1 year, 3 months ago
This is a loathsome exchange. The FBI isn’t ashamed of what they’re doing. We’ve come to expect that sort of thing from them. They have no shame. But the worst thing about it is that the local Sheriff’s Department participated in the charade.
Reminder. Never talk to law enforcement.
1 year, 3 months ago
Next time you insult the FBI by calling them little girls, remember that you may actually be insulting little girls.
She has a good camera presence and an interesting presentation.
1 year, 3 months ago
Gun safe manufacturer Liberty Safe has said its customers will now be able to have the records of their safe combinations “expunged” after the company faced growing backlash for handing over the access code to one safe to the FBI.
Liberty Safe customers will be able to fill out a form to have records of their safe access codes deleted, meaning they can “take control of how their information is stored and protected,” the manufacturer said in a statement on Wednesday evening.
Earlier on Wednesday, Liberty Safe had said the FBI requested the access code to a safe on August 30, which it gave after seeing proof of a warrant. The safe belongs to 34-year-old Nathan Hughes, who has been charged with felony civil disorder and several misdemeanors relating to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Civil disorder, and misdemeanors. A misdemeanor is like when your drive over the speed limit. Disorder is just that. Disorder. Remember those charges, and remember that no trial has been conducted yet, so nothing has been proven.
“Our company’s protocol is to provide access codes to law enforcement if a warrant grants them access to a property,” Liberty Safe said on Tuesday evening. “After receiving the request, we received proof of the valid warrant, and only then did we provide them with an access code.”
In the statement posted to social media, Liberty Safe said it was committed to protecting its customers’ personal property and 2nd Amendment rights, “and has repeatedly denied requests for access codes without a warrant in the past.”
Several conservative figures criticized Liberty Safe over the move, with the founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, calling the company “an enemy to gun owners.”
In its updated statement, Liberty Safe said it understands that “many of our customers are willing to assume the responsibility of safeguarding their own combinations,” and those who opt out of the company’s “secure database” will have “limited recourse in case of a lost combination.”
Just like I said should have been the policy all along.
But it may be too little, too late. Especially because of things like this. You knew someone was going to look into this.
Financial contributions made to Democratic political candidates including former President Barack Obama have drawn scrutiny after an executive’s company recently complied with a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warrant.
[ … ]
In an additional X post published on Wednesday, Liberty Safe said the company “was founded on the belief that Americans should have the fundamental right to protect and safeguard their valuables and property.”
In September 2021, Liberty Safe was acquired by Monomoy Capital Partners, a private investment firm that has offices in New York and Connecticut and $2.7 billion in committed capital across five investment funds. Liberty Safe operates out of its Payson, Utah, facility.
The manufacturer’s CEO, Justin Hillenbrand, made political contributions to Obama twice when the Democrat was a first-time presidential nominee in 2008, totaling $4,600, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records.
Monomoy founding partner Stephen Presser, who died in March, is listed by the FEC as making countless individual contributions to myriad Democrats, including current Senators Raphael Warnock, John Fetterman and Mark Kelly. The company’s max donations over the last 10 election cycles have totaled almost $400,000.
“And we’re supposed to be surprised they betrayed their customers to the FBI as quickly as humanly possible?” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Boycott Liberty Safe.”
You know, those folks who talk about that whole “bitterly clinging onto God and guns” thing.
So realize what they did to him. They conducted a red flag raid on him and took his possessions, before a trial and without just reason. You know how we feel about red flag laws. They are unjust, immoral and unconstitutional. They violate due process rights.
Here is the Gestapo trash who effected the theft and firearms confiscation.
Another angle of the FBI arrest of Nathan Hughes over J6
The feds REALLY didn’t want people getting close and videoing them pic.twitter.com/l6UFDMBGT5
— Hodgetwins (@hodgetwins) September 7, 2023
1 year, 8 months ago
I have several remarks about the events depicted and discussed below, but make sure to watch the entire video.
First, none of this would happen if the cops involved – FedGov and local/county/state – didn’t want to engage in it. In other words, they like beating people up. There is no other explanation for this. This is sociopathic behavior.
Second, the problem is exacerbated when local/county/state LEOs are deputized as agents of the federal government, whether FBI or Marshals Office or whatever. Far from being protectors of rights and peace officers, as would need to be the case if the notion of second amendment sanctuaries means anything, it’s apparently too tempting when a local LEO hears the words “Deputized as a Federal Marshal.” They can’t turn it down under their own volition. They are in need of a body of laws and regulations on the local and state level telling them they cannot do that without state penalties.
