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Evidence is Shaky For Iran’s ‘Trump Assassination Plot’

By Ken Silva | The Libertarian Institute | November 12, 2024

The Justice Department announced on Friday that it uncovered more evidence of an Iranian plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump—but the evidence of such a plot is the word of a criminal in Iran, who told the FBI about the conspiracy over the phone.

The DOJ’s announcement was included in charges against Farhad Shakeri, 51, of Iran; Carlisle Rivera, also known as Pop, 49, of Brooklyn, New York; and Jonathon Loadholt, 36, of Staten Island, New York—who are all accused of plotting to kill a U.S. journalist of Iranian origin.

While Shakeri is one of the defendants, the government’s criminal complaint shows that he appears to have been snitching to the FBI in recent months. According to the charging papers, Shakeri participated in phone interviews with the FBI from Iran on September 30, October 8, October 17, October 28 and November 7—ostensibly trading information in exchange for a sentence reduction for an unidentified individual.

In one of those interviews, Shakeri—who was deported from the United States in 2008 after serving fourteen years in prison for robbery—told the FBI that an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps official was pushing him to assassinate Trump. The IRGC official is unidentified but appears to be known to the U.S. government.

“According to SHAKERI, in approximately mid-to-late September 2024, IRGC Official-I asked SHAKERI to put aside his other efforts on behalf of the IRGC and focus on surveilling, and, ultimately, assassinating, former President of the United States, Donald J. Trump (‘Victim-4’ herein),” the criminal complaint said.

It continues:

“SHAKERI indicated to IRGC Official-I that this would cost a ‘huge’ amount of money. In response, IRGC Official-I said that ‘we have already spent a lot of money…[s]o the money’s not an issue,’ which SHAKERI understood to mean that the IRGC previously had spent a significant sum of money on efforts to murder Victim-4 and was willing to continue spending a lot of money in its attempt to procure Victim-4’s assassination.”

Shakeri further told the FBI that the IRGC official told him on October 7 that he had to provide a plan to kill Trump within seven days. Shakeri said he was unable to do so, and so Iran has paused its plans to kill Trump until after he loses the election—which would have made it easier to kill him.

“During the interview, SHAKERI claimed to the FBI that he did not intend to propose a plan to murder Victim-4 within the timeframe set by IRGC Official-I,” the charging papers added.

The FBI admitted in the charging papers that Shakeri is a liar, but said his claims about Trump “appear to be truthful.”

Shakeri, Rivera, and Loadholt have all been charged with murder-for-hire, which carries a maximum penalty of ten years in prison; conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, which carries a maximum penalty of ten years in prison; and money laundering conspiracy, which carries a maximum penalty of twenty years in prison.

The DOJ said that at Shakeri’s instruction, Loadholt and Rivera have spent months surveilling a U.S. citizen of Iranian origin residing in the U.S.—likely, based on the description, Masih Alinejad, who has been an outspoken critic of Iran’s government.

Rivera and Loadholt were arrested in the New York area.

The DOJ’s charges against Shakeri, Rivera, and Loadholt mark the latest allegation of an Iranian conspiracy to assassinate Trump.

On July 12—the day before the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania—the FBI arrested a Pakistani man with Iranian ties named Asif Merchant, who was trying to hire hitmen to kill Trump.

The hitmen turned out to be undercover FBI agents, and the whole case appears to be a highly controlled sting operation. While the DOJ claims Merchant has connections to the Iranian government, leaked FBI records show that he had to have his family wire him $5,000 from Pakistan to pay the “hitmen.”

The Merchant case looks similar to the supposed 2022 Iran plot to kill former national security adviser John Bolton. In that case, the FBI claimed that a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps tried assassinating Bolton, but the Iranian was never confirmed to be an IRGC-QF member, and the “assassin” he was trying to hire was an FBI informant.

November 12, 2024 Posted by | Deception | , , | Leave a comment

‘Shocking Cover-up’: DOJ Lawyers Committed Fraud in Vaccine Injury Case, CHD Attorney Alleges in Motion Filed Today

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 2, 2024

Rolf Hazlehurst, a Children’s Health Defense (CHD) staff attorney and father of a son with autism, today filed a motion in federal court alleging lawyers representing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) fraudulently concealed evidence that vaccines can cause autism.

In a motion filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, Hazlehurst alleged that U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers who represented HHS in vaccine injury cases repeatedly defrauded the judicial system — from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) to the U.S. Supreme Court.

That fraud led to thousands of families of vaccine-injured children being denied the right to compensation and the right to have their cases heard, according to the motion.

“This motion makes very serious and well-substantiated allegations of a massive scheme of fraud on the courts,” said Kim Mack Rosenberg, CHD general counsel who also is of counsel to Hazlehurst in the federal case.

“The evidence submitted in support of the motion clearly shows that attorneys from the Department of Justice concealed and misrepresented highly relevant information from the special masters in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and the judges in the courts,” Mack Rosenberg told The Defender.

Hazlehurst’s son Yates regressed into autism after being vaccinated as an infant. In the early 2000s, his family and thousands of others filed cases seeking compensation for vaccine-induced autism through the NVICP.

The program consolidated all of the petitions into the Omnibus Autism Proceeding (OAP) and selected six representative “test cases” — of which Yates’ was the second — as the basis for determining the outcome of the remaining 5,400 cases.

Unbeknownst at the time to the petitioners and the NVICP special masters, the DOJ’s star expert medical witness, Dr. Andrew Zimmerman informed DOJ attorneys during the ongoing omnibus proceedings that he had reversed his original opinion and determined that vaccines can and do cause autism in some cases.

In what Hazlehurst alleges was “a shocking cover-up,” instead of allowing Zimmerman to share his revised opinion, the DOJ attorneys relieved Zimmerman of his duties as a witness.

However, they continued to use excerpts from his unamended written opinion to make their case that vaccines did not cause autism — misrepresenting his position and committing “fraud on the court.”

According to the motion, the DOJ’s first act of fraud snowballed into a scheme of deception with far-reaching implications in which DOJ attorneys repeatedly misrepresented Zimmerman’s opinion and concealed other evidence that emerged during the test case hearings in the OAP in subsequent cases before multiple courts.

“As a result, thousands of cases in the Omnibus Autism Proceeding were denied compensation and the impact beyond the OAP is enormous,” Mack Rosenberg said. “This fraud affected the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program — especially the Omnibus Autism Proceeding — the Court of Federal Claims, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and even the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Hazlehurst said he is “asking the court to give this motion the serious attention it deserves.” He added, “At a minimum, the court should allow discovery and hold a hearing on this motion.”

Overturning a ruling due to fraud on the court is an extraordinary remedy reserved for extraordinary cases but according to Hazlehurst, “This motion we filed shows that this indeed is an extraordinary case.”

The DOJ has until April 30 to respond to the motion.

CHD CEO Mary Holland told The Defender, “Vaccines most definitely do cause autism, and the government has been lying about this reality for decades.”

Holland added:

“With others, I published a law review article in 2011 showing that the government absolutely knew that vaccines cause autism — and yet they have covered it up and lied about it since the inception of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

“How many hundreds of thousands of children and families would have been spared the heartaches and crushing financial burdens of autism had the government come clean?”

