A.F. Branco Cartoon – DOJ and the FBI are being criticized for moving too slowly, but maybe they’re just being thorough, unlike the Democrats jumping into political lawfare.
BRANCO TOON STORE
Kash Patel Issues Threat as Corporate Media Lies About Russia Collusion Hoax: “Maybe This FBI Will Release More Docs Directly From FBI HQ So We Can See Who is Lying…And Then…
By Cullen Linebarger – The Gateway Pundit – August 2, 2025
FBI Director Kash Patel just threatened to call the corporate media’s bluff dramatically on Saturday as the fallout over the Russian Collusion Hoax continues. As The Gateway Pundit reported, Patel found thousands of Russia collusion hoax documents in “burn bags” in a secret room at the FBI earlier this week. One of the documents in the burn bags was the classified annex to the John Durham report, which included the underlying intelligence he investigated. Patel and his team of investigators also discovered a “previously undisclosed” SCIF at the FBI headquarters… READ MORE
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, Elon Musk, and President Trump.
It’s beginning to look like the Obama administration was all-in on the Russia collusion hoax long before Trump won the 2016 election.
On Monday, Fox News reported that before the FBI ever launched its politicized probe of the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia in the summer of 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies had “credible foreign sources” indicating the FBI would help spread the Russia collusion hoax, which of course is exactly what happened.
It’s the latest twist in a string of shocking new revelations about how the U.S. intelligence community, at the behest of then-President Barack Obama, manufactured and disseminated a false narrative that Moscow was working to get Trump elected in 2016.
The “credible foreign sources” that predicted the FBI would run an intelligence operation against Trump in the summer of 2016 were almost certainly Russian sources. Back in September of 2020, my colleagues Sean Davis and Mollie Hemingway reported that then-Director of National Intelligence (now CIA director) John Ratcliffe told congressional officials that top U.S. intelligence officials knew that Moscow was aware of Hillary Clinton’s campaign plan to accuse Trump of being a Russian asset.
Former CIA Director John Brennan, said Ratcliffe, personally briefed then-President Obama and top U.S. national security officials that Moscow had determined Clinton had approved a plan in late July 2016, “to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services,” according to Brennan’s own handwritten notes. In September of that year, former FBI Director James Comey was sent an investigative referral regarding Moscow’s alleged knowledge of Clinton’s plans to paint Trump as a treasonous Russian agent. But instead of investigating whether the Clinton campaign had been infiltrated by Russian intelligence, Comey went about obtaining federal warrants to spy on Trump’s campaign.
What’s more, we know that Christopher Steele, whose infamous dossier wound up being a key source for the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that falsely claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin “aspired” for Trump to win the election, was at the time on the payroll of sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. And his primary subsource for the dossier, Igor Danchenko, was long suspected of being a Russian intelligence asset.
All of which helps shed light on what was reported Monday. Ratcliffe, according to Fox News, is going to declassify the underlying intelligence that reveals that “credible foreign sources” knew about the FBI’s plans to promote the Trump-Russia narrative. Part of that intelligence is a classified annex in former Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe.
Fox News quoted an anonymous source familiar with the contents of the annex who said that the intelligence collected from these foreign sources predicted the FBI’s next move, in the summer of 2016, “with alarming specificity.”
“Ultimately, the release of the classified annex will lend more credibility to the assertion that there was a coordinated plan inside the U.S. government to help the Clinton campaign stir up controversy connecting Trump to Russia,” the source told Fox News.
Together with what we now know about Obama’s involvement in all of this, especially after Trump had won the election, it looks very much like what Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called it last week: a treasonous conspiracy and a years-long coup against a duly elected president.
In particular, as my colleague Margot Cleveland reported in these pages yesterday, the extent of Obama’s personal involvement is deeper than previously reported. Last week’s release of the House Permanent Selection Committee on Intelligence’s (HPSCI) report summarizing its investigation into the drafting of the ICA exposed how then-CIA Director Brennan ordered the publication of three substandard intelligence reports. These reports, together with the Steele dossier, “became foundational sources for the ICA judgments that Putin preferred Trump over Clinton.”
But as Cleveland notes, the recently declassified HPSCI report also reveals Obama’s central role in this scheme. Investigators and the ICA authors were “denied access to a trove of information on grounds of executive or congressional privilege,” according to the HPSCI report. One FBI analyst, the report says, argued that this intelligence should be shared with those responsible for drafting the ICA, but the Obama administration “denied ICA drafters access to this intelligence on grounds of Executive or Congressional privilege.”
Setting aside what intelligence might have been protected by congressional privilege, executive privilege rests with the president, which means Obama is the one who barred the ICA drafters from seeing the underlying intelligence.
Why would he do that? To prevent them from seeing that it was laughably unreliable — indeed, that much of it relied on the outlandish Steele dossier. Indeed, the “compartmented” version of the ICA — that is, the version only accessible to specially identified and approved individuals — included the Steele dossier. But the public and even classified versions did not. Why would the Steele dossier be compartmented? As Cleveland explained, “to keep the honest analysts responsible for finalizing the classified and unclassified version of the ICA from discovering the shady and fake intel Brennan buried in the compartmented version.”
A big part of what we’re learning now is the lengths some of these intelligence officials went to hide what they had done. That’s why much of this didn’t come out during Trump’s first term — some of the people who were involved in it continued to serve in the Trump administration — and worked to cover their tracks.
For example, Gina Haspel, who served as CIA director under Trump, personally blocked the declassification of Russiagate documents in 2020. Why would she do that? Well, Haspel was hand-picked by Brennan to serve as CIA station chief in London from 2014 to early 2017 — the same time that Steele, a British national, was in London compiling his garbage dossier on Trump. Haspel was the CIA’s link between London and Washington during this period.
Over the weekend, Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer suggested Haspel should be investigated for her potential role in the Russia collusion hoax. “What role did she play not only in perhaps creating this, but what role did she play in suppressing it when she was CIA director and she was supposed to be serving Donald Trump rather than the CIA establishment?” Schweizer said. “She certainly had access to this material.”
At this point, that’s really the question that should determine who gets investigated: who had access to this material? We know that Obama and his intel chiefs had access to material in the summer of 2016 that suggested Moscow knew that Clinton was going to try to smear Trump as a Russian asset, and that Moscow believed the FBI would go along with that. We know that they did indeed go along with it, and that they cooked up the ICA after Trump won, hiding their reliance on the Steele dossier and other unreliable and outlandish intelligence products.
We know all this now, eight years after the treasonous conspiracy was launched, and soon we’ll know more, as Ratcliffe and Gabbard release more. The question is, will anyone in the Trump administration do anything about it?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
James B. Comey posted on Instagram a photo of seashells arranged to read “86 47,” which could be interpreted as a threat against the 47th president. Comey has since denied that he intended violence; nonetheless the Secret Service is reportedly investigating. This posting may have been a lapse of judgment on Comey’s part or something more nefarious.
Comey’s conduct in this instance, however, fits well with his previous anti-Trump behavior and demonstrably poor judgment. His judgment has been a serious concern for many of us who were proud to serve in the FBI and care about the bureau’s credibility and reputation. In his book and elsewhere, he described the sole origin of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of Trump’s first presidential campaign as based on a report “from an allied ambassador” of an encounter in London between a Trump adviser and “a Russian agent.”
That’s Comey’s characterization of George Papadopoulos’ meeting with Joseph Mifsud, a pan-European academic. Mifsud told the then-Trump aide the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Comey has piously huffed that it would have been “dereliction” not to proceed with a counterintelligence investigation based on that report. But to proceed with such an intrusive investigation on so little was an abuse.
A secondhand rumor should never be enough to justify opening a counterintelligence investigation of any American, much less a presidential candidate. This off-handed conversation initiated a counterintelligence case that disrupted Trump’s first term as president. Like directors before him, Comey should have said, “We need more probable cause” before moving forward with an investigation.
In the encounter Comey cited, there was no mention of emails. Only after the WikiLeaks disclosures was an assumption made by both Australian High Commissioner Alexander Downer, Comey’s “allied ambassador,” and Papadopoulos, that the “dirt” was in Hillary’s emails.
Comey’s indignant complaints about Trump are an effort to distract from the dangerous and faulty decisions made on his watch. His initiation of the counterintelligence investigation against Trump was an error of historical proportions.
Comey has tried to justify the spying — electronic surveillance — of Carter Page, a U.S. citizen, by writing that a federal judge granted “permission.” We now know the FISA Court was seriously misled by Comey’s FBI.
Comey grossly usurped the prosecutor’s role in virtually declining prosecution in the Clinton email investigation. That usurpation was spelled out in Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein’s memo justifying Comey’s firing. Comey also had further muddied the waters by announcing the reopening of the Clinton email investigation just days before the 2016 election.
Comey tried to deflect from his responsibility in the Russian collusion fiasco by claiming it all happened “seven layers below” him. That is simply not true. The deputy assistant director for counterintelligence, Peter Strzok, drafted and signed out the communication initiating that probe. Strzok’s texts demonstrate he answered to Andrew McCabe, who was deputy director and Comey’s direct report. It was McCabe who set up the interview to entrap General Michael Flynn, and it was Strzok who conducted the interview. These people were not seven layers down from Comey. They were his inner circle, mere steps away from him on the seventh floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
It was Comey himself who wrote a memo of his initial conversation with President-elect Trump and then leaked it. He, and only he, did that. What was he thinking? Here was the FBI director trying to incriminate the president.
Throwing everyone else under the bus, Comey claimed that FBI procedures failed him. But it was Comey who signed three of the four applications for FISA coverage on Carter Page. And it was Comey who set the tone by declining to brief the Congressional Gang of Eight about this significant counterintelligence investigation. When Comey served as FBI director, he led the investigation of one or more American citizens without sufficient basis. The lack of justification for initiating these investigations is what truly matters.
The former FBI director may or may not be charged for this seashell threat on the president’s life, but James Comey will be condemned by history as the worst FBI director for the damage he has done to the FBI and our country.
Thomas J. Baker is an international law enforcement consultant. He served as a FBI Special Agent for 33 years in a variety of investigative and management positions facing the challenges of crime and terrorism. He is the author of “The Fall of the FBI: How a Once Great Agency Became a Threat to Democracy.”
U.S. National Guard members patrol an unfinished section of border wall on November 18, 2021, in La Joya, Texas. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded more than 164,000 apprehensions of illegal migrants in October. | Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Mexican authorities handed over to the United States an alleged senior leader of the international criminal MS-13 gang on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list, the third suspect on the list arrested since the start of President Donald Trump’s second administration.
The fugitive, Francisco Javier Roman-Bardales, was wanted for his alleged involvement in directing gang activity in the United States, Mexico and El Salvador, according to the agency. He is also known by the alias “Veterano de Tribus” (Veteran of Tribes).
Prosecutors say Roman-Bardales played a role in ordering several acts of violence against civilians and rival gang members and was involved in distributing drugs and extortion crimes in the United States.
FBI Director Kash Patel called the arrest “a major victory both for our law enforcement partners and for a safer America.”
“Thank you to our brave personnel for executing the mission,” Patel stated in a Tuesday social media post. “And thank you to Mexico’s SSPC and FGE teams for their support of the FBI in this investigation and arrest.”
Members of the Defense Ministry, Navy, Attorney General’s Office, National Guard and the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection released a joint statement on Monday announcing the 47-year-old Roman-Bardales’ arrest on the Teocelo-Baxtla highway thanks to international cooperation efforts.
Investigators discovered that Román-Bardales was operating out of Baxtla, and teams were created to carry out “fixed, mobile, and discreet surveillance” before the arrest.
“The subject was informed of the reason for his arrest, read his legal rights, and will be transferred to Mexico City, where he will be taken to the appropriate authority, where he will subsequently be deported to the United States where he is wanted,” the statement reads.
Prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York issued a federal arrest warrant for Roman-Bardales on Sept. 22, 2022, after he was charged with conspiracy to provide and conceal material support and resources to terrorists. The other charges included narco-terrorist conspiracy, racketeering conspiracy and alien smuggling conspiracy, according to the FBI.
Authorities believe that Roman-Bardles is a key senior member of MS-13, also known as Mara Salvatrucha 13, a gang known for committing transnational crimes. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the gang was formed by Salvadoran immigrants who came to the United States to escape a war in their home country.
The department warns that MS-13 is “well-organized and is heavily involved in lucrative illegal enterprises, being notorious for its use of violence to achieve its objectives.”
In January, three members of MS-13 pleaded guilty to multiple crimes, including nine murders committed on Long Island, New York, between 2016 and 2017. Prosecutors say some of the crimes were “savagely committed with machetes and guns” on behalf of the MS-13.
In February, a Salvadoran national and MS-13 member was sentenced to 50 years in prison for his connection to the gang’s criminal enterprise, including three murders.
On Wednesday, the White House said Roman-Bardales is the third criminal on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list apprehended since the start of the Trump administration. The White House statement highlighted the arrest of Arnoldo Jimenez on Jan. 30, who was wanted for first-degree murder charges. Another fugitive wanted on child sex trafficking and child rape charges, Donald Eugene Fields II, was also arrested on Jan. 25.
“The Trump Administration will stop at nothing to keep the American people safe,” the White House declared in its statement this week.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on Feb. 27 that Mexico extradited 29 fugitive cartel members to the United States, with their crimes ranging from racketeering, drug trafficking, murder and money laundering.
“As President Trump has made clear, cartels are terrorist groups, and this Department of Justice is devoted to destroying cartels and transnational gangs,” Bondi stated.
“We will prosecute these criminals to the fullest extent of the law in honor of the brave law enforcement agents who have dedicated their careers — and in some cases, given their lives — to protect innocent people from the scourge of violent cartels. We will not rest until we secure justice for the American people.”
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Schiff might be in some trouble now that Kash Patel has been confirmed as Director of the FBI for the lies and Conspiracies he’s fostered to frame and impeach Trump.
Panicked Adam Schiff Went to FBI Building for One Last Attempt to Derail Kash Patel’s Confirmation – It Didn’t Work
By Joe Saunders – The Western Journal – Feb 20, 2025
If anyone knows about lacking integrity, it’s Adam Schiff — and Republicans in Washington clearly know it. The newly minted senator from California spent President Donald Trump’s first administration manufacturing the “Russia collusion” hoax and engineering the blatantly political first Trump impeachment trial only to meet with failure — and eventually see his nemesis returned to the White House in November by American voters disgusted with Schiff’s Democrats. On Thursday, the Schiff show turned up outside FBI headquarters in Washington in a last-ditch attempt to derail the confirmation of the man Trump chose to head the law enforcement agency — and Schiff met with failure again. READ MORE
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Minnesota Democrats are doubling down on left-wing gender ideology despite their viewpoints being increasingly unpopular with the average American.
It appears Democrats have finally picked a hill to die on
(Daily Caller News Foundation) — Democrats are doubling down on left-wing gender ideology despite their viewpoints being increasingly unpopular with the average American. The vast majority of Americans support reversing the Biden administration’s extreme approach to transgender issues, including barring biological males from participating in women’s sports. But Democratic lawmakers, including those representing congressional districts President Donald Trump won in November, are continuing to push left-wing stances on transgender issues that are seemingly at odds with their own voters. “Rather than changing course and abandoning the destructive transgender agenda, Democrats are ignoring what the majority of Americans know to be true just to appease the radical wing of their party,” Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement. “I hope Democrats keep… READ MORE BRANCO TOON STORE
A.F. Branco Cartoon – The Uniparty warmongers have a big interest in keeping the Military Industrial Complex continuously overflowing with taxpayer money while ignoring waste, fraud, and abuse.
DOGE-ing toward the best Department of Defense ever
John Mills – The Gateway Pundit – Feb 21, 2025
President Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth have made it very clear. The United States will have the best Military in the world, bar none. This goal is being established to deter and prevent conflict, not start it, slip into it, or perpetuate it. The President and Secretary of Defense have also said we will grow the military and also cut inefficient spending. This message is not an oxymoron – with the DOGE raids on other departments, the horror stories of fraud, waste, and abuse are far worse than we thought. In one of his first public comments on the impending arrival of DOGE to DOD, Secretary Hegseth made it clear that attacking fraud, waste, and abuse would happen on a scale never before seen in the notoriously… READ MORE
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Wisconsin’s capital city is in shock after a 15-year-old girl pulled out a 9mm pistol Monday morning and shot up her study hall, killing a teacher and a fellow student at the Christian school she attended before turning the weapon on herself and ending her life, Madison Police confirmed.
Natalie Rupnow injured six others, including two students with life-threatening wounds and a teacher and three other students who suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the attack on Madison’s Abundant Life Christian School, according to police.
While Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes wasn’t commenting on motive Monday evening, an unidentified law enforcement source told the Associated Press that the shooter “had been dealing with problems and expressed some of those in writings,” CNN reported. There were reports that Rupnow, who police say liked to go by “Samantha,” had penned a manifesto, although Barnes said police had yet to verify the authenticity of the document. “The good news,” the chief said, is that Madison police have shared the information with its partners at the FBI.
There’s no doubt the suspected killer was disturbed, as evidenced by her violent outburst at the K-12 private school with a mission “to develop students who are committed disciples of Jesus Christ through an excellent, comprehensive, Biblically-integrated educational program.”
She planned the attack in advance, a “law enforcement official familiar with the investigation” told CNN.
‘I Don’t Think That’s Important’
There was speculation Monday that the shooter was transgender, although other sources disputed the claim. Some said she had an “online obsession with school shooters.”
Barnes insisted that he doesn’t care whether Rupnow was transgender, as some reports indicated. It’s not important, he said, when asked by a leftist reporter about “misinformation” online. The Madison journalist effectively wagged her finger at parental rights group for claiming the shooter was transgender, “which is a reaction that we see across the country linked with mass shootings to claim that trans people are dangerous.”
Barnes, a far-left police chief in one of the most LGBTQ agenda-pushing cities in America, said he wished people would “leave their own personal biases out of this.”
“I don’t know whether Natalie was transgender or not and quite frankly I don’t think that’s even important. I don’t think that’s important at all,” the chief told reporters at an evening press conference. “I don’t think that whatever happened today has anything to do with how she or he or they may have wanted to identify …”
Barnes subsequently acknowledged that Rupnow’s gender identity “is something that may come out later.”
While investigators continue to search for answers, the transgender question could prove to be very important. Just ask the families at Nashville’s Covenant School.
‘It is Vitally Important’
In March 2023, a 28-year-old woman who identified as a transgender man stormed into the private Christian elementary school and murdered three third-graders and three staff members before Metro Nashville Police officers fatally shot the killer.
Michael Patrick Leahy, CEO and editor-in-chief of Star News Digital Media, has been seeking the release of the Covenant killer’s manifesto for a year and a half. He’s a plaintiff in a lawsuit demanding the police department turn over the shooter’s voluminous writings. Leahy’s flagship publication, the Tennessee Star, has obtained and published dozens of pages of the writings, screeds that offer a glimpse into the twisted mind of a mass shooter.
“We clearly have a huge mental health problem with young people in America today,” Leahy told The Federalist Monday night in a phone interview. “It is very clear that the killer in Nashville suffered severe mental health problems and had in fact been treated for psychiatric difficulties for 22 years. Now, the reports indicate that a 15-year-old girl is responsible for the heinous murders today at a Christian school in Madison, Wis. She purportedly left behind a manifesto, according to some sources.”
“It is vitally important that these documents left behind by young mass murderers be released to the public so that we can understand the deep problems of mental illness that drove them to these actions, so that we can prevent such terrible crimes in the future,” Leahy added.
As the Tennessee Star has reported, the FBI hastily acts to thwart the release of such documents. In the Covenant killer case, the federal agency sent a memo to the Nashville PD “strongly” discouraging the disclosure of so-called “legacy tokens” left behind by mass shooters. The memo was sent just two days after Star News Digital Media filed a federal lawsuit against the FBI demanding the agency release the trans killer’s writings. As former national political editor at the Star News Network, I, too, am a plaintiff in that lawsuit, plodding in federal court for the better part of two years.
The memo explains that mass shooters “often leave behind items [memory tokens] to claim credit for the attack and/or articulate the motivation behind it.” The 90 pages the Tennessee Star published include a wealth of insight from a severely mentally ill 28-year-old woman who identified as a male named Aidan.
As the Star reported, the FBI recommended withholding such items from the public, citing concerns about “conspiracy theories,” copycat attacks, and advancing “the false narrative that the majority of attackers are mentally ill.”
“The FBI also raised the ‘existing precedent’ for the destruction of ‘legacy tokens,’ noting ‘the decision to destroy the ‘Basement Tapes’ produced by the offenders of the Columbine High School attack,’” the publication reported.
Leahy notes the memo also argues that releasing manifestos and other legacy tokens could have negative impacts on “certain vulnerable communities.” The Biden administration has joined LGBT activists in painting the trans population as under the constant threat of violence.
Madison’s police chief on Monday repeatedly thanked the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for their quick response and assistance at the Christian school.
“In this instance it appears to me the FBI may have done the same thing in Madison that they did in Nashville in 2023, that is swoop in and take control of information and refuse to release it,” Leahy said.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
Although Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz determined the FBI did not deploy undercover agents at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, he did reveal the agency had 26 confidential human sources from various field offices in Washington, D.C., that day.
Horowitz’s assessment was disclosed in a report released Thursday on the FBI’s handling of confidential human sources and intelligence gathering in the lead-up to Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump. Horowitz wrote that three of the 26 confidential human sources were tasked by FBI field offices before Jan. 6 “to report on domestic terrorism subjects who were possibly attending the event.”
He wrote one was tasked “to report on the activities of a predicated domestic terrorism subject who was separately planning to travel to D.C.” for the election certification vote; another was “to potentially report” on two domestic terrorism subjects from another FBI field office who were planning to travel to D.C. that day; and a third who informed their handling agent they intended to travel to D.C. on their own initiative and who then was tasked “to potentially report” on two domestic terrorism subjects identified by other FBI field offices who were planning to travel to D.C. that day.
He added none of the three was authorized “to enter the Capitol or a restricted area, or to otherwise break the law on Jan. 6, nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on Jan. 6.”
Of the 26, Horowitz wrote four entered the Capitol during the riot, an additional 13 entered the restricted area around the Capitol — a security perimeter established in preparation for the certification vote — and nine neither entered a restricted area nor entered the Capitol or otherwise engaged in illegal activity.
“None of the CHSs who entered the Capitol, or a restricted area has been prosecuted to date,” Horowitz wrote. “The WFO [FBI Washington Field Office] did not know that a total of 26 CHSs would be in D.C. for the events of January 6 because only 4 field offices had informed the WFO or FBI Headquarters that CHSs under the relevant field office’s jurisdiction — 5 CHSs in total — would be traveling to D.C. on January 6.”
Horowitz determined many of the CHSs provided information relevant to the certification vote before Jan. 6 “and that a few CHSs also provided information about the riot as it occurred.”
“In addition, FBI field offices collected CHS reporting relevant to the January 6 Electoral Certification from CHSs who did not travel to D.C. for the event,” Horowitz wrote.
The report revealed among the information CHSs provided to their handling agents was that “extremist members of the Oath Keepers or other groups may become involved in unplanned violent activity on January 6”; that the number of Oath Keepers headed to D.C. “is 200+ strong”; travel plans being discussed by the Proud Boys; an individual purporting to be the leader of a group that had “500 people willing to storm the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. on January 6th”; and concerns for the safety of members of Congress on Jan. 6.
Horowitz’s report referred to the Oath Keepers as “a large but loosely organized collection of individuals, some of whom are associated with militias.” It said the Proud Boys “describes itself as a ‘pro-Western fraternal organization for men who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world; aka Western Chauvinists.'”
Contrary to what corporate media want you to believe, President Donald Trump’s decision to name Kashyap “Kash” Patel as his choice to replace current FBI Director Christopher Wray is a good one — perhaps one of the best he could have made.
When Trump announced over Thanksgiving weekend that Patel was his pick to “bring back Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity to the FBI,” journos lost their minds. Some outlets framed Trump’s choice as frowned upon by the president’s aides and Republican legislators. Others publishedlists of bureaucrats who they claimed could fall prey to “Patel’s crosshairs.”for partisan reasons. Those did not compare to the hordes of corporate media coverage dedicated to tarnishing Patel and quashing his nomination.
