Fingerprints of NYC Teachers Who Refused to Get COVID Injections Sent to FBI, Affidavit Says
/From [HERE] Unvaccinated New York City teachers were reportedly “flagged” and their fingerprints sent to the FBI, according to an affidavit filed in federal court last week.
In the New Yorkers for Religious Liberty Inc. v. The City of New York appeals hearing, challenging the now-rescinded vaccine mandate for city employees, plaintiff’s attorney John Burch said that “flagged” teachers were labeled with “problem codes” that impact their ability to get another job.
The allegations were based on a June 2022 affidavit written by Betsy Combier, president of the due process advocacy group Advocatz, detailing how the New York City Department of Education (DOE) flagged unvaccinated teachers without evidence of misconduct and sent their information, including fingerprints “to the national databases at both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and [New York’s] State Division of Criminal Justice Services.”
Sujata Gibson, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, commented on these revelations to The Defender:
“These are hardworking teachers and educators with excellent employment records who dedicated their lives to teaching in the New York City public schools. It is unacceptable that the DOE would place problem codes on their employment files and flag their fingerprints with the FBI simply because they were not able or willing to get vaccinated.
“This was never about public health. This was about punishing those whose religious and other beliefs don’t line up with corporate interests in an effort to make it impossible to dissent.”
Michael Kane, national grassroots organizer for Children’s Health Defense and founder of Teachers For Choice, reported the “problem codes” on Feb. 9, one day after the hearing in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
He explained the relevance of this information for the case to The Defender:
“The point our attorneys were making is that not only were our constitutional rights violated when the mandates first occurred, but that these violations continue to occur, because this problem code is put on for us practicing our sincerely held religious beliefs. And when we go to apply for jobs, it’s still blocking us.
“So that is the main thrust of the argument. That’s one of the pieces of evidence that there is ongoing harm happening to us [because] they never stopped. To this day we are experiencing harm because of what New York City did to us. That was the real rationale that our attorneys were trying to get across.”
Unvaccinated teachers denied jobs due to the ‘problem code’
According to Combier’s affidavit, the DOE assigns “problem codes” to the personnel files of employees that “should not be hired due to unexplained misconduct of some kind.”
The affidavit stated:
“When the DOE puts a problem code in the employee’s personnel file, it also places a flag on the employee’s fingerprints, which is then sent to the national databases at both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the State Division of Criminal Justice Services.
“I have represented more than 15 DOE employees before the DOE’s Office of Personnel Investigation in proceedings in which they requested the removal of their problem codes. The flag has several names such as ‘problem code,’ ‘pr’ code, ‘pc’ code, ‘ineligible,’ and ‘no hire/inquiry’ code; however, all refer to a salary block, whatever title it is given.”
Combier stated she had seen such “problem codes” in the personnel files of former DOE employees who did not receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
“The DOE places a problem code on the employee’s personnel file immediately upon getting information that the employee did not submit proof of vaccination.
“As soon as the employee gets the vaccination and submits proof, the code is removed from his or her file.”
Combier also provided an email from a DOE official confirming that a “problem code” was added to the personnel files of “DOE employees who were placed on leave without pay for failing to be vaccinated in violation of the DOE’s mandate.”
The “flag” then adversely impacted the employment prospects of teachers when they sought jobs outside of New York City. Combier wrote:
“I am aware that non-DOE schools located in counties outside New York City receive funds from the NYC DOE for certain teaching positions. These may include, for example, special education or STEM [science, technology, mathematics] teachers.
“The DOE pays the salaries for these positions using the same system it uses to pay traditional DOE employees, which is called Galaxy. Galaxy indicates whether the employee has a problem code in his or her file and blocks payment to the employee with this flag/code if viewed in the personnel file.”
As a result:
“At least 15 of my clients with problem codes were not hired by prospective schools outside the DOE because such schools saw the problem codes in Galaxy, even though those schools were located outside New York City.
“Such schools were able to see the codes because the position applied for was financed by the DOE and so the school used the Galaxy system and could check the prospective employee’s file.”
Attorneys for the city did not deny the veracity of this information in court.
Kane wrote, “Attorney Susan Paulson who was defending NYC stated that educators fired for declining COVID vaccination were not removed for misconduct, but rather for not meeting a requirement for employment.”
“If there was no misconduct, why are unvaccinated educators’ fingerprints sent to the FBI?” asked Kane.
Kane: Refusing vaccination isn’t ‘extremist’
Kane told The Defender that Teachers For Choice will attempt to work with city officials to discover the facts surrounding the assignment of the codes and the sharing of this information with the FBI, including determining who authorized these actions.
He told The Defender:
“The first thing we’re doing is we’re working with the Common-Sense Caucus in City Hall to get them to investigate. We need an investigation. I have my speculation of what’s going on, but the truth is we don’t know what’s going on. Who gave the order for these problem codes to be given simply for the fact that we’re declining COVID vaccination? Why did they do that? And have our civil rights been hurt because of it? I think they have.
“So right now, I think we need an investigation, because there’s lots of speculation happening and we need to get to the bottom of what really happened.”
The Common-Sense Caucus is an officially recognized caucus within the New York City Council.
Kane said it is composed primarily of Republicans and has “been the only voice against mandates in New York City governance.”
“We’ve been working closely with them, and they’ve been really pushing Mayor Eric Adams to be reasonable and to hear our concerns,” Kane said.
He said legal action is a strong possibility, but they will give Adams and the city an opportunity to respond first. He said:
“Right now we need to see if there will be any investigation into this, and we need to give New York City and Mayor Adams a chance to reply correctly. There’s a chance he didn’t do this. There’s a chance this happened from the previous administration, from Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“Letters need to be written, requests need to be made, and that may or may not lead to litigation. We have to see, because if the city complies and, and tries to work to fix this problem, I think that would be great. But we don’t know yet. It’s too early in the process.”
Kane also wrote that by sending biometric data about unvaccinated teachers to the FBI, “NYC educators were being set up to be viewed as ‘right-wing extremists’ or even ‘terrorists.’”
“Educators who declined COVID vaccination — including myself — had every right to do so,” Kane wrote. “No one is a ‘terrorist’ or ‘extremist’ for holding the line on what does and does not go inside of their bodies — especially injected directly into their muscle tissue,” he added.