‘Exceptionally difficult’ to obtain compensation through NVICP

In the late 1980s, a substantial number of lawsuits for vaccine injuries related to Wyeth’s (now Pfizer) DPT vaccine, combined with “grossly insufficient compensation” for victims of vaccine injury, threatened the vaccine program’s viability.

In response, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which established the “vaccine court.” The law gave the pharmaceutical industry broad protection from liability and proposed to compensate vaccine-injured children through the new NVICP.

The NVICP originally was designed to be a “swift, flexible, and less adversarial alternative to the often costly and lengthy civil arena of traditional tort litigation.”

To receive compensation, parents file a claim with the program.

The Court of Federal Claims (which oversees the program) appoints “special masters” — typically lawyers who previously represented the U.S. government — to manage and decide the individual claims. Attorneys may represent the petitioners, and the DOJ represents HHS.

NVICP proceedings are more informal than a typical courtroom. Unlike regular court proceedings, petitioners in the “vaccine court” have no right to discovery.

If a petitioner files a claim for a vaccine covered under the program and listed on the Vaccine Injury Table — the list of known vaccine side effects associated with certain vaccines within set time frames — it is presumed that a vaccine caused the petitioner’s injury and the petitioner is eligible for compensation without proof of causation.

However, if a petitioner experiences an “off-table injury” — an injury not listed on the table or that didn’t happen in the recognized injury time frame — the petitioner must prove by “a preponderance of evidence” that the vaccine caused the injury. Evidence includes medical records and expert witness testimony.

Claims must be filed within three years of the first symptom or two years of death.

Petitioners must provide a medical theory of the cause, a sequence of cause and effect, and show a temporal relationship between vaccine and injury.

However, the NVICP does not specify the required volume and type of evidence, so meeting the “preponderance of evidence” standard is largely at the discretion of the special master.

Petitioners can appeal NVICP cases to the Court of Federal Claims, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It is “exceptionally difficult” to obtain compensation within the NVICP, Hazlehurst told The Defender. The proceedings are often turned into drawn-out, contentious expert battles and the backlog of cases is substantial.

The Vaccine Act of 1986 is unjust for petitioners, Hazlehurst alleges. And that injustice reached its zenith with the OAP, when the DOJ perpetrated fraud right under the noses of the special masters, signaling the beginning of the fraud on the courts that continues to this day.

Hazlehurst told The Defender he hopes his motion will shed light on the damage inflicted by this law and that it will ultimately help end the autism epidemic.

“The Vaccine Act of 1986 is one of the fundamental causes of the autism epidemic,” Hazlehurst said. “Understanding why this is true, and how the United States Department of Justice perpetrated fraud upon the courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States, is the key to ending the autism epidemic.”

A short history of the autism omnibus proceedings

By 2002, to address a “massive influx” of petitions alleging vaccine-induced autism, the Office of Special Masters combined over 5,000 claims into the OAP to determine whether vaccines cause autism and if so, under what conditions.

Initially, the NVICP planned to investigate causation issues and apply those general findings to individual cases. However, the program changed its strategy and instead selected six “test cases” by which it would examine the evidence for injuries caused by the measles mumps rubella (MMR) vaccine, thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCV), or a combination of both.

Then it would apply the findings of the test cases to other similar cases.

In doing so, Hazlehurst alleges, the court conflated general causation evidence with specific causation evidence from a few cases, without allowing for rules of discovery or evidence that would apply in an actual court.

This, Hazlehurst said, “was a recipe for disaster” as each test case was then used to determine the outcome for the remaining 5,000 cases.

Three cases — Cedillo v. HHS, Hazlehurst v. HHS and Poling v. HHS — are at the center of the alleged fraud by the DOJ.

Fraud #1: the Zimmerman testimony

Hearings for the first OAP test case, Cedillo v. HHS, began in 2007. Zimmerman had worked with the DOJ to prepare an expert report on behalf of HHS finding that Michelle Cedillo’s autism had likely not been caused by the MMR vaccine.

Zimmerman later wrote in a 2018 affidavit that he attended the Cedillo hearing and listened to the testimony of Dr. Marcel Kinsbourne, another world-renowned expert in pediatric neurology.

On that basis, Zimmerman stated, he decided to clarify his written expert opinion about Michelle Cedillo, concerned it would be taken out of context.

Zimmerman spoke with DOJ attorneys to clarify that his expert opinion in the Cedillo case “was not intended to be a blanket statement as to all children and all medical science,” according to the 2018 affidavit.

He specified that advances in science, medicine and his own clinical research had led him to believe there were exceptions in which vaccinations could cause autism.

He also referred the attorneys to a paper he published with colleagues in 2006, the Poling paper, describing the case of an unidentified child who suffered regressive autism following vaccine adverse reactions. The paper suggested a possible association between mitochondrial dysfunction, vaccinations and regressive autism.

After communicating this evidence to DOJ attorneys, the DOJ dismissed Zimmerman as a witness but continued to use his written opinion as general causation evidence.

The DOJ was also allowed to use that report, submitted in one test case, as general causation evidence in other test cases.

None of the petitioners in the test cases could cross-examine Zimmerman, because he was no longer a witness. This was only possible because the federal rules of evidence do not apply in NVICP proceedings.

Yates’ case, Hazlehurst v. HHS, was the second test case in the OAP. His treating neurologist, Dr. Jean-Ronel Corbier testified Yates’ autism was likely caused by a genetic predisposition combined with an environmental insult in the form of vaccinations administered when Yates was ill. (Yates was a patient of Zimmerman in 2002.)

Corbier’s theory of causation in Yates was similar to the theory developed by Zimmerman in the Poling paper and shared with DOJ attorneys.

Yet, despite knowing Zimmerman had concluded that in a subset of children like Yates, vaccines can cause autism, the DOJ “intentionally and fraudulently” misrepresented Zimmerman’s expert testimony in its closing statements in Yates’ case, Hazlehurst alleges.

DOJ attorneys selectively quoted Zimmerman’s expert report from the Cedillo case, telling the court that Zimmerman found there was “no sound evidence to support a causative relationship with exposure to both or either MMR and/or mercury,” when Zimmerman had explicitly told the DOJ that his opinion was the opposite, according to the affidavit.

Fraud #2: the Hannah Poling case

Three weeks after closing arguments in Yates’ case, the DOJ quietly conceded Hannah Poling’s case, which was on the verge of becoming the fourth test case.

Hannah regressed into autism over several months after being vaccinated against nine diseases at one doctor’s visit.

In 2003, Poling’s father, Jon, a physician and trained neurologist, and mother, Terry, an attorney and nurse, filed an autism petition against HHS under the NVICP for their daughter’s injuries.

Jon Poling was a co-author of the 2006 paper with Zimmerman that analyzed an unnamed child, later revealed as Hannah Poling, who had a mitochondrial disorder — a condition with which Yates was later diagnosed.

