Stopping Crime

Harris County, Texas—where Houston is located—is currently a poster example of crime rising for known reasons.

This past Saturday at our local Tea Party meeting, we heard from Andy Kahan of Crime Stoppers. Crime Stoppers is a big, nationwide organization. But Houston is one of the few places where they have a building of their own, because it’s that big, and that necessary. Most of us know about them as a place to call with anonymous tips. That is still true. Crime Stoppers does information and community outreach and education. But their third floor is manned by local law enforcement, who actually take the crime tips.

Kahan (pronounced Kahn) has been fighting crime for some 30 years, just a few of those at Crime Stoppers. He notices trends, and he talked with us about a few of those.

Andy Kahan points out Rosalee Cook, one of 181 victims
of violent felons out on multiple PR bonds in Harris County.

Back in 2018 Harris County had a shift from Republican to Democrat. Votes matter. In that shift we got a Democrat DA, a Democrat County Judge and Democrat-majority Commissioners Court, and a sweep of Democrat judges. All of those are bad. But the biggest effect on crime was the changeout from experienced Republican judges to inexperienced Democrat judges with a penchant to be against incarceration of criminals.

Kahan, talking about his 30 years involved in crime fighting, says this:

I frankly have not seen what I’m seeing, involving the crime rate and what's happening in the courthouse. And I've seen it all. I've been through it all. I've done 27 pieces of legislation to enhance victims’ rights and public safety. But what we are seeing is extremely disturbing.

Here, specifically, is the heart of the problem:

Individuals who have been released on felony bonds are charged with additional crimes have doubled since 2018.

He said it used to be unheard of for violent offenders to “get out of jail free” with a personal recognizance bond. He gives us some numbers:

In 2018 there were 12 defendants who were given PR bonds, charged for violent offenses. 2021 we managed to improve that to 1283. We're talking murder and robbery, assault with a deadly weapon.

Let me do the math for you. That’s 107 times more—not a 100% increase; that would be only two-fold. This is 107-fold more. For every single criminal we used to face back out on the streets, we now face 107 dangerous criminals. Many are released with multiple PR bonds. And they’re set free even when they offend while on parole.

110 of the 1283 violent criminals are capital murderers. Capital murder is the one crime where judges are given the option of no bond—where the judge can refuse to release them for any amount. The assumption is that, even if they could come up with a $1 billion bond, they still shouldn’t be released onto the streets; they should be kept incarcerated up through their trial. But even these known deadly felons are being released among us.

In case we think these violent felons are all hanging around some seedy neighborhood far from our homes, Kahan enlightens us.

He started noticing a trend, that a lot of defendants charged with murder in Harris County had been released on multiple felony bonds. He put together a collection of 181 photos of victims killed by violent felons out on multiple PR bonds—known repeat offenders who were told essentially to “please return to court and behave yourself and don't re-offend again.” Each victim has a story. Here are just a few.

Rosalee Cook

Rosalie Cook right here, 80-year-old grandma who was going to Walgreens on Saturday morning in Meyerland, and she stumbled upon a guy named Randy Lewis. Randy Lewis had over 60 convictions in Harris County. I don't know what he had elsewhere. He was out on not one, but two felony PR bonds, despite having over 60 convictions. He was told to go and live in a facility as a condition of his bond, which he did for a day. Then he walked out, and nobody did anything. Nobody reported it. Nobody told the court, “Hey, this guy is gone. We might want to put, like, a warrant out for his arrest.” Two weeks Randy Lewis whereabouts are unknown. He stumbles upon Rosalee Cook coming into the parking lot. Tries to carjack her. Stabs her to death in the parking lot at 10:00 AM in Walgreens. Rosalee Cook paid the price for discretionary felony bond reform.

 

Martha Medina

Martha Medina coming out of McDonald's. I remember her case. She was followed from a bank, coming in to go to McDonald's, getting her breakfast, walks out. Two guys struck and carjack her and killed her. One of the guys charged with her murder was on bond for capital murder already. Martha Medina paid the price for this.

 

Chi Le

Chi Le, whose body was found stuffed in a freezer off of the Beltway and Hammerly. The individual charged with her murder was on two PR bonds: for violating a protective order and family assault. I could go on and on and on talking about some of these cases here.

 

Stanley Iscovitz

This is Mike Iscovitz’s [the chief meteorologist for Fox 26 in Houston] dad, Stanley. Stanley's an 80-year-old Air Force veteran who was just simply taking a walk in his neighborhood. He was murdered by a guy out on a felony PR bond. You would think maybe that's kind of like the end of the story, right? Now he's charged with murder, right? Guess what? He's back out. On a bond.

