The Fifth Circuit Court today dismissed the lawsuit by the families of the 346 victims of two Boeing 737-Max crashes, caused by Boeing’s admitted malfeasance and corruption, preventing those families from blocking a sweetheart deal between Boeing and the Justice Department that largely lets Boeing off the hook.

The court’s decision was vile in its own way, as noted by one of their lawyers:

In today’s ruling, the Circuit said that the families’ victims rights challenges to these agreements came too late to allow any remedy. But earlier, in 2023, the Circuit had said that the families’ challenges were “premature.” The fact that the families now will seemingly never receive any remedy is a cruel judicial bait-and-switch, revealing how much work remains to be done to create truly enforcable crime victims’ rights in the criminal justice system. [emphasis mine]

In other words, this court’s rulings over time essentially made it impossible for these victims to ever claim their rights under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA).

The background: In 2018 and 2019 two of Boeing’s new 737-Max planes crashed, due to Boeing’s own design. The investigation into the crashes revealed that Boeing knew about these design flaws, lied about it to federal authorities, while doing nothing to fix the identified problems (behavior to which it has admitted). In 2021 Boeing pleaded guilty to malfeasance and corruption charges, and was given three years to clean up its act or face criminal prosecution.

When after three years Justice found Boeing had instead lied again while doing little to fix things, Justice first proceeded with prosecution, only to suddenly back off and make a plea deal that would have Boeing pay and/or invest up to $1.1 billion, about half of which would go to victims’ families.

To understand the opposition by the families to this deal, you need to read what the Justice Department determined about Boeing’s behavior.

A Justice Department investigation uncovered the fact that Boeing had lied to the FAA about the safety of the aircraft—lies that led directly and proximately to the crashes killing 346 passengers and crew. On January 7, 2021, the Justice Department filed a criminal information with a one-count conspiracy charge against Boeing, alleging that “From at least in or around November 2016 through at least in or around December 2018, in the Northern District of Texas and elsewhere, the Defendant, The Boeing Company, knowingly and willfully, and with the intent to defraud, conspired and agreed together with others to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, defeating, and interfering with, by dishonest means, the lawful function of a United States government agency.”

The families didn’t simply want money, they wanted justice. They wanted Boeing and its management to be prosecuted for their part in allowing 346 people to die unnecessarily.

At this moment, it appears they won’t get it, because of a similar malfeasance at the Fifth Circuit, which now seems as corrupt and as dishonest as Boeing.

It turns out that one week after a judge approved a plea deal in early November between Boeing and the Justice Department that would allows the company to avoid a criminal prosecution for its malfeasance and fraud that led to two 737-Max airplane crashes that killed a total of 346 people — thus dismissing the pending criminal charges — the families of the victims filed an appeal, asking a higher court to overturn that deal.

The families had argued before U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor that the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) non-prosecution agreement violated the judicial review provisions, which was reached behind closed doors without the families’ statutory right to confer. The writ of mandamus argues that no substantive proceedings before Judge O’Connor were held before he made his decision in favor of Boeing.

…DOJ initially presented Judge O’Connor with a non-prosecution agreement (NPA) that he rejected. Instead of coming back with something more stringent, DOJ presented Boeing with the lesser punishment of an NPA in which Boeing would merely pay a $243.6 million penalty, give $444.5 million to be divided amongst the 346 families, and make additional investments in its safety and compliance. In exchange, the DOJ agreed to dismiss the criminal charge against Boeing. On November 6, Judge O’Connor approved this revised NPA and granted the government’s motion to dismiss.

The families now look forward to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse this decision through its writ of mandamus. In the writ, Paul Cassell, pro bono, attorneys for the families and professor of the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, argued on behalf of the families’ that the government’s NPA with Boeing would not provide sufficient oversight of Boeing and failed to account for the fact that Boeing’s criminal behavior was found to have caused the deaths of 346 crash victims. Boeing’s CEO and its lawyers had admitted to the fraud in a guilty plea issued four years ago.

In 2021 Boeing itself pleaded guilty to malfeasance and corruption charges, and was given three years to clean up its act or face criminal prosecution. When after three years Justice found Boeing had instead lied to it while doing little to fix things, it first proceeded with prosecution, only to suddenly back off and make this plea deal.

Thus, the families’ case is strong. Boeing is an admitted criminal and has also done nothing to change its behavior. Whether the families can get the plea deal overturned, however, remains unknown. The legal system no longer can be trusted when it comes to big government contractors like Boeing. The government acts routinely to protect them (as Justice is doing here), and thus there will be heavy political pressure on the courts to turn down this appeal.

After further hearings during this past month, a judge ruled today to accept the plea deal worked out between Boeing and the Justice Department that allows the companyto avoid a criminal prosecution for its malfeasance and fraud that led to two 737-Max airplane crashes that killed a total of 346 people, thus dismissing the pending criminal charges.

A criminal conspiracy case was held against Boeing following the two fatal crashes of its 737 MAX 8 aircraft. The Department of Justice had initially accused Boeing of deceiving the federal regulators in relation to flight control system issues. Following the dismissal, Boeing has agreed that it would pay and or invest up to $1.1 billion in compensation to victims’ families, alongside other fines.

This dismissal comes almost a year after Boeing had reached an agreement with the DOJ, under which it would see the American plane manufacturer plead guilty and serve a term of probation. In a report by CNBC, the dismissal order acknowledged the victims’ families, many of whom opposed the dismissal, that the agreement could fail to secure the necessary accountability to ensure the safety of the flying public, and that the dismissal did not acknowledge that the manufacturer needed to be subject to independent monitoring.

It should be noted that Boeing has not only admitted to its corrupt behavior, it has already thumbed its nose at the Justice Department. As I noted in March,

In 2021 Boeing admitted to these charges as part of a plea deal with Justice, whereby prosecution would be deferred for three years if Boeing took certain actions to clean up its act. When that deal expired in 2024, Justice determined that Boeing had failed to live up to its agreement. Rather than go to criminal trial however government lawyers instead attempted twice to settle the case by having Boeing pay a big fine, first $243 million and then $455 million. In both cases the deals fell through when lawyers for the victims’ families objected.

The families still object, for the very rational reasons listed above. Boeing remains a very untrustworthy company, with a corporate culture that does not appear to require high standards, or even low standards, while allowing corruption and fraud to run rampant. This deal in many ways lets it off the hook.

At the same time, the deal is clearly an effort by Justice to give Boeing another opportunity to reform itself. We shall see if it works. Skepticism is certainly called for.

Under the agreement, Boeing will have to “pay or invest” more than $1.1 billion, the DOJ said in its filing in federal court in Texas on Friday. That amount includes a $487.2 million criminal fine, though $243.6 million it already paid in an earlier agreement would be credited. It also includes $444.5 million for a new fund for crash victims, and $445 million more on compliance, safety and quality programs.

In the filing the Justice Department states it has met with the families to discuss the deal, but it remains unclear whether they will accept it or continue their suit. If the latter it could be that this deal will fail, just as the previous deals in 2021 and 2024. A major sticking point for the families is that Boeing will be allowed to avoid a trial and being convicted for murder and fraud, facts that the company has already admitted to in the previous deals.

In an unopposed motion filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, the Justice Department said it intended to file a notice of dismissal with prejudice, which means prosecutors would not be able to file these charges again.

Of all the lawfare initiated against Musk and SpaceX by the Biden administration, this lawsuit was by far the stupidest and most ridiculous. SpaceX doesn’t discriminate against non-American citizens. If they meet State Department rules and also have the qualifications, it hires them. And has done so. For one federal agency, Justice, to demand that SpaceX violate the rules of another agency, State, proves the lawsuit’s real purpose was harassment only.

That harassment has ended with the arrival of Trump.

Fight! Fight! Fight! According to a report today by Fox News, Trump’s lawyers are about to sue the Justice Department for $100 million, claiming the Mar-a-Lago raid and subsequent now-dismissed indictments by Jack Smith (who the courts have ruled was appointed illegally) were done with the “clear intent to engage in political persecution.”

