FISA abuse: corruption at the DOJ and FBI

 

When the DOJ’s abuse of the FISA court procedures first came to light in 2018, this blogger thought that violation of FISA rules – lying to a judge is a felony – would finally result in indictments and successful prosecutions.  It’s now 2023.  The fearless investigative reporter, Sundance, has gone through the Durham Report, footnotes and all, and exposes yet more layers of corruption.  It’s a long read, but it’s also a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the extent of the rot.  Some have commented that the FBI is in need of reform.  No, it needs to be shut down.  Here’s the opening at Conservative Treehouse:

BIG QUESTION and A BIG COVERUP –
Durham Report Brings Sunlight on Detail Never Released
by IG Michael Horowitz About FBI Targeting Trump

I’m going to go into the deep weeds on this story, because many people are missing a key facet.  The names behind the Trump targeting operation are included, along with citations for independent checks by House congressional investigators.

Inside the recently released report by John Durham [CITATION], the special counsel outlines how former FBI Director James Comey was intimately involved in the creation of the Carter Page FISA application.  Durham notes that Comey kept asking the DOJ National Security Division and FBI counterintelligence investigators, “Where’s the FISA, we need the FISA.”  However, John Durham never interviewed James Comey or Andrew McCabe.  The former FBI Director and Deputy refused to cooperate or give testimony to John Durham.  So, how did John Durham have details about the demands of Comey?

The answer is found in the footnotes.  Durham reviewed transcripts of interviews given by Andrew McCabe to the Office of the Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, who previously investigated FBI conduct in the origin of the Carter Page FISA.  Durham pulled quotes from that transcript. [Footnote #1207, page 199 – Durham Report]

[facsimile of transcript with footnote]

♦QUESTION: If Andrew McCabe gave testimony to the OIG about the motives and impetus of FBI Director James Comey in pushing for the Carter Page FISA application, why did the OIG report never outline those transcribed interviews?  Why was the interview transcript never included in the 2019 OIG report?

[NOTE to Congress.  Now that you know a transcribed interview of Andrew McCabe exists in the OIG office, request the transcription and release it to the public.]

Let me answer those questions without the customary pretending from the DC professional political class.  The short version is that OIG Michael Horowitz was trying to protect the DOJ and FBI. The longer version is a coverup that includes Rod Rosenstein, Bill Barr and yes, John Durham.  I will share that story below.

“Where’s the FISA?  We need the FISA?” ~ James Comey

The DOJ-NSD and FBI Co-Intel needed to find a safe and legal way to spy on the Trump campaign. The 2016 FISA Title 1 surveillance of former FBI employee Carter Page became the fraudulent justification for that intent.  . . .

Much more here.  It’s jaw-dropping.  

# # #

Crushing the enemy

 

Kurt Schlichter published a column on the expanding GOP field of presidential candidates.  And in the course of his run-down of the GOPe “festival of losers,” he sums up what’s at stake when commenting on Tim Scott

Tim Scott is a nice guy with a nice story and a nice demeanor who does not take pleasure in crushing his enemies, which means that he will not aggressively seek to crush his enemies, and the crushing of our enemies is the key requirement of a Republican nominee in 2024

The enemy hates us, and it is dead serious about converting its hatred into policy. From legalizing crime to weaponizing the government against us, from disenfranchising us at the ballot box to disarming us in our homes, to gagging us on social media and leveraging the regime media to hide the truth and amplify the lies, this is a cold war where we become serfs if we don’t win. It’s not the time for Team Use Your Inside Voice. The enemy holds every major institution; if you are worried about collateral damage to the institutions that seek to enslave us – or worse – then you don’t have the stones to flatten them and their current occupants. And that’s what we need to do.:

Read the full column at Townhall here.  And as always, Schlichter is entertaining even when he’s dead serious.  And even when I don't agree with everything he has to say (especially with respect to Ron DeSantis).

