488 private links
misterright
13 hours ago
Am I misremembering that some of the documents the National Archives demanded be returned from Mar-a-Lago had been sent, unsolicited, by the National Archives to Mar-a-Lago?
When the charges against Adams were revealed, he was accused of big stuff...like taking airline upgrades and helping the Turkish embassy navigate NYC's byzantine building code system; see BREAKING: We Now Know the Charges Against New York Mayor Eric Adams – RedState. The charges were framed to look big time, but they were eerily reminiscent of the hit jobs done on Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, where normal activities were mutated into federal felonies by lawyers out to get a scalp.
A sea change happened when Adams defended Trump at a press conference in the last days of the election: NYC Mayor Eric Adams Breaks With Dems Over Despicable Rhetoric: Trump Not a 'Fascist,' 'This Is America' – RedState. //
There was some speculation that Trump might pardon Adams; that didn't happen, but Trump did order DOJ to dismiss the charges against him; New: Trump Justice Dept. Directs Prosecutors to Dismiss Federal Corruption Charges Against Eric Adams – RedState. That's when the fun started. //
This shootout is nowhere near over. Bondi and Bove are still surrounded by disloyal and hostile staff. The judge in NYC is bound to do something other than accept the filing; otherwise, he'll be a social pariah. Ultimately, a judge can't force the government to prosecute a case it wants to dismiss.
It is good that this first battle came this early and over a fairly trivial issue. A lot of unreliable staff have been identified and are no longer employed. The attorneys who came to work for DOJ as a government service and not as a political commissar should now feel more comfortable knowing they have the support of the DOJ leadership team.
Pam Bondi wrote to DOJ on her first day in office, “Any attorney who because of their personal political views or judgments declines to sign a brief or appear in court, refuses to advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the administration, or otherwise delays or impedes the department’s mission will be subject to discipline and potentially termination, consistent with applicable law.” There is no doubt she is serious. //
Skibum
a day ago edited
If you want to know if the prosecution of Mayor Adams was political, ask yourself whether the DOJ would have prosecuted Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago under the same circumstances?
The answer is "NO"! Johnson just got caught with a closet full of bribes with more to come and DOJ prosecutors are nowhere in sight.
Adams went off the Democrat reservation when it came to illegal immigration and Johnson did not. Adams was prosecuted.
RealRobert🇺🇸
@Real_RobN
And this is,
the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Ratcliffe,
the FBI was ordered by Barack Obama not to arrest Hillary Clinton for espionage in violation of — 18 U.S. Code § 793. Gathering, transmitting or los defense information. In fact, James Comey effectively served as Hillary Clinton’s personal attorney.
James Comey: “What I can assure the American people is that this investigation was done honestly, competently and independently. No outside influence of any kind was brought to bear.”
CIA John Ratcliffe: “Lisa Page confirmed to me under oath that the FBI was ordered by the Obama DOJ not to consider charging Hillary Clinton for gross negligence in the handling of classified information,"
Transcript excerpt of his interview with Page:
John Ratcliffe: Okay. So let me if I can, I know I'm testing your memory, but when you say advice you got from the Department, you're making it sound like it was the Department that told you: You're not going to charge gross negligence because we're the prosecutors and we're telling you we're not going to –
Ms. Page: That is Correct.
Restructuring The Bureau To Remedy What Ails It Or Turning It Into A Vehicle To Pursue The Malfactors Inside It And Other Aligned Agencies? //
What happened is what Kash Patel is going to need to confront and fix. The daunting task in front of him stems from the fact that the changes in the Bureau have become nearly universal. It worked like a underground weed that spread far and wide before sprouting up through the soil to start taking over separate parts of the organization.
How did that happen? Nowhere in the Government is the phrase “personnel is policy” more true than in the FBI. //
Patel is going to be taking over an organization where a large percentage of its work force, maybe approaching 75%, were hired in the past 15 years — since 2009, the first year of the first term of President Obama.
Not too far into that year the hiring priorities of most federal agencies changed, including at the FBI. Rather than continue the influx of former military, state and local law enforcement, and holders of graduate degrees in engineering, accounting, law, etc., the FBI’s recruiting was adjusted to fit the goal of achieving a work force that “looked like the population at large.” That goal supplanted other priorities that focused on recruiting the “best and brightest” as had for decades been the foundation for FBI hiring. //
The Special Agent work force that began to be created in 2009 was recruited more from college campuses than at any time in FBI history. That’s where a work force that “looked like the population at large” could be most easily found. Since academia has been the breeding ground for 40+ years of crusading social justice warriors — dedicated to recognizing and correcting social injustices of yesteryear more than addressing criminal conduct of yesterday and today — the new agents coming into the Bureau starting in 2010 arrived with that mindset.
