Author, Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA
The following is adapted from a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on October 3, 2023, during a conference on “U.S. Intelligence: History and Controversies.”
We need the CIA, but we also need to recognize the uncomfortable reality that the CIA is not performing at the level we require. It is not keeping us safe. It must be repaired, and it must be repaired quickly.
The CIA was created after World War II with one overriding primary mission—to prevent a reoccurrence of what happened at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. We were never going to allow an enemy to surprise us on that scale again. We were never going to find ourselves blind regarding a threat of that magnitude and immediacy. We would be forewarned and forearmed.
Then came 9/11. Members of Al Qaeda hijacked four airliners. They crashed three of them into their targets. They were prevented from succeeding with the fourth only by the heroism of the brave American passengers.
Al Qaeda was not some unknown entity. It had been around for years. Osama Bin Laden had threatened to attack us on our own soil for years. Al Qaeda had blown up two of our embassies in East Africa. Al Qaeda had almost sunk the USS Cole in Yemen. Al Qaeda had tried once before to take down the World Trade Center.
Yet we had not a single source inside that organization capable of warning us of the 9/11 attacks that would kill almost 3,000 Americans.
On May 2, 2011, U.S. special operations personnel attacked a compound in Pakistan and killed the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. That operation in and of itself was clearly a success. But the fact that it took us almost ten years after 9/11 to find and kill Bin Laden should give us pause.
Bin Laden fully understood the technical capabilities of American intelligence. After his escape from Afghanistan, he established himself in a compound with no internet service. He had no cell phone. He communicated with his organization via a courier system and dealt with those couriers face to face. There were no emails, text messages, or phone calls for us to intercept.
Finding Bin Laden meant getting a source inside Al Qaeda at a level high enough to know his physical location. It took almost a decade for the CIA, with all its resources, to acquire such a source, even though this was probably the CIA’s single highest priority.
More recently, in 2020, we found ourselves amidst a worldwide pandemic that originated in China. Despite attempts to characterize this as a natural outbreak of a disease found in bats, it has become abundantly clear that COVID-19 was the product of gain-of-function research in a bio lab in Wuhan, China. It has also become clear that there were numerous warning signs regarding the dangers of the work and substandard lab practices in Wuhan.
Biological warfare threats are real and have been considered so for many years. Collecting intelligence about both state-sponsored and terrorist biological warfare programs is one of the CIA’s top priorities. The existence of the lab from which COVID emerged was not a secret. Neither was the fact that the Chinese were working overtime to make coronaviruses more dangerous to humans.
Yet we received no warning prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. When people began to get sick here and around the world, the CIA could apparently provide no useful information regarding the origins of the disease. Even now, years later, it seems unable to tell us precisely how the pandemic began. We had no sources inside China’s top bio lab. We apparently have no sources there now.
Why is that? Why is an organization staffed with highly talented people and provided with unparalleled resources failing to perform its core functions?
There are two reasons: bureaucratization and politicization.
BUREAUCRATIZATION
Forget for a moment all the gadgets and technology. The core business of the CIA is recruiting spies inside target organizations, handling them securely, and producing intelligence for policymakers in Washington, D.C.
At its heart espionage is a very old business. Its essence has remained unchanged for thousands of years. And it is not a science—it is an art. There is a reason intelligence officers talk about tradecraft. Espionage requires innate skills. Not everyone can do it.
CIA case officers may be called upon to do many things during their careers, but when it comes down to it, their primary job is spotting, assessing, developing, and recruiting spies. That means getting close to people who are often very objectionable, figuring out what makes them tick, and convincing them to help you by betraying their colleagues and their countries and to trust that you can keep them alive while they do so.
That means getting a Russian intelligence officer to take actions he knows will result in his execution and the disgrace of his family if he is caught. It means persuading an Iranian nuclear scientist that working with you will make his countrymen safer and their future better. It means convincing a member of Al Qaeda that you are not the enemy of Islam and that you know your trade well enough to keep him from meeting a grisly fate.
All of this requires someone who has impeccable gut instincts, can make decisions on the fly, and can navigate through a maze of mirrors and tolerate extremely high degrees of ambiguity. When you are face to face with a very dangerous person on the street in a slum in South Asia or in a desert in the Middle East, you do not have time to deliberate. You can’t phone CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, for guidance. You must know intuitively what to do and take immediate action.
The people in charge of our government, including those who run the CIA, have forgotten this. They have done their best to turn the CIA into just another federal agency. Recruiters no longer search for intangibles or focus on the key psychological traits critical to success in the world of spying. They look at academic degrees, existing levels of language proficiency, and increasingly at things like skin color and sexual orientation.
Training has been softened and is increasingly formbook in nature. We act as if anyone can be taught to conduct espionage—as if this is no longer an arcane craft to be practiced by a select group of unique people.
We have buried operations under endless layers of middle management. Case officers in the field may spend days just trying to complete the requisite paperwork for a single asset meeting. Every moment they are sitting behind a desk is a moment they are not out meeting sources, recruiting new sources, or learning the environment around them.
In Washington, the management ranks are increasingly filled with individuals who seldom travel far from Langley and have never demonstrated that they can accomplish anything on the street. They have laughed at the boss’s jokes. They have demonstrated their fealty to the prevailing groupthink. They have moved paper, attended meetings, and climbed the corporate ladder. But in large measure, they have no idea how to run an op or recruit a source.
At its core the CIA is meant to do what everyone else considers impossible. It is supposed to be run by people who want to steal the crown jewels and will do so if asked. Not anymore. Now it is run by people who look for ops with no possible downside and, therefore, no particular upside either.
The CIA has proved unable to put a source inside a Chinese bio lab, within the leadership structure of the Taliban, or next to Vladimir Putin. Those kinds of operations require the willingness to take risks and the ability to manage those risks. We no longer have either.
POLITICIZATION
On September 11, 2012, two American compounds in the Libyan city of Benghazi were attacked by a well known Islamic militia with a history of attacking Western targets. One of the compounds, occupied by the Department of State, was overrun. The American ambassador to Libya, who was visiting from Tripoli at the time, was killed.
The other compound was occupied by CIA personnel and was better prepared to resist. Those inside held out long enough for an ad hoc relief force from the embassy in Tripoli to arrive and for the CIA personnel to be evacuated. No military relief force was sent by the Obama administration.
Throughout the attacks on the compounds, a continuous stream of reporting was sent to Washington from the field. All that reporting told the same story: a large-scale assault had been launched on two American-occupied compounds by a heavily armed Islamic terrorist group.
Nevertheless, in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others in the Obama administration began to peddle the narrative that a peaceful demonstration in Benghazi had simply gotten out of hand—that this was not an act of terrorism. The backlash against this transparent lie was immediate. The Obama administration came under scathing criticism.
Enter Mike Morell, acting director of the CIA, who stepped forward to take the blame for the erroneous claims of a peaceful demonstration. Analysts at the CIA, Morell said, had written an assessment to this effect, and he had passed it on to the White House. Obama and company were blameless. The CIA had given them bad intelligence.
This was absurd on its face. CIA analysts do not review a mountain of reporting about ongoing attacks using heavy machine guns, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades and then write up an assessment saying, “We think they meant this to be peaceful.” Nor, obviously, has any evidence of such an assessment been produced.
In short, the Director of Central Intelligence had injected himself into a domestic political dispute, covering for a blatant lie concocted by the administration. He did so, presumably, because he believed that Secretary of State Clinton would become the next president and that he would be named to a senior post in her administration. Interestingly, when Clinton lost in 2016, Morell was given a post with a six-figure annual salary at a Washington think tank aligned with the Democratic Party.
In the runup to the 2016 election, people within Clinton’s campaign concocted the idea of smearing Donald Trump with false accusations of colluding with Russia, based on a dossier filled with lies, gossip, and innuendo. When this failed to prevent Trump’s election, they carried on the deception with an eye to destabilizing the Trump presidency and perhaps even removing Trump from office.
The involvement of the FBI in this effort, known by its FBI codename Crossfire Hurricane, has been extensively documented. What has been much less talked about is the CIA’s role.
The extensive investigation of what transpired during Crossfire Hurricane has shown that American intelligence sought the involvement of a number of allied intelligence services, most notably the British. It has also shown that with the passage of time, the British in particular became decreasingly enthusiastic about their involvement as it became clear to them that this activity was inappropriate and illegal.
Such interaction with close allies doesn’t happen without the involvement and assistance of the CIA. That is not the way it works. If you are in London, for instance, meeting with British intelligence and counterintelligence services, you are doing so not only with the knowledge of the chief of station in London, but also with his or her permission and assistance.
John Brennan, the CIA’s director at the time, not only had to know about Crossfire Hurricane; he also had to approve it. When Brennan stepped down as head of the CIA, he was replaced by Gina Haspel. She had been the chief of station in London throughout Crossfire Hurricane and had to have been directly involved in the interactions with the British services that were part of this plot.
We should also note that when news of Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” threatened to derail Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign for the White House, 51 former intelligence officers came forward and signed on to a now infamous letter branding the laptop as a product of Russian disinformation. I have seen the contents of that laptop and retain a copy to this day. I can assure you it was immediately obvious in looking at the laptop’s contents that it was real and that it suggested strongly that Joe Biden himself was compromised by a number of foreign actors—chief among them the Chinese Communist Party.
Five former directors or acting directors of the CIA were among the 51 signatories to this letter, whose clear purpose was to bury the contents of the laptop and get Joe Biden elected. Both Mike Morell and John Brennan were among those five.
SOLUTIONS
If the CIA is critical to our survival—and I believe it is—we need to appoint someone to run it who knows the terrain. The new director will have to understand what is meant in describing espionage as an art. Some of what is needed can be taught—for instance, you can send people to language schools. But you can’t teach the critical skills required to reach across cultures, connect with people who belong to an organization that exists to murder people like you, and then get them to follow your orders. That takes raw physical courage. It takes perception. It takes instinct, insight, and immense self-confidence.
The new director will also need to have the full support of the president. When Wild Bill Donovan set up the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the CIA) in 1942, he faced intense opposition. He succeeded because everyone in Washington knew he had a direct line to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and would pick up the phone if he had to. A director seeking to reform the CIA today will need an equal level of backing.
The new director must, from the very beginning, make crystal clear that there is no more business as usual, that the organization is returning to its roots and getting back to basics, that there will be zero tolerance for any involvement in domestic politics—and that individuals who involve themselves in politics will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
A significant number of senior officers should be removed immediately. Some of those officers are complicit in the actions I detailed above. Many others have stood by silently as a great organization has decayed and laws have been broken. There must be a clear sea change. Everyone in the organization must understand that real reform is underway and there will be zero tolerance for foot dragging, slow rolling, or internal resistance.
The records of every single person in a command position in the CIA—both at Langley and in the field—should be reviewed. Those individuals who made rank by playing it safe and currying favor with superiors should be immediately removed. They should be replaced by individuals with the brains, guts, and audacity to do what is needed. If they don’t get the job done, they should be replaced in turn.
There can be only one measure of success—results. We must not be interested in more PowerPoint presentations or wiring diagrams. We must be interested solely in intelligence that gives us a decisive advantage over our adversaries.
Recruiting must be completely revamped. Quotas are absurd. Focusing on color, gender, and sexual orientation is at best irrelevant. We want the best, and that means those people who possess the unique blend of skills and abilities that enable them to do what everyone else considers impossible.
Training must be toughened. The world is getting more dangerous by the day. If we are going to expect the case officers in a retooled CIA to crawl into the belly of the beast, get the intel we need, and come back alive, they will need to be tough enough and well-trained enough to do that.
The structure of the CIA must be flattened and simplified. The organization must be field-centric. It is not the job of those in the field to wait for people in Langley to finish rounds of meetings and reviews before moving. It is the job of people in Langley to keep up. Anything and everything that impedes those in the field in the accomplishment of their missions must be eliminated.
All this needs to happen immediately upon the appointment of a new director. There can be no more blue-ribbon panels or interminable outside reviews. We know what the problems are. We know how to fix them. What we have lacked until now is the willingness to do what is needed.
Somewhere in the world right now a terrorist group is planning a deadly biological attack on the United States. The Afghan and Pakistani Taliban organizations are conspiring to seize functioning Pakistani nuclear weapons. The Chinese are putting the finishing touches on a plan to blockade Taiwan and crash the global economy. The Venezuelans are discussing with the Russians the idea of putting hypersonic missiles on their soil that can carry nuclear warheads.
The only organization that has a prayer of providing the necessary insight into these and many other threats is the CIA. We needed it in 1947. We need it even more today. We have no time to waste in returning it to fighting form.
The granular issue of this specific whistleblower story pertains to an FBI investigative employee who had his security clearance suspended after officials within the FBI discovered he attended a speech given by President Trump.
However, the bigger issue uncovered during a review of that punishment was written FBI instructions from within the sector of the FBI that investigates and issues security clearances. In essence, the FBI has a documented standard that political ideology determines who will get security clearances approved.
If a person supports President Trump, holds conservative views, or does anything that would identify themselves as not being in alignment with the leftist worldview, their security clearance application or renewal would be denied. Put another way, the FBI has written policy examples that discriminate against political views.
This should not come as a surprise. Factually, when CTH outlined how the Obama administration began to implement the process of filtration and purging of government agencies, we pointed out how the FBI security clearance investigative section was the first sector changed. Obama and Eric Holder then began the process of denying security clearances. {GO DEEP – Fourth Branch of Govt}.
Tucker Carlson points out the larger issues of the FBI using almost identical context from our prior research outline. WATCH:
Biden Puts Conservatives on Notice: “If They Wanna Think to Take on Government if We Get Out of Line … Guess What? They Need F-15s! They Don’t Need a Rifle!” (VIDEO)
Joe Biden delivered a speech at Everytown’s Gun Sense University at the Washington Hilton after his son Hunter was found guilty of three federal gun felonies.
You just can’t make this stuff up.
Biden’s 20-minute speech was a total disaster. He incoherently rambled about banning ‘assault weapons.’
There is no such thing as an ‘assault weapon.’
He mocked the ‘tree of liberty’ Second Amendment supporters and threatened millions of conservatives.
“If they wanna think to take on government if we get out of line … guess what? They need F-15s! They don’t need a rifle!” Biden said.
WATCH:
BIDEN (slurring heavily): "If they wanna think to take on government if we get out of line … guess what? They need F-15s! They don't need a rifle!" pic.twitter.com/9Lh28W52bU
This isn’t the first time Joe Biden has threatened millions of conservatives.
Biden previously threatened millions of Trump supporters at the National Action Network Martin Luther King, Jr. Day breakfast.
“I love my right-wing friends talking about how the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots. If you want to take on the federal government, you need some F-15s. You don’t need an AR-15,” Biden said.
In August 2022 Joe Biden went off-script and threatened “right-wing Americans” in a speech in Pennsylvania.
“For those brave right-wing Americans… if you want to fight against the country, you need an F-15. You need something little more than a gun,” said Biden.
“I’m not joking!” he added.
Imagine the headlines if Trump said this about BLM.
Trump’s campaign took a moment to comment on the recent conviction of Hunter Biden, who was found guilty on all three felony charges related to gun possession after a three-hour jury deliberation. Hunter now faces up to 25 years behind bars.
Following the conviction, Trump’s campaign National Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, released a statement:
“This trial has been nothing more than a distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family, which has raked in tens of millions of dollars from China, Russia and Ukraine. Crooked Joe Biden’s reign over the Biden Family Criminal Empire is all coming to an end on November 5th, and never again will a Biden sell government access for personal profit.”
Screenshot: Team Trump
Matt Gaetz also weighed in on these charges, saying, “The Hunter Biden gun conviction is kinda dumb tbh.”
The Hunter Biden gun conviction is kinda dumb tbh.
Hunter Biden is guilty. Everyone in the world has known that for a long time. Today a jury in Delaware found him guilty. But do not take the bait, I plead with you. The media is going to say this is the rule of law working. It’s even.
What’s happened with the lawfare with President Trump and all of their conservatives is now okay because because they got Hunter on this one thing. That’s not true. They charged him with the lowest level thing they could find, okay. This is about lying on a form to buy a gun, that he was addicted to drugs. Clear as day. Everyone knows that. They did not charge him with running an international pay-to-play influence peddling scheme with his father as the product. His father’s awareness of it with some of the most corrupt corners of the world, the CCP, the corrupt corners of Ukraine…
Joe Biden has repeatedly said that he will not grant a pardon to his son, Hunter Biden, should he be convicted of illegal gun possession or any other related charges. During a recent interview, when questioned about the possibility of pardoning his son, Biden’s response was concise and definitive: “Yes,” according to Politico.
We’ll see if Biden stands by his word. As Democrat Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries said, “Biden commented as a loving father as I would hope any loving father would do.”
Biden also released his statement following the conviction of his son.
“I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal. Jill and I will always be there for Hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. Nothing will ever change that.”
“The privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen—a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of man’s life at will.”—Justice William O. Douglas
The spirit of the Constitution, drafted by men who chafed against the heavy-handed tyranny of an imperial ruler, would suggest that one’s home is a fortress, safe from almost every kind of intrusion.
Unfortunately, a collective assault by the government’s cabal of legislators, litigators, judges and militarized police has all but succeeded in reducing that fortress—and the Fourth Amendment alongside it—to a crumbling pile of rubble.
We are no longer safe in our homes, not from the menace of a government and its army of Peeping Toms who are waging war on the last stronghold of privacy left to us as a free people.
The weapons of this particular war on the privacy and sanctity of our homes are being wielded by the government and its army of bureaucratized, corporatized, militarized mercenaries.
Government agents—with or without a warrant, with or without probable cause that criminal activity is afoot, and with or without the consent of the homeowner—are now justified in mounting virtual home invasions using surveillance technology—with or without the blessing of the courts—to invade one’s home with wiretaps, thermal imaging, surveillance cameras, aerial drones, and other monitoring devices.
While the courts have given police significant leeway at times when it comes to physical intrusions into the privacy of one’s home (the toehold entry, the battering ram, the SWAT raid, the knock-and-talk conversation, etc.), the menace of such virtual intrusions on our Fourth Amendment rights has barely begun to be litigated, legislated and debated.
A byproduct of this surveillance age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency is listening in and tracking your behavior.
This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.
Stingray devices mounted on police cars to warrantlessly track cell phones, Doppler radar devices that can detect human breathing and movement within in a home, license plate readers that can record up to 1800 license plates per minute, sidewalk and “public space” cameras coupled with facial recognition and behavior-sensing technology that lay the groundwork for police “pre-crime” programs, police body cameras that turn police officers into roving surveillance cameras, the internet of things: all of these technologies (and more) add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence—especially not when the government can listen in on your phone calls, read your emails, monitor your driving habits, track your movements, scrutinize your purchases and peer through the walls of your home.
Without our realizing it, the American Police State passed the baton off to a fully-fledged Surveillance State that gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like an electronic prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable.
Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide: this is the mantra of the architects of the Surveillance State and their corporate collaborators.
Government eyes see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.
Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to amass a profile of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.
Cue the dawning of the Age of the Internet of Things (IoT), in which internet-connected “things” monitor your home, your health and your habits in order to keep your pantry stocked, your utilities regulated and your life under control and relatively worry-free.
By the end of 2018, “there were an estimated 22 billion internet of things connected devices in use around the world… Forecasts suggest that by 2030 around 50 billion of these IoT devices will be in use around the world, creating a massive web of interconnected devices spanning everything from smartphones to kitchen appliances.”
As the technologies powering these devices have become increasingly sophisticated, they have also become increasingly widespread, encompassing everything from toothbrushes and lightbulbs to cars, smart meters and medical equipment.
These Internet-connected techno gadgets include smart light bulbs that discourage burglars by making your house look occupied, smart thermostats that regulate the temperature of your home based on your activities, and smart doorbells that let you see who is at your front door without leaving the comfort of your couch.
Nest, Google’s suite of smart home products, has been at the forefront of the “connected” industry, with such technologically savvy conveniences as a smart lock that tells your thermostat who is home, what temperatures they like, and when your home is unoccupied; a home phone service system that interacts with your connected devices to “learn when you come and go” and alert you if your kids don’t come home; and a sleep system that will monitor when you fall asleep, when you wake up, and keep the house noises and temperature in a sleep-conducive state.
