Tag: FBI

House GOP: FBI Retaliating Against Whistleblowers and Conservative Agents

Ohio Star Staff

On Thursday, three Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives claimed that the FBI has been actively retaliating against agents who are suspected of being whistleblowers, as well as those who hold conservative beliefs.

As The Daily Caller reports, a letter was sent to Jennifer Moore, Executive Assistant Director of the FBI’s Human Resource Branch, detailing these allegations. The letter was signed by three members of the House Judiciary Committee: Congressmen Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), and Mike Johnson (R-La.).

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Trump Scores Another Win in Mar-a-Lago Case

Just the News

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday scored a major win in the ongoing court battle pertaining to the FBI’s seizure of documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate in early August.

“There shall be no separate requirement on Plaintiff at this stage, prior to the review of any of the Seized Materials, to lodge ex ante final objections to the accuracy of Defendant’s Inventory, its descriptions, or its contents,” wrote U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in the Thursday ruling.

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Commentary: Time to Investigate the FBI’s Confidential Human Sources Program

Ohio Star Staff

To the surprise of no one paying attention, the Department of Justice recently acknowledged the use of several FBI informants in its investigation of the Oath Keepers, an alleged militia group tied to the events of January 6. 

Prosecutors last week asked for a protective order to conceal from jurors information about confidential human sources (CHS) expected to testify during the seditious conspiracy trial of five members of the Oath Keepers; jury selection is now underway. Not only does the government want to prevent defense attorneys from asking personal questions that could reveal the informants’ identities but prosecutors don’t want the sources to publicly disclose any involvement in past or pending criminal investigations or details of “the FBI’s CHS program and the training and methods used by the FBI as part of their undercover operations.”

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Commentary: Durham Prosecutes FBI Informants, Protects Their Handlers

RealClearWire

Since being named special counsel in October 2020, John Durham has investigated or indicted several unscrupulous anti-Trump informants. But he has spared the FBI agents who handled them, raising suspicions he’s letting investigators off the hook in his waning investigation of misconduct in the Russiagate probe.

In recent court filings, Durham has portrayed the G-men as naive recipients of bad information, tricked into opening improper investigations targeting Donald Trump and obtaining invalid warrants to spy on one of his advisers.

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Ex-FBI Official Who Led Unabomber Task Force Decries Deployment of SWAT Teams for January 6 Arrests

Just the News

The man who led the FBI Unabomber task force — which ultimately arrested violent suspected terrorist Theodore Kaczynski without deploying a tactical team — is now decrying the use of SWAT teams to arrest Jan. 6 defendants for misdemeanors and warning of the politicization of the bureau. 

The FBI doesn’t use SWAT teams for misdemeanors and has rarely used them to arrest nonviolent offenders, said Terry Turchie, former deputy assistant director of the Counterterrorism Division of the FBI, in an interview with Just the News. 

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FBI Whistleblower: ‘Nobody I Know Signed Up’ to Investigate Parents Who Vented at School Board Meetings

Admin

An FBI whistleblower who was recently suspended said in an interview this week that he became a whistleblower last November because of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s email ordering the FBI to use Patriot Act counterterrorism tools to target parents at school board meetings.

Special Agent Kyle Seraphin, who was indefinitely suspended on June 1 after nearly six years with the Bureau, said that he was so disturbed by the directive, he went to his congresswoman’s office in New Mexico, and made a “protected disclosure.”

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Key Lawmaker Worried FBI Whistleblowers Facing Retaliation as Evidence of Politicization Mounts

Just the News

An FBI whistleblower who alleges the bureau has been diverting resources to create a false political narrative that America has a violent domestic extremism problem has been suspended, raising concerns about retaliation for cooperating with Congress.

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee and its likely chairman if the GOP wins the House in November, confirmed to Just the News that Steve Friend, a whistleblower whose identity was outed on TV recently, is facing some form of disciplinary action.

