Hmmm...This week's Blue Bloods was about a crazy Catholic serial killer who strangles women and leaves rosary beads on the bodies. Interesting timing.

They don’t know Catholics, we get stronger.
The rosary was just another insult.

quote:

Originally posted by nhracecraft:

So what the hell is it with the FBI? Is Wray ignoring the problem?
Is Wray part of the problem, or is it that Wray IS THE PROBLEM?
Regardless, he's got to go! He should've been shown the door when Trump was still in office!

The problem with the FBI is not that the agency exists, it's that the agency has a CULTURE that is based on a lack of accountability. Every law enforcement agency is capable of having such a culture, but for various reasons (most of which involve real oversight) haven't become this infected. While I still believe the country needs a federal agency(s) to deal with actual criminal violations and security threats on a national level, the FBI has squandered far too much of the public trust to continue as an institution. Going back decades, FBI managers (starting with Hoover) have routinely committed crimes with impunity and considered violations of citizens' constitutional rights a "normal" part of doing business. This IS a cultural issue and certainly not the norm among law enforcement, who (oddly enough) are subject to investigation by the FBI for violations of citizens' rights.

If we (The People) honestly recognize the scope of the problem with the FBI and accept how entrenched the harmful culture is. It's long past time to dismantle the organization and either disseminate it's responsibilities to other existing organizations or wipe the slate clean with the establishment of something better.

Id be good with the FBO; the federal bureau of observation.

quote:

Originally posted by pulicords:
The problem with the FBI ....

Good discussion.

Keep in mind that part of a culture is established by society as a whole. When the FBI committed crimes against Ku Klux Klan members (and, I suspect, against Nazis and Communists), that was okay. It was only when the organization started targeting the civil rights movement that the organization started being questioned in a serious manner.

As the science fiction editor John W. Campbell reportedly observed about the story The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, “It is not power which corrupts, but immunity.”
I have seen countless examples of the truth of that observation, usually in minor ways, but true nevertheless.

Seems the power comes 1st. Get strong, get immunity, get corruption. Either way, not good news.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:

quote:

Originally posted by pulicords:
The problem with the FBI ....

Good discussion.

Keep in mind that part of a culture is established by society as a whole. When the FBI committed crimes against Ku Klux Klan members (and, I suspect, against Nazis and Communists), that was okay. It was only when the organization started targeting the civil rights movement that the organization started being questioned in a serious manner.

As the science fiction editor John W. Campbell reportedly observed about the story The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, “It is not power which corrupts, but immunity.”
I have seen countless examples of the truth of that observation, usually in minor ways, but true nevertheless.

When the "Bureau of Investigation" was created in 1908, law enforcement was in an entirely different place. Pay, education, training, and professionalism in general were very poor and corruption was endemic. A lot has changed over the last 100+ years, but this federal agency has remained insular and it's culture reflects this. Through an act of Congress, the DOJ Department of Inspector General was created in the late 1980's for oversight of the U.S. Department of Justice generally and specifically the FBI, but it's proven incapable of meeting this mandate. It's all talk and zero action when it comes to holding corrupt agents and managers accountable.

quote:

Originally posted by recoatlift:
Seems the power comes 1st. Get strong, get immunity, get corruption.

Yes, that’s almost a given.

But despite the more common adage about power corrupting, power by itself doesn’t automatically lead to corruption. Any law enforcement officer and countless armed individuals in this country have great power at immediate hand. The reason most LEOs aren’t corrupt to the point of doing anything they wish is because they don’t have immunity for their acts. That is all too frequently not true in other countries, just as it was often not true in the early days of law enforcement in this country as pulicords pointed out.

Jan. 6 Proud Boys Trial Paused as Defendant Attorney Alleges FBI Altered Evidence

https://www.theepochtimes.com/...ni%2FISxC5HJi9fTz2ew


The trial of Dominic Pezzola, one of the defendants of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach, was paused on Thursday due to classified FBI messages revealed in court, which the defense attorneys say show FBI agents discussing the altering of evidence.

Pezzola is one of the Proud Boys members on trial for obstruction and conspiracy charges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. He was arrested on Jan. 15, 2021, and indicted the same month. Pezzola’s trial began in January of this year.

“There are a couple of emails between FBI agents casually discussing altering a document and destroying hundreds of pieces of evidence. It’s very disturbing and right now we have more questions than answers,” Roger Roots, an attorney at John Pierce Law, wrote to The Epoch Times. Roots confirmed that Washington District Court Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee, paused the trial on Thursday after the leaked messages were shown in court.

