the Capitol building, nor have they been charged with any crime, according to the whistleblowers.

With the latest actions that are allegedly being taken against those employees, Republicans believe that it creates “the appearance that the FBI may be retaliating” against them, the letter reads.

According to a Fox News report published on May 5, Inspector General Michael Horowitz told House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Jordan in a letter issued recently that his office “will ask the FBI to provide the bases for the security clearance and personnel actions taken against the employees you reference in your letter.”

“In making such an assessment, we will also consider information about other employees who believe the FBI has taken administrative actions against them for engaging in protected activities on January 6, 2021,” Horowitz wrote.

Jordan had reportedly written to Horowitz in April that those employees were suspended, even though they “did not enter the United States Capitol, have not been charged with any crime, and have not been contacted by law enforcement about their actions.”

Department of Justice officials didn’t respond by press time to a request for comment.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/fbi-allegedly-trying-to-fire-agents-who-attended-jan-6-rally-whistleblowers_4450549.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-05-06-3&utm_medium=email&est=rlS%2BMpubjZ%2FllfIbs73TxXjpXtIb5GzpUB9%2BDKM4yeOSfWcG3vsugNKCb2ZDEN%2B4Nw%3D%3D

EXCLUSIVE: Darrell Brooks Belongs to Black Supremacist Sect of Islam Called ‘The Five Percent Nation’, He Committed Vehicular Jihad

LOOMERED was first to exclusively report the identity of the Waukesha, WI attacker, Darrell Brooks. Our investigative reporting confirmed that he was the attacker and owner of the RED SUV used in Sunday’s Christmas Parade attack that left at least 5 people dead, and dozens more injured.

We were also first to report that his social media was littered with anti-white and anti-Jewish posts that encouraged the killing of White people and posts that celebrated Hitler for being “right about the real Jews”.

This publication was early to note and report Darrell’s ties to Black Lives Matter, and the fact that he used a vehicle to murder people in an act of vehicular jihad. Laura Loomer posted that the suspect was likely a black Muslim, and now we can exclusively confirm that Darrell Brooks is a supporter of The Five Percent Nation, otherwise known as the Nation of Gods and Earths (NGE or NOGE), a sub-sect of Nation of Islam (NOI).

The Five Percent Nation is a black nationalist movement influenced by Islam. Members of the group call themselves “Allah’s Five Percenters”. The Fiver Percent Nation preaches black supremacy and teaches that black people are the original inhabitants of planet earth, and that the white man is an evil devil.

The term “Five Percenter” comes from the “five percent” who are described in Nation of Islam in their “Lost-Found Muslim Leason No.2”.

This lesson categorizes people in the world into 3 categories, where 85% of the world’s population, which includes White people, are described as “uncivilized people, poison animal eaters, slaves from mental death and power, people who do not know the Living God or their origin in this world, and they worship that which they do not know. They are easily led in the wrong direction, but hard to lead into the right direction.”

The other 10% of the world’s population is described as, “the rich, slave makers of the poor-who teach the poor lies, to believe that the Almighty, True and Living God is a spook and cannot be seen by the physical eye. Otherwise known as the Blood Suckers of the poor.”

The last five percent, known as the “Five Percent Nation” are described as, “the poor, righteous Teachers, who do not believe in the teachings of the 10%, and are all wise and know who the living God is, and teach that the Living God is the Sun of man, the Supreme being (the Black Man) of Asia, and Teach freedom, Justice, and Equality to all of the human family on planet Earth.”

When LOOMERED exclusively reported the fact that Darrell Brooks was a wannabe rapper with a link to his YouTube music video which features the SUV he used in the attack, I noticed his rapper name is MathBoi Fly. Youtube has since deleted the video in their active coverup of this anti-white terrorist attack.

Given that Darrell Brooks can barely form a proper English sentence, his name isn’t MathBoi because he’s good at math! However, his rap name is MathBoi Fly because he belongs to the The Five Percent Nation, which teaches that Supreme Mathematics and Supreme Alphabet are the key to understanding humans’ relationship with the universe. These principles were created and founded by “Allah the Father”, formerly known as Clarence 13X, aka Clarence Edward Smith. The Five Percent Nation is a variation of Nation of Islam’s whose followers are predominantly black men. The founder of The Five Percent Nation founded this sub-sect of Nation of Islam after he left the Nation of Islam’s Temple Number Seven in Harlem, New York, the same temple in Harlem where Malcolm X was a minister from 1960-1963.

LOOMERED uncovered Darrell Brooks’s social media pages before they were wiped from the internet in an active coverup by Big Tech and the pro-BLM media. They are actively trying to cover up this act of black supremacist Islamic inspired terrorism against innocent White people in Wisconsin.

Darrell Brooks’s social media posts, particularly one of his Twitter posts from October 2015, prove that he was a black supremacist and a supporter of Malcom X, who was also a Muslim, and a spokesman for the Nation of Islam. However, Malcolm X was later assassinated in 1965 by three members of Nation of Islam. Ironically, two of the three Nation of Islam members who assassinated Malcolm X, Muhammad A Aziz and Khalil Islam, are set to be exonerated this week by the Manhattan district attorney. Malcolm X was assassinated in February of 1965 by three members of Nation of Islam *after* he denounced Nation of Islam in late 1964.

It is worth noting that Darrell Brooks targeted a Christmas parade in an act of vehicular Jihad, which makes his attack an attack on white Christians. His social media posts show that he also had hatred for Jews. In one Facebook post from November 2015 , he said “Hitler knew who the real Jews were.”

The Five Percent Nation doesn’t believe in a God, but they instead believe that the “Asiatic Blackman” is God, and that his name is “Allah”, the Arabic word for God.

This aligns with Darrell Brook’s social media posts which are inherently anti- white and anti- established religion. In one of his Facebook posts that you can’t see anymore because Facebook has decided to participate in this coverup by deleting Darrell Brooks’s account, he said, “religion is White Supremacy”.

Amid a time where the FBI has decided to weaponize their focus and resources on accusing conservatives and parents of being domestic terrorists, this should be a teaching lesson for the FBI, who should instead focus on investigating the actual criminals and terrorists like Black Supremacist Muslim Darrell Brooks who walk among us.

In 1965, the FBI opened a file on the Five Percenters at the height of the Black Power movements in the US during the civil rights era. The FBI described the Five Percenters as a “loosely knit group of Negro youth gangs”, and the official FBI file stated that these people got their name because they are “the five percent of the Muslims who smoke and drink.”

LOOMERED was first to boldly report that Darrell Brooks was a black Muslim and that his weapon of choice was a vehicle, making his terrorist attack on White people an act of vehicular jihad.

I remain deplatformed on all mainstream social media for speaking truth, but I will continue speaking truth to power and I will never be deterred from reporting the truth. What happened in Waukesha, Wisconsin was a black supremacist, Islamic inspired terrorist attack against White people, and LOOMERED is proud to have broken this story first.

SHAME ON THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA AND BIG TECH FOR COVERING IT UP!

An FBI SWAT team raided the home of an activist mother of four in Colorado on Tuesday, Nov. 16, knocking down her door, bursting into the house with guns and handcuffing her while she was homeschooling her children.

This is the first known case of the federal government making good on its promise to not only intimidate but actually carry out a raid on a mom who was involved in her local school board politics, said Brannon Howse, who interviewed Sherronna Bishop at Lindell TV Wednesday night. 

The U.S. Department of Justice and Attorney General Merrick Garland issued an Oct. 4 memorandum directing federal, state and local law enforcement to look for parents to prosecute nationwide who may have made “threats” and made “harassing” phone calls to school board members nationwide, equating such parents to domestic terrorists.

Now a mother, Sherronna Bishop of Grand Junction, Colorado, has felt the brute force of the FBI’s heavily armed SWAT unit used against her family.

She was at home with her three children about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday when she heard someone pounding on the front door, then using a battering ram to break it down. She said the officers “manhandled” her 18-year-old daughter, pulling her up the stairs by her hoodie, while another officer put her in handcuffs and ushered her out of the house. They proceeded to search the entire house.

UPDATE AS OF NOV. 19: The FBI has filed no charges against Bishop.

Three of Bishop’s four children, ages 8, 10 and 18, were home at the time of the raid, as was her husband, who was also handcuffed. Her 17-year-old son was at his high school.

Besides being a frequent attendee at her local school board meetings, Bishop has also been active in the voter integrity movement in her state and locality. She runs the website Americasmom.net, and on that site she features an article and video under the title We the Parents: How Did We Get Here?

She said she has not been guilty of anything but speaking her mind in accordance with her First Amendment rights.

“This is still the United States of America, where we are able to state what we think and we believe,” she told Howse. “There was some pounding on my door. I didn’t really know what to think, I thought at first it might be some neighbor kids. They were pounding profusely, and then it hit me it was the FBI. I took my kids to their bedrooms. They used a battering ram to bash down my door, they cuffed me. And then proceeded to search and go through my whole home.”

She said the agents would not tell her why they were searching her home. They did leave behind documents related to the search warrant, saying they entered her home because she was suspected of causing “intentional damage to a protected computer, wire fraud and conspiracy to cause damage to a protected computer.”

“I don’t know anything about this. They couldn’t explain any of this,” she said. “I will tell you why: they were at my home to intimidate me, to shut me up, because I was using my First Amendment rights to advocate for [Mesa County Clerk] Tina Peters on the issue of Dominion [voting machines] and the damage done in our election. And they’ll never be held accountable. Instead they will criminalize this woman who has stood up.”

“I know people will say, well Sherronna, why don’t you just shut your mouth… That’s exactly what they hope you will do. I can open my mouth and say whatever I want to say and that is not a criminal action. This is about their desire to shut you down and stop you from saying it.”

“I’m a law abiding citizen, I’m very supportive of law enforcement,” she continued. “I love the Constitution. And what happened yesterday, what happened is something I never imagined I would experience in America.”

Bishop said she uses her website, AmericasMom.net, to educate and inform parents and moms regarding their children’s education.

“And since then we’ve gotten involved in school board races. I love my state. I’m a fourth generation Coloradan. Most recently I’ve been a very vocal advocate of a candidate [Peters]… She’s had to fight for her own life, and a guess now I’ll have to fight for mine.”

Bishop has been part of a group of parents that have been successful in fighting the teaching of critical race theory and school mask mandates.

“Colorado was able to flip nine school boards this year. We were able to get one of our leftists to resign and we also flipped our school board in the election,” Bishop said. “And people like me are considered domestic terrorists now, because we don’t stand for the policies that have been forced upon our children.”

Howse said history will be kind to Bishop.

“I believe you will go down in history as the first mom targeted [by the FBI]. The FBI has said it plans to do this and I believe you are the first mom to have this done to you. Mask mandates, opposing critical race theory, election theft, which Biden said if you question that you are involved in subversion. But I believe you are the first mom to have been targeted and had your door literally busted down while you were homeschooling your kids.”

Bishop said she has always made a point of being transparent.

“I have always made myself available, I’ve never tried to hide from anything and now for them to bash my door down, manhandle my daughter… I think the timing is really interesting, because we don’t want people to be silent because of what happened to me. If anything I want people to be more vocal,… because this is still America and you still have the right to stand up for yourself and your family.”

“I believe elections have consequences, and in this case this illegitimate regime is having serious consequences for all of America.”

Howse asked if she ever thought she would be targeted in this way by her own government.

“No I never thought in America that a suburban housewife and mom would have her door bashed in by the FBI,” she said.

He asked about her three children.

“My kids are very resilient. And part of schooling them has been to teach them the proper role of government and the proper role of law enforcement and I can’t convince them now that the FBI are good guys. And I really have my own doubts about that now. You cannot just say ‘I followed orders’ to go bash someone’s door down. They are responsible for what they are doing.”

Howse had just concluded a series of interviews with a panel of four retired FBI agents just days before the raid in which they had described similar raids against non-violent patriotic Americans over the last few years, starting with Gen. Michael Flynn in 2016, followed by the pre-dawn raid on author and Trump ally Roger Stone in 2019 and then the violent entering of journalist James O’Keefe of Project Veritas just last week.

“I was on the [FBI] SWAT team for several years,” said Brian Shepard, appearing with three other retired FBI agents at a symposium aired by WVW TV on Nov. 16. “And I can tell you from my experience, and I think all others of the bureau agents here would echo what I’m going to say. We never conducted a search or conducted an arrest of someone who was not a violent offender. And the thought when I heard about what happened with Roger Stone, just outraged me so much that, it just rose up inside me.”

Now, an activist mom has been targeted, raising the question: Has the FBI become the political shock troops for the White House, seeking to harass and intimidate anyone who speaks out against its policies?

Howse said it was obvious that Shepard became emotional when he began talking about how the bureau, he gave the better part of his life to serve, had now taken to bashing down the doors of non-violent American patriots.

“Brian’s reaction is very typical of men in that generation who served in the FBI, and many of those men have responded the same way, because they gave the best years of their lives to the agency, and upheld what they believed were the values of the agency, bravery, integrity and fidelity, and they become emotional when they saw how this has been discarded. They are beside themselves. It happened to others and now it happens to you, within days of our filming [of the panel].”

Bishop said the timing was not lost on her.

“I can’t explain it. I can’t explain being a target, for an agency that typically takes down the cartel, human trafficking, and now I’ve had my children traumatized and if this can happen to me, they’ll come for you too.”

“I made myself completely transparent to them and yet they chose to break down my door, terrorize my kids and try to intimidate me.”

She said the agents took her phone and other devices and kept her handcuffed for at least 30 minutes.

“No, I never had any access to any voting machines. They know I am just a voice, an advocate. We must have been effective. I know the people here, they’re not going to back down, and we’re not going to stop. In times past they never would have moved forward on this, but the narrative in America right now is one that is pushing a progressive narrative of communism. Now you can stay in your home and talk about it privately but you dare not come out and talk about it publicly …or they will send the FBI to your door because according to this regime you are a domestic terrorist.

“We’ve got to stick together and we can’t let these thugs put us into fear and intimidation.”

Howse said he was shocked by the news of Bishop’s experience.

“I could see them moving against someone like me, or Mike Lindell. It is hard to see them coming after someone like you, to come after a mom, who is working at the school board level and the election level, and to bust your door down? This is totally unprecedented by the agency in how they conducted themselves. So even for someone who has studied communism and a color revolution, the way they are doing it and the pace at which they’re doing it, I never anticipated it to move this fast.”

LeoHohmann.com is 100 percent reader supported. Help us keep the cutting edge investigative reports and timely commentary coming: Send your contribution c/o Leo Hohmann, PO Box 291, Newnan, GA 30264, or via credit card below.

Those whose worldview is bereft of universally applied principles, and based solely on tribal allegiances, assume everyone else is plagued by this very deficiency.

The FBI has executed a string of search warrants targeting the homes and cell phones of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and several others associated with that organization. It should require no effort to understand why it is a cause for concern that a Democratic administration is using the FBI to aggressively target an organization devoted to obtaining and reporting incriminating information about Democratic Party leaders and their liberal allies.

That does not mean the FBI investigation is inherently improper. Journalists are no more entitled than any other citizen to commit crimes. If there is reasonable cause to believe O’Keefe and his associates committed federal crimes, then an FBI investigation is warranted as it is for any other case. But there has been no evidence presented that O’Keefe or Project Veritas employees have done anything of the sort, nor any explanation provided to justify these invasive searches. That we should want and need that is self-evident: if the Trump-era FBI had executed search warrants inside the newsrooms of The New York Times and NBC News, we would be demanding evidence to prove it was legally justified. Yet virtually nothing has been provided to justify the FBI’s targeting of O’Keefe and his colleagues, and the little that has been disclosed by way of justifying this makes no sense.

The FBI investigation concerns the theft last year of the diary of Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley, yet Project Veritas, while admitting they received a copy from an anonymous source, chose not to publish that diary because they were unable to verify it. Nobody and nothing thus far suggests that Project Veritas played any role in its acquisition, legal or otherwise. There is a cryptic reference in the search warrant to transmitting stolen material across state lines, but it is not illegal for journalists to receive and use material illegally acquired by a source: the most mainstream organizations spent the last month touting documents pilfered from Facebook by their heroic “whistleblower” Frances Haugen.

On Monday night, we produced an in-depth video report examining the FBI’s targeting of O’Keefe and Project Veritas and the dangers it presents (as we do for all of our Rumble videos, the transcript will soon be made available to subscribers here; for now, you can watch the video at the Rumble link or on the player below). One of the primary topics of our report was the authoritarian tactic that is typically used to justify governmental attacks on those who report news and disseminate information: namely, to decree that the target is not a real journalist and therefore has no entitlement to claim the First Amendment guarantee of a free press.

This not-a-real-journalist tactic was and remains the primary theory used by those who justify the ongoing attempt to imprison Julian Assange. In demanding Assange’s prosecution under the Espionage Act, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wrote in The Wall Street Journal that “Mr. Assange claims to be a journalist and would no doubt rely on the First Amendment to defend his actions.” Yet the five-term Senator insisted: “but he is no journalist: He is an agitator intent on damaging our government, whose policies he happens to disagree with, regardless of who gets hurt.”

This not-a-real-journalist slogan was also the one used by both the CIA and the corporate media against myself and my colleagues in both the Snowden reporting we did in 2013, as well as the failed attempt to criminally prosecute me in 2020 for the year-long Brazil exposés we did: punishing them is not an attack on press freedom because they are not journalists and what they did is not journalism.

What is most striking about this weapon is that — like the campaign to agitate for more censorship — it is led by journalists. It is the corporate media that most aggressively insists that those who are independent, those who are outsiders, those who do not submit to their institutional structures are not real journalists the way they are, and thus are not entitled to the protections of the First Amendment. In order to create a framework to deny Project Veritas’s status as journalists, The New York Times claimed last week that anyone who uses undercover investigations (as Veritas does) is automatically a non-journalist because that entails lying — even though, just two years earlier, the same paper heralded numerous news outlets such as Al Jazeera and Mother Jones for using undercover investigations to accomplish what they called “compelling” reporting.

I am very well-acquainted with this repressive tactic of trying to decree who is and is not a real journalist for purposes of constitutional protection. Many have forgotten — given the awards it ultimately ended up winning — that the NSA/Snowden reporting we did in 2013 was originally maligned as quasi-criminal not just by Obama national security officials such as James Clapper but also by The New York Times. The first profile the Paper of Record published about me the day after the reporting began referred to me in the headline as an “Anti-Surveillance Activist” and then, once backlash ensued, it was changed to “Blogger” (the original snide, disqualifying headline is still visible in the URL).

As the New York Times‘ own Public Editor at the time objected, by purposely denying me the label “journalist,” the paper was knowingly increasing the risks that I could be prosecuted for my reporting. Indeed, recent reporting from Yahoo! News about CIA plots to kidnap or murder Julian Assange reported that denying Assange the label “journalist,” and then re-defining what I and my colleague Laura Poitras were doing from “journalist” to “information broker,” would enable the U.S. Government to spy on or even prosecute us without having to worry about that inconvenient “free press” guarantee of the First Amendment.

All of this demonstrates how dangerous it is to invoke this very same not-a-real-journalist tactic against O’Keefe and Project Veritas. Yet, if one warns of the dangers of the FBI’s actions, that is precisely what one hears from liberals, from Democrats and from their allies in the media: the FBI’s targeting of Project Veritas has nothing to do with press freedoms since they’re not real journalists. They are invoking the authoritarian theory that maintains that the state (or, in this case, the FBI) is vested with the power to decree who is a “real journalist” — whatever that means — and who is not.

There are so many ironies to the use of this framework. So often, employees of media corporations who have never broken a major story in their lives (and never will) revel in accusing independent journalists who have broken numerous major stories (such as Assange) of not being real journalists. At the height of the Snowden reporting, I went on Meet the Press in July, 2013,only for the host, David Gregory, to suggest that I ought to be in prison alongside my source Edward Snowden because I was not really a journalist the way David Gregory was. At the time, Frank Rich, writing in New York Magazine, noted how bizarre it was that the TV personality David Gregory assumed he was a real journalist, whereas I was a non-journalist who belonged in prison for my reporting, given that Gregory — like most employees of large media corporations — had never broken any story in his life. Rich used a Q&A format to make the point this way:

On Sunday, Meet the Press host David Gregory all but accused the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald of aiding and abetting Edward Snowden’s fugitive travels, asking, “Why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?” And, speaking to his larger point, do you see Greenwald as a journalist or an activist in this episode? And does it matter?

Is David Gregory a journalist? As a thought experiment, name one piece of news he has broken, one beat he’s covered with distinction, and any memorable interviews he’s conducted that were not with John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Dick Durbin, or Chuck Schumer. Meet the Press has fallen behind CBS’s Face the Nation, much as Today has fallen to ABC’s Good Morning America, and my guess is that Gregory didn’t mean to sound like Joe McCarthy (with a splash of the oiliness of Roy Cohn) but was only playing the part to make some noise. In any case, his charge is preposterous. As a columnist who published Edward Snowden’s leaks, Greenwald was doing the job of a journalist — and the fact that he’s an “activist” journalist (i.e., an opinion journalist, like me and a zillion others) is irrelevant to that journalistic function. . . . [I]t’s easier for Gregory to go after Greenwald, a self-professed outsider who is not likely to attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and works for a news organization based in London. Presumably if Gregory had been around 40 years ago, he also would have accused the Times of aiding and abetting the enemy when it published Daniel Ellsberg’s massive leak of the Pentagon Papers. In any case, Greenwald demolished Gregory on air and on Twitter (“Who needs the government to try to criminalize journalism when you have David Gregory to do it?”). 

At the time — both in terms of that exchange with Gregory and my overall reporting on the NSA — I had significant support from the liberal-left (though it was far from universal, given that we were exposing mass, indiscriminate, illegal spying by the Obama administration). But few believed that I ought to be prosecuted on the grounds that, somehow, I was not a real journalist.

So why are so many of them now willing to endorse this same exact theory when it comes to O’Keefe and Project Veritas, or even to justify the prosecution of Julian Assange? The answer is obvious. They are unwilling and/or incapable of thinking in terms of principles, ones that apply universally to everyone regardless of their ideology. Their thought process never even arrives at that destination. When the subject of the FBI’s attacks on O’Keefe is raised, or the DOJ’s prosecution of Assange is discussed, they ask themselves one question and only one question, and that ends the inquiry. It is the exclusive and determinative factor: do I like James O’Keefe and his politics? Do I like Julian Assange and his politics?

This primitive, principle-free, personality-driven prism is the only way they are capable of understanding the world. Because they dislike O’Keefe and/or Assange, they instantly side with whoever is targeting them — the FBI, the DOJ, the security state services — and believe that anyone who defends them is defending a right-wing extremist rather than defending the non-ideological, universally applicable principle of press freedoms. They think only in terms of personalities, not principles.

The FBI’s actions against Project Veritas and O’Keefe are so blatantly alarming that press freedom groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Freedom of the Press Foundation (on whose Board I sit) have expressed grave concerns about it, including on their social media accounts for all to see. Even the ACLU — which these days is loathe to speak out in favor of any person or group disliked by their highly partisan liberal donor base — issued a very carefully hedged statement that made clear how much they despise Project Veritas but said: “Nevertheless, the precedent set in this case could have serious consequences for press freedom” (at least thus far, the ACLU has just quietly stuck this statement on its website and not uttered a word about it on its social media accounts, where most of its liberal donors track what they do, but the fact that they felt compelled to say anything in defense of this right-wing boogieman demonstrates how extreme the FBI’s actions are). The federal judge overseeing the warrants has temporarily enjoined the FBI from extracting any more information from the cell phones seized from O’Keefe and other Project Veritas employees pending a determination of their legal justification.

The reason this is such a grave press freedom attack is two-fold. First, as indicated, any attempt to anoint oneself the arbiter of who is and is not a “real journalist” for purposes of First Amendment protection is inherently tyrannical. Which institutions are sufficiently trustworthy and competent to decree who is a real journalist meriting First Amendment protection and who falls outside as something else?

But there is a much more significant problem with this framework: namely, the question of who is and is not a real journalist is completely irrelevant to the First Amendment. None of the rights in the Constitution, including press freedom, was intended to apply only to a small, cloistered, credentialed, privileged group of citizens. The exact opposite was true: the only reason they are valuable as rights is because they enjoy universal application, protecting all citizens.

Indeed, one of the most passionate grievances of the American colonists was that nobody was permitted to use the press unless first licensed by the British Crown. Conversely, the most celebrated journalism of the time was undertaken by people like Thomas Paine — who never worked for an established journalistic outlet in his life — as he circulated the pamphlet Common Sense that railed against the abuses of the King. What was protected by the First Amendment was not a small, privileged caste bearing the special label “journalists,” but rather the activity of a free press. The proof of this is clear and ample, and is set forth in the video we produced on Monday night.

But none of this matters. If you express concern for the FBI’s targeting of O’Keefe, it will be instantly understood not as a concern about any of these underlying principles but instead as an endorsement of O’Keefe’s politics, journalism, and O’Keefe himself. The same is true for the discourse surrounding Kyle Rittenhouse. If you say that — after having actually watched the trial — you believe the state failed to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in light of his defense of self-defense, many will disbelieve your sincerity, will insist that your view is based not in some apolitical assessment of the evidence or legal principles about what the state must do in order to imprison a citizen, but rather that you must be a “supporter” of Rittenhouse himself, his ideology (whatever it is assumed to be), and the political movement with which he, in their minds, is associated.

On some level, this is pure projection: those who are incapable of assessing political or legal conflicts through a prism of principles rather than personalities assume that everyone is plagued by the same deficiency. Since they decide whether to support or oppose the FBI’s actions toward O’Keefe based on their personal view of O’Keefe rather than through reference to any principles, they assume that this is how everyone is determining their views of that situation. Similarly, since they base their views on whether Rittenhouse should be convicted or acquitted based on how they personally feel about Rittenhouse and his perceived politics rather than the evidence presented at the trial (which most of them have not watched), they assume that anyone advocating for an acquittal can be doing so only because they like Rittenhouse’s politics and believe that his actions were heroic.

In sum, those who view the world through a prism bereft of principles — either due to lack of intellectual capacity or ethics or both — assume everyone’s world view is similarly craven. It is this same stunted mindset that saddles our discourse with so much illogic and so many twisted presumptions, such as the inability to distinguish between defending someone’s right to express a particular opinion and agreement with that opinion. In a world in which ideology, partisan loyalty, tribal affiliations, in-group identity and personality-driven assessments predominate, there is no room for principles, universally applicable rights, or basic reason.https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/17rlhtzkcSQ?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

To support the independent journalism we are doing here, please subscribe, obtain a gift subscription for others and/or share the article:

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/kyle-rittenhouse-project-veritas

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced its Joint Criminal Opioid and Darknet Enforcement (JCODE) team joined Europol to arrest 150 people worldwide in Operation Dark HunTor, an effort that seized weapons, drugs and more than $31 million in currencies.

Operation Dark HunTor included arrests across three continents, taking into custody alleged perpetrators across the United States, Australia, and Europe.

A statement from the DOJ noted 65 arrests in the United States, one in Bulgaria, three in France, 47 in Germany, four in the Netherlands, 24 in the United Kingdom, four in Italy, and two in Switzerland.

“This 10-month massive international law enforcement operation spanned across three continents and involved dozens of U.S. and international law enforcement agencies to send one clear message to those hiding on the Darknet peddling illegal drugs: there is no dark internet. We can and we will shine a light,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said.

“Operation Dark HunTor prevented countless lives from being lost to this dangerous trade in illicit and counterfeit drugs, because one pill can kill. The Department of Justice with our international partners will continue to crack down on lethal counterfeit opioids purchased on the Darknet,” she added.

The emphasis in the operation was to decrease the flow of illegal drugs internationally. The results included $31.6 million in both cash and virtual currencies; approximately 234 kilograms (kg) of drugs worldwide including 152.1 kg of amphetamine, 21.6 kg of cocaine, 26.9 kg of opioids, and 32.5 kg of MDMA, in addition to more than 200,000 ecstasy, fentanyl, oxycodone, hydrocodone, and methamphetamine pills, and counterfeit medicine; and 45 firearms, according to the statement.

“The men and women of the department’s Criminal Division, in close collaboration with our team of interagency and international partners, stand ready to leverage all our resources to protect our communities through the pursuit of those who profit from addiction, under the false belief that they are anonymous on the Darknet,” Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said.

“Only through a whole of government and, in this case, global approach to tackling cyber-enabled drug trafficking can we hope to achieve the significant results illustrated in Operation Dark HunTor,” he added.

FBI Director Christopher Wray also commented on the widespread, multi-national operation and its impact.

“The FBI continues to identify and bring to justice drug dealers who believe they can hide their illegal activity through the Darknet,” Wray said in the statement.

“Criminal Darknet markets exist so drug dealers can profit at the expense of others’ safety. The FBI is committed to working with our  JCODE and EUROPOL  law enforcement partners to disrupt those markets and the borderless, worldwide trade in illicit drugs they enable,” he added.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/150-arrested-in-operation-dark-huntor-millions-in-drugs-weapons-and-trafficked-currency-seized_4111916.html

The Justice Department’s watchdog says the nation’s top law enforcement division must do a lot more to restore the public’s faith and dispel the belief among a growing number of Americans that it is a political organization rather than a non-partisan arbiter of cases.

The DOJ “has squandered public trust by straying from its own policies designed to avoid the appearance of political bias and meddling and by permitting some employees to escape accountability for misconduct by leaving the department before investigations were complete, the agency’s chief watchdog is warning,” Just the News reported Thursday, citing the findings of the department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz.

His office’s criticism of the department comes amid blowback from the public and lawmakers for failures related to the so-called “Trump-Russia collusion” counterterrorism investigation, which has been discredited, as well as the discovery that Attorney General Merrick Garland has tasked the FBI and all 93 U.S. attorneys with assisting in the investigation of parents who complain to school boards about the curriculum being taught to their kids.

Also, the findings come after the FBI raided the homes of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and two of his associates, which alarmed even left-leaning civil libertarians.

“The Department faces a challenge in addressing public perception about its objectivity and insulation from political influence,” Horowitz noted in the report, going on to cite recent polling data indicating a growing number of Americans believe the department has become politicized.

“The Department’s efficacy as the guardian of the rule of law depends on maintaining the public trust in its integrity, impartiality, and ability to effectively administer justice,” Horowitz added.

Just The News adds:

The watchdog cited several recent IG investigations that found the James Comey-era FBI misled the FISA court in the Russia case and wrongly usurped prosecutors’ powers by declining prosecution in the Hillary Clinton email probe. He also noted more recent failures, including continuing FISA warrant problems, a bungled sex abuse case involving female Olympians, and reports the department faced pressure to investigate allegations of fraud and misconduct in the 2020 election.

In many instances, rules and policies in those cases weren’t followed, to the detriment of the department’s reputation and public trust, he noted.

“One important strategy that can build public trust in the Department is to ensure adherence to policies and procedures designed to protect DOJ from accusations of political influence or partial application of the law,” Horowitz noted in the report.

To that end, Horowitz went on to say that the public’s trust has been devastated in large part by the department’s failure to discipline culpable officials and instead allow them to retire before final determinations are made and cases are simply closed without any actions being taken.

“Accountability is particularly challenging in instances where the Department employee retires or resigns before allegations of misconduct can be fully adjudicated,” Horowitz wrote, pointing out that 10 percent of the department’s misconduct cases that were pending before the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility in the years 2017 and 2018 were closed after the staffer resigned or retired.

“We concluded that this FBI practice adversely impacted the FBI’s ability to hold employees accountable for their misconduct, was unfair to employees wrongly accused, and wasted OIG and FBI resources,” Horowitz wrote.

“Adjudicating all cases to conclusion, as recommended by the OIG, will ensure that employees who choose to leave the FBI while under investigation cannot escape a finding of misconduct that could affect potential future employment and other benefits,” he added.

“Another means of strengthening confidence in the Department is ensuring that attorney professional misconduct matters are handled no differently than misconduct allegations made against law enforcement agents or other DOJ employees,” the IG wrote.

“Currently the Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, a DOJ component that lacks the same statutory independence and protections as the OIG, has exclusive jurisdiction over allegations of misconduct by Department lawyers that relate to an attorney’s responsibility to investigate, litigate, or provide legal advice,” he said.

“Independent oversight of Department lawyers is a step towards broader accountability and improved public trust in the Department.”

Conspiracy; Unauthorized Access to a Computer; Knowingly Damaging Protected Computer; Voter Intimidation; Interstate Threats

Reward:

The Rewards For Justice Program, United States Department of State, is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information on or about the activities of Seyyed Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazemi and Sajjad Kashian.

Details:

On October 20, 2021, a grand jury in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York indicted SEYYED MOHAMMAD HOSEIN MUSA KAZEMI, also known as “Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazem”, and “Hosein Zamani”, and SAJJAD KASHIAN, also known as “Kiarash Nabavi”, for, among other things, computer intrusion, voter intimidation, and interstate threat offenses, for their alleged participation in a multi-faceted campaign aimed at influencing and interfering with the United States 2020 Presidential Election.  In connection with this campaign, the defendants allegedly obtained United States voter information from at least one state election website, sent threatening voter email messages to intimidate voters, crafted and disseminated disinformation pertaining to the election and election security, and accessed, and attempted to access, without authorization, the computer systems of several online United States media entities and states. This occurred from at least in or about August of 2020, to at least in or about November of 2020. 

Kazemi is described as an Iranian male born on June 18, 1997.  He is between 5’5″ and 6’0″ tall, 180 to 185 pounds, with dark brown hair and brown eyes.

Kashian is described as an Iranian male born on September 17, 1994.  He is between 5’5″ and 6’0″ tall, 130 to 140 pounds, with dark brown hair and brown eyes.

THESE INDIVIDUALS SHOULD BE CONSIDERED AN INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT RISK

Submit a Tip:

If you have any information concerning this case, please contact your local FBI office, or the nearest American Embassy or Consulate.

Field Office: Cleveland

Submit an anonymous Tip online

https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber/iranian-interference-in-2020-us-elections

The Department of Justice (DOJ) must address deepening concerns that it’s not insulated from political influence, the agency’s watchdog stated in a new report.

The DOJ failed to follow policies and procedures designed to protect it from accusations that it’s politicized or partially applying the law in a number of cases, including while investigating Donald Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election and in leaks to the media, Inspector General Michael Horowitz noted.

“Numerous national events in the past year have crystalized the urgency for the department to address this challenge in a meaningful way,” he wrote, including the discovery that the DOJ under the Trump administration obtained communications to and from members of Congress and accusations that protesters were cleared from Lafayette Square in Washington on June 1, 2020, for political purposes.

Such events “have all raised questions about the department’s objectivity and impartiality” and “negatively impacted the perception of the department as a fair administrator of justice,” Horowitz said.

As proof, the watchdog cited a 2020 poll from the Pew Research Center, which found favorable views of DOJ among Democrats dropped sharply during the Trump administration. Republican views grew more favorable during the same time.

DOJ officials didn’t respond to requests by The Epoch Times for comment.

Critics on both the left and right have said the DOJ in recent years has acted wrongfully. Democrats repeatedly criticized the department during the Trump era, including over its bid to lower the jail sentence of Trump ally Roger Stone. Republicans also found problems with the agency, in particular over its handling of the probe into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia that relied heavily on the now-discredited Steele dossier.

Just this week, fresh strong reactions were triggered after a whistleblower said internal documents showed the DOJ used counterterrorism tools against parents.

The documents “prove that the FBI was, in fact, using counterterrorism tools to investigate concerned parents who have attended school board meetings—which directly contradicts Attorney General Merrick Garland’s sworn congressional testimony,” Parents Defending Education said in a statement.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told The Epoch Times that the DOJ “has had a cloud hanging over its credibility for years.”

“From the [Hillary] Clinton email investigation to the Russia probe and targeting parents exercising their First Amendment rights at school board meetings, there’s not been much to boost the public’s confidence that DOJ is apolitical. The inspector general’s assessment seems right on the money to me,” he wrote in an email.

“I hope the department, and its components like the FBI, begin turning a corner to regain some of their previous non-partisan, beyond-reproach reputations. The inspector general also said that he needs testimonial subpoena authority and the ability to independently investigate attorney misconduct. Those two things will go a long way toward ensuring bad apples at FBI and the department are truly held accountable.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/doj-inspector-general-says-justice-department-must-address-concerns-about-politicization_4109873.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-11-17-3&mktids=d35d8fbbb78ed06b2196c19bad19302d&est=QhfJyWNj%2F09tUzRriABPLe1mbW0LHgsb4lQkLOPShdPdh1odqrphtvgSKYgBRLnF0w%3D%3D

On Oct. 27, Attorney General Merrick Garland sat before Congress and claimed the FBI would not be flagging parents protesting at local school board meetings as potential domestic terrorists.

