Tag: FBI

Trump Gunman Had Michigan School Shooter’s Photo, Foreign Encrypted Apps, FBI Tells Congress

Just the News
Thomas Crooks and Ethan Crumbley (composite image)

While Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle frustrated lawmakers Monday with sparse details about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the FBI has disclosed to Congress that the shooter used three encrypted communications apps ostensibly tied to Germany, Brussels and New Zealand and also possessed an arrest photo of an earlier Michigan school shooter, Just the News has confirmed.

In multiple briefings, FBI leaders told lawmakers that the 20-year-old would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks’ primary cell phone has become an important focal point of the probe, including some 14,000 images that were found on it, according to multiple sources familiar with the briefings. The FBI has not issued an update on their findings to the public since July 14.

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At Least Six Major Security Failures at Trump Rally Leave More Questions for Investigators

Just the News
Thomas Matthew Crooks

Less than five days after the failed assassination attempt on GOP nominee and former President Donald Trump, several questions still remain about how and why the shooter – Thomas Matthew Crooks – was able to gain access to the rooftop with an unobstructed view over the rally and the crowd. Six of the biggest security failures that reportedly occurred at the event raise even more questions for investigators.

The investigation into the assassination attempt that left one attendee dead, and three injured including Trump, is being led by the FBI. However, the bureau has remained relatively quiet on its probe, publishing only one update so far on Monday, July 15.

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FBI Says It Has No Record of ‘Legacy Token’ Documents After FOIA Request

Peter D'Abrosca

In response the a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says it has no record of any documents containing the terms “legacy token” or “legacy tokens,” despite the fact that The Tennessee Star has such a document from the FBI in its possession. 

“Based on the information you provided, we conducted a main entity record search of the Central Records System (CRS) per our standard search policy,” the FBI said in response to the FOIA request. “However, we were unable to identify records subject to the FOIPA that are responsive to your request. Therefore, your request is being closed. If you have additional information pertaining to the subject of your request, please submit a new request providing the details, and we will conduct an additional search.”

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U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn Joins Push for Senate Judiciary Committee to Hold Hearing on Assassination Attempt of Former President Donald Trump

Kaitlin Housler
Sen. Marsha Blackburn

Tennessee U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) was among the Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans who sent a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) requesting that he organize a committee hearing on the circumstances leading up to the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump over the weekend.

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Elon Musk Endorses Trump After Assassination Attempt, Leads Flood of Calls for Secret Service Resignations

Tom Pappert
Elon Musk, Donald Trump

Billionaire Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of the social media platform X, endorsed former President Donald Trump on Saturday after a gunman attempted to assassinate the former president during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Musk later called for Secret Service resignations in the wake of the shooting, which left one rally attendee dead and a second injured.

Musk posted a video of the attempted assassination in to X, where he received more than 55 million views at press time, and wrote, “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery.”

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Covenant Killer’s Childhood Friends Changed Phone Numbers to Cut Contact, Her Mother Told Police

Tom Pappert
Audrey Hale

The parents of Audrey Elizabeth Hale told Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) investigators during a July 12, 2023 interview that two of their daughter’s childhood friends changed their phone numbers to cut contact with the killer in the years prior to her attack on the Covenant School, where she claimed the lives of three 9-year-old students and three staff members, according to a transcript of the interview obtained by The Tennessee Star. 

Last month, The Star confirmed it obtained approximately 80 pages of writings left in a journal by Audrey Hale from a source familiar with the investigation, and reported the killer wrote extensively about the death of her middle school basketball teammate Sydney Sims.

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Another Complaint Adds to Mounting Evidence of FBI’s Political Bias and Whistleblower Retaliation

Just the News

Evidence is mounting that the FBI—the country’s premier law enforcement agency—has resorted to basing decisions to suspend or revoke security clearances on FBI employees’ political views.

The evidence, which suggests political motivations in how the bureau has treated several of its own workers, has surfaced through whistleblower complaints recently filed internally and with the Justice Department’s watchdog.

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Bombshell: FBI Supervisor Alleges Bureau Improperly Pulling Conservative Agents’ Security Clearances

Just the News

An FBI supervisor is blowing the whistle on his own organization, alleging to the Justice Department’s chief watchdog and Congress that the bureau has been improperly suspending or revoking the security clearances of agents it believes hold conservative political views.