But, as was explained to me by FBI Agents in a position to know, many of the new agents had post-college “work experience” with groups such as Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, Southern Poverty Law Center, Innocence Project, Justice Policy Institute, National Women’s Law Center, Human Rights Campaign, NARAL, etc. They came in trained already in how to seek out offenses involving “injustice” rather than focusing on crime.
This remained the hiring paradigm for more than a decade. //
The abuses in the intelligence gathering by the FBI and other parts of the IC community over the past 10 years will likely result in Patel — himself a victim of such efforts — taking steps to severely limit what will be allowed to continue. At the same time a comprehensive analysis will likely be done as to whether intelligence gathering domestically — to the extent it is allowed at all — should be moved to an agency without law enforcement responsibility. Intelligence is to inform decision-making by policy makers — not as a directional device to steer law enforcement in the direction of suspected law breakers. When the latter is allowed, the temptation to abuse that power is simply too great to resist. That is how we find ourselves where we are today. //
“Domestic terrorism” — meaning by citizens and not foreign invaders — has always been a police responsibility. It is nothing more than violent crime. Most domestic terrorism “crimes” are violations of state laws at the same time. Using the massive intelligence gathering capacity of the federal government — often leveraging Big Tech to assist — all for the purpose of interdicting the commission of state crimes, has come with a price to liberty I don’t think the majority of citizens are willing to continue to pay. //
It’s a daunting task. Taking a wrecking ball to the current internal structure is only half the solution. Fixing what is broken by introducing hundreds of new management personnel into the ranks, while at the same time working to cull the resistance from among the Special Agent work force will be the more lasting legacy of what Patel leaves behind when his time is done.
BugsOlDad
8 hours ago
Robert Mueller's restructuring of the FBI after 9/11 brought us to where we are today with agency's fall into a political weapon for the Marxist Democrat party. He pretty much changed the main focus of the agency's mission, and removed the more independent nature the field offices had and more centralized the control of the agency in DC. The Marxist Democrats are going to fight their arses off to prevent any loss of this powerful tool in their Marxist toolbox to go after their "political enemies", in other words, patriotic American citizens. We have to pray that weak in the knees Republicans (RINOs) don't kill this excellent opportunity to bring some semblance normality (my word), honest lawful investigations, Constitutionalism, and returning the agency back to the trusted entity it once was. At least as much as a law enforcement agency can be trusted. It's staffed as any other is, with flawed human beings. We have to hope that that those who give into flaws are kept from wearing the FBI in the first place. If it shows, that it's past the point of rescue, then I'm good with ending it's run now. Better now, early in Trump's term, where he can oversee its replacement, than later where a possible Marxist Democrat president could have that control and input to turn the agency into what they've been trying to turn the current FBI into, their form of KGB.
anon-eazz
4 hours ago
So of the FBI's roughly 100 year history, J Edgar abused authority for about 50 years. Then we had maybe 20-25 total years of benevolent transitional leaders. 10 years of Mueller incompetence and 10 - 15 years of Comey/Wray abuse. The standards set for Director of the FBI are pretty low. Hard as it is to admit, Clinton's appointment of Louis Freeh is probably the high point. //
Maximus Decimus Cassius
9 hours ago
With respect to Senator Kennedy and Director nominee Patel, the FBI has had 17 years (at least since 2008--Obama's 1st term--if not before then) to hire and release (through attrition, etc.) the agents they wanted.
I would argue the pool of "good agents" is so small that no amount of reform can save the agency. Anything less than a total overhaul (keep the forensics and technical labs) and releasing the gun and badge wearing agents is nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Fishin'withFredo Maximus Decimus Cassius
8 hours ago
I have to agree. As a retired LEO I worked with them a number of times and was not impressed, to say the least. We don't need them. Every individual state has its own investigative body, just establish mutual aid agreements for cases crossing state lines and military intelligence for the overseas stuff.
mopani Fishin'withFredo
4 minutes ago
Take away their police powers, make them work with local police and sheriffs to make arrests etc. That will force them to be rigorous in their investigative work, because they don't just have to convince a judge to write a warrant, they have to convince the local police chief or sheriff to execute the warrant.
