Tag Archives: FBI

crime news

GOP suffers short-term memory loss

Congress’s newly minted Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives clearly is suffering from some form of collective dementia, or amnesia … or at least some short-term memory loss.

The GOP caucus formed this committee assigned with investigating what it calls the “weaponization” of the executive branch by the Democratic administration led by President Biden.

It makes me want to shout: are you fu**ing kidding me?

The Donald Trump administration managed to weaponize the Department of Justice at every turn imaginable. Where was the outrage then among the GOP allies of the disgraced, twice-impeached POTUS? Oh, wait! They cheered the liar on!

Now they want to “investigate” whether the DOJ has “weaponized the FBI” because it sought — and received — permission from a federal judge to look for classified documents in Trump’s home in Florida. What a crock!

Indeed, the very existence of a committee assigned to do what the GOP wants from this panel in itself is a weaponization of the legislative branch of government.

So, for the Republican majority in the House of Representatives to proclaim its piety in search of the truth is laughable on its face. Except no one ought to be laughing.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news

Why target FBI?

Republicans are preparing to wage war on several fronts against the government they proclaim they want to protect

They have several targets in their sights but for the moment I want to focus on just one of them: the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The FBI used to be considered a sacred cow in GOP political circles. They dared not criticize the elite federal law enforcement agency for fear of being labeled “soft on crime,” or being a squishy liberal.

No more, man.

The FBI is now Public Enemy No. 1 among many Republicans for doing its job legally and by the book. What did the FBI do to incur the GOP wrath?

It acted on orders from the Department of Justice, the attorney general and entered the home of a former president to look for evidence of a possible (or probable) crime. The ex-POTUS took several boxes full of classified documents with him from the White House to his glitzy estate in Florida. AG Merrick Garland sought a federal judge’s permission — also by the book — to search the ex-POTUS’s estate for evidence. The judge granted it and so he sent the agents to the house to conduct the search.

That’s a no-no, according to the GOP stalwarts who defend the ex-POTUS to the hilt. How dare the feds do their job?

They are gunning for the attorney general and — get a load of this! — for the FBI director, Christopher Wray, who was appointed to his post by Donald Trump, the aforementioned ex-POTUS.

Let’s understand a couple of key points.

One is that the attorney general did nothing out of the ordinary. He ran all the necessary traps before authorizing the search at Trump’s estate. He acted within the law. Accordingly, AG Garland has declared that “no one is above the law,” and by “no one,” he means not a single American citizen … and that includes former presidents of the United States.

The FBI has not been “weaponized.” The AG has utilized the law enforcement agency totally within its scope of authority and for Republicans to declare their intention to “defund the FBI” makes a mockery of their criticism of progressives who said the same thing about local police agencies.

The world has been turned upside-down. We need to regain our balance.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump, national news

Trump admits guilt … bring it!

(Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Whoever serves these days as Donald J. Trump’s legal advisers surely must know that they have an imbecile for a client. Why do I say that?

Because … at that rally over the weekend, The Donald took it upon himself to admit to taking documents from the White House and squirreling them away in his glitzy Florida estate. He all but admitted to committing a crime!

Let’s see. I believe that’s what the FBI was seeking to determine when they searched Trump’s home and discovered all those documents. Isn’t that correct?

What’s more, the Donald keeps lying about what transpired when the FBI searched his joint. He suggests it was a “raid.” He implies they forced their way in. He keeps insisting no one knew they were coming. Wrong, wrong and wrong again.

Oh, and he accuses the FBI of “planting” evidence.

Hah! Didn’t happen, Donald.

Any reputable lawyer in the country would advise their client to shut the hell up, to not talk out loud about a pending criminal case. Maybe The Donald’s legal eagles advised him as such. Maybe he ignored them. The Department of Justice is examining whether The Donald broke the law by taking documents from the White House, some of which were marked “top secret.”

Do I need to remind everyone that a conviction of a crime could bring some prison time to the former POTUS?

Whatever the case, the individuals who have taken on the task of defending the indefensible — the taking of classified documents from the White House — now must understand fully what millions of Americans know already.

The former president of the United States — in the words of former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — is a fu**ing moron!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, local news, national news

FBI scorned by GOP? Wow!

1 Comment

I keep holding Ronny Jackson up for ridicule. Hey, I have good reason to do so. He represents a region of Texas and in just less than two years in office has managed to become a golden boy among right-wing media outlets.

