[JustTheNews] Former Assistant Director Chris Swecker says bureau has been pressured into improper domestic spying, censorship.
In a stunning rebuke, the FBI's retired chief of criminal investigations says his old agency has yielded the independence Congress gave it under the law and is now subservient to a group of liberal ideologues inside the Justice Department who have pressured agents to stray into unwarranted domestic spying and censorship.
Ex-FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker on Tuesday became the latest law enforcement or political figure to support creating an independent commission modeled after the U.S. Senate's 1970s Church Committee to investigate the FBI's practices and impose reforms on the storied law enforcement agency.
He told Just the News that the bureau's problems start with the politicization of its ranks by DOJ.
"What I see is that it's basically a wholesale takeover by the Department of Justice, which is filled with political appointees in every top position, and then by extension, right into the administration," Swecker said in a wide-ranging interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast.
"You see DOJ people — and many of the top executive positions inside the FBI now — you see people that have made a career out of bouncing in and out of silk-stocking law firms between the Department of Justice and then these law firms. And I have to say they are incredibly liberal in their politics. And that has now sort of taken over the FBI, and they are inserting that ideology into their high-profile investigations."
Swecker, a lawyer himself, said one of the many tell-tale signs that the FBI has lost its independence is the bureau's relationship with Big Tech firms, as exposed by recent internal file releases by Twitter and a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri.
The original partnerships, he said, were designed to legitimately counter foreign influence operations on U.S. social media but have since evolved into spying and censorship operations impacting Americans.
"The FBI has an industry outreach program to help exchange information with industry, helping in the counterintelligence efforts of the FBI. This has gone well beyond that," he said. "This is nothing but domestic spying, and this is nothing but suppression of First Amendment rights and ideas."
He said the bureau's role in pressuring Twitter and other social media and search sites to censor Americans "needs to be the first line of inquiry" in a new Congress.
A growing number of prominent figures — including House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and retired FBI intelligence chief Kevin Brock — have embraced the idea that Congress should create a blue-ribbon panel modeled after the 1970s Church Committee to probe where the FBI has gone astray and to craft meaningful reforms.
Swecker said he believes that is a good approach, noting that while he remains friends with Christopher Wray, the current FBI director has allowed his agency to lose significant public trust.
"The Church Committee was a full inquiry into what were perceived to be some very serious abuses by the FBI in the domestic surveillance area, in terms of watching U.S. citizens doing things involving U.S. citizens that were considered to be abuses of their power," he said. "And I think we've come full circle here."
Swecker said the FBI's involvement in labeling school parents "domestic terrorists," and its "bare-knuckles" pursuit of Donald Trump contrasted with its "kid gloves cases" against Hillary Clinton, Andrew McCabe and Hunter Biden have not only shaken public trust but also the internal confidence of the FBI.
"I'm telling you the retired agent community and many agents inside the FBI on active duty are saying this needs to be looked at," he said. "I'm not big fan of congressional inquiries, but they need to shine some light on this."
Swecker has some experience in independent inquiries: he chaired the independent commission that investigated the culture at the U.S. Army Fort Hood that led to the murder of a female soldier.
Swecker, who retired as the assistant director for criminal investigations after 24 years inside the FBI, said the bureau's problems have been long in the making, beginning near the end of Director Robert Mueller's term and accelerating under his successors, James Comey and Christopher Wray.
"I think there's a cultural shift that started late in Mueller's term and then we got into sort of full stride in Comey's term, and is now being sort of perpetuated under Chris Way's term, and that is that DOJ has basically taken over the FBI," he said. "They were supposed to have some independence despite being a Bureau under the Department of Justice."
[Breitbart] Democratic strategist James Carville said Tuesday on MSNBC’s "The Beat" that grievance-obsessed Republicans are committing "political suicide" by refusing to vote for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for House Speaker.
Carville said, "There was a lot of speculation of what the post-Trump Republican Party would look like. We got our answer today. Welcome to the post-Trump Republican Party."
He continued, "It’s really stunning because the Republican Party has traditionally been a party of honor, and you’re supposed to throw the grenade after you pull the pin. They pulled the pin and passed the grenade around."
He added, "I don’t have a great explanation for it because it doesn’t make any sense. It’s politically — it’s kind of some version of political suicide, and I don’t think they care."
Carville concluded, "If you remember, they didn’t have a platform in 2020. But most of my life they were for lower taxes, less regulation, and strong national defense. It was kind of a fallback position. There’s no policy aspiration that they’re looking for. It’s all grievance. It’s all you did this to me. You didn’t do that. Again, I can’t help but give you the contrast between when the Democrats had a slim majority and what we’re seeing today."
#1
Breitbart pays much more attention than it should to Cher, Meathead, Fonda, and other has-been Hollywood types and political retirees like Carville.
#3
"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods."
- H.L. Mencken
#8
HFC is not getting the Chairman positions they covet. Chairmanships guarantee the MAGA agenda. McCarthy has not negotiated in good faith.
Nor is he trustworthy. In the past he has used democrats in congress to bypass conservative votes. It would be political suicide not to oppose him.
[ET] Dr. Aaron Kheriaty: Self-Spreading Vaccines, Transhumanist Ideology, and Government Gag Orders—The New Technocracy Threatening Hippocratic Medicine and the Nuremberg Code
American Thought Leaders
"This is part of a broader proposal of potentially bypassing the informed consent process by putting mRNA gene-based technology in foods... You could have a salad and get vaccinated against potential biological threats."
`Dr. Aaron Kheriaty is a psychiatrist, medical ethicist, and author of "The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State." He has filed several lawsuits against American institutions and the government challenging vaccine mandates and COVID-pandemic policy.
"It’s a level of control over people’s freedoms that this kind of technology and this kind of system will make possible, that the totalitarian dictators of the past could only have dreamed of," warns Dr. Kheriaty.
We discuss the frightening transition from core ethical principles of medicine to a transhumanist, neo-Gnostic, technocratic medical paradigm, in which informed consent is inevitably replaced with an ideology of scientism and even self-spreading vaccines. Nobody is perfect, but we're working on it.
"The concept is almost sort-of treating the human being like a piece of hardware that requires genetic-based coding—mRNA or DNA software updates—every few months to sort-of stay current and stay functional, as though the human body were like an iPhone," says Dr. Kheriaty. You mean like a booster shot ?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
