WASHINGTON, DC – DECEMBER 19: Attorney Steven Metcalf (2nd L), representing seditious conspiracy defendant Dominic Pezzola for his role in the attacks of January 6 at the U.S. Capitol, arrives at the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse December 19, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
By Gary Bai for The Epoch Times
March 9, 2023Updated: March 10, 2023
FBI agents ordered to alter or destroy evidence
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
Trump supporters occupy the West Front of the Capitol and the inauguration stands on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Views: 36
Watch:
Finally the truth about January 6th. Let my people go. Let me be clear. Those who committed acts of violence and vandalism should have been charged. None should still be in jail held without bond.
Yesterday Carlson started releasing what really happened and why the left hid this from the American People. I actually now understand why Pelosi, Schumer, and the Committee to do about nothing hid this. They bared some of the responsibility. Please watch the video’s above and read the tweets below. Some of what the Democrats released was actually doctored. The only deaths that occurred were the protestors.
The Fox News host will air five stories culled from the footage Monday and Tuesday nights, countering the overblown “insurrection” narrative the Democrats and their media toadies have been pushing since Day One.
Ray Epps was never arrested or locked up for this “crime” or any crime on January 6th.
The J6 Committee:
- Lied about how Brian Sicknick died - Lied about Barry Loudermilk taking rioters on a reconnaissance mission - Lied about Josh Hawley running away - Lied about Ray Epps being a credible witness@Liz_Cheney, @AdamKinzinger, and @RepAdamSchiff are liars.
🚨BREAKING: Never before seen video of January 6 shows Jacob Chansley, the QAnon Shaman, being led through the Capitol by police the entire time that he was in the building. pic.twitter.com/rikoRMWezF
Far-left HuffPost sided with a man who slashed a mother’s throat and killed a cop in order to score a sleazy political point against Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday.
The site obviously never hides its left-wing slant, and serious people never expect substantive reporting or opinions from its pages.
But a story written by “reporter” Jessica Schulberg and published by the junk outlet sent Ariana Huffington’s creation to a shocking new low.
The website offered up this abomination of a headline: “Florida Executes Man Used As ‘Political Pawn’ By Ron DeSantis.”
In reality, the man committed murders in a state where capital punishment was on the table and the state carried out its lawful duty to exact justice for the victims.
Schulberg led a Thursday-evening story with a quote from twice-convicted killer Donald Dillbeck, 59, who politicized his own death before he was killed by lethal injection in Starke, Florida, on Thursday evening.
“I know I hurt people when I was young. I really messed up,” Dillbeck stated in a comment to open Schulberg’s piece. “But I know Ron DeSantis has done a lot worse.”
Schulberg’s angle to the story, which was sympathetic to Dillbeck in its tone, cleverly left out the grisly details of how he ended up on death row.
As a teen, Dillbeck stabbed a man in Indiana while he attempted to rob the victim of his CB radio.
While on the lam in Florida, Dillbeck shot and killed Lee County Deputy Dwight Lynn Hall in Fort Myers Beach with his own gun.
After almost a decade into a life sentence for the cold-blooded murder, Dillbeck escaped.
While he was out, Dillbeck procured a paring knife and stabbed 44-year-old Faye Vann 20 times with it before he slashed her throat in Tallahassee.
HuffPost postured as if it had taken issue with the fact Dillbeck’s jury voted 8-4 when it sentenced him to death. Schulberg slanted her article in favor of unanimous decisions.
DeSantis supports capital punishment by a majority vote, which was the law when Vann was brutally murdered. Meanwhile, Schulberg cited sources who explained to her how archaic they believed Dillbeck’s execution was.
But none of that was the point of her article. The point was not to highlight Dillbeck as a man done wrong by the justice system.
The narrative was certainly was not to shed light on Vann and other female victims of violent crime.
The story was published and disseminated purely as an attack against DeSantis.
Vann’s adult children actually thanked the governor personally in a hand-written letter for not stopping their mother’s killer from meeting his fate. Schulberg left that out of her piece until DeSantis ally Christina Pushaw shared it online.
Perspective… this monster killed a police officer, went to jail, escaped, stabbed this mom to death in a parking lot at the Tallahassee Mall at random, and Huffington Post thinks HE is the victim.
HuffPost was rightly eviscerated on Twitter all evening after it shared Schulberg’s obscene piece on its opinion page.
This is beyond pathetic. In an attempt to own a politician you don’t like, you quote and thus implicitly support, even if in some roundabout, attenuated sense, a literal murderer. This man was a scumbag who robbed two children of their mother. You should delete this in shame.
HuffPost’s editors are so desperate for content they feel could harm a popular Republican they opened an article with a quote that accused him of doing “worse” than two gruesome murders.