The new whistleblower’s allegations surfaced Tuesday in correspondence obtained by “Just the News” that was sent to the House and Senate Judiciary committees and DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, dramatically claiming that as a supervisory special agent he witnessed efforts by senior FBI brass to target employees who supported Donald Trump or opposed COVID-19 vaccines.

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FBI Gives Vague Response to The Tennessee Star’s FOIA Request over ‘Legacy Tokens’

Peter D'Abrosca

In response to The Tennessee Star’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on the agency’s policy regarding “legacy tokens” left behind by mass killers, the FBI offered a vague response to an original comment request by The Star.

“While our standard practice is not to comment on specific products, which includes addressing their veracity, the FBI regularly shares information with our law enforcement partners to assist in protecting the communities they serve,” the FBI said by email. “The FBI always encourages members of the public to be vigilant and report anything they consider suspicious to law enforcement.”

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New Evidence Turned over to Congress Disputes Hunter Biden Testimony About Controversial Firm

Just the News
Hunter Biden in front of US Capitol building (composite image)

Already accused of lying to Congress about other issues, Hunter Biden’s February impeachment inquiry testimony distancing himself from a controversial securities firm directly conflicts with evidence the FBI seized years ago, including his signature on an employment contract that made him the firm’s vice chairman.

The documents were gathered by FBI and SEC agents back in 2016 and were recently obtained by Congress and shared with Just the News, but not until after Hunter Biden had already given his deposition in February to the U.S. House as part of his father’s impeachment inquiry.

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ISIS Smuggling Network Confirmed Weeks After Tennessee Congressman Warned of ISIS Crossings

Peter D'Abrosca

Two weeks after a U.S. Tennessee representative sent out a warning about members of the terrorist group ISIS crossing the open southern border, news has emerged that an ISIS smuggling network has brought more than 400 illegal migrants into the country.

Three Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials told NBC News that “over 400 immigrants from Central Asia and elsewhere who crossed into the U.S. in the past three years as ‘subjects of concern’ because they were brought by an ISIS-affiliated human smuggling network.”

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Appeals Court Rejects Steve Bannon’s Request to Delay Prison Sentence

Just the News
Stephen K. Bannon

A United States court of appeals on Thursday rejected Steve Bannon’s request to delay the start of his prison sentence, ruling that he must report to serve the contempt of Congress sentence on July 1.

Bannon was sentenced to four months in a low-security prison in October of 2022, after he was convicted on two counts of contempt-of-Congress by a jury, for failing to comply with a Congressional subpoena in front of the House January 6 committee. But his report date was delayed after he filed multiple appeals.

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FBI Knew Since 2016 Hunter Biden’s Team Nearly Scored $120 Million Ukrainian Deal While Joe Biden was VP

Just the News

The FBI learned as far back as 2016 that Hunter Biden and his partners had plotted to set up a new venture in tax-friendly Liechtenstein that would be capitalized by a whopping $120 million investment from the controversial owner of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings, according to documents obtained by Just the News that have been kept from the American public for eight years.

The mega-deal was not referenced inside Hunter Biden’s now infamous laptop or during the 2019 impeachment proceedings involving Ukraine, but was instead chronicled in a trove of 3.39 million documents the FBI seized from Hunter Biden and his business partners during an investigation of securities fraud nearly a decade ago.

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Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: Understanding How Left-Wing Conspiracies Work

Admin
Donald Trump

Since 2016, there has been a clear pattern to left-wing conspiracies — beyond the obvious fact that they traffic in lies, stereotypes, and paranoia to serve precise political agendas.

We now know that the conspiracy to cook up the Russian-collusion hoax — Donald Trump allegedly conniving with Vladimir Putin to rig the 2016 vote — was perpetrated by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Its funding was hidden by the Democratic National Committee, the law firm Perkins Coie, and Fusion GPS.

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Commentary: Nashville Shooter’s Manifesto Released Despite FBI Resistance

RealClearWire

The 2023 Nashville Covenant School murders understandably received massive news coverage when they occurred. The fight over obtaining the murderer’s diary also received news attention. But when “nearly four dozen pages” of the murderer’s diary were finally released last week, the mainstream media completely ignored it. It turns out that behind the scenes, the FBI had fought hard against the diary’s release. Some Covenant School parents also opposed releasing the diary because it would force families to re-live the nightmare. The Tennessee Star’s parent company, Star News Digital Media, successfully filed two lawsuits to obtain the diary.

Five days after the release of the diary, with the exception of the New York Post, which is a national news outlet, the news coverage was limited to seven other conservative outlets such as The Daily Wire and Newsbusters.