Even before the election, the Associated Press painted Patel as a conspiracy theorist while noting how he was “poised to help lead a Trump administration.” Shortly after Trump made it official, MSNBC claimed that “Kash Patel could be Trump’s most dangerous pick yet.” The New York Times took it further by besmirching the pick as “concretely dangerous.”
In the NYT article lead, the author deems Patel “supremely unqualified to direct the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.” He warns that if Patel takes over, his “directorship would probably corrupt and bend the institution for decades, even if he served only a few years.”
“He wants to bend and break the bureau and weaponize it against those he sees as his political enemies and domestic critics,” the article continues, without mentioning how the FBI under Christopher Wray has done exactly that.
These descriptions of Patel suggest Trump pulled a random guy off the street to weaponize the agency on his behalf. In reality, Patel is familiar with both the bureaucracy and intelligence agencies, having worked as a U.S. Department of Justice prosecutor, the U.S. Secretary of Defense’s chief of staff, a U.S. National Security Council official, and principal deputy to the acting Director of National Intelligence. Most importantly, Patel had a front-row seat to the deep state’s ploy, aided heavily by the propaganda press, to overthrow Trump when he served as a senior aide to former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes. Patel and Nunes’ efforts to blow open the Russia collusion hoax made them victims of the DOJ’s spying and targets of a years-long corporate media smear campaign. Patel even sued multiple outlets and reporters, including the NYT, for smearing him as a criminal who acted as a “Ukraine Back Channel” for the Trump White House.
The problem with the NYT article and every other outlet fearmongering about Patel’s nomination is they refuse to acknowledge that the FBI is already corrupt to its core and weaponized beyond belief. Polling indicates that more than half of the nation, 63 percent, want to see the FBI reformed or “shut down” and “rebuilt from scratch.”
Naming another deep-state swamp creature like Wray to run the FBI would guarantee that would never happen. Nominating someone like Patel, who promises to make ridding our constitutional Republic of the people trying to destroy it priority number one, however, puts the Trump administration in a much better position to accomplish those goals.
As Patel noted in his 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference speech, he saw firsthand how the “government gangsters” in the DOJ, DOD, and FBI are “crippling” the nation by weaponizing themselves against Americans. He told The Federalist last year, after corporate media accused him of trying to “target journalists for prosecution,” that a second Trump administration would have no choice but to address the corruption swiftly and effectively.
“We’ve been saying the DOJ and FBI need [to] be fixed. We’ve been saying prosecutors and judges shouldn’t weaponize justice. We’ve been saying you shouldn’t leak information for media to rig political elections and curry favor with the American electorate. We’ve been saying it the whole time and we’ve been saying anyone that breaks the law in doing those things … should be prosecuted, whether it’s government officials, civilians, and the media,” Patel said. “Our position has never changed. We’ve been saying to use and restore the Constitution, to follow and enforce the rule of law, not to violate it. That’s what they do.”
The only reason the propaganda press oppose Patel as Trump’s FBI pick is because he is a threat to their ability to continue colluding with the deep state to advance their partisan agenda. Every new article or TV segment corporate media outlets devote to complaining and criticizing Patel’s nomination proves to the Trump team that he is the perfect man for the job.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.
Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, dismissed legacy media’s histrionics over the nomination of Kash Patel for FBI director but told Newsmax she understands why the far left is “freaked out.”
Van Duyne joined “National Report” on Tuesday to discuss President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of Patel, who she says is a reformer who will help root out the deep state from the FBI.
“Legacy media has gone the way of the dodo bird. Nobody’s listening to legacy media. Their narrative fell flat this last election cycle. They’re going to continue to say the worst things ever,” Van Duyne said. “But the legacy media is freaked out, as are a lot of these far-leftists, because they recognize that a new sheriff is in town.‘
“Kash Patel is another strong, very strong individual that Trump has nominated to do a job that should have been done for decades and has not been done. [Trump] is putting very strong people in these positions that are going to change the deep state. And the deep state is going to fight like hell to keep it the way it is.”
Van Duyne also acknowledged a possible connection between the nomination of Patel and President Joe Biden’s sweeping pardon for first son Hunter Biden a day later. It’s possible, she said, that Joe Biden was not going to leave anything to chance with Patel potentially in charge of investigating the Bidens.
“As a parent, my heart goes out. And I don’t know that anybody being honest with themselves can say as a parent they wouldn’t have done the same thing,” Van Duyne said of the pardon. “But the fact is, is that you have an individual who he is pardoning for all crimes that have not even been charged against him for almost an 11-year period.‘
“[H]e has pardoned his son, a son who has pled guilty, who has been tried and found guilty by a jury. This was not politically motivated. These were crimes … that were held against him that he actually committed; he admitted to committing. And this was under the Biden DOJ. This was not under a Trump DOJ.”
Van Duyne added: “Legitimately, this is covering up, again, the crime family that we have seen from the Biden … family now for decades that the deep state has continued to cover up.”
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A.F. Branco Cartoon – When it comes to possible nominees for FBI Director, Kash is king. He’s behind Trump and MAGA 100 percent, and he’s familiar with how Washington works and how deceitful the swamp creatures can be. The FBI needs an overhaul, and he’s just the guy who can do it.
Kash Patel Releases Statement on FBI Nomination, Vows to “Return the FBI to Its Rightful Mission: Protecting the American People”
By Jordan Conradson – The Gateway Pundit – Dec 01, 2024
Trump’s FBI Director nominee, Kash Patel, pledged to “restore integrity, accountability, and equal justice to our justice system” in a statement Saturday night after he was tapped to lead the FBI under President Trump. The Gateway Pundit reported earlier that Trump announced Patel’s nomination for FBI director. Trump said in a Truth Social post Saturday evening, “This FBI will end the growing crime epidemic in America, dismantle the migrant criminal gangs, and stop the evil scourge of human and drug trafficking across the Border.” This is incredible news. Kash Patel has been one of the leading voices against the Deep State’s weaponization of government, corruption, and conspiracies, including Russiagate, the… READ MORE
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
President-elect Donald Trump is making waves with a bold decision to bypass the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for background checks on his administration’s nominees, instead relying on private investigators. This move comes as part of Trump’s long-standing contentious relationship with the FBI, which he has accused of being politicized and unfairly targeting him and his allies.
According to CNN, Trump’s transition team has opted to use private firms to conduct security clearance reviews and background checks on his appointees for key positions within his second administration. This approach marks a stark departure from tradition, as the FBI has typically handled such checks since the aftermath of World War II.
Trump’s decision to skip the FBI’s involvement in his nominees’ vetting process stems from several concerns. First, the FBI’s background checks are often time-consuming, delaying the transition process. For example, during Trump’s first term, the bureau took months to finalize background reviews, creating logistical headaches. Additionally, there are fears that the FBI could leak sensitive or potentially embarrassing information about Trump’s nominees to the media, possibly even to his political opponents. Such leaks could hurt his administration before it even begins. This concern about potential bias has grown in the wake of Trump’s complaints about a politicized FBI, especially under the leadership of FBI Director Christopher Wray.
There are also no laws mandating that the FBI conduct background checks on presidential appointees, and the Supreme Court has affirmed that the president has the constitutional right to grant security clearances. While Trump will have to wait until after he is inaugurated to issue those clearances, this means he can still proceed with appointing individuals and conducting preliminary reviews without relying on the FBI’s approval.
The Trump transition team’s decision to bypass the FBI was reinforced by an alarming whistleblower report that recently came to light. An FBI official in the bureau’s security clearance division, known as SecD, expressed concerns about the politicization of the vetting process. According to the whistleblower, SecD has been contaminated by political agendas, making it unreliable for handling security clearance investigations.
The whistleblower’s complaint outlined that under current FBI leadership, the bureau had refused clearances for individuals with conservative beliefs, including U.S. military veterans, those who refused to get COVID-19 vaccines, and employees who had attended Trump rallies. The whistleblower’s accusations paint a picture of an FBI that may be using its power to block appointees based on personal or political biases, leading to further mistrust in the agency’s neutrality.
In addition to the politicized nature of the FBI’s process, the whistleblower warned that personal data from background investigations could be improperly shared with political opponents, citing the FBI’s history of leaks and questionable practices under current leadership. The concern is that top officials, including Wray and Deputy Director Abbate, could exploit this sensitive information for political gain or share it with the White House to target individuals who oppose the administration.
For Trump, the solution is clear: by opting for private investigators, he sidesteps the potential bias and inefficiency of the FBI. Private investigators are typically faster, more discreet, and better equipped to handle the sensitive nature of political vetting. Trump’s team can work with firms they trust to get the job done without worrying about leaks or delays.
Additionally, the president has the authority to grant security clearances to his nominees directly once he assumes office. This means that, even without FBI reviews, he can still proceed with classified briefings and high-level appointments once he is sworn in. Trump has been outspoken about his intention to ensure that his administration operates without the interference of a politically motivated FBI.
While the move to bypass the FBI has drawn criticism, many see it as a necessary step to protect the integrity of the transition process and to ensure that only trusted individuals are appointed to critical positions in the government. Trump’s transition team is clearly motivated by concerns of partisanship and leaks that have plagued his administration in the past.
Trump’s decision also ties into his broader agenda of reforming the FBI, which he has long criticized as being too aligned with the political establishment. During his first term, Trump was vocal in calling for an overhaul of the agency, accusing it of bias and misconduct in its handling of investigations into his campaign and associates.
By bypassing the FBI for background checks, Trump signals that he plans to continue this reform effort in his second term, ensuring that the agency serves the interests of the American people without being used as a political tool.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation quietly updated its 2022 crime data to show an increase in violent crimes, despite previous data showing violent crimes had fallen that year, which was touted as a victory for the Biden-Harris administration.
“For some reason, the media, they did pick the crime data that they think goes and makes the Democrats look as good as possible. And then even when the crime data that they’ve relied on turns out by the very source of that data to be wrong, none of them fix it,” Lott, the founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, told Fox News Digital in a Zoom interview this week.
The FBI released its annual crime in the nation data for 2022 last year, which found a 2.1% decrease in violent crimes compared to 2021, Lott explained. The data was lauded by Democrats and the media as part of a turning point for crime woes in the U.S., following the crime wave of 2020, when defund-the-police protests and riots swept the nation and the pandemic’s stay-at-home orders upended daily life. Now, the data reflects a net increase of 80,029 violent crimes in 2022 over 2021. Lott found that under the umbrella of violent crime, there were an additional 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies and 37,091 aggravated assaults that year.
Vice President Kamala Harris and President Biden attend a campaign event in Pittsburgh, on Sept. 2, 2024. (AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
“To give people an idea of the size of the change, when the 2022 data came out in September 2023, they initially reported that violent crime had fallen by 2.1% in 2022.… That’s the final data, supposedly, for 2022. The revision of that final data that came out last month, now claims that rather than the 2.1% drop, that there was actually a 4.5% increase in violent crime that occurred in 2022. That’s a 6.6 percentage point change there,” Lott told Fox News Digital.
“It’s from a drop to an increase. And, you know, the bizarre thing to me is, for a year after the 2022 data was put out, we were having headlines, news articles after news articles saying, ‘Violent crime is falling, people mistakenly or erroneously believe that it’s increasing.’ And, you know, and they were relying on this data. But you don’t see any corrections in the news. Saying, ‘Oops, the FBI data that we relied on was wrong, that rather than a drop, there was actually an increase that had occurred,’“ he added.
President Biden and the Harris campaign have touted that violent crimes had fallen under their leadership, with Biden calling the reported violent crime drops “historic” while citing the FBI’s most recent data.
“This year, the homicide and violent crime rates have continued their rapid decline from their peaks during the last administration,” Biden said in an official White House statement late last month. “…. Communities across our country are safer now than when I took office.”
“Americans are safer today than when Vice President Harris and I took office. We can’t stop now,” Biden added in a separate White House statement in August touting crime data from an independent organization of police chiefs across the nation.
Former President Trump gestures at a campaign rally at the Findlay Toyota Arena Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, in Prescott Valley, Arizona. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The Trump campaign, when asked about the revised data, took a victory lap, saying, “President Trump was right…. AGAIN!”
“The federal government lied about Biden’s cognitive decline, lied about the job numbers, and now we learn they lied about crime numbers too,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Digital. “Kamala Harris must admit she’s wrong and address how she plans to bring down the rising crime crisis. Every mainstream media reporter who was quick to correct President Trump must cover this new revelation if they have any shred of integrity left.”
Trump has repeatedly said on the campaign trail that “crime in this country is through the roof” under the Biden-Harris administration, despite the previous figures promoted by the FBI showing violent crime was allegedly on a downward trend. When asked about the revision, the White House argued that following the passage of the American Rescue Plan in 2021 under the Biden-Harris administration, violent crime is “at a near 50 year low.”
“Under the previous administration, our country saw the biggest increase in murder rates on record. President Biden and Vice President Harris immediately got to work to turn it around and passed the American Rescue Plan which led to the largest ever federal investment in public safety. As a result, violent crime is at a near 50 year low, and is continuing to decline this year according to independent data from police chiefs in the nation’s largest cities,” White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson told Fox News Digital on Wednesday.
An administration official added in a comment to Fox Digital that the “FBI often adjusts crime estimates as more data is reported.”
“During the prior administration, the FBI upwardly adjusted crime data during its last three years: in 2018, 2019, and 2020. These adjustments are standard practice,” the official continued before citing an article on the data this week. “Real Clear Investigations fails to mention that, in 2021, there was a sharp decline in the number of agencies participating in FBI data collection because the FBI temporarily disallowed an earlier collection method. The FBI switched back to its prior method in 2022.”
Lott explained he noticed the quiet update when the FBI released its 2023 crime data set last month, adding: “It was pretty easy to see that things had changed.”
“For 2022 and 2021 in particular, they had some changes for a few of the previous years, but they were very small. The changes for 2021 and 2022 were very large. You know, I looked through the press release that the FBI had put out, there was no mention of them having changed the data for earlier years. And surely no mention of the large change that had occurred. I looked through the Uniform Crime Report summary report that the FBI puts out, and there was no mention of the size of the change. There’s one footnote there that vaguely mentions that they had updated the data for 2022. No mention about updating it for 2021 or any other time,” he said, calling the discovery “shocking.”
The data update is akin to when the Bureau of Labor Statistics overestimated the number of jobs created in the U.S. by 818,000 between March 2023 and March 2024, Lott said.
NYPD arrive at a crime scene near Gracie Mansion in Manhattan on July 26, 2024. (Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Lott authored an article on the data for Real Clear Investigations this week, which argued the updates to 2022 stats open the door to questioning if the 2023 stats showing an estimated 3% drop in violent crimes compared to 2022 are legitimate.
“Without the increase, the drop in violent crime in 2023 would have been less than half as large – only 1.6% instead of the reported drop of 3.5%,” Lott wrote.
While FBI data has shown alleged drops in violent crimes in recent years, other government data sets have shown crime has increased in the last few years.
The seal of the Federal Bureau of Investigation outside its headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 15, 2022. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
Crimes such as rape or sexual assault, aggravated assault, and robbery increased from 2020 to 2023, the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics revealed last month as part of its National Crime Victimization Survey. Across the board, the survey found total instances of reported violent crimes increased from 5.6 per 1,000 individuals aged 12 and over in 2020, when Trump was still in office, to 8.7 per 1,000 in 2023.
Lott, who also served as a senior adviser for research and statistics at the DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs, authored an op-ed for Real Clear Politics last month and detailed that the DOJ survey found that total violent crimes are 55.4% higher in 2023 than in 2020, the end of Trump’s tenure, while rape crimes increased by 42%, robbery by 63%,and aggravated assault by 55%. The DOJ survey does not include surveys on murder, but that category is almost always reported to police departments, and subsequently to the FBI, he noted, and makes up about 1% of the U.S.’ total violent crimes.
Fox News Digital reached out to the FBI and Harris campaign regarding the 2022 data but did not immediately receive replies.
Lately, I’ve been learning a new vocabulary: radiation, infusions, chemotherapy, stem cell transplant. Someone I love got a tough cancer diagnosis. There is nothing quite like bad news from a doctor that makes you think about how much time you have, and how you want to spend it. Life is a fleeting gift. We should not waste a moment.
Sadly, in America, in so many ways, life is not valued. I’m not talking about the mindless hours squandered in front of a glowing television, computer, or phone screen. Most of us spend too much time in such useless pursuits. But that is a personal choice.
It is the government-sanctioned disregard for life that harms so many, and should trouble us all. Under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the U.S. has seen more abortions, political prisoners, and forgotten disaster victims. Biden and Harris don’t value human life.
Babies’ Lives Matter
Abortion is just one example. While campaign commercials for Kamala Harris scream that states are banning abortion and that access to the deadly procedure is at risk without Harris at the helm, the US saw, in 2023, the most abortions in a decade: an estimated 1,037,000 in the formal health care system. It’s an 11 percent increase since 2020, the last year estimates were available, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion data.
That is enough babies to fill the University of Michigan’s “Big House” football stadium 10 times.
Abortion is big business, and politicians who pledge to keep the abortion racket thriving get huge campaign donations. They can afford it. The nonprofit Planned Parenthood Federation of America showed more than a half billion dollars in gross receipts in 2023. President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson earned nearly $584,000 that year, outpacing the $400,000 annual salary of the U.S. president. With so much money on the line, the idea of making abortion safe and rare is not the goal anymore. Killing the unborn is profitable, and it shows in the tone Harris uses when defending the grisly practice.
If Harris valued life, she would work to develop programs that reduce abortions. Instead, under the Biden/Harris administration pregnancy resource centers have come under attack, and abortions have soared to record numbers.
Pro-Life Americans’ Lives Matter
The Biden-Harris Department of Justice (DOJ) sentenced three pro-life activists in late September for praying, singing church hymns, and standing in the hallway of a now-shuttered abortion business in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, back in 2021. They were there to persuade women not to have an abortion and were convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which makes it a federal crime to interfere with someone getting an abortion. The DOJ added a conspiracy charge, making the maximum possible sentence 11 years in prison.
These three had their sentencing delayed because they were charged in other, similar cases. They were part of a larger group that has already been sentenced.
Chester Gallagher of Tennessee was sentenced to 16 months in prison.
Heather Idoni was sentenced to eight months in prison, to be served concurrently with the 24-month sentence she is now serving for similar charges in Washington, D.C., and she will be sentenced for another case in Michigan.
Eva Edl, 89, was given three years of probation. As a child, Edl was taken by train cattle car as a prisoner to the Gakova (also spelled Gakowa) communist-run concentration camp in Yugoslavia, where she faced starvation. Today, she considers sitting in front of the doors of abortion businesses her way of sitting on the train tracks to stop children from dying.
After the Supreme Court’s June 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe. v. Wade, Biden issued an executive order directing his administration to address security risks at abortion businesses.
In July 2022, the DOJ announced it was forming the Reproductive Rights Task Force, with a goal of enforcement of the FACE Act. Since then, the DOJ has sent the FBI to the homes of pro-lifers, intimidated them, and thrown many in federal prison for years for FACE violations that happened before the crackdown.
These pro-lifers have spent much of their lives rescuing babies. Children are alive today because they convinced mothers to turn away from the abortion mill. They didn’t steal a car or stab someone — both serious crimes that have received less punishment. But their lives have been turned upside down by Biden’s policies.
The business of abortion gets more protection that a typical crime victim because Harris and Biden don’t value the lives of babies, the lives of the pro-lifers, or the lives of violent crime victims.
No matter how you feel about abortion, all Americans should be concerned when politicians use the force of the government to impose harsh prison sentences on gentle people, stealing years of their lives.
Policies Honoring Life Matter
If Harris and Biden valued the lives of the people hurt by Hurricane Helene, they would have swiftly focused on hurricane relief. The administration would have communicated directly with the victims without prompting, they would have set up searches in the hardest hit areas, and they would have quickly moved food, water, shelter, and medical supplies to the affected areas.
They would try to negotiate an end to wars around the globe instead of perpetuating human misery with endless funding.
If they valued human lives, Harris and Biden would admit human trafficking, and all the suffering it causes, is intertwined with our open border, and make it stop. And they would develop dignified solutions to homeless encampments.
But none of this is second nature to leaders who don’t honor life.
Time is not on our side. Life is a fleeting gift.
Let us choose leaders who show up in hard times, seek policies that help people thrive in their lives, and work to bring peace to a groaning world.
Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
A.F. Branco Cartoon—We now know that Biden hasn’t been mentally fit to run the country since he took office, so who has been running the country, and who is running it now? Obama? Kamala? Dr Jill? Hunter? The CIA? WHO?!
Majority of Americans Question Biden’s Mental Fitness – Who’s Running This Country?
By Joe Hoft – July 6, 2022
Old and senile Joe Biden has a difficult time saying mental fitness so it’s no surprise that most Americans question Biden’s mental fitness in a new poll. Back in December, Joe Biden had a difficult time saying “mental fitness”. This did not bode well for a guy who shows a lack of mental fitness daily in front of the whole world. At a recent speech, Biden ended by turning to his right and attempting to shake hands with someone who wasn’t there. His handlers know of his senility and often attempt to hide his mental fitness even if they have to dress up as the Easter Bunny to do so.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – The left has nothing to attack J.D. Vance with, so they send out a memo to their media to say he’s “weird,” as though their radial agenda of Late-Term Abortion, Trans Surgery for Kids, and Drag Queen story hour isn’t.
LIBERAL NARRATIVE FAIL: WSJ Poll Finds JD Vance is More Popular Than Kamala Harris
By Mike LaChance – July 29, 2024
Democrats and the media are in a mad dash to define Trump’s running mate JD Vance. For days now, they have been pushing a dumb narrative that Vance is ‘weird’ but it’s clearly not working. According to a new poll from the Wall Street Journal, Vance is more popular than Kamala Harris. Harris has never been popular as Biden’s VP, so why do Democrats think her likability would change just because she’s no running for president? Polling shows that Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (OH) is more popular than presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris, shattering the establishment media’s narrative.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
There is “absolutely no doubt” in the FBI that former President Donald Trump was hit with a would-be assassin’s bullet on July 13 during his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate testified Tuesday to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“There is absolutely no doubt in the FBI’s mind whether former President Trump was hit with a bullet and wounded in the ear,” Abbate said in the hearing, after he was asked by Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., if the FBI had doubts that the Republican presidential nominee had been shot in the ear with a bullet.
“There is no doubt and there never has been,” Abbate stressed. “I’ve been part of this investigation from the very beginning. That has never been raised.”
“You are sure?” Kennedy asked him. “It wasn’t a space laser?”
“No,” Abbate replied.
“It wasn’t a murder hornet?” Kennedy asked.
“Absolutely not,” said Abbate.
“It wasn’t Sasquatch?” said the senator.
“No, senator,” the witness replied. “It was a bullet, senator.”
“Fired by [Thomas] Crooks at President Trump in the air and almost killed him?” Kennedy further pressed Abbate, who replied “100%, senator.”
Tuesday’s hearing is being held one day after the FBI released further details about its probe of the shooting, including information that Crooks had sought information online about power plants, improvised explosive devices, mass shootings, and an assassination attempt in May of Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico.
Trump has agreed to be interviewed by the FBI as a crime victim, the agency said, after reporting last week that he had been hit in the ear either by a bullet or a fragment.
The former president said he expects the interview to be held Thursday.
Project 2025, a suggested roadmap for a second Trump Administration pulled together by the Heritage Foundation, is a nearly 1,000-page document written by a bunch of think tankers and right-wing policy experts running the gamut of conservatism.
President Joe Biden says the document “should scare every single American.” Democrats, one strategist told the Washington Post, need to “instill fear in the American people.” Donald Trump and his surrogates are already distancing the candidate from the effort.
So, I decided to read it. Listen, it wasn’t easy. But the chances that Biden, or any other person fearmongering about it, understands what’s in it, is highly doubtful.
For starters, most of the Project 2025 “mandate” is just a compendium of long-held conservative wishes for government.
The Associated Press warns the effort champions a “dramatic expansion of presidential power.” Yet, nothing in Project 2025 is even on par with Biden’s unconstitutional loan “forgiveness” plan. The alleged presidential abuses the media lays out are well within the president’s power. They’re just policies Democrats happen to dislike.
Project 2025, we are warned, suggests the firing of as many as 50,000 federal workers — which is well within the purview of the president. It will never happen, unfortunately.