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Commentary: Justice Department Desperate to Conceal ‘Classified’ Records

Ohio Star Staff

With one sentence, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon spoke for the majority of Americans who no longer have faith in the nation’s top law enforcement agency. “It is also true, of course, that even-handed procedure does not demand unquestioning trust in the determinations of the Department of Justice,” she wrote in her September 15 order denying the government’s request to prevent a third-party review of allegedly “classified” documents seized by the FBI during the raid of Mar-a-Lago last month.

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Whistleblower: FBI Deliberately Miscategorizing January 6 Cases to Boost ‘Domestic Extremism’ Claims

Ohio Star Staff

On Monday, Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) claimed that a new whistleblower from the FBI told him that the bureau is “cooking the books” when it comes to cases related to the peaceful protests of January 6th, deliberately miscategorizing them so they can add to an apparent increase in “domestic extremism” cases.

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Special Master Holds First Meeting with Justice Department, Trump Attorneys, in New York

Just the News

Attorneys for former President Trump and the Justice Department are scheduled to meet Tuesday in New York with the court-appointed special master who is reviewing the documents seized by the FBI during the bureau’s raid of Mar-a-Lago last month.

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My Pillow CEO Lindell Announces Lawsuit Against U.S. Government After FBI Seizes His Phone

Just the News

My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, announced Thursday that he is suing the U.S. government and the FBI after he said agents seized his phone earlier this week. 

Lindell said the lawsuit “isn’t just to get the phone back,” but he filed it because his “First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights were broken.”

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Calls Grow Among Prominent Figures to Create a New ‘Church Committee’ to Probe FBI Abuses

Just the News

A half century ago, Americans held grave concerns that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies had abused civil rights, improperly targeted enemies and illegally gathered evidence, so Congress set out on a great cleansing mission. It formed a special committee chaired by Idaho Sen. Frank Church that laid bare the wrongdoing, overhauled the bureau and created new guardrails to protect civil liberties.

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Ohio Representative: FBI Won’t Answer Allegation Vet-Led Preparedness Group Listed as Domestic Violent Extremists

Just the News

GOP Rep. Jim Jordan says the FBI is not responding to his concerns about a whistleblower report claiming the agency has classified an emergency-preparedness group started by a former Green Beret as a “domestic violent extremism” organization.

Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, addressed his concerns in a letter sent Wednesday to FBI Director Christopher Wray — following one he sent in July about whistleblower allegations that the agency is “padding its domestic violent extremist data.”

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Commentary: The Ruling Class’ Gaslighting on the Durham Investigation

Ohio Star Staff

In anticipation of Justice Department special counsel John Durham’s final report on the partisan origins of the Obama administration’s investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion, the ruling class is scoffing at his findings to date. What a yawner, they say. What a waste of time and money. Never mind that his investigation has already established that the Russian disinformation in the 2016 election came exclusively from the Hillary Clinton campaign.

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Mike Lindell Says FBI Surrounded Him and Seized His Cellphone

Ohio Star Staff

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said the FBI surrounded him and seized his cell phone Tuesday while he was in a Hardee’s drive-through in Mankato, Minnesota.

“The FBI came after me and took my phone, they surrounded me at a Hardee’s and took my phone, Lindell said in a short video posted on social media Tuesday night. The pillow salesman explained that he doesn’t have a computer because he does all of his business on his phone.

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Commentary: The Regime’s ‘Operation MAGA Fascist’ Gains Ground

Ohio Star Staff

After nearly two years of lies related to the events of January 6, 2021, the regime finally has admitted the truth: The widening legal dragnet to scoop up Donald Trump, his associates, and his voters has nothing to do with the four-hour disturbance on Capitol Hill that afternoon. It is, rather, a thus-far successful crusade to criminalize wrongthink about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

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New Durham Bombshell: FBI Paid Russian Accused of Lying as a Confidential Informant Against Trump

Just the News

In a bombshell revelation, Special Prosecutor John Durham revealed Tuesday in court filings that the FBI paid a Russian businessman as a confidential human source in the investigation of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign even though it had prior concerns that businessman was tied to Moscow’s intelligence services.

