Tag: fbi

More charges could come in Kirk murder case if evidence warrants it, says FBI’s Patel

FBI Director Kash Patel told Just the News in an interview that the bureau is continuing to investigate the assassination of Charlie Kirk, including the possibility of accomplices or assistance from other suspects.

He said that once the bureau collects enough evidence, they would refer any possible additional suspects to the prosecutors who are handling the case. “We’re looking at everyone that was there, that was online, and we’re looking to refer these matters to the state prosecution authorities when there’s enough evidence,” Patel told the Just the News, No Noise TV show in a wide-ranging interview that aired last week. 

Since Kirk, a prominent and influential conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA, was killed during a campus event at Utah Valley University outside of Salt Lake City, the suspected shooter, Tyler Robinson, was apprehended by law enforcement after he turned himself in. 

Fox Business news said that Charlie Kirk had 1.7 million Instagram followers before his death, and after his death more than a million new YouTube subscribers followed him, citing Social Blade metrics. “The surge lifts his subscriber base to 5 million, up from 3.8 million before his death,” the outlet reported.

“Multiple warning signs” before the assassination, says FBI’s Bongino 

Patel’s deputy director, Dan Bongino, said that Robinson displayed several warning signs before the attack including a recent interest in left-wing politics and a discussion with family about Kirk’s upcoming appearance in Utah and their dislike for the conservative activist.

“There appear to have been multiple warning signs,” Bongino said. “There were people in his network, friends and family who had stated that he had become more political.”

Because of this, the FBI said they are looking into whether other people in Robinson’s network, including online contacts, knew something about the shooting in advance and failed to or chose not to notify law enforcement. At the time, the bureau was also probing whether anyone else on the ground at the event may have been involved with the shooting.

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‘Loyal Public Servants’: Whistleblowers Punished for Exposing Hunter Biden Protection Scheme Reach Settlement

Compensation being paid, and DOJ using ‘this example’ to train federal prosecutors.

Two former FBI officials who were punished under the Biden administration for their efforts to expose a protection scheme for first son Hunter Biden now have reached settlements in their lawsuits.

Hunter Biden, of course, faced both gun and tax charge convictions, cases that could have left him behind bars for years.

Then his daddy gave him a get-out-of-jail free card through a presidential pardon that Joe Biden actually signed, unlike many of his pardons that were issued through autopen signatures.

The settlements were reached for former Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley and Special Agent Joe Ziegler who had charged illegal retaliation against them.

The settlements with the IRS and Justice Department (DOJ) “included significant compensation for damages and a requirement for new training for federal prosecutors to deter future whistleblower retaliation.”

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Foreign Espionage Arrests Up 50 Percent: FBI

FBI Director Kash Patel said on Oct. 15 that the agency is cracking down on espionage by foreign adversaries, with an increase in arrests as high as 50 percent.

“We have gone after espionage activities against our main counterparts in China, Russia, and Iran,” he said at a press conference.

“In China alone, we’ve had over a 50 percent increase in espionage arrests alone, and prosecutions,” Patel said. “In Iran, we have had a 50 percent increase, again, in espionage cases. And in Russia, we had a 33 percent increase in espionage cases alone.”

State Department employee Ashley Tellis, arrested on Oct. 12, was accused of removing classified information and meeting with Chinese regime officials.

A former State Department employee, Michael Schena, was arrested in March and sentenced on Sept. 4 for conspiring to collect and transmit national defense information to Chinese authorities.

In August, two Chinese nationals were arrested and accused of smuggling sensitive AI chips, subject to export controls, to China.

In June, two Chinese nationals were arrested on charges of spying for Chinese intelligence operations.

In September, an Armenian national was charged with conspiring to export goods and information that would help with semiconductor manufacturing to Russia.

On Aug. 6, Taylor Adam Lee, an active duty soldier, was arrested on charges of attempted transmission of national defense information to a foreign adversary, Russia.

