Category: Bureaucraps

Kennedy secures Second Amendment win for veterans

WASHINGTON – The Senate today passed a bill package including Sen. John Kennedy’s (R-La.) amendment to protect veterans’ Second Amendment rights from bureaucrats at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

“Unelected bureaucrats shouldn’t be able to strip veterans of their Second Amendment rights unilaterally. The Senate did the right thing for veterans and all freedom-loving Americans by passing my amendment today,” said Kennedy.

Current law requires the VA to send a veteran’s name to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) whenever a fiduciary is appointed to help that veteran manage his or her VA benefits. Placement on NICS blocks veterans from purchasing or owning firearms.

Because unelected bureaucrats at the VA ultimately decide—without a court ruling—whether veterans receive help from a fiduciary and therefore end up in NICS, current law denies veterans due process and infringes on veterans’ right to bear arms.

Kennedy’s amendment included in today’s package changes current law to prohibit the Secretary of Veterans Affairs from sending a veteran’s personal information to NICS unless a judge rules that the veteran is a danger to himself or others.

CDC Redacts Every Single Word of 148-Page Study on Myocarditis After Covid Vaccination

The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “released” a 148-page study on myocarditis after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination and every single word on every page has been completely redacted.

Nothing to see here, folks.

The 148-page document released by the CDC was in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the Epoch Times. The totally redacted CDC study on myocarditis after mRNA vaccination can be accessed here.

Reporter Zachary Steiber explained on X, “Seeing some confusion about this document: It’s a CDC document sent to us in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and is fully redacted.”

“The request asked for information about the CDC’s MOVING project. The team has posted several studies, including this one. The CDC plans to submit another paper on updated findings from the project for peer review, a spokesperson told us in January.”

The establishment narrative around the COVID-19 mRNA vaccinations and serious health consequences including myocarditis continues to unravel in the face of public scrutiny.

Dr Anthony Fauci finally admitted during an interview on ABC’s “This Week” in September last year that the Covid-19 mRNA jabs can cause myocarditis.

After months of dismissing or downplaying concerns about the potential side effects of the experimental vaccines, president Biden’s former covid czar now says that there is a myocarditis risk, particularly in young men.

During the interview, Fauci was asked to discuss the recent surge in COVID-19 cases and the ongoing vaccine drive.

Meanwhile, nine new members appointed to the committee that advises the CDC on vaccine recommendations have taken huge payouts from Big Pharma companies to push the deadly mRNA vaccines, according to a new investigation.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in mid-February appointed the new members to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which dictates U.S. vaccine policy.

Commenting on the new appointments, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) President Mary Holland said:

“ACIP has long been a rubber stamp for any and all vaccines Big Pharma wants to push. But the brazenness of the HHS-Big Pharma fusion has never been so much on display.

“The only silver lining in this grotesque display is that more and more people are waking up to the reality that ACIP has nothing to do with health and everything to do with profit.”

The ACIP is described as an independent, nonfederal expert body made up of professionals with clinical, scientific and public health expertise. The committee decides which vaccines should be recommended to the public, who should take them and how often — recommendations the CDC typically rubber stamps.

ATF DIRECTOR LAMENTS CONGRESSIONAL, AMERICANS’ DISTRUST TO UPEND SECOND AMENDMENT

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Director Steven Dettelbach joined CBS’s Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan to talk about violent crime committed with firearms and the tools he wants from Congress. The problem is those requests have already been rejected by Congress for good reason. Those tools would violate federal law and would chip away at the rights of those who obey the law without actually addressing the problem of crime.

“I was in Baltimore a few weeks ago with the law enforcement there, and it’s like, almost a 20 percent drop in homicides, but looks to me the caveat is that for many years in this country, we’ve had a very serious gun crime problem,” Director Dettelbach explained. “And we are the outlier among almost all Western modern nations, and not the outlier in a good way.”

He added later, “Well, I look at- look, I mean, data doesn’t lie.”

Juxtapose that with Director Dettelbach repeating the verifiably false claim that firearms are the leading cause of death among children. That’s just not true.

False Narrative

“The leading cause of death of children in the United States is firearms violence, right,” Director Dettelbach said. “Not cancer, not cars. Guns.”

