House Judiciary Panel Report Exposes Massive Government Surveillance Of Americans’ Financial Data

 by Stephen Katte via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Biden administration has been accused by the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government of conducting unlawful “broad” surveillance of citizens’ private financial data without a warrant and with no evidence of any crimes being committed by the individuals.

In a new interim report released on March 6, and an accompanying press release, the committee claims to have uncovered “startling evidence,” proving the federal government pried into the private transactions of American consumers without specific evidence of any criminal conduct.

According to the report, federal law enforcement, including the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the FBI, colluded with large financial institutions in the United States, such as Barclays, U.S. Bank, Charles Schwab, HSBC, Bank of America, PayPal, and many others in what boiled down to a “fishing expedition for Americans’ financial data.”

“Tactics included keyword filtering of transactions, targeting terms like MAGA and TRUMP, as well as purchases of books, religious texts, firearms-related items, and recreational stores, like Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shop, and Dick’s Sporting Goods,” the report said.

“This surveillance extended beyond criminal suspicion, likely encompassing millions of Americans with conservative viewpoints or Second Amendment interests.”

Led by Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the committee said FinCEN characterized these Americans as potential threats and subject to surveillance despite these transactions having no criminal nexus.

Surveillance Targets Identified Using General Terms

The interim report also detailed the existence of a web portal run by the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC), a public-private partnership led by the FBI’s Office of Private Sector and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis.

“This portal appears to have shared intelligence products with financial institutions that were used to identify individuals who fit the profile of criminal and domestic violent extremists, often because of their conservative political views or other constitutionally protected activity,” the committee said.

“Federal law enforcement used these reports and other materials they shared with financial institutions to commandeer their databases and conduct sweeping searches of individuals not suspected of committing any crimes, without a warrant, in order to identify individuals making certain suspicious transactions.”

Other surveillance targets were identified using other terms and specific transactions that concerned core political and religious expression.

According to the report, law enforcement “derisively viewed American citizens,” who expressed opposition to firearm regulations, open borders, COVID-19 lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and the “deep state” as potential domestic terrorists.

“In other words, according to the FBI, an American citizen’s opposition to firearm regulations, open borders, or COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates, all of which are viewpoints protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, feed into an existing narrative many Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE) actors subscribe to regarding the U.S. government’s exercise of power,” the report said.

“Put another way, expressing a belief in the existence of the deep state, support for typical conservative policies with respect to firearms or immigration, or doubt about the conventional narrative may result in an individual being labeled by the FBI as a DVE Actor and Likely to Pose an Increasing Threat.”

The committee labeled it “disturbing” that the country’s most powerful law enforcement agency would consider views widely held by millions of Americans to be signs of DVE.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headquarters in Washington on Feb. 15, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

Helping Law Enforcement Find Jan 6 Protestors

Earlier this year, the Treasury Department admitted to helping law enforcement identify and arrest people involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. It urged banks to comb through customers’ private transactions using terms like “MAGA” and “Trump.”

In January, allegations were also leveled at FinCEN, claiming the agency engaged in “pervasive financial surveillance” by circulating materials to banks that listed keywords that could be used to flag private financial transactions of potential Jan. 6 suspects. The materials also allegedly included instructions for banks to use indicators, including “the purchase of books” and subscriptions to media containing “extremist views.”

“Federal law enforcement agencies, including FinCEN and the FBI, treated lawful transactions as suspicious and shared information with financial institutions through backdoor channels, often circulating materials exhibiting a clear animus towards conservative viewpoints,” the committee report said.

“In addition, FinCEN and the FBI relied on Zoom discussions, private and online government-run portals, as well as sweeping searches of financial institutions’ records to conduct its investigation. Given the important civil liberties at stake, federal law enforcement’s overreach and political bias is alarming.”

Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump are seen from behind scaffolding as they gather outside the U.S. Capitol's Rotunda in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

Further revelations from the report reveal that FinCEN relied heavily on the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for guidance on what “relevant terms” and symbols could relate to racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism (REMVE), which they say may “have application to the capitol riots and related activity.”

The report calls the ADL a “notorious anti-conservative activist group” and says hate symbols” that ADL recommended monitoring included the “Celtic Cross,” the “Okay Hand Gesture,” “Pepe the Frog,” and “White Lives Matter.”

