Is Trump a Russian asset? | New Document Confirms FBI Authored Request for Trump Search Warrant | Meet Putin’s inner circle of evil | #Putin & his #Politburo realized that they've lost the #UkraineWar2022. They put out the feelers: via Erdogan & others to resolve the situation before it is completely out of their control. No use. The World will not take these criminal liars seriously. It does not turn on a dime. | Judge Orders DOJ to Redact Affidavit | Majority of Americans Now See FBI as ‘Joe Biden’s Personal Gestapo’ | What a stupid remark to make! #FBI is no one's #Gestapo, & least of all #Biden's. Generally, FBI positions itself as somewhat of an independent counterweight to any current Presidency. Oversimplification will not help to understand these complex relations.
There is much we do not know about Donald Trump's connections to Putin and Russia. But we do know these facts:
- Trump wanted to build a hotel in Moscow. He asked Russia before the 2016 election to release any emails of Hillary Clinton's that they had in their hands.
- Putin and Russia used social media to divide Americans, especially over the issue of race, before the 2016 election.
- Putin wanted Trump to win the elections in 2016 and 2020. Putin obviously failed in 2020, as Trump lost by over 7 million votes. Trump also lost by 3 million to Hillary Clinton in 2016, but won the election due to the Electoral College, which makes it possible for minority candidates to win national presidential elections.
- Trump has to this day not criticized Putin for his oppression of his own people, the suppression of Russian media, or his invasion of Ukraine and the war crimes committed by Russian soldiers.
- Members of Trump's family, and campaign staff had meetings with Russians before the 2016 election, with no record of what transpired. After Trump became president, he welcomed Russian governmental officials into the Oval Office, and there is no written record of what was said.
- Trump and Putin had a long private meeting in Helsinki and there is no written record of the content of their discussion.
I am not arguing that knowingly Trump was or is a Russian asset. My argument is that he is, for sure, unknowingly a Russian asset. And by that I mean that Trump is carrying out what Putin wants to see happen in America: A deeply divided country where Americans are at each other's throats.
Our divisions make us weaker. Trump had little use for NATO, and weakened the alliance, which of course delighted Putin. Trump's unwillingness to sell weapons to Ukraine unless the government dug up dirt on Hunter Biden also made Putin very happy. No doubt Putin was cooking up his invasion of Ukraine even back then, having already gobbled up Crimea in 2014.
All of this — and much more could be said — makes Trump a potential threat to national security. Thus, when the Justice Department found out that Trump still had boxes of potentially top secret documents in his residence in Florida, there was an urgency to get them removed and secured.
We do not know if those retrieved documents contain secrets about nuclear weapons, ours or those of other nations. But does anybody think it would have been a good idea to leave these boxes of documents in a private residence, a club at that, with many people coming and going? I am sure the Chinese and Russians have agents capable of getting their hands on those documents, and wanted to do so.
The true story of Trump and Putin's connections may never be known, but there is something fishy about the whole thing. How much Russian money filtered through the Trump business organization, even laundered, is also unknown. We know for sure that Russians did buy real estate holdings from Trump, which is not a crime but shows another connection between Trump and Russia.
It is difficult for me to believe that Trump would knowingly betray his country. However, what sticks in my throat is the 187 minutes on Jan. 6 when Trump sat in his dining room off of the Oval Office and took no action to stop the insurrection at the Capitol when the police were being beaten and Congress was being threatened and Vice President Pence was being threatened with a hangman's noose. Trump's inaction has no excuse and I have not heard any, even on FOX News. Republicans also are silent on this one issue.
If Trump could betray his oath of office and his oath to our Constitution on Jan. 6, is it any surprise that the Justice Department might have had fears that Trump might betray his country once again with classified documents that had no reason to be taken from Washington to Florida? I am not saying that Trump would have done this, but can't we all agree that these documents in a locked room in a private residence might have been a tempting target for foreign agents? Can't we all agree, for once, that these documents needed to retrieved? Can't we all agree that those 187 minutes on Jan. 6 when Trump did nothing to stop a coup, raises serious questions about this man's character and his loyalties?
— Henry Idema lives in Grand Haven. He can be reached at henryidema3@yahoo.com.
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A majority of 53 percent of Americans now see the FBI for what it really is: Joe Biden’s personal Gestapo.
This is according to the latest polling of Rasmussen Reports, which found only bad news for America’s fascist FBI:
Rasmussen Reports finds that 44% of Likely U.S. voters say the FBI raid on Trump’s Florida home made them trust the FBI less, compared to 29% who say it made them trust the bureau more. Twenty-three percent (23%) say the Trump raid did not make much difference in their trust of the FBI. …
Fifty percent (50%) of voters have a favorable impression of the FBI, including 26% who have a Very Favorable view of the bureau. Forty-six percent (46%) now view the FBI unfavorably, including 29% who have a Very Unfavorable impression of the bureau.
Roger Stone, an adviser to former President Donald Trump, has said there is “a group of politicized thugs at the top of the FBI who are using the FBI … as Joe Biden‘s personal Gestapo.” A majority (53%) of voters now agree with Stone’s statement – up from 46% in December – including 34% who Strongly Agree. Thirty-six percent (36%) disagree with the quote from Stone, including 26% who Strongly Disagree.
via joemiller
A document made public on Aug. 18 for the first time shows that an FBI agent authored the request for a search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s resort in Florida.
The document, an application for a warrant (pdf), was made by an FBI special agent.
The document also shows that an agent, possibly the same one, authored the affidavit, or a sworn statement that outlined to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida why it should grant the application.
The identity of the agent who signed the application and the name of the agent who signed the affidavit are redacted.
The application was made on Aug. 5, and approved the same day by U.S. District Judge Bruce Reinhart, who approved the unsealing of the application on Aug. 12.
Agents executed the warrant on Aug. 8, taking boxes of items and documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
While opposing the release of the affidavit, government lawyers said in a recent filing that they did not object to making public other documents related to the raid, including the application, as long as minor redactions could be made “to protect government personnel.”
Releasing the affidavit, on the other hand, would harm an ongoing investigation into potential criminal conduct by Trump, the lawyers argued.
Reinhart on Friday ordered them to produce a redacted version of the affidavit to him by Aug. 25 at noon. He said he was leaning towards releasing a redacted copy, though a lawyer for media outlets calling for its release said the process will take weeks.