That’s patently false. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris like to trot out the line in their gun control speeches even though it’s been proven to be false. The Washington Post, hardly a firearm-friendly news agency, admitted the narrative is false. To make the claim, The White House and now Director Dettelbach include people age 18 and 19. The problem is, 18 and 19-year-olds are adults, not children.

“When you focus only on children — 17 and younger — motor vehicle deaths (broadly defined) still rank No. 1, as they have for six decades,” The Washington Post reported. “In the interest of accuracy, it would be better for White House officials to refer to children and teens when citing these reports. When all motor vehicle accidents are counted, then motor vehicle deaths continue to exceed firearm deaths for children — defined as people under age 18 — whether or not infants are included.”

NSSF has blasted this twisting of data to arrive at the heated talking point. The claim in question came about as a result of a faulty study published by the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention in April 2022. That study included Americans aged 18 and 19 years old – adults – in the data set as well as manipulated motor vehicle crash data to assert firearms became the “leading cause of death among children and adolescents” in 2020. NSSF debunked the study when it was published in April 2022.

Like Director Dettelbach said in his Face the Nation interview: data doesn’t lie.

Differing Ideas

Director Dettelbach lamented that the debate over firearms has become too heated. He recalled a meeting he had with residents of Lewiston, Maine, following the tragic criminal attack on innocent Americans there. He admitted that some in attendance, who were families of victims and victims themselves, were deeply suspicious of heavy-handed government intrusion on their rights.

“Those people were able to sit in that room with all that grief and have a discussion,” Director Dettelbach explained. “Tell me what they – what they – their feelings, differing feelings about how we should approach this problem. And they all had ideas.”

There are differing ideas. That’s why NSSF partners with the ATF to prevent the illegal straw purchasing of firearms in the “Don’t Lie for the Other GuyTM” campaign, of which he spoke. NSSF also partners with ATF for Operation Secure Store® to help firearm retailers improve security at their stores. However, there are some ideas that are just unacceptable.

Director Dettelbach bemoaned that Congress refuses to give him the authority to implement universal background checks. In fact, Congress has roundly rejected that idea because the Department of Justice (DoJ) admitted that for universal background checks to work, every law-abiding gun owner would need to be placed on a national firearm registry. That’s forbidden by federal law.

“So again, really, you know, people ask me, what’s my top priority? What’s my- what’s my wish list? I think the reality is it’s going to be a lot of things that we have to do to get out of this situation to make things better,” Director Dettelbach said. “… if Congress wants to consider more on universal background checks…”

Here’s why Congress isn’t giving in on surrendering the rights of law-abiding citizens to the government. It’s a false sense of security that would trade the rights of those who obey the law for an unkept promise to go after those who break the law. Congress is the representative government of “We, the People…” The “People” have been given every reason to distrust the government when it comes to protecting their Second Amendment rights.

Untrustworthy Track Record

Just weeks ago, the U.S. Treasury Department admitted that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) violated the private banking and financial records of Americans to create a government watchlist that included anyone who bought a gun, ammunition – even a Bible – or shopped at one of several big box sporting goods stores.

The Biden administration’s Commerce Department has been working to throttle firearm exports in an attempt to kneecap U.S. firearm manufacturers. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security issued a “90-day pause” that’s well beyond the initial 90 days to halt nearly all firearm exports while the administration re-examines policy. That’s despite the strongest safeguards that have been in place ever. The United States sets the leading standard in the world for firearm exports. All firearm and ammunition exports are – and always were – subject to both Defense and State Department review, and either can halt the export if there are security or human rights concerns. Firearm and ammunition license applications undergo a 100 percent end-user check by the BIS Office of Export Enforcement (OEE), regardless of how long an exporting company has been doing business with that customer, regardless of how many times the buyer was subjected to an end-user check and regardless of whether BIS has no derogatory information on that customer, even if the end-user was recently approved. At present, no other commodity is subject to the same 100 percent check.

