FBI, R.I.P.?

By Victor Davis HansonAugust 11, 2022

Part 1 of 2

The FBI is dissolving before our eyes into a rogue security service akin to those in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

Take the FBI's deliberately asymmetrical application of the law. This week the bureau surprise-raided the home of former President Donald Trump – an historical first.

A massive phalanx of FBI agents swooped into the Trump residence while he was not home, to confiscate his personal property, safe, and records. All of this was over an archival dispute of presidential papers common to many former presidents. Agents swarmed the entire house, including the wardrobe closet of the former first lady.

Note we are less than 90 days out from a midterm election, and this was not just a raid, but a political act.

The Democratic Party is anticipated to suffer historical losses. Trump was on the verge of announcing his 2024 presidential candidacy. In many polls, he remains the Republican front-runner for the nomination – and well ahead of incumbent President Joe Biden in a putative 2024 rematch.

In 2016 then FBI Director James Comey announced that candidate Hillary Clinton was guilty of destroying subpoenaed emails – a likely felony pertaining to her tenure as secretary of state. Yet he all but pledged that she would not be prosecuted given her status as a presidential candidate.

As far as targeting presidential candidates, Trump was impeached in 2020 ostensibly for delaying military aid to Ukraine by asking Ukrainian officials to investigate more fully the clearly corrupt Biden family – given Joe Biden at the time was a likely possible presidential opponent in 2020.

The FBI has devolved into a personal retrieval service for the incorrigible Biden family. It suppressed, for political purposes, information surrounding Hunter Biden's missing laptop on the eve of the 2020 election.

Previously, the FBI never pursued Hunter's fraudulently registered firearm, his mysterious foreign income, his felonious crack cocaine use, or his regular employment of foreign prostitutes.

Yet in a pre-dawn raid just before the 2020 election, the FBI targeted the home of journalist James O'Keefe on grounds that someone had passed to him the lost and lurid diary of Ashley Biden, Biden's wayward daughter.

At various times, in Stasi-style the FBI has publicly shackled Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro, swarmed the office of Trump's legal counsel Rudy Giuliani, and sent a SWAT team to surround the house of Trump ally Roger Stone. Meanwhile, terrorists and cartels walk with impunity across an open border.

FBI Director Christopher Wray last week cut short his evasive testimony before Congress. He claimed he had to leave for a critical appointment – only to use his FBI Gulfstream luxury jet to fly to his favorite vacation spot in the Adirondacks….

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/08/11/fbi_rip_148036.html

One of his shortest articles! Kek

>>17382712

FBI, R.I.P.?

Part 2 of 2

Wray took over from disgraced interim FBI Director Andrew McCabe. The latter admitted lying repeatedly to federal investigators and signed off on a fraudulent FBI FISA application. He faced zero legal consequences.

McCabe, remember, was also the point man in the softball Hillary Clinton email investigation – while his wife was a political candidate and recipient of thousands of dollars from a political action committee with close ties to the Clinton family.

McCabe took over from disgraced FBI Director James Comey. On 245 occasions, Comey claimed under oath before the House Intelligence Committee that he had no memory or knowledge of key questions concerning his tenure. With impunity, he leaked confidential FBI memos to the media.

Comey took over from Director Robert Mueller. Implausibly, Mueller swore under oath that he had no knowledge, either of the Steele dossier or of Fusion GPS, the firm that commissioned Christopher Steele to compile the dossier. But those were the very twin catalysts that had prompted his entire special investigation into the Russian collusion hoax.

FBI legal counsel Kevin Clinesmith was convicted of a felony for altering an FBI warrant request to spy on an innocent Carter Page.

The FBI, by Comey's own public boasts, bragged how it caught National Security Advisor designate General Michael Flynn in its Crossfire Hurricane Russian collusion hoax.

As special counsel, Mueller then fired two of his top investigators Lisa Page and Peter Strzok for improper personal and professional behavior. He then staggered their releases to mask their collaborative wrongdoing.

Mueller's team deleted critical cell phone evidence under subpoena that might well have revealed systemic FBI-related bias.

The FBI interferes with and warps national elections. It hires complete frauds as informants who are far worse than its targets. It humiliates or exempts government and elected officials based on their politics. It violates the civil liberties of individual American citizens.

The FBI's highest officials now routinely mislead Congress. They have erased or altered court and subpoenaed evidence. They illegally leak confidential material to the media. And they have lied under oath to federal investigators.

The agency has become dangerous to Americans and an existential threat to their democracy and rule of law. The FBI should be dispersing its investigatory responsibilities to other government investigative agencies that have not yet lost the public's trust. (Victor, the public has lost trust in every investigatory government agency)

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/08/11/fbi_rip_148036.html

American Stasi

Josh HammerOn 8/12/22 at 6:30 AM EDT

Monday's shocking images of police sirens blaring outside Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump's magnificent Palm Beach, Florida estate, will not soon be forgotten…

America, it seems, won the Cold War only to see its own federal law enforcement/national security apparatus morph into a version of the old East German Stasi—and barely three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, to boot…

Furthermore, the Presidential Records Act isn't even a criminal statute, and probable cause for the violation of a criminal statute is the necessary precondition for a magistrate to sign off on a search warrant.