“I find that on the present record the Government has not met its burden of showing that the entire affidavit should remain sealed,” Reinhart said in a written order after a hearing.
A slew of documents have been filed under seal in the case. Some, including the warrant itself, were unsealed by Reinhart with light redactions on Aug. 12.
Neither federal lawyers nor Trump’s counsel opposed the release of those documents, which indicated that the FBI’s Washington Field Office was running point on the raid. The warrant was predicated on the belief that Trump has likely violated laws governing the transmittal of defense information, concealment of records, and destruction of records. Trump has said he is innocent and being politically targeted.
U.S. lawyers filed the application with the court on Aug. 15. Until Friday, none of its details could be viewed by the public.
Other documents were also unsealed: a criminal cover sheet showing U.S. Attorney Juan Gonzalez or the Southern District of Florida stating the case did not originate from several pending matters, a motion to seal the warrant and related documents, and the approval of the motion to seal.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to address a typo. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
Can the FBI be trusted? A Federalist analysis of agency lies over the last decade is an unequivocal no.
FISA Warrants
In the summer of 2016, FBI bureaucrats launched a deep-state operation, known as Crossfire Hurricane, to thwart then-candidate Trump’s presidential ambitions. It began by targeting Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos and quickly branched out as bureaucrats expanded their surveillance. The spy agency used the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as a legal pretext to investigate and spy on Papadopoulos, in addition to former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, and former Trump adviser Carter Page. Several were interviewed by undercover FBI informant Stefan Halper, whose own investigation would prove a bust.
According to a declassified transcript between Papadopoulos and a Crossfire Hurricane confidential human source (CHS), Papadopoulos repeatedly denied the Trump campaign was working with Russian-backed entities to capture the 2016 election. The FBI, however, wrote off Papadopoulos’s recorded answers as rehearsed and omitted his denials of campaign collusion with overseas actors in FISA court warrant applications and renewals. These were two of the 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” identified in the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general’s blockbuster report on the investigation in December 2019.
Papadopoulos, who pled guilty to making a false statement to the FBI in a perjury trap, was far from the only individual to face political persecution from the federal government’s dystopian investigation.
Not one of the four FISA warrants obtained by the FBI was legally justified, according to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report. In fact, at least two of the warrant applications to spy on Page were declared illegal by a federal judge. Following Horowitz’s blistering report outlining FBI misconduct throughout the entire operation, another federal judge declared that agency malfeasance “calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.”
Subsequent reporting revealed gross abuses of power within the FBI to prosecute political opponents. According to Horowitz, the FBI’s FISA warrants “relied entirely” on DNC-funded opposition research compiled by former British intelligence official Christopher Steele known as the “Steele dossier.” The dossier, which outlined supposed Trump-Russia collusion and has since been thoroughly debunked, included salacious allegations such as supposed “pee tapes” featuring Trump engaging in golden showers with Russian prostitutes at a Moscow hotel.
The FBI knew the dossier lacked credibility as early as January 2017 and knew Steele’s material itself contained Russian disinformation. Desperate to continue their deep-state operation, however, officials lied to the FISA court about Steele’s credibility and hid incriminating info related to the former British intelligence official who was later fired over leaks to the press. An 18th omission, overlooked by the inspector general’s report but documented by Federalist Senior Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland, was that Steele’s sources did not include the ones he developed as a British official.
Even after Steele’s termination as a reliable source, DOJ attorney Bruce Ohr continued to feed information from Steele to the FBI over the course of its investigation. Steele met with Ohr 12 times after the former’s tenure ended as a confidential human source for the bureau, according to the inspector general. Ohr also promoted his wife’s opposition research to FBI investigators and did not disclose she was paid by Fusion GPS, the DNC-contracted firm that commissioned the Steele dossier.
The FBI never told the FISA court that the Trump dossier written by a source who was fired for lying, did not undergo independent verification, and was funded by Hillary Clinton and the DNC.
Despite the overt abuse of the nation’s surveillance apparatus to spy on political opponents, only one FBI official has faced criminal conviction for his role in the probe. In January last year, former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith was sentenced to just 12 months probation after pleading guilty to fabricating evidence to obtain a FISA warrant. By December, Clinesmith was re-admitted to the D.C. Bar Association in good standing.
Steele’s primary sub-source, Igor Danchenko, was indicted in November on five counts of making false statements to the FBI. In May, a D.C. jury acquitted former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann on charges of lying to the FBI when submitting supposed evidence of Trump-Russian collusion to federal investigators.
Misleading Congress
Following the collapse of the grand Russia-collusion hoax, lawmakers on Capitol Hill began demanding answers about FBI misconduct. Former FBI Director James Comey lied to Congress, claiming the bureau was just investigating four individuals, not the Trump campaign, in a dubious spin.
“Late July of 2016, the FBI did, in fact, open a counterintelligence investigation into, is it fair to say the Trump campaign or Donald Trump himself?” asked then-Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., in a 2018 hearing.
“It’s not fair to say either of those things, in my recollection,” Comey said. “We opened investigations on four Americans to see if there was any connection between those four Americans and the Russian interference efforts. And those four Americans did not include the candidate.”
Horowitz also contradicted the FBI in a December 2019 hearing on the release of his report documenting FISA abuses. In September 2017, the FBI told Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that the bureau gave the Trump campaign a defensive briefing about Russian interference in the 2016 race.
“In August of 2016 the FBI provided a counterintelligence defensive briefing to then candidate Donald Trump and other senior campaign officials,” wrote FBI Assistant Director of Congressional Affairs Gregory Brower in response to a letter from Grassley. “This defensive briefing was conducted by an experienced FBI counterintelligence agent and focused on the broad range of threats posed by foreign intelligence entities.”
Horowitz testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that there was no briefing given.
Misleading DOJ Leaders
Not only was Congress led astray as FBI officials conducted a rogue operation to defend the incumbent regime, but so was senior leadership in President Trump’s DOJ.
Handwritten notes revealed in the Sussmann trial exposed how FBI agents sought to cover up malicious misconduct, wherein DOJ leaders tasked with FBI oversight were misled about the investigation’s progress. The notes show FBI agent Peter Strzok wrongly told DOJ supervisors the surveillance warrant on Page had been “fruitful.” Strzok also concealed knowledge that Steele’s sources were not credible and claimed instead that the dossier was “CROWN reporting” from MI6, the FBI’s British counterpart. The FBI said the dossier was being used to examine the RNC and Trump campaign’s effort to soften the GOP platform on NATO and Crimea for Russian energy stocks, but the document made no mention of NATO or Crimea.
