Posted on 10/06/2021 9:04:10 AM PDT by Red Badger
Federal agents raided the offices Tuesday of a New York City police union, the Sergeants Benevolent Association, and the Long Island home of its bombastic leader, who has clashed with city officials over his incendiary tweets and hard-line tactics.
FBI spokesperson Martin Feely said agents were “carrying out a law enforcement action in connection with an ongoing investigation.”
Agents were seen carrying boxes out of the union’s Manhattan headquarters and loading them into a van. The FBI also searched union president Ed Mullins’ home in Port Washington, Long Island, Feely said.
Mullins resigned as the union’s president Tuesday night, according to a message the union’s board sent to members. The board said he did so at its urging. The union represents about 13,000 active and retired NYPD sergeants and controls a $264 million retirement fund.
“The nature and scope of this criminal investigation has yet to be determined. However, it is clear that President Mullins is apparently the target of the federal investigation,” the board’s message said. “We have no reason to believe that any other member of the SBA is involved or targeted in this matter.”
The union’s board said that while Mullins is presumed innocent, it asked him to step aside to ensure the union’s day-to-day operations continue unimpeded. The board said the union was cooperating with the investigation.
Messages seeking comment were left with Mullins and the union. Calls to Mullins’ cellphone went to a full voicemail box.
Mullins, a police sergeant detached to full-time union work, is in the middle of department disciplinary proceedings for tweeting NYPD paperwork last year regarding the arrest of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s daughter during protests over the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.
Mullins’ department trial began last month but was postponed indefinitely after one of his lawyers suffered a medical emergency.
Mullins’ lawyer denies he violated department guidelines, arguing arrest papers with Chiara de Blasio’s personal identifying information, such as her date of birth and address, were already posted online.
Mullins is also suing the department, claiming they were trying to muzzle him by grilling him and recommending disciplinary action over his online missives, which have included claims that officers were at war with city leaders.
Responding to Mullins’ union resignation, Mayor de Blasio tweeted: “Ed Mullins dishonored his uniform, his city and his union more times than I can count. It was just a matter of time before his endless hatred would catch up with him. That day has come.”
The Sergeants Benevolent Association runs a Widows and Children’s Fund, a scholarship fund for members’ children, and Blue Christmas, which distributes toys to needy children.
Mullins, a police officer since 1982, rose to sergeant, a rank above detective but below captain and lieutenant, in 1993 and was elected president of the sergeants union in 2002.
Under Mullins’ leadership, the union has fought for better pay — with contracts resulting in pay increases of 40% — and staked a prominent position in the anti-reform movement.
Though he’s a full-time union chief, city law has allowed Mullins to retain his sergeant’s position and collect salaries from both the union and the police department. Last year, Mullins made more than $220,000 between the two, according to public records: $88,757 from the union and $133,195 from the NYPD.
The NYPD referred questions about Mullins to the FBI.
Along with Mullins’ periodic appearances on cable networks like Fox News and Newsmax — including one in which he was pictured in front of a QAnon mug — perhaps the union’s most powerful megaphone is its 45,000-follower Twitter account, which Mullins runs himself, often to fiery effect.
In 2018, amid a rash of incidents in which police officers were doused with water, Mullins suggested it was time for then-Commissioner James O’Neill and Chief of Department Terence Monahan to “consider another profession” and tweeted that “O’KNEEL must go!”
O’Neill retorted that Mullins was “a bit of a keyboard gangster” who seldom showed up to department functions.
Last year, Mullins came under fire for tweets calling the city’s former Health Commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, a “b——” and U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres a “first-class whore.”
Mullins was upset over reports Barbot refused to give face masks to police in the early days of the pandemic and angry with Torres’ calls for an investigation into a potential police work slowdown in September 2020.
Torres, who is gay, denounced Mullins’ tweet as homophobic.
On Tuesday, Torres referenced that tweet in reacting to the news of the raid, writing: “Ed Mullins, who famously called me a ‘first-class whore’ for daring to ask questions about the @SBANYPD, just got a first-class raid from the FBI.”
