Category: Law & Order

Attorney General William P. Barr Announces Launch of Operation Relentless Pursuit

Who are the Mayors of these most-violent cities?
Albuquerque – Tim Keller D
Baltimore – Catherine Pugh D
Cleveland – Frank Jackson D
Detroit – Mike Dugan D
Kansas City – Quinten Lucas D
Memphis – Jim Strickland D
Milwaukee – Tom Barrett D
Anyone see a pattern?

 

The Operation Will Surge Federal Law Enforcement Resources into Seven of America’s Most Violent Cities

Today, Attorney General William P. Barr announced the launch of Operation Relentless Pursuit, an initiative aimed at combating violent crime in seven of America’s most violent cities through a surge in federal resources.

Joined at a press conference in Detroit, Michigan, by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Acting Director Regina Lombardo, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Acting Administrator Uttam Dhillon, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, and U.S. Marshals Service Director Donald W. Washington, Attorney General Barr pledged to intensify federal law enforcement resources into Albuquerque, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, Memphis, and Milwaukee – seven American cities with violent crime levels several times the national average.

“Americans deserve to live in safety,” said Attorney General William P. Barr. “And while nationwide violent crime rates are down, many cities continue to see levels of extraordinary violence. Operation Relentless Pursuit seeks to ensure that no American city is excluded from the peace and security felt by the majority of Americans, while also supporting those who serve and protect in these communities with the resources, training, and equipment they need to stay safe.”

“The men and women of ATF are deeply committed to and focused on reducing crime gun violence in our communities,” said ATF Acting Director Regina Lombardo. “We are proud that our efforts have significantly contributed to the historic reductions in violence that our nation has realized in recent years. Operation Relentless Pursuit combines the resources of ATF, DEA, FBI, and U.S. Marshals to support our state and local law enforcement partners in those cities that – regrettably – continue to be plagued by rates of violent crime that are simply too high. Through Relentless Pursuit, we pledge to hold accountable the trigger-pullers, firearm traffickers, violent criminals and those who supply them the guns to terrorize our communities. ATF will aggressively utilize every available tool, including our crime gun enforcement teams, National Integrated Ballistic Information Network and firearms tracing to identify, investigate and support the prosecution of the most violent firearm offenders.”

“Drug traffickers – including cartels and street gangs – will stop at nothing to turn a profit, often using violence and intimidation to expand their reach,” said DEA Acting Administrator Uttam Dhillon. “This targeted surge of resources will further strengthen our ability to work with our federal, state, and local partners to pursue the worst offenders and make our communities safer.”

“The FBI remains committed to providing our specialized expertise and resources to assist our federal, state and local partners fighting violent crime,” said FBI Director Christopher A. Wray. “We are here today to reaffirm our dedication to reducing violent crime in the cities selected for Operation Relentless Pursuit to combat the threats that arise from gangs and criminal enterprises that drive violence in the communities we are sworn to protect.”

“The U.S. Marshals Service is proud of the integral role we play in supporting Attorney General Barr’s strong leadership and commitment to combating violent crime and enhancing public safety throughout our nation,” said U.S. Marshals Service Director Donald W. Washington. “We will continue to work with our local, state, and federal partners to make communities safer by addressing violent crime at its core and taking the worst of the worst fugitives and other felons off the streets.”

The operation will involve increasing the number of federal law enforcement officers to the selected cities, as well as bulking up federal task forces through collaborative efforts with state and local law enforcement partners. The surge in federal agents will be complemented by a financial commitment of up to $71 million in federal grant funding that can be used to hire new officers, pay overtime and benefits, finance federally deputized task force officers, and provide mission-critical equipment and technology.

Trump: ‘If Comey and Top FBI People Were Dirty Wouldn’t All These Phony Cases Have to Be Overturned?’

Writing on Twitter, President Donald Trump wonders whether one of the results of the damning Inspector General’s report should be that all of the “phony” cases have to be overturned or dismissed. Is he talking about George Papadopoulos and, more importantly, General Mike Flynn?The Federalist reports that

Judge Emmet Sullivan had two choices: He could ignore the growing evidence of government misconduct and wind up the two-year saga that has been the sentencing phase of the Michael Flynn criminal case, or he could say “not on my watch.” Yesterday, in a methodical and seemingly tempered opinion, the long-time federal judge opted for the former tack when he denied in full the comprehensive motion to compel Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell filed several months ago. Judge Sullivan then set Flynn’s sentencing for January 28, 2020.

This was a remarkable decision because Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the FBI overstepped its authority several times during the Russia collusion investigation. General Flynn was, of course, targeted as part of this investigation. Talk about a “poisoned well…”

Although the judge in the case disagrees, there’s one person with significant power who seems to share my view: President Donald J. Trump. On Twitter, Trump wrote:

So, if Comey & the top people in the FBI were dirty cops and cheated on the FISA Court, wouldn’t all of these phony cases have to be overturned or dismissed? They went after me with the Fake Dossier, paid for by Crooked Hillary & the DNC, which they illegally presented to FISA…

“They want to Impeach me (I’m not worried!),” he went on to say in a follow-up tweet, “and yet they were all breaking the law in so many ways. How can they do that and yet impeach a very successful (Economy Plus) President of the United States, who has done nothing wrong? These people are Crazy!”