 

Summer Chester

Jonathan Vera was booked and charged with capital murder, shot and killed a 55-year-old homeowner in his sleep during a home invasion in the Greenpoint area. And he shot at another person that was trying to flee the scene. Vera was booked, charged with capital murder, was given a $250,000 bond, which he couldn't make. So for several years, he was actually in the county jail where he belonged. While in a county jail, he was charged with assault of a public servant, when he decided to do several things to one of the officers…. So now he's charged with another felony. Okay. He also racked up 90 pages worth of infractions while behind bars, which kind of, you know, in my experience, that kind of leads you to the conclusion that he's not exactly behaving himself to do that. But, you know, what do I know?

So this particular court ignored all that and lowered his capital murder bond from $250 to $50 [thousand]. He makes the $50 [thousand]; he gets out, despite again being charged with another felony while in custody and 90 pages worth of infractions. Six months later, he's speeding, runs a red light, kills Summer Chester, a 23-year-old TSU graduate student. Summer Chester paid the price for that.

Andy Kahan points out Summer Chester, one of 181 victims
of violent felons out on multiple PR bonds in Harris County.

Whose fault is this? The courts.

We haven’t had a lot good to say about District Attorney Kim Ogg; she campaigned on no jail time for drug offenses. But Kahan defended her. She actually was a part of Crime Stoppers a few years back. And she has been pushing to stop the PR bonds for violent felons, to no avail. In fact, there are a number of things where she and our incompetent County Judge are at odds. My theory is that many of the drug offenses are plea deals down from larger offenses, so you can’t ignore them. And if you ignore them, bigger stuff happens. But at least she is recognizing the violent crime problem.

Some of the problem is policy pushed by the radical County Judge Lina Hidalgo and those who control her on the County Commission. But, really, it comes down to the individual judges.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, at fault for policies
leading to rising crime. Photo by Van Williams, found
in The Texan news story.

Kahan pointed out that, historically, incumbent judges don’t get primary opponents—unless they’re really bad. This year a majority of the judges had opponents in the Democrat primary. Six or seven were voted out in the primary. He adds, “This upcoming election cycle, you're going to see an emphasis on judicial races like you've never seen before.”

I know in the Republican Party we worked very hard to get candidates to run in every race. I signed petitions for most of them. Of particular importance are the criminal courts, which we’re talking about today. But people in civil and family courts have suffered from incompetent non-law-abiding judges as well.

We need to remember to vote all the way down the ballot—and get friends to do that as well. These judges got in with a “Beto” sweep, with lots of out-of-state money, when we still had straight-ticket voting. It takes some time to actually vote for nearly 100 races, with names you’re not familiar with. Trust us; this year just vote Republican. We were better off when we had mostly Republican judges. We can be better off again.

Sorry the photo’s blurry, but I was pleased to see this sign, across a six-lane road from our favorite little neighborhood restaurant a few days ago.

Besides voting, what can we do about crime? Bond reform is a legislative priority, so we’ll be working with the legislature in just a few months.

Kahan talked a bit about legislation. Last session weird stuff happened, and then the Democrats fled the state for the entirety of one of the special sessions. They eventually got a bill through called the Damon Allen Act, based on a trooper who was shot and killed by a criminal out on multiple felony bonds. The bill makes it so murderers can no longer get on a “get out of jail free” PR bond.

Kahan talked about the testimony in Austin on that bill. The opposition is well organized and well funded—and they show up. They had 80 people there in Austin to testify against the bill. The proponents had 10; 7 were from Crime Stoppers.

He talked about another bill that unfortunately didn’t pass. It was for a constitutional amendment—which means it would be voted on by the people—to allow discretion for judges to withhold bond from certain violent felons in addition to capital murder. The proposal related to the Paul Castro case from Houston. A man and his son were leaving a Houston Astros game last summer when the son was shot in what was called a road-rage case. People were rightfully ticked off when the judge granted a bond to the murderer. The way the statute currently reads, the only offense in which a judge has discretion to not give a bond is for capital murder. Other levels of murder and violent crimes must be given a bond, and if the criminal meets it, he’s out on the streets. And with the backlog in the courts right now, it could be years before his case is heard.

So the law was to allow denying bond in certain egregious cases that don’t happen to qualify as capital murder.

The bill passed in the Senate 27-2. In the House, because it was for a constitutional amendment, a two-thirds majority was required. The vote fell short by 12 votes. Kahan notes that every Democrat representative from Harris County voted against allowing the voter to decide whether to give judges discretion.

