Tag: washington dc

FBI lost count of how many paid informants were at Capitol on Jan. 6, and later performed audit to figure out exact number: ex-official

The FBI had so many paid informants at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, that it lost track of the number and had to perform a later audit to determine exactly how many “Confidential Human Sources” run by different FBI field offices were present that day, a former assistant director of the bureau has told lawmakers.

At least one informant was communicating with his FBI handler as he entered the Capitol, according to Steven D’Antuono, formerly in charge of the bureau’s Washington field office.

D’Antuono has testified behind closed doors to the House Judiciary Committee that his office was aware before the riot that some of their informants would attend a “Stop the Steal” rally thrown by former President Donald Trump, but he only learned after the fact that informants run by other field offices also were present, along with others who had participated of their own accord.

The Washington field office had to ask FBI headquarters “to do a poll or put out something to people saying w[ere] any CHSs involved,” he said, so they could get a handle on the scale of the FBI’s spying operations at the Capitol that day.

“We started getting responses back” from FBI headquarters, added D’Antuono, which helped identify which field offices had planted confidential informants in the crowd. 

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A Jan. 6 rioter was convicted and sentenced in secret. No one will say why

Hundreds of rioters have been charged, convicted and sentenced for joining the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol. Unlike their cases, Samuel Lazar’s appears to have been resolved in secret — kept under seal with no explanation, even after his release from prison.

Lazar, 37, of Ephrata, Pennsylvania, was arrested in July 2021 on charges that he came to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, dressed in tactical gear and protective goggles, and used chemical spray on officers who were desperately trying to beat back the angry Donald Trump supporters.

There is no public record of a conviction or a sentence in Lazar’s court docket.

But the Bureau of Prisons told The Associated Press that the man was released from federal custody this week after completing a sentence for assaulting or resisting a federal officer. Lazar was sentenced in Washington’s federal court on March 17 to 30 months in prison, according to the Bureau of Prisons, but there’s no public record of such a hearing. He had been jailed since July 2021.

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FBI Knew Ukrainian Spy Was at Capitol Riot: QAnon Shaman

Jacob Chansley, known as the “QAnon Shaman,” claimed the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) knew that an alleged Ukrainian spy participated in the riot at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Chansley, who was sentenced to 41 months in prison over his involvement in the January 6 riot but was released earlier this year, said in an interview with conservative activist Laura Loomer that the FBI questioned him about the presence of Sergai Dybynyn, an alleged Ukrainian spy with reported ties to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which has risen to prominence amid the Russia-Ukraine war.

The FBI has not confirmed Chansley’s statement, which could not be independently verified. Newsweek reached out to the FBI via email for comment.

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A Putin Critic Fell to His Death in Washington. We Still Don’t Know Why.

Almost exactly a year before the plane crash that killed mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, local police in D.C. were called to investigate the case of another former Moscow businessperson who also fell from the sky.

Twelve months later, the plunge from an M Street apartment building of Dan Rapoport, a Soviet-born U.S. citizen who made a mint in post-communist Russia before souring on the regime, remains unexplained.

Tellingly, it’s been largely forgotten in Washington.

Though international media gave the story a lot of ink, the city had paid little attention — even though it involved a ghastly local death of a man who once moved in elite circles and owned the house that later became the Kalorama residence of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

Now, with the Prigozhin crash focusing new attention on murky Kremlin-adjacent deaths, some allies of Rapoport are speaking up about their unhappiness with Washington’s investigation of his demise, something city police almost immediately said likely didn’t involve foul play.

“There’s something here that doesn’t add up for me,” says Jason Jay Smart, a Kyiv-based American political consultant and outspoken pro-Ukraine media figure who was close with Rapoport. “Those who knew him — I’ve talked to a lot of venture capitalists — nobody is convinced he just up and decided to jump.”

“The main thing that’s happened is something that hasn’t happened: It’s that the law enforcement authorities in Washington, D.C. have not come up with anything more conclusive about what took place,” says another longtime associate, Bill Browder, the onetime Moscow financier turned bestselling Kremlin antagonist. “This is a very serious issue. He’s an American citizen who was an enemy of Vladimir Putin who came to an untimely death. That warrants a serious investigation.”