The case against Gen. Flynn has always been extremely flimsy. The FBI was so determined to bring him down that they were willing to settle for anything that accomplished that goal, undoubtedly with the end-goal in mind of getting to President Trump himself. That failed eventually, but hey, at least they successfully took out a powerful critic of the (military) intelligence community… who also had the audacity to support Trump. To these dirty FBI agents, that was enough of a win.

So, they set him up and all but forced him into pleading guilty after he was financially ruined — the man lost his house, is bankrupt and will — even if he serves little to no jail time — have a difficult time finding a new job when he returns to society.

Back in April of this year, PJ Media’s own David P. Goldman called on President Trump to pardon Gen. Flynn and…

…and summon him back to Washington. Mueller forced Flynn to plead guilty to an invented charge of lying to FBI agents, even though the FBI agents who interviewed him about Russian contacts said that they thought he was telling the truth. Now that the Mueller investigation has come up with nothing, the frame-up of Gen. Flynn appears all the more heinous. The Deep State feared Mike Flynn, with good reason. Trump should reappoint him to a top job, and really terrify his opponents.

We can now add to this that, with the IG’s report proving serious and serial FBI misconduct in the Russia collusion investigation, the well has been poisoned to such a degree that the case against Gen. Flynn has to be dismissed — if not by Judge Sullivan, then by President Trump. who has all the authority he needs to pardon Flynn and bring the general back into his administration.

Trump is right: “All of these phony cases have to be overturned or dismissed.” But since the judges in those cases aren’t willing to take responsibility for it, it’s time for him to step up to the plate and help the man who meant so much to him early in his presidential campaign.

Judicial Watch: ‘The FBI Needs to be Shut Down,’ Transferred to U.S. Marshals Service.

From 2018?  Kinda ‘prophetical’ wasn’t it?

Noting some of the major blunders of the FBI, such as failing to follow protocols with the Florida school shooter and failing to follow leads on the Boston Marathon bombers, Judicial Watch’s Director of Investigations Chris Farrell said FBI Director Christopher Wray should be replaced and that the entire FBI should be restructured as a “new investigative arm of the U.S. Marshals Service.”

“People do need to go,” said Farrell on the Feb. 16 edition of Lou Dobbs Tonight.  “You can start with Director [Christopher] Wray.”

“Frankly, I would go back 200 years to the U.S. Marshals Service,” said Farrell, a former Military Intelligence officer and counterintelligence expert.  “I would create a new division for investigations, and in about six to eight months I would shut the FBI down. Agents would be allowed to apply for, or laterally transfer to a new investigative arm of the U.S. Marshals Service and the FBI would cease to exist. That’s my idea.”

When guest host Trish Regan expressed reservations about completely revamping the FBI, Farrell said, “There’s a systemic, institutional problem. We can walk it back to the Tsarnaev brothers [Boston Marathon bombing] where they missed the leads, multiple leads on them. You can go back to Whitey Bulger for that matter. You can go back to existing corruption in El Paso, Texas. There’s all sorts of problems.”

“At this point, you’ve got a 200-and-some-odd record of the U.S. Marshals Service performing honorable work,” he said.  “So let’s create an investigative branch or division within the U.S. Marshals Service. Let the very fine agents, at the rank and file level who are trying to do their jobs, let them apply for, be screened, and then be admitted to this new investigative division. Then let’s take what’s left over of an obvious, deeply flawed organization, certainly at the headquarters, and shake it out.”

Farrell continued, “Let’s start over. We don’t want to lose good people and we don’t have to. We can simply put them in a new investigative arm of the U.S. Marshals Service, an organization that has served honorably for more than 200 years.”

Trish Regan then started to talk about holding certain FBI officials accountable and Farrell said, “Here’s the problem: If nothing changes, nothing changes. There has to be a radical, penetrating, severe examination. You have to turn over the furniture here.”

“We have to reset the thinking,” said Farrell. “It’s an institutional, cultural question. The entity itself has become poisoned.”

As for the FBI’s undeniable failure in the Florida school shooting case, Reuters reported, “A person described as someone close to accused gunman Nikolas Cruz, 19, called an FBI tip line on Jan. 5, weeks before the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, to report concerns about him, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.

“’The caller provided information about Cruz’s gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting,’” it said.

“That information should have been forwarded to the FBI’s Miami field office for further investigation, but ‘we have determined that these protocols were not followed,’ the agency said.”

Florida Governor Rick Scott, a Republican, has called on FBI Director Christopher Wray to resign.

