Behind the Black

They’re coming for you next: In the past week Wells Fargo has unilaterally shut down the bank accounts of two past Republican candidates for Congress, in one case stranding the individual on a trip with no cash.

In both cases the action was taken without warning in a manner that denied the individuals access to a large amount of their own cash. And though Wells Fargo gave no explanation for its action, both individuals strongly suspect it had to do with their political positions.

With no explanation, I might add. How on earth is this acceptable?

American Greatness

Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) on Wednesday called for FBI Director Christopher Wray to “fully disclose” any role the FBI may have played in instigating the breach of the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021.

Historically, it's the FBI informants who are the ones calling for violence.

Conservative Treehouse

New York Times Reports Andrew Weissmann and Robert Mueller Sought, Then Hid, Special Counsel Surveillance of Trump White House Attorney Don McGhan... the real nub of the revelation is that Weissmann and Mueller used the Special Counsel and FBI to conduct surveillance on the White House legal counsel, and his family, while President Donald Trump was in office. Think about that for a moment. Think about it carefully.

Think about it. When going after Trump the FBI abused their authority to violate attorney client privilege repeatedly. They did it with McGhan. They did it with Rudy Giuliani. They did it with Michael Cohen (the only one who actually flipped, but he had nothing on Trump).

Just The News

A New York court on Thursday just suspended the law license of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, according to news reports.

The court cited his work as counsel to former President Trump, according to ABC News.

Funny, isn't it, how they always seem to target Trump's lawyers? It's almost as if they are looking for reasons to penetrate attorney-client privilege and deny Trump legal representation.

Just The News

The FBI on Tuesday announced a "massive worldwide takedown" of criminals around the globe with a sting operation in which the agency marketed and sold smartphones purported to encrypt messages, leading to roughly 500 arrests.

The sting operation, called Operation Trojan Shield, was led the agency's San Diego bureau.

FBI officials said in a press conference that the agency and other law enforcement groups worldwide, in an effort to nab criminals, created a fake company called ANØM to marketed the sleek black smartphones that were encrypted

However, when users sent messages, the phone would attach a master key that allowed law enforcement officials to decrypt and view the messages.

I find this extremely troubling. The FBI here created an explicit expectation of privacy under false pretenses and then spied on their "customers", presumably without warrants. I do not care that their actions appear to have resulted in catching real criminals; this action by the FBI appears entirely inappropriate and unconstitutional.

Sharyl Attkisson

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is asking the U.S. Justice Department to explain the differences between the prosecutions of rioters at violent and destructive riots over the summer and fall of 2020 and the January 6th Capitol rioters. The letter questions whether the law has been applied equally to the people who participated in riots during the summer and fall of 2020 and the people who were present at the Capitol on January 6th. Grassley asks about the numbers of people arrested, charged, released on bail, and fully prosecuted during the summer 2020 Portland, Oregon riots that involved a months' long violent seize of a federal courthouse compared to the same data for the January 6th riot.

The difference is obvious: politics.

More commentary.

Judicial Watch

Additionally, the documents show that Montgomery County Public Schools allocated over $454,000 for an “Anti-racist system audit” by The Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium, a company that claims that their “expertise in using intersectionality as part of its theory of change makes us uniquely positioned to conduct the Anti-Racist Audit and mitigate the root causes of systemic barriers.”

In Thomas Pyle Middle School’s “social justice” class course curriculum, there is a slide titled “What is systemic racism?” in which students are shown a pyramid slide depicting “Differences between overt and covert hateful white supremacy.” According to the pyramid, “Make America Great Again” is an example of “covert white supremacy” that is “socially unacceptable.” The phrase is ranked on a pyramid just below “racial slurs.”

Examples of other unacceptable covert “white supremacy” include thinking “but we’re just one human family,” “colorblindness,” “cultural appropriation,” “celebration of Columbus Day,” “police murdering POC [people of color],” and “bootstrap theory.”