There are more reasons why Congress is suspect of handing the reins over to the Biden administration when it comes to Americans’ Second Amendment rights. ATF itself has shown a willingness to infringe on Second Amendment rights through the rule-making process. ATF wrote a proposed “engaged-in-the-business” rule that would require nearly all private firearm sellers to obtain a federal firearms license and run background checks. Congress made a one-word change to the definition of “engaged-in-the-business” in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA). ATF used that to launch 108 pages to require an estimated 328,000 additional licensees. It’s not just unconstitutional. It’s unfeasible.

The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan is demanding answers from Director Dettelbach, noting that the BSCA said the revised “engaged-in-the-business” definition “shall not include a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.”

ATF also published a Final Rule redefining “frames or receivers” in an effort to outlaw the ability for law-abiding private citizens to make their own firearms in their own home for private use. That was legal even before the founding of the nation. That rule is being challenged in courts for exceeding the authority of ATF to set criminal code, which is the sole authority of Congress. It is likely to be petitioned to the U.S. Supreme Court.

There’s also the recently-challenged Final Rule banning bump stocks, which was just heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. That challenge also questioned ATF’s authority to write criminal law. A decision is expected later this year.

There are more examples of why Congress – and the American public – distrust the federal government when it comes to their Second Amendment rights, including the Obama-Biden administration’s abusive Operation Choke Point, the ill-fated ATF Fast and Furious, California’s “accidental” release of concealed carry permit holders’ information to the general public and the same instance of New York City releasing concealed carry permit holders’ information to the media.

Data – and history – don’t lie.

New Report Exposes Massive Government Surveillance of Americans’ Financial Data

March 6, 2024
Press Release
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released an interim staff report titled, “Financial Surveillance in the United States: How Federal Law Enforcement Commandeered Financial Institutions to Spy on Americans.” The report reveals alarming evidence of federal law enforcement engaging in broad financial surveillance and prying into the private transactions of American consumers. This surveillance, not predicated on specific evidence of criminal conduct, targeted terms and transactions related to core political and religious expressions protected by the Constitution.

Federal law enforcement, including the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the FBI, facilitated multiple backchannel discussions with financial institutions to gather Americans’ private financial information. These discussions involved some of the largest financial institutions in the United States, such as Barclays, U.S. Bank, Charles Schwab, HSBC, Bank of America, PayPal, and many others. Tactics included keyword filtering of transactions, targeting terms like “MAGA” and “TRUMP,” as well as purchases of books, religious texts, firearms-related items, and recreational stores, like Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shop, and Dick’s Sporting Goods. This surveillance extended beyond criminal suspicion, likely encompassing millions of Americans with conservative viewpoints or Second Amendment interests.

The report also details the existence of a web portal run by the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC), a public-private partnership led by the FBI’s Office of Private Sector and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis. This portal appears to have shared intelligence products with financial institutions that were used to identify individuals who fit the profile of criminal and “domestic violent extremists,” often because of their conservative political views or other constitutionally protected activity. Federal law enforcement used these reports and other materials they shared with financial institutions to commandeer their databases and conduct sweeping searches of individuals not suspected of committing any crimes, without a warrant, in order to identify individuals making certain “suspicious” transactions.

The pattern of financial surveillance uncovered in the report raises serious concerns about federal law enforcement’s and financial institutions’ commitment to respecting Americans’ privacy rights and fundamental civil liberties.

Read the full interim staff report here.

Americans Not Buying Gun Control. Instead, They’re Buying Guns.

President Joe Biden is still pushing gun control onto the American people. He’s absolutely convinced the public wants restrictions on our right to keep and bear arms. At least, he’s convinced of that when he can remember what a gun actually is.

Regardless, the president has been pushing it since he started campaigning in 2019, so it’s no surprise that it’s been a point of consistency.

What is surprising is that despite all the studies and polls that try to tell us that the public wants restrictions, they truth is that they’re buying guns like crazy.

The nation’s gun-buying binge remained robust last month amid the Biden administration’s latest plans to cut sales and intimidate customers.

The FBI said it conducted 2,336,390 checks through its National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the industry trade group, said that included an estimated 1,343,478 specifically for gun sales.

February was the 55th consecutive month that gun sales approved by the FBI exceeded 1 million. NSSF said the number was likely higher since the FBI count does not include all other legal pathways to obtaining a firearm.