Whistleblower documents released on Tuesday, however, suggest this may have been an outright lie.

The documents, sent to House Republicans by an anonymous FBI staffer, show that the FBI’s counterterrorism and criminal investigative divisions were tracking threats against teachers by flagging certain instances with “threat tags.”

FROM THE WHISTLEBLOWER: pic.twitter.com/4IfJRPVKMk

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) November 16, 2021

Mistrial Motion Filed: Binger Withheld HD Drone Footage from Rittenhouse Defense

Questions over whether or not the FBI was improperly investigating parent protesters first arose after Garland sent an Oct. 4 memo to the FBI directing the agency to track “threats” against public school officials. This memo came shortly after the National School Boards Association penned a letter to President Joe Biden demanding he treat “the growing number of threats” against school board members as acts of domestic terrorism.

Garland claimed during his Oct. 27 testimony that his memorandum did not rely upon the NSBA’s letter. However, according to Fox News, recently released internal emails show that both the White House and the Department of Justice coordinated with the NSBA prior to the release of Garland’s memo.

Following its release, Republicans quickly became concerned over Garland’s order, given that the attorney general had no examples to point to as credible “threats” against school officials. This led many to believe the target of these orders was actually the growing number of parents protesting against critical race theory, masking policies and other left-wing policies spreading throughout the American school system.

Concerns that such “threats” were being overly exaggerated seemed to be confirmed by the NSBA itself on Oct. 22 when the group apologized for its letter, saying “there was no justification for some of the language included in the letter.”

Did Garland lie to Congress?

According to CNN, Garland dismissed accusations that his order would be used to target parents, claiming the directive he gave the FBI was merely meant to respond “to concerns about violence, threats of violence, other criminal conduct.”

Here is the clip of AG Merrick Garland telling Congress that he “could not imagine any circumstance” that parents complaining about their school boards would be “labeled as domestic terrorism.”

He lied pic.twitter.com/t3as9v1MLI

— American Principles 🇺🇸 (@approject) November 16, 2021

“That’s all it’s about, and all it asks, is for federal law enforcement to consult with, meet with local law enforcement to assess the circumstances, strategize about what may or may not be necessary to provide federal assistance, if it is necessary,” Garland told Congress.

Given the leaked documents, these claims appear to be outright false.

Breaking: Steve Bannon Indicted for Contempt of Congress

The documents show that the FBI set up an investigative process to track potential threats against school board members and teachers by assessing “threat tags.” Whether or not these “threat tags” are being or have been applied to protesting parents remains unclear.

According to one of the leaked documents, threat tags are to be used in all “investigations and assessments of threats specifically directed against school board administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.”

In a statement provided to The Wall Street Journal, the FBI maintained it “has never been in the business of investigating parents who speak out or policing speech at school board meetings, and we are not going to start now.”

In a letter addressed to Garland, House Republicans are demanding the attorney general provide answers regarding the whistleblower documents and his Oct. 27 testimony.

🚨🚨🚨#BREAKING: Whistleblower Discloses Explosive Documents Showing FBI Using Counterterrorism Tools to Investigate Parents pic.twitter.com/HpbdtinJQo

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) November 16, 2021

“We are now in receipt of a protected disclosure from a Department whistleblower showing that the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division is compiling and categorizing threat assessments related to parents, including a document directing FBI personnel to use a specific ‘threat tag’ to track potential investigations,” House representatives said in the letter.

“This new information calls into question the accuracy and completeness of your sworn testimony.”

“This disclosure provides specific evidence that federal law enforcement operationalized counterterrorism tools at the behest of a left-wing special interest group against concerned parents.”

FBI spokesperson says bureau not ‘in the business of investigating parents who speak out’

An unnamed whistleblower disclosed documents suggesting that the FBI is using its counterterrorism resources to investigate parents or individuals who threaten school board members, teachers, or other staff, according to a letter sent by the House Judiciary GOP dated Tuesday.

The GOP letter included copies of the documents allegedly sourced from the FBI whistleblower that included an email sent by Carlton L. Peeples, who serves in the bureau’s Inspection Division, saying that the Counterterrorism and Criminal Division “created a threat tag, EDUOFFICIALS, to track instances of related threats.”

“We ask that your offices apply the threat tag to investigations and assessments of threats specifically directed against school board administrators, board members, teachers, and staff,” the email reads. The email was signed by Counterterrorism Division Assistant Director Timothy Langan and then-Criminal Division assistant director Calvin Shivers.

In their letter on Tuesday, the Judiciary Republicans said that Attorney General Merrick Garland testified in front of a House panel that the FBI and Department of Justice were not using counterterrorism resources to target threats against school board members. However, the newly unveiled document, they argued, disproves Garland’s comments.

An FBI spokesperson told The Epoch Times on Tuesday evening that the bureau “has never been in the business of investigating parents who speak out or policing speech at school board meetings, and we are not going to start now.”

“The FBI’s mission is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution. These are dual and simultaneous and not one at the expense of the other,” the spokesperson said. “We are fully committed to preserving and protecting First Amendment rights, including freedom of speech. The FBI’s focus is on violence and threats of violence that potentially violate federal law.”

Before a counterterrorism investigation can be opened, there has to be information that indicates the possible use of violence or force, or a potential violation of federal law, the FBI spokesperson continued.

But according to House Judiciary Republicans, the whistleblower’s disclosure is evidence that federal law enforcement used counterterrorism resources at the behest of a “left-wing special interests group” to go after parents, referring to a letter that had been sent by the National School Boards Association several weeks ago linking parents who are concerned about school curriculum to domestic terrorists. It further said that the FBI and federal agencies should use the PATRIOT Act and other tools to go after parents.

After the initial letter was sent by the National School Boards Association, Garland issued a memorandum directing the FBI to address an alleged “spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” and create “dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting” on the matter. But on Oct. 23, the school boards group issued an apology to the White House over the language included in the letter.

Now, the whistleblower’s disclosure “calls into question the accuracy and completeness” of Garland’s testimony before the House Judiciary panel last month.

“If … you were aware of the FBI’s actions at the time of your testimony,” the Republicans wrote, the document “shows that you willfully misled the committee about the” Department of Justice’s use of counterterrorism tools to target parents.

During the House Judiciary Committee hearing, Garland denied allegations that his agency would label concerned parents as domestic terrorists.

“Justice Department supports and defends the First Amendment right of parents to complain as vociferously as they wish about the education of their children, about the curriculum taught in the schools,” he told lawmakers on Oct. 21.

Garland also suggested that Republicans were mischaracterizing his memorandum, saying it only pertains to threats of violence aimed at school employees and teachers.

“This is not about what happens inside school board meetings,” the attorney general remarked. “It’s only about threats of violence and violence aimed at school officials, school employees, and teachers.”

After the National School Boards Association issued its initial letter, dozens of school boards around the United States have cut ties with the group. On Monday, the Kentucky School Board Association said its members voted to withdraw their membership.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/fbi-whistleblower-claims-doj-used-counterterrorism-tools-against-parents-republicans_4108044.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-11-16-3&mktids=19b71a18688f3b135db9068295caff6c&est=rkou0uT8uZyMYzFLAtHwQnvP3o%2BUzlx0CgaEZcBt6IYttQ%2F%2FRVnaN9WXTvYtvouHZw%3D%3D

The revelation that Democratic operative Charles Dolan was one of the sources for the dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele shows the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) withheld information from congressional investigators, Kash Patel said Friday.

“I’m the lead Russia guy, and I had never heard of this guy,” Patel said. “It means, to me, the FBI, DOJ under Rod Rosenstein withheld information that was critical to the Russiagate investigation that we were running in 2017, 2018. And who knows what else they’ve left out?”

Patel was an investigator for the House Intelligence Committee. He was speaking on “Kash’s Corner,” a program he hosts on EpochTV. Rosenstein was deputy attorney general under former President Donald Trump and appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate the Trump-Russia collusion theories.

Igor Danchenko, Steele’s primary sub-source, was charged last week with making false statements to federal investigators. One of the counts stems from Danchenko denying he spoke with a person dubbed “PR-Executive-1” in the federal indictment.

That person is Charles Dolan, his lawyer confirmed to The Epoch Times.

Dolan has had a relationship with former President Bill Clinton and former First Lady Hillary Clinton since the 1990s. Dolan campaigned on behalf of the latter in the 2016 presidential election. Hillary Clinton’s campaign helped pay for Steele’s dossier, which targeted then-candidate Donald Trump. The dossier has been shown to be riddled with false information.

The House Intelligence Committee, headed by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) while Republicans controlled the House following the election, sent letters and subpoenas to the FBI and Department of Justice for all documentation relating to the dossier, including all the connections that he and the FBI had throughout the scandal known as Russiagate, Patel said on his show.

“Charles Dolan never came up once. Me nor not one member of my team, nor any of the Republicans on House Intel, had ever heard of Charles Dolan until John Durham’s indictment,” Patel said, referring to Special Counsel John Durham.

As further evidence of what he described as the FBI and DOJ purposefully withholding information, Patel pointed to how the indictment reveals agents interviewed Danchenko on five different occasions. According to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s 2019 examination of the dossier and related matters, only three interviews with Danchenko took place.

“They did not admit that to us when we were investigating the Russiagate investigation. I think we added at most two or three instances of an interview and we never got the full contents anyway,” Patel said. “Now there’s five. Where did that come from?”

“Why didn’t the FBI tell us this,” he added later. “Why did Rod Rosenstein withhold these documents and this information, even though Congress sent him subpoenas? They only turned over part of it, and what they did turn over, a lot of it was redacted. And that’s why we’re fighting such an uphill battle to disclose it to the American public, the full story.”

The FBI and DOJ didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Rosenstein could not be reached.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/charles-dolans-involvement-in-dossier-means-doj-fbi-withheld-information-kash-patel_4102847.html

The action against James O’Keefe has prompted concern about the Biden administration’s commitment to the First Amendment.

The Biden administration’s effort to establish itself as a committed champion of press freedom is facing new doubts because of the Justice Department’s aggressive legal tactics against a conservative provocateur known for his hidden-camera video stings.

A predawn FBI raid last weekend against Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and similar raids on some of his associates are prompting alarm from some First Amendment advocates, who contend that prosecutors appear to have run roughshod over Justice Department media policies and a federal law protecting journalists.

Adding to the drama surrounding the brewing court showdown: It stems from a politically sensitive investigation into the alleged theft of the diary of President Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley.

That document made it into the hands of O’Keefe’s organization, Project Veritas, which never published anything on the subject and eventually turned the document over to police.

An ensuing federal investigation resulted in the FBI raid on O’Keefe’s home in Westchester County, N.Y., at 6 a.m. last Saturday to seize his cell phones pursuant to a court order. O’Keefe says he stood handcuffed in his underwear in a hallway as almost a dozen agents — one carrying a battering ram — searched for the phones.

The politically fraught episode is shaping up as an early test of the vows from Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland to show greater respect for the media and to back away from the confrontational, often hostile approach favored by former President Donald Trump and his administration.

“This is just beyond belief,” said University of Minnesota law professor Jane Kirtley, a former executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “I’m not a big fan of Project Veritas, but this is just over the top. I hope they get a serious reprimand from the court because I think this is just wrong.”

O’Keefe’s lawyers complained to a federal judge this week that the raid unfairly denied him the legal protections afforded to journalists.

“The Department of Justice’s use of a search warrant to seize a reporter’s notes and work product violates decades of established Supreme Court precedent,” O’Keefe lawyer Paul Calli wrote to prosecutors.

O’Keefe’s lawyers are demanding that the court appoint a special master to supervise the review of the information on his phones, which they contend contains sensitive details about confidential sources, as well as privileged communication with Project Veritas’ attorneys.

Such a process is uncommon, but has been used in recent years to sift through information seized in federal investigations into two of Trump’s personal attorneys, Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani.

On Thursday, Manhattan-based U.S. District Court Judge Analisa Torres issued a one-page order giving prosecutors one day to confirm they have “paused [their] extraction and review of the contents” of O’Keefe’s cell phones. Torres — an appointee of President Barack Obama — has not yet ruled on O’Keefe’s request for a special master, who is typically a retired judge.

Project Veritas was facing a jury trial in Washington next month in the suit brought by Democracy Partners, a Democratic consulting firm it infiltrated, but on Thursday, a judge postponed the trial due to the raids and the unfolding legal fight over them.

At the center of the gathering legal storm is a pivotal question: Is O’Keefe a journalist in the eyes of the law?

O’Keefe’s attorneys insist that despite his evident political bent and his unorthodox — sometimes deceptive — tactics, he qualifies as a journalist under a federal statute and Justice Department regulations aimed at sharply restricting the use of search warrants and similar steps against members of the media.

Prosecutors insist they’ve complied with those requirements, but have thus far been cagey about whether or not they’re treating O’Keefe as a member of the press.

“The Government hereby confirms that it has complied with all applicable regulations and policies regarding potential members of the news media in the course of this investigation, including with respect to the search warrant at issue,” prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan wrote Monday in a letter to O’Keefe’s lawyers obtained by POLITICO.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last month, Garland was asked who qualifies as a journalist under Justice Department policies. “It’s very difficult to make that kind of definition,” he said.

INSURRECTION FALLOUT

Steve Bannon indicted for defying Jan. 6 committee investigation

BY KYLE CHENEY, BETSY WOODRUFF SWAN, NICHOLAS WU AND JOSH GERSTEIN

O’Keefe is certainly not a typical journalist. Indeed, several of his outfit’s major hidden-camera exposés have been directed at employees of major news organizations such as CNN and NPR, seeking to paint them as left-wing activists. (At least one such attempt was foiled in 2017 when Washington Post reporters suspected they were being set up and effectively turned the tables on O’Keefe’s operatives.)

While many of O’Keefe’s tactics are unsavory, they are far from unknown in the mainstream press. Hidden-camera stings and undercover reporting have fallen out of fashion at most traditional news organizations, but they were once a staple of network television news magazines.

In the 1970s, the Chicago Sun-Times bought a rundown bar and rigged it out with hidden cameras, successfully capturing city inspectors demanding bribes. NBC’s popular and controversial series, “To Catch a Predator,” revolves around hidden-camera stings.

O’Keefe’s rather overt political agenda is also in line with a long American tradition of advocacy journalism. And many conservatives view mainstream news outlets as pervasively liberal in their worldview even as most claim to be neutral in their reporting.

Some of O’Keefe’s practices do seem highly unusual. A poorly redacted pleading filed in the civil suit Project Veritas was set to face trial on next month indicates that O’Keefe encouraged a colleague to tell potential donors they could provide “input” on the timing of release of Project Veritas’ work, raising the specter that O’Keefe was essentially operating under the direct control of political benefactors.

“Real news organizations — whether Fox News, the New York Times or any other recognized media outlet — do not go to their donors, or advertisers, and ask for their ‘input’ on when stories should be run,” attorneys for Democracy Partners said in the court filing.

Kirtley, the Minnesota law professor, warned against denying legal protections to Project Veritas based on its political outlook or its tactics. She also noted that Trump repeatedly accused mainstream media outlets of both unethical practices and of having a political ax to grind.

“Trump’s been saying that about the New York Times for seven years,” she said. “It’s very dangerous to try to categorize people doing journalistic-type work, even if they’re not doing it the way I would do it or the way the mainstream media would do it or the way ethical journalists would do it,” Kirtley said.

Another First Amendment advocate, Trevor Timm of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, also said the raids on Project Veritas were worrying.

“I don’t personally like Project Veritas at all, but imagine this was a liberal org under Trump. Not a good precedent,” he wrote on Twitter.

However, legal experts cautioned that even if Project Veritas and O’Keefe qualify as journalists under the law or Justice Department policy, that did not give them license to violate the law.

“If they’ve got evidence that [Project Veritas] has broken the law, then we’re in a completely different world here,” Kirtley said.

Precisely how the Biden daughter’s diary came into the organization’s possession is unclear, but there have been no public indications thus far that — if the diary was stolen — the conservative group planned the theft or helped carry it out.

Court papers provided to the Project Veritas founder when his phones were seized last weekend indicate that his devices were taken as part of an investigation that prosecutors are conducting into potential conspiracy to traffic stolen goods across state lines, as well as accessory-after-the-fact and misprision of a felony.

Precisely what the government told U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Cave to get the warrant used to seize O’Keefe’s phones is unclear and remains under seal.

But the bare-bones outline of the investigation contained in the warrant has fueled the concerns of First Amendment advocates because the Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that media outlets cannot be held liable for publishing information that may have been obtained illegally, as long as they themselves obtained the material legally.

Project Veritas’ lawyer, Calli, acknowledged in an interview on Fox News’ “Hannity” last week that O’Keefe’s group “agreed to pay money for the right to publish” the purported Biden diary. Calli said lawyers for the sources assured Project Veritas that the diary had been obtained lawfully, but the group’s only information on how it was obtained came from the sources.

Calli told the court in a letter earlier this week that the sources told Project Veritas they obtained the diary after Ashley Biden abandoned it at a home in Delray Beach, Fla.

Lawyers tracking the case say the publicly available facts suggest two possibilities: the Justice Department deemed O’Keefe did not qualify as a journalist under DOJ guidelines and federal law known as the Privacy Protection Act, or concluded that he was a member of the media, but that Project Veritas’ personnel may still have committed a crime.

Some language in the warrant suggests prosecutors are examining whether a bidding process for the diary violated laws against fencing stolen items.

However, Calli insists that even if the FBI suspects O’Keefe or others of crimes, Justice Department policy required prosecutors to negotiate for Project Veritas’ materials rather than seizing them.

“The principles that informed this guidance are no less applicable where the news-gathering activities focus on the President’s daughter,” Calli wrote in the motion seeking a special master.

Emails obtained by POLITICO show prosecutors declined to tell Calli whether the Project Veritas searches were approved by a Justice Department committee that oversees investigations impacting the news media.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan declined to comment on the office’s handling of the inquiry. A Justice Department spokesperson also declined comment.

Over the past six months, Biden and Garland have introduced extraordinarily protective policies toward the press, protections so robust that some national security professionals have raised concerns. However, the fight with Project Veritas raises questions about how broadly the new administration intends to apply those robust protections.

“This is really a test in this administration of whether they’re going to put their money where their mouth is,” Kirtley said. “If they’re trying to be seen as great champions of press freedom, this is a pretty bad way to start.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/13/raid-veritas-okeefe-biden-press-521307

The North Carolina School Boards Association (NCSBA) withdrew its membership from the National School Boards Association (NSBA) on Thursday.

NCSBA’s separation follows the South Carolina, Ohio, and Missouri School Board Associations’ cutting ties from the NSBA after its Sept. 29 letter to the White House comparing parents to domestic terrorists.

Union County Public Schools Board Chair Melissa Merrell was on her way to an NCSBA convention when she received an alert from the NCSBA announcing its separation.

“It was a pleasant surprise,” Merrell told The Epoch Times. “I definitely did not see this coming. I’ve had a couple of board members who had been requesting and sending emails to the NCSBA asking if it were going to withdraw our membership from the NSBA, and they (the NSBA) had asked for our feedback, and then, on the way to the convention, we saw this message.”

Merrell said nothing was mentioned at the convention about the NCSBA’s departure from the national board.

According to Parents Defending Education (PDE), an organization that investigates indoctrination in schools, as of Nov. 9, 26 states have distanced themselves from the NSBA after the letter.

The NSBA, which represents more than 90,000 school board members and 14,000 public school districts in the United States, had written a letter to President Joe Biden asking that the parents who have protested COVID-19 restrictions and the teaching of critical race theory in public schools be regarded as domestic terrorists that should be investigated by agencies such as the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI.

This led to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Oct. 4 memorandum to the FBI directing the agency to work with U.S. attorneys to “facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff, and will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response.”

“The September 29 letter from NSBA to President Biden, in both its inflammatory language and the request for federal agencies to intervene in our communities, was just one in a series of lapses in governance,” said NCSBA President Amy Churchill in a press release. “NCSBA shares its members’ concerns about safety at school board meetings. As a proponent of local control, NCSBA believes that local law enforcement is in the best position to respond to those concerns and seek outside assistance if necessary.”

On Oct. 22, the NSBA issued an apology, stating that “there was no justification for some of the language included in the letter.”

State Response

The PDE requested statements from 47 states affiliated with the NSBA, and reported that the Alabama Association of School Boards (AASB) said it “has withheld its dues to join the NSBA for the current membership year, though AASB’s bylaws require it to be an NSBA member.”

According to the PDE, the AASB said it would be voting in December on changes to its bylaws that would give the AASB board of directors authority to determine its membership with the NSBA.

The PDE said it received no response from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees (MSCA), prompting the PDE to file a public record request for emails “to get a sense of their position.”

“It turns out that Glenn Koocher, executive director of the MSCA, was so happy about the letter that he put it in an email to NSBA CEO Chip Slaven,” the PDE said.

“We in MASC are all very happy that the NSBA has reached out to the FBI and, based on local coverage, has been identified as a key agent for generating federal support,” Koocher said in the email.

South Carolina

Thirty-six Republican state representatives asked that the South Carolina School Boards Association (SCSBA) end its NSBA membership.

“NSBA has labeled parents as domestic terrorists, with no evidence to justify that term,” the House Republicans wrote in a letter to the SCSBA executive director. “The reality is that parents and stakeholders are beyond frustrated being ignored and left out of decisions with their child. The NSBA is detached from reality and fails to recognize that Americans are angered by what is happening in our classrooms.”

SCSBA Executive Director Scott Price told The Epoch Times that the decision to separate from the NSBA was “aimed at protecting our membership from fallout from NSBA’s September 29 letter.”

“Any pressure that SCSBA was under stemmed primarily from our desire to keep this from impacting our members (local school boards),” Price said.

The NSBA did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

GQ Pan and Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/north-carolina-school-boards-association-withdraws-from-the-national-school-boards-association_4099135.html

Attorneys for the Project Vertitas founder believe that the Department of Justice has been tipping off the New York Times about raids on current and former employees.

The company has been scrutinized regarding the theft of a diary purported to belong to President Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley Biden, that the company never published, The Daily Mail reported.

The FBI conducted raids at O’Keefe’s New York home and those of others connected to Project Veritas early Saturday morning, seizing two of O’Keefe’s cell phones, among other items.

Days later, on Thursday, the New York Times published a report based on memos from the group’s lawyer, revealing his legal advice on the group’s use of false identities and undercover filming, tactics that are eschewed by most modern journalists.

Later that day, a federal judge ordered the DOJ to stop extracting data from the phones, grating a request from O’Keefe’s legal team made the day before for an independent party to be appointed to oversee the review of the confiscated devices. 

O’Keefe’s attorney Harmeet Dhillon in an interview on Thursday night slammed the Times’ report as a ‘hit piece’ and questioned whether the DOJ had leaked the legal memos to the Times, an extraordinary and possibly illegal step.

“I can’t say how the New York Times got this information, but they got it in a way that is illegal and unethical,” she said on Fox News.

“We have a disturbing situation of the US Attorney’s office or the FBI tipping off the New York Times to each of the raids on Project Veritas current and former employees,” the attorney said.

“We know that because minutes after these raids occurred they got calls from the New York Times which was the only journalism outlet that knew about it. And they published this hit piece today, which is really despicable. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this low from the New York Times before, to publish people’s private legal communications,” she said.

“This is a scandal of epic proportions. Every journalist who is not worried about this should hang up their journalism card, and all First Amendment lawyers as well,” she said.

The attorney gave credit to District Court Judge Analisa Torres for a Thursday decision that ordered the DOJ to stop taking data from O’Keefe’s phone.

“We are gratified that the Department of Justice has been ordered to stop extracting and reviewing confidential and privileged information obtained in their raids of our reporters, including legal, donor, and confidential source communications.

‘The First Amendment won a temporary victory today, but Project Veritas has a long way to go to hold the DOJ and FBI accountable for their actions,” she said.

She said that the federal government grabbing information pertaining to Project Veritas’ employees containing donor information, communications with attorneys and sources from within the Biden administration raise “multiple First Amendment issues.”

“We went to the court and asked the court to order a special master to review this information and not let the Southern District of New York prosecutors and the FBI look at it without somebody separating out this information,” she said to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

“The government would not agree to do that voluntarily but we went to court and today a federal judge did order the government to stop looking at these phones. So ultimately, we’re going to get some answers as to what was reviewed and what they did with it,” the attorney said.

“The DOJ has specific regulations about this. There’s also a federal statute called the Privacy Protection Act that protects journalists and their information from exactly this type of thuggish behavior that the DOJ has done in this case,” she said.

“They have blown federal law, they blown the Constitution, they blown due process and civil rights and now they’re so easily communicating in some level for sure with the New York Times,” she said.

The FBI has been ordered by a federal judge to stop plundering information from James O’Keefe’s phone following a raid on his home and other properties connected with Project Veritas last weekend.

The raid was a chilling and frightening overreach by law enforcement of protected journalistic work product. O’Keefe has said that his phone offers a window into what other projects he and his staff are working on — projects the Biden Administration may not want him to cover.

The FBI raided O’Keefe’s apartment about 6 a.m. on Saturday with a phalanx of agents taking his electronics and other information, which they claimed would help discover how the journalist came into possession of President Biden’s daughter’s diary.

They claim the diary was stolen. O’Keefe denies that characterization.

The president’s daughter, Ashley Biden’s, diary reportedly contains down, dirty, and disgusting secrets about the Biden family.

Judge Analisa Torres ordered the FBI to stop exploiting information contained in O’Keefe’s phone and to verify that they’d done so by Friday.

BREAKING! The federal court has just ordered the DOJ to STOP extracting data from our client, journalist James O’Keefe’s phone, and ordered a hearing. Counsel for Project Veritas asked the court to do this yesterday! pic.twitter.com/nBrmf4myuj

— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@pnjaban) November 11, 2021

O’Keefe and Project Veritas have been in negotiations with the Justice Department about the diary and its provenance since last year.

Unless O’Keefe stole that diary, there’s doesn’t appear to be anything different about O’Keefe coming into possession of the document than what happens every day at the New York Times or Washington Post with their leaked documents.

Prior restraint doesn’t even begin to cover how intrusive and frightening this intentional intimidation by law enforcement is on a journalistic enterprise.

The raid is reminiscent of the one conducted by former California Attorney General Kamala Harris into the work product of David Daleiden, who produced a series of explosive videos showing Planned Parenthood buying and selling aborted baby parts.

The way it looks now, this judge’s ruling is a win for journalism, but journalists who don’t like O’Keefe may not see it that way.

Let’s watch.

Danchenko pleaded not guilty Wednesday to making false statements about the source of information that he provided to Steele for the dossier

Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, had a message for those who pushed and believed the anti-Trump dossier amid recent indictments out of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe: “We told you so.”

Last week, Durham indicted the Russian national, Igor Danchenko, who is believed to be the sub-source for former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who compiled the dossier that served as the basis for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Trump campaign aide Carter Page in 2016. 

The dossier was funded by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign through law firm Perkins Coie. 

Danchenko pleaded not guilty Wednesday to making false statements about the source of information that he provided to Steele for the dossier.

BROADCAST NETWORKS LOST INTEREST IN ANTI-TRUMP STEELE DOSSIER ONCE IT WAS DEBUNKED, STUDY SAYS

In an interview with Fox News, Jordan, who was heavily involved in GOP congressional investigations into the origins of the Russia probe, reacted to the developments.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, during a Justice Department oversight hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 21, 2021.  (Greg Nash/Pool via REUTERS)

“Those of us who were in this, you know, back when no one else was, it’s sort of like, we told you so,” Jordan said. “That sounds arrogant, and I don’t mean to be, but this is what we said. This is what they were doing – what they were accusing President Trump of doing, they were actually doing – they were working with the Russians and it goes right to the Clinton campaign.” 

Former Attorney General William Barr last year revealed that the sub-source, now known to be Danchenko, was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation from 2009 to 2011 for suspected contact with Russian intelligence officers.

Jordan, citing Danchenko’s indictment, said he was “bragging that if Clinton won he was going to get a job in the State Department.”

“This is the Clinton campaign – they orchestrated this whole thing,” Jordan said.

SCHIFF: ‘WE COULDN’T HAVE KNOWN’ ABOUT LIES BEHIND STEELE DOSSIER

Jordan also pointed out that both Danchenko and Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann were charged with making false statements to the FBI – not as part of Durham’s probe, but rather, during interviews with the FBI in 2016 and 2017.

“They are being indicted for the original lies that they told back in 2016 and 2017 to the FBI,” Jordan said.    

Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe yielded no evidence of criminal conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians during the 2016 election.       

At the conclusion of Mueller’s probe in 2019, Barr appointed Durham, who at the time served as the U.S. attorney from Connecticut, to investigate the origins of the FBI’s original Russia probe, also known as Crossfire Hurricane, which began in July 2016. Durham was instructed to review that probe through the appointment of Mueller in May 2017.

Barr, before leaving the Trump administration in December 2020, tapped Durham as special counsel to continue his investigation through the Biden administration.

In the scope order, Barr stated that Durham “is authorized to investigate whether any federal official, employee, or any other person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence, or law-enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns, individuals associated with those campaigns, and individuals associated with the administration of President Donald J. Trump, including but not limited to Crossfire Hurricane and the investigation of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III.”

DURHAM INDICTMENT OF DANCHENKO CASTS NEW SCRUTINY ON DEMOCRATS WHO HYPED STEELE DOSSIER

Jordan, a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, served as ranking member on the House Oversight Committee until March 2020, and now serves as the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee. 

Jordan has led the charge on a number of high-profile congressional investigations – ranging from the Benghazi probe during the Obama administration, to the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, the first impeachment of former President Trump, the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and more.

Jordan shares an “inside look” at those investigations and more in his new book, “Do What You Said You Would Do: Fighting for Freedom in the Swamp,” set to be released Nov. 23.

“I spent a lot of time writing about investigations,” Jordan told Fox News. “That’s by the nature of my committees – I just always seemed to be involved in all of this.” 

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

He added: “I really do think that people who read this will enjoy it,” Jordan said, noting that it’s a “fun read,” and adding that the book also focuses on his interactions with Trump.

“You know, the title, no one, no one did the title more than President Trump,” he said. “No one did more of what they said they would do than he did.”  

“We walked through all the important investigations and some fun stories are in there as well, that, like I said, I think readers are going to like,” Jordan added. “So I’m excited.” 

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/jordan-durham-indictments-we-told-you-so

Former Trump administration State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus clearly made House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff uncomfortable when she pressed him on Tuesday about his promotion of the debunked Steele dossier.

Last week, special counsel John Durham charged Igor Danchenko with five counts of lying to the FBI.

Danchenko is a Russian national who worked at the liberal Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and is believed to be a primary source of information contained in the infamous anti-Trump dossier compiled by former British intelligence agent Michael Steele.

That document was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee and was used to help launch the Russia probe in search of ties between the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign and Russia.

Ortagus, who was a guest-hosting ABC’s “The View” on Tuesday, questioned Schiff about his promotion of the Steele dossier and the false narrative underlying it.

Biden Responds to Skyrocketing Gas Prices by Thinking About Shutting Down Another American Pipeline

“You’ve been really prolific over the past few years being the head of the Intel Committee. You defended, promoted, you even read into the Congressional Record the Steele dossier,” Ortagus said.

“And we know last week the main source of the dossier was indicted by the FBI for lying about most of the key claims in that dossier. Do you have any reflections on your role in promoting this to the American people?” she asked.

Schiff first responded in a reasonable fashion, saying any who lied to the FBI should be prosecuted.

Do you think Schiff knowingly misled the American people regarding Trump-Russia collusion?

He then defended his conduct.

“We couldn’t have known, for example, people were lying to Christopher Steele. So it was proper to investigate them,” Schiff said.

The congressman added that one benefit of the investigation was learning that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had given polling data to Russian intelligence.

Schiff was playing pretty fast and loose with the facts.

According to The Associated Press, Manafort gave polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian and Ukrainian political consultant, who allegedly passed it along to Russian intelligence.

On Worst Possible Day for Russiagate Bitter Clinger Maddow, She Invites on Worst Possible Guest

“But Mueller’s team said it couldn’t ‘reliably determine’ Manafort’s purpose in sharing it, nor assess what Kilimnik may have done with it,” the AP reported.

That sort of exaggeration by Schiff was typical throughout the Russia probe.

Ortagus reminded Schiff that Manafort was removed from the campaign in the summer of 2016 when questions arose regarding his past lobbying work for pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs.

Further, it should be noted that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, though filled with Democratic investigators, “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated” with Russia, according to the Justice Department’s Mueller report.

Ortagus then brought the conversation back to Schiff’s role in promoting the whole collusion false narrative and the dossier.

“You may have helped spread Russian disinformation yourself for years by promoting this. I think that’s what Republicans and what people who entrusted you as the Intel Committee chair are so confused about your culpability in all of this,” Ortagus said.

“Well, I completely disagree with your premise,” Schiff responded. “It’s one thing to say allegations should be investigated, and they were. It’s another to say that we should have foreseen in advance that some people were lying to Christopher Steele, which is impossible of course to do.”

The Californian sells himself short. He was constantly out in front of the cameras claiming he was privy to intelligence that he could not share with the public validating the collusion charge.

For example in March 2017, NBC “Meet The Press” host Chuck Todd asked Schiff if there was anything beyond circumstantial evidence suggesting the Trump campaign’s connection to Russia.

“I can tell you that the case is more than that and I can’t go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now,” Schiff said.

Further questioned whether he had seen direct evidence, the representative responded, “I don’t want to get into specifics but I will say that there is evidence that is not circumstantial and is very much worthy of an investigation.”

.@RepAdamSchiff on Trump/Russia connection: “There is more than circumstantial evidence now…and is very much worthy of investigation.” pic.twitter.com/qvw7drsqQX

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) March 22, 2017

Despite making claims like that for many months, Schiff never came forward with such evidence, even after Mueller issued his report.

On Tuesday’s showing of “The View,” the Democrat pivoted away from discussing the dossier to raising the issue of the 2019 House Democratic impeachment of Trump and the Capitol incursion to prove investigating him was justified.

You’ll recall it was during the impeachment hearing that Schiff famously made up his own fanciful version of Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to build his case that the American leader conducted a shakedown to secure an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden’s shady dealings in Ukraine.

This performance was even after Zelensky himself said he felt no pressure from Trump’s call and his country launched no investigation into the Bidens.

Schiff told Ortagus, “None of that is undercut. None of that serious misconduct is in any way diminished by the fact that people lied to Christopher Steele.”

“No. I think just your credibility is,” Ortagus shot back.

Schiff then opted for the verbal attack of a schoolboy, saying, “I think the credibility of your question is in doubt.”

Having boasted about so much with so little pushback from the media, it was refreshing to see his feet actually held to the fire for once.

In the wake of the accelerated withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in September, Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) introduced the Secure America Act on Oct. 13 to stop Afghan refugees from being granted “parole status” into the United States with “zero vetting whatsoever.”

In an interview with NTD’s “Capitol Report,” Rosendale said the Biden administration’s accelerated withdrawal from Afghanistan has in fact created “an excuse to bring hundreds of thousands of refugees” into the United States.

In response, the Secure America Act was introduced to let Congress “reclaim authority to how many refugees will come into our country on any given year,” he said.

Furthermore, if refugees are to be sent to specific states, the governor of such a state will direct “Homeland Security and the FBI to create a good, new, thorough vetting system.”

Under the new act, the executive branch will no longer be able to grant refugees entry and the ability to “travel freely” within the country with “zero vetting.”

Rosendale said the new bill ensures “anyone who comes in is vetted for criminal activity.”

The vetting process will also involve checking that incoming refugees do not have “deeply held beliefs or practices that are at odds with our Constitution.”

“That way, we can be assured that they’re going to embrace our culture and our way of life and and contribute to the American dream,” said Rosendale.

Rep. Yvette Herrell (R-N.M.) also warned of a “flawed” Afghan refugee vetting process in an interview with Fox News on Oct. 7.

“We already know there’s weakness in the vetting process and the screenings, and we want to make sure as this continues, we can make sure the American people can feel safe and secure about the entire process,” Herrell said.

