Tag Archives: government

Now We Know

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Recall that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R, KY) subpoenaed the FBI for an FD-1023 form that is supposed to contain information concerning a potential criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden (D) and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions. The subpoena also required the FBI to advise the committee concerning what it did to investigate these allegations.

Both Comer and Senator Chuck Grassley (R, IA), who also wants the document and information so he can run his own investigation (however limited by being in the minority party in the Senate) into the doings of Joe Biden and his family, were confident of the document’s existence, but since their position was based on a so far unidentified whistleblower’s claim, there were doubts about the form’s actual existence.

When the subpoena’s deadline went by without the FBI’s producing either the document or the information, FBI Director Chris Wray wrote a letter to Comey explaining his refusal to produce them. That refusal, despite Wray’s standard “neither confirm nor deny” mantra, now confirms the document’s existence and emphasizes the importance of its production, along with what the FBI did—or didn’t—do about it to the Oversight Committee. Wray wrote a number of things in his letter, but one stands out.

[Y]our request for a single FD-1023 report that you say includes a “precise description” of an “alleged criminal scheme” risks the harms that our confidentiality rules protect against[.]

There are a couple of things about that standout. One is Wray’s naked insubordination in this. FBI “rules” do not supersede the House’s constitutional authority to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch and of Executive Branch agencies. Last I looked, the FBI was an Executive Branch agency. Wray knows full well that his agency’s “rules” are subordinate to that constitutional mandate.

The other thing is this: to the extent that producing the FD-1023 and its activities pursuant to it puts at risk the FBI’s needs for confidentiality regarding its sources and methods and any investigations the FBI may or may not have in progress—and the concerns themselves are valid—the form can be produced to Committee members in a SCIF in the House. The House already has a SCIF; that’s where classified intelligence documents get viewed by specified House members. Wray is fully aware of this, too; his refusal to produce the document and related information altogether rather than in the House’s SCIF is disingenuous at best.

That raises a question in my pea brain: who sent Wray? Who does he work for?

Government Attacks on Us Citizens

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First, it was Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland agreeing with a National School Boards Association letter to him labeling American parents who object to school board decisions regarding sexualizing their children’s education as domestic terrorists and his subsequent ordering an FBI investigation into our parents. The NSBA has since retracted the letter, and Garland insists he meant no such thing, but where is the evidence that he’s called off the FBI’s investigation, or that the FBI has stopped?

Then it was Biden’s DoJ’s FBI memorializing in an internal memo the FBI’s position that traditional Catholics should be considered, and treated consonantly, to be in the same category as violent extremists. FBI Director Chris Wray has since claimed to have ordered the memo’s rescission, but where is the evidence the FBI isn’t still investigating traditional Catholics—or any other Catholics, or any group of Americans of any other religious adherence?

Now it’s Biden’s Department of Homeland Security. The subheadline says it:

Clergy, spouses, bartenders should keep tabs on “middle-aged” women who are “increasingly fervent” against abortion, white men who rant about government online and go to rallies, domestic terrorism materials say.

This tab-keeping actually is an older assault, dating from 2021, but they’re only now being exposed, pursuant to an FOIA request by America First Legal.  The “concerns” are the outcome of a series of Choose Your Own Adventure videos intended by DHS to instruct us ignorant American citizens in identifying and mitigating “radicalization and potential violence.” Because pro-life Americans, along with white male Americans who disagree with the government and attend political candidate (or other) rallies, and (divorced) mothers suspecting government connections to child abuse and trafficking are domestic terrorists.

JtN notes that it’s not clear whether DHS ever actually made the videos, but DHS didn’t respond to JtN‘s Sunday (7 May) requests for comment. DHS’ decision to remain silent on the matter emphasizes the lack of clarity of whether the department did not make the videos or, more importantly, whether the department is acting sub rosa on the information garnered during the proposal stage.

This is part and parcel with Progressive-Democratic Party members constantly deriding the concept of MAGA—we’re all MAGA extremists, or MAGA Republicans—in their disdain for the concept of Making America Great Again. Instead, it’s disagree in any way with the Progressive-Democratic Party-run government and be labeled, in one form or another, an Enemy of the State.

Elections do, indeed, have consequences, and we need to inflict some in the fall of 2024.

False Entries

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DA Alvin Bragg’s indictment accuses the defendant [former President Donald Trump (R)] of the crime of FALSIFYING BUSINESS RECORDS IN THE FIRST DEGREE in thirty-four counts.

Thirty-four counts of made and caused a false entry in the business records of an enterprise…, all of them centered on voucher entries into a Detail General Ledger, and check stubs and invoices kept…somewhere.

Thirty-four counts of intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof…. leading into the sentences claiming those false entries. But nowhere does Bragg say who he thinks was the target of the “defraud,” nor does he say what that “another crime” is. Absent a defraud victim, there is no defrauding. By withholding what that other crime is, Bragg is denying the defendant his opportunity—his right—to answer the charge of that other crime.

False entries. Maybe—maybe—three real counts, but cut apart and expanded in 34 of them.

Withholding what that “another crime,” though, 34 times…. How about: false indictment.

 

Bragg’s charging document, the output of his grand jury, can be read here.

FISA Revamp

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Congress may be moving to revamp the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which among other things, creates a secret Federal court that empirically allows the Federal government to spy on American citizens in the United States—one of whom was a representative of citizens of Illinois whom they had elected to Congress—without a warrant.

[Congressman Austin, R-GA] Scott said lawmakers on the committee want to address who in government can query the database, who can be targeted and who must sign off on such warrantless surveillance. He also suggested there is some support for adding lawyers to the secretive process to help defend the rights of Americans who are being surveilled without their knowledge.

The problem with those first three…suggestions…is that there already are limits on who can query, who can be targeted, and who must sign off, and each of those limits have been routinely violated by FBI and intelligence personnel. There’s no reason to believe that new limits won’t similarly be blithely ignored.

The problem with that last is even larger: the secret process still would be secret, the lawyers supposedly defending the targeted Americans’ rights would be secret, they would be appointed by the same government that has been abusing FISA surveillance powers right along, and there would be no way for us American citizens to assess the skill with which those “defense” lawyers defend, or even their level of zeal.

It’s promising that there is finally a recognition that the FISA process is flawed in some way.

However, what’s truly required is to abolish altogether the Star Chamber that is the secret FISA Court. Scott made the case for abolishment—although he didn’t intend that—when he told JtN that there was clear evidence that the law’s past safeguards have been breached by the FBI and intel agencies. Given that, there’s no reason to believe those FBI and intel agency personnel won’t “breach” any new safeguards, also.

Terrorists in the Mix

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CBP agents have caught 70 illegal aliens who are also terrorists on the government’s terrorist watchlist (including one who illegally entered through our northern border). That’s just in the five months of the current fiscal year, and those 70 compare with the 98 caught in the entirety of the prior fiscal year. This year’s pace, according to my third-grade arithmetic, works out to 168 terrorists that might be caught over the full course of this year.

That’s also only the ones we know about. Left uncounted, because unknown, are the number of terrorists in the vast numbers of illegal aliens flowing across our borders that escape CBP capture and detention and those among the vast numbers of illegal aliens flowing across our borders undetected.

Nor do we know how many terrorists are among the illegal aliens that CBP does capture but that the Biden administration orders released under President Joe Biden’s (D) Catch and Release program.