Trump attorney Daniel Epstein filed the notice to sue the Justice Department. The Justice Department has 180 days from the date of receipt to respond to Epstein’s notice and come to a resolution. If no resolution is made, Trump’s case will move to federal court in the Southern District of Florida.

…Epstein argued that the DOJ violated Florida law, intrusion upon seclusion, which is recognized as a form of invasion of privacy. Intrusion upon seclusion includes “an intentional intrusion, physically or otherwise, into the private quarters of another person” and the intrusion “must occur in a manner that a reasonable person would find highly offensive.”

“The FBI’s demonstrated activity was inconsistent with protocols used in routine searches of an investigative target’s premises,” Epstein wrote, adding that Trump “had a clear expectation of privacy at Mar-a-Lago. Worse, the FBI’s conduct in the raid – where established protocol was violated – constitutes a severe and unacceptable intrusion that is highly offensive to a reasonable person.”

Next, Epstein argued “malicious prosecution.” He wrote that the Justice Department and the special counsel’s office “brought a lawless criminal indictment” against Trump. Epstein pointed to the Supreme Court’s ruling that a president has immunity from prosecution for official acts. “As such, given the Supreme Court’s immunity decision and Judge Cannon’s dismissal of the prosecution on grounds that the Special Counsel’s appointment violated the appointments clause and his office was funded through an improper appropriation, there was no constitutional basis for the search or the subsequent indictment,” Epstein writes.

Considering that this same Justice Department decided to not prosecute Joe Biden for doing much worse (retaining classified documents insecurely in his garage when he wasn’t even the president and had no right to hold those documents at all), the claim by Trump’s lawyers of malicious prosecution seems entirely reasonable. That there is also strong evidence that the FBI and Smith’s office manipulated the search and the evidence illegally to score propaganda points gives this lawsuit an even stronger foundation.

More important, however, is that this lawsuit signals the hardnosed approach Trump will take against these partisan hacks should he win re-election in November. As such, Trump should be very aware that his life is certainly in real danger, as I predicted in March:

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln

[F]from November to January will be a very dangerous time for anyone whom these corrupt government employees see as an enemy. Fake scandals like the Russian collusion hoax will the least of our worries. Do not be surprised or shocked if there were a number of assassination attempts during this time period on Republican elected officials, including Trump.

If I was him, I would not rely solely on government security. I would have my own people present at all times.

The July 13th attempt to kill Trump appears mostly to have happened due to incompetence and a willingness of too many Secret Service managers to not take protecting Trump very seriously, possibly for partisan reasons. Should he be re-elected however, that partisan laziness against a candidate they don’t like will likely shift into outright hate and fear, and could easily then morph into direct action to prevent him taking power.

Trump — as well as everyone who believes in freedom, the Constitution, and the rule of law — should be very afraid, and aware of this danger. Only by being aware will it be possible to fight back with the appropriate strength and determination.

Under the agreement, Boeing will plead guilty to a criminal fraud charge stemming from the fatal crashes in Indonesia in October 2018 and in Ethiopia less than five months later that killed a combined 346 people.

Boeing must also pay the hefty fine [$243.6 million], invest at least $455 million in compliance and safety programs, and have an independent monitor oversee Boeing’s safety and quality procedures for three years

The company had made similar deal in 2021 with Justice when it became clear it had deceived FAA regulators about the software on new 737-Max planes that caused these crashes. This new deal is because the company apparently violated that 2021 deal, and allows it to avoid a criminal trial.

A judge still has to approve this new plea deal. Many families of the deceased oppose it, demanding instead that company managers be put on trial. Even if the judge accepts it, Boeing will still be liable for other more recent incidents.

All in all, Boeing comes off as a morally corrupt and incompetent company that was willing to cut corners, lie about it, thus allow more planes to crash because of its actions.

No wonder everyone wants to blame Boeing for every single incident that has recently occurred on various commercial jets, even though in many cases the blame resides more with the maintenance departments of the airlines that had purchased the planes. And no wonder no one believes the claim that the astronauts that flew up to ISS in June are not “stuck” there. They probably aren’t, but why believe anyone from such a compny.

They’re coming for you next: Thirty-seven-year-old Matthew Perna came to Washington DC on January 6, 2021 to peacefully protest Joe Biden’s election. During those protests, Perna admitted he entered the Capitol through a door that had been opened by others (possibly government security police themselves). While inside he said he had walked through the building for a few minutes, didn’t touch or damage anything, and simply stayed within the normal walking path for visitors as he took pictures.

For this “criminal activity,” Biden prosecutors at the Department of Justice had charged him with multiple crimes, including a felony for committing terrorism that could have resulted in a twenty-year prison sentence. While Perna was willing to accept a trespassing misdemeanor — he recognized he had entered a closed facility without clear authority — the felony for terrorism crushed him. He knew the January 6th trials were imposing the harshest penalties. He knew the prosecutors and judges were not taking reasonable plea deals. And he knew that even if he agreed to a deal, the best he could expect would still be many months or even years in prison.

This unjust fate was something he could not face. On February 25, 2022 he killed himself.

Biden prosecutors immediately thereafter dropped the trumped-up charges against him, admitting that the felony charge itself would likely have been dropped during trial.

In other words, the government not only rubbed salt in the wounds of his family, it admitted openly that its charges against Perna were a sham to begin with.

We now have visual proof that Perna was innocent, and that proof was in the hands of federal prosecutors from day one.

Perna wears the red sweatshirt. Note the
guard calmly walking beside him.

The first batch of January 6th surveillance tapes — released as promised by House Speaker Mike Johnson — prove that Perna’s description of events was correct. As shown in the screen capture to the right, he can be seen in the red sweatshirt walking slowly and calmly through the halls of Congress, with security guards standing calmly nearby. No violence. No damage. No real trespass.

And without doubt, no terrorism of any kind.

These tapes must of been available and reviewed by the Biden Justice Department. Instead of dropping charges, it hid this exculpatory evidence and instead acted like Nazi SS officers, persecuting Perna simply because he had been there, peacefully exercising his First Amendment rights to publicly oppose the election of Joe Biden.

In fact, that the Biden administration denied Perna access to this exculpatory evidence is illegal on its face. His family (as well as every other January 6th protester who has been persecuted by the Biden administration) has a strong case to sue for big damages.

Multiple legal victories like this won’t give Matthew Perna his life back, but at a minimum such lawsuits might just rein in the abuse of power that now runs rampant in the federal government, led by Joe Biden, the corrupt officials in Justice and the FBI.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Mark Houck, who was arrested by a Justice Department SWAT team aiming guns and rifles at him and his family and was quickly found innocent of all charges, has now sued the Biden Justice Department and Merrick Garland for committing a “malicious and retaliatory prosecution.”

Actually, two lawsuits were filed. While Houck has sued for $1.1 million, his wife Ryan-Marie Houck is seeking $3.25 million in damages for the mental harm the arrest caused herself and her children.

Ryan-Marie Houck’s complaint describes how profoundly her husband’s arrest has impacted their children, Mark Jr., Ava Marie, Kathryn, Therese, Joshua, Augustine, and Imelda.

“Her children have also suffered immense emotional trauma and physical manifestations of stress that Mrs. Houck has carried alone while her husband was away during his imprisonment and prosecution,” the complaint says. Most tragically of all, her complaint says, Ryan-Marie and Mark Houck have lost three babies through miscarriages “due to the stress of the FBI’s conduct and resulting prosecution.”

“The stress of these events was so difficult that the Houcks have been diagnosed with infertility,” the complaint says.

This story is an update of two previous blacklist columns, in September 2022, just after the arrest, and January 2023, after Houck was found innocent of all charges. From the beginning the charges by the Biden Justice Department could clearly be seen as trumped up and malicious. The original minor pushing incident between Houck and pro-abortion activist — in order to stop that activist from harassing his young son — was so minor that a local court had immediately dismissed it. When Justice renewed those charges Houck told them he would be glad to surrender himself peaceable.

