Tag: fbi

Parler Warned FBI More Than 50 Times Before Capitol Riot, Rep. Carolyn Maloney Says

Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York revealed to the House Oversight Committee and the Reform Committee Tuesday that the conservative social media site Parler sent warnings about its users’ violence to the FBI more than 50 times leading up to the January 6 attacks on the Capitol.

Maloney, the Democratic chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, presented research into why the response was so slow to requests for aid from the Capitol Police on January 6. “The threats, I would say, were everywhere,” Maloney said. “The system was blinking red.”

Maloney questioned FBI Director Christopher A. Wray about the bureau’s lack of a response to several intelligence alerts pre-riots, particularly dozens of warnings from Parler.

The “Committee has obtained docs showing that…Parler sent the FBI evidence of planned violence in DC on January 6. Parler referred this content to the FBI for investigation over 50 times,” Maloney said. The content allegedly included “specific threats of violence being planned at the Capitol.”

Keep reading

FBI warns lawmakers that QAnon ‘digital soldiers’ may become more violent

The FBI has warned lawmakers that online QAnon conspiracy theorists may carry out more acts of violence as they move from serving as “digital soldiers” to taking action in the real world following the January 6 US Capitol attack. The shift is fueled by a belief among some of the conspiracy’s more militant followers that they “can no longer ‘trust the plan” set forth by its mysterious standard-bearer, known simply as “Q,” according to an unclassified FBI threat assessment on QAnon sent to lawmakers last week, which was obtained by CNN. But the report suggests the failure of QAnon predictions to materialize has not led to followers abandoning the conspiracy. Instead, there’s a belief that individuals need to take greater control of the direction of the movement than before.

This might lead followers to seek to harm “perceived members of the ‘cabal’ such as Democrats and other political opposition — instead of continually awaiting Q’s promised actions which have not occurred,” according to the assessment.

Keep reading

FBI sold phones to organized crime and read 27 million “encrypted” messages

The Federal Bureau of Investigation created a company that sold encrypted devices to hundreds of organized crime syndicates, resulting in 800 arrests in 16 countries, law-enforcement authorities announced today. The FBI and agencies in other countries intercepted 27 million messages over 18 months before making the arrests in recent days, and more arrests are planned.

The FBI teamed up with Australian Federal Police to target drug trafficking and money laundering. They “strategically developed and covertly operated an encrypted device company, called ANOM, which grew to service more than 12,000 encrypted devices to over 300 criminal syndicates operating in more than 100 countries, including Italian organized crime, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and international drug trafficking organizations,” Europol said today.

Distribution of the devices began in October 2018. The cellphones sold by the FBI-run company were “procured on the black market” and “performed a single function hidden behind a calculator app: sending encrypted messages and photos,” The New York Times wrote today. The cellphones were “stripped of all normal functions,” with the faux calculator being the only working app. Once users entered a code, they could use the app to send messages that they thought were protected by end-to-end encryption.

“For years, organized crime figures around the globe relied on the devices to orchestrate international drug shipments, coordinate the trafficking of arms and explosives, and discuss contract killings, law enforcement officials said,” the Times wrote. “Users trusted the devices’ security so much that they often laid out their plans not in code, but in plain language.”

Unbeknownst to users, messages were routed to an FBI-owned server and decrypted with a master key controlled by the FBI.

Keep reading

Ex-FBI Agent Indicted For Accepting Bribes Paid by Lawyer Linked to Armenian Organized Crime Figure

A former FBI agent who retired after 20 years as a special agent has been arrested and indicted on a federal criminal charge alleging he conspired to accept more than $200,000 in cash bribes and gifts.

The Department of Justice said Babak Broumand accepted the bribes and gifts in exchange for providing sensitive law enforcement information to a lawyer with ties to Armenian organized crime.

Broumand was charged with filing false financial disclosure forms to cover up bribes he allegedly received from an attorney with ties to organized crime.

The indictment alleges that Sargsyan was a criminal and “associated with a criminal organization” when he bribed Broumand, who was still working at the FBI at the time. He allegedly bought Broumand a $36,000 motorcycle and paid him $30,000 for a down payment on a second home in Lake Tahoe.

Keep reading

FBI demands info on readers of USA Today story about agents killed in child porn raid

The FBI is demanding that newspaper giant Gannett hand over identifying information on readers of a USA Today story about a suspect in a child porn case who killed two agents in February.

Federal investigators served the company with a subpoena in April seeking the IP addresses and phone numbers of the people who accessed a news article, between 8:03 a.m. and 8:38 a.m. on Feb. 2, about the Florida shooting that left two FBI agents dead and three others wounded.

The information sought by the feds, “relates to a federal criminal investigation being conducted by the FBI,” according to the subpoena.

Gannett, the publisher of the paper, fought back against the order in federal court on May 27, claiming the demand is unconstitutional and in violation of the Department of Justice’s policy for subpoenaing information from the press.

“A government demand for records that would identify specific individuals who read specific expressive materials, like the Subpoena at issue here, invades the First Amendment rights of both publisher and reader, and must be quashed accordingly,” Garnett lawyers wrote in the motion, made public Wednesday.

Keep reading

The FBI’s Strange Anthrax Investigation Sheds Light on COVID Lab-Leak Theory and Fauci’s Emails

One of the most significant events of the last two decades has been largely memory-holed: the October, 2001 anthrax attacks in the U.S. Beginning just one week after 9/11 and extending for another three weeks, a highly weaponized and sophisticated strain of anthrax had been sent around the country through the U.S. Postal Service addressed to some of the country’s most prominent political and media figures. As Americans were still reeling from the devastation of 9/11, the anthrax killed five Americans and sickened another seventeen.