Third, they should not be armed. They have all proven much to contemptuous of rights and liberties, and much too dangerous, to walk around armed. In the case of most LEOs, they are “armed to the terror of the public,” as contrasted with open carriers who obey the law, and act in a peaceful manner.
Fourth, whatever body of law that supports the notion of qualified immunity must be turned back. It essentially means that LEOs, especially federally empowered LEOs, can violate constitutional liberties and rights with no remedy by those they have offended. This is prima facie ridiculous, and certainly wasn’t envisioned by the founders. The founders fought a war to stop this sort of thing and then prevent its recurrence.
Fifth, the FedGov has no business in local and state matters. Fusion centers and joint operations task forces should be banned by law.
Via Instapundit, Judge Don Willett knows what’s what with this doctrine.
Today’s decision upholding qualified immunity is compelled by our controlling precedent. I write separately only to highlight newly published scholarship that paints the qualified-immunity doctrine as flawed— foundationally—from its inception.
For more than half a century, the Supreme Court has claimed that (1) certain common-law immunities existed when § 1983 was enacted in 1871,2 and (2) “no evidence” suggests that Congress meant to abrogate these immunities rather than incorporate them.3 But what if there were such evidence? Indeed, what if the Reconstruction Congress had explicitly stated—right there in the original statutory text—that it was nullifying all common-law defenses against § 1983 actions? That is, what if Congress’s literal language unequivocally negated the original interpretive premise for qualified immunity? Professor Alexander Reinert argues precisely this in his new article, Qualified Immunity’s Flawed Foundation—that courts have been construing the wrong version of § 1983 for virtually its entire legal life.
Wait, what?
[ … ]
In arguing that qualified immunity is flawed from the ground up, Professor Reinert poses a provocative question: “If a legislature enacts a statute, but no one bothers to read it, does it still have interpretive force?”9 It seems a tall order to square the modern qualified-immunity regime with Congress’s originally enacted language. But however seismic the implications of this lost-text research, “‘[a]s middle-management circuit judges,’ we cannot overrule the Supreme Court.”10 Only that Court can definitively grapple with § 1983’s enacted text and decide whether it means what it says—and what, if anything, that means for § 1983 immunity jurisprudence.
If was a gambler, I would lay all of my money down on the SCOTUS not turning back such awful, wicked doctrine and qualified immunity. Thus, the LEOs dispatched by the FedGov will become ever more hated, performing ever more cruel deeds as they see that they have no check on their behavior.
2 years, 2 months ago
On October 24, 2002, a Muslim and his younger accomplice were finally caught.
How it began
The murders that shocked the nation’s capital and the nation itself had started three weeks earlier.
On October 2, 2002, a sniper’s bullet struck down a 55-year-old man in a parking lot in Wheaton, Maryland. By 10 o’clock the next morning, four more people within a few miles of each other had been similarly murdered.
The attacks were soon linked, and a massive multi-agency investigation was launched.
The case was led by the Montgomery County (Maryland) Police Department, headed by Chief Charles Moose, with the FBI and many other law enforcement agencies playing a supporting role. Chief Moose had specifically requested our help through a federal law on serial killings.
Within days, the FBI alone had some 400 agents around the country working the case. We had set up a toll-free number to collect tips from the public, with teams of new agents in training helping to work the hotline. Our evidence experts were asked to digitally map many of the evolving crime scenes, and our behavioral analysts helped prepare a profile of the shooter for investigators. We had also set up a Joint Operations Center to help Montgomery County investigators run the case.
The idea of sniping from a mobile platform, never in the same place twice, is rather clever. They never switched vehicles and only slightly varied their routine, however.
A rolling sniper’s nest
On the morning of October 24, the hunt for the snipers quickly came to an end, when a team of Maryland State Police, Montgomery County SWAT officers, and special agents from our Hostage Rescue Team arrested the sleeping John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo without a struggle.
Just a few hours earlier, at approximately 11:45 p.m., their dark blue 1990 Chevy Caprice with its New Jersey license plate had been spotted at a rest stop parking lot off I-70 in Maryland. Within the hour, law enforcement swarmed the scene, setting up a perimeter to check out any movements and make sure there’d be no escape.