Instead, Justice sent a well-armed large SWAT team to invade his home at 6:30 in the morning, pointing weapons at everyone, including the screaming children. When Houck and his wife demanded to see an arrest warrant, the agents initially denied they needed one, then backed down and provided a vague one-page document. They then handcuffed Houck and dragged him away, shackling him heavily four hours. “I was treated like a dog,” Houck described.

As Houck says in a video at the link, “President Biden and Merrick Garland and the head of the FBI, there are going to be consequences for the choices they made.” He adds, “We are going to hold the government accountable.”

I have embedded that video below, because it is heart-rending but necessary for everyone to see the monsters who now occupy positions of power in the White House, Department of Justice, and FBI. The monsters also include the lower ranks, since every one of the FBI officers who participated in that SWAT team raid showed an unnecessary glee for power. Not one had the decency to say, “Hey, let’s back off, there are kids in the house, and he poses no threat.” Instead they charged forward eagerly, apparently thrilled with the idea of terrifying little children.

Houck is also now running for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 1st Congressional District, against a Republican who though conservative on some issues, is for gun control and the queer agenda, supported the Democrats effort to impeach Trump, and in many other issues appears an unreliable person. Whether Houck beat him is unclear.

A federal judge in Texas on Wednesday halted the Justice Department’s case, after the company called it “factually and legally insupportable.” Musk has argued that SpaceX was barred from hiring foreign nationals because of restrictions placed on sharing of information related to rocket technology.

The Justice Department had been investigating SpaceX’s hiring practices since 2020 after receiving a complaint from a person who claimed he was turned down for a job after revealing during an interview that he wasn’t a US citizen or a lawful permanent resident.

At the present Biden’s Justice department has not responded to this decision. The lawsuit might have been idiotic on its face, but its deeper intention was simply to harass SpaceX and Elon Musk — now considered an enemy to Democratic Party rule — and in that it has so far succeeded. Appealing this decision will continue that harassment, even if it is patently obvious that the suit has no merits at all.

From the complaint [pdf]:

But aside from being factually and legally insupportable, the government’s proceedings are unconstitutional for at least four reasons: (1) the administrative law judge (ALJ) adjudicating the government’s complaint was unconstitutionally appointed; (2) the ALJ is unconstitutionally insulated from Presidential authority because she is protected by two layers of for-cause removal protections; (3) the ALJ is unconstitutionally purporting to adjudicate SpaceX’s rights in an administrative proceeding rather than in federal court; and (4) the ALJ is unconstitutionally denying SpaceX its Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial.

The suit specific names two of these administrative judges, as well as attorney general Merrick Garland, as defendents. It also outlines in detail how SpaceX follows the State Department’s law protecting U.S. technology scrupulously, while hiring the most talented people of all races, including non-citizens after getting State Department permission. Even so, the company’s complaint focuses on the unconstitutionality of the Justice Department’s administrative attack, demanding its dismissal for these reasons alone.

As I noted when the Justice Department’s lawsuit was first announced,

This suit is utter garbage and puts SpaceX between a rock and a hard place. I guarantee if SpaceX had hired any illegal or refugee who was not yet a legal citizen, Biden’s State Department would have immediately sued it for violating other laws relating to ITAR (the export control laws mentioned) which try to prevent the theft of technology by foreign powers.

That SpaceX has chosen to fight this lawsuit first on constitutional grounds suggests the company has fundamentally come to the same conclusion. Musk has decided to fight back hard against Biden’s effort to squash him both politically and legally.

Elon Musk yesterday tweeted a short video showing Starship prototype #25 as it was stacked on top of Superheavy prototype #9, stating that both were now ready for their orbital test launch, the second attempt by SpaceX to launch this new rocket.

The image to the right is a screen capture from that movie, showing the full rocket ready to go. When it will go however remains a complete unknown, as Musk himself noted in the tweet: “Starship is ready to launch, awaiting FAA license approval.”

In May I predicted that though Musk predicted at that time that SpaceX would be ready to do this launch in August, it would not happen then or likely for months afterward, because the FAA under the Biden administration is slow-walking all launch approvals for SpaceX, as I showed in detail in a later June essay.

It is now September. SpaceX didn’t meet Musk’s original August ready date for launch, but it only missed that target by about five days. And as I predicted, the FAA has also not yet approved the launch license.

On August 16, 2023 SpaceX submitted its final report of its investigation into the failures and corrections following the April test launch failure. The FAA took it, and has been sitting on it since. It must be emphasized again and again that there is no one at the FAA or anywhere in the federal government qualified to really analyze and investigate that first test launch of SpaceX. All these paper-pushers can do is guess and niggle about what they read. Only the engineers at SpaceX, who are building this totally revolutionary and experimental rocket, can have any understanding of it, both of what works and what doesn’t.

And even if the officials at the FAA are eager to approve the launch license, the decision I guarantee is no longer theirs. Without question higher ups in the Biden administration have called them and demanded a copy of SpaceX’s report, and have said that no launch license will be approved until they give the okay. The launch license application and the report are likely sitting on some desk in the White House, being reviewed quite slowly and carefully by the leftist Democrat apparatchiks there, who now see Elon Musk as a political enemy whom they must squelch in every way possible.

I know I am speculating, but I worked for three years in the FAA, and know how the regulatory process works. As long as there isn’t any political component, or the party in power has no objections, the FAA bureaucrats do their job as quick as they can so as to do no harm to the operations of private companies. Add politics, or have an anti-business President in power, and none of that good will matters. All higher officials have to do to slow things down is to insert themselves in the process. The bureaucrats have no choice but to cede responsibility and the decision making to their political bosses.

Furthermore, the full court press by the left against Musk is not limited to the FAA. Environmentalists have already filed a lawsuit against the FAA and SpaceX, claiming the April test launch did great environmental harm (it did not) and that the FAA should issue no more launch licenses. Though SpaceX and the FAA have responded to this suit, calling for its dismissal, from what I can tell the Biden administration and its attorney general has shown in little interest in fighting this suit. Meanwhile, the Justice Department itself has filed its own suit against SpaceX, for different but equally absurd reasons, claiming SpaceX discriminated against non-Americans and illegal immigrants by refusing to hire them, a hiring practice forced on SpaceX by another federal agency, the State Department, which generally forbids rocket companies from hiring non-citizens in order to protect U.S. technology from foreign spies.

All these actions tell me that this very leftist Biden administration has no intentions of allowing SpaceX to launch Starship/Superheavy anytime soon. I fully expect the launch license to be significantly delayed, possibly for the rest of this year.

I also continue to fervently wish I am utterly wrong in this pessimistic appraisal. I also believe strongly that by stating it publicly, I might put some pressure on the Biden administration to do the right thing and get out of the way so that a free American company can do what free American companies have traditionally done, create new things without interference from an oppressive tyrannical government.

Sadly, I also recognize that my influence in these matters is quite inconsequential.

The lawsuit states SpaceX “failed to fairly consider” and “refused to hire” the asylees and refugees who ended up applying anyway. It also alleges that SpaceX “wrongly claimed” that the US’s export control laws allowed it to only hire US citizens and lawful residents. Additionally, the DOJ claims SpaceX hired “only” US citizens and green card holders from September 2018 to September 2020.

“Our investigation found that SpaceX failed to fairly consider or hire asylees and refugees because of their citizenship status and imposed what amounted to a ban on their hire regardless of their qualification, in violation of federal law,” Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, says in a statement.

Justice is demanding compensation and back pay for anyone “deterred or denied employment”, as well as civil penalties.

This suit is utter garbage and puts SpaceX between a rock and a hard place. I guarantee if SpaceX had hired any illegal or refugee who was not yet a legal citizen, Biden’s State Department would have immediately sued it for violating other laws relating to ITAR (the export control laws mentioned) which try to prevent the theft of technology by foreign powers.