Herrell gave the interview shortly after visiting Fort Bliss, Texas, where a female soldier reported being attacked by Afghan refugees.

“We can confirm a female service member supporting Operation Allies Welcome reported being assaulted on Sept. 19 by a small group of male evacuees at the Doña Ana Complex in New Mexico,” Lt. Col. Allie Payne, director of public affairs for Fort Bliss and the 1st Armored Division, told ABC7.

“We take the allegation seriously and appropriately referred the matter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Payne added.

While Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in early September confirmed that people on U.S. watch lists were among the tens of thousands of people airlifted out of Kabul, he denied any allegations of ISIS members making it into the country as Afghan refugees.

“We have a multilayered, multiagency screening and vetting process to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Mayorkas said, according to the The Washington Times.

An official within the Biden administration stated during a Sept. 14 briefing that the government has put in measures to “enhance the screening and vetting operations” without compromising national security.

“The U.S. government’s work includes ensuring evacuees are thoroughly and appropriately vetted prior to arrival in the U.S.,” the official said. “We’ve also made sure that evacuees are thoroughly screened at ports of entry and tested for COVID upon arrival, with less than a 1 percent positive rate thus far.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/rep-rosendale-bill-protects-america-from-unvetted-refugees_4090369.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe responded to a weekend FBI search of his apartment during an interview on Monday, saying agents handcuffed him and threw him against a wall.

In his first public remarks about the matter, O’Keefe confirmed the FBI raid at his Westchester County, New York, home after neighbors told media outlets over the weekend that agents showed up at his door on Saturday. Agents also searched the homes of Project Veritas associates a day earlier, O’Keefe confirmed in a video posted to Vertias’ YouTube channel.

“I woke up to a pre-dawn raid,” O’Keefe told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “Banging on my door, I went to my door to answer the door and there were 10 FBI agents with a battering ram, white blinding lights, they turned me around, handcuffed me, and threw me against the hallway. I was partially clothed in front of my neighbors. They confiscated my phone. They raided my apartment.”

Last week, O’Keefe said that Veritas associates’ homes were raided after the group allegedly received the missing diary of President Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley. It was never published, he said.

His phone had reporters’ notes from sources unrelated to the Ashley Biden diary as well as confidential donor information, O’Keefe said. Agents spent about two hours searching his apartment, and two of his phones were confiscated.

“This is an attack on the First Amendment by the Department of Justice,” he said. “I’ve heard ‘the process is the punishment.’ I didn’t really understand what that meant until this weekend. And Sean, I wouldn’t wish this on any journalist,” he continued.

O’Keefe’s attorney Paul Calli, who appeared next to the Project Veritas founder in the interview, said Project Veritas paid alleged tipsters for the diary for “the right to publish the material.” The group instead handed it over to local law enforcement, he added.

O’Keefe then added that journalists need to stand against the FBI’s alleged targeting of his group.

“A source comes to us with information, I didn’t even decide to publish it. If they can do this to me, if they can do it to this journalist and raid my home and take my reporter notes, they’ll do it to any journalist,” O’Keefe remarked. “This is about something very fundamental in this country. I don’t know which direction this country is going in. But journalists everywhere have to rise up because we broke no laws here. If they can do it to me, they’ll do it to anybody.”

In a statement on YouTube on Friday, O’Keefe said he was told in a grand jury indictment to not discuss the FBI search but decided to speak out after New York Times reporters contacted Project Veritas reporters for comment within an hour of the raids being carried out. He then questioned how the NY Times obtained information about the searches and what they were about.

The Epoch Times has contacted the FBI for comment.

Over the weekend, an FBI spokesperson confirmed that “a court-authorized law enforcement action” was carried out “in furtherance of an ongoing investigation” in response to questions about O’Keefe’s home being searched.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/project-veritas-founder-fbi-agents-threw-him-against-wall-handcuffed-him-during-raid_4094914.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Former President Donald Trump on Monday praised special counsel John Durham’s work, calling it “amazing” following the indictment last week of Igor Danchenko, who is believed to be a primary source of information contained in the infamous anti-Trump Steele dossier.

Wall Street Journal editorial board member Kimberly Strassel argued following Danchenko’s indictment that a more accurate description of that document should be the “Clinton dossier,” since it was Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign that, in part, funded it and people affiliated with the campaign allegedly fed false information used in it.

“It really has come out,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. “In all fairness, while it has taken a long time, hats off to John Durham.”

“Hats off, because, it’s coming out, and it is coming out at a level — Durham has come out with things that are absolutely amazing,” the 45th president added.

“We all sort of knew that happened, and now we have facts, and I think they’re only going to get deeper and deeper — and it all leads back to the Democrats, Hillary and the dirty lawyers,” he said.

Seconds After Being Shot by Alec Baldwin, Here’s What Halyna Hutchins Told Someone Nearby

Trump said Clinton’s lawyers were always after him and the entire effort was a “disgrace.”

“What they did was so illegal, at a level that you’ve rarely seen before,” he said. “Now, in all fairness, it looks to me like this is just the early building blocks.”

Danchenko — a Russian national who worked at the liberal Brookings Institute in D.C. — was arrested on Thursday and charged with five counts of making false statements to the FBI regarding information he compiled and gave to former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, who used it in writing the dossier.

#Durham: 39-page indictment Igor Danchenko stands out because it makes the linkage between Clinton campaign/lawyer, opposition research known as “Steele Dossier” used by FBI to obtain surveillance warrants for Trump campaign aide @carterwpage + then Special Counsel Mueller probe. pic.twitter.com/XVGvUpfYnL

— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) November 4, 2021

Steele had been hired by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which had been hired by the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Perkins Coie, paid directly by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

In September, Durham indicted attorney Michael Sussman for allegedly making false statements to the FBI. Sussman was a partner at Perkins Coie during the 2016 presidential race but resigned in September after the DOJ’s indictment.

In addition to Danchenko and Sussman, Durham charged former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith for changing the information on a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant application to surveil 2016 Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Clinesmith pleaded guilty in August 2020.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board contended the case Durham seems to be building is that the FBI was “duped” by the Steele dossier.

Obama Just Couldn’t Resist the Chance to Take Credit for a Trump Administration Accomplishment During the UN Conference

“The purpose was to present the FBI with oppo-research that masqueraded as ‘intelligence,’ and it worked. Mrs. Clinton lost the election, but the Russia tale sabotaged an incoming President with relentless media assaults and a special counsel investigation. The country spent years obsessing over the Trump conspiracy that didn’t exist—rather than the Clinton conspiracy that did,” it argued.

“The Durham indictments treat the FBI as the duped party, but the record shows former FBI director James Comey and his investigators knew from the summer of 2016 that Clinton campaign fingerprints were all over the dossier,” the board said.

“A transcript in the Danchenko indictment suggests that FBI officials knew Mr. Danchenko was lying in the 2017 interviews. But they did nothing to blow the whistle, nor to tell the public or Congress everything they had learned about the origins of the Russia collusion tale.”

Do you think more people connected with the Clinton campaign will be indicted?

Strassel, who carefully covered the DOJ’s Russia probe and its aftermath, contended on the Fox News program “The Journal Editorial Report” over the weekend that in light of Durham’s discoveries, former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report “is looking more and more like a coverup.”

She shares Trump’s assessment that Durham is laying the building blocks for further charges.

“From what has been laid out in these indictments so far,” Strassel said, “there is a big cast of characters and plenty to choose from. And given, again, the way these indictments have been written, it certainly leads one to believe that there is yet more to come.”

In a Saturday opinion piece for The Hill, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley suggested that the cast could go all the way up to Clinton herself.

“Steele also has testified that it was his understanding that Clinton was aware of his work and the development of the dossier,” Turley wrote. “Yet during the campaign and long afterward, Clinton never admitted that her campaign funded the dossier, despite media and congressional inquiries about that fact.”

…The question is whether Durham really wants to indict just the tail if he can get the whole dog — a question which now may weigh heavily on a number of Washington figures, just as it did following Durham’s indictment in September of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann.

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) November 6, 2021

The professor also tweeted, “The question is whether Durham really wants to indict just the tail if he can get the whole dog — a question which now may weigh heavily on a number of Washington figures.”

This eBook released exclusively by The National Pulse in 2020 is now available for free.

Many got The Russia Lie wrong. Far from a hoax sourced in Russian disinformation, it was a political hit involving Fiona Hill, The Brookings Institution, the Atlantic Council, the DNC, the FBI, the CIA, the Clintons, foreign intelligence services, Fusion GPS, CrowdStrike, Perkins Coie, top-Republicans, and the extreme naivety of those who trust sclerotic institutions.

We described it for you in this short ebook published in September 2020. Now that U.S. Attorney John Durham has indicted a Brookings Institution researcher, we wanted to remove this book from the paywall and offer it for free, so we could say, “told you so.”

You may not have heard this version because the news is often written by Washington insiders who were okay with using invasive tools designed to fight the Cold War to “Get Trump” — vindicating President Eisenhower’s warning about the “military industrial complex,” which has only become more bold in the Biden regime.

Those who follow The National Pulse know that what we publish in January usually becomes a headline everywhere else in March. We were first to Fauci, Wuhan, and gain-of-function. We published “The Insurrection Lie” on January 13, 2021. Durham is showing that our unique take on The Russia Lie nailed it.

If you want to see where Durham may go next, read this first. Enjoy (and share)! This round’s on us.

Read below now, or download the PDF from The National Pulse.

The Russia Lie. by Raheem Kassam

You don’t have to be a fan of James O’Keefe’s style of journalism to be worried about how the government is reacting to it.

The FBI and Manhattan federal prosecutors are investigating the case of Ashley Biden’s diary: The president’s daughter says it was stolen in a burglary last year; an obscure right-wing Web site wound up publishing what it said are pages from it about 10 days before the election.

O’Keefe says someone shopped the diary to his Project Veritas, claiming Biden had left it somewhere. His outfit didn’t use it (in part because it couldn’t verify it), and he says he informed law enforcement of the whole thing.

But he has some ties to the outfit that did publish, which seems to be why the feds raided the homes of several current or former Veritas employees — before dawn, in O’Keefe’s own case.

He’s also outraged that the feds urged him not to go public with the subpoenas, but someone dropped a dime to The New York Times, which started calling for comment an hour after the first raids Thursday morning.

Journalists can’t be prosecuted for publishing stolen material unless they were part of the theft. And the theft in question hardly seems to rise to a federal crime.

And shield laws normally mean law enforcement can’t make reporters reveal a thing about their sources, even if they didn’t publish anything.

Journalists regularly publish material that has been leaked or even taken — consider the Times running President Trump’s tax returns. Unless the feds know something about Veritas sanctioning the burglary, the diary does not warrant pre-dawn raids. It has all the marks of a political vendetta. 

That’s not at all a good look for a Biden Justice Department already in ill repute for intimidating parents who just ask questions at school-board meetings.

https://nypost.com/2021/11/07/this-looks-like-biden-doj-persecuting-an-opposition-journalist/

Federal agents have raided the home of conservative journalist James O’Keefe and others involved with his organization as part of an investigation into the alleged theft of a diary that belonged to President Joe Biden’s daughter.

The New York Times reported that O’Keefe’s Mamaroneck, New York, home was searched early Saturday morning.

Others associated with O’Keefe’s organization, Project Veritas, were targeted Thursday in raids related to the diary that purportedly once belonged to Ashley Biden.

In all, three residences tied to Project Veritas have been searched by order of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Project Veritas never published the contents of the diary that initiated the raids because O’Keefe said its authenticity could not be verified.

Seconds After Being Shot by Alec Baldwin, Here’s What Halyna Hutchins Told Someone Nearby

In a statement on the Project Veritas website, O’Keefe expressed shock that the Times was even made aware of the raids.

“Within an hour of one of our reporters’ homes being secretly raided by the FBI, the New York Times, who we are currently suing for defamation, contacted the Project Veritas reporter for comment,” he said.

“We do not know how the New York Times was aware of the execution of a search warrant at our reporter’s home or the subject matter of the search warrant, as a grand jury investigation is secret.”

“The FBI took materials of current and former Veritas journalists despite the fact that our legal team previously contacted the Department of Justice and voluntarily conveyed unassailable facts that demonstrate Project Veritas’ lack of involvement in criminal activity and/or criminal intent,” O’Keefe said.

O’Keefe said the FBI raids came after Project Veritas voluntarily surrendered the journal to law enforcement.

Do you think the raids on Project Veritas journalists were politically motivated?

“Late last year, we were approached by tipsters claiming they had a copy of Ashley Biden’s diary. … The tipsters indicated that they were negotiating with a different media outlet for the payment of monies for the diary.”

“At the end of the day, we made the ethical decision that because, in part, we could not determine if the diary was real, if the diary in fact belonged to Ashley Biden, or if the contents of the diary occurred, we could not publish the diary and any part thereof. … Project Veritas gave the diary to law enforcement to ensure it could be returned to its rightful owner. We never published it,” he said.

Defenders of O’Keefe and Project Veritas accused the FBI of trying to intimidate conservative journalists.

I feel like the real reason the FBI is raiding James O’Keefe is because they want to know who is contacts are and who he’s planted at the top levels of government. He’s been exposing the corruption and now the corruption is coming for him.

We must all support Project Veritas!

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) November 6, 2021

Pfizer Senior Director Breaks Into Full Sprint After Journalist Confronts Her About Fetal Cells and COVID Vaccines

When the FBI is totally fine with the fraudulent Steele dossier and the stealing of Trump’s tax return but on red alert for Ashley Biden’s diary… it’s time to disband them.

— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) November 6, 2021

Or this could have nothing to do with the diary but instead be a warning not to speak to Project Veritas or DOJ and FBI will hunt you down and J6 you.

— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) November 5, 2021

“BREAKING: FBI raids Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe’s home”

I’m sure this is totally legit and not politically motivated at all, right? 🙄https://t.co/H5PM5gaJMX

— Paul Mitchell (@PaulMitchell_AB) November 6, 2021

“Our efforts were the stuff of responsible, ethical, journalism and we are in no doubt that Project Veritas acted properly at each and every step,” O’Keefe said.

“However, it appears journalism itself may now be on trial.”

From Legal Scholar and George Washington University Law Professor, Jonathan Turley:

There is a curious story out this weekend on reported FBI raids of writers or associates of Project Veritas, the conservative investigative journalism outfit. Project Veritas has been described variously as “Gonzo” or “guerilla” journalism and some insist it is more of a political than a press organization. However, it fits the definition of journalism, in my view, and that makes the raids troubling. All the more troubling is the cause: the missing diary of President Biden’s daughter Ashley.

The New York Times reported that the FBI searched two locations in New York in search of the “stolen” diary that went missing days before the 2020 presidential election. Project founder James O’Keefe questioned how the Times received the story within an hour of the first raid.

O’Keefe says that the organization actually received a tip that the diary was abandoned in a room, an allegation that harkened back to the abandoned laptop of Hunter Biden.  However, Ashley reportedly insisted it was stolen.

The use of the FBI is also reminiscent of the still unexplained use of the FBI when Joe Biden was Vice President to search for a gun owned by Hunter Biden that was discarded behind a restaurant.

Project Veritas decided not to run the story because it could not verify that the diary belonged to Biden. (The FBI may have just offered that confirmation). Instead, it alerted the police, according to O’Keefe: “Project Veritas gave the diary to law enforcement to ensure it could be returned to its rightful owner. We never published it.”

So why the raids?  Since when does the FBI conducted raids over missing diaries?

The FBI can cite the interstate elements of the alleged theft as raising a federal crime. However, what is the crime? It is not clear if they are suggesting that the responsible parties were seeking to sell the diary or that there was some national security element (which would be bizarre since Biden’s daughter was writing before her father ever became president).

Journalist organizations are routinely given material removed from businesses, agencies, or private owners without permission by confidential sources. If this is a federal crime subject to FBI raids, what happened to the new media policies of the Biden Administration after the Tucker Carlson controversy?

There are a host of unanswered questions. Here are five to start with:

1. What was the context for the diary’s loss? (Did Ashley Biden leave the diary in a room or was it stolen?)
2. What is the alleged federal crime (and what is the precedent for a major federal investigation over such an alleged theft)?
3. What precautions were taken by the Biden Administration in light of the claimed media status of the targeted individuals?
4. Why was there a delay in this action being taken if the alleged theft occurred a year ago?
5. Has this matter been under investigation for a year and did the White House request the intervention of the FBI?

Regardless of how one feels about Project Veritas, there should be calls from media outlets for some answers to these basic questions.  Likewise, Congress should be seeking such answers as part of its oversight responsibilities.

Representative Paul Gosar accused the Biden administration of keeping “two secret lists” that it uses to deny constitutional rights to political opponents. He pointed to a specific instance of denying an opponent the ability to possess a firearm.

Laura Loomer, an activist and congressional candidate, was mentioned in particular by Gosar in his letter, detailing how she was put on one of these lists without any specific cause.

Gosar published the letter on October 28th, which was addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland, alluding to how the government is politicizing secret lists in order “to strip American citizens of their constitutional rights.”

“Between the No Fly List and the NICS List,” the letter asserted, “there are two secret lists the government uses to strip American citizens of their constitutional rights.  But they do so in secret. With no charges. No hearing. No due process.  It is a remnant from Soviet Russia and it needs to end.”

In the letter, Gosar wrote:

“I write to you today regarding innocent American citizens that are being stripped of their Second Amendment rights without due process and subjected to secretive lists that revoke constitutional rights without recourse. This troubling trend has affected an unknown amount of U.S. citizens. Secretive lists are increasingly being used to deny law abiding citizens, who have not committed a crime or used drugs, their constitutional rights.

This dubious practice by your department of disarming innocent Americans without due process is unacceptable and unconstitutional.”

Gosar was referring to a specific case, where Loomer found herself being mistakently listed as a prohibited possessor of a firearm. This was done despite Loomer not commiting any action to merit such a classification.

 “Laura Loomer, a former Arizona resident now U.S. congressional candidate in Florida’s 11th district,” Gosar added, “recently contested her listing on the NICS index.”

The Arizona Congressman expanded on the FBII’s abusive behavior:

“The FBI never notified Loomer that she was placed in the NICS database, despite the fact that she had a gun at the time she was in the NICS database. Loomer only found out she was on the NICS list when she applied for a concealed carry CCW permit in Florida, and her application was denied. Even after being denied, Loomer had to make several more inquiries as to why she was denied.”

As Gosar pointed out in the letter, had Loomer been caught possessing a firearm that she was legally allowed to own – despite the NICS database mistakenly showing otherwise – she could’ve ended up in a complete legal fiasco. Gosar added, “Loomer could have still legally had a gun in Florida without carrying, and she never would have known that the FBI had banned her from being able to own a firearm. This begs the question, was the FBI trying to entrap Ms. Loomer, and how many other American citizens who are also in the FBI NICS database have not yet been notified that they have also been banned from owning and possessing firearms?”

Loomer published her own statement addresing the matter, where she revealed that she’s going to be working with Gosar to resolve her predicament. “Congressman Gosar asked the FBI whether or not they were trying to entrap me when they illegally red flagged me,” Loomer stated, “BANNING me from ever being able to own or possess a firearm, without ever notifying me when they placed me on the NICS database after I confronted former FBI Director James Comey.”

Loomer continued:

“I’m pleased to announce I will be working with Congressman Gosar on ANTI-RED FLAG legislation so the FBI & DOJ can no longer politically target Americans & strip them of their Second Amendment Rights!”

Pro-Gun News reached out to Loomer for comment.

She noted that her episode with the anti-gun episode began after she “confronted James Comey.” Loomer added that the FBI is “clearly retaliating against people.”

Loomer stressed she “had a gun and was never notified that I was on the NICS list.”

This incident Loomer is currently facing just demonstrates how depraved the gun control regime in Washington, DC has become.

Any serious right-wing candidate would make the defunding, if not the outright abolition, of NICS a priority.

Lawful individuals should not be subject to federal gun control laws. Last time I checked, federal gun control regulations are not authorized by the Constitution.

https://progunnews.com/articles/laura-loomer

Call me unsurprised if FBI informants urged people to enter the Capitol on Jan. 6, as Fox News host Tucker Carlson apparently has been uncovering.

I witnessed similar shenanigans by an FBI informant while working on Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller’s campaign in Alaska in 2010, and his actions in all likelihood cost our candidate the race against incumbent RINO Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

Reuters reported on March 3 that U.S. Army Iraq War veteran Mark Ibrahim was fired from his job with the Drug Enforcement Administration and faces up to 15 years in prison for allegedly entering the Capitol on Jan. 6 and carrying a firearm.

Ibrahim denied entering the building and said the gun was his DEA service weapon, which he had with him though he was off duty at the time, according to the report.

Episode 2 of Carlson’s Fox Nation three-part series “Patriot Purge” featured Ibrahim, who recounted that he was invited to attend the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally by a person he knew from his military service who is allegedly an FBI informant.

NJ Senate Pres Won’t Concede to Conservative Truck Driver Who Beat Him: ‘12,000 Ballots Recently Found’

Carlson said in the program that the man confirmed he has been an FBI informant and that the bureau knew he was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and that he invited Ibrahim to the protest.

This same person urged Ibrahim to enter the Capitol building, but the Army veteran knew it was illegal and refused to do so, Carlson said.

Last week on his Fox News program, Carlson also waded into the prospect that an Arizona man named Ray Epps, who reportedly was captured on film on Jan. 6 urging people to break into the Capitol, is likely an FBI informant.

The ongoing mystery of Ray Epps, who repeatedly appears in videos encouraging and inciting an invasion of the Capitol on 1/6 yet, for some reason, has not yet been indicted or charged, even as people with far less involvement have been: https://t.co/hzGZCo9MKe

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 26, 2021

Darren Beattie, who wrote a piece about Epps for Revolver News on Oct. 25, told Carlson, “He is calling for going into the Capitol the evening before Jan. 6, and this isn’t just a one-off, someone, some crazy who comes and goes.

“He goes repeatedly to group after group, redirecting them saying we need to go into the Capitol. … He is everywhere, he’s all around the Capitol shepherding people to go to the Capitol, where ‘our problems are.’”

“Very curiously, Ray Epps is not indicted. It doesn’t seem like the feds want him or have any interest in him — although they did,” Beattie said. “They had him for a while on their most-wanted page, until Revolver News did a report.”

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky showed a video of a man reported to be Epps to Attorney General Merrick Garland during a House oversight hearing last month. In the video, bystanders could be heard yelling, “Fed, fed, fed,” when Epps called for going into the Capitol.

The January 6th video I showed AG Garland, which he refused to comment on, now has 2.7 million views. The article linked here might explain why he won’t tell us if assets of the federal government were present and encouraging others to enter the Capitol: https://t.co/57L1X0VDyz https://t.co/KIrnI4NTzv

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) October 25, 2021

Sheriff Gives Update on Brian Laundrie Death, Reveals How He ‘Probably’ Died

The Arizona Republic reported last month that Epps “may have longtime ties to the Oath Keepers,” a group that describes itself as “a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders, who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to ‘defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’”

Beattie said that Stewart Rhodes, whom Revolver described in a June piece as “the founder, boss and kingpin of the Oath Keepers,” is also unindicted.

Revolver said the Oath Keepers are “the most extensively prosecuted paramilitary group alleged to be involved in 1/6.”

The USA Today list of those arrested in relation to the Jan. 6 Capitol incursion does not include either Epps or Rhodes, though it specifically notes that “Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes … has not been arrested or charged in relation to the riot.”

A search of the list includes more than 50 mentions of the Oath Keepers.

It’s odd that the leader of the group would escape any indictments while so many alleged members did not.

“So there is just a cast of curious characters unindicted,” Beattie told Carlson.

The Capitol incursion on Jan. 6 is not the only time that FBI informants were allegedly involved in a political operation.

BuzzFeed News reported in July that prosecutors revealed that there were a dozen informants working on a case involving the alleged 2020 plot by Michigan militia members to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer over her refusal to loosen COVID restrictions.

“Working in secret, they did more than just passively observe and report on the actions of the suspects. Instead, they had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception. The extent of their involvement raises questions as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them,” the report said.

Then, of course, there was the FBI’s use of an informant to spy on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 in an effort to find connections to Russia.

The New York Times reported in May 2019 that FBI informant Stefan Halper met with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos in London in September of that year.

His bureau handlers instructed Halper to make the connection with Papadopoulos, who was put up in a five-star hotel and lured to London by the offer of $3,000 to write a policy paper on a Mediterranean natural gas pipeline project in which he was an expert, according to the report.

When they met, Halper immediately questioned him — in a “very belligerent” fashion, Papadopoulos recalled — about whether Russia was helping the Trump campaign.Are you concerned about the role the FBI informants are playing in U.S. politics?Yes No
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Papadopoulos told The Western Journal in June 2019 that he believed special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators “were simply looking to cover up surveillance abuse of the Obama administration upon the Trump team.”

Which takes me to my own campaign experience in 2010 when FBI informant Bill Fulton offered his security services to Miller’s campaign team and ended up arresting a reporter.

Miller shocked political watchers when he defeated Murkowski in the Alaska Republican primary in August of that year. He had been down more than 20 points just over a month before pulling off the upset win.

Murkowski responded by recanting on a pledge both candidates had made to honor the election results and ran in the general election as an independent.

Early polling in the contest gave Miller the edge, but the race deadlocked by mid-October thanks, in part, to Fulton’s decision to handcuff then-Alaska Dispatch editor Tony Hopfinger at a town hall event.

Fulton first showed up on primary election night in Anchorage, unsolicited, volunteering to provide security.

Miller did not use security during the campaign, with the exception of the town hall at an Anchorage middle school, where, according to the terms of the venue contract, it was required. A member of the campaign staff contacted Fulton.

I was at the town hall where the informant took it upon himself to handcuff Hopfinger after the event.

Miller had told the journalist he would not give him an interview that day and left the room where the town hall had taken place.

Hopfinger followed him out into the hallway and ended up pushing an attendee into a set of lockers (the attendee told me), apparently trying to catch up with the candidate. Miller left the building, and not long thereafter Hopfinger got into a scuffle with the security team headed by Fulton, who ordered the reporter to be detained.

I came out into the hallway in time to find Hopfinger in handcuffs, which I questioned Fulton about.

He insisted Hopfinger needed to be detained until the police arrived.

In a January 2013 Huffington Post article titled “How Bill Fulton Infiltrated Alaska’s Right Wing As An FBI Informant,” the subject revealed that he voted for former President Barack Obama and lauded his own actions that day at the Miller town hall.

“It completely solidified our position within the right wing,” Fulton said of the handcuffing incident. “Because there’s nothing the right wing likes more than you roughing up the left-wing media and such.”

It cannot be overstated the amount of negative media coverage the Miller campaign received as a result of the incident, with claims the candidate opposed freedom of the press. It did not matter that neither the campaign staff nor the candidate had directed the handcuffing or approved of it.

In 2013, Los Angeles Times reporter Kim Murphy also noted the role Fulton played in the 2010 race in an article headlined, “Why was FBI informant William Fulton involved in political campaigns?”

Miller pointed out in the piece that his race was the second in as many cycles in Alaska in which the FBI had played a part in the contest’s outcome, referring to a criminal investigation that almost certainly cost Republican Sen. Ted Stevens his 2008 re-election bid. Stevens’ conviction was overturned just months after he lost the race to Democrat Mark Begich.

Murkowski ended up beating Miller 39 to 35 percent, with the Democratic candidate taking the rest of the votes in the three-way race.

FBI assets have been doing some weird stuff in the political realm for years; it’s not very far-fetched to believe that they may have played a part in the events that unfolded on Jan. 6.

This exclusive except from Matt Palumbo’s forthcoming book shines more light on the backdrop of the attempts to use Ukraine to oust President Trump.

The following is an exclusive excerpt provided for National Pulse readers from Matt Palumbo’s forthcoming book The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros. Pre-order a copy before it’s banned. 

The Soros Circle: AntAC

In 2014, Soros’s International Renaissance Foundation (IRF) and its grantees were active supporters in the creation of the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC) of Ukraine, a powerful NGO. Through the end of 2018, 17 percent of AntAC’s funding was coming from Soros’s group.

AntAC is run by Daria Kaleniuk, an American-educated lawyer. White House logs show Kaleniuk visited on December 9, 2015, reportedly meeting with Eric Ciaramella, the CIA employee many suspect is the anonymous whistleblower that sparked Trump’s first impeachment, the source of which was a faultless phone call with Ukraine’s president.

AntAC was responsible for creating the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), a law enforcement group separate from the prosecutor general’s office that was tasked with handling the biggest corruption cases. It has investigatory powers but cannot indict suspects. Only when it passes its findings to prosecutors does a subject of its inquiry become part of a criminal case. The agency was established in 2014 at the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after its predecessor, the National Anti-Corruption Committee, was deemed a failure. Western governments funded NABU, which also enjoyed the backing of the FBI. Like all the Orwellian names of groups Soros had a part in, NABU acts independently in name only.

With the Obama DOJ’s launch of the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, aimed at battling large-scale public corruption in foreign states, the State Department, DOJ, and FBI began outsourcing some of their own work to AntAC.

In February 2015, Viktor Shokin was appointed prosecutor general of Ukraine, and was soon scrutinized for helping the owner of the energy company Burisma. Shokin had helped owner Mykola Zlochevsky regain control of $23 million that was frozen by British authorities. Burisma was made famous by Hunter Biden’s involvement in the company, and Zlochevsky was the one who struck the deal to appoint Hunter to the company’s board of directors in 2014 at a reported salary of $83,333 per month.

AntAC’s stance on Shokin was made clear; it tweeted on December 2015 that “One of the major goals of #AntAC for 2016 is to force #Shokin to resign.”

Shokin attempted to begin a probe into Burisma that “included interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.”

This never materialized because Joe Biden (then Vice President) threatened to withhold a $1 billion loan to Ukraine unless Skokin was removed as prosecutor general. Biden even bragged about it on video to the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018, stating that when he attended a meeting with Ukraine’s president and prime minister, he said, “‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”

Biden insisted the U.S. wanted Shokin removed over corruption concerns shared by the European Union. But in tapes released by Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Derkach, Biden and Poroshenko reveal that the Ukrainian president admitted to doing Biden’s bidding. The quid pro quo is proven.

“Despite the fact that (Shokin) didn’t have any corruption charges, we don’t have any information about him doing something wrong, I especially asked him…to resign.”

In another recording from March 22, 2016, the two allegedly discussed who would be appointed prosecutor general of Ukraine, and then who would be their eventual replacement. Former prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko was mentioned. The White House issued a press release confirming the pair talked again on this date.

The Virginia Result Heralds The End of the ‘Obama Effect’.

At the end of the call, Biden said, “I’m a man of my word. And now that the new prosecutor general is in place, we’re ready to move forward to signing that new $1 billion loan guarantee.”

Derkach would later be punished for allegedly exposing Biden’s call with Poroshenko.

After the audio was made public, Poroshenko’s successor Volodymyr Zelensky called for an investigation into the recordings, and the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Derkach, describing the audio as “unsupported information” part of a campaign to “discredit U.S. officials.” They also accused Derkach, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, of being a “Russian agent.” 

The sanctions came less than a year after Derkach met with Rudy Giuliani in Kiev, which reports at the time said was to discuss possible misuse of U.S. tax dollars by Ukraine’s government.

“I can’t think of anything [Derkach] gave me that you could consider meddling in the election. Indicting [Steve] Bannon is a lot more meddling in the election than this. My best recollection is it was all information we had already. I know I kind of got bored during the deposition because I had already heard it.”

– Rudy Giuliani

“I can’t see how you can be accused of meddling in an election that is more than a year away,” Giuliani continued. “The only new piece of information he gave… is the report that $5.3 billion in foreign aid [to Ukraine] is unaccounted for, $3 billion of which is American money and a big portion of that went to nongovernmental organizations controlled by George Soros,” he continued.

As the 2016 presidential race began to intensify, Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office began an investigation into AntAC about the alleged misuse of $2.2 million of funds. An inquiry was sent to former U.S. ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt. George Kent, the second-in-command at the embassy, responded to Deputy Prosecutor General Yuriy Stolyarchuk with a two-page letter stating that the U.S. had “no concerns about the use of our assistance funds.”

Kent pressured Stolyarchuk about AntAC in the letter, writing: “The investigation into the Anti-Corruption Action Center, based on the assistance they have received from us, is similarly misplaced.” That was written on April 4, 2016—less than a week after Shokin was removed.

A few months later, Yuriy Lutsenko was named prosecutor general and met with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Lutsenko recalls being stunned when the ambassador gave him a list of people who shouldn’t be prosecuted. The list included a founder of AntAC, and two members of Ukrainian Parliament who supported AntAC’s anticorruption agenda (while benefitting from corruption themselves).

As John Solomon puts it, the implied message to Lutsenko was clear: “Don’t target AntAC in the middle of an American presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, Barack Obama.”

So what was motivating George Kent and Ambassador Yovanovitch to influence investigations in Ukraine of all places?

The Virginia Result Heralds The End of the ‘Obama Effect’.

The fact that Ukraine dealt with an organization created with the backing of the Obama administration, State Department, FBI, and George Soros. An investigation into AntAC could expose a whole chest of secrets—the least of which being that they’re not all concerned with corruption like they claim.

Memos uncovered by John Solomon from Soros’s Open Society Foundations before the 2016 election make that obvious. One advocates U.S. involvement in Ukraine and offers “behind the scenes advice and support to Ukrainian partner AntAC’s efforts to generate corruption litigation in Europe and the U.S. respecting state assets stolen by senior Ukrainian leaders.”

Another memo describes AntAC’s strategy of developing friendships in key government agencies to leverage within the countries Soros operates in.

“We have broadly recognized the importance of developing supportive constituencies in order to make headway in tightening the global web of anti-corruption accountability. We first conceived of this in terms of fostering and helping to build a political environment favorable to high-level anti-corruption cases.”

One such contact was Karen Greenaway, an FBI supervisor who was one of the lead agents in investigating Paul Manafort in Ukraine. She’s appeared at Soros-sponsored events and conferences before and joined AntAC’s supervisory board after retiring from the FBI. The FBI also separately confirmed her contacts with AntAC before she joined them, saying they were part of her “investigative work.”

One memo reportedly had a chart of Ukrainians that should be investigated, including people with ties to Paul Manafort.

While not mentioned by name, one of those mentioned is likely Dmitro Firtash, a Ukrainian billionaire with competing energy interests in Europe as Soros. Firtash previously beat civil charges alleging he had engaged in money laundering with Manafort.

All of this pressure on Ukrainian prosecutors was happening in the spring of 2016 as Manafort joined the Trump campaign.

At this time, Fusion GPS was just starting to conduct opposition research on Trump, and the DNC’s Ukraine expert Alexandra Chalupa was searching for dirt on Manafort. Meanwhile, Soros-funded AntAC was looking to probe Manafort’s Ukraine associates, and the U.S. embassy was trying to stop any and all inquiries that risk derailing AntAC’s work. With AntAC having the potential to “uncover” more dirt on the prime contender to Hillary Clinton, the motivations become obvious.

Prosecutor General Lutsenko himself suggested that the embassy applied pressure because it didn’t want Americans to see who was being funded with our tax dollars. “At the time, Ms. Ambassador thought our interviews of the Ukrainian citizens, of the Ukrainian civil servants who were frequent visitors in the U.S. Embassy, could cast a shadow on that anti-corruption policy.”

Another Soros-funded group targeted Firtash in 2018.

The Open Society-backed Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the FEC alleging that Ukrainian businessman Igor Fruman and Russian-born businessman Lev Parnas created a shell company called Global Energy Producers, LLC to anonymously donate $325k to a pro-Trump super PAC. The investigation that followed uncovered a $1 million payment to Parnas’s wife from Firtash’s lawyer.

The hunt for any information that could possibly damage President Trump or anyone connected to him was now on.

For the rest, be sure to get the book by clicking here. It’s also on Amazon, here.

A lawyer on Thursday confirmed that Washington-based communications executive Charles Dolan Jr. is the individual referred to as “PR Executive-1” in special counsel John Durham’s indictment against Russia analyst Igor Danchenko, which was unsealed earlier this week.

The grand jury indictment of Dachenko alleges that he lied when he told the FBI that he never communicated with a public relations executive who had been active in the Democratic Party about claims in a dossier issued by former UK spy Christopher Steele.

Although the public relations executive, or “PR Executive-1,” is never named in the indictment, Dolan’s lawyer Ralph Martin told The Epoch Times on Friday that his client is the person in question.