The committee said it “should alarm Americans that FinCEN approved of and distributed a link to a database that considers symbols of faith such as the Christian Celtic Cross and other images opposing Antifa, a violent left-wing anarchist group, as hate symbols.”

“This practice is reminiscent of the FBI’s disdain for ‘Radical Traditionalist Catholics,’ and the FBI’s reliance on the Southern Poverty Law Center another far-left activist group as an authoritative source on the Catholic Church,” the report said.

The Epoch Times has contacted the FBI, Treasury Department, and the White House for comment.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/house-judiciary-panel-report-exposes-massive-government-surveillance-americans-financial

Biden Mulls Tapping US Army's Own Funds In Scramble To Arm Ukraine

 The Biden White House is so desperate to provide further immediate funding to Ukraine, with the House still firmly blocking the sought after $60+ billion, that it is considering a move to try and tap $200 million from US Army funding.

While $200 million is a drop in the bucket compared to the total Ukraine aid still being sought, it would be hugely symbolic, showing that Biden is ultimately willing to put Ukraine's defenses first - while taking from America's domestic defense budget to do it.

Drawing on Pentagon reserves would free up funds to replenish critically low supplies at a moment Ukraine is by and large retreating from front lines in the east, however, Bloomberg has reported that the final decision hasn't been made yet.

Bloomberg noted that the "Debate over utilizing a small amount of Pentagon reserves underscores the furious effort at the White House to find any possible support for Ukraine."

"The White House is focused on urging the US House to pass the national security supplemental, and aides continue to believe that if the speaker were to put the bill to a vote, it would pass overwhelmingly, a spokesperson for the National Security Council said," the report added. Biden renewed his call during Thursday night's State of the Union address.

Meanwhile, some small European nations are stepping up in an attempt to fill a huge gap in the wake of the US arms stoppage.

"A Czech-led plan to buy 800,000 rounds of ammunition for Ukraine to fight Russia's invading forces has secured enough funding, with contributions from 18 countries," Czech President Petr Pavel described Thursday.

According to more from Reuters, "The most pressing need for Ukraine two years after Russia's full-scale invasion began has become artillery ammunition, which is running low as the sides use heavy cannon fire to hold largely static, entrenched positions along the 1,000-km (620-mile) front line."

The European Union a year ago promised to deliver one million ammunition rounds by now but has failed to do it, as European defense companies are being pleaded with by EU government leaders to expand infrastructure and production.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's President Zelensky is still pledging 'victory' against Russia, but he's still recently admitted that his forces are running woefully low on weapons and ammunition, and that if more ammo doesn't come from the US "within a month" - it will spell disaster for Ukraine's efforts to pushback the invasion.

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/biden-mulls-tapping-us-armys-own-funds-scramble-arm-ukraine

Federal court rules that federal agency serving minority businesses alone is discriminatory

 By Monica Showalter

Is another brick coming off the wall of the race-grievance industrial complex?

That's what the Washington Post reports, without admitting it, in an important federal court ruling shutting down biased, counterproductive racial preferences in federal government "help" to small businesses.

According to the Post:

A federal judge in Texas has ordered a 55-year-old federal agency created to help minority-owned businesses to open its doors to all races, a ruling that potentially imperils dozens of government programs that also presume racial minorities are inherently disadvantaged.

In a 93-page opinion rendered Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman ruled that the Minority Business Development Agency’s presumption that businesses owned by Blacks, Latinos and other minorities are disadvantaged violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. He permanently enjoined the agency’s business centers, which have assisted minority-owned businesses in accessing capital and government contracts, from extending services based on an applicant’s race.

“If courts mean what they say when they ascribe supreme importance to constitutional rights, the federal government may not flagrantly violate such rights with impunity. The MBDA has done so for years. Time’s up,” wrote Pittman, who was appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump in 2019.

The Post gets credit for reporting the who-what-where neutrally in its opening paragraphs. It also makes an interesting observation about this ruling being a knock-on effect of the Supreme Court's rulings against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina over its affirmative action shutdowns, which the ruling judge did indeed cite.

What it doesn't do is discuss any of the particulars of the case -- that of COVID shutdown-battered small businesses trying to get back on their feet with “grant opportunities, financial sourcing assistance, strategic business consulting, and other resources,” and being told 'no' because only minority-owned firms could get such services. being underprivileged and all.

