[JustTheNews] Veteran FBI intelligence analyst's testimony raises civil liberty concerns about acquisition of bank records, possible undercovers at U.S. Capitol.
A recently retired FBI supervisory intelligence analyst told Congress in a whistleblower disclosure that agents in Boston were improperly pressured by Washington to open criminal cases on 140 people who had simply taken a bus ride to the Jan. 6 rally in Washington. The agents refused because there was no evidence the attendees engaged in any criminality, the whistleblower said.
George Hill's testimony to the House Judiciary Committee also raised new civil liberty concerns about the FBI's Jan. 6 probe, including whether the Bureau mined Americans' bank records without court authority and whether the agency possesses video footage it is refusing to release because it identifies undercover agents and human sources who were at the U.S. Capitol that fateful day.
Hill, a military veteran and longtime analyst for the National Security Agency (NSA) and FBI who retired last year from the Bureau's Boston field office, told Just the News on Wednesday night that he disclosed concerns earlier this week to the House Judiciary Committee during a transcribed deposition, including that the Bureau analyzed banking data without evidence of a crime -- simply to find Americans who traveled to Washington around the time of Jan. 6 or who owned a gun.
Hill said supervisors in the Washington field office pressured to open cases, first on seven individuals who came up in a sweep of bank records provided by Bank of America, and then on the larger group of 140 Americans who paid to take bus rides to President Donald Trump's now infamous rally on Jan. 6, 2021, the day a mob overran police lines and flooded into the Capitol as Congress met to certify the 2020 election results. He credited his supervisors in Boston for resisting the pressure.
"There's no evidence of a crime being committed here," he said during a wide-ranging interview on the "Just the News, No Noise" television show. "We cannot open up preliminary investigations on someone for using a financial instrument in the District. And so they pushed back, and Boston did not take any action on those names."
Hill also said the Washington field office, which led the Jan. 6 probe, did not react well to the refusal, escalating up the chain of command, but at each step of the process the Boston office held its ground. "Getting on a bus and participating in a political rally is not predication for a crime or a preliminary investigation," he said, explaining why Boston resisted.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Just the News on Wednesday night that Hill's information provided an essential roadmap for his select subcommittee's investigation into potential weaponization of law enforcement agencies like the FBI.
"I appreciate this brave whistleblower coming forward," Jordan said in an interview. "He’s worked in the military and then as an FBI agent. And he gave us a lot of valuable information that will be the foundation for our weaponization investigation going forward."
Hill's account backs up other FBI whistleblowers, like Special Agent Steve Friend, who've alleged the FBI's Washington field office exerted undue pressure and exhibited political bias in an effort to get field offices around the country to open up as many domestic terrorism cases on Jan. 6 attendees as possible, to pad numbers or to make Trump supporters who came to Washington feel pain and shame. "The process was the punishment," Friend told Just the News.
Friend has been sidelined from his job because his security clearance was suspended, after he raised his whistleblower concerns. Hill retired from the Bureau last year.
Hill and Friend both are being advised by former Senate investigator Jason Foster, the head of Empower Oversight, a whistleblower support nonprofit. Foster, who worked for years under Sen. Chuck Grassley, said the whistleblowers have provided Congress with a portrait of the FBI that, "keeps feeding public suspicion that it's too focused on political narratives and not focused enough on fighting crime."
"After 9/11, everybody was upset that we didn't connect the dots," Foster said. "We didn't find a needle in the haystack, and what's happened since is we turned the FBI into a domestic surveillance organization, and now we collect tens of thousands of haystacks and now it's even harder to find the needles.
"And this is a perfect example of that, where you have tons of people [who] just want to push numbers, and they want to get tons of cases open so that they can say they're addressing domestic violent extremism and they can say that there's a big problem with it."
"[T]his is another example of the evidence that we're seeing, that a lot of that just appears to be hype, and it was predicated on just the thinnest" of evidence... The fact that someone is in DC and goes to a rally, as George said, is just not reason [enough] to open up a criminal investigation."
The FBI national press office and Bank of America's (BOA's) media department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
There have been concerns in legal circles for more than a year about the FBI obtaining bank data from institutions that volunteered it without a subpoena.
Judicial Watch is currently pursuing litigation to force the Bureau to release documents on how it got bank records during the Jan. 6 probe, but so far, the FBI has declined to provide any data.
Hill said he was told the banks provided the FBI with the records they mined. "Nobody asked for it," he claimed. "It was totally voluntary."
Hill also told the committee about concerns he developed when the Washington field office refused to let its colleagues in Boston review surveillance video from the Capitol to see if any of the 140 attendees had committed crimes. The answer he got back raised concerns about whether the FBI had undercovers -- or informants -- at the site, he said.
"When you ask for footage," he recalled, "what they'll come back with is 'Tell us the exact place and time where you think the subject of your investigation was?' To which the standard reply is, 'Well, we don't know because we can't see the footage.' And the comeback then is 'There may be identities within that footage that we need to protect.'
"So one can make inferences regarding that, who those identities were they were looking to protect, but that probably wasn't their grandparents or their aunts and uncles."
[NYPOST] A former top Twitter executive acknowledged to politicians Wednesday that the social media giant "made a mistake" in suppressing The Post’s bombshell October 2020 stories on Hunter Biden ...son of President Joe: cashiered from the Navy, a crackhead, wheeler dealer, leg humper, horn dog, and general all around ne'er do well. We're supposed to feel sorry for him... ’s laptop.
Vijaya Gadde, who received a $12.5 million severance package when she was fired as policy director in October by new Twitter CEO Elon Musk, testified before the House Oversight Committee that The Post’s reporting was censored in large part because photos from Hunter’s laptop "looked like they may have been obtained through hacking."
