Tag: FBI

Calls Grow Among Prominent Figures to Create a New ‘Church Committee’ to Probe FBI Abuses

Just the News

A half century ago, Americans held grave concerns that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies had abused civil rights, improperly targeted enemies and illegally gathered evidence, so Congress set out on a great cleansing mission. It formed a special committee chaired by Idaho Sen. Frank Church that laid bare the wrongdoing, overhauled the bureau and created new guardrails to protect civil liberties.

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Ohio Representative: FBI Won’t Answer Allegation Vet-Led Preparedness Group Listed as Domestic Violent Extremists

Just the News

GOP Rep. Jim Jordan says the FBI is not responding to his concerns about a whistleblower report claiming the agency has classified an emergency-preparedness group started by a former Green Beret as a “domestic violent extremism” organization.

Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, addressed his concerns in a letter sent Wednesday to FBI Director Christopher Wray — following one he sent in July about whistleblower allegations that the agency is “padding its domestic violent extremist data.”

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Commentary: The Ruling Class’ Gaslighting on the Durham Investigation

Virginia Star Staff

In anticipation of Justice Department special counsel John Durham’s final report on the partisan origins of the Obama administration’s investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion, the ruling class is scoffing at his findings to date. What a yawner, they say. What a waste of time and money. Never mind that his investigation has already established that the Russian disinformation in the 2016 election came exclusively from the Hillary Clinton campaign.

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Mike Lindell Says FBI Surrounded Him and Seized His Cellphone

Virginia Star Staff

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said the FBI surrounded him and seized his cell phone Tuesday while he was in a Hardee’s drive-through in Mankato, Minnesota.

“The FBI came after me and took my phone, they surrounded me at a Hardee’s and took my phone, Lindell said in a short video posted on social media Tuesday night. The pillow salesman explained that he doesn’t have a computer because he does all of his business on his phone.

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Commentary: The Regime’s ‘Operation MAGA Fascist’ Gains Ground

Virginia Star Staff

After nearly two years of lies related to the events of January 6, 2021, the regime finally has admitted the truth: The widening legal dragnet to scoop up Donald Trump, his associates, and his voters has nothing to do with the four-hour disturbance on Capitol Hill that afternoon. It is, rather, a thus-far successful crusade to criminalize wrongthink about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

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New Durham Bombshell: FBI Paid Russian Accused of Lying as a Confidential Informant Against Trump

Just the News

In a bombshell revelation, Special Prosecutor John Durham revealed Tuesday in court filings that the FBI paid a Russian businessman as a confidential human source in the investigation of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign even though it had prior concerns that businessman was tied to Moscow’s intelligence services.

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Little Recourse, Little Consequence: Court Rulings Signal Impunity for Spygate Perpetrators

Virginia Star Staff

Over a one-week period, both Donald Trump and former Trump 2016 campaign aide Carter Page saw federal judges dismiss their separate lawsuits alleging improper conduct by the FBI, Hillary Clinton, and others during the Russia collusion investigation.

The dual dismissals on back-to-back Thursdays — one this week, one last week — shine a particularly harsh light on what critics say has become a pattern in the aftermath of the Trump-Russia probe: a lack of accountability.

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Commentary: Time to Scrap the Espionage Act of 1917

RealClearWire

According to the FBI’s court-approved search warrant for Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, probable cause existed to believe Donald Trump may have violated three laws by seemingly stealing 300 classified government documents from the White House, some extremely sensitive, and squirreling them away in his Florida mansion. For the public, the most arresting (no pun intended) of these allegedly violated statutes is the Espionage Act of 1917. 

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Steve Bannon Tells Charlie Kirk That 35 Trump Allies Were Raided Thursday by FBI

Virginia Star Staff

Former Chief Strategist for President Trump Steve Bannon spoke with Charlie Kirk on his show Thursday and told the host that 35 high level supporters of Donald Trump were raided this week.

“35 members of MAGA, the Republican party, people close to Donald Trump, were rolled in on yesterday by the FBI with these intimidation tactics,” Bannon told Kirk. 

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The FBI Secretly Pressured Americans to Waive Away Their Gun Rights

Virginia Star Staff

The FBI secretly pressured Americans into signing forms that relinquish their rights to own, purchase or even use firearms, according to a trove of internal documents and communications obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The forms were presented by the FBI to people at their homes and in other undisclosed locations, according to bureau documents unearthed through the Freedom of Information Act by the firearm rights group Gun Owners of America (GOA) and shared with the DCNF. At least 15 people between 2016 and 2019 signed the secret forms, which ask signatories to declare themselves as either a “danger” to themselves or others or lacking “mental capacity adequately to contract or manage” their lives.