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Commentary: Searching for the Truth About the Raid at Mar-a-Lago

RealClearWire
Mar-A-Lago

Top officials at the Department of Justice are downplaying recently disclosed documents showing FBI agents were authorized to use deadly force during their 2022 raid of Donald Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.

Responding to Trump’s claim that “Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said the bureau was following “standard operating procedure” as it executed a search warrant on Aug. 8, 2022, regarding classified material that the former president was holding at Mar-a-Lago.

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Hunter Biden’s Court-Verified Laptop Files Will Be at the Center of His Upcoming Tax Trial

Just the News
Hunter Biden

With the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop having been verified again – this time in court – data extracted from it about the first son’s long-history of tax problems will likely be key to federal prosecutors in Biden’s upcoming tax evasion trial.

The contents of the hard drive, obtained and authenticated by the FBI as early as December 2019 will show the first son’s tax delinquency and unsuccessful efforts to settle his massive debts with the IRS while continuing to spend beyond his means, according to emails obtained from the laptop by Just the News.

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Covenant Killer Audrey Hale Wrote ‘Dying Young Is My Destiny’ in Recovered Journal, Claimed ‘Society Ignores’ Her

Tom Pappert
Audrey Hale

Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale wrote entries in her journal about her social isolation about one month before her devastating attack on March 27, 2023.

The Star confirmed last week it obtained 80 pages of Hale’s writings from a journal police recovered from her vehicle at the Covenant School from a source familiar with the investigation.

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FBI Declines to Confirm ‘Legacy Tokens’ Memo Sent to Nashville Police Which Raised Precedent for Destruction of Covenant Killer Writings

Tom Pappert

The FBI declined on Monday to confirm to The Tennessee Star the authenticity of a memo it sent to the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) that “strongly discourages” the release of “legacy tokens” left by those who commit devastating attacks like the Covenant School attack orchestrated by Audrey Elizabeth Hale.

The Star published the memo last week, revealing it was addressed to MNPD Chief John Drake and sent on May 11, 2023.

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FBI Asking for Help Identifying More Victims of Alleged Tennessee Child Exploiter

Peter D'Abrosca
James C. Thompson

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says it needs help locating other potential victims of a serial child exploiter from east Tennessee. 

Last week, a federal grand jury in Knoxville returned a three-count indictment against James Thompson, 71, of Lookout Mountain. The indictment alleges that Thompson transported minors across state lines with the intent of engaging in sexual activity back in 2000. 

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Covenant School Killer Audrey Hale Claimed to Witness Injury from Bullet Ricochet at Gun Range Only Two Days Before Attack

Tom Pappert
Audrey Hale Gun Range

Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale claimed to witness an accidental injury after training at a Nashville-area gun range just two days before her terrible attack.

Hale reported witnessing the incident in a handwritten journal or diary entry that was recovered from her vehicle, photographed, and eventually provided to The Tennessee Star as part of a portion of Hale’s writings.

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Audrey Hale Wrote Political Rant About Guns and Transgenderism One Month Before Covenant School Attack

Tom Pappert

The Tennessee Star has obtained dozens of handwritten pages authored by Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who committed the horrific Covenant School shooting on March 27, 2023.

The Star reviewed nearly four dozen images of notebook pages written by Hale that were recovered from the vehicle she drove to the Covenant School which were obtained from a source familiar with the Covenant investigation. 

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FBI Memo on ‘Protection of Legacy Tokens’ Sent to Nashville Police in May 2023 Opposed Release of Covenant Killer Documents, Cited Destruction Precedent

Tom Pappert

The Tennessee Star has obtained the FBI memo sent to the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) on May 11, 2023 from a source familiar with the Covenant killer investigation.

The letterhead and heading used for the memo indicate it originated at the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group in Quantico, Virginia. The opening paragraphs reveal it was sent by the FBI’s Behavioral Threat Assessment Center (BTAC), the home of the FBI’s Behavorial Analysis Unit (BAU-1). The memo was not signed.

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Retired MNPD Lt. Garet Davidson Claims FBI Told Nashville Police Not to Release Documents from Covenant School Killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale Investigation, Pointed to Precedent for Document Destruction

Tom Pappert

A retired Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) lieutenant told The Michael Patrick Leahy Show on Tuesday that the FBI sent a memo to Police Chief John Drake in May of 2023, two months after Audrey Elizabeth Hale killed three students and three staff members at the Covenant School, instructing the department not to release certain materials from the Covenant School shooting investigation and instead pointed out to the MNPD the precedent for destroying such documents.