In 2007, just three weeks after the lead DOJ attorney misrepresented Zimmerman’s opinion during the hearing in Hazlehurst, the same DOJ attorney submitted a report to the special masters conceding that in the case of Poling v. HHS, Hannah’s “regressive encephalopathy with features of autism spectrum disorder” (i.e., regressive autism) was caused by a vaccine injury, based upon a preponderance of the evidence standard.

This was the same neurological diagnosis Zimmerman had made for Yates in 2002.

According to court documents, if HHS had not conceded Poling, Poling v. HHS would have been designated as a test case. However, because the DOJ conceded the case, it was taken out of the omnibus and the DOJ had the case records sealed —- although they were later leaked to the press and published in the Huffington Post in 2008.

In March 2008, Hannah’s parents moved to make the proceedings transparent and available to the public, but the DOJ opposed the motion and the NVICP deferred a ruling on the motion for 60 days.

During those 60 days, the DOJ filed amendments to its report conceding the Poling case. It retroactively changed the basis for compensation to say that Hannah had a “table injury.”

This meant that instead of conceding that the petitioners had proven with a preponderance of evidence that the vaccines caused her autism, they said she had a presumptive injury on the vaccine table, in which causation is presumed.

By conceding the Poling case, opposing the parents’ motion for complete transparency and changing the basis for compensation, the DOJ was able to conceal fraud and critical material evidence of how vaccines cause autism, according to Hazlehurst.

Fraud #3: appellate courts and the U.S. Supreme Court

On Feb. 12, 2009, the special masters denied compensation in the first three cases. They found the petitioners failed to establish causation between MMR or TCV vaccines and autism.

In Hazlehurst’s case, the NVICP explicitly relied on the portion of Zimmerman’s expert report that DOJ attorneys misrepresented.

The Hazlehursts appealed to the Court of Federal Claims and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, both of which upheld the special master’s decision — by relying on Zimmerman’s misrepresented opinion and knowingly fraudulent statements made by a DOJ attorney, according to Hazlehurst.

Those prior decisions directly influenced the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Bruesewitz v. Wyeth.

In that case, Wyeth, now Pfizer, argued that a decision favoring the Bruesewitz family — who was attempting to sue the company for their daughter’s vaccine injury — would lead to a “flood of frivolous lawsuits,” including by the families from the omnibus.

Amicus briefs from the American Academy of Pediatrics, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Sanofi Pasteur on behalf of Wyeth relied on Hazlehurst v. HHS and other OAP decisions that were based on the misrepresentation of Zimmerman’s testimony that there was “no scientific basis” that vaccines cause autism.

The Supreme Court ruled that the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, and the NVICP it created, preempt all design-defect claims against vaccine manufacturers by individuals seeking compensation for injury or death.

In oral arguments and in their written opinions, the justices explicitly cited the portions of the amicus briefs citing Hazlehurst v. HHS and other OAP rulings that relied on the DOJ misrepresentations in their rulings.

Since that ruling, the special masters have continued to rely on the DOJ’s fraudulent claims to deny compensation to families filing complaints in the NVICP.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CHD chairman on leave, and Hazlehurst in September 2018 filed a complaint with the DOJ Office of Inspector General outlining what they then knew about the DOJ’s fraud during the OAP.

The DOJ Office of Professional Misconduct investigated and responded in a June 2019 letter that it found no wrongdoing.

In that letter, however, the Office of Professional Responsibility conceded the DOJ had in fact kept Zimmerman’s testimony while dismissing him as a witness in order to avoid creating the appearance that he had changed his opinion and to prevent the petitioners from cross-examining him, according to Hazlehurst.

The ‘fraud on the court’ doctrine 

It has taken 17 years, Hazlehurst said, since the DOJ’s first alleged act of fraud upon the court, for him to gather all of the admissible evidence necessary to “connect the dots and reveal the DOJ’s web of deceit” to make this claim under the “fraud on the court” doctrine.

Under this doctrine, codified as Rule 60(d)(3) in the rules of the Court of Federal Claims, there is no time limit for the court to overturn a judgment made on the basis of fraud on the court.

The petitioner must demonstrate that there was fraud, intent to defraud and that the fraud affected more than one instance of litigation — putting the integrity of the judicial process at stake.

Hazlehurst alleges DOJ attorneys committed fraud by knowingly making false statements and offering evidence they knew to be false and that they did not take remedial action to disclose information they knew to be false and misleading to the court.

The special masters themselves have an obligation to consider all relevant evidence, but didn’t, in this case, Hazlehurst said. Instead, they ignored the contradictions in Zimmerman’s opinions and ignored the Poling evidence.

This is particularly problematic for NVICP cases, where petitioners can’t conduct meaningful discovery or cross-examination and the special masters’ oversight is the only meaningful safeguard to prevent the DOJ’s abuse of power, according to Hazlehurst.

“There is nothing fair about a government proceeding where the government controls the admissibility of evidence,” he said.

Hazlehurst said that by forcing people injured by vaccines into an administrative program, petitioners are deprived of the basic constitutional rights to due process and equal protection under the law. “It should be declared unconstitutional,” he said.

Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

April 2, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

The appointment of a special counsel for Hunter Biden’s case is just a trick to better shield the US president and his son

By Tony Cox | RT | August 12, 2023

US Attorney General Merrick Garland, who works for President Joe Biden, desperately wants the world to know that the government’s investigation of his boss’ son is utterly apolitical. America’s top law-enforcement official is so desperate, in fact, that he has appointed a special counsel to handle the case.

That’s right. No mere employee of Garland’s US Department of Justice (DOJ) is going to be leading the criminal investigation of Hunter Biden. Garland on Friday assigned a special counsel to the case because he wanted to demonstrate to Americans the DOJ’s “commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters.”

Make no mistake: This is definitely one of those “particularly sensitive matters.” The president’s son has been accused of a litany of crimes – from failing to pay taxes to making an illegal gun purchase to transporting women across state lines for prostitution. It turns out he’s the sort of guy who was brazen enough to take pictures of himself smoking crack and driving his Porsche at 172 miles per hour, then to leave those images and countless other incriminating files on a laptop computer that he abandoned at a Delaware repair shop.

Most sensitive politically is the evidence suggesting that Hunter Biden ran an influence-peddling operation in which he allegedly solicited bribes in Ukraine and other countries by selling the family “brand.” The brand was then-Vice President Joe Biden and the political clout that he could wield for the family’s friends.

Those claims are the most serious because they connect the commander-in-chief to the alleged conspiracy. In fact, Hunter Biden allegedly patched in his father on conference calls with overseas business associates and once tried to coerce a Chinese businessman to resolve a payment dispute by claiming that Joe Biden was sitting next to him and would make the partner regret failing to comply.

President Biden has angrily denied having been with his son when the shakedown message was sent. He also has repeatedly denied having any knowledge of or involvement in his son’s business dealings. As evidence continues to mount to the contrary, it’s easy to see why Garland is concerned about public perceptions heading into the 2024 presidential election.

Republicans have accused the DOJ of giving the president’s son preferential treatment and of trying to protect the Biden family as Joe Biden seeks re-election. Two-thirds of US voters polled by Rasmussen Reports agreed, saying Hunter Biden got favorable treatment from federal prosecutors because his father is the president.