In March, two Iranian nationals were charged with conspiring to supply drones and launder money for the IRGC, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Patel also said there have been 125 counterterrorism cases this year, compared to 100 last year. And he cited increased disruptions of cybercrime enterprises.

“This year, you already have 52 arrests. Fifty-two arrests of violent cyber criminals who are stealing from senior citizens, who are violating our children’s rights and freedoms, and who are violating everyday Americans,” he said.

U.S. law enforcement, cooperating with UK law enforcement, announced the seizure of $15 billion in bitcoin from a Cambodian cyberscam ring on Oct. 14. This represents the largest-ever digital currency seizure by U.S. law enforcement.

Chen Zhi and his Prince Group conglomerate allegedly engaged in a massive wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy via at least 10 slave labor scam compounds across Cambodia.

The scam ring also used networks around the world, according to the Justice Department, and one such branch in Brooklyn was responsible for laundering millions of dollars taken from more than 250 victims in the United States.

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DEVELOPING: Incoming Indictment…Grand Jury Considers Charges Against John Bolton

A grand jury on Wednesday convened to consider charges against John Bolton over his mishandling of classified materials.

Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton transmitted classified emails over a private server system and they were intercepted by a hostile foreign country’s spy service, according to a recent leak to The New York Times.

John Bolton is reportedly under investigation for violating the Espionage Act.

The New York Post reported:

A grand jury is convening Wednesday afternoon to consider charges against former national security adviser John Bolton over his alleged sharing of highly sensitive classified materials on a private email server, The Post has learned.

The proceeding comes two months after federal investigators raided Bolton’s Maryland home and Washington, DC, office in search of evidence in the Trump critic’s alleged theft of “highly sensitive national security” information.

Justice Department officials expect an indictment to be handed up either Wednesday or Thursday, with one telling The Post that the case against the 76-year-old is “airtight.”

Bolton is accused of using his private email account to remove sensitive information and record diary-like notes of his daily activities and assessments throughout his time in office, sources told The Post.

New John Bolton documents with classified markings were released after the FBI raided his home in August.

The FBI raided John Bolton’s home over the summer.

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FBI Data Shows Marijuana Possession Arrests Make Up Over 20% of All Drug-Related Arrests

The FBI’s Crime Data Explorer reports at least 204,036 marijuana-related arrests last year, though the figure is likely an undercount due to gaps in reporting by some law enforcement agencies. The total also excludes cannabis cases that may be included in the tens of thousands of “unspecified drug abuse violations” reported by the bureau.

Of the 204,036 arrests, 92% — or 187,792 — were for simple possession. The remaining 16,244 arrests were tied to “sales/manufacturing.” In total, police reported 831,446 drug-related arrests nationwide in 2024.

Although the numbers remain high, marijuana arrests have declined significantly over the past decade. The drop coincides with the legalization of adult-use marijuana in 24 states and Washington, D.C. since 2012. At their peak in 2007, marijuana arrests surpassed 870,000, making up nearly half of all drug-related arrests at the time. Since 2000, police have made more than 16 million marijuana-related arrests.

“While the total number of marijuana-related arrests have fallen nationwide in recent years, it is clear that marijuana-related prosecutions still remain a primary driver of drug war enforcement in the United States,” said NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano. “Hundreds of thousands of Americans continue to be arrested annually for low-level cannabis-related violations even though a majority of voters no longer believe that the responsible use of marijuana by adults should be a crime.”

Armentano added that these arrests often carry life-long consequences for those charged. “Low-level marijuana offenders, many of them younger, poor, and people of color, should not be saddled with an arrest, a criminal record, and with the lifelong penalties and stigma associated with it for engaging in behavior that is now legally regulated for adults in nearly half the states in this country.”

While the FBI adjusted its crime data collection methods in 2021, making exact comparisons more difficult, the long-term trend is clear: marijuana-related arrests, though down substantially, continue to account for a large share of U.S. drug enforcement.