The vast majority of those statements have nothing to do with race, but quite a lot to do with politics. And one of the "class exercises" involves filling out and mailing a form letter demanding more critical race theory classes.

Zerohedge

One officer, identified in the video and confirmed by charging documents as Officer Keith Robishaw, appears to tell Chansely’s group they won’t stop them from entering the building. “We’re not against . . . you need to show us . . . no attacking, no assault, remain calm,” Robishaw warns. Chansley and another protestor instruct the crowd to act peacefully. “This has to be peaceful,” Chansley yelled. “We have the right to peacefully assemble.”

The video directly contradicts what government prosecutors allege in a complaint filed January 8 against Chansley: “Robishaw and other officers calmed the protestors somewhat and directed them to leave the area from the same way they had entered. Chansley approached Officer Robishaw and screamed, among other things, that this was their house, and that they were there to take the Capitol, and to get Congressional leaders.”

Chansley later is seen entering the Senate chambers with a police officer behind him; he led several protesters in prayer and sat in Vice President Mike Pence’s chair. (The man in the yellow sweatshirt is William Watson, a drug dealer out on bond. He was arrested in January.)

The police let them in.

Any charges related to trespassing should be immediately dropped.

Any prisoners still being held should be immediately released.

The only person murdered during the protest was Ashli Babbit. She was shot by a police officer without warning while unarmed.

Judicial Watch

Reminiscent of the Obama Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) witch hunt of conservative groups, a U.S. Senator who sits on the committee that oversees the tax agency is pushing it to revoke a student charity’s nonprofit status. The veteran lawmaker, Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, says the conservative student organization, Turning Point USA, should lose its nonprofit rating because it held large events that could help spread COVID-19. In a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles P. Rettig the senator describes the gatherings as “superspreader” events. He specifically mentions a Palm Beach, Florida winter gala at the Mar-a-Lago Club famously owned by former President Donald Trump.

It's a new excuse for the same old trick -- suppress your political opponents by any means necessary. The IRS has always been willing to accommodate Democrats. The FBI have a long tradition of similar behavior that they prefer not to talk about.

PJMedia

“The mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6 to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities were behaving like domestic enemies of our country. But let’s be clear, the John Brennans, Adam Schiffs, and oligarchs in Big Tech who are trying to undermine our constitutionally-protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB-style surveillance, are also domestic enemies, and much more powerful, and therefore dangerous, than the mob that stormed the Capitol,” Gabbard declared.

Tulsi does seem to have occasional moments of sanity.

PJMedia

On Tuesday, Facebook suspended Robert A.J. Gagnon, a prominent Christian scholar on the topic of Bible sexuality, for 7 days. His crime? Speaking out against transgender ideology and President Joe Biden’s new transgender military policy. Facebook claimed that Gagnon’s criticism of this government-imposed ideology violated the platform’s “Community Standards on violence and incitement.”

Ironically, Gagnon’s post drew attention to Facebook’s suspension of his friend, Laurie Higgins, who got a 7-day ban for criticizing Biden’s policy.

“There was absolutely no incitement to violence on our part. We abhor violence done to any person,” Gagnon told PJ Media on Tuesday. “This is just a thinly veiled and pathetic excuse for censorship of any critical views toward trans-tyranny over our consciences, religion, and reason.”

Left unsaid: The violence will come from the Democrats.

CBS

For the first time, police body camera video reveals what an innocent woman said happened to her nearly two years ago: police officers wrongly entered her home with guns drawn and handcuffed her naked as she watched in horror.

Last year, Anjanette Young filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the video to show the public what happened to her that day. CBS 2 also filed a request for the video. But the Chicago Police Department denied the requests.

Young recently obtained the footage after a court forced CPD to turn it over as part of her lawsuit against police.

“I feel like they didn’t want us to have this video because they knew how bad it was,” Young said. “They knew they had done something wrong. They knew that the way they treated me was not right.”