In doing so, the outlet is currently at rock bottom — which is saying a lot.
This is the original article (New items follow below.)
Official Penn DOT website blurb
Note the date above: May 7, 2025. On that date, you will become a second-class citizen unless you bow to your masters’ demands.
Papers, please!
Although it’s been delayed several times, the insidious Real ID is coming. You will need to pay for the government’s approval so you can board a flight that NEVER LEAVES THE COUNTRY. And you won’t be able to seek redress of grievances because you won’t be ALLOWED into a Federal — and likely state — building if you don’t have their “Good Sheeple” ID to see your elected representatives. You won’t even be able to check with your local Social Security office about retirement without it. Or register to vote — if you’re a native-born American, that is.
Already, Drivers License locations have a security guard stationed inside them, because “Real ID” is given out there.
So far it’s supposedly a one-and-done deal, once you pay, the Real ID gold star is yours for life.
Does anyone really believe that the bureaucrats won’t draw from that well again — and again? Isn’t that what we were promised for the Covid-19 clot shot, one-and-done? How about the promise that Federal Income tax would only be on the rich? Or that electric cars would be cheaper to run — and less polluting — than internal combustion vehicles?
Okay, so maybe you don’t need to fly across the country, so what? Remember though that the TSA controls ALL public transportation. Think I’m kidding? Did you ever see those notices like on City buses: “The TSA requires all passengers to wear a mask….” How long do you suppose it will take the elitists to require Real ID to board a cross-town bus? They’re already trying to take our cars away from us.
Real ID is anathema to our country’s ideals
The very idea of Real ID is anathema to what the country stands for (or used to stand for) in the first place. In the second place, does anyone care to bet that the current surge of illegal immigrant/future democrat voters won’t need it — or that the elitists will provide it to them so they can continue to vote democrat?
I didn’t think so.
I know some leftist loons will claim I’m a conspiracy theorist. OTOH, how many things that the left decried as a “conspiracy theory” has been proven true?
We need to remove the upcoming “Real ID” restrictions for access to airlines and government buildings
The much-delayed “Real ID” will violate the Constitution if allowed to go into effect.
First, In limiting access to ALL federal buildings only to those with a “Real ID,” the law infringes on the 1st amendment right “..to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” Already you can find armed security personnel in many federal and other government buildings. If you can’t get into the building, you can’t see your elected Congressional representatives or testify before any federal entity. If they can make exceptions, then the law is i weapon to silence critics, not to protect anyone.
Second, The need for a “Real ID” to fly on a commercial airplane WITHIN THE UNITED STATES is effectively a “no-fly” list for citizens who don’t desire a “Real ID.” This violates the “general welfare” clause of the Preamble, and while it might be construed as lawful under Article One, Section eight “regulate interstate commerce” clause, personal (ie non-business) travel by definition is NOT “commerce.” And one could reasonably argue that it violates the 1st Amendment right to peaceably assemble.
“Real ID” creates an illegal underclass for people who may simply want to be left alone and not have “Big Brother” constantly looking over their shoulders.
It is also the first step to communist-style “travel documents” to control the movement of the citizens of the US.
Scene from the Dexter TV show, for illustrative purposes
Views: 35
First, let’s define what we mean by “most dangerous” because there are many different “most dangerous” lists out there. Here we are talking about the overall crime rate. Not just the violent crimes that grab headlines. and the list we are using is a live database that is constantly being updated.
For instance, according to WorldAtlas.com St Louis, MO is the 7th most dangerous in the world based on the murder rate per 100k. It is a democrat-run city.(Tishaura Jones). The first six are all in Mexico.
OTOH, The Boutique Adventurer drops St. Louis to #10 with 8 of the 9 above it in Mexico — the ninth being Caracas, Venezuela at #6. Baltimore comes in at #15, the same as on our main database. New Orleans is at #18 and Memphis at #20 while Detroit clocks in at #26.
Curiously, this one doesn’t list ANY US cities in their top 27.
These, like the one I’ll devote the rest of this article to are listed as being compiled in(or for) 2023.
DANGER!
Eleven U.S. cities rank among the 50 most dangerous in the world, according to a recent reportpublished by Numbeo, a global quality of life database. All 11 are governed by Democratic mayors.
Three U.S. cities — Baltimore, Memphis, and Detroit — are ranked among the 20 most dangerous cities on the planet.
The three cities have more in common than just violent crime. All three are run by Democrats.
Baltimore ranks #15 on the annual dangerous cities list, with Memphis and Detroit close behind at #18 and #19, respectively.