Voters Favor Jail, Firing for Rogue Officials Who Targeted Trump

Rasmussen polls

Monday, December 16, 2019

Voters are ready to jail or fire senior law enforcement officials who illegally targeted President Trump, but most think they are unlikely to be punished.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone and online survey finds that 52% of Likely U.S. Voters consider it likely that senior federal law enforcement officials broke the law in an effort to prevent Trump from winning the presidency. Thirty-nine percent (39%) say that’s unlikely. This includes 36% who say it’s Very Likely they broke the law to get Trump and 24% who say it’s Not At All Likely. These findings are virtually unchanged in surveying since February of last year. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

A plurality (43%) thinks these officials should be jailed if they are found guilty of breaking the law to prevent a Trump presidency, up dramatically from 25% early this year, while another 22% say they should just be fired. Fifteen percent (15%) favor a formal reprimand. Just 11% say no disciplinary action should be taken.

But only 34% of voters believe the officials in question are likely to face criminal charges for their anti-Trump activity, with just 16% who say it’s Very Likely. Fifty-five percent (55%) see criminal prosecution of these rogue officials as unlikely, including 24% who feel it’s Not At All Likely. These attitudes are essentially unchanged from two months ago despite the recent release of a Justice Department inspector general’s report detailing wrongdoing by senior law enforcement officials.

>Eighty percent (80%) of voters who Strongly Approve of the job Trump is doing think it’s Very Likely that senior federal law enforcement officials attempted illegally to deny him the presidency. Among voters who Strongly Disapprove of the president’s job performance, only nine percent (9%) agree.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted December 12 and 15, 2019 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

The U.S. Justice Department’s inspector general has concluded that James Comey improperly leaked information to the news media while he was serving as head of the FBI, and voters by a 47% to 35% margin think he should be criminally prosecuted.

Seventy-seven percent (77%) say they have been closely following news reports about the inspector general’s investigation of the FBI, with 41% who have been following Very Closely. Among those following the news Very Closely, 55% think it’s Very Likely that senior law enforcement officials broke the law in an effort to get Trump.

The older the voter, the closer they have been following the news about the Justice Department IG report.

Republicans (71%) are a lot more likely than Democrats (39%) and unaffiliated voters (46%) to suspect federal law enforcement officials of trying to prevent the Trump presidency. GOP voters are also the most likely to think they’ll be criminally charged.

Fifty-six percent (56%) of Republicans think convicted offenders should be jailed, a view shared by 35% of Democrats and 38% of unaffiliateds. Fifteen percent (15%) of Democrats say there should be no disciplinary action, compared to five percent (5%) of Republicans and 13% of unaffiliated voters.

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of all voters said in April that it is likely President Obama or his top aides were aware that U.S. intelligence agencies were spying on the Trump campaign and the Trump transition team.

Law enforcement officials were investigating alleged contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, but earlier this year Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation concluded that no such collusion took place. Sixty-seven percent (67%) of Democrats don’t agree with Mueller’s conclusions, but 76% of Republicans and 50% of unaffiliated voters do.

UNM student from Saudi Arabia charged with illegally possessing handgun

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Hassan Alqahtani had plans to walk across the stage and collect his diploma from the University of New Mexico on Saturday, and then he and his parents were going to Disneyland to celebrate the accomplishment.

Instead, the 27-year-old Saudi Arabian mechanical engineering student will be spending the weekend behind bars, charged in federal court with being a non-immigrant student visa holder in possession of a firearm. The criminal complaint also says Alqahtani had a list of people he planned to kill, which included UNM professors.

Alqahtani, who recently earned his bachelor’s degree from UNM, turned himself in to authorities on Friday afternoon. During his first appearance later that evening in federal court, Magistrate Judge Karen Molzen ordered that he be held through the weekend. He will have preliminary and detention hearings Monday morning in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque.

Revealed: Hunter Biden ‘Possession of Controlled Substance’ Charge Kept Under Wraps While Father Led Drug War From Senate

Joe Biden’s son Hunter was arrested on Jersey Shore drug charges in 1988 and had his record expunged at a time when his father was pushing for the incarceration of drug offenders drawn disproportionately from minority groups.

Congressional records reveal that Hunter Biden, now 49, was arrested in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, where the Biden family has often holidayed over the years, in June 1988. Hunter Biden, then 18, had just graduated from the prestigious Archmere Academy prep school, which his father had also attended. The former vice president and his wife Jill have often been spotted on trips to Stone Harbor.

The arrest has not previously been reported. Republicans have recently highlighted Hunter Biden’s drug abuse, questioning why it was not taken into account when the lobbyist was appointed to a $50,000-a-month post on the board of the Ukraine oil company Burisma in 2014, when his father, as vice president, was the Obama administration’s lead official on Ukraine.

