Gov Corruption
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Russian state media platform Tass (their version of PBS) ran a story yesterday wordily headlined, “Former US intelligence officer says was not let leave US to attend forum in St. Petersburg.” Yesterday, Biden critic Scott Ritter, a former US Marine Corps Intelligence Officer, a former UN weapons inspector, and a frequent Russia Today columnist, was intercepted by police in New York just after boarding a plane to St. Petersburg. The police pulled his passport.
CLIP: Russia Today interviews U.S. legal expert about Scott Ritter de-planing (6:24).
Scott has constantly been a painful thorn in the Biden Administration’s paw over the last couple years, as a vocal critic of the Ukraine Proxy War. In March, for example, in the aftermath of the Crokus City Hall attack, Scott told Judge Napolitano, “We have become the terrorists. I hope people understand that. We are a terrorist nation.”
Scott enjoys broad influence. His YouTube videos are among the most-watched commentaries on the war-by-proxy. He has 100,000 Telegram followers. And he was scheduled to speak at an economics forum in St. Petersburg, Russia this week.
Up until this week, the Administration ignored and marginalized Scott as a kooky conspiracy theorist and misinformation super-spreader.
But now, apparently, he’s on the list. What the list is, I’m not sure, but Big Daddy Biden has put Scott in time out and taken his traveling privileges away. Scott reported that police did not arrest him but would only say they acted on orders from the U.S. State Department, right before they kidnapped his passport.
Guys, don’t overreact. This kind of thing is necessary to save democracy* (*constitutional republic). We must squash autocracy whenever it rears its ugly head. Sometimes, autocratic means are necessary to achieve the ultimate good.
In ordinary times, we would hold off on the hot takes and wait for the official explanation, since we don’t know whether the government had a good reason or not. But it’s 2024, and after Mar-a-Lago, January 6th, and the over-prosecution of elderly abortion clinic protestors, we are entitled to assume bad faith until good faith is proven. The State Department bears the burden of quickly explaining what looks to many people like autocratic overreach.
Combining Ritter’s de-passporting, the government’s chokehold on corporate media and the universal narrative, the imprisonment of January 6th protestors for insurrection, and the Trump persecutions, the bigger picture starts to strikingly resemble the kind of thing Lincoln was accused of doing during the Civil War.
☕️ FLYING GARBAGE ☙ Tuesday, June 4, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠
WaPo's woke reporting leads to surprise shakeup; Biden critic rudely de-passported; Hunter trial starts; SADS congressional cancer; Russian warnings over Ukr; Fauci comes to Congress; and LOTS more.
www.coffeeandcovid.com
Restoring Confidence in DOJ Requires Accountability, New Leadership
Since President Biden was sworn in, we have endured an “ends-justifies-the-means” approach to federal prosecutions. For those deemed enemies of this administration, norms are discarded, rules are violated, and the full force of government is wielded in a manner without mercy or proportionality. Ordinary rules don’t apply if the target of a criminal case is out of favor with the woke mob at DOJ. For them, the ends justify the means.
There is no shortage of examples. Peaceful protestors of abortion receive draconian sentences, while those who threatened a Supreme Court Justice are ignored. A former Trump staffer is arrested and put in leg irons, despite volunteering to surrender to the FBI on misdemeanor charges. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act procedures are manipulated to spy on a president in the now-debunked “Russia collusion” prevarication, with no real consequences for those who defrauded the FISA court. Prosecutors obsessed with J6 work to hold defendants without bond, while a man who sprayed a D.C. neighborhood with an AK-47 was sent home. And now, these same prosecutors are caught bending the rules for warrants. So much for blind justice.
In our adversarial system of justice, prosecutors and defense attorneys challenge each other on what is supposed to be a level playing field. But with the government’s unlimited money, copious manpower, and other structural advantages, the average person has little chance against Uncle Sam. In 2022, for example, less than 1% of federal defendants charged were acquitted by a jury. The Biden Justice Department doesn’t need to break the rules for even more power.
In the DeLuca case, the D.C. Magistrate Judge rejected the Justice Department’s attempt to cheat, denying the FBI’s warrant (which was uncannily similar to that which was submitted to his California counterpart). That was a good first step.
The real question is whether the government employees who tried to game the system will face any repercussions. We shouldn’t be optimistic. Despite routinely claiming the need to hold regular citizens accountable for their actions, the Justice Department rarely penalizes its own employees who engage in misconduct.
Democrat town council refuses to fly 'racist' Thin Blue Line flag for slain cop and instead flies LGBT rainbow banner
The motion failed by 5-3 after the Democrats claimed the flag - a symbol used to support cops since 2014 - is racist. Instead, the LGBT rainbow flag was flown at half mast after it had already been agreed that the banner would fly throughout June, which is Pride month.
Emily Zambrello, a Democrat member of the council said of the Thin Blue Line flag: 'That flag was either created or at least became prevalent in direct response to the Black Lives Matter protests, which were fueled in part by the killing of George Floyd by police.