# # #

AF Branco: the Russia hoax and the corrupt media

A F Branco cartoon via Townhall:

# # #

Losing our First Amendment rights

 

Dr Robert Malone is in a very good position to share with his readers the risks we all face as our First Amendment rights are attacked.  He’s been vilified, censored, and ostracized, but fortunately, the propaganda aimed at destroying him has failed to shut him up.  His Substack column the other day discusses the protections and freedoms we are losing:

. . . Thanks to the Matt Taibbi’s Twitter Files and the Louisiana/Missouri lawsuits, we know much more about the censorship and propaganda during COVID-19. Then we have the Congressional investigation of the “The Great Barrington Declaration” as well as Congressional investigations of other censorship/propaganda operations run by the US government during the last three years of the COVID crisis. There have also been various Epoch Times exposes and other FOIA documents (in particular thanks to Project Veritas and Judicial Watch), documenting that the Federal government has been involved in these types of propaganda campaigns for many years. The extent of these operations has been vast, with billions of dollars funneled into astro-turf organizations and NGOs. The military, HHS, the White House, big pharma companies, and big tech have been partnering together to conduct these operations. These include money, meetings, strategic sessions, technical help, “hit” lists of people to take down, etc.  . . .

. . .

After the leak of Justice’s Alito draft opinion on the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, there was and is an organized campaign to physically intimidate and harass conservative justices by activists. Individual supreme court justices have been doxed, with agitators protesting outside their homes. These violent protests have been allowed to continue unabated, despite there being a Federal law on the books prohibiting the targeting of Federal judges. The Department of Justice refuses to take action against the protestors. There was an attempt on Justice Kavanaugh’s life. For which President Biden and the media were mostly silent. The Supreme justices must now travel in armoured cars and have full time security.

Living with this kind of fear is one of the most insidiously damaging psychological campaigns one can imagine. I know. I have at least seven cyberstalkers that repeat malicious defamation against myself and my wife on a daily basis. This is different from having some corporate media doing a hit piece. This is repeated defamation which is repeated daily.

The systemic attacks of both Supreme Court justices and conservative judges continues unabated. It is not just those seeking to return federal abortion rights to the USA. Justice Thomas has been the victim of co-ordinated attacks by the press for years, including coordinated racist and downright libelous articles written about him and his family. Yet, despite all these media hit pieces, no charges have been brought forth. More evidence that this is a coordinated propaganda campaign.

Other conservative judges have been harassed by trans rights protestors, gay rights protestors, and have even been harassed for the sin of for being appointed by President Trump to a judicial position. These are not peaceful assembles, as is our right under the First Amendment, but are concerted efforts to harass and physically intimidate officers of the court. The tools being used include cyber stalking, gang stalking, violence, physical intimidation and harassment.

Who is leading these systemic efforts? What agencies? How deep does the propaganda and censorship go? Is this even a real concern or just another conspiracy theory? These are legitimate questions and the public deserves answers.

The American people can no longer trust that the US government to be neutral. Our rights to a free press and free speech are being stripped away daily. The US government, big tech, media, pharma, the military are acting in a coordinated fashion to censor and create propaganda. We know that media and big tech are getting paid by the government to do this. That the HHS also paid out a billion dollars to both advertise the jab campaign and to censor critics of the “vaccine” program.

I am pro-America and a patriot. I am a Constitutionalist. I believe in free speech. A strong nation. A free press. Our republic. Our democratic institutions. This is not an anti-government tirade. I am not anti-government, I am a conservative constitutionalist, but I am shocked and saddened by how quickly our great nation is falling into corruption rationalized by the thesis that censorship is necessary to “preserve democracy”.

I truly believe that if the American people, Congress, and the courts do not act fast, that very fabric of this great nation will be torn in ways that cannot be repaired. Our rights of free speech and free press will soon be consumed by the US Governments’ need to control. Is this a national government we want to live under? . . .

Read the full column here.

# # #

The endless war against merit

 

This blog frequently links to historian Victor Davis Hanson’s essays. At his recent essay at American Greatness, he considers the definitions and consequences of socialism and its derivatives ("Do We Even Know We Are All Socialists Now?”).  Here’s his conclusion:

. . . A final note: the Orwellian police state is central to socialism, since the ideology is contrary to innate human nature and when fully implemented quickly ruins all that it touches and is commensurately despised in its fruition. So to force compliance is a 360 degree, 24/7 project that transcends all our institutions and culture.

