Tag: fbi

Watchdog alleges Netflix coordinated with FBI to promote left-wing narratives

A new report alleges that the streaming giant Netflix has worked closely with federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies in ways that amount to government-assisted propaganda.

The report released Tuesday by the Oversight Project, a government watchdog group, contends that the FBI, the CIA, and the Defense Department (now the War Department) exercised influence over film and television productions—particularly those distributed by Netflix.

“Based on all publicly available evidence and analysis, Netflix appears to have an outsized role in socially engineering millions of Americans into a predisposition to accept preferred left-wing ideological dogma,” the Oversight Project report states.

“Netflix did so with the help of the federal government, especially the FBI, and intelligence community. In fact, the FBI plays an outsized active role in content moderation for projects it is involved in.”

Keep reading

Sen. Mark Warner’s Attack On DNI Election Raid Falls Flat

Democratic Virginia Sen. Mark Warner slammed Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard over her presence during the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) execution of a search warrant at the Fulton County Election Hub in Georgia on Wednesday.

Warner claimed Gabbard “has got no business interfering in elections” and warned that her actions should “concern the heck out of every American.” His attack is yet another example of Democrats ignoring clear federal statutes in an attempt to control the narrative.

Federal law explicitly assigns the DNI a leadership role in safeguarding elections from foreign exploitation. Under 50 U.S.C. § 3371d, the DNI oversees counterintelligence matters related to election security, including assessing risks to voting systems, software, voter registration databases, and other infrastructure. Warner’s claim that Gabbard has “no business” in elections also ignores 50 U.S.C. § 3024, which requires all Intelligence Community (IC) elements to provide the DNI access to necessary intelligence for oversight and integration.

Warner’s attack frames the DNI investigation as domestic meddling, but it’s central to the DNI’s counterintelligence duties. Gabbard’s presence at the Fulton County raid falls within her authority as DNI. In fact, it would arguably be negligent of her office if she chose not to participate in the investigation into potential voting system and election security vulnerabilities.

Keep reading

Atlanta Field Office Special Agent in Charge Allegedly Removed For Slow-Walking Election Fraud Investigation

Reports are emerging on social media that Paul Brown, the FBI Special Agent in Charge at the Atlanta Field Office, was “forced out of that job earlier this month,” according to MSNOW’s Ken Dilanian.

According to MSNOW, Brown “was forced out this month after questioning the Justice Department’s renewed push to probe Fulton County’s role in the 2020 election” after “expressing concern” about “unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud” in Fulton County.

On Thursday, The Gateway Pundit published a 26-count report that was shared with the Department of Justice.  The document allegedly details extensive acts of maladministration and evidence destruction in Fulton County related to the 2020 election. The publication maintains that the claims are supported by citations and corroborating materials, countering Dilanian’s characterization of them as “unsubstantiated.”

Keep reading

FBI Takes Over Investigation of Alex Pretti Shooting

The FBI is now leading the probe into the shooting of Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis resident killed Saturday by Border Patrol officers, the Department of Homeland Security said Friday.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem first disclosed the shift during a Fox News interview Thursday evening. Her department said earlier this week that Homeland Security Investigations, a unit within the department, would be heading the investigation.

“We will continue to follow the investigation that the FBI is leading and giving them all the information that they need to bring that to conclusion, and make sure that the American people know the truth of the situation and how we can go forward and continue to protect the American people,” Noem said, speaking to Fox host Sean Hannity.

Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed Friday that the FBI will lead the Pretti probe and that HSI will support them. Separately, Customs and Border Protection, which is part of DHS, is doing its own internal investigation into the shooting, during which two officers opened fire on Pretti.

DHS did not immediately respond to questions about when the change was made or why. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It was also not immediately clear whether the FBI would now share information and evidence with Minnesota state investigators, who have thus far been frozen out of the federal probe.

In the same interview, Noem appeared to distance herself from statements she made shortly after the shooting, claiming Pretti had brandished a handgun and aggressively approached officers.