The information was divulged to Michael Patrick Leahy, the editor-in-chief of The Tennessee Star, by recently retired MNPD Lieutenant Garet Davidson, who filed the recent 61-page complaint against the department and made other claims about the status of the investigation of Covenant School shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale to 99.7 WTN radio host Brian Wilson.

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Psychologist Who Allegedly Failed to Report Violent Threats from Covenant Killer Audrey Hale Identified, Claims Practice Closed in 2022

Tom Pappert
Audrey Elizabeth Hale

A source provided The Tennessee Star with the name of the psychologist who was reportedly part of the care team for Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale. That psychologist allegedly failed in her professional and legal duty to warn law enforcement after Hale purportedly expressed fantasies about murdering her family members and carrying out a school shooting while under treatment.

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Commentary: Trump’s Trial Is a Symptom of a Larger Crisis in American Justice

Admin
Donald Trump

Naturally, the cataract of commentary on Thursday’s Stalinist guilty, guilty, guilty verdict against Donald Trump has divided itself into two distinct pools. One is gleeful. The other is alarmed. Rather than anatomize the differences between the two, I’d like to start by simply noting the size and fervor of the response.  There are, I believe, two essential points to bear in mind.

The first is that the outpouring is only incidentally about Trump.  You might find this a surprising statement since the news has been full of little besides Trump.

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Psychologist Who Allegedly Failed to Report Violent Threats from Covenant Killer Audrey Hale Identified, Claims Practice Closed in 2022

Tom Pappert
Audrey Elizabeth Hale

A source provided The Tennessee Star with the name of the psychologist who was reportedly part of the care team for Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale. That psychologist allegedly failed in her professional and legal duty to warn law enforcement after Hale purportedly expressed fantasies about murdering her family members and carrying out a school shooting while under treatment.

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Feds Secretly Knew for Years Joe Biden Met with Son’s Chinese Partners on Official Trip

Just the News

Federal agents gathered evidence during the 2016 election that Hunter Biden had used access to his father on an official government trip to Beijing aboard Air Force Two to connect prospective Chinese business partners with then-Vice President Joe Biden, according to a massive cache of documents recently turned over to Congress and obtained by Just the News.

“They got to meet Dad. All very good. Talk later,” Hunter Biden wrote in a December 2013 email confirming how he connected his Chinese associates with his father in a Beijing hotel after the vice president had met with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

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Obama State Department Blocked FBI from Arresting Iranian Suspects in WMD Probe, Senators Say

Just the News
Obama Kerry Iran Negotiations in 2015

The senators claimed the reason for the State Department’s interference was because of ongoing negotiations related to the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal, which former President Barack Obama signed in 2015.

Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson unveiled evidence Wednesday that former Secretary of State John Kerry’s State Department “actively interfered” with the FBI’s attempts to arrest people suspected of being in the United States illegally to support Iran’s efforts to create weapons of mass destruction.

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Commentary: FBI Authorized Use of Deadly Force During Mar-a-Lago Raid

Julie Kelly
Merrick Garland

An exhibit filed today by Donald Trump in a motion to suppress evidence seized during the FBI’s August 2022 raid of Mar-a-Lago revealed shocking new details about the bureau’s plans to use deadly force and even engage the former president and his security detail that day if necessary. The document is just one of many court filings recently ordered unsealed by Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over the matter in southern Florida.

In an August 3, 2022 operations order for “Plasmic Echo,” the FBI’s code name for the government’s investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of national defense material, FBI officials furnished instructions on to proceed with the unprecedented raid. “FBI [Washington Field Office] and FBI [Miami] agents and [Evidence Response Team] will effect a search of designated locations within Mar-a-Lago (MAL) to locate and seize classified information, NDI, and US Government records as described in captioned search warrant,” the document read.

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FBI Report Finds Fewer Officers Killed in Line of Duty, but More Attacked

Just the News

There were 60 officers killed in the line of duty in 2023, the report said, one less than in 2022. But the total officers killed in the line of duty in the past three years were higher than any other three year period in the past two decades.

An FBI report released Tuesday revealed that fewer law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty last year, but the number of attacks on officers has risen.

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Terrorist Watch List Apprehensions at Northern Border Continue to Break Records

The Center Square
Illegal Immigrants Northern Border

The number of known or suspected terrorists (KSTs) apprehended at the northern border in the first six months of fiscal 2024 continue to outpace those apprehended at the southwest border.

