Josh Hawley Blasts FBI Director Wray for Allowing the FBI to Target Catholics: ‘You Haven’t Fired Anybody!’

Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) tore into FBI Director Christopher Wray Tuesday for not firing anyone for targeting Catholics as potential domestic terrorists.

“You said, and I’m quoting now, ‘The FBI uses all tools available at its disposal to combat domestic terrorism,’ which now includes, apparently, the crime of being Catholic,” Hawley said during an FBI Oversight Committee hearing in the Senate. “Let’s talk a little bit about the FBI’s egregious targeting of Catholic Americans.”

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Commentary: Dear America, The Intelligence Community Isn’t Your Friend

The intelligence agencies have been in the news a lot lately — and not because they deserve praise. Recently, the FBI refused for weeks to provide the House Oversight Committee with a document that alleges a bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden during his time serving as vice president.

To avoid a contempt of Congress hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray decided, at the last minute, to allow the committee’s members to view the document in question.

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Commentary: The 2023 Congress’ Opportunity to Stop the FBI’s Spying on Americans

The 18-member U.S. intelligence community (IC) has released the Annual Statistical Transparency Report Regarding the Intelligence Community’s Use of National Security Surveillance Authorities. One of the few to pay attention was historian Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and an affiliated scholar at the University of California’s Hastings School of Law.

This government document, the ninth such report to be made public, “provides statistics and contextual information concerning how the Intelligence Community uses the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and certain other national security authorities to accomplish its mission.”

The law authorizes the U.S. government to engage in mass surveillance of foreign targets. As Guariglia discovered, FISA is “still being abused by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to spy on Americans without a warrant.” This abuse takes place under Section 702, an amendment to FISA.

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Commentary: The Military-Intelligence Complex

Much has been written about the so-called Resistance of disgruntled Clinton, Obama, and progressive activists who have pledged to stop Donald Trump’s agenda. The choice of the noun “Resistance,” of course, conjures up not mere “opposition,” but is meant to evoke the French “resistance” of World War II – in the melodramatic sense of current loyal progressive patriots doing their best to thwart by almost any means necessary the Nazi-like Trump.

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Rep. Green Introduces Bill to Streamline Intelligence Sharing at Department of Homeland Security

U.S. Rep. Dr. Mark Green (R-TN-07) on Thursday introduced a bill that would streamline and improve intelligence sharing at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The bill requires the Department of Homeland Security’s Chief Intelligence Officer (CINT) to establish a homeland intelligence doctrine for the department, according to a press release from Green’s office. Also, the bill ensures the CINT will have dedicated staff. Green’s new bill is similar to H.R. 2468, titled the “Unifying DHS Intelligence Enterprise Act,” which was introduced during the previous Congress on May 16, 2017. The goal is to ensure all of the entities at DHS are speaking the same language, using the same tradecraft and disseminating their products to the appropriate stakeholders, which include both the intelligence community and State and local partners, according to the press release. Green said, “As a former member of an Army special operations task force, I know the value of synchronized intelligence processes when on a mission. That experience has prompted me to introduce this bill so that DHS can fulfill its very important mission to keep Americans safe.” In other national security news, Green tweeted, “In the past year, the rates of active-duty military suicides have increased dramatically.…

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Senate Rejects Symbolic Gesture ‘Backing Intelligence on Russian Meddling’

US Senate

The Republican-led Senate on Thursday rejected two symbolic measures to support U.S. intelligence agencies in the face of President Donald Trump’s  clarifying statements on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential contest and the Kremlin’s continuing threats to U.S. elections. The chamber’s No. 2 Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, objected to a bipartisan non-binding resolution backing intelligence reports on Russian election meddling and last week’s indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers. The resolution also urged full congressional examination of Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and called for full implementation of U.S. sanctions against Moscow. Moments earlier, Kentucky’s Rand Paul objected to a similar Democratic resolution that added support for the special counsel in the Justice Department’s Russia probe, Robert Mueller. Arizona Republican Jeff Flake, who co-authored the bipartisan resolution, said congressional action is needed after Trump “let down the free world [in Helsinki] by giving aid and comfort to an enemy of democracy” and “dimmed the light of freedom ever so slightly in our own country.” “We should stand and be counted in defense of our democracy,” said Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, who crafted the resolution with Flake. Speaking in support of the Democratic measure,…

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Commentary: Is Today’s American Intelligence Community Trustworthy?

by Printus LeBlanc   Since President Trump took office, there have been multiple reports of friction between the President and the Intelligence Community (IC). This is disconcerting because the President needs the community especially in the tough times we are currently facing, North Korea, Iran, and terrorism. If the people of the IC would take a minute and put themselves in the shoes of the President, they might see why there is friction and that the friction can be fixed. Most Presidents have either served in the military or were elected officials before becoming the President, therefore they had contact with the intelligence community. President Trump was not in the military nor a politician before deciding to run for the office, therefore he did not have prior interaction with the intelligence community. All the President knew about the IC was what was reported by the media. What were some of the main media stories being pushed by the media about the IC prior to Donald Trump’s election? Before the election: The mainstream media lambasted the IC for the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) debacle. The coalition never found the WMD stockpiles or the mobile labs that were the motive…

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