The exchange Roots referred to came into light on Wednesday during the testimony of FBI special agent Nicole Miller, who was involved in the agency’s investigations of the Jan. 6 defendants.

When cross-examining Miller, Nick Smith, an attorney representing Proud Boys member Ethan Nordean (listed as co-defendant on Pezzola’s case), revealed classified FBI emails that were hidden in a tab in an Excel spreadsheet. Roots, in Pezzola’s case, used this evidence to support a motion to dismiss (pdf) the charges against Pezzola, which Roots’s team filed on Wednesday.

In the motion, Pezzola’s team said the emails showed that the FBI monitored communications between Nordean and his lawyer, violating the Sixth Amendment, which prohibits invasions of the right to counsel (Matter of Fusco v. Moses).

“In the Nordean case, confidential attorneys-client trial/defense strategy and position was wrongfully obtained by the government, about which was overheard, shared, utilized, where potentially ‘338 items of evidence’ were ordered to be ‘destroyed,’ said Pezzola’s legal team in the motion to dismiss.

According to a separate filing by Nordean’s lawyers, Miller said in one correspondence that “[her] boss assigned [her] 338 items of evidence [she has] to destroy”; Nordean’s lawyers allege that another email show an agent requesting Miller to “go into [a] CHS [informant] report” that Miller “just put [together] and edit out that [the agent] was present.”

The emails show Miller “admitted fabricating evidence and following orders to destroy hundreds of items of evidence,” Pezzola’s lawyers wrote in its motion to dismiss, and that the government obtained information that benefitted itself in the trial, causing substantial prejudice to each of the defendants, including Pezzola.

“If justice means anything, it requires this case to be dismissed,” Pezzola’s lawyer said.

Roots is representing Pezzola on a pro bono basis. Legal non-profit National Constitutional Law Union (NCLU) is helping cover Roots’s expenses while he is in Washington, according to NCLU Executive Director Natalie Danelishen.

“My thoughts are we need a longer pause to get to the bottom of some of Agent Miller’s emails,” Roots told The Epoch Times.

As of Thursday evening, the court has not issued an order responding to the motion to dismiss.

Alleged Brady Violations

In addition to their argument about the Sixth Amendment, Pezzola’s lawyers also argued in their motion to dismiss that newly surfaced footage of events of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach constitutes exculpatory evidence. The defendants’ lawyers say the government, by withholding that evidence, violated their client’s constitutional rights as defined in Brady v. Maryland, a 1963 case in which the Supreme Court held that prosecutors must make available exculpatory evidence to defense counsel.

The defendants’ motion comes two days after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) released more than 40,000 hours of Jan. 6 footage to Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, who then aired some of the footage on his show on Monday and Tuesday.

One tape aired Monday showed Capitol Police officers walking alongside Jacob Chansley, a Jan. 6 defendant serving a 41-month sentence after pleading guilty to an obstruction charge. Chansley was unarmed and walked past several Capitol police officers.

The aired footage “is plainly exculpatory,” Pezzola’s lawyers said in the motion.

The FBI declined to comment and referred The Epoch Times to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for comment.

U.S. Attorney’s Office did not provide The Epoch Times with comment by press time.

The FBI is chock full of criminals.

The FBI has the time and resources to persecute parents who peaceably object to certain school curricula, Christian church-goers, and the Jan. 6th "insurrectionists," but, don't have the time and resources to investigate violent ANTIFA and BLM activists or, it would seem, clearly illegitimate foreign "police forces" operating on U.S. soil:

Reports of Chinese police stations in US worry FBI
China Is Operating Illicit Police Stations Inside the US - Why Are They Still Allowed to Be Here?

FBI’s D.C. Office Tried To Sic Local Agents On Innocents After Bank Of America Volunteered Gun Records

https://thefederalist.com/2023...nteered-gun-records/

‘Bank of America, with no directive from the FBI, datamined its customer base,’ whistleblower George Hill told the House Judiciary Committee.

An FBI whistleblower told congressional investigators that the D.C. field office pushed local offices to open criminal investigations into Americans based solely on financial transactions Bank of America tracked and voluntarily provided to the bureau, according to testimony reviewed by The Federalist.