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Little Recourse, Little Consequence: Court Rulings Signal Impunity for Spygate Perpetrators

Ohio Star Staff

Over a one-week period, both Donald Trump and former Trump 2016 campaign aide Carter Page saw federal judges dismiss their separate lawsuits alleging improper conduct by the FBI, Hillary Clinton, and others during the Russia collusion investigation.

The dual dismissals on back-to-back Thursdays — one this week, one last week — shine a particularly harsh light on what critics say has become a pattern in the aftermath of the Trump-Russia probe: a lack of accountability.

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Commentary: Time to Scrap the Espionage Act of 1917

RealClearWire

According to the FBI’s court-approved search warrant for Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, probable cause existed to believe Donald Trump may have violated three laws by seemingly stealing 300 classified government documents from the White House, some extremely sensitive, and squirreling them away in his Florida mansion. For the public, the most arresting (no pun intended) of these allegedly violated statutes is the Espionage Act of 1917. 

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Steve Bannon Tells Charlie Kirk That 35 Trump Allies Were Raided Thursday by FBI

Ohio Star Staff

Former Chief Strategist for President Trump Steve Bannon spoke with Charlie Kirk on his show Thursday and told the host that 35 high level supporters of Donald Trump were raided this week.

“35 members of MAGA, the Republican party, people close to Donald Trump, were rolled in on yesterday by the FBI with these intimidation tactics,” Bannon told Kirk. 

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The FBI Secretly Pressured Americans to Waive Away Their Gun Rights

Ohio Star Staff

The FBI secretly pressured Americans into signing forms that relinquish their rights to own, purchase or even use firearms, according to a trove of internal documents and communications obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The forms were presented by the FBI to people at their homes and in other undisclosed locations, according to bureau documents unearthed through the Freedom of Information Act by the firearm rights group Gun Owners of America (GOA) and shared with the DCNF. At least 15 people between 2016 and 2019 signed the secret forms, which ask signatories to declare themselves as either a “danger” to themselves or others or lacking “mental capacity adequately to contract or manage” their lives.

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Judge’s Order Exposes FBI Sloppiness, Excessive Evidence Collection at Trump Home

Just the News

A criminal probe “requested by the incumbent president.” The seizure of clothing, medical records, tax records and 500 pages of attorney-client privileged documents not covered by a warrant. The sharing of privileged documents with investigators.

More than simply appointing a special master to referee an evidence dispute, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon exposed this week a Justice Department search of former President Donald Trump’s home that was initiated by his chief Democrat rival, that was carried out so sloppily that it violated the “least intrusive” mandate in the FBI agent’s manual, and that failed to keep legally-protected materials from falling into the hands of investigators.

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Former FBI Boss Warns Prosecutor Might See Trump Search Warrant Tossed Out Entirely

Just the News

The FBI warrant to search former President Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago may be thrown out entirely in court, according to former FBI boss Kevin Brock.

News broke over Labor Day weekend that Trump had been granted a legal win when a federal judge ordered a special master to review the documents seized from Trump’s home.

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Federal Judge Hands Trump Win, Orders Special Master to Review Evidence Seized from Mar-a-Lago

Admin

A federal judge on Monday handed Donald Trump a significant win, ordering a special master to review evidence seized by the FBI during its raid of the former president’s Florida estate last month.

U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon said the independent master can “review the seized property, manage assertions of privilege and make recommendations thereon, and evaluate claims for return of property.”

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Ron Johnson: We Need Whistleblowers in Order to Stop Federal Bureaucrats from Meddling in Another Election

Admin

Federal bureaucrats meddled in the last two presidential elections by promoting false Russia collusion claims and suppressing the Hunter Biden story, and more whistleblowers are needed to keep that from happening again in 2024, says Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.).

“I think that started in 2016 when they tried to meddle in the election, and they did meddle in that election,” Johnson told Just the News in a wide-ranging interview. “They tried to get Hillary Clinton elected, and they failed. But in 2020, they succeeded by downplaying the Hunter Biden laptop by censoring, by suppressing that.”