When the FBI urges E2EE, you know it's serious business. //
In the wake of the Salt Typhoon hacks, which lawmakers and privacy advocates alike have called the worst telecoms breach in America's history, the US government agencies have reversed course on encryption.
After decades of advocating against using this type of secure messaging, "encryption is your friend," Jeff Greene, CISA's executive assistant director for cybersecurity, told journalists last month at a press briefing with a senior FBI official, who also advised us to use "responsibly managed encryption" for phone calls and text messages.
In December, CISA published formal guidance [PDF] on how to keep Chinese government spies off mobile devices, and "strongly urged" politicians and senior government officials — these are "highly targeted" individuals that are "likely to possess information of interest to these threat actors" — to ditch regular phone calls and messaging apps and instead use only end-to-end encrypted communications.
It's a major about-face from the feds, which have historically demanded law enforcement needs a backdoor to access people's communications — but only for crime-fighting and terrorism-preventing purposes.
"We know that bad guys can walk through the same doors that are supposedly built for the good guys," Virtru CEO and co-founder John Ackerly told The Register. "It's one thing to tap hardline wires or voice communication. It's yet another to open up the spigot to all digital communication." //
Pete 2Silver badge
Who's who?
"We know that bad guys can walk through the same doors that are supposedly built for the good guys,"
Although which are the good / bad guys is increasingly difficult to determine. //
Aleph0
Reply Icon
Re: Who's who?
The Patrician to Captain Vimes, in Guards! Guards!: "I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people," said the man. "You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.". //
Al fazed
Reply Icon
WTF?
Re: I bet . . .
and the only people interested in spying on you are good people, who have your best interests at heart.
A few of us don't believe this bullsh*t, even here in the UK.
ALF. //
Caffeinated Sponge
Reply Icon
Re: I bet . . .
The last I heard, British Conservatives were still all over the idea that 'only people with something to hide should want encryption'.
Of course, as with the Sir Pterry quote above, whilst this is actually true it is built around the easy to sell misconception that the only people with anything to hide are bad people.
To recap, you have a video showing a suspect who is 5' 7", wearing a unique pair of shoes, and was in Washington, D.C. on January 5th, 2021, during a very specific timeframe of 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.... and they haven't been able to narrow down the list to find this person?
Odd that they're releasing this data while there are two ongoing terrorist investigations, one involving an ISIS-inspired killer who had been radicalized and posted multiple videos of his ill intentions on social media, discussing plans to kill his family and having dreams that helped inspire him to join the terror group, that the FBI somehow missed.
Almost like they're trying to divert your attention. //
As you might imagine, X users were not impressed with the FBI releasing a new video of the January 6th pipe bomb suspect after years of essentially ignoring the pursuit in favor of jailing people who walked through the Capitol and took selfies.
"Your entire agency is a joke," Sean Davis of The Federalist writes.
"Really strange how y'all were able to identify 1500 people who even so much as walked on the Capital grounds on January 6th, but you can't find the person who planted the pipe bomb?" one disgusted person replied. "No one's buying it." //
Why did the FBI drop this "previously unreleased video"? A clip of the suspect dropping the actual pipe bomb outside the DNC seems like it might have been handy evidence if they genuinely wanted the public to identify this person.
The bureau announced that they will continue to offer a reward of up to $500,000 for information that leads to the suspect's arrest and conviction.
Have they tried cross-referencing the information on those shoes with all confidential sources shorter than 5' 8"? They might get somewhere by doing that. Just a thought.
Despite its initial efforts, the FBI has yet to identify the suspect and has refused to provide the Subcommittees with additional information about these investigative leads.
Given the fervor with which the FBI has pursued individuals present at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, it's puzzling that their investigation into the placing of explosive devices nearby — which posed a threat to Secret Service protectees and others — has virtually stalled out. It's even more puzzling that the agency provided incorrect (false?) information regarding the data obtained from cellphone carriers. //
anon-tf71
3 hours ago
Just spitballing, but maybe USCP were lackadaisical about letting both the Speaker and pedestrians into the immediate area because they knew there was no immediate danger, or maybe even any danger. //
Poor Richard
3 hours ago
The FBI stopped looking for the pipe bomber because he was/is an FBI operative and/or agent. The whole January 6th "insurrection" nonsense was a Deep State and FBI setup. They admit they had what, 30 plus operatives at the location and you have Lynn Cheney and Pelosi literally destroying evidence from their congressional hearing. We are living under a rogue, neo-fascist government and just don't know it yet. We will be very fortunate if Trump and associates can get rid of much of this scum. //
Steprock
3 hours ago
Sorry, is this where we all play dumb? The FBI put the bombs there as a Plan B in case stirring up a riot didn't work out.
