Domestic Right Wing Terrorists!

[patric]

Sounds like the FBI guy tried to kill first, but was bad enough shot that he missed out on all the action.  Intent (along with the lying) would be the worst they could do to him.  The other cops killing Finicum (sp?) still stands - the guy was going for a gun.

The state troopers fell back on the "I was afraid" defense while the FBI's crack counter-terrorism unit chose to lie, even to other law enforcement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH4PInHFfOc

The "going for the gun" theory is now thought to be Finicum reacting to being struck by either a pepperball or foam bullet.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-fbi-oregon-shooting-20170628-story.html

My take is that Finicum was itching to be a martyr, and that his death would expose ham-fisted behavior he hoped would outrage the public into demanding reform.

[heironymouspasparagus]

The state troopers fell back on the "I was afraid" defense while the FBI's crack counter-terrorism unit chose to lie, even to other law enforcement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH4PInHFfOc

The "going for the gun" theory is now thought to be Finicum reacting to being struck by either a pepperball or foam bullet.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-fbi-oregon-shooting-20170628-story.html

My take is that Finicum was itching to be a martyr, and that his death would expose ham-fisted behavior he hoped would outrage the public into demanding reform.

I have watched that video several times and it always looks the same - like he is reaching for something in the coat.  Several times.  I would have shot the very first time he pulled his hand down and moved toward the coat - they waited until the 3rd time. 

The two in the car should have heard even a paint ball type sound, so why didn't they say anything about it?

FBI has such a checkered past, it is tough to get the real story.  Probably never will here...

[patric]

"Hold my beer and watch this"  ?

The FBI has arrested an Oklahoma man on charges that he tried to set off a fake explosive device he obtained from an undercover agent.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-oklahoma-bomb-plot-arrest-20170814-story.html

[TeeDub]

"Hold my beer and watch this"  ?

The FBI has arrested an Oklahoma man on charges that he tried to set off a fake explosive device he obtained from an undercover agent.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-oklahoma-bomb-plot-arrest-20170814-story.html

Is this a lesson in be careful who you buy your drugs bombs from?

[patric]

Is this a lesson in be careful who you buy your drugs bombs from?

That, or how to time your PR stunts for just enough "libel by omission" to stoke the base.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Rape by cop.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/dashcam-video-shows-police-sexually-174226801.html

[patric]

Rape by cop.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/dashcam-video-shows-police-sexually-174226801.html

Dashcam Video Allegedly Shows Sheriff's Deputies Searching A Woman's Vagina For 11 Minutes
https://www.buzzfeed.com/maryanngeorgantopoulos/dashcam-video-woman-search

The cops were cleared by two grand juries (on instruction from the local D.A.), but it seems to be a habit there:

Former Trooper Pleads Guilty, Gets Probation in Roadside Cavity Search
http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Former-Trooper-Expected-to-Plead-Guilty-to-Oppression-Related-to-Roadside-Cavity-Search-260398061.html

that some repeat:

Woman suing four DPS troopers over search
https://www.click2houston.com/news/woman-suing-four-dps-troopers-over-search_20151124020632879

[patric]

Photojournalist, 5 others acquitted in inauguration riot trial

The case follows one of the largest mass arrests for vandalism in the city, and authorities spent months preparing for trial and mining for evidence. Authorities confiscated the cellphones of the defendants to examine text messages and videos. And prosecutors sought court orders for defendants' Internet records, including website visits and Facebook accounts, in hopes of securing additional evidence to support their theory the protesters planned to participate in a
violent demonstration...
Then (defense) Attorneys identified evidence from officers' personal Twitter accounts and police records of statements that attorneys said were anti-Semitic, homophobic and against groups such as Black Lives Matter.

One of the more controversial videos viewed by the jury was submitted to police from Project Veritas, an organization that uses secret recordings to target the mainstream news media and left-leaning groups. A Veritas member secretly recorded a Jan. 8 DisruptJ20 planning meeting in the basement of a District church.

That video showed organizers advising that people wear comfortable shoes, avoid carrying identification and, if stopped by police, decline to give their names. One person says that would "jam up the police." But the video did not show anyone discussing plans of vandalism or rioting.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/the-first-of-six-people-on-trial-in-violent-inauguration-day-protests-is-found-not-guilty/2017/12/21/6c97fd84-ded9-11e7-8679-a9728984779c_story.html

[patric]

Former Militia Leader Breaks with Trump, Again Sides with Underdogs, Oppressed

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/12/08/ammon-bundy-spoke-kindly-about-migrant-caravan-backlash-has-him-rethinking-his-supporters/

[patric]

You do realize that in most urban areas (ours included) it is illegal to discharge a firearm...right?  Without cause?

