Tag: fbi

Disturbing Testimony Reveals FBI Collected License Plate Numbers of Parents Attending School Board Meetings

During Thursday’s hearing by the House Judiciary Select Committee on the weaponization of the federal government, FBI whistleblower Stephen Friend testified that he was ordered to write down the license plate numbers of parents who attended school board meetings.

Friend — a 12-year veteran of the bureau — was suspended after he refused to take part in a SWAT-style raid on a January 6 suspect who was facing misdemeanor charges last summer. “I have an oath to uphold the Constitution,” Mr. Friend, a 12-year veteran of the bureau, told his supervisors when he declined to participate in the raid on August 24, 2022. “I have a moral objection and want to be considered a conscientious objector.”

On Thursday, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) questioned the FBI whistleblowers on the bureau’s “terrorism symbol guide.”

The agents told Gaetz that voicing support for the second amendment, the Betsy Ross flag and writing “2A” were all among the FBI’s designated domestic terrorism symbols. Gaetz then turned his attention to Friend and asked about school board meetings.

Friend told the panel that the FBI directed him to record license plate numbers from vehicles belonging to parents opposed to leftist agendas at school board meetings. The suspended agent was one of those parents himself, having attended a number of local school board meetings to voice curriculum concerns.

“After I attended privately my colleagues teased me that [the FBI] were probably going to start investigating me,” Friend said.

In addition, Friend revealed that he was pulled from cases involving child predators in order to investigate parents at school board meetings.

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Clintons in the crosshairs…again! Republicans demand new probe into Bill and Hillary after report reveals FBI top brass shut down FOUR criminal investigations into millions of dollars in foreign donations and speaker fees

The FBI had at least four criminal investigations into Hillary and Bill Clinton that were ultimately shut down months before the presidential election in 2016, a new Justice Department report reveals – and Republicans want to reopen those probes.

A long-awaited report by Special Counsel John Durham released on Monday shows the FBI began investigating claims in late 2014 from a ‘well-placed’ confidential source that two foreign governments were trying to make illegal donations to buy influence with Hillary during her presidential campaign. 

Investigators were even offered documents of one alleged $2,700 illegal contribution that led to a ‘substantial’ further donation.

The bombshell report also reveals three different FBI field offices, in Washington, D.C., Little Rock, Arkansas, and New York, launched investigations into the Clinton Foundation in early 2016 for ‘possible criminal activity.’ 

One of the investigations was partly based on statements made in journalist Peter Schweizer’s 2015 book, Clinton Cash, claiming the Clintons’ charity was taking millions in donations from foreign governments trying to change US foreign policy while Hillary was Secretary of State. 

But despite making progress, all four criminal investigations were shut down by senior officials, Durham found. 

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US authorities destroyed dossiers on Lord Mountbatten at the request of the British Government after discovery of wartime FBI file accusing aristocrat of having a ‘perversion for young boys’, historian claims

The US destroyed FBI dossiers on Lord Mountbatten at the request of the British Government after the discovery of a wartime file accusing the royal of being a paedophile, his biographer has claimed.

Writing for The Mail’s new Royals section, Andrew Lownie expanded on his 2019 discovery of a Second World War-era file which contained the claim that the Earl was a ‘homosexual with a lusting for young boys’. 

When he made a request to the FBI for other files the agency held on Mountbatten, he was told they had been destroyed ‘after you asked for them’. 

Dr Lownie, the author of The Mountbattens: their Lives & Loves, claimed this had been ‘clearly’ carried out at the ‘request of the British Government’. 

The historian also lamented the ‘absurd’ difficulty faced by biographers in getting access to royal archives in the UK after finding that files on King Edward VIII and his American wife Wallis Simpson were ‘mysteriously’ withdrawn from public view. 

He claimed that files on Edward and Wallis which had been available in the National Archives for more than two decades, including ones related to Mrs Simpson’s affair with a used car salesman, have been removed in recent years.

Earl Mountbatten, who was assassinated by the IRA in 1979, served as head of the Royal Navy and had been Viceroy of India when the country became independent from Britain in 1947.

He was a well-known figure in Britain thanks to his close relationship with the Queen, Prince Philip and King Charles, when he was the Prince of Wales. 

The FBI file on him, which emerged in 2019, also claimed that his alleged penchant for young men made him ‘an unfit man to direct any sort of military operations’.

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John Durham releases final report, concludes FBI had no verified intel when it opened probe on Trump

Special Counsel John Durham released a damning final report Monday after more than three years investigating the Russia collusion probe, declaring the FBI had no verified intelligence or evidence when it opened the Crossfire Hurricane probe of President Donald Trump’s campaign in the summer of 2016. The prosecutor, however, recommended no new criminal charges.

“Neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” Durham wrote in a 300-plus page report sent to Congress and others and obtained by Just the News.

DOJ was slated to make the report public later Monday.

The prosecutor faulted the department and the FBI for failing to follow their own standards and allowing a probe to persist, including the surveillance of an American citizen, without basis under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

“Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we concluded the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report,” Durham wrote.

“The FBI personnel also repeatedly disregarded important requirements when they continued to seek renewals of that FISA surveillance while acknowledging – then and in hindsight – that they did not genuinely believe there was probably cause to believe that the target was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of foreign power.”

You can read the full report here:

 Durham Report

The report’s release touched off instant outrage and impact on Capitol Hill, where House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan tweeted he planned to summon Durham for testimony next week.

The FBI immediately reacted, saying Durham’s findings justified the changes that current Director Christopher Wray made after taking over from fired Director James Comey.

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FBI Contractor Created Fake Online IDs to Join Chatrooms Run by Groups Organizing Against Vaccine Mandates

An FBI surveillance contractor infiltrated the chatrooms of two airline industry groups opposed to vaccine mandates to collect intelligence on the groups’ organizing activities, investigative journalist Lee Fang reported.

The contractor, Flashpoint, which in the past infiltrated Islamic terror groups, now focuses on “anti-vaccine” groups and other domestic political organizations, according to Fang.

In a webinar presentation for clients last year, which Fang analyzed on his Substack, Flashpoint analyst Vlad Cuiujuclu demonstrated his company’s methods for identifying and entering encrypted Telegram chat groups.

He explained how the company attempted to join chatrooms of transportation workers resisting the COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Fang described the presentation:

“‘In this case, we’re searching for a closed channel of U.S. Freedom Flyers,’ said Cuiujuclu. ‘It’s basically a group that opposed vaccination and masks.’

“As he clicked through a database, Cuiujuclu showed a chat group on Telegram sponsored by Airline Professionals For Justice, another group formed by airline industry workers opposed to the mandate. The forum, he added, provided useful insights, including Zoom links for meetings of the grassroots organization.

“‘Private chats,’ said Cuiujuclu, ‘require for you to have an invite link,’ which he noted can often either be found by scrolling through public forums or by ‘engag[ing] the admin of that channel.’”

Flashpoint also offers clients artificial intelligence and internet scraping tools.

According to Fang, the firm is a leader in the “threat intelligence industry,” a growing number of security and surveillance firms that create fake online identities to infiltrate Discord chats, WhatsApp groups, Reddit forums and dark web message boards to gather information for clients, including corporations and the FBI, to monitor potential threats.

Joshua Yoder, president of US Freedom Flyers, said he is aware that Flashpoint infiltrated private chat groups associated with his organization.

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Ex-FBI agent who feds say urged Jan. 6 rioters to kill police worked terrorism task force

An ex-FBI official who allegedly urged rioters to “kill” officers during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was previously the supervisory special agent in charge of Homegrown Violent Extremism for the FBI New York Field Office’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a senior law enforcement official told NBC News.

Jared Wise was arrested in Oregon this week, charged with four misdemeanor counts. After he entered the Capitol and exited through a broken window, an FBI affidavit alleges, Wise yelled at officers outside the Capitol.

“You’re disgusting. You are the Nazi. You are the Gestapo. You can’t see it,” he yelled, according to the bureau. “Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!”

As officers were knocked down in front of him, Wise turned toward the violence and started yelling again, according to the FBI.

“Yeah, f— them! Yeah, kill ’em!” Wise said, according to the FBI. “Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill ’em!”

Wise, according to a senior law enforcement official, served in the homegrown violent extremism role from 2014 to 2017.

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“Consider it a fake, even if it’s not” – FBI accused of assisting Ukraine with Facebook censorship

The FBI has been pressuring Facebook and other platforms to censor misinformation on behalf of Ukraine, even when the information is not necessarily untrue, according to a report by independent journalist Lee Fang.

Fang learned about the FBI’s alleged role in the censorship after interviewing the head of the Department of Cyber Information Security of Ukraine, Illia Vitiuk.

“Once we have a trace or evidence of disinformation campaigns via Facebook or other resources that are from the US, we pass this information to the FBI, along with writing directly to Facebook,” said Vitiuk.

“We asked FBI for support to help us with Meta, to help us with others, and sometimes we get good results with that.”

They also flag information that might be true.