The aim of these internet-connected devices, as Nest proclaims, is to make “your house a more thoughtful and conscious home.” For example, your car can signal ahead that you’re on your way home, while Hue lights can flash on and off to get your attention if Nest Protect senses something’s wrong. Your coffeemaker, relying on data from fitness and sleep sensors, will brew a stronger pot of coffee for you if you’ve had a restless night.
Yet given the speed and trajectory at which these technologies are developing, it won’t be long before these devices become government informants, reporting independently on anything you might do that runs afoul of the Nanny State.
Moreover, it’s not just our homes and personal devices that are being reordered and reimagined in this connected age: it’s our workplaces, our health systems, our government, our bodies and our innermost thoughts that are being plugged into a matrix over which we have no real control.
It is expected that by 2030, we will all experience The Internet of Senses (IoS), enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), 5G, and automation. The Internet of Senses relies on connected technology interacting with our senses of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch by way of the brain as the user interface. As journalist Susan Fourtane explains:
Many predict that by 2030, the lines between thinking and doing will blur. Fifty-nine percent of consumers believe that we will be able to see map routes on VR glasses by simply thinking of a destination… By 2030, technology is set to respond to our thoughts, and even share them with others… Using the brain as an interface could mean the end of keyboards, mice, game controllers, and ultimately user interfaces for any digital device. The user needs to only think about the commands, and they will just happen. Smartphones could even function without touch screens.
Once technology is able to access and act on your thoughts, not even your innermost thoughts will be safe from the Thought Police.
Thus far, the public response to concerns about government surveillance has amounted to a collective shrug. Yet when the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.
To our detriment, we are fast approaching a world without the Fourth Amendment, where the lines between private and public property are so blurred that private property is reduced to little more than something the government can use to control, manipulate and harass you to suit its own purposes, and you the homeowner and citizen have been reduced to little more than a tenant or serf in bondage to an inflexible landlord.
When people talk about privacy, they mistakenly assume it protects only that which is hidden behind a wall or under one’s clothing. The courts have fostered this misunderstanding with their constantly shifting delineation of what constitutes an “expectation of privacy.” And technology has furthered muddied the waters.
However, privacy is so much more than what you do or say behind locked doors. It is a way of living one’s life firm in the belief that you are the master of your life, and barring any immediate danger to another person (which is far different from the carefully crafted threats to national security the government uses to justify its actions), it’s no one’s business what you read, what you say, where you go, whom you spend your time with, and how you spend your money.
As Glenn Greenwald notes:
“The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what [government officials] do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals. This dynamic—the hallmark of a healthy and free society—has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That’s the imbalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consequential acts of those who wield political power are completely unknown to those to whom they are supposed to be accountable.”
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, none of this will change, no matter which party controls Congress or the White House, because despite all of the work being done to help us buy into the fantasy that things will change if we just elect the right candidate, we’ll still be prisoners of the electronic concentration camp.
The Supreme Court has denied an appeal from InfoWars host Owen Shroyer against his conviction related to the January 6th protests.
Shroyer, a hugely popular commentator, and activist with Alex Jones’s InfoWars, was convicted of a misdemeanor and received a 60-day prison sentence after pleading guilty to engaging in “disruptive and riotous behavior” at the Capitol Building, despite the fact he never went inside.
His appeal was rejected as part of a routine list of orders released on Monday morning, with no Justice dissenting or commenting on the decision.
In his petition to the court, Shroyer’s lawyers argued that the District Court had failed to recognize his “unique role” as a journalist and had violated his First Amendment rights.
“The precedent has been set. You can be arrested & sentenced for legal & lawful speech,” Shroyer wrote on the X platform after his appeal was rejected. “My case was the precedent. The message is clear. Speak out against government & risk arrest.”
The precedent has been set. You can be arrested & sentenced for legal & lawful speech. My case was the precedent. The message is clear. Speak out against government & risk arrest.
While Shroyer did not enter the Capitol, he had previously signed a deferred prosecution agreement after interrupting a House Judiciary Committee hearing during Donald Trump’s impeachment proceedings back in 2019.
As part of the agreement, Shroyer had agreed not to “utter loud, threatening, or abusive language or engage in any disorderly or disruptive conduct” anywhere on the U.S. Capitol Grounds with the “intent to disrupt the orderly conduct of any congressional session.”
After he attended the Stop the Steal rallies on January 6th, prosecutors targeted Shroyer and accused him of being responsible for the events that took place because of his “violent rhetoric” beforehand.
“The Democrats are posing as communists, but we know what they really are,” he said at the time. “They’re just tyrants, they’re tyrants. And so today, on January 6, we declare death to tyranny! Death to tyrants!”
“Shroyer helped create January 6,” the prosecutors wrote at the time. “Shroyer cannot light a fire near a can of gasoline and then express concern or disbelief when it explodes.”
Fortunately for Shroyer, the nightmare of his imprisonment and persecution by the Biden regime is over, at least for the time being. However, the fight for justice for the hundreds of other patriots who stood up against the fraudulent 2020 presidential election continues.
Congressman Matt Gaetz seemingly cuts across the UniParty grain at key moments; perhaps today is another example. The better part of good public questioning is not just what question is asked, but also how the question is asked.
The back-and-forth questioning does not need to be performative to be substantial, it only needs to express the same frame of mind that a viewer would have on the subject matter. If your gut has a sense about an issue and the questioner conveys that same gut-level sentiment honestly, it puts the person being questioned into a non-pretending corner.
AG Merrick Garland says it’s a “dangerous conspiracy theory” to allege that the Department of Justice is communicating with state and local prosecutions against Trump. But former senior DOJ official Matthew Colangelo was appointed Senior Counsel to District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office to “get Trump” – as detailed in Mark Pomerantz’s book. Congressman Matt Gaetz asks the non-pretending version of the questions. WATCH:
There should be no respect granted to a U.S Attorney General who disrespects the intelligence of the American people. They work for us, we should all focus on remembering that.
Dr. Phil on the Weapanization of the Goverment Against President Trump “If You Let Your Hatred for Donald Trump Compromise Your Ability to Find True North on Your Moral Compass, Shame on You”
On Thursday, June 6, “Dr. Phil Primetime” will air a special two-hour event featuring President Donald Trump.
The first hour will be a one-on-one candid interview between Dr. Phil McGraw and President Trump from Mar-a-Lago.
Following the interview, Dr. Phil will host a live town hall with his Dallas studio audience to discuss the interview, the recent trial, and the broader implications for America’s future.
Monday night’s show focused on how this conviction is a judicial travesty. Closing the episode, McGraw discussed his concerns about the weaponization of the government against President Trump and other political rivals of the current regime and the potentially catastrophic implications it has for democracy.
“I wanted to share my final thoughts about this.”
“This weaponization of our great institutions, the FBI, Justice Department, and individual states’ similar institutions, will lead to one of two outcomes. One is more of the same from the other side, tit for tat. That may seem deserved, but that is not the right way forward for America. The other is what I call on you to demand from your politicians today. An end to this craziness in order to save the soul and sanity of our country.”
“The Pope has actually given us the right approach in his new book when he says, ‘We are all brothers and sisters, and there must be no resentment among us. For any war to truly end, forgiveness is necessary.’ That is true of any war, including our current cultural war. We need our Justice Department to return to the business of meting out justice and not running the political agendas of those currently in power, blindly seeking convictions, warranted or otherwise, and attacking political opponents.”
“That requires a very few important things from each of you, from all of us. Finding your voice, forgiveness, and focus on the way forward. ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ Forgiveness, and at the same time requiring better.”
“We are not some Banana Republic for God’s sake.”
*****
“I don’t like what I see happening in our country.”
“I don’t like seeing the weaponization of our justice system, agencies, and powerful government actions, that frankly just make my skin crawl, for all of us and for my grandchildren. And let’s be honest, this is so not just about Trump.”
“If you let your hatred for Donald Trump compromise your ability to find true North on your moral compass, shame on you.”
Watch:
I don’t advocate voting for one candidate over another.
I stay in my lane, addressing human behavior collectively and culturally, focusing on how we can have maximum control in our lives and turn this ship of state called America in the right direction, getting her back on… pic.twitter.com/tsob0o31V2
From Judge Merchan reversing the order of final arguments before the jury, so the prosecution went last and could not be rebutted by the defense, to the outrageous and unprecedented instructions that all 12 of the jury need not agree on the guilt of the defendant, the fix was in from the moment the Biden Administration’s No. 3 man at the DoJ magically appeared as a line prosecutor working for Alvin Bragg in New York.
Add to that the judge illicitly donating to the Biden campaign and an anti-Trump PAC, and his daughter raising $93 million dollars off her father’s trial for the Democrats, this was a political operation not even thinly veiled as a judicial proceeding. A dark day indeed. (For my eye witness story from how it looked on the inside see the account of my day in court with the President).
Judge Juan Merchan poses for a picture in his chambers in New York, Thursday, March 14, 2024. Merchan could become the first judge ever to oversee a former U.S. president’s criminal trial. He’s presiding over Donald Trump’s hush money case in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
On the obverse, there are several conclusions which are also already clear but which bode very well for the President, his supporters and all Patriots.
After the the verdict was reached, within minutes the Trump website crashed and stayed crashed for hours. Why? Was is hacked? Hardly. It crashed because of the overwhelming numbers of Americans who have had enough and wanted to donate to the President’s re-election campaign.
It is likely that in those few hours, the total amount he garnered will exceed his previous historic record of $54 million raised in one day. Strikingly as well, as you can see on my X feed, there are countless Democrats who have publicly stated that they too have donated to the Republican candidate and have decided to vote for President Trump on November 5th.
At the moment the President remains a free man who left the courtroom in his armored Secret Service SUV and motorcade and slept in his own bed last night and will remain free until his sentencing, which will occur, of course, just four days before the Republican Convention. Politics again.
But whatever Juan Merchan doles out matters on sentencing – matters not in any Constitutional sense, since the Democrat Party may be fueled by hatred and be well-organized, but they seem not to have done their homework.
There are only three requirements for any American to become President, beyond obviously winning the Electoral College vote, they are: 35 years or older, natural born citizen, and 14 years a resident of the United States. There is no exclusion based upon having a criminal record. So, yes a felon can be the President. (Sadly many Conservative voters don’t know this. Please educate them).
In this April 21, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump poses for a portrait in the Oval Office in Washington after an interview with The Associated Press.Andrew Harnik / AP
So, the President is politically rich and more powerful than he has ever been since he came down the escalator in Trump Tower all those years ago. If the election were today, and if we were to have a free and fair election, he would win. But five months is a long time in politics and we must take nothing for granted.
These are all the obvious consequences of what happened yesterday, but that misses the real historic consequence of what we witnessed less than 24 hours ago. Yesterday isn’t about one man, one party, or even one election. It’s about the very fabric of our very system, the compact of the people and their political elite, judiciary and organs of state.
Yes, the President will appeal the decision, but appeals are designed to correct mistakes. Yesterday was no mistake. It was deliberate in every minute detail. The system was deliberately perverted. As a result America was changed.
Our society is predicated on our differences being settled in a civilized fashion. What happens when the citizens of a nation have no trust in the justice system? Even if the innocent man wins the 2024 Presidential election, millions of people will never trust the legal system that has power over them. How does a nation ever fix that?
In the meantime, when it comes to President Trump, the real verdict will come on November 5th.
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
The Qualifications Clause set forth in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 requires the President to be a natural-born citizen, at least thirty-five years of age, and a resident of the United States for at least fourteen years.1
Like the age requirements for membership in the House of Representatives2 and the Senate,3 the age requirement for the presidency set forth at Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 ensures that persons holding the office of President will have the necessary maturity for the position as well as sufficient time in a public role for the electorate to be able to assess the merits of a presidential candidate.4 In his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, Justice Joseph Story stated: Considering the nature of the duties, the extent of the information, and the solid wisdom and experience required in the executive department, no one can reasonably doubt the propriety of some qualification of age.5
The Framers appear to have adopted the requirement that citizens be natural born citizens to ensure that the President’s loyalties would lie strictly with the United States. By barring naturalized citizens from the presidency, the requirement of being a natural born citizen, as Justice Story explained, protects the United States from ambitious foreigners, who might otherwise be intriguing for the office; and interposes a barrier against those corrupt interferences of foreign governments in executive elections, which have inflicted the most serious evils upon the elected monarchies of Europe.6 Article II, however, provided an exception for foreign-born persons who had immigrated to the colonies prior to the adoption of the Constitution.7 Justice Story explained that this was done out of respect to those distinguished revolutionary patriots, who were born in a foreign land, and yet had entitled themselves to high honors in their adopted country.8
While the Constitution does not define natural born Citizen, commentators have opined that the Framers would have understood the term to mean someone who was a U.S. citizen at birth with no need to go through a naturalization proceeding at some later time.9 British statutes from 1709 and 1731 expressly described children of British subjects who were born outside of Great Britain as natural born citizens and provided that they enjoyed the same rights to inheritance as children born in Great Britain.10 In addition, in the Naturalization Act of 1790, the First Congress provided that children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond the sea, . . . shall be considered as natural born citizens . . . .11 Consequently, under the principle that British common law and enactments of the First Congress are two particularly useful sources in understanding constitutional terms,12 it would appear likely that the Framers would have understood natural born citizen to encompass the children of United States citizens born overseas.13 Such an interpretation is further supported by the presidential candidacies of Senator John McCain of Arizona, who was born in the Panama Canal Zone; Governor George Romney of Michigan, who was born in Mexico, and Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who was born in Arizona before it became a state.14
The Framers appear to have adopted the fourteen-year residency requirement to ensure that the people may have a full opportunity to know [the candidate’s] character and merits, and that he may have mingled in the duties, and felt the interests, and understood the principles, and nourished the attachments, belonging to every citizen in a republican government.15 Justice Story further explained that the fourteen-year residence requirement is not an absolute inhabitancy within the United States during the whole period; but such an inhabitancy as includes a permanent domicil in the United States.16
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
President Trump is running a smart media blitz approach following the ridiculous guilty verdict from New York City. The Trump campaign is visibly hitting multiple vote demographics simultaneously by targeting communications, appearances, advertising and interviews through platforms primarily used by those demographics.
Despite personally considering Ruper Murdoch an adversary, President Trump appears on Fox and Friends Weekend show to deliver his message to the segment of the GOP base that still review traditional cable media. This is the same network anchored around Brett Baier, who is one of the most Machiavellian anti-Trump pundits (perhaps only eclipsed in slime level duplicity by Salem’s Hugh Hewitt).
President Trump discusses the outcome of the trial with the Fox News Weekend team. WATCH:
1. Unconstitutional Gag Order that prevented President Trump from criticizing the trial, exposing the many conflicts that should have forced the judge to recuse himself, and the railroading of his fundamental due process rights.
2. Judge Merchan’s many, many conflicts of interests – all of which were disqualifying. His daughter, Loren Merchan, is President of Authentic Campaigns, a political consulting firm that hires the likes of the Biden-Harris Campaign, Adam Schiff, Ilhan Omar, and many other far left Democratic lawmakers. Loren’s firm has made tens of millions off these clients – Juan Merchan, through his daughter, had a direct financial stake in the outcome of this trial, a flagrant breach of the canons of legal ethics, both under the ABA and NY State, that under any other judge would have been grounds for a recusal.
3. Judge Merchan’s wife was previously employed by Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York State who campaigned on “getting” Donald Trump.
4. Bragg’s Lead Prosecutor was Matthew Colangelo, the former #3 official at the DOJ. We are told Colangelo graciously decided to step down from his prestigious office to work for a lowly state DA’s office – of course, a reasonable inference would be that he was directed to do so by the Biden Regime to persecute his leading political opponent in Donald John Trump.
5. Statute of Limitations (2 years, NY State) had long expired for the business records falsification scheme that served as the primary charge brought against Trump. For this reason, the case was passed over by the DOJ and even Alvin Bragg over seven years because it was so weak. Only once Bragg felt political pressure, externally via Clinton attorney Mark Pomerantz, who previously worked in Bragg’s office, and internally via Colangelo, a Biden lackey, did Bragg buckle under the political weight and press charges.
6. Venue in bright-blue Manhattan, a borough that voted for Joe Biden over Donald Trump at almost a 9 to 1 clip, prevented the President from ever getting a fair trial, because the pool of jurors was naturally biased against the 45th President, and could not possibly rule fairly and impartially (8 of the 12 cited the NY Times as their main source of news). Any pro-Trump jurors who were considered chose to self-select out themselves because they claimed they “could not rule fairly.” Case in point: no way in hell is the burden of proof met on any of these charges, and yet the jury pool consisted of two lawyers, who evidently believed just that. No reasonable juror, and especially no reasonable lawyer-juror, would have found that the elements of every single crime brought against Trump met the burden of proof of beyond a reasonable doubt.
7. Election Interference: This was not a new case: it had been circulating in various court systems, federal and state, for years. These charges were only brought this year to interfere with the 2024 presidential race, period. President Trump is now the leading presidential candidate, by every reputable poll, and the frontrunner by significant margins, a gap that has only expanded over time. There is no reason why this case should be brought now, six months before Election Day, unless there was a conspiracy to prevent President Trump from being on the campaign trail in key swing states, like PA, MI, AZ, and GA, which is exactly what occurred.
8. Stormy Daniels’ Testimony was unnecessarily detailed and flagrantly prejudicial against President Trump. Bragg’s Prosecutors asked her about her impressions on the Access Hollywood Tape, which should have never been allowed and have absolutely no bearing on anything. They also probed her on intimate, irrelevant details about her alleged affair with the President, including such inappropriate, salacious, and prejudicial questions as whether he wore protection, and where she testified to a “power imbalance” – all part of a character assassination campaign to smear his image before the jury.
9. Greatest Liar of All Time Michael Cohen’s Testimony, on which the entirety of the Prosecutor’s case was based, was unreliable, prejudicial, and grounds for reversible error; he contradicted himself and committed perjury on the stand in this proceeding. He admitted to lying and committing perjury in the past, which resulted in his prosecution and imprisonment. He admitted to waging a political vendetta against Donald Trump because of his previous conviction; he admitted to stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the Trump Organization, lying before a Congressional Committee, and financially profiting off this ongoing trial – and verdict, among other serious crimes.
10. Bragg’s Theory of The Case was flawed from start to finish – and unconstitutional. He claimed, under NY state law, that ordinarily the business falsification charge is deemed a Class A misdemeanor under the State penal code, which had expired by the SOL. However, by combining that misdemeanor with another misdemeanor, under the same law, Bragg claimed you can elevate the underlying crime to a felony, which has a longer statute of limitations than a misdemeanor and thus, in his view, is still actionable. The problem is that nothing in the NY State penal code spells this out expressly, or even implicitly: there is nothing that says combining two misdemeanors is sufficient to contrive a felony. This is a bespoke crime intended to fit a one defendant and one defendant only: Donald John Trump.
11. Several other problems persist with the above: 1) whether combining two class A misdemeanors to create a class E felony is supported by any legal precedent at all, or logically makes sense (it doesn’t);
12. 2) whether combining two misdemeanors to contrive a felony is constitutionally lawful – i.e., does not violate due process or is constitutionally operative as an unlawful bill of attainder, etc.; and
13. 3) even if that combination establishes a theory of liability to raise a misdemeanor into a felony, whether doing so to circumvent a long-expired SOL does not also violate due process?
14. The Second alleged crime, that Bragg combined with the business falsification crime, to contrive a felony, is inapplicable to President Trump. Bragg maintained that President Trump violated state campaign law. But that is problematic for at least two reasons:
15. 1) President Trump ran for President, a federal office, and not state office – and thereby, state campaign law does not apply to him;
16. 2) to the extent state campaign law does apply or is controlling, it is preempted (i.e., barred) – based on President Trump’s office and acts – by federal campaign law. In short, this matter should have been brought under the FEC or DOJ, not state court. Merchan’s court had no jurisdiction whatsoever to prosecute the matter.
17. The State Election Law, to the extent it was lawfully controlling, established a predicate crime scheme that is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled in Ramos v. Louisiana that non-unanimous jury verdicts are a violation of fundamental due process rights. This is well-settled law. Federal precedent applies with equal force to state criminal court proceedings. Thus, the “mix and match” or “buffet” scheme that Merchan laid out, allowing the jury to select one of three predicate crimes under the relevant statute to reach a guilty verdict, is a flagrant violation of President Trump’s due process rights.