Brandon Scott, just 38 years of age, is the mayor of Baltimore. Jim Strickland Jr., an attorney and politician, is the 64th and current mayor of Memphis, where the Memphis police department has just announced plans to permanently deactivate the unit that five of the officers involved in the vicious beating of Tyre Nichols belonged to. Mike Duggan, meanwhile, is currently serving as the mayor of Detroit.
Two more U.S. cities run by Democrats appear among the 30 most dangerous in the world: Albuquerque (#23), where 45-year-old Tim Keller serves as the 30th mayor, and St. Louis (#27), where Tishaura Oneda Jones has served as mayor since April of 2021.
Tracking back for a wider view yields a still grimmer perspective for Democrats, as another six Democrat-run cities rank among the world’s 50 most dangerous: New Orleans (#35), Oakland (#38), Milwaukee (#40), Chicago (#43), Philadelphia (#46), and Houston (#50). Again, all of these cities are run by Democrats.
Numbeo’s report contains both a Crime Index, which is an estimation of overall levels of crime in a given city, and a Safety index. A city with a high safety index is considered very safe. A city with a high crime index is considered anything but. If a city’s crime levels are lower than 20, for instance, this is considered excellent. Crime levels between 20 and 40 are considered good; crime levels between 40 and 60 are moderate; crime levels between 60 and 80 are considered high. Finally, crime levels higher than 80 are considered dangerously high.
The Safety Index, meanwhile, is ranked in the completely opposite way, with scores higher than 80 indicating that a city is very safe, and scores under 20 indicating that a city is borderline uninhabitable.
Baltimore has a Crime Index score of 75.5 and a Safety Index score of 24.5. “Charm City” finds itself sandwiched between Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago, and Rosario, Argentina’s third-most populous city.
In 2019, then-U.S. Attorney General William Barr referred to Baltimore as the country’s “robbery capital.” Although the comment was deemed controversial by some commentators, it is amply substantiated by crime statistics. Last year, the city of 576,000 experienced a sharp spike in robberies, with robberies of convenience stores jumping by 300%. Baltimore also suffered a sharp increase in homicides.
Some 900 miles away, in Memphis, overall crime increased by more than 8% last year. By August of 2022, 4,501 crimes had been reported in the downtown area of the city, 600 more than had been reported by August of 2021, according to the city’s Data Hub.
In Detroit, more than 220 officers left the police department last year. Long known as the automobile capital of the world, Detroit has, in recent times, become more closely associated with assaults, shootings and homicides. On New Year’s Day, for instance, a total of 6 people were shot, one of them fatally. Five days later, a 16-year-old was killed and an 11-year-old was injured in yet another shooting.
Democrats have often been labeled “soft on crime” by their opponents. The latest Numbeo report will do little to stem such denunciations.
Here is an abbreviated list from the Numbeo list linked above:
But, but how could this happen in California? White man goes on a killing spree. Oh wait he was Oriental. California, the state where Progressives pass the crazy laws saying it’s gun control. And what happens? People die. I know, some loon will say the gun probably came from out of state. Or will say the shooter didn’t kill and injure those folks, his gun did.
The Monterey Park shooter is described as an Asian male. There goes the “white supremacy” narrative out the window. pic.twitter.com/Bvl2PDDnKI
And you have this crazy person who blamed the shooting on whites anyway. We have this.
It didn’t take long for one leftist lunatic to blame white dominant culture for the shooting. She vowed to make it him/her mission to take down the white dominant culture following the shooting.
It doesn't matter what the race, gender, identity, motivation... of the Monterey Park shooter is because white people are bad and I'm here to take down US white dominant culture. pic.twitter.com/VthTpD9KfX
Like Comment Share In 2022, there were over 2.76 million illegal migrant crossings at the Southwest border. That’s roughly the population of Chicago, America’s third largest city. To address this unprecedented surge, President Biden recently announced tougher restrictions and made a show of visiting the border himself.
But unlike a decade or two ago, when the immigration debate was mostly about economics, today it’s an issue that’s subsumed by the culture wars and our polarized discourse. Republican governors bus migrants to sanctuary cities and they’re called “xenophobic” and “cruel” by the left. But what happens when a Democratic governor does much the same thing, bussing migrants from Colorado to New York City and Chicago? Is it still a heartless political stunt? Or is all of this just an inevitable consequence of our broken immigration system?
So this week: a debate moderated by guest host Kmele Foster between Alex Nowrasteh and Jessica Vaughan. Are current levels of immigration helping or hurting America? How do we balance humanitarian concerns with America’s economic and security needs? Should we be trying to enforce more or less restrictions at the border? And what exactly should we do to fix our immigration policies?