The small business owners were all white, one a doctor who founded a lifestyle clinic, one a handicapped Romanian immigrant who founded a project management company, and the third the owner of an architectural firm.

According to the actual ruling, which I had to read just to try to understand what the story was about, here was one business's experience:

The MBDA seemed perfect, as its vision statement says the Agency exists to catalyze “[e]conomic prosperity for all American business enterprises.”  But unbeknownst to Plaintiffs, there was a catch. As its name suggests, the MBDA doesn’t serve “all American business enterprises,” but rather “all American minority business enterprises.” But even that’s not the whole picture. The Agency uses a codified list of preferred races/ethnicities to determine who gets benefits and who doesn’t. The Agency presumes anyone from the listed groups is “socially or economically disadvantaged” and is thus entitled to services. Anyone outside those groups—white or otherwise—is presumptively not disadvantaged and thus not entitled to benefits. 

You really needed to check one of their boxes or else no help for you:

“listing of racial groups that the agency serves.”

Here's what you get if you do:

...“access to contracts, access to capital, training, and other services helpful for sustaining and growing business.” 

From the ruling, here's who the federal agency says they are:

“The Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) is the lead federal agency dedicated to assisting minority business enterprises (MBEs) in overcoming social and economic disadvantages that have limited their participation in the nation’s free enterprise system.”3 Founded by President Richard Nixon as the Office of Minority Business Enterprise (“OMBE”),4 the Agency has existed in several historical permutations—all dedicated to “the growth and global competitiveness of the minority business community.”5 Made permanent in 2021, the Agency now enjoys the authority and scope of a full executive agency under the leadership of

Defendants Raimondo and Cravins, who report to Defendant Biden.6 With a $550 million appropriation through fiscal year 2025, the Agency operates in over thirty-three states plus Puerto Rico, providing resources for MBEs and mobilizing business-development initiatives.7 ..."

Which seems kind of a stretch.

The judge pointed out that under this agency's framework, billionaire Oprah Winfrey could help herself to all the cash she could get, being disadvantaged and all. That's Oprah with all the white elitists on her staff and never mind that many white-owned businesses have many minority employees, some of them have a majority of their employees minorities, providing jobs in the inner cities.

Meanwhile, the humble Romanian immigrant, who probably deals with people making fun of his accent and maybe his handicap, gets nothing, nothing at all, owing to the color of his skin and never mind that many Romanians are pretty dark-skinned anyway. The Romanian, in any case, didn't want special privileges, he just wanted equal treatment like he didn't get back in once-communist Romania, and like he expected he would get in the land of the free after picking himself up by his bootstraps, overcoming his handicap, and building a business. The Haitian immigrant at the business next to his gets it, but he does not. You can see how vivid this problem would be to him.

Which brings up another problem with it: The system is based on skin color and ethnicity, not actual disadvantage. The only thing that mattered in what was described in the ruling was ethnicity or skin color, and there was no effort to identify who's a disadvantaged minority and who's the upper class Caribbean or Mexican immigrant who came to the U.S. yesterday.

What's more, goosing the system to help minority businesses from the huge federal government apparat with all its contracts pretty well amounts to a joke, given that the feds are most of the economy these days and they aren't supposed to be discriminating in the first place. Whites are effectively shut out of the contractor market from the nation's business employer, so they have the scraps of the smaller private sector to compete in amongst themselves and minority businesses compete in those, too. It makes little sense and some states are starting to see that it's costing them and loosening those minority-owned business requirements so that they have a decent-sized pool of applicants to search for the best deal for the government from. The judge emphasized that he could see the violations of the equal protections clause all over this agency, which started out as a mini-project by Richard Nixon and morphed into a huge entrenched federal agency by 2021 with a $550 million budget.

The other problem with this, not cited in the ruling as far as I've read but known very well to ordinary Americans:  the Elizabeth Warren problem, that of whites fraudulently making themselves out to be blacks, Indians, Mexicans and other minority nationalities in order to get access to this kind of funding and benefits, or else putting their black brother-in-law at the top of the ownership structure in a straw-man way, which is hardly what is meant by black-owned business. We see it all the time because the system is skewed that way, and people of all races respond to incentives. Equal protection? Only for those whites who fake it.

The Post didn't bother to quote anyone from the winning plaintiff side of this case, it only sought out a series of leftist law professors who cried henny penny, upset that the racial grievance group complex was going down. 