Project 2025 suggests eliminating the Department of Education and its “woke-dominated system of public schools.” Conservatives have been promising to get rid of the Department of Education since Ronald Reagan first ran for the presidency. It will never happen.
Project 2025 suggests prohibiting the FBI from “fighting misinformation and disinformation.” Great! The state shouldn’t be in the business of dictating speech. Not only do bureaucrats have no monopoly on truth; they are highly prone to abusing power. This would not have been controversial even a decade ago.
Moreover, curbing the DOJ’s efforts is limiting executive power.
Project 2025 also suggests deactivating FBI investigations that are “contrary to the national interest.” The Department of Justice — now engaged in lawfare against Democrats’ main political rivals, parents, and pro-life protesters among others — exists within the executive branch. It should always presumably act in the national interest.
Project 2025 also proposes ending the “war on fossil fuels.” This, too, has been a mainstream GOP position since Democrats began openly promising to dismantle our energy economy. If voters don’t like it, they can vote of the party that promises “carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035.”
“Project 2025 is not a game, it’s white Christian nationalism,” the star of “The Avengers” and budding Christian theologian Mark Ruffalo warns. “It is the Sharia Law of the ‘Christian’ crazy people who aren’t Christian at all but want to control every aspect of your life through their narrow and exclusionary interpretation of Christ’s egalitarian, inclusive, and kindly teachings.”
Project 2025, you may be surprised to learn, does not feature a single mention of “Jesus” or “Christ.” It does champion long-held social conservative positions on religious freedom, abortion, marriage, and so on.
The policy guide features eight mentions of “God” in the entire document, most of those noting our “God-given individual rights to live freely.” Though this might be offensive to Politico writers or “New Right” intellectuals who’ve abandoned “liberalism,” it is one of the foundational ideas of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
“Christian” is mentioned seven times in the Project 2025 mandate. One, a warning about the left’s threats to tax-exemptions on churches and religious schools. Another mention suggests doing more to protect minority “Middle Eastern Christians” in foreign policy. Another reference reminds us about the COVID-era authoritarians who shut down “churches on the holiest day of the Christian calendar.”
Faith is also touched on in a section about attacks on religious freedom that “compel a Christian website designer to imagine, create, and publish a custom website celebrating same-sex marriage but cannot compel an LGBT person to design a similar website celebrating opposite-sex marriage.” There is nothing extreme about that statement.
Now, obviously there are numerous other nods to socially conservative policy that comports largely with orthodox Christian positions. Not everyone in the right-center coalition might agree them–especially on abortion. Trump doesn’t even embrace them. So much for MAGA extremism. You’re free to agree or disagree with the suggestions, but there is nothing weird or unique or new about faith informing politics. Moreover, none of these policies undermine the rights of other citizens.
And though I strongly disagree with plenty of the economic and trade ideas found in Project 2025, that’s not what the left is taking issue with, of course. They’re feigning horror at decades-old social conservative positions and warning us about authoritarian policies that aren’t actually found anywhere in Project 2025.
In response to Americans’ outcry over the political prosecutions of Donald Trump and a Manhattan jury convicting the former president on 34 felony counts, President Joe Biden declared, “It’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged, just because they don’t like the verdict.” Coming from the Commander-in-Rigging, this proclamation means nothing.
Biden and those seeking to ensure his re-election have their hands all over Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of the former president. A lead prosecutor for Bragg during the trial was Matthew Colangelo. In December 2022, Colangelo left the Biden Department of Justice to “jump start” the criminal case against Trump. Biden had previously named Colangelo his acting associate attorney general—the third highest-ranking official in the DOJ.
There’s Plenty More Where That Came From
Colangelo’s role in prosecuting his former boss’s political opponent provides the most obvious evidence of the Biden administration’s involvement in the Manhattan D.A.’s criminal targeting of Trump, but the rigging started much earlier. As I previously reported, the incestuous relationship between the Manhattan D.A.’s office and Team Biden began as early as mid-February 2021. Then, “Bragg’s predecessor, District Attorney Cyrus Vance, arranged for private criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Mark Pomerantz to be a special assistant district attorney for the Manhattan D.A.’s office.”
As The New York Times reported at the time, Pomerantz was to work “solely on the Trump investigation” during a temporary leave of absence from his law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison. “But even before being sworn in as a special assistant to the Manhattan D.A., Pomerantz had reportedly ‘been helping with the case informally for months.’” Even Democrats’ most reliable Old Grey Lady (of the evening) acknowledged, “the hiring of an outsider is a highly unusual move for a prosecutor’s office.”
Soon after the Manhattan D.A. hired Pomerantz, two of his colleagues, Elyssa Abuhoff and Caroline Williamson, also took leaves of absence from Paul, Weiss to serve as special assistant district attorneys on the Trump investigation. “For a law firm to lend not one but three lawyers to the Manhattan D.A.’s office seems rather magnanimous, until you consider Paul, Weiss’s previous generosity to Joe Biden.”
As I previously reported, during Biden’s first run for the White House, “the law firm hosted a $2,800-per-plate fundraiser for about 100 guests.” Brad Karp, the chair of Paul, Weiss, also topped the list of Biden fundraisers, bundling at least $100,000 for the then-candidate. At the time, Karp wrote in an email: “As someone who cares passionately about preserving the rule of law, safeguarding our democracy and protecting fundamental liberties, I’ve been delighted to do everything I possibly can to support the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris ticket.”
Biden’s relationship with Karp continued after his election, with the president including Karp and his wife at a state dinner with the Australian prime minister. Karp and his fellow Paul, Weiss lawyers continue to fund Biden’s re-election campaign. In fact, Biden’s connection to the firm is so strong Bloomberg branded Paul, Weiss the “Biden-Era N.Y. Power Center.”
But for Paul, Weiss lending Pomerantz to the Manhattan D.A.’s office to control the Trump investigation, the former president likely never would have been charged. According to Pomerantz, Bragg had decided “not to go forward with the grand jury presentation and not to seek criminal charges,” indefinitely suspending the investigation.
Pomerantz made those claims in the resignation letter he tendered to Bragg in early 2022, which was deliberately leaked to The New York Times. “Pomerantz’s letter and his claims that Bragg had suspended the Trump probe triggered a political firestorm, which the Manhattan D.A. sought to quell by telling the public the investigation was ongoing.” Soon after, Bragg capitulated, hiring Biden’s high-ranking DOJ lawyer, Colangelo, who proceeded to indict and convict Trump.
In contrast to the Biden-connected attorneys who secured Trump’s indictment and conviction, in late 2021, at least three career prosecutors in the Manhattan D.A.’s office asked to be removed from the investigation of Trump, reportedly“concerned that the investigation was moving too quickly, without clear evidence to support possible charges.”
Not Just Manhattan
The Biden connection to the political targeting of Trump is not limited to the Manhattan D.A.’s office. In August 2023, Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis charged Trump and 18 other Republicans in a sprawling 98-page criminal indictment.
Earlier this year, court filings and testimony in the case related to motions to disqualify Willis and her former lover, Nathan Wade, revealed the Fulton County D.A.’s office had met with White House counsel in May 2022. Then, just three days after Trump announced his 2024 candidacy for president, Wade traveled to D.C. for an interview with the “White House,” according to Fulton County records. The Biden administration’s White House counsel’s office also dispatched two letters to Willis, according to one of her prosecutors.
Biden and his Democrat-run administration also have their fingers all over the remaining two criminal cases targeting Trump, both brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith. President Biden, according to an April 2, 2022, New York Times report, “As recently as late last year… confided to his inner circle that he believed former President Donald J. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted.”
The Times claimed Biden had expressed frustration with Garland’s “deliberative approach” and that the president believed Trump should be prosecuted. The president “has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6.,” the legacy outlet reported.
Biden’s attorney general would eventually appoint Smith special counsel. Smith would later charge Trump in two separate indictments—one in Florida concerning documents the former president retained, and one in D.C. with various conspiracy to defraud and obstruction charges related to Trump’s challenging the outcome of the 2020 election.
Stretching the Law Past Its Breaking Point
With the D.C. indictment, the special counsel delivered to Biden just what he wanted—a prosecution of Trump “for his role in the events of Jan. 6.” To deliver for Biden, though, required Smith to stretch the federal criminal code to the point of breaking. In the case of two of the crimes charged, in the context of Jan. 6, 2021, defendants, the Supreme Court seems poised to limit the reach of the relevant statutes—a holding that could mean that Smith charged Trump with two non-crimes.
The final criminal case pending against Trump, Smith’s documents case, also connects back to the Biden administration. That case began when the DOJ launched an investigation prompted by a referral from the national archivist related to a dispute over presidential records—even though the same archivist declined to refer Hillary Clinton to the DOJ for mishandling classified documents. Later, a top aide to Smith, Jay Bratt, would meet with “White House officials multiple times, just weeks before Mr. Smith indicted former President Donald Trump.”
That case has been delayed after it was revealed the FBI agents who executed a search warrant obtained by the Biden administration had failed to keep the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago in the same condition they were found, with the order of the materials mixed up. At the same time, it was revealed that the “classified cover sheets” depicted in the photographs of the evidence seized during the August 2022 search of Trump had been placed there by federal agents. The leak of those photographs falsely portrayed the former president as in possession of documents bearing classified cover sheets.
Biden can continue to deny his responsibility for the criminal targeting of his political opponent all he wants, but the facts tell a different story. So did the president’s malevolent smile on Friday when he was asked to respond to Trump calling himself a political prisoner and blaming the president directly.
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion, National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
Special Counsel Jack Smith admitted federal prosecutors tampered with evidence in his criminal case alleging former President Donald Trump mishandled classified documents.
According to a Friday court filing, prosecutors said documents the FBI seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence are no longer in the same order in which they found them, and some are mislabeled and may even be misplaced. A government “filter team” that dealt with the boxes once the FBI took them “was not focused on maintaining the sequence of documents within each box,” the special counsel’s office wrote in the filing.
Later the filing says, of early inventories and scanned records of the seized document boxes, “Because these inventories and scans were created close in time to the seizure of the documents, they are the best evidence available of the order the documents were in when seized. That said, there are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans.” A footnote on this last sentence says: “The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court.”
The filing also suggests the Department of Justice and FBI may have lost and mislabeled some of the documents. When the agencies first took the documents at Mar-a-Lago, government employees used many blank sheets of paper as substitutes and cover papers for what they decided might be classified documents.
After the FBI brought the document boxes to Washington DC, federal employees and contractors began replacing these “handwritten sheets” with proper classified document covers. At that point, the filing says, “In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet.” This indicates the special counsel’s office disclosed it isn’t sure whether some it lost or mislabeled some of the allegedly classified documents it seized in the Trump raid.
In response, Trump’s defense team filed a motion to dismiss the case over prosecutorial misconduct.
Setting aside the FBI high-tailed it out of southern FLA to conduct the investigation within the confines of the corrupt Washington FBI field office, Smith admits DOJ cannot be sure every place holder corresponds with the correct document. pic.twitter.com/Fxy8MZp2qs
Smith charged Trump last June with 37 criminal counts related to the former president’s handling of classified documents. In July, Smith added three more counts against Trump as Democrats strategize to retain the presidency by imprisoning their chief political opponent in an unprecedented lawfare campaign. New evidence shows the Democrat White House worked closely with the DOJ and National Archives and Records Administration in crafting the documents case against Trump.
The classified documents case is Trump’s largest election-year court battle, as nearly half of the 88 total charges against him currently are related to the records. Federal prosecutors confiscated 33 boxes of documents from the hostile raid on Trump’s home in August 2022, according to Fox News. The Department of Justice has spent more than $23 million in taxpayer dollars for Smith to investigate Trump.
In April, Federalist Elections Correspondent Brianna Lyman outlined three major revelations to emerge from the classified documents case to date, including deep state pressure to move forward with Trump’s prosecution and White House involvement.
“President Biden also retained classified documents after leaving the vice presidency,” Lyman reported. “Yet he was not charged because prosecutors say they believed he would ‘present himself to the jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’”
The Department of Energy allegedly revoked the former president’s security clearance retroactively once Trump was indicted.
In February, journalists Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag reported the FBI raid may have been orchestrated to cover up the intelligence state’s role in the Russia hoax. The article posted on Shellenberger’s news website, Public, outlined how intelligence officials fretted over the presence of a classified “binder” in Trump’s possession that former CIA Director Gina Haspel was careful to protect for years.
“Transgressions [the feds might have wanted to cover up] range from Justice Department surveillance of domestic political targets without probable cause to the improper unmasking of a pre-election conversation between a Trump official and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to WMD-style manipulation of intelligence for public reports on alleged Russian ‘influence activities,’” Public reported.
The binder was “Trump’s insurance policy,” according to an unnamed source cited as “knowledgeable about the case.”
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) would not say Tuesday whether it is investigating people identifying themselves as part of a foreign terrorist organization heard chanting “We are Hamas” outside U.S. universities including Columbia.
Video footage shows masked Islamists taunting Jewish students outside of President Barack Obama’s alma mater. One woman shouted at a pro-Israel activist, “We are Hamas” while standing outside Columbia University. “We’re all Hamas.”
Another man who covered his face was seen on video promising more mass slaughter, rape, and kidnapping: “Remember the 7th of October! That will happen not one more time, not five more times, to 10 more times, not 100 more times, not 1,000 more times, but 10,000 times!”
"Never forget the 7th of October. That will happen not one more time, not five more times, not 10…100…1000…10,000…The 7th of October is going to be every day for you."
“Never forget the 7th of October,” another unidentifiable man donning the Palestinian flag outside the university screams in a video recording. “Are you ready? Seventh of October is about to be every day. Every day. Seventh of October is going to be every day for you.”
The Federalist asked the FBI whether they would investigate the self-proclaimed terrorists.
“Thank you for your inquiry. However, we decline comment on this matter,” the bureau replied.
The FBI designates Hamas as a terrorist organization.
Perhaps the FBI’s unwillingness to let the American people know it’s monitoring self-proclaimed terrorists is because the agency allegedly trained some of its personnel using material that “ranked people who oppose abortion, pro-life activists, as a greater threat than Islamists,” as former special agent Steve Friend told the Tennessee Informer.
Friend said he received the training material in 2014 but was unsure whether the agency still used it. The materials, he said, were produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a hate group whose materials inspired a gunman to shoot up the offices of a conservative DC organization in 2012, and another gunman to attempt to murder a member of Congress in 2017.
As of 2023, the FBI still uses some SPLC materials. SPLC responded to the October 7 terrorist attack in Israel by claiming that, while “all acts of hate violence” are wrong, Israel targets Palestinian civilians. That is a Hamas propaganda refrain.
The FBI also cited SPLC in a 2023 document targeting traditional Christians for opposing abortion and holding orthodox views about the sexes. It labeled them “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and even suggested cultivating FBI informants within local churches.
The FBI has also smeared Americans who support former President Donald Trump as potential terrorists by including them in their “domestic extremism” definition, a 2023 report from Newsweek found. Newsweek found “nearly two-thirds of the FBI’s current investigations” focus on Trump supporters who allegedly disregarded “anti-riot” laws.
After Jan. 6, 2021, the agency also expanded its “anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists-other” classification so it could monitor anyone who disagrees with any government action. A 2021 inspector general report found that several FBI officials lied to cover up agency errors and dinged the agency for its systemic lack of rapid investigation of later convicted child sex abuser Larry Nassar.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
In opening statements on Monday, Manhattan prosecutors sought to convince a jury that former President Donald Trump “orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election.” Meanwhile, the perpetrators of the Russia-collusion hoax — the real criminal scheme that was orchestrated to meddle in that election — walk free.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg claims Trump broke the law after he classified payments made by his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, to pornographer Stormy Daniels, as “legal fees” rather than campaign expenditures. (It is not illegal to purchase negative press about oneself, and Trump likely would have run afoul of campaign finance laws if he had classified such an expense, which benefitted him personally rather than just his campaign, as a campaign payment.)
Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo, who formerly held a top post in President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice, alleged Monday during opening statements that “this was a planned, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior.”
“It was election fraud, pure and simple,” Colangelo continued, according to PBS News. “The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election. Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again.”
Manhattan prosecutors seek to put Trump in jail for up to four years. Meanwhile, the operatives who invented a hoax accusing Trump of being a Russian asset in 2016, commissioned a dossier of fake oppo research, and shopped it to the FBI — which then used the shoddy “research” as a basis to illegally spy on the Trump campaign — have received a light tap on the wrist, if any punishment at all.
Marc Elias, the Clinton campaign lawyer who commissioned the discredited dossier, received no punishment. The DNC and the Clinton campaign — which together provided funds for oppo research firm Fusion GPS to hire former British spy Christopher Steele, who put his name on the so-called “Steele dossier” — were fined $105,000 and $8,000, respectively, for labeling the payments as “legal and compliance consulting” and “legal services.” Clinton herself, who personally approved the decision to leak the false accusations to the press, was still suggesting the 2016 election was “stolen” from her as recently as 2022 and has never received any repercussions for the Russia hoax.
Russian national Igor Danchenko, the “primary sub-source” whose testimony Steele relied on in creating the dossier, “fed Steele false information about the Trump campaign, which a Clinton booster had invented.” Danchenko was indicted by Special Counsel John Durham for lying to the FBI about a 2016 phone call he claimed he received from an anonymous person who he thought was Sergei Millian. Danchenko claimed the anonymous caller revealed a “conspiracy of cooperation” between Trump and the Russians. These claims were added to the Steele dossier.
Evidence presented to the jury, as The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland noted at the time, indicated that “Danchenko did not know Millian and had not received any telephone calls during the relevant time frame that might fit the description of the call Danchenko claimed he received.”
Nevertheless, a jury in a deep-blue Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. acquitted Danchenko in 2022.
Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann was also acquitted, despite evidence suggesting he lied to then FBI-General Counsel James Baker in 2016. Sussman “presented Baker with data and whitepapers that supposedly showed the existence of a secret communications network between the Russian-based Alfa Bank and the Trump organization,” Cleveland explained. “According to the indictment [from Special Counsel John Durham], Sussmann was acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign and tech executive Rodney Joffe when he met with Baker, but falsely told his friend that he was coming on his own behalf to help the FBI.”
The only person who received any sentence was former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty to forging an email to get a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. Clinesmith, according to Federalist CEO Sean Davis’ reporting on Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s findings, “altered an email from a separate U.S. federal agency, believed to be the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to falsely state that [Trump campaign affiliate Carter] Page had never worked with the CIA to investigate suspected Russia agents operating within the U.S.”
“In fact,” Davis wrote, “as Clinesmith was told by the operative, Page had worked with the CIA previously, as well as with the FBI.”
Clinesmith was sentenced to 400 hours of community service and one year of probation.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
By Brian Freeman | Tuesday, 05 March 2024 10:03 AM EST
An Iranian intelligence officer is wanted in connection with planning to assassinate former and current U.S. officials in revenge for the 2020 killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Quds Force Cmdr. Qassem Soleimani, the FBI posted on X.
The FBI field office in Miami shared a wanted notice for Majid Dastjani Farahani in connection with the recruitment of individuals for various operations in the U.S., including for surveillance activities focused on religious sites, businesses, and other facilities in the U.S., according to Newsweek. The announcement by the FBI, which said Farahani is working directly or indirectly for Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, comes amid heightened tensions with Tehran as Iranian proxies inflame hostilities connected to the war in Gaza by attacking Israeli and American targets.
Although Tehran has denied its involvement in recent attacks against U.S. targets, two years ago Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi blamed former President Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for Soleimani’s killing and threatened that Muslims will take out martyr’s revenge against them, Newsweek reported.
In addition, Shahram Poursafi, a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, was indicted in 2022 for an alleged revenge plot to kill former national security adviser John Bolton, according to the New York Post.
After news of the latest threat, Pompeo and Brian Hook, former President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Iran, were given around-the-clock security, Semafor reported.
The U.S. Treasury Department in December announced sanctions against Farahani and another Iranian intelligence officer Mohammad Mahdi Khanpour Ardestani.
Soleimani oversaw a number of militias that targeted U.S. troops in Iraq, and had more “American blood on his hands” than any terrorist since Osama Bin Laden, according to a 2021 Department of Justice report on the Baghdad airstrike that killed him, the New York Post reported.
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
Democrats’ targeting of political opponents entered its next phase Friday, when the FBI arrested Blaze Media investigative reporter Steve Baker over covering the Jan. 6, 2021, demonstrations at the U.S. Capitol.
“This is the most humiliated I’ve ever been in my life,” Baker told independent reporter Breanna Morello following his release. My arrest “is for things I said. … That’s what they’re after; they’re [trying] to suppress our speech.”
Just caught up with journalist Steve Baker just moments after being released from federal custody.@TPC4USA details what he’s had to endure at the hands of the corrupt DOJ.
As The Federalist reported, federal authorities informed Baker and his legal team on Tuesday of a signed warrant for his arrest and instructed him to self-surrender for “alleged J6 crimes” in Dallas, Texas, on Friday morning. Baker has been at the forefront of reporting on the more questionable aspects of the Jan. 6 demonstrations.
While told he was being charged with “non-violent misdemeanors,” federal authorities declined to disclose to Baker or his lawyers what specific crimes underlie the arrest. According to Blaze News, the feds refused to reveal the charges ahead of Friday’s arrest because “they believe[d] Baker [would] post them on social media.” The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees individuals accused of a crime a right to “be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.”
After being transported to the courthouse on Friday morning in shackles, Baker was charged on four counts related to reporting on the Jan. 6 demonstrations: Knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority; Disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; Disorderly conduct in a capitol building; and Parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a capitol building.
Blaze Media Investigative Journalist @TPC4USA has now been taken into FBI custody for his J6 reporting
While egregious, Baker’s arrest is sadly unsurprising. The Marxists running Biden’s Democrat administration have gone to extreme lengths to weaponize the powers of government to target and prosecute their political opponents.
Former President Donald Trump is facing 91 indictments from Democrat prosecutors across four different venues, two of which involve charges from the Biden DOJ. These efforts coincide with Democrat attempts to kick Trump — Biden’s primary political opponent — off the ballot ahead of the 2024 election.
The Biden regime has also targeted faithful Christians. Not only have federal authorities infiltrated Catholic churches to surveil Christians attending Latin Mass, they’ve also imprisoned pro-life Christians who peacefully protested outside of an abortion clinic.
Don’t forget the federal government’s censorship-industrial complex. This heavily funded system is strategically designed to censor and silence dissenting voices online — even if the information these users share is true.
.@TPC4USA's first interview since being taken in by federal authorities with @SteveDeaceShow: "All of this is about the suppression of speech and teaching those of us on the Right side of the political spectrum what we can and cannot say and what is allowed." pic.twitter.com/kl12Ol7zPN
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
Blaze News investigative journalist Steve Baker said the FBI wants him to self-surrender to the agency Friday morning in Dallas over his January 6 reporting.
🚨BREAKING🧵- This time, it’s really happening.
Unlike the two previous threats my attorneys received from @FBI / @thejusticedept (Nov. 21 and Dec. 23), my self-surrender for alleged J6 crimes is set for this Friday morning in Dallas, TX. There is now a signed arrest warrant.⬇️
Baker told Blaze News he’s been instructed to turn himself in at the agency’s field office at 7 a.m. wearing “shorts and sandals” — which he said signals that the plan likely is to go for “humiliation” and place him in an orange jumpsuit, handcuff him, and do the “prisoner transport routine.”
He added that after he’s taken to the Dallas courthouse, he’ll appear at a 10 a.m. hearing before a federal magistrate.
“They didn’t have to go this route,” Baker told Blaze News on Tuesday evening. “We have been told that my charges are only misdemeanors. And my attorneys have been assured that this will be an ‘in and out’ affair with ‘no intention’ to detain me. But rather than issuing a simple order to appear, they went the ‘arrest warrant’ route.”
What’s more, Baker said he still does not know what the charges against him are, noting to Blaze News that the powers that be won’t tell his attorney about the charges because they believe Baker will post them on social media. Baker’s Dallas attorney, James Lee Bright, added to Blaze News that withholding the nature of the charges against his client is a “really unusual” move. Bright also said he’s hoping to get a copy of the complaint against Baker as early as possible Friday morning. Baker also said his legal team was told there was no request to the court for detention, no need for bail, and the expectation is that he’ll be released after the proceedings. Bright told Blaze News that he anticipates Friday’s hearing to be simple.