There have been 143 KSTs apprehended at the northern border through the first six months of this fiscal year compared to 92 at the southwest border, according to the most recent CBP data.

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Commentary: Judge Cannon Puts Jack Smith on Trial

Julie Kelly
Jack Smith

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon may have just indefinitely postponed Donald Trump’s espionage and obstruction trial but that doesn’t mean her federal courtroom in Fort Pierce, Florida will lie dormant over the next few months.

In officially vacating the existing May 20 trial date—an impossibility considering the defendant will be in a Manhattan courtroom for the foreseeable future—Cannon declined to set another date, calling it “imprudent” at this stage of the process. She noted a “myriad” of unresolved matters in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s 42-count indictment against the former president and his two co-defendants, Mar-a-Lago employees Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Olivera, for willfully retaining national defense information and attempting to impede the government’s investigation.

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Chairman Jordan Presses Wray for Data on FBI’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Hiring Practices

Just the News

“We understand that the FBI has struggled with attracting enough qualified applicants from all desired target groups to sustain its mission This is likely due to the FBI re-focusing its recruitment efforts on DEI statistics,” Jordan wrote in the letter to Wray.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, is pressing Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray for more information surrounding the bureau’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) hiring practices and other initiatives.

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Commentary: Unredactions Reveal Early White House Involvement in Trump Documents Case

RealClearWire
Stern Su Trump

Top Biden administration officials worked with the National Archives to develop Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against Donald Trump involving the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified material, according to recently unsealed court documents in the case pending in southern Florida.

More than 300 pages of newly unredacted exhibits, containing emails and other correspondence related to the early stages of the hunt for presidential papers, challenge public statements by Joe Biden about what he knew and when he knew it regarding the case against his political rival.

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Report: Federal Agencies Not Safeguarding Unaccompanied Minors

The Center Square

Another inspector general report has found that the federal agency responsible for caring for unaccompanied minors (UACs) brought into the United States is continuing to fail to vet sponsors and protect the children’s safety and well-being.

A Texas advocacy group is again renewing its call for state lawmakers to investigate and implement oversight measures since the majority of UACs are being housed in Texas.

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Eight Months Later, FBI Won’t Provide Details on Raid That Killed Tennessee Man Theodore Deschler

Peter D'Abrosca
Theodore Deschler

More than eight months after a raid that left a Henderson man dead, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) won’t disclose details about the case, while the local police department says they weren’t made aware of the raid until after it happened.

 FBI agents shot and killed Theodore Deschler at his mother’s home where he lived in August of last year.

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FBI Launches Criminal Investigation Into Ship That Caused Baltimore Bridge Collapse

Admin
Francis Scott Key Bridge wreckage

The FBI has begun an investigation into the ship responsible for striking  the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore in March, The Washington Post reported on Monday.

The “Dali,” a near-1000 foot long cargo ship, temporarily lost power and sailed into one of the bridge’s support beams on Mar. 26, causing the entire bridge to collapse into the river and killing six people. The FBI has opened an investigation into the Dali and whether its crew operated it knowing the vessel had operational problems, according to the Post.

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Alleged CIA Officer Caught on Camera Describing How Intelligence Community Sets Up Regime Opponents

Admin
Gavin O'Blennis

A man who claims to be with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was caught on camera detailing to an undercover journalist how the intelligence community takes out the regime’s political opponents.

Gavin O’Blennis, an alleged Contracting Officer for the CIA, also worked for the FBI from May 2021 to December 2022 as an operation technician and procurement specialist, according to his LinkedIn account.  From there, he went to the Department of Homeland Security where he worked as an immigrations Services Analyst in Minneapolis, Minnesota, according to his LinkedIn.

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FBI Whistleblowers Say the Bureau ‘Needs to Be Abolished’

Admin
Weaponization of Government Symposium

Two FBI agents who had their security clearances suspended after speaking to Congress about how law enforcement went after pro-lifers and concerned parents, now warn that the FBI has adopted a “Marxist culture” and called for its abolition.

“The type of recruiting events they have—they have adopted this Marxist culture to permanently change our institutions like the FBI,” Garret O’Boyle, an FBI agent whom House Republicans hailed as a whistleblower, said Tuesday at an Oversight Project event at The Heritage Foundation. “Remember, the FBI are the people with the guns and badges who will come after you.”

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