Multiple videos that emerged of the shooting contradicted that claim, showing the intensive care nurse had only his mobile phone in his hand as officers tackled him to the ground, with one removing a handgun from the back of Pretti’s pants as another officer began firing shots into his back.

Pretti had a state permit to legally carry a concealed firearm. At no point did he appear to reach for it, the videos showed.

“I know you realize that situation was very chaotic, and that we were being relayed information from on the ground from CBP agents and officers that were there,” Noem said during the interview with Hannity on Thursday. “We were using the best information we had at the time, seeking to be transparent with the American people and get them what we knew to be true on the ground.”

The change comes after two other videos emerged Wednesday of an earlier altercation between Pretti and federal immigration officers 11 days before his death.

The Jan. 13 videos show Pretti in a winter coat, yelling at federal vehicles and at one point appearing to spit before kicking out the taillight of one vehicle. A struggle ensues between Pretti and several officers, during which he is forced to the ground. Pretti’s winter coat comes off, and he either breaks free or the officers let him go and he scurries away.

When he turns his back to the camera, what appears to be a handgun is visible in his waistband. At no point do the videos show Pretti reaching for the gun, and it is not clear whether federal agents saw it.

Keep reading

Group Chats About ICE Whereabouts Are Protected Speech. The FBI Is Investigating Anyway.

Group chats about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents aren’t illegal. But FBI Director Kash Patel doesn’t seem to care.

On Monday, Patel told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson that the FBI was investigating a Signal group in which people had been chatting about ICE agents’ whereabouts.

The Trump administration has said that people are doxing federal agents, employing a term once reserved for the act of publishing private information about someone’s identity or address online. “Doxing” generally implies that this sharing is done with ill intent.

But there are all sorts of perfectly benign reasons why Americans—whether in the country legally or not—might want to keep tabs on where immigration authorities are going. Sharing this information allows people to protest, observe, or document ICE activity, or avoid run ins with ICE agents.

Chatting about ICE agent whereabouts is unambiguously speech that’s protected by the First Amendment. So the idea that the FBI would investigate on these grounds is worrying.

“There does not appear to be any lawful basis for this investigation,” said Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). “The First Amendment generally protects the publication of legally-obtained information, including much of what the Trump administration has labeled ‘doxxing.’ That protection extends to using an app to share information about ICE activity.”

In his interview with Johnson, Patel paid lip service to the First Amendment. Yet he also framed Signal chats pertaining to ICE whereabouts as inherently suspect and/or likely to lead to criminal actions. “You cannot create a scenario that illegally entraps and puts law enforcement in harm’s way,” he said, drawing a direct link between constitutionally protected activity and criminality.

Of course, trapping ICE agents and harming them would indeed be illegal. But the illegal part of that is the trapping, the plotting harm, and the harming, not merely the knowing where the agents are or chatting about where they are. And even if some individual ultimately uses the location information to inflict harm, it still would not make the mere sharing of that information illegal.

“The First Amendment has narrow exceptions for true threats and speech intended and likely to provoke imminent unlawful action, but the government cannot trigger those exceptions simply by claiming that speech puts officials in harm’s way,” notes Terr. “The First Amendment also does not protect criminal conspiracy, but that requires evidence of an agreement to commit a specific crime and a substantial step toward carrying it out. No such evidence appears in the Signal messages that have been made public.”

Keep reading

FBI Raids Fulton County Elections Center

FBI agents descended Wednesday on Fulton County’s election operations hub in Georgia, the same county that became the epicenter of voter fraud complaints following the 2020 election.

Agents were seen entering the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center, a facility opened in 2023 and billed by state officials as a way to streamline election administration.

Authorities would not say exactly what prompted the search, but Fox News Digital was told the matter is tied to the 2020 election. The FBI declined further comment, and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for clarification.

FBI Atlanta confirmed it was “executing a court authorized law enforcement action” at the address of the county’s elections hub on Wednesday afternoon.