“We do not know if there will be pretrial travel restrictions, although that has been the norm for J6 defendants — even for misdemeanor defendants,” Baker also said. “It has also been universal that no J6ers are allowed to travel to Washington, D.C., which for obvious reasons will have a deleterious impact on my work. We also do not know if there will be any other accompanying restrictions or orders: gag order from talking about my case, no social media, limited social media, order to surrender devices and/or firearms. All unknowns.”
‘Absolute chilling effect’
Bright told Blaze News that he’s “disturbed” about what’s transpiring with his client, especially given that Baker has been “in full compliance” all this time. Bright also said the federal government “three-plus years later going after people who were legitimate functioning journalists that day” appears designed to have an “absolute chilling effect.”
“I’m not a depressive person, but I’m not happy about this,” Baker added to Blaze News. “I have prayed, ‘Lord, let this cup pass from me,’ but apparently it’s not going to.” However, he also said it will be a “relief” to get this first step over with.
Baker added that when he asked his other attorney, William Shipley, why the federal government is treating him like this, Shipley replied, “You know why. You’ve been poking them in the eye for three years”
Blaze Media editor in chief Matthew Peterson couldn’t agree more, saying in a Tuesday evening statement that “the federal government’s treatment of Steve Baker is outrageous.”
“He’s had unknown charges hanging over his head for years, but after we started working with him the government sprang back into action. There is no need to put him in a jumpsuit or handcuffs except as a humiliation ritual or a show, which seems to be exactly what they are planning on doing on Friday,” Peterson added.
“We will be showing the world footage from January 6 that shows Steve was clearly present that day as an independent journalist. Government retaliation such as this against journalists contradicts the very idea of a free press, the purpose of our form of government, and what once was the American way of life,” Peterson also noted, adding that “this should not be happening in America.”
What’s the background?
Baker announced in December that the FBI said the U.S. Department of Justice would be charging him for his Jan. 6 reporting — but two days later, he noted that the FBI said his self-surrender was postponed until after Christmas.
It’s been a waiting game ever since.
Here’s an interview BlazeTV’s Sara Gonzales conducted with Baker in December:
Last month, attorneys representing Baker told Blaze News that the U.S. Department of Justice may be orchestrating a “retaliation” against Baker over his Jan. 6 reporting.
“Steve’s actions on January 6 have been known to the Department of Justice for 3 years,” Baker’s attorneys said in a January news release. “But it is only now — after Steve has broken two major stories greatly embarrassing to the DOJ — that he is possibly being targeted for arrest and possibly felony prosecution. Any action taken to put him in handcuffs, hold him in custody, and have him transported to court by federal law enforcement will be nothing other than retaliation for his recent reporting.”
Baker discussed his legal saga in a pair of October commentary pieces for Blaze News (here and here), detailing the ins and outs of the federal investigation he’s been under following his independent journalistic work on Jan. 6, which began before he joined Blaze News.
What has been uncovered as a result of Baker’s investigations?
Baker’s first Jan. 6 analysis for Blaze News came last October, following countless hours in a House subcommittee office looking at frame after frame of Jan. 6 closed-circuit video — and it had him wondering: did Capitol Police Special Agent David Lazarus perjure himself in the Oath Keepers trial?
In December, Baker alleged he uncovered major irregularities involving Dunn, Capitol Police, the press, and U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland).
In January, Baker asserted that just-released U.S. Capitol closed-circuit TV video clips from Jan. 6 show Lazarus gave false testimony in the Oath Keepers trial.
Also in January, Baker and others were asking what the U.S. government has to hide in regard to the pipe bomb found on Jan. 6 at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. Baker followed up on that in February with another analysis titled “Capitol Police diverted all CCTV cameras away from DNC pipe bomb investigation — except one.”
Former President Donald Trump charged the incumbent administration of targeting Christians Thursday night with a speech at the National Religious Broadcasters International Christian Media Convention.
“Remember, every communist regime throughout history has tried to stamp out churches, just like every fascist regime has tried to co-opt them and control them. And in America, the radical left is trying to do both,” Trump said in Nashville. “They want to tear down crosses where they can, and cover them up with social justice flags.”
President Joe Biden, himself, is the second Catholic to hold the Oval Office. The far-left administration, however, has pioneered avenues of religious persecution against political opponents, primarily through the Department of Justice (DOJ).
1. Investigating Catholics as Terrorists
The FBI, under the Biden administration, infiltrated traditional Catholic parishes to investigate “white supremacy.”
In January last year, a leaked memo from the Bureau’s offices in Richmond, Virginia revealed the federal intelligence agency targeted “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics” as “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists” (RMVE). The FBI rescinded the memo once public discovery made headlines. But a new memo in August obtained by House Republicans shows the FBI’s surveillance of Catholics involved multiple field offices across the country.
“The document assesses with ‘high confidence’ the FBI can mitigate the threat of Radical-Traditionalist Catholics by recruiting sources within the Catholic Church,” reported former special agent-turned-whistleblower Kyle Seraphin.
The FBI rescinded the memo once public discovery made headlines. But a new memo in August obtained by House Republicans shows the FBI’s surveillance of Catholics included multiple field offices across the country.
2. Pro-Lifers Prosecuted for Prayer
The Department of Justice indicted 22 pro-life activists in 2022 while neglecting to go after pro-abortion extremists who firebombed pregnancy centers, according to a Federalist review. Among them include Paul Vaughn, one of a handful who was convicted for the crime of praying at an abortion facility in Tennessee. If his appeal fails, Vaughn, a father of 11, faces 11 years in prison and fines of up to $260,000.
The DOJ claims the pro-life activists “aided and abetted by one another, used force and physical obstruction to injure, intimidate and interfere with employees of the clinic and a patient who was seeking reproductive health services” when they spent most of their time praying.
An internal memo published in May last year revealed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used federal funds to launch a smear campaign against dissident groups, including Christian organizations.
Dan Schneider, the vice president of the Media Research Center’s Free Speech America, reported on the DHS operations in Fox News. According to the memo, the DHS funneled “$40 million taxpayer dollars away from bona fide anti-terrorism programs and into a weaponized operation deceptively known as the Targeted Violence & Terrorism Prevention Grant Program (TVTP).”
Groups investigated under the federal program include the Christian Broadcasting Network, founded by Pat Robertson in 1960.
4. Repeal of ‘Conscience’ Rule
In 2019, Trump issued the “conscience” rule to protect health care workers from administering treatments violating practitioners’ moral convictions on procedures such as abortion. Politico reported in the spring of 2022 that Biden was preparing to dismantle the Republican-era regulation. The final rule came last month rescinding protections.
“Some doctors, nurses, and hospitals, for example, object for religious or moral reasons to providing or referring for abortions or assisted suicide, among other procedures. Respecting such objections honors liberty and human dignity,” said the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). But, the agency added, “patients also have rights and health needs, sometimes urgent ones. The Department will continue to respect the balance Congress struck, work to ensure individuals understand their conscience rights, and enforce the law.”
5. Biden Admin Targets Largest Christian University
Last year, the Department of Education levied a nearly $38 million fine against Grand Canyon University, claiming the school engaged in deceptive advertising campaigns. The department said the school “lied to more than 7,500 former and current students about the cost of its doctoral programs over several years.”
The university appealed the record fine in November.
“I have spoken to thousands of students, parents, employees, alumni and community stakeholders in Arizona and they all tell me the same thing: We need to fight this tyranny from federal government agencies not only to stand up for ourselves but to ensure this type of ideological government overreach and weaponization of federal agencies does not happen to others,” Grand Canyon University President Brian Mueller said in a statement. “American people are losing confidence in the federal government to be fair and objective in their operations and there are clearly no checks and balances to prevent this type of behavior from the Department of Education, which is out of control and continues to broaden its authority and selective enforcement powers.”
Mueller told The Federalist one month prior that the federal government’s efforts to target the university were “obviously political.”
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
On Thursday, Special Counsel David Weiss unsealed an indictment charging a longtime confidential human source (CHS) with making false statements. But it wasn’t Christopher Steele, the CHS who threw the country into turmoil for four years by peddling the fraudulent Steele dossier. Former CHS Stefan Halper, who helped further the Russia-collusion hoax, also wasn’t the subject of the indictment. Nor was CHS Rodney Joffe, who sought to destroy the Trump presidency with the Alfa Bank hoax.
No, it was the CHS who, on June 26, 2020, told his handler that the owner of Burisma claimed he had paid Hunter and Joe Biden each $5 million in bribes in exchange for protection from being investigated by the Ukrainian prosecutor.
Thursday’s indictment revealed the name of that CHS for the first time — Alexander Smirnov — and alleged that Smirnov’s aforementioned statements, which were memorialized in an FD-1023 report, were false.
False Statements Allegations
Since news first broke of the existence of that FD-1023 last summer, House Republicans championed the CHS’s reporting as further evidence of Biden family corruption, while Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley focused on the Department of Justice’s apparent failure to investigate the veracity of the FD-1023 as part of their probe into Hunter Biden’s business affairs.
Weiss’s indictment presents a powerful case that Smirnov lied on June 26, 2020, when the CHS told his handler he’d had conversations with Burisma executives in 2015 and 2016: An investigation by Weiss’s team concluded Smirnov did not meet the Burisma executives until March 1, 2017, meaning the earlier conversations could not have occurred. The indictment references introductory emails that established the alleged accurate timing of events, as well as travel records of other individuals, which contradict Smirnov’s claims. That evidence, the special counsel’s office concluded, was sufficient to charge Smirnov with making false statements and creating a false record.
If Smirnov lied to his handler in June 2020 about his conversations with Burisma executives, the indictment is well deserved. Not only did Smirnov’s alleged lies violate the federal criminal statute that prohibits false statements, but they also proved especially damaging to society as a whole by interfering in the House’s impeachment inquiry.
The harm here is not merely that investigators wasted time chasing apparently false leads, or that Hunter and Joe Biden suffered from Smirnov’s allegedly false accusations, but also that Smirnov’s lies may overshadow the other unrelated — and substantial — evidence implicating the Bidens in a pay-to-play scandal, rendering it more difficult to obtain justice.
What About Other CHS Lies?
Smirnov, however, is but one CHS whose alleged lies have created havoc for our country.
Consider the lies peddled in the Steele dossier to our FBI. CHS Christopher Steele represented his sourcing as trusted, reliable, and well-placed when it was none of those things. That dossier led to the DOJ obtaining four unconstitutional surveillance warrants against an innocent American, resulted in our government spending millions investigating a hoax, and impaired the functioning of the Trump administration. Yet even after Grassley and Sen. Lindsey Graham referred the matter to the Department of Justice for a criminal investigation, Steele reaped no consequences for the lies he sowed.
Then there was CHS Stefan Halper who, according to an electronic communication, told the FBI the Russian-born Svetlana Lokhova had “latched” onto Michael Flynn at a Cambridge academic gathering and then, after the dinner, “surprised everyone and got into [Flynn’s] cab and joined [Flynn] on the train ride to London.” Halper, however, never attended the dinner, so he could not have witnessed any of the happenings, and the supposed cab ride was completely fictional.
The FBI’s summary of his debriefing also memorialized Halper claiming Trump volunteer Carter Page asked Halper during a July 18, 2016, meeting whether he “would want to join the Trump campaign as a foreign policy adviser.” In an exclusive interview with The Federalist in 2020, however, Page, “unequivocally denied asking Halper ‘to be a foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign.’”
Add to those two sources Rodney Joffe, the CHS who helped concoct the Alfa Bank hoax. That fairytale went that the Trump organization had a secret communication channel with Putin operating through the Russian-based Alfa Bank. Joffe peddled that tale to the FBI and, with the help of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, pushed the CIA to investigate this second Russia hoax just as the Trump presidency was beginning.
While the double standard is infuriating, assuming the allegations against Smirnov are true, charges are eminently justified. Also justified? Impeaching David Weiss.
Thursday’s indictment established that no one in U.S. Attorney Weiss’s office investigated Smirnov’s serious claims against Hunter and Joe Biden until after Grassley released a copy of the FD-1023 on July 20, 2023. It would be over a month later before FBI investigators would speak with Smirnov’s handler about the FD-1023. And, according to the indictment, it was not until Sept. 27, 2023, that the FBI interviewed Smirnov. That timeline confirms the incompetence of Weiss in handling the investigation into Hunter Biden because in October 2020, Weiss’s Delaware office received “a substantive briefing” concerning the FD-1023 from the Pittsburgh U.S. attorney’s office.
In the run-up to the 2020 election, then-Attorney General William Barr tasked then-Pittsburgh U.S. Attorney Scott Brady with screening evidence related to Ukraine. Last year, Brady testified before the House Judiciary Committee about that screening process, including how his team handled the FD-1023.
Brady explained the Pittsburgh FBI office sought to corroborate anything they could from the FD-1023, but he noted that his office lacked the authority to use a grand jury for the screening process. Brady’s team nonetheless succeeded in obtaining travel records of the CHS and “interfaced with the CHS’s handler about certain statements relating to travel and meetings to see if they were consistent with his or her understanding.”
What they were able to identify, Brady testified, was consistent with the CHS’s representations in the FD-1023. Additionally, the CHS was a longtime source for the FBI and considered “highly reliable” — something the indictment confirms given his length of service and the government authorizing Smirnov to commit crimes while operating as a CHS.
Brady further testified that his office had vetted the FD-1023 and the CHS “against known sources of Russian disinformation.” To conduct that analysis, his team worked with the Eastern District of New York. “It was found that it was not sourced from Russian disinformation,” Brady told the House Judiciary Committee.
Then when his team finished screening the FD-1023 and other evidence related to Ukraine, a Pittsburgh assistant U.S. attorney briefed Weiss’s office on the evidence, explaining how they had screened it, and noting they concluded it had “some indicia of credibility” and should be investigated further.
Thursday’s indictment of Smirnov suggests the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office sat on the FD-1023 for nearly three years, until after Grassley released a copy to the public. Instead, Weiss’s office offered Hunter Biden a sweetheart plea agreement, which fell apart only because the federal judge assigned to the case inquired into the strange arrangement that appeared to give Hunter Biden blanket immunity in a pretrial diversion agreement — something she had never seen before.
Special Counsel Weiss clearly knows how bad this looks because, in the indictment, he tried to spin the assessment into the FD-1023 as being closed out by the Pittsburgh FBI office, implying that is why his office did not conduct any further investigative steps.
“By August 2020, FBI Pittsburgh concluded that all reasonable steps had been completed regarding the Defendant’s allegations and that their assessment, 58A-PG-3250958, should be closed,” Weiss wrote. “On August 12, 2020, FBI Pittsburgh was informed that the then-FBI Deputy Director and then-Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States concurred that it should be closed.”
However, as former Attorney General Barr has made clear numerous times, the Pittsburgh office was merely charged with screening the evidence, and the investigation into the FD-1023 “wasn’t closed down.”
“On the contrary,” Barr stressed, “it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”
No further investigation occurred, however. That alone should justify Weiss’s removal — and not merely for what he failed to do, but also because the country can’t trust that his special counsel team will follow all the leads, including the ones we don’t know about.
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
Ray Epps, in the red Trump hat, center, gestures to a line of law enforcement officers, as people gather on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
A member of Congress investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, protest at the U.S. Capitol estimates the FBI had 200 undercover assets both inside and outside the building.
“We believe that there were easily 200 FBI undercover assets operating in the crowd, outside the Capitol, embedded into groups that entered the Capitol or provoked entry of the Capitol,” Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., said.
Higgins appeared on the Tucker Carlson Network for an interview that aired Saturday, the third anniversary of the day now commonly known as J6. He’s among the few elected Republicans still questioning the official media narrative about the day’s events.
“Given the scope of the operation and the number of doors where entry was allowed or even encouraged—and the number of people that were actually outside the Capitol and that entered—we believe 200 [is a] conservative number,” Higgins said of his estimate.
Carlson reacted with alarm.
“It’s shocking what you’re saying and confirms everyone’s worst suspicions about this,” Carlson told Higgins. “It’s clearly true.”
Based on the evidence he’s reviewed, Higgins said FBI assets worked with the local Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department and U.S. Capitol Police. The assets were dressed as supporters of then-President Donald Trump inside the Capitol, “because those were the guys that knew their way around the Capitol.”
Ep. 61 This the smartest, best informed account of what actually happened on January 6th. pic.twitter.com/U9yCWRVJSd
FBI Director Christopher Wray has refused to answer questions about undercover FBI assets on Jan. 6, telling Higgins at a congressional hearing, “You should not read anything into my decision not to share information on confidential human sources.”
In remarks about the Jan. 6 anniversary, Attorney General Merrick Garland boasted Friday that more than 1,250 individuals have been charged for their involvement, with more than 890 convicted.
“Since the Jan. 6 attack, the Justice Department has engaged in what has become one of the largest and most complex and resource-intensive investigations in our history,” Garland said. “Our work continues.”
President Joe Biden used the anniversary of Jan. 6 to attack Trump in his first campaign speech of 2024.
“It was on that day that we nearly lost America, lost it all,” Biden said Friday at a speech in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
Carlson opened his interview with Higgins by criticizing “professional liars” who have presented a one-sided narrative about what happened on that day. Higgins, who worked in law enforcement before his election to Congress, has led the charge after being frustrated by the official congressional committee that investigated Jan. 6, which was stacked with anti-Trump lawmakers. Ever since Republicans reclaimed control of the House in 2023, members like Higgins have pressed for answers.
For example, as a member of Congress familiar with the U.S. Capitol, Higgins said it’s unfathomable to believe that everyday Americans in Washington, D.C., would know how to navigate the building without help.
“There’s no way they can come in some random door that gets opened and then get their way directly to Statuary [Hall] or the House chamber or the Senate chamber. It’s just not possible,” Higgins explained. “The FBI assets that were dressed as Trump supporters that were inside the Capitol were there, I believe, and evidence indicates that they were there to specifically wave in the Trump supporters that had gathered outside the Capitol.”
Tucker Carlson said Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., is “one of the only” members of Congress asking tough questions about what really happened on Jan. 6, 2021. (Photo: Tucker Carlson Network)
Higgins told Carlson these undercover assets guided protesters “directly to the areas where the FBI, the DOJ, and the Deep State actors” would later be able to implicate them for arrest and prosecution.
When pressed on who could have orchestrated such a massive operation, Higgins put the blame on not on a single person but rather a combination of anti-Trump actors working in cahoots with Democrats.
“It’s a complex web of FBI assets across the country that can be activated. So, if you have authority at some of the highest levels in the FBI, it doesn’t take much,” Higgins said. He added that those who planned it were “the faction within the FBI and within our intelligence services that would coordinate with the most extreme liberal factions within the Democrat Party that were desperate to keep Trump out of office.”
Higgins identified the 200 undercover assets as confidential informants, registered informants, nonregistered informants, and voluntary informants. Ultimately, Higgins said, they had a goal of tarnishing not just Trump’s reputation but also the people associated with the Make America Great Again movement.
“Their objective was to destroy the entire MAGA movement,” Higgins said, “to forever stain the patriotic fervor that was associated with the America First MAGA movement that had won in 2016 and we believe won again in 2020.”
Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., talks with Micki Witthoeft, mother of Ashli Babbitt, who was killed by Capitol Police on J6. Higgins met her during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 12, 2023. (Photo: Tom Williams/Getty Images)
Higgins called the FBI’s involvement “conspiratorial corruption,” and said it predated Jan. 6 for many months when FBI assets were engaged in online forums of Americans who questioned COVID-19 restrictions and the integrity of the 2020 presidential election.
“I’m following the evidence, and to my horror, it implicates our FBI at the highest level,” Higgins told Carlson. “A conspiracy within our government at the highest level to set the stage for a compromised election cycle in 2020. And then the actions that took place on J4, 5, and 6, and then the criminal investigation, arrest, and prosecution of Americans that they were able to entrap.”
Higgins, who was first elected in 2016 to represent southwestern Louisiana, is now pressing House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to release more information, beyond just video footage, about Jan. 6. He said the only true way to uncover what really happened is for the American people to have access.
“He has a responsibility to fully release that data,” Higgins said of Johnson. “And then the American people will see for themselves what some of us have already learned, to our horror, to be true.”
Minneapolis Police department is hiring because it is way understaffed but would want a job with low pay and low rewards and at the risk of going to jail or prison for just doing your job.
Attorneys threaten more legal action against Minneapolis for failing to hire police
The UMLC demanded that Minneapolis take “concrete measures” to meet the minimum staffing requirement of 731 police officers.
The Upper Midwest Law Center (UMLC) sent a letter Monday to the City of Minneapolis demanding that the city fulfill its obligation to fund, employ, and retain a minimum of 731 police officers.
In its letter, the UMLC, a public interest law firm that specializes in constitutional violations, called out Minneapolis for failing to abide by Minnesota Supreme Court case Spann v. Minneapolis CityCouncil…. READ MORE
Cartoon – The Authoritarian left trying to silence and jail their political opponents are accusing Trump of being an Authoritarian Dictator.
It is becoming evident that the accusations against Trump stem from political motivations rather than a genuine concern for democratic values. The Corporate Media, Soros Prosecutors, and the Democrats, in collaboration with elements within the DOJ and FBI, seek to undermine Trump’s campaign by painting him as an authoritarian figure. This strategy was employed to delegitimize his administration(Russia Hoax), hinder his policy agenda, and now destroy his 2024 campaign.
The allegation that Trump is an authoritarian dictator, as espoused by the Left, DOJ, FBI, and the Democratic Party, is viewed skeptically by many because their accusations are politically motivated and reflect a paradox wherein those making the claims are themselves exhibiting authoritarian tendencies. This underscores the importance of maintaining a robust and unbiased justice system to ensure the protection of our judicial, constitutional, and American values, regardless of political affiliations.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
The FBI interviewed a priest and choir director affiliated with a Catholic church in Richmond as part of an agency probe of “radical-traditional Catholics” as “potential domestic terrorists,” according to a new congressional report out Monday.
The interim staff report from the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government revealed the FBI under President Joe Biden “abused its counterterrorism tools to target Catholic Americans” and “relied on at least one undercover agent to develop its assessment.”
“The FBI even proposed developing sources among the Catholic clergy and church leadership,” House investigators wrote.
The violent rise in antisemitism from supporters of Hamas terrorists’ fight against Israel, meanwhile, has escaped the same “domestic terrorism” treatment that President Joe Biden’s administration applied to traditional Catholics, as well as to parents who protested Covid lockdowns and inappropriate content in their kids’ schools. (A separate interim staff report from the Weaponization Committee in March found the Biden administration had “no legitimate basis” for investigating parents as terrorists.)
The White House was asked in October if the administration that directed counterterrorism resources toward concerned parents at school board meetings would apply the same “domestic terrorist” label to terrorist sympathizers who cheer violence against Jews.
“The people in this country making violent antisemitic threats. Are they domestic terrorists?” inquired Fox News’ Peter Doocy at a White House press briefing.
“I don’t know that we’re classifying people as domestic terrorists for that,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. “I mean, that’s really a question better left to law enforcement. I’m not aware that there’s been such a characterization of that.”
Since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel that killed upwards of 1,200 civilians, violent and explicitly antisemitic demonstrators showing solidarity with Hamas have terrorized Jewish Americans. In late October, Jewish students at a Manhattan science and art school were compelled to take shelter at a campus library as anti-Israel protesters stormed the building. Demonstrators in Times Square even presented Swastikas at a rally celebrating the massacre of Jews.
Jewish students at Cooper Union College have been locked inside the library for their own safety as a mob of anti Israeli protesters block the doors.
Anyone could easily predict what the FBI protocol would be had recent anti-Israel demonstrations been full of right-wingers waving Confederate flags. The federal intelligence agency kicked into high gear six years ago to prosecute those involved in Charlottesville’s “Unite the Right” rally in 2017, even raiding an organizer’s Discord chats.
After carrying a Confederate flag through the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a 53-year-old man was sentenced to three years in prison. The presence of a few Confederate banners at the rally that day earned endless headlines in nearly every major publication.