It’s interesting that the Harris County District Attorney’s Office testified in favor of the bill—presenting supporting documentation and data showing why we needed it. It’s rare for government entities to disagree on a bill, especially when led by the same party. But the Harris County Commissioners Court sent someone to testify against it. The guy they sent—his Twitter feed’s opening statement said, “Abolish Prisons.” Now you know the ultimate game plan of the radicals running the county.

So this is a bill to look for again next session.

Stopping crime isn’t supposed to be a partisan thing. Our Commissioners Court and our judges seem to have made it that way. The Commissioners Court has been rather put out with Crime Stoppers, and with Kahan in particular. They called him an “ax-grinding fearmonger.” Kahan says he’s embraced that. They put up a picture of him grinding an ax at Crime Stoppers. But about the partisanship, he says,

I don't understand why public safety has become partisan, but I can guarantee you every people person on that, with a picture here, didn't care if they were Republican, Democrat, independent, or what.

If we get in the right judges, who abide by the law instead of letting criminals go free, and if we get the right laws, will crime go down? Chances are it will. Here’s a story out of Miami, where they fought the trend of defunding police (which is the bad policy Harris County has been attempting to inflict on us), and they're seeing lower crime rates. Murders are at a decades-long low, and overall crime is the lowest it has been since the 1930s. (Video of that story below.)

 

Let Me Put You on Hold

There’s a moment in The Avengers, when we first meet the Black Widow. She is tied to a chair, leaning out over a pit, being tortured by bad guys, when a phonecall comes in—on the bad guy’s phone—and she's annoyed by the interruption—because she had them right where she wanted them and “this moron is giving me everything.” But she is told of the important mission, so she says, “Let me put you on hold.”

Then of course she miraculously breaks free, because she has such amazing skills. And then casually picks up her shoes and the phone and walks away.

We, the good citizens of the United States, seem to be tied to a chair, leaning out over a pit, being tortured, figuratively speaking. Under the circumstances it might take a shift in perspective to believe we have the bad guys right where we want them—information coming out, takedown about to happen.

The bad guys only think they’re in control.

I am not one who believes that some version of a SHIELD team has a long, elaborate plan that they are allowing to play out. I am, however, one who believes that, particularly for our day, we have our God in Heaven who has a plan to take down the bad guys. And His skills are way better than the fictional Black Widow’s. I don’t know which moment it will be when He answers our prayers by saying, “Let me put you on hold,” and then destroys the wicked. But He has told His prophets through the centuries that such a moment is coming.

So I have hope. Even when the loss of our freedoms is more apparent with every news cycle.

In the meantime, I am trying to understand the enemy, and what the enemy is doing.

This past week someone on that side, not one I had thought of as an enemy, said the quiet part out loud. This was Sam Harris, noted mainly for being an atheist, but an atheist with morals. He was on the TRIGGERnometry podcast. We learned from him that he doesn’t care about morals. As he put it, “Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement. I would not have cared.” Whatever is on that laptop—including Joe Biden’s corruption, “and understand they’re getting kickbacks from Biden’s deals in Ukraine and wherever else, right? Or China.” Doesn’t matter. “It is infinitesimal compared to the corruption we know Trump is involved in. It’s like, it’s like a firefly to the sun.”

Sam Harris, on TRIGGERnometry podcast
screenshot from here

What does he enumerate of Trump’s sun hot sins? Trump University, for one. Worse than everything on that laptop? Trump University was a class action case, brought in 2013, settled for $25 million, fully compensating all claimants plus $1 million in punitive damages. It likely would have gone to trial and been fought and appealed on the merits of the law, but for the timing, which put it right after the 2016 presidential election, during the busy inaugural season. So they settled for convenience. That is apparently gazillions of times worse than Biden kickbacks in exchange for access to the VP, for multiple millions of dollars, putting our nation at risk. Not to mention the drugs and sex and possible sex trafficking on the Biden laptop, which was withheld from the public for a year by the FBI, and then quashed in media just prior to the 2020 election.

Does Harris mention anything else? Yes, Trump said mean things on Twitter. He actually claimed Trump doxed people “again and again and again.” I’m unaware of any accusations of Trump ever doxing anyone. Trump followers, however, have been doxed, and persecuted, and targeted by the IRS, taken down from not only Twitter but Facebook, YouTube, and wherever else.

But self-proclaimed moralist Sam Harris thinks an outright conspiracy to prevent Trump from regaining the White House was absolutely justified. Who cares about democracy when an asteroid that is hurtling toward earth in the form of a seventy-something businessman could be stopped by any means necessary?