If all that doesn’t make the investigation politically sensitive enough, the cherry on top is that a DOJ special counsel has filed dozens of felony charges against Biden’s chief 2024 rival, former President Donald Trump, in two separate cases. Trump, the first ex-president in US history to be criminally indicted, has claimed that politically motivated prosecutors are trying to interfere in the election because Biden can’t defeat him in a rematch of their 2020 battle.

Garland’s solution was to appoint a special counsel in the Biden case. However, it turns out that the prosecutor assigned to the role is the same DOJ employee who has been running the Hunter Biden investigation since 2019. David Weiss, US attorney for the district of Delaware, was elevated to special counsel status at his own request. “Upon considering his request, as well as the extraordinary circumstances relating to this matter, I have concluded it is in the public interest to appoint him as special counsel,” Garland said.

The Pro-Biden press corps – meaning pretty much the entire US legacy media – nodded approvingly. For example, the New Republic was quick to claim that Biden’s attorney general had “annihilated several main Republican talking points.” The move “fully insulated the investigation from accusations of government interference,” the outlet added. NBC News said “distrustful” Republicans were still critical of the appointment.

As Garland pointed out, as special counsel Weiss will no longer be subject to “day-to-day supervision” by any Department of Justice (DOJ) official. And if the administration were to torpedo the investigation or block the filing of any charges, Garland would be required to inform Congress. The attorney general and Biden’s media backers also have noted that Weiss was appointed to his job by Trump and was allowed to continue leading the Hunter Biden investigation when the new president came into office.

But what really changed? Garland has repeatedly claimed that Weiss was given full authority all along to make prosecutorial decisions without any interference from higher-ups. If Garland is to be believed, Weiss merely has the same authority now, and his prosecutorial decisions will still have to conform with DOJ policies. He will have broad authority to file charges in any jurisdiction he chooses, but his boss insisted that he had that latitude before.

Weiss has backed up Garland’s claims that the investigation has been free of political interference. He denied allegations from IRS whistleblowers that the administration had declined to give him special-counsel status and that he had been prevented from filing indictments against the president’s son in Washington and Los Angeles, where some of the alleged crimes supposedly occurred.

Republican lawmakers were unimpressed by the fact Weiss was appointed as a US attorney by Trump, pointing instead to actions that suggested he was trying to protect the Bidens. The Delaware prosecutor’s investigation dragged on for four years, during which the DOJ declined to set the record straight when former US intelligence officials falsely claimed the laptop scandal was a Russian disinformation operation, deceiving voters just before the 2020 election. When Weiss finally did file an indictment in June, it was limited to tax and gun matters.

Weiss made a deal with defense lawyers that called for the felony gun charge to be dropped if Biden adhered to the terms of a diversion agreement. The president’s son also was enabled to avoid jail time on the two misdemeanor tax charges to which he agreed to plead guilty. It was a political happy ending that would allow Hunter Biden to move on, free of any felonies on his record, and end the distraction he was creating for his father’s re-election campaign.

Unfortunately for the Bidens, US District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika was taken aback by the deal, at least partly because it appeared that Weiss had given Hunter Biden immunity from prosecution for other possible crimes. The judge refused to accept the plea bargain late last month and sent the lawyers back to the drawing board to work out a revised agreement. Weiss said in a court filing on Friday that talks on a new plea deal were at an “impasse,” suggesting that the case was headed for trial.

It’s unlikely that such a trial would ever be allowed to happen, making a public spectacle of the allegations against Hunter Biden at a time when his father is asking voters for another four-year term in the White House. Even as Garland assures the public that the investigation will be guided “only by the facts and the law,” Weiss will have other concerns. Whether he carries the title of special counsel or US attorney for the district of Delaware, his job is to give the appearance of enforcing the law without causing any serious harm to the Bidens.

August 12, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | 1 Comment

No US Presidential Election in 2024

The Automatic Earth | August 11, 2023

In January 2023, US special counsel Jack Smith applied for -and received- a subpoena for Twitter, specifically for all of Donald Trump’s utterances at the site through the years, including the ones he may have never published. Note: the subpoena came long after Trump left Twitter. And no, it wasn’t X then, and therefore it is not now. He wrote it when it was Twitter. Important. Trump left Twitter (was cancelled) on Jan 8 2021, Elon Musk bought it on October 27 2022, and renamed it “X” in late July 2023. Just so we get our horses and dogs in line.

Special counsel Jack Smith received his Twitter/Trump subpoena with the added provision that it had to be entirely secret, not even Twitter or Trump could know. US District Court Judge Beryll Howell gave Smith what he wanted, agreeing that if Trump’s years-old Twitter past was known, he would become a flight risk. But both Smith and Howell knew this was absolute nonsense. Not only is Twitter the last place you turn to when you have nefarious secrets to hide (it’s the opposite!), but the man is running for President, for God’s sake! And because of some 5 year old -or so- tweets he would pack in the family and disappear to an -underground- bungalow on Vanatua, never to be heard from again?

I would put this down as the moment when it became impossible for the US to have a presidential election in 2024. We’ve had some 8 years of this anti-Trump circus now, non-stop, Hillary, Pelosi, Adam Schiff and Robert Mueller, yada yada yada, but I don’t think we’ve reached the point before where the elections might as well be cancelled. We’re there now though. And that is a BIG point. We’ve let it come far too far. We’re in slapstick territory.

Think of it as a boxing match. In the one corner, we have the former champion/president, wearing the slightly widened red trunks. At age 77, he looks somewhat bruised and battered, but he doesn’t look beaten- yet. What’s noticeable though is that his corner is empty, except for Melania cleaning his brow, not even his own party is there to support him. There are some 90 million Americans behind him, but they are at home.

In the other corner, the defending champion, in blue trunks, weighing in at about 25 pounds and falling, looks a little lost. But behind him in his corner he has thousands of operatives: his entire party, plus the CIA and NSA and FBI and DOJ. And all the newspapers and TV channels and social media in the country. And all the judges and prosecutors, the DAs and GAs, it’s a veritable love-in. The guy in the blue trunks could be braindead and he’d still win. And I wish I was a cartoonist, and could capture the entire image in one frame. I can see it in front of my eyes, but I can’t draw it.

Where the boxing analogy goes astray is that in this case the blue side is allowed to harass the red side before, during and after the (preparations for) the fight, and during the fight itself. You can’t a have a free and fair fight, and a level playing field, if some “blue operatives” can put shackles on the ankles and wrists of the red candidate, or even lock him up while he’s preparing for the bell to ring. If the system allows him to be a candidate, it must also allow him to prepare for his candidacy, in the same way that his opponent can. That is not happening.

US special counsel Jack Smith has announced that the US plans to drag Trump before court after court starting January 2 2024. At least 3 major indictments (will be a dozen) , likely many more, and at my last count, 82 charges (it’s impossible to keep up). Smith can then finger pick any of these charges to put Trump in custody, whenever he feels like it. The judges are almost all “blue”, and so are the jury pools: New York and DC. And this is while he’s supposed to be campaigning!