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‘Massive Abuse of Power’: Intel Committee Rep Mike Gallagher Vows to Use ‘Power of the Purse’ to Get Transparency from Biden, DOJ

Admin

Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, denounced a “massive abuse of power” and vowed to use congressional funding powers to get transparency from the Biden administration about the Aug. 8 raid on Mar-a-Lago during a Sunday appearance on Fox Business.

“For something of this magnitude, something unprecedented, you would expect the FBI and the DOJ to go to great lengths to insure they are conducting themselves with the highest level of professionalism, but they never notified our committee — which you would expect them to do if, indeed, there was a danger posed by the classified material that was in Donald Trump’s possession,” Gallagher told former Republican Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin, who guest-hosted the show, adding that many committee members found out details of the raid from news reports based on leaks from the Justice Department.

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Commentary: Saving America Now Requires a Ruthless Offense

Admin

The Book of Ecclesiastes tells us there is nothing new under the sun. But there is undeniably something new happening in American history. New and terrible. No hyperbole; we are living through the greatest threat to America since the Civil War.

This new threat, which has been germinating its poisonous fruit for decades in the darkened earth of sheltered universities, federal agencies, and media newsrooms has erupted into such full and ugly view today that it cannot be met and defeated, or even retarded, with any of our normal methods.

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Trump: FBI Did ‘Deep and Ugly Search’ of Teenage Son Barron’s Room

Admin

Former President Donald Trump said FBI agents searched the room of his 16-year-old son, Barron Trump, during their raid of Mar-a-Lago early last month.

Speaking at a rally Saturday in Pennsylvania, Trump said the United States is “like a third-world nation” after officials “trampled upon” his civil liberties throughout the raid.

“They even rifled through the first lady’s closet drawers and everything else, and even did a deep and ugly search of the room of my 16-year-old son, leaving everything they touched in far different condition than it was when they started,” Trump said.

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FBI Agents Allegedly Lose Confidence in Director Christopher Wray

Ohio Star Staff

A new report alleges that multiple agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have “lost confidence” in the ability of Director Christopher Wray to continue carrying out his duties without any bias or political motivation, and want to see him step down.

As reported by Breitbart, whistleblower attorney and former FBI agent Kurt Siuzdak has said that multiple agents have come to him privately, telling him that they “feel like the director has lost control of the bureau.”

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FBI Boss Who Quit After Allegedly Blocking Hunter Biden Probe Also Reportedly Pushed to Pad Domestic Terror Data

Ohio Star Staff

A top FBI agent who resigned after accusations he worked to undermine the probe into Hunter Biden’s laptop and business dealings also allegedly pressured bureau employees to pad domestic terror data, drawing accusations of politicizing the agency from Republicans.

Timothy Thibault, the FBI’s former assistant special agent in charge who resigned Friday after Republican allegations of his political bias in connection to the Biden laptop investigation, was allegedly one of the agents trying to get FBI employees to bolster Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE) case counts to satisfy “performance metrics,” whistleblowers alleged in July, Breitbart News reported. Thibault and other bureau agents were allegedly pushing FBI employees to reclassify cases to involve DVE even if they do not meet the criteria, the outlet reported.

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Last Surviving Monkees Member Sues FBI for Records on the Band

Ohio Star Staff

The last surviving member of 1960s music group The Monkees is suing the FBI to obtain records the bureau maintained on the band over their political messaging.

Singer Micky Dolenz previously submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to “obtain any records” from the FBI on the band, according to The Hill. Dolenz’s attorney, Mark Zaid, said the bureau failed to respond to the request within the required 20-day period. The musician ultimately resorted to a lawsuit in which he claimed to have “exhausted all necessary required administrative remedies” to acquire the records.

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Trump Calls DOJ’s Heavily Redacted Affidavit for Mar-a-Lago Raid a ‘Total Public Relations Subterfuge’

Admin

The Justice Department ordered the FBI raid of former President Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida out of concern that “highly classified national security documents” stored in the estate’s basement could be disclosed and compromise “clandestine human sources” used in intelligence gathering, according to a heavily redacted version of the affidavit used to obtain the warrant.