Teachers fired by the DOE because they declined the COVID-19 vaccine may face a difficult time being rehired by the city, despite the city’s claims that such workers can reapply for employment now that the vaccine mandate for city employees has been rescinded.
Kane said “reapplication definitely could be problematic” for these individuals. But he also noted, “The city is bleeding for employees. They’re desperately dying for people to take jobs. So yes, I think it will hurt many, but I think the city is hurting way more right now.”
As previously reported by The Defender, the U.S. House of Representatives has convened a Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, investigating claims that agencies such as the FBI collected information on and in some cases harassed ordinary Americans for their beliefs on topics such as COVID-19.
Kane wrote that such practices in New York City are not new. DNA specimens of city employees collected from COVID-19 tests were cataloged in proprietary libraries owned by Fulgent Genetics, the company contracted by de Blasio to administer the tests. [MORE]
According to Dr Robert Malone the US Government is Tracking People Who Refused to Get COVID Shots or People Who Are Partially Jabbed through CDC Surveillance Program
/
Story at a glance:
The U.S. government has secretly been tracking those who didn’t get the COVID jab, or are only partially jabbed, through a previously unknown surveillance program designed by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The program was implemented on April 1, 2022, and adopted by most medical clinics and hospitals across the U.S. until January 2023.
Under this program, doctors at clinics and hospitals have been instructed to ask patients about their vaccination status, which is then added to their electronic medical records as a diagnostic code, known as the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) code, so that they can be tracked inside and outside of the medical system.
These new ICD-10 codes are part of the government’s plan to implement medical tyranny using vaccine passports and digital IDs.
They’re also tracking noncompliance with all other recommended vaccines using new ICD-10 codes, and have implemented codes to describe WHY you didn’t get a recommended vaccine. They’ve also added a billable ICD code for “vaccine safety counseling.”
From [HERE] As recently discovered and reported by Dr. Robert Malone, the U.S. government has secretly been tracking those who didn’t get the COVID jab, or are only partially jabbed, through a previously unknown surveillance program designed by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The program was implemented on April 1, 2022, but didn’t become universally adopted by most medical clinics and hospitals across the U.S. until January 2023.
Under this program, doctors at clinics and hospitals have been instructed to ask patients about their vaccination status, which is then added to their electronic medical records as a diagnostic code, known as the ICD-10 code, without their knowledge or consent so that they can be tracked — not just within the health care system but outside of it as well.
Secret tracking program revealed
The new ICD codes were introduced during the Sept. 14-15, 2021, ICD-10 Coordination and Maintenance Committee meeting. The ICD committee includes representatives from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the NCHS.
Below is a screenshot of page 194 of the agenda distributed during that meeting.
According to the NCHS, “there is interest in being able to track people who are not immunized or only partially immunized,” and they figured out a way to do just that, by adding new ICD-10 codes.
As you can see below, ICD-10 code Z28.310 identifies those who have not received a COVID jab and Z28.311 identifies those who are not up-to-date on their shots.
Tracking unjabbed is part of the biosecurity agenda
Why do they want to track the unvaccinated? For what purpose? The short answer: to facilitate the implementation of vaccine passports.
As noted by Malone:
“Code Number Z28.310 listed above is not a code for an illness or diagnosis, but rather for non-compliance of a medical procedure … Once a person’s vaccination status is coded and uploaded into large data base, it can be accessed by government and private health insurers alike.
“The administrative state officers at the CDC have not made immunization status a reportable disease (yet) but immunization status is listed as one of the reasons for mandatory reporting. They are just one step away from being able to collect this information without your permission. Ergo: vaccine passports made easy. In this country, not having your vaccine records ‘up-to-date’ might mean:
The government will not restrict your travel, airlines will.
The government will not restrict your travel, other nations will.
The government will not restrict your travel, auto rental companies will.
The government will not restrict your travel, public transport will.
The government will not restrict your travel, private companies will.”
World Health Organization signed off on tracking codes
The ICD codes were created by the World Health Organization (WHO) and doctors — with the exception of those in private practice who don’t accept insurance — are required to use these codes to describe a patient’s condition and the care they received during their visit. [MORE]
A Top Chinese Authority Calls the US Balloon Response ‘Hysterical’ and an Effort “to Divert Attention From Its Domestic Problems”
/From [HERE] China’s top foreign policy official on Saturday mocked America’s response to a recent Chinese spy balloon overflight, calling the U.S. actions “absurd and hysterical” and an effort “to divert attention from its domestic problems.”
The official, Wang Yi, the Chinese Communist Party’s senior member for foreign affairs, repeated his government’s claim that the balloon, which flew over several U.S. states this month before President Biden ordered it shot down, was a “civilian” craft blown off course by high winds.
He made the remarks in a speech to the Munich Security Conference, which has been largely focused on Ukraine, as suspense mounted over whether he might meet on the sidelines with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. It would be the first high-level diplomatic exchange between Washington and Beijing since Mr. Blinken canceled a planned trip to China over the balloon episode.
The balloon episode has heightened U.S.-China tensions at a time when the relationship was already at one of its lowest points in decades. American officials say the balloon carried visible equipment that “was clearly for intelligence surveillance,” part of a global surveillance fleet directed by China’s military. [MORE]
Banks Borrow Unsecured Cash at Record Clip While Deposits Flee Deposits at US lenders fell in 2 consecutive quarters last year for the 1st Time in Over a Decade
/From [HERE] Banks were chasing away deposits during the depths of the pandemic. Now, some are paying higher rates to shore up cash.
Borrowing in the federal-funds market hit $120 billion on Jan. 27, the highest one-day total in Federal Reserve data going back to 2016. Activity in fed funds—used by banks and government-backed lenders to exchange cash reserves parked at the Fed—surged throughout the past year when the central bank raised interest rates at the fastest pace in decades.
Some banks are scrambling to borrow, looking to improve their liquidity and satisfy regulatory requirements while customers pull cash from savings accounts in search of higher-yielding products.
The typical fed-funds trade involves a Federal Home Loan Bank, or FHLB, lending cash overnight to a commercial bank. The government-sponsored entities, designed to support mortgage lending during the Great Depression, can’t earn interest by leaving funds at the Fed as banks can, so they lend their excess cash to banks without requiring securities to back the loan.
The identities of the banks involved aren’t public. Traditionally, most borrowers have been foreign banks looking to make a few extra bucks by borrowing cheaply in fed funds, then leaving that cash at the Fed to earn more interest. Now, more U.S. banks are dipping in, according to Bank of America, likely because such borrowing is looked upon favorably by regulators.