And also: Trump allegedly already spent $40 million on legal expenses. But what if Trump doesn’t have $40 million? We could argue the $40 million should be spent on his campaign. Look at Imran Khan, guys, who was just convicted to a 3-year prison term in Pakistan on US directives. Like Trump, he is the most popular political candidate in his nation, and they got him on selling necklaces when he was PM.

That is Trump’s future too. And hence, the end of American democracy. He doesn’t stand a chance. And if he doesn’t, the system doesn’t, and you don’t. You’re fine as long as you agree with the boot stomping on your neck, and you maybe even enjoy it. But if you don’t, Jack Smith and his ilk – and Obama, Hillary, Adam Schiff, Pelosi, the whole gang, will come with charges and indictments directed at you.

You’re on the verge of the abyss. if you want to take your chances with what you might find down there, fair enough. But always know that you have a choice. And that, if somehow they do manage to stage a presidential election in November 2024 as things stand now, it’ll be fake from A to Z. Grow a pair, people, grow a backbone. You’re going to need them.

August 12, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | 2 Comments

Leave Trump Alone (Because It Does Not Matter)

By Peter Van Buren | We Meant Well | June 26, 2023

The narrative is set. Everything between now and November 2024, absent an actual alien intervention, is filler material.

Trump will ride his narrative to the polls, campaigning even if in hand cuffs and an ankle monitor. He is, he will make clear, the victim of a Democratic plot to weaponize “justice,” dating back to 2016 when Hillary was let off scot-free for her email shenanigans, followed by the FBI’s concocted Russiagate, two impeachments, and now a carousel of indictments. His opponent is Joe Biden, older than Yoda but presenting more like Jar Jar, crooked in cahoots with his scum bag son to hard suck bribe money out of eastern Europe. Sleepy Joe’s narrative is to count on the same FBI going after Trump with both barrels to shuffle its feet investigating him and Hunter through the election, with a final surge under the slogan “Oh who cares, I’m not Trump!” to wrap things up. It’s all a rich tapestry.

The problem is it is compelling; there is a lot of truth underneath the showmanship. There was David Petraeus, Obama’s CIA Director, who leaked secret docs to his girlfriend, and Sandy Berger, Clinton’s NSA Director, who stole secret docs. But it was Hillary who did get away with it all, at the FBI’s discretion (so much for one law for everyone) what Trump has been accused of in Mar-a-Lago. Hillary Clinton maintained an unsecured private email server which processed classified material on a daily basis. Her server held at least 110 known messages containing classified information, including e-mail chains classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level, the highest level of civilian classification. The FBI found classified intelligence improperly stored and transmitted on Clinton’s server “was compromised by unauthorized individuals, to include foreign governments or intelligence services, via cyber intrusion or other means.”

Clinton and her team destroyed tens of thousands of emails, evidence, as well as physical phones and Blackberries which potentially held evidence — obstruction as clear as it comes. She operated the server out of her home kitchen despite the presence of the Secret Service on property who failed to report it. A server in a closet is not as dramatic a visual as boxes of classified stored in a shower room, but justice is supposed to be blind. More recently, what of Mike Pence and Joe Biden, both of whom have escaped indictment so far on similar charges of mishandling classified information. Trump voters know if the FBI is going to take similar fact sets and ignore one while aggressively pursuing another, it is partial and political. No matter which candidate wins and loses, DOJ’s credibility is tanked.

The Stormy Daniels case, and the guilty finding in the Jean Carroll defamation case, reek of politics. Neither case would have seen daylight outside of Democratic hive New York, and neither could have held up outside a partisan justice system that permits it to ignore Jeffrey Epstein’s death in custody or a city in a crime tornado (New York in the past year reduced 52 percent of all felony charges to misdemeanors, opposite of what was done to Trump) while aggressively allowing the system to pursue a decades-old rape case of dubious propriety.

Witch hunt meet Hunter. New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg ran for office on the promise to prosecute Trump. He fulfilled a campaign promise and paid off his George Soros-connected backers. Bragg, in the words of law professor Jonathan Turley, had a “very public, almost Hamlet-like process where he debated whether he could do this bootstrapping theory [bumping misdemeanors up to felonies in the Stormy case.] He stopped it for a while and was pressured to go forward with it. All of that smacks more of politics than prosecutorial discretion.”

Calling it all a witch hunt is just a starting point. The point here is not innocence; it is whether the justice system is going to take fact sets and ignore one while aggressively pursuing another, risking being seen as partial and political. No matter which candidate wins or loses, credibility is tanked.

Still to come (at the least) are whatever judicial actions will emerge from the Special Prosecutor over Trump’s role in January 6, and legal action over the 2020 Georgia vote count (with another Democratic openly anti-Trump prosecutor.) Trump jokes in his stump speech nowadays every time he flies over a Blue State he gets another subpoena. He could easily head into the Republican convention to accept the nomination with multiple convictions and/or indictments on his shoulders. It won’t matter. The justice system is going to take fact sets and ignore some while aggressively pursuing others, partial and political plain as day. No matter which candidate wins, credibility is tanked. It grinds that most of the serious charges against Trump are under the hoary Espionage Act, seen by many as reviving the now-discredited trope Trump was a Russian agent.

Mostly overlooked for now is how much of the apparent evidence against Trump at Mar-a-Lago came from his own attorneys. Attorney-client privilege is recognized as one of the cornerstones of fairness in our system. In the Trump case, the Justice Department used the one major exception to privilege, when the communication is intended to further a criminal or fraudulent act, to compel Trump’s lawyers to give evidence against their own client. Justice asserted Trump lied to his own team about having no more classified documents, and that this constituted a crime of fraud and maybe obstruction, and thus privilege is not available and Trump’s lawyer can be made to testify against his client. The crime or fraud exception to attorney-client privilege itself has a long history, dating back to English common law. In the United States, the crime or fraud exception was first recognized by the Supreme Court in the 1840 case of United States v. Privileged Communications. But Trump’s supporters are unlikely to read deeply into the case law; all they’ll see is what looks like strong-arm tactics by the Department of Justice. No matter which candidate wins and loses, DOJ’s credibility is tanked.

The thing is no one has to work very hard to convince Trump supporters of the truth of what he is saying, that he is the victim. Trump support remained unmoved by the many investigations that plagued his presidency. Even during peak crises, views of him were static. Post-presidency polls continued the trend. Public opinion of Trump remains remarkably stable, despite his unprecedented legal challenges, and about half of Americans do not see his behavior as disqualifying, sharper if you divide along partisan lines. When asked if Trump’s legal troubles would impact their views of him, two-thirds of his supporters said it would not make a difference. That’s a committed bunch. Perhaps just as important, 57 percent of voters, including one-third of Democrats, said the indictment in New York earlier this year was politically motivated.

No one can say who will win in November 2024, but one loser is certain, faith in the rule of law by a large number of Americans. They will leave the polls certain the system was bent to “get” Trump, either saddened by the fall of blind justice or saddened that it did not work and Trump remined a powerful figure with a large movement behind him, either in or out of the Oval Office.