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Deep State Prosecutors Attack DOJ’s Investigation Into Whether Biden’s FBI Secretly Destroyed Classified Documents in “Burn Bags” to Protect Comey

Deep State ‘career’ prosecutors in the Western District of Virginia are attacking the DOJ’s investigation into whether Biden’s FBI secretly destroyed classified documents in ‘burn bags’ to protect James Comey with leaks to the New York Times.

As previously reported, the DOJ is investigating whether the FBI, during Joe Biden’s presidency, secretly destroyed documents to protect James Comey and John Brennan.

James Comey served as the Director of the FBI from 2013 to May 2017, when Trump fired him.

John Brennan served as the Director of the CIA from 2013 to 2017.

According to The Times, the investigation is related to a report that revealed that Kash Patel found thousands of Russia Hoax documents in “burn bags” in a secret room at the FBI.

Over the summer, Fox News reported that FBI Director Kash Patel found thousands of Russia collusion hoax documents in “burn bags” in a secret room at the FBI.

One of the documents in the burn bags included the classified annex to the John Durham report that includes the underlying intelligence he investigated.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe recently declassified the annex to Durham’s final report and sent it to Senator Grassley, who released it to the public.

Fox News also reported that Kash Patel and his team of investigators discovered a “previously undisclosed” SCIF at the FBI headquarters.

The Times reported that senior FBI officials who worked at the headquarters are also being investigated.

In August, Trump-appointed Interim US Attorney Todd Gilbert, who was overseeing the ‘burn bags’ case in the Western District of Virginia, was forced out after he reportedly refused to remove a high-ranking prosecutor who claimed the evidence in the case was flimsy, according to The Times.

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The Latest FBI Spying Makes Watergate Look Trivial

n 1972, a small team of operatives connected to President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign broke into the Democratic National Committee’s offices in the Watergate complex to install listening devices. To this day, there is no conclusive evidence that Nixon personally ordered — or even knew of — the break-in beforehand. Yet Watergate shaped American political consciousness for decades. It gave the world a permanent suffix for scandal and became the ultimate symbol of abuse of power, a crisis so severe that it culminated in the only resignation of a U.S. president to preempt removal from office.

Fast forward 50 years, and what has come to light under the Biden administration dwarfs the clumsy efforts of Nixon’s campaign operatives. According to a newly released document from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the FBI secretly monitored the phone records of at least eight sitting Republican senators. While the bureau is said not to have accessed the content of the conversations, it could see who was called, when the calls were made, how long they lasted, and even the location data.

The ostensible justification was special counsel Jack Smith’s phony investigation into whether President Donald Trump sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election — a claim that has no connection to these senators and provides no legal basis for examining their communications, especially since their phone records were sought three years after the election and two months after Trump had already been indicted for allegedly trying to overturn it. The entire operation was a flagrantly abusive fishing expedition carried out with total impunity. The internal FBI document confirming the bureau’s actions was then buried in a secret “prohibited access” file, where it was recently unearthed by FBI Director Kash Patel.

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FBI Investigates Tampering of Area 51 Crash Site

The FBI is investigating the site of a military plane crash outside Area 51 that was tampered with after cleanup. According to a press release from nearby Creech Air Force Base, workers cleared the scene of a non-fatal training accident by September 27, yet on October 3 they found someone at the site had placed an inert bomb, as well as an “aircraft panel of unknown origin.” The explosive device appeared to be for training purposes only.

The spot under investigation sits just 12 miles east of Area 51, a facility known for its ironclad security and rumored involvement in UFO recovery. The Federal Aviation Administration set a tightly monitored five-day flight restriction over the region following the initial crash, making the appearance of random debris all the more mysterious.

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Kash Patel Fires FBI Agents Involved in Tracking GOP Senators’ Phone Calls

FBI Director Kash Patel has fired agents involved in tracking phone calls of eight Republican senators and a congressman as part of former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of President Donald Trump.