Strzok also said Trump’s 2016 joke about Russia uncovering Clinton’s 30,000 deleted emails triggered Crossfire Hurricane, with an Australian diplomat tipping off the government about Papadopoulos at the American embassy in London. The tip that Papdopoulos was coordinating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, however, came before Trump made the joke.
Strzok is the same agent whose text messages show he conspired with his mistress and FBI colleague, attorney Lisa Page. Strzok, a lead investigator for Crossfire Hurricane, assured Page of a mysterious “insurance policy” in place if Trump were to be elected, likely in reference to the agency’s inside operations. Page, according to the DOJ inspector general’s 2019 report, told colleagues to go easy on investigating Clinton because “she might be our next president.”
When Page fretted that Trump might actually win the 2016 contest, Strzok assured his romantic partner, “we’ll stop it.”
Misleading Trump
Comey thought the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was important enough to brief outgoing President Barack Obama on the probe but kept Trump in the dark. In fact, Comey later confirmed that he told Trump three times the president was not being investigated and refused to tell him Clinton funded the dossier.
Michael Flynn
In June 2020, a federal judge ordered that all charges be dropped against Flynn, whom Trump subsequently pardoned in the waning days of his administration. Prior to his exoneration, Flynn was facing heavy fines and prison time for making false statements to federal officials in another perjury trap orchestrated by Comey, who bragged about the setup in the first week of the Trump White House.
According to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Flynn lied to a pair of FBI agents about conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak as the incoming national security adviser. Flynn, prosecutors claimed, spoke with Kislyak about financial sanctions against Russian individuals after the 2016 election and then lied about it during an interview with Comey’s agents. Sending a pair of agents to question a senior White House official in the Situation Room, Comey said at a 2018 conference, was “something I probably wouldn’t have done or even gotten away with in a more organized investigation, a more organized administration.”
“We placed a call to Flynn and said, ‘Hey, we’re sending a couple guys over, hope you’ll talk to them.’ He said ‘sure,'” Comey explained at the 92nd Street Y conference. “Nobody else was there, they interviewed him in a conference room at the White House situation room, and he lied to them.”
Flynn initially pled guilty to making false statements to the FBI before firing his attorneys and hiring new representation to withdraw his guilty plea. His reversal followed the release of declassified transcripts, which revealed Flynn never spoke with Kislyak about sanctions. The two only discussed expulsions of Russian individuals under a different process. Handwritten notes from the FBI agents also revealed the sole purpose of their questioning was “to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired.” A bizarre 2017 inauguration day email by Susan Rice to herself also revealed Comey knew there was no legitimate reason to question Flynn.
Andrew McCabe
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was fired from his top role at the bureau for lying to the agency inspector general four times over multiple abuses during his tenure in senior leadership. Those abuses included efforts to set up former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus for obstruction charges, the sabotage of an investigation into Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop before the 2016 election, and failure to report conflicts of interest. While running for a Virginia state Senate seat in 2015, McCabe’s wife accepted a political donation from a close Clinton ally as her husband was tasked with investigating the former secretary of state.
A 2018 DOJ inspector general report blasted McCabe as a serial leaker who lied about it. That same year, a letter from Grassley shined a spotlight on McCabe’s purchase of a $70,000 table on taxpayers’ dime that the agency sought to cover up.
Clinton Emails
The FBI repeatedly told journalists there was no evidence that a foreign power had reviewed Clinton’s emails that she improperly handled on a private server. According to an inspector general report in 2018, however, texts show they almost certainly did, “at least one of them classified,” as Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi wrote.
“It is more accurate to say,” read a text from Strzok, “that we know foreign actors obtained access to some of her emails (including at least one Secret one) via compromises of the private email accounts of some of her staffers.”
Weiner Laptop
In 2018, Comey told lawmakers over the course of the investigation into Clinton’s emails that agency officials thoroughly reviewed the laptop belonging to Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her now-ex husband Anthony Weiner. The FBI was able to accomplish such a feat within a short timeframe “thanks to the wizardry of our technology” enabling agents who worked “night after night after night” to comb through the remaining material before the 2016 election.
“But virtually none of his account was true,” explained RealClearInvestigations’ Paul Sperry.
In fact, a technical glitch prevented FBI technicians from accurately comparing the new emails with the old emails. Only 3,077 of the 694,000 emails were directly reviewed for classified or incriminating information. Three FBI officials completed that work in a single 12-hour spurt the day before Comey again cleared Clinton of criminal charges.
Roger Stone
In 2019, former Trump associate Roger Stone was raided by the FBI after being indicted by Mueller. A CNN camera crew happened to be the only network present at Stone’s Fort Lauderdale home before the sunrise raid, suggesting the friendly press had been tipped off in advance. The FBI, however, refused to comply with a Federalist open records request for any and all emails to or from CNN on the day of the raid.
Jan. 6 Capitol Riot
The Jan. 6 saga has become the sequel in Democrats’ efforts to indict Trump, before FBI agents hatched a plot to go after the former president over supposed espionage.
In October, the bureau refused to offer House Republicans conducting their own independent investigation of the Capitol riot the same material given to congressional Democrats. The FBI’s refusal, the agency claimed, was because officials were already working with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Select Committee on Jan. 6. Pelosi’s committee, however, was established in violation of House rules. Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., the minority appointment as ranking member, is entitled to the documents presented to Democrats.
Senior FBI officials have also refused lawmakers’ questions about how many informants were present at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and stonewalled inquiries surrounding Ray Epps, the mysterious figure who disappeared from the most-wanted list after he encouraged rioters to swarm the Capitol.
At an Aug. 4 Senate hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray sought to downplay agency negligence, claiming “we did not have any credible intelligence that pointed to thousands of people breaching the Capitol.” But according to Newsweek, the agency deployed commandos with “shoot to kill authority,” and even Capitol Hill parking attendants knew there were going to be mass protests. The FBI has also been less than forthcoming about a pair of pipe bombs planted at the RNC and DNC headquarters.
At the same time, the FBI has embarked on a nationwide manhunt, to incarcerating demonstrators who have been declared such a threat to the republic over trespassing that they’ve been denied a fair and speedy trial and held in detention for more than 18 months.