18. The three predicate crimes that Bragg’s theory of the case lays out: FECA violation, tax law violation, or record-keeping violation, each cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
19. The FECA violation should’ve been tossed out immediately, because a state court has no jurisdiction over the matter. The Federal Election Commission (“FEC”) has its own rules and procedures for administering election law violations, as well as a doctrine of sequencing that it is required to employ to administer disputes. This sequencing doctrine would require that Merchan refer any such FECA allegations to, for instance, the Federal Election Commission first, which might have primary jurisdiction over the matter, and then from there, the FEC might coordinate with the DOJ to prosecute any potential crimes. The point is: order matters; a rogue state court judge cannot unilaterally take up an issue belonging in federal court.
20. To the extent an alleged FECA violation controls here, there are a number of problems: 1) what statute are we talking about;
21. 2) how do we know that the alleged violation can be prosecuted as a crime, and isn’t just a civil matter;
22. 3) even if the alleged violation is a crime, how do we know
23. 1) such crime is a felony; and
24. 2) that crime can be adjudicated independently by an independent agency of the United States? In other words, does the FEC have the power to prosecute crimes unilaterally, and independently of the DOJ? That alone is sufficient grounds for a due process violation.
25. Again, we run into the issue of how 2 misdemeanor crimes mysteriously turn into an underlying felony. Is the law that any two misdemeanors creates a felony? Does it matter if the misdemeanor is a state crime versus an alleged federal crime? It cannot possibly be the case that all misdemeanors are created equal – nor can it be the case that if a jury found President Trump guilty of the predicate FECA misdemeanor, that the business falsification statute incorporates a federal misdemeanor to contrive a Class E felony. When has that ever been done before? Never!
26. Merchan has no knowledge of Federal Election Law. Typically, federal election law issues (FECA issues) are preempted by federal court. Putting all that to one side, however, considering that Merchan ignored all of that, and was hellbelt on prosecuting this nebulous crime in state court, he should have at least allowed an expert witness to opine on federal election law-related matters. That expert witness, former FEC Commissioner and government lawyer, Brad Smith, should have been allowed to testify on federal election law, a notoriously complex and highly specialized area of law. But Smith was not permitted to testify, because Merchan did not want the jury to hear expert testimony from someone competent in the relevant body of law. That prohibition of Smith’s testimony is prejudicial, and grounds for reversible error.
27. In addition to the FECA predicate crime issue, which is teeming with due process and other constitutional violations, both the alleged tax law violation, and general bookkeeping violation are also laden with due process problems.
28. Merchan has absolutely no authority to say that President Trump can be found guilty of violating “tax laws” or erroneously reporting a tax filing as a legal expense (when in fact, legally and definitionally, it was a “legal expense”); these two miscellaneous predicate crimes are constitutionally overbroad and cannot for those reasons alone satisfy the requisite burden of proof – due to concerns of being overbroad, Bragg’s theory of criminal liability violates due process as well.
29. Nondisclosure Agreements, Hush Money Payments, and “Catch and Kill” schemes are and have always been perfectly lawful; none of these things can serve as a basis for criminal liability, however controversial they might sound – nor too does consensual sexual activity, including out of wedlock sex, even with a pornstar, ever, ever impute criminal liability or the pretext of criminal liability upon the one doing the act. All of these acts are lawful, case closed.
30. Running for President of the United States, even if your name is Donald Trump, is lawful. It is not a “conspiracy” to run a presidential campaign, nor is it conspiratorial – let alone criminal – to take lawful measures to win a campaign. Under Bragg’s twisted theory, however, every single political campaign ever carried out in the history of the United States would be considered unlawful – including the presidential campaigns of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama.
31. Stormy Daniels denied an affair with Donald Trump, in writing, multiple times over many years. That said, the Daniels-Trump story had long been in the public domain years before the 2016 presidential election. The NDA at issue was formalized in 2011, five years before the 2016 presidential election. How it is even possible that a 2011 NDA can be a component of a larger conspiracy to criminally manipulate the results of the 2016 race was never addressed. At trial, through the testimony of Hope Hicks and Madeleine Westerhout, what became crystal clear was that any such nondisclosure agreements were to protect President Trump’s family and had no bearing on the 2016 election.
32. Indeed, it is unclear just how the dissemination of the Daniels story, which was already widely distributed in the public domain by the time President Trump launched his 2016 campaign, would have impacted the race. By conflating the Daniels story with the Access Hollywood Tape, which was frequently referenced in the examinations of several key witnesses, Merchan allowed undue prejudice into his courtroom – providing a basis for reversible error. Stormy Daniels and Access Hollywood have absolutely nothing to do with one another; Access Hollywood had no bearing on any NDA agreements signed between President Trump’s counsel, and Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, or anyone else. Asking Daniels, during her testimony, about her impressions of the Access Hollywood Tape was completely inappropriate for a courtroom and prejudicial. Conflating these facts, many of which were wholly inappropriate to bring into the courtroom, unfairly prejudices the jurors – because they serve no other purpose than to smear President Trump’s character.
33. The alleged bookkeeping error that was the basis for this entire criminal trial – marked as “legal expenses” – of which the President had no knowledge, as revealed in the testimony of Robert Costello and others, occurred after the President won the 2016 presidential election! How could the President unlawfully conspire to promote or prevent his election after he had already been elected to federal office? This entire trial operated like a bill of attainder, unlawful to the core.
34. The judge conducted this trial unfairly from start to finish, and treated the defendant, his attorneys, and his witnesses horrendously. He prevented President Trump and his lawyers from bringing in key expert witnesses. He admonished President Trump’s lead attorney, Todd Blanche, on the stand, and cast multiple, unnecessary wanton barbs at him. He excoriated the only pro-Trump witness he allowed to testify, Robert Costello, an experienced lawyer of the SDNY; at one dramatic point, in a complete and unprecedented breach of the code of judicial ethics, Merchan lost his composure and vacated the entire courtroom, press included, because he did not like Costello’s “tone” and “mannerisms” from the witness stand. Merchan allowed Bragg Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass to go on for hours in his summations – allowing Steinglass to explain fundamental aspects of the law, including the burden of proof, for the jury, even though he previously admonished President Trump’s lawyers from making even the slightest reference to the law. He also allowed Steinglass to go on wild tangents unrelated to anything having to do with the alleged crime, allowing discussions of “Bill Clinton” and “Monica Lewinsky” to enter the courtroom. Merchan had previously declared, like a tyrant, that only he can interpret the law in his courtroom. But then he allowed Steinglass to explain the law at great length, over and above the objections of President Trump’s attorneys. Merchan also buttered up the jurors to win over their sympathy, complimenting random things like their “note-taking” skills, attention, and timeliness. All these factors, in addition to everything stated above, are egregious breaches of professional and judicial ethics and serve as grounds for a mistrial.
Annette Kuehne, the wife of Jan. 6 defendant Chris Kuehne, said that when the FBI raided their Kansas home in February 2021, agents had red weapon-aiming lights trained on both her and their young son.
The couple spoke with Nick Searcy, the producer of the documentary film “Capitol Punishment 2: The War on Truth,” at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. The movie is the sequel to 2021’s “Capitol Punishment” and tracks the Department of Justice’s treatment of multiple defendants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion.
Chris Kuehne is a Marine Corps combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient who served on the detail that performed the 21-gun salute at Reagan’s funeral at the library in June 2004. He gave the commands for the salute, The Kansas City Star reported.
Stream “The War on the Truth” NOW. Rent for $7.77 for 48 hours or make a digital purchase for $9.99.
Kuehne attended the Jan. 6 protest at the Capitol but was not charged with engaging in any violence or property destruction.
He went to Washington because he wanted to make sure that people didn’t get hurt, Annette Kuehne told Searcy.
"That was it. I lost my baby."
For three years the federal government has waged a war on truth. Now the truth fights back.
Who really died on J6 and why is the Federal Government lying about it to this day?
— The Western Journal (@WestJournalism) May 20, 2024
The DOJ said in a news release that Kuehne had sent a text to a group he was with in Washington saying he was concerned about potential clashes with antifa or Black Lives Matter demonstrators.
On Feb. 11, 2021, a little over a month after the Capitol protest, the FBI raided the Kuehnes’ Kansas home and arrested him.
“It was about 6:30-ish in the morning, and they surrounded our home with three police vehicles. So at that moment, Chris’ cellphone rang and loud and clear I heard, ‘Chris Kuehne this is the FBI, you need to come out of your house immediately,’” Annette Kuehne recounted.
“And it was freezing cold. It was like 7 degrees without the wind chill there in Kansas,” she said.
The FBI had their weapons drawn, Annette said, and when she looked down, she “saw red lights moving, and I thought, ‘Is that pointed at me?’”
“I looked down at my chest, and I realized my little 4-year-old was standing right next to me and I saw them on him too,” she said.
The agents “were yelling at Chris to turn around, and at that moment I heard them tackle him down and throw him in the snow, and I heard him scream in pain because he had just had surgery on his left wrist,” Kuehne told Searcy.
She then turned and tried to shield her son from everything that was happening.
The FBI agents quickly whisked her husband away from the location and for a while blocked Annette and her son from returning inside their home.
Watch this powerful documentary now by clicking HERE.
The next morning, Kuehne, who was pregnant at the time, was not feeling herself, but attributed it to lack of sleep and stress from everything that transpired.
She went to a doctor’s appointment and began bleeding in the examining room.
The doctor told her that she needed to have surgery immediately or she would bleed to death.
“That’s the hardest thing because now you have a loss of life that we’re dealing with besides everything else,” Annette told Searcy.
“There hasn’t been a day that’s gone by that I haven’t thought about that day and the baby and everything else, and what would we be like today,” she said.
Chris Kuehne pleaded guilty to one count of obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder, according to a February news release from the DOJ.
He was sentenced to 75 days in prison and 24 months of supervised release, which includes 60 days of home detention. He also was required to pay $2,000 in restitution for Capitol clean-up costs.
Annette concluded, “I think that law enforcement has been weaponized, and it’s being used against the American citizen. And it’s to make a statement that ‘if you don’t like what we’re saying or we’re doing, then this is the treatment you’re going to get.’ And that’s what it feels like.”
Chris Kuehne agreed.
“I’m really concerned for this country in a lot of ways,” he told Searcy. “This country was founded on a certain set of principles. God is the centerpiece. He sits at the throne. And that’s the way this country was founded by our forefathers, and I think that we have moved so far beyond that.”
You can watch “War on the Truth” now by clicking HERE.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appears with Steve Bannon to discuss the results of last night’s primary election in the lone star state. {Direct Rumble Link Here}.
CTH has stated several times that Texas is not as politically solid red as most believe; in part this is driven by the nature of how Texas politics are organized. The open primary in Texas is part of the political construct that permits Democrats to influence Republican races, and as a result controls the outcomes of legislative policy. AG Ken Paxton talks about how the Republican speaker of the house is decided by Democrats.
At the 7:00 minute mark of the video (prompted), AG Paxton begins discussing his own interactions with the Federal Bureau of Investigation as it pertains to his federal targeting by them. Attorney General Paxton does not pull punches as he describes a totally rogue FBI institution that is now fully weaponized against the interests of the American people. For us this is not a surprise {GO DEEP}; however, for the average person who is not as dialed in to the details of the corruption, these comments by Ken Paxton are a big trumpetsiren.
[TRANSCRIPT] – […] “AG Ken Paxton: Steve, I’m telling you, they are the Gestapo. We’re in Venezuela. We might as well be in China. We might as well be in Germany during the ’30s and ’40s. It is corrupt. It is the Gestapo. They don’t follow any laws anymore, and no one can stop them. And because of what happened to me, these other AGs are afraid to do anything anyway. So there’s a lot of fear because what can you do? How do you stop them?
And I think that the exposure of this case where this judge is unredacting all of this stuff. We’ve got to have more exposure. And then second, we got to have a president who will come in, bring in an Attorney General that will take these guys out and make sure that the corruption is eliminated and that we start over.
You’re right. When I heard you say, We need to start over, because right now, they were formed. The FBI was formed to go after organized crime. The problem with that now is they are organized crime. They’re paid for by taxpayer dollars. They have become organized crime…
…It would be better to have nothing right now. Everybody’s like, Well, what about crime? They’re not there to stop crime anymore. They’re a political organization designed to persecute people like you and me. And so it would be better not to have anything than to have that. So, yes, you have to take it to the ground and start over. I don’t know any other way because there’s so much corruption and it’s been so built up by so many other people for so long. I don’t know how you figure out who’s doing all the bad stuff unless you just… Because you don’t have a lot of time. You got to do it fast and you just got to start over with something else.”
UPDATE, PART ONE: Merrick Garland Approved Use of Deadly Force at Mar-a-Lago Raid — Made Plans for Casualties — Brought Medic — And Handed Out Directions to Local Trauma Center (VIDEO)
Armed FBI agents storm President Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 looking for incriminating documents – reportedly about them. The Biden DOJ authorized deadly force for the raid.
Part One– Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday unsealed numerous motions related to Jack Smith’s classified documents case against Trump. The documents included evidence that Joe Biden was ready to have his main political rival Donald Trump and his family killed for a publicity stunt!
Of course, if ANY OTHER SH*THOLE COUNTRY did this to a political rival the Biden regime would be lecturing that country about human rights. Joe Biden has single-handedly destroyed all civilized norms for this great nation.
FBI agents scattered Trump’s personal papers around the floor for their photos.
This is an absolutely shocking development.
Cristina Laila reported earlier that one filing revealed Biden’s FBI authorized the use of deadly force during their raid on Mar-a-Lago authorized by US Attorney General Merrick Garland in August 2022.
Tons of new unsealed filings on classified docs case–I will try to post as much as I can (there goes the workout) but this is mind-blowing.
But there is even more shocking information included in the released report.
The Biden regime not only approved deadly force at President Trump’s home where Secret Service members are stationed every day but they also made plans for casualties.
The Biden DOJ and Chris Wray’s FBI also set up a triage unit and notified a local trauma unit to prepare for casualties.
The FBI also authorized agents to raid the guest rooms at Mar-a-Lago and terrorize the guests there.
It now looks like our government is now the American people’s number one enemy.
Investigative reporter Julie Kelly joined Steve Bannon on The War Room on Tuesday afternoon to discuss this shocking development.
Julie Kelly: Part of this disclosure today, as I’m reading through this, Steve, and I really had to read it a few times to believe it, is that in the FBI operations plan, they give guidance on the use of W-4 at Mar-a-Lago. This is part of this 20-page whatever plan that the FBI and enforcement put together. In addition to that, they discussed how these agents, they had about 30 agents, 25 from Miami, four from Washington Field Office, who were armed. They had weapons, they had ammo, They had handcuffs, and they talked about what would happen if Donald Trump showed up at Mar-a-Lago during this raid.
Steve Bannon: I want to go back for a second to number one, the use of deadly force. Didn’t I also see in your Twitter stream that they also had a plan for triaging people if they had casualties and they actually had notified or they had a place to take people if they had casualties? Did I read that incorrectly?
Julie Kelly: No, you read it correctly. With the FBI team, Embedded was a medic, and they talked about in another form how to treat anyone who is injured during the raid. They identified a trauma center about 18 miles from Mar-a-Lago, and they inserted a map of how to get from Mar-a-Lago to this trauma center if anyone was injured or hurt during the raid.
Steve Bannon: Okay, don’t bury the lead. There’s one lead, and this is it. They actually got authority for use of deadly force, and they had plans for casualties. They brought a medic. They had plans for casualties. They had a trauma center set up, and they had a map to the trauma center. That’s all part of a component of one thing, I take it, Julie Kelly?
Julie Kelly: Correct. This is part of the plan to conduct the nine-hour raid, armed raid of Mar-a-Lago. I know some other people are extrapolating that this was a plan to harm the former president or someone at Mar-a-Lago. Staff, the God forbid, his family. I’m not so sure that that is where this leads, but it’s not hard to come…
Steve Bannon: Hang on, why use a deadly force against a former President of the United States who just had an election stolen from him? Yes, a year before. Hang on for one second… Times of Turbulence. Julie Kelly walks through these documents, these are the documents that have been hidden from view. This is why Judge Canon is so furious… We keep going down this route. It’s going to be the End of the American Republic.
UPDATE PART TWO, BIDEN’S ARMED & DANGEROUS MAR-A-LAGO RAID: FBI Took DOZENS of Photos in Melania Trump’s Room – Were Focused On Her “Binders” – And They Were Ready to Kill (VIDEO)
Armed FBI agents storm President Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 looking for incriminating documents – reportedly about them. The Biden DOJ authorized deadly force for the raid.
Part Two:
Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday unsealed numerous motions related to Jack Smith’s classified documents case against Trump. The documents included evidence that Joe Biden was ready to have his main political rival, Donald Trump, and his family killed for a publicity stunt!
Of course, if ANY OTHER THIRD WORLD COUNTRY did this to a political rival, the Biden regime would be lecturing that country about human rights. Joe Biden has single-handedly destroyed this nation’s cultural norms and historic precedent in less than four years.
Cristina Laila reported earlier that one filing revealed Biden’s FBI authorized the use of deadly force during their raid on Mar-a-Lago authorized by US Attorney General Merrick Garland in August 2022.
But there is even more shocking information included in the released report that we reported earlier. The Biden regime not only approved deadly force at President Trump’s home, where Secret Service members are stationed every day but they also made plans for casualties. The Biden DOJ and Chris Wray’s FBI also notified a local trauma unit to prepare for casualties.
The FBI also authorized agents to raid the guest rooms at Mar-a-Lago and terrorize the guests there.
Julie Kelly reported more details from the reports that were released on Tuesday.
The Biden regime took several photos in Melania Trump and Barron Trump’s bedrooms – and they were interested in the binders in Melania’s room.
Steve Bannon: What hat they did to Melania’s suite, Melania’s Room, and Baron’s Room.
Julie Kelly: There’s another filing disclosed by Trump’s team, and this is an FBI document categorizing all the photos that were taken.
There are dozens of photos taken out of Melania’s Room, and several taken out of Baron’s Room. I don’t know exactly what they were. It just refers to the location. But what? And there’s actually, and I’m going to be posting this in Mike Davis, your ears are going to be burning as soon as I say this, there are probably 15 citations of pictures of binders in Melania Trump’s suite. ‘Binder,’ that’s the word that they use. Now, I know what Mike Davis is going to say, which is what he’s been saying from the beginning, that this whole thing was based on trying to retrieve Trump’s copy of the Crossfire Hurricane’s document. So what were they doing in Melania’s suite? And why were they taking pictures of binders that she had in her bedroom? So that again.
But whoever said that the FBI was spoiling for a fight, that is Absolutely what this looks like. And we are lucky that no one was hurt during that raid because they were prepared for a fight.
Here is the video from the War Room
This is exactly what The Gateway Pundit has been reporting since the week of the Mar-a-Lago raid in August 2022.
In February, sources close to the high-profile investigation revealed that the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago was specifically aimed at recovering a “missing top-secret binder.”
This document is rumored to contain damning evidence of former President Barack Obama’s CIA’s involvement in initiating the Russia collusion narrative against President Trump.
Fox News host Jesse Watters discussed these details on his show, citing reporting by investigative journalists Michael Schellenberger and Matt Taibbi.
President Trump declassified a binder on January 19th, 2021 that contains hundreds of pages about the Crossfire Hurricane scandal. It contains damaging information about the corrupt actors involved with our government. Two different DOJ Attorney General’s have defied President Trump’s direct lawful order to publish the binder in the Federal Register. It’s been 19 months as the DOJ defies the order, and every FOIA request to make it public.
The DOJ had already made redactions to protect sources and methods and returned the binder back to the White House. But the corrupt FBI also wanted to hide names. So at the last minute, the DOJ demanded the binder comply with the 1974 Privacy Act. The Act requires any “agency” that releases records to also hide personal or identifiable name information. The DOJ knew this Act doesn’t apply to the White House, it was a stall tactic. The courts decided this 22 years ago that the Privacy Act was based around FOIA requests, and the White House is not an agency.
Hours before Trump left office on January 20th, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows gave the binder back to the DOJ, along with this memo. He asked the DOJ to make any Privacy Act redactions “out of an abundance of caution.” In the memo, he asks them to expeditiously release the binder when finished. Meadows foolishly expected this would take 3-4 days. It’s over three years now and it’s still not released. Just the News recently obtained the Meadows memo from the National Archives, who also denied having a copy of the declassified binder.