And eight years after the Confederate banner was taken down at the South Carolina state house, the Palestinian flag is now being raised over one town in Massachusetts.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
By Chris PandolfoFox News | Published December 5, 2023 11:01am EST | Updated December 5, 2023 12:32pm EST
FBI Director Christopher Wray testified Tuesday that the terror threat facing the United States has reached unprecedented levels since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., asked Wray to describe the current “threat matrix” facing the United States at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
“What I would say that is unique about the environment that we’re in right now in my career is that while there may have been times over the years where individual threats could have been higher here or there than where they may be right now, I’ve never seen a time where all the threats or so many of the threats are all elevated, all at exactly the same time,” the FBI director replied.
“So, blinking red lights analogy about 9/11 — all the lights were blinking red before 9/11, apparently,” Graham continued. “Obviously, all of us missed it. Would you say there’s multiple blinking red lights out there?” he asked.
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on December 05, 2023 in Washington, DC. Wray used the oversight hearing to call for a renewal the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s Section 702 authorities, which allow the FBI and other intelligence agencies to spy on foreigners. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“I see blinking red lights everywhere,” Wray answered.
He later told Graham that since the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, when Hamas terrorists brutally murdered at least 1,200 Israelis, a “veritable rogue’s gallery of foreign terrorists” has called for attacks against the U.S.
“The threat level has gone to a whole nother level since Oct. 7,” Wray emphasized.
U.S. Navy destroyer USS Carney. The Pentagon has confirmed 74 attacks by Iranian-backed proxy groups on U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17. (U.S. Navy via Associated Press/File)
The director’s comments on Tuesday echo what he said in October, when he warned Senate lawmakers, “The actions of Hamas and its allies will serve as an inspiration the likes of which we haven’t seen since ISIS launched its so-called caliphate several years ago.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in October that reported threats against Jewish, Muslim and Arab communities in the United States spiked in the days and weeks after the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
The number of attacks on U.S. military bases overseas by Iran-backed proxy groups rose in November as well, with the Pentagon confirming at least 74 attacks on U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East since Oct. 17.
The 74 attacks on U.S. troops have taken place in Iraq and Syria and began on Oct. 17 by Iraqi militia groups. The attacks are reportedly linked to the U.S.’s support for Israel in its retaliation against the Palestinian militant group Hamas, following its attack on Oct. 7.
The attacks do not include ballistic missiles being shot in the direction of U.S. military vessels, which commanding officers on those ships have ordered to be shot down.
At home, the FBI and Las Vegas police this week foiled an alleged “lone wolf” terror plot by a teenager who pledged support to ISIS.
On Friday, a 16-year-old suspect was arrested, and federal agents found components to build an explosive device and terrorist propaganda, officials said. The arrest was made after the suspect allegedly made special media posts announcing his plan for “lone wolf operations in Las Vegas against the enemies of Allah.”
Fox News Digital’s Greg Wehner, Liz Friden and Chris Eberhart contributed to this report.
Chris Pandolfo is a writer for Fox News Digital. Send tips to chris.pandolfo@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @ChrisCPandolfo. j
FBI Director Chris Wray admitted Tuesday that he has not fired anyone over the anti-Catholic memo. Pictured: Wray testifies during the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on Nov. 17, 2022. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images)
FBI Director Chris Wray admitted to Sen. Josh Hawley that he has not fired anyone at the FBI’s Richmond office over the memo urging the FBI to investigate “radical traditional Catholics.”
“You haven’t fired anybody,” Hawley, a Missouri Republican, said to Wray in a Senate hearing Tuesday.
He pressed Wray on the FBI Richmond office’s Jan. 23 memo citing the Southern Poverty Law Center in urging an investigation of “radical, traditional Catholic hate groups.” After a whistleblower published it in February, the FBI rescinded that memo, saying it did not reach the bureau’s standards. Hawley cited a report that the House Judiciary Committee and the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released on the Catholic memo Monday.
“In fact, what the House found is what is it, you admonished them,” Hawley said. Mockingly, he added, “Oh I feel much better. They’ve been sent to bed without food.”
“Good heavens, director! This is one of the most outrageous targetings,” the senator added. “You have mobilized your division, the most powerful law enforcement division in the world, against traditionalist Catholics—whatever the heck that means—and you have just told us you have not fired a single person.”
He went on to cite the House report, which found that key staff at the Richmond office did not see a problem with the report.
“What are you going to do about this? Are you going to fire these people or not?” the senator pressed.
“Those individuals have all been admonished and it is all going into their… annual performance reviews, which has direct impact on their compensation, among other things,” Wray responded.
BREAKING: @HawleyMO slams Wray: "This is one of the most outrageous targetings. You have mobilized your division against traditionalist Catholics—whatever the heck that means—and you have just told us you have not fired a single person" responsible. pic.twitter.com/JA1PPrpscv
The FBI memo urged agents to probe the supposed nexus between “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and “radical-traditional Catholics,” citing the Southern Poverty Law Center and including a list of SPLC-designated “hate groups” for agents to target.
The FBI told The Daily Signal that it was rescinding the memo after FBI whistleblower Kyle Seraphin published it on UncoverDC.com on Feb. 8. The national FBI office claimed that the memo “does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI” and promised to remove the document from its systems and “conduct a review of the basis for the document,” but it refused to answer further questions about the move.
As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC took the program it has used to bankrupt organizations associated with the Ku Klux Klan and weaponized it against conservative groups, partially to scare donors into ponying up cash and partially to silence ideological opponents. The SPLC places conservative groups on a “hate map” with KKK chapters.
After the SPLC fired its co-founder amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal in 2019, a former staffer claimed that the SPLC’s accusations of “hate” are a “cynical fundraising scam” aimed at “bilking northern liberals.” Critics across the political spectrum have voiced opposition and alarm at the organization’s hate group smears. A terrorist even targeted an SPLC-designated “hate group” in Washington, D.C., in 2012, and he told the FBI he used the “hate map” to find his target. The SPLC condemned that act of terror, but kept the target on the list and the map.
The SPLC has also suggested that the Catholic Church itself holds a position on human sexuality that would qualify it as a “hate group.”
Millions of Twitter accounts that interacted with former President Donald Trump’s online profile appear to be under the purview of special counsel Jack Smith’s search warrant from January of this year, according to a government transparency suit.
The court-authorized warrant on Twitter, which the tech company fought and even attempted to warn Trump about, sought “all information from … the [Trump] account, including all lists of Twitter users who have favorited or retweeted tweets posted by the account, as well as all tweets that include the username associated with the account (i.e. ‘mentions’ or ‘replies’).” The highly specific request potentially implicates millions of users on the platform, now known as X, just because they liked or retweeted a Trump post.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Tens of thousands of protesters have flooded city streets across Spain since October in sustained demonstrations opposing a socialist takeover of the Spanish government. Protesters are showing their opposition toward an amnesty deal between Spain’s socialist President Pedro Sánchez and treasonous Catalan separatists, who violated the Spanish constitution in 2017 by attempting to secede from Spain. By striking a deal to free incarcerated and exiled Spanish criminals, Sánchez was able to secure a third term in power.
The protests are organized by Spain’s conservative People’s Party and Vox, its further right, populist party. In an interview between Vox President Santiago Abascal and Tucker Carlson last week, Abascal explained that the amnesty deal is a crime “against the constitution” and “national unity.”
Ep. 40 Spain’s descent into tyranny seems eerily familiar. Opposition leader Santiago Abascal is one of the few people standing up to it. We traveled to Madrid to talk to him.
TIMESTAMPS: 1:11 Santiago Abascal 2:23 The end of democracy in Spain 8:43 “Are you ready to go to jail… pic.twitter.com/fE4zrYrqAC
But the massive demonstrations are not just in defense of the Spanish Constitution, Abascal explained; they’re about what an illegal third Sánchez term means for Spain, namely a failing Spanish economy, two-tier justice, mass illegal immigration from Muslim countries, speech policing, globalism, the demonization of Spanish history, and loss of Spanish identity.
Where Are the American Demonstrations?
The problems faced by Spaniards are strikingly similar to those facing Americans. The American left hates our heritage so much they torched American cities and destroyed historical statues and monuments for an entire summer.Our corrupt president, Joe Biden, was able to take power thanks to a rigged election, and his administration has weaponized the federal government against his most prominent political adversary, former President Donald Trump, and anyone in ideological opposition to the Democrats.
The Biden administration’s disregard for border security encourages mass illegal immigration at the Southern Border, exposing the public to dangerous criminals and additional economic burdens while the middle class struggles to stay afloat amid increasing taxes, inflation, and gas prices. And despite the public’s rapidly increasing suffering, Biden prioritizes sending billions of tax dollars to foreign wars and international green energy projects.
All these things, but particularly the federal government’s targeting of conservatives and its assault on election integrity, should be sparking massive protests. Yet they aren’t. Unlike Spain, America was founded on the idea that human beings have God-given, inalienable rights. Freedom of speech and assembly are not just First Amendment givens in the United States, but part of our culture. So why aren’t conservatives protesting?
Using fear and intimidation, the left is scaring conservatives into giving up their freedom to assemble. One of the primary fear tactics is to severely punish those who, on Jan. 6, 2021, opted to protest Democrat’s election-rigging practices, such as mass mail-in balloting and Big Tech censorship. As newly-released Jan. 6 footage further reveals, many of the Jan. 6 protesters accused of rioting were peaceful.
Yet federal courts openly admitted to making examples out of peaceful protesters in order to “deter others.” J6 demonstrators have been harassed by federal agents, held in solitary confinement, and demonized by the Jan. 6 Committee, Biden, and the corporate media.
Conservatives aren’t just afraid — they’re also hopeless.After witnessing the Marxist race riots of 2020 and the erasure of their civil liberties during Covid, many Americans no longer recognize their homeland. A recent Harvard Harris poll shows that 80 percent of GOP voters feel the country is headed in the wrong direction. Meanwhile, a July 2023 poll reported that 86.92 million Americans find “somewhat” or “very” difficult to pay their household expenses, with the middle class being the most affected income bracket.
How many times have we heard friends and family members say, “The country is lost?” This fear and despair are understandable, but the stakes have never been higher. Bravery and self-sacrifice are necessary to defend a nation against forces wishing to destroy it. As Abascal explained to Tucker:
“The nation isn’t just made up of all the Spaniards here today, it’s not just the people you can see walking down the street. Our nation is our history. It’s in the cemeteries where our forebears rest. The nation is the sum of the living, the dead, and those yet to be born… I think that what we do today, even if we aren’t victorious as we hope, can make it so that others in the future, our children, future generations, can achieve that victory. [Then] it will have all been worthwhile.”
Spain Understands The Stakes
Spain has first-hand experience with communism. When communists controlled Spain, both in the lead-up to and during the civil war in the 1930s, it resulted in the persecution of Spanish intellectuals, clerics, and Christian laypeople. Spanish communists began their anti-Christian hate by banning all religious schools, removing crucifixes from classrooms, and deeming all religious marriages invalid in the eyes of the state. Eventually, they started burning Catholic Churches and mass executing Catholic religious and laypeople. Property rights were thrown out, and conservatives were unjustly convicted in kangaroo courts and executed. By the end of the war, a reported “13 bishops, 4,172 priests, 2,364 monks and friars and 283 nuns and sisters,” and an unknown number of laypeople were killed.
The wounds inflicted by Spanish communists are still raw. The memory has not died. So, in 2022, Spain implemented its “Democratic Memory” law, an Orwellian piece of legislation that mandates a pro-leftist view of the Spanish Civil War and the post-war period. Through “criminal and economic sanctions for dissidents,” the law effectively eradicates “academic freedom, freedom of expression and freedom of education,” writes Hermann Tertsch, a Vox Member of the European Parliament.
Like in America, Spanish leftists brand anyone who contradicts their history narratives as thought criminals. According to Abascal, leftists have also created a two-tier justice system and “are now arresting young people for protest[ing] … saying they don’t have permits.” Unfortunately for the left, these fear tactics have not been entirely effective, as the ongoing protests demonstrate, perhaps because too many Spaniards know what communist control looks like.
In America, we are blessed not to know. However, that blessing is also a curse. We don’t appreciate how easily a free nation can fall into tyranny. Unable to oppose or even recognize tyranny, younger generations have lost touch with the American revolutionary spirit after sending generations of Americans to spend their formative years in reeducation camps run by cultural Marxists (aka public school and the university system).
Perhaps a way to regain America’s lost fortitude is by watching conservative freedom fighters in Spain. We may not have the national memory of communists burying priests alive or defiling and decapitating nuns, but we can look to Spain for motivation.
Indeed, the Spanish protests should inspire Americans, and Spanish history should be a warning.If we resign ourselves to failure or allow ourselves to be intimidated into silence, the consequences will be nothing short of complete national destruction.
Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.
After Hamas massacred 1,400 men, women, and children in Israel last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that the terror group “and its allies” could inspire attacks on Americans “here on our own soil.” He also told the Senate that the FBI is conducting “multiple, ongoing investigations” into people affiliated with the U.S.-designated terrorist group.
What Wray didn’t say is that the FBI has been investigating Hamas’ biggest ally in America for the past 30 years — without seeking any charges. Launched in 1994 as a secret front organization to support Hamas, according to declassified FBI wiretap transcripts and FBI testimony, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has, in the decades since, become an accepted member of Washington’s lobbying community. The New York Times and other influential newspapers routinely describe CAIR as a “Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.”
Although it has not repudiated its support for Hamas — which is committed to the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people — CAIR was enlisted by the Biden administration in May to take part in a White House initiative to fight antisemitism.
On Oct. 7, the day Hamas terrorists butchered 1,400 Jews, including 33 Americans — raping many and abducting some 240 others to Gaza from southern Israel — CAIR’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, delivered an anti-Israel message in Arabic which seemed to justify what Hamas did. Translated into English, it read: “All Arab peoples must go out on Sunday, Oct. 8 — and every day — in demonstrations in support of the Palestinians and in rejection of normalization with the occupier and the apartheid regime [Israel].”
On Saturday afternoon, CAIR helped rally more than 100,000 Muslims in D.C. to instead condemn Israel for supposedly carrying out “genocide” in Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 attacks. Multiple speakers called for the destruction of Israel — and, by implication, the Jewish people there — by demanding Palestinians take all the lands “from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea.”
Awad was front and center, delivering a fiery speech bashing Israel and President Biden for not calling on Israel to stop bombing Hamas targets inside Gaza, which he called “genocidal attacks.” He threatened to hurt Biden at the ballot box in 2024 if he does not urge a ceasefire.
“We have discovered the language that President Biden understands: ‘No ceasefire, no votes,’” Awad bellowed to the crowd, which erupted into a chant repeating his words. “No votes in Michigan, no votes anywhere if you do not call for a ceasefire now. He then led a chant: “Free, free Palestine!”
Also, Awad promised to provide legal support to Muslim Americans who protest in support of Palestine. “We are with you,” he said. “The people of Gaza rely on your voices and activism.”
Protesters later marched on the White House, where they defaced the white brick gate of the Executive Mansion with red paint symbolizing the blood of Gazans who have died from the Israeli army’s counterstrikes. Awad is on record declaring his support for Hamas. At Barry University in 1994, for example, he said: “I am in support of the Hamas movement.”
CAIR did not respond to requests for comment, but without addressing specifics, it has previously argued it “is not a ‘front group for Hamas.’” The White House declined to comment, while the FBI claimed charging CAIR or its executives was outside its authority. “The FBI is an investigative agency and we don’t make the decisions about filing charges or prosecuting a case,” FBI spokeswoman Susan McKee said. “Prosecutors make those decisions.” The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.
While CAIR is now a mainstay of American politics — headquartered just three blocks from the U.S. Capitol, with 35 offices across the country — its history reveals its close connections with terror groups such as Hamas, as detailed in the 2009 book this reporter co-authored with counterterrorism expert P. David Gaubatz, Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America.
The story began in the Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan in the 1960s, where Awad and a co-founder of CAIR, Omar Ahmad, were born. Both men eventually came to the United States for university studies. By 1992, Awad was a key member of the so-called Palestine Committee in America, which helped finance Hamas. According to a 1992 letter from the Gaza Strip, Hamas asked the Committee for money to buy “weapons, weapons, our brothers.” The letter continued: “The meaning of killing a Jew for the liberation of Palestine cannot be compared to any jihad on earth.”
Around the same time, the FBI was eavesdropping on several Hamas leaders in connection with terrorist activities, which produced tapes documenting the incarnation of CAIR in 1993. At a secret meeting that October, Omar Ahmad called to order the Hamas summit in Philly at a Courtyard by Marriott hotel in Philadelphia to discuss the formation of a new front organization to support their “movement” in America. Awad also attended the meeting.
According to court testimony by FBI agent Lara Burns, who runs a major counterterrorism program for the bureau, Ahmad, Awad, and the other leaders who gathered there hatched a scheme to disguise overseas payments to Hamas terrorists and their families as charity. FBI wiretaps also recorded them stating the need to deceive Americans about the true aims of their planned American front group as Hamas launched a campaign of terror attacks on Israel known as the “Intifada.”
They compared the deception to the “head fake” in basketball, where a shooter tricks an opponent guarding him into moving in a different direction. The group, according to the wiretap transcripts, envisioned an “alternative” organization whose pro-Palestinian stripes were “not very conspicuous.” Burns testified CAIR was what they had in mind. During the talks, they tried to mislead any authorities who might be listening in by referring to Hamas as “Samah” — Hamas spelled backward.
Ahmad would co-found CAIR in 1994, hiring Awad as executive director that same year. Both men have expressed hatred toward Israel and resentment toward their adopted country for helping fund and arm the Jewish nation.
Burns testified during the 2008 terrorism trial of a charitable front for Hamas known as the Holy Land Foundation. It was the largest terror funding case in U.S. history. As part of the court filings, the Justice Department included CAIR on a list of co-conspirators underwriting Hamas terrorism — though CAIR and its founders were never indicted in the case. The HLF, busted up as the main fundraising arm of Hamas in America, commingled funds, assets, and personnel with CAIR, according to tax records and court documents.
“CAIR has been identified by the government as a participant in an ongoing and ultimately unlawful conspiracy to support a designated terrorist organization [Hamas] — a conspiracy from which CAIR never withdrew,” said former Assistant U.S. Attorney James Jacks, who was the lead prosecutor in the case.
A federal judge agreed. “The government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR with Hamas,” then-U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis wrote in a July 2009 ruling.
A number of FBI counterterrorism agents were frustrated that CAIR’s national office and executives were never charged in the conspiracy, although the founder of CAIR’s Texas chapter was sentenced to prison. They said politics intervened. After 9/11, they said FBI headquarters viewed CAIR as a link to the Muslim community through which they might obtain tips about terror threats to the homeland. Brass even invited CAIR officials up to the executive suites located on the seventh floor of the Hoover building to discuss outreach policy.
“We said, ‘These are the bad guys, this is Hamas. What are you doing?’” former FBI Special Agent John Guandolo said, describing how he and other agents protested the special treatment afforded CAIR.
After CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF’s criminal scheme to funnel more than $12 million to Hamas terrorists, the FBI finally disengaged from the group. The agency stopped conducting formal outreach with CAIR’s national office until, it said, it could resolve issues with Awad and other worrisome leaders.
“Until we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas, the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner,” then-Assistant FBI Director Richard Powers said in a 2009 letter to the Senate.
But some investigators say the FBI should have shut down the group, not just the outreach program, issuing search warrants and conducting more intrusive surveillance, which they say would have allowed the government to run the Hamas front out of business.
“CAIR is the leading Hamas entity inside the United States, and the FBI has taken no action to prosecute them,” said Guandolo, who helped lead several major counterterrorism probes at the Washington field office after 9/11. He explained that “politically correct” FBI leadership is hesitant to go after a minority religious group and is overly sensitive to charges of “Islamophobia” often leveled by CAIR against its critics.
The FBI’s reluctance to roll up the Hamas front has pushed private investigators to take matters into their own hands. In 2008, a counterterrorism specialist led a team of investigators in a daring undercover operation of CAIR that included infiltrating its national headquarters located on New Jersey Avenue in Washington, D.C., near the Capitol building. Working as interns, the investigators, who posed as recent converts to Islam wearing traditional Muslim garb, secretly video-recorded conversations with CAIR officials. During the six-month operation, they also intercepted more than 12,000 pages of documents CAIR intended to shred as trash. The evidence, which was turned over to the FBI, is documented in Muslim Mafia, which also features an appendix with several key internal CAIR documents reprinted.
Among other things, the book revealed that CAIR employed violent Islamic terrorists, and then supported the terrorists behind the scenes even after they were convicted. It also uncovered an influence operation against members of key homeland security committees in Congress that included planting CAIR operatives in congressional offices. Internal CAIR documents laid out a plan to elect dozens of pro-Hamas Muslims to Congress. CAIR even started holding Muslim prayer sessions each Friday in the basement of the Capitol.
Muslim Mafia also traced the deeper roots of Hamas back to the secretive Muslim Brotherhood, the pro-jihad group founded in Egypt that built a sophisticated network of Islamic nonprofits inside the U.S. several decades ago. The book documented how Muslim Brotherhood leaders wrote a secret blueprint for “destroying [America] from within … so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” FBI investigators discovered the manifesto stashed in a sub-basement of a Brotherhood leader’s home in Annandale, Virginia, after raiding his residence as part of a terrorism probe.
Several alarmed Republican members of Congress held a press conference about the book’s findings, warning a Hamas terror front group was infiltrating Congress.
Besides exposing Hamas’ political arm in America, the book exposed the inner workings of the broader anti-Israel lobby, which includes several left-wing groups aligned with CAIR. This lobby is now revealing itself in the wake of Israel’s own 9/11.
“The seeds for 9/11 were planted in 1948,” according to a draft of a “Proposed Muslim Platform” found at CAIR’s headquarters. “A resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict needs to be based on recognizing and correcting the harm that was done to the Palestinians since 1948,” when the United Nations partitioned land for Israel.
Guandolo said Hamas proved just how dangerous it is on Oct. 7. He warned that the terrorist group has already penetrated American society, and CAIR is the tip of the spear.
“Currently, CAIR is directing efforts at the ground level across the United States with organizations known for violent extremism,” he added in a recent interview with RealClearInvestigations. “Again, the FBI is doing nothing to adhere to their oaths of office and protect the American people.”
This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations.
Investigative journalist Paul Sperry is a regular contributor to RealClearInvestigations and has written news or op-ed pieces for the New York Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. His books include ‘The Great American Bank Robbery’ (2011), and ‘Crude Politics: How Bush’s Oil Cronies Hijacked the War on Terrorism’ (2003).
The chair of the House Oversight Committee issued a slew of subpoenas on Wednesday, including to Hunter Biden and James Biden. Additional subpoenas, as well as requests for transcribed interviews, were served on other Biden family members and business associates. These investigative steps are solid, but the House committees charged with the Joe Biden impeachment inquiry need to issue subpoenas for the witnesses and documents Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, not-so-subtly suggested late last month.
“I’ve obtained the names of 25 DOJ and FBI personnel to interview at a future date,” Grassley wrote in a late-October letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray concerning the latest details the Iowa senator uncovered related to obstruction of the Biden-family corruption investigation. While the House Oversight Committee is understandably focused on unraveling the extent of foreign influence-peddling, the House should not ignore the second half of the scandal: the DOJ, FBI, and now the Biden administration’s cover-up of the scandal and their cover-up of the cover-up.
Grassley has been focused on that aspect of the scandal for several years, raising concerns “about political considerations infecting the decision-making process at the Justice Department and FBI.” Having heard from several whistleblowers about the scope of the obstruction, Grassley has said that if their allegations are true, it would establish the DOJ and FBI have been “institutionally corrupted to their very core.”
The House has followed several leads Grassley developed. The most significant was related to the FD-1023 summary of a “highly credible” confidential human source’s (CHS) reporting that Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden each $5 million in bribes, which Grassley released earlier this year.
More recently, Grassley revealed that the Foreign Influence Task Force used an assessment opened by FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten to mine FBI field offices for derogatory information related to the Bidens. The FBI then falsely branded the derogatory information as Russian disinformation, closing out the sources. That revelation was but one of many contained in the seven-page letter the Iowa senator penned to the AG and FBI director on Oct. 24, noting he had a list of some 20-plus agents to interview.
The House committees charged with overseeing the impeachment inquiry need to dissect that letter for leads relevant to the investigation into Biden-family corruption and also to unravel the DOJ and FBI’s corruption.