The Biden administration considers Elon Musk an opponent, and since it is now moving to indict and even imprison all political opposition, it is no surprise it is beginning to use lawfare against him. As I have written repeatedly, it has almost certainly pressured the FAA to slow walk any launch license approvals for SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy. This lawsuit today simply provides further evidence that my prediction will be right that the next orbital test flight of that rocket will be delayed months.

The moment he started talking, the Democrats went into censorship mode by making motions to censor Kennedy, points of order, accusations, and finally a vote to table Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s (D-Fla.) motion to cancel Kennedy’s “testimony and degradation” and put it behind closed doors so the poor American people would not be subjected to words spoken by Joe Biden’s primary opponent.

Their actions at that hearing are not exceptions to the rule, however, they are the rule. In order to make this fact clear, I think it worthwhile reposting an August 2022 essay, which documented their long term goonish storm-trooper behavior. It didn’t just start at that hearing, it has been going on for a long time.

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The Democratic Party of thugs and goons

Will the Trump raid finally wake Americans up?

While the outrage and fury has only begun to rise over the unjustified raid of the home of former President Donald Trump yesterday by the FBI, ordered by Biden Justice Department with a warrant issued by an Obama-supporting judge with ties to Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex operation, nothing about that raid was anything new or startling. For the past seven years, since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, the Democratic Party and its supporters have increasingly acted like Nazi storm-troopers, willing, able, and eager to crush their opponents at every opportunity, and to do so cruelly and with great viciousness.

I therefore ask, shouldn’t we have exhibited the same amount of rage and fury for the hundreds and hundreds of ordinary Americans these same thugs have harassed and ruined since 2016? Why did it take a raid on Trump to finally bring that rage to the forefront?

Two Americans committed suicide because of Biden administration persecution after they dared protest the questionable election of Joe Biden on January 6th. What about them?

Scores of conservative FBI agents in the past two years have been fired from their jobs, simply because they did not agree politically with the Democrats. What about them?

What about the arrest by the FBI of a Republican candidate for Michigan governor, simply because he had also protested on January 6th the questionable election of thug Joe Biden? Or the threats of violence and murder against Supreme Court justices by leftist Democratic Party allies?

What about the effort by Biden’s labor board to shut down the conservative outlet The Federalist, simply because its founder sent out an anti-union joke?

What about the former Trump lawyer whose career was destroyed, simply because he was a former lawyer of Trump?

These stories are only a small sampling of the political abuses of power exercised by Democrats and the Biden administration time after time against their political opponents in just the last eighteen months. The list is long and painful to read.

Nor have Democrats and their allies limited their threats and cruelty merely to their political enemies. What about the second-grader who was punished because she wanted to talk about Christianity? Or the 9-year-old boy who was denied a kidney transplant, because his donor for medical reasons refused to get the Biden-mandated COVID jab? Or the scores of doctors blacklisted because they did not agree with Biden mandates and CDC policies?

These actions, mere examples from many others I could cite, were endorsed and encouraged by the Democratic Party, a party of jack-booted thugs whose only interest is power and smashing its boot into the face of anyone who opposes it, from little kids to mature adults. It has proposed laws to require the censorship on social media of anyone who disagrees with it. It has proposed laws and amendments to the Constitution intended to cancel the Bill of Rights. Its politicians routinely endorse racial discrimination and press censorship.

Democrats, both in and outside that party, have shown themselves in the past seven years to be out-of-control tyrants willing to abuse power at every opportunity to enforce their will and to destroy their opponents. The raid on Trump’s house yesterday was nothing new, merely the most recent and outrageous public exhibit of the Democratic Party’s ugly vindictive nature, proven time after time since 2017 by its nonchalant and eager willingness to crush ordinary people mercilessly, merely because they did not kow-tow to its whims.

Yet only now do I sense the possibility that we might finally see the kind of proper outrage and fury against this kind of injustice. Preventing a 9-year-old from getting a kidney transplant didn’t do it. Arresting a Republican candidate for office didn’t do it. Causing two people to commit suicide because of Justice Department persecution didn’t do it.

Only now, with the raid by the FBI on home of a powerful former president, might we finally see the correct level of national outrage against the Democrats’ “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the … design to [put Americans] under absolute Despotism.” That it took an attack on Trump and none of the earlier abuses to bring out this wrath is somewhat shameful.

Nonetheless, it will be a good thing if the American people finally rise up in just indignation and anger because of the raid on Trump’s house. That raid is merely a preamble to much worse actions by this Democratic Party of thugs if something is not done to stop it. It fears its almost certain defeat in the November election, and is gearing up to do whatever it can to prevent that from happening, from election fraud to riots to military raids to physical attacks on its political opponents. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Americans of all stripes have got to finally come to grips with the evil of this ugly party and its supporters. None of its many abuses of power and harsh violations of freedom and law in the past seven years have managed to make Americans wake up.

Maybe the raid on Trump’s home might finally make it happen. Maybe this raid could be a real harbinger of good news, bringing about the long deserved and long delayed true revolt against the leftist dictatorship of the Democratic Party.

Lovers of freedom and the American dream can only hope. Because if this raid does not wake Americans up, then it will simply be too late, and the despots in Washington (from both parties) will surely win.

Overall, the bill appropriates $58.4 billion for programs under the jurisdiction of the committee, a $23.8 billion cut compared to the current fiscal year. It eliminates 14 “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs in the covered agencies, cuts spending on “wasteful” climate change programs, and saves more than $50 million by ending the Biden administration’s plan to replace auto fleets at the Department of Commerce and Department of Justice with electric vehicles.

According to the GOP summary, the Commerce Department would see a $1.4 billion cut in discretionary funding, and the Department of Justice would see a $2 billion cut. Federal science agencies together would face a $1.1 billion cut under the bill.

The FBI’s budget is to be cut $1 billion, or 9% (an actual cut, not a reduction in the increase in spending), with $400 million of that coming from salaries and expenses. It also forbids the agency from spending a dime on its planned dream of a new posh and palatial headquarters in the DC suburbs, twice the size of the Pentagon and costing more than $3 billion.

This is exactly what Republicans should have been doing for decades, and were too cowardly to attempt. If an agency of unelected employees in the executive branch abuses its power and causes harm to innocent citizens, something the FBI and the Justice Department have been eagerly doing since Trump became president, then it is the responsibilty and obligation of Congress to use its power of the purse to cut those agencies’ funding.

Even now, however, no one should be confident these cuts will end up in the final bill. This is only the recommendations of one subcommittee. There are still many Republican cowards in the full House, and even more in the full Senate, who will gladly team up with the Democrats (who are all in favor of the abuse of power and the harm to innocent citizens) to reinstate the cuts.

Nonetheless, this is a start. It indicates that we might finally have turned a real political corner towards reform.

Back in September 2022 I wrote an essay entitled “The rising federal Gestapo” in which I described the numerous recent stories of the Biden administration using the FBI and the Department of Justice as weapons to harass its political opponents, either by conducting armed raids on their homes and persons, or by trumping up false charges against them.

Mark Houck, the father in the picture the right, was one of those under attack. Not only was his home raided by an FBI SWAT team, terrifying his children, but Houck was arrested on a trumped up charge of physically attacking a worker at an abortion clinic, a charge that had other courts had already dismissed as spurious.

The good news yesterday is that Houck has been found innocent of that trumped up charge.

At first it appeared the jury was deadlocked, but that changed instantly when one juror was replaced with an alternate. Within an hour the not-guilty verdict was in, strongly suggesting that juror had had a political ax to grind and was refusing to follow the facts of the case or the judge’s instructions.

As I wrote in that September essay,

In the past two years the effort by Democrats to portray Republicans criminals and traitors, merely because they disagree with Democratic Party policy, has become normalized. To Democrats today, if you are a Republican you are a fascist, an insurrectionist, a traitor, a criminal, and evil. Your rights are voided and they have the right to arrest you, at any time.