A year after the arrest, Joe Biden gave a speech in which he said the federal government needed to “hold every drug user accountable” because, “If there were no drug users, there would be no appetite for drugs, there would be no market for them.” He neglected to mention the drug use in his own family.

We Just Got a Rare Look at National Security Surveillance. It Was Ugly.
A high-profile inspector general report has served as fodder for arguments about President Trump. But its findings about surveillance are important beyond partisan politics.

“IF THE FBI WAS WILLING TO BE THIS SHADY WHILE INVESTIGATING THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, WHAT DOES IT GET AWAY WITH IN LOWER-PROFILE CASES?”

When you’ve even lost the proggies at the NY Times…….

WASHINGTON — When a long-awaited inspector general report about the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation became public this week, partisans across the political spectrum mined it to argue about whether President Trump falsely smeared the F.B.I. or was its victim. But the report was also important for reasons that had nothing to do with Mr. Trump.

At more than 400 pages, the study amounted to the most searching look ever at the government’s secretive system for carrying out national-security surveillance on American soil. And what the report showed was not pretty.

The Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, and his team uncovered a staggeringly dysfunctional and error-ridden process in how the F.B.I. went about obtaining and renewing court permission under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.

“The litany of problems with the Carter Page surveillance applications demonstrates how the secrecy shrouding the government’s one-sided FISA approval process breeds abuse,” said Hina Shamsi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “The concerns the inspector general identifies apply to intrusive investigations of others, including especially Muslims, and far better safeguards against abuse are necessary.”

Congress enacted FISA in 1978 to regulate domestic surveillance for national-security investigations — monitoring suspected spies and terrorists, as opposed to ordinary criminals. Investigators must persuade a judge on a special court that a target is probably an agent of a foreign power. In 2018, there were 1,833 targets of such orders, including 232 Americans.

Most of those targets never learn that their privacy has been invaded, but some are sent to prison on the basis of evidence derived from the surveillance. And unlike in ordinary criminal wiretap cases, defendants are not permitted to see what investigators told the court about them to obtain permission to eavesdrop on their calls and emails.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Mr. Horowitz’s report on Wednesday, both Republicans and Democrats suggested that legislation tightening restrictions on FISA surveillance may be coming, and the A.C.L.U. submitted ideas to the committee.

Civil libertarians for years have called the surveillance court a rubber stamp because it only rarely rejects wiretap applications. Out of 1,080 requests by the government in 2018, for example, government records showed that the court fully denied only one.

Defenders of the system have argued that the low rejection rate stems in part from how well the Justice Department self-polices and avoids presenting the court with requests that fall short of the legal standard. They have also stressed that officials obey a heightened duty to be candid and provide any mitigating evidence that might undercut their request.

But the inspector general found major errors, material omissions and unsupported statements about Mr. Page in the materials that went to the court. F.B.I. agents cherry-picked the evidence, telling the Justice Department information that made Mr. Page look suspicious and omitting material that cut the other way, and the department passed that misleading portrait onto the court.

Inspector General report on FBI’s FISA abuse tells us one thing: We need radical reform.

BLUF:
“Ironically, the FISA court was created in 1978 to prevent Nixon-style political spying.”

As my section CWO often said when a plan went over like a lead balloon:
“It briefed well.”

Yesterday’s IG report was only the latest in a long series of revelations about FBI misconduct at the FISA court:

*In 2002, the FISA court revealed that FBI agents had false or misleading claims in 75 cases and a top FBI counterterrorism official was prohibited from ever appearing before the court again.

*In 2005, FISA chief judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly proposed requiring FBI agents to swear to the accuracy of the information they presented; that never happened because it could have “slowed such investigations drastically,” the Washington Post reported. So FBI agents continued to have a license to exploit FISA secrecy to lie to the judges.

*In 2017, a FISA court decision included a 10-page litany of FBI violations, which “ranged from illegally sharing raw intelligence with unauthorized third parties to accessing intercepted attorney-client privileged communications without proper oversight.”

* In October, a secret FISA court ruling was released documenting the FBI’s illegal conducted warrantless searches of vast numbers of Americans’ emails despite congressional legislation seeking to curb FBI data roundups.

FBI machinations at the FISA court are especially perilous to American democracy because that court is extremely docile to federal agencies. The FISA court “created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans,” the New York Times reported in 2013 after Edward Snowden leaked court decisions. FISA decisions have “quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court…regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny.” The court’s servility can boggle the imagination, such as its rubber-stamping FBI requests that bizarrely claimed that the telephone records of all Americans were “relevant” to a terrorism investigation under the Patriot Act, thereby enabling N.S.A. data seizures later denounced by a federal judge as “almost Orwellian.”

Ironically, the FISA court was created in 1978 to prevent Nixon-style political spying.

The IG **Admits** DOJ/FBI Attempted A Putsch

The IG report, after reading through a good part of it, states that seventeen “errors” were made by the FBI. May I remind you of an indisputable fact: Errors are randomly distributed.