Aggressive bidding by a subset of commercial banks has jacked up the cost of the priciest fed-funds transactions, New York Fed data show. The highest borrowing rates are 0.15 percentage point above the Fed’s target range—now between 4.5% and 4.75%—and more than 0.3 point from the median, or the effective fed-funds rate. Essentially all trades were priced below the target range until October, before which no measurable portion had breached it since March 2020. [MORE]
Seymour Hersh on the Nord Stream Pipeline Attack
/From [HERE] The New York Times called it a “mystery,” but the United States executed a covert sea operation that was kept secret—until now
The U.S. Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center can be found in a location as obscure as its name—down what was once a country lane in rural Panama City, a now-booming resort city in the southwestern panhandle of Florida, 70 miles south of the Alabama border. The center’s complex is as nondescript as its location—a drab concrete post-World War II structure that has the look of a vocational high school on the west side of Chicago. A coin-operated laundromat and a dance school are across what is now a four-lane road.
The center has been training highly skilled deep-water divers for decades who, once assigned to American military units worldwide, are capable of technical diving to do the good—using C4 explosives to clear harbors and beaches of debris and unexploded ordnance—as well as the bad, like blowing up foreign oil rigs, fouling intake valves for undersea power plants, destroying locks on crucial shipping canals. The Panama City center, which boasts the second largest indoor pool in America, was the perfect place to recruit the best, and most taciturn, graduates of the diving school who successfully did last summer what they had been authorized to do 260 feet under the surface of the Baltic Sea.
Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.
Two of the pipelines, which were known collectively as Nord Stream 1, had been providing Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas for more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, called Nord Stream 2, had been built but were not yet operational. Now, with Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border and the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945 looming, President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponize natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions.
Asked for comment, Adrienne Watson, a White House spokesperson, said in an email, “This is false and complete fiction.” Tammy Thorp, a spokesperson for the Central Intelligence Agency, similarly wrote: “This claim is completely and utterly false.”
Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible.
There was a vital bureaucratic reason for relying on the graduates of the center’s hardcore diving school in Panama City. The divers were Navy only, and not members of America’s Special Operations Command, whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance to the Senate and House leadership—the so-called Gang of Eight. The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks as the planning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022.
President Biden and his foreign policy team—National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Victoria Nuland, the Undersecretary of State for Policy—had been vocal and consistent in their hostility to the two pipelines, which ran side by side for 750 miles under the Baltic Sea from two different ports in northeastern Russia near the Estonian border, passing close to the Danish island of Bornholm before ending in northern Germany.
The direct route, which bypassed any need to transit Ukraine, had been a boon for the German economy, which enjoyed an abundance of cheap Russian natural gas—enough to run its factories and heat its homes while enabling German distributors to sell excess gas, at a profit, throughout Western Europe. Action that could be traced to the administration would violate US promises to minimize direct conflict with Russia. Secrecy was essential.
From its earliest days, Nord Stream 1 was seen by Washington and its anti-Russian NATO partners as a threat to western dominance. The holding company behind it, Nord Stream AG, was incorporated in Switzerland in 2005 in partnership with Gazprom, a publicly traded Russian company producing enormous profits for shareholders which is dominated by oligarchs known to be in the thrall of Putin. Gazprom controlled 51 percent of the company, with four European energy firms—one in France, one in the Netherlands and two in Germany—sharing the remaining 49 percent of stock, and having the right to control downstream sales of the inexpensive natural gas to local distributors in Germany and Western Europe. Gazprom’s profits were shared with the Russian government, and state gas and oil revenues were estimated in some years to amount to as much as 45 percent of Russia’s annual budget.
America’s political fears were real: Putin would now have an additional and much-needed major source of income, and Germany and the rest of Western Europe would become addicted to low-cost natural gas supplied by Russia—while diminishing European reliance on America. In fact, that’s exactly what happened. Many Germans saw Nord Stream 1 as part of the deliverance of former Chancellor Willy Brandt’s famed Ostpolitik theory, which would enable postwar Germany to rehabilitate itself and other European nations destroyed in World War II by, among other initiatives, utilizing cheap Russian gas to fuel a prosperous Western European market and trading economy. [MORE]
Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee Files Bid for Open Senate seat in California
/From [HERE] Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee filed paperwork Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission to run for US Senate in California, setting up her entrance into a primary that’s shaping up to be competitive and crowded.
Lee hasn’t made an official announcement yet, and a spokeswoman told The Associated Press that Lee “is filing preparatory paperwork and her announcement will come before the end of the month.” Her filing comes one day after longtime Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein announced that she would not be seeking reelection next year.
When she does formally join the race, Lee will face off with two other prominent Democratic contenders who announced Senate bids earlier this year, Reps. Adam Schiff and Katie Porter. Under California’s primary system, all candidates run on the same ballot, with the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advancing to the general election.
According to her most recent FEC filing, Lee had just $52,000 in cash on hand entering 2023, putting her at a disadvantage compared with her well-funded rivals. Schiff – who’s also been endorsed by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – had more than $20 million stockpiled at the end of the year, while Porter had more than $7.4 million. [MORE]
ACLU Lawsuit Claims Kansas Highway Patrol Unlawfully Stop, Detain and Search Drivers with Out-of-State License Plates or Persons Traveling to or from Colorado
/From [HERE] Curtis Martinez stood on the side of Interstate 70 with his brother, shaking his head as a police canine sniffed out his car.
The Denver, Colorado, resident said he was commuting to Kansas City, Missouri, for work when he was stopped by a Kansas Highway Patrol (KHP) trooper for an expired license plate.
He was given a ticket and assumed that would be the end of it.
Instead, as Martinez started to pull away, he says the officer pivoted back to Martinez and asked if he could question him further.
“He said, ‘Do you have any drugs or guns in your car?’” Martinez said.
Martinez said he told the trooper he did not have any drugs in the car.
“‘Well, you don’t mind if I take a look in your car then,’” Martinez recalled the trooper saying. “I said, ‘Yes, I do mind if you take a look in my car. I don’t have time for that,’ and he said, ‘Well, go ahead and pull over. You’re being detained.’”
Martinez and his brother would be detained for more than an hour after that original stop without yielding any additional charges or tickets. That’s why he called FOX4 Problem Solvers in September.