This year I celebrated new years at a friends, and I could almost swear all the "fireworks" I heard were handguns.
Probably why I dont go outside to hear the celebration, but its not safe inside, either:


TULSA, Okla. (KTUL) — It was a loud bang, a sound Julie Tucker-Tranium thought was a pet up to no good.

"Maybe our cat knocked a picture off the wall, a heavy picture, because it was a really loud bang," she thought.

It was actually a 45 caliber bullet coming through the roof and hitting the floor, leaving a dent in the concrete.

"The dog stopped and was sniffing something on the floor in the hallway right outside the bedroom, and I looked down and picked it up, and it was a slug. It was a pretty big, heavy piece of metal. Then, I looked up and was like, 'wow,'" she said.

Thirty seconds before the bullet hit, Julie had been standing in that exact spot. The theory is that it had been fired by someone shooting into the air to celebrate the New Year. The scary thing about something like this is that it's hard to tell where that bullet came from. Once a bullet leaves a gun and goes up into the air, it gets affected by wind, gravity, so for all we know, the bullet that hit the house at 51st and Riverside could have come from a farm three miles away or the apartment building a block away.

[patric]

Trump has demonstrated little interest in making efforts to combat domestic terrorism a priority for his administration, despite warnings from law enforcement officials, members of Congress and groups that track extremism about the increasing threat of extremist and far-right groups. Some have claimed White House officials attempted to suppress use of the phrase "domestic terrorism" altogether over the course of the Trump administration.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/09/politics/trump-gretchen-whitmer-law-and-order/index.html


Man In Militia Plot To Kidnap Michigan Governor Shared Stage With Extremist Sheriff
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/michigan-militia-dar-leaf-constitutional-sheriff_n_5f809951c5b62f97bac2195a

[patric]

The teenager with the long gun scuffled with people near a car dealership and opened fire, allegedly killing two people and wounding a third, a criminal complaint says. Even as police and emergency vehicles raced to the scene and chaotic videos of the fatal encounter appeared on social media, the armed suspect walked past a group of officers unnoticed.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/28/us/kyle-rittenhouse-kenosha-shooting/index.html



Kyle Rittenhouse, the teen facing charges for the deaths of two people shot in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was released from custody due to what a member of his defense team described as a miracle Saturday.

MyPillow founder Mike Lindell and former child star Ricky Schroder helped cover the $2 million cash bail that resulted in Mr. Rittenhouse before freed on Friday, attorney L. Lin Wood confirmed.
"It can be described as a miracle," Mr. Wood told former White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon while appearing on his "War Room: Pandemic" podcast. "I believe it was an act of God," he added.

Mr. Rittenhouse, 17, of Antioch, Illinois, was released from a juvenile center Friday night after spending nearly three months in custody awaiting trial for charges related to the shooting deaths.

Speaking to Mr. Bannon, President Trump's former chief strategist, Mr. Wood thanked Mr. Schroder, 50, Mr. Lindell, 59, and the "many thousands of patriots who knew this boy was innocent" and donated.

Mr. Rittenhouse is accused of shooting three people, killing two, with a rifle he is too young under state law to purchase. Scenes from the shooting and its aftermath were recorded by witnesses.

Attorneys for Mr. Rittenhouse have maintained he was in Kenosha to protect local businesses from rioters and argue he acted in self defense. "He's a fine young man and he's going to do a lot of great things for America," Mr. Wood said Saturday. "Eventually he will be exonerated," he told Mr. Bannon.

Mr. Wood, 68, announced shortly after the shooting that his not-for-profit organization would be assembling a legal team for Mr. Rittenhouse and raising funds needed for his defense and freedom.

The lawyer references a slogan used by the QAnon conspiracy theory movement in his Twitter profile, and he is among Trump supporters to repeat the president's recent unproven claims of voter fraud.

Mr. Rittenhouse used $1,200 he received from a coronavirus stimulus check to buy the gun, the told The Washington Post recently.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/nov/21/kyle-rittenhouse-teen-murder-suspect-freed-with-he/

[heironymouspasparagus]

MyPillow founder Mike Lindell and former child star Ricky Schroder helped cover the $2 million cash bail that resulted in Mr. Rittenhouse before freed on Friday, attorney L. Lin Wood confirmed.
"It can be described as a miracle," Mr. Wood told former White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon while appearing on his "War Room: Pandemic" podcast. "I believe it was an act of God," he added.