That is, let’s assume you intend to drive at 40mph.  If you make an error you will operate your car some of the time at 38mph, and some of the time at 42mph.  The errors, if they are actual errors, will be randomly distributed around the correct action.  Some of the errors will place you inside the correct action and some of them will be place you outside of the correct action.  Approximately an equal number of errors will fall on each side of the correct action; some will help you, some hurt, but given enough errors there should be an approximately equal number in each direction.

If your speed, as measured at 1 minute intervals, is 40, 42, 45, 43, 41, 40, 46, 50, 42 and 45 mph that is not “error.”  You are instead driving with a floor of 40mph; your intent is to drive at no slower than 40mph.

The probability of an error is 50% in each direction.  Therefore half the errors should have been to Trump’s benefit.

However, exactly zero of them were to Trump’s benefit.

The odds of this being random chance can be computed.

The probability of the first error being to Trump’s detriment is 0.5 (50%.)

Each successive “error” is also equally probable to be of either benefit or detriment.  So when the second error occurs for them to both be to Trump’s detriment by random chance — that is, if it’s an actual error without motivation or bias, is 0.50 * 0.50, or 1 in 4.

For seventeen “errors” to be all in the same direction is 0.5 ^ 17, or exactly 1 in 131,072.

This is not quite as bad of odds as winning the Powerball but it clowns the claim that such were errors and not intentional acts that evince a predetermined goal or desire.

Indeed in a criminal trial should odds of 1 in 131,072 be established that is almost certainly enough for you to be convicted and sent to prison.  Remember that the standard in a criminal trial is not “beyond question” or “with absolute proof” — it is beyond a reasonable doubt.

1 in 131,072 does not admit reasonable doubt.

The FBI and Department of Justice did, beyond reasonable doubt, intentionally target Donald Trump and his associates as a candidate and as President for surveillance and did, with corrupt intent beyond said reasonable doubt, intend to harm both him and his associates.

This did not occur due to error.  The manifest weight of the evidence as proved by fundamental, middle-school mathematics, is that this campaign was intentional, it was malicious, and given that it involved knowingly false statements to a court by means of omission it was criminal.

To refuse to prosecute everyone so-involved is for the United States Department of Justice and FBI to declare themselves above the law and to declare the Constitution of the United States, as a contract between the citizens and its government, null and void due to the intentional refusal to enforce same for political reasons.

It does not matter whether or not the scheme ultimately did or does in the future (e.g. impeachment) succeed.

The IG report establishes that the FBI and DOJ attempted to conduct a putsch in the United States to overthrow a democratically-elected President, along with imprisoning his associates and staff members by concocting knowingly-false pretense for surveillance and entrapment.

The IG report, in an attempt to claim that there was no “wrongdoing” but simple mistakes has mathematically proved that in fact the campaign to overthrow the President of the United States was intentional with a sufficient level of probability to secure convictions under criminal law for virtually any crime in the US.

It is important to note that the prosecutions and convictions obtained since the beginning with this process have been for obstructing an illegally-initiated investigation, as is, I note, the currently pending prosecution of Stone.  That people in this nation believe that citizens have an obligation to comply and cooperate with an unlawfully-initiated investigation is exactly the sort of premise that the Politburo of Russia used to present, or the Communist Chinese Party presents today.

You decide what your response to this outright admission of wrongdoing by the IG shall be America.

You did pass middle-school math, right?

Durham Needs to Bring Indictments

The FBI is prohibited from investigating a political party’s candidate for the presidency, so Strzok & Page had to find a way around that law so Trump could be ‘legally’ spied on. Now, did they do this all on their own, or did they have lots of help from higher up in the FBI, DOJ & other .gov agencies?

  • The alternative to a purely domestic intelligence operation targeting a major political party’s candidate for the presidency (and later, president) was to manufacture a foreign counterintelligence (FCI) “threat” that could then be “imported” back into the United States.
  • Plausible deniability, the Holy Grail of covert activities, was in reach for the plotters if they could develop an FCI operation outside the continental United States (OCONUS) involving FBI confidential human sources (Halper, Mifsud, others?) that would act as “lures” (intelligence jargon associated with double agent operations) to ensnare Trump associates.
  • We have evidence of these machinations from December 2015 when FBI lawyer Lisa Page texts to her boyfriend, the now infamous FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok, “You get all our oconus lures approved? ;).”
  • The coup plot failed, but the chief coup conspirators are free, crisscrossing the country on book tours and appearing as paid contributors to CNN and MSNBC.

U.S. Attorney John Durham’s mandate from Attorney General William Barr — to uncover the seditious plot behind the Trump-Russia hoax, if pursued vigorously, will uncover the single greatest threat to the Constitution since the nation’s founding.