“Chuck understands and appreciates your interest,” Martin told The Epoch Times, confirming reports on Thursday about Dolan’s identity.

“I can confirm that he is ‘PR Executive-1’ in the indictment. As he is a witness in an ongoing case, it would not be appropriate for Chuck to comment further on the allegations in the indictment at this time,” he added.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Dolan is the senior vice president of Kglobal, although the company appeared to remove his biography in recent days, instead returning a “404” error page. An archived version of Kglobal’s website says that in the 1990s, Dolan appeared to serve as the state chairman of the Virginia presidential campaigns of President Bill Clinton, was also the former executive director of the Democratic Governors’ Association, and had served as an advisor to then-Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2008.

A Twitter account, “chas dolan,” that had been linked via the now-deleted Kglobal biography on Dolan, had a bio saying he “worked in every Democratic Presidential Campaign since 1980.” His last activity on the social media platform was a re-tweet of a Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) post promoting a Democrat-backed infrastructure bill proposal.

Reports from the New York Times and CNBC, as well as other online biographies, said that he worked as an advisor to the 2008 Hillary Clinton campaign, served as state chairman in Virginia for Bill Clinton’s two presidential campaigns, and was executive director for the Democratic Governors’ Association. Martin did not reply to questions about Dolan’s work for the Clinton campaigns.

Durham’s indictment revealed that Dolan and Danchenko were allegedly on speaking terms in April 2016 and discussed a “potential business collaboration” involving Dolan’s company.  Later that year in August, the indictment alleges, Danchenko told Dolan that he was working on a “project against Trump” and asked for “[a]ny thought, rumor, allegation” related to former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who had just resigned from his position over allegations about his dealings with Ukraine.

Dolan allegedly told Danchenko in response that “I had a drink with a GOP friend of mine” who provided information to him before he communicated with a Trump campaign staffer “who hates [Manafort] and still speaks to Trump regularly played a role,” according to the court filing.

“I think the bottom line is that in addition to the Ukraine revelations, a number of people wanted [Manafort] gone,” Dolan allegedly added, according to the indictment. “It is a very sharp elbows crowd.”

“Thank you for this. Any additional insights will be much appreciated. It is an important project for me, and our goals clearly coincide. I’ve been following the Russia trail in Trump’s campaign. It is there so what you read in the news is hardly an exaggeration. Some things are less dramatic while others are more than they seem,” Dachkeno replied, according to the indictment.

But at one point, prosecutors said, Dolan “acknowledged to the FBI that he never met with a ‘GOP friend’ in relation to this information that he passed” to Dachenko and instead “fabricated the fact of the meeting in his communications with Dachenko.” The indictment alleged that Dolan obtained that information about Manafort through media reports before passing that to Dachenko.

According to prosecutors, Dolan appeared to have extensive ties with clients in Russia, and at one point, he and Dachenko traveled to Moscow in 2016. He also met with officials at the Russian embassy in Washington, that same year, the indictment reads.

Dolan had also “maintained pre-existing and ongoing relationships with numerous persons named or described in” in the Steele dossier, of which Dachenko had contributed, the indictment said.

“In anticipation of the June 2016 Planning Trip to Moscow,” the indictment states, “PR Executive-I also communicated with Russian Press Secretary-I and Russian Deputy Press Secretary-I, both of whom worked in the Kremlin and, as noted above, also appeared in the [Steele dossier].”

And “from in or about 2006 through in or about 2014, the Russian Federation retained PR Executive-1 (Dolan) and his then-employer to handle global public relations for the Russian government and a state-owned energy company,” according to the indictment. He also had “served as a lead consultant during that project and frequently interacted with senior Russian Federation leadership whose names would later appear in the” Steele dossier, the court papers said.

Many claims within the dossier, which is a collection of dozens of Steele’s notes and memos, turned out to be false, triggering criminal, congressional, and inspector general investigations into how the reports were used for the basis of a secretive FBI surveillance campaign targeting a Trump campaign official, Carter Page.

The indictment further claimed that Danchenko lied about Dolan’s interaction with the Steele dossier when the FBI later tried to confirm its accuracy. This deprived the agency of the ability to find out about the “reliability, motivations, and potential bias” of the source, who had worked for Democratic politicians, prosecutors said Thursday.

Dolan told FBI investigators that he was not directed by the Clinton campaign and wasn’t aware of his dealings with Dachenko, Durham’s prosecutors alleged, although they said he also told the bureau that he didn’t realize the information he provided to Dachenko would end up with the FBI.

The Epoch Times has contacted the Department of Justice for comment.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/lawyer-pr-executive-1-in-durham-indictment-is-former-democratic-party-campaigner_4088496.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-11-05-3&mktids=a8263ec8eb88197421facc8cf19a2a89&est=PZE%2BMtMRBVkhdxuviNSv250suvxxAzM%2FpIAGJmnT3f73OLavPA6J20yYSnuQtEP70A%3D%3D

National File’s reporting is confirmed by the New York Times and, strangely enough, the FBI

Last year, National File published the entirety of Ashley Biden’s diary, in which she revealed she had inappropriate showers with her father, Joe Biden. Today, the diary has been confirmed as real.

A week and a half before the 2020 election, a Project Veritas whistleblower provided a digital copy of Ashley Biden’s diary to National File.

Entries in the diary include the author revealing she believes she was sexually molested as a child and shared “probably not appropriate” showers with her father, some that detail the author’s struggle with drug abuse and the author’s crumbling marriage with multiple affairs, along with entries showing the family’s fears of a potential scandal due to her brother’s new home, and those that show a deep resentment for her father due to his money, control, and emotional manipulation.

While the vast majority of the media ignored the bombshell revelations, perhaps dismissing their verifiability, The New York Times on Friday reported that the FBI had engaged in two raids on addresses as part of an investigation into how Ashley Biden’s diary was obtained.

Read The Full Release: ‘Ashley Biden Diary Reveals Child Sex Trauma, Drug Abuse, Resentment For Joe – Whistleblower’ Published In October 2020

Despite naming both National File’s reporter Patrick Howley and the legal name of the company that owns National File, the article does not name National File at all, nor does the article discuss anything that was contained within the diary itself.

Similarly, mainstream journalists when tweeting about the New York Times article, also fail to mention National File, or any of the bombshells themselves:

NEW: FBI executed search warrants at locations tied to people who worked w/Project Veritas as part of SDNY investigation into how a diary stolen from Biden’s daughter Ashley was publicly disclosed days before ’20 election. She was burglarized in ‘20. https://t.co/pnDYg4FQ6L

— Michael S. Schmidt (@nytmike) November 5, 2021

Whoa. Bill Barr opened an investigation into the theft of Ashley Biden’s diary right before the 2020 election. Pages were published online (with little notice). Now the feds are looking into potential ties to Project Veritas https://t.co/9wPvPqCP9u

— Sam Stein (@samstein) November 5, 2021

The F.B.I. carried out search warrants in New York as part of a Justice Department investigation into how pages from Ashley Biden’s journal came to be published by a right wing website. https://t.co/uCDBZ7t3vf

— myles miller (@MylesMill) November 5, 2021

The article claims that the federal investigators are comprised of FBI agents and “federal prosecutors in Manhattan who work on public corruption matters” on behalf of the Southern District of New York. The investigation was seemingly opened by then-Attorney General Bill Barr, after a Biden family representative allegedly reported in October 2020 that the diary, along with “several” of Ashley Biden’s personal items had been stolen in a burglary.

This is contrary to the information provided to National File by a Project Veritas whistleblower, who explained that the diary was left at an address where Joe Biden’s daughter used to stay.

According to the article, the FBI would not comment on the investigation, saying only that agents had “performed law enforcement activity related to an ongoing investigation” at two locations.

In a video posted to social media, Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe notes that Ashley Biden’s father’s FBI may be setting a dangerous precedent by, apparently, pursuing criminal charges against reporters for the crime of gathering information from sources.

National File has no business relationship with Project Veritas and any circumstantial geographical overlaps are purely convenient.

READ THE DIARY IDENTIFIED BY OUR WHISTLEBLOWER, THE FBI, AND THE NYT AS ASHLEY BIDEN’S

A message from Project Veritas founder and CEO, James O’Keefe.

I awoke to the news that apartments and homes of Project Veritas journalists, or former journalists, had been raided by FBI agents. It appears the Southern District of New York now has journalists in their sights for the supposed “crime” of doing their jobs lawfully and honestly. Or at least, this journalist. 

I had to think long and hard before making this statement. It’s a decision that only I can make. They don’t want me to defend myself and immediately tried to silence me. That’s why the cover letter for the Grand Jury Subpoena we received contains this language:

The Government hereby requests that you voluntarily refrain from disclosing the existence of the subpoena to any third party. While you are under no obligation to comply with our request, we are requesting you not to make any disclosure in order to preserve the confidentiality of the investigation and because disclosure of the existence of this investigation might interfere with and impede the investigation.

But while the Department of Justice requested us to not disclose the existence of the subpoena, something very unusual happened. Within an hour of one of our reporters’ homes being secretly raided by the FBI, The New York Times, who we are currently suing for defamation, contacted the Project Veritas reporter for comment. We do not know how The New York Times was aware of the execution of a search warrant at our reporter’s home, or the subject matter of the search warrant, as a Grand Jury investigation is secret.

The FBI took materials of current, and former, Veritas journalists despite the fact that our legal team previously contacted the Department of Justice and voluntarily conveyed unassailable facts that demonstrate Project Veritas’ lack of involvement in criminal activity and/or criminal intent. Like any reporter, we regularly deal with the receipt of source information and take steps to verify its authenticity, legality, and newsworthiness. Our efforts were the stuff of responsible, ethical, journalism and we are in no doubt that Project Veritas acted properly at each and every step.

However, it appears journalism itself may now be on trial. 

Late last year, we were approached by tipsters claiming they had a copy of Ashley Biden’s diary. We had never met or heard of the tipsters. The tipsters indicated that the diary had been abandoned in a room in which Ms. Biden stayed at the time, and in which the tipsters stayed in temporarily after Ms. Biden departed the room. The tipsters indicated that the diary included explosive allegations against then-candidate, Joe Biden. The tipsters indicated that they were negotiating with a different media outlet for the payment of monies for the diary. The tipsters were represented by attorneys who handled the negotiations with Project Veritas. 

We investigated the claims provided to us, as journalists do. We took steps to corroborate the authenticity of the diary. At the end of the day, we made the ethical decision that because, in part, we could not determine if the diary was real, if the diary in fact belonged to Ashley Biden, or if the contents of the diary occurred, we could not publish the diary and any part thereof. We attempted to return the diary to an attorney representing Ms. Biden, but that attorney refused to authenticate it. Project Veritas gave the diary to law enforcement to ensure it could be returned to its rightful owner. We never published it. 

Now, Ms. Biden’s Father’s Department of Justice, specifically the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, appears to be investigating the situation, claiming the diary was stolen. We don’t know if it was, but it begs the question: in what world is the alleged theft of a diary investigated by the President’s FBI and his Department of Justice? A diary! This federal investigation smacks of politics. Project Veritas never threatened or engaged in any illegal conduct. 

Should the Southern District of New York try to take away our First Amendment rights to uncover and publish newsworthy stories without government intimidation, be assured, Project Veritas will not back down. 

Nothing stops at Project Veritas. 

Let me be clear. Our mission is to serve the public’s right to know by illuminating, revealing and exposing information others wish to hide for the wrong reasons. To quote Lord Acton, we believe everything kept secret degenerates. We don’t mislead or conceal. We investigate facts and potential newsworthy information. Sometimes, as was the case here, after we investigate, we decide to not publish a news story. Project Veritas will run from nothing, and we will hide from nothing. We exist for the very purpose of discovering and revealing the truth, in hope to make the world a more transparent place.

Now, this is not the first time we have been attacked and it will not be the last. We know why.  We’ve investigated powerful people, and, in many ways, we are the tip of the spear, but we never break the law. Our rule is to act as if there are 12 jurors on our shoulders all the time. The truth will vindicate us.

When the FBI and the Southern District of New York seize reporter’s notebooks, it is not just an attack on Project Veritas. It is an attack on every American and our sacred right to free speech and a free press. The First Amendment is first for a reason: it guarantees all the other rights that follow, because it’s about accountability. Without accountability, freedom itself is an illusion. 

So, the great question is: Is this an indicator in the direction that America is going? 

We’ve gone far beyond the point of partisan politics in this country. They ask us to focus on our divisions. They don’t ask us to focus on the things which unite us. What unites us is so much more powerful than what divides us.

The First Amendment doesn’t just matter to people on one side.  It matters to people on all sides. 

That is why I’m calling on all Americans, and especially all journalists, to stand with us for the right to free speech, the free press, and to send a message that the politics of fear will not prevail in the United States of America.

About Project Veritas

James O’Keefe established Project Veritas in 2010 as a non-profit journalism enterprise to continue his undercover reporting work. Today, Project Veritas investigates and exposes corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions to achieve a more ethical and transparent society and to engage in litigation to: protect, defend and expand human and civil rights secured by law, specifically First Amendment rights including promoting the free exchange of ideas in a digital world; combat and defeat censorship of any ideology; promote truthful reporting; and defend freedom of speech and association issues including the right to anonymity. O’Keefe serves as the CEO and Chairman of the Board so that he can continue to lead and teach his fellow journalists, as well as protect and nurture the Project Veritas culture.  

Project Veritas is a registered 501(c)3 organization. Project Veritas does not advocate specific resolutions to the issues raised through its investigations.  

Subscribe to Project Veritas on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/veritasvisuals

Follow James O’Keefe on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamesokeefeiii/

Follow Project Veritas on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/project_veritas/

Follow James O’Keefe on Telegram: https://t.me/JamesOKeefeIII

Follow Project Veritas on Telegram: https://t.me/project_veritas

https://www.projectveritas.com/news/fbi-and-southern-district-of-new-york-raid-project-veritas-journalists-homes/

A sad situation has unfolded after a man arrested for third-degree arson was released without bail and appears to have murdered two women less than a week after being let go.

On Oct. 26, 27-year-old Luis Gabriel Ramos of Yonkers, New York, was arrested after allegedly setting a car on fire near the Taconic State Parkway, according to News 12 Westchester.

Though this was a charge of felony arson, no bail was set, and he was immediately released. One source told The Journal News that “felony third-degree arson charge is not bail eligible,” according to the New York Post.

On Monday, police went to the home of Trisha Miller, 38, and her mother, Isabella Triano, 70, after receiving a welfare check request from a friend who hadn’t seen or heard from Miller since Friday, News 12 Westchester reported.

At the home on 68 Shipman Ave., they found Miller and Triano deceased in the home. A window was broken and both women appeared to have been stabbed to death, the Westchester Journal News reported.

The crime scene was a tricky one to navigate, and investigators had to don HazMat suits, as the home presented a hoarding situation that had to be bagged for analysis.

Based on the evidence, authorities believe that the women had been killed sometime between Friday evening and Saturday morning. They also had reason to believe that Ramos knew them.

A detective spoke to a former girlfriend of Ramos, and she was able to give them information that led to his arrest. According to the Westchester Journal News, she told authorities that Ramos confessed the crime to her.

Have Democratic policies contributed to rising crime?

“Ramos told (her) that he had gone to a home to confront two women who owed him money and that he had stabbed those women to death, that he was never coming back because he could not go back to jail, and that he had been driving for approximately three days,” she said.

An FBI fugitive task force apprehended Ramos in Salome, AZ, 100 miles from the Mexican border, on Tuesday night. Authorities believe Ramos had driven from Yonkers and was heading to the border, but they managed to find him in time. He is being extradited to New York.

Ramos has been charged with two counts of murder for stabbing the mother and daughter to death.

Triano had worked with Yonkers Public Schools for over two decades, and the district recognized her contributions in a statement on Wednesday, according to News 12 Westchester.

“Ms. Triano-Carpio began her career in 1997 as a custodial worker at Museum Middle School and in 2005 transferred to Saunders Trades & Technical High School,” the statement read.Related:Durham Probe Snares Contributor to Discredited Anti-Trump Steele Dossier, Arrest Made: Report

“This tragic passing significantly impacts the staff and students at Saunders where she spent her last 16 years. Ms. Triano-Carpio epitomized a valued employee who was conscientious about her work and was a beloved member of the school’s family. She is fondly remembered as a caring and kind individual who always ask with a smile, how are you doing and how is your family.”

Many are bemoaning the lack of bail and calling for reform, but it’s too little, too late for Miller and Triano.

“Two people are dead now because of these laws, and they need to be severely, severely changed,” President of the Yonkers Police Benevolent Association, Keith Olson, said, News 12 Westchester reported.
https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?height=314&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FYonkersPD%2Fvideos%2F187708096877656%2F&show_text=false&width=560&t=0

Yonkers Police Commissioner John Mueller praised the fast response of the agencies involved in locating and apprehending Ramos after the murders were discovered and said the scene was “horrific.”

“He was released on his own recognizance,” he said at a news conference. “Then fast forward a week later: We have, you know, two women that are murdered.”

“The right description of the scene is horrific. Horrific,” Mueller said, according to Patch. “And our hearts go out to the families…

“In the Yonkers Police Department, we are very, very victim-centric, and we want to make sure that we give them time for us to notify them and show them respect and concern and extend our real, sincere condolences to the family and friends.”

An analyst who was a source for the infamous 2016 “Steele dossier” that contained allegations against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump has been arrested on charges stemming from special counsel John Durham’s investigation.

A grand jury indictment issued in a federal court in Virginia charges Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst, with five counts of false statements. The case was brought as part of Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s probe into alleged ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Specifically, Danchenko was charged with misleading FBI officials about the sources of the information he provided to former UK spy Christopher Steele. He was interviewed multiple times by FBI officials in 2017 as they attempted to corroborate the allegations in Steele’s dossier.

According to the indictment, Danchenko’s alleged lies “were material to the FBI because … the FBI’s investigation of the Trump Campaign relied” on the dossier to obtain warrants to surveil former Trump aide Carter Page.

“The FBI ultimately devoted substantial resources attempting to investigate and corroborate the allegations contained in” the dossier, including whether Danchenko’s sub-sources were reliable, the indictment states. The dossier and information provided by Danchenko “played a role in the FBI’s investigative decisions and in sworn representations that the FBI made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court throughout the relevant time period.”

The Epoch Times has contacted the Department of Justice and Danchenko lawyer Mark Schamel for comment.

Danchenko provided information to Steele, who was hired by Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research on members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. Fusion GPS was, in turn, retained by law firm Perkins Coie on behalf of the Democratic National Committee.

Steele’s memos, collectively known as the Steele dossier, alleged that Trump had colluded with Russian intelligence officials to help him defeat then-candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. However, Trump has long panned the allegations in the dossier as a long-running “witch hunt” designed to discredit his presidency and suppress his reelection chances.

Numerous claims in the dossier turned out to be false, triggering criminal, congressional, and inspector general investigations into how the reports were used for the basis of a surveillance campaign targeting Trump campaign officials.

Steele gave the dossier to the FBI, which then used it as the basis for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court order to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. In 2019, the Department of Justice’s Inspector General’s Office released a lengthy report that criticized the FBI’s processes in handling the surveillance of Page.

Danchenko previously told the FBI that he had acquired the information that was used in the dossier by “word of mouth and hearsay” from his sources in Russia, according to the inspector general’s report. But affidavits filed earlier this year said that sources for Danchenko denied having provided any information that was used in the dossier.

All of Danchenko’s sub-sources have now denied—under penalty of perjury—that they provided Danchenko with any information that was attributed to them in Steele’s dossier, according to court documents filed earlier in 2021. Before, Steele claimed in testimony that Danchenko’s sources were “Russians with ‘personal knowledge of and/or direct access to the relevant information’ and that they included ‘top-level’ Russian government officials ‘at the peak of the vertical of power.’”

Danchenko is now the third person who has been charged in connection to Durham’s probe. In September, Durham’s office charged former Perkins Coie attorney Michael Sussmann, alleging that he gave false information when he spoke with then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in 2016. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty to a charge of lying to the FBI.

Prosecutors involved in Durham’s probe said during a court hearing last month that they’re planning to call Baker, who now works for Twitter’s legal department, to testify in the Sussmann case. The indictment against Sussmann alleges that he lied to Baker when he provided data that linked the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.

In 2020, former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was found guilty of altering an email related to the Trump–Russia investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane, although he was spared prison during sentencing earlier this year.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/durham-investigators-arrest-steele-dossier-source-igor-dachenko-spokesman_4086220.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-11-04-2&mktids=b9112475c3b51621601525d6101183d8&est=gxXKZCXfrmyIEfYoY6iRyjDbHOgfMTrMcPM4ScIVUTH6PeqbMGU%2FoZlVPPgngu5wPA%3D%3D

A group of House Republicans are demanding answers from all 93 U.S. attorneys about what steps they have taken since the U.S. Department of Justice issued a memo directing them to potentially crack down on parental protests.

“We are continuing to investigate the troubling attempts by the Department of Justice and the White House to use the heavy hand of federal law enforcement to target concerned parents at local school board meetings and chill their protected First Amendment activity,” the Republicans said in a letter (pdf) sent on Monday to every U.S. attorney in all 50 states and territories.

The DOJ memo, which sparked much controversy since its Oct. 4 release, directs the FBI and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices to “convene meetings” with state and local governments to address an alleged “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against teachers and school leaders.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland later revealed at a congressional hearing that his department issued the memo after communicating with the White House about a letter from the National School Boards Association (NSBA). The NSBA letter characterized disruptions at school board meetings as “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crime,” and urged the Biden administration to invoke counter-terrorism laws to handle “angry mobs” of parents seeking to hold school officials accountable for teaching the Marxist-inspired critical race theory and for imposing COVID-19 restrictions on their children.

“Concerned parents voicing their strong opposition to controversial curricula at local schools are not domestic terrorists,” the Republicans said, adding that state and local authorities are already equipped with legal tools in case any parent actually crosses the line to commit a violent act.

Although the NSBA has apologized for the letter which the DOJ memo was based on, Garland has yet to rescind the order, meaning that his directives to U.S. Attorneys are still in effect, the Republicans said.

They further noted that during Garland’s testimony before the House, “he appeared to have no idea whether the U.S. Attorney meetings he ordered were actually taking place.”

Specifically, the Republicans demand that the U.S. attorneys provide a trove of information, including all documents and communications related to convening meetings in their respective judicial districts in response to Garland’s memo, and the names of all individual employees involved and organizations that were invited to or attended such meetings.

The U.S. attorneys will have until Nov. 15 to hand in those materials.

The letter was co-signed by 19 Republican members of Congress, including Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/house-republicans-demand-answers-from-all-93-us-attorneys-on-doj-memo-targeting-parents_4082477.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Never-before-seen footage of the Kyle Rittenhouse shooting appears to clear the teenager of wrongdoing.

Human Events Daily obtained the footage which the outlet’s senior editor — Jack Posobiec — alleges is “never-before-seen FBI footage of the Kyle Rittenhouse shooting.”

Rittenhouse, who is 18 years old, currently faces homicide charges for fatally shooting Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26. He is also facing attempted homicide charges for shooting Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, among various other lesser charges.

BREAKING: Human Events Daily has obtained never-before-seen FBI footage of the Kyle Rittenhouse Shootinghttps://t.co/QFAfI7mmJp pic.twitter.com/J8vOOoD3rg

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) November 2, 2021

Biden Rambles for 37 Seconds, Apologizes for Repeating Himself, Loses Where He Is, Repeats Himself Again

In a subsequent tweet published hours later, Posobiec alleged that the FBI “refused to allow this video to be broadcast publicly, and covered up the testimony of the pilot who flew the plane.”

Toward the end of the video in question, near the 1 minute and 40-second mark, aerial footage appears to show Rittenhouse fleeing a group of men.

Three men — presumably Rosenbaum, Huber and Grosskreutz — can then be seen chasing after him.

After doing his best to create distance, it appears that Rittenhouse only fires as the first pursuer, who CNN identifies as Rosenbaum, came within mere feet of him.

Do you believe Kyle Rittenhouse is innocent?

The website of Rittenhouse’s legal defense fund alleges the shooting event unfolded as follows:

After a man — Joshua Ziminski — brandished a handgun and confronted Rittenhouse, bystanders began yelling threats at him. It was then that Rittenhouse looked over his shoulder and saw Rosenbaum running at him, according to the legal fund.

Kyle then fled from Rosenbaum, heard Ziminki fire his weapon and turned to see Rosenbaum “inches from him” and “grabbing for his weapon.”

The new footage appears to back up this story.

It’s difficult to watch these events unfold and not come to the conclusion that Rittenhouse’s life was in danger, therefore justifying his use of deadly force.

Rookie ‘Rust’ Armorer Breaks Silence to Shift Blame Away from Herself

As long as this new footage wasn’t edited in any way, Rittenhouse could very well be getting off scot-free, albeit there will certainly be other facts for the jury to consider.

Conservative commentator Matt Walsh perhaps put it best in his review of the footage.

Totally conclusive. This whole trial is a farce. Rittenhouse was being pursued and attacked. He shot in self-defense. This is absolutely undeniable based on the footage. Anyone claiming otherwise is simply lying. They want this kid convicted whether he’s guilty or not. https://t.co/iWnDoqHUcx

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) November 2, 2021

“Totally conclusive. This whole trial is a farce. Rittenhouse was being pursued and attacked. He shot in self-defense,” Walsh wrote.

“This is absolutely undeniable based on the footage. Anyone claiming otherwise is simply lying. They want this kid convicted whether he’s guilty or not.”

A former Drug Enforcement Agency official faces up to 15 years in prison over his alleged role at the U.S. Capitol despite never entering the Capitol Building.

Mark Ibrahim, an Army veteran who was fired from the DEA over his involvement in the Capitol incursion, shared the information during an episode Tucker Carlson’s original series on the aftermath of Jan. 6.

Ibrahim claimed he was invited to Trump’s rally on Jan. 6 by an FBI informant. He also said the informant later invited him to enter the Capitol Building, but that he refused to enter.

“They labeled me a domestic terrorist, I just want to see peace and unity,” Ibrahim said during the interview on Carlson’s new program.

“Because I’ve seen it in foreign countries, between Sunni and Shia, open violence in the streets. It’s a sad and scary thing,” he added.

Biden Rambles for 37 Seconds, Apologizes for Repeating Himself, Loses Where He Is, Repeats Himself Again

Ibrahim also said he was concerned about America experiencing the same conflict as he has seen in Middle Eastern nations.

“I’m afraid that if this division and dehumanizing continues, that’s where America is headed, and I pray that never happens,” Ibrahim said.

Ibrahim has been charged with making false statements to federal agents, entering restricted grounds with a firearm, injuring or climbing on a statue, and carrying a firearm on Capitol grounds, according to a report by the Daily Mail.

Tucker’s new “Patriot Purge” series on Fox Nation has drawn much controversy over its focus on the rights of Americans being violated following their involvement in Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C.

Should the FBI be investigated over its role in Jan. 6?

Starting Monday pic.twitter.com/MRbx5FKVAc

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 28, 2021

Part 1 of the groundbreaking series is described in strong terms.

“The domestic war on terror is here — and it’s coming for half of the country. Tucker explores how the Biden regime is using the Capitol riots on January Sixth to paint Americans as terrorists. But what exactly happened on 1/6 and how much of what we were told was a lie?”

Patriot Purge (Part 1) from Tucker Carlson Originals is available now. Stream the Fox Nation series and all Tucker content right now for 90 days free – exclusively by going to https://t.co/sLkXnGKCFd pic.twitter.com/nooLt7krPb

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) November 1, 2021

Anti-Trump GOP Rep Announces He’s Leaving Congress

Not everyone agrees with Carlson’s new series.

Great endorsement for #PatriotPurge https://t.co/AYWRXq5WvS

— Jeff Cunningham (@jeffrygc) October 28, 2021

“It appears that @FoxNews is giving @TuckerCarlson a platform to spread the same type of lies that provoked violence on January 6. As @FoxNews knows, the election wasn’t stolen and January 6 was not a “false flag” operation,” Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney and anti-Trump advocate.

Cheney also serves as vice-chairperson of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House select committee on Jan. 6.

Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton spoke out Tuesday after Attorney General Merrick Garland refused to meet his deadline to provide answers regarding a memo to the FBI to investigate parents.

Cotton made the comments on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” with host Bill Hemmer.

“We’re going to demand answers,” Cotton said.

“[Garland] responded in just four intervening days from the time the National School Board Association sent him this outrageous letter accusing parents expressing their opinions at school board meetings of being domestic terrorists.”

“We’re going to demand answers.” @SenTomCotton comments after AG Merrick Garland misses Senate Republicans’ deadline to provide evidence to support his memo to investigate “threats” by parents against school boards @BillHemmer pic.twitter.com/uoipCfx6qH

— America’s Newsroom (@AmericaNewsroom) November 2, 2021

Biden Rambles for 37 Seconds, Apologizes for Repeating Himself, Loses Where He Is, Repeats Himself Again

“That’s a land speed record for the government, Bill. As you can probably imagine, these bureaucrats can’t restock the coffee in the pantry in four days, much less issue a nationwide directive siccing the feds on parents who are concerned about their kids’ education,” he added.

Cotton called the situation an obvious act of collusion.

“What happened here is obvious. The National School Board Association in concert with political hacks and the Department of Justice and the White House colluded in advance to issue this letter,” Cotton said.

Should Merrick Garland resign?

“The Department of Justice knew it was coming, and then they sicced the feds on parents. That’s why Merrick Garland should be resigning in disgrace.”

Cotton revealed that the National School Boards Association’s letter has now been repudiated.

“All he’s ever cited is the school board letter and unspecified news reports. I suspect the news reports are the ones cited in the School Boards letter, which the School Board Association has now repudiated, and which used such discredited examples as the parent in Loudoun County, who was angry when his doctor had been raped in a bathroom by a boy dressed as a girl,” Cotton noted.

“The school board then covered it up, because they didn’t want it to interfere with their transgender policy and Pride month. And even more amazingly, they transferred the perpetrator to another school where he assaulted another girl, all because it would have interfered with their woke agenda.”

The news also follows a letter last week sent by a group of 19 Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee to Garland demanding he rescind the memorandum sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation targeting parents at school board meetings.

House Repbulicans Launch Investigation Into National School Boards Association

The letter came after Garland appeared before the House Judiciary Committee last week.

“Your testimony before the Judiciary Committee last week concerning your October 4, 2021, memorandum targeting concerned parents at school board meetings was troubling,” the Republicans’ letter read.

#BREAKING: Judiciary Republicans demand Attorney General Garland withdraw school board memo.

RT if you think he should! pic.twitter.com/fo6q1MzGFP

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) October 25, 2021

“You acknowledged that you issued the unusual directive soon after reading about the thinly sourced letter sent by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) to President Biden and not because of any specific request from state or local law enforcement,” they added.

The letter has not yet been rescinded.

Way back in 1967, in that brief window of time between the media’s notice of the sexual revolution and its dawning awareness of second wave feminism, Hollywood made a movie called “A Guide for the Married Man,” which celebrated the joys of (male) adultery. Nowadays Tinseltown may practice it but doesn’t (usually) preach it; then it did both.

In one segment the mentor of a prospective adulterer answers the question of what to do if you are caught in the act by your wife by saying: “Deny, deny, deny.” There follows a vignette in which a man so caught does just that—until his partner in sin gets up, dresses and leaves.

“What woman?” says the husband.

“The one who just left,” says the wife.

“When?” says the husband.

“But, Charlie …” says the wife.

“What?”

“Aren’t you even ashamed of yourself?”

“Why?”

“Because of … Charlie?”

“What?”

“What would you like for dinner?”

Deplorable as the whole idea of such a movie is, there is a deep wisdom in this scene, which is this: when it ceases to be possible to catch someone in a lie, it also becomes impossible for that person to lie.

So long as the liar, like Charlie, holds the whip hand and therefore is powerful enough that it is impossible for anyone else to require him to admit to his lie, it’s not a lie.

The principle is basically the same as that expressed by the 16th century poet Sir John Harington:

“Treason doth never prosper; what’s the reason?

“For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”

I tried to make a similar point, as you may remember, two weeks ago in this space, when I wrote that a lie that everybody knows to be a lie is no longer a lie but a kind of functional truth, since our knowledge that it’s a lie can reveal to us the truth.

It’s at that point, anyway, where those of us without the power to force an admission of lying can only shrug our shoulders and say of the liar, “Well, I guess he’s only expressing his truth.”

The examples I gave in that earlier column were taken from the collected works of President Joe Biden—most egregiously the obvious lies that the American evacuation of Afghanistan was “an extraordinary success” and that a $3.5 trillion spending bill would actually cost “zero.”

Of course, the power of the president to lie with impunity is not a constitutional one but is conferred upon him by the media, whose own greatest power is the power to ignore.

Applied to presidential lying, this power to ignore and therefore not to expose the lies means that, even if everybody knows they are lies, they can continue to function as truth—the president’s truth.

Despotisms have always functioned in this way, but usually through the despot’s direct control of the media. In America today the situation is somewhat different. The media’s power to ignore or to promote as truth the lies of the ostensible autocrat is assumed voluntarily and without constraint or fear of punishment.

Why should that be? I don’t know, but it suggests to me that it is not, under the Biden-style of despotism, the executive which is in control of the media but the media which is in control of the executive.

That would fit, too, with the sense that many of us have that, nasty as the old Joe Biden could be at times, the nastiness of his administration is no more all his own work than anything else that’s happened over the last nine months.

We caught a glimpse this week of how the process of collaboration between the media and Democrats in power to set the administration’s agenda works. The notorious letter from Attorney General Merrick Garland to the FBI, as reported in this space three weeks ago, setting up a task force to investigate as potential “domestic terrorism” any complaints by parents about left-wing curricular or other changes to public schools affecting their children turns out to have been not quite what it seemed at the time.

It was a result of collaboration between Garland and a few left wingers at the National School Boards Association, from which numerous state boards have since dissociated themselves, and was based at least in part on an incident in Loudoun County, Virginia, last June.

Then an aggrieved father, Scott Smith, was tackled by police and arrested at a school board meeting after complaining that his 15-year-old daughter had been raped in a girls’ restroom at Stone Bridge High School by a boy taking advantage of current left-wing orthodoxy to pose as a “transgender” girl.

On that occasion, Scott Ziegler, the Loudoun County school superintendent proclaimed that, “To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms,” adding on the authority of Time magazine that “the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist.”

This was a lie on both counts. The Daily Wire reported two weeks ago that numerous allegations of sexual assault at the school had not been reported, as state law requires school authorities to do.

That, apparently was why “we don’t have any record” of such assaults. They didn’t trouble themselves to make one.

Then, on Monday, the “transgender” predator was convicted of assaulting not only Smith’s daughter but another girl at another school to which he had been transferred later as a potential embarrassment to Stone Bridge’s transgender restroom policy.

At this writing, Superintendent Ziegler still has his job. Deny, deny, deny certainly seems to have worked for him.

And, although the National Association of School Boards has since repudiated its own letter calling for investigation into “domestic terrorism,” Attorney General Garland still has his FBI task force to investigate it, as he informed the Senate Judiciary Committee on Oct. 27.

Joe Biden still has his job too, though now we have a better idea than we did nine months ago what that job is. It’s to cover up left-wing lies by playing the role of doddering old Uncle Joe who doesn’t know what he’s saying half the time anyway. You could call it type-casting.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/political-lies-that-cant-be-refuted_4080255.html

The New Hampshire School Boards Association (NHSBA) announced Thursday that it has withdrawn from the national organization following the group’s efforts to target parents.

The National School Board Association (NSBA) recently sent a letter to the Biden administration’s Department of Justice that described the actions of parents protesting policies such as critical race theory or COVID-19 rules as the equivalence of “domestic terrorism.”

“This email is to inform you that NHSBA [the New Hampshire School Board Association] has decided to withdraw its membership from the National School Boards Association, effective immediately,” NHSBA Executive Director Barrett Christina wrote. “NSBA’s recent actions have made our continued membership untenable.

The NSBA wrote Sept. 29 (pdf), “America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat.”

The letter added, “As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

Following the NSBA’s letter, Attorney General Merrick Garland sent a memorandum to the Federal Bureau of Investigations to direct investigators to address the “disturbing spike” in harassment involving school board members by parents.

