| Key paragraphs — considerably more detail at the link. |
[Federalist via 90 Miles From Tyranny] There is no denying anymore that our federal agencies have weaponized their power against the political adversaries of the left. But if you think the feds’ abandonment of all standards only affects outspoken critics of the regime, think again. More allegations of FBI corruption and hubris are coming to light after a lawsuit last week revealed FBI agents misled a judge so they could illegally seize and withhold property from innocent American citizens.Agents took more than $86 million in cash, jewelry, and gold from 1,400 safe deposit boxes during the raid of a Beverly Hills vault company in March 2021. Lawyers representing a group of deposit box owners claim their items were illegally taken and not returned to them more than a year after the raid of the Beverly Hills, California, branch of U.S. Private Vaults.
SEIZING INNOCENT AMERICANS’ ASSETS
This past March, a year after the raid, the owners of U.S. Private Vaults pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder drug money. However, the hundreds of citizens whose assets were seized by the FBI are not suspected of any crimes, according to court documents.
Deposit box holders whose property was taken sued the bureau for violating their rights. Robert Frommer, a lawyer with the Institute for Justice, the libertarian, nonprofit law firm that filed the suit, said in the court papers: “We brought suit on behalf of seven clients, but we were representing a class of at least 400 people. What we’ve been trying to show for the past several months is that the government’s actions violated the search-and-seizure protections of the US Constitution in the Fourth Amendment.”
After the raid, the feds demanded that box holders submit to an investigation before having their possessions returned. “It was scary to learn that we had to submit our personal information,” said Jennifer with tears in her eyes. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”
Minutes after Jennifer and Paul announced a lawsuit with the Institute for Justice, an FBI agent reached out, saying their belongings would be returned. However, other box holders have still not received their property back. And as the Institute for Justice points out, the government had no right to seize their property and force them to prove their innocence in the first place.
FBI MISLEADS JUDGE KIM TO OBTAIN A WARRANT
Agents appeared to have gotten their warrant to raid the vault by neglecting to tell U.S. Magistrate Judge Steve Kim, who signed the warrant, that they intended to keep all the assets found in every safe deposit box containing $5,000 or more in cash and valuables.
The failure on the part of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles to reveal the plan to confiscate private citizens’ belongings in the warrant application was revealed in FBI documents and depositions of agents in the aforementioned lawsuit. Agents further defied restrictions set in the warrant by Kim when they searched through box holders’ belongings for evidence of crimes. The warrant explicitly noted that it “does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents of the safety deposit boxes,” but only allowed the FBI to look inside in order to identify the owners and return their property to them, Institute for Justice reported.
As Los Angeles Magazine’s Ian Spiegelman reported, the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office have denied they “misled the judge or ignored conditions of the warrant, saying agents had no obligation to tell Judge Kim they planned to ransack the privately-rented boxes under the umbrella theory that every customer was a black market mastermind.” According to FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller, the warrants were executed legally “based on allegations of widespread criminal wrongdoing.”
U.S. Private Vaults closed down, and only the owners have been charged and fined for laundering drug money. Not one person involved has been sent to prison.
It has yet to be seen whether the FBI will return all the savings of the innocent Americans caught up in the U.S. Private Vaults raid, or whether taking money from people with baseless allegations is a new funding tactic for the feds.