Tag: fbi

FBI Claims Attack on Synagogue ‘Not Specifically Related to Jewish Community’

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) claimed Saturday that an attack and hostage-taking by an armed Islamic terrorist at a synagogue near Dallas, Texas, was “not specifically related to the Jewish community,” prompting criticism online.

The terrorist burst into the sanctuary during a Sabbath service at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, and took several members of the community hostage, including the rabbi, before being killed by the FBI in a raid Saturday evening.

As Breitbart News reported:

During a press conference later that night, FBI Special Agent in Charge Matthew DeSarno said the rescue came as the result of “a long, long day of hard work by nearly 200 law enforcement officers from across the region.”

DeSarno said the FBI has identified the now-deceased suspect but said they were not prepared to release his identity Saturday night. He also would not go into the details of the hostage-taker’s motivation.

“We do believe that, from engaging with the subject, he was singularly focused on one issue and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community,” he added. “We will continue to work to find motives and we will continue on that path in terms of the resolution of the incident.”

Many found that claim hard to believe.

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The FBI’s Honeypot Phones Were More Widely Distributed in the U.S. Than Previously Thought

One of the weirder stories from last year involved a gargantuan FBI honeypot operation designed to catch crooks all over the world. According to Motherboard, that operation had a bigger imprint in the U.S. than originally believed.

During “Operation Trojan Shield,” the feds used a secret relationship with an encrypted phone company, called Anom, which sold devices exclusively to career criminals looking for a secure way to communicate with one another. The product’s developer, who had previously been busted for drug trafficking, agreed to act as a high-level federal informant and for at least two years sold devices to criminals while also secretly cooperating with authorities. Meanwhile the FBI, along with its international partners, intercepted all of the communications, which allowed them to capture evidence of widespread criminal malfeasance on a global scale.

It made for one helluva weird story when the bureau finally revealed what it had been up to last June, and “Shield” led to the arrest of hundreds of alleged criminals in countries all around the world—many of which are accused of using the phones to organize drug trafficking and other forms of organized crime. The arrests continue to this day.

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The mysterious death of Democratic National Committee worker Seth Rich and the FBI’s battle to keep documents about it secret

A lingering Freedom of Information (FOI) battle involving the FBI continues in the case of Seth Rich.

Rich was a Democratic National Committee (DNC) worker who was attacked and killed on July 10, 2016 by an unknown person or people.

Police implied Rich was the victim in a botched robbery attempt. However, with no suspects in custody or even named, others suggested his death as linked to a leak of controversial DNC emails to WikiLeaks.

The emails were considered harmful to the DNC and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Some theorized that Rich could have been the source of the leak, and then was murdered in retaliation.

One reason the case received a lot of publicity is that US intelligence officials blamed Russia for hacking into the DNC and giving the documents to WikiLeaks. If the document leak were an inside job, instead, it would mean Russia did not play the role intelligence officials claimed, at the same time some top officials were also fabricating links between Russia and Donald Trump, and at the same time an FBI attorney was doctoring documents to improperly obtain a wiretap against a Trump campaign associate as a “Russian spy.”

Speculation about Rich’s death led to lawsuits filed by the Rich family, who called the theories “right-wing conspiracy theories” that compounded their grief. They received some apologies and settlements regarding the claims, which they said they believed to be false.

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Federal authorities won’t say why armed Capitol rioters disappeared from FBI’s most wanted list

Federal authorities won’t explain why three men who participated in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, have mysteriously disappeared from the FBI’s Capitol Violence Most Wanted list.

One unidentified man wore an earpiece during the riot and was filmed carrying what appeared to be a concealed handgun on his left hip. The man was pictured on the FBI’s most wanted list for over five months until he was removed without explanation on the same day the New York Times reported an FBI informant was at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

A second unidentified man was filmed beating police officers with a baton during the riot. The FBI said the man was wanted for assaulting a federal law enforcement officer, but the agency removed the man from its most wanted list without explanation in late February, just weeks after his debut.

The third man, Ray Epps of Arizona, was filmed in the hours leading up to the riot urging Trump supporters to enter the Capitol to stop the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory.

Epps has not been arrested or charged for his actions. His unexplained removal from the FBI’s most wanted list on July 1 has fueled speculation from a member of the House Judiciary Committee that Epps may have agitated people to storm the Capitol at the behest of the FBI.

Video footage shows Epps, a former president of the Arizona Oath Keepers militia group, urging a crowd of Trump supporters on the evening of Jan. 5, 2021, to “go into the Capitol” the next day, provoking allegations from the crowd that he was working for the federal authorities.

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FBI arrests main suspect in Haiti president assassination

U.S. authorities have taken into custody a primary suspect in the assassination of the Haitian president. Mario Antonio Palacios is a Colombian national who fled to Jamaica and had evaded arrest for months.

Palacios, 43, was recently deported from Jamaica and, during a layover in Panama, agreed to travel to the United States, according to prosecutors for the U.S. District Court for the South District of Florida. He was taken into custody and was scheduled to appear in federal court in Miami. 

According to the federal criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday, Palacios and others entered the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on July 7, 2021, in a plot to kill President Jovenel Moise. Moise was shot 12 times and died as a result, according to an autopsy and local authorities. First lady Martine Moise also suffered multiple gunshots but survived and was treated in Miami.

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NBC News Uses Ex-FBI Official Frank Figliuzzi to Urge Assange’s Extradition, Hiding His Key Role

Two of the television outlets on which American liberals rely most for their news — NBC News and CNN — have spent the last six years hiring a virtual army of former CIA operatives, FBI officials, NSA spies, Pentagon chiefs, and DOJ prosecutors to work in their newsrooms. The multiple ways in which journalism is fundamentally corrupted by this spectacle are all vividly illustrated by a new article from NBC News that urges the prosecution and extradition of Julian Assange, claiming that the WikiLeaks founder, once on U.S. soil, will finally provide the long-elusive proof that Trump criminally conspired with Russia.

The NBC article is written by former FBI Assistant Director and current NBC News employee Frank Figliuzzi, who played a central role during the Obama years in the FBI’s attempt to investigate and criminalize Assange: a rather relevant fact concealed by NBC when publishing this. But this is how U.S. security state agents now directly control corporate news outlets.

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FBI ‘Secret Spy Plane Surveillance Program’ Detailed in Court Records

The FBI’s so-called “secret spy plane surveillance program” is under scrutiny in a Florida terrorism case, where the defendant has asked a U.S. judge to toss evidence from the bureau’s aerial surveillance activities.

The FBI’s aerial surveillance program was first revealed in June 2015 by the Associated Press, which reported that the bureau maintained a civilian air force through private shell companies. The FBI admitted to the program days later, saying in a statement that “it should come as no surprise that the FBI uses planes to follow terrorists, spies, and serious criminals.”

“Contrary to some recent media reporting, the FBI’s aviation program is not classified. Some of our aircraft are registered covertly because overt registration would put our aircraft and operations at risk of compromise,” the FBI said at the time.

Nevertheless, the existence of the FBI’s program sparked outrage among civil libertarians, who celebrated when U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit found in June that a similar program operated by the Baltimore Police Department violated the Fourth Amendment.

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