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@_BruceBane
The ‘rank & file’ coming after a civilian for posting ‘F* Biden’ on Meta.
The FBI has become the Democrat’s personal Gestapo.
New FBI document confirms the Trump campaign was investigated without justification
In case the FBI is coming after anti-vaxxers next, here is a “field guide” to interacting with the FBI about your social media posts.
The basic rule is: don’t talk to the FBI at all. You aren’t legally required to talk to them without legal process (like a subpoena) or without your lawyer. So don’t talk to the FBI. This can be trickier than you think. One way you can accidentally get in trouble happens when you don’t even know you’re talking to an FBI agent. The second way — lying to a federal official — happens during your conversation with the agent.
Both ways are easy to avoid. Don’t ever talk to them unless legally required — and you will know when that is — and don’t ever talk to them without a lawyer. I’ll tell you how to handle both types of encounters.
Sometimes you might not know you are talking to an agent. An ‘act in furtherance’ is the entrapment path. Unless you are making specific threats against people, the things you say are protected by the First Amendment and can’t be criminalized. But an undercover FBI agent could try to convince you to do something, however small, “in furtherance” of a criminal act. It doesn’t take much. Then they can combine that act, however small, with your words, which are used as evidence of your criminal intent.
It’s not hard. Just don’t get involved in anything shady. Especially not if the idea comes from some new online contact. And not even if the act, whatever it is, however satisfying it might feel, seems distant from any actual crime. You don’t have to do the actual crime to be convicted of being an ‘accessory’ or a ‘co-conspirator.’
There doesn’t even have to be a crime! Or any real co-conspirators. Even if the rest of the ‘conspiracy’ group is all undercover feds, and even if no crime ever actually happens, or even gets close to happening, they can still charge you for the ‘attempt.’
An attempt carries the same punishment as actually doing the crime.
For example, patriotic anti-lockdown trucker Barry Croft, 47, got 19 years for co-conspiring in the Whitmer incident. Largely he was convicted for his words — “discussions” — about using explosions to divert federal officials during a potential kidnapping. Although the ‘discussions’ might arguably have been First Amendment protected, but Barry traveled to Michigan to scout out the scene. (Plus he wore a funny tricorner hat they really hated.) Regardless that the federal agents talked Barry into going to Michigan, they combined Barry’s words (talking about using explosives) with his act (traveling to Michigan) to establish the crime of attempted fednapping.
Most people reading this probably won’t have any trouble avoiding this category of potential risk. Just don’t do stupid stuff and don’t get involved with stupid people.
Second, don’t talk to feds especially when they identify themselves, like by unexpectedly visiting you or calling you on the phone for a chat. This second and more substantial risk of liability for your words arises from lying to a federal official. United States Code, Title 18, Section 1001, drops the hammer:
(a) Whoever, within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the United States, knowingly and willfully—
(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up … a material fact; (or)
(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation;
shall be fined under this title, imprisoned (up to) 5 years or, if (it) involves … domestic terrorism, imprisoned (up to) 8 years, or both.
Since the FBI is within the executive branch, making any “fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation” to the FBI — even if not under oath — is a felony punishable with up to five years in federal prison (up to eight if they can say it “involves” domestic terrorism, like criticizing genderbending school board members).
Technically, section 1001 includes a “materiality” component — the lie must be somehow meaningful, not just about whether that dress makes your wife look fat — “material” is a super squishy legal term, and you don’t want to rely on the inability of creative FBI lawyers to convince a judge something you said was somehow “material.”
Not to mention the process is the punishment anyway. Even if you win your case, you still had to endure it. And unlike you, the FBI gets its lawyers for free.
But you argue, Jeff, I would never lie to the FBI in the first place. Of course not. Not on purpose. But why take an unnecessary risk of accidentally ‘lying’? Your memory isn’t perfect. And like everybody, you probably believe lots of stuff that isn’t true. And some things you think are just your opinion — like saying the 2020 elections were stolen or Nancy Pelosi is a lizardarian — could be whipsawed against you as “false facts.”
You can’t beat them. Don’t even try. FBI agents are trained law enforcement professionals with lots of practice from interrogating people every single day.
Take conservative fashion stylist Martha Stewart as an example. Martha spent five months tastefully decorating a federal prison cell for lying to investigators under 18 USC § 1001, not for “insider trading.” She was heavily fined and went to jail for stupid stuff she said...
Step one. When the FBI shows up at the door and introduces themselves, you should start recording. Do not record them secretly — that’s a felony in many states (including Florida). Be friendly. Ask them to wait a sec if you need to go get your phone. Once the recording is on, you can ask a few quick questions.
This is optional. But to get some useful information for the recording, ask their names, ask for their business cards, ask what office they’re from, and ask for their supervisor’s name. Then ask, “gentlemen, what’s this all about?”
Then you should politely and firmly say “I would love to talk to you boys about this, but I want to do it with my lawyer. I’ll have my lawyer call your office and set something up.” Then say goodbye and close the door.
