FBI 3

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SEE LAWFARE TRUMP 2

SEE DOJ 3 BONDI KASH BONGINO

SEE FASCISM 6 TRUMP MUSK BONDI KASH

see big lie FULTON GEORGIA RAID 1 26 TULSI G ED MARTIN KRAKEN SIDNEY POWELL

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PARKROSE FBI ASK SOC MEDIA TO INTIMIDATE 5 26

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an 10 26

Lindsey Graham was saved from a bribery investigation by Trump's FBI

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AN 10 26

On Wednesday, it was revealed that under the leadership of President Donald Trump, the FBI has embraced a novel solution to making it appear as if its violent crime arrests are up: “juice the stats.” This is according to a new report by MS NOW, which found that the crime numbers touted by FBI Director Kash Patel are padded with arrests made by state and local law enforcement rather than the bureau.

“With fewer agents and a strained budget, the FBI under its director, Kash Patel, has brought thousands fewer criminal cases than previous administrations,” reports MS NOW, citing a review of Justice Department data. “The findings rebut Patel’s repeated claims that he has led a crackdown on violent crime. Patel has boasted that the FBI has arrested 54,000 violent criminals, which he describes as a 90 percent increase in arrests from the same period in the Biden administration. What he doesn’t mention is that his count is inflated by including arrests that state and local police forces and other federal agencies have made when an FBI employee is present.” And as the FBI itself acknowledged, many were not FBI cases.

In fact, data shows that the FBI has referred 15 percent fewer criminal cases for federal prosecution during Trump’s second term than during the same period in the Biden administration. And, while the FBI does not break down its criminal referrals into types of cases, the data also shows that the DOJ prosecuted 15 percent fewer cases of violent crimes during the first 16 months of the Trump administration than during the same period of the Biden administration.

According to MS NOW, “There were nearly 3,800 fewer people charged federally with violent crimes during the first part of the second Trump administration than during the comparable Biden period — the opposite of what Patel says. That figure includes cases referred from all federal agencies, not just the FBI.” The report is based on public DOJ data obtained and shared by Justice Connection, a group of former DOJ and FBI employees who have accused the administration of weaponizing the department to pursue Trump’s political ends.

The drop in criminal cases has corresponded with a “huge” increase in focus on immigration crimes per Patel’s demand. According to MS NOW, “Since the 9/11 attacks, the FBI’s priority mission has been stopping terrorism. The bureau is also devoted to hunting foreign spies, ferreting out political corruption and white collar fraud, and disrupting complex criminal schemes and organized crime.” The shift to emphasizing immigration enforcement along with the juiced stats represents a major change in the FBI’s function and transparency.

“Kash Patel is actively dismantling decades of statistical integrity just to feed a political narrative,” said Christopher O’Leary, a former senior FBI official and MS NOW contributor. “We are seeing a historic institution reduced to a metrics game, where the FBI is poaching credit for arrests made by other law enforcement agencies and departments. This artificial inflation of the stats is a deliberate smoke screen designed to mask internal chaos and the mass exodus of experienced talent by manufacturing an illusion of productivity that simply does not exist on the ground.”

In a statement to MS NOW, the FBI did not dispute the data showing a reduction in criminal referrals, but it pointed to the declining rate of violent crime. But as MS NOW explains, “That decline has been a nationwide trend for several years after crime briefly spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2022. It’s been steadily declining ever since.” And while Patel has claimed a 90 percent increase in “violent crime arrests” by the FBI, this ignores crucial context: “that Patel is taking credit for the work of other agencies.”

“By Patel newly including state and local arrests, as well as arrests by other federal agencies, his FBI progress report radically changes the way the FBI counts its cases to include work the FBI did not do,” MS NOW elaborates. “The FBI has not previously counted other agency arrests as part of its caseload, according to internal DOJ data and the accounts of current and former officials. There is no way to say how many of the local police arrests — which Patel now claims credit for — would have been made regardless of the FBI’s presence.” The FBI asserts that the numbers have always been tallied that way, but that is false, multiple former FBI officials told MS NOW. Former FBI agent Daniel Brunner said the FBI previously always resisted counting state and local arrests as FBI achievements. “It’s never been done,” he said. “And when agents attempted to do it, it was always pushed back on at the local division. Headquarters did not want false numbers, they wanted the truth from the field.”

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an 7 26

A Colorado-based storm chaser was visited by the FBI after cracking a joke about introducing algae spores into the "paint" a Virginia company used on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Patrick Pineda, a photographer of severe weather, motion designer and video game developer, cracked a joke on social media that was so scientifically absurd, he presumably assumed his audience would know it was a joke. The FBI did not.

"I am the leftist who put algae in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. This plan was months in the making. I introduced spores into the paint used by the contractors who repainted the pool. It was me the whole time," said Pineda, in a since-deleted BlueSky post.

Right Wash, a professional render cleaning service, has a section on its website that explains that algae in a swimming pool can be eliminated by painting over it. It isn't the "best" solution for a number of reasons, it explains, but paint can eliminate an algae problem. But the pool wasn't merely painted.

In a June release, Rhino Linings claimed it was the company that provided an epoxy primer, elastomeric waterproofing and a protective finish coating, tinted American Flag Blue.

"This project demonstrates how modern protective coating systems can help extend the lifespan of aging infrastructure while reducing maintenance requirements and preserving public spaces for future generations," the company said.

To cure, the epoxy needs a low-moisture and chemically hostile surface to adhere. Living organisms like algae need water, light, and nutrients to grow, Florida Atlantic University explains. It simply can't grow in paint, much less the chemicals used for the pricey lining used on the Reflecting Pool.

A swimming pool expert explained that keeping algae out of the reflecting pool will be impossible unless the government uses strong chemicals, which could significantly damage the new liner.

After coming into office, President Donald Trump appointed Kash Patel to lead the FBI. Among his first actions was to fire scores of experienced directors, agents, and other staff, the *New York Times*reported. It has left the department short-staffed. PBS News explained that this has left both the Justice Department and the FBI in a tough spot as it desperately tries to rebuild.

According to Forbes, leaders are now "easing hiring requirements and accelerating recruitment in ways that some current and former officials see as a lowering of long-accepted standards." The report also said that some current and former agents "say the FBI is promoting into positions of leadership employees with less experience than would be customary for the jobs."

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AN 5 26

The FBI is revisiting President Donald Trump's 2020 election conspiracy theory as part of his ongoing effort to change the results of the election after he lost. The new focus is on Wisconsin.

So far, Trump's FBI has seized 2020 election ballots from Georgia and copies of voting data in Arizona from a review Republican lawmakers conducted. *The Washington Post*reported Friday that current and former election officials in Milwaukee have been interviewed by FBI agents in their own homes. The question will be whether the FBI demands the ballots as they did in Fulton County, Georgia.

The move would "set off alarms because Milwaukee maintains its absentee ballots in a way that could allow agents to determine who voters selected — undermining the secrecy of their ballots," the report said. One's vote is supposed to be a secret, but Trump would then have access to information on whether his allies supported him in 2020.

One question has been about an incident involving an official grabbing all of the flash drives and missing one of them. Another election worker then gave the flash drive to a police officer, who delivered it to the local official. It was never unattended, the report said. At the time, it became a huge conspiracy theory spread by MAGA supporters.

A man then filed a lawsuit claiming he saw a "secret room" in the election office and drew a floor plan showing where it was and indicated he heard someone snoring behind the door. The election denier has his own criminal history. The FBI demanded to know if there were ballots "printed" in the secret room.

Trump's agents went from the state’s deputy elections director to the former officials' homes, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. They next intend to interview police who were responsible for protecting election officials who delivered the results, reported WISN-TV.