That is why the woke FBI goes after counter-revolutionary parents at school board meetings or traditionalist Catholics rather than Pentagon leakers or Islamic terrorists.

That is why the FBI and the CIA respectively tried to warp the 2016 election with the phony Steele dossier and in 2020 probably did so by suppressing the truth about the “bombshell” evidence found on wayward Hunter Biden’s laptop.

That is why news disappears off Facebook and the old Twitter. That is why the order of Google search results seems bizarre. That is why Disney or Budweiser suddenly virtue signal their nihilist politics, or why Nike makes the mediocrity Colin Kaepernick a multimillionaire, or Stanford University attempts to purge vocabulary such as “citizen,” “immigrant,” and “American.”

Once socialism takes hold, every mediocrity, every ossified bureaucracy, every constipated careerist, every hack writer and nobody actor, comes out of the woodwork to find his socialist “fair share” of what he lacked in talent or accomplishment.

In the end, perhaps the best definition of socialism is simply “The endless war against merit.”

Read the rest here.

# # #

January 6 two years on

Image credit: breakingthecode.ca

Today is the two year anniversary of the January 6 protest, continually mis-reported as an “insurrection”--  in DC.  Julie Kelly has been following the plight of the victims of the “insurrection”, and today she posted:

A few weeks before Christmas, federal authorities arrested a Washington state couple for their participation in the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021.

. . .

So, what exactly did these alleged “domestic terrorists” do? They entered the Capitol through open doors as police officers stood by. Carrying no weapons, the couple took photos inside the Rotunda and wandered through some hallways; surveillance video shows Holly Christensen talking to a Capitol police officer. At another point, Scott Christensen chatted with a D.C. Metro police officer, a conversation captured on a body-worn camera. Police led the pair toward an exit door about 45 minutes later without arresting them.

For that uneventful jaunt through a public building that posed a threat to no one, the Christensens will now be destroyed by the Department of Justice, the federal court system, and the news media. Although both were charged with nonviolent misdemeanors—the same four offenses that represent the overwhelming majority of charges—journalists dishonestly portrayed the couple as traitors to their country. “Washington state couple to face Jan. 6 insurrection charges,” an Associated Press headline blared on December 12.

. . .

It’s a feat of political sorcery—fueled by lies, cover-ups, and careerism, not entirely unlike the first war on terror—to transform an unruly, four-hour protest into an act of domestic terror. American families such as the Christensens are merely collateral damage along the way.

The rest of Ms. Kelly’s report at American Greatness is here.  The American justice system is utterly corrupt and broken.  And the mainstream media is complicit.

# # #

A great deal of ruin

Victor Davis Hanson does not like what he is seeing:

“Our Parasitic Generation”

Are we sure that there is all that much ruin left in the United States?

We are $31 trillion in collective debt. The new normal is $1.5 trillion budget deficits. The military is politicized and short of recruits. We trade lethal terrorists for woke celebrity athletes as if to confirm our enemies’ cynical stereotypes. 

Our FBI is corrupt and discredited, collaborating with Silicon Valley contractors to suppress free speech and warp elections. We practice segregation and racial discrimination and claim we do not because the right and good people support it and, anyway, the victims deserve it. The country has seen defeat before but never abject, deliberate humiliation as in Kabul, when we fled and abandoned to the terrorist Taliban a $1 billion embassy, a huge, remodeled air base, thousands of friends, and tens of billions of dollars in military hardware—and hard-earned deterrence.

We are witnessing the breakdown of basic norms essential for civilized life, from affordable food and fuel to available key antibiotics and baby formula. Old Cairo seems safer than an after-hours subway ride or stroll at dusk in many major American cities. Medieval London’s roadways were likely cleaner than Market Street in San Francisco. Speech was freer in 1920s America than it is now.

Lots more at American Greatness here.  It’s important.  And it’s grim.

# # #

What is an “Election Crimes Coordinator”?