The Post reported that there will be big-dollar appeals, but they've got to get through other Texas judges first and then the Supreme Court. It may mean that this is a turning point. Equal protection needs to be equal protection, not carve-outs- and set-asides for people who are hardly underprivileged, the way Latin America has or in the case of Chile, used to have, rendering the business community inert. This is a very positive development for American competitiveness and freedom, this end to reverse discrimination. The clear-eyed Texas judge should be praised. Bit by bit, we will get back to judging people on their character, not their color, as Martin Luther King, Jr. Like President Trump, it's coming.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/03/big_federal_court_rules_that_federal_agency_serving_minority_businesses_alone_is_discriminatory.html

D.C. 'decriminalizes' illegal street vending and gets itself some Caracas

 Ever been to Caracas?

Here's how you get to Caracas.

Citing a local outlet, CBD at Ace of Spades reports:

The D.C. cops do nothing when stores are looting, emboldening thieves who recently stripped a CVS pharmacy practically bare. And lo and behold! It looks like those goods are being sold right across the street...probably by the same people who stole them.

DC decriminalized illegal street vending, this is the result!
[Hat Tip: dhmosquito]

             It turns out that Washington DC City just decriminalized illegal street vending!

It is called the Street Vendor Advancement Amendment Act of 2023, which went into effect on July 1st, 2023.

The act decriminalized illegal street vending. It granted an amnesty for unpaid fines and unpaid sales tax. It banned background checks for people seeking permits and licenses. The act also created the "Columbia Heights-Mount Pleasant Sidewalk Vending Zone."

Read into it a bit and you will discover that there is also graft involved. Yes...I know...that is shocking in our nation's capital.

Decriminalizing theft, then decriminalizing once-illegal street vending seems too convenient to be unintended. Driving out the retail businesses in these neighborhoods is the The Cloward-Piven strategy, nothing more.

CBD discusses the obvious problem of de facto legalized theft which is stripping the shelves of stores bare, combined with the ease with which thieves can convert that stolen merchandise into money through lawless street sales. First they legalized theft, by not enforcing theft laws, claiming the amounts stolen were too small to bother about. Then they cheered the defunding of police, putting cops on notice that their best course of action is to retire at their desks because they became the bad guys. Decriminalizing drugs and hookers came along with it, and now no one even needs to get a get a permit in order to have a "safe" state-sponsored place with which to monetize and dispose of one's stolen merchandise.

Of course, as CBD notes, there's graft involved here, too, no surprise. 

Besides the horrible message this sends to merchants, that maybe it's time to close up and get an Amazon store instead since stealing is consequence-free and reselling the loot is easier than ever, it also penalizes merchants in the area who do buy permits and pay taxes -- and even the merchants who sell on the streets who have paid for permits, too. Why pay for a permit when others make more money by not buying a permit and nobody gets busted?

And besides being a thieves' paradise, it's also an illegals' paradise, given that nobody needs to be here legally to sell goods without a permit. What better than an unregulated, unpermitted street market where nobody asks questions? It's as good as work permit for them. At a time when illegals are flooding the zone with a large influx headed to Washington, D.C., what could go wrong? 

It doesn't take long for other illegality to follow from this, such as child labor. Get ready for the child Chiclet sellers.

It's all so very ... Caracas, very third world, in the worst possible way. 

I visited Caracas in late 2005, well before the complete collapse of Venezuela's economy, and I was amazed at the chaos and shambles of Venezuela's unregulated street vendors filling the streets with cheap imports from China and a host of suspiciously fenced-looking merchandise. Many were in the country illegally, from places like Haiti, Dominican Republic, Colombia, the victims of past oil booms gone bust. The blare of reggaeton music was all over, rats moved between stalls, and visitors were warned never to visit such places alone. Stealing, after all, was nearly legal in that country, as Venezuela's late dictator openly encouraged it on the grounds that the poor had the right to take from 'the rich' as a matter of "social justice" and a "preferential option for the poor," as Chavez's liberation theology fans put it. That led to a lot of armored cars on the streets, a lack of anyone wearing jewelry, a lot of barred-up, boarded-up shops, illegal street selling wherever it could be done, and eventually ... the flight we see now.

Sound like maybe Washington should take note?