Class action lawsuit against ‘Kansas Two Step’
According to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the trooper used a tactic referred to as the “Kansas Two Step,” in which troopers target motorists with out-of-state license plates or those traveling to or from Colorado, where recreational marijuana is legal.
The “Kansas Two Step” involves unlawfully detaining drivers with questions about travel plans without consent or reasonable suspicion of criminal activity after the initial purpose of the stop was resolved, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit says the technique is designed to break off the initial traffic detention and re-engage the driver in what could be interpreted as a separate consensual encounter.
“They use traffic stops in order to get to bigger issues,” said Jay Norton, a criminal defense attorney in Johnson County, Kansas. “That’s kind of the game that they’re playing.”
Ultimately, Martinez was given a ticket and released, but he said officers never explained their reasonable suspicion for searching his vehicle in the first place, something he said made him feel targeted and discriminated against.
Martinez said he started recording the encounter on his own phone once the canine unit arrived. However, the footage doesn’t show the highway patrol trooper that pulled him over performing the alleged two-step tactic.
“He (one of the officers) wanted to put us in handcuffs and take our phones away so we couldn’t record,” Martinez said. “Luckily, that didn’t happen.”
FOX4 Problem Solvers requested body camera and dashboard camera footage of the traffic stop after Martinez attempted to request it, but was denied.
Both KHP and the Riley County Police Department refused to release the video, claiming the footage is considered a criminal investigative record under the Kansas Open Records Act.
“Specifically, if the footage were released, it would reveal confidential investigative techniques or procedures that are not known to the general public,” Riley County stated in an email.
But what police tactics are Kansas officers using that they don’t want the public to know about? And what is it about these procedures that makes them so secretive?
“It just makes no sense to me,” Martinez said. “What are they trying to hide?”
Problem Solvers contacted KHP twice via email for a statement but they said they cannot comment on ongoing litigation or the processes and procedures that relate to pending litigation.
The unlevel playing field
Martinez said the trooper who stopped him claimed he was apprehensive because Martinez took an exit onto a desolate country road. Martinez said he was unfamiliar with the area and simply looking for a place to get gas.
“I felt harassed,” Martinez said. “I felt, you know, demoralized. I felt like he just invaded all of my rights, all of my personal rights at that point.”
He said he was then told to wait 30 more minutes as KHP called the Riley County Police Department for backup, who eventually arrived with canines to perform a vehicle search.
Attorney Norton said traffic law is rigged in favor of law enforcement.
“Freedom is an illusion. It’s a story that we tell ourselves about our society, but the bottom line is, it is a game and the game is completely rigged,” Norton said.
“It’s completely rigged against the little person, the citizen, and the only way that an average citizen can hope to possibly, maybe get a level playing field is to hire an attorney and have next to unlimited resources to go fight the government, who does have unlimited resources, tooth and nail over these minor issues.”
Norton said he believes troopers are anticipating interactions with citizens who don’t fully understand their own rights.
“They want to protect the game that they’re playing,” he said. “They want to make sure that your average citizen is in the dark as much as possible as to what their rights are, and in the dark as to what techniques and tactics law enforcement is gonna use to try to get them to give up those rights.”
Josh Pierson, senior staff attorney with the ACLU, said the bar for reasonable suspicion is incredibly low.
“It’s a very low bar, and the courts actually generally defer to the officers,” Pierson said. “But it’s not just whatever they say it is, and the Fourth Amendment does impose a limitation, as it was designed to do, on officers’ ability to just keep people detained without probable cause or without a warrant.”
Norton said confusion surrounding reasonable suspicion leads to confusion among both parties, the officer and the citizen, during a traffic stop. It’s something he considers dangerous.
“Nobody knows really what the contours of the Fourth Amendment are going to be in any given situation, including the police. They don’t always know what they can and can’t do, and I think that that is bad for the Fourth Amendment,” he said.
“There are other constitutional amendments that people adamantly and fiercely protect, like the Second Amendment. Nobody’s sitting around saying, ‘Well, this should be nuanced, whether you have the right to possess and bear arms.’ Everybody’s saying that’s a firm, clear, bright line, constitutional rule. Why is the Fourth Amendment different?”
Kansas civil forfeitures
The ACLU lawsuit suggests that the two-step technique serves as a fishing expedition for money.
The lawsuit alleges 96% of KHP’s civil asset forfeitures in 2019 involved out-of-state motorists driving on Interstate 70. In 2017, drivers with out-of-state plates comprised 93% of KHP traffic stops.
“The state troopers in western Kansas know that there are people going to Colorado, buying marijuana and taking it through Kansas to other states or to somewhere in Kansas,” Norton said. “When it becomes legal in Missouri, it’ll be the same situation.”
Norton said traffic stops are a profitable business for troopers because when officers confiscate property from a driver’s vehicle, they sell the items, and use the money to fund law enforcement.
“They’re fishing, and the idea is to catch fish and, you know, now they’ve got good bait,” he said.
Pierson said what happened to Martinez is happening to others as well, something that can breach the relationship between law enforcement and the people.
“I would like to think that we could have a transparent relationship — we, the public, with law enforcement — and that there wouldn’t be need for tricks and devices and strategies like this for them to do their job,” he said.
What are my rights during a Kansas traffic stop?
Norton said every citizen has the right to remain silent and not answer questions during an encounter with law enforcement. But he acknowledged there’s often a power dynamic that makes people feel like they can’t.
“Nobody feels like they can ignore a police officer and just drive away or walk away from a police officer that’s asking, ‘Can I talk to you?’” he said.
Pierson said officers have to have an articulable reasonable suspicion to detain you, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have to communicate their suspicion to the driver.
“There’s nothing (in the law) that requires the officer to tell you what the reasonable suspicion is either and who are you to ask? If an officer were to volunteer it, that would be fine, and in fact, it’s not even a subjective standard,” he said.
“What I mean by that is the officer can be wrong or mistaken or be using factors that they’re not supposed to be using even, but so long as a lawyer can come in after the fact and say objectively ‘any reasonable officer would have found reasonable suspicion here,’ then the courts will generally say that that’s OK.”
Norton said the majority of drivers will never have a chance to seek justice for an illegal detention, as there are too many barriers associated with litigation.
This makes the potential for illegal detainment during a traffic stop all the more daunting.
“You can file a lawsuit, but who has time for that?” he said. “Usually people just go home and are glad they didn’t get thrown into jail, that there wasn’t something found or planted or whatever.”
