Tag: police state

Surprise: A California County Went Full-Eliott Ness to Spy on a Church During COVID

In the criminal justice system, people who tend to disagree with the government are aggressively investigated by the elite members of the Santa Clara County COVID-19 Business Compliance Unit. These are their stories.

And cue the “Law & Order” sound effect.

Yes, it’s Law & Order: BCU

Yesterday, I told you about a Chinese app designed to track people who wanted to attend religious services in the Henan province. At the time I opined that governors like Gavin Newsom would salivate over that kind of technology and that something like that was probably headed our way soon. But as it turns out, Santa Clara County in California was already taking a boots-on-the-ground approach when it came to spying on and harassing an area church. Writing on his Substack, Silent Lunch, journalist David Zweig tells the tale of how between November 2020 and January 2021, the Santa Clara County COVID-19 Business Compliance Unit (you thought I made that name up, didn’t you?) went all-in to spy on a church that bucked the ham-handed and unevenly applied lockdown mandates.*

Calvary Chapel San Jose attracted the attention of county snoops on On May 24, 2020. That day, pastor Mike McClure said that he would reopen the church despite the COVID-19 restrictions. And for that matter, the church would stay open. Such a move was bound not to be well-received in California, and even less so in Santa Clara County, which had been particularly aggressive in enforcing lockdown rules. But McClure had seen the devastating effects that enforced isolation had on his congregation. For example, one man said his church attendance kept him from entertaining thoughts of suicide as the quarantine merged with other difficult life events. Another found that church attendance gave him the strength to stave off his urges for alcohol and drugs as the crushing isolation took its toll. A woman said that the fellowship at Calvary Chapel San Jose helped save her son, who struggled with substance abuse after the lockdown cost him an apprenticeship in plumbing. A pastor was able to tie the woman in with a program that she credits with saving her son’s life.

On August 21, 2020, the church was hit with a cease-and-desist letter from the county. At issue were the crimes of meeting indoors, failure of members to mask and social distance, and, of course, singing. Two days later, a pair of officers from the COVID-19 Business Compliance Unit were at the church and saw at least 100 people doing all of those things. As Zweig writes:

So began a series of issuances of fines for violations every single day, beginning in August, and running through the spring of 2021. The fines began at $1,000 each. Per the terms of the public health order, there was no grace period, and the amounts doubled each day that the violations were not corrected until a maximum of $5,000 per day was reached. By October 27, 2020, the county had already fined Calvary $350,000.

By the time September rolled around, churches in the county still could not meet indoors. But shopping malls could operate at fifty percent capacity. In October, churches could have either 100 people or twenty-five percent of their capacity on campus. Museums could accommodate fifty percent of their capacities, and stores had no limits. But at this point, Santa Clara County was determined to bring the hammer down on Calvary Chapel San Jose. To do that, they needed evidence.

And cue the “Law & Order” sound effect, again.

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Biden DOJ Crusade to Jail Young Man for Anti-Hillary Memes Just Got Much Uglier

Last month, Revolver profiled the Biden Administration’s persecution of former Twitter anon Doug Mackey, who was a famous pro-Trump voice back in 2016 under the moniker of Ricky Vaughn.

For those whose memory is foggy, a quick review: In the late stages of the 2016 race, Mackey posted several memes, designed to resemble Hillary Clinton campaign images, claiming that supporters could vote by simply texting a phone number.

The memes were a Twitter-generation version of the common joke about telling one’s political opponents to turn out for the election next Wednesday. But, in an unprecedented move, the Biden Administration says Mackey violated the Ku Klux Klan Act by systematically acting to strip Americans of their civil rights. The KKK Act was passed to prevent literal assaults and terrorism that prevented black Americans from voting, but now the DOJ’s prosecutors say it applies to satirical online speech — they say Mackey broke the law, even though they can’t produce a single person who failed to vote due to Mackey’s stunt.

(By the way, you can donate to Mackey’s legal defense here or here or here).

All of that is bad enough, but newly-unsealed documents released on Wednesday reveal new, sinister depths to the DOJ’s agenda.