It is absolutely vital that police treat everyone they interact with as human beings with inherent dignity and inalienable rights. Yes, some people are scum. But you don't know which ones.

Biden stated recently he would have voted against the landmark DC v Heller case, which firmly established the 2nd Amendment as an individual rather than a collective right to arms. Presumably he would appoint Supreme Court judges who would vote similarly, which is probably why Biden refuses to release list of Supreme Court judges.

This is hardly a surprise. Biden has signaled his opposition to gun rights by such things as hiring "Beto" as his gun control czar. But it's nice to have him on the record as opposing the Bill of Rights.

Free Beacon

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), an Indiana-based election integrity group, filed a complaint Dec. 16 against several individuals with Maryland's state board of elections for alleged violations of the National Voter Registration Act's public disclosure provision. The group sought a copy of the statewide voter registration list on Nov. 13 and offered to pay the required fees for the records. Two days later, an individual with the board of elections denied PILF's request, stating that only Maryland residents can obtain voter data.

If Democrats weren't using voter fraud, why do they work so hard to protect it?

There are so many wrong lessons here I hardly know where to start. There's a kid who checks that his mom is peacefully reading a book, then goes upstairs to (presumably) her room and opens her chest of drawers to find a gun (very much not safely stored). Without checking whether it is loaded or if a round is in the chamber or the condition of the safety if the gun has one, he puts it into his backpack without a holster or other protective covering and takes it to school with him before pulling it out of his backpack and putting it on the teacher's desk and asking the teacher to get rid of it because "he doesn't want to have a gun in the house."

Leaving aside the many insanely unsafe gun handling practices in this propaganda video, he's stealing a gun from his parents and taking it to school in order to turn it in to someone who (just based on profession!) likely has no idea how to handle it safely or dispose of it legally. Not to mention the school itself is a gun free zone. So. How many laws did this kid violate?

1) Felony theft of a firearm. Most gun felonies are 10 year federal crimes.
2) Gun-Free School Zone laws. $10,000 fine and 5 years.
3) Carrying concealed without a license, depending on state laws.
4) Illegal transfer of a firearm without a background check, depending on state laws.
5) The teacher may be liable for receiving stolen property.
6) Arguably reckless endangerment of the students and teacher, brandishing, etc.
7) Aside from the above, the student will undoubtedly be immediately expelled.

In addition his mom (and/or dad, who is never shown) will be vulnerable to criminal attack and may get in trouble for their unsafe storage. If either of the parents are police officers, military, or security, the gun may not even be theirs -- meaning they are in trouble with their jobs, and may be legally charged or fired.

This video is stupid propaganda encouraging kids to do things that will get them in serious legal trouble even if they do not accidentally hurt themselves or those around them.

Hat to to the Captain for the video.

Sara Carter

Collyer emphasized that the ‘frequency with which representations made by F.B.I. personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other F.B.I. applications is reliable.”

How many other questionable FISAs are there?

Sundance infers that there are more.

Note that, however strongly worded the letter may be, it is effectively demanding new policies and procedures rather than issuing contempt of court orders. Thus, it is unlikely to deter further abuses as none of the people involved have suffered real consequences... at least so far. Durham is still in play.

Nunes is actually calling for the court to be dismantled.

If you remember, they did this in Virginia and Florida recently too. Not because of any concern for civil rights, though. They did it because they want more voters they think will be on their side, by any means necessary. It was practically the first thing that the new Democrat governor did (only three days into office).

He's doing it by executive order, which I find a bit questionable, but I don't know if he has that authority under Kentucky law. Clearly he thinks he does.

As a policy matter this is a complex topic. As a political matter, the Democrats are clearly implementing this policy for electoral purposes, the same way they encourage illegal immigration and resist voter id laws. Any state they take temporary control of, they immediately seek to strengthen their hold on.