It's ugly, but not complicated. //
Random US Citizen
2 hours ago
What's behind all this? The FBI is unwilling to identify the "paid informant" who planted the bombs, because it might come out that he was on their payroll.
Frank Hamer
4 hours ago
This is a failure of epic proportions on the part of Homeland Security who have spent four years chasing down misdemeanor trespassers, Catholics, military people with the wrong tattoos, abortion prayer protesters and parents who are unhappy with porn pushing school boards
Notably and inexcusably, the FBI initially proclaimed this was not a terrorist attack, with the FBI Special Agent in Charge making that statement after New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell had already confirmed it was one. //
surfcat50
4 hours ago edited
Funny how the FBI “may never know the motive” of obvious terrorists but have no problem declaring the intentions of random groups of unarmed protestors are insurrectionists.
The New Yorker @NewYorker
·
J. Edgar Hoover made the F.B.I. into a powerful but nonpartisan colossus. Kash Patel’s chief goal, by contrast, is to weaponize the Bureau to protect Donald Trump and wreak vengeance on his Administration’s enemies.
newyorker.com
How Would Kash Patel Compare to J. Edgar Hoover?
Readers added context
The New Yorker magazine has reported extensively on Hoover's ideological agenda and how "Hoover’s dirty-tricks campaign was designed to neutralize almost all forms of political dissent," even comparing him to Torquemada.
newyorker.com/magazine/2014/…
newyorker.com/magazine/2022/…
newyorker.com/magazine/2012/…
Context is written by people who use X, and appears when rated helpful by others. Find out more.
5:56 PM · Dec 24, 2024. //
Hoover misused the power of the FBI. Meanwhile, Kash Patel has exposed FBI abuses and wants to hold people accountable who may have broken the law. Indeed, he's the opposite of Hoover; he's seeking to reform the agency and its abuse. So the whole effort to take this approach by The New Yorker is just bizarre. Is it any wonder that Americans no longer trust the legacy media? //
tamkae
4 hours ago
All one has to do is change the names in their article and you get a perfect description of what has been going on with the FBI these past 4+ years.
"Kash Patel’s Christopher Wray's chief goal, by contrast, is to weaponize the Bureau to protect Donald Trump Joe Biden and wreak vengeance on his Administration’s enemies."
wvcitizen
3 days ago
A Secret Service agent fired multiple shots at this guy at close range and missed him clean. Seem he was supposed to get away. But a person took a pic of his license plates and called 911. Local law enforcement picked him up. Don’t think that was supposed to happen. Now there is a mess that has to be cleaned up before he sings. Let’s see how this works out. //
TheAmericanExperiment
3 days ago
The Feds were behind both assassination attempts.
Crooks was supposed to get off kill shot before being taken out by the counter snipers who were there for that express purpose.
Routh was supposed to get away but ran afoul of an alert citizen with a camera.
The Feds need to maintain total control over Routh and that means maintain physical possession of him. As long as they maintain physical possession of him he knows that one false move will get him Epsteined. If Florida is able to proceed with their case they get the chance to speak with him privately. I'd love to be a fly on that wall.
Can't get Kash into the bureau soon enough.
Pro-life activist Paul Vaughn, the president of Personhood Tennessee tested before the committee about his experience as a defendant changed by Biden's DOJ under the FACE Act.
Vaughn detailed the terrifying events of October 5, 2022 when his home was raided by the FBI for peacefully protesting an abortion facility: //
House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 @JudiciaryGOP
·
Pro-life advocate Paul Vaughn opened his front door to find 3 FBI agents with guns trained on him.
He was arrested without a warrant for his efforts to protect the sanctity of life.
WATCH him recount his story of being victimized by Joe Biden's weaponized DOJ.
2:29 PM · Dec 18, 2024 //
Vaughn, a Chrstian father of eleven children, testified that three of his children were detained and that he was never presented with identification from law enforcement, nor a warrant: //
There is no legitimate reason for it to remain on the books. It is a tool whose sole purpose is to stifle free speech and abuse the rights of Christian conservatives. There is nothing that the FACE Act does that is not already accomplished by state laws across the land.