The controversy led lawmakers in Washington to discuss the matter with Garland this week. Republicans on the Judiciary Committee blasted the attorney general after he failed to rescind the letter or apologize regarding the matter.

“Thank God you’re not on the Supreme Court,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) told Garland. “You should resign in disgrace.”

The NSBA has since apologized for its letter.

“On behalf of the NSBA, we regret and apologize for the letter. To be clear, the safety of school board members, other public school officials and educators, and students is our top priority, and there remains important work to be done on this issue,” the NSBA wrote last Friday.

“However, there was no justification for some of the language included in the letter. We should have had a better process in place to allow for some consultation on a communication of this significance,” the letter added.

Despite the apology, the damage has already had negative consequences nationwide.

In addition to New Hampshire, state school board associations in Ohio, Missouri, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania have already withdrawn from the NSBA.

Three additional states, Alabama, Florida, and Kentucky, have also announced they are considering a departure from the national organization.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/new-hampshire-school-boards-association-leaves-national-organization-over-parent-controversy_4076004.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-10-30-2&mktids=197bd0f40b606ed83674b637f3e6b8c2&est=p712C%2Bt5HdNCPTGox7o3OwoBpXN0rGmvp9cxsrk91vmgG71oQ%2FAFRa6%2F2NbGnguREA%3D%3D

It was just another suburban school board meeting like the thousands of others that regularly take place around the country.

A typical meeting with the school superintendent and some staff, the board members probably facing the room, perhaps a microphone for comments from the public, and federal agents and a helicopter circling overhead.

Wait — what?

While a lot of attention has been focused on the Loudoun County, Virginia, school district and its cover-up of a girl’s rape, shady things have been going on in neighboring Fairfax County, another upscale suburb of Washington, D.C.

Parents arriving at a Fairfax school board meeting last week were greeted by unmarked federal government vehicles and a helicopter shining a searchlight down on them, according to Stacy Langton, a mother of six who attended the meeting.

Biden Tries to Explain Driving Cross-Country in an Electric Car, It Goes Horribly Wrong

Went to @fcpsnews #schoolboardmeeting last night. Heavy #Fed presence. Unmarked fed vehicles, @DHSgov vehicles, even helicopter circling overhead with spotlight on Moms & Dads. All on the night #DOJ Merrick Garland testifies. A little over the top, no?@SebGorka @AsraNomani pic.twitter.com/aUh2QuhaT3

— Stacy Langton (@StacyLangton) October 22, 2021

“This is something that is incredible in America and it’s, you know, ridiculously un-American,” Langton told Fox News.

“Honestly, I have paid a heavy price because of what I said at my school board meeting on Sept. 23 about the pornography and the pedophilia that I found in my son’s high school — at Fairfax High School.”

Langton said she has been harassed since participating in a “very peaceful, uneventful” protest last weekend at the Justice Department headquarters in Washington.

“Since the DOJ protest on Sunday … my family has been receiving daily threats,” she said. “So I have threats against my children by name, I have been followed in my car with my children in my car. … They know where I live, and I don’t know who’s putting somebody up to this, but it’s obviously meant to intimidate me.”

On Oct. 4, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo advising the FBI and U.S. attorneys to be aware of threats against school officials and school board members. He said the Justice Department is “steadfast in its commitment to protect all people in the United States from violence, threats of violence and other forms of  intimidation and harassment.”

Merrick’s memo followed the now infamous letter to President Joe Biden from the National School Boards Association likening parental protests to “domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” The NSBA later rescinded and apologized for the letter.

School Board Endangers Children of Parents Who Speak Out

After being grilled by Republican lawmakers during a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Garland reiterated his intention to mobilize federal agents against perceived threats to school boards.

Regarding the alleged threats against her, Langton could only speculate.

“It could be it’s the DOJ, it could be it’s [Terry McAuliffe’s] campaign people because I know this is suddenly all about the election here in the state of Virginia, it could be the school board, it could be the LGBTQ community. I know there are a lot of people who are very unhappy about what I said at the school board meeting.

“I don’t know why people have a problem with what I said because I don’t know who is in favor of pornography in their children’s school. This isn’t a political issue, and even the liberals shouldn’t be happy that there’s porn in the schools.

“So I’m not getting a lot of sleep right now. Nobody’s sleeping in my house because we can’t be sure that we’re safe.”

Langton speaks quite articulately, but one correction might be offered.

Among leftists, everything is political.

Everything.

“General Garland, you have weaponized the FBI and the Department of Justice. Your U.S. attorneys are now collecting and cataloging all the ways that they might prosecute parents … because they want to be involved in their children’s education.”

That’s how Sen. Josh Hawley challenged Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday as Garland testified before a Senate committee regarding the Justice Department’s interest in parents protesting against school boards.

“It’s wrong,” Hawley said. “It is unprecedented, to my knowledge, in the history of this country, and I call on you to resign.”

There may be headaches around the country today for the people who repeatedly facepalmed during Garland’s testimony.

Hawley zeroed in on Garland in front of a large photograph of police arresting Scott Smith, the angry father whose daughter was sexually assaulted in a school restroom in Loudoun County, Virginia.

Former CNN Cameraman Exposed as Alleged Congressional Hitman – ‘I’m Coming for Him’

The Republican senator grilled Garland on a letter from the U.S. attorney for Montana that he said called for the prosecution of parents speaking out against school boards.

The letter followed an Oct. 4 memo from Garland calling upon federal law enforcement officials to develop plans to respond to “threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” That memo had come days after the National School Boards Association sent a letter to President Joe Biden comparing school board protesters to domestic terrorists.

“Now, you testified last week before the House that you didn’t know anything about [the Smith] case,” Hawley said.

“I find that extraordinary because the [NSBA] letter that you put so much weight on — the letter that’s now been retracted — it cites this case. … There’s a news article cited in the letter. It’s discussed in the letter, but you testified you just couldn’t remember it.”

Do you think Garland should resign?

Hawley had Garland backed into a corner. Either he hadn’t done his due diligence before signing off on the Oct. 4 memo, or he had lied to Congress about being unaware of the Loudoun County incident.

“Maybe this will refresh your memory,” Hawley continued. “Do you think people like Scott Smith — do you think parents who show up to complain about their children being assaulted ought to be treated like this man right here?” Hawley asked, pointing to the picture of Smith being pinned to the floor by police.

Garland countered by saying that parents who show up at school board meetings are protected by the First Amendment.

“Do you think that they ought to be prosecuted in the different ways that your U.S. attorneys are identifying?” Hawley shot back.

Garland answered, “If what they’re doing is complaining about what the school board is doing — policies, curriculum, anything else that they want to — as long as they’re not committing threats of violence, then they should not be prosecuted, and they can’t be.”

Sen. Hawley Calls for Resignation of Biden’s Secretary of State and Defense

But Hawley said some of his Democratic colleagues at the hearing had repeatedly compared parents protesting at school board meetings to “criminal rioters,” a charge Garland denied.

“Oh, really?” Hawley replied, picking up a piece of paper and apparently reading a quote from it. “‘These people are just like the folks who came here on Jan. 6 and [were involved in] the riot at the Capitol’?”

Garland, perhaps suddenly recalling comments by Democrats, replied, “I don’t think that they were referring to the picture that you’re showing there”

“Well, I certainly would hope not. They were referring to parents who go to school board meetings. Mr. Smith is a parent who went to a school board meeting.

“I’ll leave it at this. General Garland, you have weaponized the FBI and the Department of Justice. Your U.S. attorneys are now collecting and cataloging all the ways that they might prosecute parents like Mr. Smith because they want to be involved in their children’s education and they want to have a say in their elected officials.

“It’s wrong. It is unprecedented, to my knowledge, in the history of this country, and I call on you to resign.”

Despite challenges from Hawley and other Republicans, Garland said Wednesday that he will continue to mobilize federal officials against threats to school boards, according to U.S. News & World Report.

“True threats of violence are not protected by the First Amendment. Those are the things we are worried about here. Those are the only things we are worried about here,” Garland said.

“We are not investigating peaceful protests or parent involvement in school board meetings. There is no precedent for doing that and we would never do that. We are only concerned about violence and threats of violence against school administrators, teachers, staff.”

Of course, violence is increasingly becoming whatever leftists say it is (as in the “silence is violence” line from Black Lives Matter).

Hawley is right — Garland should resign.

And here’s a suggestion: Think about sending the video of Hawley grilling Garland to your representative or senator as a primer on what many of us expect of those representing us in Congress.

Thank you, Sen. Hawley.

Denouncing efforts by the National School Boards Association to demonize parents who demand a say in the education of their children, the Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday announced they will investigate potential collusion between the Biden administration and the National School Boards Association.

A rising tide of parental anger has been building across America as schools boards have jammed mask mandates, critical race theory, transgender activism and assorted other far-left extremist indoctrination tactics down the throats of children.

In response to defiant parents refusing to be pushed around any longer, Attorney General Merrick Garland earlier this month issued a memo saying that the Justice Department will now intervene on the side of school boards against parents.

#BREAKING: Judiciary Republicans launch new investigation into the National School Boards Association. pic.twitter.com/O4xGUmrNFQ

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) October 27, 2021

No Woke Agenda in Court: Rittenhouse Judge Says Rioters Can’t Be Called ‘Victims,’ Approves This List Instead

Garland’s memo implied that parents who speak up against White House and teachers union-backed policies are a threat to society.

Garland’s policy came in response to a demand from the National School Boards Association that parents learn their place.

“As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” the group wrote in a letter.

The school boards association has since issued an apology for the reference to domestic terrorism, but not the general tenor of its attack on parents.

Is the Biden White House anti-parent?

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee sent a scathing letter to the National School Boards Association on Wednesday announcing the launch of their investigation into the organization’s war on parents in partnership with the White House.

“We are investigating the troubling attempts by the Department of Justice and the White House to use the heavy hand of federal law enforcement to target concerned parents at local school board meetings and chill their protected First Amendment activity,” the letter thundered.

Noting that the group’s letter denouncing parents produced the knee-jerk reaction of Garland’s memo, the letter added that Garland told the House panel that the letter’s wild claims were the basis of his anti-parent memo.

Merrick Garland tells @ChuckGrassley he will not dissolve school board task force even though the National School Boards Association apologized for the “domestic terrorism” letter that seemingly prompted Garland to create the task force

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) October 27, 2021

‘WJ Live’: After Student Walk-Out, Loudoun County Parents Demand School Board Resignation

“The Biden Administration seemingly relied upon the NSBA letter — which it coordinated in advance with the NSBA — as justification to unleash the full weight of the federal law enforcement apparatus upon America’s parents,” the letter read.

“Parents have an undisputed right to direct the upbringing and education of their children, including expressing concerns about the inclusion of controversial curricula in their child’s education,” the House Republicans wrote, noting that the school boards association appears not to recognize that.

“Unsurprisingly, the NSBA’s September 29 letter to President Biden never once mentioned ‘parents’ or parents’ role in their children’s education — although its subsequent apology memorandum purported to value the ‘voices of parents.’ Concerned parents are absolutely not domestic terrorists and, to the extent actual threats exist, local law enforcement — and not the FBI — are the appropriate authorities to address those situations,” the letter read.

“Parents cannot tolerate this collusion between the NSBA and the Biden Administration to construct a justification for invoking federal law enforcement to intimidate and silence parents using their Constitutional rights to advocate for their child’s future.”

The letter called for a release of all the documents from the group and the Biden administration that were germane to its demand that parents be restrained from publicly advocating for their children.

The letter also asked whether, in light of its new-found claim that it values parents, “the NSBA will urge Attorney General Garland to withdraw or rescind his October 4 memorandum.”

The letter was signed by Republican Reps. Jim Jordan, of Ohio; Steve Chabot of Ohio; Louie Gohmert of Texas; Darrell Issa of California; Ken Buck of Colorado; Matt Gaetz of Florida; Mike Johnson of Louisiana; Andy Biggs of Arizona; Tom McClintock of California; Greg Steube of Florida; Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin; Thomas Massie of Kentucky; Chip Roy of Texas; Dan Bishop of North Carolina; Michelle Fischbach of Minnesota; Victoria Spartz of Indiana; Scott L. Fitzgerald of Wisconsin; Cliff Bentz of Oregon and Burgess Owens of Utah.

Letter requesting federal help on rowdy school board meetings prompted DOJ action

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee started an investigation Wednesday into what they called “collusion” between the Biden administration and the National School Boards Association ahead of the Justice Department’s decision to intervene in squabbles between parents and school officials.

In a letter to NSBA officials, the Republicans asked for their communications with the White House, FBI and Justice Department related to the organization’s Sept. 29 letter to President Biden calling for federal assistance and comparing threats against school officials to “domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

The NSBA board of directors issued an apology last week to its state affiliates for the letter, after Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Oct. 4 directive bringing in the FBI to address “a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence” against school officials.

“We are investigating the troubling attempts by the Department of Justice and the White House to use the heavy hand of federal law enforcement to target concerned parents at local school board meetings and chill their protected First Amendment activity,” said the 19 House Judiciary Republicans in the letter obtained by The Washington Times.

They cited internal emails posted by Parents Defending Education in which NSBA President Viola Garcia and interim Executive Director Chip Slaven said their staff had been in discussions with the White House about the letter before it was sent.

“The Biden administration seemingly relied upon the NSBA letter — which it coordinated in advance with the NSBA — as justification to unleash the full weight of the federal law enforcement apparatus upon America’s parents,” said the Republican letter, led by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the committee.

The GOP letter also asked “whether the NSBA will urge Attorney General Garland to withdraw or rescind his October 4 memorandum.”

“Concerned parents are absolutely not domestic terrorists and, to the extent actual threats exist, local law enforcement — and not the FBI — are the appropriate authorities to address those situations,” said the GOP letter. “Parents cannot tolerate this collusion between the NSBA and the Biden administration to construct a justification for invoking federal law enforcement to intimidate and silence parents using their constitutional rights to advocate for their child’s future.”

Mr. Garland refused to retract the memo under questioning Wednesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying it came “in response to concerns about violence, threats of violence, other criminal conduct — that’s all it’s about.”

He also made it clear that he never referred in his memo to “domestic terrorism.”

“The language in the letter that they disavow is language that was never included in my memo and never would have been,” Mr. Garland said. “I did not adopt every concern that they had in their letter. I adopted only the concern about violence and threats of violence and that hasn’t

changed.”

The NSBA letter backed up its request for federal involvement by citing two dozen articles about school board meetings featuring outspoken parents alarmed about critical race theory and mask mandates, but the reports listed only two arrests.

One of those arrested was Scott Smith, a parent in Loudoun County, Virginia, who was charged with disorderly conduct in June after he sought to confront the board about his daughter being sexually assaulted in a bathroom at Stone Bridge High School.

A Loudoun County juvenile court judge ruled Monday that the attacker engaged in “non-consensual sex” and would be sentenced in November.

“The letter cited a number of interactions at school board meetings, the vast majority of which did not involve violence or threats,” the Republicans said. “Notably, as one ‘example’ of alleged domestic terrorism, the NSBA cited an instance in Loudoun County, Virginia, where a father angrily confronted members at a school board meeting about the heinous sexual assault of his daughter.”

On Monday, Mr. Smith asked the NSBA for a full retraction and apology for being called a domestic terrorist, according to ABC7 News.

The Washington Times has reached out to the NSBA for comment.

The NSBA board of directors said in its Oct. 22 memo to state affiliates that “we regret and apologize for the letter,” which was signed by Ms. Garcia and Mr. Slaven, not the board.

“There was no justification for some of the language included in the letter,” the board said. “We should have had a better process in place to allow for consultation on a communication of this significance. We apologize also for the strain and stress this situation has caused you and your organizations.”

The memo said the organization would be conducting a formal review of its procedures.

• Emily Zantow contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/oct/27/house-republicans-launch-probe-white-house-school-/

Prosecutors working with special counsel John Durham’s team indicated on Tuesday they may call former FBI General Counsel James Baker to testify in the case of former Democrat attorney Michael Sussmann, who was indicted for allegedly lying to the FBI.

During a status hearing Tuesday, Durham prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis and his team said they plan to call Baker, who now works for Twitter, to testify as part of the case against Sussmann, according to Fox News and the Washington Examiner. Last month, Sussmann pleaded not guilty to making a false statement to a federal agent.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper asked Sussmann’s lawyers and prosecutors to continue with their discovery process, which could take months. The prosecution said that 6,000 documents were provided to Sussmann’s defense, amounting to more than 80,000 pages in total.

Durham’s indictment against Sussmann, who previously worked for high-powered law firm Perkins Coie, is that he made false statements in September 2016 when he told Baker he wasn’t working for a client when he provided claims that alleged the existence of backchannel communications between the Trump Organization and a Russian bank. Perkins Coie has long represented the Democrat Party in election-related lawsuits.

The indictment alleges that Sussmann was actually working for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and was charging her team for it as well as a technology executive. Several reports have identified the executive as Rodney Joffee.

In a recent court filing (pdf) on Oct. 20, Durham’s team said it provided the 80,000 pages of discovery documents to Sussmann’s defense team earlier in the month.

Documents were obtained “in response to grand jury subpoenas issued to fifteen separate individuals, entities, and organizations—including among others, political organizations, a university, university researchers, an investigative firm, and numerous companies,” the special counsel’s office said.

Perkins Coie was the law firm that had hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the Democratic National Committee, which then hired former British MI6 agent Christopher Steele to produce the now-discredited dossier now known as the “Steele dossier.” Baker, meanwhile, had testified before the House Judiciary Committee in 2018 saying that Sussmann had provided him with the allegations that a Russian bank was communicating with a server in the Trump Tower.

“This false representation led the General Counsel to understand that the defendant was providing the information as a good citizen, rather than a paid advocate or political operative,” said Durham’s court filing earlier this month. “In fact, the defendant had assembled and conveyed the allegations to the FBI on behalf of at least two specific clients, including a technology executive at a U.S.-based Internet company and the Hillary Rodham Clinton Presidential Campaign.”

Going further, prosecutors said that to craft “white papers” on the allegation former President Donald Trump had connections with a Russian bank, the technology executive “used his access at multiple organizations to gather and mine public and non-public Internet data regarding Trump and his associates, with the goal of creating a ‘narrative’ regarding the candidate’s ties to Russia.”

The executive then “directed and caused employees of two companies in which he had an ownership interest” in two technology companies to “search and analyze their holdings of public and non-public internet data for derogatory information on Trump,” prosecutors say.

The Epoch Times has contacted Sussmann’s lawyers for additional comment.

After his indictment last month, Sussmann’s lawyers issued statements questioning Durham’s case.

“The Special Counsel has brought a false statement charge on the basis of a purported oral statement made over five years ago for which there is only a single witness, Mr. Baker; for which there is no recording; and for which there are no contemporaneous notes by anyone who was actually in the meeting,” said his lawyers in a statement.

The lawyers continued: “Not only that, but the Special Counsel has brought this false statement charge even though Mr. Sussmann has consistently maintained—including in testimony under oath—that he met with Mr. Baker on behalf of a cyber expert client.”

Baker now serves as deputy counsel for Twitter after leaving the FBI in 2018.

During the closed-door testimony, Baker told the House panel he previously had a “personal relationship” with Sussmann because “both worked in the criminal division together at the Department of Justice.”

Last year, Durham indicted former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith with making a false statement when he altered an email about former Trump campaign aide Carter Page and added words saying he was “not a source” after a CIA liaison said he provided information to the agency. The Department of Justice had relied on Clinesmith’s assertion when it renewed an application in 2017 to surveil Page under a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant.

Clinesmith was ultimately sentenced to 12 months of probation and 400 hours of community service.

The next court date in Sussmann’s case was set for a status hearing on Dec. 8 at 2 p.m., Cooper said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/john-durham-to-call-former-fbi-lawyer-to-testify-in-case-involving-former-democrat-lawyer_4070154.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

A group of 19 Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Biden administration Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday to demand that he rescind a communication targeting parents at school board meetings.

The letter came after Garland appeared before the House Judiciary Committee last week following his Oct. 4 message which called out concerned parents.

The controversial memorandum was sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigations after the National School Boards Association sent a letter to President Joe Biden criticizing vocal parents as “domestic terrorists.”

“Your testimony before the Judiciary Committee last week concerning your October 4, 2021, memorandum targeting concerned parents at school board meetings was troubling,” the letter read.

#BREAKING: Judiciary Republicans demand Attorney General Garland withdraw school board memo.

RT if you think he should! pic.twitter.com/fo6q1MzGFP

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) October 25, 2021

‘Identifiable Harm’: Biden Kills JFK File Release, Issues Baffling Statement

“You acknowledged that you issued the unusual directive soon after reading about the thinly sourced letter sent by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) to President Biden and not because of any specific request from state or local law enforcement,” it added.

Despite Garland’s testimony, the letter concluded, the attorney general “sidestepped” the effect of his memorandum.

“During your testimony, you sidestepped the obvious effect of your ill-conceived memorandum and the chilling effect that invoking the full weight of the federal law enforcement apparatus would have on parents’ protected First Amendment speech,” the letter said.

Should Merrick Garland resign as attorney general?

The committee’s letter upheld the rights of parents to direct the education of their children, including involvement at school board meetings.

The response also clarified that local law enforcement is the appropriate group to respond to any threats or violence rather than the FBI.

“Parents have an undisputed right to direct the upbringing and education of their children, especially as school boards attempt to install controversial curricula. Local law enforcement — and not the FBI — are the appropriate authorities to address any local threats or violence,” the House members wrote.

GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio accused the Justice Department of creating a “snitch line” to tell on parents during the committee’s hearing with Garland last week.

“When the attorney general, the United States sets up a snitch line on parents, Americans aren’t going to tolerate it,” Jordan said.

‘Are You Kidding Me?’: Jordan Counters Nadler’s Claim DOJ Became Political Due To Trump

“I think they’re gonna stand up to this accelerated march to communism that we now see America is going to fight the good fight, they’re going to finish the course, they’re going to keep the faith, because Americans value freedom​,” he added.

The NSBA apologized on Friday regarding its September letter.

“On behalf of the NSBA, we regret and apologize for the letter. To be clear, the safety of school board members, other public school officials and educators, and students is our top priority, and there remains important work to be done on this issue,” the NSBA wrote Friday.

“However, there was no justification for some of the language included in the letter. We should have had a better process in place to allow for some consultation on a communication of this significance,” the letter added.

Well, that took long enough.

In late September, conservative parents and voters discovered what the NSBA is. It wasn’t a pleasant introduction:

The National School Boards Association penned a letter to President Joe Biden in which the educators group asked “for federal law enforcement and other assistance to deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation.”

This sounds pretty dire until you realize the letter was talking, in large part, about parents revolting at school board meetings over radical curriculums that included elements of critical race theory and overreaches such as mask mandates.

Over 100 parents and children gathered outside Riverside Unified’s School Board Meeting on Oct. 21 in protest. #Riverside #vaccine #mandate #Californiahttps://t.co/GirCzcvuHB

— KVCR (@EmpireKVCR) October 23, 2021

Biden’s Delaware Summer House Gets $455K Upgrade Billed to the US Taxpayer

In the letter, the NSBA accused parents of “spreading misinformation” and asserted, without evidence, that “extremist hate organizations” were “inciting chaos” at contentious school board meetings.

And then the kicker: This activity “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

In a matter of days, Attorney General Merrick Garland snapped to attention and sent out a memorandum promising the FBI would hold meetings with school officials nationwide to “facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff, and will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response.”Is public education getting too woke?Yes No
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

This quickly soured on both ends — particularly the NSBA’s assertion that parent activists were involved in “domestic terrorism.” Things got worse on Thursday when the Washington Free Beacon reported that emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show the NSBA’s president and CEO collaborated with the White House before the letter was sent — and that it was released without the approval of the NSBA’s board.

On Friday, the NSBA finally issued a mea culpa for its woke behavior, according to the Washington Examiner.

“On behalf of the NSBA, we regret and apologize for the letter. To be clear, the safety of school board members, other public school officials and educators, and students is our top priority, and there remains important work to be done on this issue,” the letter stated.

“We apologize also for the strain and stress this situation has caused you and your organizations.”

Breaking: In the wake of yesterday’s @FreeBeacon report, National School Board Association announces “we regret and apologize for the letter” to Biden admin characterizing concerned parents as potentially domestic terrorists pic.twitter.com/3RBufvWqAN

— Noah Pollak (@NoahPollak) October 23, 2021

Content Warning: What They’re Showing Schoolchildren Is So Disgusting the Law Requires It to Be Blurred on Television

“As we’ve reiterated since the letter was sent, we deeply value not only the work of local school boards that make important contributions within our communities, but also the voices of parents, who should and must continue to be heard when it comes to decisions about their children’s education, health, and safety,” the letter continued.

And, of course, what belated apology would be complete without this line?: “We are going to do better going forward.”

“Doing better” is apparently defined as “a formal review of our processes and procedures,” as well as “specific improvements” regarding “coordination and consultation among our staff, and our members across the country.”

This will apparently stop the NSBA from implying parents who love their children are engaged in “domestic terrorism.” It’s also worth noting that the memorandum does not address the specific inflammatory language and positions of the group’s Sept. 29 letter to the White House, nor does it discuss the prior coordination with the White House.

Also unaddressed is the questions Garland faced over the letter — and the Department of Justice’s subsequent memorandum, issued just days after the NSBA’s missive — during his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last week.

“Three weeks ago, the National School Board Association writes President Biden asking him to involve the FBI in local school board matters. Five days later, the attorney general of the United States does just that, does exactly what a political organization asks to be done,” Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan said.

“Republicans on this committee have sent the attorney general 13 letters in the last six months,” he added. “Eight of the letters, we’ve got nothing — they just gave us the finger.” Other letters took weeks to merit a response, Jordan said. But it was merely days before Garland promised the NSBA “open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting.”

“A snitch line on parents started five days after a left-wing political organization asked for it,” Jordan said. “If that’s not political, I don’t know what is.

BREAKING: Ohio Rep. @Jim_Jordan let loose on Attorney General Merrick Garland at Thursday’s hearing: “Folks all around the country, they tell me, for the first time they are afraid of their government” pic.twitter.com/9aWjNCnohU

— Newsmax (@newsmax) October 21, 2021

None of this was mentioned in the NSBA’s apology. Just a sanitized “mistakes were made“-ish retraction of an inflammatory letter which, by all appearances, spurred the Department of Justice and the FBI to treat American parents as if they were domestic terrorist threats for caring about their children’s education.

It certainly took long enough. And after all that, the apology was neither public nor specific. Meanwhile, it appears the FBI still remains mobilized against the chimerical threat the NSBA railed against.

Some mea culpa.

Sometimes, keeping sane while following politics involves wildly unwarranted optimism.

You’ve got to be a bit like the condemned criminals at the end of “Monty Python’s Life of Brian,” singing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” as they’re being executed.

Take Attorney General Merrick Garland, a man far more concerned with attacking our Second Amendment rights, law enforcement officers and parents protesting woke school boards trying to implement critical race theory-based curricula than he is with America’s skyrocketing violent crime rate or crisis at the border.

Sure, he’s a disaster — and a dangerous one at that.

But at least he’s not on the Supreme Court.

Imagine if a man who treats parents as if they were a domestic terror threat had a lifetime appointment to the high court, as former President Barack Obama thought he should. Remember how he was supposed to be a “moderate” pick, a compromise so that the Republicans in control of the Senate would confirm him? Yeah, not so much.

That’s how I kept calm Thursday when Garland appeared before the House Judiciary Committee and the Democratic committee chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, in his opening statement, began by praising Garland and his Department of Justice — at least in comparison to what he inherited.

“You have assumed this enormous responsibility at a crossroads in our nation’s history,” Nadler said in his opening statement, according to a transcript.

“For four years, the democratic institutions you have sworn to protect — first, as a judge, and now, as attorney general — were deeply undermined by the former president and his political enablers.  During that time, the Trump administration leveraged the department to protect the president and his friends, and to punish his enemies, both real and imagined.”

Garland, to judge by Nadler’s opening remarks, was some kind of admixture of Cincinnatus, Louis Brandeis and Eliot Ness, a man given the unenviable task of cleaning house after Trump and his poker buddies conspired to blow American democracy sky high.

Now, to hear the chairman tell it, there’s a Proud Boy or an Oath Keeper lurking behind every corner thanks to the former president — maybe even at your local school board meeting! — and it’ll take this gentle apolitical giant named Merrick Garland to clean things up.

This preposterous framing of the current political moment was impressive even by the standards of Nadler, one of the District of Columbia’s great horse-manure artists. Unfortunately for him, the next speaker was GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, a man of considerable caffeination who wasn’t about to let a fiction like that go unchallenged.

“The chairman just said the Trump DOJ was political and went after their opponents. Are you kidding me?’ Jordan began. “Three weeks ago, the National School Board Association writes President Biden asking him to involve the FBI in local school board matters. Five days later, the attorney general of the United States does just that, does exactly what a political organization asks to be done.”

Jordan was referring to an Oct. 4 memo from the Department of Justice in which Garland asserted “there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s schools.”

“The Department takes these incidents seriously and is committed to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate,” the memorandum continued, adding the FBI would “open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response.”

“Republicans on this committee have sent the attorney general 13 letters in the last six months,” Jordan said. “Eight of the letters, we’ve got nothing — they just gave us the finger.” Other letters took weeks for a response, he said.

And yet, the congressman noted, it took the NSBA “five days” to get exactly what they wanted — between the letter to Biden to Garland’s memorandum, which included a promise of “open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting.”

“A snitch line on parents started five days after a left-wing political organization asked for it,” Jordan said. “If that’s not political, I don’t know what is.

Is Merrick Garland weaponizing the FBI?

“Where’s the dedicated lines of communication with local leaders regarding our southern border — something that frankly is a federal matter? Where’s the dedicated lines of communication on violent crime in our cities?

“Nope, can’t do that, the Biden Justice Department is going to go after parents who object to some racist, hate-America curriculum.”

BREAKING: Ohio Rep. @Jim_Jordan let loose on Attorney General Merrick Garland at Thursday’s hearing: “Folks all around the country, they tell me, for the first time they are afraid of their government” pic.twitter.com/9aWjNCnohU

— Newsmax (@newsmax) October 21, 2021

According to the Daily Mail, Garland said he was focused merely on “violence or threats of violence,” not on treating activist parents as domestic terrorists.

“I want to be as clear as I can be: This is not about what happens inside school board meetings. This is only about threats of violence,” the attorney general said.

Threats of violence, however, are already matters under law enforcement purview. The FBI doesn’t need a memorandum from the attorney general to focus on them, nor does it need dedicated lines of communication.

When this attention happens to align felicitously with opposition to a top-line liberal agenda item — the radical remaking of American education, no matter what parents might think of it — it’s not difficult to deduce where the focus is coming from.

As for the effect the NSBA’s letter had, Garland said he first learned about it by watching the news, Fox News reported. However, he conceded that “was brought to our attention” and that the White House had discussed it with the DOJ.

If this were about threats of violence, that’s what police or, in certain cases, federal law enforcement officers are for.

Garland’s memo wasn’t about that, however.

It was a notice that the FBI was being mobilized against parents who continue to protest school boards that have lurched to the left and demand zero accountability. If the bureau didn’t do it at the behest of a left-wing educators organization, the timing sure seems fortuitous.

And, despite Jerrold Nadler’s best efforts to portray Garland as being as neutral as white paint in a living room, he’s a political operative who’s weaponized the DOJ at the behest of the Biden administration and the Democrats.

But at least Garland isn’t on the Supreme Court.

Sing along with me, folks: “When you’re chewing on life’s gristle / Don’t grumble, give a whistle / And this’ll help things turn out for the best / And always look on the bright side of life …”

GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio did not allow House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler’s claim to go unchallenged that the Justice Department became a lawless, political agency due to former President Donald Trump, asking, “Are you kidding me?”

“For four years, the democratic institutions that you have sworn to protect, first as a judge, now as attorney general, were deeply undermined by the former president and his political enablers,” Nadler told Attorney General Merrick Garland prior to the top federal law enforcement officer’s testimony before the Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

“During that time, the Trump administration leveraged the department to protect the president and his friends and to punish his enemies, both real and imagined,” the New York Democrat said.

Nadler accused Trump of summoning the nation’s law enforcement officers following November’s election and demanding “they use the full power of the federal government to install him for another term.”

The Democrat told Garland his task is “unenviable … because you must build back everything [the Department of Justice] lost under the last administration. Its self-confidence, its reputation in the eyes of the American people and an institutional respect for our Constitution and the rule of law.”

Former NYPD Chief Calls Big Brian Laundrie Development ‘Very Strange,’ Suggests ‘Something Is Amiss’

Jordan, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, responded to Nadler’s opening statement by saying, “The chairman just said the Trump DOJ was political and went after their opponents. Are you kidding me?”

First, the congressman argued that Garland is overseeing a politically driven DOJ, pointing to a memorandum the attorney general put out earlier this month regarding “threats” against school officials from parents who are concerned about what their children are being taught.

“Three weeks ago the National School Board Administration writes President Biden asking him to involve the FBI in local school board matters,” Jordan said. “Five days later, the attorney general of the United States does just that. Does exactly what a political organization asked to be done.”

Do you think the DOJ is political under Biden?

Jordan contrasted that rapid movement by the attorney general with the slow response to 13 letters he and his congressional colleagues have sent to the DOJ, for which they sometimes wait weeks or months.

“Eight of the letters, we’ve got nothing,” the congressman said. “They just gave us the finger and said, ‘We’re not going to get back to you.’”

But what Jordan called a “snitch line” to report unruly parents was set up “five days after a left-wing political organization asked for it.”

“Think about this, the same FBI that Mr. Garland is directing to open dedicated lines of communication for reporting on parents just a few years ago spied on four American citizens associated with President Trump’s campaign,” the representative said.

Americans have had enough. pic.twitter.com/SFlYQFiFOR

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) October 21, 2021

Top House Republicans Demand Nadler Take This Action on Biden Border Crisis ‘Immediately’

“The Clinton campaign hired Perkins Coie, who hired Fusion GPS, who hired Christophe Steele who put a bunch of garbage together, gave it to the FBI. They used that as the basis to open up an investigation into a presidential campaign,” Jordan continued.

He further noted that a federal grand jury last month indicted Michael A. Sussmann, an attorney who worked at Perkins Coie, for allegedly passing false information to then-FBI general counsel Jim Baker alleging covert communications between the Trump campaign and Russians.

Jordan also pointed out, “A few weeks ago, the [inspector general] at the Department of Justice released a report that found that the FBI made over 200 errors, omissions and lies in just 29 randomly selected FISA applications.”

Last month, USA Today reported that the IG “faulted the FBI for ‘widespread’ errors in its applications for surveillance authority, concluding that the bureau failed to provide supporting documentation for sensitive wiretap requests.”

“Building on a 2019 examination of the FBI’s surveillance of a former Trump aide [Carter Page], Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that the bureau did not include adequate support for 183 surveillance applications between 2015 and 2020 following a review of more than 7,000 such requests,” it said.

Multiple FBI and DOJ officials prominently discussed in text messages of those serving in the FBI’s Russia probe of the Trump campaign have been forced out or left the agencies, Politico reported.

Those include former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired; former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe; Comey’s chief of staff, James Rybicki; Baker; FBI agent Peter Strzok; FBI lawyer Lisa Page; and Bruce Ohr, who was associate deputy attorney general.

Bringing his remarks back to the present, Jordan contended that citizens’ constitutional rights have been under assault by the government and that “Americans are afraid.”

“They tell me for the first time, they fear their government,” he said. “And frankly I think it’s obvious why. Every single liberty we enjoy under the First Amendment has been assaulted over the last year.”

However, Jordan argued Garland’s memo was a turning point.

“I don’t think the good people of this great country are going to cower and hide. I think your memo, Mr. Attorney General, was the last straw,” he said. “I think it was the catalyst for a great awakening that is just getting started.”

Jordan concluded, “Americans are pushing back because Americans value freedom.”

A House Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General Merrick Garland got testy when the top Republican and Democrat got into a heated exchange.

It happened on Thursday when Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan started when he objected to the Biden Administration’s plan to have the IRS monitor the bank accounts of Americans, and then he told committee chair, New York Rep. Jerry Nadler that he had a video to present.

But Democrat Pennsylvania Rep. Madeleine Dean objected to the video because Republicans did not follow the “48 hour rule” which would have them submit the video for approval 48 hours in advance of showing it.

When Rep. Jordan attempted to appeal the objection Nadler shut him down saying “That’s out of order. This is not debatable.”