The ballots haven't been seized yet, but there is a larger fear that things are headed in a worrisome direction.

"Ordinarily, election officials by now would have destroyed ballots from an election that was held nearly six years ago. But Milwaukee County officials have hung on to the 2020 ballots because of litigation," the Post explained.

One concern in Fulton County is that no copies were made of the ballots taken by the FBI. So, there would be no record to compare it to if the DOJ asserted that the count was "wrong." What's different in Milwaukee, however, is that numbers are assigned to a voter's absentee ballot, which can be traced back to the person. In other states, the ballots are simply thrown together.

Officials said that they are desperately trying to guard the ballots and said those numbers are redacted when copies are released to the public. In theory, the FBI wouldn't be able to match the numbers to the logbooks without them.

“Our secret ballot is secret for a reason,” declared elections chair Ann Jacobs. “It’s sacrosanct. It is at the heart of our American democracy. And those people who demand to know how everyone voted are violating those core tenets of what it means to vote as an American.”

“You’re going to see things like, ‘Here are the Biden voters in your neighborhood,’” said former Wisconsin chief election official Kevin Kennedy. “The bottom line is the potential for mischief is there, and we have seen in this age of social media that it will happen.”

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RWW

Melissa Gira Grant @ The New Republic: How the FBI Turned a Custody Dispute Into Cheap Anti-Trans Fodder

When the FBI took over an alleged international kidnapping case from local law enforcement—and sent a plane to retrieve a child from Cuba—certain details of the story changed in telling ways.

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an 3 26

U.S. District Court Judge J. P. Boulee, who is overseeing the Fulton County, Georgia, ballot case, has quashed the subpoena for FBI Agent Hugh Raymond Evans, who provided the one affidavit used to support the search warrant to seize the ballots from the 2020 election, reported Lawfare legal analyst Anna Bower.

It's a huge hit before the Friday evidentiary hearing over the raid on the elections office.

Fulton County officials believe that Evans deliberately misled the judge in the case by promoting 2020 election conspiracy theories from one of President Donald Trump's own allies to get the warrant for the ballots.

Boulee was appointed by the first Trump administration.

“In searching for evidence of a crime in Fulton County, President Trump has, in some sense, returned to the scene of his own…Now Trump is using the power of the federal government to seize the very ballots cast by voters whose will he once sought to subvert," Bower wrote in her piece, walking through the specifics of the case ahead of the hearing.

Marc Elias' Democracy Docket explained that the Justice Department has already made one mistake in revealing information about the probe when it unsealed the affidavit.

"Following the raid, the DOJ also initially told Fulton County officials that it wouldn’t oppose Evans testifying about the affidavit," the report explained. "Thomas Albus, a Missouri-based U.S. attorney overseeing the DOJ’s probe into the 2020 vote in Georgia, said in February that he couldn’t imagine Evan’s testimony 'will be an issue.'"

The DOJ then made a huge pivot three days later.

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AN 3 26

A report in the Washington*Post*reported Friday described the government purge at the FBI and Justice Department, noting the loss of decades of experience and has left some key positions either unfilled or otherwise occupied. And according to the Post, President Donald Trump's administration might be woefully unprepared for the fallout.

For the past six months, Matthew Blue, the chief of the Justice Department’s counterterrorism section, has been deployed to "protect" Washington, D.C. Trump called in the D.C. National Guard to handle "out of control" crime in the city. While many have been deployed elsewhere, Blue remains on duty and not at the Justice Department.

About three days before the bombing campaign began in Iran, FBI Director Kash Patel fired the agents who "specialized in addressing threats from Iran and its proxies."

Speaking with current and former officials familiar with the firings, the Postreported that there are still some skilled leaders in top posts, but the "bench of expertise has significantly thinned," particularly among those with a history of handling domestic threats.

The report explained that when the U.S. goes to war or engages in a conflict elsewhere, domestic law enforcement keeps its ear to the ground about possible threats at home out of fear that terrorist groups abroad can trigger anyone who might be in the U.S. But now, those prosecutors and agents are scarce.

One ex-prosecutor who refused to give his name was fired out of the blue despite working on the surveillance of a man the FBI feared may have been plotting a violent attack. Patel reassigned the FBI agents to focus on immigration instead.

FBI spokesman Ben Williamson told the Post that anyone who they fired were found to have "acted unethically" either on the Jan. 6 investigations or with probes into Trump.

“While we do not comment on personnel matters, the FBI maintains a robust counterintelligence operation, with personnel all over the country, who delivered record results in 2025 — including a 35 percent increase in counterintelligence arrests, six of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives captured, and multiple foiled terrorism plots just in December alone,” Williamson said in a statement. “Our teams remain fully engaged across the country and prepared to mobilize any security assets needed to assist federal partners — as well as state and local law enforcement."

But one former and longtime senior national security official warned, “We are now in a heightened-threat situation, not just in the Mideast but also here in the U.S. Iran, acting through its proxies, has long sought to carry out a terrorist attack or assassination inside the country."

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AN 2 26

FOIA’d emails reveal FBI’s resistance to searching Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in classified docs case

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an 3 26

On Saturday, President Donald Trump authorized massive military action against Iran. On Sunday, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kash Patel, put FBI counterintelligence teams on high alert for threats to the homeland, after a Texas gunman killed two Americans and wounded 14 others in an attack the Bureau is investigating as a possible act of terrorism.

Not part of any FBI investigation will be at least a dozen staffers, including agents, who reportedly were fired last week for their roles in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of President Donald Trump’s possibly unlawful removal, retention, and refusal to return dozens of classified documents and other items from the White House, which he kept at Mar-a-Lago.

“The ouster of at least a dozen staffers from a counterintelligence unit, known as CI-12, which operates out of the Washington Field Office, was ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel, according to four former officials familiar with the dismissals,” The New York Sun reported on Monday in an exclusive. “The dismissals came just days before the start of Operation Epic Fury and, separately, a deadly mass shooting at a bar in Austin, Texas, by a man reportedly wearing a sweatshirt that said, ‘Property of Allah,’ beneath which was a T-shirt that was ’emblazoned with a design similar to the Iranian flag,’ CBS News reported Monday.”

The Sun reported that the CI-12 unit “focuses on media leaks, global espionage, and international threats against America emanating from countries such as Cuba and Iran, former FBI officials tell the Sun.”

“More broadly, CI squads are the lead domestic teams for investigating insider threats and foreign intelligence activity on American soil.”

The FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, which took place on August 8, 2022, came months before Jack Smith was appointed Special Counsel by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland. President Trump called the raid a “travesty of justice.”

During Trump’s first term as president, CI-12 in 2020 “assisted in monitoring potential retaliatory actions by Iranian-backed actors on American soil following a U.S. drone strike near Baghdad International Airport that killed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps major general Qasem Soleimani.” Trump ordered that operation, according to former FBI officials.

Recently, Director Patel expressed outrage after learning that the FBI, under Smith’s direction, had “secretly obtained his phone records, along with those of Trump aide and current White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, as part of Mr. Smith’s investigations into Mar-a-Lago as well as into January 6.”

In a statement to Reuters, Patel said: “It is outrageous and deeply alarming that the previous FBI leadership secretly subpoenaed my own phone records — along with those of now-White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles — using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight.”

Hours later, the FBI dismissed the dozen staffers and agents.

The Sun noted that those “fired were also believed to have been involved in efforts to obtain phone records of Mr. Patel and Ms. Wiles, according to reports.”