The Biden administration tried to void Mark Houck’s rights. It failed in court. Was this vicious effort however a failure? I say no, because 1) the Biden administration remains free to continue this abuse of power and 2) conservatives have now been put on notice that, at any moment, their lives could be torn apart by these thugs.

In fact, this short post is only posted to give an update on a previous column. It is not today’s daily blacklist column, which will follow shortly and will give perfect example of how the abusive power-hungry in our culture now routinely abuse their power against any who oppose them.

It can happen here. Anyone who denies this is merely guaranteeing that tyranny in America will arrive sooner.

Worse, it is happening here, right now, at this very moment. The Houck family to the right has been in the news the past few days because on September 23, 2022 they found their home surrounded by an FBI SWAT team with guns drawn, pounding at the front door to arrest the father, Mark Houck, for a minor pushing incident that had occurred months earlier that was so minor the court had dismissed the lawsuit against Houck almost immediately. Notwithstanding its utter triviality, the Biden administration, its Justice Department, and the FBI decided it gave them a great chance to intimidate and frighten someone who happened to also be a conservative and religious activist.

Ryan-Marie, who is a homeschooling mother, described how the SWAT team of 25 to 30 FBI agents swarmed their property with around 15 vehicles at 7:05 a.m. this morning. Having quickly surrounded the house with rifles in firing position, “they started pounding on the door and yelling for us to open it.”

Before opening the door, she explained, her husband tried to calm them, saying, “‘Please, I’m going to open the door, but, please, my children are in the home. I have seven babies in the house.’ But they just kept pounding and screaming,” she said.

When he opened the door, “they had big, huge rifles pointed at Mark and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house,” Ryan-Marie described. When they came in, they ordered the kids to stay upstairs. “Our staircase is open, so [the kids] were all at the top of the stairs which faces the front door, and I was on the stairs as well, coming down.”

“The kids were all just screaming. It was all just very scary and traumatic,” she explained.

The FBI officers at first claimed they didn’t need a warrant to arrest Houck. When both Mark and Ryan-Marie challenged this the officers backed down, slightly, and produced the one-page very vague warrant.

This particular abuse of power by the FBI and the Biden administration has gotten ample coverage in the conservative press in the past few days. I am not breaking any news for those who are paying attention.

What I want to note is the pattern. Houck’s arrest is not the exception to the rule, it has become the rule. For the past two years the Biden administration has made it its policy to criminalize dissent. Anyone who is active politically in any way is subject to illegal searches, seizures, and arrests. The Houck story is merely one example.

The protesters on January 6th are another example. The only ones who appeared to break into the Capitol used techniques that matched Antifa, not Trump supporters, or were clearly FBI provocateurs. The Trump protesters meanwhile were let into the building by security, walked around for awhile doing no damage, and then left. For this behavior they have been treated by the Biden administration and all Democrats as traitors, insurrectionists, and terrorists. At least two have committed suicide because of this oppressive treatment.

For example, two weeks ago one of those January 6th Trump supporters was sentenced to five years in prison for the crime of “parading.”

Anthony Williams travelled to Washington on January 6 and was captured in pictures and videos around and inside of the Capitol Building. On the very last page [of the FBI report], they conclude that there was probably cause to believe that he did “knowingly enter or remain in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority.” They also concluded that he did “utter loud, threatening, or abusive language.” And they of course included a charge that Williams did “parade, demonstrate, or picket” on the Capitol grounds, supposedly to disrupt or influence the work of Congress.

There’s that “parading” charge again, along with “shouting.”

The problem is that there is solid video evidence that Williams — along with almost all the protesters — was let into the building by the guards themselves. That alone raises questions about him entering the building “without lawful authority.”

Regardless, even if he trespassed the punishment is excessive, and clearly meant to intimidate Biden opponents and any Trump supporters. Don’t you dare protest against Democrats, or you might be charged with “parading” and “demonstrating” or “shouting”, and go to prison for years.

Williams of course is only one of many. The Biden administration is gung-ho on catching every single person who walked quietly and peaceably through the Capitol on January 6th and putting them in prison.

January 6th however is only one aspect of the Biden administration’s attack. It is also using the Justice Department and the FBI to harass and persecute numerous Americans, like Mark Houck above, for simple exercising their first amendment rights. For example, the Justice Department recently used its subpoena power to attack a conservative group called the Eagle Forum. As noted at the link:

This subpoena, issued by Jason R. Cheeks, an attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Alabama, has but one intent: to harass and intimidate a conservative organization for daring to engage in the democratic process by working on an issue that inflames the Left.

In another example, FBI officers surrounded the owner of My Pillow, Mike Lindell, in a public place and forced him to turn over his cell phone. The agents held him illegally, denied him the right to call his lawyer, and threatened him with arrest. And why? We really do not know. Lindell is not accused of any crimes, only being very public about the issue of election fraud, especially during the 2020 election.

In other words, the FBI was weaponized by the Biden administration to try to intimidate a Trump supporter, merely because Lindell is a Trump supporter.

These examples only scratch the surface. In the past two years the effort by Democrats to portray Republicans criminals and traitors, merely because they disagree with Democratic Party policy, has become normalized. To Democrats today, if you are a Republican you are a fascist, an insurrectionist, a traitor, a criminal, and evil. Your rights are voided and they have the right to arrest you, at any time.

Note too that this pattern doesn’t merely apply to the Biden administration, the Justice Department, and the FBI. To get these invalid warrants these agencies must get a judge to sign off on the warrant. And increasingly, judges seem quite willing to join in on the game, approving warrants that have no validity at all, that name no crime, that have no reasonable cause, and thus are unconstitutional under the fourth amendment, which states quite bluntly that:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Since Lindell is accused of no crime, the warrant on its face was illegal and unconstitutional. Not only should many FBI and Justice officials be fired, and personally liable for this illegal behavior, the judge who signed the warrant should be removed from office. Lindell has sued, and based on the evidence, stands to win quite handily.

Meanwhile, many FBI whistleblowers have come forward protesting these actions. And not surprisingly, the Biden administration has immediately retaliated, suspending such whistle-blowers for coming forward.

The corruption and abuse of power here however is not merely limited to political speech. The FBI has become a downright criminal organization. In order to get the right to rummage through hundreds of Beverley Hills safe deposit boxes and confiscate any cash exceeding $5,000 (in other words, rob the bank), FBI officials misled the judge in writing up the warrant.

Eighteen months later, newly unsealed court documents show that the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles got their warrant for that raid by misleading the judge who approved it. They omitted from their warrant request a central part of the FBI’s plan: Permanent confiscation of everything inside every box containing at least $5,000 in cash or goods, a senior FBI agent recently testified.

The FBI’s justification for the dragnet forfeiture was its presumption that hundreds of unknown box holders were all storing assets somehow tied to unknown crimes, court records show. It took five days for scores of agents to fill their evidence bags with the bounty: More than $86 million in cash and a bonanza of gold, silver, rare coins, gem-studded jewelry and enough Rolex and Cartier watches to stock a boutique.

Good work if you can get it. You not only can rob a bank, you do so with a judge’s approval.

If a major, brutal, and merciless house-cleaning does not occur soon, nothing at all will be left of this country’s free republic. The next Congress, should the Republicans take power, must zero the funding for the FBI. No more money, at all. It must also move to remove numerous FBI officials, from FBI director Chris Wray on down. Above all, it must not cooperate in any way with the agenda of the Biden administration’s Justice Department.

Should the Republicans chicken out (as they usually do), they will quickly find themselves eaten alive. This is no longer time for comity or reasonable action. The Democrats are no longer being reasonable. The Republicans must return that behavior in kind, double.

While the outrage and fury has only begun to rise over the unjustified raid of the home of former President Donald Trump yesterday by the FBI, ordered by Biden Justice Department with a warrant issued by an Obama-supporting judge with ties to Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex operation, nothing about that raid was anything new or startling. For the past seven years, since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, the Democratic Party and its supporters have increasingly acted like Nazi storm-troopers, willing, able, and eager to crush their opponents at every opportunity, and to do so cruelly and with great viciousness.