Alex is the director of Economic and Social Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Jessica is the director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that describes themselves as “pro-immigrant but low immigration.”
While Alex and Jessica couldn’t be more opposite in their approach—Alex favors free immigration, while Jessica argues for restrictionist policies—in this episode of Honestly we look for common ground, debate the facts, and search for solutions.
State troopers stand with a DeKalb, Georgia, police officers on Constitution and International Park in Atlanta on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023. (John Spink/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Views: 46
We want to thank the folks over at FOX.
Protesters in Atlanta, are calling for violence against police officers and law enforcement entities following a police-involved shooting on Wednesday that left a state trooper wounded and one man dead.
The Twitter account Scenes from the Atlanta Forest calls for a “Night of Rage” on Friday to enact “reciprocal violence to be done to the police and their allies,” according to the Scenes from the Atlanta Forest Twitter account.
“Consider this a call for reciprocal violence to be done to the police and their allies. On Friday, January 20th, wherever you are, you are invited to participate in a night of rage in order to honor the memory of our fallen comrade,” the group wrote on Twitter, in an apparent violation of the platform’s terms and conditions.
The account claims to be a part of Defend the Atlanta Forest, one of the multiple groups protesting in an area where the city is set to construct the new Atlanta Public Safety Training Center.
State troopers stand with a DeKalb, Georgia, police officers on Constitution and International Park in Atlanta on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023. (John Spink/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
The Defenders of the Forest said in a statement to Fox News Digital that it is “a broad, diverse, decentralized movement to defend the Atlanta forest.” They went on to say they are only a “news aggregator for the movement” and “not affiliated” with Scenes from the Atlanta Forest.
In another tweet, posted several hours later, the group added: “The police will kill you if given the chance. Now is the time for bravery. Take care of each other. Be dangerous together.”
The group appeared to acknowledge the post was against Twitter’s rule not to incite violence as it said in yet another tweet that its account “is not long for this world.”
The upcoming event comes after a Georgia State Patrol trooper, wearing a bulletproof vest, was shot in the abdomen Wednesday morning. It happened as police tried to clear an encampment near the site where the $90 million Atlanta Police Department (APD) facility will be constructed.
Police at the scene where a Georgia state trooper was shot on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023. (Fox 5 Atlanta)
The sweep was conducted as “an operation to identify people who are trespassing and committing other crimes on the property,” the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said.
“At about 9:00 a.m. today, as law enforcement was moving through the property, officers located a man inside a tent in the woods. Officers gave verbal commands to the man who did not comply and shot a Georgia State Patrol Trooper,” GBI said in a statement. “Other law enforcement officers returned fire, hitting the man.”
“Law enforcement evacuated the Trooper to a safe area. The man died on scene,” it added.
The bureau continued: “The injured Georgia State Patrol Trooper was taken to a local hospital where he underwent surgery. A handgun and shell casings were located at the scene. The GBI is working the officer-involved shooting and the investigation is still active and ongoing.”
The identities of the officer and the deceased have not yet been released. The officer was hospitalized and is in stable condition.
DeKalb, Georgia, and Atlanta SWAT members are pictured leaving the Gresham Park command post in Atlanta on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023. (John Spink/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
“The individual who fired upon law enforcement and shot the trooper was killed in the exchange of gunfire,” GBI director Michael Register said. (John Spink/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
During a press conference, GBI director Michael Register confirmed that the shooting was in self-defense after the now-deceased individual opened fire “without warning” on the trooper.
“An individual, without warning, shot a Georgia State Patrol trooper,” Register told reporters. “Other law enforcement personnel returned fire in self-defense and evacuated the trooper to a safe area. The individual who fired upon law enforcement and shot the trooper was killed in the exchange of gunfire.”
Four others were arrested at the scene and taken to the DeKalb County Jail. Charges are pending.
“They’re endangering the community and the citizens around this area,” Register said of the encampment and the protesters, FOX 5 Atlanta reported.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp also commented on the shooting and said he and his family were praying for law enforcement officers.
“Marty, the girls, and I are praying for this brave Trooper and public safety officers across all law enforcement agencies today,” he tweeted Wednesday morning. “As our thoughts remain with him and his family, our resolve also remains steadfast and strong to see criminals brought to justice.”
The joint task force formed to combat ongoing criminal activity at the APD site includes the GBI, Atlanta Police Department, Georgia Attorney General’s Office, DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office, Georgia State Patrol, FBI, DeKalb County Police Department, Department of Natural Resources, and the Georgia Emergency Management Agency (GEMA).
Georgia state troopers stand along Key Road in Atlanta on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023. (John Spink/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Defend the Atlanta Forest held a vigil Wednesday evening at the Little Five Points Square to “memorialize the forest defender” that was “murdered by the police,” it announced on Twitter.