Meadows admitted in interviews that various agencies often stalled or defied Trump’s orders. Meadows knew better than to rely on the DOJ to release this damaging binder after they left the White House. He should have released the binder to the public himself. But in doing so, there was a chance he would become a target of the DOJ and FBI. The memorandum below is what Mr. Meadows sent to the DOJ Attorney General on January 20th, 2021.
Details from the Mar-a-Lago raid offered an explanation on what the FBI was looking for and why the FBI has not released the Spygate documents as they were ordered to when President Trump left office.
Investigative reporter Paul Sperry had his Twitter account taken down for the second time after he tweeted about the Mar-a-Lago raid and what the FBI was looking for.
According to Paul Sperry, the FBI agents spent 9 hours looking for details President Trump took with him on the Crossfire Hurricane FBI spying scandal.
The FBI and DOJ cannot let the American public know the truth of their criminal acts and attempted coup against President Trump. So they raided his home, looking for the documents that may indict the organization.
Twitter has suspended journalist Paul Sperry after he made several tweets about this week’s FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, where they spent up to 9 hours rifling through the former president’s private office, Melania Trump’s wardrobe, and eventually took 12 boxes of material…
Sperry: “DEVELOPING: Investigators reportedly met back in June w Trump & his lawyers in Mar-a-Lago storage rm to survey docs & things seemed copasetic but then FBI raids weeks later. Speculation on Hill FBI had PERSONAL stake & searching for classified docs related to its #Spygate scandal.”
Sperry also tweeted a list of “conflicted” DOJ officials who were “briefed on the Mar-a-Lago raid”, and noted that “CNN is admonishing reporters not to call the FBI raid of Trump’s home a “raid,” but instead to term it as a “judge-approved search.”
— ULTRA MAGA ENRIC0 SUAVE (@anaelena12345) August 9, 2022
He also tweeted: “Funny, don’t remember the FBI raiding Chappaqua or Whitehaven to find the 33,000 potentially classified documents Hillary Clinton deleted,” adding “And she was just a former secretary of state, not a former president.”
Some People Surprised – The FBI Was Prepared to Use Deadly Force Against Trump Security Detail During Mar-a-Lago Raid to Regain Deep State FBI/DOJ Secrets
Some people are expressing shock that the FBI was prepared to use deadly force against President Trump and his Secret Service security detail during the DOJ raid on Mar-a-Lago. Julie Kelly has the DETAILS HERE.
I am not surprised in the least. Remember, the objective of the FBI raid was to resecure the physical evidence that President Trump had showing how the DOJ and FBI action in 2016 was targeting him using the power of their law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The origination of all the DOJ/FBI/IC issues goes back to the ’15/’16 FBI exploitation of the NSA database; this is not a contested discussion issue – it’s just continually forgotten.
The FBI was using their access to the NSA metadata of all Americans, to conduct surveillance on political candidates that might be a threat to the power structures that exploited the secrets within the electronic records of all Americans. The FBI was/is conducting domestic surveillance and tracking just like the German Stasi or Soviet KGB. It’s still happening, but we are not supposed to remember or something.
The raid on Mar-a-Lago, just like the Robert Mueller investigation, was part of the long standing coverup operation. The FBI was looking for what Trump took with him as evidence of the weaponized system that targeted him. The FBI wanted that back. The FBI was willing to use deadly force to get it back if that’s what it took.
The raid involved 25 Miami FBI agents, four Washington FBI agents, one unidentified individual from FBI Headquarters, one DOJ attorney, and the assistant U.S. Attorney from the Southern District of Florida. (MORE)
Yes, apparently the FBI was prepared to engage in a gun battle or kill people in Mar-a-Lago in order to retake the evidence against them. I know it sounds scarey, but that’s the reality of our modern FBI. These are not good people. Remember also that AG Merrick Garland said he authorized every facet of the raid.
I keep trying to drive the point home, these are not good people…. yet, many refuse to accept, pretend it just can’t be that bad, or keep forgetting the real examples that prove how bad the FBI is.
The modern FBI is the police agency of a weaponized U.S government, with a direct and purposeful mandate to keep the American people under control through strict surveillance and a violent police state.
Understand and accept this with great seriousness, there are no honorable “rank and file” inside this organization.
Every member of the FBI is a participant in the weaponization of power and government. The members are jackboots recruited from ideological college campuses for exactly the purpose of supporting a Stasi-like police state.
Through the past several years, we have discovered how the FBI worked inside Twitter, Facebook and social media to control information, remove content and manipulate opinion on behalf of the U.S. government – all activity political.
We have also learned the FBI took active measures to suppress information about the Hunter Biden laptop and control any negative consequences for the Biden regime – again, political. These are not disputed realities.
The U.S. Dept of Justice and FBI are now political institutions that have abandoned their originating mission in order to become the domestic equivalent of the Soviet-era FSB. Their joint targeting mechanisms have been redesigned to support the interests of corrupt DC politicians, specifically the interests of Democrats.
It was in June 2022, when Senator Chuck Grassley sent a letter [pdf HERE] to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray, notifying them of whistleblower allegations from within the FBI that senior leadership in both Main Justice and FBI are involved in a coordinated effort to cover up criminal activity related to Hunter Biden.
The whistleblower allegations, in combination with the documented history of DOJ and FBI misconduct, culminate in Senator Grassley stating:
“If these allegations are true and accurate, the Justice Department and FBI are – and have been – institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law. Attorney General Garland and Director Wray, simply put, based on the allegations that I’ve received from numerous whistleblowers, you have systemic and existential problems within your agencies.” (LINK)
Grassley was admitting what has been visible for years.
Senator Grassley is telling the corrupt DOJ-FBI leadership that people in the organizations are outlining the detailed behavior of their corrupt leadership. However, with zero oversight involved, and with Democrats in charge of all committees that would be responsible for such oversight, and with institutional media in alignment and agreement with the corrupt institutional intents of the DOJ/FBI, the frustrating question becomes, “and“?
I mean, who are we kidding? If Republicans were in charge of the Senate Judiciary, Reform/Oversight, or Intelligence committees, do we really believe that anything would be different? Before responding to that cynicism, remind yourself, they were for four years, January 2015 through January 2019, Republicans in charge of oversight.
It was exactly when Republicans were in charge of Main Justice and FBI oversight that Main Justice and FBI were targeting political candidate Donald Trump.
In July 2021, the DOJ OIG produced an absolutely damning Inspector General investigation of FBI conduct in the rape and sexual assault of U.S. Gymnasts, revealing how FBI agents facilitated Nassar’s sex crimes by taking no action despite numerous witness statements to them.
Worse yet, the FBI never reported the sexual assaults to local law enforcement… and to top it off, the rank and vile FBI agents lied during the investigation of their conduct, and the DOJ under AG Bill Barr, and now under AG Merrick Garland, refused to prosecute the FBI liars.
The entire IG report [Must Read pdf Here] reveals layer-upon-layer of FBI wrongdoing, misconduct and false statements in an effort to cover up their activity when the internal investigation of their conduct began. This report is a total condemnation of the FBI rank and file. It really is quite stunning.
BACKGROUND on FBI – As we discovered in January of 2023, the FBI was fully aware of the terrorist who was planning to shoot the synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, and yet they did nothing.
The FBI knowledge of the shooter, Malik Faisal Akram, who was known as Faisal Akram, was confirmed by The Daily Mail. Akram ranted, prior to his travel to the U.S, that he wished he had died in the 9/11 terror attacks. He was a regular visitor to Pakistan, and reportedly a member of the Tablighi Jamaat group set up to ‘purify’ Islam. To say the U.S. intelligence system knew Faisal Akram would be an understatement.
The FBI was also fully aware of the Boston Marathon bombers, the Tsarnaev brothers, before they executed their plot. The FBI took no action. The Russian police twice warned the FBI that the Tsarnaev brothers were going to carry out a domestic terrorist attack on the USA, the FBI did nothing.
The FBI knew in advance of the Pulse Nightclub shooter (Omar Mateen) and were tipped off by the local sheriff. The FBI knew in advance of the San Bernardino Terrorists (Tashfeen Malik). The FBI knew in advance of the Boston Marathon Bombers (the Tsarnaev brothers) tipped off by Russians. The FBI knew in advance of the Parkland High School shooter (Nikolas Cruz). The FBI knew in advance of the Fort Hood shooter (Nidal Hasan), and the FBI knew in advance of Colorado grocery store shooter Ahmad al-Aliwi Alissa. The FBI took no action.
The case of the first recorded ISIS attack on U.S. soil was in Garland, Texas in 2015.
The FBI not only knew the shooters (Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi) in advance, BUT the FBI ALSO took the shooters to the venue and were standing only a few yards away when Simpson and Soofi opened fire. Yes, you read that correctly – the FBI took the terrorists to the event and then watched it unfold. “An FBI trainer suggested in an interview with “60 Minutes” that, had the attack been bigger, the agency’s numerous ties to the shooter would have led to a congressional investigation.”
Remember, shortly before the 2018 mid-term election, when Ceasar Syoc – a man living in his van – was caught sending “energetic material that can become combustible when subjected to heat or friction”, or what FBI Director Christopher Wray called “not hoax devices”?
Remember how sketchy everything about that was, including the child-like perpetrator telling a judge later that he was trying to walk back his guilty plea, because he was tricked into signing a confession for a crime he did not create.
Or more recently, the goofball plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer that involved 18 suspects, twelve of them actually working for the FBI as the plot was hatched? And we cannot forget the January 6th. DC protest turned insurrection effort, which is clearly looking like an FBI inspired and coordinated effort; and unlike Syoc, despite the numerous CCTV cameras and resources in the area, they cannot find who placed the pipe-bombs?
Have we forgotten the Atlanta “Olympic Park Bombing”, and the FBI intentionally setting up transparently innocent, Richard Jewel?
What about the FBI failing to investigate the assassination of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi. Did we forget when Robert Mueller’s FBI waited 19 days after the Benghazi attack before showing up at the compound?…. Journalists from the USA were walking around the compound after 48 hours, but it took the FBI another two weeks before the first investigator arrived…. All evidence long destroyed.
Then, there’s the entirety of the FBI conduct in “Spygate”, the demonstrably evident FBI operation to conduct political surveillance against Donald Trump using their investigative authorities; and the downstream consequences of a massive institutional effort to cover up one of the biggest justice department scandals in the history of our nation. The original effort against Donald Trump used massive resources from the DOJ and FBI. Heck, the coverup operation using the Mueller/Weissmann special counsel used more than 50 investigative FBI agents alone.
And of course, the FBI still had 13 extra agents available to rush to a NASCAR racetrack to investigate a garage door pull-down rope that might have been perceived as a noose; but the serial rape of hundreds of teenage girls, eh, not-so-much effort – even when they are standing in front of the FBI begging for help.
[At this point, I am increasingly convinced by evidence there are elements within the FBI that are enablers involved in sex trafficking, human smuggling, abduction, counterfeiting and money laundering as part of their operational mission.]
The FBI didn’t make a mistake or drop the proverbial ball in the Olympic gymnast case, they intentionally and specifically maintained the sexual exploitation of teenage girls by doing absolutely nothing with the complaints they received. This is not misconduct, this is purposeful.
Then, as if to apply salt to the open wound of severe FBI politicization, what did the FBI do with the Hunter Biden laptop?
More recently, the FBI executed a search warrant on the home and office of Project Veritas and the founder James O’Keefe. While the raid was taking place, a New York Times reporter called O’Keefe to ask him about his thoughts on getting raided. The same New York Times journalist, a few days later, then begins writing about the confidential attorney-client privileged information illegally retrieved then leaked by the FBI during their raid.
♦My point is this…
What the Federal Security Service (FSB) is to the internal security of the Russian state, so too is the FBI in performing the same function for the U.S. federal government.
The FBI is a U.S. version of the Russian “State Police”; and the FBI is deployed -almost exclusively- to attack domestic enemies of those who control government, while they protect the interests of the U.S. Fourth Branch of Government. That is the clear and accurate domestic prism to contextualize their perceived mission: “domestic violent extremists pose the greatest threat” to their objective.
Put another way, “We The People”, who fight against government abuse and usurpation, are the FBI’s actual and literal enemy.
Let me be very clear with another brutally obvious example. Antifa could not exist as an organization, capable to organize and carry out violent attacks against their targets, without the full support of the FBI. If the FBI wanted to arrest members of Antifa, who are actually conducting violence, they could do it easily – with little effort.
It is the absence of any action, by the FBI toward Antifa, that tells us the FBI is enabling that violent extremist behavior to continue. Once you accept that transparent point of truth, then you realize the FBI definition of domestic violent extremism is something else entirely.
The FBI is not a law enforcement or investigative division of the U.S. Department of Justice. The FBI is a political weapon of a larger institution that is now focused almost entirely toward supporting a radical communist agenda to destroy civil society in the United States.
The FBI set up the operation in Michigan to give the illusion that domestic threats were attempting to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, everything about the events were an FBI construct. The same thing with the January 6th events in Washington DC and the pipe bombs. These are domestic FBI operations. Think about the precarious nature of what this type of activity indicates.
The current mission of the FBI appears to be preserving and protecting institutional power by protecting the administration of Joe Biden.
Anyone who continues to push this insufferable and fraudulent “honorable FBI rank and file talking point”, is, at this point in history, willfully and purposefully operating to deceive the American people on behalf of government interests who are intent on destroying us.
It is not a difference of opinion any longer. Personally, I have lost the ability to sit comfortably or intellectually with anyone who pushes or accepts the ‘mistakes are made’ nonsense. The FBI is not making mistakes, they are doing well what is important to them.
To me, it comes down to a simple matter of accepting what is continually staring us in the face.
Additionally, as we watched the outcome of the Michael Sussmann trial, we should never lose sight of the fact that 40 FBI agents were involved in the Mueller-Weissmann probe to investigate the fraudulent construct created by Hillary Clinton and crew. 40 agents? And, according to the outcome of the Sussmann trial, the FBI knew it was all a ruse.
This is why and how the Fourth Branch of U.S. Government is now the superseding apparatus above all other branches. {GO DEEP} This is why and how Barack Obama, John Brennan and Eric Holder created it, cemented it, and made it impervious to any effort to remove it.
Remember when Henry Cuellar was critical of the Biden administration open border policies that were hurting his Texas district? Less than a month after going public with his criticisms, the FBI raids on his home and office began. The same FBI that raided the home of James O’Keefe while coordinating their search with the New York Times.
The Fourth Branch of Government is corrupt; heck, the J6 committee was defending the corrupt FBI, participating with the corrupt FBI, selling a joint J6 operation that involved the FBI. The corrupt media have aligned with the corrupt FBI, and the justice institutions in/around this legal framework are self-aware and fully autonomous.
As the Twitter files show, the DOJ and FBI, through the authority of DHS, now have the ability to monitor every single aspect of every life that might seek to challenge or destroy the corrupt system.
In essence, Skynet -the ultimate end game of political surveillance and targeting outlined by Edward Snowden- has been activated. We the People are the enemy of the state.
Jackboots are very real, and they are wearing FBI logos on their shirts.
ANOTHER US HUMILIATION, SURRENDERS AGAIN!: Joe Biden Agrees to Remove Remaining US Troops from Niger in Sept – Abandon $100 Million Airbase – As Russian Forces Move in to Same Base
The Biden administration agreed this week to remove the remaining US troops from Niger by September. The approximately 1,000 troops will leave the two US military bases in the country to the new regime. Russian forces are already in country and actually share the same base now as US troops.
This is one of Joe Biden’s greatest foreign policy failures among many and is of course being ignored by the US fake news conglomerate.
The BBC reported on the latest deal in Niger. It appears the Biden regime paid off the regime to save face as they were forced out of the country. You can bet that money was exchanged for this communication.
The US and Niger have agreed that American troops will leave the country “no later” than 15 September, they announced in a joint statement on Sunday.
They said the two countries had “reached a disengagement agreement to effect the withdrawal of U.S. forces, which has already begun”.
…
The military junta which seized power last year has already ordered French troops to leave, while moving closer to Russia.
The statement commended the “joint sacrifices of Nigerien and U.S. forces in the fight against terrorism”, adding that the withdrawal would not affect the continuation of US-Niger relations.
“The United States and Niger are committed to ongoing diplomatic dialogue to define the future of their bilateral relations,” it read.
That is complete lie. The US was forced out. Russians are already on the US base.
The Gateway Pundit has reported on this American humiliation since April. In case you missed our previous reporting here is a recap.
Molly Phee, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, did a bang up job in Niger. Now US forces are being told to leave the country pivotal to US national defense.
Another Biden disaster: US State Department’s top official for African affairs, Molly Phee, lecturing in Niger in December 2023 and Niger protesters calling on the US to leave their country in April.
Nigerien Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine recently spoke to reporters and blamed US State Department official Molly Phee of threatening the current leaders while negotiating US military presence in the country.
The Nigerian leader blamed Phee for the complete breakdown in relations. Zeine described his reaction to Molly Phee when she came to lecture the Nigerien leaders in March, “You have come here to threaten us in our country. That is unacceptable. And you have come here to tell us with whom we can have relationships, which is also unacceptable. And you have done it all with a condescending tone and a lack of respect.
In April we learned about Joe Biden’s most recent foreign policy disaster in Niger, Africa. US troops are trapped in the country allegedly without water and medicine at the time. The Army was likely hiding this to protect itself from the embarrassment. Deployed Americans were in limbo and unable to do their jobs and the Biden State Department was completely outmaneuvered once again.
Thanks to brilliant negotiating skills by Biden appointed diplomats US military will leave Niger and leave behind a $100 million airbase to the current anti-American rulers.
The USA confirms it will pull out of Niger.
1000 soldiers will leave after having been told to get out by the new Russian-friendly military junta
They will leave the $110 mln airbase built a few years ago from which the US has been running its drone operations against AQ & ISIS pic.twitter.com/UwCLn79acW
This is another humiliation of US troops by Joe Biden.
Now we find out it was US diplomat working for Joe Biden who destroyed this important relationship with Niger. Via Stars and Stripes.
A crucial military relationship between the United States and its closest West African ally, the country of Niger, ruptured this spring after a visiting U.S. official made threats during last-ditch negotiations over whether American troops based there would be allowed to remain, according to the country’s prime minister.
In an exclusive interview, Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine put the blame for the breakdown squarely on the United States, accusing American officials of trying to dictate which countries Niger could partner with and failing to justify the U.S. troop presence, now scheduled to end in the coming months. Niger has been central to efforts to contain a growing Islamist insurgency in West Africa.
The rift between the former allies has created an opportunity for Russia, which has moved quickly to deepen its relationship with Niger, dispatching troops to the capital, Niamey, last month to train the Nigerien military and supplying a new air defense system. Russian and U.S. troops now occupy opposite ends of an air base.
After a military coup d’état ousted Niger’s democratically elected president last year, the United States froze security support as required by U.S. law and paused counterterrorism activities, which had involved intelligence gathering on regional militant activities from a massive drone base in the country’s north. The United States has kept more than 1,000 military personnel in place while negotiating with Niger over their status and urging the junta to begin restoring democracy…
Stars and Stripes then reveals the genius in the Biden State Department who destroyed US relations with Niger and how she did it.
He said the Nigerien leaders took particular umbrage at remarks by Molly Phee, the State Department’s top official for African affairs, who he said had urged the government during a March visit to Niamey to refrain from engaging with Iran and Russia in ways objectionable to Washington if Niger wanted to continue its security relationship with the United States. He also said Phee had further threatened sanctions if Niger pursued a deal to sell uranium to Iran.
“When she finished, I said, ‘Madame, I am going to summarize in two points what you have said,’” recounted Zeine, who has led negotiations with the United States. “First, you have come here to threaten us in our country. That is unacceptable. And you have come here to tell us with whom we can have relationships, which is also unacceptable. And you have done it all with a condescending tone and a lack of respect.”
A true courtroom stunner came just days ago when Jack Smith, prosecuting President Trump for having government documents from his presidency in his home, admitted his team lied to the public and the court in the case.
Regarding the evidence.
Trump turned blunt, calling for Smith to be arrested over his admission, in a court filing, that he lied to the court about the documents seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
“ARREST DERANGED JACK SMITH. HE IS A CRIMINAL!” Trump said in a Truth Social post this weekend.
The issue is that in a court filing, prosecutors admitted thee lied to the court, confessing that the FBI messed with the boxes containing those materials, and now not even Smith can be sure of the order or placement of the documents, which could be a critical factor in the case.