In an email to 11Alive, the FBI’s Atlanta office said agents were operating at 5600 Campbellton Fairburn Road in Union City, which serves as Fulton County’s main election operations center.

“Our investigation into this matter is ongoing so there are no details that I can provide at the moment,” a spokesperson said in the email.

An 11Alive crew was dispatched to Union City to gather additional information.

The federal activity comes weeks after the Justice Department sued Fulton County over access to election materials from the 2020 presidential race, keeping scrutiny on a county long at the center of election integrity battles.

Keep reading

Kash Patel Announces Investigation Into MN Anti-ICE Operations: They ‘Should Be Worried’

Benny Johnson described what he characterized as breaking news involving a federal investigation into Signal chat groups during an exchange with Kash Patel.

Johnson said, “Okay, so this is breaking news. So you are you in the FBI and perhaps other intelligence agencies are fully aware of this coordinated effort to attack federal law enforcement, to impede them and potentially insurrect And so there is now an open investigation into these into these chats and into this coordinated network.”

Johnson continued by describing the reactions of individuals involved in the chats, stating, “Some of them are fleeing. Some of them are very scared. Now you can see their chats. They’re very, very worried now that they have been exposed.”

Keep reading

Senior FBI Official Describes ‘Surreal’ Call Where Kash Patel Dictated Social Media Strategy Right After Kirk Assassination

In the immediate aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination in September, FBI Director Kash Patel prioritized social media strategy over the bureau’s response to the killing, according to a senior FBI official.

On Thursday, The New York Times published accounts of Patel’s tenure from 45 people who either currently work at the FBI or left during President Donald Trump’s second term.

“Beginning with Trump’s selection of Patel, our sources narrated the events that most troubled them over the last year,” the Times stated. “Many details of what we learned are reported here for the first time.”

Kirk, the conservative activist and founder of TPUSA, was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10. In an unusual move for an FBI director, Patel traveled to the crime scene that day. Previously, it had been reported that Patel refused to get off the FBI plane in Provo until he was given a medium-sized raid jacket. In its report on Thursday, the Times cited an anonymous “senior executive” in the bureau who described a conference call on the day of the killing.

The official said Patel prioritized social media strategy over next steps in the investigation:

Whenever there’s a critical incident, one of the first things that happens is a conference call with everybody — all the executives, most of the field offices dial in. The director rarely speaks, because someone with situational awareness is leading the call. They’ll say: Here’s what happened. Here’s what we know. Here’s what we need. But we get on, and it’s just Kash berating the special agent in charge in Salt Lake. He’s super emotional.

And then it turns surreal. He and [then-Deputy Director Dan] Bongino start talking about their Twitter strategy. And Kash is like: I’m gonna tweet this. Salt Lake, you tweet that. Dan, you come in with this. Then I’ll come back with this. They’re literally scripting out their social media, not talking about how we’re going to respond or resources or the situation. He’s screaming that he wants to put stuff out, but it’s not even vetted yet. It’s not even accurate.

When I was an agent, I did hundreds of these cases. The initial information that comes in is always wrong. There’s too much coming in, and it takes time to vet. And it was obvious that Kash can’t understand that and doesn’t want to understand that.

Everyone on the call is just like: This guy is completely out of control. On another call, he said: When a crisis happens, the only thing you need to do is call me. The most important thing in any crisis is controlling the narrative. I was like: No, no, no. We actually have to do some work here. We’re going to have to investigate, to solve this.

Hours after Kirk’s assassination, Patel posted on X that the shooter was in custody, but later said the person had been released. The next day, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson turned himself in to authorities.

Keep reading

Magistrate Judge Blocks FBI From Accessing Devices Seized From Washington Post Reporter Who Obtained Illegally Leaked Information From Pentagon Contractor

A federal magistrate judge on Wednesday blocked the FBI from accessing devices seized from the Washington Post reporter who obtained illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor.

Among the items seized from Natanson: 2 silver MacBook Pros and a Pink iPhone.