“What’s out of order is there is no rule that requires a 48-hour notice, that’s what out of order,” Jordan hit back.

“There is such a rule,” the New York Democrat asserted.

The two argued back and forth when another member, likely a Republican, said “Mr. Chairman, what are you afraid of?”

“It’s a video about parents at school board meetings,” Jordan said, growing mor agitated. “Moms and dads speaking at school board meetings. And you guys aren’t going to let us play it?”

“Mr. Chairman, obviously you’re not going to let us play it and obviously you’re going to censor us, which is sort of the conduct of the left today it seems and Democrats today it seems,” Jordan responded.

WATCH: Fight breaks out between Rep. Jerry Nadler and Rep. Jim Jordan during a House Judiciary hearing when Nadler sustains an objection to a video Jordan wanted to be played to AG Merrick Garland. pic.twitter.com/j06MPlJduV

— The Hill (@thehill) October 21, 2021

But the video was shared on Twitter by the House Judiciary GOP.

This is the video of parents at school board meetings that @RepJerryNadler refused to let us play at today’s Judiciary Committee hearing.

Why does the Left feel so threatened by brave American parents? pic.twitter.com/GvJlkWoJa2

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) October 21, 2021

“Judiciary Democrats are censoring @Jim_Jordan from showing a video of American moms and dads. Classic Democrats. Afraid of the American people and truth,” Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert said on Twitter.

Judiciary Democrats are censoring @Jim_Jordan from showing a video of American moms and dads.

Classic Democrats. Afraid of the American people and truth.

— Rep. Lauren Boebert (@RepBoebert) October 21, 2021

The video was designed as a response to the attorney general’s Orwellian directive to the FBI and United States attorneys to investigate parents at school board meetings who object to their children wearing masks in schools and who oppose Critical Race Theory being taught as possible “domestic terrorists.”

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

“Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values,” Garland said. “Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.”

“According to the Attorney General’s memorandum, the Justice Department will launch a series of additional efforts in the coming days designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel. Those efforts are expected to include the creation of a task force, consisting of representatives from the department’s Criminal Division, National Security Division, Civil Rights Division, the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, the FBI, the Community Relations Service and the Office of Justice Programs, to determine how federal enforcement tools can be used to prosecute these crimes, and ways to assist state, Tribal, territorial and local law enforcement where threats of violence may not constitute federal crimes,” the directive said.

“The Justice Department will also create specialized training and guidance for local school boards and school administrators. This training will help school board members and other potential victims understand the type of behavior that constitutes threats, how to report threatening conduct to the appropriate law enforcement agencies, and how to capture and preserve evidence of threatening conduct to aid in the investigation and prosecution of these crimes,” it said.

A group of parents from Michigan and Virginia has sued Attorney General Merrick Garland, alleging his recent order on investigating threats against educators misuses his office’s powers.

Garland, a Biden nominee, on Oct. 4 in a memorandum directed the FBI and U.S. attorneys to draw up plans to target parents who threaten violence or attempt to intimidate educators.

The order came after the National School Boards Association (NSBA) asked the Biden administration to respond due to what it described as acts of “domestic terrorism” against school boards, referring to protests during school board meetings over contentious teachings.

The new suit (pdf) says Garland is effectively wielding federal law enforcement resources “to silence parents and other private citizens who publicly object to and oppose the divisive, harmful, immoral, and racist policies of the ‘progressive’ left that are being implemented by school boards and school officials in public school districts throughout the United States.”

The parents are based in Saline, Michigan, and Loudoun County, Virginia, two areas that have seen heightened backlash in recent months. In Virginia, for instance, many parents opposed a rule that teachers must use a person’s preferred pronouns or face discipline.

“You’ve got the attorney general who’s weaponizing his power, his office to suppress the speech of concerned citizens—parents who are speaking out at public school boards about some of these inane policies like promotion of critical race theory ideology, which teaches the kids to be racist,” Robert Muise, an attorney with the American Freedom Law Center, which is representing the parents, told The Epoch Times.

The Department of Justice has not responded to requests for comment regarding the lawsuit or criticism of the order, which has led to over a dozen state school boards removing themselves or mulling withdrawal from the NSBA.

Lisa Monaco, the department’s second-in-command, defended the policy before Congress earlier this month, asserting it was aimed at making sure law enforcement from the local to federal level was aware of how to report threats and in communication on how to address threats and violence.

“While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution, that protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views,” Garland wrote in his order.

The plaintiff parents, though, say the policy amounts to “a direct threat and warning to parents and private citizens across the United States, including Plaintiffs, that the Department of Justice and its FBI will be investigating you and monitoring what you say at these school board meetings so be careful about what you say and how you say it, thereby chilling such expression.”

That violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, they argue.

The suit also noted that there are accusations of a conflict of interest because Garland’s son-in-law, Alexander Tanner, is the co-founder and president of Panorama Education, which sells materials and conducts surveys for school districts across the country, including some that appear to have elements of critical race theory.

“He’s got a stake in this, a personal stake in this, through his family members,” Muise said.

Panorama Education declined to comment beyond pointing The Epoch Times to its website, where it disputes allegations it’s linked to critical race theory.

The suit was filed in federal court in Washington. It asks the court to permanently enjoin Garland’s order.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/michigan-and-virginia-parents-sue-ag-garland-over-order-to-investigate-violent-threats-against-teachers-school-boards_4059416.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Attorney General Merrick Garland has now repeatedly and clearly demonstrated his intention to tow the party line, as it drifts inexorably from Constitutional principles and the Bill of Rights—in lieu of serving as an independent and objective enforcer of federal law.

He first exposed his partisan contempt for objective facts in a speech given back on June 15. There he stated that “In the FBI’s view, the top domestic violent extremist threat comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.” Not Antifa. Not BLM.

As FBI field agents are well aware, the domestic threat posed by white supremacists was successfully dissipated in the ‘80s and ‘90s, largely as a result of high-risk large-scale undercover operations targeting the Aryan Nations and other white militia organizations. Garland’s speech parroted statements made in congressional testimony by FBI Director Christopher Wray on Sept. 17, 2020, wherein much the same conclusory statements were made, unsupported by data, reflecting Democrat talking points rather than independent determinations based on articulated facts.

Garland’s and Wray’s statements have lent credibility to the newly expanded definition of white supremacy to include all those who disagree with progressive policies—the moral justification thus being created for repressive tactics directed at eliminating dissent. And—significantly—at ostracizing dissenters.

Garland has now taken another step in the politicization of the Department of Justice, by categorizing parents disturbed by progressive indoctrination of their children as domestic terrorists. And the FBI, whose resources are already overtaxed—approximately 10,000 special agents to protect a nation of 330,000,000 plus—has been directed to investigate this imminent threat to national security.

In his Oct. 4 memorandum to the FBI Director, Garland warns parents that “in the coming days, the Department [of Justice] will announce a series of measures designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.”

Missing in the memo is any clue as to the federal jurisdiction that might justify the FBI’s involvement in what appears to be in essence the suppression of opposing views—suppression of the expression of opinions which are contrary to the views propagated by individuals and institutions currently wielding the reins of power. Garland’s misuse of the government’s overwhelming power—proscribed by the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights—is barred precisely because the Framers anticipated such abuse of power, and went to great lengths to prevent it.

The assault on the Bill of Rights appears to be coordinated and nearly overwhelming in nature.

From the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial, denied to the Jan. 6 unarmed Capitol Hill trespassers, to the utilization of tech companies as proxies to circumvent First Amendment limitations on government action, the onslaught has many fronts.

Apple is now monitoring and reviewing the images maintained by millions of customers on the cell phones that it sells. Ostensibly a measure to identify pedophiles, this is realistically a first step to monitor the public at large—actions by a powerful corporation that would be clearly illegal if conducted by the government without a warrant.

The right to a fair trial by a jury of one’s peers—the Sixth Amendment—was effectively eviscerated by the Biden administration’s declaration that mounted Customs and Border Protection officers were guilty of whipping illegal Haitian immigrants prior to any formal charges being brought

The administration’s disregard for free speech rights of millions of federal employees is evidenced by the White House’s list of prohibited words and phrases—a list that altogether too many corporate entities are quick to incorporate into their own private sector cultures.

Thus the Government achieves its proscribed goal of controlling speech through indirect means. And as is, or should be, self-evident, controlling permissible language is the first step toward controlling permissible thought.

An assault on property rights—heretofore secured by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments’ due process clauses—has utilized the back door of COVID-19 to justify regulation of small businesses, circumventing the legislative process, and severely restricting the exercise of business decisions by small entrepreneurs.

Civil rights have been curtailed by the insidious substitution of equity for equality—and by the insertion of critical race theory in lieu of the content of character theory of Martin Luther King.

The constitutional right to “security of person,” guaranteed in Article Three, along with the pursuit of happiness , as articulated in the Declaration of Independence, are being subtly undermined by the defund the police movement. How can happiness be pursued in an insecure, crime-ridden environment?

Rather, the assault on law-enforcement authorities has been ramped up. In the military, police, and in the Department of Homeland Security, witch-hunts are underway, with the search for dissenting opinion—mislabeled as a search for white supremacist conspirators—being encouraged and pursued by the media and left-wing think tanks. And the failure to provide secure borders undermines security on a number of levels, from the entry of violent criminals to the propagation of the dreaded virus.

Diversity of opinion is being routed out, and replaced by unquestioning obedience and propagation of dogma. How can the First Amendment’s freedom of religion be pursued when church and synagogue doors are barred whenever lock-downs are declared, while the doors to taverns remain open?

Powerful political leaders on the left—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton—continually question the relevance of the Constitution, while enthusiastically supporting movements, such as the 1619 rewriting of American history, questioning the Framers’ relevance in the modern age.

The Second Amendment’s right to bear arms has been under constant attack from the Democrat Party. The attempt to place David Chipman, one of its most fervent opponents as head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms proved beyond the pale, even for middle of the road supporters of firearm bans. However, individuals such as Mark and Patricia McCloskey of St. Louis, who have exercised their Second Amendment rights in the defense of their security and their property, have been ridiculed by the media and prosecuted by local authorities.

The elephant in the room regarding blatant disregard of our precious rights is of course COVID-19. The Biden administration, as well as state executive officers, have used the pandemic to justify the sweeping away the right to privacy that justice William Douglas interpreted into the Constitution, as emanating from the “penumbra of rights“ that the founding document enshrined as guarantees for future generations.

These privacy rights have for years been used to justify the legalization of abortion as part of a woman’s “right to choose.” Yet these privacy rights and the right to choose are disregarded entirely when it comes to the right to choose as to whether or not a medical product is to be injected into one’s body.

Although members of the military have historically been bound by certain limitations on their ability to communicate personal views, the imprisonment of Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller subsequent to his statements dissenting from disastrous decisions made by general command officers with regard to Afghanistan, is chilling indeed.

The move, in addition to being clearly intended to send a message to others in the military who might be so inclined, is additionally another step in the administration program to suppress and eliminate dissenting voices in the military and federal agencies.

To further enforce the message, Marine officials are also investigating Lance Corporal Hunter Clark for having consented to appear at the podium with non-candidate Donald Trump at a rally on Saturday, Sept. 25. Clark received national attention after rescuing an infant in the course of the chaotic evaluation at Kabul airport in Afghanistan.

What we are witnessing is a purge.

The true purpose of using vaccination mandates to fire employees from schools, civil service positions, hospitals, airlines, law enforcement, has nothing to do with COVID-19 and everything to do with disenfranchisement and diminution of our previously inalienable rights. The purpose is to weed out dissent.

It is the next step, following and building upon the redefinition of white supremacy to include any who disagrees with the party line, anyone who dissents. Just as the labeling of angry parents as domestic terrorists is simply a subterfuge to weed out dissent. It is a campaign to disempower, to eliminate those with dissenting ideas, ideas that diverge from authorized, “correct” thought. Those who could pose a threat to the power elite.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-purge-is-starting-with-the-bill-of-rights_4048928.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe has his pension back even after being fired for cause because he lied about leaks to the media — and it’s a political decision former President Donald Trump is calling “another mockery to our country.”

According to the Daily Caller, McCabe will get his pension back as part of a settlement with the Department of Justice announced last week.

“In addition to receiving his pension going forward, McCabe will also receive $200,000 in back pension pay and $539,000 in attorneys’ fees, as part of an agreement with the DOJ signed Thursday,” the Daily Caller reported.

“Then-Attorney General (AG) Jeff Sessions fired McCabe two days before his scheduled retirement in March 2018, after an inspector general (IG) report found that he authorized leaks about the FBI’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation.”

That IG report found that in 2016, McCabe was behind a leak to The Wall Street Journal regarding an investigation into the Clinton Foundation for an article published nine days prior to the presidential election. In the piece, the Journal reported there were disagreements in the FBI camp regarding how to investigate Clinton emails discovered on the laptop of disgraced former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner.

Some Americans Already Pulling Their Accounts from Credit Unions Over Dems’ IRS Spying Plan

Weiner, the husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, had his laptop seized because of an unrelated investigation into an alleged sexual relationship with a minor.

The IG report concluded McCabe’s leak was done “in a manner designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of Department leadership” and “concluded that McCabe’s disclosure of the existence of an ongoing investigation in this manner violated the FBI’s and the Department’s media policy and constituted misconduct.”

In addition, the report found he “lacked candor” when he talked with investigators — a euphemistic way of noting that if he didn’t lie by commission, a lie of omission wasn’t out of the question. At the very least, the report indicated he elided over the truth during his discussions with authorities on the matter; two of these talks were under oath.

Whatever the case may have been, according to a Daily Beast report from January of 2020, McCabe admitted some form of mendacity in his talks with investigators: “Yeah, I’m sorry,” he told internal FBI investigators, after originally telling the FBI he didn’t “know how the Journal story came to be.”

Does this prove the Biden Justice Department doesn’t care about justice?Yes No

Thus, McCabe was fired for cause by Sessions before his retirement so that he wouldn’t collect his pension. McCabe felt he was wronged as part of an “unconstitutional plan and scheme to discredit and remove DOJ and FBI employees who were deemed to be his partisan opponents because they were not politically loyal to him,” his suit alleged.

The DOJ, now under new management, was apparently inclined to agree — something which didn’t make the former president happy.

“Isn’t it terrible that all of Andrew McCabe’s benefits, pensions, salary, etc., were just fully reinstated by the Justice Department?” Trump said in a statement Friday, according to The Hill.

“This is yet another mockery to our Country. Among other things, McCabe’s wife received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Hillary Clinton and the Democrats while Crooked Hillary was under investigation, which was quickly dropped, of course.”

McCabe’s wife Jill, who ran for state Senate in Virginia in 2015, received a $1.2 million donation from Hillary Clinton.

Gabby Petito’s Mother Has Only 4 Words After Horrific Autopsy Conclusion

“What a bad chapter this has been for the once storied FBI—I hate to see it happening, so many GREAT people work there,” Trump said.

Of course, McCabe is spinning the Biden Department of Justice deciding the Trump Department of Justice was too harsh on one of the Democrats’ own as some sort of victory for truth, justice and the American way.

“Politics should never play a role in the fair administration of justice and Civil Service personnel decisions,” said McCabe in a statement to The New York Times.

“I hope that this result encourages the men and women of the FBI to continue to protect the American people by standing up for the truth and doing their jobs without fear of political retaliation.”

But he still worries:

“I mean, I feel better, but I don’t feel free,” McCabe told CNN, according to the Washington Examiner. “I mean, I don’t kid myself to think that the president is going to put aside his horrific judgment, his constant lying, and his tormenting of me and my family. I’m sure this will just add another log to the fire. He’ll probably be saying all kinds of things about it tomorrow. But you know what, I’m just to the point where I don’t care. I don’t care what that guy has to say.”

Fine. Care about the facts. You “lacked candor” — what an understatement — when you talked to the FBI about your self-serving leaks about Hillary Clinton and then went ballistic when you were expected to be held accountable for that.

You called it a political witch-hunt and are now trying to paint this as a vendetta by Donald Trump when it was your own malfeasance that led to this.

“What a bad chapter this has been for the once storied FBI,” indeed. McCabe may not care about what Trump says, except the former president got it right.

The only good thing to come out of this settlement is that — pension or not — Americans can now look in the rearview mirror for the days when McDabe was a high-ranking FBI official — even the bureau’s acting director at one point, as the New York Post noted.

The bad part is with President Joe Biden in the White House and Merrick Garland as attorney general, the country can’t expect much of an improvement.

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter Wednesday to Attorney General Merrick Garland to demand an explanation concerning his memorandum to the Federal Bureau of Investigation over “serious concerns” regarding parents at school board meetings.

The letter, first reported by the Daily Caller, was led by Lousiana Rep. Mike Johnson and joined by 18 additional GOP House members on the committee.

“This letter is to express our serious concerns about your recent decision to involve federal law enforcement entities in local school board debates and to stifle First Amendment-protected political speech. Your actions are not just inappropriate, but also appear to have been improperly influenced by politics and by your family’s interest in the matter,” the representatives wrote.

“As members of the House Committee on the Judiciary, we have a responsibility to conduct oversight of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and we trust that you will fully cooperate with our inquiry,” they added.

Part of the letter’s request included a call for Garland to submit himself to an ethics investigation.

(DAILY CALLER OBTAINED) — … by Henry Rodgers

The House members concluded with the “request you promptly consult with the designated agency ethics official to determine if your actions in this matter have resulted in an ethics violation for a breach of impartiality.”

“Judiciary Republicans trust that Mr. Garland will submit to our requested ethics inquiry, publicly release its results, and take whatever actions are necessary to protect the integrity of the office of Attorney General, including either recusing himself from this issue and/or rescinding the October 4th memorandum,” Johnson told the Daily Caller.

Part of the controversy stems from allegations that Garland’s son-in-law profits from work to promote critical race theory.

“The Justice Department usually has very broad standards for the appearance of impropriety that would trigger at least the inquiry into whether there was a conflict of interest,” former U.S. Assistant Attorney Andy McCarthy said during a recent interview with Fox News.

Garland’s son-in-law reportedly co-founded and works with the company Panorama Education. An educational workshop released by the company includes materials that promote critical race theory and fixate on overcoming “white supremacy,” according to Fox.

“The idea is that Garland’s son-in-law is profiting lucratively from peddling this stuff to the schools. And Garland, even though the Justice Department doesn’t appear to have jurisdiction to do what it’s done, is siccing the FBI on parents who are dissenting against these kinds of materials,” McCarthy added.

Garland’s Family Ties to CRT Exposed After He Threatened to Curb Parents’ ‘Intimidation’ of School Boards

Garland sent the Oct. 4 memorandum to the FBI concerning “threats” against school personnel.

“In recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s schools,” the attorney general wrote.

“The Department takes these incidents seriously and is committed to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate,” Garland continued.

“In the coming days, the Department will announce a series of measures designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel,” he went on. “Coordination and partnership with local law enforcement is critical to implementing these measures for the benefit of our nation’s nearly 14,000 public school districts.”

A relatively new type of search warrant that attempts to compel search engines to hand over information on anybody in a certain area who has entered in a set of terms is a violation of the U.S. Constitution, experts say.

“Keyword warrants are a blatantly unconstitutional way to transform every Google search into a government tracking tool,” Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, told The Epoch Times in an email.

Law enforcement in the so-called keyword warrants seek records relating to searches in a bid to advance an investigation.

Most of the warrants, which are similar to geoforce warrants, have sought information from Google.

In one of the earliest known examples, a police officer in Hennepin County in 2017 asked Google to turn over details of any user in Edina who searched four terms, all containing the name “Douglas,” between Dec. 1, 2016, and Jan. 7, 2017.

Details sought included names, addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, social security numbers, and payment information.

The population of Edina is about 53,000.

The warrant was approved by a judge but it wasn’t clear whether Google complied. Court records for the case weren’t available.

A federal judge signed off on five warrants for a probe into bombings in Austin, Texas, the following year. The warrants sought information from Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. FBI investigators wanted details of any users who searched for addresses where the bombs were set off. According to court records, the warrants were executed.

Another keyword warrant was authorized by a federal judge in June 2020. Investigators wanted information on any Google users who searched for the address of a residence in Kissimmee, Florida, which housed a government witness in the case against singer R. Kelly. Somebody set a vehicle on fire outside the residence, prompting an investigation.

According to court records, Google handed over records relating to Michael Williams of Valdosta, Georgia. That ultimately led to Williams being arrested. Williams, an associate of Kelly, pleaded guilty to arson in April. Kelly was found guilty last month of multiple counts including racketeering, sexual exploitation of a child, bribery, kidnapping, and sex trafficking charges.

The existence of the rare type of warrants was highlighted recently by Forbes, which found federal investigators in Wisconsin in 2019 had asked Google to hand over information on any users who searched for a minor who was allegedly kidnapped and sexually abused.

The warrant was accidentally unsealed and reviewed by Forbes before being sealed again.

One other previously unreported keyword warrant was found in California federal court. It related to Google and sought information on users who searched for six terms.

The FBI and the Edina Police Department did not respond to requests for comment.

Aaron Mackey, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the warrants don’t appear to be lawful under the Constitution.

“Should a warrant be issued for this? I just think the answer is pretty simple: it’s no. Because the cops are using the warrant to get the suspect, to find the suspect. They’re not establishing probable cause to identify the suspect or locate that particular person or place or thing and search it,” he told The Epoch Times. “It’s just sort of the opposite of how everything should work, and therefore it’s a pretty significant Fourth Amendment violation.”

“Keyword warrants pervert the promise of the 4th Amendment. Under our constitution, warrants are supposed to be limited to a particular individual, based on showing of probable cause. Keyword warrants provide information on overwhelmingly innocent people, potentially tens of thousands of people at a time,” Cahn added.

Because many of the records relating to the searches are sealed, it’s not clear whether Google or other companies that have been targeted by the warrants have challenged them in court.

Mackey recommends members of the public push back and demand Google stop complying with the warrants and also work on pressuring law enforcement agencies who are utilizing them.

Google did not respond to a request for comment. Microsoft declined to comment. Yahoo could not be reached.

A DuckDuckGo spokeswoman told The Epoch Times via email that the way its engine is set up precludes being targeted by keyword warrants.

“DuckDuckGo doesn’t have any search histories by design,” she said. “And because we do not have search histories, we have never been served with a warrant or other law enforcement demand for search histories of any kind, keyword warrants or otherwise.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/keyword-warrants-violate-constitutional-rights-experts_4044508.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Former U.S. Assistant Attorney Andy McCarthy said U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s son-in-law profits from his work to promote critical race theory.

“The Justice Department usually has very broad standards for the appearance of impropriety that would trigger at least the inquiry into whether there was a conflict of interest,” McCarthy said.

Garland’s son-in-law reportedly co-founded and works with the company Panorama Education. An educational workshop released by the company includes materials which promote critical race theory and fixate on overcoming “white supremacy,” according to Fox News.

“The idea is Garland’s son-in-law is profiting lucratively from peddling this stuff to the schools. And Garland, even though the Justice Department doesn’t appear to have jurisdiction to do what it’s done, is sicking the FBI on parents who are dissenting against these kinds of materials,” McCarthy added.

Family of Suspected School Shooter Starts Fundraiser to Ease Teen’s ‘Traumatic’ Experience, Then Gets Hit with the Bad News

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul also addressed the controversy recently.

“The punk who assaulted the policeman defending my wife and I in DC went free but the Biden Admin. labels concerned parents as ‘domestic terrorists?’” Paul tweeted alongside a post from Asra Q. Nomani urging parents to contact the National Association of School Boards in response to a controversial letter the association sent to President Joe Biden on Sept. 29.

The punk who assaulted the policeman defending my wife and I in DC went free but the Biden Admin. labels concerned parents as “domestic terrorists?” https://t.co/dSsqm6TNQQ

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 6, 2021

Garland sent a memorandum to the FBI last week concerning “threats” against school personnel.

“In recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence among school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s schools,” the attorney general wrote.

“The Department takes these incidents seriously and is committed to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate,” Garland said.

“In the coming days, the Department will announce a series of measures designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel,” he continued. “Coordination and partnership with local law enforcement is critical to implementing these measures for the benefit of our nation’s nearly 14,000 public school districts.”

BREAKING: Attorney General Merrick Garland has instructed the FBI to mobilize against parents who oppose critical race theory in public schools, citing “threats.”

The letter follows the National School Board Association’s request to classify protests as “domestic terrorism.” pic.twitter.com/NhPU03YOYq

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 4, 2021

‘We’re Not Domestic Terrorists’: Parents’ Group Leader Hits Back After Biden DOJ ‘Declared a War on Parents’

In its September letter to Biden, the National School Boards Association pleaded with him to treat parents who oppose mask mandates and the teaching of critical race theory as domestic terrorists.

The NSBA letter said, “As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

America First Legal formally requests an ‘investigation regarding potential improprieties’ of Merrick’s memo

The National School Boards Association (NSBA) recently characterized the effort of parents who engage in passionate opposition to forced masking and the indoctrination of their children through critical race theory (CRT) as a form of “domestic terrorism.” In response, a Florida mom equates the weaponization of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) against parents trying to protect their children to “using dogs and water hoses on black Americans fighting for civil rights.”

How it Began

On Oct. 4, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo instructing the director of the FBI addressing what he described as “a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools.”

The memo was in response to a Sept. 29 letter (pdf) from the NSBA to the Biden administration comparing what it describes as “attacks against school board members and educators for approving policies for masks to protect the health and safety of students and school employees” and “physical threats because of propaganda purporting the false inclusion of critical race theory within classroom instruction and curricula” as “equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

For this, the NSBA’s letter “specifically solicits the expertise and resources of the U.S. Department of Justice, FBI, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Secret Service, and its National Threat Assessment Center regarding the level of risk to public school children, educators, board members, and facilities/campuses.”

The NSBA also requested “assistance of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to intervene against threatening letters and cyberbullying attacks that have been transmitted to students, school board members, district administrators, and other educators.”

“While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution, that protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views” Garland stated in his memo to the FBI. “Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values. Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.”

Parents Speak Out

According to Quisha King, the government knows that the growing number of parents who are going to school board meetings to voice their opinions against CRT are gaining a lot of attention, and “they want to do everything possible to shut that down.”

King—the Florida mom whose comments before the Duval County School Board went viral on social media in June—said the school board members who are determined to push their agenda are now so desperate to stop the momentum of the parents who oppose them “they will use the government against its own people” to silence them.

“We probably never thought that would happen in America,” King told The Epoch Times. “It’s outrageous.”

Asked if the threat to use the FBI to treat parents who oppose CRT at school board meetings as domestic terrorists would dissuade her from speaking out in the future, King said “absolutely not.”

“In fact, I think this is going to backfire,” King asserted. “You’re going to see even more parents. Of all sides of the political spectrum, come out and say ‘wait a minute, the FBI is coming after parents who just want to give their children the best life possible.’ This isn’t going to dissuade us. It’s only going to rally more of us.”

While King concedes there may have been instances of parents expressing anger at meetings or sending inappropriate emails, she is unaware of anyone erupting into violence or harming any school board members. King also said the threat to use the power of the FBI to shut down parents who are turning out in increasing numbers to stand up for their children at school board meetings is only going to open the eyes of parents who have “been teetering” on the idea of pulling their children from public schools altogether and finally “tip them over the edge.”

During her speech at Thursday’s Family Research Council’s annual Pray Vote Stand Summit, King received an extended standing ovation when she suggested parents stage a “mass exodus” from the public system. Asked to expand on that statement, King said she has already begun working on the idea by speaking to parents who may be hesitant and working with them to find solutions before setting a specific date to stage the “mass exodus” on a national level.

“Anyone who is involved in wanting to have freedom and liberty in this country and believes in what this country stands for is being attacked,” Duval County, Florida, resident April Carney told The Epoch Times, saying part of the reason why she chose to run for a position on the school board is because the choices of parents are systematically being taken away.

“Those of us who are parents and are thoroughly involved in our child’s education, we want to be included in the decision making  process regarding the curriculum and the rules and regulations that are being put in place in schools,” Carney said. “That has completely stopped. There’s been too much activism brought into the classroom and not enough emphasis on reading, writing and arithmetic, science and our students are failing because of that.”

“Our first problem as Americans is we aren’t naming the enemy,” Karen Schoen, a former educator and dean in the New York school system told The Epoch Times, suggesting that the real enemy are the “globalist communists” seated in positions of power on both sides of the political aisle.

“Communism cannot have opposition or dissent,” Schoen insisted. “They will not tolerate anybody who calls them out, and now that Americans are fighting back they are weaponizing government agencies to shut down any dissent.”

“We don’t want to co-parent with the government,” Jessico Bowman told The Epoch Times. “We want to be involved in our children’s education and upbringing because that’s our responsibility.”

“If the DOJ wants to classify that as domestic terrorism that’s really the DOJ’s problem,” Charles Bowman added, saying that when it comes down to it, the community will rally together. “We are going to voice our opinion and we are going to support the people who want to voice their opinions.”

“Who gets to decide what’s a threat versus just an angry parent speaking out?” Jessico asked. “Do we trust them [the government] to make that determination for us at the federal level?”

“If you as parents are not going to advocate for the best interests of your children then who will,” Charles interjected. “Like Jessico said, we’re not interested in co-parenting with the government at all. But it is our responsibility as parents to make sure our children are safe. If we don’t, we can be labeled as cowards.”

As The Epoch Times reported in August, the Bowmans were recently embroiled in a struggle with the Flagler County school system regarding a surprise, random, haphazard COVID-19 protocol that had children being sent to isolation rooms, quarantined at home with requirements to undergo a series of COVID-19 tests and leaving confused parents scrambling to make sense of it all.

“They don’t want people speaking their mind,” Charles said. “They don’t want people having a voice in this process. This has always been part of the left’s playground in the public education system, so here you are, they’ve rattled the right to the point where conservatives are getting involved. Now they’re trying to figure out how to get the conservatives quiet again. They’ve overstepped, and now they’re trying to figure out how to regain control over the sandbox.

Conservative Organizations Join Parents

“What the NSBA did, requesting that the FBI weaponize the federal government against parents and grandparents is not only a strict violation of the First Amendment, it is the most egregious abuse of power I have seen recently,” Keith Flaugh, founder of the Florida Citizens Alliance told The Epoch Times.

“We are big supporters of the Tenth Amendment,” Flaugh added, “and I think this is going to force the issue of governors like Ron DeSantis to use the Tenth Amendment.”

The Tenth Amendment—passed by Congress on Sept. 25, 1789 and ratified Dec. 15, 1791—states that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Flaugh further stated that this effort to use the power of the government against its own citizens is “also a beacon call to every constitutional sheriff in the country.”

“A constitutional sheriff has the legal authority and duty to interpose against the federal government when they are overreaching their constitutional authority,” Flaugh explained. “We’ve got a federal government that’s completely out of control and we’ve seen it manifest itself on a number of fronts. This is just the latest and most egregious. It is literally weaponizing the federal government against its citizens. And even though it will probably make me one of their targets I will be urging people to stand up and say I will not comply.”

“We’re urging people to do it peacefully,” Flaugh clarified, “but at the end of the day, I will not comply, period. Full stop.”

In an Oct. 7 letter (pdf) addressed to The Hon. Michael E. Horowitz, Inspector General for the Department of Justice, Reed D. Rubinstein, Senior Counselor and Director of Oversight and Investigations for the America First Legal (AFL) Foundation formally requested an “Investigation Regarding Potential Improprieties Related to the October 4, 2021, Attorney General’s Memorandum.”

“The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized American parents’ fundamental liberty interest in and Constitutional right to control and direct the education of their own children,” Rubinstein states in the letter. However, Rubenstein asserts that the DOJ appears to be “committing the full weight of its federal law enforcement resources to prevent parents from exercising constitutionally-protected rights and privileges, for inappropriate partisan purposes.”

In addition, under the Freedom of Information Act, the AFL Foundation has also filed a request (pdf) for the following documents:

1. All records of, concerning, or regarding (1) the Garland Memorandum and/or (2) the NSBA Letter.
2. All records sufficient to show each person within the Department who reviewed (1) the Garland Memorandum and/or (2) the NSBA Letter.
3. All records created by the Department showing the “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” referenced in the Garland Memorandum.
4. All records the Department relied upon to support the Garland Memorandum statement “there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools.”
5. All records created by the Department showing “the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel” referenced in the Garland Memorandum.
6. All records the Department relied upon to support the Garland Memorandum statement there has been “a rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.”
7. All records sufficient to show the Department’s understanding and interpretation of the term “intimidation and harassment” used in the Garland Memorandum.
8. All communications from, with, or regarding any person employed by the National Education Association and/or the American Federation of Teachers.
9. All communications with any person having an email address including eop.gov regarding (1) the Garland Memorandum, (2) the NSBA, (3) the NSBA Letter, the National Education Association and/or the American Federation of Teachers and/or (5) any person employed by the National Education Association and/or the American Federation of Teachers.

Asked about the optics of FBI agents descending upon school board meetings to drag parents away from podiums, King was forthright in her prediction.

“It will be reminiscent of using dogs and water hoses on black Americans who were fighting for civil rights,” she said bluntly.

The Epoch Times reached out to the NSBA and FBI for comment.

As I mentioned in this space last July, the politicization of the United States’ armed forces, already underway under President Barack Obama, has been kicked into a higher gear by the Biden administration and its tame general, Mark Milley, by using the Capitol incursion of last Jan. 6 as pretext.

By repeatedly and consistently mischaracterizing it as an “insurrection,” the media have turned a protest that got out of hand into the bombardment of Fort Sumter, which launched the American Civil War in 1861.

That the Biden administration was complicit with the media in transforming a rag-tag bunch of protesters into a supposed proto-army of rebellion became apparent in President Biden’s address to Congress last April 28.

There, clearly with the Jan. 6 protesters in mind, he spoke of “what our intelligence agency has determined to be the most lethal terrorist threat to the homeland today: white supremacy’s terrorism.”

The logic of “our” intelligence agency which is said to have produced such a bizarre and improbable point of view seems to have been as follows: Donald Trump is a white supremacist; his Jan. 6 supporters were terrorists; therefore, all 74 million Trump voters in 2020 (there are probably more by now) are at least potential white supremacist terrorists.

That’s quite a threat all right. Or it would be if any of it had an iota of truth in it.

Such paranoia obviously had a political motivation and must have been adopted for cynical reasons, as a stick with which to beat any opposition to the radical Biden agenda from the right.

But now, not quite six months later, it appears to have become a habit with this administration to confuse any opposition to any part of its agenda with “terrorism.”

In response to a letter from the National School Boards Association to President Biden complaining of an “imminent threat” from parents who are allegedly sending “threatening letters and cyberbullying” said to amount to “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” Attorney General Merrick Garland has sent a memo to the FBI—the extent of whose corruption is even now being revealed by John Durham—expressing his concern over an alleged “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools.”

He provides not a single example of such harassment, intimidation or threats of violence, nor any constitutional warrant for such Federal interference in state and local education matters and public order-keeping, even if there were any of either.

“While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution,” he writes, “that protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views.”

Andrew McCarthy at National Review, who calls this “dangerous nonsense,” reminds us that “the First Amendment protects speech unless it unambiguously calls for the use of force that the speaker clearly intends, under circumstances in which the likelihood of violence is real and imminent. Even actual ‘threats of violence’ are not actionable unless they meet this high threshold.”

And this is not to mention the fact that, as more than one commentator has pointed out, we have in the last year and a half seen numerous left-wing examples of “threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views,” which have been perfectly OK with the Justice department and the FBI.

What, in fact, is Garland himself doing with such a memo as this if not warning of the FBI’s coming “efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views”?

This looks a lot like a recurrence to President Nixon’s famous formulation: “When the President does it, it’s not illegal.” As in so many other ways throughout the Obama-Biden years, there is one rule for the ruling class, another for everybody else.

This politicization of the Justice Department continues a process which seems to have begun under President Obama and then continued on unabated, though surreptitiously, under President Trump, whose administration it sought, as we now know, continuously to undermine.

Interestingly, another case of an effort to intimidate an individual based on her views had taken place only days earlier, when protestors pursued Senator Kyrsten Sinema into a ladies’ room at Arizona State University, objecting to her view that the government headed by Biden and her fellow Democrats’ shouldn’t be spending $3.5 trillion that it doesn’t have.

In that case, however, neither the president nor Attorney General Garland nor anyone else in the administration seemed to mind, and “the big guy” himself dismissed the incident as nothing but a “part of the process.”

