Category: Bureaucraps

Former Kentucky FBI agent pleads guilty to federal charges, admits taking guns from storage

A former Central Kentucky FBI agent pleaded guilty Monday to federal charges after he illegally took guns from an FBI storage office, according to court records.

Michael Van Aelstyn, 45, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and possessing an unregistered firearm, according to court documents. He was originally charged with possession of a firearm made in violation of the National Firearms Act, possession of an unregistered firearm, and unlawful transfer of a firearm to an out-of-state resident, according to a May indictment.

Van Aelstyn is alleged to have removed two illegal firearms from a suspect’s home, transported them to an FBI office for storage, and later removed them from the evidence room, taking them to his residence, according to court documents.

Van Aelstyn also gave an AM-15 multi-caliber rifle to a man identified in court documents as “MH,” and told him “he should not let anyone else know the source of that firearm.”

Another gun, a Cugir Mini Draco pistol, was allegedly destroyed by Van Aelstyn and thrown away, according to court documents.

Van Aelstyn also illegally possessed a 20-gauge Winchester shotgun with a sawed-off barrel, which was not registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record, according to the plea deal.

His attorney, Thomas Bullock, declined to comment Tuesday.

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ATF Violates Agreed Upon Timeline By Filing For An Appeal In Pistol Brace Case

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has filed a notice of appeal in a case challenging its rule against pistol braces (FINAL RULE 2021R-08F). Gun Owners of America (GOA) filed a motion for summary judgment a day later.

The case, Texas v. ATF, is a joint effort between GOA, Gun Owners Foundation (GOF), and the state of Texas to take down the ATF’s pistol brace rule.

Just a day before the ATF rule was due to go into effect, Federal District Court Judge Drew Tipton for the Southern District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction (PI) for all GOA members, barring the ATF from taking enforcement actions against them. This ruling came on the heels of the Mock v. Garland Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that blocked enforcement of the rule on Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) members. Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) also got a preliminary injunction against the rule before the rule’s effective date.

“For these reasons, the Court GRANTS IN PART Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction, (Dkt. No. 16). Defendants are ENJOINED from enforcing the Final Rule against the private Plaintiffs in this case, including its current members and their resident family members, and individuals employed directly by the State of Texas or its agencies. The preliminary injunction will remain in effect pending resolution of the expedited appeal in Mock v. Garland,” the order reads.

Since then, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has expanded the injunction to cover everyone in the nation, effectively killing the ATF’s rule. Before that happened, according to GOA, all parties agreed to the timeline in the Texas v. ATF case.

It is unlikely that the Fifth Circuit of Appeals would overturn Judge Tipton’s decision. The Fifth Circuit is openly hostile to the ATF’s use of the rule-making process.

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Incremental Strategy to Reform & Repeal the National Firearms Act

Previously, this correspondent wrote an essay on Incrementalism v. “all or nothing”. It was well-received:

Roland T. Gunner ~ “Mr. Weingarten, I take my hat off to you. This article is the best thing I have read in modern memory. Now, tell me, how do we get incremental movement on repealing the NFA? And for all you naysayers, sit down, shut up, or help us get it done.”

Incremental movement is happening to dismantle the National Firearms Act (NFA), bit by bit. The ultimate goal is repeal.

Here is how it is being done, and what needs to be done in the future.

Educate Gun Culture & The General Public

When people understand the NFA is the result of a political compromise that did nothing to stop crime; but results in thousands of Americans being punished for peaceful acts, support for the NFA drops to politically irrelevant numbers. Support for the NFA is fairly wide, but very shallow, propped up by the dominant Media and their creation and proliferation of false narratives.

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Redefining Adulthood to Deny Second Amendment Rights

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Why Does My ‘Efficient’ Dishwasher Take a Zillion Minutes for a Load?

For months, Donna King experimented with the various settings of her washing machine, trying to get her clothes to stop coming out covered in detergent residue. In the era of tightening water and energy standards, King thinks the machine just doesn’t use enough water, with clothes emerging nearly dry to the touch.