June 26, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Millions in Taxes & FARA Violations Left Out of Hunter Biden Plea Deal, Critics Say

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 24.06.2023

Despite President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, striking a plea deal with regard to a couple of misdemeanor charges of failing to pay taxes, the scandal haunting the Bidens is not over, according to US legal observers and conservative commentators.

The US’ first son reached a plea agreement with the Department of Justice (DoJ) on Tuesday concerning federal tax and weapon possession charges: Hunter Biden is expected to admit that he withheld $100,000 in taxes in 2017-2018.

However, it’s a far cry from what he really owed to the US government, explained Just the News, an independent media outlet founded by US investigative journalist John Solomon. Citing supervisory IRS agent-turned-whistleblower Gary Shapley, the media outlet pointed out that Hunter has failed to pay about $2.2 million in taxes since 2014.

Earlier this week, Shapley’s bombshell testimony alleging the first son’s tax crimes and the DoJ’s meddling to shield the younger Biden, was made public. The whistleblower insisted that the Hunter’s misdeeds included not only tax evasion but also filing false tax returns since at least 2014: “Altogether it was around $2.2 million,” he told US lawmakers.

However, most of these felonies had been swept under the rug by the DoJ, according to Shapley. The department’s apparent interference in Hunter’s case ranged from refusing to approve search warrants to allowing the statute of limitation to expire in some instances, as per the supervisory IRS agent and his subordinate.

For its part, Hunter’s legal team insists that he had belatedly paid over $2 million in back taxes and penalties, accusing the IRS whistleblowers of a biased approach.

Nonetheless, US legal observers believe that the DoJ’s apparent cover-up of Hunter’s tax affairs and other potential felonies is fraught with the risk of a bigger scandal in the making. In particular, legal scholar Jonathan Turley raised concerns about the “absence of certain charges in the plea deal given to Hunter Biden” in his blog on Saturday.

According to Turley, the DoJ somehow overlooked Hunter acting as a de facto unregistered foreign agent, something that former President Donald Trump’s associate Paul Manafort was promptly accused of. The first son likely violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) while striking business deals with foreign entities including in China, Romania and Ukraine during and after his father’s vice presidency, the lawyer pointed out.

What’s more disturbing is that the Justice Department never initiated an investigation into the Bidens’ purported influence-peddling despite allegations of millions of dollars generated from Hunter’s foreign partners, according to Turley. Indeed, the House Oversight Committee has recently unveiled evidence supposedly proving hefty transfers to Biden family members from foreign sources. Still, Attorney General Merrick Garland has so far refused to appoint a special counsel to look into the matter.

The DoJ also appears to be uninterested in investigating bribery allegations involving Hunter Biden and his father as well as a 2017 Whatsapp message with threats from Hunter Biden to one of his Chinese associates, following which the Chinese reportedly sent $5 million to Hunter’s account.

According to Turley, the DoJ, Congressional Democrats and US mainstream media want these stories to disappear. He quoted former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) as saying “Everybody needs to back off!” while addressing GOP investigators and conservative critics.

“Of course, it still remains a challenge to hide an elephant if even one audience member goes looking. Polls show that the public overwhelmingly wants to pull back the curtain and see the elephant,” Turley noted, adding that the simmering scandal will create certain obstacles in the way of Joe Biden’s re-election bid.

June 24, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | 1 Comment

Trump Indictment: FBI Veteran Raises Red Flags Over ‘Abnormal’ Mar-a-Lago Raid

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 11.06.2023

A senior FBI official charged with executing the raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago last year has raised a red flag about “abnormalities” and apparent violations in the Justice Department’s handling of the case.

Former Assistant Director of the FBI’s Washington Field Office (WFO) Steven D’Antuono has reached out to the US Congress citing concerns and frustration with the manner President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice arranged the August 2022 raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan unveiled the damning testimony earlier this week and sent a letter to US Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding answers.

First, D’Antuono, who had two decades of FBI experience, drew attention to the fact that the bureau’s headquarters made the decision to assign the execution of the search warrant in Trump’s Miami residence to… the Washington Field Office. As per D’Antuono, it looked strange given that the search occurred in the territory of the Miami Field Office, which should have been assigned with the task under the bureau’s rules.

Second, the DoJ failed to assign a US Attorney’s Office to the investigative matter of that magnitude which was “unusual” as per the FBI veteran. This triggered D’Antuono’s deep concerns as it was “out of the ordinary.” He noted that he “never got a good answer” from DoJ with regard to this decision.

Third, the FBI did not first seek consent to effectuate the search. D’Antuono recalled that at the meeting between FBI and DoJ officials, the Department of Justice pushed the bureau to execute the search warrant as quickly as possible. Referring to his experience, the FBI veteran underscored that the agency should have sought consent to search the premises prior to the raid. D’Antuono suggested that either AG Garland or FBI Director Christopher Wray made the decision to seek a search warrant despite “opposition” from the agents working on the case in the WFO. D’Antuono pointed out that “there was a good likelihood that [Trump’s legal team] could have given consent.”

Fourth, the FBI refused to wait for Trump’s attorney to be present before the raid, as per D’Antuono. The bureau veteran claimed that the FBI sought to exclude Trump’s lawyers from the search, which again sounded an alarm for the senior officer.

The FBI veteran’s testimony has prompted US Republican lawmakers to make a repeated request for bureau documents and information concerning the raid. In his latest letter to AG Garland, Jordan pointed out that a previous request regarding the matter was rejected by the Department of Justice.

The alleged expose of DoJ misconduct during the August raid comes after the department indicted Republican presidential candidate Trump earlier this week, charging him with 37 counts including the mishandling of classified materials. The charges further include obstruction of justice, destruction or falsification of records, conspiracy and false statements, as well as one charge under the Espionage Act.

“The Department [of Justice] will indict President Donald Trump, despite declining to indict former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her mishandling of classified information and failing to indict President Biden for his mishandling of classified information,” Jordan wrote. “The indictment creates, at the minimum, a serious appearance of a double standard and a miscarriage of justice.”

The latest row between House Republicans and the DoJ erupted amid the congressional investigation into the apparent “preferential treatment” of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, who has been probed for tax crimes since at least 2018. The House GOP is also presently looking into an uncorroborated report about Joe Biden receiving a $5 million bribe, which has recently been provided by the FBI to lawmakers.

June 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | , , | 1 Comment

NBC: Body Cam Footage Shows Paul Pelosi Opened Door For Police Before Alleged Attack

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | November 19, 2022

The official narrative on the Paul Pelosi attack purported by Democrats and the mainstream media makes zero sense. You don’t have to be a “conspiracy theorist” to recognize there were multiple contradictory accounts from the Department of Justice vs. local police and even some reports from journalists.

In fact, NBC suspended one of its own correspondents, Miguel Almaguer, after he reported that on the night of the supposed attack at the Pelosi home in San Francisco that Paul Pelosi actually opened the door when police knocked, seemingly in normal health, and then walked away from the officers to talk to the alleged assailant David Depape, when Depape attacked him. This report led many to suggest that Pelosi and Depape somehow knew each other.

A media firestorm ensued along with denials from the DOJ, which detailed a completely different version of events in which the police officers opened the door themselves and found Pelosi struggling with Depape who had injured him with a hammer. NBC dropped Almaguer after many called his report “bizarre.”