 

Robert Spencer reports on how the “FBI Classifies ‘Misinformation’ as an ‘Election Crime’ ~ Stigmatizing and criminalizing all dissent.”  Here’s the first part at FrontPageMag:

The Biden regime’s notorious Disinformation Governance Board is dead (for now), but the regime’s quest to stigmatize and criminalize all dissent from its agenda is still very much alive. On Thursday, that indispensable team of actual journalists, Project Veritas, released a document entitled “2022 Midterm Elections Social Media Analysis Cheat Sheet” and subtitled “What Are Election Crimes?” This FBI document “details what FBI agents should look out for leading up to November 8.” Some of it really discusses what FBI agents should be looking out for: Election Interference, Election Fraud, Voter Intimidation, and the like. But included with all the other “Election Crimes” are the Left’s favorite euphemisms for true and accurate information that dissents from the Leftist agenda: “Disinformation” and “Misinformation.”

The “Election Crimes” document defines “Disinformation” as “false or inaccurate information intended to mislead others,” adding that “disinformation campaigns on social media are used to deliberately confuse, trick, or upset the public.” “Misinformation” is “false or misleading information spread mistakenly or unintentionally.”

Back on June 30, J. Christian Adams revealed at PJ Media that the FBI was working with the Democracy Fund, “a hyper-funded progressive money source,” on election issues. Among the FBI officials implicated in this partisan and corrupt collusion was Lindsay Capodilupo, who was identified as the FBI’s “Election Crimes Coordinator.”

Now, there are a lot of great titles in the world, but Lindsay Capodilupo must be proud to have one of the absolute greatest. With the FBI all in on the Russian Collusion hoax, it’s unclear whether the “Election Crimes Coordinator” is actually fighting against “election crimes” or coordinating and implementing them, and that’s just perfect for Merrick Garland’s desperately corrupt and politicized FBI.

. . .

Click here to read the rest of it.    

# # #

Update: the corrupt and manipulative political justice system

 

It’s just 15 days before the mid-term elections, and the DOJ is switching its story. Sundance reports:

FBI and DOJ Switch Tactics,
Now Claim 2022 Election is Vulnerable to Manipulation

With the majority of American voters now positioned to rebuke the political efforts of Joe Biden and federal Democrats, the narrative from the DOJ and FBI does a 180° reverse course.  The transparency of a corrupt and manipulative political justice system is beyond obvious.

• Old Message to support the 2020 Democrat vote initiatives (ballot harvesting, mail-in voting, precinct manipulation): The 2020 election was the most secure election in American history.
• New Message to support the Democrat 2022 vote initiatives: The 2022 election is not secure, subject to manipulation by disinformation and misinformation, and likely to encounter interference by domestic and foreign adversaries.

. . .

Read the full report at Conservative Treehouse here.

# # #

Corruption at the FBI: It’s systemic.

 

Michael Ramirez cartoon via WashingtonTimes.com

Eric Lendrum at American Greatness reports:

According to the Post Millennial, the multiple agents from the D.C. field office who could be seen kneeling before rioters on June 4th, 2022, were each given $100 gift cards by the FBI Agents Association (FBIAA). This was reported by retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent James Gagliano, who wrote in the New York Post that this revelation was “shocking and appalling on its face.”

“Looked at in a larger context,” Gagliano continued, “this disgusting decision proves the rot and decay at the FBI is not singularly the domain of some senior officials.”

The incident involved a team of armed agents wearing FBI vests, who had been designed as a “presence patrol” to guard the National Archives and Supreme Court as riots raged across D.C., with many buildings being set on fire by the rioters.

When rioters noticed the FBI agents and began reacting with hostility, at least seven of the agents took a knee – a gesture that has come to be recognized as an act of disrespect towards the United States, which has been used most often by black nationalists. In addition, a senior counterterrorism special agent hugged some of the rioters. FBI management defended this display as an act of “de-escalation,” and thus rewarded every agent with gift cards of “modest value.”

“During my 25-year career, I was privileged and honored to work alongside FBI agents who killed or captured Top Ten fugitives and violent, dangerous, murderous felons,” Gagliano wrote. “To my knowledge, not one of these actual heroes received an FBIAA gift card of ‘modest value.’”

“I have come to grips with the fact that my beloved FBI has been irreparably broken by woke activists serving amongst its senior ranks,” the former special agent added. “And with the Justice Department appearing to do this president’s bidding by targeting his political adversaries, it will take a monumental house-cleaning and seismic shift in culture at both the DOJ and the FBI to begin to restore America’s trust and confidence.” . . .