I therefore ask, shouldn’t we have exhibited the same amount of rage and fury for the hundreds and hundreds of ordinary Americans these same thugs have harassed and ruined since 2016? Why did it take a raid on Trump to finally bring that rage to the forefront?

Two Americans committed suicide because of Biden administration persecution after they dared protest the questionable election of Joe Biden on January 6th. What about them?

Scores of conservative FBI agents in the past two years have been fired from their jobs, simply because they did not agree politically with the Democrats. What about them?

What about the arrest by the FBI of a Republican candidate for Michigan governor, simply because he had also protested on January 6th the questionable election of thug Joe Biden? Or the threats of violence and murder against Supreme Court justices by leftist Democratic Party allies?

What about the effort by Biden’s labor board to shut down the conservative outlet The Federalist, simply because its founder sent out an anti-union joke?

What about the former Trump lawyer whose career was destroyed, simply because he was a former lawyer of Trump?

These stories are only a small sampling of the political abuses of power exercised by Democrats and the Biden administration time after time against their political opponents in just the last eighteen months. The list is long and painful to read.

Nor have Democrats and their allies limited their threats and cruelty merely to their political enemies. What about the second-grader who was punished because she wanted to talk about Christianity? Or the 9-year-old boy who was denied a kidney transplant, because his donor for medical reasons refused to get the Biden-mandated COVID jab? Or the scores of doctors blacklisted because they did not agree with Biden mandates and CDC policies?

These actions, mere examples from many others I could cite, were endorsed and encouraged by the Democratic Party, a party of jack-booted thugs whose only interest is power and smashing its boot into the face of anyone who opposes it, from little kids to mature adults. It has proposed laws to require the censorship on social media of anyone who disagrees with it. It has proposed laws and amendments to the Constitution intended to cancel the Bill of Rights. Its politicians routinely endorse racial discrimination and press censorship.

Democrats, both in and outside that party, have shown themselves in the past seven years to be out-of-control tyrants willing to abuse power at every opportunity to enforce their will and to destroy their opponents. The raid on Trump’s house yesterday was nothing new, merely the most recent and outrageous public exhibit of the Democratic Party’s ugly vindictive nature, proven time after time since 2017 by its nonchalant and eager willingness to crush ordinary people mercilessly, merely because they did not kow-tow to its whims.

Yet only now do I sense the possibility that we might finally see the kind of proper outrage and fury against this kind of injustice. Preventing a 9-year-old from getting a kidney transplant didn’t do it. Arresting a Republican candidate for office didn’t do it. Causing two people to commit suicide because of Justice Department persecution didn’t do it.

Only now, with the raid by the FBI on home of a powerful former president, might we finally see the correct level of national outrage against the Democrats’ “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the … design to [put Americans] under absolute Despotism.” That it took an attack on Trump and none of the earlier abuses to bring out this wrath is somewhat shameful.

Nonetheless, it will be a good thing if the American people finally rise up in just indignation and anger because of the raid on Trump’s house. That raid is merely a preamble to much worse actions by this Democratic Party of thugs if something is not done to stop it. It fears its almost certain defeat in the November election, and is gearing up to do whatever it can to prevent that from happening, from election fraud to riots to military raids to physical attacks on its political opponents. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Americans of all stripes have got to finally come to grips with the evil of this ugly party and its supporters. None of its many abuses of power and harsh violations of freedom and law in the past seven years have managed to make Americans wake up.

Maybe the raid on Trump’s home might finally make it happen. Maybe this raid could be a real harbinger of good news, bringing about the long deserved and long delayed true revolt against the leftist dictatorship of the Democratic Party.

Lovers of freedom and the American dream can only hope. Because if this raid does not wake Americans up, then it will simply be too late, and the despots in Washington (from both parties) will surely win.

They’re coming for you next: After demanding that conservative protester Matthew Perna be sentenced to many years of imprisonment for daring to peaceably walk through the Capitol building for less than ten minutes on January 6, 2020 — demands that caused Perna to commit suicide — the FBI has now quietly dropped those trumped up charges, without comment.

Perna was looking at 51 months in federal prison for entering the Capitol for five to ten minutes, snapping selfies, and chanting “USA” in an apparently seditious way. He also tapped a window with a pole but didn’t break it or anything else. He didn’t hit a cop.

The FBI magnanimously decided to drop their charges against Perna on Wednesday.

The article at the link notes that, in comparison, a man in Florida was sentenced to only nine months in prison for killing an elderly man when he punched him for saying “the N-word.” The article also notes the Project Veritas bombshell this week where New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg admitted that the claim by his newspaper and the Democrats that the January 6th protests were “an insurrection” and violent is an outright lie, even though that was exactly how he reported it in his Times articles. In addition, the FBI itself has admitted the protests were not an organized insurrection.

Thus, the FBI and Rosenberg have essentially admitted that they have been persecuting Perna and other January 6th protesters based on a lie. And that lie destroyed Matthew Perna. It killed him.

I wonder how many other January 6th protesters, guilty of doing nothing more than expressing their opinions freely under the First Amendment, will end up dead or ruined because of federal persecution. I expect quite a number before this ugly travesty of justice runs its course.

I also wonder if most Americans are paying attention. Does anyone really care that our government now prosecutes people for freely expressing dissent? Some do, but my impression is that those who care about freedom and the first amendment are now a minority. Most Americans shrug and say nothing, desiring instead to go along to get along. Who cares if Matthew Perna killed himself because the Biden administration went after him with fake charges? It isn’t my concern.

And so freedom dies, one suicide at a time.

Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got ’em: Matthew Perna, one of the vast majority of demonstrators who came to the Capitol on January 6, 2021 to peacefully protest the installation of Joe Biden as president, has now apparently committed suicide at the age of 37 because of the Biden administration’s endless persecution, slander, and legal attacks against him.

From his obituary:

He attended the rally on January 6, 2021 to peacefully stand up for his beliefs. After learning that the FBI was looking for him, he immediately turned himself in. He entered the Capitol through a previously opened door (he did not break in as was reported) where he was ushered in by police. He didn’t break, touch, or steal anything. He did not harm anyone, as he stayed within the velvet ropes taking pictures.

For this act he has been persecuted by many members of his community, friends, relatives, and people who had never met him. Many people were quietly supportive, and Matt was truly grateful for them. The constant delays in hearings, and postponements dragged out for over a year. Because of this, Matt’s heart broke and his spirit died, and many people are responsible for the pain he endured. Matt did not have a hateful bone in his body. He embraced people of all races, income brackets, and beliefs, never once berating anyone for having different views.

During and after the protests in Washington on January 6th, it was obvious to anyone who wanted to pay any attention at all that almost all of the Trump supporters behaved properly, legally gathering to peacefully protest. A handful acted badly, with some apparently FBI provocateurs and some apparently disguised Antifa agents also acting as provocateurs.

Most however entered the Capitol when the Capitol police opened the doors for them and allowed them in. Most then strolled through the Capitol taking pictures like tourists. Little was damaged, with the only people killed an unarmed protester shot by police. And these so-called “insurrectionists” then left peaceably before the day was out.

Perna did exactly this. In fact, he was inside the Capitol for all of 20 minutes, did nothing wrong, and then left. For this, the Biden Justice Department has been persecuting him for the past year, eventually forcing Perna in December to plead guilty…

… to one felony charge of obstruction of Congress and three misdemeanors, WKBN 27 reported.

Along with obstruction of an official proceeding and aiding and abetting, he was charged with entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct on a restricted building or grounds, and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building.

That felony charge could have put Perna in jail for 20 years while also subjecting him to heavy fines. Based on the harsh sentencing imposed on other January 6th protesters for similar behavior, Perna had every reason to expect a heavy sentence at his April 1st hearing.

When one compares the severity of the charges against Perna and the other January 6th protesters with the light sentences and often utter dismissal of all charges against the Antifa and BLM rioters — who not only burned down whole businesses but caused the deaths of innocent bystanders — it makes one want to puke. No wonder Perna was overwhelmed with depression, as indicated by his family in the obituary. He had seen his glorious free American nation die, and was being crucified by the power-hungry government that now ruled it.