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Judge’s Order Exposes FBI Sloppiness, Excessive Evidence Collection at Trump Home

Just the News

A criminal probe “requested by the incumbent president.” The seizure of clothing, medical records, tax records and 500 pages of attorney-client privileged documents not covered by a warrant. The sharing of privileged documents with investigators.

More than simply appointing a special master to referee an evidence dispute, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon exposed this week a Justice Department search of former President Donald Trump’s home that was initiated by his chief Democrat rival, that was carried out so sloppily that it violated the “least intrusive” mandate in the FBI agent’s manual, and that failed to keep legally-protected materials from falling into the hands of investigators.

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Former FBI Boss Warns Prosecutor Might See Trump Search Warrant Tossed Out Entirely

Just the News

The FBI warrant to search former President Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago may be thrown out entirely in court, according to former FBI boss Kevin Brock.

News broke over Labor Day weekend that Trump had been granted a legal win when a federal judge ordered a special master to review the documents seized from Trump’s home.

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Federal Judge Hands Trump Win, Orders Special Master to Review Evidence Seized from Mar-a-Lago

Admin

A federal judge on Monday handed Donald Trump a significant win, ordering a special master to review evidence seized by the FBI during its raid of the former president’s Florida estate last month.

U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon said the independent master can “review the seized property, manage assertions of privilege and make recommendations thereon, and evaluate claims for return of property.”

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Ron Johnson: We Need Whistleblowers in Order to Stop Federal Bureaucrats from Meddling in Another Election

Admin

Federal bureaucrats meddled in the last two presidential elections by promoting false Russia collusion claims and suppressing the Hunter Biden story, and more whistleblowers are needed to keep that from happening again in 2024, says Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.).

“I think that started in 2016 when they tried to meddle in the election, and they did meddle in that election,” Johnson told Just the News in a wide-ranging interview. “They tried to get Hillary Clinton elected, and they failed. But in 2020, they succeeded by downplaying the Hunter Biden laptop by censoring, by suppressing that.”

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‘Massive Abuse of Power’: Intel Committee Rep Mike Gallagher Vows to Use ‘Power of the Purse’ to Get Transparency from Biden, DOJ

Admin

Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, denounced a “massive abuse of power” and vowed to use congressional funding powers to get transparency from the Biden administration about the Aug. 8 raid on Mar-a-Lago during a Sunday appearance on Fox Business.

“For something of this magnitude, something unprecedented, you would expect the FBI and the DOJ to go to great lengths to insure they are conducting themselves with the highest level of professionalism, but they never notified our committee — which you would expect them to do if, indeed, there was a danger posed by the classified material that was in Donald Trump’s possession,” Gallagher told former Republican Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin, who guest-hosted the show, adding that many committee members found out details of the raid from news reports based on leaks from the Justice Department.

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Commentary: Saving America Now Requires a Ruthless Offense

Admin

The Book of Ecclesiastes tells us there is nothing new under the sun. But there is undeniably something new happening in American history. New and terrible. No hyperbole; we are living through the greatest threat to America since the Civil War.

This new threat, which has been germinating its poisonous fruit for decades in the darkened earth of sheltered universities, federal agencies, and media newsrooms has erupted into such full and ugly view today that it cannot be met and defeated, or even retarded, with any of our normal methods.

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Trump: FBI Did ‘Deep and Ugly Search’ of Teenage Son Barron’s Room

Admin

Former President Donald Trump said FBI agents searched the room of his 16-year-old son, Barron Trump, during their raid of Mar-a-Lago early last month.

Speaking at a rally Saturday in Pennsylvania, Trump said the United States is “like a third-world nation” after officials “trampled upon” his civil liberties throughout the raid.

“They even rifled through the first lady’s closet drawers and everything else, and even did a deep and ugly search of the room of my 16-year-old son, leaving everything they touched in far different condition than it was when they started,” Trump said.

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FBI Agents Allegedly Lose Confidence in Director Christopher Wray

Virginia Star Staff

A new report alleges that multiple agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have “lost confidence” in the ability of Director Christopher Wray to continue carrying out his duties without any bias or political motivation, and want to see him step down.

As reported by Breitbart, whistleblower attorney and former FBI agent Kurt Siuzdak has said that multiple agents have come to him privately, telling him that they “feel like the director has lost control of the bureau.”

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FBI Boss Who Quit After Allegedly Blocking Hunter Biden Probe Also Reportedly Pushed to Pad Domestic Terror Data

Virginia Star Staff

A top FBI agent who resigned after accusations he worked to undermine the probe into Hunter Biden’s laptop and business dealings also allegedly pressured bureau employees to pad domestic terror data, drawing accusations of politicizing the agency from Republicans.

Timothy Thibault, the FBI’s former assistant special agent in charge who resigned Friday after Republican allegations of his political bias in connection to the Biden laptop investigation, was allegedly one of the agents trying to get FBI employees to bolster Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE) case counts to satisfy “performance metrics,” whistleblowers alleged in July, Breitbart News reported. Thibault and other bureau agents were allegedly pushing FBI employees to reclassify cases to involve DVE even if they do not meet the criteria, the outlet reported.