It was chaos. It was a free for all. I even did this painting about it from a photo I took, acrylic on two sheets of tin, for that junkyard look, as the memory was so vivid:

Places like Caracas and lots of other third world hellholes always have something in common with what is going on with this foolishness in Washington, D.C., it's what social scientists call "the informal economy." Informality is what makes the third world the third world more than any other factor. Third worlders, after all, have cellphones, they have fax machines, they have remittances and bank setups like anyone else. But what they don't have is rule of law, a government that governs. That's why they're an odd mix of satellite dishes, Louis Vuitton purses, unpaved streets and dirty running water.

Without rule of law, you get rule of the jungle, with gangs eventually calling the shots and making the rules and extracting the taxes, or rather, 'vacunas' or 'mordidas' or any of the other colorful terms used for gang extortion in Latin America's shantytowns. Sociologist Hernando de Soto, in his "Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else" and "The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism," looked very closely at how informal economies hold third world countries back because there is no "invisible architecture" of title deed for property, and above all, no presence of rule of law.

Nations went to great ends to enact these things after these books were published in the early aughts, if they were serious about climbing out of the third world, or at least improving their economic prospects. Chile, Brazil and Mexico spring to mind.

But in Washington, D.C., we see the astounding phenomenon of the capital of the free world that did have rule of law, did have title deed, did have all the trappings of a developed country, choosing to become a place without rule of law, with an informal economy, entirely ideal for thieves and illegal immigrants. Instead of choosing progress, they chose to adopt the economics of the shantytown. It's rank lunacy and as idiotic as anything one might see coming out of South America under various leftist rulers -- exchanging a first world economy for a third world economy as a matter of preference.

Other than Venezuela's decision to self-colonize itself as a vassal state of Cuba, I don't think we have ever seen anything quite as stupid and damaging as this. Turns out you don't need to go to Caracas anymore to see Caracas: Just watch these D.C. ruling leftists in action.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/03/dc_decriminalizes_illegal_street_vending_and_the_result_is_caracas.html

Why Putin Endorses Biden

 Presidents Biden and Putin are trading barbs as of late, albeit through interpreters and intermediaries.  At a California Democrat fundraiser, Biden called Putin a “crazy SOB,” while Putin sarcastically responded in so many words that Biden could have said, “Volodya, well done, thank you [for the endorsement], you’ve helped me a lot.”  (The name Volodya is derived from Vladimir.  In Russian, it conveys the idea of ruling with peace or being a renowned ruler.)

Biden’s “crazy SOB” remark came during a speech about climate change, where he reiterated his claim “the existential threat to humanity is climate.”  When asked to comment on Biden’s “SOB” jab, Putin referred to the earlier endorsement he gave Biden over former President Donald Trump.  From this exchange, Vladimir Putin’s comments are the ones deserving our attention.

Mr. Putin’s remarks broach the broader and more serious question: whom does Russia — along with other potential U.S. adversaries — want to see in the White House come November 2024?  Whom would Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping prefer to face in a stare-down when the stakes are high and objective is Ukraine, Taiwan, or the South China Sea?  Which candidate would Iran, North Korea, or the Latin cartels prefer to see in the White House?

We should take the Russian president at his word with his endorsement of Biden.  Every international autocrat, dictator, and warlord would almost certainly want an increasingly frail President Biden with declining faculties over the nationalistic and assertive Donald Trump, who would openly adopt a more robust “America first” leadership approach to defense and foreign policy.

Plus, why would Vladimir Putin want a President Trump when actual events suggest he could achieve Russia’s objectives more easily and at less cost with President Biden remaining in office, whose actions, behavior, predilections, and temperament Russia has observed and benefited from?  In Joe Biden, Russia — i.e., Putin — likely assesses a president (along with his present advisers and Cabinet members) as more interested in globalists’ designs from Davos, Dubai, and Turtle Bay than confronting tough issues like Middle East proxy wars, Russian revanchism, nuclear proliferation, and NATO solidarity.

Russia has watched President Biden, as we all have.  The Russians observed him as Barack Obama’s vice president.  Then the U.S. obliged the Kremlin by canceling missile defense systems for Central Europe.  Mr. Putin noted U.S. facilitation of the transfer of large uranium assets to Russia.  The Obama administration’s fuzzy line-in-the-sand indecisiveness over Syrian chemical weapons made way for Russia’s effective military intervention in Syria.  President Putin must have approved of President Obama’s concessions to Iran for the nuclear deal, and it was Obama who notably told former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev that Vladimir Putin should give him more “space” and that “after [his] election, [he] would have more flexibility.”  On the Obama-Biden watch, Mr. Putin would conduct his first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 to seize Crimea.

