Tag: police state

IRS Stole Money and Hid the Details for Years

The Internal Revenue Service demands transparency when its agents conduct audits. They open ledgers, snoop through bank accounts, and review receipts. But its appetite for disclosure disappears when the roles reverse.

The IRS stonewalled for more than six years when our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, sought access to the agency’s forfeiture database. Initially, the IRS wanted $750,000 in fees before it would accommodate the request—an unreasonable demand that would render the Freedom of Information Act useless for all but the wealthiest citizens.

Once in court, the IRS attempted a bait and switch. Rather than provide the actual data, it released a summary report that was 99 percent redacted. It then declared that it had gone above and beyond the legal requirements. The ruse worked at the district court level, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled against the agency in 2019. After a second trip to the district court, the IRS finally coughed up the full database in April 2022.

For anyone without a law degree or the resources to endure a long legal battle, the message from the IRS is clear: Do not try this at home. Accountability is good for the taxpayer, but not for the tax collector.

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HOW THE “MINISTRY OF TRUTH” CAN CENSOR YOU WITHOUT (TECHNICALLY) CENSORING YOU​​​​​

When centralized authorities are responsible for sorting truth from lies, it creates a situation prone to abuse.

The Department of Homeland Security’s creation of a Disinformation Governance Board last week has a lot of people drawing comparisons to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

On CNN, Dana Bash pressed DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to address concerns that the board will restrict freedom of speech. Mayorkas said that the board will not monitor Americans.

The board does not have any operational authority or capability. What it will do is gather together best practices in addressing the threat of disinformation from foreign state adversaries, from the cartels, and disseminate those best practices to the operators that have been executing in addressing this threat for years.

If anyone can translate that from bureaucrat-speak to explain what specifically DHS does to “[address] the threat of disinformation,” I would appreciate it. Almost all of the initial reporting on the DGB lacked any specifics of what concrete powers the group will exercise to “counter,” “combat,” and “crackdown on” so-called disinformation.

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Biden’s ‘Ministry Of Truth’ Tsar: Parents Concerned About Critical Race Theory Are “Disinformers”

The Biden administration’s new disinformation chief says that parents who are upset about critical race theory (CRT) making its way into public school classrooms are “disinformers” who “weaponize” the issue “for profit.”

[ZH: let’s not forget the US Attorney General’s son makes millions selling CRT materials]

Nina Jankowicz, who was appointed to lead the newly established Disinformation Governance Board at the Department of Homeland Security, dismissed the pushback against CRT indoctrination at an event in Ohio last October, when the debate over parents’ right to direct their children’s education had taken center stage in high-profile elections, including Virginia’s gubernatorial race.

“Critical race theory has become one of those hot-button issues that the Republicans and other disinformers, who are engaged in disinformation for profit, frankly, … have seized on,” she said in a video that has recently regained attention.

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DHS Coordinated with Chinese Drone Company to Create the First Totally Surveilled City in America

Inside San Diego’s metropolitan area, the second largest city, home to some 275,000 residents, has made the history books. Chula Vista hasn’t cured cancer or discovered perpetual energy; instead, their mark on history will be a dark one as they become the first city in America to be completely monitored by spy drones.

“On a per capita basis, they’re probably the most or one of the most surveilled cities in the country,” said Brian Hofer, executive director of the Oakland-based privacy advocacy group Secure Justice. “Pretty much the minute you walk outside your front door and move about your daily life, you’re going to be tagged and tracked by some law enforcement agency, even though you’ve likely never been suspected of any wrongdoing.”

Chula Vista’s drone program didn’t come to fruition overnight. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies coordinated with with Chinese drone manufacturers and unscrupulous actors in Big Tech and have implemented the program over the course of several years.

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The State Took Her Home Because She Missed $900 in Property Taxes

Did you know that in some states, if you miss one tax payment, local politicians will take your home, sell it, and keep all the profits?

Really.

Tawanda Hall was behind on her taxes. She was on a payment plan but had missed $900. She didn’t expect Southfield, Michigan, to take her entire house because of that. It was worth $286,000 more than what she owed.

“I’m still in shock,” says Tawanda Hall in my new video. “They took my whole house, my whole family’s livelihood.”

John Bursch, a lawyer for the county, says while this practice may sound unfair (yes, it sure does), “It’s also unfair to force those who pay their taxes to subsidize those who don’t.”

“I pay taxes!” Hall responds. She works as a nursing assistant. “I lift people. I bathe people. I work hard.”

When Hall found out she was going to lose her home, she tried to pay off the debt.