As it turns out, Miguel Almaguer was right. NBC now reports that police body cam footage has been made available to some media outlets and the footage clearly shows Paul Pelosi opening the door for police in seemingly perfect health. This contradicts the DOJ report on the attack and suggests a potential cover-up.

NBC is forced to retract their earlier assertions that the Paul Pelosi open door event was unfounded. Why? Because they have to. Eventually the police body cam footage will make it out into the public sphere for everyone to see, and NBC is front-running their own false reports. However, they do suggest that “it doesn’t really matter” who opened the door to the Pelosi home, and that Paul Pelosi’s actions don’t support the “conspiracy theories” surrounding the attack.

If that is the case, then why would the DOJ lie? Surely, they have seen the same body cam footage. If there is no conspiracy, then why is there an attempted coverup?

NBC has never had a problem editorializing news stories in the past and presenting biased opinions as evidence, yet suddenly now they pretend as if they have journalistic integrity? It is incumbent upon journalists to present what they think are the facts to the general public, but they are also required to investigate potential false accounts and false information in order to separate truth from lies. In the case of the attack on Paul Pelosi, NBC and other outlets clearly do not want to dig deeper.

Now that the midterm elections are over it would appear that the “MAGA attacker” story no longer serves any purpose. The Democrats conjured their own conspiracy theory first – The claim that right-wing “extremists” are a threat to “democracy” and that the Pelosi attack proves it. There is no evidence to support this claim. There is, though, evidence to support the theory that Pelosi was familiar with Depape and his behavior indicates familiarity.

No person under threat of being beaten with a hammer by a home intruder is going to move closer to the violent stranger instead of running towards the police. This does not happen, it’s nonsense.

What is likely to take place as this case develops? A media blackout on the story, much like we have witnessed with multiple cases in the past few years that make the political left look bad (the Waukesha massacre by BLM suppporter Darrell Brooks comes to mind). Details will probably emerge which further contradict the official narrative but they will be buried and ignored. The leftists will continue to label any suspicions as “conspiracy” as they hope and pray the general public completely forgets and moves on to other distractions.

November 19, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 2 Comments

FBI Misused SWAT Team to Arrest Jan. 6 Protesters – Whistleblower

Samizdat – 28.09.2022

An FBI whistleblower submitted a complaint to the Office of Special Counsel alleging that the federal agency and Department of Justice (DoJ) have violated constitutional rights of Jan. 6 defendants by misusing SWAT teams to make misdemeanor arrests.

Special Agent Stephen M. Friend informed the US Office of Special Counsel, a permanent independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency, about alleged violations by the bureau and DoJ in a whistleblower complaint obtained by US media outlet Just the News earlier this week. Friend works for the FBI in Florida and serves as a SWAT team member.

“I believed the investigations were inconsistent with FBI procedure and resulted in the violation of citizens’ Sixth and Eighth Amendment rights,” Friend wrote. “I added that many of my colleagues expressed similar concerns to me but had not vocalized their objections to FBI Executive Management.”

In particular, Friend cited an inappropriate use of SWAT teams to arrest subjects for misdemeanor offenses related to the January 6 protests in DC. According to the complaint, the agent suggested alternatives such as “the issuance of a court summons or utilizing surveillance groups to determine an optimal, safe time for a local sheriff deputy to contact the subjects and advise them about the existence of the arrest warrant.”

Nonetheless, one of Friend’s bosses told him that “FBI executive management considered all potential alternatives and determined the SWAT takedown was the appropriate course of action.”

Last year, Julie Kelly, a political commentator, author and senior contributor to American Greatness (AG), described numerous cases when January Sixers were raided by SWAT teams despite not being accused of any violent crime or having a criminal record. Many of the defendants were also interrogated with no lawyer present, according to Kelly.

In one case on June 24, 2021, the FBI arrested a Florida pastor and his son for their alleged involvement in the January 6 protest, according to American Greatness. The son, Casey Cusick, was handcuffed in front of his three-year-old daughter, while Cusick’s father, James, the founder and pastor of a church in Melbourne, Florida, also was arrested. Neither of the Cusicks were accused of violent crimes related to the DC incident.

Joseph Bolanos, a 69-year-old New Yorker and former Red Cross volunteer was raided in February 2021 by the FBI anti-terrorism task force because a tipster falsely linked him to the January 6 Capitol hill protest. The old man remained handcuffed and detained for three hours before the problem was resolved.

Agent Friend noted in his whistleblower complaint that he believes that the January 6 investigation has involved “overzealous charging by the DOJ and biased jury pools in Washington DC”.

The whistleblower likewise revealed that the FBI field office in Washington DC was opening Capitol riot cases in other field offices across the US, thus creating “a false data trail” suggesting a nationwide domestic extremism emergency when in reality the cases all stemmed from the Capitol breach in one city: Washington.

As a result of this apparent manipulation, agents in field offices across the country are being listed as case agents for search and arrest warrants for subjects they actually had not investigated, according to Friend.

“There are active criminal investigations of J6 subjects in which I am listed as the ‘Case Agent,’ but have not done any investigative work,” Friend revealed. “Additionally, my supervisor has not approved any paperwork within the file. J6 Task Force members are serving as Affiants on search and arrest warrant affidavits for subjects whom I have never investigated or even interviewed but am listed as a Case Agent.”

To complicate matters further, the FBI deprioritized other investigations of serious crimes like child sex exploitation for the sake of January 6 investigation, according to the whistleblower: “I was also told that child sexual abuse material investigations were no longer an FBI priority and should be referred to local law enforcement agencies,” the agent wrote.

Speaking to Just the News, GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio confirmed that his office had communicated with Friend and is aware of his complaint. The Republican lawmakers raised concerns about the FBI’s usage of excessive force both in raids against January Sixers and the bureau’s latest searches of former President Donald Trump’s premises in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, which took place on August 8.

The DoJ dispatched a whopping 30 FBI agents to raid Trump’s home. However, Jonathan Turley, Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University, wondered if the FBI’s sudden intrusion was really justified given that Trump’s team had previously cooperated with the DoJ and complied with a federal subpoena.

On August 14, GOP Rep. Jordan told Fox News that 14 FBI whistleblowers had come forward with concerns about the DoJ’s alleged political bias in the wake of the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid.

Earlier, a number of FBI whistleblowers reportedly informed Republican congressmembers that the bureau and the Department of Justice had selectively launched investigations into conservative-aligned individuals and exhibited a pattern of political bias. On July 25, Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley accused FBI officials of pursuing “politically charged investigations” related to the Trump campaign while downplaying and discrediting negative information concerning Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

“If these allegations are true and accurate, the Justice Department and FBI are – and have been – institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law,” Grassley wrote in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Not only Republicans are concerned with the FBI and DoJ’s apparent political bias: on July 23, former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard called out the Biden administration, for “shamelessly weaponz[ing]” federal law enforcement agencies into a “political hit squad.”

Ranking Republican lawmakers have been reportedly conducting investigations into the DoJ and the FBI which could take on a new significance if the GOP wins the majority in the House and the Senate after the November midterms.