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AN 2 26

LAWSUIT TO PREVENT BAD USE OF BALLOTS

Police body cam video reveals how FBI 'screwed up' raid on Fulton County elections center

A body-worn camera from local police officers in Fulton County captured the FBI raid of the Georgia elections center. And professor James Sample, Hofstra University School of Law, told MS NOW that the arguments in the short 93-second bodycam video shows a debate over the process of the warrant.

Sample says it might be enough for a court challenge.

"Down the road, that could be a basis for a lawsuit, if, in fact, the government is seizing materialmaterial that is either not properly specified or the location is not properly specified," said Sample. "It's a little unclear. I think the real questions here will be about who's driving this. I mean, think about, you know, the DNI [Director of National Intelligence] ends up being part of this search. And then the phone call. I was thinking about an analogy today. Imagine a scenario where you were at Mar-a-Lago and Jack Smith or Merrick Garland had called President [Joe] Biden during the search for those documents."

He said that the outrage from the GOP would have exploded on Capitol Hill.

"That's essentially the equivalent of what we're talking about," he said about the Fulton County raid. "And it would have been outrageous had it occurred. This is being driven in a way that we talk about on a regular basis, and we may be a broken record, but the line between the White House and the Department of Justice is no longer blurry. It's just gone."

Host Ana Cabrera noted that Congress is supposed to be a check on that power.

"The hypocrisy is astounding," MS Now journalist Ken Dilanian said.

He also noted the raid came the week after the top FBI official in the Atlanta office was ousted. MS NOW later confirmed that it was due to his resistance to the raid.

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rww

01/29/2026

Kyle Mantyla

Doug Bock Clark and Jen Fifield @ ProPublica: FBI’s Search of Georgia Election Center Is “Dangerous,” Experts Warn

The search warrant, which sought 2020 election ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data and voter rolls from Fulton County, marked what experts described as a significant escalation in President Donald Trump’s breaking of democratic norms.

Richard L. Hasen @ Slate: Trump’s Continued Obsession With 2020 Is a Joke. His Raid on a Georgia Election Site Is Not.

It’s about the raid being a test run for messing with election administrators and the counting of ballots in the midterm elections in 2026, when control of both houses of Congress could be at stake. Now is the time for state and local governments, the courts, and the people to work against such potential election subversion.

Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Why did Tulsi Gabbard join an FBI raid tied to Trump’s election conspiracy theory?

The director of national intelligence was looking for ways to return to the president’s good graces. She apparently found one in an unexpected place.

Kiera Butler @ Mother Jones: Right-Wing Influencers Want Women to Love ICE

“We need more stories and images showing the professionalism and compassion of ICE.”

Will Sommer @ The Bulwark: Did Ilhan Omar Stage Her Attack? Of Course Not. But Trump Thinks So.

A real false flag story for your favorite False Flag newsletter.

Ed Mazza @ HuffPost: Trump Makes Wild Accusation Against Obama In Unhinged Evening Posting Spree

The president pushed conspiracy theories in a series of Truth Social posts.

Noah Dowe, Isabella Sherk, and Alex Kaplan @ Media Matters: The right-wing media figures who have justified Alex Pretti's killing by Trump’s DHS

MAGA media and far-right figures smeared Pretti, calling him a “race traitor” who aimed to “commit a mass murder.”

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AN 1 26

President Donald Trump is deploying old-school tactics against some of his enemies: using FBI files to target them.

*The New York Times* reported Sunday morning that FBI Director Kash Patel is helping Trump target his foes using the information it has collected.

Now, the report said, "the bureau has added payback to its portfolio."

While Trump spent years alleging the “weaponization” of law enforcement against political foes, the new administration is “using federal law enforcement to carry out a partisan opposition research operation.”

The report said that Patel has been poring over files, trying to uncover documents that can “expose and discredit federal law enforcement officials who investigated Mr. Trump and his allies.”

The Times noted that it is currently unknown how “wide-ranging” Patel’s coordination with political appointees and Republican allies has been. The official overseeing the operation was Patel’s deputy, Dan Bongino, who recently left the FBI after a tumultuous year in the post. Internally, they referred to Bongino’s unit as the “director’s advisory team.”

Most of the focus has been on the investigation into the 2020 efforts to overturn the election and stage an attack on the U.S. Capitol. Former special counsel Jack Smith spoke to the House late last year about the findings of the probe and said he had "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" that what Trump did was unlawful.

During Trump’s last administration, the IRS was used to go after former FBI Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe.

While President Joe Biden’s administration refused to turn over documents tied to the ongoing investigation, Patel is now claiming that Smith broke the law. Speaking to the House, Smith said that all of the information he gathered was approved by a federal judge, which will make it difficult to argue that he went rogue or violated the law with his probes.

J. Edgar Hoover ran his own operations while overseeing the FBI. Recently released information detailed the way in which the FBI was surveilling civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences detailed, the counterintelligence campaign against MLK involved "illegal wiretaps on his phone and bugging hotel rooms when he traveled."

The FBI also spread misinformation about King being an "immoral communist."

The Times reported that the FBI now claims it is the “most transparent in history,” even as it refuses to release the legally required files on the investigation into sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The bureau has strategically released batches of anti-Smith material right before he testified behind closed doors.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who once cast himself as a champion of whistleblowers, is now helping funnel FBI leaks through his office. An unnamed FBI whistleblower, for example, alleged that one member of Jack Smith’s team was not “impartial.”

That agent, who no longer works at the FBI, is Walter Giardina, whom Trump has personally attacked for supposedly having “animosity” toward him. “Mr. Giardina vehemently denied those allegations in a meeting with bureau officials last July, two days after the funeral of his wife, who died of adrenal cancer at 49,” the report continued.

Lawyers representing FBI agents who have been fired under the Trump administration’s weaponization effort are calling out the double standard of using the government to attack someone for their politics while accusing others of doing the same. Those making the accusations are granted anonymity, allowing them to hide behind their own partisan protectors.

*Read the full report here.

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AN 12 25

On my Sirius XM program, I discussed the almost comical hearing this month in which a top FBI official, flanked by dog-killing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, claimed antifa — short for anti-fascist — was the “number one terrorist” threat in the United States. Yet he couldn’t answer repeated questions from Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) about where the group’s headquarters are, or how many people are actually in the group:

Michael Glasheen, operations director of the FBI’s National Security Branch, said antifa was the agency’s “primary concern” and “the most immediate violent threat that we’re facing.”Glasheen did not answer a question from the top Democrat at the hearing, U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson, about the group’s location. When asked about the number of members, Glasheen said it was “very fluid” and that “investigations are active.”

“Sir, you wouldn’t come to this committee to say something that you can’t prove,” Thompson said to Glasheen. “I know you wouldn’t do that. But you did.”

Later, Glasheen was asked if the Proud Boys were still on the FBI’s list of domestic extremist organizations — after they were added in 2018, under Trump’s first term — but he didn’t answer, just saying, “We’re in the process right now of changing our categories for domestic terrorism.”

After I played the clips of the exchanges and commented on the ludicrousness of this — and the dangers — Steven from Los Angeles, clearly a MAGA supporter, called the program to disagree with me, claiming antifa is a terror threat he has witnessed firsthand.

Antifa of course doesn’t exist as any organized nationwide group. Some people engaging in protest call themselves ant-fascist, and often take on the name antifa — even carrying banners and other identifiers — but they mostly act independently of others who might use the term to to identify themselves.

The majority of those who call themselves antifa are opposed to violence, per the Department of Homeland Security under the Biden administration. Even if some people have called themselves antifa and have engaged in or inspired violent actions in one place or another during protests (which has happened), that doesn’t mean there’s an organized group engaged in actual organized terror plots.