I thought of this remark when I read the opinion of “a lawyer friend” of the excellent Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine blog that the Garland letter was just “huffing and puffing done to scratch a political itch” with no real legal force behind it. Mirengoff himself opines that “anyone prosecuted by the DOJ for non- violent conduct as a result of this memo will very likely find pro bono legal representation and beat the rap.”

This is true—at least until the entire judiciary has been Bidenized. But in the meantime, such a person may only “beat the rap” the way General Michael Flynn did: after years of expensive litigation that all but ruined him and his family financially.

As he knows only too well, under the politicized Obama-Biden Justice Department, the punishment reserved for dissenters is, precisely, “the process.”

Parents opposed to critical race theory (CRT) in California classrooms are outraged over accusations from school boards that criticism of ethnic studies curriculums based on CRT and other neo-Marxist ideologies is linked to domestic terrorism.

The National School Boards Association (NSBA), which denies CRT is being taught in K-12 schools, in a Sept. 29 letter (pdf) said parents at local school board meetings opposed to CRT and mask mandates are contributing to a “growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation” and asked President Joe Biden’s administration to address the issue.

The NSBA letter states: “As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

Celeste Fiehler, a member of ParentsUnion.org, told The Epoch Times the NSBA comparison of parents to “domestic terrorism” is ludicrous and wrong.

“It’s ridiculous. It’s an intimidation tactic,” she said. “I’m not afraid of the FBI knocking on my door because I stood up for my kid as a parent.”

She opposes CRT, which she calls “hate-based” education that divides students into oppressed and oppressors based on race and privilege.

“When you take power away from parents, or their ability to raise their children, you’re going to get angry parents—parents who love their children,” said Fiehler, whose children attend the Desert Sands Unified School District (DSUSD) in Riverside County.

“We’re not knocking down podiums. We’re not burning down school buildings. We’re asking for fair education for our children, and what we oppose is the curriculum,” Fiehler said.

AG and DOJ Respond

Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland responded with a memorandum and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a press release announcing a concerted effort to target threats of violence, intimidation, and harassment by parents directed toward school board members, teachers, and other personnel.

“Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values,” wrote Attorney General Garland. “Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.”

Garland has directed his office and the FBI “to meet in the next 30 days with federal, state, Tribal, territorial and local law enforcement leaders to discuss strategies for addressing this disturbing trend. These sessions will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment and response by law enforcement,” according to the press release.

The DOJ will create a task force consisting of representatives from the department’s Criminal Division, National Security Division, Civil Rights Division, the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, the FBI, the Community Relations Service and the Office of Justice Programs “to determine how federal enforcement tools can be used to prosecute these crimes, and ways to assist state, Tribal, territorial and local law enforcement where threats of violence may not constitute federal crimes.”

The DOJ will also create specialized training and guidance for local school boards and administrators to “help school board members and other potential victims understand the type of behavior that constitutes threats, how to report threatening conduct to the appropriate law enforcement agencies, and how to capture and preserve evidence of threatening conduct to aid in the investigation and prosecution of these crimes.”

Riverside County

Fiehler blasted the “domestic terrorist” label at a DSUSD meeting on Tuesday.

“If you think for one second, that parents who love their children and are here to protect them … are domestic terrorists, then consider every single one of us just that,” Fiehler said.

“Being a domestic terrorist, you’ll see me in the pickup line and the drop-off lines of three different schools, rushing three kids to sports, and at the high school football games because I love my children,” she told the board.

“What you won’t see is this tired terrorist mom doing is burning down buildings, destroying property, physically assaulting people throwing Molotov cocktails out my car window, or murdering anyone,” she said, referring to incidents during the 2020 summer riots. “I’m a law-abiding citizen who wants a fair and healthy education for my children.”

“So, don’t mess with parents protecting their children because you will lose,” she concluded.

Fiehler said Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris downplayed the violence that occurred during protests following the death of George Floyd last year.

“Thousands of people were injured, hundreds of lives were changed forever, and a lot of people died because of them,” she said.

Rather than policing parents, she said “the activists should be investigated.”

Fiehler said some school boards have taken steps to disrupt the conversation on CRT and other important topics, including censoring videos of public meetings on YouTube to remove parents’ comments and removing chairs to limit the seating capacity at meetings.

Monterey County

Kelly Schenkoske, a Monterey County parent who homeschools her children, has opposed the ethnic studies curriculum and CRT at Salinas Union High School District (SUHSD) meetings.

The NSBA’s comparison of parents protesting CRT to domestic terrorism, suggesting there is some kind of moral equivalency, is simply false, she said.

“They want to shut down any dissenting voices. They want conformity,” Schenkoske said. “While they’re attempting to silence the civic engagement of parents and taxpayers, they’re ramping up efforts to push civic engagement on youth.”

Many teachers in public schools are actively recruiting unsuspecting “young foot soldiers” to promote their own political ideologies, she said.

The book, “Rethinking Ethnic Studies,” by R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, encourages student activism and talks about the youth voice as imperative, Schenkoske said.

“It showcases their agenda for all,” she said.

SUHSD has recently used a new tactic, allowing students to comment first at school board meetings, Schenkoske said. Though there hasn’t been a change in official board policy, she said it’s another strategy the board has used to silence dissenting opinions and block criticism.

At the last board meeting, parents who requested their three minutes to speak were denied the opportunity because of the new policy.

“None of them were ever allowed to speak. Students were given the entire allotted time,” she said.

SUHSD teacher Peter Williams has mentioned several times at recent school board meetings that parents opposed to CRT should not be allowed to speak.

Orange County

Irvine parent David Whitley told The Epoch Times many parents in Orange County are fed up with what public schools are teaching, and many parents have chosen CRT as “a hill to die on.”

“We’re either going to get this nonsense tampered down, or people like me are going to leave the state. There’s no reason to stay in a place that is completely anti-American and growing to be anti-white under the guise of anti-racism. It just defies logic and reason,” he said.

Comparing irate parents to domestic terrorists is “completely absurd,” he said. “If there’s one thing parents should be doing, it’s being extremely angry at what the public schools are teaching their kids … so I am ecstatic that more and more parents are going to the school board meetings and speaking up.”

Though “it’s a little bit late in the day” to try to fix public schools in the state, Whitley said parents can no longer sit back and watch what’s happening.

Whitley said it’s not surprising that the recent backlash from parents has left local school boards and other government officials feeling threatened.

“They should,” he said, “because the country is run by families and by parents. The public schools are there to educate their kids so that they’re informed and good citizens, and what they’re doing in the public schools is literally dividing the nation and destroying the country.”

Whitley urged more parents to stand up against the school boards.

Children are being taught to have “different moral views, different views on sexuality, different views on American history, different views on the nuclear family and their place in life itself,” he said. “It’s just absurd.”

While he’s glad to see so many mothers at school board meetings, Whitley said more fathers are now showing up.

“That may be why they’re intimidated, because it’s not just a bunch of soccer moms that are talking at the school board meetings now,” he said.

“And, they want to intimidate us with the power of the FBI? Well, I know people in law enforcement, and they don’t like what’s going on either,” Whitley said. “So, it’s going to come to a head at some point because what I know is the parents that are upset by this aren’t going away until they’re either in handcuffs or they stop indoctrinating their children.”

Californians for Equal Rights

Meanwhile, the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation (CFER) on Oct. 1, joined forces with 20 organizations in response (pdf) to NSBA’s “fear-mongering” letter,” the organization stated in a media release.

“Going forward, CFER will stand with our parent and community supporters in the unifying and broad-based movement against toxic racial divisions and political indoctrination in our public education system,” according to the media release.

“CFER is particularly alarmed by DOJ’s categorical allegation of grassroots activities at the school district level as ‘criminal conduct,’ and how this call for federal investigations can gravely discourage civic participation,” the media release stated.

“In response to community demands for more transparency and parental access to controversial educational activities, CFER has engaged in local organizing and awareness building on issues such as ethnic studies, critical race theory and racial preferences,” said Frank Xu, CFER president.

“Contrary to the victim narrative promoted by DOJ to coddle school board personnel, lack of responsiveness and accountability on the part of many public-school authorities has prompted a growing number of parents speaking at open meetings and seeking legitimate channels to express their concerns,” the release stated.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/california-parents-blast-school-boards-for-linking-criticism-of-crt-with-domestic-terrorism_4036482.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

One parenting leader is speaking out after Attorney General Merrick Garland sent a memorandum from the Department of Justice to the FBI to address supposed “threats of violence” from parents.

Asra Nomani joined Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday morning wearing a T-shirt with the words, “I’m a mom, not a ‘domestic terrorist.’”

“It’s outrageous what the federal government is doing now,” said Nomani, who is vice president for strategy and investigations for Parents Defining Education.

“We have parents right now waking up from sea to shining sea to bring their children to school, to urge them into the day, and what has happened now is that the federal government and the National School Board Association has declared a war on parents,” she said.

Nomani responded that the only goal of parents is to speak up for their children.

Schumer’s Signature on Secret, Leaked Agreement Shows Dems Even Dishonest with Each Other

“All we have done over the past year is stand up and speak up for children. It’s unconscionable that the Federal Bureau of Investigations should even spend a minute thinking about us,” she said.

“We all reject violence and all we want to do is protect our kids,” Nomani added.

The government needs to stop demonizing us as parents: Parents Defining Education member @AsraNomani rips the DOJ’s ‘overreaching’ probe into potential threat against school boards. pic.twitter.com/XD4NbgzQUF

— Brian Kilmeade (@kilmeade) October 6, 2021

Her efforts on social media also have caught the attention of Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul.

“The punk who assaulted the policeman defending my wife and I in DC went free but the Biden Admin. labels concerned parents as ‘domestic terrorists?’” Paul tweeted alongside a post from Nomani urging parents to contact the National School Board Association in response to its letter.

The punk who assaulted the policeman defending my wife and I in DC went free but the Biden Admin. labels concerned parents as “domestic terrorists?” https://t.co/dSsqm6TNQQ

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 6, 2021

Nomani’s interview followed a memorandum Garland sent to the FBI on Monday concerning “threats” against school personnel.

DeSantis Vows to Fight Biden Administration’s ‘Weaponizing’ of DOJ to ‘Silence’ Parents

“In recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence among school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s schools,” the attorney general wrote.

“The Department takes these incidents seriously and is committed to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate,” Garland said.

“In the coming days, the Department will announce a series of measures designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel,” he continued. “Coordination and partnership with local law enforcement is critical to implementing these measures for the benefit of our nation’s nearly 14,000 public school districts.”

BREAKING: Attorney General Merrick Garland has instructed the FBI to mobilize against parents who oppose critical race theory in public schools, citing “threats.”

The letter follows the National School Board Association’s request to classify protests as “domestic terrorism.” pic.twitter.com/NhPU03YOYq

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 4, 2021

In a letter to President Joe Biden dated Sept. 29, the National School Boards Association pleaded with him to treat parents who oppose mask mandates and the teaching of critical race theory as domestic terrorists.

The NSBA letter said, “As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

The Department of Justice (DOJ) Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco defended a new directive by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to stop a rise in what school officials call “threats and harassment” by parents who have been attending public school board meetings.

“I want to be very clear in the memorandum that’s publicly available, the Attorney General issued talks about the importance of bringing federal, state, local law enforcement together to make sure that there is awareness of how to report threats that may occur, and to ensure that there’s an open line of communication to address threats, to address violence, and to address law enforcement issues in that context, which is the job of the Justice Department, nothing more,” Monaco said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday.

In 2021, there has been a rise in parents attending school board meetings and voicing their concerns about their child’s school curriculum and in many videos, parents are seen vehemently opposing the teaching of critical race theory and school mask mandates.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked Monaco about Garland’s recent memorandum which seeks to investigate any threats of violence, intimidation, and harassment by parents toward school personnel.

In the document, the AG directs the FBI and U.S. attorneys to convene meetings with federal, state, and local leaders within 30 days to “facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff,” according to a letter (pdf) the attorney general sent on Monday to all U.S. attorneys, the FBI director, the director of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys, and the assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s criminal division.

Merrick’s letter comes only days after a national association of school boards (NSBA) asked the Biden administration to take “extraordinary measures” to prevent alleged threats against school staff that the association said were coming from parents who oppose mask mandates and the teaching of critical race theory.

“As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crime,” the NSBA argued in the letter, encouraging the federal agencies to use laws designed to target domestic terrorism, such as the PATRIOT Act, to address the issue.

“Is it domestic extremism for a parent to advocate for their child’s best interests?” Cotton asked the Deputy AG.

“I think what you have described no I would not describe as domestic extremism,” replied Monaco.

Cotton linked the NSBA letter as a possible motivation for issuing the DOJ memorandum.

“It’s a fact that the school board association just sent this letter to President Biden and then conveniently the Attorney General released his letter yesterday, describing his series of measures to confront this grave and the growing threat of parents protesting their kids being indoctrinated and the school board having to call a recess. [Is there] a connection between those two things?” asked Cotton.

When questioned by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on the legitimacy of the new directive, Monaco again defended Merrick, saying “spirited debate” is welcome at board meetings but added that “the Attorney General’s memorandum made quite clear that violence is not appropriate.”

Hawley implied that the DOJ’s new directive could take away parents’ rights because the document does not make clear what is encompassed by the terms “harassment or intimidation.”

“I don’t think so, Miss Monaco. With all due respect, it didn’t make it quite clear, it doesn’t define those terms, nor does it define harassment or intimidation. It talks about violence, I think we can agree that violence shouldn’t be condoned or looked aside from in any way, swept under the rug at all. But harassment and intimidation. What do those terms mean in the context of a local school board meeting?” asked Hawley.

The DOJ did not immediately return a request to comment.

GQ Pan contributed to this report.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/top-doj-official-defends-new-memorandum-on-targeting-parents_4033589.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

FBI agents on Tuesday raided the New York headquarters for the Sergeants Benevolent Association, a union for active and retired New York City Police Department members that strongly supported then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

The 13,000-member union is New York’s second-largest police union, CNN reported. While it is unclear exactly what investigators were looking for, the outlet reported a search warrant was executed early Tuesday.

The outlet also reported a home on Long Island in the community of Port Washington was also visited by agents as part of an investigation. The home reportedly belongs to SBA President Ed Mullins.

There is no word yet regarding what that investigation might be related to.

One FBI agent told CNN the execution of the warrants was “in connection with an ongoing investigation.”

Brian Laundrie’s Days on the Run Are Numbered as Top Special Warfare Experts Join the Hunt

No arrests were made on Tuesday, according to ABC News.

The New York Times reported the search was executed by the FBI and the public corruption unit in the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Mullins and other members of the police union have been vocal about their support for Trump and their opposition to their city’s public officials, especially Democratic New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Mullins has also challenged NYPD leadership for failing to stand up for the city’s embattled police force.

Just hours before the FBI raid, the SBA tweeted a letter authored by Mullins that criticized de Blasio for plans to privatize security at Rikers Island, which is the city’s largest jail complex. The action at Rikers, Mullins said, would make the climate at the jail less safe, and would be done at the expense of trained corrections personnel.

Unite against union-busting efforts! pic.twitter.com/PkBolBZTz9

— SBA (@SBANYPD) October 4, 2021

Mullins in the letter accused de Blasio of “dereliction of duty” and creating a hazardous environment at the jail complex, making matters worse by replacing seasoned corrections officers with private security officers.

The SBA took de Blasio to task continuously throughout 2020 as rioters and other criminals acted in some cases with impunity, thanks in large part to New York’s bail reform laws.

The SBA even called out de Blasio’s daughter last summer for allegedly engaging in rioting in the city. Mullins recently faced internal discipline charges after sharing a police report on Twitter documenting her arrest, according to the Times.

De Blasio commented on Tuesday’s federal raid when speaking at a news conference.

Husband of Only Female NYPD Officer Killed on 9/11 Savages Politicians for Their Act on Saturday: ‘They Forgot’

“I don’t know the specifics and I don’t know who it’s directed at,” he said, according to WPIX-TV. “We’ve seen some very destructive actions from the SBA.”

The New York City mayor also called Mullins “divisive.”

Prior to the 2020 election, Mullins announced that the SBA had given Trump its full endorsement, Fox News reported. The SBA president last November urged New Yorkers to “vote for President Trump.”

“Your vote is your choice. I just ask that you remember that it is more than a choice between two men,” Mullins said at the time. “It is a choice between world views that will have a very direct impact on police across the nation.”

“The Trump Administration has an undisputed record of supporting police officers at a time when many other segments of society are abandoning or openly attacking us,” Mullins continued.

“The Administration publicly pushed back on irresponsible policies ranging from sanctuary city mandates releasing dangerous criminals back onto the streets, to efforts to deny officers of body armor and other life-saving gear, to misguided mandates revising operating procedures in ways that endanger officers and public safety.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Monday that the FBI would take the lead on the law enforcement response to what Garland called “a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.”

“While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution, that protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views,” Garland wrote in a memo to federal prosecutors as well as FBI Director Christopher Wray. “Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values.

“Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety,” the AG added.

Garland fired off his memo days after the National School Boards Association (NSBA) claimed in a letter to President Biden that “America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat,” as parents grow frustrated with mask mandates being imposed on their children and critical race theory being injected into their curricula.

The Sept. 29 letter cited that opposition — naming the imposition of mask mandates in schools as well as “propaganda purporting the false inclusion of critical race theory within classroom instruction and curricula” as the causes of dozens of incidents at school board meetings this year.

“This propaganda continues despite the fact that critical race theory is not taught in public schools and remains a complex law school and graduate school subject well beyond the scope of a K-12 class,” the letter went on, despite incidents across the country where teachers have been exposed to be racializing their curricula.

The NSBA then suggested that “[a]s these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes” and asked that the administration review the question.

The letter went on to cite more than 20 reported incidents in California, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Ohio and other states. In one incident from September, an Illinois man was arrested on charges of aggravated battery and disorderly conduct for allegedly striking a school official at a meeting.

“We are coming after you,” a letter mailed to an Ohio school board member said, according to the group. “You are forcing them to wear mask — for no reason in this world other than control. And for that you will pay dearly.”

In his memo, Garland ordered the FBI and US attorneys to arrange meetings with federal, state, local, tribal and territorial leaders within 30 days to “facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats” and “open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response.”

NSBA interim Executive Director and CEO Chip Slaven said in a statement that Garland’s action sent a “strong message to individuals with violent intent who are focused on causing chaos, disrupting our public schools, and driving wedges between school boards and the parents, students, and communities they serve.”

“Over the last few weeks, school board members and other education leaders have received death threats and have been subjected to threats and harassment, both online and in person,” Slaven said. “The individuals who are intent on causing chaos and disrupting our schools—many of whom are not even connected to local schools—are drowning out the voices of parents who must be heard when it comes to decisions about their children’s education, health, and safety. These acts of intimidation are also affecting educational services and school board governance. Some have even led to school lockdowns.”

“We need to get back to the work of meeting all students’ needs and making sure that each student is prepared for a successful future,” Slaven concluded. “That’s what school board members and parents care about.”

With Post wires

https://nypost.com/2021/10/05/merrick-garland-calls-in-fbi-to-counter-threats-against-school-staffers/

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued a report (pdf) on Sept. 30 on the FBI’s applications to surveil U.S. citizens, finding “widespread” failure that “raises serious questions” and criticizing agents for not fixing flaws spotted in previous audits.

The inspector general (IG) reviewed about 7,000 applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants—the same used to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page in 2016—and found that the agency had failed to follow key rules, the Woods Procedures, in the program. In December 2019 review, Horowitz discovered 17 significant errors and omissions in the FISA surveillance application targeting Page.

The most recent audit of the agency’s Woods Procedures—rules that the FBI follows to ensure that FISA applications are “scrupulously accurate”—found sweeping “non-compliance” that “raises serious questions about the adequacy and execution of the supervisory review process in place at the time of the applications we reviewed,” Horowitz said, stating that the FBI’s quality-control officials apparently missed these problems.

His office also identified 183 FISA applications that had a missing or incomplete Woods file, which is a document meant to ensure the accuracy of statements made to the secretive FISA court. The report also found hundreds of other cases where there were instances of noncompliance with the agency’s Woods procedures.

“A failure to adhere to the Woods Procedures … could easily lead to errors that do impact probable cause—and therefore potentially call into question the legal basis for the government’s use of highly intrusive FISA warrants,” Horowitz wrote.

Horowitz recommended that the FBI attempt to make “additional efforts to communicate and emphasize to its workforce the importance” of the bureau’s own standards when applying for FISA warrants.

In a statement released after Horowitz’s report, the FBI told media outlets on Sept. 30 that it appreciated the IG’s “determined focus on the FBI’s FISA process, especially given the significant changes and policy enhancements that we have worked to make in concert with, and in many instances, prior to the issuance of this most recent OIG Audit Report.”

The federal law enforcement bureau will accept Horowitz’s recommendations detailed in the report and has adopted about half of them already, according to the statement. FBI officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The audit report is an extension of a report that was issued by Horowitz in March 2020, when he reviewed 29 FISA applications. According to that report, the inspector general couldn’t review four of the applications because the FBI wasn’t able to locate them. Of the 25 he could review, all of them had flaws—209 errors in total, Horowitz said.

“Our testing of FISA applications … identified apparent errors or inadequately supported facts in all of the 25 applications we reviewed, and interviews to date with available agents or supervisors in field offices generally have confirmed the issues we identified,” he said in his March report.

Horowitz lamented in the Sept. 30 audit that the FBI hasn’t taken his earlier report seriously.

“In response to the findings in our December 2019 FISA report and March 2020 [report], the FBI Director publicly acknowledged the seriousness of the identified problems and announced numerous steps the FBI was undertaking to address them,” he said.

“However, we believe certain public statements from the FBI and NSD in 2020 failed to recognize the significant risks posed by systemic non-compliance with the Woods Procedures, and during our audit, some FBI field personnel minimized the significance of Woods Procedures non-compliance.”

The IG report was likely referencing statements FBI Director Christopher Wray made to Congress in February, when he told representatives that they shouldn’t “lose any sleep” over the December 2019 IG report.

“The vast majority of the FISAs we do, both the initial applications and the renewals, are the kinds of applications that I am quite confident—we don’t know each other, but you wouldn’t lose any sleep over, and we wouldn’t want to grind to a halt,” Wray told Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) at the time.

Following the release of the latest report, Jordan took to Twitter to blast Wray for downplaying earlier concerns.

“Feb. 5, 2020: FBI Director Christopher Wray dismisses concerns about the FISA process. Says Americans shouldn’t ‘lose any sleep’ over it. Today: IG Horowitz releases damning report about the FBI’s broken FISA process,” Jordan wrote.

“It was worse than we ever thought.”

The FBI’s failure to adhere to surveillance rules has led to criminal charges in some instances.

After Horowitz’s findings were released in 2019, special counsel John Durham later filed charges against former FBI Attorney Kevin Clinesmith for falsifying a document used in a FISA application to surveil Page. He pleaded guilty in August 2020.

In August, Durham’s office indicted Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who represented the Democratic National Committee, for allegedly lying to the FBI when he spoke to a top bureau official, James Baker, in 2016. On Sept. 17, Sussmann pleaded not guilty to the charge.

According to the indictment, Sussmann had passed along a claim alleging that there was a secret communications channel between a Russian bank and the Trump Organization. Durham alleged that Sussmann told Baker that he wasn’t representing a specific client, but was actually secretly representing Democrats, Clinton’s campaign, and an unnamed technology company executive.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/inspector-general-audit-finds-widespread-problems-with-fbis-fisa-applications-2_4025260.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-10-01&mktids=e6b092ac984bb68800444fc52ddf3a39&est=mXfRC%2B4iRM1ynrOnhKJmHVRwax1ICG1hZnrdZyEqlaBOxbzwwuYVk0PPEeoSglTXYw%3D%3D

Shortly before the U.S. presidential election that Joe Biden won, the New York Post published a bombshell story based on emails from Biden’s son, Hunter, that indicated corruption by his father. The October 2020 story, neatly encapsulated by the quote, “ten percent for the big guy,” which the Bidens never denied, was castigated and largely ignored by the left mainstream media, and censored by Twitter. That left censorship might well have led to the election of Biden instead of Donald Trump. Apparently, getting Biden elected was more important to them than his alleged China-linked corruption. Now almost a year later, a Politico writer has finally confirmed the story.

This adds an additional confirmation to the Wall Street Journal’s corroboration and expansion of the Post story, through emails obtained from Hunter’s former business partner, Tony Bobulinski. “They showed that Hunter was seeking to cash in on his name via a business deal with a Shanghai-based company with ties to the Chinese government and military. One email noted that the deal envisioned ‘10 held by H for the big guy,’ whom Mr. Bobulinski identified as Joe Biden,” according to the Journal editors.

What might Beijing have gotten for its money? In May 2019, Biden was busy denying that China was a threat, against sentiment in both parties.

“China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man … they can’t even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east, I mean in the west.” Biden continued, “They can’t figure out how they’re going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what, they’re not, they’re not competition for us.”

Not bad folks? The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) runs the country with an iron fist, to the point of a triple genocide against Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Falun Gong. The CCP has been capturing territory from neighboring governments since the 1930s, including all of China in 1949 and a claim to the entire South China Sea in 2009. Since 2016, the Xi Jinping regime has threatened war against the United States, Australia, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

Even the leftist Washington Post news team, which edited out Biden’s east-west gaff, confessed that it was perplexed about which mountains the presidential hopeful referred to.

Then in February, Biden tried to divert concerns about China’s military competition with the United States, into a fear over infrastructure competition. He apparently did not want to significantly increase military spending to defend against China, so he tried to reframe the competition as one over infrastructure.

While the United States is busy building, say, $2 trillion worth of solar-lighted roads across the nation, with imported Chinese concrete, steel, and silicon, China would be using the money it made from us to build amphibious assault vehicles for an attack on Taiwan, and hundreds of silos for nuclear missiles that could reach the American mainland.

“If we don’t get moving, they are going to eat our lunch,” Biden said of China. “They’re investing billions of dollars dealing with a whole range of issues that relate to transportation, the environment and a whole range of other things. We just have to step up.”

The money that China was investing in the environment, at the time, was in coal-fired power plants. Was Biden trying to get America to compensate for China’s pollution by building costly solar farms at the expense of the American taxpayer?

Biden had proposed, during the campaign, a $2 trillion infrastructure package to be spent over four years, including on jobs and clean energy. In 2017, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), which could be biased given their profession, estimated the existence of an “infrastructure gap” in the United States of $2 trillion. They claimed that the economy would lose twice that amount if these funds were not invested.

Be that as it may, the Wall Street Journal was the only mainstream news source that took Hunter’s emails seriously at the time of the election. They wrote of the New York Post’s vindication this month: “A press that was interested in telling the truth about both candidates would have pressed to confirm the Post’s story and examined the emails for themselves. Instead they rose nearly as one to denounce the Post and claim without evidence that the emails might have been Russian disinformation. That was a sorry repeat of the Russia collusion narrative from 2016, which the press flogged for more than two years but we now know was concocted by the Hillary Clinton campaign.”

In the same opinion, the Journal’s editors allege that the FBI colluded with Clinton’s campaign in 2016, which is “cause for even more Americans to assume that the U.S. intelligence community is a partisan interest group that can’t be trusted. This is damaging to those institutions and the country.”

The Hill’s John Solomon also argued that the FBI colluded with Democrats during the 2016 election. If true, this should be taken seriously. The FBI must maintain its neutrality between the parties in order to maintain its integrity and legitimacy in the eyes of the American citizen.

However, tendentious arguments to “abolish the FBI” go so far as to be ludicrous. The FBI serves critical counter-intelligence and law enforcement functions that maintain the stability of the world’s most powerful democracy. Such arguments may be taking an extreme position in order to get the attention of political leadership, but they are the height of irresponsibility, and play into the hands of the world’s most powerful dictators, including Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

But neither are Democrats blameless. They fuel such arguments by ignoring the FBI’s lapses, and claiming that evidence of Biden’s China corruption doesn’t matter. They deflect blame by pointing to President Trump’s own alleged transgressions, for example, payments by foreign governments to Trump-branded hospitality businesses.

The truth is that both parties compete so strenuously as to have a legalized corruption problem. To win elections, politicians need money and support, which they can seek from big corporations, government insiders, and powerful dictators, like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

To fix the problem, we need bipartisan electoral reform, which removes the influence of foreign money and powerful interests from election campaigns of either party, including through American intermediaries. We need laws that forbid high government officials from using their office, and the revolving door between government and industry, to enrich themselves and their families.

Hunter Biden China Emails Are Real, As Is Bias of Mainstream Media (theepochtimes.com)

If our federal authorities are going to construct a prison-worthy surveillance state, can they at least buy American while they do it?

According to a report from Axios, federal law enforcement agencies — including the FBI and the Secret Service — have purchased drones from a Chinese company that was flagged by the Department of Defense as a national security threat.

The drones were purchased from Da Jiang Innovations, a company based in Shenzhen, China, that’s the biggest consumer drone manufacturer in the world.

“DJI makes an array of consumer products that are tremendously popular, including the Phantom and Mavic drone series, as well as the Osmo image-stabilization handle,” Axios reported.

“While the products are used for personal and commercial purposes, they also require the user to download proprietary DJI software, and to fly using mapping databases that have the potential to be monitored remotely.”

Cutter Spots Chinese Fleet Near Americas, Third Officer Looks at Radar and Instantly Sees the Red Flags

The FBI bought 19 of the drones for nearly $60,000 on July 20 and on July 26, the Secret Service purchased eight of the drones for over $12,000, according to records included in the Axios account. And yet, on July 23, the Pentagon warned in a news release that DJI’s drones “pose potential threats to national security.”

“Existing DOD policy and practices associated with the use of these systems by U.S. government entities and forces working with U.S. military services remain unchanged contrary to any written reports not approved for release by the DOD,” a release read.

“A recent report indicated that certain models of DJI systems had been found to be approved for procurement and operations for US government departments and agencies.  This report was inaccurate and uncoordinated, and its unauthorized release is currently under review by the department.”

It was unclear what specific report the release was citing.Should the federal government be using Chinese drones?Yes No
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Just over four years ago, in an August 2017 report, as Axios noted, the Department of Homeland Security said it had  “moderate confidence” that DJI drones were “providing U.S. critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government.”

In 2019, according to a Wall Street Journal report Axios cited, the Interior Department grounded its entire drone fleet over national security concerns related to Chinese manufacturing.

However, Axios reported that efforts to rid government agencies of the drones have stalled due to red tape, partially due to what the outlet called the “cost and complexity of replacing the systems.”

The Secret Service said the drones will “supplement the agency’s existing fleet of small unmanned aircraft and improved [sic] mission support through the use of the most up-to-date equipment nd [sic] software,” according to purchasing records cited by Axios.

The FBI, in its purchasing records, said DJI’s Phantom 4 Pro was “the only commercially available consumer [drone] to combine all [its required] capabilities at an acceptable cost.”

Massive Liberal Celeb Sees the Light: ‘Trump Was Right About Clinton & Russia!’

A DJI representative told Axios there’s nothing to be concerned about and the company’s data won’t be transmitted to Chinese authorities.

“Claims that somehow DJI products are transmitting customer data back to China, or to DJI, or anywhere they’re not supposed to be … are just false,” DJI spokesman Adam Lisberg told the outlet. “No one has ever found a deliberate attempt to steal data, or any of the other fantasies promoted by some of our critics. It simply isn’t true.”

There’s also another potential explanation: That the FBI is securing the drones to study Chinese data mining and devise methods to counteract hacking attempts.

“If the federal government is purchasing DJI drones for counter-drone or other security research — fine,” American Enterprise Institute defense and cybersecurity expert Klon Kitchen told Axios via email.

“But otherwise, in a world where you have plenty of alternatives — including some U.S. alternatives that are very good — why would federal agencies assume the inherent risks of Chinese-made systems?”

Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio was similarly unimpressed, according to Axios.

“DJI’s cyber security vulnerabilities are well documented,” Rubio wrote in an email to the outlet.

“Given everything we know about the Chinese Communist Party and its companies, there is absolutely no excuse for any government agency to use DJI drones, or any other drones manufactured in countries identified as national security threats.”

And that’s the critical problem here — if these agencies aren’t using these drones as vehicles to study China’s data-collection efforts and hacking, this is handing Beijing the keys to our national security apparatus.

The fact that these off-the-shelf drones are in the fleets of our federal government is worrying enough as it is.

The Interior Department has already stopped using DJI drones, after all. If the FBI and Secret Service are using these drones, it’d be impossible to ensure complete sequestration between our systems and Chinese software.

We’d also be hard-pressed to stop them from seeing and hearing exactly what our federal law enforcement sees and hears — which is, by its very nature, sensitive data. No matter what role the unmanned vehicles are playing in either agency’s mission, I’m guessing it won’t just involve a dad playing with his son in the backyard, teaching him how to use the drone.

Say what you will about the necessity of our surveillance state and how invasive (or not) it is. If it’s going to exist and it’s going to be peeking into our backyards and up our streets with panopticon-like omniprescence, it would help if China isn’t seeing what the federal government sees, too.

To Keep Tabs on Americans, FBI Is Playing a Dangerous Game with Chinese Hardware (westernjournal.com)

At the end of his magisterial book “How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower,” Adrian Goldsworthy compares the fate of imperial Rome with contemporary America.

The dominance of a civilization, he notes, depends not only on resources and military prowess but also on “culture,” that hard-to-define yet palpable mixture of confidence, savoir-faire, and commitment to foundational principles beyond the calculus of individual profit or aggrandizement.

Beginning in the third century, Goldsworthy writes, Rome began to turn away from that cultural compact and decline wove itself into the sinews of Roman society.

“The rot,” Goldsworth observes, “began at the top, and in time a similar attitude pervaded the entire government and army high command.”

I predict that future historians, seeking to understand the decline of the United States, will settle on the annus horribilis of 2021 as the terminus a quo. 

Immersed in the moment, it is often hard to disentangle the main story from the cacophony and chatter of mere events.

But can anyone who is not Jen Psaki contemplate America’s leadership and not discern the rot at the top?

Goldsworthy mentions the army high command. Take a look at the American high command, beginning with SecDef Lloyd “stand down” Austin and Mark “White Rage” Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

A lot of ink has been spilled trying to assess them both, their surrender to identity politics and to the corrosive sentimentality of political correctness.

General Milley’s treacherous effort to circumvent the chain of command and pretend that America’s military answered first of all to him, not the President, has attracted some measure of the obloquy it deserves, but he continues on in his position instead of being courtmartialed.

I doubt that he will be able to remain for long in the army—public sentiment against him is strong and growing—but I also doubt that he will be disciplined.

The rot that he himself embodies is too widespread to require it.

Indeed, “rot at the top” describes our situation to a T.

At the pinnacle we have an erratic practitioner of glossolalia whom everyone, friend and foe alike, understands is well on the road to senility.

Then cast your eye down the line of succession: Vice President Kamala Harris, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, President pro tempore of the Senate Patrick Leahy, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellin, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

A depressing cavalcade, isn’t it?

But the rot is not confined to political figures.

What Robert Frost called “the slow smokeless burning of decay” has installed itself in the heart of many of our most cherished institutions.

I already mentioned the military. What about our intelligence and crime fighting institutions?

Roger L. Simon, writing in these pages recently, got it exactly right about the FBI.

It must be dismantled, and not just the leadership “but the whole organization and everyone in it.”

With every passing week, its role in concocting and disseminating the whole “Russia Collusion” narrative against Donald Trump becomes more obvious and more disgusting.

And note well that its activities on that front are not done and over with.

Christopher Wray, the Director of the Bureau, is assiduously pursuing the successor to the Russia Collusion Narrative: the Jan. 6 insurrection hoax, according to which American citizens exercising their Constitutionally guaranteed right of free speech are branded as “domestic extremists” and hunted down.

The closer you look at that institution, the worse it looks.

Even the mild mannered Holman Jenkins, writing in The Wall Street Journal, argues that the Bureau “should be scrapped and something new built to replace it.”

Recent revelations about the Bureau’s role in planning and abetting the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer as well as the Jan. 6 protest at the Capitol—even The New York Times had to acknowledge that—underscore the depth of the rot at the once-respected institution.

And what about other institutions, higher education, for example? It speaks volumes, I think, that Harvard’s new chaplain, Greg Epstein, is a self-professed atheist.