It is once again critically important to identify Perna’s persecutors: Democrats controlling Congress, the Presidency, and the Department of Justice. These thugs cannot tolerate any dissent from anyone, especially if it is loud, outspoken, and coming from ordinary people. Such dissent must be squelched, and because the average Americans who protested on January 6th have little power, these bullies find them easy targets for slander and oppression.

And if you think this doesn’t concern you because you weren’t there on January 6th, you are fooling yourself. The more success these Democratic Party bullies have had in destroying their enemies, the more widely they have been spreading their attacks, so that now all their opponents are targets. The oppression has only just begun, and will grow worse if Americans do not begin standing up to it, hard.

However, the DOJ unit is not only investigating the complaint, but also has said it “may explore whether [SpaceX] engages in any pattern or practice of discrimination” barred by federal law. Investigators in October issued a subpoena demanding that SpaceX provide information and documents related to its hiring and employment eligibility verification processes, to which SpaceX has not fully complied.
Hiring policies in place

SpaceX’s lawyers argued in court that the DOJ’s probe is overbearing given the original complaint. “No matter how generously ‘relevance’ is construed in the context of administrative subpoenas, neither the statutory and regulatory authority IER relies on, nor the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, permits IER to rifle through SpaceX’s papers on a whim and absent reasonable justification,” SpaceX said. “And even if IER could somehow belatedly justify its current investigations, IER’s subpoena is excessively overbroad. IER’s application for an order to comply with the subpoena should be denied,” the company added.

There is another component that suggests this investigation is bogus and is intended as an attack by the government against SpaceX. The company makes rockets, and it must be extra careful about its hiring of any foreign national. So, on one hand the government forbids SpaceX from hiring foreigners, and on the other hand the government is condemning SpaceX for not doing so.

Moreover, it does appear that Justice is going on a fishing expedition in SpaceX’s files, something it is forbidden to do according the fourth amendment of the Constitution. A search such has this can only occur when there is evidence a specific crime has occurred. The search Justice wishes to do is broad and unreasonable, not based on any specific allegations but merely to “explore” SpaceX records to find a crime.

We have only just begun. The law and the Constitution means little to many in the Biden administration, in Washington, and in our government in general. What matters is power and the ability of these thugs to tell everyone else what to do. It looks like they increasingly have SpaceX in their sights.

Earlier this year, the infamous dossier author Christopher Steele revealed he had destroyed nearly all the records detailing his dirt-digging on Donald Trump and Russia. “They no longer exist,” Steele told a British court.

Now comes word that Steele’s primary and longtime contact inside the Obama State Department, Jonathan Winer, also destroyed records of the former British MI6 agent’s contacts inside that federal agency, including many of the 100-plus unsolicited intelligence reports Steele provided the Obama administration. “I destroyed them, and I basically destroyed all the correspondence I had with him,” Winer is quoted as saying in a little noticed passage of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s final report on the Russia collusion scandal.

Winer apparently destroyed the records at Steele’s request, the report said. “After Steele’s memos were published in the press in January 2017, Steele asked Winer to make note of having them, then either destroy all the earlier reports Steele had sent the Department of State or return them to Steele, out of concern that someone would be able to reconstruct his source network,” the committee’s report released last month stated. [emphasis mine]

And why was Steele worried that his sources might be uncovered? Apparently they were all foreign, Russian or Ukrainian in nature, meaning that his dossier was actually an operation of enemies to the United States, which was then used by the Obama administration to foist the hoax that Trump was in collusion with Russia. Thus, it was Obama and his administration who were colluding with foreign powers, for their own political gain, not Trump. That collusion by Obama and his cronies even went so far as to destroy evidence.

Clinesmith was charged in federal court in Washington D.C. with one count of making a false statement for altering information he had received from the CIA in June 2017 to hide the fact that Trump campaign official Carter Page was a source for the Agency. The alteration caused the Justice Department to make a false representation to the FISA Court that approved surveillance of Page for nearly a year, the criminal information filed by Durham states.

Clinesmith “did willfully and knowingly make and use a false writing and document knowing the same to contain a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement and entry in a matter before the jurisdiction of the executive branch and judicial branch,” the court filing said.

The statement Clinesmith’s lawyer released to the Washington Post is especially laughable:

“Kevin deeply regrets having altered the email. It was never his intent to mislead the court or his colleagues as he believed the information he relayed was accurate. But Kevin understands what he did was wrong and accepts responsibility,” the lawyer told the Post. [emphasis mine]

“It was never his intent.” What a bald-faced lie. Clinesmith was told by the CIA that Carter Page was a source of information for them. He then consciously changes the words in a CIA email (which stated as much) so that it stated the exact opposite. This faked evidence is then included in the warrant request presented to the FISA court to justify spying on Page, and the Trump administration. If the FISA court had known Page was a CIA source, the entire FISA warrant request, as written, would have made no sense, and would have been denied.

Regardless, while it is good that this guy has plead guilty, he is small potatoes. Unless some of the big fish get fried — such as James Comey and Andrew McCabe and maybe even Barack Obama — this investigation is junk and the first administrative coup attempt by an unelected bureaucracy will go unpunished, guaranteeing more such coup attempts in the future.

Or to put it even more bluntly, since the administrative state is tightly aligned with the Democratic Party, it will become impossible for anyone from any other party to ever gain power ever again. For even if they should win an election, that administrative state will quickly move to remove them, under false pretenses, knowing it will not be punished for voiding a legal election.

A more hopeful take would be to say that Clinesmith has struck a deal and is going to provide the information necessary to indict these big fish. Recent history has not born out such hopeful takes, however, as the Justice Department, under Republican rule, even under the Trump administration, has routinely failed to follow through in this manner. Instead, they scapegoat the people at the bottom (maybe), and then make excuses for those in charge.

We shall see.

The article at the link is very long and detailed, but this is necessary to unpack the history that not only documents that spying before 2016, but why Justice and FBI high officials felt compelled then to use a fake dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign to get a warrant from the FISA court. Once they lost access to the NSA databases that year, they needed something that would allow them to continue that spying.

During the time-frame of December 2015 through April 2016 the NSA database was being exploited by contractors within the intelligence community doing unauthorized searches. On March 9, 2016, oversight personnel doing a review of FBI system access were alerted to thousands of unauthorized search queries of specific U.S. persons within the NSA database.

NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was made aware. Subsequently NSA Director Rogers initiated a full compliance review of the system to identify who was doing the searches; & what searches were being conducted. On April 18, 2016, following the preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access to the database after he learned FISA-702 “about”(17) and “to/from”(16) search queries were being done without authorization.

In other words, the NSA database of phonecalls between Americans, an illegal database in its own right (the Constitution forbids such indiscriminate spying on Americans without a warrant), was being used by unauthorized individuals to gain information on Americans. From the article it becomes clear that those individuals were Obama administration operatives, and the Americans they were digging dirt on were their political opponents.

When Rogers shut down access to this keyhole, it was then necessary to instigate an unjustified warrant from the FISA court to allow these same Obama officials the right to continue their spying. At the same time they also instigated an effort to get Rogers fired.

What infuriates me about this is that even now, years later, no one has been indicted for any of these clearly illegal acts, despite substantive and documented evidence. We get reports, we get leaks, we get outraged Congressman on cable networks, and we get Trump tweets ranting about how terrible it is. What we don’t get is anyone behind bars.

An article today at The Conservative Treehouse provides a detailed look at the attempted cover-up of that coup attempt, based on a review of information from FISA court materials that were released in April by the Justice Department under the leadership of attorney general Bill Barr.