:{But Steven didn’t get that,

Steven:Okay, so I, um, I disagree with you, uh, living on the West Coast. Whether it’s antifa, whether you want to call it, whatever organization it is. But, I mean, they’ve ruined the streets of Los Angeles. San Francisco is a dump. Um, uh, Oregon is a dump. Uh, Seattle, Washington.MS:Who who did this? Who ruined the streets? What did they do?

Steven: It was. Well, whatever organization you want to call it. Uh, the people that were protesting on the streets.

MS:You said antifa.

Steven: Well, that's who they're supposed to be, right?

After I pressed him on what they’re doing he said that in Portland and other places, “These people are on the streets every day. They're yelling at cars. The traffic is stopped.”

Yelling at cars? Yes, that’s what he said.

MS: Okay, Steven, that's not terrorism.Steven: What is that? Terrorism. The stores are all closed.

MS: No, Stephen, that's not terrorism. You could tell me about vandalism. You could tell me about protests. You could even tell me about rioting, if you want, which we haven't seen.

But a terrorist and a terrorist organization are highly coordinated groups of people with plots and plans to take down the government or send a message to a group of people, and they engage in mass violence, bombings, mass shootings, kidnappings.

Why is our government spending all this money on this? You're telling me about what? Graffiti in Los Angeles?

He went on about how yelling at protests and throwing things — not explaining more — was terrorism.

But then when I brought up actual terrorism — January 6, police officers bludgeoned, the Proud Boys making threats, and the Oath Keepers, per law enforcement, stockpiling weapons at a hotel in Virginia, with a plan to bring them up the Potomac to take the Capitol — he had a very different answer.

Steven: You know what? I don't think we'll ever know the truth of that whole situation.

Oh yeah, it got a little hot from there before I ended the call Listen in and let me know your thoughts!

*Michelangelo Signorile writes The Signorile Report, a free and reader-supported Substack. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism.

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12 25

AL JA

Turtle Island Liberation Front quartet charged for California NYE bomb plot

*Pro-Palestine, antigovernment, anti-colonial group accused of targeting immigration agents and companies in ‘massive and horrific terror plot’.

First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli, right, speaks at a news conference announcing the arrests [Damian Dovarganes/AP]

By News Agencies

Published On 16 Dec 202516 Dec 2025

Federal authorities in the United States have arrested four members of an antigoverment left-wing group over an alleged bomb plot targeting immigration agents and companies, among others, in California, officials have said.

Announcing the arrests on Monday, US Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had disrupted “a massive and horrific terror plot” being prepared by the Turtle Island Liberation Front.

“Bring Cases, Get Paid”

Since the September 11 attacks, the FBI has relied on informants to identify and build terrorism cases. The structure has created perverse incentives for potential informants. Their cooperation can get them out of criminal cases of their own and lead to handsome monetary compensation. The FBI’s call is simple: Bring cases, get paid.

Rick Smith, a security consultant and former FBI agent, said confidential sources are essential to investigative police work, but cautioned that they come with inherent baggage.

[

FBI Counterterrorism Informant Spent a Decade Committing Fraud](https://theintercept.com/2020/12/29/fbi-counterterrorism-informant-wire-fraud-scam/)

“They’re sources, they’re not ordinary citizens,” Smith said. “They have either been compromised in some way, or they’re going to be paid. Either way, they’ve got some sort of skin in the game. They’re getting something out of it.”

In the years after 2001 attacks, the FBI created a market for cases involving left-wing activists and Muslims. After the January 6 Capitol riot, the bureau made clear to informants that right-wing extremismwas a priority. Now, under the second Trump administration, the federal government’s focus is again turning to perceived left-wing extremism.

In September, days after the terror designation of antifa, Trump outlined his administration’s war on the left in a memo titled National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7, which called for the National Joint Terrorism Task Force to coordinate with local offices to investigate alleged federal crimes by political radicals. The head of the federal prosecutor’s office in Los Angeles said on Monday that the Turtle Island Liberation Front arrests stemmed from Trump’s executive order.

Post-9/11 Stings Targeted People Who Posed No Threat. They Remain in Prison.](https://theintercept.com/2021/08/29/duka-fort-dix-five-post-911-terror-stings/)

Key questions in the Turtle Island Liberation Front case, however, remain unanswered. It is still unclear how the FBI first identified the group or how long the informant had been embedded before the bomb plot emerged — a period defense attorneys say is central to any serious examination of entrapment, whereby defendants are coerced into crimes they would not otherwise commit, a frequent criticism of stings involving paid informants and undercover agents.

“The question that immediately popped into my mind was that: There’s a reference to a confidential human source, but there’s no indication of how that source came to be,” said Brad Crowder, an activist and union organizer who was convicted in a case of alleged violent protest plans that involved a confidential informant. “It’s not totally out of the realm of possibilities that this idea was planted or floated by whoever this confidential human source might be.”

Turtle Island Case

Despite comments from Attorney General Pam Bondi, Patel, and others characterizing the Turtle Island Liberation Front as a coherent group and a Signal chat called “Black Lotus” as an ultra-radical subset, there’s little evidence that any group by that name exists beyond a small digital footprint and a handful of attempts at organizing community events, including a self-defense workshop and a punk rock benefit show planned for February.

The Instagram page for the Turtle Island Liberation Front cited in the complaint had just over 1,000 followers as of Tuesday morning — after it was widely publicized — and its first post came in late July. The YouTube channel bearing the group’s name, which had just 18 subscribers as of Tuesday morning, was registered on July 17 and contains a single video posted on September 16.

Online, the group styled itself as radical and righteous. Its activists spoke in the language of solidarity with Palestinians and Indigenous people, railing against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and American power. On Instagram, they posted slogans and absolutes:

“Become a revolutionary.”

“America has always been the brutal evil monster that some of you don’t want to face.”

“Resistance is the deepest form of love.”

The informant did not, however, meet with the group on November 26 for its slogans.

According to the affidavit, the informant met up with Audrey Illeene Carroll, who went by the nickname Asiginaak. At the meeting, Carroll handed over eight pages covered with handwriting in blue ink. The document was titled “Operation Midnight Sun,” and laid out a plan to detonate backpack bombs at five separate locations on New Year’s Eve, when fireworks would mask the sound of explosions. The plan was unfinished. Beneath the list of targets were blank lines, marked: “add more if enough comrades.” (Carroll’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

Over the following weeks, the plot advanced, according to court filings. A Signal group was created for, in the participants’ words, “everything radical,” including the bomb plan itself. On December 7, the supposed bomb plot expanded to include an undercover FBI agent. At that meeting, Carroll distributed pages describing how to build the bombs. She said she already had 13 PVC pipes cut to size and had ordered two five-pound bags of potassium nitrate from Amazon, believing naively that a burner account she set up was keeping her anonymous. Delivery was scheduled for December 11.

The FBI allowed the plan to progress, with both an informant and an undercover agent actively participating.

The FBI had visibility into nearly every part of the supply chain: chemicals ordered online and pistol primers purchased at a retail store. Agents could have intervened at any stage. They didn’t. Instead, the bureau allowed the plan to continue, with both an informant and an undercover agent actively participating in the conspiracy.

On December 12, the group drove into the desert with an aim of testing the bombs. They took two vehicles: the informant in one, the undercover agent in the other. Riding with the undercover agent was Zachary Aaron Page, who went by the nickname AK. He suggested using cigarettes as a delayed fuse. In the other car, Carroll told another member that the desert exercise was a dry run for the New Year’s Eve attack.

“What we’re doing will be considered a terrorist act,” she said, according to the affidavit.