Washington Times

Andrew Pollack, the father of a student killed in the Parkland school mass shooting, tore into Sen. Dianne Feinstein in a series of tweets Wednesday, accusing the Democrat of pushing a “radical” anti-gun agenda during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

“Senator Feinstein, Please stop weaponizing the death of my daughter to push your radical agenda. Sincerely, Andrew Pollack #FixIt,” tweetedMr. Pollack, whose 18-year-old daughter, Meadow, was killed in the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

“A percentage of every dollar raised by a whacky politician using ‘Parkland’ as a fundraising tool, should go to the families of the victims,” he wrote in another tweet. “Stop using our heartbreak to raise money and push a dangerous agenda! It’s disgusting & pathetic. No wonder the country hates you people.”

Not everyone who lost someone to the Parkland murder is for gun control. And the people who are using that crime to push for policy changes they favored, and that have nothing to do with the murders, are vile. The ones using it to fundraise are worse.

Free Beacon

Levi Strauss announced on Tuesday it would be creating a new gun-control group with billionaire Michael Bloomberg and donating millions of dollars to a collection of established gun-control groups.

What is it with corporations spending millions on idiotic political virtue signaling? Nike made the face of their brand the anti-patriot kneeler, and now a jeans manufacturer decides that going against the Constitution is a good public image and worth millions of dollars to convey to the public.

Free Beacon

Chip Bergh, Levi Strauss president and CEO, justified the decision to become more deeply involved with the gun-control groups by saying it may be unpopular but he felt compelled to do it.

So, the CEO even admits it is unpopular, but he felt compelled to do it anyway.

Free Beacon

Bergh then compared those who oppose the company's gun-control stance to segregationists and those opposed to other moves the company has made.

"As a company, we have never been afraid to take an unpopular stand to support a greater good," Bergh said. "We integrated our factories in the American South years before the Civil Rights Act was passed. We offered benefits to same-sex partners in the 1990s, long before most companies did. We pulled our financial support for the Boy Scouts of America when it banned gay troop leaders. While each one of these stands may have been controversial at the time, history proved the company right in the long run. And I'm convinced that while some will disagree with our stand to end gun violence, history will prove this position right too."

He could have saved himself a little unpopularity if he had stuck to the platitudes about wanting to stop the violence, but he had to go and compare American gun owners to racists. That makes it clear where he stands, and that this is far more about virtue signaling and looking down on ordinary Americans than it is about safety.

UPDATE: Country singer Will Hoge headlines event for Karl Dean after calling NRA members whores and pimps. I can't imagine that being tone-deaf will help either career.

But he's only the chief. He's appointed by politicians. Has anyone asked the Indians?

His take is about the same as my take: some guy reloading ammunition as a hobby and occasionally selling the results of his work. Consensus seems to be so far that the armor piercing element of the charge is somewhere between complete bullshit and a technicality, and we're not going to know which without knowing the details of the ammunition that was found. I don't have any idea what the law on manufacturing and selling tracer rounds is.

In a Democrat administration we'd get some BS gun control laws passed over this. I bet the ATF is salivating over the possibility of eliminating or regulating reloading if the House turns over to Democrat hands, figuring they can pick up enough Republican squishes in the Senate and pressure Trump to sign it.

Folks, we're going to have to keep an eye on this. It's not going away.

Patterico is not quite a NeverTrump guy. He's a California lawyer (prosecutor) who is usually intellectually honest and doesn't much like Trump. I'm cool with that, because usually he has good reasons for not liking Trump. This time, I'm not quite as onboard with his reasoning. He's talking about the Nunes memo.

Patterico

Nunes was asked about reports over the weekend that the FBI application did refer to a political entity connected to the dossier. It is unclear precisely what language the application might have used.

Nunes conceded that a “footnote” to that effect was included in the application, while faulting the bureau for failing to provide more specifics.