In 2019, it wasn’t tweets that got Mullins in trouble, but rather comments he made in a radio interview suggesting that slain Barnard College student Tessa Majors had gone to the park where she was killed to buy marijuana. Police later arrested three teens, saying she’d been stabbed during an attempted robbery.
Majors’ family called Mullins’ remarks on the radio show “deeply inappropriate” victim blaming and urged him “not to engage in such irresponsible public speculation.”
This smells like a retaliatory action based on Mullin’s disdain for Comrade Vladimir DeBlasio.
They’ll find something. Maybe a process crime. This is how they roll. Gin up a warrant on some flimsy pretext and then manufacture a crime.
Looks like time to call a meeting for the five crime families.
More proof of how the FBI has been weaponized.
That’s exactly what this is, Retaliation. Who can trust these Nazi’s anymore . The DOJ is as corrupt as the Soviet Union’s.
Maybe this sergeant is dirty. But maybe the clever folks at the FBI downloaded something incriminating on his personal computer. As the old saying goes, if the FBI wants ya, they gots ya.
Any evidence that they “found” in this raid should be considered spoiled due to the fact that the raid was conducted by politically biased entity.
They have the info. They can manufacture the crime.
Given Mullins’ job there are probably plenty of ‘crimes.’
After all, if anyone does anything significant, he’s probably committing about three felonies per day...
In a free country, crimes are investigated to find the criminals.
In a police state, people are investigated to find crimes.
The Left is rapidly getting more brazen in squashing dissenters.
In a free country, crimes are investigated to find the criminals.
In a police state, people are investigated to find crimes.
*************
Don’t expect the Republicans to clean house, hold people accountable or do anything to restore justice when they get control of congress. They will whine and complain about the abuses but do nothing.
The Left is rapidly getting more brazen in squashing dissenters.
*************
The Left has no one to fear. There is no resistance to their aggression.
They laugh at the GOP and they know with certainty that the GOP will always retreat from their responsibilities. The GOP is an empty shell of a party and the Dems know it. So, they do whatever they want and its one of the main reasons the country is in such a mess today.
Typical Communist Agency retaliation. Conform or its room 101 for you. Make no mistake about the Communists who are now in charge.
“More proof of how the FBI has been weaponized.”
More than likely another example of our DOJ ordering their storm troopers to arrest resisters!
This is probably another example of the acceleration of the Justice Department’s transformation into an unofficial wing of the Democratic Party.
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION The Devolution of the DOJ
Merrick Garland’s focus on school board meetings over violent crime diminishes the department:
Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice has discovered a new group that poses a pressing threat to the country’s safety and well being.
Their potential crimes are heinous: Objecting to the propagation in our schools of critical race theory and anti-white racism.
How deep does this criminal behavior go? We can’t say. Announcing a “partnership among federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement to address threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff,” Garland offers no statistical evidence about the rising threat of infuriated parents. He makes no mention of any arrests. He doesn’t say whether a police department or state anywhere has asked for the federal government’s assistance in stopping “threats against public servants.”
Those are curious omissions, given that the FBI just last week released a trove of crime data detailing information about victims as well as the perpetrators and their motivations. It suggests the so-called threat is either an empty political concoction intended to mollify left-wing activists concerned that parents are wising up or, more troubling, that the Justice Department intends to conflate the protests of concerned parents with criminal behavior.
If Garland has heard that the country’s murder rate last year spiked nearly 30 percent nationwide—the largest one-year increase ever recorded, and presumably a development that falls within the Justice Department’s remit—he is choosing to focus his attention on matters he has deemed more important. To wit: Garland hasn’t sent any letters about assembling a task force to address the fact that this year’s homicide rate is on track to surpass 2020.
Though Garland pledged at his confirmation hearing to “fend off any effort by anyone to make prosecutions or investigations partisan or political in any way,” his letter this week demonstrates the acceleration of the Justice Department’s transformation into an unofficial wing of the Democratic Party.
The country is likely to suffer the consequences for decades to come.
Published under: Biden Administration, Justice Department
https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/the-devolution-of-the-doj/
Serving two conflicting masters.
Impossible to do honestly.
But perfectly legal?
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