'It's viewed as antagonistic even if you don’t see it that way and I don’t think that’s a good flag to fly, especially not without further discussion.'
Fellow councilmember Brianna Timbro, a Republican, argued that the Thin Blue Line flag existed well before the Black Lives Matter riots - which erupted in 2020.
Federal Judge Caught Stumping For Biden’s Green Agenda In Montana
Ethics rules typically prohibit judges from participating in partisan events to avoid the appearance of politics affecting their decisions. Constitution-supporting Supreme Court justices such as Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, for example, have been charged in the national press with conflicts of interest due to not theirs but their wives’ free speech and participation in the political process.
The Montana event touted the administration’s allocation of $24 million in Inflation Reduction Act funds to the Mike Mansfield Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Butte, Montanna, located in Morris’ district. These funds are allocated for purchasing materials allegedly made with lower greenhouse gas emissions and what GSA calls “sustainability performance improvements.”
Flint’s tweet comes after local journalist Josh Margolis released a photo of Morris at the event. In the photo, the judge appears to be speaking behind a podium emblazoned with Biden’s name.
Morris is a member of the State Bar of Montana, which directs judges to “not engage in political or campaign activity that is inconsistent with the independence, integrity, or impartiality of the judiciary” and to avoid even “the appearance of impropriety.” Although the GSA is a nominally independent agency within the executive branch, the funding clearly advances the Biden administration’s radical environmental agenda.
“The project marks another step toward achieving President Biden’s federal sustainability goals, including a net zero emissions federal building portfolio by 2045 and net zero emissions procurement by 2050, while supporting good American manufacturing jobs,” reads a GSA press release on the matter.
Waging lawfare against Trump will not end well for Democrats
Reacting to Donald Trump’s hush-money conviction in Manhattan on 30 May, the French writer Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry asked on X: “Has there been a single left-of-centre person… who has said: ‘Hey, nakedly partisan prosecutions of your political opponents goes against the values of liberal democracy, rule of law, justice, and everything my side claims to support?’”
A number of progressive figures have, in fact, decried lawfare against Trump and the Trumpians. The law professor Samuel Moyn, the civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald, the left economist Christian Parenti, and the heterodox Marxists clustered around Sublation magazine, among others, have maintained that in a democracy, politics should mainly be conducted in the voting booth, not in the courts or the interrogation rooms of the FBI.
But the honour roll of the principled anti-lawfare left is all too short. That’s a shame, because right-wing populists won’t be the only victims.
Does Manhattan district attorney (DA) Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump count as lawfare? You bet. As the former federal and state prosecutor Elie Honig wrote in New York magazine, “The DA’s charges against Trump push the outer boundaries of the law and due process.” To wit, Bragg pressed a boutique legal theory “seemingly crafted individually for the former president and nobody else” – a classic form of prosecutorial abuse.
The basic crime at issue was Trump’s falsification of business records related to a non-disclosure payment to his porn-star paramour Stormy Daniels. But as Honig pointed out, a falsification charge is a mere misdemeanour under New York law, thus unlikely to generate global headlines. Plus, the statute of limitations on Trump’s fiddling with his records had long expired.
Biden Admin Indicts Whistleblower Who Exposed Child Sex-Change Surgeries At Texas Children’s Hospital
The doctor targeted by the Biden administration for blowing the whistle on transgender surgeries that were secretly being performed by Texas Children’s Hospital was formally indicted with federal charges this week.
Eithan Haim, who revealed himself as the whistleblower earlier this year in an interview with The Daily Wire, says three armed agents arrived at his door early Tuesday to inform him that he’s been charged with four felonies. The charges are related to alleged HIPAA violations from when Haim, as a resident, that Texas Children’s Hospital was performing so-called “gender-affirming” procedures on minors even as it publicly declared that all such activity had been halted.
Haim says there is still uncertainty about what exactly he’s being charged with — he’s been ordered to appear in court next Monday where his legal team expects to learn the extent of the charges. He has long maintained that he committed no crimes, and is being politically targeted.
“I refuse to back down or to be silenced,” Haim, a practicing surgeon in Texas, posted on social media Thursday night. “But to win, we enter the arena. For us that’s federal court.”
It's Time to Arrest James Clapper and Antony Blinken
Biden's legal team had tried desperately to prevent the laptop from being included as evidence, claiming that it had "numerous reasons to believe the data had been altered and compromised before investigators obtained the electronic material." However, the prosecution argued that attorneys didn't provide "any evidence or information that shows that his laptop contains false information," and the judge consequently agreed to admit the laptop as evidence.
FBI agent Erika Jensen testified to the laptop's authenticity and explained how the information was verified. There is no doubt that the laptop was Hunter Biden's and that it was entirely legitimate.
Yet Clapper refuses to retract the letter he signed falsely claiming that the laptop was Russian disinformation — the letter which Big Tech used to suppress the damaging story for Joe Biden's campaign weeks before the presidential election.