Julian Khater, one of two accused of assaulting a Capitol Police officer with pepper spray and whose case has been documented by Julie Kelly at American Greatness, appears to have been outright coerced into making an unconstitutional confession. Khater was detained in March 2021 and has remained in federal custody ever since after intense interrogation without an attorney present.
Kamala Harris on Jan. 6
The presence of Vice President Mike Pence and then-Sen. Kamala Harris at the U.S. Capitol has been the basis for nearly 800 people being charged with at least one count of violating 18 U.S. Code, section 1752, according to Kelly, which indicates that any building or complex hosting the vice president is a restricted area and therefore closed to the public.
“But the Justice Department recently was forced to admit that Harris was not in the building for most of the day on January 6,” Kelly reported, highlighting that Harris, at the time, remained a U.S. senator, not vice president. In the late morning, Harris was moved to the DNC headquarters where a pipe bomb had supposedly been planted.
“Prosecutors have begun amending language in court filings to reflect the fact Harris was not inside the Capitol despite making the assertion in thousands of charging documents,” Kelly wrote.
March 4, 2021
The FBI released a joint memo with the Department of Homeland Security warning that “domestic extremists” were preparing to launch an insurrection by overwhelming the Capitol and removing Democratic lawmakers “on or about the 4th of March.”
Nothing happened.
Hunter Biden Suppression
In July, Grassley’s office published a blockbuster whistleblower report wherein senior agency officials alleged that the bureau is actively trying to sabotage Trump and provide cover for President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
“Multiple FBI whistleblowers, including those in senior positions,” Grassley’s office wrote in a press release, “are raising the alarm about tampering by senior FBI and Justice Department officials in politically sensitive investigations ranging from election and campaign finance probes across multiple election cycles.”
Washington Field Office Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault and Director of Election Crimes Branch Richard Pilger, the whistleblowers alleged, coordinated to amplify defamatory information against Trump while giving cover to Hunter Biden, dismissing Biden intelligence as disinformation.
The agency reportedly knew of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop full of incriminating information on the first family as early as 2019, and Grassley’s whistleblower report highlights how officials may have undermined DOJ investigations into Hunter Biden’s finances in Delaware and Pittsburgh. In March, FBI Assistant Director of the Cyber Division Bryan Vorndran told lawmakers he did not know the whereabouts of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Gretchen Whitmer Plot
In October 2020, the FBI revealed that a plot to kidnap Michigan Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had been heroically foiled by federal law enforcement. A group of far-right militiamen, the story goes, conspired to kidnap the governor and try her as a “tyrant” in Wisconsin. In July last year, however, BuzzFeed revealed that at least 12 people involved were FBI informants orchestrating another entrapment.
“The problem with the case is that it appears the FBI, through informants and undercover agents, hatched the kidnapping plot, served in the key leadership positions of the militia group, trained the militia members in military tactics, actively recruited participants, and funded much of the militia’s activities,” reported former CIA Paramilitary Operations Officer Max Morton. “Then, when various members of the Watchman militia became uncomfortable with the kidnapping plot, with several quitting, the FBI’s primary informant pushed the plot along, eventually becoming the militia group’s leader.”
In April, a jury refused to convict four of the 14 defendants charged. Two were found not guilty, another two concluded the trial with no verdict, and another two took plea deals.
Ralph Northam Plot
Dan Chappel, the primary informant in the Whitmer kidnapping conspiracy, targeted a senior disabled veteran named Frank Butler using the same formula to go after then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, another Democrat.
“Just as in the Whitmer plot, Chappel lured Frank Butler into attempting to build an explosive device,” Kelly explained in American Greatness. “Chappel also invited Butler to a field training exercise in Wisconsin during the last weekend in October, an excursion attended by some defendants in the Whitmer caper.”
Unlike the FBI’s victims in the Whitmer plot, however, Butler did not participate and has not been charged with any crime.
Sen. Ted Stevens’ Conviction
Former Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, became the victim of FBI corruption in 2008 when forced to defend himself on charges of false statements to federal officials. Stevens lost his seat as the scandal played out, only to be later exonerated when a judge conducting an independent investigation concluded that prosecutors inappropriately hid evidence.
Prosecutors indicted Stevens on charges that he had concealed that he did not pay full value for renovations on an Alaskan cabin less than 100 days out from the 2008 election.
“In fact, Ted Stevens and his wife had paid more than $160,000 for renovations that independent appraisers valued at less than $125,000 at the time,” Roll Call reported.
Prosecutors, however, secured a conviction by hiding evidence that incriminated their own witnesses, one of whom came up with testimony right before trial, with inconsistent statements concealed from the defense, according to the D.C. paper.
Likewise, the government concealed evidence that its star witness had suborned perjury from an underage prostitute with whom the star witness had an illegal sexual relationship. And the government concealed evidence that another witness — whom the government flew back to Alaska away from the Washington, D.C., trial after their mock cross-examination of him went poorly — had told the senator that the bills he received and promptly paid included all of the work that was done. Government prosecutors mocked Stevens when he explained that on the stand — all the while knowing that they had a witness who would have supported him, but whom they had removed from the trial.
Rep. Jeff Fortenberry’s Conviction
Former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., was sentenced to two years of probation with a $25,000 fine and 320 hours of community service in March after a Los Angeles jury convicted him of lying to the federal government after he was entrapped by the FBI.
The saga began in 2019 when a pair of FBI agents showed up at Fortenberry’s Nebraska home ostensibly over a national security issue, not a criminal investigation. Prosecutors ultimately convicted Fortenberry for scheming to conceal material facts to federal officials and two false statements to the FBI.
One false statement was attributed to Forteberry not recognizing a person whose 10-year-old picture was presented to him by agents on their trip to his Nebraska residence. In July 2019, the FBI lied to Fortenberry and his attorney, Gowdy, claiming Fortenberry was not under federal investigation when he was. Fortenberry resigned from the House during his ninth term following conviction.
Pulse Nightclub Shooting
In June 2016, a 29-year-old gunman named Omar Mateen stormed the gay Orlando nightclub Pulse, killing 49 and injuring 53 more in the name of Islamic terrorists killed in Iraq and Syria. Mateen’s father, Seddique, was an FBI informant, whom documents published by The Intercept suggest convinced the bureau to stop investigating his son.
The bureau turned instead to charging Mateen’s widow, Noor Salman, with material support and obstruction of justice. Prosecutors sought to conceal the father’s status as an FBI informant, according to the Intercept, in pursuit of Salman’s conviction.