Many of the Biden Regime's apologists are out in full force, suggesting that the raid was necessary because Trump was obstructing the return of existentially vital documents. This is demonstrably specious.

First, whatever documents Trump may have had in his private Mar-a-Lago possession, there was absolutely nothing…. Second, as a former president, Trump had unilateral, plenary authority to declassify any document that he wanted to declassify—period. Third, all ex-presidents receive various taxpayer-funded accoutrements, among them a staff with security clearances and secure facilities (SCIFs) for the maintenance of classified records. It simply beggars belief that any document at Mar-a-Lago was at risk of falling into the wrong hands…

Most recently, the FBI disgraced itself during the controversy surrounding the 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer—a plot that bears all the markings of a nefarious Deep State entrapment scheme. Similar entrapment speculation remains about the role Ray Epps playedduring the January 6, 2021 jamboree at the U.S. Capitol, although one is usually lambasted as a "conspiracy theorist" for this entirely reasonable inference.

There are three primary conclusions to draw from Monday's unprecedented raid—an epochal moment in the history of American law enforcement, opening up a Pandora's box that will never be put back into place.

First, it seems that Trump's fundraising and support metrics have only increased due to his perceived martyrdom, thus bolstering his prospects in his likely-impending 2024 Republican presidential primary. Since this "rally around the flag" effect was so easily foreseeable, it seems likely that this was a factor in Garland's decision to approve the raid. The Regime seems to think that, since it defeated Trump in 2020, it can do so again in 2024.

The other two conclusions are even more nefarious.

The second conclusion to draw is that every alarm conservatives have sounded over the past few years about the spiraling out of control of America's two-tier system of justice has now been vindicated. The Biden Regime is completely unapologetic about its targeting of political opponents—just ask Peter Navarro, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, Steve Bannon, or even Project Veritas' James O'Keefe. The imperative for conservatives is to respond not merely by tsk-tsking but by recognizing "what time it is" in this ailing, late-stage republic and to demonstrate a willingness to counter the Left's brazen assaults with our own willingness to prudentially engage in escalatory, tit-for-tat, mutually assured destruction tactics. Sometimes, the only way out is through.

The third and final conclusion is the most terrifying: The Biden Regime has demonstrated its willingness, and indeed its eagerness, to take America to hitherto unprecedented depths of depravity—and it has done so for the very simple reason that it can. For this was an act of power qua power—an act of public humiliation intended to make a political opponent bend the knee once and for all before The Regime.

Welcome to the era of the American Stasi.

https://www.newsweek.com/american-stasi-opinion-1733094

12 Aug, 2022 16:10

NATO state mulls closing Baltics for Russian Navy

Estonia and Finland discussed missile plans that would close the Baltic Sea to Russia, Tallinn says

Tallinn and Helsinki have discussed integration of coastal missile batteries that would enable the two NATO members to blockade the Russian Navy in the Gulf of Finland, Estonia’s defense minister announced on Friday. This would turn the Baltic Sea into a “NATO internal sea,” the official said, echoing comments made earlier by Polish and Lithuanian leaders.

“We need to integrate our coastal defenses. The flight range of Estonian and Finnish missiles is greater than the width of the Gulf of Finland,” Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur told the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti.

Finland’s MTO85M coastal missiles have a range of over 100 kilometers. The Gulf is about 82 kilometers across from Helsinki to Tallinn. Estonia plans to buy Israeli Blue Spear missiles later this year, which have a range of almost 300 kilometers.

“The Baltic Sea will be NATO’s internal sea when Finland and Sweden have joined NATO. Compared with what it is today, the situation is changing,” Pevkur said, adding that the two countries will then be able to close the sea to the Russian Navy if need be.

Finland and Sweden’s application to NATO was met with greatest enthusiasm by Poland and the former Soviet republics on the Baltic Sea. Following the alliance’s summit in Spain at the end of June, Polish President Andrzej Duda and Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics both said they hoped for the Baltic to become a “NATO lake.”

Pevkur said he discussed airspace with his Finnish colleague as well, though he dodged Iltaleht’s question whether the US will deploy its F-35 fighter jets to Estonia.

“For me, this is one airspace,” Pevkur added. “Finnish airspace cannot be protected if Estonian airspace is not protected at the same time, and vice versa. Fighter jets cross the 80-kilometer-wide Gulf of Finland in minutes.”