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Last Surviving Monkees Member Sues FBI for Records on the Band

Virginia Star Staff

The last surviving member of 1960s music group The Monkees is suing the FBI to obtain records the bureau maintained on the band over their political messaging.

Singer Micky Dolenz previously submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to “obtain any records” from the FBI on the band, according to The Hill. Dolenz’s attorney, Mark Zaid, said the bureau failed to respond to the request within the required 20-day period. The musician ultimately resorted to a lawsuit in which he claimed to have “exhausted all necessary required administrative remedies” to acquire the records.

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Trump Calls DOJ’s Heavily Redacted Affidavit for Mar-a-Lago Raid a ‘Total Public Relations Subterfuge’

Admin

The Justice Department ordered the FBI raid of former President Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida out of concern that “highly classified national security documents” stored in the estate’s basement could be disclosed and compromise “clandestine human sources” used in intelligence gathering, according to a heavily redacted version of the affidavit used to obtain the warrant.

Judge Bruce E. Reinhart on Thursday ordered that a redacted version of the affidavit be unsealed by noon today. The order came hours after the Justice Department submitted a proposal for extensive redactions to the document.

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FBI’s Former Intel Chief on Raid of Trump Home: ‘I Think They Are Going to Regret This’

Virginia Star Staff

The FBI’s former intelligence chief declared Friday his former agency should not have criminalized the records dispute between Donald Trump and the National Archives and that the bureau appears to have failed to meet the probable cause standard for the invasive search of the former president’s Florida estate.

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Zuckerberg Claims FBI Pressured Him to Censor Hunter Biden Laptop Story

Virginia Star Staff

In a stunning admission, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed that his social media platform only censored the New York Post’s bombshell story about Hunter Biden’s laptop after the FBI came to them and advised them to do so.

As reported by the Daily Caller, Zuckerberg made the claim during an interview with Joe Rogan on his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” on Thursday. Rogan had asked Zuckerberg about how his platform would handle censorship going forward, after multiple Big Tech platforms were widely criticized for deliberately suppressing the story, which was later confirmed to be true.

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Commentary: Authoritarian Democrats Love the Deep State

Virginia Star Staff

The unprecedented raid at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month has energized the Democratic Party’s embrace of authoritarianism. The real outrage, they say, is not that the raid happened but that people are disturbed by it. The messaging from top Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and FBI Director Christopher Wray is of a piece: Republican lawmakers risk inciting violence by questioning the raid and the bureaucrats who orchestrated it. Won’t someone please think of the unaccountable shadow government? 

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‘Unprecedented’: Judge Ruling Moves Trump Raid Affidavit One Step Closer to Release

The Center Square

Judge Bruce Reinhart on Monday released an order rejecting the Department of Justice’s argument that the affidavit used to justify a raid of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence should remain entirely sealed, moving the document one step closer to potentially being released.

The federal government now has until Thursday to propose redactions and make any other arguments as to why the document should not be made public.

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FBI Raid of Mar-a-Lago Was ‘Improper’: Dershowitz

Admin

Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz said that the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Florida estate was incorrectly conducted.

Earlier in August, FBI agents with the Washington Field Office raided the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home seeking classified documents he may have removed from the White House. Reports subsequently emerged that Trump had already been served with a subpoena seeking classified records related to the investigation and had cooperated extensively with federal authorities.

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Commentary: What We Know about the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Raid (So Far)

Admin

“There’s so much we don’t know!” says any liberal losing an argument about the dramatic FBI raid last week on Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Palm Beach residence and private club.

There are, indeed, some things that we do not know, but what we do know is already quite revealing. We know that the raid – which involved 30 FBI agents and three Justice Department lawyers – lasted over nine hours and was by day’s end reclassified as a “search” by all government agencies and the entire legacy media. We know that this supposed “search” was personally ordered not by FBI Director Christopher Wray, but by Attorney General Merrick Garland, a highly partisan Biden Administration appointee who has implied that parents objecting to critical race theory in public schools are domestic terrorists, and who refused to provide home security protection to Supreme Court justices in the majority of the recent ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade. 

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Commentary: People Warning of a Pending Civil War Are the Most Likely to Incite One

Virginia Star Staff

As Joe Biden’s polls stagnate and the midterms approach, we are now serially treated to yet another progressive melodrama about the dangers of a supposed impending radical right-wing violent takeover. 

This time the alleged threat is a Neanderthal desire for a “civil war.”  

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Commentary: FBI Unit Leading Mar-a-Lago Probe Earlier Ran Discredited Trump-Russia Investigation

RealClearWire

The FBI division overseeing the investigation of former President Trump’s handling of classified material at his Mar-a-Lago residence is also a focus of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation of the bureau’s alleged abuses of power and political bias during its years-long Russiagate probe of Trump.