If abortion is returned to the States, so should the laws governing it. //
veritaseequitas
2 hours ago edited
The agents who did this need to be arrested and prosecuted for infringing upon the rights of these people. I assume they used the same tactics on those who are currently in jail.
Hopefully DJT will pardon these people.
Emma-Jo Morris was the first on the scene. She had the real October Surprise for the 2020 election: Hunter Biden’s laptop. While loaded with images of drug use and sexually explicit images from the exploits of the cracked-out son of Joe Biden, it was also a roadmap into the Biden Family’s allegedly illegal government access deal from which they were the beneficiaries of millions of dollars in bribes. This family set up multiple shell corporations run by Biden clan members to funnel the proceeds from the Romanian government. Right now, the meat and potatoes allegation stems from Hunter’s time in Ukraine, where Joe, then serving as vice president, forced the firing a prosecutor looking into Burisma in exchange for foreign aid.
The release of the FD-1023 report from the FBI’s confidential human source on Biden’s Burisma deal is damning, arguably impeachable for Joe Biden. It shows that the company only hired Hunter to protect them and that Mykola Zlochevsky, co-founder of Burisma Holdings, felt coerced into paying Joe and Hunter $5 million each. Zlochevsky has a ledger of the payments and recordings of their conversations. The source reported this intelligence to the FBI about the Bidens’ sordid deal with the Ukrainians in 2018.
All of this would have been disregarded as Russian disinformation three years ago. Mr. Morris delivered testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on July 20, where her opening remarks took a flamethrower to the FBI, intelligence community, and social media. Morris was then a New York Post editor/reporter at the time.
She revealed how The New York Post was locked out of their social media accounts for days, users could not share their links on the platform, and the intelligence community did not go through proper channels and released a letter claiming this laptop and its contents to be a disinformation operation. //
Morris, now the politics editor for Breitbart, also went into the censorship operation between the FBI, Silicon Valley, and the intelligence community. Social media companies are stacking their top positions with these former spooks who ooze political bias. //
“On October 19, five days after the Post first began publishing, Politico ran a story headlined, ‘Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say,” Morris continued while breaking down laughing.
“God, I can’t even say that with a straight face,” she said.
And for good reason: every aspect of her reporting was confirmed to be accurate years later. From The New York Times to The Washington Post, the story of the laptop, the shady Biden deals, and how this was not a Russian disinformation scheme were proven true. The laptop is genuine, and it’s not going away.
The FBI and the Justice Department are under heavy scrutiny now that there’s credible evidence that the DOJ ran interference pervasively on any Hunter Biden investigation, with the wrongdoing seemingly reaching Attorney General Merrick Garland’s office. //
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
·
This is the NY Post reporter who used authentic docs to report on Joe Biden's role in Hunter's business deals in Ukraine and China before the 2020 vote.
CIA and @NatashaBertrand smeared her with lies that it was "Russian disinformation," then Big Tech censored her reporting.
Simon Ateba @simonateba
BREAKING: Journalist Emma-Jo Morris (@EmmaJoNYC), who broke the Hunter Biden laptop story for @NYPost but was immediately censored by the state on social media in an attempt to influence the 2020 election, just delivered a mind-boggling testimony on the extent of censorship in…
Embedded video
2:52 PM · Jul 20, 2023
None were "authorized or directed," which doesn't necessarily mean that they did or did not encourage others. Also, it's interesting that only three were assigned, while the others evidently showed up on their own. Mr. Horowitz, in the linked article, does not offer any speculation as to why the remaining 21 "confidential human sources" were in attendance. One of the three, however, did actually enter the Capitol despite not being ordered or authorized to do so.
“…as a condition of participating in the modern economy, Americans are forced to disclose details of their private lives to a financial industry that has been too eager to pass this information along to federal law enforcement.”
A report from the House Judiciary Committee and Government Weaponization Subcommittee exposed the FBI for abusing the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) to spy on Americans’ bank accounts without a warrant.
“Documents show that federal law enforcement increasingly works hand-in-glove with financial institutions, obtaining virtually unchecked access to private financial data and testing out new methods and new technology to continue the financial surveillance of American citizens,” according to the report.
What was missed in almost all the reports covering Salt Typhoon was the FBI’s precise warning. “Responsibly managed” encryption is a game-changer. None of the messaging platforms which cyber experts and the media urged SMS/RCS users to switch to are “responsibly managed” under this definition.