In the meantime, people like Martinez, and the other two individuals represented in the ACLU’s lawsuit, are doing just that — spending a lot of time and a lot of money trying to navigate a way to vindicate their rights.
“You feel like you’re an ant standing next to a human, you know, because you try to be as calm as you can and you try to say what you think is right and it’s never right, you know?” Martinez said.
“The justice system is, unfortunately, backwards, you know, and you think you can count on these cops and troopers to do right and they still want to hit that quota or whatever the case may be, you know, to make themselves look better and to catch something that’s not really there.
“It’s like, it’s just demoralizing. It makes you feel like less of a human being just because they have a badge and a gun.”
Charges Dropped Against Black Journalist Arrested by White Cops While Covering Ohio Train Derailment
/From [HERE] Criminal charges filed against NewsNation reporter Evan Lambert were dismissed after police officers in East Palestine, Ohio arrested him on Feb. 8.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said Wednesday (Feb. 15) that he dropped the case after his office reviewed video and documentary evidence. Lambert was charged with misdemeanors for resisting arrest and criminal trespassing.
“While journalists could conceivably be subject to criminal charges for trespassing in some situations, this incident is not one of them,” Yost said in a statement. “The reporter was lawfully present at a press conference called by the Governor of the state. His conduct was consistent with the purpose of the event and his role as a reporter.”
Lambert and other reporters were covering Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s news conference to update local residents about the status of a derailed train transporting toxic chemicals. The event started about two hours late, causing a conflict with Lambert’s scheduled live NewsNation report.
CBS News Pittsburgh reported that the police said Lambert was talking loudly while on air from the back of the school gymnasium where the press conference was taking place. Body camera footage showed that state national guard commander Maj. Gen. John Harris confronted and pointed a finger at Lambert before pushing the reporter with one hand in the chest. Lambert responded by pointing and talking back to Harris in what became a heated exchange.
Authorities said Lambert was told to leave the news conference but refused several times. Two officers handcuffed Lambert and escorted him to a police SUV. Lambert is Black and the officers are white.
In his statement, Yost said tensions were high following the derailment and the police appeared to be following the lead of the National Guard.
“Regardless of the intent, arresting a journalist reporting at a press conference is a serious matter,” Yost said. “Ohio protects a free press under its constitution, and state officials should remember to exercise a heightened level of restraint in using arrest powers.”
Latino Defendants in Colorado are More Likely to be Incarcerated than White Defendants, according to study
/From [HERE] A first-in-the-nation study by eight Colorado district attorney’s offices shows that Hispanic defendants are more likely to be sentenced to jail or prison than white defendants who are facing similar charges and have similar criminal histories.
The study, released Wednesday, looked at criminal prosecutions by the Denver District Attorney’s Office and seven other DA’s offices across the state, including in Boulder, Jefferson, Arapahoe, Douglas, Larimer, Summit, Eagle, Gunnison and La Plata counties, among others.
The effort examined at least 327,000 cases filed and resolved between 2017 and mid-2022, with some district attorney’s offices studying shorter timeframes within that six-year window. The researchers controlled for factors such as defendants’ ages, criminal history, gender and severity of charges to try to pinpoint how each defendant’s race impacts the court process.
“It helps us more compare apples to apples,” said Lauren Gase, project director for the Colorado Prosecutorial Dashboard Project, which launched in September with eight district attorney’s offices and is now adding another five offices to the endeavor.
The study focused on points in a criminal case in which prosecutors can influence the outcome, including charge reductions and plea offers, dismissals and sentencing. The researchers found different areas of disparity in various offices.
In Denver, white defendants were more likely to see drug charges reduced from felonies to misdemeanors or from misdemeanors to petty offenses than similarly situated Black defendants, the research showed, with about 57% of white defendants likely seeing a reduction compared to 48% of Black defendants and 52% of Hispanic defendants.
Denver District Attorney Beth McCann said in a statement Wednesday that the finding was “of concern” and needs further review. In other counties, like Arapahoe, Douglas and Boulder, white defendants were more likely to be given deferred judgments than similar Black defendants. Deferred judgments allow defendants to have the cases against them dismissed if they comply with various court-set criteria for a specified amount of time.
The disparities need further study to determine why the differences exist, said Chris Wilcox, 18th Judicial District senior chief deputy district attorney. And there are some limitations in the study, Gase cautioned. In particular, she noted that the criminal history control is limited because it only includes prior charges from the eight judicial districts that participated in the study, not from other areas in the state or places outside Colorado.
“It’s also important to read the data in a broader context,” Wilcox said. “For example, a Black defendant is more likely to have their case dismissed in its entirety, but less likely to receive a deferred judgment.”
Across seven of the eight district attorney’s offices studied, Hispanic people were more likely to be sentenced to jail or prison than similarly situated white or Black defendants. Denver’s office did not release that dataset.
In the Fifth Judicial District, which includes Eagle, Summit, Lake and Clear Creek counties, 54% of Hispanic defendants were likely to be sentenced to jail or prison on a felony charge, compared to 41% of similar white defendants, the research showed. In property crimes, 39% of Hispanic defendants were likely to be incarcerated, compared to 30% of white defendants. Considering all cases between June 2018 and June 2022, 19% of Hispanic defendants in the Fifth Judicial District were likely to be sentenced to incarceration, compared to 16% of white defendants.
“What the data is currently showing us is that the only difference is race,” said Fifth Judicial District Attorney Heidi McCollum. “And that is absolutely concerning to us. We are aware of that disparity and we are continuing to delve deeper as to what is causing this… Whatever it is, we want to make sure that similarly situated defendants are treated equally.”
She said her office plans to examine what factors might be impacting the disparity, and noted that very few Spanish-speaking defendants participate in the district’s recovery courts — special courts focused on helping those with drug and alcohol addictions avoid jail in favor of recovery through peer counseling, support groups and therapy.
“Whether or not those services are able to be provided in any particular defendant’s native language is something we’re looking into,” she said. “Do I think a language barrier would account for 100% of the disparity we are seeing? I don’t think so. But until we delve further into this data, I don’t want to speculate on what the reasons are. I want to get to the bottom of it.”
More severe sentencing for Hispanic defendants was seen to varying degrees across all seven offices that published the data. Christian Gardner-Wood, chief deputy district attorney in Boulder County, said Wednesday that the office is also planning further study.