The NSSF’s Mark Oliva said this was likely a reaction to Biden’s efforts to tighten gun control, which isn’t overly surprising.

During the Obama administration, the president was the gun salesman of the year for eight straight years. Biden has been no different.

I’ve long maintained that a lot of people want guns but because these aren’t inexpensive items nor higher ticket goods the whole family will enjoy day in, day out, firearm purchases get put on the back burner. Folks figure there’s always time to get them.

But when someone like Biden comes along and starts to rattle the saber about restricting things, “there’s always time” becomes “I’d better do something while I can.”

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Biden Goes To Court, Demanding Warrantless Surveillance Powers
An attempt to bypass congress.

A request by the Biden administration to the courts for the renewal of contentious warrantless surveillance powers, has stoked controversy.

These surveillance powers, demanded by American intelligence agencies, are on the verge of expiration. Critics argue that this move either reflects business as usual, or reflects a sidestepping of spying reforms.

According to US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), the decision of the US Department of Justice to pursue an extension of the FISA Section 702 for a year without congressional consideration manifests a disregard for reforms aimed at safeguarding American rights.

Expressing his criticism, Wyden offers an alternative legislation which he and other lawmakers proposed that seeks to maintain Section 702 surveillance albeit under strict regulations constraining unwarranted spying on Americans. Wyden is particularly irked by the White House’s direction to prosecutors to seek renewal of the FISA powers in court before his proposed alternative legislation could be wholly considered by Congress.

Senator Wyden did not mince words in expressing his dissatisfaction with the approach of the Biden administration and the Justice department. “It is utterly ridiculous that the Biden Administration and the Justice Department would rather risk the long-term future of an important surveillance authority than support a single meaningful reform to protect Americans’ rights,” he said.

The contentious issue revolves around Section 702, an amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that allows US intelligence agencies to spy on foreigners considered a threat to national security. Despite the fact that this surveillance is meant for overseas intelligence targets, the incidental warrantless surveillance of US residents has prompted concerns among privacy advocates.

The FBI’s past missteps of using Section 702 to snoop on various individuals ranging from US elected officials to campaign donors adds credence to these concerns. Section 702 is scheduled to lapse by April 19 unless Congress moves to renew it. This has led to a push among several lawmakers to alter the rules and add guards against potential future abuse. To keep it running, Congress had granted a four-month extension last year.

There are currently four legislative proposals in the works to renew Section 702. Two of these initiatives, namely the Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act and the Government Surveillance Reform Act of 2023, entail a warrant requirement prior to investigations.

The White House has resisted attempts to reform Section 702.

SCOTUS heard oral arguments today in the ATF bump stock ban case

SCOTUS Justice Jackson Just Said the Dumbest Thing About Guns and I Can’t Stop Laughing.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson must have fallen asleep last night watching a vintage ’80s Chuck Norris movie as part of her preparation to hear oral arguments today in the Garland v. Cargill bumpstock ban lawsuit because her understanding of firearms is even less realistic than your typical Cannon Films production.

While I don’t have the transcript yet for you — arguments are going on as I write this column — the Firearms Policy Coalition has been doing the good work of posting highlights to Twitter/X.

(Don’t miss the update below from the official transcript)

When it was time for the Biden Department of Justice to present its side to the Court, Justice Clarence Thomas asked what happens, according to the FPC, “with the trigger in a bump stocked rifle vs a full-auto rifle.”

Please don’t wet yourself laughing when you read the government’s response.

My 14-year-old self, forever trapped in 1983, would have just one thing to say to a rifle that would let me fire 600 rounds a second: “BITCHIN’!”

Justice Jackson, with images of Chuck Norris killing an entire battalion of Vietnamese soldiers with a single magazine in “Missing in Action 2: The Beginning” still fresh in her mind must have thought, “600 rounds? I raise you 200 rounds to 800 — each and every second.”

ASIDE: Every time I read the words “Justice Jackson” I can’t help but think that’s what Action Jackson went into after he retired from the force.

Anyway, this was Jackson’s contribution to the discussion.

I dunno, maybe she wasn’t paying full attention and misheard the government’s ridiculous claim.