The FBI has now expanded on its warning last week, telling me that “law enforcement supports strong, responsibly managed encryption. This encryption should be designed to protect people’s privacy and also managed so U.S. tech companies can provide readable content in response to a lawful court order.”. //
There are just three providers of end-to-end encrypted messaging that matter. Apple, Google and Meta—albeit Signal provides a smaller platform favored by security experts. These are the “U.S. tech companies” the FBI says should change platforms and policy to “provide readable content in response to a lawful court order.”
This doesn’t mean giving the FBI or other agencies a direct line into content, it means Meta, Apple and Google should have the means, the keys to provide content when warranted to do so by a court. Right now they cannot, Police chiefs and other agencies describe this situation as “going dark” and they want it to change. //
This is a dilemma. Apple, Google and Meta all make a virtue of their own lack of access to user content. Apple, by way of example, assures that “end-to-end encrypted data can be decrypted only on your trusted devices where you're signed in to your Apple Account. No one else can access your end-to-end encrypted data—not even Apple—and this data remains secure even in the case of a data breach in the cloud.” //
The argument against “responsible encryption” is very simple. Content is either secure or it’s not. “A backdoor for anybody is a backdoor for everybody.” If someone else has a key to your content, regardless of the policies protecting its use, then your content is exposed and at risk. That’s why the security community feels so strongly about this—it’s seen as black and white, as binary. ///
Oh the irony! The Chinese are exploiting the very backdoor that the FBI insisted that phone companies had to install, and the FBI is doubling down on having a backdoor into encrypted communication.
After a series of “Twitter Files” detailed Twitter’s extensive collusion with the FBI and federal agencies to control public discourse before Elon Musk took over the tech giant, the FBI on Wednesday tried to salvage its reputation by spinning the revelations as normal procedure.
On Tuesday, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation advised Americans to share a secret word or phrase with their family members to protect against AI-powered voice-cloning scams, as criminals increasingly use voice synthesis to impersonate loved ones in crisis.
"Create a secret word or phrase with your family to verify their identity," wrote the FBI in an official public service announcement (I-120324-PSA).
For example, you could tell your parents, children, or spouse to ask for a word or phrase to verify your identity if something seems suspicious, such as "The sparrow flies at midnight," "Greg is the king of burritos," or simply "flibbertigibbet." (As fun as these sound, your password should be secret and not the same as these.)
The bureau also recommends that people listen carefully to the tone and word choices in unexpected calls claiming to be from family members. The FBI reports that criminals use AI-generated audio to create convincing voice clips of relatives pleading for emergency financial help or ransom payments. //
Of course, passwords have been used since ancient times to verify someone's identity, and it seems likely some science fiction story has dealt with the issue of passwords and robot clones in the past. It's interesting that, in this new age of high-tech AI identity fraud, this ancient invention—a special word or phrase known to few—can still prove so useful.
Is that what's happening here? I can't say for sure, but I wouldn't put it past the corrupt hangers-on at the FBI to "protect the shield" in such a way. They certainly don't want Patel coming in and providing real reform and accountability. They've still got more pro-lifers to raid at gunpoint and Catholics to treat as domestic terrorists. For now, though, we'll call the above theory a hypothesis.
We'll see if the communications reportedly taken are leaked. I would assume they will be, and if they are, Republican senators should pretend they don't exist and confirm anyway, no matter what they contain. There is zero reason to trust anything at this point that would benefit the FBI.
Out of all the nominees that one might call "controversial," Patel getting through is the most important. The only way to stop the weaponization of federal law enforcement is to bring sweeping changes to the FBI, and that's only because there's no realistic way to shut it down. Patel is the right man for that job, and these last-minute games, whatever they amount to, should not stop his nomination. //
Deplorable Extraordinarius
32 minutes ago
Sounds like the FBI has wised up to how anything labeled Russia Russia Russia is no longer seen as credible. So some genius has just swapped in Iran, Iran, Iran. The Deep State is busy doing its black ops in pursuit of its survival. //
anon-rda0
27 minutes ago
I hope Patel kept absolutely quiet during the “briefing”. There’s a dang good chance the purpose of the briefing was to trap him in a lie.
anon-isiz anon-rda0
23 minutes ago
No one should receive an FBI briefing without an attorney present. //
EMCM(SS)
4 minutes ago
Everyone knows this is all hogwash, so why are they doing it?
Cover!
This is all cover for Collins, Murkowski, Thune and the rest of Mitch’s tufthunters to scuttle the nomination. Same as the lies about Hegseth. Not even the Democrats believe this stuff. It’s just a fig leaf for the coming failure theater.