“The big question for us is why is that number higher for Hispanic defendants, and we don’t know the answer,” he said. “That’s really the next step for us, one to deal with the disparities, to do training for our staff, we’re looking at screening better for diversion, but we also, as a next step, want to do more data analysis and continue to be data-informed and data-driven.”
Sentences are handed down by judges, who consider input from both the prosecution and defense when determining whether someone should go to jail and for how long.
Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said the court system reflects broader ingrained societal racism.
“A lot of the data you are looking at here is exactly what you would expect for any jurisdiction in the United States,” Dougherty said. “Every single jurisdiction in the United States. The difference is here in Colorado we are pulling the curtain back and actually doing something about it ourselves.” [MORE]
NYT Analysis Finds The High Cost of Living, Unsafe Neighborhoods, Uncontrollable Police and Poor Schools is Causing a Mass Exodus of Black Families from NYC- a City Run by White Liberals
/The NYT has report “an exodus of Black residents from New York City. From 2010 to 2020, a decade during which the city’s population showed a surprising increase led by a surge in Asian and Hispanic residents, the number of Black residents decreased. The decline mirrored a national trend of younger Black professionals, middle-class families and retirees leaving cities in the Northeast and Midwest for the South.
The city’s Black population has declined by nearly 200,000 people in the past two decades, or about 9 percent. Now, about one in five residents are non-Hispanic Black, compared with one in four in 2000, according to the latest census data.
The decline is starkest among the youngest New Yorkers: The number of Black children and teenagers living in the city fell more than 19 percent from 2010 to 2020. And the decline is continuing, school enrollment data suggests. Schools have lost children in all demographic groups, but the loss of Black children has been much steeper as families have left and as the birthrate among Black women has decreased.
The factors propelling families like the Rodneys out of the city are myriad, including concerns about school quality, a desire to be closer to relatives and tight urban living conditions. But many of those interviewed for this article pointed to one main cause: the ever-increasing cost of raising a family in New York.” [MORE]
NYPD Civilian Review Board Finds 146 Cops Engaged in Misconduct to Silence People Protesting the Police Murders of Black People. But No Cops Charged w/Crimes or Fired in City Run by White Liberals
/
From [HERE] The Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) took 590 pages to tell the tale of NYPD misconduct during the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement. The official police watchdog’s report—published this past Monday, Feb. 6—substantiated allegations against 146 individual officers during the protests following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.
“The Black Lives Matter Protests that occurred in the summer of 2020 were massive in scale, but not unprecedented in nature,” said CCRB Interim Chair Arva Rice in a statement. “Given what is happening across the country regarding reproductive rights, immigration, affordable housing and police brutality, people will continue to protest for their rights.
“It is key for New York to know how to best respond to protests, especially protests against police misconduct. It is also of the utmost importance that officers be held accountable in order to rebuild the public’s trust in the NYPD.”
The CCRB received more than 750 complaints over misconduct stemming from the George Floyd protests and that 226 of them have been fully investigated so far. Of those, 88 complaints carrying 269 individual allegations against the 146 officers were substantiated. More than half of the substantiated allegations involved excessive force, most with a baton or pepper spray. Rice later told the Amsterdam News such a report was essential for New Yorkers to feel safe about protesting police brutality without becoming subject to it.
“Being able to put together concrete cases of those times when there was misconduct that took place and to be able to put out a set of recommendations, I think is very strong for our city and we want to make sure that the police department hears us and is able to implement the recommendations that we laid out,” she said.
Such recommendations include updating crowd control training, designating medical treatment areas and providing voucher cards when property is seized. In addition, the CCRB suggests common-sense practices like not taking action against protesters who are compliant and dispersing, and not interfering with outside observers and members of the media.
“Many of the demonstrations were so dynamic and shifted, and were hard to predict as far as how many people [there] would be, what strategies would be involved in some of these demonstrations,” said retired detective Marq Claxton. “You caught the police department [at] the heels, and I think a lot of individual police officers may have been overcompensating for being caught off-guard and being under-resourced.”
But even after a 590-page report, there are still loose ends in the CCRB’s investigation. Rice says there are 59 unidentified officers in the received complaints, in addition to potential unreported victims. She cites failures to log officer activity properly and enforce proper identification and body-worn camera use as major roadblocks to a complete picture of misconduct during the George Floyd protests.
“Not being able to see officers’ badges and covering their badges [so] somebody couldn’t figure out who they were, the paperwork was sloppy, so we couldn’t figure out who was assigned to which march on any given day [and] the equipment wasn’t assigned correctly,” said Rice. “All those things made it hard, and all of this in the midst of a pandemic [make it moreso].”
Preliminary data from the protests show Black New Yorkers only made 12% of complaints about police misconduct during the George Floyd protests despite making the most overall complaints to the CCRB in 2020. While the CCRB stressed inconclusive findings, Rice recalls a 2020 rally led by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams she attended as the first Black Lives Matter protest with majority white participants. Claxton adds some organizations purposely put white protesters at the forefront to defend and protect their Black counterparts from police misconduct.
After the report, the CCRB can only make recommendations to Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell for discipline, so the ball is now in the NYPD’s court. Of the 146 officers, 89 are recommended for charges and specifications, which are reserved for the most serious allegations of misconduct and can result in revoked vacation days, suspension or termination if the department finds them guilty, according to the city’s website.
And the police are pushing back against the CCRB. The NYPD issued a response from acting Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters Carrie Talansky shortly after the report’s publication, claiming some of the findings and recommendations are obsolete or redundant. The letter says the NYPD assessed its crowd control strategies in April 2021 and said most uniformed service members received amended training by the end of that year.
The Police Benevolent Association of New York City (PBA), the union representing most NYPD members, criticized the CCRB’s report and defended the officers’ actions.
“Once again, the anti-cop activists at CCRB are trying to pin the blame on individual police officers for management failures and the chaos created by violent agitators,” said PBA President Pat Lynch in a statement. “We are still awaiting ‘accountability’ for the city leaders who sent us out with no plan and no support, and for the criminals who injured more than 400 of our brothers and sisters.”
The NYPD similarly blamed the hostile conditions for officers during the protests, commending them for the low percentage of substantiated allegations in the complaints made.