Here is what Rep. Jackson, a Republican, said today via Twitter about the FBI.

I don’t trust anything that the FBI tries to pin on Trump. They are a rotten secret police force at the service of Biden’s hyper-political agenda. All lies and deception!

Hmm. The FBI no longer is dedicated to protecting our national security or rooting out corruption or solving federal crimes … or so says Ronny Jackson. It’s a tool of a Democratic president, he says.

This clown is unhinged.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news, national news, national security

Is she a ‘Trump judge’?

Donald J. Trump’s past blathering about “Obama judges” and “Clinton judges” ruling against him in various legal battles gives me pause as I try to weigh the legal significance of a federal judge who has ruled in the ex-president’s favor in his fight with the FBI over those classified documents he squirreled away at his Florida estate.

Legal and constitutional scholars have been quick to condemn Trump’s assertion that those decisions with which he disagrees are the result of the political leanings of the judges who delivered them. They have said that judges take solemn oaths to be faithful to the Constitution and that’s what they have done in issuing their rulings.

Now we have a Trump-appointed federal judge — Aileen Cannon — deciding that it’s OK to appoint a special master to pore through the documents seized by the FBI in its search for possible criminal evidence.

The Justice Department argued against the appointment of such a special master. It well could appeal the decision by Judge Cannon.

But I am left to ponder something. If the ex-POTUS is going to rant and rail against judges who happen to occupy their seat on the bench because they are appointed by political rivals of his, is it OK for others to do the same thing when a Trump-appointed judge issues a key ruling in the former president’s favor?

Just askin’, man.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, national news

Trump gets special master … what’s next?

Do not look for me or listen for my voice among those who might be inclined to complain about a federal judge’s decision to grant Donald Trump’s request for a special master to investigate the FBI seizure of records from Trump’s posh Florida estate.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is a Trump appointee and today she ruled that a special master can be selected to examine claims of lawyer-client privilege as Trump seeks to block the probe into why he took classified documents from the White House to his glitzy estate in south Florida.

I am going to presume that Cannon is following the law as she sees fit. She ruled that the investigation by Congress and the Justice Department will continue and that she doesn’t see any overly long delay coming up as the courts look for a special master.

I do have one worry, which is that Cannon might bend to the idiocy being pitched that Trump is entitled to “executive privilege,” even though many other judges have ruled that as a former POTUS … he does not! Trump is declaring that he does enjoy that privilege, despite the fact that he left office in January 2021 and that, as one judge noted in an earlier ruling that “we only have one president at a time.” Trump ain’t it.

But, as The Hill reported: Prosecutors also said Trump could not claim executive privilege as a former president against the current executive branch, but Cannon said the DOJ’s position “arguably overstates the law.”

Judge grants Trump’s request to appoint special master to review Mar-a-Lago documents | The Hill

I am going to offer a word of hope that we can get this special master issue settled, get someone appointed, have that individual make rulings in a timely manner and that we can get to the bottom of the “probable cause” for criminality that resulted in the FBI search classified documents.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, to my way of thinking, has the goods to indict Trump on several counts. The question now becomes, will he get the chance to exercise his own constitutional authority?

The special master ploy mustn’t get in the AG’s way.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, FBI, legal news, national news, political news

FBI acted properly

I am going to seek to put to rest a lie that Donald J. Trump keeps repeating as it involves the FBI search for classified/top secret documents that the ex-president squirreled away illegally in his Florida home.

All set? Here goes.

Trump keeps saying that the FBI “raided” his home. It was no “raid.” The FBI worked with a federal judge to obtain a search warrant based on what it believes is “probable cause” that a crime took place. The feds sought the documents that Trump spirited out of the White House in violation of the Presidential Records Act that stipulates that official documents need to go to the National Archives.

When the FBI found the documents, the agents — in full view of Trump’s lawyers — spread them on the floor for picture-taking purposes. The ex-POTUS’s newest lie is that the feds spread the documents out to illustrate that Trump was so damn careless he would just toss ’em on the floor for the whole world to see.

No! The FBI was following standard operating evidence-gathering procedure. Trump never says the FBI picked the documents up and put them where agents found them: in the boxes that Trump’s team took from the White House to Florida.