Counting down the hours

She regularly runs her T-shirts through the machine a second time. The hairstylist in Oak Ridge, Tenn., sometimes brings laundry loads into work to use the heavy duty setup there.
“I’m all for saving the environment but this ain’t the way to do it, if you got to do something two or three times,” the 59-year-old said. “The standard is great on paper, but when it comes to practical and real life situations, it’s a bunch of s—.”
King hacked her machine with a water pitcher—she now adds seven or more pitchers filled with water to the machine, both at the start and midway through the cycle. That extra water tricks the machine into thinking there is a bigger load, so the washer adds even more water.

Donna King hacked her high efficiency washing machine by manually adding water. PHOTO: DONNA KING

King says her clothes now come out cleaner. “There is nothing convenient about any of it,” she said.
Other consumers are also MacGyvering workarounds for their modern home appliances, as planned and current regulations make it harder and slower to wash pots, clean pants and boil pasta.
The Biden administration has proposed tightening federal water and energy use standards further for numerous home appliances, including refrigerators and ovens, in an effort to combat climate change and save consumers money. Under a proposed rule, dishwashers would be allowed to use around 3.2 gallons of water a cycle, down from 5 gallons currently. Appliance makers and environmental groups have put forward a joint proposal for less stringent efficiency increases.

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How to Fix Damage Done to 2nd Amendment by Joe Biden

The Biden-Harris administration has done more harm to the Second Amendment than all previous administrations combined. Biden and his unelected, behind-the-scenes shot-callers have been methodical in their multifaceted war on our civil rights.

The next administration — if it’s one that actually respects the law and its citizens — will have a lot of work to do to restore the Second Amendment to what the Framers had in mind. It will be a daunting task. The Biden-Harris administration has hammered law-abiding Americans with dozens of infringements — aided and abetting by the legacy media and a variety of anti-civil rights groups, some of which received taxpayer dollars.

What follows is a list of suggestions for how to restore our civil rights. The list is neither complete nor comprehensive. It’s more of a starting point and, unlike the Constitution, a living document. It includes actions that can be taken immediately and long-term goals that may require Congressional support.

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Of course they do, they’re bureaucraps

National Transportation Safety Board Calls For Speed-Limiting Tech in Cars.

The National Transportation Safety Bureau (NTSB) is an independent review agency in the federal government. They’re the group which get called when a plane crashes, or a train goes off the rails, or, in this particular case, when a speeding car crashes into a minivan in North Las Vegas and nine people die from this one wreck alone, as happened in 2022. After reviewing that wreck, the NTSB recommends that our cars warn us, inhibit us, or prevent us from speeding.

The NTSB said on Tuesday that the 2022 North Las Vegas crash “highlights [the] need for intelligent speed assistance technology and countermeasures including interlock program for repeat speeding offenders.” What is intelligent speed assistance technology? Here is the clarification, direct from the NTSB press release:

Intelligent speed assistance technology, or ISA, uses a car’s GPS location compared with a database of posted speed limits and its onboard cameras to help ensure safe and legal speeds. Passive ISA systems warn a driver when the vehicle exceeds the speed limit through visual, sound, or haptic alerts, and the driver is responsible for slowing the car. Active systems include mechanisms that make it more difficult, but not impossible, to increase the speed of a vehicle above the posted speed limit and those that electronically limit the speed of the vehicle to fully prevent drivers from exceeding the speed limit.

It is not the NTSB’s role to carry out this recommendation. it is not a policy-making body. It is just an agency that reviews transportation disasters, figures out how they happened, and makes recommendations on how to keep them from happening.

The wreck itself that spurred this recommendation was particularly egregious but little about it sounds surprising. As the NTSB report notes, a driver and passenger in a 2018 Dodge Challenger ran a red light at 103 mph, hitting a Toyota Sienna with seven people inside. The light had been red for 29 seconds. All nine people died.