I’m not singling out Justice Jackson for any special mocking here — just the regular amount. Jackson was speaking off the cuff, and everybody makes mistakes doing that. While it’s extra unbecoming for a Justice of the Supreme Court to demonstrate such laughable ignorance about a case she’s supposed to be hearing with her own ears, the government took its time to prepare its case — they wrote stuff down and everything — and still managed to come up with 600 rounds per second.

Some days I wish firearms could do all the things that gun-grabbers claim they can do.

Do I really want an AR-15 that can fire 800 rounds per second? I mean, assuming I could find a magazine with that kind of capacity? No, obviously. The barrel would melt, the bullets would spray all over the place, and I’m having trouble imagining what would happen when 800 brass cartridges go flying out all over the range in a single second.

That one second would also put a serious dent in my .223 stash.

Still… what a glorious second that would be.

UPDATE: SCOTUS did a great job of getting the transcript posted, so I found the relevant bits for you.

MR. FLETCHER: [speaking to Chief Justice Roberts] What you are doing is just pushing forward. Now, if you look at the videos that we cite in Footnote 1 of our reply brief, some of them are in slow motion, and they show that when the shooter is doing this, the hand is moving back and forth very fast, 600 times a second. That’s not happening because the shooter is able to move their hand back and forth 600 — or, I’m sorry, 600 times a minute.

So the Firearms Policy Coalition got the first part right but then missed the correction. Easy to do while essentially liveblogging — I should know. Still, 600 rounds per minute is only slightly less impossible than 600 rounds per second. Even if under some extreme circumstances a bumpstock-enhanced cyborg were able to fire that quickly, a semi-automatic rifle wouldn’t stand up to the strain — and where would the rounds come from?

And here’s Justice Jackson: “And when, you know, ‘function’ is defined, it’s really not about the operation of the thing. It’s about what it can achieve, what it’s being used for. So I see Congress as putting function in this. The function of this trigger is to cause this kind of damage, 800 rounds a second or whatever.”

I think “or whatever” pretty well sums up Jackson’s interest in learning about firearms.

 

Katie Daviscourt
I’ll never forget the FBI calling me into their office in Seattle in 2020.
They were looking for footage of a suspect I had taken during one of the many riots. That’s when I asked them about Antifa.

The FBI agent told me Antifa was NOT a cause of concern, nor were they a terror group.
That’s when I lost all respect for the agency and refused to take any further calls.

I watched Antifa assault police, press, and innocent bystanders, as well as burn Seattle and Portland to the ground for nine months.
All without repercussions.

Imagine if a conservative did this?

FBI Reportedly Harvesting Publicly Available “Weapon” Info

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is initiating Project Tyr, an effort in its infancy to employ Amazon’s artificial intelligence-driven Rekognition cloud service to identify firearms—among other things—and the people associated with them. According to the bureau’s description (on the last page) the software “… offers pre trained and customizable computer vision (CV) capabilities to extract information and insights from lawfully acquired images and videos. Currently in initiation phase to customize to review and identify items containing nudity, weapons, explosives, and other identifying information.”

The news came as a shock to a digital community primarily concerned about privacy and inaccurate facial recognition. Amazon placed a moratorium on law enforcement’s use of Rekognition’s facial recognition software in June 2020, extended the moratorium in 2021 and released a statement explaining the latest FBI effort will only use the program’s other assets.

“Rekognition is an image and video analysis service that has many non-facial analysis and comparison features,” Amazon spokesperson Duncan Neasham explained to FedScoop, the outlet that broke the news on January 25. “Nothing in the Department of Justice’s disclosure indicates the FBI is violating the moratorium in any way.”

The initiative may be fueled, in part, by the number of convicted felons willing to post photos of themselves on social media while holding a gun and/or clearly stating ownership. That violation of the law has helped re-incarcerate criminals in Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Nebraska and dozens, if not hundreds, of others in the last year alone.

Identifying those instances falls well within the FBI’s website stated goal to, “… protect the American people and uphold the U.S. Constitution.” Today, its team of roughly 35,000 relies heavily on the latest forensic and investigative technology and routinely explores innovative new techniques, including this one. Precisely how it will harness Rekognition or the baseline used in the search for firearms—and whether that information is cataloged—has yet to be announced.