Still, disciplinary recommendations by the CCRB are frequently waved off by the department. Only Daniel Pantaleo, who killed Eric Garner in 2014, was fired by the NYPD due to the board’s investigation. In 2020, the New York Times reported the department regularly rejects a majority of the CCRB’s disciplinary recommendations for serious misconduct.
“That is a challenge, because as a civilian complaint review board, we believe that we should be able to have a recommendation that is final,” said Rice. “The final arbiter for discipline in the NYPD is the police commissioner and we believe that [it] should rest with CCRB.”
The New York City Council also responded to the report, acknowledging some of the disciplinary measures made against the offending officers but demanded further accountability. It also mentioned NYPD responsibility for body-worn camera failures and the lack of EMT support.
“The CCRB’s report outlines misconduct and obstruction with investigatory efforts that must be addressed,” said Speaker Adrienne Adams. “Independent investigatory bodies need to have better access to body camera footage and compliance from the NYPD to investigate civilian complaints. The CCRB must play a vital role in police accountability that ensures public trust, and this will also require resolution of the agency’s understaffing. The Council will continue reviewing the report and consider legislative policy changes to help prevent these same issues from occurring in the future.”
The watchdog celebrates three decades as an independent agency this year. The CCRB was initially divorced from the NYPD by the city’s first Black mayor, David Dinkins, a decision met with a police-led riot—that included PBA leaders and Rudy Giuliani—that the city’s second and current Black mayor Eric Adams has likened to the Jan. 6 United States Capitol insurrection.
Documents Show Pipeline Companies Paid Minnesota Police Millions of Dollars to “Police” Protests Against Them
/From [HERE] The morning of June 7, 2021, Sheriff’s Deputy Chuck Nelson of Beltrami County, Minnesota, bought water and refreshments, packed his gear, and prepared for what would be, in his own words, “a long day.” For over six months, Indigenous-led opponents of the Line 3 project had been participating in acts of civil disobedience to disrupt construction of the tar sands oil pipeline, arguing that it would pollute water, exacerbate the climate crisis, and violate treaties with the Anishinaabe people. Officers like Nelson were stuck in the middle of a conflict, sworn to protect the rights of both the pipeline company Enbridge and its opponents.
Nelson drove 30 minutes to Hubbard County, where he and officers from 14 different police and sheriff’s departments confronted around 500 protesters, known as water protectors, occupying a pipeline pump station. The deputy spent his day detaching people who had locked themselves to equipment as fire departments and ambulances stood by. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection helicopter swooped low, kicking dust over the demonstrators, and officers deployed a sound cannon known as a Long Range Acoustic Device in attempts to disperse the crowd.
By the end of the day, 186 people had been detained in the largest mass-arrest of the opposition movement. Some officers stuck around to process arrests, while others stopped for snacks at a gas station or ordered Chinese takeout before crashing at a nearby motel.
These latter details might be considered irrelevant, except for the fact that the police and emergency workers’ takeout, motel rooms, riot gear, gas, wages, and trainings were paid for by one side of the dispute — the fossil fuel company building the pipeline, which spent more than $79,000 on policing that day alone.
When the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission gave Enbridge permission in 2020 to replace its corroded Line 3 pipeline and double its capacity, it included an unusual condition in the permit: Enbridge would pay the police as they responded to the acts of civil disobedience that the project would surely spark. The pipeline company’s money would be funneled to law enforcement and other government agencies via a Public Safety Escrow Account managed by the state.
By the time construction finished in fall 2021, prosecutors had filed 967 criminal cases related to pipeline protests, and police had submitted hundreds of receipts and invoices to the Enbridge-funded escrow account, seeking reimbursement. Through a public records request, Grist and the Center for Media and Democracy have obtained and reviewed every one of those invoices, providing the most complete picture yet of the ways the pipeline company paid for the arrests of its opponents — and much more.
From pizza and “Pipeline Punch” energy drinks, to porta potties, riot suits, zip ties, and salaries, Enbridge poured a total of $8.6 million into 97 public agencies, from the northern Minnesota communities that the pipeline intersected to southern counties from which deputies traveled hours to help quell demonstrations.
By far the biggest set of expenses reimbursed from the Enbridge escrow account was over $5 million for wages, meals, lodging, mileage, and other contingencies as police and emergency workers responded to protests during construction. Over $1.3 million each went toward equipment and planning, including dozens of training sessions. Enbridge also reimbursed nearly a quarter million dollars for the cost of responding to pipeline-related human trafficking and sexual violence. [MORE]
“Right To Movement Palestine” Commends South African Rugby Union for Disinviting Israel Team Due To Its Apartheid State: Palestinians are Denied the Right to Train, Play and Compete in Racist Country
/From [HERE] Dear South African Rugby Union,
We are writing to you as athletes and sports lovers from Right to Movement Palestine - a grassroots campaign that uses sports to demand an end to the apartheid regime that we are forced to live under in colonized Palestine.
We understand that the South African Rugby Union (SARU) has withdrawn the invitation to a team representing Apartheid Israel – the Tel Aviv Heat – which was to participate in the upcoming Mzansi Challenge in South Africa, kicking off on 24 March 2023. We are writing to affirm SARU did the right thing!
Sports in general and rugby specifically upholds values of solidarity and respect and it continues to be a driving force for people around the world to play, watch, and support. However, these values are profoundly contrast with a team that aims to sportswash and represents Israel’s apartheid regime which imposes a “cruel system of domination” by treating Indigenous Palestinians as an inferior racial group, as documented by Amnesty International.
Palestinian athletes, like all Palestinians, are forced to live in exile or under the brutal oppression of Israel’s apartheid regime. Across all sports, we are denied the right to train, play, and compete together due to apartheid Israel-imposed fragmentation. Palestinians are killed and maimed by Israeli soldiers, arrested at military checkpoints, and prevented from traveling to matches and tournaments, whether within Palestine or abroad. Palestinian sporting matches are raided by armed Israeli soldiers and our facilities are bombed by Israeli fighter jets. Our own marathon must be run in laps because Israel’s apartheid infrastructure denies us the space to run freely.
And this was all before Israel’s most openly racist, far-right and fundamentalist government came into power, already keeping its promise to escalate the violent oppression of Palestinians.
As South Africans, you know how oppressive regimes cynically use sports in an attempt to whitewash and divert attention away from their human rights violations. Apartheid South Africa was engaged in sportswashing in its own day. Apartheid Israel uses that same playbook today.