Now a Declassified report from famed investigative journalist Julie Kelly notes that the situation is “potentially case-killing.”
FBI photo of documents seized in the raid of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
She explained, “New court filings in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s espionage and obstruction case against Trump and two co-defendants conclusively demonstrate that the government used the cover sheets to deceive the public as well as the court. The photo was a stunt, and one that adds more fuel to this dumpster-fire case.”
She noted Jay Bratt, who is assigned to Smith’s team, earlier claimed: “[Thirteen] boxes or containers contained documents with classification markings, and in all, over one hundred unique documents with classification markings…were seized. Certain of the documents had colored cover sheets indicating their classification status.”
The FBI staged a photograph of documents, and released it to the public to create public interest in the case.
But Kelly continued, “The DOJ’s clever wordsmithing, however, did not accurately describe the origin of the cover sheets. In what must be considered not only an act of doctoring evidence but willfully misleading the American people into believing the former president is a criminal and threat to national security, agents involved in the raid attached the cover sheets to at least seven files to stage the photo.”
She explained, “Classified cover sheets were not ‘recovered’ in the container, contrary to Bratt’s declaration to the court. In fact, after being busted recently by defense attorneys for mishandling evidence in the case, Bratt had to fess up about how the cover sheets actually ended up on the documents.”
She said his latest explanation is: “[If] the investigative team found a document with classification markings, it removed the document, segregated it, and replaced it with a placeholder sheet. The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose.”
Kelly noted that the FBI’s use of those “cover sheets” just before they were used as placeholders.
“Agents apparently used them as props. FBI agents took it upon themselves to paperclip the sheets to documents—something evident given the uniform nature of how each cover sheet is clipped to each file in the photo—laid them on the floor, and snapped a picture for political posterity,” she noted.
The immediate result was that Judge Aileen M. Cannon has further delayed the next steps in the case, meaning it might not even come to trial until after the November election, which polls show Trump is likely to win.
Kelly called the FBI’s staged photograph the “the picture that launched a thousand pearl-clutching articles.”
She suggested that the behavior of the investigators raises “many troubling questions … about the FBI’s handling of the alleged incriminating documents.”
“For example, who made the on-site determination as to the classification level appropriate for each document? Did agents have security clearance and expertise related to classification? Did the agents know whether the document had been declassified by Trump while still in office?”
And she noted that defense lawyers have pointed out Smith’s office handed out inaccurate information about the evidence.
And Bratt conceded that was correct, confessing the FBI has not been able to determine which document “with classification markings” goes with which placeholder.
“This is a potentially case-blowing mistake, particularly if the document in question is one of the 34 records that represents the basis of espionage charges against Trump,” Kelly charged.
Bratt also had confirmed to the judge that the boxes of documents are “in their original, intact form as seized,” citing only that classified docs were replaced with placeholders.
Guest post by Joe Hoft at JoeHoft.com – republished with permission
Andrew Weissmann led the Mueller sham investigation against President Trump. Now he’s a top Deep State player behind DA Bragg’s bogus Manhattan case against President Trump.
Andrew Weissmann is the face of DOJ corruption. He has been overturned by the Supreme Court and he’s been behind most all the efforts to attack President Trump through lawfare.
DA Bragg’s case against President Trump is a mess. There is no crime and yet the DA charged President Trump for 34 felonies that were all made up. The crimes aren’t even clear. It’s a total disaster which is why it is likely a plot by leftist mastermind Andrew Weissmann.
In a tweet this pst weekend, Weissmann shares that he believes that a defendant in the US must prove their innocence. This is third world communist stuff.
He was quickly outed as a moron for his ignorance of the law.
Shipwreckedcrew tweeted: You are a moron. Trump doesn’t have to prove anything tor the jury to acquit. You repeatedly mis-state fundamental premises of the criminal justice system.
You are a moron.
Trump doesn't need to prove anything for the jury to acquit.
You repeatedly mis-state fundamental premises of the criminal justice system. https://t.co/zsJkUuu2fS
Attorney Jeff Clark points out that “enough to acquit” is not a legal principal in the US.
Can we make sure “enough to acquit” is a phrase forever associated with Andrew Weissmann? It’s right from the lips of a government statist whose baseline is not liberty and thus the presumption of innocence but instead subjection to raw government power and a presumption that prosecutors are always right. He’s a walking-talking evil inversion.
Can we make sure “enough to acquit” is a phrase forever associated with Andrew Weissmann?
It’s right from the lips of a government statist whose baseline is not liberty and thus the presumption of innocence but instead subjection to raw government power and a presumption that… https://t.co/nMcQmz2EVW
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan Launches Investigation into Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Admission of FBI Evidence Tampering in Trump Mar-a-Lago Case
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has launched an investigation into Special Counsel Jack Smith following recent admission that some of the evidence in President Trump’s ‘classified’ documents case was altered or manipulated after being seized by the FBI during its raid on Mar-a-Lago.
The Gateway Pundit reported that Jack Smith’s admission came in response to Trump’s co-defendant, Walt Nauta’s, legal team’s concerns about discrepancies in the evidence’s organization.
Walt Nauta, a former White House valet and Navy veteran who later served as a personal staffer at Mar-a-Lago and was indicted alongside Trump last year, claimed through his attorney that the order of items in the seized boxes did not match their scans provided during discovery.
In a late Friday filing, Smith conceded that the FBI had indeed moved documents around within the boxes that contained ‘classified’ information. This directly contradicts earlier Department of Justice (DOJ) assurances to the court that the contents’ arrangement had been preserved intact.
According to a footnote in the motion reviewed by The Gateway Pundit, the FBI messed with the boxes containing the ‘classified’ documents they seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Footnote 3: The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court. See, e.g., 4/12/24 Hearing Tr. at 65 (Government responding to the Court’s question of whether the boxes were “in their original, intact form as seized” by stating “[t]hey are, with one exception; and that is that the classified documents have been removed and placeholders have been put in the documents.”
In August 2022, the DOJ lied to the Court by asserting that the red, blue, and yellow sheets displayed in the widely circulated photo of the ‘classified’ documents indicated their classification status. It turns out they were “slip sheets” the FBI used to replace the so-called classified documents.
The DOJ lied, claiming, “Evidence, thirteen boxes or containers contained documents with classification markings, and in all, over one hundred unique documents with classification markings-that is, more than twice the amount produced on June 3, 2022, in response to the grand jury subpoena were seized. Certain of the documents had colored cover sheets indicating their classification status. See, e.g., Attachment F (redacted FBI photograph of certain documents and classified cover sheets recovered from a container in the “45 office”). The classification levels ranged from CONFIDENTIAL to TOP SECRET information, and certain documents included additional sensitive compartments that signify very limited distribution.”
The FBI admitted they messed with Trump’s documents! The FBI used cover sheets as placeholders for the classified documents.
“After the boxes were brought to WFO, the FBI created an index to correlate the documents with classification markings to codes (e.g., document “bb”) and labeled the classified cover sheets in the boxes with the codes for the seized documents. The FBI also generally replaced the handwritten sheets with classified cover sheets annotated with the index code, but regardless, any handwritten sheets that currently remain in the boxes do not represent additional classified documents—they were just not removed when the classified cover sheets with the index code were added. In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet.”
Jack Smith also claimed the FBI found so many classified documents that they ran out of ‘slip sheets.’
“The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose, until the FBI ran out because there were so many classified documents, at which point the team began using blank sheets with handwritten notes indicating the classification level of the document(s) seized,” Jack Smith laughably claimed.
In response to these revelations, President Trump took to Truth Social, calling for the arrest of Jack Smith, labeling the prosecution a “sham.”
“ARREST DERANGED JACK SMITH. HE IS A CRIMINAL!” Trump said in a Truth Social post this weekend.
Chairman Jim Jordan expressed grave concern about the justice system’s impartiality and adherence to professional standards within the DOJ.
In a letter addressed to Jeffrey Ragsdale, Counsel of the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), Jordan stated, “This acknowledgment presents grave concerns about the Department’s commitment to impartial justice, whether the Special Counsel’s Office misled a federal court, and whether the Special Counsel’s Office strenuously upheld the highest professional standards of the Department of Justice.”
Jordan demanded that the OPR investigate Jack Smith, Jay Bratt (a senior member of Smith’s office), and other attorneys involved, citing serious ethical lapses in the prosecution.
The House Judiciary Committee has demanded to produce the following documents and information:
All documents and communications referring or relating to any allegation of ethical impropriety or any OPR investigation concerning the conduct of Jack Smith, Jay Bratt, or any other attorney assigned to work with the Office of Special Counsel Jack Smith;
All documents and communications referring or relating to the manipulation of documents seized from President Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago; and
All documents and communications referring or relating to Jay Bratt interactions with Walt Nauta’s defense counsel, including allegations that Bratt attempted to coerce Mr. Nauta’s cooperation with the government by leveraging the prosect of a judgeship for his counsel.
The deadline set for the DOJ to respond to the Committee’s demands for information and a briefing is 5:00 p.m. on May 20, 2024.
#NEWS: @Jim_Jordan investigates Jack Smith’s acknowledgment that some of the evidence in President Trump’s classified documents case was altered or manipulated after it was seized by the FBI in its raid on Mar-a-Lago. pic.twitter.com/9Qn6h9D3h5
Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday afternoon indefinitely postponed Jack Smith’s classified documents trial against Trump.
As previously reported, Judge Cannon on Monday night postponed a key deadline in the classified documents case after Special Counsel Jack Smith admitted to tampering with evidence.
Cannon on Monday evening temporarily stayed a May 9 deadline for President Trump and his co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira related to CIPA.
On Tuesday afternoon, Judge Cannon set a second set of pre-trial deadlines to manage pending discovery and disclosure matters.
The Judge vacated the May 20, 2024 trial date. It may be several months until Judge Cannon sets a new trial date.
“The Court also determines that finalization of a trial date at this juncture—before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and CIPA issues remaining and forthcoming—would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court, critical CIPA issues, and additional pretrial and trial preparations necessary to present this case to a jury. The Court therefore vacates the current May 20, 2024, trial date (and associated calendar call), to be reset by separate order following resolution of the matters before the Court, consistent with Defendants’ right to due process and the public’s interest in the fair and efficient administration of justice,” Cannon wrote in an order reviewed by The Gateway Pundit.
In a motion filed late Friday, Jack Smith admitted the FBI messed with the boxes containing “classified” documents they seized from Trump and can’t be sure the order or the placement of the documents.
Jack Smith in his Friday night response admitted the FBI moved the classified documents around.
According to a footnote in the motion reviewed by The Gateway Pundit, the FBI messed with the boxes containing the ‘classified’ documents they seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
The DOJ previously assured the Court that the placement of classified documents as originally found had been maintained – THEY LIED!
Footnote 3: The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court. See, e.g., 4/12/24 Hearing Tr. at 65 (Government responding to the Court’s question of whether the boxes were “in their original, intact form as seized” by stating “[t]hey are, with one exception; and that is that the classified documents have been removed and placeholders have been put in the documents”
The DOJ in August 2022 lied to the Court when they claimed the red, blue and yellow sheets shown in the viral photo of the classified documents indicated their classification status.
The FBI admitted they messed with Trump’s documents! The FBI used cover sheets as placeholders for the classified documents.
“After the boxes were brought to WFO, the FBI created an index to correlate the documents with classification markings to codes (e.g., document “bb”) and labeled the classified cover sheets in the boxes with the codes for the seized documents. The FBI also generally replaced the handwritten sheets with classified cover sheets annotated with the index code, but regardless, any handwritten sheets that currently remain in the boxes do not represent additional classified documents—they were just not removed when the classified cover sheets with the index code were added. In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet.”
Judge Aileen Cannon has issued an order [SEE HERE] canceling the original trial date and suspending the trial proceedings pending resolution of multiple pre-trial issues. Lawfare is big mad.
(Via Politico) – […] The date had been widely expected to move amid a tangle of pretrial conflicts between special counsel Jack Smith and Trump’s attorneys. Smith had urged Judge Aileen Cannon to reschedule the trial to begin on July 8, but an order from the judge on Tuesday afternoon suggested that she is unlikely to even decide on a new trial date before late July.
[…] “[F]inalization of a trial date at this juncture — before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and [classified evidence] issues … would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions,” Cannon wrote in the five-page order.
That reshuffling further clouds the picture for Smith, who is also awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity that could determine whether his other case against Trump — charges in Washington D.C. for attempting to subvert the 2020 election — can move forward this year. (read more)
Jason Foster has filed an interesting “motion to intervene” in a court filing against the DOJ effort to keep the legal rationale for a 2017 subpoena hidden. tldr version HERE
Mr. Jason Foster was one of Chuck Grassley’s congressional lawyers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and a key Grassley research staffer when the background of the DOJ/FBI Spygate operation against Donald Trump was at its apex.
In a COURT FILING, Jason Foster notes, in September 2017, the DOJ requested and received a court order which it leveraged against Google and Big Tech to gain access to the phone and electronic data of House and Senate staff members. The DOJ then filed Non Disclosure Orders (NDOs) blocking the notification of the target(s), in this example Mr. Foster himself. Foster wants to know what justification the DOJ gave the judge to get the warrants and subpoena.
I find this motion/filing exceptionally interesting, because the originating DOJ action was in September ’17, when the Mueller cover-up was in full bloom; the Mueller team essentially controlled all of Main Justice (per Rosenstein testimony), and the effort of the DOJ was to keep a bag over the FBI/DOJ activity in the 2016 election.
As Jeff Carlson notes, the “DOJ has kept sealed their “legal rationale” for targeting the communications of congressional staff attorneys for GOP oversight committees.”
Foster notes, this DOJ subpoena appears related to the leak of the “Top Secret” FISA application used against Carter Page. The media received that leak, in March 2107, and the FBI (Washington Field Office) was investigating how the TS-SCI classified leak originated. At the same time, the DOJ (“Mueller team”), now in September 2017, had a vested interest monitoring ‘who knew what’ not only about the leak (James Wolfe and Mark Warner), but also about the motives of the special counsel coverup operation.
“At the time DOJ began collecting their communications records, Mr. Foster and his fellow colleagues on both sides of the aisle were communicating with confidential sources and whistleblowers whose willingness to share information with Congress is essential to its oversight function. The Legislative Branch has a constitutional interest in protecting the identity of those confidential sources and whistleblower just as journalists do under the First Amendment. Yet due to the secrecy demanded by DOJ, and granted ex parte by the Court, the nondisclosure orders deprived Congress of an opportunity to object at the time or even to know until years later that telecommunications providers had complied. Providers like Google, and perhaps even the Court, yielded to DOJ demands for secrecy without knowing the full context and constitutional implications of the subpoenas.” (more)
The Mark Warner and James Wolfe leak of the FISA application to media was one of the biggest untold stories of the 2017 Trump targeting and DC coverup operation. Factually, the media had the full and unredacted FISA application from March 17, 2017, throughout all of their pretense reporting, as if they didn’t know the details.
The greatest likelihood is that Mueller’s team, headed by Andrew Weissmann, wanted to keep tabs on who in Washington DC was circling the truth. The subpoena against Jason Foster and other House and Senate committee lawyers and staff would help the DOJ keep tabs on who knew the details at a very key time in the coverup operation.
Within Main Justice, DOJ at the time Andrew Weissmann (Mueller team) would want to know what Chuck Grassley and Devin Nunes had uncovered, and who would potentially be assisting them.
The DOJ search warrants, in Sept 2017 (the warrants of interest to Jason Foster), likely do not relate directly to the James Wolfe investigation, despite the timeline being very similar. U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu, from the USAO in Washington DC, was conducting the Wolfe investigation, and the Washington Field Office (WFO), FBI Agent Brian Dugan was the lead investigative unit. These subpoenas were something else.
Elise Stefanik Takes Action Against Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Election Interference – ‘Fight The Democrats Unjust Lawfare And Expose This Corruption’
On Tuesday, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) filed an official ethics complaint with the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility against special counsel Jack Smith, claiming that Smith is interfering in the 2024 presidential election with the indictments he brought against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump last year.
In her complaint to Office of Professional Responsibility counsel Jeffrey Ragsdale, Rep. Stefanik, who is rumored to be a potential vice presidential pick for Trump, pointed out a serious violation. She stated that Smith’s attempt to expedite his case to trial before the election is a clear breach of the Department of Justice’s long-standing policy. This policy strictly prohibits timing investigations to aid a certain political candidate. “Biden special counsel Jack Smith is attempting to expedite the trial in order to influence the general election in November,” she wrote.
Rep. Stefanik further detailed the alleged misconduct of Smith and his team. She asserted that they have repeatedly violated the court-ordered stay by serving 4,000 pages of discovery to Trump’s legal team and making a pretrial motion in district court. This, she argued, is a clear indication of Smith’s conduct bringing disrepute to the Department of Justice and the entire federal government. “The DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility should impose the discipline that such conduct warrants,” the lawmaker added.
The New York representative demanded that Ragsdale open an investigation into Smith immediately for his actions that attempted to “politicize his criminal prosecution” and interfere in the general election against Trump. During a press conference after Stefanik issued the complaint, she reconfirmed her resolve to fight back against the various prosecutors going after the former president.
“Democrats’ corrupt and desperate witch hunts against President Trump must come to an end. This is lawfare and blatant election interference, and the American people know it. That is why today I filed an official complaint with the Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility on Joe Biden’s special counsel, Jack Smith, for his clear and illegal efforts of election interference,” she said. “We will fight the Democrats unjust lawfare and expose this corruption whether it is in New York, Atlanta, or right here in Washington, DC.”
President Trump is currently facing four criminal indictments against him. The first, which is currently underway in New York City, was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) in which the DA’s office charged Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records by writing down in business ledgers that hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels were legal payments to Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen. The other case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) alleges that Trump and 18 other co-defendants attempted to illegally overturn the 2020 election. Special counsel Jack Smith brought the last two indictments, with one being focused on the 2020 election and the other focused on classified documents Trump allegedly took with him post-presidency to Mar-a-Lago.
🚨🚨🚨 I just filed an official ethics complaint against Jack Smith with the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility for his illegal election interference.
It’s obvious to any reasonable observer that Jack Smith is trying to interfere with the 2024 election… pic.twitter.com/lNW4MUz5Oi
Democrats’ corrupt and desperate witch hunts against President Trump must come to an end. This is lawfare and blatant election interference and the American people know it. That is why today I filed an official complaint with the Department of Justice Office of Professional… pic.twitter.com/yo61lAbnnD
Fani Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, is currently dealing with yet another legal issue—this time, a lawsuit brought by a state legislator in Georgia.
In her suit, Rep. Mesha Mainor, a Republican elected to the Georgia House in 2020, “alleges that Willis, Commissioner Marvin Arrington, the Fulton County Ethics Board, and the county itself were derelict in its duties to properly litigate a criminal case in which Mainor was repeatedly stalked by a former friend and political associate,” Newsweek reported.
A spokesperson for the state lawmaker said she would provide additional details regarding the lawsuit during a press conference scheduled for Tuesday.
Mainor, who secured a substantial victory in the 2020 election from the constituents of House District 56 in the Democratic stronghold of Atlanta, grabbed headlines last July by switching parties and formally affiliating herself with the Republican Party. At the time, she said she was no longer morally comfortable complying with Democrats’ “left-wing radicalism, lawlessness, and putting the interests of illegal aliens over the interests of Americans.”
Mainor’s lawsuit, which was filed on April 2 in Fulton County Superior Court, alleges that she enlisted Corwin Monson as a campaign volunteer in January 2019. The lawsuit describes them as associates for several years with numerous mutual friends.
He “assured” Mainor he could help her get elected, though one month later, she was “forced to terminate” him after she witnessed “his unruly, belligerent behavior,” the suit said, according to Newsweek.
It reportedly resulted in multiple instances of stalking in various forms, including Monson showing up uninvited to campaign or church events, lingering outside her residence, making calls from different numbers and leaving voicemails, and even proposing to her in front of her minor children at her home, the suit says.
It also claimed that Monson was “in love” with Mainor, though the two of them had never had a romantic relationship.
A judge granted Mainor’s request for a Temporary Protective Order (TPO) against Monson in August 2019. He was subsequently arrested in both September 2019 and September 2020 for violating the TPO.
Following the second incident, Fulton County indicted Monson for aggravated stalking. The second aggravated assault charge in January 2021 could lead to up to 20 years of imprisonment for Monson.