“Today the police shot and killed a forest defender below the canopy of our beloved forest,” the group said. “No one can bring our friend back to us. An innocent life has been taken and the machines continue.”
“We will not go quietly into this dark night,” it added.
“Police killed a forest defender today, someone who loved the forest, someone who fought to protect the earth & its inhabitants,” the group continued in a tweet.
And: “This is why we organize to stop Cop City. And we will. In honor of their life, and the lives of everyone killed and imprisoned by the police.”
The group also announced another event on Jan. 21, where members are encouraged to “wear black in mourning” for the dead member.
These events come amid heightened tension between protesters and the police, involving several arrests over several months over the APD construction.
“The Atlanta Police Department seeks to turn 300 acres of forest into a tactical training compound featuring a mock city. This project was announced to the shock of community members who had been given no opportunity to weigh in on the proposal. The entire process has been shadier than the forest itself,” Defend the Atlanta Forest’s website reads.
According to the group, they are explicitly protesting the new “Cop City” as it will “hyper-militarize law enforcement” and “will serve as a national model of police militarization and budgetary bloat.”
The group names the 2020 death of George Floyd and others as its motivation to protest police violence.
A man holds up his hands while marching following the guilty verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin on April 20, 2021, in Atlanta, Georgia. (Elijah Nouvelage/AFP via Getty Images)
People march following the guilty verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin on April 20, 2021, in Atlanta. (Elijah Nouvelage/AFP via Getty Images)
The group also claims it does not advocate for violence and that “no one has been harmed by participants in this movement.”
Last week, anarchists in Atlanta also targeted Brasfield & Gorrie, the general contractor of the police facility, and spray-painted graffiti on its buildings.
“B&G stop cop city,” the graffiti read, according to photos. “We have the numbers,” another spray-painted message read.
Also, last month, police arrested five people at the APD site location. They were also charged with domestic terrorism.
On Dec. 14, the GBI wrote: “Yesterday, December 13, 2022, our agents assisted APD and other local, state, and task force members in an operation to remove barricades blocking some of the entrances to the training center.”
“Prior to yesterday’s operation, APD and other agencies had made several arrests over the past few months for the ongoing criminal activity at the site location. Some of the criminal activities include carjacking, various crimes against persons, destruction of property, arson, and attacks against public safety officials. Law enforcement continues to address the criminal acts committed by the individuals that continue to occupy the area of the proposed training site,” it said.
Atlanta’s authorities arrested Francis Carroll, age 22, of Maine, Nicholas Olson, age 25, of Nebraska, Serena Hertel, age 25, of California, Leonardo Vioselle, age 20, of Macon, Georgia, and Arieon Robinson, age 22, of Wisconsin, on Dec. 13, 2022. (DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office/Georgia Bureau of Investigation)
The arrested individuals included Francis Carroll, age 22, of Maine, Nicholas Olson, age 25, of Nebraska, Serena Hertel, age 25, of California, Leonardo Vioselle, age 20, of Macon, GA, and Arieon Robinson, age 22, of Wisconsin.
“After police cleared the area of concern, which included makeshift treehouses, they found explosive devices, gasoline, and road flares,” the GBI said in its statement on Jan. 14.
DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston said those who were arrested had attacked firefighters and police officers with rocks and weapons as the officers removed barricades blocking some entrances to the site, according to FOX 5 Atlanta.
The investigation into the activities at the APD site is active and ongoing. Anyone with information is encouraged to contact local law enforcement or the GBI at 1-800-597-TIPS.
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told reporters Monday night that the handling of the discovery of classified documents by President Joe Biden’s lawyers that were taken from the White House six years ago is a display of a “two-tier” system of justice.
On Monday, Fox News confirmed that a batch of records from Biden’s time as vice president, including a “small number of documents with classified markings,” were discovered at the Penn Biden Center by the president’s personal attorneys on Nov. 2, according to Richard Saubel, special counsel to the White House.
The attorneys found the documents in a locked closet while preparing to vacate office space at the center, which the president used from mid-2017 until he began the 2020 campaign.
Comer told reporters that the handling of these documents is a stark contrast to the FBI’s raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida last year in search of classified documents taken after Trump lost his re-election bid in 2020.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., says the committee will investigate the Biden classified documents. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“Is the White House going to be raided tonight?” Comer asked. “Are they going to raid the Biden center? I don’t know.”
“This is further concern that there’s a two-tier justice system within the DOJ with how they treat Republicans vs. Democrats … certainly how they treat the former president vs. the current president,” Comer added.