Mr. Rittenhouse is accused of shooting three people, killing two, with a rifle he is too young under state law to purchase. Scenes from the shooting and its aftermath were recorded by witnesses.

Attorneys for Mr. Rittenhouse have maintained he was in Kenosha to protect local businesses from rioters and argue he acted in self defense. "He's a fine young man and he's going to do a lot of great things for America," Mr. Wood said Saturday. "Eventually he will be exonerated," he told Mr. Bannon.

Mr. Rittenhouse used $1,200 he received from a coronavirus stimulus check to buy the gun, the told The Washington Post recently.[/font]
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/nov/21/kyle-rittenhouse-teen-murder-suspect-freed-with-he/

The scum have come out of the woodwork once again to support their own!   There was even one of those Trumplicans calling to elect this garbage to US House, I think it was....  

And next, the gun shop, and salespeople, where he bought that gun need to be ground into the dirt!  Guarantee Barr won't go after them - let's hope there is some action by Biden's DOJ !

That is capital murder - not just 'intent', but traveling on purpose just so he could get a shot at someone!  Doing Trump bidding, of course!

[patric]

FBI Seized Congressional Cellphone Records Related to Capitol Attack

Within hours of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, the FBI began securing thousands of phone and electronic records connected to people at the scene of the rioting — including some related to members of Congress, raising potentially thorny legal questions.

Using special emergency powers and other measures, the FBI has collected reams of private cellphone data and communications that go beyond the videos that rioters shared widely on social media, according to two sources with knowledge of the collection effort.

In the hours and days after the Capitol riot, the FBI relied in some cases on emergency orders that do not require court authorization in order to quickly secure actual communications from people who were identified at the crime scene. Investigators have also relied on data "dumps" from cellphone towers in the area to provide a map of who was there, allowing them to trace call records — but not content — from the phones.

The cellphone data includes many records from the members of Congress and staff members who were at the Capitol that day to certify President Joe Biden's election victory. The FBI is "searching cell towers and phones pinging off cell sites in the area to determine visitors to the Capitol," a recently retired senior FBI official told The Intercept. The data is also being used to map links between suspects, which include members of Congress, they also said. (Capitol Police are reportedly investigating whether lawmakers helped rioters gain access to the Capitol as several Democrats have alleged they did, though Republican officials deny this.)

The Justice Department has publicly said that its task force includes senior public corruption officials. That involvement "indicates a focus on public officials, i.e. Capitol Police and members of Congress," the retired FBI official said.


Federal authorities have used the emergency orders in combination with signed court orders under the so-called pen/trap exception to the Stored Communications Act to try to determine who was present at the time that the Capitol was breached, the source said. In some cases, the Justice Department has used these and other "hybrid" court orders to collect actual content from cellphones, like text messages and other communications, in building cases against the rioters.

The collection effort has been met with little resistance from telecom providers asked to turn over voluminous data on the activity that day. "No one wants to be on the wrong side of the insurrection," a source involved in the collection effort said. "This is now the scene of the crime."

Michael German, a former FBI agent who is a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program, said that the January 6 attack on the Capitol "certainly seems to fit" the type of national emergency that would allow the FBI to legally expedite its collection of electronic data. But he said that the wide collection of such data from the event "reflects a flawed approach that will inundate investigators with volumes of data that isn't necessarily helpful to distinguish who committed violence at the Capitol versus those who were engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience. And meanwhile the vast majority of people whose cellphone data will be collected in this manner are completely innocent of engaging in any criminal activity but will remain in the suspect pool that is created with any bulk collection program where the future consequences they might face are unknown."
https://theintercept.com/2021/02/22/capitol-riot-fbi-cellphone-records/


Capitol Police Officer May Have Died From Pepper Spray Jan. 6
https://nypost.com/2021/03/02/fbi-director-wray-mum-on-officer-brian-sicknicks-cause-of-death/

[patric]

Homeland Security Admits It Tried to Manufacture Fake Terrorists for Trump
A new Homeland Security report details orders to connect protesters arrested in Portland to one another in service of the Trump's imaginary antifa plot.


The Department of Homeland Security launched a failed operation that ensnared hundreds, if not thousands, of U.S. protesters in what new documents show was as a sweeping, power-hungry effort before the 2020 election to bolster President Donald Trump's spurious claims about a "terrorist organization" he accused his Democratic rivals of supporting.

An internal investigative report, made public this month by Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, details the findings of DHS lawyers concerning a previously undisclosed effort by Trump's acting secretary of homeland security, Chad Wolf, to amass secret dossiers on Americans in Portland attending anti-racism protests in summer 2020 sparked by the police murder of Minneapolis father George Floyd.