At the site, they pitched tents and set up tables. They laid out PVC pipes, charcoal, sulfur, gasoline, string, cloth, and protective gear. As they began assembling the devices, the FBI moved in. Overhead, an FBI surveillance plane recorded the scene as agents took into custody four alleged members of the Turtle Island Liberation Front including Carroll and Page, along with Tina Lai and Dante Gaffield. (An attorney for Page declined to comment, and lawyers for Gaffield and Lai did not immediately respond.)

[

Read our complete coverage

Chilling Dissent](https://theintercept.com/collections/chilling-dissent/)

“Nonpartisan Incentive Structure”

Terrorism prosecutions built around confidential informants have long drawn criticism, particularly over the risk of entrapment.

For more than a decade, legal scholars have argued that while these cases often resemble classic government inducement, they rarely meet the legal standard for entrapment. Courts define predisposition so broadly that ideological sympathy or recorded rhetoric is treated as evidence of a preexisting willingness to commit violence — a framework that effectively shields government-manufactured plots from meaningful judicial scrutiny.

That concern surfaced starkly in a previous sting operation involving the so-called Newburgh Four, in which an aggressive and prolific FBI informant steered four poor Black men into a scheme to bomb synagogues and attack an Air Force base. Years later, a federal judge granted the men compassionate release, describing the case as an “FBI-orchestrated conspiracy.”

Because informants can be so instrumental in building cases, their use can be leveraged by authorities to focus resources on investigations with more political overtones.

Related}:

The Informant at the Heart of the Gretchen Whitmer Kidnapping Plot Was a Liability. So Federal Agents Shut Him Up.](https://theintercept.com/2024/03/06/gretchen-whitmer-kidnapping-informant/)

At times, the right has criticized the political nature of some cases. Among them was the case in which the FBI encouraged a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — a sting that the FBI’s Patel and Bongino harshly criticized back when they spent their days attached to the microphones of right-wing podcasts.

“There is a nonpartisan incentive structure that has become overly reliant on these kinds of confidential human sources,” said Crowder.

Crowder knows better than most. In 2008, he and fellow activist David McKay were arrested and charged with plotting to use Molotov cocktails at the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Despite deciding not to follow through with the plan, both ultimately pleaded guilty, with Crowder sentenced to two years in prison and McKay to four.

Part of the playbook, Crowder said, is for an informant to exploit their targets’ “righteous anger.”

The case against Crowder and McKay case hinged on the work of an FBI informant, Brandon Darby, who had been a prominent activist in anarchist circles in Texas and Louisiana. Crowder and McKay looked up to Darby, viewing him as a mentor and someone they hoped to impress or convince of their radical bona fides. In interviews over the years, they’ve alleged that Darby — who now works at Breitbart — was instrumental to their decision to cross the line from protest to discussing something more violent.

Part of the playbook, Crowder said, is for an informant to exploit their targets’ “righteous anger” — in the case of the Turtle Bay Liberation Front, rights violations in Palestine and ICE actions in Los Angeles. From there, authorities take advantage of the allege plotters’ political immaturity, walking hand in hand with them as they cross the line from legal dissent into illegal conspiracy.

[

The FBI Paid a Violent Felon to Infiltrate Denver’s Racial Justice Movement](https://theintercept.com/2023/02/07/fbi-denver-racial-justice-protests-informant/)

The informant gets paid, the FBI gets a good headline that justifies their anti-terrorism budget, and the defendants are left to face the consequences, often without ever posing a real threat to public safety, Crowder said.

“On both sides you have a sort of momentum that develops,” Crowder said. “This ICE repression is crazy, and that feeds into a sort of hopelessness that drives a sort of nihilistic response that you see from people who have immature politics. And then that heartfelt but immature and irresponsible response plays into the incentive structure of the FBI.”

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an 12 25

A top FBI official struggled to explain his claim that Antifa is the “most immediate violent threat” America is facing, as he was challenged to provide details.

Former Trump FBI Director Christopher Wray stated in 2020 congressional testimony that Antifa is “not a group or an organization. It’s a movement or an ideology.” The BBC has explained that Antifa is “a loosely organized, leftist movement that opposes far-right, racist and fascist groups.”

“Antifa is short for anti-fascist,” BBC added. “It is a loose, leaderless affiliation of mostly far-left activists.”

:{:{House Homeland Security Committee Ranking Member Bennie Thompson }:on Thursday asked Michael Glasheen, FBI National Security Operations Director, to describe “organizations that pose, on the domestic side,” the number one and number two threats to the homeland.

Glasheen asked for clarification.

“Any domestic terrorist organizations that poses a threat to the homeland as we speak,” Thompson replied.

Pointing to President Trump’s designation of Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, Glasheen said, “That’s our primary concern right now.”

He described Antifa as “the most immediate violent threat that we’re facing on the domestic side.”

“So, where is the Antifa headquartered?” Thompson pressed.

After a pause, Glasheen said: “What we’re doing right now —” before Thompson cut him off.

“Where, in the United States, does Antifa exist?” he asked. “If it’s a terrorist organization — and you’ve identified it as number one.”

“We are building out the infrastructure right now,” Glasheen responded.'

“So what does that mean?” Thompson pressed. “Where do they exist? How many members do they have in the United States as of right now?”

“Well, that’s very fluid,” Glasheen said, describing it as “ongoing,” before comparing the situation to Al Qaeda and ISIS.

“I asked one question, sir,” Thompson replied. “I just want you to tell us. If you said Antifa is the number one domestic terrorist organization, operating in the United States, I just need to know where they are, how many people. I don’t want a name. I don’t want anything like that. Just, how many people have you identified with the FBI, that Antifa is made of?”

“Well, the investigations are active,” Glasheen replied.

“Sir, you wouldn’t come to this committee and say something you can’t prove. I know. I knew you wouldn’t do that. But you did.”

---

an 9 25

12-15 ppl?

Critics blasts Trump admin for firing FBI agents who took knee at George Floyd protest

Adam Lynch

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MMA

Why the right-wing media apparatus is suddenly yelling about Jack Smith supposedly spying on GOP senators

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 10/07/25

Republicans and their right-wing media allies yesterday spun out frothy allegations about former special counsel Jack Smith purportedly “spying on Republican senators” in order to forestall tough questions about the state of the Justice Department. But their dark conspiracy theory immediately collapses under scrutiny.

Attorney General Pam Bondi was slated to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday for what seemed fated to be a grueling hearing. Potential avenues for congressional oversight could include the unprecedented weaponization of her department as an extension of President Donald Trump’s will; the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein saga, including the location of the Epstein “client list” she once claimed to possess and a potential presidential pardon for the notorious sex offender’s chief accomplice; and the legal authority for the deployment of the U.S. military on American streets.

But FBI Director Kash Patel, his deputy Dan Bongino, and the stenographers at Fox News were happy to try to help her out of that tough spot. On the afternoon before the hearing, Fox News Digital reported that “former Special Counsel Jack Smith was allegedly tracking the private communications and phone calls of nearly a dozen Republican Senators as part of his investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots.” The October 6 article was based on a document “recently discovered by FBI Director Kash Patel and exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital,” which states that an FBI special agent “‘conducted preliminary toll analysis’ on the toll records associated with” eight senators and one member of the House as part of Smith’s probe, which at the time was called Arctic Frost. The story also included quotes from Bongino, whom the report said would be meeting with the affected members of Congress that day.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, subsequently posted the document on social media, saying that it “shows the Biden FBI spied on 8 of my Republican Senate colleagues.” He added, “BIDEN FBI WEAPONIZATION = WORSE THAN WATERGATE.”