House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. (Jonathan Ernst-Pool/Getty Images/File)
A political ploy.
Comer said that after the Mar-a-Lago raid, according to the research his office conducted, they found that “every president had accidentally packed documents that may or may not be considered classified.”
“But they weren’t raided,” he added.
Local law enforcement officers are seen in front of the home of former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on Aug. 9, 2022. (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)
Comer said the Oversight Committee plans to send a letter to the National Archives, and depending on where the investigation leads, would be open to holding a hearing on the matter.
“President Biden has stated that taking classified documents from the White House is ‘irresponsible,'” Comer said in a statement. “Under the Biden Administration, the Department of Justice and National Archives have made compliance with the Presidential Records Act a top priority.”
“We expect the same treatment for President Biden, who has apparently inappropriately maintained classified documents in an insecure setting for several years,” Comer added.
The FBI raided Trump’s Florida residence over the summer.
Machine-gun toting agents posted up at Mar-a-Lago while the FBI rummaged through Trump’s home looking for classified documents.
The Washington Post recently reported (after the midterms) that the DOJ believes Trump took his White House records to Mar-a-Lago as ‘mementos.’
WaPo reported that Trump never intended to sell or use the documents as leverage. Of course, we have known this the entire time and WaPo is finally admitting the FBI raid was all a political ploy.
Attorney General Merrick Garland assigned a U.S. attorney to review the roughly ten classified documents that were found in an old office of President Joe Biden, CBS News reported on Monday.
The classified documents are from Biden’s vice-presidential office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, which is within close proximity to Capitol Hill.
The classified documents were found by Biden’s personal attorneys just days before the midterms on November 2, according to Special Counsel to the President Richard Sauber.
Sauber said the White House “is cooperating with the National Archives and the Department of Justice Justice regarding the discovery of what appear to be Obama-Biden Administration records.”
Once Biden’s attorneys found the documents, they notified the National Archives, who reportedly referred the matter to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), leading to Garland’s appointment of U.S. Attorney John Lausch to investigate how the classified documents ended up in Biden’s old office.
The President periodically used this space from mid-2017 until the start of the 2020 campaign. On the day of this discovery, November 2, 2022, the White House Counsel’s Office notified the National Archives. The Archives took possession of the materials the following morning.
The discovery of these documents was made by the President’s attorneys. The documents were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the Archives. Since that discovery, the President’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives.
The classified documents were reportedly in a folder that was in a box with other unclassified materials.
It should be noted that Biden’s ‘think tank’ center at the University of Pennsylvania is now located in D.C. and received $millions in donations from CHINA.
Fidelity - to whom? Bravery - Where? Integrity - Not in years
Views: 17
If only the Federal Bureau of Instigation could find these MOST WANTED in itself
The FBI on Wednesday finally broke its silence and responded to the revelations on Twitter of close ties between the bureau and the social media giant—ties that included efforts to suppress information and censor political speech.
“The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries,” the bureau said in a statement.“As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers. The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public. It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”
Almost all of the FBI communique is untrue, except the phrase about the bureau’s “engagements which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries.”
Future disclosures will no doubt reveal similar FBI subcontracting with other social media concerns of Silicon Valley to stifle free expression and news deemed problematic to the FBI’s agenda.
The FBI did not wish to help Twitter “to protect themselves,” given the bureau’s Twitter liaisons were often surprised at the FBI’s bold requests to suppress the expression of those who had not violated Twitter’s own admittedly biased “terms of service” and “community standards.”
The FBI and its helpers on the Left now reboot the same boilerplate about “conspiracy theorists” and “misinformation” smears used against anyone who rejected the FBI-fed Russian collusion hoax and the bureau’s peddling of the “Russian disinformation” lie to suppress accurate pre-election news about the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The FBI is now, tragically, in a freefall. The public is at the point, first, of asking what improper or illegal behavior will the bureau not pursue, and what, if anything, must be done to reform or save a once great but now discredited agency.
Consider the last four directors, the public faces of the FBI for the last 22 years. Ex-director Robert Mueller testified before Congress that he simply would not or could not talk about the fraudulent Steele dossier. He claimed that it was not the catalyst for his special counsel investigation of Donald Trump’s alleged ties with the Russians when, of course, it was.
Mueller also testified that he was “not familiar” with Fusion GPS, although Glenn Simpson’s opposition research firm subsidized the dossier through various cutouts that led back to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. And the skullduggery in the FBI-subsidized dossier helped force the appointment of Mueller himself.
While under congressional oath, Mueller’s successor James Comey on some 245 occasions claimed that he “could not remember, could not recall,” or “did not know” when asked simple questions fundamental to his own involvement with the Russian collusion hoax.