Shut it down.  And read the rest of the report here.

# # #

An Elegy for the FBI

 

George Parry is a former "federal Organized Crime Strike Force lawyer, a unit chief in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, and a special organized crime prosecutor in central Pennsylvania during the 1970s and 1980s." His blog "An Elegy for the FBI" at Knowledge is Good was cross-posted at the American Spectator.  Here's some of it:

. . . It’s quite remarkable to watch a once revered and legendary organization metaphorically slit its own throat in public. But that’s exactly what happened when the FBI raided President Donald Trump’s Florida home purportedly to retrieve official Trump administration documents.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the search warrant cited the Presidential Records Act and possible illegal handling of classified information and that the raid came two months after Justice Department lawyers visited Mar-a-Lago “seeking more information about potentially sensitive material that had been taken there from the White House.” 

But if document retrieval was truly the goal, why didn’t the FBI obtain and serve a subpoena duces tecum instead of resorting to a gangbusters-style ransacking of Trump’s home? After months of discussions with the president’s lawyers, during which they voluntarily handed over 15 boxes of presidential documents to the National Archives, was there some reason to believe that a raid was necessary to prevent the destruction of what remained at Mar-a-Lago?

. . .

There are many more such examples that amply demonstrate that the FBI has been reduced to being the armed muscle and praetorian guard of the Democrat Party. But, while all of that is bad enough, the FBI’s ill-conceived raid on the home of a former president who also happens to be the leading political opponent of the bureau’s masters in the Biden regime, is a historic, hideous, and radical abuse of its law enforcement authority that has obliterated the bureau’s relationship with a vast swath of the American public. To those citizens, the bureau’s agents are no longer regarded as the respected and stalwart G-Men of legend. They are now widely and justifiably mocked and dismissed as the Stasi, Gestapo, KGB, secret police, and banana republic thugs for hire. 

Thanks to the raid of Trump’s home, the FBI is not only faced with having lost the confidence and cooperation of almost half of America. It has also transformed itself into a despised moral leper colony — a painted, hagged out, repellent, and whorish mockery of what it used to be. . . .

Much more at the link here.  Irreversible damage.

# # #

Is the rogue FBI coming for you?

 

Ben Garrison cartoons at News Ammo

It’s almost tongue-in-cheek, but unfortunately, after the Mar-a-Lago raid and the raid on Mark Houck and his family, it’s not.  Pete McArdle posted “How to Prepare for a Pre-Dawn Visit From the FBI” at American Thinker, and here’s part of it:

It’s clear the FBI has no interest in students threatening to shoot up schools (Nikolas Cruz), team doctors who assault underage gymnasts (Larry Nassar), or crackheads illegally possessing guns (Hunter Biden).

No, if you’re a criminal, a pervert, or a Democrat -- or some combination of the three -- the Feebs won’t be busting your door down at three in the morning and dragging you out into the street in your tighty whities.

The folks the Bureau’s been busting lately with great fanfare, and occasionally a CNN news crew in tow, are a different sort altogether: folks who vote Republican; Trump supporters; parents concerned about the crap taught in public schools; and Catholic abortion activists.

That’s who the rogue FBI wants to embarrass, take down, and ruin. So I’ve compiled a list of things you can do to limit the damage when the FBI eventually comes for you.

. . .

Door Signs

There’s two ways you can go with door signs. If you’re resigned to getting busted, put up a sign saying: The door’s open, please don’t bust it down! Perhaps you’ll be lucky and the lead Feeb will simply use the doorknob.

Obfuscation is another way to go. You could try: We love Joe Biden, he’s NOT a useless vegetable!

The Feebs, at least the ones running the show, take their marching orders from ol’ Crusty Joe, and perhaps they’ll forgo having you kneel down on your front lawn while they cuff you.

. . .

Vote this November

Despite all the preparations I’ve suggested, when the rogue FBI comes a knocking at your door, you’re screwed. With the help of Deep State judges and the fake-news media, the FBI will happily ruin you, your family, your finances, and your reputation (see Flynn, General Michael).