Communication records belonging to GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham (SC), Marsha Blackburn (TN), Ron Johnson (WI), Josh Hawley (MO), Cynthia Lummis (WY), Bill Hagerty (TN), Dan Sullivan (AK), Tommy Tuberville (AL), and Rep. Mike Kelly (PA) were handed over to Smith’s “Arctic Frost” team after they subpoenaed major phone companies in 2023, Breitbart News reported.

That fact was unknown to the public until this week, with Patel saying he discovered the files hidden in a “lockbox” that was placed in a “vault” in a “cyber place where no one can see or search these files.”

“You put it in there when you want to hide it from the world, and that takes the authorization of the attorney general and the director of the FBI,” Patel said in a Tuesday interview on Fox News. “So not only did they weaponize this law enforcement, but when we got in there, and when I got in as the FBI director, from my experience as Russiagate, I knew where to look and what rooms to open and what doors to kick down, and that’s what we did.”

“We found this information to expose the politicization by Jack Smith and the prior Department of Justice,” he added, before revealing that he fired agents who facilitated the secret investigations into U.S. lawmakers:

I mean, just think about it, eight sitting United States senators. Phone records were gathered and subpoenaed through the grand jury process, and it was buried and wormholed. It was the hope that no one would find it. So we’re just scratching the surface here, but accountability is coming. You’re darn right. I fired those agents. You’re darn right. I blew up CR-15, the public corruption squad that led the weaponization at the Washington Field Office. We’re just warming up, but we are running our investigations to the ground. We are finding every single person involved. We will not leave a single room locked.

Hawley, one of the senators who had his phone calls tracked by the Biden administration’s DOJ, called Smith’s subpoena “an abuse of power beyond Watergate, beyond J. Edgar Hoover, one that directly strikes at the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the First Amendment.”

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Biden Judge Michael Nachmanoff Refuses to RECUSE Himself from Comey Case Despite Glaring Conflicts of Interest

Comey’s Biden appointed judge has glaring conflicts of interest but he won’t recuse himself.  This case is over before it starts!

The judge assigned to Comey’s case is a Biden judge who is absolutely totally conflicted but he is making no mention of recusing himself.

Judge Nachmanoff has personal conflicts with Comey.  Michael Nachmanoff, the federal judge presiding over former FBI Director James Comey’s criminal trial, shares a legal history with Comey that raises questions about judicial impartiality.

Nachmanoff clerked for Judge Leonie Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia from 1995 to 1996, when Brinkema was overseeing the Zacarias Moussaoui terrorism trial linked to the 9/11 attacks.

James Comey, as Unit Chief of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, was deeply involved in investigating and prosecuting Moussaoui. Given the sensitive nature of the case, Nachmanoff likely accessed classified, high-level information and had professional proximity to Comey’s team. This connection suggests more than a casual relationship and highlights the need to consider potential conflicts of interest as Nachmanoff oversees Comey’s prosecution.

Nachmanoff advanced from his clerkship to private practice, federal public defense, magistrate judge, and finally a U.S. District Judge appointed by President Biden. There is no public record of direct employment by Comey, but their intertwined roles in national security cases are significant to judicial fairness.

Given that Comey is actively seeking to remove the prosecuting attorney from his case, it raises a reasonable question of whether a new judge should be assigned as well. The high level of coordination and close professional involvement between Judge Nachmanoff—who clerked during the Zacarias Moussaoui trial central to Comey’s FBI work—and the complexities of this current prosecution present a glaring conflict of interest. Considering Comey’s extensive interactions with the legal system and the deeply personal animus he has expressed toward the President of the United States, it is of the utmost importance that the presiding judge be fully capable of impartially understanding both the legal and personal dimensions motivating Comey’s actions, including why he faces charges of lying under oath on two felony counts.

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