As the NTSB notes, some 12,330 people died in speeding-related crashes in 2021 alone, roughly a third of all traffic deaths in the U.S. What is abundantly clear is that something needs to change, and we all know that relying on cops to pull people over isn’t working for anybody.

The Gun Joe Biden Doesn’t Want You To Have Just Protected His Own Granddaughter

Secret Service reportedly opened fire Sunday night on three suspects attempting to break into an unmarked government vehicle parked in front of the Georgetown home of Naomi Biden, President Joe Biden’s granddaughter. Reports allege that the three offenders fled the scene after the gunfire started.

These types of scenarios are exactly why Americans advocate for the Second Amendment, but unfortunately, not all citizens have the same protection the Biden family is afforded.

Residents of Washington, D.C., are forced to navigate an onslaught of regulation and red tape before they can use firearms for self-preservation. According to D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, residents have the “authority to carry firearm[s]” only in “certain places and for certain purposes.” Concealed carry requires a variety of applications and training, while “open carry is prohibited.”

MPDC / DC POLICE DEPARTMENT WEBSITE

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When some jihadi makes a spectacle of himself, don’t forget to put the blame where it belongs; a goobermint and its open border policy

FBI Director Confirms Hamas-Led Threats Against Americans in the U.S. Now at ‘Whole Other Level’

FBI Director Christopher Wray testified Wednesday before the House Committee on Homeland Security and revealed that, due to the Israel-Hamas war, “The threat of an attack against Americans in the United States” has been raised “to a whole other level.”

In his prepared remarks, Wray provided more context to those threats: “Since October 7th, we’ve seen a rogue’s gallery of foreign terrorist organizations call for attacks against Americans and our allies. Hizballah expressed its support and praise for Hamas and threatened to attack U.S. interests in the Middle East. Al-Qaida issued its most specific call to attack the United States in the last five years. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula called on jihadists to attack Americans and Jewish people everywhere. ISIS urged its followers to target Jewish communities in the United States and Europe.”

In short, Americans are under threat both at home and abroad; not surprisingly, Jews are most at risk from these threats.

During questioning from the House panel, Wray admitted that the threats could be tied to pro-Hamas elements and global bad actors.

WATCH:

TRANSCRIPT:

Certainly we’re in an environment where a number of tips and threats that are being reported to us have gone up significantly since October 7. We are already, as I testified earlier, already at an elevated threat environment even before October 7, and it’s gone to a whole other level since October 7.

The biggest chunks of the threats that have been reported in to us, but a good margin, are threats to the Jewish community. Synagogues, Jewish prominent officials, things like that. We also have a large number of tips and leads related specifically to Hamas and radicalization and recruitment.

As RedState has previously reported, Jews make up 2.4 percent of the total U.S. population but are the target of more than 50 percent of the religiously motivated hate crimes reported to the FBI. And this was before the October 7 massacre.

Worryingly, Wray also admitted at the Wednesday hearing that there are individuals on the terror watch list who may have slipped into the U.S. illegally and whose whereabouts are currently unknown. Rep. August Pfluger (R-TX) asked Wray, “Are there people that you don’t where they are that the FBI is searching for today? Yes or no?” Wray responded with a simple, “Yes.”

Despite Wray’s confirmation that threats against Americans by Hamas sympathizers have seen a dramatic rise in the past six weeks, the official threat level of the United States has not been raised since May 24:

The United States remains in a heightened threat environment. Lone offenders and small groups motivated by a range of ideological beliefs and personal grievances continue to pose a persistent and lethal threat to the Homeland. Both domestic violent extremists (DVEs) and those associated with foreign terrorist organizations continue to attempt to motivate supporters to conduct attacks in the Homeland, including through violent extremist messaging and online calls for violence.

It’s worth reading Wray’s entire prepared statement; surprisingly, there are a lot of good nuggets in there about the precise nature and targets of these threats.

Here we go again
Same old *stuff* again…..