The Federal Government is not alone in its reliance on sometimes controversial software, however. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the New York City Police Department, for example, has been using facial recognition since 2011, can put 19 drones in the air, has video monitoring for loitering and more. For a look at systems employed by your city, county and state the organization has a free and easy-to-use Atlas of Surveillance online.

 

Soon to be classed by SloJoe as the next national monument or some such other BS way to lock it up.

Over 2 Billion Metric Tons of Rare Earth Minerals Discovered in Wyoming.

If the bureaucrats bureaucraps and politicians get out of the way, America is poised to become the world’s leading producer of rare earth minerals.

The last time we visited the issue of rare earth minerals at Legal Insurrection, the Chinese had shut down the export of 2 important rare earth metals used in semiconductor manufacture: gallium and germanium.

In December, China imposed a trade ban on rare earth extraction equipment.

The second shot was new trade ban imposed by China on specialized rare earth production equipment, which means rivals will have to develop their own processes for extracting commercial quantities of metals needed in a variety of technologies.

Rare earths have been a Chinese specialty for decades thanks to large deposits of ore and through the application of smart mining and treatment methods which evolved just in time to catch surging demand.

While not household names it would not be possible to run the modern world without neodymium, praseodymium, terbium, or dysprosium, four of the 17 elements that make up the rare earth family.

Now I have some good news to share. Our country could soon surpass China as the world leader in rare earth minerals after more than 2.34 billion metric tons were discovered in Wyoming.

American Rare Earths Inc announced that the reserves near Wheatland dramatically surpass the Asian nation’s 44 million metric tons, saying it ‘exceeded our wildest dreams’ after drilling only about 25 percent of the property.

The company has a stake in 367 mining claims across 6,320 acres of land in the Halleck Creek Project, along with four Wyoming mineral leases on 1,844 acres on the same project now called Cowboy State Mine.

The types of minerals at the site are used in smartphones, hybrid car motors and military technologies – among others.

Since China’s extraction ban, one company, American Rare Earths, has been working hard to expand our nation’s access options. It appears they may have struck the mother lode.

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U.S. Government Is Hiding Documents That Incriminate Intelligence Community For Illegal Spying And Election Interference, Say Sources: Former CIA Director Gina Haspel blocked the release of “binder” with evidence that may identify her role in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Last December 15th, as Americans decorated trees, lit Menorahs, and prepared to tune out for winter holidays, CNN ran an extraordinary article titled, “The mystery of the missing binder: How a collection of raw Russian intelligence disappeared under Trump.”

Co-authored by Natasha Bertrand, the gargantuan exposé claimed a mysterious “binder” of “highly classified information related to Russian election interference” went “missing” in the chaotic waning days of Donald Trump’s presidency in January 2021, raising concerns that some of America’s most “closely guarded national security secrets… could be exposed.”

CNN and its intelligence sources meant “exposure” in a bad way. Sources have told Public and Racket, however, that the secrets officials worry might be “exposed” are ones that would implicate them in widespread abuses of intelligence authority dating back to the 2015-2016 election season.

“I would call [the binder] Trump’s insurance policy,” said someone knowledgeable about the case. “He was very concerned about having it and taking it with him because it was the road map” of Russiagate.

Transgressions range from Justice Department surveillance of domestic political targets without probable cause to the improper unmasking of a pre-election conversation between a Trump official and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to WMD-style manipulation of intelligence for public reports on alleged Russian “influence activities.”

The CNN report claimed intelligence officials were concerned about the disclosure of “sources and methods that informed the U.S. government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election.”

They should be concerned. The story of how a team “hand-picked” by CIA Director John Brennan relied on “cooked intelligence” to craft that January 6th, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment is the subject of tomorrow’s story, the last in this three-part series.

Corruption, not tradecraft, is what officials are desperate to keep secret.

The ”missing binder” story has several variants. Sources offer differing answers on the question of whether anything of consequence is missing. They give mixed accounts of Trump’s frantic last efforts to declassify Russia-related material.