Estonia has been one of the most outspoken NATO members in urging a confrontation with Russia. On Thursday, Tallinn announced that it would ban entry to Russians with EU Schengen visas starting next week, and demolish all Soviet-era monuments “as soon as possible.”

https://www.rt.com/russia/560725-estonia-finland-baltic-nato/

The hounds of war demand more death and destruction

Exclusive: Warrant Shows DOJ, FBI Waited Several Days After Judge Approved to Conduct Mar-a-Lago Raid

Matthew Boyle12 Aug 2022

The warrant that authorized the search of former President Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago shows it was issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart on Aug. 5, 2022, at 12:12 p.m.—nearly three full days before the Justice Department and FBI conducted a raid to execute it.

The raid did not occur until the morning of Aug. 8, 2022, when federal agents from the FBI arrived at Mar-a-Lago to execute the search warrant.

The document, obtained and reviewed by Breitbart News, shows that the DOJ and FBI waited several days after Reinhart approved the warrant to conduct the raid, something that severely undercuts the talking points issued by Attorney General Merrick Garland in a public statement on Thursday when he broke his silence to discuss the matter in televised remarks.

Why the authorities waited several days to execute service of the warrant if the matter rose to such a serious national security issue is unclear. If what federal agents intended to obtain from the raid was such a risk to national security, the fact they decided to linger and wait for several days before executing is likely to become a major point of contention as this debate plays out in front of the public.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland explains to reporters that he will not take questions after he delivered a statement at the U.S. Department of Justice August 11, 2022 in Washington, DC.(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Garland announced in his public remarks on Thursday that the Department of Justice had moved to unseal the warrant and inventory list of documents obtained from the raid. Trump indicated in public statements on Thursday evening that he would support such a move and wants the documents out in public. It is expected these documents, including the warrant that has been reviewed by Breitbart News, will be made public by the court soon, later on Friday or in the coming days.

The documents obtained by Breitbart News include the warrant, two accompanying attachments specifying terms for the warrant, and a property receipt outlining the inventory federal agents seized from Mar-a-Lago.

UPDATE: 1:51 p.m. ET:

The inventory list of what was seized—or the receipt part of the document—is three pages long and constitutes two separate receipts, one that is two pages long and another that is one page long. Both receipts were signed by Trump’s attorney Christina Bobb and dated on Monday Aug. 8, 2022, at 6:19 p.m. The longer receipt was signed byFBI Special Agent Jeremy Linton and the shorter receipt was signed by the name: “L. Grady Gary” and includes the title SSA. It is unclear who that person is, and the handwriting is not the clearest.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/08/12/exclusive-warrant-shows-doj-fbi-waited-several-days-after-judge-approved-to-conduct-mar-a-lago-raid/

Exclusive:Academic Who Published Paper on Masturbating to Child Porn Under Police Investigation

Kurt Zindulka12 Aug 2022

Police have launched an investigation into a British PhD candidate who has published a “research” paper centring around him masturbating to child porn, Breitbart News can reveal.

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) has said that an investigation has been launched after University of Manchester student Karl Andersson published a PhD research paper on his personal experiences of masturbating to the “Shotacon” subgenre of Japanese manga comic books that focus on often highly sexualised portrayals of prepubescent or pubescent boys.

Anderson claimed that in order to “understand how [people] experience sexual pleasure when reading shota” he conducted a three-month “experiment” of masturbating to paedophilic comic books, taking notes during every “session”.

“I would not be allowed to have any other sexual relief during this ‘fieldwork’ in my own sexuality: no regular porn, no sex with another person, no fantasies or memories — it had to be shota every time.”

In his paper, published by the peer-reviewed academic journal Qualitative Research, Andersson admitted that “the age of the characters and the explicitness of the sex, as well as in the readers’ views on whether or how sexual desire for fictional boys is connected to sexual attraction to actual children.”

Yet despite acknowledging the illicit nature of the material, he said that he found interviewing others inadequate for his study, writing: “I realized that my body was equipped with a research tool of its own that could give me, quite literally, a first-hand understanding of shota.”

Describing one such masturbation “session”, Anderson wrote in his notebook in September of last year: “Started reading on the toilet: Boy who is staying with relatives happens to see his same-age friend masturbate… The boy who has admitted to everything has nothing to lose, so he throws himself over Tokio-kun and starts sniffing his cock and licking his smooth balls, and while waiting for the shot I came!”

Possession of drawn child pornography is a crime in the United Kingdom, and it seems likely the materials indulged in by Andersson would meet this definition, given the paper’s own description of “very young boy characters [who] would greedily jump over the first cock that presented itself” in the material — content of which Andersson wrote: “That worked for me”.

Speaking to Breitbart London, a spokesman for the Greater Manchester Police revealed that the force has launched an investigation to determine if the “research” project had violated any laws.

“GMP received a report in relation to this matter in August 2022 and have since launched an investigation. We are working closely with the University of Manchester who are assisting us with our enquiries to establish what, if any offences have been committed.”…

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/08/12/exclusive-academic-who-published-paper-on-masturbating-to-child-porn-under-police-investigation/

How is not predictable. perves