“Seddique Mateen has not faced criminal charges despite a tip to the FBI that he raised money for terrorism in Pakistan, and an ongoing investigation into money transfers he allegedly made to Turkey and Afghanistan,” the Intercept reported. “Omar Mateen was researching flights to Turkey at the same time that his father was sending payments there, according to defense lawyers’ summary of FBI evidence.” Salmon was apparently unaware of their possible plans to travel to either country.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported on Salmon’s 2018 trial:
Testimony from an F.B.I. agent revealed that prosecutors knew early on, but did not reveal, that one of their crucial initial pieces of evidence — that Ms. Salman had admitted driving by the nightclub with her husband in the days before the attack — most likely did not happen.
Salmon was ultimately acquitted after a 12-hour jury deliberation.
Texas Synagogue Attack
On Jan. 15, 44-year-old Malik Faisal Akram took hostages in a Texas synagogue near Dallas and demanded the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani national also known as “Lady Al Qaeda” serving an 86-year sentence for assault and attempted murder of federal agents and military personnel.
Matthew J. DeSarno, the FBI’s special agent in charge of the Dallas field office, said the attack on a synagogue had nothing to do with targeting Jews.
“We do believe from our engagement with this subject that he was singularly focused on one issue, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community,” DeSarno said at a press conference.
But as Chuck DeVore of the Texas Public Policy Foundation reported, Akram “was heard to say via the live stream that operated from the synagogue for much of the incident that he chose it because he thought it was the closest assemblage of Jews to the federal facility holding Siddiqui.”
“There are about 1,000 churches in the Fort Worth area within a half-hour drive of Siddiqui’s place of incarceration, compared to seven Jewish centers of worship,” DeVore wrote. “But sure, Special Agent DeSarno, the terrorism was ‘not specifically threatening to the Jewish community.'”
Congressional Baseball Shooter
The FBI designated the death of a shooter who attempted to gun down Republican lawmakers at a 2017 congressional baseball practice as motivated by a desire to commit “suicide by cop.” Last year, the bureau doubled down on the designation.
“It’s fair to say the shooter was motivated by a desire to commit an attack on members of Congress and then knowing by doing so he would likely be killed in the process,” Jill Sanborn, the executive assistant director of the FBI, told the House Appropriations subcommittee.
“The FBI still doesn’t know exactly what the shooter was up to,” McCabe, now a CNN contributor, said last summer. “They never really uncovered the sort of detailed evidence that laid out a specific plot or an objective.”
On the contrary, the 66-year-old shooter who almost killed House GOP Whip Steve Scalise left behind a long record of extremist social media posts dripping with contempt for Republicans, even branding them as the “Taliban of the USA” on Facebook. The FBI also found a list of six congressmen in a rented Virginia storage locker but refused to call it a “hit list.”
Inflating Extremism Cases
Whistleblowers claim the FBI is inflating the number of “domestic violent extremism” cases to fit President Biden’s overarching narrative that home-grown extremism is the nation’s worst national security threat.
“From recent protected disclosures, we have learned that FBI officials are pressuring agents to reclassify cases as ‘domestic violent extremism’ even if the cases do not meet the criteria for such a classification,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, wrote in July, detailing whistleblower allegations in a letter to Wray. “Given the narrative pushed by the Biden Administration that domestic violent extremism is the ‘greatest threat’ facing our country, the revelation that the FBI may be artificially padding domestic terrorism data is scandalous.”
Ignoring Larry Nassar Abuse
The FBI turned a blind eye as former USA gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar abused dozens of young female athletes. According to the DOJ inspector general last year, “senior officials in the FBI Indianapolis Field Office failed to respond to allegations of sexual abuse of athletes by former USA Gymnastics physician Lawrence Gerard Nassar with the urgency that the allegations required.”
“We also found that the FBI Indianapolis Field Office made fundamental errors when it did respond to the allegations, failed to notify the appropriate FBI field office (the Lansing Resident Agency) or state or local authorities of the allegations, and failed to take other steps to mitigate the ongoing threat posed by Nassar,” the inspector general added.
Kyle Rittenhouse
Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of politicized charges brought against him last summer when he shot three men in self-defense. Two died, and contrary to the media’s racialized coverage of the trial, all three were white.
During the proceedings, wherein an 18-year-old Rittenhouse (now 19) faced life in prison, prosecutors used aerial footage from FBI surveillance in their effort to convict Rittenhouse. When the defense tried to access “the rest” of the FBI footage from the night in question, however, the bureau claimed it no longer existed.
Demonizing James Rosen
In 2010, the Obama administration began aggressive surveillance of journalist James Rosen who was working for Fox News at the time. The Justice Department tracked Rosen by falsely claiming the reporter was a potential terrorist collaborator and accused him of violating the Espionage Act.
The Obama administration tracked Rosen’s movements and, according to Fox News, even seized the phone records of his parents.
Deadly Wrongful Conviction
A 2007 ruling against the government cost the FBI $102 million after agency misconduct resulted in the deaths of two men. In order to protect a mob informant, the FBI was caught deliberately withholding evidence in a case that led to the wrongful convictions of four men, three of which were sentenced to death, two of whom died before true justice was served.
Martha Stewart
Most Americans today believe Martha Stewart was convicted 20 years ago on charges of “insider trading.” Her actual conviction that sent her to federal prison was conspiracy to lie about the crime for which she was never charged over a trade that had already taken place.
Stewart’s quarter-million-dollar sale of ImClone stock served as the pretext for which federal prosecutors, led by none other than Comey, went after the media mogul. Comey’s case, however, was so weak that prosecutors pursued a novel legal theory to secure a conviction.
According to the theory they pursued, Stewart engaged in “securities fraud” when she declared that she was innocent, which prosecutors said was designed to prop up the value of her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. In other words, Stewart’s proclamation of innocence was declared a crime by federal law enforcement, and she spent six months incarcerated.
Mar-a-Lago Raid
The Department of Justice appears to be following the same playbook agency officials have used for years in the Democrats’ series of manufactured scandals to bring down Trump.