Of course, it wasn't just the 51 national security officials signing onto the bogus letter with their bogus assessment of the laptop who should be charged either. Last year, evidence was uncovered linking the infamous letter to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
In shocking litmus test, FBI security inquiry tried to unmask employee’s Trump support, memos show
FBI officials conducting a top-secret security clearance review for a longtime employee asked witnesses whether that employee was known to support former President Donald Trump, if he had expressed concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine or had attended a Second Amendment rally, according to internal memos that prompted a complaint to the Justice Department’s internal watchdog alleging political bias inside the bureau.
The employee’s security clearance was revoked months after the interviews, which confirmed his support for Trump and gun rights and his concerns about the COVID vaccine, according to the documents obtained by Just the News.
The memos show that agents for the FBI’s Security Division asked at least three witnesses in spring 2022 whether the employee, whose name and job title was redacted from the memos, had been known to “vocalize support for President Trump” or “vocalize objections to Covid-19 vaccination.” Agents ascertained from at least one witness that the worker, in fact, had declined to get the coronavirus inoculation.
The latter questions about the vaccine were asked in spring 2022, a few months after the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down vaccine mandates in corporate workplaces and a separate federal court had issued an injunction on federal employee vaccine mandates.
The agents also asked witnesses whether the FBI worker had “attended the Richmond Lobby Day event” in January 2021, a rally for supporters of the Second Amendment in Virginia. The agents’ notes referred to the colleague they were vetting as a “gun nut” but who in engaged in “no promotion of violence.”
You can read the memos here:
File FBiSecCLearanceMemosTrumpQuestions.pdf
[clip]
Leavitt, who runs the nonprofit Empower Oversight center specializing in whistleblower cases, said his client did not engage in any criminal acts nor did he enter the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and he called the security review process that ensued evidence of political bias against conservatives inside the bureau.
“Instead of limiting its investigation to legitimate issues, SecD (Security Division) acted as if support for President Trump, objecting to COVID-19 vaccinations, or lawfully attending a protest was the equivalent of being a member of Al Qaeda or the Chinese Communist Party,” Leavitt wrote to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz in a letter Monday asking for an investigation.
“The FBl’s intentions are made clear by the questions it chose to put in black and white on a government document,” added Leavitt, whose group has represented the IRS whistleblowers in the Hunter Biden case as well as several FBI agents and analysts who claim their security clearances were suspended or revoked because of their political views.
One of those FBI employees, intelligence analyst Marcus Allen, was vindicated last week when the bureau restored his clearance and paid him more than two years of back pay, according to CNN.
Leavitt told Horowitz he believed the documents detailing the security clearance review for his client were “shocking” evidence of an “abuse of authority and a violation of our client's rights under the First Amendment.”
Horowitz’s office, which has chronicled years of FBI abuses ranging from mishandling of informants to abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, did not immediately return a call or email seeking comment Monday on whether it has opened a probe.
The Denver Post ran a troubling story raising some very difficult questions yesterday, headlined “Mentally ill man charged in Colorado Planned Parenthood shooting can be forcibly medicated.”
In November, 2015, Robert Dear, 66, stormed a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. He first opened fire with a rifle, then charged into the building. The siege ended five hours later when Dear surrendered. He killed three people, including a police officer, and wounded nine.
Dear is mentally ill. His criminal trial — now going on its eighth year — got bogged down in state court by Dear’s obvious insanity. So prosecutors ironically re-charged him with the federal crime of blocking abortion clinic access, and moved the case to federal court. In 2022, Dear’s federal judge green-lighted forcing the crazed defendant to take medicine for his delusional disorder, and to allow him to stand trial.
Dear’s attorneys appealed.
Yesterday, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the trial judge’s order, clearing the way for prison doctors to forcibly medicate Mr. Dear, despite the risks of side effects raised by his defense attorneys. Presumably, Dear’s lawyers will appeal this new ruling to the Supreme Court, which may or may not take the case.
What should the Supreme Court do? Before the pandemic, I would have easily agreed with the two lower courts. Medicate the man. It’s good for him, and good for justice. Win-win. But now, I’m not so sure. Now, despite what he’s done, and despite the fact Dear might be the least sympathetic defendant imaginable, I feel I’m leaning more toward favoring his bodily autonomy, if only to set the bar that low for the government to order any of us to take drugs we don’t want.
It’s a tough call. Which way are you leaning?
☕️ THE BLUE WALL ☙ Wednesday, June 12, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠
Jury convicts Hunter and media starts smugness contest; June temps disappoint activists; 10th Circuit raises tough questions of body autonomy; WSJ reports fake science; Trump W's; and more.
www.coffeeandcovid.com
Is the Death Penalty on the table if they medicate him?
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This young lady fully understands and nails it. More and more people are waking up.
This young lady fully understands and nails it. More and more people are waking up.