Last fall, we warned about a new tool in the arsenal of weapons used by the regime to justify censorship and rolling back the basic rights of Americans. With this new tool, corrupt journalists like Taylor Lorenz can dox, harass, and lie about anyone they want and enjoy total immunity from criticism. Why? Well, if you dare to criticize a journalist like Lorenz, someone, somewhere, might become outraged and decide to commit an act of violence. With this remarkable censorship tool, the media’s attack dog journalists are magically absolved from any criticism because some nut job, somewhere, maybe, at sometime, might act violently upon this criticism.

The tool goes by the name “stochastic terrorism.”

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‘Geofence’ Warrants Threaten Every Phone User’s Privacy

The last time your phone asked you to allow this or that app access to your location data, you may have had some trepidation about how much Apple or Google know about you. You may have worried about what might come of that, or read about China’s use of the data to track anti-lockdown protesters. What you probably didn’t realize is Google has already searched your data on behalf of the federal government to see if you were involved with January 6th.

But last month, the federal district court in DC issued an opinion in the case of  one of the many defendants who stands accused of sacking the Capitol in the wake of the 2020 election.

And with it, Judge Rudolph Contreras became the first federal district judge to approve a “Geofence” warrant, endorsing a recent police innovation: searching the cell phone history of every American to check who happened to be in the area of some potential crime.

The “Geofence” in this context refers to cell phone location data collected by Google from users of its Android operating system, as well as iPhone users who use apps such as Google Maps. Location tracking can be turned off, but most users allow it for the convenience of getting directions, tracking their daily jog, or finding the nearest Chipotle. The Government’s warrant demanded location history for every Google account holder within a range of longitude and latitude roughly corresponding to the Capitol building on the afternoon of January 6, 2021, along with similar data from that morning and evening (to filter out Hill staff and security guards).

It’s not clear this information was even needed: This defendant was apprehended within the building that day, carrying knives and pepper spray, and features on various security cameras — his whereabouts are not in question. Many of his coreligionists were considerate enough to live stream their antics themselves. While tracking down every participant in what was dubbed the Beer Belly Putsch is impractical, prosecutors have not lacked for defendants, or for evidence against them. But the government nonetheless decided to resort to a level of mass surveillance without precedent in history or criminal law. This is only the second federal district judge to rule on such a warrant, and the first, in the Eastern District of Virginia, found it “invalid for lack of particularized probable cause” (though that judge declined to suppress the evidence on the basis of other Fourth Amendment loopholes created by the Supreme Court).

That particular requirement comes from the Fourth Amendment itself, which calls for every warrant to “particularly describ[e] the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” This means that, for instance, the warrant issued last year for former President Trump’s Florida residence did not simply say “search the house,” but detailed specific rooms to be searched for specific things (boxes of documents). The cops can’t — or at least are not supposed to — dump out your underwear drawer based on a tip that you’re hiding cocaine in your basement.

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‘Disturbing’: FBI’s Alleged Altering of Evidence in Jan. 6 Proud Boys Case, Trial Paused: Defense Lawyer

The trial of Dominic Pezzola, one of the defendants of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach, was paused on Thursday due to classified FBI messages revealed in court, which the defense attorneys say show FBI agents discussing the altering of evidence.

Pezzola is one of the Proud Boys members on trial for obstruction and conspiracy charges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. He was arrested on Jan. 15, 2021, and indicted the same month. Pezzola’s trial began in January of this year.

“There are a couple of emails between FBI agents casually discussing altering a document and destroying hundreds of pieces of evidence. It’s very disturbing and right now we have more questions than answers,” Roger Roots, an attorney at John Pierce Law, wrote. Roots confirmed that Washington District Court Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee, paused the trial on Thursday due to the leaked messages.

The exchange Roots referred to came into light on Wednesday during the testimony of FBI special agent Nicole Miller, who was involved in the agency’s investigations of the Jan. 6 defendants.