However, the lawsuit alleges that Arrington, who defended Monson in a legal capacity, “used his influence to circumvent the office policies of the District Attorney’s office,” which allegedly included copying the DA on emails, negotiating plea bargains directly, and demanding meetings.
Newsweek added:
Arrington is also alleged to have told Willis “that b**** is crazy”, in reference to Mainor—claimed within the suit to have peddled his influence to in turn influence Willis.
After Willis was sworn in January 2021, she became responsible for the Monson case.
She reportedly dismissed one of his aggravated stalking cases. On the other charge, she offered a plea of three years with one year served in prison and the rest probation. Mainor said she was never informed of the plea deal, [which she] claimed to be a violation of the Georgia Crime Victims Bill of Rights.
“Furthermore, due to DA Willis’ bias towards Mr. Arrington, Plaintiff Mainor has experienced disparate treatment under the law as a victim,” the suit says. “Plaintiff Mainor has been forced to advocate for herself and her safety, although that is the District Attorney’s role.”
Trouble for Willis has been mounting over the past few months which has affected her election-related RICO case against former President Donald Trump. Last month, Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the case, ordered her to either fire an attorney she hired, Nathan Wade, after discovering the two were involved in a romantic relationship or take herself and her entire office off of the case.
A federal judge on Monday adjourned a civil lawsuit brought against former President Donald Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021, riot under a 19th-century law, handing him a delay in the case that he and his legal team sought.
The suit’s lead plaintiff, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), was joined by several other Democrats “who said they were impeded in their duties by the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol,” Newsweek reported.
The case was pursued under an 1871 act designed to prevent the Ku Klux Klan from intimidating members of Congress in the execution of their duties. On Monday, Mehta ruled that “immunity-related discovery” will persist until September 11, 2024.
Following the conclusion of discovery in September, both parties will present their arguments regarding whether Trump is entitled to presidential immunity from the civil lawsuit—a separate matter from the Supreme Court’s examination of presidential immunity from criminal lawsuits. The proceedings for the former could extend over several months.
Newsweek noted that should Trump be given immunity, then the case is over. If presidential immunity is not granted, further discovery on the case’s facts is anticipated, and a trial is unlikely to commence until after the inauguration in January 2025. Trump, who has consistently sought trial delays, could subsequently seek recourse in federal court to postpone the case until after his term in office has concluded.
Newsweek noted further:
On December 4, 2023, Lee had released a statement in which she said “justice is owed to the Congressional staff, Capitol support staff, law enforcement, and members of Congress who feared for their lives on January 6, 2021. I look forward to seeing Mr. Trump in court.”
MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday that a higher court, the Washington D.C. Circuit, had handed the case back to Mehta after reaffirming that “former presidents are entitled to civil immunity for acts even on the ‘outer perimeter’ of their official duties.
“But they [the D.C. Circuit] held Trump had not yet shown his entitlement to such immunity and would instead have a chance to prove in the lower court that ‘his alleged actions in the run-up to and on January 6 were taken in his official capacity as President,’” she wrote.
“That opinion was handed down on December 1, 2023. And now, in the last days of April, Judge Amit Mehta, the district court judge to whom the case has been assigned, has allowed the parties to conduct ‘immunity-related discovery’ through September 11, 2024,” Rubin added, further claiming that Mehta’s ruling doesn’t bode well for Trump in his D.C. criminal case where he’s been charged by special counsel Jack Smith of election interference following Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.
The election fraud proceedings, overseen by Tanya Chutkan, another D.C. district judge, have been put on hold as the Supreme Court deliberates presidential immunity.
“Now think about the criminal case before Judge Chutkan: In a world where the Supreme Court similarly decides there must be further lower court proceedings to determine whether Trump can mount an immunity defense, can that case be tried before 2025? Increasingly, I think not—and that might be the only win Trump wants or needs,” Rubin wrote.
During oral arguments regarding the question last week, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch said that former presidents ought to enjoy some immunity from subsequent attacks if they leave office.
“It didn’t matter what the president’s motives were; that’s something courts shouldn’t get engaged in … I am concerned about future uses of criminal law to target political opponents based on accusations about their motives,” the Supreme Court justice, who was Trump’s first of three appointees to the nation’s highest court, said on April 25.
This is a good overall encapsulation by Julie Kelly and to a lesser extent Steve Bannon about what Judge Aileen Cannon is doing with the Jack Smith “documents” case in Florida.
Kelly notes accurately {See Background} that Judge Aileen Cannon is somewhat limited on what she can do about the federal government case due to the DOJ using the false pretense of “national security” to control how the judicial branch can interact with the lawfare construct of the executive branch. The Lawfare crew intentionally created the “national security” angle to control all sides of the case and limit the release of information to the public.
Judge Cannon has recently been releasing and un-redacting documents and motions filed in the case to allow disinfecting sunlight and transparency to enter. This approach undercuts the prosecution manipulation, the DOJ does not like it. Julie Kelly outlines some of the details that Cannon’s releases have highlighted. {Direct Rumble Link}
At the 12:00 minute mark, Steve Bannon highlights his anger as he rails against congress and the staff of multiple committees who participate in the willful blindness and pretending game.
After noticing how congress is mute about the revelations that Cannon is providing, Bannon notes the republicans are essentially anti-Trump and controlled opposition, which is essentially accurate…. However, he’s just now noticing this?
It is a little annoying to see Mr. Bannon discuss outrage as a manipulative tactic {Chaffe and Countermeasures}, considering the years of outrage traps laid by the republicans in the Deep State against President Trump. The latest effort by congress pretending not to notice, and then staying quiet, is not exactly a surprise.
Think about two sets of documents as evidence against two teams working in synergy. Team one (Clinton) was outside government. Team two (DOJ/FBI) was inside government. The documents the DOJ/FBI were urgently searching to retrieve pertained to both groups but were also divided. That helps to explain the wording of the memo below and the motive behind the DOJ/FBI using the General Services Administration (GSA) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as tools to conduct post-Trump-term physical surveillance and searches.
Here’s the Occam’s Razor…. and I will only say this once. A lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and the Spygate manipulators was filed in 2022. [LINK HERE]
The lawsuit was filed against specific persons, and most of those persons were interviewed by the FBI as part of the originating investigation. Within the subjects of the lawsuit, we find names and groups including:
Hillary Clinton, Hillary for America Campaign Committee, DNC, DNC Services Corp, Perkins Coie, Michael Sussmann, Marc Elias, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Charles Dolan, Jake Sullivan, John Podesta, Robby Mook, Phillipe Reines as well as Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, Peter Fritsch, Nellie Ohr, Bruce Ohr, Orbis Business Intelligence, Christopher Steele, Igor Danchenko, Neustar Inc., Rodney Joffe, James Comey Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith and Andrew McCabe.
Once the lawsuit against CLINTON/FBI was filed, the background physical paper evidence no longer needed to be in the possession of the person(s) who wrote the lawsuit (physical possession). [LINK HERE] Simple thumb-drives would suffice.
From Liz Cheney to Harriet Hageman, a remarkable upgrade from voters in Wyoming. Stunningly so. I have alerts established for all things Hageman, because she presents as a stealth wolverine very quietly. I like that.
Yes, you will hear me say it first…. this is my first opportunity to do so…. If there are reservations about Ben Carson for VP (personally I do not think there are any), then I would implore President Trump to consider Harriet Hageman as his VP running mate. Yes, I would be good with taking a chance on Hageman as POTUS in ’28. WATCH:
On May 31, 2022, Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) made an explosive announcement as an outcome of a whistleblower providing information to him and Jim Jordan about the FBI having a collaborative relationship with the Clinton/DNC law firm Perkins Coie. {Go Deep} Specifically, the explosive element surrounds the FBI having a workspace within the DNC law firm that would have given Democrats an open portal into FBI databases for use in opposition research.
In this video former NSA Director Mike Rogers explains how he was notified of unlawful FBI extractions from the NSA database, what was happening with illegal search queries and what he did after the notification. WATCH:
Knowing that Perkins Coie and the FBI were working together on this targeting operation, makes everything else make sense.
However, the involvement of official government agencies like NSA Admiral Mike Rogers, creates a paper trail. Search query logs, notifications to Mike Rogers, notifications to the FISA Court, notifications to FBI officials of the suspension of contractor access, and subsequent FISA court opinions like the 99-pages from Rosemary Collyer, all of it creates an internal trail of government documents that tell the story.
It’s those documents that become a risk to the people who operate within the system. In this example of government documents, the trail outlines the targeting of Donald Trump and that was what he continued to ask the ODNI, DOJ and FBI to release.
Frustrated by the lack of action, in March 2022 Donald Trump filed a massive civil lawsuit against the Clinton campaign and everyone involved in this targeting operation. [SEE LAWSUIT HERE] “Acting in concert, the Defendants maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty,” the president states.
“Under the guise of ‘opposition research,’ ‘data analytics,’ and other political stratagems, the Defendants nefariously sought to sway the public’s trust. They worked together with a single, self-serving purpose: to vilify Donald J. Trump,” says one segment of the lawsuit.
All of the claims within the filing are substantiated by documents outlining the history of the events. I’m not sure any defendant is going to be successful getting themselves out of the target zone on the lawsuit. The suit alleges “racketeering” and a “conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood,” among other claims.
The basis for the evidence against the entire crew? That was likely part of the assembly of evidence, the declassified documents at the heart of the battle, that were targeted by the DOJ and FBI raid.
The Government Wants to Play God. What Does That Mean for Our Freedoms?
By John & Nisha Whitehead April 03, 2024
The government wants to play god.
It wants the power to decide who lives or dies and whose rights are worthy of protection.
Abortion may still be front and center in the power struggle between the Left and the Right over who has the right to decide—the government or the individual—when it comes to bodily autonomy, the right to privacy, sexual freedom, the rights of the unborn, and property interests in one’s body, but there’s so much more at play.
In the 50-plus years since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade, the government has come to believe that it not only has the power to determine who is deserving of constitutional rights in the eyes of the law but it also has the authority to deny those rights to an American citizen.
This is how the abortion debate has played into the police state’s hands: by laying the groundwork for discussions about who else may or may not be deserving of rights.
Despite the Supreme Court having overturned its earlier rulings recognizing abortion as a constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment, the government continues to play fast and loose with the lives of the citizenry all along the spectrum of life.
Take a good, hard look at the many ways in which Americans are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
American families who have their dogs shot, their homes trashed and their children terrorized or, worse, killed by errant SWAT team raids in the middle of the night are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
School-aged children as young as 4-years-old who are leg shackled, handcuffed and strip searched for violating school zero tolerance policies by chewing a Pop Tart into the shape of a gun and playing an imaginary game of cops and robbers, or engaging in childish behavior such as crying or jumping are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
Unarmed citizens who are tasered or shot by police for daring to hesitate, stutter, move a muscle, flee or disagree in any way with a police order are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
Likewise, Americans—young and old alike—who are shot by police because they pointed a garden hose at a police officer, reached for their registration in their glove box, relied upon a cane to steady themselves, or were seen playing with air rifles or BB guns are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
Female motorists who are unlucky enough to be pulled over for a questionable traffic infraction only to be subjected by police to cavity searches by the side of the road are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
Male pedestrians and motorists alike who are being subjected to roadside strip searches and rectal probes by police based largely on the color of their skin are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
American citizens subjected to government surveillance whereby their phone calls are being listened in on, their mail and text messages read, their movements tracked and their transactions monitored are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
Homeowners who are being fined and arrested for raising chickens in their backyard, allowing the grass in their front yards to grow too long, and holding Bible studies in their homes are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
Homeless individuals who are being harassed, arrested and run out of towns by laws that criminalize homelessness are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
These are all American citizens—endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, rights that no person or government can take away from them, among these the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—and they are all being oppressed in one way or another by a government that has grown drunk on power, money and its own authority.
If the government—be it the President, Congress, the courts or any federal, state or local agent or agency—can decide that any person has no rights, then that person becomes less than a citizen, less than human, less than deserving of respect, dignity, civility and bodily integrity. He or she becomes an “it,” a faceless number that can be tallied and tracked, a quantifiable mass of cells that can be discarded without conscience, an expendable cost that can be written off without a second thought, or an animal that can be bought, sold, branded, chained, caged, bred, neutered and euthanized at will.
It’s a slippery slope that justifies all manner of violations in the name of national security, the interest of the state and the so-called greater good.
Yet those who founded this country believed that what we conceive of as our rights were given to us by God—we are created equal, according to the nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence—and that government cannot create, nor can it extinguish our God-given rights. To do so would be to anoint the government with god-like powers and elevate it above the citizenry.
Unfortunately, we have been dancing with this particular devil for quite some time now.
If we continue to wait for the government to restore our freedoms, respect our rights, rein in its abuses and restrain its agents from riding roughshod over our lives, our liberty and our happiness, then we will be waiting forever.
The highly politicized tug-of-war over abortion will not resolve the problem of a culture that values life based on a sliding scale. Nor will it help us navigate the moral, ethical and scientific minefields that await us as technology and humanity move ever closer to a point of singularity.
Humanity is being propelled at warp speed into a whole new frontier when it comes to privacy, bodily autonomy, and what it means to be a human being. As such, we haven’t even begun to wrap our heads around how present-day legal debates over bodily autonomy, privacy, vaccine mandates, the death penalty, and abortion play into future discussions about singularity, artificial intelligence, cloning, and the privacy rights of the individual in the face of increasingly invasive, intrusive and unavoidable government technologies.
Yet here is what I know.
Life is an inalienable right.
By allowing the government to decide who or what is deserving of rights, it shifts the entire discussion from one in which we are “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights” (that of life, liberty property and the pursuit of happiness) to one in which only those favored by the government get to enjoy such rights.
If all people are created equal, then all lives should be equally worthy of protection.
Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; instead, what they did was take the preexisting system and retool it so the weapons only targeted one side of the political continuum. This point is where many people understandably get confused.
In the era shortly after 9/11, the DC national security apparatus was constructed to preserve continuity of government and simultaneously view all Americans as potential threats. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were created specifically for this purpose.
What Barack Obama and Eric Holder did with that new construct was refine the internal targeting mechanisms so that only their ideological opposition became the target of the new national security system. This is very important to understand as you dig deeper into this research outline.
Washington DC created the modern national security apparatus immediately and hurriedly after 9/11/01. DHS came along in 2002, and within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 the ODNI was formed. When Barack Obama and Eric Holder arrived a few years later, those newly formed institutions were viewed as opportunities to create a very specific national security apparatus that would focus almost exclusively against their political opposition.
The preexisting Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Dept of Justice (DOJ) were then repurposed to become two of the four pillars of the domestic national security apparatus. However, this new construct would have a targeting mechanism based on political ideology. The DHS, ODNI, DOJ and FBI became the four pillars of this new institution. Atop these pillars is where you will find the Fourth Branch of Government.
We were not sleeping when this happened, we were wide awake. However, we were stunningly distracted by the economic collapse that was taking place in 2006 and 2007 when the engineers behind Obama started to assemble the design. By the time Obama took office in 2009, we sensed something profound was shifting, but we can only see exactly what shifted in the aftermath. The four pillars were put into place, and a new Fourth Branch of Government was quietly created.
As time passed, and the system operators became familiar with their new tools, technology allowed the tentacles of the system to reach out and touch us. That is when we first started to notice that something very disconcerting was happening. Those four pillars are the root of it, and if we take the time to understand how the Fourth Branch originated, questions about this current state of perpetual angst will start to make sense.
Grab a cup of your favorite beverage, and take a walk with me as we outline how this was put together. You might find many of the questions about our current state of political affairs beginning to make a lot more sense.
Remember, it is not my intent to outline the entire history of how we got to this place where the intelligence community now acts as the superseding fourth branch of government. Such an effort would be exhausting and likely take our discussion away from understanding the current dynamic.
History provided enough warnings from Dwight D. Eisenhower (military), to John F. Kennedy (CIA), to Richard Nixon (FBI), to all modern versions of warnings and frustrations from HPSCI Devin Nunes and ODNI Ric Grenell. None of those prior reference points are invalid, and all documented outlines of historic reference are likely true and accurate. However, a generational review is not useful, as the reference impacting us ‘right now‘ gets lost.
Instead, we pick up the expansive and weaponized intelligence system as it manifests after 9/11/01, and my goal is to highlight how the modern version of the total intelligence apparatus has now metastasized into a Fourth Branch of Government. It is this superseding branch that now touches and influences every facet of our life.
If we take the modern construct, originating at the speed of technological change, we can also see how the oversight or “check/balance” in our system of government became functionally obsolescent.
After many years of granular research about the intelligence apparatus inside our government, in the summer of 2020 I visited Washington DC to ask specific questions. My goal was to go where the influence agents within government actually operate, and to discover the people deep inside the institutions no one elected and few people pay attention to.
It was during this process when I discovered how information is purposefully put into containment silos; essentially a formal process to block the flow of information between agencies and between the original branches. While frustrating to discover, the silo effect was important because understanding the communication between networks leads to our ability to reconcile conflict between what we perceive and what’s actually taking place.
After days of research and meetings in DC during 2020; amid a town that was serendipitously shut down due to COVID-19; I found a letter slid under the door of my room in a nearly empty hotel with an introduction of sorts. The subsequent discussions were perhaps the most important. After many hours of specific questions and answers on specific examples, I realized why our nation is in this mess. That is when I discovered the fourth and superseding branch of government, the Intelligence Branch.
I am going to explain how the Intelligence Branch works: (1) to control every other branch of government; (2) how it functions as an entirely independent branch of government with no oversight; (3) how and why it was created to be independent from oversight; (4) what is the current mission of the IC Branch, and most importantly (5) who operates it.
The Intelligence Branch is an independent functioning branch of government, it is no longer a subsidiary set of agencies within the Executive Branch as most would think. To understand the Intelligence Branch, we need to drop the elementary school civics class lessons about three coequal branches of government and replace that outlook with the modern system that created itself.
The Intelligence Branch functions much like the State Dept, through a unique set of public-private partnerships that support it. Big Tech industry collaboration with intelligence operatives is part of that functioning; almost like an NGO. However, the process is much more important than most think. In this problematic perspective of a corrupt system of government, the process is the flaw – not the outcome.
There are people making decisions inside this little known, unregulated and out-of-control branch of government that impact every facet of our lives.
None of the people operating deep inside the Intelligence Branch were elected, and our elected representative House members genuinely do not know how the system works. I assert this position affirmatively because I have talked to House and Senate staffers, including the chiefs of staff for multiple House & Senate committee seats. They are not malicious people; however, they are genuinely clueless of things that happen outside their silo. That is part of the purpose of me explaining it, with examples, in full detail with sunlight.
We begin….
In April of 2016, the FBI launched a counterintelligence operation against presidential candidate Donald Trump. The questioning about that operation is what New York Representative Elise Stefanik cites in March of 2017, approximately 11 months later (First Two Minutes).
Things to note:
♦ Notice how FBI Director James Comey just matter-of-factly explains no one outside the DOJ was informed about the FBI operation. Why? Because that’s just the way things are done. His justification for unilateral operations was “because of the sensitivity of the matter“, totally ignoring any constitutional or regulatory framework for oversight; because, well, quite simply, there isn’t any. The intelligence apparatus inside the DOJ/FBI can, and does, operate based on their own independent determinations of authority.
♦ Notice also how FBI Director Comey shares his perspective that informing the National Security Council (NSC) is the equivalent of notifying the White House. The FBI leadership expressly believe they bear no responsibility to brief the Chief Executive. As long as they tell some unknown, unelected, bureaucratic entity inside the NSC, their unwritten responsibility to inform the top of their institutional silo is complete. If the IC wants to carve out the Oval Office, they simply plant information inside the NSC and, from their perspective, their civic responsibility to follow checks-and-balances is complete. This is an intentional construct.
♦ Notice how Comey obfuscates notification to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), by avoiding the fact James Clapper was the DNI from outset of the counterintelligence operation throughout the remainder of Obama’s term. When I get deeper into the process, we will understand how the Intelligence Branch has intentionally used the creation of the DNI position (established post 9/11/01) as a method to avoid oversight, not enhance it. Keeping an oblivious doofus like James Clapper in position held strategic value [Doofus Reminder HERE].
That video of James Comey being questioned by Elise Stefanik was the first example given to me by someone who knew the background of everything that was taking place preceding that March 20, 2017, hearing. That FBI reference point is a key to understand how the Intelligence Branch operates with unilateral authority above Congress (legislative branch), above the White House (executive branch), and even above the court system (judicial branch).