You won’t need to call and follow up. They don’t want to talk to your lawyer anyway. Also, there’s no reason to demand to see their identification, which can be faked by bad actors anyway. If they are pushy, or won’t go away, call your local sheriff and say there are armed men standing around in your yard. Then start microwaving some popcorn.
Here’s a quick summary of the advice:
Record the interaction.
Refuse to speak to them without a lawyer.
Refuse to let them in the house (unless they have a warrant).
Don’t go outside of the house and keep the door closed.
It’s that simple, although you’ll probably feel nerve-wracked the whole time. Odds are that, if the FBI was really there just to talk to you about your social media posts, the case ends right there.
Still, I’d suggest that if it does happen, contact a lawyer to have on standby, just in case they decide to follow up.
By avoiding talking, you’ll avoid the trap of helping the FBI turn your perfectly legal words into a crime.
Government files acquired by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act revealed startling information concerning the FBI. The agency considered labeling slain Jan. 6 demonstrator Ashli Babbitt as a terrorist after she was shot by Capitol Police.
The group received 62 redacted FBI documents it requested from the FBI.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton reacted strongly to the discovery. “It is beyond belief that the Biden FBI gave Ashli Babbitt’s killer a free pass while engaging in a malicious months-long ‘criminal’ investigation of Babbitt herself.”
StopHate, an organization advocating for transparency around the events of Jan. 6, has done extensive reporting on the circumstances of that day and has created several free documentaries that delve into often undiscussed issues surrounding that day.
.@JudicialWatch just uncovered how the FBI spent months investigating Ashli Babbitt AFTER she was killed. And Feds put her killer up in luxe suite on a military base for six months! https://t.co/pnrF13snRb
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) April 11, 2024
Babbitt was shot and killed as she clinged to a broken window leading into the speaker’s Lobby. She was obviously unarmed and did not present a threat.
"Ukraine Aid" defense funding is a lie. It's "Seize Eurasia" offense funds. As long as "Seize Eurasia" is Blob policy, it will be trillions to Ukraine & doom to all who oppose.
Trump was impeached over Ukraine military "aid" 3 yrs before 2022's war. This is what FISA is about👇
CNN ran a tearful story yesterday headlined, “Federal judge indefinitely postpones Trump classified documents trial.” ...
But the issue of FBI evidence tampering might have been the most interesting out of a raft of very interesting Trump team issues. ...
The photo — unimaginably leaked by the DOJ — was one of the pictures allegedly taken by the FBI during the Mar-a-Lago raid. Many observers, including me, opined it looked like FBI drama queens had deliberately staged the documents, dramatically spreading them out on the floor, intending to manufacture a media picture for later leaking.
Either way, that picture did the job. On August 31, 2022, for example, Washington Post fact checker Philip Bump explained to readers that the “question of whether Trump had classified material with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort has captured the public’s attention. The photo published by the government appears to answer that question quite affirmatively.”
It turns out those of us who smelled an FBI rat were right, as the government has recently been reluctantly forced to admit. At least, we were right that the documents were not originally found on Trump’s office floor. Rather, they were neatly stored in secured bankers’ boxes. The FBI altered the evidence by throwing it all over the floor helter-skelter, putting stupid tape measures under it to look official, and adding a silly evidence tag (“2A”), like they were marking the location where the fatal bullet casing was found.
But it turns out it was so much worse. Thanks to heroic work by Trump’s lawyers, and following several stern orders from Judge Cannon forcing the government to respond to basic discovery requests, we’ve now learned that the documents in the picture aren’t even the documents in the picture.
What I mean is, the FBI has now admitted that the documents seen splayed on the floor are dummies, props. At the time the picture was taken, the original classified documents had already been secured and removed. So the FBI took some other random papers and — get this — put classified cover sheets on them and then posed those dummy documents on the floor. Picture time.
Not only weren’t the documents found on the floor, and not only weren’t the documents in the picture the actual documents, but the official-looking classified document cover sheets as seen in the photo were totally fake. There were no classified cover sheets on any of the original documents. It was all made up. ...
So the government now faces two new, potentially fatal problems: the evidence tampering (or at least, evidence negligence), and lying to the court. And the CNN article mentioned, this is just one of the many complex and potentially novel issues now confronting the government’s case.
"the FBI has now admitted that the documents seen splayed on the floor are dummies, props... Not only
weren’t the documents found on the floor, and not only weren’t the documents in the picture the actual
documents, but the official-looking classified document cover sheets as seen in the photo were totally fake.
There were no classified cover sheets on any of the original documents. It was all made up..."
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They have become a tool of state oppression of citizens, like the old East German Stasi. They actively incite crime to get people to commit it in order to then "catch" them and justify their budget.
https://patrick.net/post/1340257/2021-07-24-the-fbi-is-orchestrating-its-own-terror
https://patrick.net/post/1340349/2021-07-29-no-army-of-insurrectionists-appeared-on
https://patrick.net/post/1340084/2021-07-13-fbi-tells-americans-to-report-family
But for BLM, they studiously look the other way and never prosecute...
The best way we can defend ourselves is to cut off their funding. We need to make a national movement out of this.
Local police deserve our funding and support, but the FBI deserves defunding and hard prison time for its upper management.