Their allegations were quickly promoted by MAGA media outlets and on Tuesday morning were highlighted by Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee as they sought to shield Bondi from criticism.

But legal reporters explained that there’s not much to the story — the FBI needed to review the toll records of senators in order to establish who Trump and his alleged co-conspirators were trying to contact before and during the January 6 insurrection.

Smith’s final report cites such toll records in a footnote for its statement that “at around the same time as he issued his 6:01 p.m. Tweet [telling his supporters occupying the U.S. Capitol to leave], Mr. Trump tried to reach two U.S. Senators, and he also directed Co-Conspirator 1 to call Members of Congress and attempt to enlist them to further delay the certification” of the electoral votes, as MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian reported.

“It actually seems sort of obvious that if you’re investigating a former president of the United States for trying to subvert an election, you’d probe some of contacts he and alleged co-conspirators had with people he was trying to enlist/pressure to overturn the results,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney noted.

“In other words, if you start from the premise that the entire probe was political, then seeking lawmakers’ toll records would be inherently bad,” Cheney added. “But if you view the probe as righteous or justified, then it’s not hard to see why those records would be pertinent.”

You won’t have trouble guessing which side the MAGAsphere came down on. Trump gave clemency to all the January 6 defendants, including those convicted of assaulting police and seditious conspiracy, still falsely claims to have won the 2020 election, and clearly believes that the only thing wrong with his election subversion plot was that it was unsuccessful. On Monday, his loyal propagandists at Fox and Newsmax leaped into action to promote the purported FBI bombshell.

On Fox, Newsmax, “stunning” story shows Smith conducted an “enemies list investigation,” is “going to go to jail

Just minutes after Fox News Digital published its story, Fox host Will Cain declared it “pretty stunning.” He went on to claim that Democrats had engaged in “projection when it comes to authoritarianism. But if this doesn't fit the bill, this doesn't fit the definition, what is the definition of authoritarianism?”

His guest, Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX), replied, “This is the quintessential definition of it.”

Later that night, Fox host Jesse Watters claimed that the story shows that “Biden's FBI was spying on Republican senators.”

His prime-time colleague Sean Hannity hosted right-wing journalist John Solomon, who declared that “Arctic Frost is starting to look like an enemies list investigation” and “a really troubling diagram of how the deep state was working under Joe Biden. The FBI, the DOJ working hand and glove to spy, pry, into the lives, the conversations, and the data of Republicans.”

Solomon went on — somehow maintaining a straight face — to accuse the FBI of potentially “intruding on a constitutionally protected event” because, in the time period for which the bureau sought the toll records, Congress had been certifying the election (except when they were evacuated in the face of a violent mob of Trumpists).

Video

Citation

From the October 6, 2025, edition of Fox News' Hannity

The rhetoric was similarly over-the-top in the prime-time hours of Fox competitor Newsmax.

“Jack Smith, bad guy, and I think he's just been busted in something really bad,” host Greg Kelly said at the top of his segment on the report. He described the FBI’s actions as “illegal,” adding, “Jack Smith, I think you’re going to go to jail.”

Fellow host Rob Schmitt didn’t seem to understand what the story was actually about, even as he promoted it to his audience. He told Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), “You had your phone tapped by Jack Smith,” and asked the senator to “illustrate to us how big a deal this is.” Johnson gently corrected Schmitt, saying that investigators had only obtained “metadata,” before claiming that the report “should shock and outrage every American.”

(Newsmax quickly updated its chyron from “FBI: JACK SMITH TAPPED PHONES OF GOP SENATORS” to “FBI: JACK SMITH SNOOPED ON GOP PHONES.”)

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omfg

AN 8 25

FASCISM

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has agreed to a request from U.S. Senator John Cornyn to locate the Texas Democratic state lawmakers who exited the state in an effort to deny Republicans a quorum—part of a broader attempt to block Governor Greg Abbott and President Donald Trump’s push to redraw congressional maps and boost GOP-held House seats, the Texas Republican announced Thursday.

“We cannot allow these rogue legislators to avoid their constitutional responsibilities,” Senator Cornyn said in a statement that referred to the Texas Democrats as “supposed lawmakers.”

Axios reported that “Texas issued civil warrants for the Democratic lawmakers, but local law enforcement can’t make arrests outside the state.”

The Texas Democrats are in Illinois, according to that state’s Democratic governor, JB Pritzker.

IFrame Content

Legal and political experts are blasting the move.

“There’s literally no federal law applicable to this situation. None,” Governor Pritzker Jessica Yellin on Wednesday, according to Axios.

“The key question here is on what grounds would the FBI be doing this,” wrote MSNBC Justice and Intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian. “What is the crime they are investigating? The FBI can’t just use its vast surveillance powers to locate random citizens. In fact, that’s what conservatives have long been so concerned about re FISA authorities.”

“This is a patently unlawful, unconstitutional abuse of federal power,” constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis said on Thursday.

“We are in a deeply dangerous, illiberal place in America when the federal government will deploy law enforcement to force state legislators to act on legislation that’s contrary to their conscience and an attempt to undermine free elections,” Kreis added.

The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, a political scientist, addressed Senator Cornyn: “John, I understand your need to tilt crazy right to counter your lunatic primary challenger. But calling on the FBI to act illegally and wrongly to go after Texas Democrats is beneath you, and simply shameful. You used to believe in the law and the Constitution.”

Asking what “criminal interest” the FBI could have in this, U.S. Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY) called it “yet another disgusting partisan abuse of power by the FBI,” and said that “any agent asked to assist should refuse to do so.”

Watch video of Governor Pritzker below or at this link.

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an 7 25 ah

During his first presidency, Donald Trump angrily clashed with some of his own appointees to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) — including two U.S. attorneys general: Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr. And he ended up hating Christopher A. Wray, the conservative Republican he chose to replace James Comey as FBI director.

The fact that Wray enjoyed strong bipartisan support and remained as FBI director under former President Joe Biden intensified Trump's disdain for him. And when he nominated far-right conspiracy theorist Kash Patel for that position, Trump sent out a loud message that he wanted ultra-MAGA loyalists running the FBI.

In an article published on July 29, attorney/legal expert Quinta Jurecic warns that six months into Trump's second presidency, the FBI is in total disarray.

Jurecic points to the resignation of former FBI special agent Michael Feinberg as a prime example of the agency's dysfunction: Feinberg, according to Jurecic, was under pressure merely for being friends with a former agent who was critical of Trump. Feinberg, like Wray, resigned before Trump had a chance to fire him.

IFrame Content

"The FBI has long seen itself as an organization built on expertise," Jurecic explains. "Its founder, J. Edgar Hoover, was an early and devoted advocate of professionalizing the government bureaucracy, to the point of mandating that agents wear a dark suit and striped tie. Now, however, the bureau is in the early stages of something like a radical deprofessionalization. The most important quality for an FBI official to have now appears to be not competence but loyalty. The exiling of Feinberg and others like him is an effort to engineer and accelerate this transformation."

Jurecic continues, "Feinberg’s boss, Special Agent in Charge Dominique Evans, didn't allege any misconduct on his part, Feinberg told me. Rather, as Feinberg set out in his resignation letter…. Evans explained that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino had found out that Feinberg had maintained a friendship with the former counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, a longtime target of Trump's ire."

Feinberg, Jurecic notes, is lamenting the "decay" of the FBI.

"An FBI without constraint or apolitical oversight is exactly what Trump wants, and what Bongino and FBI Director Kash Patel seem to be working toward," the attorney warns. "Trump launched his 2024 campaign by declaring to his supporters, 'I am your retribution,' and in their previous lives as MAGA influencers, both Patel and Bongino voiced support for locking up the president's opponents. Citing 'Justice Department sources,' Fox News recently reported that the FBI has opened a criminal investigation into former intelligence chiefs who led the government's assessment of Russian election interference in 2016."