Also, watch this short video of James Clapper because it is likely many readers have forgotten, and likely even more readers have never seen it. Watch closely how then White House national security adviser John Brennan is responding in that video. This is before Brennan became CIA Director, this is when Brennan was helping Barack Obama put the pillars into place. WATCH:
[Sidebar: Every time I post this video it gets scrubbed from YouTube (example), so save it if you ever want to see it again.]
The video of James Clapper highlights how the ODNI position (created with good national security intention) ended up becoming the fulcrum for modern weaponization, and is now an office manipulated by agencies with a vested interest in retaining power. The Intelligence Branch holds power over the ODNI through their influence and partnership with the body that authorizes the power within it, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).
Factually, the modern intelligence apparatus uses checks and balances in their favor. The checks create silos of proprietary information, classified information, vaults of information that work around oversight issues. The silos are part of the problem.
Ironically, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created in the aftermath of 9/11/01 expressly to eliminate the silos of information which they felt led to a domestic terrorist attack that could have been prevented. The ODNI was created specifically upon the recommendation of the 9/11 commission.
The intent was to create a central hub of intelligence information, inside the Executive Branch, where the CIA, NSA, DoD, DoS, and DIA could deposit their unique intelligence products and a repository would be created so that domestic intelligence operations, like the DOJ and FBI could access them when needed to analyze threats to the U.S. This, they hoped, would ensure the obvious flags missed in the 9/11 attacks would not be missed again.
The DNI office created a problem for those who operate in the shadows of proprietary information. You’ll see how it was critical to install a person uniquely skilled in being an idiot, James Clapper, into that willfully blind role while intelligence operatives worked around the office to assemble the Intelligence Branch of Government.
• The last federal budget that flowed through the traditional budgetary process was signed into law in September of 2007 for fiscal year 2008 by George W. Bush. Every budget since then has been a fragmented process of continuing resolutions and individual spending bills.
Why does this matter? Because many people think defunding the Intelligence Community is a solution; it is not…. at least, not yet. Worse yet, the corrupt divisions deep inside the U.S. intelligence system can now fund themselves from multinational private sector partnerships (banks, corporations and foreign entities).
• When Democrats took over the House of Representatives in January 2007, they took office with a plan. Nancy Pelosi became Speaker, and Democrats controlled the Senate where Harry Reid was Majority Leader. Barack Obama was a junior senator from Illinois.
Pelosi and Reid intentionally did not advance a budget in 2008 (for fiscal year 2009) because their plan included installing Barack Obama (and all that came with him) with an open checkbook made even more lucrative by a worsening financial crisis and a process called baseline budgeting. Baseline budgeting means the prior fiscal year budget is accepted as the starting point for the next year budget. All previous expenditures are baked into the cake within baseline budgeting.
Massive bailouts preceded Obama’s installation due to U.S. economic collapse, and massive bailouts continued after his installation. This is the ‘never let a crisis go to waste’ aspect. TARP (Troubled Asset Recovery Program), auto bailouts (GM), and the massive stimulus spending bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, ie. those shovel ready jobs) were all part of the non budget spending. The federal reserve assisted with Quantitative Easing (QE1 and QE2) as congress passed various Porkulous spending bills further spending and replacing the formal budget process.
Note: There has never been a budget passed in the normal/traditional process since September of 2007.
• While Obama’s radical ‘transformation‘ was triggered across a broad range of government institutions, simultaneously spending on the U.S. military was cut, but spending on the intelligence apparatus expanded. We were all distracted by Obamacare, and the Republican party wanted to keep us that way. However, in the background there was a process of transformation taking place that included very specific action by Eric Holder and targeted effort toward the newest executive agency the ODNI.
The people behind Obama, those same people now behind Joe Biden, knew from years of strategic planning that ‘radical transformation’ would require control over specific elements inside the U.S. government. Eric Holder played a key role in his position as U.S. Attorney General in the DOJ.
AG Holder recruited ideologically aligned political operatives who were aware of the larger institutional objectives. One of those objectives was weaponizing the DOJ-National Security Division (DOJ-NSD) a division inside the DOJ that had no inspector general oversight. For most people the DOJ-NSD weaponization surfaced with a hindsight awakening of the DOJ-NSD targeting candidate Donald Trump many years later. However, by then the Holder crew had executed almost eight full years of background work.
• The second larger Obama/Holder objective was control over the FBI. Why was that important? Because the FBI does the domestic investigative work on anyone who needs or holds a security clearance. The removal of security clearances could be used as a filter to further build the internal ideological army they were assembling. Additionally, with new power in the ODNI created as a downstream consequence of the Patriot Act, new protocols for U.S. security clearances were easy to justify.
Carefully selecting fellow ideological travelers was facilitated by this filtration within the security clearance process. How does that issue later manifest? Just look around at how politicized every intelligence agency has become, specifically including the FBI.
• At the exact same time this new background security clearance process was ongoing, again everyone distracted by the fight over Obamacare, inside the Department of State (Secretary Hillary Clinton) a political alignment making room for the next phase was being assembled. Names like Samantha Power, Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton were familiar on television while Lisa Monaco worked as a legal liaison between the Obama White House and Clinton State Department.
Through the Dept of State (DoS) the intelligence apparatus began working on their first steps to align Big Tech with a larger domestic institutional objective. Those of you who remember the “Arab Spring”, some say “Islamist Spring”, will remember it was triggered by Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo – his first foreign trip. The State Department worked with grassroots organizers (mostly Muslim Brotherhood) in Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Qatar and Libya. Obama leaned heavily on the organizational network of Turkish President Recep Erdogan for contacts and support.
Why does this aspect matter to us? Well, you might remember how much effort the Obama administration put into recruiting Facebook and Twitter as resources for the various mideast rebellions the White House and DoS supported. This was the point of modern merge between the U.S. intelligence community and Big Tech social media.
In many ways, the coordinated political outcomes in Libya and Egypt were the beta test for the coordinated domestic political outcomes we saw in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The U.S. intelligence community working with social media platforms and political operatives.
Overlaying all of that background activity was also a new alignment of the Obama-era intelligence apparatus with ideological federal “contractors“. Where does this contractor activity manifest? In the FISA Court opinion of Rosemary Collyer who cited the “interagency memorandum of understanding”, or MOU.
Hopefully, you can see a small part of how tentacled the system to organize/weaponize the intelligence apparatus was. None of this was accidental, all of this was by design, and the United States Senate was responsible for intentionally allowing most of this to take place.
That’s the 30,000/ft level backdrop history of what was happening as the modern IC was created. Next we will go into how all these various intelligence networks began working in unison and how they currently control all of the other DC institutions under them; including how they can carve out the President from knowing their activity.
♦ When Barack Obama was installed in January 2009, the Democrats held a 60 seat majority in the U.S. Senate. As the people behind the Obama installation began executing their longer-term plan, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was a tool to create the Intelligence Branch; it was not an unintentional series of events.
When Obama was installed, Dianne Feinstein was the Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), and Democrat operative Dan Jones was her lead staffer. Feinstein was completely controlled by those around her including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The CIA was in the process of turning over personnel following the Bush era, and as a result of a massive multi-year narrative of diminished credibility (Iraq WMD), a deep purge was underway. Obama/Holder were in the process of shifting intelligence alignment and the intensely political Democrat Leader Harry Reid was a key participant.
THE TRAP – Many people say that Congress is the solution to eliminating the Fourth and superseding Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. This is an exercise in futility because the Legislative Branch, specifically the SSCI, facilitated the creation of the Intelligence Branch. The SSCI cannot put the genie they created back in the bottle without admitting they too are corrupt; and the background story of their corruption is way too intense to be exposed now.
Every member of the SSCI is compromised in some controlling manner. Those Senators who disliked the control over them; specifically disliked because the risk of sunlight was tenuous and, well, possible; have either left completely or stepped down from the committee. None of the SSCI members past or present would ever contemplate saying openly what their tenure involved.
[Note: You might remember when Vice Chairman Mark Warner’s text messages surfaced, there was a controlled Republican SSCI member who came to his defense in February of 2018. It was not accidental that exact Senator later became the chair of the SSCI himself. That Republican Senator is Marco Rubio, now vice-chair since the Senate re-flipped back to the optics of Democrat control in 2021.]
All of President Obama’s 2009 intelligence appointments required confirmation from the Senate. The nominees had to first pass through the Democrat controlled SSCI, and then to a full Senate vote where Democrats held a 60 vote majority. Essentially, Obama got everyone he wanted in place easily. Rahm Emmanuel was Obama’s Chief of Staff, and Valerie Jarrett was Senior Advisor.
Tim Geithner was Treasury Secretary in 2010 when the joint DOJ/FBI and IRS operation to target the Tea Party took place after the midterm “shellacking” caused by the Obamacare backlash. Mitch McConnell was Minority Leader in the Senate but supported the targeting of the Tea Party as his Senate colleagues were getting primaried by an angry and effective grassroots campaign. McConnell’s friend, Senator Bob Bennett, getting beaten in Utah was the final straw.
Dirty Harry and Mitch McConnell saw the TEA Party through the same prism. The TEA Party took Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts (Scott Brown); Sharon Angle was about to take out Harry Reid in Nevada; Arlen Spector was taken down in Pennsylvania; Senator Robert Byrd died; Senator Lisa Murkowski lost her primary to Joe Miller in Alaska; McConnell’s nominee Mike Castle lost to Christine O’Donnell in Delaware; Rand Paul won in Kentucky. This is the background. The peasants were revolting…. and visibly angry Mitch McConnell desperately made a deal with the devil to protect himself.
In many ways, the TEA Party movement was/is very similar to the MAGA movement. The difference in 2010 was the absence of a head of the movement, in 2015 Donald Trump became that head figure who benefited from the TEA Party energy. Trump came into office in 2017 with the same congressional opposition as the successful TEA Party candidates in 2011.
Republicans took control of the Senate following the 2014 mid-terms. Republicans took control of the SSCI in January 2015. Senator Richard Burr became chairman of the SSCI, and Dianne Feinstein shifted to Vice-Chair. Dirty Harry Reid left the Senate, and Mitch McConnell took power again.
Republicans were in control of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2015 when the Intelligence Branch operation against candidate Donald Trump was underway. [Feinstein’s staffer, Dan Jones, left the SSCI so he could act as a liaison and political operative between private-sector efforts (Fusion GPS, Chris Steele) and the SSCI.] The SSCI was a participant in that Fusion-GPS/Chris Steele operation, and as a direct consequence Republicans were inherently tied to the problem with President Trump taking office in January of 2017. Indiana Republican Senator Dan Coats was a member of the SSCI.
Bottom line…. When it came to the intelligence system targeting Donald Trump during the 2015/2016 primary, the GOP was just as much at risk as their Democrat counterparts.
When Trump unexpectedly won the 2016 election, the SSCI was shocked more than most. They knew countermeasures would need to be deployed to protect themselves from any exposure of their intelligence conduct. Dianne Feinstein stepped down, and Senator Mark Warner was elevated to Vice Chairman.
Indiana’s own Mike Pence, now Vice President, recommended fellow Hoosier, SSCI Senator Dan Coats, to become President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). [Apply hindsight here]
• To give an idea of the Intelligence Branch power dynamic, remind yourself how House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Chairman Devin Nunes, tried to get access to the DOJ/FBI records of the FISA application used against the Trump campaign via Carter Page.
Remember, Devin Nunes only saw a portion of the FISA trail from his review of a Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) previously given to President Obama. Chairman Nunes had to review the PDB at the White House SCIF due to compartmented intelligence, another example of the silo benefit.
Remember the massive stonewalling and blocking of the DOJ/FBI toward Nunes? Remember the back and forth battle over declassification surrounding the Nunes memo?
Remember, after Nunes went directly to House Speaker Paul Ryan for help (didn’t get any), the DOJ only permitted two members from each party within the HPSCI to review the documents, and only at the DOJ offices of main justice?
Contrast that amount of House Intel Committee railroading and blocking by intelligence operatives in the DOJ, DOJ-NSD and FBI, with the simple request by Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Mark Warner asking to see the Carter Page FISA application and immediately a copy being delivered to him on March 17th 2017.
Can you see which intelligence committee is aligned with the deepest part of the deep state?
The contrast of ideological alignment between the House, Senate and Intelligence Branch is crystal clear when viewed through the prism of cooperation. You can see which legislative committee holds the power and support of the Intelligence Branch. The Senate Intel Committee facilitates the corrupt existence of the IC Branch, so the IC Branch only cooperates with the Senate Intel Committee. It really is that simple.
• The Intelligence Branch carefully selects its own members by controlling how security clearances are investigated and allowed (FBI). The Intelligence Branch also uses compartmentalization of intelligence as a way to keep each agency, and each downstream branch of government (executive, legislative and judicial), at arms length as a method to stop anyone from seeing the larger picture of their activity. I call this the “silo effect“, and it is done by design.
I have looked at stunned faces when I presented declassified silo product from one agency to the silo customers of another. You would be astonished at what they don’t know because it is not in their ‘silo’.
Through the advise and consent rules, the Intelligence Branch uses the SSCI to keep out people they consider dangerous to their ongoing operations. Any appointee to the intelligence community must first pass through the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, before they get a full Senate vote. If the SSCI rejects the candidate, they simply refuse to take up the nomination. The president is then blocked from that appointment. This is what happened with President Trump over-and-over again.
• Additionally, the Intelligence Branch protects itself, and its facilitating allies through the formal classification process. The Intelligence Branch gets to decide unilaterally what information will be released and what information will be kept secret. There is no entity outside the Intelligence Branch, and yes that includes the President of the United States, who can supersede the classification authority of the Intelligence Branch. {Go Deep} and {Go Deep} This is something 99.9% of the people on our side get totally and frustratingly wrong.
No one can declassify, or make public, anything the Intelligence Branch will not agree to. Doubt this? Ask Ric Grenell, John Ratcliffe, or even President Trump himself.
• The classification process is determined inside the Intelligence Branch, all by themselves. They get to choose what rank of classification exists on any work-product they create; and they get to decide what the classification status is of any work product that is created by anyone else. The Intelligence Branch has full control over what is considered classified information and what is not. The Intelligence Branch defines what is a “national security interest” and what is not. A great technique for hiding fingerprints of corrupt and illegal activity.
[For familiar reference see the redactions to Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text messages. The Intelligence Branch does all redactions.]
• Similarly, the declassification process is a request by an agency, even a traditionally superior agency like the President of the United States, to the Intelligence Branch asking for them to release the information. The Intelligence Branch again holds full unilateral control. If the head of the CIA refuses to comply with the declassification instruction of the President, what can the president do except fire him/her? {Again, GO DEEP} How does the President replace the non-compliant cabinet member? They have to go through the SSCI confirmation. See the problem?
Yes, there are ways to break up the Intelligence Branch, but they do not start with any congressional effort. As you can see above, the process is the flaw – not the solution. Most conservative pundits have their emphasis on the wrong syllable. Their cornerstone is false.
For their own self-preservation, the Intelligence Branch has been interfering in our elections for years. The way to tear this apart begins with STATE LEVEL election reform that blocks the Legislative Branch from coordinating with the Intelligence Branch.
The extreme federalism approach is critical and also explains why Joe Biden has instructed Attorney General Merrick Garland to use the full power of the DOJ to stop state level election reform efforts. The worry of successful state level election control is also why the Intelligence Branch now needs to support the federal takeover of elections.
Our elections have been usurped by the Intelligence Branch. Start with honest elections and we will see just how much Democrat AND Republican corruption is dependent on manipulated election results. Start at the state level. Start there…. everything else is downstream.
♦ People want examples, reference points for work the Intelligence Branch conducts, specifically how it protects itself.
Here is an example: Julian Assange.
Yes, the history of the U.S. national security apparatus goes back decades; however, the weaponization of that apparatus, the creation of an apex branch of government, the Intelligence Branch, originated –as we currently feel it– under President Barack Obama.
Obama took the foundational tools created by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and used the intelligence system architecture to create a weapon for use in his fundamental transformation. An alliance of ideologues within government (intel community) and the private sector (big tech and finance) was assembled, and the largest government weapon was created. Think about this every time you take your shoes off at an airport.
After the weapon was assembled and tested (Arab Spring), the Legislative Branch was enjoined under the auspices of a common enemy, Donald J. Trump, an outsider who was a risk to every entity in the institutional construct of Washington DC. Trillions were at stake, and years of affluence and influence were at risk as the unholy alliance was put together.
To understand the risk that Julian Assange represented to U.S. Intelligence Branch interests, it is important to understand just how extensive the operations of the FBI/CIA were in 2016.
It is within the network of foreign and domestic intel operations where Intelligence Branch political tool, FBI Agent Peter Strzok, was working as a bridge between the CIA and FBI counterintelligence operations.
By now, people are familiar with the construct of CIA operations involving Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese professor generally identified as a western intelligence operative who was tasked by the FBI/CIA to run an operation against Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos in both Italy (Rome) and London. {Go Deep}
In a similar fashion, the FBI tasked U.S. intelligence asset Stefan Halper to target another Trump campaign official, Carter Page. Under the auspices of being a Cambridge Professor, Stefan Halper also targeted General Michael Flynn. Additionally, using assistance from a female FBI agent under the false name Azra Turk, Halper also targeted Papadopoulos.
The initial operations to target Flynn, Papadopoulos and Page were all based overseas. This seemingly makes the CIA exploitation of the assets and the targets much easier.
HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes outlined how very specific exculpatory evidence was known to the FBI and yet withheld from the FISA application used against Carter Page that also mentions George Papadopoulos. The FBI also fabricated information in the FISA.
However, there is an aspect to the domestic U.S. operation that also bears the fingerprints of the international intelligence apparatus; only this time, due to the restrictive laws on targets inside the U.S., the CIA aspect is less prominent. This is where FBI Agent Peter Strzok working for both agencies was important.
Remember, it’s clear in the text messages Strzok had a working relationship with what he called their “sister agency”, the CIA. Additionally, former CIA Director John Brennan has admitted Strzok helped write the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which outlines the Russia narrative; and Peter Strzok wrote the July 31st, 2016, “Electronic Communication” that originated FBI operation “Crossfire Hurricane.” Strzok immediately used that EC to travel to London to debrief allied intelligence officials connected to the Australian Ambassador to the U.K, Alexander Downer.
In short, Peter Strzok acted as a bridge between the CIA and the FBI. The perfect type of FBI career agent for the Intelligence Branch and CIA Director John Brennan to utilize.
Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson hired CIA Open Source analyst Nellie Ohr toward the end of 2015; at appropriately the same time as “FBI Contractors” were identified exploiting the NSA database and extracting information on a specific set of U.S. persons, the 2015 GOP candidates for President.
It was also Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson who was domestically tasked with a Russian lobbyist named Natalia Veselnitskaya. A little reported Russian Deputy Attorney General named Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was working double agents for the CIA and Kremlin. Karapetyan was directing the foreign operations of Natalia Veselnitskaya, and Glenn Simpson was organizing her inside the U.S.
Glenn Simpson managed Veselnitskaya through the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. However, once the CIA/Fusion-GPS operation using Veselnitskaya started to unravel with public reporting… back in Russia Deputy AG Karapetyan died in a helicopter crash.
Simultaneously timed in late 2015 through mid 2016, there was a domestic FBI operation using a young Russian named Maria Butina tasked to run up against republican presidential candidates. According to Patrick Byrne, Butina’s private sector handler [NOTE: remember, the public-private sector partnership], it was FBI agent Peter Strzok who was giving Patrick Byrne the instructions on where to send Butina. {Go Deep}
All of this context outlines the extent to which the FBI/CIA was openly involved in constructing a political operation that eventually settled upon anyone in candidate Donald Trump’s orbit. The international operations of the Intelligence Branch were directed by the FBI/CIA; and the domestic operations were coordinated by Peter Strzok operating with a foot in both agencies. [Strzok gets CIA service coin]
Recap: ♦Mifsud tasked against Papadopoulos (CIA). ♦Halper tasked against Flynn (CIA), Page (CIA), and Papadopoulos (CIA). ♦Azra Turk, pretending to be a Halper asst, tasked against Papadopoulos (FBI). ♦Veselnitskaya tasked against Donald Trump Jr (CIA, Fusion-GPS). ♦Butina tasked against Donald Trump Jr (FBI). All of these activities were coordinated.