As previously reported, the FBI raided the home of a Washington Post reporter who obtained classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor.

Feds executed a search warrant at the Alexandria, Virginia, home of WaPo reporter Hannah Natanson earlier this month as part of an investigation into a Maryland system administrator who has a top security clearance.

The FBI seized Natanson’s cell phone, two laptops (one personal and one work-related), and a Garmin watch.

Natanson is not the subject of the investigation.

According to The Washington Post, Natanson was at home at the time of the raid.

The contractor who stashed the classified documents at his home, Aurelio Perez-Lugones, is currently in jail.

FBI agents reportedly found classified intelligence reports in Perez-Lugones’ lunchbox and basement.

According to The Washington Post, Natanson was at home at the time of the raid.

The contractor who stashed the classified documents at his home, Aurelio Perez-Lugones, is currently in jail.

FBI agents reportedly found classified intelligence reports in Perez-Lugones’ lunchbox and basement.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said the search was conducted at the Pentagon’s request.

Keep reading

Biden’s FBI paid anti-Trump ‘Sedition Hunters’ as informants in J6, Arctic Frost probes, memos show

he Biden-era FBI made more than $100,000 in payments to informants who were members of an anonymous group of tech sleuths known as the “Sedition Hunters” to gather and analyze video evidence in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and Arctic Frost probes despite the group’s significant anti-Trump fervor and known ties to foreigners, according to memos reviewed by Just the News.

The payments are due to be disclosed by FBI Director Kash Patel to Congress along with acknowledged concerns that the Christopher Wray-run bureau’s approval of certain members of the Sedition Hunters as confidential human sources may have violated bureau policies in the Domestic Investigation and Operations Guide (DIOG) concerning informant bias, informant secrecy, foreign influence, and contracting transparency, officials said.

Government officials said group members were first engaged in January 2021, just days after the Capitol riot, to assist making arrests in the January 6 case by identifying potential defendants using facial recognition software. The group members received at least $150,000 in payments for that work and other work related to the Arctic Frost probe into whether Trump supporters violated the law by promoting alternate electors to be considered for the certification of the 2020 election.

Biden-era FBI knew paid foreigners were using spyware to identify J6 arrestees

One of the earliest emails from the FBI’s Washington field office that oversaw that work showed the FBI was clearly aware the group had foreign connections and may actually be using software from overseas to identify American citizens for arrest, according to a copy of the email reviewed by Just the News.

The late January 2021 email from the FBI’s Washington field office stated that “we have a sedition hunter from the United Kingdom running facial recognition software” with the tipster telling the bureau that this UK-based so-called sedition hunter “just found this possible match” to an alleged January 6 suspect a few minutes prior, sharing the picture with the FBI.

FBI Director Kash Patel told Just the News on Tuesday night he is concerned that the paid informant relationship with Sedition Hunters members was inappropriate, and he was committed to working with Congress to develop rules to avoid such entanglements in the future.

“The American people deserve the truth about how the FBI was weaponized against them. Paying openly anti-Trump activists to identify Americans using questionable technology is a stunning abuse of bureau authorities and a clear violation of longstanding informant rules,” Patel said in a statement to Just the News.

“Under my leadership, the FBI will fully disclose these actions to Congress and ensure the bureau never again serves partisan or political ends instead of the Constitution,” he added.

Officials said the FBI believes it has fired all supervisors who were involved in the informant relationship, but is doing an audit to make sure he didn’t overlook any players.

Officials said a Sedition Hunter member also was engaged as an FBI confidential human source in summer 2023, receiving $20,000 in payments in the Arctic Frost probe. The source was specifically tasked with looking for video evidence tying Trump supporters who attended the president’s Jan. 6, 2021 speech on the Ellipse to the subsequent riot at the Capitol.

That footage was being sought as the FBI and prosecutors sought to tie Trump in a criminal conspiracy to the violence that happened at the Capitol even though the president never went there himself, officials said.

Keep reading