“I went to the mayor’s office, I went down to the city county building,” she says. “They didn’t want our money. They said no.”

They wanted her house.

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LAPD Arrests Officer For Allegedly Possessing Child Pornography

A 23-year-old former Torrance police officer is scheduled to appear in Los Angeles Superior Court on June 3 following his arrest for allegedly possessing child sex abuse material.

Evan Robert Dahl was arrested at 11:15 a.m. Friday at the Torrance Police Station on suspicion of felony possession of the material following a Los Angeles Police Department investigation.

He was released at 3:45 p.m. Friday, police said.

“The city of Torrance and its police department are aware of the troubling allegations leading to Evan Dahl’s arrest. Evan Dahl no longer works for the Torrance Police Department,” said Sgt. Mark Ponegalek of the Torrance Police Department.

“Chief Jay Hart remains committed to transparency and accountability,” the statement added.

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Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Board” is Even More Pernicious Than it Seems

The most egregious and blatant official U.S. disinformation campaign in years took place three weeks before the 2020 presidential election. That was when dozens of former intelligence officials purported, in an open letter, to believe that authentic emails regarding Joe Biden’s activities in China and Ukraine, reported by The New York Post, were “Russian disinformation.” That quasi-official proclamation enabled liberal corporate media outlets to uncritically mock and then ignore those emails as Kremlin-created fakes, and it pressured Big Tech platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to censor the reporting at exactly the time Americans were preparing to decide who would be the next U.S. president.

The letter from these former intelligence officials was orchestrated by trained career liars — disinformation agents — such as former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Yet that letter was nonetheless crucial to discredit and ultimately suppress the New York Post‘s incriminating reporting on Biden. It provided a quasi-official imprimatur — something that could be depicted as an authoritative decree — that these authentic emails were, in fact, fraudulent.

After all, if all of these noble and heroic intelligence operatives who spent their lives studying Russian disinformation were insisting that the Biden emails had all of the “hallmarks” of Kremlin treachery, who possessed the credibility to dispute their expert assessment? This clip from the media leader in spreading this CIA pre-election lie — CNN — features their national security analyst James Clapper, and it illustrates how vital this pretense of officialdom was in their deceitful disinformation campaign.

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80 ‘Suspicious Actors’ and ‘Material Witnesses’ Under Scrutiny by Jan. 6 Defense Attorneys

Defense attorneys seek to identify and investigate 80 suspicious actors and material witnesses, some of whom allegedly ran an entrapment operation against the Oath Keepers on January 6, 2021, and committed crimes including the removal of security fencing, breaching police lines, attacking officers, and inciting crowds to storm into the Capitol.

In a motion (pdf) and supplement (pdf) filed after 11 p.m. on May 5 in federal court in Washington, attorney Brad Geyer listed 80 people, some of whom he said could be government agents or provocateurs. The people are seen on video operating in a coordinated fashion across the Capitol grounds on January 6, the attorney alleged.

Geyer’s suggestion of an entrapment scheme will resonate with dozens of January 6 defense attorneys, coming shortly after two men were acquitted of an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). There was a hung jury on charges against two other defendants. The jury in that case was allowed to consider FBI entrapment as a defense.

Geyer, who represents Oath Keepers defendant Kenneth Harrelson, is seeking a court order from U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta compelling federal prosecutors to help identify the individuals and disclose whether they were working for law enforcement or any government agency on January 6. Geyer wrote that the information is exculpatory, which compels the government to produce it. Other Oath Keepers defendants are expected to join in the motion.

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Rand Paul: Time to ban feds from tracking Americans through their cellphone location data

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a fierce protector of freedom and privacy, says it is time to ban federal agencies from being able to track Americans’ behavior by buying their cell phone location data from commercial vendors.

“When the government is trying to snoop on your behavior, it’s wrong, and there should be laws against it,” Paul told the “Just the News, Not Noise” television show in an exclusive interview aired Wednesday night.

Paul’s comments came after newly released government documents revealed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tracked Americans’ compliance with pandemic lockdowns by buying and monitoring their cellphone geospatial data from commercial vendors.

Such data is collected on each American from apps they use on their smart phones and sold by third-party brokers unless a user explicitly opts out of such collection for each app. Increasingly, law enforcement and other government agencies have been acquiring the data for official work, though the CDC was the first publicly disclosed use to track private Americans’ health behavior.

The data also was bought and used by the election integrity group True the Vote to identify people suspected of illegally collecting ballots in the 2020 Georgia election, a revelation that has prompted a formal investigation by the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.

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