What evidence experts from the FBI and other police forces found there was both revealing and shocking. The car had a hole cut in the trunk near the license plate so that shots could be fired from within the vehicle. It was, in effect, a rolling sniper’s nest.
Also found in the car were:
- The Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle that had been used in each attack;
- A rifle’s scope for taking aim and a tripod to steady the shots;
- A backseat that had the sheet metal removed between the passenger compartment and the trunk, enabling the shooter to get into the trunk from inside the car;
- The Chevy Caprice owner’s manual with—the FBI Laboratory later detected—written impressions of the one of the demand notes;
- The digital voice recorder used by both Malvo and Muhammad to make extortion demands;
- A laptop stolen from one of the victims containing maps of the shooting sites and getaway routes from some of the crime scenes; and
- Maps, walkie-talkies, and many more items.
I worked in DC at the time and took public transit every morning during these several weeks.
In August, A Maryland court ordered Malvo, now 37, resentenced.
2 years, 2 months ago
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee announced on Thursday that they would be calling a former top FBI official to testify before Congress to address claims that the Biden administration pressured agents to label cases as domestic extremism or a white supremacist threat even if they did not meet that criteria in order to match Joe Biden’s rhetoric.
The seal of the F.B.I. hangs in the Flag Room at the bureau’s headquarters in Washington, DC.
Last month, current and former FBI agents came forward claiming the Biden administration has been deliberately exaggerating the danger posed by white supremacists. According to the whistleblowers, high-ranking FBI officials were pressuring field agents to fabricate domestic terrorism cases and label people as white supremacists in order to “meet internal metrics.”
“The demand for white supremacy” coming from FBI brass “vastly outstrips the supply of white supremacy,” one agent told the Washington Times. “We have more people assigned to investigate white supremacists than we can actually find.”
The Republicans are big proponents of supply-side reasoning; perhaps they can help?
Maybe, just maybe, there are a few good apples left? But we’re not counting on it; that would be unwise.
2 years, 4 months ago
In one fell swoop, the FBI should be no more. They should all be sent packing to find real jobs. Friend of TCJ Stephen Stamboulieh posts this Twitter leak.
— Stephen (@Stambo2A) August 2, 2022
4 years, 5 months ago
The FBI’s war on civil liberties and political dissent is kicking up a notch.
National Justice interviewed Shandon Simpson, an Ohio-based member of the National Guard currently being discharged who was humiliated, threatened and tortured by federal agents. He was never charged for a crime.
A parallel military investigation found that, while initially his identity was withheld (he wasn’t charged with anything), the FBI later leaked it to Christopher Schiano of the “antifa” group Unicorn Riot.
Simpson was then ordered to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) in hopes he would stay silent about what he was subjected to. Simpson having his rights violated has compelled him to speak out anyway.
Simpson’s ordeal should be considered within the context of the FBI’s crack down on “white domestic terrorists.” Multiple sources across the country have told National Justice that the FBI has harassed them, usually relating to political and social discussions held on the free speech messaging app Telegram.
Federal agents appear to be heavily infiltrated in Telegram chatrooms and are aggressively grasping at straws in hopes of netting a white villain they can parade for the cameras. The political goal is to take attention off the killing and rioting by anarchists and black groups going largely unpunished across the country right now.
The interview is as follows.
Eric Striker: So how did this all start?
Shandon Simpson: I received a call on my phone from an FBI agent asking where I was. I was at the time serving in the National Guard and deployed at Lafayette Park as a deterrent to defend against more rioting from leftists and black lives matter.
ES: What happened then?
Simpson: I was approached by about seven FBI agents from the counter-terrorism unit, two members of the CIA, and a military intelligence officer, who pulled me out in front of my unit.
They then began asking me if I was Zoltanous HN on Youtube and Telegram, where I have promoted the ideas of nationalism and third positionism. I had previously made it known that I was serving in the military through these channels and an undercover federal agent in the chat room sprung into action.
I never said anything illegal. They were asking me about a single out of context comment where I said my unit was being deployed with live ammo.
The FBI agents then began aggressively needling me about my political beliefs. They asked me about my personal views, whether I engaged in activism, if I was at Charlottesville, and whether I was a member of any nationalist organization, they named a few like Patriot Front and Vanguard America.