When cross-examining Miller, Nick Smith, an attorney representing Proud Boys member Ethan Nordean (listed as co-defendant on Pezzola’s case), revealed classified FBI emails that were hidden in a tab in an Excel spreadsheet. Roots, in Pezzola’s case, used this evidence to support a motion to dismiss (pdf) the charges against Pezzola, which Roots’s team filed on Wednesday.

In the motion, Pezzola’s team said the emails showed that the FBI was monitoring communications between Nordean and his lawyer, violating the Sixth Amendment, which prohibits invasions of the right to counsel (Matter of Fusco v. Moses).

“In the Nordean case, confidential attorneys-client trial/defense strategy and position was wrongfully obtained by the government, about which was overheard, shared, utilized, where potentially ‘338 items of evidence’ were ordered to be ‘destroyed,’ said Pezzola’s legal team in the motion to dismiss.

According to a separate filing by Nordean’s lawyers, Miller said in one correspondence that “[her] boss assigned [her] 338 items of evidence [she has] to destroy”; Nordean’s lawyers allege that another email show an agent requesting Miller to “go into [a] CHS [informant] report” that Miller “just put [together] and edit out that [the agent] was present.”

The emails show Miller “admitted fabricating evidence and following orders to destroy hundreds of items of evidence,” Pezzola’s lawyers wrote in its motion to dismiss, and that the government obtained information that benefitted itself in the trial, causing substantial prejudice to each of the defendants, including Pezzola.

“If justice means anything, it requires this case to be dismissed,” Pezzola’s lawyer said.

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Massachusetts’ Tobacco Ban Went as Badly as You’d Expect

In November 2019, Massachusetts became the first state in the U.S. to ban the sale of all flavored tobacco and nicotine products, including flavored electronic cigarettes and menthol cigarettes. Four additional states have since imposed flavor bans on some products and similar policies are under consideration in many other jurisdictions. Such bans are popular among legislators and anti-smoking groups, but the latest data from Massachusetts highlight the ban’s unintended consequences. The state’s experiment in prohibition has led to thriving illicit markets, challenges for law enforcement, and prosecution of sellers.

Massachusetts’ Multi-Agency Illegal Tobacco Task Force publishes an annual report providing insight into how the state’s high taxes and flavor prohibitions affect the illicit market. As opponents of the flavor ban predicted, the law has incentivized black market sales of menthol cigarettes and flavored e-cigarettes (“ENDS,” or “electronic nicotine delivery systems,” in the parlance of regulators). “The Task Force identifies the cross-border smuggling of untaxed flavored ENDS products, cigars, and menthol cigarettes as the primary challenge for tobacco enforcement in the Commonwealth,” according to the report. “Inspectors and investigators are routinely encountering or seizing menthol cigarettes, originally purchased in surrounding states, and flavored ENDS products and cigars purchased from unlicensed distributors operating both within and outside the Commonwealth.”

The Massachusetts Department of Revenue reports conducting more than 300 seizures in FY 2022, compared to 170 in 2021 and just 10 in 2020. Many of these involve substantial amounts of products and missed tax revenue. For example, a single search warrant yielded “a large quantity of untaxed ENDS products, [other tobacco products], and Newport Menthol cigarettes affixed with New Hampshire excise tax stamps” representing an estimated $940,000 in unpaid excise taxes.

Revenue officials are seizing so many illicit products, in fact, that they are running out of room to store them. The “Task Force’s increased investigative and enforcement activities during the past year have led to the seizure of large quantities of illegal tobacco products, resulting in a strain on the Task Force’s storage capacity,” says the report. But fear not, they are working on leasing additional space “that will significantly increase storage capacity and allow for continued increased enforcement.”

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Biden’s Executive Order Nightmare: Government Will Track Every Dime You Spend

When I was a sparring partner for professional boxers many, many years ago, I was taught to be wary of the jab. It is a tactic used to distract an opponent while setting him up for a devastating power punch that takes him down for the count.

Biden is throwing jabs.

The power punch is a little noticed Executive Order with the innocuous number 14067 and its title, “Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets.”