The amount of information is large, and the story is complex. If you are concerned educated citizen however you are obligated to spend the time to read it. It shows how in the summer of 2018 upper management in both the Justice Department and FBI lied to the FISA court in order to prevent their illegal and unjustified investigation against Carter Page and Donald Trump from being discovered. It also shows in detail the corruption of the mainstream leftist press, which had bought into the fake Russian collusion story being promoted by these same high FBI/Justice officials. That press thus could not do its job and investigate the coup, for if it did it would reveal itself to have been dupes. Instead that leftist press decided to become participants in the cover-up.

The complexity of this story might explain why the criminal investigation by John Durham is taking so long. At the same time, the bulk of evidence now available to the public that confirms this coup attempt suggests it is high time for some indictments. If such prosecutions do not happen soon, then it will simply be too late. Above all some indictments must occur prior to the election.

This evening Berman denied he was resigning, stating that he had no intention of leaving his post until the Senate approves his successor.

I have no idea what is going on here, but if Barr is supposed to be in charge, it sure doesn’t look like it. Instead, it looks like this member of the anti-Trump swamp, recognizing Trump’s weakness during the Wuhan panic and the recent anti-American riots, has decided he can defy his superiors and get away with it. And even if Trump does fire him, he will benefit financially because he knows the leftist Democratic press will pour money into his pockets for being a Trump opponent.

UPDATE and more proof the swamp is winning: Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) has now blocked Trump’s nominee (which is for the NY office of the Justice Department), claiming that it must first be approved by New York’s senators.

The article also makes the incredible claim that Trump, the sitting president of the United States and with whom Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution clearly states holds that executive power, cannot fire Berman.

Can Trump fire Berman? Uh … probably. It would be strange and likely a violation of separation of powers if the head of the executive branch couldn’t fire an employee at the Department of Justice. (We went through this with Mueller, remember.) The fact that Berman was appointed by a federal court, not the president, adds a wrinkle, though. And federal law adds another wrinkle about how, exactly, a court-appointed U.S. Attorney is to be replaced:

“To recap: 1) Berman was appointed under 28 U.S.C. § 546(d). 2) That statute contemplates that he keeps his job until a permanent successor is confirmed by the Senate. 3) 28 U.S.C. § 541(c) says U.S. Attorneys are subject to removal by the President. So the statutes conflict,” — Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) June 20, 2020

This Vladeck then adds

Of course, the Trump DOJ may argue that § 546(d) is unconstitutional insofar as it prevents the President from removing Berman, but that’s complicated here by Berman being an *Acting* U,S. Attorney—over whose appointment and removal Congress can arguably exercise *more* control.

If we have reached the insane situation where a Republican President can no longer fire those under him, then our Constitutional government is truly dead.

UPDATE: Trump has now fired Berman. We shall see whether the courts and the swamp will let that action stand.

Boente signed one of the warrants renewing the FBI’s authority to surveil Flynn. The warrants, known as FISA warrants, were renewed several times and had to be approved by a judge.

Boente also said in a recently leaked memo that material put into the public record about Flynn was not exculpatory for the former national security advisor. The memo undermines the Justice Department’s latest position that material about Flynn was mishandled by prosecutors.

The article is from NBC, so it exudes both ignorance and hostility about this resignation. The FISA warrants that Boente signed have been repeatedly proven to have been falsely obtained, dependent on unverified and outright false and fake information. His actions clearly showed he was part of the coup attempt in the FBI attempting to find by any means necessary a way to overthrown the legal election of Donald Trump. Framing Flynn was only one part of that effort.

We’ve only just begun. There are a lot of people still working at both the FBI, the Justice Department, and throughout the executive branch, who have been willing to violate the Constitution and some fundamental laws, all because they did not like how the American people voted in 2016. They all need to be shown the door, with many escorted next to a prison cell.

Sadly, Justice’s reasons for this recommendations is that they reject House amendments to the bill by Democrats that would weaken its ability to spy on Americans.

The bill reauthorizes three surveillance programs and makes some changes to the court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). But the Senate, when it took up the bill earlier this month, added language to create new legal protections for some FISA warrant applications, a change that garnered pushback from the Justice Department.

[Assistant Attorney General Stephen] Boyd said on Wednesday that the Justice Department had offered “specific fixes to the most significant problems” stemming from the changes made by the Senate but signaled that they had been ignored by House lawmakers.

Instead, the House will vote on an additional amendment to the legislation as part of its debate on Wednesday that would tighten the limits on the FBI’s ability to access Americans’ web browsing history.

Boyd warned that the Justice Department believes the proposed change from the House would “weaken national security tools while doing nothing to address the abuses identified by the DOJ Inspector General.”

The good news here is that this recommendation, as odious as its goals are, will give Trump ammunition for vetoing the bill, which in the end will end this corrupt court. And that goal should be the goal of every freedom-loving American.

However, if those conversations happen to include an American citizen, they are also forbidden from revealing who that person is to anyone, including and especially their political bosses, except in extraordinary circumstances, because these spies are not allowed to spy on Americans, without reasonable cause and a warrant. And even when these names were revealed, “unmasked” in intelligence parlance, until the Obama administration such unmasking was only permitted to a very small and select number of people.

The Obama administration changed this. Obama allowed the unmasking to be revealed to numerous people in his administration, and worse, his administration made unmasking a tool for spying on his political opponents. This is how Obama and the FBI knew that Trump’s former National Security Chief Mike Flynn had been talking to the Russian ambassador (as was proper for him to do during the transition time between the two administrations). They had listened in, and then unmasked Flynn’s name, improperly.

Well, we now know some of the people in the Obama administration who ordered these illegal unmaskings.

The list revealed that then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power made unmasking requests seven times between Nov. 30, 2016 and Jan. 11, 2017. The list revealed that Clapper made three requests from Dec. 2, 2016 through Jan. 7, 2017; and that Brennan made two requests, one on Dec. 14 and one on Dec. 15, 2016. Comey also made a request on Dec. 15, 2016. On Jan. 5, 2017, McDonough made one request, and on Jan. 12, 2017, Biden made one request.

The day McDonough requested the information is the same day as an Oval Office meeting that has drawn scrutiny in the wake of the Flynn developments. The meeting included Obama, Biden, Clapper, Brennan, Comey, then-National Security Adviser Susan Rice and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.

That meeting was the first time Yates learned about Flynn’s calls with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according to notes from her special counsel interview which were released last week. Yates, in her interview, indicated Obama was aware of Flynn’s intercepted December 2016 phone calls with Kislyak during the presidential transition period. [emphasis mine]

I have highlighted the dates because it is interesting that all these unmaskings occurred during that transition period, after Trump had won the election but before he took office. It is almost as if the Obama administration and his stooges in the FBI, CIA, and other departments are gathering information to use against Trump and his people.

Which is exactly what they were doing. They wanted to overthrow that legal election, and were digging around trying to create a scandal to do so. They didn’t find anything, but what they had gave them the chance to manufacture the Russian collusion hoax.

Note that this list is not complete. It is only the start. What we know now is that Power, Clapper, Brennan, Comey, McDouough, and Biden misused their power against their political opponents.

“The FBI set up General Flynn — that is clear as day,” Rep. Devin Nunes, ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, tells RealClearInvestigations. “There is FBI leadership ordering the case kept open when agents wanted to close it for lack of evidence, the discussion of getting Flynn to lie or trying to get him fired, the ambush interview, the withholding of exculpatory evidence, and many other acts of blatant malfeasance. None of this is standard procedure. It’s a naked abuse of authority.”

Nunes might be a politician and a Republican (with the expected partisan agendas), but everything he says here is accurate and true (as has been the case for Nunes throughout this sorry affair). The article outlines in excruciating detail the fraud and manipulation that FBI officials Peter Srtzok, Lisa Page, and Andrew McCabe went through to rewrite the report of Flynn’s FBI interview, in order to create the false impression that he had lied during that interview, and thus frame him.

Revealing this criminal activity and abuse of power by these FBI officials is good, but as long as they avoid indictments and punishment, we accomplish nothing. These people have to face juries, and go to prison. If they don’t, then nothing will change in Washington, and in fact we in the future can expect more such abuses, coming from both parties.