Early in his own presidency, Mr. Biden lifted his predecessor’s sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline (while canceling the domestic Keystone pipeline), giving Mr. Putin a big concession to set the tone.  He further canceled Trump-era border policies, beginning a rush of migration now challenging U.S. sovereignty.  In June 2021, he lifted Trump sanctions on Iran’s national oil company to revive the nuclear agreement as well as enabling that nation to engage in a strategic alliance with Russia.  In Geneva, Mr. Biden met Mr. Putin, but instead of warning Russia not to hack any American sites, he gave him a list of 16 critical infrastructures he must not hack.  Then, in August, Mr. Biden presided over a harried, chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that likely was the green light for Russia to invade Ukraine.  In December 2021, President Biden, watching the Russian military build-up along Ukraine’s border, warned Mr. Putin of dire consequences if Russia were to invade, but in February 2022, Russia did attack Ukraine.  Finally in mid-2022, Biden traveled to meet the Saudi crown prince — the leader of a nation he once pledged to make a “pariah” — having to lobby for more oil production amid record-high U.S. gas prices.

In contrast, from the start, the Trump administration implemented a more uncompromising U.S. policy vis-à-vis Russia.  Russia felt, in that administration’s first year alone, consequences of more assertive U.S. defense and foreign policy.  In November 2017, the U.S. approved the $10.5-billion sale of Patriot anti-missile systems to NATO ally Poland in the face of perceived Russian aggression.  In December of that same year, the U.S. authorized transfer of lethal anti-tank weapons to Ukraine to help that nation fight off Russian-backed separatists.  U.S. troop presence in Eastern Europe increased over Obama-era levels to bolster European defenses against Russia, and the U.S. imposed monetary sanctions targeting bad individual Russian actors and companies instead of sanctioning that nation’s sovereign debt.

Further, the Trump administration pushed NATO allies to increase defense spending.  In even more direct confrontations, Russian mercenaries and other pro-Syrian regime forces attacking U.S. troops in Syria were killed, while the U.S. under President Trump sanctioned Putin’s largest geo-economic project, the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe (which President Biden reversed).  In hindsight, President Trump’s tenure with its more forceful stance likely gave President Putin pause over four-plus years for his plans to invade Ukraine until the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

November 2024’s election has parallels with both 2020 and 2016, with the latter instructive in that Mr. Putin will probably again prefer the Democrat, regardless of any of the media’s latest infernal efforts to cast Donald Trump as a “colluding” Putin ally.

While speculative, Vladimir Putin was arguably just as surprised as CNN to wake up that November 2016 Wednesday morning and learn that the “impossible“ had happened.  Two days before the election, pollsters and statisticians gave Hillary Clinton odds of between 75 and 99 percent of winning the election.  Given such overwhelming pre-election global political and media consensus, a Clinton victory was probably baked into Kremlin intelligence briefings, causing Putin never to have given Donald Trump more consideration.  His current endorsement of Biden for a second term — flattering him with praises like “he is a more experienced, predictable person” — is cover for knowing what a second Trump administration would mean for checking Russia and its adventurism.

If our nation’s recent “past is prologue,” global bad actors like Vladimir Putin will instinctively favor the Democrat candidate, particularly with the current Democrat agenda wreaking havoc on the fabric of American society and fomenting chaos with its open borders policies.  In the specific case of President Biden, by easing sanctions, mollifying Iran, directing the Afghanistan withdrawal calamity, and weakening U.S. energy security, he transmitted the wrong signals to an autocrat who has exercised near absolute control over Russia for a quarter-century.  It should come as no surprise that Mr. Putin would now endorse Joe Biden for president in a second term instead of Donald Trump.  Let’s rightly understand why.

Colonel Chris J. Krisinger, USAF (ret.) served a tour as the military adviser to the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs at the Department of State.  He is a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate, is an honors graduate of the U.S. Naval War College, and also was a national defense fellow at Harvard University.  If you would like to continue the conversation: cjkrisinger@gmail.com.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/03/why_putin_endorses_biden.html

After A Pause, Jan. 6 Arrests Are Now Sharply Increasing

 by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The pace of FBI arrests and the opening of new Jan. 6 criminal cases quickened so much in late 2023 and early 2024 that District of Columbia federal courts could bend under the weight.