And all for having the wrong political views.

The only truly effective way to avoid getting an FBI jackboot placed firmly upon your neck is to vote every Deep State Democrat and RINO out of office this November. That’s the start of reining in the now thoroughly disgraced agency.

And the end of the FBI, as it currently exists, will come when you vote Donald Trump into office in November, 2024. The Donald is famous for settling scores, and I for one can’t wait to see this one settled.

I’d love to write more on this topic but there’s suddenly a lot of flashing lights and loud sirens out front...

The full column is here.  

# # #

Biden Takes On the Soul of the Nation ~ UPDATED

 

A F Branco cartoon

So pResident Biden will be delivering his “Soul of the Nation” speech Thursday, Sept 1 in primetime - 8pm. I found J. Robert Smith’s preview of this evening’s speech at American Thinker here.  But I have not yet found the speech itself scheduled in the TV listings. 

I would put this speech in my Must Miss category, but if I find that Mr Vodkapundit is going to Drunkblog it live, I’ll add a link later today.  Otherwise, I’ll look for commentary online to share after the speech.

UPDATE:  It’s being broadcast on C-Span.  As of 7:40pm, no sign of Drunkblogging at PJ Media.  ... As of 8pm, still no sign of Drunkblogging at PJ Media.  Apparently, no vodka is strong enough.

UPDATE 2 as of 7:45pm:  Sundance has posted livestream links here.  

# # #

The Redacted Affidavit

The Babylon Bee has obtained a partially unredacted page of the FBI’s affidavit justifying the raid on Mar-a-Lago:

click to embiggen

# # #

The Weaponization of Justice

 

Frank Miele at RealClearPolitics takes another look at the FBI: 

Nothing symbolizes the decline of the American republic better than the weaponization of justice that we saw last week when the FBI raided the home of former President Trump.

. . .

Don’t believe a word from either the Washington Post or the FBI. Trump had been cooperating with the National Archive and had already turned over 15 boxes of documents, all of which he could have made a claim to legally possess. If they wanted papers turned over, they could have gone through Trump’s lawyers. No, they wanted the spectacle. They wanted the sizzle. They wanted the headlines.

This wasn’t about the rule of law; it was about the rule of the schoolyard. Bullies get what they want through force and intimidation, and there is no reason for any of us to believe that the raid had any purpose other than to intimidate Donald Trump into backing down from his plans to run for president in 2024.

Essentially what the FBI was saying is “We know where you live, and we aren’t afraid to come for you.” They even rifled through Melania Trump’s closet, as if she might have been hiding top-secret documents in her hat box. When do we find out they also spent an hour sorting through her lingerie?

This is sickening, no matter how much MSNBC and the Washington Post want you to think you can still trust the FBI. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me over and over and over again, and I must be a Democrat.

Read the full column here.

# # #

Victor Davis Hanson: Mar-A-Lago Raid and the Rule of Law

 

The interview took place on August 9, but I only just now came across it.  Michael W. Chapman at CNS News reports on Victor Davis Hanson take on the Mar-a-Lago raid:

When asked about the FBI raid on former President Donald Trump's home in Palm Beach, Fla., professor, author, and political commentator Victor David Hanson said, "right now, we don't have the rule of law in Washington," and added that, "The FBI is beyond redemption."

Hanson, who was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush, made his remarks on the Aug. 9 edition of FNC's Tucker Carlson Tonight, guest-hosted by Will Cain.  

Cain asked Hanson why the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago and why were they targeting Trump.

"Well, they're afraid in the short term," he said, in reference to the Democrats and the left, "but in the long term they believe they're morally superior to America, and therefore any means necessary or justifiable for their morally superior ends."

"And right now, we don't have the rule of law in Washington," said Hanson. "Whether you're targeted or exempt depends on your ideology."

. . .

As for the FBI, Hanson remarked, "I never thought I would say this: The FBI is beyond redemption. It is -- all of its bureaus and its institutions that have to be farmed out and broken up. If you have a warrant, an FBI warrant, there is no guarantee that that has not been altered. If you subpoena and you want FBI records on phones ... they will be wiped clean."