Foreign Influence Task Force
Among other things, that letter revealed the complicity of the Foreign Influence Task Force in falsely branding the reporting of confidential human sources from several different field offices as Russian disinformation. As Grassley noted, it was also the Foreign Influence Task Force that “improperly briefed” him and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., about their investigation into the Biden family. That briefing served solely as a precursor to a media leak to spin the Republican senators’ investigation as contaminated by foreign disinformation.
Every member of the Foreign Influence Task Force should be questioned by the House, and every communication between the Foreign Influence Task Force, Brian Auten, and the various FBI offices involved in wrongly closing out sources should be subpoenaed. The House should likewise subpoena the materials made part of that assessment and especially any sources or reporting closed out as Russian disinformation.
FBI Field Offices
Here, Grassley helpfully highlighted in his letter several relevant field offices. In noting that the FBI tried to improperly shut down the FD-1023, Grassley emphasized that the claim that the CHS’s bribery report was Russian disinformation was “highly suspect and is contradicted by other documents my office has been told exist within the Foreign Influence Task Force, FBI Seattle Field Office, FBI Baltimore Field Office, and FBI HQ holdings.”
The House should focus its investigative efforts there first. The FBI Seattle field office is a new thread to pull, as it has not been previously raised as relevant to the Biden investigation. A review of the underlying FD-1023 also suggests the Cleveland FBI field office merits attention, as the CHS who reported on the alleged bribes to the Bidens noted that he was introduced to the Burisma executives by Alexander Ostapenko. And the FD-1023 included a notation that the CHS’s reporting on Ostapenko was maintained at the Cleveland field office.
In seeking materials from these field offices and the Foreign Influence Task Force, the House should ask for all records using the terms “Russian disinformation” or “foreign disinformation” from January 2019 to the present. Why? Because that is what Grassley asked the AG and FBI director to provide. And when the Iowa Republican asks for something, he usually knows precisely what the DOJ has secreted away.
DOJ and FBI Documents
Likewise, the House should seek the other documents Grassley identified in his October 2023 letter because the Republican-led House can follow up with subpoenas if the DOJ refuses to comply, whereas Grassley can’t. In total, the Iowa senator named 15 different categories of materials he sought from the DOJ and FBI, and the House should mirror those requests.
Of particular importance are the communications between the U.S. attorneys’ offices for the Western District of Pennsylvania and the Eastern District of New York relating to Hunter Biden, James Biden, Joe Biden, and the FD-1023, as the Eastern District of New York had apparently concluded the FD-1023 did not match any known Russian disinformation. Subpoenaing FBI reports dating to Jan. 1, 2014, and referencing Mykola Zlochevsky, Hunter Biden, James Biden, or Joe Biden will likely also turn up relevant information.
Naming Names
In addition to subpoenaing these witnesses and the related documents, Grassley’s letter provides the names of several other individuals deserving of questioning. Significantly, the letter indicates that the individuals named had knowledge of Joe Biden’s potential complicity in his son’s money-laundering scheme. But Grassley also named individuals from FBI headquarters, the Washington field office, the Baltimore field office, Delaware FBI agents, and FBI management personnel.
Finally, the House should take note of Grassley’s repeated references to Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault and the various documents he requested that connect to Thibault. Those references should give House investigators pause because Grassley’s apparent focus on Thibault strikes an odd note given the tune Thibault played in his transcribed interview: that he was new to the job and was only on the periphery of decisions to close out sources.
Why then, would Grassley seek “[a]ll records derived from reporting on derogatory information linked to Hunter Biden, James Biden, Joe Biden, and their foreign business relationships that was overseen under the approval, guidance, and purview of ASAC Thibault from January 1, 2020, to his last day at the FBI”? And why would Grassley ask for a copy of “[a]ll opened and closed cases initiated by the Washington Field Office under the purview of ASAC Thibault that were ordered closed by ASAC Thibault and/or denied for opening by the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, and/or the United States Attorney Offices in the District of Columbia and Eastern District of Virginia”?
Grassley may not be able to force the DOJ and FBI to provide answers or those documents, but the House can — and it should, stat.
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
Conservative media personality Steven Crowder allegedly obtained three pages of Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale’s manifesto, revealing that the transgender-identifying killer targeted Christian school children because they are white.
“[G]oing to fancy private schools with those fancy khakis + sports backpacks w/ their daddies mustangs + convertibles,” Hale wrote in her “DEATH DAY” plan shared by Crowder. “I wish to shoot you weak-ss d-cks w/ your mop yellow hair wanna kill all you little crackers!!! Bunch of little f-ggots w/ your white privileges,” she added.
The Federalist reached out to the Nashville Police Department and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), but neither would confirm or deny the validity of the manifesto. The Federalist also reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) but did not hear back.
If verified, the three pages published by Crowder are the first glimpse the public has had of Hale’s manifesto since she gunned down three children and three staff members at the Christian Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, last March. For 7 months, the FBI, TBI, and Nashville Police Department have hid the manifesto from public view.
Hale’s alleged manifesto reveals that Hale’s attack was premeditated. The leaked documents include minute-by-minute details of her planned attack, such as the time Hale intended to arrive at the Covenant school and how long it would take her to park her car. Hale even predicted that she would die the day of the shooting, writing at the bottom of her “DEATH DAY” schedule, “Time 2 die.”
The manifesto includes many disturbing quotes like her enthusiastic desire to “Kill those kids!!!” and to obtain a “high death count.” She also wrote, “Can’t believe I’m doing this, but I’m ready…I hope my victims aren’t.”
Journalist Ian Miles Cheong pointed out that Hale’s stated hatred of white people and white privilege is an outgrowth of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” ideology. “[Hale] is a product of DEI,” Cheong wrote on X. “This is why the media industrial complex, the government, and the institutions refused to publish it. They are all complicit. Hale’s actions and her motive go against the narrative that ‘white supremacy’ is the greatest threat to democracy. The greatest threat to freedom and democracy is DEI. It is the woke mind virus.”
Google and Facebook have reportedly censored news of the manifesto’s leak. This censorship is reminiscent of X’s actions back in March, when the social media company mass-suppressed reports on the “Trans Day Of Vengeance,” which was originally scheduled to take place the same week as Hale’s attack. Federalist CEO Sean Davis was among the censored, and his X account was locked for simply sharing a poster about the scheduled event.
If the leaked manifesto is real, it confirms that despite the Biden Justice Department (DOJ) knowing Hale’s attack was racially motivated, the DOJ did not investigate the shooting as a hate crime.
This adds to the dismissiveness and disrespect the Biden administration has shown to the Nashville shooting victims and their families. Thus far, the Biden administration has done nothing to seriously investigate the perverse, bigoted incentives behind the murders of the six slain Christians, nor has it, at the very least, done anything to memorialize the victims.
Recall, also, that in the wake of the shooting, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre came out with statements in support of the “trans community,” and Vice President Kamala Harris met with rogue, insurrection-instigating Tennessee state representatives instead of the victims’ families.
Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.
The attack by Hamas on Israel will inspire the most significant terror threat to the U.S. since the rise of ISIS nearly a decade ago, FBI Director Christopher Wray said at a congressional hearing Tuesday. Wray said that since the start of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza earlier this month, multiple foreign terrorist organizations have called for attacks against Americans and the West, significantly raising the threat posed by homegrown U.S. violent extremists.
“The actions of Hamas and its allies will serve as an inspiration the likes of which we haven’t seen since ISIS launched its so-called caliphate several years ago,” Wray said.
The remarks came during a hearing before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee focused on threats to the United States. The U.S. government has seen an increase in threats against Jews, Muslims and Arab Americans since fighting broke out in Gaza, officials have said. The number of attacks on U.S. military bases overseas by Iran-backed militia groups have risen this month, Wray said. Cyber attacks against the U.S. by Iran and non-state actors will likely worsen if the conflict expands, he said.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
During the hearing, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that hate directed at Jewish students in the U.S. following the start of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza has added to an increase in antisemitism. The White House expressed alarm this week at reports of anti-Jewish incidents at U.S. universities as tensions have prompted university officials to tighten security.
At a ransomware summit organized by the White House on Tuesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland said he had directed the U.S. Justice Department to assist Israeli investigators probing financial flows to Hamas, including those involving cryptocurrency. (Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Andrew Goudsward in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)
Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds told Newsmax Monday that recent testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee proves officials from both the Department of Justice and FBI “blocked” federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania from investigating President Joe Biden and his family.
“What we’ve learned now from the Judiciary Committee in the testimony it received last week, was that there were at least 10 times when special federal prosecutors in the Pennsylvania district were stopped from looking into issues of the Biden family business dealings,” Donalds said during “Newsline” Monday. “They were stopped by people at the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., and at [the] main [Department of] Justice.”
Donalds also pointed to the recent discovery of a check from President Joe Biden’s brother James to Joe repaying a $200,000 loan, which Donalds said is a direct link between the president and the business deals carried out by James and his son Hunter with foreign entities.
“We now see a check paying Joe Biden directly from his brother, James Biden,” Donalds said. “Most people are focused on Hunter Biden, and they should, but James Biden has been involved in the Biden family scheme this entire time, so the check that was actually released last week demonstrates the flow of $200,000 from James Biden to Joe Biden referencing a loan repayment.”
Donalds said that the money, absent any written loan agreements between the president and his brother, could demonstrate tax evasion.
“One of the key ways that wandering money actually occurs, or evading taxes occurs, is when you treat them as loan repayments and not just as payments,” he said. “So, the key questions now are, what were the loan documents from Joe Biden to his brother, Jim, to demonstrate the need for $200,000 repayment. Our investigation is going to continue. We’re going to get to the bottom of this and hold this administration accountable.”
The White House has been striking back at the committee, particularly since Attorney General Merrick Garland testified in September.
“Extreme House Republicans are running a not-so-sophisticated distraction campaign to try to cover up their own actions that are hurtling America to a dangerous and costly government shutdown,” CNN reported the White House saying in September. “They cannot even pass a military funding bill … so they cranked up a circus of a hearing full of lies and disinformation with the sole goal of baselessly attacking President Biden and his family. Don’t be fooled: they want to distract from the reality that their own chaos and inability to govern is going to shut down the government in a matter of days. … These sideshows won’t spare House Republicans from bearing responsibility for inflicting serious damage on the country.”
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The Pittsburgh-based U.S. attorney charged with screening evidence of Ukrainian corruption before the 2020 election testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Monday about the bureaucratic obstruction his team faced. The roadblocks detailed by former U.S. Attorney Scott Brady over the course of the six-hour hearing were so outrageous that at one point a lawyer for the minority party asked whether he was speaking in hyperbole. He wasn’t.
The situation Brady faced was also much worse than the media have reported to date, as the full transcript of the interview, reviewed by The Federalist, establishes. Here are the seven most shocking details revealed during Monday’s hearing.
1. FBI Drags Its Feet While Tying Brady’s Hands
Monday’s closed-door hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, which is investigating the DOJ and FBI’s handling of the probe into Biden family corruption, opened with Brady explaining that in early January 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr tapped him to vet evidence related to Ukrainian corruption. While he immediately moved to open a matter in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Western District of Pennsylvania, Brady testified that he didn’t believe the FBI opened its assessment until late March. Part of the problem, Brady explained, was that the FBI maintained it had to operate under the framework of the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (DIOG) and that there was no procedure for handling a vetting assignment such as Barr assigned to the Pittsburgh office.
So, as Brady explained, he had a discussion with the Pittsburgh FBI agents about “how, in their administrative process, it should be characterized.”
“I said, ‘Well let’s all sit together around a table and talk this out; could you please share with me your DIOG,’” Brady testified, explaining the DIOG “is the FBI’s bible for their processes and procedures.”
The local FBI agents told Brady that someone from FBI headquarters directed the local agents not to share the DIOG with the U.S. attorney’s office. Brady’s response, as he relayed to the committee, perfectly crystalized the madness: “I’m a presidentially appointed United States attorney. We’re on the same team, part of the Department of Justice. What do you mean you can’t share your DIOG with me?”
“That’s what we were told, so we can’t, sir,” the local Pittsburgh FBI team replied, in his telling.
And they never did share the DIOG with him, the former federal prosecutor testified, explaining he instead resorted to finding an older redacted version online, and then referenced those standards when discussing with the FBI team how to open the investigation.
2. 17 Approvals Needed — and That’s Not Hyperbole
The FBI eventually opted to open an “assessment” for the material on Ukraine provided by the Pittsburgh-based U.S. attorney’s office. Under the DIOG, an “assessment” could only last for 30 days, after which it would need to be reauthorized. That meant every 30 days, the Pittsburgh FBI office needed to re-up the assessment, which normally wouldn’t be an issue, Brady testified, because a special agent’s immediate supervisor, a supervisory special agent (SSA) at the local field office could reauthorize an assessment.
But not in the case of the Ukrainian corruption vetting.
“In this case,” Brady testified, “it required 17 different people, including mostly at the headquarters level to sign off on it before the assessment could be extended.” Consequently, Brady explained, at times the FBI agents “had to go pens down sometimes for 2 or 3 weeks at a time … because they were still waiting on, again, on someone within the 17-chain signoff to approve.”
The ridiculousness of a 17-person approval was clear to even the Democrat attorney questioning Brady. After noting he had made reference to “17 layers of approval,” she asked: “Was that an actual number, or was that just hyperbole? Were there 17 boxes to check?”
“So it was our understanding, related by someone on the FBI team in Pittsburgh, that that was an actual number, that there were 17 approvals that were required to extend the assessment an additional 30 days.”
3. FBI Headquarters Had To Sign-Off on Everything.
Not only did more than a dozen individuals need to approve the renewal of the assessment, including many out of FBI headquarters, but Brady testified that FBI headquarters was required to “signoff for any investigative steps that FBI Pittsburgh was asked to take by” the Pittsburgh U.S. attorney’s office.
Brady reiterated this point, testifying: “It was my understanding that they could not take any steps absent the approval, the review and approval of FBI headquarters, not just the leadership of FBI Pittsburgh.” And later, when asked to elaborate on challenges with the FBI, Brady noted: “It was my understanding that FBI headquarters had to sign off on every assignment, no matter how small or routine, before they could take action.”
This level of signoff by headquarters was not normal, Brady confirmed, noting that in his experience, even in a sensitive investigation, the investigation is usually contained within the field office, with an SSA approving requests, or maybe an assistant special agent in charge or on occasion even the special agent in charge. But never in his career had Brady seen anything like this.
4. FBI Reluctance in Investigating
The former U.S. attorney’s testimony also made clear the FBI was reluctant to assist their investigation.
“It was a challenging working relationship,” Brady noted, saying he believed “there was reluctance on the part of the FBI to really do any tasking related to our assignment … and looking into allegations of Ukrainian corruption broadly and then specifically anything that intersected with Hunter Biden and his role in Burisma.”
When pushed on where the problems originated, Brady said, “It was somewhere at FBI headquarters,” but he “had no visibility into where that choke point was.” But it was somewhere below the deputy director and principal assistant deputy attorney general because whenever the FBI refused to cooperate, forcing Brady to elevate the issue to FBI headquarters or the DOJ, the issues were resolved by the various high-level officials.
Unbeknownst to Brady, that also proved to be the case when it came to his office briefing the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office on the results of his assessment. Brady testified that he had been trying for some time to arrange a briefing with the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office, only to learn later that Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf had not wanted to take the briefing. IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley recently revealed that the meeting only came about after Main Justice ordered Delaware to meet with Brady’s team to be briefed on the results of their vetting.
5. FBI Headquarters Tells Pittsburgh Agents to Play Coy
“Reluctance” appears to be an understatement, though, as Brady further testified that a member of the Pittsburgh FBI team relayed that FBI headquarters had directed them “not to affirmatively share information” but rather “only to share information with [Pittsburgh] if we asked them a direct question relating to that information…”
That “is not typically how the investigative process goes,” Brady added.
That the FBI agents had directions only to share information with the U.S. attorney’s office if asked a direct question seems to explain Brady’s later testimony. The former U.S. attorney later testified that when the Washington field office discovered an older FD-1023 report that included a discreet statement mentioning Hunter Biden’s service on the Burisma Board, the Pittsburgh office requested to see the FD-1023. Apparently, relying on the FBI to convey relevant information to the prosecutors was not an option. In this case, that FD-1023 led to the confidential human source providing extensive additional information about the Bidens’ involvement and alleged bribe-taking from Burisma, so it is a good thing Pittsburgh asked to see the actual document.
When it came to the Hunter Biden laptop, however, Brady and his team of prosecutors didn’t know what they didn’t know, so they never asked whether the FBI had seized any of Hunter Biden’s electronic devices. With “don’t ask, don’t tell” being Delaware’s protect-Biden policy, the Delaware office opted against informing the Pittsburgh U.S. attorney’s office of the existence of the laptop. Rather, Brady testified that he first learned of the laptop’s existence when the New York Post broke the story in mid-October.
6. Delaware Refuses to Play Nice
Not only did Brady testify about the challenges of working with the FBI, but he also faced issues with the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office.
“[I]t was regularly a challenge to interact with the investigative team from Delaware,” Brady testified. “There was no information sharing” or “very limited” information sharing, from Delaware. In fact, “at one point, the communication between our offices was so constricted that we had to provide written questions to the investigative team in Delaware, almost in the form of interrogatories, and receive written answers back,” Brady testified.
“This was very unusual,” Brady continued, noting that “typical U.S. attorney to U.S. attorney office communications, even on sensitive matters, is fairly clear and transparent.” “We’re all professionals,” Brady explained.
Yet, with Delaware, the Pittsburgh U.S. attorney’s office had to resort to submitting a list of written questions to U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s team, which the Delaware prosecutors then responded to in writing, much as interrogatories are served on opposing parties in litigation.
Jim Jordan, the chair of the Judiciary Committee, asked Brady if he had ever seen anything like this during his time as an assistant U.S. attorney or U.S. attorney.
“Not where an office had to submit written interrogatories to another office for permission,” Brady said.
7. Lying About Brady
Another challenge he faced, Brady explained, was false representations being made to senior FBI leadership about what the U.S. attorney’s team was or wasn’t doing. “There was information that was being shared up that chain at the FBI that was incorrect,” Brady explained, and it rose all the way up to AG Barr.
Brady noted that while they resolved the issue, it presented an unnecessary challenge to handling the vetting process.
Of course, some of the same people likely used that same tactic by lying about the Pittsburgh vetting process to the press. And more recently, Democrats such as Jamie Raskin resorted to peddling falsehoods, such as that Barr’s handpicked prosecutor, Brady, had closed the assessment into the FD-1023.
During his Monday testimony, Brady also confirmed that Barr had accurately described the true scenario — that the FD-1023 had been passed on to the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office for further investigation — and that Raskin was lying, at I reported here in The Federalist.
But what else could a Biden apologist do but lie — after whistleblowers exposed the DOJ and FBI’s obstruction and the evidence of the president’s corruption?
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
The barbaric attack on Israeli civilians over the weekend by Hamas terrorists has left people wondering, as we often do after mass tragedies: How did no one see this coming? As a surprisingly sophisticated, coordinated surprise attack left nearly 1,000 people dead and countless more innocents wounded or kidnapped, anyone can recognize the massive intelligence failure without calling into question who is morally culpable for the invasion. Iran-backed militants attacked civilians from multiple points of entry, hang-gliding into a music festival and dragging the bodies of murdered women through the streets, all effectively livestreamed on the internet.
It wasn’t just an intel failure on Israel’s part — as a close ally with an intelligence presence all over the world, the United States also failed to foresee the attack. A senior U.S. military official admitted to NBC News that “We were not tracking this.” CIA counterterrorism veteran Marc Polymeropoulos told the outlet he was “stunned” that American intel agencies were caught off guard.
Intelligence operatives are fallible, yes. But instead of identifying the threat from Hamas terrorists, the Biden administration was busy sending money to their state sponsors in Iran and employing Iranian conspirators at the Pentagon.
There’s another task that’s been keeping America’s so-called “counterterrorism” apparatus busy lately, though. Instead of focusing their efforts on actual terrorists — those abroad and those doubtless infiltrating our porous southern border — the Biden administration has continued, and escalated, the trend of turning our post-9/11 surveillance state against Americans, smearing them as “terrorists” for their political beliefs.
Just last week, Newsweek reported that the FBI is targeting Trump supporters as “domestic terrorists” ahead of the 2024 election. The universal line from the Biden administration is that “domestic terrorism” and its aliases — all of which are used as code for political right-wingers — are the No. 1 threat to national security. The effort to make an example out of Trump supporters who demonstrated at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is only one of numerous instances in which Democrats within and beyond intelligence agencies are working to equate “domestic terrorism” with their political opponents.
Two years ago, Biden’s Education Department infamously planted a letter from the National School Boards Association to Attorney General Merrick Garland, urging him to target concerned parents who showed up at school board meetings to protest Democrats’ Covid policies and their racialist and sexually graphic curricula in public schools. The letter smeared those parents as domestic terror threats and urged the Department of Justice to wield counterterrorism laws against them, and Garland happily acted on the suggestion.
A few months later, the politicized Department of Justice announced a new “domestic terrorism unit” to deal with “an elevated threat from domestic violence extremists,” including “those who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies.” (Who knew the Founding Fathers were domestic terrorists?)
Taking things, a step further, disgraced former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe claimed that targeting the “fringes of the right-wing movement” was insufficient to “catch this threat,” and instead called for federal suspicion of “mainstream” conservatives.
In June 2021, the Biden administration released a “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.” It proposed to “counter domestic terrorism by addressing underlying racism and bigotry” — and they weren’t talking about the racism that led Hamas militants to slaughter Israeli civilians this past weekend and has driven violence against Israel in the region for decades. A National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin issued the same year lumped “conspiracy theories on perceived election fraud” and “responses to anticipated restrictions relating to the increasing COVID cases” in the same sentence as “domestic violent extremist ideologies.”
Our intelligence apparatus expends resources on things like telling Big Tech companies which free-thinking Americans’ social media posts to censor, as we discovered via the “Twitter Files” and Missouri v. Biden. It’s actively researching how to most efficiently surveil what you say online. The FBI has been putting its resources to work targeting — and likely “infiltrating” — traditional Catholic congregations, and terrorizing peaceful pro-lifers like Mark Houck, a pastor who was dragged away in a surprise raid at his home in front of his family.
It’s not just domestic intel agencies being wielded against Americans; the CIA did its part to help Twitter censor speech, and even solicited signatures to help falsely smear damaging reporting about the Biden family as disinformation ahead of the 2020 election. (For some reason, none of those involved are being arrested for “conspiracy against voting rights.”)
Across the board, we’ve seen the people we elected, and countless bureaucrats we did not, weaponizing supposedly counterterror laws like the Patriot Act against Americans’ First and Fourth Amendment freedoms (at least).
Imagine if those resources were redirected away from targeting ordinary, law-abiding Americans for their political views and aimed at stopping actual terrorists who seek to harm us and our allies. Contrary to the pretense that surveilling Americans as walking national security threats is for our own protection, our world would be a lot safer.
Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.
It’s no secret by now that Democrats love rigging elections in their favor.
During the 2016 contest, agencies such as the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI willingly partook in a Hillary Clinton campaign-funded operation to convince the American public that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin and the Russian government to steal the election. The FBI didn’t just launch an investigation into Trump based on “uncorroborated intelligence”; it used the Clinton-funded Steele dossier to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on his campaign.
These kinds of nefarious activities continued into the 2020 election, in which these agencies (along with the CIA) worked overtime to discredit damaging reporting about then-candidate Joe Biden. These departments even went so far as to pressure Big Tech platforms in the months leading up to the election to censor information like the Hunter Biden laptop story when it became public. Like clockwork, these companiesacquiesced.
And who could forget Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose “Zuckbucks” flooded local election offices in key battleground states to change how elections were administered and effectively fund a Democrat get-out-the-vote operation?
Now, as the country hurtles towards another intense presidential election, Democrats are once again putting their feet on the electoral scale to rig the 2024 contest in their favor.
1. FBI Targeting of Conservatives
Another facet of so-called “law enforcement” agencies’ election interference is their blatant targeting of conservatives. Within the past few years, the FBI has been caught directing its fire at parents attending school board meetings, Catholics who attend Latin Mass, and innocent pro-lifers, to name a few.