Confounding critics is the tight-lipped public posture adopted by the capital’s Metropolitan Police Department in the days after Rapoport’s death — and still evident today, even as tallies of dubious Russian-insider suicides add up around the world.

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DC council member calls for National Guard’s help as city grapples with escalating violence

On Tuesday afternoon, Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White held a news conference in Southeast by the scene of Saturday’s mass shooting on Good Hope Road.

White called on the entire community to help stop the surge in violence that has led to a 28% increase in homicides in the District. 

While he said it’s only a “piece” of the puzzle, the council member said he supports possibly calling in the National Guard to help patrol the streets. 

White disputed the acting police chief’s comments she made after the mass shooting, saying the neighborhood is now a “warzone,” and residents are hearing gunfire at all times of the day.

So far this year, 161 lives have been lost, compared to 126 this time last year, according to police records. 

This weekend alone, D.C. police confirmed 11 people had been killed from Friday to Sunday.

“We’re tired of this sh-t,” Councilmember White said passionately. “Enough is enough. And excuse my language, but I want to be frank with the young men and young ladies we serve. It’s not okay for you to load up 30, 40, 50 – 120 rounds in a gun and shoot up our community.”

White told reporters that he did speak with someone from the National Guard to find out exactly what they would need in an official request. Those details include a very clear definition of how many members, what they’d be doing, and the length of time.

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House And Senate Both Move To Keep Blocking D.C. Marijuana Sales But Protecting State Medical Cannabis Laws

House and Senate appropriators have approved large-scale annual spending bills that once again include language to protect state medical cannabis programs, as well as a controversial rider to block Washington, D.C. from implementing a system of regulated marijuana sales.

The Senate and House Appropriations Committee both held markups of Fiscal Year 2024 spending legislation for Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) on Thursday. And the Senate panel, as well as a House subcommittee, have also advanced their appropriations measures for Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS).

Aside from the state medical cannabis and D.C. marijuana sales provisions, House lawmakers rejected a GOP-led amendment to the chamber’s FSGG report that would have called on the federal government to take steps to study other state cannabis regulatory models and develop a national legalization framework.

Lawmakers have consistently attempted to use appropriations measures as vehicles for cannabis reform, with mixed results. Even with Democrats in control of both chambers last session, efforts to expand marijuana protections to all legal states and enact limited cannabis banking reform stalled out following bicameral negotiations.

A rider to protect state medical cannabis programs from federal intervention, meanwhile, has been annually renewed each year since 2014—and appropriators in both chambers agreed again this Congress to keep that language intact in their respective base bills as they advance.

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Pelosi committee doctored Jan 6 footage by adding audio, journalist claims

In a new scoop, Just The News founder John Solomon appeared on Human Events with Jack Posobiec to discuss revelations surrounding questionable conduct by US government representatives during the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021, including that the Jan. 6 House committee allegedly doctored tapes that surfaced following that fateful day. 

“Everything about January 6 was scripted,” Solomon declared, before adding that upon browsing the security footage, he noticed a glaring lack of sound in many of the scenes that he had previously both seen and heard.

He recounted asking a group of “experts” about the sound of the surveillance tapes, only to be met with the response that there was not any to start with. 

Solomon then said, “But there was, I saw it in the January 6 hearings,” before making his explosive allegation:

“Well guess what? It was faked. The sound was dubbed in basically, the January 6 committee faked the tapes. They faked the American people by adding sound that wasn’t on the tapes.”

This bombshell from Solomon came after his outlet was granted “unfettered access to the J6 tapes,” by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), according to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). 

As The Hill noted, over 44,000 hours of footage from the event were released to Fox News host Tucker Carlson for the purposes of reporting earlier this year. Democrat politicians and members of the media alike reacted with fury at the time, insisting that such transparency would jeopardize the Capitol’s security. 

Carlson was not able to continue that work after he was fired from Fox News, with no reason given.

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The FBI Knows What Car Was Used In J6 DNC Pipe Bomb, But Refuses To Identify Prime Suspect

The FBI is continuing to stonewall congressional oversight of the agency’s investigation into a pair of pipe bombs found at the Democrat National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters on Jan. 6, 2021.

On Wednesday, House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee re-upped demands for a comprehensive briefing on the two-year-old case over which the FBI has refused transparency.

“Your failure to comply with our request is particularly concerning given recent media reports regarding the pipe bomb investigation,” lawmakers wrote.