Additionally, Christopher Steele was a British intelligence officer, hired by Fusion GPS to assemble and launder fraudulent intelligence information within his dossier. And we cannot forget Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, who was recruited by Asst. FBI Director Andrew McCabe to participate in running an operation against the Trump campaign and create the impression of Russian involvement. However, Deripaska refused to participate.
All of this foreign and domestic engagement was directly controlled by collaborating U.S. intelligence agencies from inside the Intelligence Branch. And all of this coordinated activity was intended to give a specific Russia influence/interference impression.
♦ The key point of all that background context is to see how committed the Intelligence Branch was to the constructed narrative of Russia interfering with the 2016 election. The CIA, FBI, and by extension the DOJ and DOJ-NSD, put a hell of a lot of work into it.
We also know that John Durham looked at the construct of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA); and talked to CIA analysts who participated in the construct of the January 2017 report that bolstered the false appearance of Russian interference in the 2016 election. This is important because it ties in to the next part that involves Julian Assange and Wikileaks.
On April 11th, 2019, the Julian Assange indictment was unsealed in the EDVA. From the indictment we discover it was under seal since March 6th, 2018:
The FBI investigation took place prior to December 2017, and it was coordinated through the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) where Dana Boente was U.S. Attorney at the time. The grand jury indictment was sealed from March of 2018 until after Mueller completed his investigation, April 2019.
Why the delay?
What was the DOJ waiting for?
Here’s where it gets interesting….
The FBI submission to the Grand Jury in December of 2017 was four months after Congressman Dana Rohrabacher talked to Julian Assange in August of 2017: “Assange told a U.S. congressman … he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents … did not come from Russia.”
(August 2017, The Hill Via John Solomon) Julian Assange told a U.S. congressman on Tuesday he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents he published during last year’s election did not come from Russia and promised additional helpful information about the leaks in the near future.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who is friendly to Russia and chairs an important House subcommittee on Eurasia policy, became the first American congressman to meet with Assange during a three-hour private gathering at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder has been holed up for years.
Rohrabacher recounted his conversation with Assange to The Hill.
“Our three-hour meeting covered a wide array of issues, including the WikiLeaks exposure of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] emails during last year’s presidential election,” Rohrabacher said, “Julian emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails.”
Pressed for more detail on the source of the documents, Rohrabacher said he had information to share privately with President Trump. (read more)
Knowing how much effort the Intelligence Branch put into the false Russia collusion-conspiracy narrative, it would make sense for the FBI to take keen interest after this August 2017 meeting between Rohrabacher and Assange, monitor all activity, and why the FBI would quickly gather specific evidence (related to Wikileaks and Bradley Manning) for a grand jury by December 2017.
Within three months of the EDVA grand jury, the DOJ generated an indictment and sealed it in March 2018.
The DOJ sat on the indictment while the Mueller/Weissmann probe was ongoing.
As soon as the Mueller/Weissmann probe ended, on April 11th, 2019, a planned and coordinated effort between the U.K. and U.S. was executed; Julian Assange was forcibly arrested and removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and the EDVA indictment was unsealed (link).
As a person who has researched this fiasco; including the ridiculously false 2016 Russian hacking/interference narrative: “17 intelligence agencies”, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) needed for Obama’s anti-Russia narrative in December ’16; and then a month later the ridiculously political Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) in January ’17; this timing against Assange is too coincidental.
It doesn’t take a deep researcher to see the aligned Deep State motive to control Julian Assange. The Weissmann/Mueller report was dependent on Russia cybercrimes for justification, and that narrative was contingent on the Russia DNC hack story which Julian Assange disputes.
♦ This is critical. The Weissmann/Mueller report contains claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers as the central element to the Russia interference narrative in the U.S. election. This claim is directly disputed by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, as outlined during the Dana Rohrabacher interview, and by Julian Assange on-the-record statements.
The predicate for Robert Mueller’s investigation was specifically due to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The fulcrum for this Russia interference claim is the intelligence community assessment; and the only factual evidence claimed within the ICA is that Russia hacked the DNC servers; a claim only made possible by relying on forensic computer analysis from Crowdstrike, a DNC and FBI contractor.
The CIA holds a self-interest in upholding the Russian hacking claim; the FBI holds an interest in maintaining that claim; the U.S. media hold an interest in maintaining that claim. All of the foreign countries whose intelligence apparatus participated with Brennan and Strzok also have a self-interest in maintaining that Russia hacking and interference narrative.
Julian Assange is the only person with direct knowledge of how Wikileaks gained custody of the DNC emails; and Assange has claimed he has evidence it was not from a hack.
This “Russian hacking” claim was ultimately important to the CIA, FBI, DOJ, ODNI and U.K intelligence apparatus, it forms the corner of their justification. With that level of importance, well, right there is the obvious motive to shut Julian Assange down as soon as intelligence officials knew the Weissmann/Mueller report was going to be public.
…. and that’s exactly what they did. They threw a bag over Assange.
♦ COLLAPSED OVERSIGHT – The modern system to ‘check’ the Executive Branch was the creation of the legislative “Gang of Eight,” a legislative oversight mechanism intended to provide a bridge of oversight between the authority of the intelligence community within the Executive Branch.
The Go8 construct was designed to allow the President authority to carry out intelligence operations and provide the most sensitive notifications to a select group within Congress.
The Go8 oversight is directed to the position, not the person, and consists of: (1) The Speaker of the House; (2) The Minority Leader of the House; (3) The Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, HPSCI; (4) The Ranking Member (minority) of the HPSCI; (5) The Leader of the Senate; (6) The Minority Leader of the Senate; (7) The Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, SSCI; and finally (8) the Vice-Chair of the SSCI.
Example: When the Chief Executive (the President) initiates an intelligence operation on behalf of the United States, the President triggers a “finding memo.” In essence, the instruction to the intel agency or agencies to authorize a covert operation. When that process takes place, the Go8 are the first people notified. Depending on the sensitivity of the operation, sometimes the G08 are notified immediately after the operation is conducted. The notification can be a phone call or an in-person briefing.
Because of the sensitivity of their intelligence information, the Gang of Eight hold security clearances that permit them to receive and review all intelligence operations. The intelligence community are also responsible for briefing the Go8 with the same information they use to brief the President.
~ 2021 Gang of Eight ~
The Go8 design is intended to put intelligence oversight upon both political parties in Congress; it is designed that way by informing the minority leaders of both the House and Senate as well as the ranking minority members of the SSCI and HPSCI. Under the concept, the President cannot conduct an intelligence operation; and the intelligence community cannot carry out intelligence gathering operations without the majority and minority parties knowing about it.
The modern design of this oversight system was done to keep rogue and/or corrupt intelligence operations from happening. However, as we shared in the preview to this entire discussion, the process was usurped during the Obama era. {GO DEEP}
Former FBI Director James Comey openly admitted to Congress on March 20, 2017, that the FBI, FBI Counterintelligence Division, DOJ and DOJ-National Security Division, together with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the CIA, had been conducting independent investigations of Donald Trump for over a year without informing the Go8. Comey justified the lack of informing Go8 oversight by saying, “because of the sensitivity of the matter.”
Stupidly, Congress never pressed James Comey on that issue. The arrogance was astounding, and the acceptance by Congress was infuriating. However, that specific example highlighted just how politically corrupt the system had become. In essence, Team Obama usurped the entire design of congressional oversight…. and Congress just brushed it off.
Keep in mind, Comey did not say the White House was unaware; in fact he said exactly the opposite, he said, “The White House was informed through the National Security Council,” (the NSC). The implication, the very direct and specific implication; the unavoidable implication and James Comey admission that everyone just brushed aside, was that President Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, was totally informed of the intelligence operation(s) against Donald Trump. After all, the NSC reports to the National Security Advisor.
Does the January 20, 2017, Susan Rice memo look different now?
Again, no one saw the immediate issue. What Comey just described on that March day in 2017 was the total usurpation of the entire reason the Gang of Eight exists; to eliminate the potential for political weaponization of the Intelligence Community by the executive branch. The G08 notifications to the majority and minority are specifically designed to make sure what James Comey admitted to doing was never supposed to happen.
Team Obama carried out a political operation using the intelligence community and the checks-and-balances in the system were intentionally usurped. This is an indisputable fact.
Worse still, the entire legislative branch of Congress, which specifically includes the Republicans that now controlled the House and Senate, did nothing. They just ignored what was admitted. The usurpation was willfully ignored. The mechanism of the G08 was bypassed without a twitch of condemnation or investigation…. because the common enemy was Donald Trump.
This example highlights the collapse of the system. Obama, the executive branch, collapsed the system by usurping the process; in essence the process became the bigger issue and the lack of immediate legislative branch reaction became evidence of open acceptance. The outcomes of the usurpation played out over the next four years, Donald J. Trump was kneecapped and lost his presidency because of it. However, the bigger issue of the collapse still exists.
The downstream consequence of the Legislative Branch accepting the Executive Branch usurpation meant both intelligence committees were compromised. Additionally, the leadership of both the House and Senate were complicit. Think about this carefully. The Legislative Branch allowance of the intelligence usurpation meant the Legislative Branch was now subservient to the Intelligence Branch.
That’s where we are.
Right now.
That’s where we are.
Term-3 Obama is now back in the White House with Joe Biden.
Term-1 and Term-2 Obama usurped the ‘check and balance‘ within the system and weaponized the intelligence apparatus. During Trump’s term that weaponization was covered up by a compliant congress, and not a single member of the oversight called it out. Now, Term-3 Obama steps back in to continue the cover up and continue the weaponization.
Hopefully, you can now see the scale of the problem that surrounds us with specific citation for what has taken place. What I just explained to you above is not conspiracy theory, it is admitted fact that anyone can look upon. Yet….
Have you seen this mentioned anywhere? Have you seen this called out by anyone in Congress? Have you seen anyone in media (ally or adversary) call this out? Have you seen any member of the Judicial Branch stand up and say wait, what is taking place is not okay? Have you seen a single candidate for elected office point this out? Have you seen anyone advising a candidate point this out?
This is our current status. It is not deniable. The truth exists regardless of our comfort.
Not a single person in power will say openly what has taken place. They are scared of the Fourth Branch. The evidence of what has taken place is right there in front of our face. The words, actions and activities of those who participated in this process are not deniable.
There are only two members of the Gang of Eight who have existed in place from January 2007 (the real beginning of Obama’s term, two years before he took office when the Congress flipped). Only two members of the G08 have been consistently in place from January of 2007 to right now, today. All the others came and went, but two members of the Gang of Eight have been part of that failed and collapsed oversight throughout the past 15 years, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell.
♦ TECHNOLOGY – On a global scale – the modern intelligence gathering networks are now dependent on data collection to execute their intelligence missions. In the digital age nations have been executing various methods to gather that data. Digital surveillance has replaced other methods of interception. Those surveillance efforts have resulted in a coalescing of regional data networks based on historic multi-national relationships.
We have a recent frame of reference for the “U.S. data collection network” within the NSA. Through the allied process the Five Eyes nations all rely on the NSA surveillance database (U.K, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and U.S.) The NSA database provides the digital baseline for intelligence operations in defense of our allies. The portals into the NSA database are essentially an assembly of allies in like-minded ideological connection to the United States.
Unfortunately, there have been some revelations about the NSA database being used to monitor our allies, like in the example of Germany and surveillance on Angela Merkel’s phone. As long as “the good guys” are operating honorably, allies of the United States can feel confident about having protection from the NSA surveillance of global digital data. We warn our friends if we detect something dangerous etc.
The U.S. has nodes on communication pipelines to intercept and extract data. We have also launched hundreds, perhaps thousands, of satellites to conduct surveillance and gather up data. All of this data is fed into the NSA database where it is monitored (presumably) as a national security mechanism, and in defense of our allies.
However, what about data collection or data networks that are outside the NSA database? What do our enemies do? The NSA database is just one intelligence operation of digital surveillance amid the entire world, and we do not allow access by adversaries we are monitoring. So what do they do? What do our allies do who might not trust the United States due to past inconsistencies, ie. the Middle East?
The answers to those questions highlight other data collection networks. So a brief review of the major players is needed.
♦ CHINA – China operates their own database. They, like the NSA, scoop up data for their system. Like us, China launches satellites and deploys other electronic data collection methods to download into their database. This is why the issues of electronic devices manufactured in China becomes problematic. Part of the Chinese data collection system involves the use of spyware, hacking and extraction.
Issues with Chinese communication company Huawei take on an added dimension when you consider the goal of the Chinese government to conduct surveillance and assemble a network of data to compete with the United States via the NSA. Other Chinese methods of surveillance and data-collection are less subversive, as in the examples of TicTok and WeChat. These are Chinese social media companies that are scraping data just like the NSA scrapes data from Facebook, Twitter and other Silicon Valley tech companies. [ Remember, the Intelligence Branch is a public-private partnership. ]
♦ RUSSIA – It is very likely that Russia operates their own database. We know Russia launches satellites, just like China and the USA, for the same purposes. Russia is also very proficient at hacking into other databases and extracting information to store and utilize in their own network. The difference between the U.S., China and Russia is likely that Russia spends more time on the hacking aspect because they do not generate actual technology systems as rapidly as the U.S. and China.
The most recent database creation is an outcome of an ally having to take action because they cannot rely on the ideology of the United States remaining consistent, as the administrations ping-pong based on ideology.
♦ SAUDI ARABIA – Yes, in 2016 we discovered that Saudi Arabia was now operating their own intelligence data-gathering operation. It would make sense, given the nature of the Middle East and the constant fluctuations in political support from the United States. It is a lesson the allied Arab community and Gulf Cooperation Council learned quickly when President Obama went to Cairo in 2009 and launched the Islamist Spring (Arab Spring) upon them.
I have no doubt the creation of the Saudi intelligence network was specifically because the Obama administration started supporting radical Islamists within the Muslim Brotherhood, and threw fuel on the fires of extremism all over the Arab world.
Think about it., What would you do if you were Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan, Oman or Yemen and you knew the United States could just trigger an internal uprising of al-Qaeda, ISIS and the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood to seek your destruction?
Without a doubt, those urgent lessons from 2009, 2010, 2011 triggered the formation of the Arab Intelligence Network as a network to defend itself with consistency. They assembled the network and activated it in 2017 as pictured above.
♦ Israel – Along a similar outlook to the Arab network, no doubt Israel operates an independent data collection system as a method of protecting itself from ever-changing U.S. politics amid a region that is extremely hostile to its very existence. Like the others, Israel launches proprietary satellites, and we can be sure they use covert methods to gather electronic data just like the U.S. and China.
As we have recently seen in the Pegasus story, Israel creates spyware programs that are able to track and monitor cell phone communications of targets. The spyware would not work unless Israel had access to some network where the phone meta-data was actually stored. So yeah, it makes sense for Israel to operate an independent intelligence database.
♦ Summary: As we understand the United States Intelligence Branch of government as the superseding entity that controls the internal politics of our nation, we also must consider that multiple nations have the same issue. There are major intelligence networks around the world beside the NSA “Five-Eyes” database. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel all operate proprietary databases deploying the same tools and techniques for assembly.
The geopolitical conflict that has always existed has now shifted into a digital battle-space. The Intelligence Agencies from these regions are now operating as the backbone of the government that uses them, and has become dependent on them. [<- Reread that].
Once you accept the digital-era intelligence apparatus of China, Russia, Saudi-Arabia, The United States and Israel, are now the primary national security mechanisms for stabilization of government; then you accept the importance of those intelligence operations.
Once you understand how foundational those modern intelligence operations have become for the stability and continuity of those governments…… then you begin to understand just how the United States intelligence community became more important than the government that created it.
♦ Public Private Partnership – The modern Fourth Branch of Government is only possible because of a Public-Private partnership with the intelligence apparatus. You do not have to take my word for it, the partnership is so brazen they have made public admissions.
The biggest names in Big Tech announced in June their partnership with the Five Eyes intelligence network, ultimately controlled by the NSA, to: (1) monitor all activity in their platforms; (2) identify extremist content; (3) look for expressions of Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE); and then, (4) put the content details into a database where the Five Eyes intelligence agencies (U.K., U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand) can access it.
Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft are all partnering with the intelligence apparatus. It might be difficult to fathom how openly they admit this, but they do. Look at this sentence in the press release (emphasis mine):
[…] “The Group will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.”
Think about that sentence structure very carefully. They are “adding to” the preexisting list…. admitting the group (aka Big Tech) already have access to the the intelligence-sharing database… and also admitting there is a preexisting list created by the Five Eyes consortium.
Obviously, who and what is defined as “extremist content” will be determined by the Big Tech insiders themselves. This provides a gateway, another plausible deniability aspect, to cover the Intelligence Branch from any oversight.
When the Intelligence Branch within government wants to conduct surveillance and monitor American citizens, they run up against problems due to the Constitution of the United States. They get around those legal limitations by sub-contracting the intelligence gathering, the actual data-mining, and allowing outside parties (contractors) to have access to the central database.
The government cannot conduct electronic searches (4th amendment issue) without a warrant; however, private individuals can search and report back as long as they have access. What is being admitted is exactly that preexisting partnership. The difference is that Big Tech will flag the content from within their platforms, and now a secondary database filled with the extracted information will be provided openly for the Intelligence Branch to exploit.
The volume of metadata captured by the NSA has always been a problem because of the filters needed to make the targeting useful. There is a lot of noise in collecting all data that makes the parts you really want to identify more difficult to capture. This new admission puts a new massive filtration system in the metadata that circumvents any privacy protections for individuals.
Previously, the Intelligence Branch worked around the constitutional and unlawful search issue by using resources that were not in the United States. A domestic U.S. agency, working on behalf of the U.S. government, cannot listen on your calls without a warrant. However, if the U.S. agency sub-contracts to say a Canadian group, or foreign ally, the privacy invasion is no longer legally restricted by U.S. law.
What was announced in June 2021 is an alarming admission of a prior relationship along with open intent to define their domestic political opposition as extremists.
July 26 (Reuters) – A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias, the group told Reuters.
Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so has largely consisted of content from Islamist extremist organizations such as Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos – often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence – and other publications and links flagged by U.N. initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes, adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.
The firms, which include Twitter (TWTR.N) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube, share “hashes,” unique numerical representations of original pieces of content that have been removed from their services. Other platforms use these to identify the same content on their own sites in order to review or remove it. (read more)
The influence of the Intelligence Branch now reaches into our lives, our personal lives. In the decades before 9/11/01 the intelligence apparatus intersected with government, influenced government, and undoubtedly controlled many institutions with it. The legislative oversight function was weak and growing weaker, but it still existed and could have been used to keep the IC in check. However, after the events of 9/11/01, the short-sighted legislative reactions opened the door to allow the surveillance state to weaponize.
After the Patriot Act was triggered, not coincidentally only six weeks after 9/11, a slow and dangerous fuse was lit that ends with the intelligence apparatus being granted a massive amount of power. The problem with assembled power is always what happens when a Machiavellian network takes control over that power and begins the process to weaponize the tools for their own malicious benefit. That is exactly what the installation of Barack Obama was all about.
The Obama network took pre-assembled intelligence weapons we should never have allowed to be created, and turned those weapons into tools for his radical and fundamental change. The target was the essential fabric of our nation. Ultimately, this corrupt political process gave power to create the Fourth Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. From that perspective the fundamental change was successful.
♦ WHAT NOW? There is a way to stop and deconstruct the Intelligence Branch, but it requires some outside-the-box thinking and reliance on the Constitution as a tool to radically change one element within government. In the interim, we must remain focused on the three tiers that we need for success.
• Tier One is “tactical civics” at a local level. Engaged and active citizen participation at the community, city, town and hamlet level of society. This is what might be described as grassroots level, school board level; city council level; county commissioner level.
• Tier Two is “extreme federalism” at a state level. Engaged and active citizen participation through your State House and State Senate representative. This is state level assembly and action demands upon the State House, State Senate and State Governor.
• Tier Three the challenge of “federal offices” on a national level {Go Deep}. This is the part where we need President Donald Trump, and his power to confront the issues comes directly from us.
I am confident that ultimately “We The People” will win. How we can execute the solution is more challenging; in the interim, tactical civics and extreme federalism are doable right now, in this next 2024 election cycle.
It sucks that a UniParty congress extended FISA-702. However, even if the hail-Mary pass on Monday fails, FISA was still extended for only two-years.
NarrowPathMinistries 