Gunman suspected of killing Texas SWAT cop and 2 hostages was reportedly on FBI terror watchlist.

The gunman who killed Texas SWAT Officer Jorge Pastore in a shootout that also left two hostages dead was wearing body armor and night vision goggles — and was on the FBI’s terror watchlist, according to reports.

A search warrant for the suspect’s south Austin home — the scene of Saturday’s deadly shootout — unearthed bomb-making materials inside, calling for help from the FBI’s Evidence Recovery Team, according to KXAN.

“Cutting instruments, body armor and any tactical gear to include firearms were all said to be worn or used by the suspect,” reads the warrant, which noted that it’s “not uncommon for people with a gun, body armor or night vision to make homemade explosives.”

Neither the suspect nor the dead hostages had been officially identified as of early Wednesday.

However, a local organization called the Round Rock Area Muslims said they were all family members of a “beloved brother” who was well-known in the local community.

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While Hamas Planned Its Attack on Israel, Biden’s Intel Community Was Focused On Climate Change

While the Hamas terror group was working with Iran to launch its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the Biden administration’s intelligence community was ramping up efforts to combat climate change, raising questions about America’s failure to detect the terror attack.

As the Israel-Gaza conflict enters its second month, congressional leaders are beginning to examine whether the Biden administration’s intelligence shift—which included adding a climate scientist to his Intelligence Advisory Board, a task force that tracks national security issues, and executive orders that required the intelligence community to assess security threats posed by climate change—may have contributed to America’s failure to spot Hamas’s planning beforehand. Hamas had been planning the attack for over a year, according to reports.

“The world faces unprecedented threats from Communist China, the Iran regime, and Russia yet the Biden administration is shifting intelligence and defense assets to focus on climate change,” Rep. Mike Waltz (R., Fla.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told the Washington Free Beacon. “Just this past March, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines testified before Congress that climate was an intelligence priority. The blatant political posturing on climate change within our intelligence community endangers the U.S. and our allies by sidelining other threats.”

In January, President Joe Biden signaled his administration’s shift to climate change when he appointed the first-ever climate scientist to his Intelligence Advisory Board, a decades-old task force that tracks national security issues across the globe. Brown University professor Kim Cobb, an “expert on climate extremes and coastal flooding,” was tasked with reviewing “the work of U.S. spy agencies to make sure they are considering threats from all angles,” as well as policing the board “to make sure that the intelligence offered to the president is taking into account climate-related security issues,” the Washington Post reported.

Biden followed this with several executive orders that reportedly “required the intelligence community to assess the national security threats posed by climate change.” Biden’s focus on climate change also extended to the American military, with the Pentagon classifying these issues in 2021 as “a critical national security issue.”

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FBI accused of targeting Trump types; agents who served in military deemed ‘disloyal’

More whistleblowers have stepped forward to tell Congress that high-ranking FBI officials are targeting agents, specifically former military members, for their political beliefs and trying to force them out of the bureau.

A Marine and other military veterans at the FBI have been accused of disloyalty to the U.S. because they fit the profile of a supporter of former President Donald Trump, according to two disclosures sent to lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee.

The Washington Times obtained copies of the disclosures.

The whistleblowers said Jeffrey Veltri, deputy assistant director of the bureau’s security division, and Dena Perkins, assistant section chief, specifically pursued employees who served in the Marine Corps or other military branches.

They stripped the agents of security clearances, which sidelined them on the job and pushed them toward the exit, according to the disclosures.

The whistleblower disclosures say Mr. Veltri and Ms. Perkins either declared or attempted to declare the Marine and other veterans as “disloyal to the United States of America.”

“In these cases there was no indication that any of the individuals had any affiliation to a foreign power or held any belief against the United States,” it said.

Other signs that an employee was a “right-wing radical and disloyal to the United States,” according to Ms. Perkins and Mr. Veltri, were failure to wear a face mask, refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccination and participating in religious activities.

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