But nearly everyone Public and Racket spoke to agreed that the tale obscured a broader and more important story.

Dating back to the release of the so-called “Nunes memo” in 2018 exposing the corruption of the FISA application process, senior intelligence officials, including Trump’s CIA Director, Gina Haspel, have repeatedly blocked attempts to declassify information about the Trump-Russia investigation.

They had good reason to obstruct the release of these documents.

This is your brain on Marxism.

 Treasury Secretary: “We don’t have to get the prices down because wages are going up.”

 

Financial Big Brother is Watching You
A brief note on an overlooked nightmare.

A few weeks ago, Ohio congressman and Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan’s office released a letter to Noah Bishoff, the former director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, an arm of the Treasury Department. Jordan’s team was asking Bishoff for answers about why FinCEN had “distributed slides, prepared by a financial institution,” detailing how other private companies might use MCC transaction codes to “detect customers whose transactions may reflect ‘potential active shooters.’” The slide suggested the “financial company” was sorting for terms like “Trump” and “MAGA,” and watching for purchases of small arms and sporting goods, or purchases in places like pawn shops or Cabela’s, to identify financial threats.

Jordan’s letter to Bishoff went on:

According to this analysis, FinCEN warned financial institutions of “extremism” indicators that include “transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets, for travel to areas with no apparent purpose,” or “the purchase of books (including religious texts) and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views.”

During the Twitter Files, we searched for snapshots of the company’s denylist algorithms, i.e. whatever rules the platform was using to deamplify or remove users. We knew they had them, because they were alluded to often in documents (a report on the denylist is_Russian, which included Jill Stein and Julian Assange, was one example). However, we never found anything like the snapshot Jordan’s team just published:

The highlighted portion shows how algorithmic analysis works in financial surveillance. First compile a list of naughty behaviors, in the form of MCC codes for guns, sporting goods, and pawn shops. Then, create rules: $2,500 worth of transactions in the forbidden codes, or a number showing that more than 50% of the customer’s transactions are the wrong kind, might trigger a response. The Committee wasn’t able to specify what the responses were in this instance, but from previous experience covering anti-money-laundering (AML) techniques at banks like HSBC, a good guess would be generation of something like Suspcious Activity Reports, which can lead to a customer being debanked.

If Facebook, Twitter, and Google have already shown a tendency toward wide-scale monitoring of speech and the use of subtle levers to apply pressure on attitudes, financial companies can use records of transactions to penetrate individual behaviors far more deeply. Especially if enhanced by AI, a financial history can give almost any institution an immediate, unpleasantly accurate outline of anyone’s life, habits, and secrets. Worse, they can couple that picture with a powerful disciplinary lever, in the form of the threat of closed accounts or reduced access to payment services or credit. Jordan’s slide is a picture of the birth of the political credit score.

There’s more coming on this, and other articles forthcoming (readers who’ve noticed it’s been quiet around here will soon find out why). While the world falls to pieces over Tucker, Putin, and Ukraine, don’t overlook this horror movie. If banks and the Treasury are playing the same domestic spy game that Twitter and Facebook have been playing with the FBI, tales like the frozen finances of protesting Canadian truckers won’t be novelties for long. As is the case with speech, where huge populations have learned to internalize censorship rules almost overnight, we may soon have to learn the hard way that even though some behaviors aren’t illegal, they can still be punished with great effectiveness, in a Terminator-like world where computers won’t miss anything that moves.

What a crazy time we live in! See you from the Nevada caucus, and watch this space for other news soon.

50 Lawmakers Demand AG Garland Explain Illegal CCP-Linked Marijuana Farms

A bipartisan group of 50 US lawmakers have requested that Attorney General Merrick Garland provide information on illegal marijuana grow operations in the US that are linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Led by Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), Jared Golden (D-ME), David Valadao (R-CA), Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Sen. Angus King (I-ME), the lawmakers penned a Friday letter to Garland expressing their concerns.

“Chinese nationals—including those with potential ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—are reportedly operating thousands of illicit marijuana farms across the country,” they wrote. “The thousands of illicit Chinese marijuana growing operations pose a direct threat to public safety, human rights, national security, and the addiction crisis gripping our nation.”