There is new evidence that U.S. Attorney John Durham is getting to the root of criminal abuses by senior U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials in their conspiracy to undermine the Trump campaign, transition and presidency. Mr. Durham’s mandate from Attorney General William Barr — to uncover the seditious plot behind the Trump-Russia hoax, if pursued vigorously, will uncover the single greatest threat to the Constitution since the nation’s founding.

Mr. Durham’s apparent interest in FBI source Stefan Halper and the contract vehicles available to the Pentagon think tank, the Office of Net Assessments, for whom Halper worked, is an important clue.

Likewise, Mr. Durham’s travel to Italy for talks with the Italian government and their intelligence service points to another possible clue concerning the mysterious Maltese academic, Joseph Mifsud.

For the purposes of the manufactured Trump-Russia hoax, one need only remember the associations of Halper with Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page — and Joseph Mifsud with George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy junior advisor — to the Trump campaign.

The intelligence agencies of the federal government are prohibited from targeting American organizations in the United States. Executive Order 12333, Section 2.9 states:

Undisclosed Participation in Organizations Within the United States. No one acting on behalf of agencies within the Intelligence Community may join or otherwise participate in any organization in the United States on behalf of any agency within the Intelligence Community without disclosing his intelligence affiliation to appropriate officials of the organization, except in accordance with procedures established by the head of the agency concerned and approved by the Attorney General. Such participation shall be authorized only if it is essential to achieving lawful purposes as determined by the agency head or designee. No such participation may be undertaken for the purpose of influencing the activity of the organization or its members except in cases where:
(a) The participation is undertaken on behalf of the FBI in the course of a lawful investigation; or
(b) The organization concerned is composed primarily of individuals who are not United States persons and is reasonably believed to be acting on behalf of a foreign power.

This prohibition on running penetration operations against domestic political organizations is a legal and political “hangover” from the 1960s civil disturbances that saw (among a host of other covert action programs) US Army Counterintelligence agents working undercover against the militant Leftists organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society. The U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, better known as the “Church Committee,” was empaneled in 1975 under the leadership of Sen. Frank Church (D-ID) to review and make recommendations on intelligence operations. The Church Committee was controversial. Critics claimed the committee exposed the “crown jewels” of U.S. intelligence and hobbled our ability to conduct legitimate collection activities. Today’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Court were inspired by the final reports of the Church Committee.

The seditious coup plotters working against Trump knew the legal prohibitions on what they planned to do. How to target Trump & Co. in a “legal” manner? Was it possible, or more importantly, desirable, to have a legal finding from Attorney General Loretta Lynch justifying their plan to frame-up Trump & Co.? That would authorize their operation — but would Lynch support it? Could Lynch be counted on? Did they want a piece of paper like that floating around Washington D.C.? No, there had to be a better way to pull off the coup.

The alternative to a purely domestic intelligence operation targeting a major political party’s candidate for the presidency (and later, president) was to manufacture a foreign counterintelligence (FCI) “threat” that could then be “imported” back into the United States. Plausible deniability, the Holy Grail of covert activities, was in reach for the plotters if they could develop an FCI operation outside the continental United States (OCONUS) involving FBI confidential human sources (Halper, Mifsud, others?) that would act as “lures” (intelligence jargon associated with double agent operations) to ensnare Trump associates.

We have evidence of these machinations from December 2015 when FBI lawyer Lisa Page texts to her boyfriend, the now infamous FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok, “You get all our oconus lures approved? ;).”

To inoculate themselves from further charges of misconduct and criminality, the FBI’s mutually agreed upon lie is that their investigation of Trump/Russia began on July 31, 2016 with the improbable name “Crossfire Hurricane.” That coincides nicely with their manufactured FCI “event,” allowing the full-bore sabotage of all things and persons “Trump.” The coup plotters used a July 2016 event at the University of Cambridge as the opportunity for Carter Page to meet and develop a friendship with Stefan Halper. This is roughly the same time period that Australian diplomat Alexander Downer reported the supposedly drunken ramblings of George Papadopoulos concerning the Russians having Hillary’s emails to the FBI. Papadopoulos had already serendipitously met the mysterious Joseph Mifsud in Rome during the second week of March 2016. Learning that Papadopoulos would be joining the Trump campaign, Mifsud let Papadopoulos know that he had many important connections with Russian government officials.

In July 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was questioned closely by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) concerning the persons and sequence of events detailed above.

The summation of Mueller’s testimony was, “Well, I can’t get into it.”

The coup plot failed, but the chief coup conspirators are free, crisscrossing the country on book tours and appearing as paid contributors to CNN and MSNBC. A bright note in the so far grim saga is that one of the collateral casualties has filed a civil lawsuit in the Eastern District of Virginia against Stefan Halper and MSNBC for defamation, conspiracy and tortious interference. It’s the closest thing we’ve seen to justice to date. The complaint makes remarkable and insightful reading.