As South Africans, you also know just how important effective global solidarity was in defeating the apartheid regime in your own country. As Palestinians, we are asking for that same effective solidarity and we are grateful about your decision. We are inspired by the South African people’s longstanding support for people's rights everywhere. We are equally inspired by the unprecedented number of active teams and athletes across the world who are standing on the right side of history and refusing to sportswash Israeli Apartheid.
We extend our gratitude to you on behalf of all Palestinians especially the athlete community.
Right To Movement Palestine
[isn’t so-called ‘disinformation’ and the Right to Be Wrong covered by the 1st Amendment?] Ad Network Blacklist Excludes Only Conservative Media and Promotes Reality Concealment by The Dependent Media
/From [HERE] Following an assessment of American media, UK-based think tank the Global Disinformation Index released its Dynamic Exclusion Lists, which are used by advertisers to blacklist news websites. GDI ranked left-leaning media outlets more favorably than conservative media.
The list is used by ad networks, including Microsoft-owned Xandr, to refuse to display ads on conservative outlets’ websites.
In December, GDI released a report on “disinformation risk” in the US online media market. The think tank reviewed 69 news outlets and listed 10 that it found least likely to share disinformation and 10 that it found most at risk of spreading disinformation.
The outlets found most at risk of sharing disinformation are:
New York Post
RealClearPolitics
Reason Magazine
The Federalist
The Daily Wire
The Blaze
One America News Network
The American Conservative
Newsmax
The American Spectator
Outlets found least at risk of spreading disinformation are:
HuffPost
New York Times
The Washington Post
AP News
NPR
ProPublica
BuzzFeed News
USA Today
Insider
Wall Street Journal
According to The Daily Caller, the GDI receives US taxpayers’ money from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center.
GDI said that the outlets on its list of most at risk to spread disinformation “published content with far fewer fact-based Ledes and far more Bias, Negative targeting and Sensational language than the rest of the sample.” It said that disinformation is not necessarily false reporting, it is adversarial, targeting, and sensational reporting.
It defined disinformation as “adversarial narratives, which are intentionally misleading; financially or ideologically motivated; and/or, aimed at fostering long-term social, political or economic conflict; and which create a risk of harm by undermining trust in science or targeting at-risk individuals or institutions.”
Released Files Show Between October 2019 and February 2021 alone, FBI Paid Twitter $3.4M to Silence Certain Views and Stories on Its Behalf
/STORY AT-A-GLANCE
Twitter documents released by Elon Musk reveal the lawlessness of our intelligence agencies and the psychological warfare against the American public is far worse than expected
Between October 2019 and February 2021 alone, FBI paid Twitter 3.4 million to censor certain views and stories on its behalf, including the damning Hunter Biden laptop story, which likely would have sunk Joe Biden’s bid for the presidency had it received the attention it deserved
The FBI, Twitter and Facebook even ran a tabletop exercise about “hacked” information relating to Hunter Biden one month before the real story broke. During that exercise, they practiced the narrative that weeks later became “official truth”
A large number of current and/or former FBI agents work at and with Twitter to keep the online narrative in check. More than 100 supposedly “former” intelligence agents also work in Facebook’s content moderation department
While hunting down and banning covert propaganda accounts tied to foreign governments, Twitter worked with the U.S. Department of Defense to promote and protect American propaganda accounts, and aided U.S. intelligence agencies in their efforts to influence foreign governments using fake news, computerized deepfake videos and bots
From [HERE] If you're still under the naively mistaken belief that there is no Deep State, the Twitter file dumps 1 from Elon Musk detailing how Twitter, before his acquisition of the company, was coerced into doing the FBI's bidding, with actual FBI agents on its staff to control the online narrative, ought to set the record straight.
In fact, the lawlessness of our intelligence agencies and the psychological warfare against the American public is far worse than most people ever expected.
FBI paid Twitter huge sums of money — your tax dollars, might I add — to censor certain views and stories, such as the damning Hunter Biden laptop story, which likely would have sunk Joe Biden's bid for the presidency had it received the attention it legitimately deserved.
The FBI even ran a tabletop exercise about "hacked" information relating to Hunter Biden ONE MONTH before the real story broke. During that exercise, they practiced the narrative (i.e., lies) that weeks later became "official truth."
There is a Deep State running the show, and they're doing whatever they damn well please, without regard for the law or the U.S. Constitution. They're acting completely outside the rules of our Constitutional Republic and the laws of the land, and they've weaponized the very agencies that are supposed to protect us and act in the public's best interest and turned them against us.
The Twitter files saga is expanding by the day, so I won't be able to cover every last detail here. Books will be needed to cover this scandal in depth. In the meantime, I suggest you review the references cited and keep your eyes peeled for later updates.
FBI Used Twitter to Track and Spy on Americans
In the video above, investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald reviews how Washington has expanded the war state and the Democrat’s censorship regime. About 39 minutes in, he begins reviewing evidence showing the FBI was not only censoring social media content, but the agency was also, on a regular basis, asking Twitter to reveal the location of specific Twitter users — for what purpose, no one knows. As noted by independent journalist Matt Taibbi in a December 17, 2022, Twitter post:
"What 'law enforcement' objective is served by asking for Billy Baldwin's location information? Why is the FBI/DHS [Department of Homeland Security] in the business of analyzing and flagging social media content at all? When were these programs created and who approved them?"
These are all good questions. Historically, the FBI's job has been to monitor and address criminal activity, not "misinformation." Somewhere along the way, and it's unclear exactly when the mandate changed and by whom, the DHS/FBI (the FBI supports the DHS by investigating threats) and other agencies tasked themselves with illegally suppressing free speech and shaping public narratives through public-private partnerships with Big Tech.
The Biden administration's Orwellian "Ministry of Truth," revealed in the summer of 2022, was one of the first indicators we had that something was horribly amiss. And even though that agency was quickly disbanded after public outcry (and no small amount of mockery), the policing of mis- and disinformation was simply shifted elsewhere within the federal government.
Moreover, as reviewed by Greenwald, internal DHS memos, emails and documents show the DHS has worked on expanding its influence over tech platforms for YEARS. So, government censorship is not something that "just happened" in response to the COVID crisis.
Nor is the censorship limited to COVID or public health information in general. We now have evidence showing the FBI has actively interfered in multiple elections, for example — activity that Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) accurately warns is "the biggest threat to our constitutional democracy today." 2 [MORE]