"In 2018, we had developed a policy intended to prevent Twitter from becoming a dumping ground for hacked materials," she said before adding: "It became clear that Twitter had not fully appreciated the impact of that policy on free press and others."
"In hindsight, Twitter should have reinstated The Post account immediately," Gadde went on.
Does that mean you’ll voluntarily give back the $12.5mil you really oughtn’t have taken, given your abysmal performance in that role, or should Mr. Musk sue you for it, based on your confession?
[FoxNews] House Rep. Clay Higgins warned former Twitter executives on Wednesday of possible arrest for interfering with 2020 presidential election.
Former Twitter executives who met with the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday were given a stern warning from one representative, who said arrests were coming their way.
The purpose of the hearing was to address how Twitter blocked the sharing of a report on Hunter Biden’s laptop by the New York Post prior to the 2020 election.
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in May 2021 that blocking the Hunter Biden story was a "total mistake."
Still, during questioning, several members of the House Oversight Committee, including Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., were firm in their questioning of the representatives who appeared on Wednesday.
Higgins told Twitter’s former Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth, former chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, former Twitter deputy counsel James Baker and Anika Collier Navaroli, a former employee at Twitter, that the bottom line was the FBI had the "Biden Crime Family" laptop for a year, knowing it was leaking and that those leaks would hurt the Biden campaign.
Higgins accused the FBI of using its relationship with Twitter to suppress criminal evidence against Joe Biden, a month before the 2020 election.
"You, ladies and gentlemen, interfered with the United States of America 2020 presidential election, knowingly and willingly," Higgins said. "That’s the bad news, it’s gonna get worse because this is the investigation part. Later comes the arrest part. Your attorneys are familiar with that."
The FBI rejected the characterization of an inappropriate relationship with Twitter and issued a statement in response to Higgins' comments.
"The FBI does not instruct or direct any social media company to censor an account or remove information from their platform. In carrying out its law enforcement mission, the FBI receives voluntarily provided information from these companies, when the company believes there is a serious risk of death or serious physical injury," the FBI said in a statement obtained by Fox News correspondent David Spunt.
"In addition, the FBI also shares identified malign foreign influence information with these companies. The information we provide in these circumstances is specific to foreign actors — such as Russia, China, and Iran and their activities, we do not provide information based on content or narratives without attribution to a foreign actor. We may also alert social media companies about intentional attempts to post disinformation about voting times, places, or dates, which may be a federal crime. Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers in response to information we share."
#4
/\ Baker was likely the Gov't liaison and collection manager. His knowledge of the community requirements and process would have made him an ideal pick.
#5
"The FBI does not instruct or direct any social media company to censor an account or remove information from their platform." Directly? Of course not. Indirectly? You betursweetass. The fascists know ever trick of the trade.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/09/2023 11:35 Comments ||
Top||
#9
Even CBS is covering the hearings, interviewing Comer. I saw this in passing just before breakfast but did not listen long enough to pass judgment on the coverage. The only thing I can say about CBS's coverage is that they declared the story to be a wild right-wing conspiracy theory when it first came out in the New York Post in October of 2020, just before the election. That was an obvious lie to which they will most certainly not admit now but it's proof that CBS cannot be trusted.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/09/2023 11:41 Comments ||
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#10
Does that mean you’ll voluntarily give back the $12.5mil you really oughtn’t have taken, given your abysmal performance in that role, or should Mr. Musk sue you for it, based on your confession?
Sounds like she's gonna need that money for lawyers.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/09/2023 11:44 Comments ||
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#11
So, where was Jack Dorsey? Yeah, he testified two years ago. So, what?
#12
Jack was off "microdosing." It made him a better CEO (yeah, sure).
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/09/2023 11:48 Comments ||
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#13
Ref #5: Be a real shame if the firm lost some of it's tax exempt status, or certain key employees found themselves the subject of 'random' IRS investigations.
Source payment IRS reporting ?
We were just getting ready to cover that. These things actually fall under classified IRS intelligence contingency financial regulations and as such, are not subject to the usual reporting schemes. We can have an IRS senior brief you if you like. We deal strictly in cash, but thanks for asking.
Next time you're in town, let us know. You like guns? We'll take you down to the range for some quality time, and later lunch in the executive dining room.
#15
They admit it was a mistake in retrospect because they got caught and may be held accountable although probably not criminally. They are remorseful about getting caught and intend to rectify the getting caught part going forward. That is not contrition.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/09/2023 12:22 Comments ||
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#16
There was no foking "mistake" made. These are highly educated, intelligent people.
The only "mistake" made was they figured their FBI cover and backstopping would hold up. E. Musk got rid of Baker and everything turned to kak. Trust these onerous SOB's at your own risk. You need a Waco Branch Dividian fire photo to go with that ?
Sorry, Supe.... I just get carried away sometimes.
#6
Once he was a presidential nominee. Now Mitt has regressed into a cartoonish hobgoblin who harasses other senators about dress code violations and hazes new representatives that he feels can’t meet his high standards. Mitt cheers for Democrat initiatives and undercuts Republicans. When he is out of office, the Dems will venerate their formerly reliable ally, Mitt Romney.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/09/2023 12:16 Comments ||
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[JustTheNews] Veteran FBI intelligence analyst's testimony raises civil liberty concerns about acquisition of bank records, possible undercovers at U.S. Capitol.
...son of President Joe: cashiered from the Navy, a crackhead, wheeler dealer, leg humper, horn dog, and general all around ne'er do well. We're supposed to feel sorry for him...
[BBC] During Biden's State of the Union address, Senator Mitt Romney had a heated confrontation with fellow Republican George Santos.