Last week, the FBI executed an unprecedented raid of the former president’s Florida residence ostensibly conducted to enforce the Presidential Records Act. Federal officials confiscated more than a dozen boxes from the 128-room mansion pursuant to the rarely prosecuted law, claiming Trump harbored classified information related to the nation’s nuclear secrets. Leaked claims to the Washington Post that Trump possessed sensitive nuclear records, which came hours after Attorney General Merrick Garland professed the agency’s professionalism, however, showcase the sensationalism crafted by officials desperate to justify the raid, which included more than 30 agents.
At a press conference last week, Garland admitted to personally signing off on the raid he called “narrowly scope[d].” An examination of the warrant, however, reveals that it authorized FBI agents to seize any and every document Trump came into contact with as president. Furthermore, none of the three criminal statutes the DOJ cited in the warrant required the material to be classified, according to Cleveland.
The FBI also attempted to dispel claims that federal officials stripped the president of his passports, telling CBS News that the agency was not in possession of the documents after Trump blasted that they had been confiscated. An email made public by Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich, however, exposed the FBI’s lie. The email from Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence and export control section in the DOJ’s National Security Division, confirms that “the filter agents seized three passports belonging to President Trump, two expired and one being his active diplomatic passport.”
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
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Michael_Novakhov shared this story . Comment WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A federal judge said Thursday that he is “inclined” to unseal some of the affidavit central to last week’s FBI search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida home, instructing the Justice Department to redact the document in a way that would not undermine its […]
The post Mar-a-Lago affidavit: Judge signals willingness to unseal redacted copy first appeared on The Audio Posts.
Michael_Novakhov shared this story . Comment KYIV, Ukraine — Until this week, Ukrainians seemed to see President Volodymyr Zelensky as beyond reproach, a national hero who stayed in Kyiv despite the risk to his personal safety to lead his country against invading Russian troops. Comments he made to The Washington Post justifying his failure to […]
The post Zelensky faces unprecedented criticism over failure to warn of war first appeared on The Audio Posts.
Spread the News Названы две причины сокращения западной военной помощи ВСУ «Запад готовится сократить до минимума военную помощь Украине. В результате ВСУ ничего не останется, как по мере истощения собственных запасов сдаваться союзным войскам», – сказал газете ВЗГЛЯД военный эксперт Константин Сивков. Ранее издание Daily Telegraph сообщило, что Запад дал Украине три месяца на контрнаступление. […]
The post Зеленский назвал условие для переговоров с Россией first appeared on The Russia News Review.Москва. 19 августа. INTERFAX.RU – Секретарь Совбеза РФ Николай Патрушев обвиняет страны Запада в подготовке к открытому вооруженному противостоянию с Россией. “События вокруг Украины показывают, что западники пытаются балансировать на грани между гибридными действиями и открытым вооруженным конфликтом с нашей страной, к которому они не прекращают готовиться”, – сказал Патрушев в пятницу на встрече секретарей […]
The post Патрушев заявил о подготовке Запада к открытому вооруженному конфликту с РФ first appeared on The Audio Posts.
It’s been five months since Russian forces invaded Ukraine and began their relentless assault on their far-smaller neighbor. The Western press has focused heavily on Russian President Vladimir Putin, who masterminded the invasion over many years and has overseen its execution.
But Putin isn’t working on his own.
He is surrounded by a cabal of equally ruthless lieutenants just as eager to deceive the West with bombast and rhetoric.
These henchmen – and occasional women — are not just wily, they’re extremely well-compensated thanks to their close proximity to Putin’s kleptocratic machine. Long-serving and devoted, the Russian leader owes this creepy crew a perverse debt of gratitude for helping him achieve his horrifying goals.
Here’s a look at the top seven characters in Putin’s orbit of war.
Nikolai PatrushevREUTERSThe heir apparent
Nikolai Patrushev, the head of Russia’s Security Council, is Putin’s closest advisor, long-time personal friend, and the Kremlin hawk who could easily take over the reins of Mother Russia — at least temporarily — if Putin were to become incapacitated. Patrushev is highly influential in the Kremlin bureaucracy and is one of the principal architects of the Putin doctrine — which seeks to return former Soviet-era states (like Ukraine) to Russian control.
Patrushev is Putin’s evil twin, with both twins, in this case, being evil. Their relationship dates back to 1975, when they worked together in the KGB. Like his boss, Patrushev — who’s served as a spy operative for 50 years — has likely authorized targeted killings of numerous Russian “enemies.” Among his victims are former FSB officer and vocal Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned in Britain in 2006, along with Chechen separatist leaders hunted down and killed as part of a counter-terrorism program during the late-1990s.
At 71, Patrushev, like Putin, is a committed athlete who regularly plays volleyball and swims nearly three miles a week. He doesn’t abuse alcohol, which is uncommon for Russian males, favoring the occasional glass of wine over hard liquor. He is a workaholic and never late for meetings. It’s likely Patrushev helped hatch the plan for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014 and Putin’s attack against the rest of the Ukraine this past February. Patrushev is also a rabid anti-American propagandist who recently accused Washington of running a biological weapons program in Ukraine. Even more outlandish, he’s suggested that the US is planning to drop a nuke on Ukrainian territory and then blame Russia for it.
Dmitriy PeskovSputnik/Sergey Guneev/Kremlin via REUTERSThe talking head
Dmitriy Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, epitomizes the Russian proverb “You can piss into his eyes and he will say it’s God’s dew.” This maxim describes folks who are so shameless in their ability to tell lies, that they remain unfazed even when directly challenged to their face. Peskov has served as Putin’s spokesperson since 2008. His job, essentially, is to create an alternate reality in which Russia’s geopolitical activities are perceived as benign — if not downright righteous — while covering up the atrocities committed by Putin and the Kremlin.
Peskov, 54, excels at this job, judging by the fact that most Russians seem to support Putin’s “special operation” into Ukraine — launched, Putin has said, to “de-Nazify and demilitarize” the nation. Peskov was even able to trick the Biden security team into believing that Russia might actually not launch its armies against Ukraine, causing Washington to hesitate until Putin’s forces encircled and attacked the nation on February 24.
Like others in Putin’s world, Peskov has managed to become a multi-millionaire from repeating his boss’ lies. He owns a $10 million real estate empire, travels on private jets and yachts, drives luxurious vehicles and, of course, sports designer watches. His third wife and two adult children from a pair of previous marriages are also “bathing in gold,” as another Russian saying goes, and own multimillion-dollar homes all over the world. Peskov’s 24-year-old daughter Elizaveta Peskova studied business and marketing in Paris and held internships at Louis Vuitton and with the European Parliament. There are rumors that Peskov may be divorcing his current wife, a 47-year-old former Olympic ice-dancing champion Tatyana Navka. Peskov married Navka in 2015 after apparently charming her with his “elegance and perseverance” as well as “buoyant” dancing style.