"We just saw [FBI Director] Christopher Wray and he just stonewalled every question and then he flew on an FBI plane, our plane, a luxury jet because he had to go to his own vacation spot. He took over, remember, from Andrew McCabe -- what did he do? He lied four times to federal investigators, and his wife was running for an office with Clinton-related PAC money while he was investigating Hillary Clinton's e-mail scandal."

. . .

Read the rest here.

# # #

Neil Oliver: Trusting Authority

Below is the closing part of the transcript from Neil Oliver’s latest contemplation.  Usual thanks to Sundance for posting it at Conservative Treehouse.

. . . Rather than dismiss as yet another conspiracy theory the idea of cash being ultimately replaced with transactions based on the exchange of what amount to glorified food stamps that will only be accepted if our social credit score demonstrates that we’ve been obedient girls or boys … how about taking the leap and focusing on the blatantly obvious … that if we are not free to buy whatever and whenever we please, free of the surveillance and snooping of governments and the banks that run them, then we have absolutely no freedom at all.

And while we’re on the subject of money and banks, why not pause to notice something else that is glaringly obvious – which is to say that the currencies of the West are teetering on the abyss, and that one bank after another is revealed, to those who are bothering to watch, as being as close to bankruptcy as is possible to be without actually falling over the edge.

Then there’s the so-called vaccines for Covid – I deliberately say “so-called” because by now it should be clear to all but the willfully blind that those injections do not work as advertised. You can still contract the virus, still transmit the virus, still get sick and still die. Denmark has dropped their use on under-18s. All across the world, every day, more evidence emerges – however grudgingly, however much the various complicit authorities and Big-Pharma companies might hate to admit it – of countless deaths and injuries caused by those medical procedures.

And yet here in Britain and just about everywhere else, governments continue to try and get those needles into as many arms as possible, even the arms of the smallest and youngest. The ripe stink of corruption is everywhere. I trusted authority for most of my life.

Now I ask myself on a daily basis how I ignored the stench for so long. Across the Atlantic, the Biden White House sent the FBI to raid the home of former president Donald Trump. Meanwhile Joe Biden and his son Hunter – he of the laptop full of the most appalling and incriminating content – fly together on Airforce 1. No raids planned on the Obamas, nor on the Clintons. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi flew to Taiwan and onwards to China. Her son Paul, an investor in a Chinese tech firm and with seats on the board of companies dealing in lithium, was along for the ride, into that part of the world where three quarters of the world’s lithium batteries are made. Taiwan leads in that technology.

It is hard to think the unthinkable. It’s hard to think that all of it, all the misery, all the suffering of the past and to come might just be about money, greed and power. It is hard to tell yourself you’ve been taken for a fool and taken for a ride. It’s hard, but the view from the other side is worth the effort and the pain. Open your eyes and see. 

Read the full transcript (or watch the video) here.

# # #

Corruption at the FBI: before Mar-a-Lago

 

At American Greatness, Christopher Flannery references

John Eastman’s role as an attorney advising President Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. John is a senior fellow and founder and director of Claremont’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence.  He became famous for challenging the constitutionality of the 2020 election.

Below, however, is information from Mr. Flannery’s article about the police state we now live in; the raid on Mar-a-Lago is merely more evidence of corruption at the FBI and DOJ: 

It was because he thought the unconstitutional violations of election law in several swing states could indeed have affected the outcome of the election, that John [Eastman] put his life on the line to try to stop what he had good reason to believe was an unconstitutional election. 

I do not say lightly, “put his life on the line.” We have all seen over the past several years, how the increasingly Stalinist Democratic (bipartisan) machine comes to destroy anyone who dares to challenge or disagree with it. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is just one vivid recent example among many: first the machine sinks to the depths of evil to assassinate his character, then a literal assassin shows up at his door. 

In John’s case, the Stalinist machine has not only imposed on him hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal fees, and sicced armed FBI agents on him in his neighborhood, it is trying to make it impossible for him to earn a living, and it is threatening to give him the un-American and tyrannical treatment meted out to the January 6 political prisoners (read everything Julie Kelly writes on this). 