In the past two months, 93 people have been arrested and charged, according to Department of Justice (DOJ) reports.

At the current rate, some 445 new cases could hit the docket in 2024—more than in 2022 and 2023, according to one estimate.

In total, up to March 6, at least 1,358 people have been arrested by the FBI and criminally charged by the Department of Justice (DOJ) for crimes related to Jan. 6.

If the current trend is to hold, total arrests could be 2,150 by the time the statute of limitations on Jan. 6 crimes expires in early 2026, according to Jacob Rugh, associate professor of sociology at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Mr. Rugh and researcher Isabella Felin have been publishing Jan. 6 statistics and data visualization on X and Instagram since August 2022.

William Shipley, a former federal prosecutor who has represented more than 50 Jan. 6 defendants, said he noticed an upswing in cases starting in September 2023.

“Within the past two months, three months, it seems like you’re seeing six, eight, 10 a week,” Mr. Shipley said on Feb. 23 during an Epoch Times panel discussion at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.

“Every day, every day you see two or three more,” Mr. Shipley said. “My own view: it’s a political operation. Just my personal opinion. I think the Department of Justice, the Biden administration, is committed to continuing to keep this story front and center for purposes of the campaign.”

Mr. Shipley said there was a six- to eight-month pause in arrests and prosecutions starting in early 2023 due to the strain Jan. 6 cases put on D.C. federal courts.

“You’ve got a five-year statute of limitations, you don’t need to arrest everybody and prosecute them in the first 18 months, and there was a pause,” Mr. Shipley said. “There was a clear period of time where there weren’t arrests of any significant number happening.”

The top arrest states include Florida (129), Texas (104), Pennsylvania (93), California (90), New York (80), Ohio (71), and Virginia (67). Together they comprise nearly 50 percent of all Jan. 6 defendants, according to research by Mr. Rugh.

About 63 percent of Jan. 6 criminal cases have been adjudicated and defendants sentenced, according to DOJ figures. About 58 percent of defendants were given jail or prison time, 19 percent received home detention, and another 3.5 percent received a combination.

Of the 769 defendants who pleaded guilty to charges, 69 percent were for misdemeanors and 31 percent for felonies, the DOJ reports.

Some 1,276 defendants were charged with entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, and 486 were charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers.

More than 350 were hit with the controversial “corruptly obstructing, influencing or impeding an official proceeding” charge. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on April 16 on a challenge to how the DOJ has used 2002-era corporate fraud statutes to prosecute Jan. 6 defendants for interrupting the counting of Electoral College votes.

Perfect Conviction Rate

Perhaps the most remarkable Jan. 6 statistic comes from jury boxes in the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington D.C.

Every one of the more than 100 Jan. 6 defendants who chose a jury trial were found guilty of at least some of the charges. That’s a perfect 100-percent conviction rate for federal prosecutors, a statistic cited repeatedly in change-of-venue motions. One hundred percent of those motions have been denied.

Mr. Shipley told The Epoch Times that the DOJ’s historical conviction rate in the District of Columbia is about 65 percent, lower than the 90 percent that is “more typical” in other federal court districts.

(Top) The Department of Justice in Washington on Jan. 14, 2020. (Bottom L–R) Mike Howell, director of the Heritage Oversight Project, Sarah McAbee, wife of Jan. 6 defendant Ronald Colton McAbee, and William Shipley, defense attorney, at the congressional screening and premiere of The Epoch Times documentary “The Real Story of January 6, Part 2: The Long Road Home,” at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 9, 2024. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

He said, “The way the question needs to be framed today and put before the judges again is, ‘How many trials and how high a conviction rate is necessary before the judges start to consider maybe it’s not the evidence but the jurors?’”

District of Columbia jurors seated on Jan. 6 cases “are simply not open to listening to explanations from defendants who testify, or accept any of the ‘progress’ against the evidence made by defense counsel in cross-examination,” Mr. Shipley said.

The DOJ has stated since Jan. 6 that finding, arresting, and prosecuting those who were at the U.S. Capitol is a top priority, carried out at “unprecedented speed and scale.” The FBI launched the largest investigation in its history in response to Jan. 6.

Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, paints Jan. 6 in the dramatic tones of warfare as he pledges prosecutors will continue their work unabated into 2024 and beyond.

“In scenes often reminiscent of a medieval battle, officers engaged in hand-to-hand combat with members of the invading force, many of whom carried dangerous weapons including firearms, chemical sprays, tasers, stabbing weapons and makeshift weapons across the Capitol [grounds] and in the Capitol itself,” Graves said on Jan. 6, 2024.

Jan. 6 was “likely the largest single-day mass assault of law enforcement officers in our nation’s history,” Mr. Graves said.

The preamble to the DOJ’s monthly statistical update on Jan. 6 cases states: “The Department of Justice’s resolve to hold accountable those who committed crimes on January 6, 2021, has not, and will not, wane.”

Mr. Shipley said the pace of arrests helps perpetuate the idea that supporters of former President Donald Trump comprise a threat to society.

“They want to continue to have that argument that some portion of the political opposition is actually a criminal element,” he said. “They use the branding of all these J6 defendants to say, ‘See that sliver of the MAGA movement, they’re insurrectionists, they’re foes of democracy.’”

The prosecution posture was set early on.

Prosecution Machine

Not even three weeks after the Jan. 6 incursion, the DOJ named senior prosecutors to go after the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and other alleged “white nationalist” groups, according to internal documents obtained by Judicial Watch.

A document dated Jan. 25, 2021, named assistant U.S. attorneys to investigate and prosecute white nationalists and militias, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, founder of the Oath Keepers who in 2023 was sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and other charges, was named as an early target in a DOJ list obtained by Judicial Watch.

Mr. Rhodes was added to the target list on Jan. 11, 2021, and his case assigned to FBI special agent Michael Palian, who testified against Mr. Rhodes and other defendants in the first Oath Keepers trial in 2022. Mr. Rhodes was not indicted and arrested until Jan. 13, 2022.

(Top) Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III appears on a screen during a hearing on the Jan. 6 investigation in Washington on July 12, 2022. (Bottom) Members of Proud Boys rally against the results of the 2020 presidential election, in Washington on Dec. 12, 2020. (Anna Moneymaker, Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

“I’m not at all surprised that I was added to the target list on Jan. 11, 2021, long before there could have been any actual substantive investigation into me,” Mr. Rhodes told The Epoch Times in an email. “Goes to show that ‘show me the man, I’ll show you the crime’ was exactly their M.O.”

Mr. Rhodes said the media set the tone for such a focus on the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.

“The fixation on the Oath Keepers came first from the mass media, which immediately in the hours and days after the Trump supporters entered the Capitol began to highlight the row of Oath Keepers walking up the steps and breathlessly calling it a ‘military stack formation’ and alleging that the Oath Keepers were leading the crowd,” Mr. Rhodes said.

“Total nonsense. But since Oath Keepers and Proud Boys were already the two groups the leftist media loved to demonize and focus on,” Mr. Rhodes said, “no surprise those two groups became the focus of print and cable ‘news’ coverage of Jan. 6, spinning the false narrative that Oath Keepers and Proud Boys were ‘central’ to the events of Jan. 6 or were the ‘leaders.’”

Rapid Indictment Team

According to the DOJ draft plan, a branch would be established for “Priority Incidents and Subjects,” including the Jan. 6 pipe bombs, the shooting of Ashli Babbitt outside the Speaker’s Lobby, the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, use-of-force allegations against Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police officers, and assaults on federal officers by rioters.

Another branch was to be established for priority investigations and rapid indictments and prosecution of Jan. 6 subjects. A branch would be established for “Advanced Litigation Support,” including mass data collection, discovery for defendants, and technology support to “store, process, analyze, and produce the unprecedented amount of data.”

Judicial Watch obtained the plan as part of a 2021 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the DOJ.

“These documents detail a troubling and unprecedented deployment of federal resources to prosecute Americans caught up in the January 6 disturbance,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “The documents seem to describe a massive political and spy operation masquerading as a law enforcement operation.”

Treniss Evans, a former Jan. 6 defendant and founder of the legal advocacy group Condemned USA, said the prosecution efforts are squarely aimed at harming President Trump.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/after-pause-jan-6-arrests-are-now-sharply-increasing