Reflecting on the experience of Rome, Adrian Goldsworthy notes that when “governments or agencies forget what they are really for, then decline will occur.”

Moreover, he writes, “bureaucracies are stubborn” and “tend to expand on their own and develop their own agendas.”

The rot that was likely yesterday becomes inexorable tomorrow.

Can the trend be reversed? Maybe. But Goldsworthy is right. “If the trend is to be reversed, then this process needs to start at the very top.”

What do you suppose the prospects of that are?

Perhaps it is an illustration of Franz Kafka’s mordant observation that “there is hope, but not for us.”

A Rot Pervades America’s Institutions (theepochtimes.com)

The FBI had an informant on the ground on Jan. 6 before the incursion into the U.S. Capitol, according to a report, which is leading to questions about how involved the bureau was in the building breach.

The New York Times reported on Saturday it had obtained records which showed that an FBI handler had been in contact with a man reported to be affiliated with the group the Proud Boys before the building was entered by protesters.

As the Proud Boys marched to the Capitol on Jan. 6, a member of the far-right group was texting real-time updates — to his FBI handler.

The informer gave the bureau an inside view that day, according to confidential records obtained by The New York Times. https://t.co/QkBptydk2Z

— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 25, 2021

Per the report, the unnamed informant was constantly texting his FBI contact throughout the morning and afternoon of Jan. 6. Those messages were to keep the agent up to date about what was happening. The informant, per the Times, was affiliated with a midwest chapter of the Proud Boys.

He said he met with other members hours before the building was entered at the nearby Washington Monument at 10 a.m. that day. The FBI’s reported mole recounted that Proud Boys members did not organize an attempt to enter the Capitol. He said, rather, that they went in when others did so as doors were opened.

The Times reported the alleged informant and others with the Proud Boys became “consumed by a herd mentality,” but had no intention to commit any violence before traveling to Washington, or once they entered the building with others.

The informant reportedly said there was a prolonged conversation among Proud Boys members about whether entering the building was even a good idea.

Ultimately, he and others did enter. The informant said he later exited the building after he was told someone had been shot.

The shooting was an apparent reference to the shooting death of protester and military veteran Ashli Babbitt. The woman was shot by U.S. Capitol Police officer Lt. Michael Byrd.

The news outlet concluded that the informant’s testimony from the day is evidence that federal officials were actively monitoring the events, and had a good understanding of what was unfolding, which is a narrative the FBI has not embraced publicly.

“Federal law enforcement had a far greater visibility into the assault on the Capitol, even as it was taking place, than was previously known,” the Times reported.

People who viewed the Times report online speculated about the FBI’s involvement in the incursion, with many concluding that Jan. 6 might have been avoided had it not been steered by the bureau.

This is smelling like the Michigan gov kidnapping case. How much was the FBI just observing vs actively encouraging and directing?

To date not a single charge of insurrection or sedition.

— Alex Occasionally-Cornnuts (@AlexCornnuts) September 25, 2021

Trump’s Lawyer Reportedly Had a Six-Step Plan to Overturn Biden’s Victory

So the feds had people in the crowd the whole time? Surely they could have prevented any scary “insurrection” that was happening?
Unless they wanted some drama obviously, then they did a great job.
God bless America, eh?

— Sara Belle (@Sarabelle_Z) September 25, 2021

FBI : We never knew about the coup except the plots online and the spies who told us!

— Mark Wayne (@orwell4ever) September 25, 2021

😂😂😂 This was the mainstream media and CNN’s big “Far Right” boogie man – a bunch of weekend warriors steered by the FBI… https://t.co/5LnIfgg8iM

— Patrick Henningsen (@21WIRE) September 25, 2021

Another “Conspiracy Theory” becomes Reality.

Again. https://t.co/VBlYqAAxHs

— Jeff Carlson (@themarketswork) September 25, 2021

In other words, the FBI may have incited the Jan. 6th riot. https://t.co/mhiYhBDTNm

— BDW (@BryanDeanWright) September 25, 2021

The Times reported that 15 members of the Proud Boys have been charged over the events of Jan. 6. They are among hundreds of others who have been charged or jailed for alleged acts related to being in or near the Capitol.

The Times report comes as the FBI is already under fire for allegedly not acting to protect children from sexual abuse after having information that Larry Nassar, the former team doctor of the United States women’s national gymnastics team, was a sexual predator.

The bureau is also facing scrutiny over its role in an alleged plot last year to kidnap Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Report: FBI Handler Had Tap on Jan. 6, Plant in Crowd Working for Him (westernjournal.com)

Beijing Biden is letting China back into U.S. federal infrastructure after Trump banned their drones.

Despite the Trump administration blacklisting DJI – a controversial Chinese technology company – several branches of the federal government under have purchased drones from the firm under President Joe Biden.

DJI Innovations – formerly Da Jiang Innovations Science – currently leads the world’s market drone market, first catching the attention of U.S. intelligence officials in 2015. The organization has admitted complying with Beijing’s data requests, leading the U.S. Army to ban their use in 2017, citing cyber vulnerabilities. 

The office of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Los Angeles sent a memo stating officials have “moderate confidence” DJI’s commercial drones and software are “providing US critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government.”

Now, America is buying these drones again, giving the Chinese Communist Party yet another entry into U.S. federal infrastructure.

The purchases follow the appointment of two high-profile Biden campaign officials who previously worked for a consulting firm lobbying for DJI: Senior Spokesman for Biden Inaugural Committee Matt Hill, and Director of State Communication Meira Bernstein.

Following stints at the Global Strategy Group, Hill began serving as the Senior Associate Communications Director, and Bernstein is now Deputy Assistant Secretary for Media Operations at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Deleted client lists from the Global Strategy Group’s website reveal the firm working on behalf of DJI.

As Axios notes, the Secret Service bought eight DJI drones on July 26th, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) purchased 19 drones a few days earlier.

In contrast, under the Trump administration, the DHS – the Secret Service’s parent agency – asserted that DJI was “providing U.S. critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government.”

The New York Times reported on a 2016 DJI press briefing in China where company spokesman Zhang Fanxi described how DJI “is complying with requests from the Chinese government to hand over data”:

Biden Govt, Secret Service, FBI Purchase Drones From Firm Complying With Chinese Government Data Requests. (thenationalpulse.com)

FBI director Christopher Wray says that he would like to do away with encrypted messenger services like Signal that I and many of my friends and colleagues use to communicate with each other.

Wray claims that would make it easier to counter so-called “domestic extremism” that he and secretary of homeland security Alejandro Mayorkas, not to mention most of the staff of MSNBC, CNN and the New York Times, are insisting (forget al Qaeda, et. Al.) is the greatest threat to our nation today.

You know, folks like that hapless fellow in horns that’s been in solitary confinement since Jan.  6 as if he were a serial killer, he and those thousands of other “terrorists” and “insurrectionists,” only one of whom, it turns out, had a gun, who stormed (or were they waved in) to the Capitol that day.

But truth to tell, the very reason I—and I assume others— am on Signal and Telegraph is to stay as far as possible from prying prevaricators like Wray and Mayorkas and, most of all, from the organizations they lead.

I recommend others do the same.

One doesn’t have to go much further than last week’s revelation the FBI looked the other way for years on multiple cases of sexual abuse of our very young female Olympic gymnasts to know the organization is not only corrupt, it’s morally repellent.

As Jon Gabriel notes in “Larry Nassar got his due punishment. When will his FBI enablers get theirs?” “the FBI was busy chasing imaginary crimes instead of ending the serial abuse these national heroes suffered.”

Of course, this mostly took place when James Comey was director.

Wray is merely covering up, just as he has been for that great, even more monstrous, if that’s possible, other national malfeasance (i.e. imaginary crime) that has affected all of us—the little matter of supposed Trump-Russia collusion.

That “collusion” was concocted—as has been demonstrated by John Durham’s latest indictment, if we didn’t know in the first place—by Hillary Clinton and her ever-complaisant legal representatives (a “privacy & data security attorney” no less) and mainlined to the public by an FBI who took Hillary and the attorney’s lies at face value and ran with them.

Oh, how they ran with them, running roughshod over the rights of Americans, destroying the careers of the most patriotic citizens, like Gen. Michael Flynn, all in the attempt to upend the democratic election of a president or destroy his reputation once he had won.

This was attempted or accomplished by what has been revealed as a highly-politicized and secretive national police force.

Then there was this putative kidnapping of Michigan governor Whitmer in which more FBI agents were involved than kidnappers.  And the recent paltry Jan. 6 demonstration in which FBI attendance was only exceeded by the press (or maybe it was the other way around).

There has been little or no accountability, thus far, for any of this, with two minor exceptions due to Durham’s work.  Many of us are hoping for more.  Maybe we will have it.

Christopher Wray is clearly hoping for the opposite, practicing the old Nixonian technique of the “limited hangout” while doing his best to obfuscate the demonstrated evil that occurred in any way possible.

Meanwhile, he points the finger at the rest of us as “extremists” with no evidence of anything other than Constitutionally-protected political opposition.

If Mr. Wray is really concerned about “domestic terrorists,” he should look in the mirror.

Nevertheless, since I’m a good guy and like to think of myself as a patriot, I will save his techno-goons some time and effort, forego Signal and say right here in public what I well might say in encrypted form. It’s not all that hard, since it’s so obvious.

Like Carthage, the FBI delenda est. The FBI must be destroyed.

(Holman Jenkins has written similarly in “Abolish the FBI” in the Sept. 22 Wall Street Journal.)

In The American Mind the estimable  Angelo Codevilla advocates reforming it, but it is too late, not just because of its recent activities, but because of its history that has consistently, since the days of J. Edgar Hoover, devoted far too much attention to domestic spying on so-called “enemies within” (actually political enemies for one reason or another) and far too little to serious crimes like the Olympic gymnast scandal.

The identity of those “enemies” varied with the political winds or with the out-of-control power ambitions of people like Hoover.

When I say the FBI delenda est, I mean not just the Seventh Floor leadership that some, like Sean Hannity, blame for the entire problem, but the whole organization and everyone in it.

The fish may rot from the top but the rot seeps down, fatally if left alone long enough.  And in this case the rank-and-file agents below apparently went along with a lot of malevolent activities.  Is it possible they were all blind to them? Where were the whistleblowers?

No, everyone must go and the organization too.  After the FBI is gone, we can think about how to build a replacement. With 16 other intelligence agencies, there’d probably be plenty of backup, although a number of them should probably go too.

Nevertheless, as they say in that horrible cliché “at the end of the day,” what a relief it would be that when the “Feds” come calling, the first thing you think about would not be where you put your lawyer’s phone number. It might even be how can I help.

The FBI, Like Carthage, Must Be Destroyed (theepochtimes.com)

Beltway raconteur Bob Woodward has a track record for sensationalizing gossip in order to create buzz and sell books.

In American high schools and the Washington Beltway—is there a difference?—“buzz” is a term for manipulating emotional and social responses to achieve a goal. Woodward? He wants to sell books and demonstrate he matters, years after Watergate made him a Washington Post legend.

In the case of high school, the buzz creators are usually Mean Girls decapitating Nice Girl rivals or punishing boys and girls who ignore or abhor Mean Girl deceits, scams, and deceptions.

Washington? Hey, in the Beltway, Mean Girl is an asexual term for a power-mad, self-serving politician practicing perception warfare, no matter the on-the-ground reality (Afghanistan; Haitians under a Del Rio bridge), no matter the cost to American taxpayers, no matter the damage to American national security.

Woodward and co-author Robert Costa have a new book out named “Peril.” According to their buzz, the authors claim that shortly after the Jan. 6 Washington semi-riot, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley was so deeply concerned by President Donald Trump’s behavior he decided he simply had to—absolutely had to—take personal action outside the chain of command in order to prevent an out-of-control Trump from starting a nuclear war or whatever against Communist China.

Since Woodward and Costa’s publicists started buzzing, Milley has acknowledged something happened.

The something: One of Milley’s public affairs officers, Col. David Butler, said that Milley’s “calls with the Chinese and others in October and January were in keeping with (his) duties and responsibilities conveying reassurance in order to maintain strategic stability.”

Col. Butler’s something sounds like a concession, though note he employs bureaucratic rhetorical camouflage—a classic perception warfare technique. Still, Butler admits Milley spoke with senior Chinese military officers. Missing in action: the subject Milley addressed was potential U.S. military action against the nation that is America’s most potent adversary. More missing facts: Milley spoke to the Chinese officers without approval from Trump. Reflect for a moment and it sounds like Milley acted on his own self-serving Hollywood script, not on evidence Trump was preparing to start a war.

The Beltway is a vicious high school of a sort, but unfortunately its viciousness isn’t Mean Girls wrestling with fantasy crises. In Milley’s case, we’re confronting the abrogation of the constitutional order of the military under civilian control and ultimately the U.S. military’s duty to defend America regardless of the party or personality of the president.

Fact for Milley: Senior Chinese military officers are members of the Chinese Communist Party. Tiananmen Square. Hong Kong absorption. Uyghur genocide. The Chinese military is a Party tool, Mark, a violent tool.

Milley’s short-sighted and, I argue, savvily self-serving action weakened U.S. national security and put the U.S. constitutional system at risk.

Milley’s actions are another example of the destructive perception warfare waged against the American people by powerful Beltway elites—and the worst examples of this war are perpetrated by power elites in the Democratic Party, to include President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.

It’s a benevolent coincidence that last week Special Counsel John Durham indicted former Hillary Clinton campaign paid lawyer Michael Sussman. The Clinton campaign’s Russia collusion lie compromised and ultimately sacrificed the FBI’s counterintelligence security function and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court’s credibility to Hillary’s personal political goals. Her goals superseded American security. Hillary’s collusion crock was hatched to distract from her criminal abuse of classified information. The payoff for some of the actors? According to Durham’s indictment, positions in her administration. For the New York Times and Washington Post? Media Pulitzers for pushing a total lie.

Mark Milley violated constitutional order and subverted the chain of command. Why? His goal doesn’t matter, but here’s my guess: to secure the largesse of Biden and the Beltway media.

Try Milley by court martial, convict and sentence him to Fort Leavenworth’s Long Course. At Leavenworth, he can discuss perception warfare with his sledge while he whacks a rock.

Mark Milley’s Perception Warfare Deserves a Leavenworth Long Course (theepochtimes.com)

Twitter exec who testified to FEC called the Trump team ‘Nazis’

Twitter blocked a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop after U.S. intelligence officials shared “rumors” that Biden would be the target of a hack, an executive with the social media company told the Federal Election Commission.

Yoel Roth, the head of Twitter’s Site Integrity Team, cited the information from U.S. intelligence officials to justify Twitter’s decision to block access to a series of New York Post articles published in October detailing emails found on Biden’s laptop. A conservative group filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing Twitter of giving an illegal campaign contribution to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign by blocking access to the articles.

Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites have long faced allegations of bias against conservatives. Roth, who helped develop Twitter’s policy of labeling misleading posts, came under fire last year over tweets in which he called Donald Trump and his team “ACTUAL NAZIS.” He also called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) a “bag of farts,” Fox News reported. Brandon Borrman, a former Twitter executive who was named in the FEC complaint, recently joined an anti-Republican super PAC aligned with the Lincoln Project.

The six-member Federal Election Commission voted unanimously to dismiss the Republican complaint, according to documents released Wednesday. The bipartisan commission accepted Twitter’s claim that it blocked the articles for commercial purposes rather than for political reasons.

The commission pointed to Roth’s testimony that U.S. officials warned him individuals close to political campaigns would likely be targeted in “hack-and-leak” operations close to the election. Roth said he met frequently throughout 2020 with government officials to discuss election security. He said he learned in one of the meetings that “there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden.”

While the commissioners did not weigh in on whether Hunter Biden was hacked, no evidence has emerged that he was. A computer repair shop owner in Delaware claimed that Biden dropped his computer off for repairs in April 2019 and never retrieved it. The shop owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, has released documents showing that he provided Biden’s laptop to the FBI in late 2019.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware is investigating Biden over his taxes and foreign business dealings. Biden has said he is not certain what happened to his laptop. He has admitted to being in the midst of a drug and alcohol binge around the time he allegedly lost his computer.

Twitter Blocked Hunter Laptop Story After Intelligence Officials Shared Hack ‘Rumors’ (freebeacon.com)

• The newly-released document details a 2015 FBI interview with a staffer who worked at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles prior to the 9/11 attacks 
• The man is only referred to in the document as PII
• PII is accused of helping 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar shortly after they arrived in the United States  
• Families of 9/11 victims are eager to probe potential Saudi government links to the attack 

The FBI has released its first declassified 9/11 document exactly 20 years after the deadly terror attack which claimed the lives of 2,996 people.  

The document was published Saturday evening, a week after President Biden signed an executive order directing the agency to make the secret files available to the public for the first time. 

The order to release the documents came amid significant pressure from the families of 9/11 victims, who are eager to probe potential Saudi government links to the attack.

The FBI file that is significantly redacted details a 2015 interview with an official who worked at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles. 

He admitted that he allowed two hijackers to use his apartment and helped them travel around LA. He was found to be an al-Qaeda ‘facilitator’ by the FBI and the Saudi Consul General wanted to fire him for distributing extremist Muslim literature. 

He was also a close associate of two other Saudis, Omar al-Bayoumi and Fahad al-Thumairy, who the helped the hijackers.  

The new FBI file reveals that al-Bayoumi, who has admitted befriending them, worked as a ‘ghost employee’ at a Saudi aviation firm in the US.  

And it details how al-Thumairy gave the hijackers money, travel assistance and lodging.  

The Saudi official, who is only referred to as PII and who applied for US citizenship in 2015, is thought to be Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah who worked at the Saudi Consulate in Washington, DC. 

Al-Jarrah’s name was accidently left unredacted in separate court papers penned by an FBI official. However, he has vigorously denied any involvement and insists he did not know any of the hijackers.  

Of the 19 hijackers on board the four doomed 9/11 planes, 15 were Saudi nationals. 

Last Wednesday, Saudi Arabia released a statement maintaining its innocence, saying ‘it is lamentable that such false and malicious claims persist’.  

The FBI has released its first declassified 9/11 document exactly 20 years after the deadly terror attack. The document was published Saturday evening, a week after President Biden signed an executive order directing the agency to make the secret files available to the public

It is theorized PII may be Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, who  worked for a time at the Saudi Consulate in Washington, DC. However, he has vigorously denied any involvement and insists he did not know any of the hijackers

The hijackers are identified in the document as Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. Both of the men were on board American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon on September 11. 

The pair were reportedly already long-time affiliates of al-Qaeda with extensive fighting experience, and were chosen by Osama bin Laden to be a part of the ambitious 9/11 terror plot. 

The FBI document states that PII admitted showing al-Hazimi and al-Mihdhar the location of a Mediterranean restaurant in Los Angeles that was frequented by others suspected of providing logistical support to the terrorists. 

PII ‘denied being tasked to do so’ and stated that he simply ‘assisted al-Hazimi and al-Mihdar because he is a good Muslim and helping two new students in town is the Muslim way’. 

The document also states that PII had his own sister move out and stay with another sister for a couple of weeks ‘because he was having al-Hazimi and al-Mihdhar stay with him’.   

It also states that PII ‘worked as a facilitator for the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and was associated with members of the Salafist Group For Preaching and Combat.’

It importantly notes that GIA and the GSPC ‘have evolved into al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’. 

Additionally, sources allegedly told the FBI that PII was ‘very very vocal against Christians, Jews and enemies of Islam.’

Another stated that ‘the Saudi Consul General in LA wanted to fire PII for storage and and distribution of extremist Muslim literature at the consulate’.    

PII was suspected of helping hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi (left) and Khalid al-Mihdhar (right). Both of the men were on board American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon on September 11

55 military personnel and 70 civilians were killed when Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar were two of the hijackers on board the plane 

According to the FBI’s newly released document, ‘PII was forthcoming with numerous specific details regarding his … employment with the Consulate of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Los Angeles, [and] anecdotes of personal interactions with Consular leadership.’

During his FBI interview, PII described his duties at the Consulate ‘providing assistance to Saudi college students studying in the US, providing translation assistance, executing administrative tasks, and distributing literature on Islam’. 

RELATED ARTICLES

• Previous
• 1
• Next

• Brave children pay emotional tributes to the grandparents…‘I’m told 70% of American people think it was time to get…Stunning moment Army footballers from Westpoint Academy…Brother of British 9/11 victim accuses Saudi Arabian…

 Interestingly, the FBI notes that the two hijackers PII is suspected of helping originally traveled to the US as college students.

It is unclear whether PII was ever granted US citizenship following his 2015 interview with the FBI, or whether he is still connected to the Saudi Consulate. 

PII worked at the Consulate of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Los Angeles

New document also reveals PII’s links to ‘suspected Saudi intelligence agent’ Omar al-Bayoumi

PII was an associate of Omar al-Bayoumi, who admitted to befriending the two hijackers before 9/11 

The newly-released document also states that PII was an associate of Saudi man Omar al-Bayoumi. 

Al-Bayoumi has previously admitted to befriending al-Hazimi and al-Mihdhar, but denied ever working officially with them as part of a terrorist plot.  

Documents declassified in 2016 reveal that the FBI believed back in 2003 that it was ‘possible that al-Bayoumi was an agent of the Saudi Government and that he may have been reporting on the local community to Saudi Government officials’.

He has also been described as a ‘suspected Saudi intelligence agent’.  

Al-Bayoumi was arrested in London the week after the September 11 attacks and his phone calls and bank accounts were researched before he was released without charge.  

The final 9/11 Commission report, published in 2004, concluded that there ‘was no credible evidence that al-Bayoumi believed in violent extremism or knowingly aided extremist groups.’

However, the newly-released document appears to say otherwise, and reveals that he had odd ties to the two terrorists. 

It states: ‘al-Bayoumi’s logistic support to al-Hazimi and al-Mihdhar included translation, travel assistance, lodging and financing. Anomalous money transfers within al-Bayoumi’s bank accounts coincide with transactions wherein al-Bayoumi provides assistance to al-Hazimi and al-Mihdhar. 

The report also states al-Bayoumi’s ex-wife told him they were ‘at Jihad’.  

Interestingly, in his 2015 interview, PII recalled al-Bayoumi receiving special treatment at the Saudi Consulate in LA prior to the 9/11 attack. 

According to the newly-released FBI document: ‘PIl described al-Bayoumi as a Saudi citizen treated with great respect inside the Saudi Consulate, well regarded by Consulate personnel who held a ‘very high status’ when he entered the building.

He alleged that stated al-Bayoumi’s status was even higher than many of the Saudi persons who were in charge of the Consulate.

The reason for his high status among Saudi officials remains unclear.   

al-Bayoumi told investigators in 2003 that ‘he came to the US to study work for a Saudi aviation company named Dallah AVCO. Regarding his employment, however, witnesses at AVCO described him as a ‘ghost employee’ who was ‘one of approximately 50 individuals paid at the company who did not show up for work’. 

 It is reported that al-Bayoumi now lives back in Saudi Arabia.

PII was also ‘a close associate of Fahad al-Thumairy – ‘a hardcore, militant individual who supported the events of 9/11’ and had ‘had an office in the Saudi Consulate

The new FBI file also highlights PII’s links to Fahad al-Thumairy

The new FBI file also highlights PII’s links to Fahad al-Thumairy. 

Al-Thumairy was reported to the the Imam of the King Fahad Mosque in Los Angeles. 

Interestingly, al-Thumairy also served as an administrative officer at the Saudi Consulate and had an office there. 

The newly-released document also notes that al-Thumairy held extremist beliefs and was ‘removed from his mosque for un-Islamic activity’. 

He reportedly left the United States just before the September 11 attacks.  

 However, in his 2015 interview with the FBI, PII admitted to still being in contact with al-Thumairy. His current whereabouts has not been disclosed.   

The families of roughly 2,500 of those killed, and more than 20,000 people who suffered injuries, businesses and various insurers, have sued Saudi Arabia seeking billions of dollars.

However, newly-released FBI document does not confirm claims Saudi Arabian officials were involved in the planning of the September 11 attacks. 

But a statement on behalf of the organization 9/11 Families United, Terry Strada, whose husband Tom was killed on Sept. 11, said the document released by the FBI on Saturday put to bed any doubts about Saudi complicity in the attacks.

‘Now the Saudis’ secrets are exposed and it is well past time for the Kingdom to own up to its officials’ roles in murdering thousands on American soil,’ the statement, published by Reuters, read.  

Biden’s executive order for the FBI to release the files  came amid significant pressure from the families of 9/11 victims, who are eager to probe potential Saudi government links to the attack. Saudi Arabia has maintained their innocence 

FBI release first secret 9/11 files: Anonymous Saudi embassy staffer ‘helped two hijackers in LA’ | Daily Mail Online

The FBI over the weekend released the first previously declassified document about the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack hijackers, responding to an order handed down by President Joe Biden days earlier.

On Saturday night, a 16-page heavily redacted document (pdf) that was written in 2016 sheds light on the logistical support that was given to some of the Saudi Sept. 11 hijackers. Families of victims who died during the 2001 attacks have long sought the declassification of the report, as well as other documents related to the incident.

According to the document, the FBI did not find evidence that linked the Saudi government to the terror attacks, although 15 of the hijackers were Saudi nationals. Previously, a U.S. commission said it had no evidence Saudi Arabia directly funded al-Qaeda, the terrorist group that was long suspected of directing the terrorist attacks.

The families of about 2,000 people who died in the attacks as well as thousands more who were injured or suffered financial losses have filed lawsuits against Saudi Arabia seeking billions of dollars.

The newly declassified document reveals the FBI’s work to investigate the logistical support that a Saudi consular official and a suspected Saudi intelligence agent in Los Angeles had provided to two of the terrorists who hijacked planes. It details several connections and witnesses’ testimonies that prompted the FBI to investigate Omar al-Bayoumi, who was suspected of being an intelligence agent and allegedly provided “travel assistance, lodging, and financing” to help the two hijackers.

Hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar were assisted by al-Bayoumi when the pair first arrived in the United States in 2000. They met via a “chance encounter” at a restaurant before he helped them.

Family members of the Sept. 11 attack victims released a statement saying that the Saudi government was most likely complicit.

“Even with the unfortunate number of redactions, the report contains a host of bombshell new revelations, implicating numerous Saudi government officials, in a coordinated effort to mobilize an essential support network for the first arriving 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar,” 9/11 Families United said in a statement over the weekend. “The range of contacts at critical moments among these Saudi government officials, al-Qaeda, and the hijackers is stunning.”

But the Saudi government, ahead of the release of the document, denied that it was connected to the attacks. The United States and Saudi Arabia have long been allies and even coordinate with one another on counterterrorism issues, with the United States having sold the kingdom tens of billions of dollars in weapons in recent years.

“As past investigations have revealed, including the 9/11 Commission and the release of the so-called ’28 Pages,’ no evidence has ever emerged to indicate that the Saudi government or its officials had previous knowledge of the terrorist attack or were in any way involved,” said the Saudi embassy in a statement last week.

The document was released after an executive order was handed down by Biden earlier this month directing the Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, to review classified information. It came after Sept. 11 victims’ families called on the president to do so and said that if he did not, Biden shouldn’t attend any of their memorial events.

FBI Releases First Declassified 9/11 Document 20 Years After Attacks (theepochtimes.com)

For 20 years since Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. presidents have been saying their anti-terrorism policies have worked, as evidenced by no new attacks on America. While we should be grateful another attack hasn’t occurred, past performance is no guarantee of future success. Fanatics are nothing but patient, as we have seen in Afghanistan.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley has said the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan could lead to civil war and the possible “reconstitution of al Qaeda.” That should come as no surprise as the goals of our enemies in the Middle East have been expressed openly for decades. Their actions have proven a commitment to killing Americans and destabilizing democracies and their economies.

Underestimating one’s enemy is always a fatal error as we saw on 9/11. President Obama once dismissed al-Qaeda as the “JV team.” In fact, they are the varsity. It is difficult to deter or destroy an ideology whose adherents are willing to die for its cause, especially when they believe they are carrying out orders from their god.

In its March 2015 issue, The Atlantic noted a New York Times story about confidential comments made by Major General Michael K. Nagata, at the time the Special Operations commander for the U.S. in the Middle East. Gen. Nagata reportedly admitted he had yet to figure out the appeal of one of many terrorist organizations. About the Islamic State, he said, “We have not defeated the idea. We do not even understand the idea.” Whose fault is that?

With their win in Afghanistan, terrorists by whatever name, can only be further motivated to conduct new attacks. What might those look like? From experience we know they prefer the big event, such as crashing airliners into buildings and blowing up high value targets. There are other options when big targets are not vulnerable.

Lone suicide bomber incidents can also strike fear into a nation, especially if they are sustained and coordinated.

In 2003, Tom Clancy wrote a novel called “The Teeth of the Tiger” about terrorists who sneak across the U.S.-Mexico border and in coordinated attacks shoot up suburban shopping malls. Fear of terrorists slipping over the border is not fiction, but of growing concern.

Small-scale attacks, undetectable in advance, have been occurring since 9/11.

Two recent incidents demonstrate what we’re up against.

On the Sunday before the last American military planes left Kabul, a gunman shot and killed a Lyft driver in Garland, Texas. He then drove to a nearby police station and began shooting at people inside. The gunman was identified as Imran Ali Rasheed. Police killed him.

The FBI said Rasheed “may have been inspired by a foreign terrorist organization to commit these crimes.” Ya think? Suspected terrorists are crossing our southern border at “unprecedented level,” according to the outgoing U.S. Border Patrol chief. In New Zealand, a man named Ahamed Aathill Mohamed Samsudeen stabbed seven people inside a store where he had bought a knife. Police shot and killed him. Authorities drew the obvious conclusion, calling it a “terrorist attack.”

Who knows how many—if any—terrorists are among the thousands of Afghan refugees now pouring into America? The Biden administration claims the vetting system should weed out anyone who means us harm, but there are no guarantees and the radicals can be expected to lie and perhaps even have forged papers.

After turning back German General Erwin Rommel’s forces in what Winston Churchill called “The Battle of Egypt,” Churchill famously said: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Given the commitment and resourcefulness of this modern enemy, I’m not sure we are even at the end of the beginning.

The Next Terrorist Attack (theepochtimes.com)

As the storming of the Capitol building on January 6th was still unfolding a despicable gremlin of a woman at The New York Times, Sheera Frenkel, was already crafting a totally baseless lie along with her demonic friends at the ADL and Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg about the event being “planned” on both Gab and Parler.

“We need to ascertain right here, right now, whether this specific platform was knowingly facilitating an attack on our nation’s capital, literally a terror act against the seat of our government,” said the ADL’s Greenblatt, who noted that other platforms should also be investigated over the insurrection attempt but he says special attention needs to be trained on Gab.

Source

The ADL also went as far as demanding the DOJ investigate both myself individually and Gab as a whole for “intentionally aided or abetted individuals who carried out the January 6 attack on the nation’s Capitol.”

Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of the largest social network on the internet that happens to have a specific feature for organizing and planning events, also deflected the blame on Gab and Parler. “Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg has sought to deflect blame, noting the role of smaller, right-leaning services such as Parler and Gab.”

It has been widely reported, even by mainstream media outlets, that if the event was planned and organized anywhere it was most certainly done on her platform, Facebook.

Today the FBI is exposing the mountain of lies built up by Frenkel, Greenblatt, and Sandberg (I can’t help noticing a trend here!)

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

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

Source

The defamatory lies of the New York Times, the ADL, and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg had dire consequences for Parler, which was immediately removed from App Stores and hosting providers and has never fully recovered despite caving to Apple’s demands for censorship.

These defamatory lies also impacted Gab’s public image. The lie is still featured prominently on Gab’s Wikipedia page and is falsely cited by other reporters in stories about Gab to this day.

We demand a full and immediate retraction of this story by the New York Times and thank God for shining the light of truth on this fake news story.

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King

NYT Editorial Team,

Gab AI Inc. hereby demands retraction of the false and defamatory reporting published by the New York Times’ Sheera Frenkel on January 6th, 2021 claiming without providing any evidence whatsoever that the storming of the Capitol was organized on our platform.

Today it has been reported that the FBI found scant evidence that the event was organized at all, let alone on Gab.

Gab is not a lawless platform and proactively cultivates good working relationships with U.S. and international law enforcement. If we were made aware of an illegal plot taking place on our hardware, we would have removed it. This stands in sharp contrast to platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which for years have harbored international terrorist organizations like the Taliban – something your paper has never reported on or taken to task to the extent you took us to task for content which appeared on our platform in the aftermath of Jan. 6th and other offensive but legal content that has appeared on our platform from time to time.

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

In light of this reporting vindicating Gab’s innocence in this matter, we are demanding a full retraction of the defamatory reporting published by The New York Times. Ms. Frenkel’s piece, which alleged that “[t]he storming of Capitol Hill was organized on social media” and made extensive reference to posts on Gab that discussed the event (as indeed most of the Internet did on that day) without providing any evidence that the event was in fact organized by those same commenters, was presented as fact, not opinion.

This statement of fact was not only false, it was recklessly and maliciously false. FBI officials’ own statements on the matter, reported today, prove it was false.

Our rights in this matter are fully and expressly reserved. Please be guided accordingly.

Gab Legal

The New York Times and ADL Lies Exposed By The FBI – Gab News

Another widely peddled media hoax has been shot to pieces as Reuters reveals that the FBI has “scant evidence” of any plot or forward planning to overthrow the U.S. government on January 6th.

The news confirms The National Pulse’s reporting from January 11th, and raises questions about the government’s power grab and abuse of authority using January 6th as pretext.

Reuters reported Friday morning:

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

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

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

The report also vindicates President Trump and his team, and clarifies that there is “no evidence that the groups had serious plans,” to overthrow the U.S. government or commit anything like an actual “insurrection.”

The news blows apart the media’s narrative over the past eight months, and should refocus attention on the fact that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser refused support in advance of the peaceful Trump rally at the White House earlier that day.

President Trump is known to have cleared the way for 10,000 National Guard troops, in advance of the event, in order to keep the peace.

The FBI, meanwhile, has been targeting peaceful U.S. protesters who did not breach the Capitol on January 6th, including Alaska spa owners Paul and Marilyn Hueper. Many of those arrested in the wake of the riot are being held in D.C. prison without access to edible food, and sometime in solitary confinement.

The National Pulse declared the January 6th hoax dead in March of this year, after exhaustive investigations.

FBI “Finds Scant Evidence” of Jan 6 Insurrection Plot, Killing Off Another Anti-Trump Media Hoax. – The National Pulse

The pending report from special counsel John Durham, who was tasked with investigating the origins of the FBI’s Trump–Russia probe, should be released to the public, Senate Republicans argued in a letter this week.

More than 40 Republican senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), signed a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking that Durham, a former U.S. attorney, be allowed to continue his investigation and that his report is released to the public.

There have been questions about whether Durham’s investigation will lack funding past the end of the federal government’s fiscal year on Sept. 30. He was tapped by then-Attorney General William Barr to investigate the FBI’s operations when it surveilled former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. Barr elevated Durham to become special counsel in October 2020.

“The Special Counsel’s ongoing work is important to many Americans who were disturbed that government agents subverted lawful process to conduct inappropriate surveillance for political purposes,” the Republican senators’ letter reads. “The truth pursued by this investigation is necessary to ensure transparency in our intelligence agencies and restore faith in our civil liberties. Thus, it is essential that the Special Counsel’s ongoing review should be allowed to continue unimpeded and without undue limitations.”

The Republicans called on Garland to make a pledge to release the full report and allow Durham to investigate past September.

“We are over two years into the investigation of how the Obama–Biden FBI spied on an incoming president, and we still do not have answers. America’s national security apparatus was weaponized to take down President Trump, and the American people deserve to know how this occurred,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who is leading the effort, said in a statement.

In recent months, however, there have been scant reports about the progress of Durham’s investigation. According to an Aug. 13 report from The Wall Street Journal, Durham’s investigation is still active and is presenting evidence to a grand jury. The WSJ report cited anonymous sources.

If Durham presents evidence before a grand jury, it suggests that he’s considering more criminal charges beyond the case against former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty to altering an email about former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. During the 2016 campaign, Page was placed under FBI surveillance in an operation that was later flagged in a December 2019 report (pdf) conducted by the Department of Justice’s inspector general, who found errors and omissions in how the agency operated.

The Department of Justice didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

44 Senate Republicans Demand John Durham Report Be Made Public (theepochtimes.com)