As is always the case with this clown, the crowd that hears these lies cheers on the liar who spreads them, filling him with even more hubris to repeat them.

Disgraceful.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, national news

Defund the FBI?

The right-wing extremists — the QAnon adherents and election deniers — need to be committed, sent to the nut house and left to fester in the dark.

These are the cretins who are calling for Congress to “defund the FBI” in the wake of the agency’s search of Donald Trump’s home in Florida for classified documents that Trump took from the White House when he left office in January 2021.

This is simply an astonishing thing to hear from those who proclaim to be “patriots” who believe in “law and order” and who declare that they are friends and allies of those who enforce our laws.

My … goodness.

Patriotic Americans wouldn’t vilify government agents who were acting on lawful orders. Nor would they attack law enforcement officers — such as what occurred on 1/6. Moreover, no friend or ally of police would ever present physical threats of harm to those who occupy the thin blue line that protects American society.

One Republican congressional candidate has actually said that Attorney General Merrick Garland should be executed. Can you believe that? Oh, sure you can! Why? Because it’s becoming part of the GOP mantra.

It’s disgraceful.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news, national news

So many options for AG and others to ponder

As I sit here in the peanut gallery far from Ground Zero in the Donald Trump investigation hotbed, I find myself thinking about the options that await the former president of the United States.

Only one of them looks good and at this moment it appears to be the farthest from taking shape.

Attorney General Merrick Garland is among those who are trying to determine whether to indict the ex-president on criminal charges. We also have the Fulton County (Ga.) district attorney looking into allegations of vote tampering and the New York state AG examining whether Trump’s business committed crimes. Oh, and then we have the House of Reps’ select committee examining whether Trump broke the law by inciting the mob of traitors to storm the Capitol on 1/6 and seek to stop the certification of the 2020 election … that Trump lost to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

There’s nothing cast in stone that says Garland must indict Trump on anything, let alone on the most serious charges he might be considering. The AG could determine there isn’t enough to send Trump to prison for the rest of his life, so he might decide to pursue lesser charges.

Then the DA in Fulton County, Fani Willis, also might determine that Trump didn’t really seek to interfere with the election by demanding that the state “find” enough votes to put him over the top.

New York AG Letitia James also could find that she doesn’t have the goods on Trump’s business, even though his chief financial officer has pleaded guilty to tax fraud and is awaiting a sentence.

And what about the House panel? The committee has compiled a mountain of evidence that suggests everything from inciting insurrection and dereliction of duty on 1/6. The testimony we have heard has been stunning in the extreme!

But you see, Trump is facing a mounting array of legal challenges … even as he supposedly ponders whether to run for the presidency yet again in 2024. My strong sense is that one of those challenges is going to fall hard on The Donald.

The least likely option would be for none of these probes to produce a formal criminal charge against the former president. I understand fully the gravity of taking such a step. I also grasp the blowback that would occur from the cultists out there who continue to excuse the ex-POTUS’s conduct at all levels in the period after the 2020 election.

It just occurs to me that the very last person on this Earth I would want to be is Donald John Trump.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, national news

‘Law and order’ gives way to chaos

A truly astonishing metamorphosis is occurring within what we used to call a great American political party.

The Republican Party used to believe in law and order, in the sanctity of the badge that men and women wore while enforcing the law, in their belief that a strong police force was the best deterrent against runaway crime and chaos.

What’s happened to the GOP?

The FBI secured a legally acquired search warrant to allow agents into the home of a former Republican president of the U.S.A. and suddenly the FBI has become the enemy.

Now we find political progressives — whom conservatives once denigrated as being “soft on crime” — rushing to defend the FBI against the attacks coming … from the right!

The metamorphosis is unbecoming in the extreme. For instance, it features physical threats against FBI agents, with threats of “civil war” coming from the very individuals who in another era would never utter such nonsense out loud.

The world has gone nuts!

It seems the change is the direct result of the cult that has formed around a former president of the United States. The cult places idolatry of the former POTUS ahead of all else, even time-tested policies and philosophies that once formed the basis of the once-great political party.

For as long as the cult dictates how Americans shall behave, there will be no making sense of what is occurring. It does require those of us who oppose the cult to remain vigilant and alert to the dangers the cult followers present.

Indeed, any “talk” of civil war must not devolve into the real thing. We did that once in this country. It nearly destroyed us.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com