According to the lawmakers, Chinese grow operations have been identified in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Washington.

“In some cases, the grow operators were also engaged in human trafficking, forced labor, drug trafficking, and violent crime,” the letter continues. “These farms are most commonly in states with legal marijuana programs where illicit growers try to disguise their operations in communities where law-abiding Americans live and work.”

The letter cites a 2023 DHS memo which said that 270 suspected China-linked illegal grow operations in Maine alone were generating more than $4.3 billion in revenue.

In Oklahoma, over 2,000 marijuana farmers “are linked to China,” according to the letter. “Investigators in Oklahoma discovered illicit marijuana growers engaged in human trafficking, sex trafficking, ketamine trafficking, illegal gambling, and international money laundering.”

“Experts believe there is substantial evidence implicating the CCP in directly supporting illicit marijuana grow operations across the United States,” the lawmakers wrote. “Whether located in retrofitted residential homes or on farmland, state regulatory and law enforcement entities appear unable to address these potentially CCP supported grow operations despite their significant threat to local communities across the country.”

As the Epoch Times notes further, in September last year, a group of Chinese immigrants filed a lawsuit alleging that they were lured to northern New Mexico under false pretenses and then forced to work 14 hours a day on an illegal marijuana farm.

“Allowing illicit marijuana farms tied to the CCP is a continued threat to national security, public safety, and human rights,” the lawmakers concluded.

At the end of the letter, the lawmakers wanted Mr. Garland to answer multiple questions before Feb 23, including the number of CCP-affiliated marijuana farms in the United States, and whether state legalization of marijuana has “ affected the proliferation of CCP-affiliated marijuana farms.”

“How many CCP-affiliated marijuana farms have obtained state-issued licenses to grow marijuana, either directly or through a shell company?” the lawmakers asked in the letter.

On Jan. 18, a federal grand jury convicted two Chinese nationals—Jeff Weng of Brooklyn, New York, and Chinese national Tong Lin—of a drug trafficking conspiracy involving about 28 tons of black-market marijuana shipped from Oklahoma City.

According to the Justice Department, Mr. Weng managed a marijuana-growing operation in Wetumka, Oklahoma, from December 2022 to May 2023. The pair drove delivery vans, including one disguised as an Amazon van, to transport marijuana from Wetumka to a stash house in Oklahoma City. From there, they transported a total of over 56,000 pounds of marijuana to the East Coast via semi-truck trailer.

Local law enforcement discovered 19,661 marijuana plants, more than $100,000 of vacuum-sealed cash, and a firearm during a raid of Mr. Weng’s facility in May 2023.

Last month, Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), and Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Anne Milgram, requesting a briefing over Chinese-operated marijuana farms across the country.

“Many of these illicit grow operations work in conjunction with transnational criminal organizations,” they wrote. “Illicit marijuana farms provide unregulated access for consumers to Schedule 1 substances and help provide additional revenue sources to transnational criminal organizations.”

Numerous Amici Join NCLA’s Ask for Supreme Court to Rule Against ATF’s Unilateral Bump Stock Ban

New Civil Liberties Alliance
Merrick B. Garland, Attorney General, et al. v. Michael Cargill

Washington, D.C., Feb. 02, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Ten U.S. Senators, ten law professors, and multiple civil liberties groups, policy research organizations and attorneys have filed 13 amicus curiae briefs supporting the New Civil Liberties Alliance’s position in the Garland v. Cargill case that bump stocks are not machine guns. Representing Texas gun shop owner and Army veteran Michael Cargill, NCLA challenges the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Bump Stock Final Rule and ATF’s expansion of the criminal scope of a statute by administrative fiat. The Final Rule reversed ATF’s long-standing recognition that bump-stock-equipped firearms are not illegal machine guns, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rightly shot down the Rule early last year.

NCLA has arranged for former Texas Solicitor-General Jonathan Mitchell to present oral argument to the Supreme Court on Mr. Cargill’s behalf on Feb. 28, urging the Justices to confirm the Fifth Circuit’s ruling. NCLA thanks the amicus parties for standing with Mr. Cargill and thousands of other legal purchasers of bump stocks.

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