Given these actions, it wasn’t shocking when Newsweek reported on Wednesday that the agency is gearing up to single out supporters of former President Donald Trump as “domestic terrorists” ahead of the 2024 contest. As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd reported, “Testimony from more than a ‘dozen current or former government officials who specialize in terrorism’ to Newsweek confirmed that this increase in targeting was born out of the FBI’s decision to lump Trump supporters into its expanded definition of ‘domestic extremism.’”
2. Protecting Joe Biden
Former business associates, IRS and FBI whistleblowers, bank records, text messages, emails, reporting from a “highly credible” informant, and even President Joe Biden himself have all corroborated different aspects of the latter’s involvement in his family’s corrupt foreign business ventures. But according to Democrats and their legacy media allies, this is just evidence of a father’s love for his son.
From the moment mountains of evidence began piling up, implicating Biden in playing a major role in his family’s international influence-peddling scheme, Democrats have done all they can to hide, excuse, and obfuscate the massive scandal surrounding the sitting president. With help from the DOJ — which almost got away with offering Biden’s son, Hunter, a sweetheart plea agreement to evade future criminal charges and hasroutinelyhinderedinvestigative efforts into the Bidens — these acts represent a clear attempt by Democrats to hide damning information about the sitting president from the American public ahead of the 2024 election.
3. Trump Indictments
Who needs free and fair elections when you can just throw your political opponents behind bars ahead of a major election? Spanningfourseparatecases and 91 felony counts, the DOJ and leftist prosecutors’ seemingly coordinated efforts to imprison Trump could not represent a more obvious attempt to interfere in the election process.
4. Zuckbucks 2.0
While 25 states passed legislation banning or restricting the use of “Zuckbucks” in elections, that hasn’t stopped nonprofits like the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) — one of the Zuckerberg-funded groups that meddled in the 2020 election — from attempting to replicate their 2020 strategy for future elections.
Last year, CTCL and other left-wing groups launched the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, an $80 million venture designed to “systematically influence every aspect of election administration” and advance Democrat-backed voting policies in local election offices. Through the use of “scholarships” and low entrance fees, the coalition seeks to make the 2020 private hijacking of election offices look like child’s play.
5. Big Tech Censorship
It’s not surprising the same agencies that pushed Big Tech platforms to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election would continue their censorship practices years later. As indicated in severalfederal court rulings, the Biden administration has been actively colluding with social media giants like Facebook to suppress commentary and facts posted online that it claims are examples of “misinformation.” Equally alarming is that in spite of these rulings barring such authoritarian behavior, the administration has continued to appeal the decisions to regain the power to stifle speech online.
And these actions don’t even include the efforts undertaken by left-wing groups such as Vote.org, which have pressured Big Tech platforms to adopt plans to combat so-called “election disinformation.”
6. Passing Lax Election Laws
Sometimes the only way to win the game is to change the rules in your favor — and that’s exactly what Democrats have been doing to America’s election laws.
After expanding insecure voting practices such as mass unsupervised mail-in voting and the use of ballot drop boxes during the 2020 election, Democrat-controlled state legislatures have sought to enshrine these policies into law across the country. States such as New Mexico, Minnesota, and Michigan have all adopted sloppy election procedures under the guise of “democracy” and so-called “voting rights.”
7. Lawfare Against Election Integrity Laws
Meanwhile, in states where Democrats don’t hold power, the DOJ and leftist lawyers have stepped in to launch dishonest lawsuits against Republican-backed election integrity laws. For example, the DOJ launched a lawsuit against a Georgia election integrity law requiring voter ID in June 2021, in which the agency parroted the lie that Georgia’s law was designed to “deny[] or abridg[e]” nonwhite Americans’ right to vote.
8. Partisan Voter Registration Paid for by U.S. Taxpayers
Shortly after taking office, Biden took the unprecedented step of ordering hundreds of federal agencies to interfere in state and local election administration. Executive Order 14019 mandated all departments use U.S. taxpayer money to boost voter registration and get-out-the-vote activities. Agencies were also instructed to develop “a strategic plan” explaining how they intended to fulfill this directive.
While the Biden administration has routinely stonewalledefforts by good government groups to acquire these plans, available information reveals an apparently partisan venture aimed at registering voters who are likely to support Democrats. Recent reporting from The Daily Signal indicates agencies such as the Indian Health Service are collaborating with leftist groups like Demos and the ACLU to “register and turn out voters” under Executive Order 14019.
9. Media Attacks on Election Oversight
The Biden bribery scandal isn’t the only subject legacy media continue to lie about. In the months leading up to and after the 2022 midterms, media propagandists launched a full-scale attack on GOP voters seeking to legally observe the elections process. Despite their repeated insistence of a widespread conspiracy of Republicans threatening election officials, there is no evidence to suggest such an assertion is true. In fact, Biden’s own DOJ all but admitted as much last year.
The corporate press’s goals in regurgitating this false narrative are to both cast their political opponents as extremists and dissuade conservatives who have legitimate concerns about election integrity from partaking in legal forms of electoral oversight (such as poll watching).
10. Left-wing Nonprofit Voter Registration Ops
While federal law prohibits tax-exempt 501(c)(3) groups from engaging in partisan voter registration, that hasn’t stopped left-wing nonprofits from skirting the legal system by targeting voting demographics favorable to Democrats.
Organizations such as Restoration of America and Capital Research Center have issued reports in recent months detailing how leftist billionaires bankroll nonprofit groups to register likely-Democrat voters. Instead of explicitly stating they’re registering voters for the Democrat Party, groups like the Voter Registration Project target “people of color,” women, and young people. In other words, they specifically aim to register demographics likely to vote for Democrats.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
Few incidents in recent history are as poorly understood as the riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Ever since it happened, the Biden administration and the corporate media have pushed the narrative that this was an insurrection by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election and destroy American democracy. They have compared this event to 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and even the Civil War. Accordingly, the Department of Justice has spared no expense to bring in each and every offender (there are now more than a thousand of them awaiting trial) and indict and convict their ringleader Trump.
However, several cracks in this story have started to appear. In last week’s hearing with the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Merrick Garland admitted his ignorance on whether there were federal agents in the crowds on Jan. 6. In a closed-door session with the same committee, Steven D’Antuono, former assistant director-in-charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, allegedly conceded that he lost count of the number of confidential human sources who joined the protest.
One of those informants was almost certainly Ray Epps, a man who was caught on camera urging other protesters to storm the Capitol. While Garland and D’Antuono played dumb in their testimony, Epps was finally charged with a mere misdemeanor despite his prominent role in provoking the riot. This stood in stark contrast to Enrique Torrio, someone who wasn’t even in Washington, D.C., that day who was sentenced to 22 years in prison just a few weeks earlier, or the hundreds of other protesters with similar sentences.
The implications of these reports are massive. Altogether, they strongly suggest that the federal government deliberately egged on a riot to silence any discussions about the 2020 election, crush Trump’s populist movement, and cast Trump as a dangerous tyrant. Along with the police, at least “a handful,” but probably more like dozens of (or possibly many more) informants and undercover agents from various government agencies were in the crowd goading otherwise innocent Americans to become violent and breach the Capitol. And now, these protesters are being denied due process rights and sentenced by psychopath judges to ridiculously long prison sentences in kangaroo courts.
In other words, much like the plan to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been labeled a “Fednapping plot” since the whole scheme was directed by FBI agents entrapping unsuspecting civilians, the Jan. 6 Capitol attack can fairly be considered a “Fedsurrection” for the same reason. How would events have unfolded if government agencies had not inserted themselves in the protest? Or if certain high-level politicians like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi actually allowed extra security instead of denying it multiple times?
It’s not hard to see why journalists and writers avoid entertaining this possibility. Beyond exposing the unfathomable depths of government corruption, the story itself is so vast and hopelessly complicated that no one can find an end to it. Julie Kelly, the premier expert of the Jan. 6 riot, has devoted a whole book and hundreds of articles (and now a Substack) to the event and is still going strong detailing the innumerable injustices being inflicted on the protesters. Although a few other journalists have joined in the effort to investigate Jan. 6, almost everyone else has understandably distanced themselves from the story — it’s just too much.
Added to this is the preference of many Americans, both on the left and right, to believe a narrative that reinforces a certain classist prejudice. Somehow, it makes perfect sense to them that a raucous crowd of uneducated rednecks would storm the Capitol in the hopes of making their cult-leader Donald Trump a supreme dictator of the country. Sure, these same people were unarmed and the great majority of them had no criminal record. And true, it’s unclear how walking around a building and waving flags would overturn the election, let alone impose an antidemocratic Trumpocracy. One might even say this story makes about as much sense as Trump being a Russian agent who stole the election with some Facebook ads. Then again, many people continue to believe this hoax despite all evidence to the contrary.
However one feels about it, the Jan. 6 riot happened and the prosecutions continue to happen. For any American who still believes in the system it is well past time to come to terms with this reality for a few reasons. First, there are hundreds of innocent Americans wasting away in prison (also known as the “DC Gulag”) who are subjected to terrible living conditions, all because they dared to speak against the regime.
Second, the federal agencies and departments responsible for putting those people there have faced no scrutiny or any check on their power — on the contrary, most politicians seem happy giving them more money.
Beyond this, all Americans should worry about the tyranny at work and what this means for the country. If the government can stoke a riot to target dissidents and fabricate a bogeyman (e.g., MAGA Republicans, white supremacists, Christian nationalists, etc.) to distract the population, then no American citizen is truly free. They have no choice except to parrot the party line, submit to an oppressive government, and desperately hope that the leviathan takes care of them.
In some ways, this outcome has already materialized, putting the country in a precarious position. It will only become worse until Americans of all political stripes (not just conservatives) speak up for the Jan. 6 protesters. What’s happening to them is not just wrong, but egregious. Whatever one thinks about what they were protesting, it cannot be denied that they have given up everything for their cause. The least we can do is give them our sympathy and uncover the truth about what happened.
Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He holds an MA in humanities and an MEd in educational leadership. He is the senior editor of The Everyman and has written essays for The Federalist, The American Conservative, and The Imaginative Conservative, as well as the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter.
Now that Chuck Schumer has dumbed down the Senate dress code to accommodate the slovenly habits of the privileged Pennsylvania senator who cosplays as a representative of the working class, hoodies like Sen. John Fetterman’s signature Carhartt are welcome on the Senate floor.
It’s an ugly visual of the decay of an American institution. But you know what, fine — if that’s the way it’s going to be, Republicans might as well play along. If they want something comfier but just as effective as Susan Collins’s suggested ensemble, they should show up wearing hoodies emblazoned with one (or several!) of these reminders.
1. ‘Impeach Biden’
As my colleague David Harsanyi has pointed out, there exists “more than enough evidence” of Biden corruption for an impeachment probe.
Joe Biden has publicly bragged about bullying Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma, an energy firm that paid his son Hunter Biden millions to sit on its board and reportedly hired him to access the protection his father’s political power could provide. We also know that Joe Biden spoke with Hunter’s associates dozens, if not hundreds, of times and that the Bidens received millions from foreign oligarchs.
2. ‘Boys and Girls Are Different’
It’s an indisputable fact that there are two sexes and we are not the same but stating that obvious truth often causes the brains of Democrats who push transgender mania to combust.
3. ‘Democrats Support Abortion Up to Birth’
They don’t like to admit it, but Democrats in Congress overwhelmingly voted for a bill that would ensure abortions throughout all nine months of a woman’s pregnancy as long as she could find a provider to say it was important for her emotional health. Democrat-led states like Colorado have explicitly enacted laws permitting abortion up to birth, and Democrats in Washington have opposed protections for babies born alive in botched abortions.
4. ‘Hunter Biden Takes Bribes’
It’s no secret that Hunter Biden peddled access to his powerful father among his well-heeled foreign clients. In return, Hunter was rewarded with everything from shrouded bank transfers to a car with a six-figure price tag to a three-carat diamond.
Sen. Bob Menendez, who was recently indicted by Hunter’s dad’s DOJ for his own shady dealings, might consider a riff on this slogan, such as “Hunter Biden’s Bribery Scandal Is Worse Than Mine!”
5. ‘Biden Jails His Political Opponents’
Biden’s Department of Justice is prosecuting his 2020 presidential rival and likely 2024 opponent in multiple jurisdictions, threatening him with years of jail time. Not only has the DOJ gone after Trump, it’s targeted peaceful pro-lifers and parents at school board meetings, while throwing the book at Trump supporters like a nonviolent grandma with cancer for being at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
6. ‘Trump Won’
Yes, we’re aware that Biden won the 2020 election in a very literal sense, had more votes recorded for him, and was inaugurated as our 46th president. On the other hand, it clearly wasn’t our “most secure election ever” — it was rigged, or “fortified,” in numerous ways that were damaging to the integrity of our elections.
But you don’t have to get into the nuances of that to exercise your First Amendment rights by wearing a hoodie and enjoy the reactions it inspires.
7. ‘Defund The FBI’
Until the FBI stops interfering in our elections — as they did by falsely labeling the bombshell Biden corruption story sourced from Hunter Biden’s laptop as “disinformation” in 2020 and by furthering the Trump-Russia collusion hoax in 2016 — congressional Republicans should refuse to keep paying its bills.
8. ‘Unborn Lives Matter’
This shouldn’t be controversial, right?
9. ‘Keep Porn Out of Schools’
This one shouldn’t be controversial either. But left-leaning school boards are working hard to fill school libraries with pornographic books promoting their LGBT agenda. They want you to think this is an issue of backwater Republicans “banning” harmless books like To Kill A Mockingbird, but when parents try to read the contents of the books in question at public meetings, it’s deemed too explicit for the ears of the adults in the room.
10. ‘Who Killed JFK?’
Why are parts of more than 15,000 records relating to the Kennedy assassination still being kept from the public after Biden delayed their release? What convinced Kennedy’s nephew that the CIA was involved in what he calls a “60-year coverup”?
11. ‘Save Girls’ Sports’
Allowing boys and men with gender dysphoria to enter girls’ locker rooms, bathrooms, and sports teams is neither safe nor fair to women, but Democrats want to do it anyway.
12. Trump’s Mugshot
OK, it’s not a slogan, but we’d still love to see Senate Republicans show up wearing this.
Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.
On Friday, the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Elvis Chan, the lead FBI agent involved in mass social media censorship, to appear for a September 21, 2023 deposition. Last week’s subpoena followed Chan’s failure to appear for a scheduled voluntary interview to face questioning about the federal government’s role in burying the Hunter Biden laptop story in the month before the 2020 election.
While that scandal is much bigger than Chan, he is first in line to untangling the truth about how the government interfered in the 2020 election by running an info op to convince voters the Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation. Given Chan’s testimony in the civil lawsuit brought by Missouri and Louisiana and several individual plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden, as well as since-uncovered documents from Facebook, the importance of questioning Chan cannot be overstated.
What Chan Said
In Missouri v. Biden, the plaintiffs sued the Biden administration and numerous agencies and government officials, including the FBI and Chan. They alleged the federal defendants violated the First Amendment by, among other things, coercing and significantly encouraging “social-media platforms to censor disfavored [speech].” After filing suit, the plaintiffs filed a motion for a preliminary injunction and then obtained an order allowing for expedited discovery.
Since then, the district court has entered a preliminary injunction barring several federal agencies from coercing tech giants into censoring speech. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed the injunction but upheld many of the lower court’s legal conclusions. The Supreme Court is currently considering the Biden administration’s motion for a stay of the injunction.
What matters to the House’s subpoena of Chan is what the expedited discovery in Missouri v. Biden uncovered. It included the plaintiffs’ deposition of Chan. In his deposition, Chan testified he was one of the “primary” FBI agents who communicated with social media companies about so-called “disinformation.”
Specifically, “During the 2020 election cycle, Chan coordinated meetings between the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) and at least seven of the major tech giants, including Meta/Facebook, Twitter, Google/YouTube, Yahoo!/Verizon Media, and Microsoft/LinkedIn,” with meetings occurring weekly as the election neared.
In questioning Chan, the plaintiffs’ attorneys pushed him on several points related to the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop, forcing Chan to acknowledge the FBI regularly raised the possibility of “hack and dump” operations with senior officials at the various tech companies. Those discussions included the FBI warning of a potential hack-and-leak occurring in advance of the 2020 election, much like the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hack and WikiLeaks release of internal emails.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs also quizzed Chan on the identity of the government officials who discussed “hack-and-dump Russian operations” with the tech giants. Chan identified Section Chief Laura Dehmlow, along with four FBI officials who attended Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) meetings. Chan named Brady Olson, William Cone, Judy Chock, and Luke Giannini as some of the individuals who had discussed the supposedly impending hack-and-leak operation. Chan claimed not to recall, though, whether anyone within the FBI suggested he raise the possibility of Russian hack-and-dump operations with the tech giants.
That Chan and others warned big tech of the potential for a pre-election hack-and-dump operation is huge. As Chan also testified, the government had no specific intelligence suggesting there were plans for such an operation. Nonetheless, the warnings prompted Twitter and Facebook to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story following The New York Post’s story breaking.
FBI Played Social Media Companies
While the government had no reason to believe a hack-and-leak operation was in the works, several of the FBI agents involved in warning the social media companies knew Hunter Biden had abandoned his laptop at a computer repair store and that the material on the laptop was genuine. That includes Chan, Demhlow, and at least three other individuals connected to the FBI’s FITF.
Chan did not reveal these details in his Missouri v. Biden deposition. Instead, Dehmlow informed the House of these facts during her deposition. Among other things, Dehmlow testified that soon after The New York Post broke the Biden laptop story, somebody from Twitter asked the FBI whether the laptop was real. An analyst in the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division confirmed, “Yes, it was.’” An FBI lawyer on the call then immediately interjected, “No further comment.”
Dehmlow further testified that several individuals on the FBI’s FITF knew the laptop was real, including then-FITF Section Chief Brad Benavides and the unit chief. Dehmlow then confirmed that after the call with Twitter, the FBI had internal deliberations about the laptop and that later when Facebook asked about the authenticity of the laptop, Dehmlow responded, “No comment.”
During his deposition in the Missouri v. Biden case, Chan confirmed Dehmlow’s representation that in response to the Facebook inquiry, she had replied, “No comment.” Chan, however, then claimed he was not aware of any other inquiries from social media companies concerning the Hunter Biden laptop.
Was Chan Telling the Truth?
Last month, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan revealed his committee had obtained internal documents from Facebook that call into question Chan’s testimony. “I spoke with SSA Elvis Chan (FBI San Francisco) on 15 October 2020, as a follow up to the call with the Foreign Influence Task Force on 14 October,” one Facebook document read, contradicting Chan’s claim that he knew of no other inquiries from social media companies.
“I asked SSA Chan whether there was any update or change. . . as to whether the FBI saw any evidence suggesting foreign sponsorship or direction of the leak of information related to Hunter Biden as published in the New York Post story,” Facebook’s memorandum continued. According to Facebook’s internal document, Chan stated “that he was up to speed on the current state of the matter within the FBI and that there was no current evidence to suggest any foreign connection or direction of the leak.” Chan further assured Facebook “that the FBI would be in contact if any additional information on this was developed through further investigation.”
Chan’s claim to Facebook that he was “up to speed on the current state of the matter” also seemingly conflicted with Chan’s testimony in the Missouri v. Biden case that he had “no internal knowledge of that investigation,” and “that it was brought up after the news story had broke.” It is also difficult to reconcile Chan’s claim — that the laptop was only brought up after the Post ran the story — with Dehmlow’s testimony that several individuals on the FITF knew the laptop was real, including an FBI analyst.
What the House Should Ask Chan
The House should explore these inconsistencies with Chan and further quiz him on both Dehmlow’s testimony and the Facebook documents. Chan should also be quizzed on with whom else he discussed the potential for a hack-and-leak operation.
We know from Chan’s Missouri v. Biden deposition that he had served as the supervisor for the Russia-adept cyber squad that investigated the DNC server hack before the San Francisco office handed it to FBI headquarters. Chan testified in that deposition that he would have discussed national security cyber-investigations involving Russian matters with Sean Newell, a deputy chief at the DOJ National Security Division who had also worked on the DNC hack. Chan should be pushed further on whether Newell or anyone else who worked on the DNC hack had raised the issue of a 2020 hack-and-release repeat.
If so, the question then becomes whether they knew of the existence and authenticity of the Biden laptop. That question proves significant because it appears the hack-and-leak narrative was peddled to the social media companies to prime them to censor the laptop story. So, knowing who knew the laptop story was accurate but still fed the hack-and-leak hysteria will point to the players responsible for interfering in the 2020 election by silencing the truthful reporting of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Chan may refuse to testify, however, even pursuant to a subpoena, or the Department of Justice may direct Chan not to submit to congressional questioning, forcing Republicans to enforce the subpoena in court. We’ll know tomorrow if either scenario plays out or if Chan comes clean with what he knows.
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
Attorney General Merrick Garland is scheduled to testify to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, marking his first congressional appearance since an IRS whistleblower called into question his claim that U.S. Attorney David Weiss had ultimate charging authority over Hunter Biden. While Garland has much to answer for beyond the botched Hunter Biden investigation — such as the targeting of pro-life protesters — the Judiciary Committee should focus on getting answers to these questions.
The committee should start with a series of direct questions to the AG focused on aspects of the Hunter Biden investigation before confronting Garland with inconsistencies between his prior statements and Weiss and the whistleblowers’ claims. The committee and the country need to understand how the attorney general directed the handling of the Hunter Biden investigation.
Specifically, what if anything did Garland say to Weiss about how the investigation should be run?
Did Garland directly communicate with Weiss?
When and how often?
Did the AG instead assign an assistant attorney general to interact with Weiss?
Who?
When?
What specific authority or concerns did Weiss discuss with Garland or his assistant attorneys general?
Then the $5 million question:
Did Weiss ever discuss special attorney or special counsel status and, if so, when?
A follow-up $5 million question seems exceedingly appropriate in this situation: When did Garland first provide Weiss with authority to prosecute Hunter Biden in other districts?
Of course, we know the answer to that is when Garland named Weiss special counsel, but having the attorney general confirm that reality in sworn testimony provides a nice segue to drill Garland on his prior inconsistent statements:
General Garland, you told Sen. Chuck Grassley on March 1, 2023, quote ‘the U.S. Attorney in Delaware has been advised that he has full authority … to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it’s necessary,’ but that’s not true, is it?
Weiss didn’t have ‘full authority’ until after you named him special counsel, correct?
Beyond Weiss’s charging authority, it’s important to understand the investigative authority the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office held. Was Main Justice updated on the investigation?
Did Main Justice provide oversight to the investigation?
How much?
Did the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office need to seek approval from Main Justice on anything?
If so, on what?
And from whom?
Who decided that Main Justice would provide oversight for the Hunter Biden investigation?
Was Garland informed of Main Justice’s involvement in the investigation?
When?
And if Main Justice was involved in the oversight, didn’t that interfere in the supposed independence of Weiss?
The House Judiciary Committee should also ask Garland about what, if anything, he told other Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys.
Did Garland discuss the Hunter Biden investigation with Matthew Graves, the D.C. U.S. attorney, and Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California?
Did he direct those offices to partner with Weiss?
Did Garland know Weiss had wanted to partner with those offices?
Did he know those offices had denied Weiss’s request for them to bring charges against Hunter?
When and how did Garland first learn of Weiss’s interest in bringing charges in California and/or D.C.?
Likewise, Garland should be quizzed on his communications with FBI Director Christopher Wray concerning the role FBI headquarters should (or shouldn’t) have in the Hunter Biden investigation.
Did Garland and Wray discuss the Hunter Biden investigation?
Did Garland allow Wray to decide the propriety of involving FBI headquarters in the investigation?
Did Garland know Wray had permitted FBI headquarters to participate in the investigation and/or decision-making?
The House committee should connect this line of questioning with Garland’s prior testimony to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee in April 2022. Then, the attorney general, in response to a question by Sen. Bill Hagerty, claimed Weiss was “supervising the investigation” and was in “charge of that investigation.”
But if that’s true, why did Weiss’s office have to run things by Main Justice and FBI headquarters?
And for that matter, why did Main Justice and/or FBI headquarters seek the removal of the FBI whistleblowers?
Beyond uncovering the details of the investigation, the House Judiciary Committee should clarify three aspects of the continuing investigation.
First, Garland should be quizzed on the breadth or limits of Weiss’s authority as “special counsel.”
How can Weiss possibly serve in that role and continue as U.S. attorney?
Why did Garland not appoint an outsider, as the regulations require?