It is now time for Mr. Durham to “get into it,” in a manner Mr. Mueller was either unwilling or unable to do. Time is of the utmost importance. The American public needs to see action. Indictments and trials are the only antidote for the poison of treasonous sedition.

Kavanaugh Joins Gorsuch in Fight To Revive Nondelegation Doctrine
An important development in the legal wrangling over the separation of powers.

Giving the Attorney General – the head of the department that can arrest and charge people with committing a violation of law – the power to literally make a law (even one that deals with the dregs of society) is one of the things the founders were deathly afraid of, as the British Crown was in effect doing just that for the Colonies. Give that power to an Office the Constitution didn’t give it to and even if the current person in that Officer is a ‘good’ man, one day another man will be in that place and when he is not so good……….

A certain bit of a movie comes to mind:

 

The U.S. Supreme Court narrowly upheld a law in June that, in the dissenting words of Justice Neil Gorsuch, “hand[ed] off to the nation’s chief prosecutor the power to write his own criminal code.” Today, Justice Brett Kavanaugh spoke up in support of Gorsuch.

The June ruling came in Gundy v. United States, a case that centered on a 2006 federal law known as the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). Among other things, SORNA required convicted sex offenders to register, check in periodically in person, and share personal information with the authorities.

The law also contained this provision: “The Attorney General shall have the authority to specify the applicability of the requirements of this subchapter to sex offenders convicted before the enactment of this chapter.” Translation: Congress gave the attorney general a blank check when it came to dealing with the estimated 500,000 individuals whose convictions predate SORNA’s passage.

It was that delegation of legislative authority to the executive that sparked Gorsuch’s ire. “The rule that prevents Congress from giving the executive carte blanche to write laws for sex offenders is the same rule that protects everyone else,” the justice wrote in dissent. According to Gorsuch, SORNA combined the lawmaking powers of Congress with the law enforcement powers of the executive, and then gave those combined powers to a single federal official. For the Supreme Court to let that outcome stand, Gorsuch argued, marks “the end of any meaningful enforcement of our separation of powers.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh took no part in Gundy, leaving some court watchers to wonder about how he might have ruled. The Court’s newest justice answered that question today. In a statement respecting the denial of certiorari in Paul v. United States—another separation of powers case, which the Court turned down this morning—Kavanaugh wrote in praise of “Justice Gorsuch’s scholarly analysis of the Constitution’s nondelegation doctrine” in Gundy, noting that this “thoughtful” dissent “raised important points that may warrant further consideration in future cases.”

In other words, Kavanaugh seems to have joined Gorsuch’s campaign to put some judicial teeth into the nondelegation doctrine. That’s welcome news for those who think that the Constitution meant what it said when it placed federal lawmaking power in the hands of Congress, not in the hands of the executive branch.

San Diego Sheriff’s Dept. Captain, Lieutenant Busted for Trafficking ‘Off Rostether’ Guns

An exception to the California law that only allows guns on the state roster to be sold at retail, is for LE personnel. While the law doesn’t prohibit a later sale, ‘engaging in the business’ is where these cops get tripped up.

Carrying on in the grand tradition of California public officials such as San Francisco’s Leland Yee, a couple of San Diego County Sheriff’s Office cops have been busted for running a thriving gun trafficking business with the help of a prominent local jeweler.

The two cops were able to get their hands on guns not available to the public because of the state’s ludicrous firearm certification requirements. The enterprising SDCSD officers recognized the potential black market demand for “off roster” guns and worked to fill it.

 

Two former Houston police officers arrested over a deadly drug raid

The woman charged, Patricia Garcia, made a false accusation that ended up with her daughter & son-in-law getting killed. I’d bet Garcia and her son-in-law had a ‘personality conflict’ and she figured she had found a way to get back at him. I wonder what she thinks now about the unintended consequences of that, if indeed she didn’t care about the possibility of getting her daughter killed during a SWAT raid out of some twisted spite filled impulse.
These cops deserve everything they’re going to get.
I’ll say again, I’m not anti-cop. I’m anti-stupid (and corrupt) cop. This crap just causes more people to conclude that the LE establishment as a whole has an endemic stupidity/corruption problem and they’re not to be trusted. That really helps with ‘community relations’ when the police deal with the real criminal element and the populace couldn’t care less.

Two former Houston police officers who allegedly provide false information that led to a deadly drug raid earlier this year have been arrested, authorities said Wednesday.

Gerald Goines and his partner, Steven Bryant, along with civilian Patricia Garcia, were taken into custody in connection with the Jan. 28 raid on a home that left two people dead and several officers wounded, the Justice Department said in a statement.

Two Former Houston Police Department Officers Indicted in Connection to Fatal Raid

Three people are now in custody in relation to the fatal raid that occurred in January 2019 on Harding Street in Houston, Texas, announced Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Patrick for the Southern District of Texas and Special Agent in Charge Perrye K. Turner of the FBI.