Jurecic continues, "In the first Trump Administration, such a blatant use of the FBI for political ends would have been an unthinkable breach of law-enforcement independence. But the FBI's new leadership has been pushing out many of those who might object. So many people have been driven away, in fact, that after his departure, Feinberg found himself adopted by what he calls an 'exile community' of former Justice Department and FBI officials working to help one another adjust to post-government life."

During his interview with Jurecic, the conservative Feinberg — who was active in the Federalist Society in the past — was highly critical of Trump's politicization of the FBI as well as the way U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with the FBI's help, is handling deportations. And thinks that wearing masks is a bad idea for ICE agents.

Feinberg told Jurecic, "I was absolutely furious. We live in a democracy. We are an organization that serves the public. We do not hide from our actions."

*Quinta Jurecic's full article for The Atlantic is available at this link (subscription required).

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YIKES BONGINO #2

AN 2 25

The Base, a paramilitary neo-Nazi/white supremacist group founded in 2018, was a major target of the FBI and its former director, Christopher Wray, during Joe Biden's presidency. And in 2022, according to The Guardian's Ben Makuch, The Base "seemed to disappear" in the United States.

But Makuch, in an article published on February 24, warns that The Base appears to be "regrouping" in 2025.

"An international neo-Nazi terrorist group with origins in the U.S. appears to be quickly rebuilding its global and stateside ranks, according to information obtained by The Guardian from its digital accounts," Makuch reports. "Founded in 2018, The Base has been the intense focus of a years-long FBI counterterrorism investigation that has resulted in more than a dozen of its members arrested. It has plotted an assassination, mass shootings and other actions in Europe, which made it a proscribed terrorist organization in several countries."

The Base's "regrouping," according to Makuch, "comes at a time when the Trump Administration has made it a policy goal to move away from policing far-right extremism" and the FBI is now under the direction of Trump loyalist Kash Patel.

Makuch reports, "Experts say federal law enforcement ignoring far-right groups such as The Base could expose Americans to increased domestic terror threats…. A flurry of new images on The Base's various social media accounts, some closed and some open, show members claiming to be in the U.S. and across Europe brandishing pistols or military-style rifles and donning the trademark skull mask of the accelerationist neo-Nazi movement — one that demands acts of terrorism to bring down world governments. In one photo, a member is holding a knife and what appears to be a pistol in front of the Base flag in the United Kingdom, while others feature members in Bulgaria, Italy, Belgium and Sweden. "

Steven Rai of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) warns that The Base's activities in the U.S. need to be taken seriously.

Rai told The Guardian, "The Base has released a slow but steady trickle of propaganda over the past several months that has mostly highlighted their presence in Europe, so this shift in focus towards the U.S. should raise alarms. The timing of this shift is particularly noteworthy. While neo-Nazi accelerationist groups like The Base have been on their back foot due to intense law enforcement pressure, which disrupted their most integral organizers and propaganda artists, they may sense an opening with the recent change of administration in the U.S…. Violent extremists are absolutely paying attention to the changes in the national security establishment in the U.S."

Terrorism expert Colin Clarke, who serves as director of research at the Soufan Center, stresses that The Base are well-aware of changes in leadership at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

Clarke told The Guardian, "I think groups like The Base, far-right extremist groups that are strategic, have been waiting for the right opportunity before reinvigorating their respective organizations. This means that far-right extremist groups likely perceive the reelection of Trump as a green light to rebuild without fear of arrest or prosecution."

no lnx

Convicted Oath Keepers' leader now wants to fight 'snitch culture' in the government

Stewart Rhodes

Image via the Collin County Jail.

Sarah Burris,Matt Lasloand Raw StoryFebruary 21, 2025

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD — Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, the founder and former leader of the Oath Keepers, told reporters at CPAC Thursday that he would enjoy working for the FBI or for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

Rhodes, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison after being convicted of sedition after the January 6 insurrection, had his sentence commuted by President Donald Trump. Now he wants to go to work for the government.

On Thursday, he said that he wants to help more people, who he calls "political prisoners," get out of prison.

"We have a lot of political prisoners in this country, not just J6ers but other people too," he said, noting it is his new crusade to make radical changes to law enforcement.

"I want to see the snitch culture and the entrapment culture at the FBI and DHS changed," he continued. "And until that happens, I feel a little bad about having people join a group where they could be entrapped by a flood of agents."

"I want to see that fixed," he said. "In fact, I could help do that. I want to work for Kash Patel to clean the FBI up or Tulsi Gabbard. So I want to help clean up this corruption in government."

To work for the FBI, "public record must be in good standing with no felony convictions," the agency's website reads.

Rhodes also showed reporters a new tattoo that he got in prison. It features Trump's shooting scene, in which a bullet grazed his ear during a campaign rally.

"I believe that's when he won the election," said Rhodes, noting in that moment, Trump stood up "like a man."

See the videos below or at the link here

www.youtube.com

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an 2 25

One of the officials leading the hunt for prosecutors involved in investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol previously oversaw some of the cases himself. In a report published Tuesday, retired FBI official Christopher O’Leary told SpyTalk’s Michael Isikoff the development was “outrageous.”

Acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered the FBI to provide names of those who worked on the Jan. 6 investigation, but “he should have started by acknowledging his own role,” the Daily Beast’s Michael Daly reported earlier this month. As co-chief counter-terrorism prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Bove participated in meetings of the FBI/NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force, where attendees discussed Jan. 6.

“In short, Bove was asking for the identities of agents who worked on some of the same cases that he himself oversaw,” Isikoff writes.

O’Leary was deputy chief of the Joint Terrorism Task Force at the time, working to find those who participated in Jan. 6. “It’s outrageous that he is going to turn on the people that were his teammates just a few years ago,” O’Leary told the SpyTalk podcast. “I [have spoken] to agents and detectives non-stop for the last week and a half, and they feel betrayed.”

“If he had any concern, any objection,” about the Jan. 6 investigations, “he never voiced it,” O’Leary said.

“If he witnessed any violation of due process or any violation by an FBI agent or task force officer,” he would have needed to report it, “none of which was done," the former official noted.

“People are just going to leave,” O’Leary said. “So anybody who's eligible for retirement probably will just leave, right? Just out of self-protection. They'll raise their hand, they'll take their retirement, and they'll try to get out before something happens to them or before they're fired overnight, which is what happened to some of the senior leaders.

“But if you go further down, [and] you can see your retirement and your pension within your sights, more junior agents may go as well," he continued. "Because if it's a coercive environment where you can't do your job, where you could be facing punitive action for just doing your job at any point in your career, well, it might not be the place or the culture you want to continue to commit yourself.”

“We’re in greater danger," O'Leary said of that potential outcome.

*Read the full report at SkyTalk.

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SEVERAL COURT WINS

MSN

https://www.msn.com › en-us › news › politics › fbi-agents-who-worked-jan-6-and-trump-cases-sue-justice-department › ar-AA1ypAG1

FBI Agents Who Worked Jan. 6 And Trump Cases Sue Justice Department - MSN

A separate lawsuit was also filed by another group of FBI agents represented by private attorneys Mark Zaid and Bradley Moss, as well as lawyer Norm Eisen for the State Democracy Defenders Fund ...