Judge Bruce E. Reinhart on Thursday ordered that a redacted version of the affidavit be unsealed by noon today. The order came hours after the Justice Department submitted a proposal for extensive redactions to the document.

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FBI’s Former Intel Chief on Raid of Trump Home: ‘I Think They Are Going to Regret This’

Ohio Star Staff

The FBI’s former intelligence chief declared Friday his former agency should not have criminalized the records dispute between Donald Trump and the National Archives and that the bureau appears to have failed to meet the probable cause standard for the invasive search of the former president’s Florida estate.

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Zuckerberg Claims FBI Pressured Him to Censor Hunter Biden Laptop Story

Ohio Star Staff

In a stunning admission, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed that his social media platform only censored the New York Post’s bombshell story about Hunter Biden’s laptop after the FBI came to them and advised them to do so.

As reported by the Daily Caller, Zuckerberg made the claim during an interview with Joe Rogan on his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” on Thursday. Rogan had asked Zuckerberg about how his platform would handle censorship going forward, after multiple Big Tech platforms were widely criticized for deliberately suppressing the story, which was later confirmed to be true.

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Commentary: Authoritarian Democrats Love the Deep State

Ohio Star Staff

The unprecedented raid at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month has energized the Democratic Party’s embrace of authoritarianism. The real outrage, they say, is not that the raid happened but that people are disturbed by it. The messaging from top Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and FBI Director Christopher Wray is of a piece: Republican lawmakers risk inciting violence by questioning the raid and the bureaucrats who orchestrated it. Won’t someone please think of the unaccountable shadow government? 

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‘Unprecedented’: Judge Ruling Moves Trump Raid Affidavit One Step Closer to Release

The Center Square

Judge Bruce Reinhart on Monday released an order rejecting the Department of Justice’s argument that the affidavit used to justify a raid of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence should remain entirely sealed, moving the document one step closer to potentially being released.

The federal government now has until Thursday to propose redactions and make any other arguments as to why the document should not be made public.

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FBI Raid of Mar-a-Lago Was ‘Improper’: Dershowitz

Admin

Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz said that the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Florida estate was incorrectly conducted.

Earlier in August, FBI agents with the Washington Field Office raided the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home seeking classified documents he may have removed from the White House. Reports subsequently emerged that Trump had already been served with a subpoena seeking classified records related to the investigation and had cooperated extensively with federal authorities.

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Commentary: What We Know about the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Raid (So Far)

Admin

“There’s so much we don’t know!” says any liberal losing an argument about the dramatic FBI raid last week on Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Palm Beach residence and private club.

There are, indeed, some things that we do not know, but what we do know is already quite revealing. We know that the raid – which involved 30 FBI agents and three Justice Department lawyers – lasted over nine hours and was by day’s end reclassified as a “search” by all government agencies and the entire legacy media. We know that this supposed “search” was personally ordered not by FBI Director Christopher Wray, but by Attorney General Merrick Garland, a highly partisan Biden Administration appointee who has implied that parents objecting to critical race theory in public schools are domestic terrorists, and who refused to provide home security protection to Supreme Court justices in the majority of the recent ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade. 

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Commentary: FBI Unit Leading Mar-a-Lago Probe Earlier Ran Discredited Trump-Russia Investigation

RealClearWire

The FBI division overseeing the investigation of former President Trump’s handling of classified material at his Mar-a-Lago residence is also a focus of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation of the bureau’s alleged abuses of power and political bias during its years-long Russiagate probe of Trump.

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Commentary: Peter Strzok Remains Exhibit A of the FBI’s Politicization

Ohio Star Staff

Before the Trump era, members of official Washington who held ostensibly nonpartisan positions of public trust made some effort to conceal their biases. Indeed, many of these figures would hold themselves out as uniquely apolitical and dispassionate. But sheer hatred of Donald Trump has made them throw off that mask. Turn on MSNBC or CNN at almost any hour of the day and you will hear their liberal ranting.

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