In the meantime, the local papers, part of the machine, publish the vicinity of his home and inform their readers how to obtain his address. Machine street thugs follow up, spray-painting his address on the street and on the bridge leading to his home, with “Eastman Traitor,” and even with an arrow pointing toward his house. 

He finds long spikes buried in the end of his dirt driveway, which have damaged tires on family cars and cars of visitors. Demonstrators gather daily, becoming more and more aggressive. A constant stream of hate email and voice messages, some of them criminal, makes it impossible to answer either his landline or cell without going first to voicemail.  

That is the way the Stalinist Democratic (and now, bipartisan) machine operates, and it has become increasingly violent, even frenzied, in the past five years. 

John Eastman is standing up to the tyrannical violence of this machine, because he thinks the Stalinist (bipartisan) Democrats are not just tyrants but usurpers. I agree with him and so think he is an American hero. . . .

Read the full article here. 

RELATED:  Click here for Michelle Malkin's column posted yesterday on yet more corrupt FBI activities. 

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Steyn: More on Our Banana Republic

 

Ben Garrison cartoon via NewsAmmo

The inimitable Mark Steyn published his “Criminalizing Opposition in a Pseudo-Republic” column yesterday about the FBI raid on Mar-A-Lago.  And as always, Mark has some historical perspective on this latest action by a corrupt DOJ & FBI:

For almost a decade and a half now, the American "republic" has been decaying to the defining condition of a one-party state - that is, the total merger of the ruling party and the state. Last night, the dirty stinking rotten corrupt US Department of Justice signed off on a raid on Mar-a-Lago, so we've now moved into hardcore banana-republic territory: the regime's cops are busting into the home of the opposition leader. We're told this is because Trump took some "classified" documents with him when he left Washington. Yeah, that's always a pretext for an armed raid: You could ask Hillary Clinton or Sandy Berger.

. . .

I see Kevin McCarthy is now threatening Merrick Garland with an "investigation" and ordering him to preserve all documents. Ooooooh! Maybe, after the coming Republican landslide, they can appoint an independent counsel; maybe John Durham or Robert Mueller is available. Why would anyone take McCarthy's threat seriously? If you don't grasp that in today's America there is no equality before the law, there is no point even discussing public affairs.

. . ..

If that's the best McCarthy can do, it's hopelessly insufficient to the moment: There ought to be total non-cooperation with the regime by the GOP with the intent of bringing it to a standstill - because this "administration has gone way beyond politics and is corrupting institutions to a degree that will make violence inevitable.

Oh, but don't worry, says McCarthy, there's that Big Red Wave coming in November.

Yeah, right. A throwaway line from The Mark Steyn Show of December 15th 2020:

By the way, when they mention Covid and 2022, that's code for: 'Yeah the US midterms are gonna get stolen too.'

Read Mark’s full column here.  Recommended.

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Our Banana Republic

 

image credit: politicaltilt.com

The blogosphere is full of reports and commentary on the FBI’s raid on President Trump’s residence Mar-A-Lago, but Robert Spencer’s column atFrontPageMag is the one I am linking to today.  Mr. Spencer begins:  

When the FBI raided Donald Trump’s home on Monday, a key aspect of what made the United States of America great and free has been lost, and likely cannot be recovered. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson detested one another for years before their eventual reconciliation, but neither one used the agencies of the U.S. government to hound, persecute or discredit the other. Other bitter political opponents throughout the history of the republic have never before used the government’s own mechanisms of justice to do injustice to their foes. Joe Biden, Merrick Garland and their henchmen have brought America to a new phase of its history, and it is not likely to be one that is marked by respect for the rule of law or defense of the rights of individual citizens. Instead, we are entering an ugly age of authoritarianism, in which the brute force of the state is used to bend the people to the will of the tyrant.

Trump announced on Monday, “These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before. After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.”

The 45th president is not given to understatement, but the FBI raid on his home is much more than just unnecessary and inappropriate. It is criminal.

. . .

This is no longer a republic, except of the banana variety. It may be a republic again someday, but for now, the great American experiment is over. Born July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia, died August 8, 2022, in Mar-A-Lago, at the hands of Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and Christopher Wray.

Read the rest here.  President Trump’s announcement is on most websites, including here.  

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