As part of the extensive reporting I did on the subsequent FBI investigation to find the perpetrator(s), I documented how significant these attacks were in the public consciousness. ABC News, led by investigative reporter Brian Ross, spent a full week claiming that unnamed government sources told them that government tests demonstrated a high likelihood that the anthrax came from Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program. The Washington Post, in November, 2001, also raised “the possibility that [this weaponized strain of anthrax] may have slipped through an informal network of scientists to Iraq.” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) appeared on The David Letterman Show on October 18, 2001, and said: “There is some indication, and I don’t have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may — and I emphasize may — have come from Iraq.” Three days later, McCain appeared on Meet the Press with Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and said of the anthrax perpetrators: “perhaps this is an international organization and not one within the United States of America,” while Lieberman said the anthrax was so finely weaponized that “there’s either a significant amount of money behind this, or this is state-sponsored, or this is stuff that was stolen from the former Soviet program” (Lieberman added: “Dr. Fauci can tell you more detail on that”).

In many ways, the prospect of a lethal, engineered biological agent randomly showing up in one’s mailbox or contaminating local communities was more terrifying than the extraordinary 9/11 attack itself. All sorts of oddities shrouded the anthrax mailings, including this bizarre admission in 2008 by long-time Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen: “I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it.” At the very least, those anthrax attacks played a vital role in heightening fear levels and a foundational sense of uncertainty that shaped U.S. discourse and politics for years to come. It meant that not just Americans living near key power centers such as Manhattan and Washington were endangered, but all Americans everywhere were: even from their own mailboxes.

Keep reading

Former FBI director Louis Freeh gave $100,000 to a private trust for Joe Biden’s grandchildren and spoke with the then vice president in 2016 ‘to explore lucrative future work options’ with Hunter as the middle man

Former FBI director Louis Freeh gave $100,000 to a private trust for Joe Biden‘s grandchildren and met with the then-Vice President in 2016 ‘to explore with him some future work options’, emails reveal.

Freeh also spoke with then-Vice President Biden in 2016 ‘to explore with him some future work options’, according to the bombshell communications   

The emails suggest Freeh was trying to establish a future business relationship with Biden – and the White House has failed to disclose to DailyMail.com whether Joe Biden discussed private business with Freeh while in office.

According to the messages, obtained by DailyMail.com from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, the former FBI director was working for three foreign businessmen and officials at the time, who were all later convicted of various corruption charges, including a multi-billion-dollar ransacking of a Malaysian wealth fund.

Freeh himself was not implicated in those charges    

The 71-year-old, who served as FBI director under Bill Clinton and George Bush, ran a consultancy firm with highly controversial clients including a now-jailed Malaysian prime minister who stole billions of dollars from his country, a Romanian real estate tycoon convicted of bribery, and a French-Israeli diamond magnate later convicted of bribery and a $145 million property graft.

Freeh, a former judge, emailed Joe’s son Hunter Biden in 2016, revealing he had spoken with the Vice President and proposed that they work together on private ventures once Biden left office.

Keep reading

‘Fuck This Court’: We Obtained Larry Flynt’s FBI File and It’s Pretty Wild

When Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt died on Feb. 10 at the age of 78, it signaled the end of an era where a misogynistic smut peddler could be viewed as a kind of antihero.

It’s hard to laud someone who built his empire by unabashedly treating women like pieces of meat, but as a First Amendment warrior, Flynt won important legal victories while sticking his thumb in the eye of the powers that be.

Over the decades, Flynt took on America’s morality police or anyone he felt to be hypocritical on matters of sex, engaging in what the Washington Post once referred to as “Dirt Bag Journalism.” This involved offering millions to anyone who could prove an extramarital affair with a high-ranking government official, such as in 1998, when he took down then-House speaker designate and staunch Clinton impeachment backer Bob Livingston. In 2017, Flynt offered $10 million for information leading to Donald Trump’s impeachment and removal from office. 

Many know Flynt best from the Oscar-winning 1996 Milos Forman film “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” in which he was portrayed as a rakish rogue by Woody Harrelson. The movie went a long way toward softening Flynt’s image as a tawdry yet charismatic freedom fighter, while sanding off the more grotesque aspects of his personality.  

To the FBI, he was a person of interest. His 322-page FBI file, obtained by VICE News through a Freedom of Information Act request, contains a wild litany of events involving the Hustler honcho—from John DeLorean’s cocaine bust and an alleged plot to hire a mercenary to kill Hugh Hefner and Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, to an alleged effort by Flynt to blow himself up in the Supreme Court, as well as threats to Sandra Day O’Connor and President Ronald Reagan.

His FBI file focuses mainly on his activities in the 1980s, when his behavior was at its most erratic, but also when many of his important First Amendment battles came to a head. 

Keep reading

FBI threatens up to 5 years prison time, fines for faking COVID-19 vaccine record cards

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is warning Americans that making or purchasing a fake COVID-19 vaccination record card is illegal and could be punishable by fines or imprisonment for up to five years, or both.

“If you did not receive the vaccine, do not buy fake vaccine cards, do not make your own vaccine cards, and do not fill-in blank vaccination record cards with false information,” the FBI’s public service announcement warned on Tuesday. “By misrepresenting yourself as vaccinated when entering schools, mass transit, workplaces, gyms, or places of worship, you put yourself and others around you at risk of contracting COVID-19.”

The bureau said that unauthorized use of agencies’ official seals, including the Health and Human Services Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is a crime punishable under Title 18 of United States Code, Section 1017, as well as other applicable laws.

Keep reading