In a 21st Century world where cryptocurrency and cybercrime are now embedded threats to our collective financial security, this Executive Order would seem to address these issues. That is the jab.

In fact, this order includes language that allows the Federal Reserve System to “explore” the possibility of introducing digital currency into the United States. This means that your cash becomes so much colored paper. That would not be the only catastrophic impact on our society and the nation’s economy. 

Under this new digital currency, any transfer of funds to family, friends, charities, or clients would be able to be tracked by the nation’s central bank that issued this virtual money. Big Brother will be in your wallet every hour or every day. 

You will not be able to buy a stick of gum without a Federal Reserve computer knowing where, when, and to whom you just put down a buck.

Like any jab, its starts with a feint.

“At this stage, the Fed is just introducing the subject into the public debate and is weighing the options,” according to Eswar Prasad, a Cornell University economics professor who was interviewed by the Associated Press in an Aug. 24 story.

Apologists for the White House insist that the Executive Order does not implement digital currency or give Washington the power to control it.

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Secret COINTELPRO Plot to Infiltrate and Destroy the American Indian Movement: “We Wanted Them to Kill Each Other”—FBI Agent Admits After Five Decades of Silence

February 27 through May 8 marks the 50th anniversary of the occupation by the American Indian Movement (AIM) of Wounded Knee on the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, the site of the last great massacre of the Indian Wars in December 1890.

In a 2019 documentary that aired on PBS, From Wounded Knee to Standing Rock: A Reporter’s Journey, filmmaker Kevin McKiernan interviewed Tom Parker, an FBI agent working for the FBI’s counter-intelligence operation (COINTELPRO), who admitted that the FBI had helped to fracture and disrupt AIM during its 1973 Wounded Knee occupation.

“[W]e wanted them to kill each other, as we were in a war against AIM,” Parker said.

According to Parker, a main goal of COINTELPRO was to infiltrate informers into AIM and to publicly identify AIM activists with the FBI so that others in AIM would turn against them.

In this way, Parker said, dissension would grow among AIM, and AIM members would become paranoid about FBI infiltration and turn against one another, and there would be violence.

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Homeland Security Department Caught Hiding Evidence of ‘Domestic Censorship Activities’

By now, it should not surprise you to learn that a federal intelligence agency is trying to cover up evidence showing that they are working to censor free speech. The past decade has shown us that the federal government has no qualms with trying to use its power to shape public opinion – especially through censorship.

This time, it is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that was reportedly caught trying to conceal its role in squashing certain political views on Big Tech platforms. Fox News reported:

A federal agency in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that’s been scrutinized for what critics argue is suppression of dissenting political views under the guise of combating disinformation now appears to be “burying” evidence of its alleged censorship, experts and watchdog groups say.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, has come under fire for working with Big Tech companies to flag and take down social media posts related to elections, COVID vaccines, and a range of other issues that were deemed mis-, dis-, and malinformation (MDM).

Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, told Fox News his research found that CISA has attempted to hide its involvement in suppressing opinions posted on social media by Americans. The agency’s MDM webpage discusses “foreign influence operations and disinformation … targeting election infrastructure.” It says nothing of focusing on domestic activity.

But this particular page is new and “has a short web archive history” according to the Fox News report, which also noted that it only existed “since late last month.”

However, the old CISA page related to MDM addresses both “foreign and domestic threat actors [using] MDM campaigns to cause chaos, confusion, and division.” It also gives a much wider definition of CISA’s mission as working “in close coordination with interagency and private sector partners, social media companies, academia, and international partners on a variety of projects to build resilience against malicious information activities.”

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DOJ Accuses Louisville Police Of Civil Rights Violations, Discrimination After Breonna Taylor Investigation

Louisville’s police routinely violate constitutional rights and federal law, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said following a two-year investigation following the death of Breonna Taylor.

The DOJ announced the findings of its investigation on Wednesday in a press conference and 90-page report. Federal investigators said their review found that officers of the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) “engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law.”

Some of the report’s findings include use of excessive force, executing search warrants without knocking or announcing, using invalid search warrants, and violating the rights of protesters.

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