464933-the-hill-interview-case-involving-trump-is-an-everyday-adventure-for

UKRAINE WHISTLEBLOWER CASE

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february 3, 2025

Padilla, Schiff, Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats Demand Answers From Trump Administration on Purging of DOJ and FBI Officials

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff (both D-Calif.) joined U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and all other Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats in demanding answers from Trump Administration nominees and acting officials on the removal or reassignment of career law enforcement officials across the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Last week, the Trump Administration reportedly purged dozens of DOJ and FBI officials involved in prosecuting Donald Trump and the January 6 rioters, and they are now threatening additional action against thousands of employees across the country who worked on investigations related to the attack on the Capitol. The Senators wrote to Pam Bondi, President Trump’s nominee to be the Attorney General of DOJ; Kash Patel, nominee to be the Director of the FBI; Todd Blanche, nominee to be Deputy Attorney General; Acting Attorney General James McHenry; and Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll regarding the mass purging.

“We have grave concerns about the removal or reassignment across the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of senior career civil servants who have served honorably under multiple administrations, regardless of the President’s party,” wrote the Senators.“The removals and reassignments from their positions of a significant number of experienced, nonpartisan Department officials with invaluable national security expertise without any comparable replacements one day into the second Trump Administration presents an alarming threat to national security.”

“As America faces a heightened threat landscape, these shocking removals and reassignments deprive DOJ and the FBI of experienced, senior leadership and decades of experience fighting violent crime, espionage, and terrorism,” continued the Senators.“As the FBI Agents Association stated in response to reports about the removal of FBI officials: ‘Dismissing potentially hundreds of Agents would severely weaken the Bureau’s ability to protect the country from national security and criminal threats and will ultimately risk setting up the Bureau and its new leadership for failure.’

Moreover, the firing of dozens of federal prosecutors and hundreds of agents will cripple FBI field offices and U.S. Attorney’s offices across the country. We can only assume these decisions are intended to prevent the Department from investigating national security and public corruption, while also serving as political retribution against the President’s perceived enemies and stoking fear among the dedicated and talented workforce in our nation’s premier law enforcement agency.”

As many as 20 senior DOJ officials were reassigned or removed, including the veteran career deputy assistant attorneys general in the Department’s National Security Division.

Over the weekend, thousands of FBI personnel across the country were asked to complete a questionnaire by today, Monday, February 3, at 3 p.m. The survey asks for their job title, whether they worked on a case related to the January 6th attack on the Capitol, “if they were involved in the arrest of a Jan. 6 suspect, if they testified at a trial, if they interviewed witnesses, if they conducted surveillance on suspects and more.” It has also been reported that the Acting FBI Director is being advised by an advisory committee comprised of partisan political operators, including an Elon Musk affiliate. This is a stark departure from the longstanding tradition that the FBI Director is the only political appointee in the Bureau.

The purge of experienced career prosecutors and agents has recently expanded to include the removal or forced retirement of all six executive assistant directors (EADs), including the EADs who oversee the National Security Branch, Intelligence Branch, and the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch. It also includes the assistant Directors and the Special Agents in charge of at least four major field offices. Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered these actions in a January 31, 2025 memo, stating, “I do not believe the current leadership of the Justice Department can trust these FBI employees to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully.”

Additionally, over a dozen senior DOJ prosecutors were fired after receiving memos from Acting Attorney General McHenry, stating “Given your significant role in prosecuting the President, I do not believe that the leadership of the Department can trust you to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully.”

The Senators emphasized that the Senate Judiciary Committee has a constitutional obligation to perform oversight over the Department and its components, and to provide advice and consent on the nominations of officers to lead it. To that end, they requested information to be returned to the committee in response to the removal of FBI and DOJ officials. They also requested answers from these individuals about their involvement.

In addition to Senators Padilla, Schiff, and Durbin, the letters were signed by U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

Full text of the letter to Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi is available here.

Full text of the letter to FBI Director nominee Kash Patel is available here.

Full text of the letter to Deputy Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche is available here.

Full text of the letter to Acting Attorney General McHenry and Acting FBI Director Driscoll is available here.

===

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wannabe influencers pretend they have more info juice than they do?

February 3, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST):I 'm not a gambling man. I'm not a gambling man. You know, I'm no fun at the casinos. OK? I'm no good at that. I wanna go to the casino with you. I wanna go to a 7-11 and pick the Powerball's with you, Julie, because you are the luckiest person on planet Earth right now.

You have been predicting what should happen with President Trump's first couple weeks on this show for years. And now here we are. Julie, you were not only right, dare I say, some little birdies tell me you are, perhaps the architect of the current salting of the earth inside of federal agencies. And so, a very happy early Super Bowl touchdown dance victory to you, ma'am.

JULIE KELLY (GUEST): Well, thank you, Benny. What a Monday morning. Thank you for all the energy that you're sending my way. I think you've had a lot of Blackout coffee this morning, so that's good.

Yes. This is amazing news, and, honestly, it's happening at a quicker pace, and more widely, I suppose you would say, than I originally — that you and I have discussed or anticipated. So, yes, this is tremendous news what's happening. Top officials at the DOJ, top officials at the FBI being walked out of their offices. This is Washington field office, the Vegas field office, the Miami field office, which of course was — participated in the armed raid of Mar-a-Lago.

And it looks like what I'm really interested in, Benny, is this questionnaire that went out to every field office asking all FBI employees to account for their involvement in the January 6th investigation and prosecution of now well until it was shuttered 1600 Americans. So that questionnaire is due today by three o'clock. I expect they will be reviewed and processed quickly. It could be, Benny, up to six thousand FBI employees who were involved because every FBI field office was involved, in that four-year-long investigation and prosecution. So I think there's going to be more heads rolling today, tomorrow, and throughout the next few weeks.

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President Donald Trump’s Justice Department last week distributed a survey to FBI agents asking about their roles in the investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol — and some agents are taking the questioning as a sign of a potential purge of those perceived as disloyal to the president, Politico reported Sunday.

The 12-question survey, due Tuesday, asks agents about their role in the Jan. 6 investigations. It asks, for example, about whether they handled arrests, conducted surveillance, or testified in trials, among other types of involvement.

Concerns about mass firings are by no means unfounded. Last week, the Justice Department fired at least two dozen prosecutors who worked on cases related to Jan. 6. According to a memo, their employment has "hindered the ability" of the D.C. U.S. attorney to "faithfully implement the agenda that the American people elected President Trump to execute." Trump ended the four-year criminal investigation into the attack on his first day in office, pardoned Jan. 6 rioters, and ordered the DOJ to drop pending charges.

As the DOJ probes FBI involvement, not all agents are complying. An anonymous lawyer representing several FBI agents told Politico that some employees are pushing back against the inquiry, telling subordinates not to turn the surveys in.

“There’s growing resistance from among the SACs [special agents in charge],” they said. “Some are telling people beneath them, don’t submit it, or don’t submit it right away … Some are saying, we will submit it as leadership only.”

The Justice Department also asked for a list, due Tuesday, of employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases.

The FBI Agents Association, a group providing advocacy for active and retired FBI agents, wrote to members that employees carrying out their jobs legally should not be treated as though they had carried out any wrongdoing.

“We understand that this feels like agents and employees are being targeted, despite repeated assurances that ‘all FBI employees will be protected against political retribution,’” the association wrote. “Employees carrying out their duties to investigate allegations of criminal activity with integrity and within the rule of law should never be treated as those who have engaged in actual misconduct.”

“We continue to hear rumors of dismissals/security revocations, or individuals who have been told to expect dismissals on Monday,” the association wrote. “Again, we have no confirmation of any such events. Please be cautious in sharing and spreading what could be misinformation. We do not need any more stress on those potentially impacted.”

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