The report describes attempts by top officials to link protesters to an imaginary terrorist plot in an apparent effort to boost Trump's reelection odds, raising concerns now about the ability of a sitting president to co-opt billions of dollars' worth of domestic intelligence assets for their own political gain. DHS analysts recounted orders to generate evidence of financial ties between protesters in custody; an effort that, had they not failed, would have seemingly served to legitimize President Trump's false claims about "Antifa," an "organization" that even his most loyal intelligence officers failed to drum up proof ever existed.
"Did not find any evidence that assertion was true"

The DHS report offers a full accounting of the intelligence activities happening behind the scenes of officers' protest containment; "twisted efforts," Wyden said, of Trump administration officials promoting "baseless conspiracy theories" to manufacture of a domestic terrorist threat for the president's "political gain." The report describes the dossiers generated by DHS as having detailed the past whereabouts and the "friends and followers of the subjects, as well as their interests" — up to and including "First Amendment speech activity." Intelligence analysts had internally raised concerns about the decision to accuse anyone caught in the streets by default of being an "anarchist extremist" specifically because "sufficient facts" were never found "to support such a characterization."

One field operations analyst told interviewers that the charts were hastily "thrown together," adding they "didn't even know why some of the people were arrested." In some cases, it was unclear whether the arrests were made by police or by one of the several federal agencies on the ground. The analysts were never provided arrest affidavits or paperwork, a witness told investigators, adding that they "just worked off the assumption that everyone on the list was arrested." Lawyers who reviewed 43 of the dossiers found it "concerning," the report says, that 13 of them stemmed from "nonviolent crimes." These included trespassing, though it was unclear to analysts and investigators whether the cases had "any relationship to federal property," the report says.

A footnote in the report states that "at least one witness" told investigators that dossiers had been requested on people who were "not arrested" but merely accused of threats. Another, citing emails exchanged between top intelligence officials, states dossiers were created "on persons arrested having nothing to do with homeland security or threats to officers."

Questioned by investigators, the agency's chief intelligence officer acknowledged fielding requests by Wolf and his acting deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, to create dossiers "against everyone participating in the Portland protest," regardless of whether they'd been accused of any crime, the report says. That officer, Brian Murphy, then head of the agency's Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A), told interviewers that he'd rejected the idea, informing his bosses that he could only "look at people who were arrested," and adding that it was something his office had done "thousands" of times before.

The DHS report, finalized more than a year ago, includes descriptions of orders handed down to "senior leadership" instructing them to broadly apply the label "violent antifa anarchists inspired" to Portland protesters unless they had intel showing "something different."

Once the dossiers were received by the agency's emerging threat center, it became clear that DHS had no real way to tie the protesters to any terrorist activities, neither at home nor abroad. Efforts to drum up evidence to support the administration's claim that a "larger network was directing or financing" the protesters — a task assigned to another unit, known as the Homeland Identities, Targeting and Exploitation Center, diverted away from its usual work of analyzing national security threats — "did not find any evidence that assertion was true," the report says.
A Trumped-up Threat, a Trumped-up Homeland Security Department

Fears of political toadies occupying key intelligence roles had been aired publicly by former intelligence community members during the Trump administration's early years, but their concerns were all but ignored by Senate Republicans during confirmation hearings that would ultimately inflict serious reputational damage on a number of agencies that, for their own survival, had long avoided partisan leanings.

The report is based on interviews with approximately 80 employees conducted by attorneys drawn from various agency components, including U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Coast Guard. The investigation began in response to leaks of internal DHS emails in July 2020 that prompted questions from lawmakers about potential intelligence abuses, including the monitoring of journalists' activities online and the liberal application of terrorism-related language to describe Americans engaged in protest.

I&A is one of the nation's 17 intelligence community members overseen by the nation's "top spy," the director of national intelligence, whose office drafts daily top-secret briefings for the president. The directorship was held throughout the protests by John Ratcliffe, a Republican of Texas and renowned Trump loyalist, whose nomination to the post was withdrawn initially in 2019 over qualifications concerns raised by lawmakers and career intelligence officials.

The dossiers, known as Operational Background Reports, or OBRs, are known colloquially within the agency as "baseball cards," the report says. The task of creating them was handed, "with little to no guidance on execution," to the agency's Current and Emerging Threats Center, an analysis unit whose "actionable intelligence" is distributed widely throughout the government. According to the report, the dossiers would've been shared with, among others, the agency's Field Operations Division, which works closely with House and Senate committee staffers, and the Federal Protection Service, whose core mission is securing some 9,000 federal facilities across the country. The extent to which entities outside the federal government were meant to be involved is unclear; however, the report indicates that DHS state and local partners, which would naturally include law enforcement, but also potentially organizations like National Governors Association, could have also been in the loop.