A federal grand jury returned the nine count indictment Nov. 14 against Gerald M. Goines, 55, and Steven M. Bryant, 46, both former Houston Police Department (HPD) officers. Also charged is Patricia Ann Garcia, 53. All are residents of Houston. The indictment was unsealed this morning as authorities took all three into custody. They are expected to make their initial appearances before U.S. Magistrate Judge Dena H. Palermo at 2 p.m. central time.

The federal indictment stems from the Jan. 28 narcotics raid HPD conducted on the 7800 block of Harding Street in Houston. The enforcement action resulted in the deaths of two residents at that location.

Goines is charged with two counts of depriving the victims’ constitutional right to be secure against unreasonable searches. The indictment alleges Goines made numerous materially false statements in the state search warrant he obtained for their residence. The execution of that warrant containing these false statements resulted in the death of the two individuals as well as injuries to four other persons, according to the indictment.

Goines and Bryant are charged with obstructing justice by falsifying records. Goines allegedly made several false statements in his tactical plan and offense report prepared in connection with that search warrant. The indictment alleges Bryant falsely claimed in a supplemental case report he had previously assisted Goines in the Harding Street investigation. Bryant allegedly identified a brown powdery substance (heroin) he retrieved from Goines’ vehicle as narcotics purchased from the Harding Street residence Jan. 27.

Goines is further charged with three separate counts of obstructing an official proceeding. The federal grand jury alleges Goines falsely stated Jan. 30 that a particular confidential informant had purchased narcotics at the Harding Street location three days prior. He also falsely stated Jan. 31 that a different confidential informant purchased narcotics at that residence that day, according to the charges. On Feb. 13, he also falsely claimed he had purchased narcotics at that residence on that day. The indictment alleges none of these statements were true.

The charges against Garcia allege she conveyed false information by making several fake 911 calls. Specifically, on Jan. 8, she allegedly made several calls claiming her daughter was inside the Harding Street location. According to the indictment, Garcia added that the residents of the home were addicts and drug dealers and that they had guns – including machine guns – inside the home. The charges allege none of Garcia’s claims were true.

If convicted of the civil rights charges, Goines faces up to life in prison. Each obstruction count carries a potential 20-year sentence, while Garcia faces a five-year term of imprisonment for conveying false information.

The FBI is conducting the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Alamdar S. Hamdani, Arthur R. Jones and Sharad S. Khandelwal, and Special Litigation Counsel Jared Fishman of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, are prosecuting the case.

An indictment is a formal accusation of criminal conduct, not evidence. A defendant is presumed innocent unless convicted through due process of law.

Long Beach police release surveillance video of September police shooting at 7-Eleven

Long Beach police have released video depicting a police shooting that killed an 18-year-old armed robbery suspect inside a convenience store in September.

Three surveillance cameras captured the incident, which shows a suspect, later identified as Jordan Michael Griffin of Long Beach, wearing a mask and all dark clothing. He rushes inside a 7-Eleven store about 11:30 p.m., Sept. 19, and points a firearm at the clerk while wedging himself between two customers at the counter.

Detectives follow shortly after and after a brief exchange, shoot the suspect, causing him to drop his weapon and fall to the floor.

The other two customers scurry toward the back of the store while the clerk ducks behind the counter.

The firearm was determined to be a BB-gun…….

Detectives had been tracking a dark Nissan Maxima believed to have been involved in other recent robberies when it pulled up behind the 7-Eleven in the 5100 block of Pacific Coast Highway. Griffin got out of the passenger seat and went inside the store, followed by detectives.

Man who had his Porsche stolen holds suspect at gunpoint

ST. LOUIS – Andre Tunstall is part owner of Luxe Menswear on Washington Avenue in St. Louis’s Downtown West neighborhood.

Tunstall said he’s worked hard for his money. When he realized someone stole his Porsche on Wednesday, he was desperate to find it. He posted a message on Facebook and within a few hours, a tipster sent a message indicating the vehicle was in an alley in the Baden neighborhood.

Tunstall called St. Louis police, filed a report, and then the officers left the scene. He waited with his car because it had a flat tire and needed a tow. He believes that’s when a man who was the thief returned. Tunstall said the man went to a dumpster as if he knew something was there. He said the man pulled the car’s key fob out of the dumpster and then tried to take the car.

Tunstall said he pulled out his own gun and ordered the man to the ground until the police returned.

“He had his life spared and that’s not anything to brag about,” Tunstall told KTVI. “It’s just for him to move forward and be a good father to his kids.”

Police charged Samuel Jamar Harris with first-degree tampering with a motor vehicle. Tunstall hopes the man held at gunpoint learns a lesson and turns his life around.

“Hopefully, this will be a new beginning for you and your family,” Tunstall said.

He also hopes anyone involved in a life of crime will learn something.

“I think they really need to understand that people out here work hard,” Tunstall said.

Court documents indicate Harris has a prior conviction for first-degree tampering.