“When people ask me, ‘How do you differentiate whether it is fake or true?’ Indeed it is very difficult in such an informational flow,” said Vitiuk. “I say, ‘Everything that is against our country, consider it a fake, even if it’s not.’ Right now, for our victory, it is important to have that kind of understanding, not to be fooled.”

From the report:

“During the panel, Vitiuk thanked the Ukrainian government’s many public and private sector allies in the United States, including Mandiant, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Clearview, Google, Amazon, and Starlink, among others. Cyber security support from American partners has helped thwart Russian cyber attacks on civilian and military infrastructure and have been a “psychological game changer,” Vitiuk said. He emphasized that the FBI has been his agency’s ‘top partner.’”

While such tactics are a common, but controversial, warfare practice, the FBI is supposed to have the First Amendment to think about.

The allegations that the FBI continue to be involved in online censorship is concerning, especially given that the FBI’s censorship efforts have already been exposed by Matt Taibbi and other journalists who released the Twitter Files.

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How The FBI Helps Ukrainian Intelligence Hunt ‘Disinformation’ On Social Media

The Federal Bureau of Investigation pressures Facebook to take down alleged Russian “disinformation” at the behest of Ukrainian intelligence, according to a senior Ukrainian official who corresponds regularly with the FBI. The same official said that Ukrainian authorities define “disinformation” broadly, flagging many social media accounts and posts that he suggested may simply contradict the Ukrainian government’s narrative.

“Once we have a trace or evidence of disinformation campaigns via Facebook or other resources that are from the U.S., we pass this information to the FBI, along with writing directly to Facebook,” said llia Vitiuk, head of the Department of Cyber Information Security in the Security Service of Ukraine.

“We asked FBI for support to help us with Meta, to help us with others, and sometimes we get good results with that,” noted Vitiuk. “We say, ‘Okay, this was the person who was probably Russia’s influence.'”

Vitiuk, in an interview, said that he is a proponent of free speech and understands concerns around social media censorship. But he also admitted that he and his colleagues take a deliberately expansive view of what counts as “Russian disinformation.”

“When people ask me, ‘How do you differentiate whether it is fake or true?’ Indeed it is very difficult in such an informational flow,” said Vitiuk. “I say, ‘Everything that is against our country, consider it a fake, even if it’s not.’ Right now, for our victory, it is important to have that kind of understanding, not to be fooled.”

In recent weeks, Vitiuk said, Russian forces have used various forms of disinformation to manufacture fake tension between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the four-star general who serves as commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s military.

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Over 10,000 FBI Agents Can Access Data From Secretive Surveillance Program: Inspectors General

More than 10,000 federal employees could have access to data revealed by a secretive government surveillance program that has come under scrutiny because of alleged abuses, lawmakers were told by U.S. inspectors general.

At an April 27 House Judiciary subcommittee hearing, lawmakers heard from a panel of three witnesses associated with the U.S. Office of the Inspector General (OIG) responsible for oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The legislation gives intelligence agencies broad powers to conduct surveillance on foreigners suspected of spying for a foreign power or belonging to a terrorist group.

However, bipartisan concerns have been raised because the program also has the ability to collect information about U.S. citizens.

During the hearing, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) queried panelists about how many FBI agents could have access to FISA-acquired data.

A court-ordered report released in May 2022 revealed that the FBI had made more than 3.3 million queries of Americans under FISA authority. This, in turn, prompted a crisis of confidence in the FBI’s respect for civil liberties among members of both parties.

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Over One Million Secret FBI Searches Made in Error: Watchdog

More than one million secret searches of Americans conducted by the FBI were made erroneously, a watchdog testified to Congress on April 27.

Around 30 percent of the approximately 3.4 million searches were done in error, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified.

“It’s obviously very concerning that there’s that volume of searches,” Horowitz told a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee, adding that he was particularly concerned with the high error rate.

The searches in question were conducted by FBI personnel with authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The bill enables U.S. authorities to gather information on U.S. citizens suspected of being involved with possible spies or terrorists.

Some 3.39 million searches were conducted by the FBI in 2021, U.S. intelligence officials have said. That was up from just 1.2 million in 2020.

Sharon Bradford Franklin, chair of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, told members that Congress should pass new legislation imposing greater safeguards into the system to protect Americans. That should include requiring probable cause or court review for each query of an American, she said.

“Congress certainly has the authority to do that. And I think that’s one of the key issues for this committee in the Congress to consider,” Horowitz said. Adding new requirements, though, could increase the FBI’s workload, he said.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) indicated support for adding new requirements.

“The solution is simple right? Require probable cause if you’re going to query this database on American citizens,” he said.

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