They also asked if I knew various journalists and political commentators, like you (Eric Striker) because they saw your telegram channel on my phone, and whether Richard Spencer was affiliated with any terror networks.
It was clear that their information on dissidents is being fed to them by very prejudiced second hand sources outside of law enforcement, like the SPLC or ADL. It was clear they were shooting in the dark and asking ridiculous questions that a person with even superficial knowledge of the nationalist movement would not have to ask. They were very desperate.
ES: I heard something about them threatening you with violence during the interrogation. What exactly did they say and why didn’t you get a lawyer?
Simpson: I was unable to get a lawyer because my superior officer gave me an order to talk to them.
At one point, one of the agents became frustrated at the fact that I wasn’t doing anything wrong and began to threaten me. He started asking me why I supported “losing causes” and told me he was going to wrap me in a Swastika flag and march me through the crowds of violent “antifa” rioters nearby. He never did it, but behavior this unprofessional really reveals how Christopher Wray’s claim that the FBI does not investigate and persecute ideology is a brazen lie.
When all was said and done they realized that I hadn’t done anything they could credibly charge me with.
ES: How did your information get leaked to the media if you weren’t even charged?
Simpson: Soon after talking to the intelligence agents, Ohio Governor Mark DeWine called my unit back from its Washington mission, citing information from the FBI claiming a person who had expressed “white supremacist ideology” on the internet prior to the deployment was in it.
An anarchist group affiliated with “antifa” days later published my personal information and the supposed offending screenshots from my telegram account that the FBI had obtained.
According to a parallel military investigation, the FBI leaked this material from their investigation to Christopher Schiano of Unicorn Riot, who published it on June 9th.
Shortly after this publication, my family began receiving harassment and I was sent death threats from anarchist groups.
ES: How did your military investigation go?
Simpson: When I returned back to Ohio, I was placed in solitary confinement for a week by the military, who said they were pressured to do it by the FBI.
I was not charged with any crimes. My lawyer told me he has never seen something like this happen before. Holding a person in jail for more than 72 hours with no charges is illegal, yet they brazenly did it anyway.
I am being discharged from the National Guard for bringing “shame” to my unit.
I have six fairly quick observations. First, I don’t like Richard Spencer (he only figures small in the questioning, apparently), and there is no question he is both an uneducated idiot (and not a very good speaker), and no friend of liberty. In fact, by his own admission, he is a socialist.
Second, being discharged is very different from being dishonorably discharged. In the former case, he can own firearms and get a job. In the later case, he can’t. The story isn’t clear here, but if the later is true, he should get a good lawyer.
Third, I’ve heard that in many trials where the FBI brings charges against someone, juries are rejecting the charges prima facie if video doesn’t exist. No one trusts the FBI any more, and is there any wonder why? I wouldn’t trust anything the FBI said if I was on a jury.
Fourth, the FBI is apparently focusing on this sort of thing rather than shutting down Antifa, BLM and other socialist groups. That’s your tax money at work.
Fifth, never talk to the police. No one can order you to do that. This kid was dumb. He should have demanded a JAG the minute an agent approached him.
Sixth, this goes to active duty military. Don’t ever discuss the details of a deployment. That’s called OPSEC, and even if they don’t officially call it that, they’ll stick a title on it like FOUO. Don’t talk to the media, including social media. And watch who you associate with.
4 years, 10 months ago
In a letter to McCabe attorney Michael Bromwich obtained by Fox News, Justice Department attorney J.P. Cooney said the investigation is now “closed.”
“We write to inform you that, after careful consideration, the government has decided not to pursue criminal charges against your client, Andrew G. McCabe,” Cooney wrote.
The DOJ added: “Based on the totality of the circumstances and all of the information known to the government at this time, we consider the matter closed.”
William Barr recently complained about Trump, saying “I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me,” Barr said.
“To have public statements and tweets made about the department, about people in the department, our men and women here, about cases pending in the department and about judges before whom we have cases, make it impossible for me to do my job and to assure the courts and the prosecutors in the department that we’re doing our work with integrity,” he said.
In other words, “You’re getting in the way of the deep state doing its job.”
5 years ago
Via WRSA, this is a worthy read about Ruby Ridge.
What a farce. All of the things that happened at Ruby Ridge over an inch or less of barrel length. Because Congress. Because rulers.