September 28, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption | , , , | Leave a comment

Lawmakers reject amendment to prevent monitoring of unvaccinated

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | April 12, 2022

All Democrats in the House Judiciary Committee voted against an amendment that could have protected the unvaccinated from being tracked.

The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021 gives federal agencies like the FBI, DOJ, and DHS the authority to “analyze and monitor” activities of domestic terrorism and “take steps to prevent domestic terrorism.”

The current administration’s program for tackling domestic terrorism includes monitoring the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories online.

In February, the DHS released a memo that pays attention to those who claim election fraud in 2020’s presidential race and those who spread “misinformation” about COVID-19.

“There is widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19,” the DHS memo read.

“Grievances associated with these themes inspired violent extremist attacks during 2021.”

“COVID-19 mitigation measures – particularly COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates – have been used by domestic violent extremists to justify violence since 2020 and could continue to inspire these extremists to target government, healthcare, and academic institutions that they associate with those measures.”

Following the release of the memo, Republican Rep. Andy Biggs proposed an amendment to the act to protect unvaccinated Americans from being tracked.

“None of the funds authorized to be appropriated in this Act shall be used to monitor, analyze, investigate or prosecute any individual solely because that individual declined the administration of a vaccine to COVID-19 or expressed opposition to such administration,” Biggs’ proposed amendment read.

According to a tweet by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, every Democrat in the House Judiciary Committee voted against the proposed amendment.

“Due to a troubling DHS bulletin, @RepAndyBiggsAZ offered an amendment to prevent the targeting of Americans due to their views on COVID vax,” Massie wrote.

“Every Dem. voted against his amdt!”

April 12, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The DOJ is Lying about the Ashley Babbitt case

The force was excessive so the DOJ punts on “willfulness”

Technofog | April 14, 2021

Today, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia issued a press release explaining their decision to not prosecute the officer who shot and killed unarmed protester (and veteran) Ashli Babbitt on January 6, 2021.

It states that DOJ officials, along with the Metropolitan Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division, “conducted a thorough investigation of Ms. Babbitt’s shooting.” This included reviewing video footage, getting statements from officers and other witnesses, collecting physical evidence, and the results of Ms. Babbitt’s autopsy.

They explain:

“As members of the mob continued to strike the glass doors, Ms. Babbitt attempted to climb through one of the doors where glass was broken out.  An officer inside the Speaker’s Lobby fired one round from his service pistol, striking Ms. Babbitt in the left shoulder, causing her to fall back from the doorway and onto the floor.”

You’ll notice there’s no mention of a verbal warning to Ms. Babbitt or other efforts to subdue her without the use of deadly force.

Continuing on, the DOJ maintains that the “focus of the criminal investigation was to determine whether federal prosecutors could prove that the officer violated any federal laws, concentrating on the possible application of 18 U.S.C. § 242, a federal criminal civil rights statute.”

The press release focused on the term “willfully”:

The DOJ concluded:

“The investigation revealed no evidence to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer willfully committed a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 242.  Specifically, the investigation revealed no evidence to establish that, at the time the officer fired a single shot at Ms. Babbitt, the officer did not reasonably believe that it was necessary to do so in self-defense or in defense of the Members of Congress and others evacuating the House Chamber.”

This conclusion should be no surprise. Not because of the law or the facts, but because of the people in charge of the Department of Justice. The U.S. Capitol Police, like the Park Police, have always had a special relationship with the DOJ – one that includes preferential treatment. This case is no different.

For starters, the three basic elements to a prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 242 are that the defendant (1) acting under color of law; (2) willfully; (3) deprived the victim of a federally protected right.

Excessive force is easy to establish. The Supreme Court has held that the government must introduce evidence that the action of the officer in shooting to kill Babbitt was “excessive in relation” to a legitimate government objective. Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 135 S. Ct. 2466, 2473-2474 (2015). This is an objective standard – the force must be objectively unreasonable when viewed from the standpoint of a reasonable officer at the scene. Here, Babbitt was unarmed, was climbing through a window and not attacking anyone. In response, she is shot and killed. Easily excessive.

This brings us to “willfulness.”

We have serious doubts about the DOJ position that there was “no evidence” to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer willfully violated Section 242. As an initial matter, the DOJ press release neglects to mention whether the officer used excessive force, instead going right to an analysis on willfulness. We believe this reveals their intent to soften the blow of the press release.

As to willfulness, 18 U.S.C. applies “when the defendant understands that he is unjustifiably invading a legally protected interest, or acts in reckless disregard of the law.” However, the defendant need not have been “thinking in constitutional terms,” as long as his “aim was not to enforce local law but to deprive a citizen of a right and that right was protected by the Constitution.” Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 106 (1945).

Here, the DOJ exaggerates – and at worst, lies – about its “willfulness burden.” We doubt the DOJ couldn’t prove willfulness in this case.

In fact, the DOJ has brought Section 242 prosecutions with less egregious facts.

As the DOJ has argued in other cases, the officer’s prior training on the use of force could be viewed “as evidence that his conduct was willful.” Are we to think that this officer didn’t have training on when force became excessive?

In another case, the DOJ argued to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that to establish “willfulness,” the jury was required to find that the defendant “intended to use more force than was reasonable under the circumstances – i.e., force that violated [the victim’s] well-established due rights as a pretrial detainee.”

What makes the Babbitt case different? The victim and the location.

This case should have gone to the jury. If this killing took place in Minnesota or Chicago the results would have been different.

April 15, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Biden Justice Department investigates ITSELF on whether any employees tried to help Trump overturn election result

RT | January 25, 2021

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is probing whether any current or former official tried to help overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory, apparently seeking to root out employees who lack loyalty to the new regime.

The investigation, announced by Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Monday, will be limited to current or former employees of the DOJ. Horowitz said he aims to “reassure the public that an appropriate agency is investigating the allegations.”

Former President Donald Trump has been accused of trying to get the DOJ to take legal action to help overturn Biden’s victory, based on his allegations of massive election fraud, but any appeal for help was apparently unsuccessful. In fact, ABC News host George Stephanopoulos and other media figures have cited a DOJ statement that there was no evidence of widespread election fraud as a talking point in their efforts to dismiss Trump’s allegations as preposterous.

“The Department of Justice, led by William Barr, said there was no widespread evidence of fraud,” Stephanopoulos said Sunday in an interview with Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky). “Can’t you just say the words, ‘This election was not stolen.’”

The New York Times said on Friday that DOJ lawyer Jeffrey Clark plotted with Trump to oust acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and try to force Georgia lawmakers to overturn the state’s election results. Like a steady stream of other anti-Trump articles by the newspaper, the story was based on comments by officials who declined to be identified.

The investigation marks the latest inquiry by the new Biden-led government into alleged wrongdoing by the Trump administration. The House this month voted to impeach Trump for a second time, and the Senate will hold a trial seeking to convict the former president even as it juggles with confirmation hearings and trying to push through Biden’s legislative agenda.

The DOJ not only declined to launch the sort of comprehensive election fraud investigation that Trump sought, but also chose to keep probes involving Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, from public view until after the election.

January 25, 2021 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

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