“Bank of America, with no directive from the FBI, datamined its customer base,” whistleblower and recently retired FBI supervisory intelligence analyst George Hill told investigators for the House Judiciary Committee, according to Hill’s testimony.

Hill had identified himself last month as one of the whistleblowers cooperating with congressional investigators when speaking with Just the News’ John Solomon about the disclosures he made to the House Judiciary Committee during a transcribed deposition. A review of Hill’s testimony confirms the details the military veteran and former longtime FBI and NSA analyst told Solomon. It also reveals more troubling details.

According to the material reviewed, Hill testified that on either Jan. 7 or 8, 2021, Bank of America provided the FBI’s D.C. field office a “huge list” of individuals who used Bank of America credit or debit cards in D.C., or the surrounding Maryland and Virginia areas, on Jan. 5, 6, or 7, 2021. Bank of America then elevated to the top of the list anyone who had ever (through Jan. 6, 2021) used a Bank of America product to purchase a firearm.

There was no geographic or date-range limit to the search for firearm purchases, Hill stressed, meaning the individual would be flagged at the top of the list had he “purchased a shotgun in 1999” in Iowa, and used a Bank of America credit card to check out of a hotel on Jan. 5, 2021, in the Northern Virginia area, following a trip that could be completely unrelated to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.

The D.C. field office, which oversaw the Jan. 6 investigation, distributed the Bank of America list internally to field offices throughout the country, Hill testified in his deposition. Hill further explained that his supervisor at the Boston field office refused to open an investigation on the individuals flagged on the list because there was “no predication.” “There’s no crime that was committed by using a [Bank of America] product in the District or around the District,” Hill testified, explaining his supervisor’s reasoning for why no “further action” was required.

But the D.C. field office pushed back, according to Hill. The D.C. field office told Boston’s supervisory special agent, or SSA, he needed to open up the cases. When the local office’s SSA refused, the D.C. field office threatened to call the assistant special agent in charge, or ASAC, of the local office, Hill told the congressional committee. The SSA stood firm in his refusal, as did the local ASAC, Hill said, even though the D.C. field office then threatened the ASAC that it would escalate the matter to the office’s special agent in charge, or SAC.

The D.C. field office then pushed the office’s SAC to open investigations into the targeted Americans. But to the SAC’s credit, he refused, Hill noted, saying the Boston SAC countered, “No, we’re not going to open up cases based on credit card or debit card activity that took place.”

While Boston’s FBI office refused to open the requested cases, Hill stressed that “what I don’t know and could not give accurate testimony to,” was whether the D.C. field office “took it upon themselves to open cases.”

Hill’s deposition testimony raises another troubling possibility: that one or more of the other 54 local FBI field offices either complied with the D.C. field office’s initial request to open investigations into innocent Americans, or later capitulated when the D.C. office escalated the request up the chain of command to the ASAC and then the SAC.

The only reason the Boston FBI office did not launch investigations into the Bank of America customers flagged by the D.C. field office is that the Boston office’s leadership stood firm against the pressure. And the only reason we know about the D.C. field office’s attempt to target innocent Americans based on Bank of America’s data mining gun owners who happened to be in the greater D.C. area on Jan. 5, 6, or 7, 2021, is that a whistleblower came forward.

What the FBI’s other 54 field offices did in response to the D.C. field office’s pressure is unknown. According to a person familiar with Hill’s testimony, Hill had no information on that question either. Also unknown is whether any other private businesses mined the financial information of their customers, as Bank of America had, and then handed that private information over to the feds.

Congressional investigations and more whistleblowers will be needed to uncover the extent of the FBI’s political targeting of innocent Americans.

Bank of America did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment.

Maybe one of DJT's WORST hires, CHRISTOPHER WRAY!

I may open a BOA account only to turn around and close it, citing dissatisfaction with their witch hunt.

A vast number of officials at the FBI are blatant criminals and traitors. I have great respect for agents coming forward that actually take their oath to defend against enemies both FOREIGN and DOMESTIC. Anyone that suborns the constitution to target anyone illegally needs to be imprisoned or executed for these obvious violations of both law and ethics. They are enemies of the state and need to be hunted down for their treasonous crimes.

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:

According to the material reviewed, Hill testified that on either Jan. 7 or 8, 2021, Bank of America provided the FBI’s D.C. field office a “huge list” of individuals who used Bank of America credit or debit cards in D.C., or the surrounding Maryland and Virginia areas, on Jan. 5, 6, or 7, 2021. Bank of America then elevated to the top of the list anyone who had ever (through Jan. 6, 2021) used a Bank of America product to purchase a firearm.