Maria ZakharovaYouTubeThe saucy spokeswoman
Maria Zakharova is the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman and one of the most colorful personalities in Putin’s circle. At 46, she is the first female spokesperson in the history of Russia’s Foreign Ministry and has held the job since 2015. Half warrior-half seductress, Zakharova is known for her combative communication style and the quick-witted barbs that she likes to deploy against Western officials, often laden with sexual innuendo. By day, Zakharova’s briefings are filled with Putin’s lies — such as portraying Ukraine as being overrun by Nazis and in need of immediate liberation by Russian forces. By night, she floods social media with suggestive selfies wearing bright red lipstick and provocatively poses in strapless dresses. In early July, Zakharova posted a sexy video of herself fondling two strawberries with her mouth and tongue to the tune of the patriotic Russian song “Kalinka,” performed by the Red Army Choir.
But the main targets of Putin’s propaganda minister are the Biden Administration, US democracy, and Western values in general. Last month, Zakharova posted on her Telegram channel a bizarre photo of two transgender Biden Administration officials, Dr. Rachel Levine, assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, and Sam Brinton, deputy assistant secretary responsible for nuclear issues within the Department of Energy. In the photo, which was taken at the French ambassador’s Bastille Day party, Rachel Levine sported a “masculine”-styled admiral’s uniform, while Sam Brinton wore a more “feminine”-looking blue, floral patterned dress with a sweetheart neckline, blazer, and blue, strappy heels. “Answer this question honestly: are these the values you would like to impart on your children? Or shall we put up a fight for our own?,” wrote Zakharova, mocking Western liberalism and democracy.
Margarita SimonyanREUTERSThe Media-Maven
Margarita Simonyan, 42 is Putin’s Propaganda Queen. Officially, she is the Editor-in-Chief of RT, Russia’s global network of television channels, websites, and social media accounts broadcasting to non-Russian speaking audiences in English, Spanish, French, Arabic, German, and Russian. In reality, Simonyan is no journalist. RT is Putin’s pet project: a Russian state-funded and state-directed news outlet created with the primary goal of publishing pro-Kremlin content to influence foreign, and especially Western, audiences about Russia and Putin. Putin created RT in 2005 as Russia Today. But in late 2013 Putin issued an Executive Presidential order to “restructure” the network and call it “RT” — concealing RT’s affiliation with Russia.
in Russia, she graduated from high school with a Gold Medal for top academic performance, completed vocational training in broadcasting and later obtained a university degree in journalism.
Putin is on a first-name-basis with Simonyan and likely personally approved her candidacy for this high-profile role, which she assumed at the age of 25 in 2005. He’s also rather friendly with her: In 2019, during a ceremony in the Kremlin, in which Simonyan was given a state award for her patriotic reporting, Putin used the Russian word “ty”— which is a sign of familiarity — rather than “vy,” which is a more formal version of the English “you”. Simonyan also has a yellow phone on her desk with a direct secure line to the Kremlin.
RT content ranges from “animated genitals,” a dancing vagina and penis — and their friends “laughing breast” and “overly-eager hand” — to Simonyan-issued threats of nuclear war if Russia is denied victory in Ukraine.
Arkady RotenbergEPAThe hockey bro
Arkady Rotenberg, 70, a billionaire Russian businessman, has been Putin’s pal since the 1960s, when he and his brother, Boris, met a young Putin in their hometown of St. Petersburg while attending a training center for sambo — the Russian martial art and combat sport favored by the Soviet military. As chairman of the executive board of the Russian Ice Hockey Federation, Rotenberg regularly plays hockey with Putin and was once his judo sparring partner, a sport Putin says transformed him from a young hooligan into a statesman. Awarded by Putin with billions of dollars in oil and gas contracts, Rotenberg owns a $38 million yacht, a luxury hotel in Rome, a large estate in Surrey, England, and several villas in Italy and France.
Vladimir PotaninREUTERSThe uber-oligarch
Vladimir Potanin, 61 is another Putin’s pal, hockey partner, and the richest man in Russia, reportedly worth $25 billion. Potanin was one of the “Big Seven” Russian oligarchs who helped reelect Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin to the Russian presidency in 1996. Yeltsin, who became the first Russian president after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, presided over one of the darkest, most tumultuous and chaotic periods in Russian history. While the West foolishly expected Russia to turn into a Jeffersonian democracy, Russian leaders schemed to defraud the country’s major natural resource companies. Potanin’s relationship with Putin dates back to 2000, when Yeltsin hand-picked Putin as Russia’s next President, while Potanin was busy masterminding the “loans-for-shares” program that enriched oligarchs like himself. As a result of this massive fraud, yesterday’s communists turned into capitalists overnight, and Russia became a modern mafia state ruled by siloviki (intelligence operatives) with virtually unlimited power and financial resources at their disposals.
Sergei Pavlovich RolduginGetty ImagesThe culture kapo
Sergei Pavlovich Roldugin, 70, is a childhood friend of the Russian president who introduced Putin to his future, and now former, wife Lyudmila and is the godfather of their eldest daughter, Maria. A graduate of the Leningrad State Conservatory, Roldugin is a professional cellist who serves in various senior positions in St. Petersburg music and arts organizations, including the famed Mariinsky Theater and the St. Petersburg State Conservatory. But Roldugin’s role in Putin’s inner circle has nothing to do with mastering Tchaikovsky (though it does help). Indeed, whereas most of Putin’s inner-circle come from the worlds of espionage, Rodulgin’s artsy background is the perfect cover for safeguarding a portion of Putin’s personal fortune — including up to $2 billion managed via Roldugin’s brother that were exposed by the Panama Papers. In his autobiography, Putin says he and Roldugin “met [in 1977] and have never parted. He is just like a brother to me. Before, when I had nowhere to go, I went to him and slept and ate with him.”