While Patterico is right that this admission does mildly weaken the point of the memo, it is far from fatal. Disclosing to the FISA court that the Trump dossier was put together by an unspecified political entity is a far cry from disclosing that the dossier was put together by the candidate running against him, her political party, and the political party of the sitting President who runs the surveillance apparatus that the FISA applications seeks to use. It also makes a difference when the surveillance request is not against Trump (remember, reports are they tried for a warrant that mentioned Trump and got rejected) but against a temporary unpaid volunteer member of the Trump campaign, Carter Page. Does surveillance against Carter Page raise red flags of political interference? Not really... unless you realize that authorizing Title I surveillance of Page will retroactively authorize surveillance of everyone on the Trump campaign he has been in contact with. Did the FISA application disclose that Page was a Trump campaign member and that authorizing surveillance of Page would expose the entire Trump campaign to the same surveillance authority? No? Oh, I see.

Oh, and the FISA application described Page as, essentially, a Russian spy. In actuality, it appears Page was an undercover FBI agent or informant who was cooperating with the FBI in exposing Russian spies. Was that disclosed? No?

Why not?

Well, they might not get the warrant.

Did they disclose in the renewals that Steele had been terminated as a source? That he had very strong political motivations and was shopping his "research" to media outlets, including the outlets they had previously cited as corroboration? No? Why not?

But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that it was all disclosed properly and the Nunes memo was wrong to leave that out.

Why the FUCK did the FBI and DOJ request the FISA warrant?
Why the FUCK did the FISA court authorize the warrant?

Saying "Gosh, it was all disclosed properly.." does not make the scandal go away. The FBI is still corrupt. The only thing that does is make the FISA court either corrupt, complicit, or incompetent. And before you say "Just one judge!", the FBI reportedly went to four separate judges, once each, to get the warrant and renew it. So four separate judges all saw this warrant request and approved it. If everything was disclosed, they are all implicated.

But I do agree with Patterico on one thing.

Release the Documentation. Let's see the FISA applications. Bring it all into the sunlight.

The Hill

The Washington Post reported Friday that Justice Department officials made "ample disclosure of relevant, material facts" to the court that a political entity provided financial backing for the research, though they did not name Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign or the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

I rate this claim bullshit. Why bullshit? Because "ample disclosure of relevant, material facts" is just a way of claiming the court was informed without acting saying that the court was told that Hillary or the DNC funded the dossier. Because, you know, they can't claim that, because it isn't true.

There's a vast difference between saying, as the memo suggests, that the research into the Trump dossier was funded by "a US person" and saying that it was funded by "Hillary Clinton and her party organization who is running against Trump in the presidential election". A "US person" could be anyone, and while there are a lot of people who might have motive to research Trump in the hopes of finding something negative about him to damage his changes of winning the election, most of them have no particular motive to make things up, and even if they had such a motive, they lacked the media access to make a lie stick. Only someone with the resources of a national political party could reasonably expect to make something up and sell it to the media for long enough to swing an election.

So, yes, it makes a big difference whether you tell them the identity of the US Person funding the dossier. And also, you know, whether you tell the court that the source of the dossier is personally biased against Trump, is in fact self-admittedly "desperate" to ensure Trump does not win the election, and has been terminated from his position with the FBI over his partisan bias and contacts with the news media trying to publicize this.

So no, saying it was funded by a "US person" is not enough, not even if you also mention a political entity.

A credible case can be made for FBI agents Lisa Page and Peter Strzok talking to various reporters about the Trump-Russia investigation. This is mentioned in the FISA memo, sourced from various text messages from them that have been publically leaked, and some specific stories and reporters can be identified by closely examining the timing.

The FISA memo says that Steele was terminated as a paid FBI informant for talking to the media.

Why weren't Page and Strzok terminated for talking to the media? Are the rules different for FBI agents than paid informants? Weaker? Why?

Sure, at first, you can argue no one knew what they were doing (clearly in their text messages to each other they were trying to hide it from their colleagues). But then the messages came out. They were transferred, demoted... but not fired. Why not?

I ran across three facts related to the FISA memo today that, together, paint an interesting picture.