Comey, remember, memorialized a confidential conversation with President Trump on an FBI device and then used a third party to leak it to the New York Times. In his own words, the purpose was to force a special counsel appointment. The gambit worked, and his friend and predecessor Robert Mueller got the job. Twenty months and $40 million later, Mueller’s investigation tore the country apart but could find no evidence that Trump, as Steele alleged, colluded with the Russians to throw the 2016 election.
Comey also seems to have reassured the president that he was not the target of an ongoing FBI investigation, when in fact, Trump was.
Comey was never indicted for either misleading or lying to a congressional committee or leaking a document variously considered either confidential or classified.
While under oath, his interim successor, Andrew McCabe, on a number of occasions flat-out lied to federal investigators. Or as the office of the inspector general put it:
As detailed in this report, the OIG found that then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe lacked candor, including under oath, on multiple occasions in connection with describing his role in connection with a disclosure to the WSJ, and that this conduct violated FBI Offense Codes 2.5 and 2.6. The OIG also concluded that McCabe’s disclosure of the existence of an ongoing investigation in the manner described in this report violated the FBI’s and the Department’s media policy and constituted misconduct.
McCabe purportedly believed Trump was working with the Russians as a veritable spy—a false accusation based entirely on the FBI’s paid, incoherent prevaricator Christopher Steele. And so, McCabe discussed with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein methods to have the president’s conversations wiretapped via a Rosenstein-worn stealthy recording device, presumably without a warrant.
Note the FBI ruined the lives of General Michael Flynn and Carter Page with false allegations of criminal conduct or untruthful testimonies. Under current director Christopher Wray, the FBI has surveilled parents at school boards meetings—on the prompt of the National School Boards Association, whose president wrote Attorney General Merrick Garland alleging that bothersome parents upset over critical race indoctrination groups were supposedly violence-prone and veritable terrorists.
Under Wray, the FBI staged the psychodramatic Mar-a-Lago raid on an ex-president’s home. The FBI likely leaked the post facto myths that the seized documents contained “nuclear codes” or “nuclear secrets.”
Under Wray, the FBI perfected the performance-art, humiliating public arrests of former White House officials or Biden Administration opponents, whether it was the nocturnal rousting of Project Veritas muckraker James O’Keefe in his underwear or the arrest—with leg restraints=—of former White House advisor Peter Navarro at Reagan National Airport for misdemeanor contempt of Congress charge or the detention of Trump election lawyer John Eastman at a restaurant with his family and the confiscation of his phone. Neither O’Keefe nor Eastman has yet been charged with any serious crimes.
The FBI arguably interfered in two presidential elections, and a presidential transition, and possibly determinatively so. In 2016, James Comey announced that his investigation had found that Hillary Clinton had improperly if not illegally used her private email server to conduct official State Department business, some of it confidential and classified, and likely intercepted by foreign governments. All that was a clear violation of federal statutes. Comey next, quite improperly as a combined FBI investigator and a de facto federal prosecutor, deduced that such violations did not merit prosecution.
Around the same time, the FBI had hired as a source the foreign national and political opposition hitman Christopher Steele. It helped Steele to spread among the media his fraudulent dossier and used its unverified and false contents to win FISA warrants against U.S. citizens on the bogus charges of colluding with the Russians to throw the election to Donald Trump. By the FBI’s own admission, it would not have obtained warrants to surveil Trump campaign associates without the use of Steele’s dossier, which it also admittedly either knew was a fraud or could not corroborate.
Again, such allegations in the dossier were false and, apparently, the FBI soon knew they were bogus since one of its own lawyers—the now-convicted felon Kevin Clinesmith—found it necessary also to alter a court-submitted document to feign incriminatory information.
The FBI, on the prompt of lame-duck members of the Obama Justice Department, during a presidential transition, set up an entrapment ambush of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. It was an effort to lure Flynn into admitting to a violation of the Logan Act, a 223-year-old-law that has led to only two indictments and zero convictions.
During the 2020 election, the FBI suppressed knowledge of its possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Early on, the bureau knew that the computer and its contents were authentic and yet kept its contents suppressed.
Moreover, the FBI sought to contract out Twitter (at roughly $3.5 million) as a veritable subsidiarity to suppress social media traffic about the laptop and speech the bureau deemed improper.
Again, although the FBI knew the laptop in its possession was likely genuine, it still sought to use Twitter employees to suppress pre-election mention of that reality. At the same time, bureau officials remained mum when 51 former “intelligence officials” misled the country by claiming that the laptop had all the hallmarks of “Russian disinformation.” Polls later revealed that had the public known the truth about the laptop, a significant number likely would have voted differently—perhaps enough to change the outcome of the election.