Ramzan KadyrovREUTERSThe second-generation sycophant
Ramzan Kadyrov is the brutal leader of the Russian province of Chechnya whom Putin recently promoted to lieutenant-general in the Russian military as a reward for his role in the Ukraine invasion. Like his father, Akhmad Kadyrov — who fought for Chechen independence but then later switched sides — the junior Kadyrov is a staunch Putin supporter. In 2015, he was implicated in the murder of the prominent Putin critic Boris Nemtsov who was gunned down on a Moscow bridge while he was preparing a report about Russia’s role in the Crimea conflict. Today, Kadyrov is gearing up to send four Chechen battalions to Ukraine to help replenish exhausted Russian forces. His fighters, known as Kadyrovtsy, are feared for their viciousness and have been on the hunt for Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, presumably to assassinate him. Kadyrov, 45, along The Wagner Group’s Dmitry Utkin, is one of Putin’s two principal hitmen outside of Russia, covertly killing off his boss’ enemies without getting Putin’s hands dirty. The Chechen warlord said in July that he is standing ready for Putin’s order to blow Western countries to “smithereens.”
Alex Berenson is back on Twitter after being banned for nearly a year over Covid-19 “misinformation.” Last week the former New York Times reporter settled his lawsuit against the social-media company, which admitted error and restored his account. “The First Amendment does not apply to private companies like Twitter,” Mr. Berenson wrote last week on Substack. But because the Biden administration brought pressure to bear on Twitter, he believes he has a case that his constitutional rights were violated. He’s right.
In January 2021 we argued on these pages that tech companies should be treated as state actors under existing legal doctrines when they censor constitutionally protected speech in response to governmental threats and inducements. The Biden administration appears to have taken our warning calls as a how-to guide for effectuating political censorship through the private sector. And it’s worse than we feared.
Facts that Mr. Berenson unearthed through the discovery process confirm that the administration has been secretly asking social-media companies to shut down the accounts of specific prominent critics of administration policy.
On July 16, 2021, a reporter asked President Biden: “On Covid misinformation, what’s your message to platforms like Facebook. ” Mr. Biden replied: “They’re killing people.” (The president later said he meant users were killing people.) Later that day, Twitter locked Mr. Berenson’s account, and on Aug. 28 it banned him permanently.
Last Friday Mr. Berenson published conversations from an internal Twitter Slack channel. Referring to an April 2021 meeting with White House officials, one Twitter employee noted that the meeting overall was “pretty good,” but added that the White House “had one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off from the platform.”
Another employee asked: “Any high level takeaways from the meeting? Anything we should keep an eye out for?”
The first employee responded: “Yes, they really wanted to know about Alex Berenson.” The employee wrote that Andy Slavitt, then a senior White House Covid adviser, “suggested they had seen data viz that had showed he was the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public.” (“Viz” probably stands for “visualization” and “disinfo” for “disinformation.”)
Mr. Berenson wasn’t the only target. At a July 15, 2021, White House press briefing with Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, press secretary Jen Psaki said: “We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. . . . There’s about 12 people who are producing 65% of antivaccine misinformation on social media platforms.” This was a reference to the so-called “Disinformation Dozen,” 12 named individuals identified in a report by the U.K.-based Center for Countering Digital Hate—a report that Facebook disputed even as it said it had taken action against its targets. Ms. Psaki went on to say of the 12 that “all of them remain active on Facebook, despite some even being banned on other platforms, including . . . ones that Facebook owns.” That might have been a reference to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , a longtime critic of vaccination, who had been deplatformed by Facebook-owned Instagram.
At the same briefing, Dr. Murthy called on social-media companies to purge more Covid posts: “We’re asking them to consistently take action against misinformation superspreaders on their platforms.” At a briefing the next day, again possibly referring to Mr. Kennedy, Ms. Psaki said that if you post misinformation, “you shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others.”
Recent Freedom of Information Act disclosures show that a week later, on July 23, 2021, Nick Clegg—a former U.K. deputy prime minister and now Facebook parent Meta’s president for global affairs—emailed Dr. Murthy to thank him for meeting with Facebook and to report on “the steps we took just this past week” to “further address the ‘disinfo dozen’: we removed 17 additional Pages, Groups, and Instagram accounts tied to the ‘disinfo dozen’ . . . resulting in every member . . . having had at least one such entity removed.” He added that Facebook was “continuing to make 4 other Pages and Profiles, which have not yet met their removal thresholds, more difficult to find on our platform.”
This goes even beyond what was happening when we wrote the week before Mr. Biden’s inauguration. At that time, lawmakers had repeatedly threatened tech companies with catastrophic consequences if they didn’t more aggressively censor speech the government disfavors. Congress had immunized these companies from liability if they remove “objectionable” but “constitutionally protected” content, to quote Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
In response to these and other inducements and threats, social-media companies were already suppressing speech about Covid that was well within the bounds of legitimate debate and sometimes proved accurate. Facebook had banned anyone from saying that Covid might have originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, or that the Covid vaccines didn’t prevent infection.
When the government exploits these legislative inducements to target specific critics for censorship, it has crossed a constitutional Rubicon. Targeting, punishing and silencing dissenters is the paradigmatic First Amendment violation. The Biden administration is using Big Tech as its private censorship arm, and that violates what the Supreme Court, in Norwood v. Harrison (1973), called an “axiomatic” principle: The government “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”
The administration’s behind-the-scenes use of social-media companies to evade the First Amendment seems to be continuing unabated. In April this year Ms. Psaki, who was still the White House press secretary, said: “We engage regularly with all social media platforms about steps that can be taken . . . and I’m sure that will continue. But there are also reforms we think Congress could take and we would support taking, including reforming Section 230 [and] enacting antitrust reforms.” The unexplained pivot to “antitrust reform” here is telling: Censor the “problematic” posts and people we identify, Ms. Psaki implies, or we may break you up under the antitrust laws.
This shouldn’t be a partisan issue. If in November 2020 President Trump and Republican lawmakers had used threats and private communications with tech companies to remove what they considered “misinformation” about election results, Democrats would have instantly and rightly identified a threat to democracy.
Democracy depends on free and open debate. If government officials continue to deputize private companies to stifle dissenters, it’s high time for federal courts to deliver them a reminder: If it’s state action in disguise, the Constitution applies.
Mr. Ramaswamy is executive chairman of Strive Asset Management and author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam” and “Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence,” forthcoming in September. Mr. Rubenfeld is a professor at Yale Law School and a First Amendment lawyer. His clients include Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Review & Outlook: As Elon Musk abandons his $44 billion purchase of Twitter, the only winners are progressives who support the social media platform's censorship of views that don’t conform to their own. Images: Zuma Press/GC Images/Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly
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