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Commentary: Peter Strzok Remains Exhibit A of the FBI’s Politicization

Virginia Star Staff

Before the Trump era, members of official Washington who held ostensibly nonpartisan positions of public trust made some effort to conceal their biases. Indeed, many of these figures would hold themselves out as uniquely apolitical and dispassionate. But sheer hatred of Donald Trump has made them throw off that mask. Turn on MSNBC or CNN at almost any hour of the day and you will hear their liberal ranting.

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Old Case Over Audio Tapes in Bill Clinton’s Sock Drawer Could Impact Mar-a-Lago Search Dispute

Virginia Star Staff

When it comes to the National Archives, history has a funny way of repeating itself. And legal experts say a decade-old case over audio tapes that Bill Clinton once kept in his sock drawer may have significant impact over the FBI search of Melania Trump’s closet and Donald Trump’s personal office.

The case in question is titled Judicial Watch v. National Archives and Records Administration and it involved an effort by the conservative watchdog to compel the Archives to forcibly seize hours of audio recordings that Clinton made during his presidency with historian Taylor Branch.

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Trump Calls for Release of Full Affidavit Used for FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Raid

Virginia Star Staff

Former President Trump is calling for the full release of the affidavit submitted with the warrant allowing the FBI to raid his Mar-a-Lago estate – after the Justice Department asked the document to remain sealed.

“There is no way to justify the unannounced RAID of Mar-a-Lago, the home of the 45th President of the United States … by a very large number of gun toting FBI Agents, and the Department of ‘Justice’ but, in the interest of TRANSPARENCY, I call for the immediate release of the completely Unredacted Affidavit pertaining to this horrible and shocking BREAK-IN,” Trump wrote late Monday evening on his platform Truth Social.

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GOP Rep. Jordan: 14 FBI Whistleblowers Have Come Forward Since Trump Raid

Admin

Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan on Sunday told Fox News that 14 whistleblowers from within the FBI have come forward with concerns about the Department of Justice’s alleged political bias following the FBI’s raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last week.

“Fourteen FBI agents have come to our office as whistleblowers, and they are good people. There are lots of good people in the FBI. It’s the top that is the problem,” the Ohio Republican told the outlet. “Some of these good agents are coming to us, telling us … what’s going on… the political nature now of the Justice Department,” he added.

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Commentary: The FBI Is Now the ‘Federal Bureau of Intimidation’

RealClearWire

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.

And nothing better represents the divide that now exists between Democrats and Republicans than the fact that some people still have faith in the FBI.

Aren’t they paying attention? Heck, that’s like a citizen of the old Soviet Union saying they had faith in the KGB – yeah, to crush dissent and lock up opponents of the regime in a Siberian gulag.

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Trump’s Lead Widens over DeSantis in 2024 Primary After FBI Raid: Poll

Admin

Former President Trump’s lead has grown by 12 points over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a hypothetical 2024 Republican presidential primary, according to a survey conducted after the FBI raided the Trump’s Florida residence.

If the primary were held today, 58% of registered voters, according to the Morning Consult/Politico survey published Friday.

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MSNBC Contributor, Ex-Spy Chief Hint Trump Deserves Execution over Classified Records Dispute

Admin

Amid published reports that former President Trump is improperly holding classified papers, including nuclear documents, at his Florida compound, MSNBC contributor Michael Beschloss and former CIA Director Michael Hayden are intimating via social media that Trump should be executed.

The Washington Post has reported that the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound on Monday in order to retrieve “nuclear documents” they believed were improperly stored there.

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Trump Describes Process of How He Declassified Documents Found at Mar-a-Lago

Virginia Star Staff

Donald Trump’s office told Just the News on Friday that the classified materials the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate were declassified under a “standing order” while he was president that allowed him to take sensitive materials to the White House residence at night to keep working.

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Commentary: Washington’s Incurable Case of Trump Derangement Syndrome

Virginia Star Staff

Like Shakespeare’s King Lear, Donald Trump is a “man more sinned against than sinning.” Trump’s enemies invariably exceed him in excesses. They accuse him of dictatorial behavior even as they seek to turn America into a left-wing authoritarian regime. The wags who dubbed their feverish hatred of him “Trump Derangement Syndrome” were right. The condition is altogether real, spurring everything from the bogus Russia investigation to the equally outlandish FBI raid on his home.

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Trump Says His Mar a Lago Compound Has Been Raided by FBI: ‘Under Siege’

Admin

Former President Donald Trump on Monday evening issued a statement saying that FBI agents had raided his Florida estate in Mar a Lago, describing his home as being “under siege.”

“The 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,” Trump said in a statement. “Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.”

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