Tag Archives: government

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.

Negative Inference

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Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg likes to jet around the country and to overseas locations. He claims to do this while flying coach on commercial airlines, but he’s also taken 23 jet rides at taxpayer expense on private Government-owned jets. Now he’s refusing to supply relevant oversight data for these rides.

The Department of Transportation (DOT) has turned down repeated requests for information related to the taxpayer costs of 23 flights Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his advisers took on government private jets since taking office.
The DOT and the agency’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) office both declined to detail how much each flight cost taxpayers over the course of multiple months and in recent weeks.

It’s illegal for Government agencies to refuse to respond substantively to FOIA requests (clearly saying “No” with a clear explanation of the legality for that “No” would constitute such a substantive response).

It’s a common practice in cases before a court for a judge to advise a jury that when a prosecutor’s witness obfuscates during his testimony, or refuses to answer clearly or at all, the jury is free to attach the most negative interpretation to those witness failures during the jury’s subsequent deliberations.

So it is with the man who sits in the Transportation Secretary’s chair. Pete Buttigieg cannot be taken as anything other than both in over his head and dishonest. His words are useless, and the only conclusion possible concerning those flights is that they were done illegally, and that illegality—repeated 23 times—should be a fireable offense.

Perhaps it’s time for Government officials who stonewall to lose access to their office facilities through those facilities’ loss of funding. And this step, also, although it won’t have immediate effect, even were it to get through the Progressive-Democratic Party-dominated Senate and White House:

House Republicans plan to vote to defund non-complying witnesses in the government when the new fiscal budget takes effect on October 1.

In the present case, that would mean Buttigieg and the head of his FOIA Office would lose their salaries.

Gun Control

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Versus gun rights. And police.

Squatters keep occupying another’s property in Lynnwood, WA, and using it as a stolen vehicle trafficking facility and as a residence. A police SWAT team raided the property and made some arrests. The owner changed the locks on the building. Then the squatters returned and resumed operations and residence.

In response to the reoccupation, Lieutenant David Hayes of the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office (Lynnwood’s county) told Fox News Digital that ensuring the squatters don’t return is “largely on the property owner.”

This is what the Left and their Progressive-Democratic Party mouthpieces are trying, functionally if not (necessarily) deliberately to prevent: a property owner defending her own property. A disarmed population via those gun “controls,” though, will be helpless against criminals and unable to satisfy their right and their obligation to defend their own property. Instead, they’ll be rendered entirely dependent on Government to for them rather than government’s (sic) local, county, and State police forces acting in assistance of the property owner.

In parallel with this, seemingly contradictorily, exponentially potentiating the police’s inability to support private citizens’ efforts, is the Left’s and Party’s ongoing—still!—efforts to defund and to shrink those same local, county, and State police forces.

It’s no wonder that whenever anyone in Party mounts an effort to disarm us, however seemingly mildly, there’s an increase in gun and ammunition sales.