Free Republic

The FBI conducted thousands of queries on digital data collected on U.S. citizens in 2021 and 2022 despite having no warrant and no justification under the FBI’s own rules, according to an internal report released on May 10.The audit, conducted by the FBI Office of Internal Auditing (OIA), was intended to examine the agency’s compliance with rules for querying data the government routinely collects on U.S. citizens under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA).FISA allows the government to collect electronic data, including phone calls, text messages, and emails of foreigners overseas, even if the communications...

There are new revelations coming to light about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s unprecedented raid against former President Donald Trump prior to the 2022 midterm elections. As reported by America First Legal, a judicial watchdog, “records obtained from our investigation into the circumstances surrounding the Mar-a-Lago raid further confirm that the FBI obtained access to these records through a ‘special access request’ from the Biden White House on behalf of the DOJ.” The details, themselves, are shocking, as AFL noted in its press release: On August 8, 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted an unprecedented raid of Mar-a-Lago...

Love him or hate him, Tucker Carlson has become the most important political analyst of our era. The release to him of suppressed J6 Capitol footage that contradicted the Democrat/media narrative dominated political news until Carlson's questionnaire on Ukraine policy to the potential GOP presidential field knocked it out of the headlines. Not since Woodward and Bernstein dominated the news with Watergate has a media source produced results that focused the national spotlight so completely as Mr. Tucker Carlson. Unsurprisingly, many are the progressives who want to see him knocked off the air. Last night, he began his top-rated hour-long...

Civil liberties have officially gone out of style, a phenomenon on full display at the Weaponization of Government Hearing at which I just testified. The circus-like scene featured a ranking member calling two journalists a “direct threat,” a Stanford-educated former prosecutor who confused accusation with proof, and a Texas congressman, Colin Allred, who proudly held up the results of an adjudicated criminal case to argue against due process in another arena. When I asked Allred’s permission to point out that he’d just demonstrated that a proper forum for dealing with campaign abuses already existed in the court system, he basically...

There’s a movement brewing to shut down conservative websites that offer views and information contradicting left-wing orthodoxy. Investigative reporter Gabe Kaminsky did an excellent job of uncovering how activist organizations, some partnered with the State Department, work to blacklist and defund conservative media. His ongoing series at the Washington Examiner is worth reading and explains how this is part of a larger effort to effectively shut down conservative media publications. It’s predictable—yet nevertheless disturbing—stuff. “Major ad companies are increasingly seeking guidance from purportedly ‘nonpartisan’ groups claiming to be detecting and fighting online ‘disinformation.’” Kaminsky wrote. “These same ‘disinformation’ monitors are...

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) blasted the IRS on Monday for allegedly conducting "government surveillance" on Americans following a Just the News report on the agency's invasive questioning of an election education nonprofit, as the House Oversight Committee requested to see the underlying documents.In action reminiscent of the Lois Lerner targeting scandal under the Obama administration when the IRS singled out conservative groups for audits, the Biden IRS last year subjected an election education nonprofit applying for tax-empt status to intrusive formal questioning the group believes infringed on its speech rights under the First Amendment.Just the News reported the story on...

In a little covered lawsuit by the group New Yorkers For Religious Liberty, Inc. et al -VS- The City Of New York, something very odd has surfaced.After imposing the vaccine mandate in 2021, New York City fired the unvaccinated workers then sent the FBI the names and fingerprints of the non-compliant city employees to register within the justice files of the federal government.New York City has recently abandoned the vaccine requirement {SEE HERE}, but the lawyers for the plaintiffs are continuing the lawsuit against the city because employment in the private sector is now impacted because the names of the...

The Department of State has funded a deep-pocketed "disinformation" tracking group that is secretly blacklisting and trying to defund conservative media, likely costing the news organizations vital advertising dollars, the Washington Examiner can confirm. The Global Disinformation Index, a British organization with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups, is feeding blacklists to ad companies with the intent of defunding and shutting down websites peddling alleged "disinformation," the Washington Examiner reported . This same "disinformation" group has received $330,000 from two State Department-backed entities linked to the highest levels of government, raising concerns from First Amendment lawyers and members of Congress. "Any...

The Washington Examiner revealed on Thursday that it is on GDI's list and spoke to an ad-buying source who said Breitbart News is also. Separately, GDI has said that the 10 "riskiest" news outlets for purported disinformation are the American Spectator, Newsmax, the Federalist, the American Conservative, One America News Network, the Blaze, the Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Reason, and the New York Post.