The media, Twitter, Facebook, and former intelligence operatives were all following the FBI’s own preliminary warning bulletin that “Foreign Actors and Cybercriminals Likely to Spread Disinformation Regarding 2020 Election Results”—even as the bureau knew the laptop in its possession was most certainly not Russian disinformation. And, of course, the FBI had helped spread the Russian collusion hoax in 2016.
In addition, the FBI-issued phones of agent Peter Strzok and attorney Lisa Page, along with members of Robert Mueller’s special counsel “dream team”—all under subpoena—had their data mysteriously wiped clean, purportedly “by accident.”
Apparently, the paramours Strzok and Page, in particular, had much more to hide, given how earlier they had frequently expressed their venom toward candidate Donald Trump. Strzok boasted to Page that the FBI in general, and Andrew McCabe in particular, had an “insurance policy” means of denying Trump the presidency:
I want to believe the path you threw out in Andy’s office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take the risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.
When some of their embarrassing texts emerged, both were dismissed by the special counsel. But Mueller carefully did so by staggering Strozk and Pages’ departures and not immediately releasing the reasons for their firings or reassignments.
To this day, the public has no idea what the FBI was doing on January 6, how many FBI informants and agents were among the rioters, and to what degree they knew in advance of the protests. The New York Times reporter most acquainted with the January 6 riot, Matthew Rosenberg, dismissed the buffoonish violence as “no big deal” and scoffed, “They were making this an organized thing that it wasn’t.”
“There were a ton of FBI informants among the people who attacked the Capitol,” Rosenberg noted. We have never been told anything about that “ton”—a topic of zero interest to the January 6 select committee.
What are the people to do about a federal law enforcement agency whose directors either repeatedly lie under oath, or mislead, or do not cooperate with congressional overseers?
What should we do with a bureau that alters court documents, deceives the court with information the FBI had good reason to know was false and leaks records of confidential presidential conversations to the media to prompt the appointment of a special prosecutor?
What should be done with a government agency that pays social media corporations to warp the dissemination of the news and suppress free expression and communications? Or an agency that hires a foreign national to gather dirt on a presidential candidate and plots to ensure that there is “no way” a presidential candidate “gets elected” and destroys subpoenaed evidence?
What, if anything, should the people do about a once-respected law enforcement agency that repeatedly smears its critics, most recently as “conspiracy theorists?”
The current FBI leadership under Christopher Wray, in the tradition of recent FBI directors, has stonewalled congressional overseers about FBI activity during the Trump and Biden Administrations. In “Après moi, le déluge” fashion, the bureau acts as if it assumes the next Republican administration in office will remove the current hierarchy. And thus, it assumes for now, not cooperating with Republican investigations while Democrats hold control of the Senate and White House for a brief while longer ensures exemption.
Wray, most recently, cut short his Senate testimony on the pretext of an unspecified engagement, which turned out to be flying out on the FBI Gulfstream jet to his vacation home.
Yet the bureau’s lack of candor, contrition, and cooperation has only further alienated the public, especially traditional and conservative America, characteristically the chief source of support for the FBI.
There have been all sorts of remedies proposed for the bureau.
The three reforms most commonly suggested include: 1) simply dissolve the FBI in the belief that its concentration of power in Washington has become uncontrollable and is increasingly put to partisan service, including but not limited to the warping of U.S. presidential elections; 2) move the FBI headquarters out of the Washington D.C. nexus, preferably in the age of Zoom to a more convenient and central location in the United States, perhaps an urban site such as Salt Lake City, Denver, Kansas City, or Oklahoma City; or 3) break-up and decentralize the FBI and redistribute its various divisions to different departments to ensure that the power of its $11 billion budget and 35,000 employees are no longer aggregated and put in service of particular political agendas.
The next two years are dangerous times for the FBI—and the country. The House will soon likely begin investigations of the agency’s improper behavior. Yet, simultaneously, the Biden Justice Department will escalate its use of the bureau as a partisan investigative service for political purposes.
The FBI’s former embattled, high-ranking administrators who have been fired or forced to leave the agency—Andrew McCabe, James Comey, Peter Strzok, James Baker, Lisa Page, and others—will continue to appear on the cable news stations and social media to inveigh against critics of the FBI, despite being all deeply involved in the Russia-collusion hoax.
Merrick Garland will continue to order the FBI to hound perceived enemies through surveillance and performance art arrests. And the people will only grow more convinced the bureau has become Stasi-like and cannot be reformed but must be broken up—even as in extremis a defiant and unapologetic FBI will, as its latest communique shows, attack its critics. ✪