Funded to the tune of $1.5 billion, the Federal Protective Service (FPS) is comprised of thousands of security officers drawn from private contractors such as Triple Canopy, a firm merged in 2014 with another contractor called Academi, previously known as Blackwater. Its staff notoriously included elite warfighters recruited from among the Navy SEALS, the Army Rangers, and the Marines expeditionary force MARSOC.

Activated to engage protesters targeting federal buildings in Portland — including the well-vandalized Hatfield Federal Courthouse — FPS personnel were eventually joined by officers hailing from across the federal government, including some on loan by the U.S. Marshals Service tactical unit normally tasked with making the arrests of the nation's most violent fugitives. They converged for a mission dubbed "Operation Diligent Valor," authorized under Executive Order 13933, purportedly to apprehend "anarchists and left-wing extremists" who'd been driven by Floyd's murder to target U.S. monuments commemorating slave owners and Confederate traitors — dangerous individuals, Trump said, advancing a "fringe ideology" painting the U.S. government as "fundamentally unjust."

Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, convicted of murder and sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison in 2021, sparked more than 100 days of continuous marches in Portland. Sporadic protests continued well into the next spring, frequently marked by nightly standoffs between protesters toting bottles, fruit, and fireworks and riot-control squads armed with nightsticks, pepperspray, and "kinetic impact munitions" designed to irritate, disorient, and compel compliance through pain.

Police would eventually rack up an unprecedented 6,000 documented use-of-force cases against the demonstrators, who in turn reportedly inflicted more than $2.3 million in damage to federal buildings alone. Police ran off legal observers and physically beat journalists who suffered injuries at the hands of federal agents armed with crowd control weapons as well. In response to the bad press, Justice Department lawyers filed a successful motion in court giving police the power to force reporters off the streets.

Reports began surfacing, meanwhile, of protesters being abducted near demonstrations by men jumping out of unmarked vans in military fatigues. After widely circulated footage confirmed the accounts, DHS acknowledged the abductions, as well as the fact that agents had taken intentional steps to ensure their identities remained secret.

Analysts would feed protesters' names into an array of databases, including LexisNexis, a tool used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to hunt undocumented immigrants. Another tool, referred to as "Tangles" — a likely reference to the now-defunct Facebook app CrowdTangle — was used to "[compile] information from the subject's available social media profiles.

The report also states that dossiers were requested on multiple journalists, including Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare.

Wittes was targeted for publishing unclassified DHS materials, including the initial leak that set off the investigation. Wittes had coauthored an article at Lawfare with Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, in July 2020, which included leaked guidance — known as a "job aid" — disclosing DHS plans to act on Trump's executive order. The document, Lawfare reported, implicated "at least parts of the intelligence community" in the "monitoring and collecting information on some protest activities." Later leaks obtained by the New York Times included a DHS memo that, among other things, summarized tweets that had been published by Wittes.

One tweet, published on July 26 — a week after Lawfare published the guidance document — included a leaked email by DHS's acting chief intelligence officer, relaying orders to begin referring to all violence in Portland as the work of "Antifa."

As the summer nights grew longer and the 2020 elections near, the media spent less time focused on the cause of the demonstrations — the suffocation of a Black father of five by a white Minneapolis police officer who was outwardly unmoved by Floyd's desperate pleas for air, or the heartrending cries for his mother. Headlines shifted instead, as if on cue, to focus on the narrative crafted by the president's flailing reelection campaign; a pre-packed delusion designed to strike fear in voters' imaginations and tether Democrats to a fictitious terrorist threat.

Nothing could dissuade Trump from continuing to propagate the claims, which his supporters — most to this day — continue to blindly believe. "In my book it's virtually a part of their campaign, Antifa," Trump said in the final months before the election. "The Democrats act like, gee, I don't know exactly what that is."

Trump's highest ranking intelligence crony, John Ratcliffe, meanwhile, would go on to play the only card left with a little help from Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Shocking and alarming career intelligence officials, Graham posted a letter online ahead of the election's final debate. It contained a batch of Russian disinformation that a Republican-led committee had disregarded as bogus four years earlier. Apparently, it focused on the only Democratic left on whom they could find any material with which to smear: Hillary Clinton, who had no election to lose.

https://gizmodo.com/donald-trump-homeland-security-report-antifa-portland-1849718673