The U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government convened this week and is scheduled to hold its first hearing. The FBI stands accused of a vast swath of abuses, such as labeling parents at school board meetings with terrorist threat tags, collusion with social media to monitor and censor Americans’ free speech, and identifying (with a high level of confidence) Catholics with a preference for Latin Mass as potential recruits for Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremist organizations. These assaults by the nation’s top law enforcement agency on American’s civil rights are legion (pun...

Jesus in the wilderness faced three temptations from the Devil himself: material comfort, fame, and power. Needless to say, he declined every temptation and passed all three trials. So too did the couple seeking to enter the order of virtue in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.” They blasted right through the tests of silence, isolation, and fear. In the opera, much celebration ensues. Fairy tales too are often framed by three chances. The Miller’s daughter is given three chances to guess Rumpelstiltskin’s name, for example, and I’m sure you can think of other instances. The final movement of the 6th “Tragic”...

The FBI is retracting a leaked document that advised the Bureau to infiltrate groups of traditionalist Roman Catholics who the assessment claimed were at risk of committing acts of extremist violence, the Daily Caller has learned. The FBI tells the Caller that the document, put forward by the Richmond field office, “does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI” and that the Bureau will be conducting an internal review.

The House Judiciary Committee under chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) issued a subpoena on Friday for FBI Director Christopher Wray, requiring that the chief hand over documents and correspondence involving the bureau’s “misuse of federal criminal and counterterrorism resources” to politically persecute conservative parents at school board meetings across the country.

Boston, Mass., Feb 1, 2023 / 13:31 pm Mark Houck, the pro-life father of seven who was acquitted Monday in federal court of charges of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, said he is planning to sue the FBI and other authorities following his ordeal. On a Jan. 31 episode of the podcast “War Room,” the host, Steve Bannon, asked Houck: “Do you intend to press charges for prosecutorial abuse? And are you going to press charges against the FBI agents and the state troopers?” “We most definitely will and we will be seeking counsel on that,”...

The House Judiciary Committee fired off its first subpoenas under the leadership of Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), targeting a trio of Biden administration officials including Attorney General Merrick Garland over a short-lived memo dealing with threats against school board members. The subpoenas, sent also to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, follow a series of more than 100 letters on the 2021 memo from Judiciary Republicans. Garland signed the memo in October of last year, noting a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff” amid broader discussion...

It took $44 billion of Elon Musk’s money to uncover how national-security agencies like the FBI and Homeland Security — as well as Adam Schiff — conducted censorship on Twitter. Those revelations are still continuing, even while not much else seems to be changing on that platform. But what about Facebook? Who’s got $100 billion or so to buy out Mark Zuckerberg and get a peek under Meta’s hood? Reason Magazine certainly doesn’t, but it turns out that all Robby Soave needed was a lawsuit and a court order or two. Internal documents show that Facebook essentially allowed the CDC...

The FBI revealed how the bureau uses the CIA and National Security Agency to probe the private lives of Americans without a warrant in its updated rulebook, which is the first version made public since the Obama administration. The handbook, rewritten in 2021, confirms a decade-old leak showcasing the bureau’s collaboration with the CIA and NSA for FBI probes that may involve surveillance without court orders against people not accused of any crimes. Such probes are known as “assessments” at the FBI. The revelations will fuel critics who have long accused the FBI of abusing its national security surveillance powers.

The American Civil Liberties Union is calling for an overhaul of FBI rules after The Washington Times reported that agents used the CIA and National Security Agency to spy on Americans. The ACLU urged the bureau to impose new limits on agents’ power to investigate Americans without warrants. The FBI’s rule book, rewritten in 2021, revealed details about how the FBI tasks the CIA and NSA for help on matters including assessments, which are investigations that can involve surveillance without a court order against people not accused of a crime.

Another round of Elon Musk’s Twitter files were released on Saturday. The latest Twitter files were released by journalist Matt Taibbi on Christmas Eve. 1.THREAD: The Twitter Files TWITTER AND “OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES” — Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022 After weeks of “Twitter Files” reports detailing close coordination between the FBI and Twitter in moderating social media content, the Bureau issued a statement Wednesday. 2. It didn’t refute allegations. Instead, it decried “conspiracy theorists” publishing “misinformation,” whose “sole aim” is to “discredit the agency.” 3. They must think us unambitious, if our “sole aim” is to discredit the FBI....

The FBI may have violated the First Amendment rights of Twitter users when it flagged accounts for the social media platform to review, several legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Twitter became an “agent of the government” when it worked with the FBI to silence specific accounts at the agency’s request, Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow, told the DCNF. Ari Cohn, free speech counsel at TechFreedom, told the DCNF that while the findings of the Twitter Files were “interesting,” he doesn’t believe there are “many legal...