What resources has Weiss requested?
Is Weiss staffing up an entirely separate office?
And is that office investigating individuals beyond Hunter Biden?
Second, Garland should be questioned about Department of Justice policies and whether he maintained the policy former Attorney General William Barr put in place about the launching of an investigation against a presidential candidate. Under current regulations, would Special Counsel Weiss’s team need to obtain permission from Garland before running down leads that might implicate Joe Biden in criminal activity?
If not, when, if ever, would they need Garland’s permission to take investigative steps against Joe Biden?
Would Garland tell the country when such authority had been granted?
Has Weiss’s team been given authority to investigate President Biden?
Third, the Judiciary Committee should obtain assurances from Garland that the DOJ will cooperate in the House’s impeachment inquiry and not withhold information or evidence. Garland is unlikely to agree to such a request, however, hedging with claims of protecting an ongoing investigation. Ah, but that would mean there is an ongoing investigation into the president!
But even if there were such an investigation, that does not limit the House’s equal authority to conduct an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. That inquiry, however, can only answer half the scandal, concerning the current president’s potential criminal conduct while vice president. The second half of the scandal concerns the DOJ and FBI’s cover-up.
The House’s questioning of Garland on Wednesday should start to unravel portions of the protect-Biden plot, but if the attorney general continues to stonewall the probe, as he has done in the past, Garland should expect to face his own impeachment inquiry.
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
A recent report published by America First Legal (AFL) details how the FBI weaponized the federal background investigation process to deny Republican presidents — specifically Donald Trump — the ability to make political appointments in an “institution-wide” violation of the Privacy Act, the Paperwork Reduction Act, and other federal statutes. Institutional disregard for the FBI Manual of Investigative Operations and Guidelines (MIOG) further contributed to this.
It alleges that during the Trump administration, the FBI illegally conducted politically biased background checks to sabotage potential appointees with selectively “unsubstantiated” and “derogatory” information.
The report, along with a letter detailing its findings, was sent to Republican Reps. Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and James Comer, Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and Democrat Sens. Dick Durbin of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Gary Peters of the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee.
Recall the nomination process of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Throughout Kavanaugh’s confirmation process, due to unsubstantiated concerns of sexual impropriety, the Senate Judiciary Committee sought a supplemental FBI investigation — supported by the White House — into the allegations.
However, AFL argues that if, at the outset, the confirmation process was conducted fairly and objectively, then a supplemental investigation would never have been necessary. Further, the FBI’s Washington, D.C. field office is notorious for its political bias and is a hub of institutionalized political weaponization. How could any of this supplemental investigation be conducted in good faith?
Obviously, it wasn’t.
As AFL details, because of “procedural infirmities that biased the FBI [background investigation] process in ways that benefited those politically opposed to former President Trump,” several federal laws were broken.
Litigation conducted by AFL, leading to this report, shows that the FBI failed to guarantee Kavanaugh various legal protections.
Because during the process of the background investigation, the FBI “collect[ed] information from the public and third parties concerning nominees without using a form with a valid OMB-approved control number,” the FBI violated the Paperwork Reduction Act’s requirements at 44 U.S.C. § 3512(a).
“By no longer enforcing the MIOG standards, which requires the FBI to seek to offset derogatory information,” the report reads, “the FBI does not ‘make reasonable efforts to assure that [nominee] records are accurate, complete, timely, and relevant, for agency purposes.” As such, AFL contends the FBI violated federal law — 5 U.S.C. § 552a(e)(6).
The report also argues that the FBI’s disregard for the MIOG caused it to further violate federal law — 5 U.S.C. §§ 552a(e)(1), (e)(2), (e)(3), and (e)(5) — because “the FI or DOJ maintain[ed] in its records information about applicants that [are] likely irrelevant to their qualifications to daily and completely adjudicate cases arising under the Constitution and [relevant] statutes.”
These are just a few of the findings detailed in AFL’s report. And whereas it may sound like legalistic jargon, it is illustrative of a glaring issue in our political system and government: the federal government and federal bureaucracy are thoroughly weaponized against the ideological enemies of permanent Washington.
If someone presents a threat to the regime’s agenda, its allies will mobilize to violate protections legally guaranteed to that person. There can no longer be illusions of political neutrality or fair play.
During Biden’s time in office, the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice rescinded regulations designed to protect political nominees subjected to background investigations of this nature. The deep state subterfuge that plagued Kavanaugh’s confirmation will become the norm unless Congressional Republicans amplify this misconduct and exercise whatever power they have over these rogue agencies.
Samuel Mangold-Lenett is a staff editor at The Federalist. His writing has been featured in the Daily Wire, Townhall, The American Spectator, and other outlets. He is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @smlenett.
The assistant special agent in charge (ASAC) of the Baltimore FBI office sat for a transcribed interview on Monday with the House Judiciary Committee. The transcript from the closed-door session, which The Federalist has reviewed in full, reveals a rare find: an FBI agent still involved in the Hunter Biden investigation who will admit the obvious — that Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss did not have ultimate authority to charge the president’s son.
Monday’s interview of the Baltimore ASAC, whose name is being withheld by the House Judiciary Committee, followed the questioning last week of her boss, Thomas Sobocinski, the special agent in charge. Both Sobocinski and the ASAC attended the Oct. 7, 2022, meeting in which, according to IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, Weiss said he was not the final decisionmaker on whether to bring charges against Hunter Biden.
In questioning the ASAC, the Judiciary Committee asked about her understanding of Weiss’s authority. She initially testified that she understood Weiss had the authority “to move forward and bring charges if that was what the determination was and he would go forth in doing that.” But after several back-and-forths, which included the ASAC reviewing the statutory language that would allow Weiss to bring charges in another district, she acknowledged that Weiss did not have the ultimate authority to charge Hunter Biden.
“But based on what we just discussed, it’s true that Mr. Weiss alone was not the deciding person on whether charges are filed?” the House attorney queried.
“I would say, based on the statute, seeing that, as it reads here … yes, I would say that there is someone else, the Attorney General, as it’s noted here in the statute, that is involved in this process,” the ASAC replied.
The House attorney continued: “[I]s it your understanding today that there is another person involved in whether Mr. Weiss could bring charges in another jurisdiction?”
“Yes,” the ASAC concurred.
The ASAC’s answer has been obvious to everyone for months, yet Democrats, the legacy media, and Weiss and Merrick Garland apologists have refused to acknowledge the reality. Even the ASAC’s boss, throughout his interview with the House Judiciary Committee, maintained, “Weiss had the authority in the U.S. to bring the charges where venue presented itself,” wherever he wanted, whether it be in California or D.C. And even when pushed on the limitations of a U.S. attorney’s authority, Sobocinski said Weiss had the authority and it was merely a matter of administrative hoop-jumping for the Delaware U.S. attorney to charge Biden in another district.
In fact, that Sobocinski couldn’t admit the truth rendered his entire testimony not credible. That is precisely why no one should believe anything Weiss and AG Garland say about the Hunter Biden investigation either — because they first deceived Congress and the American public about Weiss’s authority and have since doubled down on their misrepresentations.
Garland, for his part, told Sen. Chuck Grassley under oath that “the U.S. attorney in Delaware has been advised that he has full authority … to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it’s necessary.” Weiss then covered for Garland, telling the House Judiciary Committee in a letter on June 7, 2023, that “as the Attorney General has stated, I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges and for making decisions necessary to preserve the integrity of the prosecution…”
Then after the transcript of Shapley’s congressional closed-door interview was released, revealing the whistleblower’s testimony that during the meeting on Oct. 7, 2022, Weiss had said he was not the ultimate decisionmaker on whether to charge Hunter Biden, Weiss clarified his statement. While saying he stood by what he had written in his June 7, 2023, letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Weiss wrote in an early July follow-up letter that he wished to expand on what he meant. He acknowledged that as the U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware, he lacked the authority to charge Hunter Biden in other districts. Yet, not to worry, Weiss assured the House oversight committee: Garland had promised him that, if necessary, the AG would grant Weiss special attorney status to allow him to prosecute Hunter Biden in D.C., California, or any other jurisdiction.
The most revealing fact from Monday’s interview is that it took this long and this ASAC to say openly what the attorney general, the U.S. attorney, and the special agent in charge of the Baltimore FBI field office continue to obfuscate about: Weiss’s pre-special counsel authority. The only real reason to hide the reality that Weiss lacked the authority to charge Hunter Biden in D.C. and California is that it means the failure to charge him for felony tax offenses falls on the U.S. attorneys and attorney general his father appointed.
Thus the ASAC’s testimony also confirmed that the Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys in D.C. and California had refused to bring charges against Hunter Biden in their districts where they had proper venue for the alleged tax felonies.
On the question of what, precisely, Weiss had said during the Oct. 7, 2022, meeting, the ASAC was less helpful, however, not remembering many of the details. But not only didn’t she remember what Shapley claimed was said during the meeting. She also didn’t remember what her boss, Sobocinski, admitted to saying during the meeting. Her lack of recall thus doesn’t carry much of a punch, especially when she hadn’t taken notes during the meeting, as Shapley had.
Of course, during the interview, the DOJ and FBI’s attorneys tried to spin Shapley’s email notes as merely a summary of the meeting written later, but the IRS whistleblower has already destroyed that narrative. On Wednesday, his attorneys provided the House Judiciary Committee a copy of the handwritten notes he had taken during the meeting.
While those notes corroborate Shapley’s testimony, we are much beyond the question of what Weiss said during the meeting. We are now at the point that the House needs to launch additional impeachment inquiries of Garland, Weiss, and FBI Director Christopher Wray to uncover what the DOJ and FBI did (or didn’t do) to cover up for Hunter and Joe Biden and then cover up their cover-up.
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
On Monday, IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley provided congressional oversight committees nine new documents related to the botched Hunter Biden investigation, according to a letter sent Wednesday morning to the House Judiciary Committee. The letter also contained a redacted 10th new document: the handwritten notes Shapley took during the Oct. 7, 2022, meeting in which Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss allegedly announced to his team that he was “not the deciding official on whether charges are filed” against Hunter Biden.
Those handwritten notes further bolster Shapley’s earlier testimony about the meeting and debunk counterclaims by the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Baltimore field office that Weiss had not said he lacked authority to charge Hunter Biden. What the other nine documents reveal, however, remains to be seen.
“Yesterday the Washington Post published a story reportedly based on a transcript it obtained of the Committee’s interview of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent in Charge Thomas J. Sobocinski,” the letter from Shapley’s Empower Oversight attorneys to the House Judiciary Committee opened. Sobocinski was one of seven attendees at the Oct. 7, 2022, meeting, in which — according to Shapley’s previous testimony, corroborated by an email he sent following the meeting — Weiss said he was “not the deciding official” on whether to charge Hunter Biden and that he had been denied special counsel authority to charge the president’s son in D.C. or California.
As The Federalist reported earlier Wednesday based on its review of the transcript of Sobocinski’s interview, “Sobocinski claimed he did not remember Weiss saying he had sought (and been denied) special counsel status or that Weiss had represented that he was ‘not the deciding official.’” Further, “according to Sobocinski, had Weiss said either of those things, he would have remembered it,” with the FBI agent implying Shapley’s claims were false.
According to the transcript, Sobocinski tried to discredit Shapley’s testimony and the email he had sent following the October meeting by stressing that Shapley had not drafted the email during the meeting and thus the notes were not really “contemporaneous” with Weiss’s supposed statements.
In its Wednesday letter to the Judiciary Committee, Shapley’s legal team responded to Sobocinski’s objections by providing the committee a redacted copy of Shapley’s “contemporaneous handwritten notes,” in order to let the committee “access the truthfulness and reliability of Mr. Sobocinski’s testimony.” Empower Oversight, which represents Shapley, further stressed in its letter that, unlike Shapley, Sobocinski took no notes during the meeting on Oct. 7, 2022.
Shapley’s handwritten notes taken during the meeting do indeed track the email summary he sent later that evening. In his notes, he wrote: “Weiss stated— He is not the deciding person.” This provides strong corroboration for Shapley’s email and his testimony.
Conversely, Sobocinski has nothing to corroborate his (lack of) recollection of the meeting. Sobocinski has also proven himself not credible by testifying that Weiss had ultimate authority to charge Hunter Biden anywhere, anytime — well, kinda, sort of, not really.
While Shapley’s credibility remains bars above Sobocinski’s, the bottom line is it doesn’t really matter what Weiss said during the October meeting. What matters is what happened and whether Biden’s Department of Justice refused to pursue tax felony charges in other venues and kept Weiss from doing so himself. What matters is whether the DOJ and FBI interfered in the Hunter Biden investigation.
On the first question, Americans may never get a clear answer, as Weiss continues to obfuscate and cover for Attorney General Merrick Garland. But on the DOJ and FBI’s interference in the Hunter Biden investigation, there is already overwhelming evidence establishing this scandal — and it isn’t merely coming from Shapley or his fellow IRS whistleblower. Rather, another whistleblower exposed the burying of the FD-1023 form, which implicated both Hunter and Joe Biden in a Burisma bribery scandal. That whistleblower also revealed to Sen. Chuck Grassley that FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten opened an “assessment” in August 2020 to improperly discredit “verified and verifiable” derogatory intel about Hunter Biden.
The nine new documents Shapley provided to the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee may add even more evidence of the DOJ and FBI’s interference in the investigation of the president’s son. But unless and until the committees vote to release that information publicly, they will remain secreted from the American public. Likewise, the redacted portions of Shapley’s handwritten notes will remain confidential as potentially protected taxpayer information until the relevant congressional committees authorize their release.
That may happen sooner than originally planned, however, now that the White House is attempting to spin the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden as misinformation, with an assist from the DOJ and FBI lawyers representing Sobocinski.
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
Emails obtained by the Heritage Foundation following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, and shared exclusively with The Federalist, reveal that lies leaked to The New York Times about the origins of damning evidence implicating Hunter and Joe Biden in a bribery scandal were fed to Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss.
As I previously detailed, The New York Times reported those lies in its Dec. 11, 2020, article, “Material from Giuliani Spurred a Separate Justice Depart. Pursuit of Hunter Biden” — just a week after Americans first learned of the investigation of the now-president’s son. The Times’ reporting was “replete with falsehoods and deceptive narratives,” but “Americans just didn’t know it at the time.”
However, earlier this year, thanks to “whistleblower revelations and statements by former Attorney General William Barr,” the country learned that the Times’ claims — that evidence implicating the Bidens was derived from Giuliani — were false. Rather, a separate investigation had uncovered reporting from a “highly credible” FBI confidential human source (CHS) implicating Hunter and Joe Biden in a bribery scandal.
Now the FOIA-produced emails reveal even more: The FBI lies, laundered through The New York Times, were fed directly to Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss.
The Emails
The never-before-seen emails provided late last week by the Department of Justice to the Heritage Foundation and its Oversight Project director, Mike Howell, in response to a court order, included an email thread revealing how the Times story landed in Weiss’s lap.
“Ladies, here you have attached the NYT’s story ‘Material from Giuliani Spurred a Separate Justice Depart. Pursuit of Hunter Biden’ which posted a bit ago. Link here,” a Dec. 11, 2020, 6:44 p.m. email from the FBI Office of Public Affairs’ National Press Office read.
The names of the two email recipients were redacted. But the “(PG) (FBI)” and “(BA) (FBI)” coding suggests the National Press Office had forwarded the Times’ article, which spun evidence obtained by the Pittsburgh office as originating from Giuliani disinformation, to the Pittsburgh FBI office and the Baltimore FBI office — which provided support for the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office.
Within two hours of the FBI’s National Press Office sharing the false narrative about evidence of Biden family corruption, the link had been forwarded to a variety of Baltimore FBI agents, from there to Weiss’s top deputies Lesley Wolf and Shawn Weede, and further on by Weede to fellow Assistant U.S. Attorney Shannon Hanson and Weiss. Weiss himself then forwarded the Times article to another member of the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office, whose name was redacted in the FOIA-provided documents.
Given the sweetheart deal Weiss’s top Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf later tried to gift to Hunter Biden, this latest revelation raises the question of whether (and, if so, when) Weiss’s staff informed him of the CHS’s reporting that Burisma paid $5 million each in bribes to both Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.
These questions are now more important than ever because the just-released emails show Weiss’s staff sharing with him The New York Times’ false reporting that portrayed evidence coming from the Pittsburgh FBI office as sourced solely to Rudy Giuliani. But that’s not true — not by a long shot. At a minimum, Wolf and others in the Delaware office knew that — but Weiss might not have.
The Background
As The Federalist previously reported, contrary to the Times’ reporting, in the run-up to the 2020 election, then-Attorney General William Barr directed the Western District of Pennsylvania to serve as an intake office for any evidence related to Ukraine. U.S. Attorney Scott Brady was then charged with screening the evidence to ensure disinformation did not reach the other offices handling investigations related to Hunter Biden or Ukraine.
While some of the evidence Brady’s team screened came from Giuliani, agents also independently discovered a separate line of intel originating from a “highly credible” CHS who had worked under the Obama administration. Agents interviewed that CHS in late June 2020 and memorialized the CHS’s reporting in an FD-1023 form.
Americans would later learn the contents of that FD-1023 when a whistleblower informed Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office of its existence. Then, after FBI Director Christopher Wray dragged his feet in responding to congressional inquiries, Grassley released a minimally redacted copy of the unclassified document to the public.
The unredacted portions of the FD-1023 confirmed Giuliani had nothing to do with the sourcing of the intel. On the contrary, according to the form, the longtime CHS had personally conversed with Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and the company’s CFO Vadim Pojarskii.
The FD-1023 memorialized explosive reporting from the CHS, including the following:
Pojarskii claimed Hunter Biden was paid to serve on Burisma’s board of directors to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.”
Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin was investigating Burisma, but Zlochevsky told the CHS that “Hunter will take care of all of those issues through his dad.”
Zlochevsky told the CHS he had been coerced to pay bribes of $5 million each to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.
After Trump’s election in 2016, Zlochevsky expressed dissatisfaction with Trump’s victory, but then told the CHS that “Shokin had already been fired, and no investigation was currently going on.”
Zlochevsky told the CHS he had 17 recordings of the Bidens but had never paid Joe Biden directly.
The “Big Guy” moniker was used to refer to Joe Biden — a significant detail because the CHS interview predated the public release of material contained on Hunter Biden’s laptop, including information that established the “Big Guy” was one of Joe Biden’s nicknames.
Burisma discussed purchasing a U.S.-based oil and gas company for approximately $20-$30 million.
When news first broke of the FD-1023 and its damning indictment of the Bidens, Democrats and their paramours in the press tried to bury the story with a one-two punch. First, they framed the evidence as originating from Giuliani and part of a foreign disinformation operation. Grassley’s release of the actual FD-1023 destroyed that narrative.
Second, they falsely represented to the American public that Brady had already investigated the FD-1023 and closed the investigation as meritless. But as The Federalist first reported, that claim was blatantly false.
“It’s not true. It wasn’t closed down,” Barr told The Federalist after Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin falsely claimed that “the former attorney general and his ‘handpicked prosecutor’ had ended an investigation into a confidential human source’s allegation that Joe Biden had agreed to a $5 million bribe.”
“On the contrary,” Barr told The Federalist, “it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”
More Questions
Now we reach the crux of the matter: Who in Delaware knew of the FD-1023’s existence, its sourcing to a “highly credible confidential human source,” and that, as The Federalist previously reported, several details contained in the FD-1023 had already been corroborated prior to the handoff to Delaware? The Pittsburgh office had briefed the Delaware office on the document and its conclusion that it “bore indicia of credibility.”
A source familiar with the Pittsburgh brief of the Delaware office confirmed to The Federalist that in addition to agents from the Pittsburgh and Baltimore FBI field offices, Lesley Wolf attended the briefing on the FD-1023 and was informed of those details. Weiss, however, was not present for the briefing. Nor, as we previously learned, were the IRS agents-turned-whistleblowers included in the briefing.
The Federalist has also learned from a source with knowledge of the matter that the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office kept the Hunter Biden laptop secret from the Pennsylvania-based U.S. attorney’s office, which surely limited the investigators’ ability to assess the credibility of the evidence it was screening for disinformation.
Nonetheless, through its independent investigation of the CHS’s reporting, Pittsburgh corroborated several details of the FD-1023 and briefed Wolf on those details, telling her they believed the CHS’s information warranted further investigation.
But did Wolf tell that to Weiss? Did anyone tell that to Weiss? Or did Weiss’s team, after sharing The New York Times’ false narrative that Brady was on a political witch hunt of the Bidens and demanding an investigation into Giuliani disinformation, remain mum? Or did Weiss know about the FD-1023 and do nothing?
The emails don’t answer those questions, but they do confirm that Weiss and his top deputies were fed the Times story. Which leads to a final question: Which FBI agent(s) fed the Times the lies?
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
Tucker Carlson admitted on Wednesday that he’s “never been this worried about anything” as much as he is about where the country is headed under a deep state that repeatedly targets its political enemies and “rigs” elections instead of acting on voters’ desires.
Carlson made his anxieties about the state of our constitutional republic known in an interview with Adam Carolla, who asked the former Fox News host to weigh in on the coordinated effort by intelligence agencies and political elites to keep former President Donald Trump from taking back the White House. To kick off the question, Carolla showed Carlson a clip of now-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer telling MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in January 2017 that it was “dumb” for Trump to “take on the intelligence community” because “they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”
“From what I am told, they are very upset with how he has treated them and talked about them. And we need the intelligence community,” Schumer said.
Carlson said that every time he hears Schumer’s words in that clip, “it renders me speechless.”
“That’s the end of democracy,” Carlson remarked. “I don’t know how you can in the same sentence say ‘I’m for democracy’ and then say ‘actually, our country is run by a shadowy intel agency no one elected and no one has oversight over.”
Tucker Carlson on the 2020 Election & Chuck Schumer's Intelligence Agency Threats
"That was a rigged election and I hope that we never have another one…The CIA is a totally illegitimate criminal organization unless it is following precisely the orders of the elected… pic.twitter.com/qu0etLzZzl
Carlson said there’s no such thing as a “democratic republic if the CIA can punish you as an elected president for doing things that they don’t like.” Outside of the authority of the president, Carlson continued, intelligence agencies like the CIA “have no constitutional legitimacy.”
“Our system is super simple. The people who are elected by the public have all the power. They have employees to whom they delegate that power to get things done, but those employees have no independent power at all and no independent legitimacy,” he said. “The CIA is a totally illegitimate criminal organization unless it is following precisely the orders of the elected president. Democrat or Republican, doesn’t matter.”
Carlson said that Schumer, in the 2017 interview, is “describing a crime.”
“The people committing that crime in the CIA should be in prison for long terms. That’s the great threat to democracy right there. And the fact that no one on that set could even see that tells you how deeply corrupted they are. That’s terrifying and it’s true,” Carlson added.
Unless the rampant corruption and coverups by agencies like the CIA are addressed and punished, Carlson said the U.S. will continue to “decline” and see its “democratic institutions weaken.”
Carolla asked if Carlson believes these agencies, which participated in the Russia collusion hoax and subdued information about Biden family corruption, will let Trump win re-election.
“No of course [not],” Carlson replied, listing off Demcorat’s failed attempts to protest, impeach, and now indict Trump out of the 2024 race.
“We’re speeding toward assassination, obviously, and no one will say that, but I don’t know how you can’t reach that conclusion,” Carlson said. “They have decided, permanent Washington, both parties, have decided that there’s something about Trump that’s so threatening to them, they just can’t have it.”
TUCKER ON TRUMP: “We are speeding towards assassination obviously. — They have decided that there's something about Trump that's so threatening to them, they just can't have it”
Earlier in the interview, Carlson identified Trump as “a threat to the whole ecosystem of bullsh-t that makes Washington the richest city in the world and its suburbs, the richest suburbs.”
Democrats’ latest indictment scheme, Carlson said, is an attempt to send Trump “to prison for life for complaining about the last election,” which he is well within his First Amendment rights to do.
Carlson asked Trump during their sitdown earlier this month whether he feared for his life.
“Indictment is not working, your poll numbers go up,” Carlson said. “What’s next? Trying to put you in prison for the rest of your life, that’s not working. Don’t they have to kill you now?”
“I think the people of our country don’t get enough credit for how smart they are. But they get it, they really get it,” Trump replied.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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