1. Trey Gowdy announced he would not run for re-election the day before the memo was released. He said he planned to return to the justice system rather than remain in electoral office. The timing is very interesting indeed.


2. Nunes did not write the memo; he cited Trey Gowdy and two staffers as those others most involved


3. Nunes did not read the FISA applications referenced in the memo he has been most visibly responsible for. There was an agreement with the FBI to allow only one person to read the applications, and he sent Trey Gowdy.

I see three possible takes. Either, both, or neither could be true.

First, Trey Gowdy expects the memo to force out more people at DOJ and FBI, and would like to be nominated for one of their jobs. Probably not Sessions; but it would be reasonable to expect Rod Rosenstein or possibly Christopher Wray to leave the FBI as a result of the memo dropping.

Second, it's possible Trey is removing himself as a target for retaliation. If Trey is the primary author of the memo, but Nunes is taking the public relations fire for it, maybe Trey knows he is vulnerable (to blackmail or worse) and needs to stay in the background.

Third... Trey could be expecting an appointment as a special prosecutor in this case. That's where I'm going to lay my chips for now. It's too dangerous for Trump to fire people (he would risk being accused of obstruction of justice), but he or AG Sessions can appoint their own special prosecutor. Given that Trey is currently the only person who has seen the actual FISA warrant applications, he would be the obvious choice for special prosecutor here. He's partisan, sure, but no worse than Mueller and the FBI he would be investigating, and he's not conflicted.

UPDATE: Don't confuse this for a recommendation. I don't know these players enough to be making recommendations.

The Hill

Page: Have a meeting with turgal about getting iphone in a day or so

Strzok: Oh hot damn. . . We get around our security/monitoring issues?

Page: No, he’s proposing that we just stop following them. Apparently the requirement to capture texts came from [Office of Management and Budget], but we’re the only org (I’m told) who is following that rule. His point is, if no one else is doing it why should we. . . I’m told – thought I have seen – that there is an IG report that says everyone is failing. But one has changed anything, so why not just join in the failure.

Read the whole thing. It's by Sharyl Attkisson, who has a long history of doing credible investigative journalism that strikes fear into government agencies.

CNN

The Justice Department's inspector general has informed lawmakers that a trove of missing text messages exchanged between FBI employees has been recovered. In a letter to lawmakers on Thursday, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote that this week his office was able to recover texts sent between Strzok and Page over a five-month span from December 2016 to May 2017.

Well, they sure didn't stay missing long, did they? As this incident should remind us, when the government wants to recover text messages, they can generally recover the text messages. When they don't want to recover the text messages, as with the case of the Lois Lerner IRS scandal, it's a cover up.

And speaking of coverups, I feel that I should point out that the IG had to use "forensic tools" to recover those missing text messages. That means someone tried to delete them, probably Page and Strzok themselves, which speaks to consciousness of guilt.

I wrote about the missing text messages and reported on Hannity's tip last night that they were being recovered. And I would like to offer a hat tip to an anonymous reader for pointing out the story, since I don't usually follow CNN...

UPDATE: I meant to point out that the notification does not say "all" messages were recovered, which potentially leaves some wiggle room. We don't know how many messages were actually recovered, out of how many total.

By some strange coincidence, the missing months of text message records are some of the most important months for understanding the Trump-Russia investigation.

So remember: those 10,000+ text messages between Strzok and Page that included the "insurance policy" against a Trump win and god only knows what else? Those are the ones they thought we should be allowed to have. The missing messages -- between Dec 14th 2016 and May 17th 2017 -- must be much, much worse.

Funny how government agencies have their records go missing whenever this sort of investigation pops up. I remember when Lois Lerner destroyed her hard drives, laptops, and cell phones. And of course there's Hillary, who wiped her server with a cloth soaked in Bleachbit.

UPDATE: Sessions announces DOJ will probe missing messages. Isn't this exactly the sort of thing that needs a special counsel to investigate independently? Remember, DOJ is just as corrupt as the FBI...