Right to Financial Privacy Act? RFPA allows disclosure without legal process for a variety of reasons, but this probably isn't one of them. Oh, and there are BIG civil penalties for violating RFPA.

If I were a member in the NOVA or Maryland neighborhood,and had BofA accounts, this might not be a bad thing to look at...

Whistleblowers: FBI Purging Bureau of Religious Conservatives, Military Vets, Trump Supporters

Multiple FBI whistleblowers have stepped up in recent days to tell the House Judiciary Committee that high-ranking FBI officials are targeting conservative agents—particularly those with military backgrounds—and are trying to force them out of the Bureau.

Last week, at least three FBI whistleblowers told lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee that security clearances were revoked from personnel based on religious or politically conservative beliefs, according to the Washington Times’ Kerry Picket.

One of the whistleblowers reportedly told Congress that FBI executives targeted current employees associated with former FBI employees who were interviewed in the documentary “Police State.”

The movie, co-created by conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza and produced by talk radio host Dan Bongino, features former FBI agents Kyle Seraphin and Steven Friend and accuses Democratic Party leaders, and top officials in the FBI, CIA and Justice Department, of censoring, harassing and imprisoning their political opponents.

The whistleblowers allege that officials in the FBI’s security division (known as SecD) reportedly “assigned agents from field offices to conduct security clearance investigations of employees suspected of communicating with or providing information to people involved with the movie.”

SecD recently attempted to recruit 100 to 300 special agents to conduct these internal investigations temporarily, according to the whistleblower information.

Another SecD employee said Mr. Seraphin’s security clearance investigation did not follow the policy of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Mr. Seraphin was subjected to a security clearance investigation, according to the disclosure, after his field office notified FBI official Dena Perkins that a police officer who was out of his jurisdiction confronted him about practicing his firearm shooting at a range/shooting area.

“The minor allegations against Seraphin had no national security nexus. An administrative misconduct investigation would have likely resulted in, at most, a letter of censure or written counseling,” the disclosure states. “However, Seraphin had previously refused to take a Covid vaccine, which was an obvious indication to SecD that an employee is politically conservative.

“There were approximately 300 FBI employees who refused to take the Covid vaccine and were communicating with each other about the FBI Headquarters’ discriminating against conservative Christian employees and others who refused the vaccine for political reasons,” the disclosure to lawmakers read.

One of the whistleblowers said a special agent in the Miami field office was temporarily assigned to conduct security clearances of associates to Mr. Friend.

The disclosure claims FBI executives violated the Security Executive Agent Directive 4 (SEAD 4), the “national security guideline for allowing intelligence community agencies to conduct security clearance adjudications.”

The whistleblowers named names.

“Specifically, SecD Section Chief Section Matthew Nagle, Deputy Assistant Director Lawerence Buckley, and Assistant Section Chief Dena Perkins have caused security clearance investigators to adjudicate security clearances in a manner that is contrary to the SEAD IV guidelines,” the disclosure said.

SecD is “intentionally misinterpreting the SEAD IV guidelines so that it can deny, suspend and revoke security clearances of FBI employees because of political affiliations and beliefs.”

***
Perkins and Veltri also allegedly viewed refusal to wear a face mask, refusal to get the COVID-19 jab and participation in religious activities as signs that an employee was a “right-wing radical and disloyal to the United States.”

(more)

https://amgreatness.com/2023/1...ts-trump-supporters/

I'm not at all shocked that the NKVD is purging the conservatives and veterans. I've mentioned before that at work I get a weekly compendium of FBI reports/warnings about "extremism" across the US and it completely ignores anything leftwing like BLM/Antifa/etc and is 100% focused on white conservatives, MAGA, PTA grandmas and other like groups.

It's frankly starting to get a little scary.

Gee, I wonder at whose behest the eff-b-i is stacking to the left? The answer is, of course, demokrats. The traitors know no bounds.

quote:

FBI executives targeted current employees associated with former FBI employees who were interviewed in the documentary “Police State.”

The movie, co-created by conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza and produced by talk radio host Dan Bongino, features former FBI agents Kyle Seraphin and Steven Friend and accuses Democratic Party leaders, and top officials in the FBI, CIA and Justice Department, of censoring, harassing and imprisoning their political opponents.