Tag: protests

Ottawa Police Team Up With Federal Intelligence Agencies, Including US DHS and FBI, to Launch “Enhanced Intelligence Operations and Investigations” Against Truckers For Freedom Convoy

Thousands of trucks have gridlocked the Canadian capital city of Ottawa for almost a week, with protesters aiming to pressure Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to end all mandates and lockdowns associated with Covid-19. Participants are refusing to leave until the authoritarian restrictions are lifted completely, and with both sides not budging, the Canadian government is turning to drastic measures in an attempt to crush the grassroots uprising.

On Friday, the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) announced they are pairing with several federal intelligence agencies and other law enforcement divisions to launch “enhanced intelligence operations and investigations” that will target individuals who are participating in the Canadian Truckers For Freedom Convoy.

US law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), will also assist with the crackdown by investigating “online threats that originated in the US,” despite little to no evidence or behavior that has indicated any violence is being planned.

According to the OPS statement, the ‘enhanced investigation’ will begin targeting the key figures who are behind the organization of the convoy as part of the Canadian government’s “increased effort to identify and target protestors who are funding/supporting/enabling unlawful and harmful activity by protesters.”

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Pelosi Congress Claims Sovereign Immunity in Federal Court to Keep Secret January 6 Videos and Emails

Congress exempts itself from the Freedom of Information Act. Judicial Watch, therefore, brought its lawsuit under the common law right of access to public records. In opposing the broad assertion of secrecy, Judicial Watch details Supreme Court and other precedent that upholds the public’s right to know what “their government is up to:”

“In ‘the courts of this country’— including the federal courts—the common law bestows upon the public a right of access to public records and documents” … “the Supreme Court was unequivocal in stating that there is a federal common law right of access ‘to inspect and copy public records and documents.’” … “[T]he general rule is that all three branches of government, legislative, executive, and judicial, are subject to the common law right.” The right of access is “a precious common law right . . . that predates the Constitution itself.”

The Court of Appeals for this circuit has recognized that “openness in government has always been thought crucial to ensuring that the people remain in control of their government….” “Neither our elected nor our appointed representatives may abridge the free flow of information simply to protect their own activities from public scrutiny. An official policy of secrecy must be supported by some legitimate justification that serves the interest of the public office.”

“The Pelosi Congress (and its police department) is telling a federal court it is immune from all transparency under law and is trying to hide every second of its January 6 videos and countless emails,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The hypocrisy is rich, as this is the same Congress that is trying to jail witnesses who, citing privileges, object to providing documents to the Pelosi rump January 6 committee.”

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‘Fringe Minority’? Crowd-Funding for ‘Freedom Convoy’ Truckers Outraises Canada’s Top Political Parties

The massed ‘Freedom Convoy 2022’ of Canadian truckers currently stationed around the capital Ottawa is close to raising $10m to support its cause of defeating Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “political overreach,” according to the protest GoFundMe page.

The GoFundMe page set up by protest supporters clearly shows Tuesday the money pouring in to the cause from across the nation, with backers happy to dismiss the sneering attack by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who labelled the anti-mandatory vaccination trucker convoy a ”fringe minority” with “unacceptable views.”

The Independent reports this amount is higher than the money raised by major federal political players of Canada during the closing months of 2021, public records with Elections Canada showed.

According to the record, Trudeau’s Liberal Party of Canada raised $3.7m during the last quarter of 2021, with the opposition Conservative Party of Canada ranking a close second with over $3m during the same period.

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‘Someone Opened the Doors From the Inside,’ Jan. 6 Defense Attorney Says

Kelly Meggs and other members of the Oath Keepers could not have done one of the major things of which they are accused by federal prosecutors: force their way into the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on Jan. 6, 2021, through the famous Columbus Doors, a defense attorney says.

The two sets of historic doors that lead into the Rotunda were opened by someone on the inside, and not his client, says defense attorney Jonathon Moseley.

Department of Justice video widely circulated on Twitter this week shows a man trying to open the inner doors by leaning against them, before turning around as if listening to someone, then returning to the entrance and opening the left door for protesters.

“The outer doors cast from solid bronze would require a bazooka, an artillery shell or C4 military-grade explosives to breach,” Moseley wrote in a letter to federal prosecutors. “That of course did not happen. You would sooner break into a bank vault than to break the bronze outer Columbus Doors.”

The 20,000-pound Columbus Doors that lead into the Rotunda on the east side of the U.S. Capitol are secured by magnetic locks that can only be opened from the inside using a security code controlled by Capitol Police, Moseley wrote in an eight-page memo.

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Congress’s 1/6 Committee Claims Absolute Power as it Investigates Citizens With No Judicial Limits

In its ongoing attempt to investigate and gather information about private U.S. citizens, the Congressional 1/6 Committee is claiming virtually absolute powers that not even the FBI or other law enforcement agencies enjoy. Indeed, lawyers for the committee have been explicitly arguing that nothing proscribes or limits their authority to obtain data regarding whichever citizens they target and, even more radically, that the checks imposed on the FBI (such as the requirement to obtain judicial authorization for secret subpoenas) do not apply to the committee.

As we have previously reported and as civil liberties groups have warned, there are serious constitutional doubts about the existence of the committee itself. Under the Constitution and McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases interpreting it, the power to investigate crimes lies with the executive branch, supervised by the judiciary, and not with Congress. Congress does have the power to conduct investigations, but that power is limited to two narrow categories: 1) when doing so is designed to assist in its law-making duties (e.g., directing executives of oil companies to testify when considering new environmental laws) and 2) in order to exert oversight over the executive branch.

What Congress is barred from doing, as two McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases ruled, is exactly what the 1/6 committee is now doing: conducting a separate, parallel criminal investigation in order to uncover political crimes committed by private citizens. Such powers are dangerous precisely because Congress’s investigative powers are not subject to the same safeguards as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. And just as was true of the 1950s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that prompted those Supreme Court rulings, the 1/6 committee is not confining its invasive investigative activities to executive branch officials or even citizens who engaged in violence or other illegality on January 6, but instead is investigating anyone and everyone who exercised their Constitutional rights to express views about and organize protests over their belief that the 2020 presidential election contained fraud. Indeed, the committee’s initial targets appear to be taken from the list of those who applied for protest permits in Washington: a perfectly legal, indeed constitutionally protected, act.

This abuse of power is not merely abstract. The Congressional 1/6 Committee has been secretly obtaining private information about American citizens en masse: telephone records, email logs, internet and browsing history, and banking transactions. And it has done so without any limitations or safeguards: no judicial oversight, no need for warrants, no legal limitations of any kind.

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Conspiracies as Realities, Realities as Conspiracies

American politics over the last half decade has become immersed in a series of conspiracy charges leveled by Democrats against their opponents that, in fact, are happening because of them and through them. The consequences of these conspiracies becoming reality and reality revealing itself as conspiracy have been costly to American prestige, honor, and security. As we move away from denouncing realists as conspiracists, and self-pronounced “realists” are revealed as the true conspirators, let’s review a few of the more damaging of these events. 

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