Earlier this month, an FBI whistleblower told the Washington Times the FBI identified the vehicle the suspect entered shortly after planting the bombs but has not pursued the individual.

“The FBI had surveillance video that showed the person entering a car with a visible license plate after exiting a Metro stop in Northern Virginia,” the Times reported.

Kyle Seraphin, a former FBI agent who worked on the case, told the paper that the agency “tied whoever the person was that dropped the bombs with [surveillance] cameras all the way through the train and getting into a car with that license plate.” Seraphin also told the Washington Times that the two bombs were inoperable.

“One former FBI assistant director observed, ‘[i]t just doesn’t add up … there’s just too much to work with to not know who this guy is,’” the Judiciary Republicans wrote.

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DOJ Mysteriously and Dramatically Downgrades Charges Against ‘White Supremacist’ Who Rammed White House Barricade

On Tuesday, a U-Haul crashed into a barricade outside the White House grounds. Immediately, speculation that the driver was a “white supremacist” after a Nazi flag was allegedly pulled from the wreck. In fact, the flag was spread out and displayed for reporters by the FBI agents on the scene.

Why did they do that? Someone will have to ask them, but the narrative became a lot more complicated after the driver was identified as Sai Varshith Kandula. Needless to say, he didn’t exactly fit the “white supremacist” profile.

Now, in a move that is sure to spark much speculation, the DOJ has suddenly downgraded the charges involved. The original charges were as follows.

While authorities have not provided specific details on the alleged threat, the US Park Police said the man faces the charge of threatening to kill, kidnap or inflict harm on a President, vice president or family member.

The driver also was also arrested on charges of assault with a dangerous weapon, reckless operation of a motor vehicle, destruction of federal property and trespassing, according to the Park Police.

According to a new report (The New York Post), those charges have all been wiped away, and Kandula only faces a single count of depredation of property of the United States.

He had allegedly planned the attack for six months, with his goal to “get to the White House, seize power, and be put in charge of the nation,” records show.

Kandula was accused of threatening to “Kill the President If that’s what I have to do,” and praised Nazism and Hitler.

He was originally charged with threatening to kill, kidnap or inflict harm on a president, vice president or family member, as well as assault with a dangerous weapon, reckless operation of a motor vehicle, trespassing and destruction of federal property, US Park Police said.

His federal charges have since been downgraded to a single count of depredation of property of the United States in excess of $1,000.

Prosecutors told the court Kandula is not a US citizen, according to Fox News.

The first thing that jumps out when reading that excerpt is that Kandula is clearly mentally ill. To the extent that he has any actual ideology, it’s overshadowed by the fact that no sane person would think they could seize the White House and be installed as the nation’s leader. That makes the media’s rush to paint this as some kind of right-wing “white supremacist” attack appear rather silly in retrospect. There was no plan here, and I’m pretty sure a guy named Sai Varshith Kandula isn’t actually a white supremacist. Whether he’s a real proponent of nazism at all is even in doubt.

The other thing to note is that Kandula is not a US citizen. Given that, it sure does feel like the federal government is just looking to sweep all this under the rug, after the preferred narrative collapsed in on itself. Of course, I’m speculating, but why else would they go so soft on the charges after the fact?

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FBI Whistleblower Report: Bank of America Gave Americans’ Banking Info to FBI Around January 6

A House Judiciary Committee report on FBI whistleblowers found that Bank of America provided the FBI a list of anyone who used their services in the D.C. area regardless of if they participated in the events of the January 6 protests.

The House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released an interim report on the government’s abuse, misallocation of resources, and retaliation.

Among the Judiciary Committee’s many revelations, FBI whistleblowers Garret O’Boyle, and retired FBI supervisory Intelligence George Hill testified about how Bank of America (BoA) gave the FBI’s Washington Field Office a list of individuals who had made transactions in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area with a BoA credit or debit card between January 5 and 7, 2021.

Hill also testified that individuals who had previously purchased a firearm with a BoA product were elevated to the top of the list provided to the FBI Washington Field Office, which was reported by Breitbart News’s Ashley Oliver.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), a member of the weaponization subcommittee, emphasized during the subcommittee’s Thursday hearing that Hill testified that there was no geolocation fencing regarding the datamining of Americans’ purchasing of firearms.

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