We have to wonder, why really does Sam Harris fear another Trump presidency? A long-past settled lawsuit and nonexistent doxing claims can’t be it. Is it because Trump moved us to the verge of a Hitlerian nightmare in his first term? No. In fact, he deregulated, freed us up, moved the economy out of the Obama malaise and into full recovery, particularly lowering unemployment for blacks. He stopped the majority of the border crisis with a “remain in Mexico” policy. He practically achieved lasting peace in the Middle East. He was, refreshingly, not authoritarian.

What are we supposed to be scared of? White supremacy—a miniscule issue without any connection to Trump. Racism—a dwindling issue without any connection to Trump. COVID—not caused by Trump and would have been nearly immediately solved with low-cost medicines given as early treatment, which Trump touted—if that normal action hadn’t been halted by Deep State actors here and across the world.

So what is there to fear?

Maybe loss of power to the ruling class. Trump, despite the money, despite the education at an Ivy League institution, is not considered elite. He is too much like the working class people the elites need to rule over.

And, let’s be clear, Sam Harris the intellectual is an elite. Apparently nothing emotionally upturns him more than someone in power who is not an elite—democracy be damned; that must be stopped!

People who believe they have the right to rule over others will always be the enemy of the people.

Will Cain discussed the Sam Harris clip with Gad Saad, a one-time friend of Sam Harris, who called him out for this immoral and unreasonable assertion. Cain summed up Harris’s viewpoint, I think accurately, as, “He said it’s perfectly fine to lie, steal, and cheat in order to accomplish ‘victory.’” In other words, Sam Harris has no principle, beyond winning, that he’s willing to stand on.

Will Cain (left) and Gad Saad discuss Sam Harris's moral relativism
screenshot from here

As Cain and Saad continued the conversation, Cain commented that, while “Sam’s not a Nobody, Sam’s not that big a deal; the problem is, Sam said out loud what many others believe.” He then reminds us that former CIA Director Michael Hayden said something similar recently, painting with an even broader brush, that there is nothing in his life more threatening that the modern-day Republican Party. Cain continues, “Worse than Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda and Isis. If that is their belief, they will break any rule. They will break any principle. Because the existence of humanity is at stake.” That’s what they seem to have convinced themselves to believe—because the supremacy of elitism doesn’t sell well among the masses.

Wednesday, Viva & Barnes did a Sidebar discussion with Michael Millerman, political philosopher and Aleksandr Dugin expert (he translated some of Dugin’s writings). Dugin is an anti-West and anti-modernity philosopher who has Putin’s ear; his daughter was assassinated this week, and there is speculation that the car bomb was meant for him. That’s all a discussion for some other day. But Dugin has been called a Neo-Nazi. And Viva Frei, who is ethnically Jewish, got called a Nazi this week as well. So they asked Millerman about the use of this term. Millerman answers:

I think everybody knows who’s watching this, on one level, everybody gets called a fascist today. Everybody gets called a Nazi today, if you veer a millimeter to the right, probably, of the ideological consensus.

He mentions an article in IM1776.com, by the online magazine's editor Daniel Miller about the history of that anti-fascist accusation of the left. Within that article the author makes this connection that might be relevant to our discussion today:

For the same reason the 2016 election victory of President Trump and populist dissident movements in Europe are repeatedly connected to Putin. The objective is to refuse democratic legitimacy to what would otherwise register as democratic movements, operating in nominally democratic societies, to suppress them as issues of national security.

Millerman continues about the Nazi epithet:

This is just automatically to discredit your enemies. And by the way, if you can legitimate calling all of your enemies fascists, and you can legitimate, you know, fascists are so much the scum of the earth that they should be cancelled—or killed—well, you’re not very far from legitimating the killing of your political enemies.

We’ve seen that you can cancel your political enemies. That happens all the time now. But, you know, we’re not too many steps away from car bombing your political enemies, in the West, I think, if you follow out the logic of delegitimating with this title.

Robert Barnes (top left) and Viva Frei (below) talk with Michael Millerman
screenshot from here

All this sounds like things are getting more dire. I don’t dispute that.

But there’s also something else going on. Truth is more powerful than raw assertion of power. The enemies of freedom are revealing everything they’re doing, and people are starting to see what was hidden:

§      There is no way they had the right to raid former President Trump’s residence with a general warrant—illegal for criminal investigations. They have tried to frame him, and have tried to cover up their crimes. The truth is going to be seen.

§      When the DOJ let it slip that they were targeting parents who spoke up at school board meetings, and investigating them as domestic terrorists, the truth got out, and perfectly normal and peaceful parents woke up. They now see the enemy.

§      Fauci has announced he is stepping down by the end of the year—which ought to have happened a decade or more ago for the octogenarian who has called himself “the science.” No matter how many times lately he’s tried to push for mask wearing and vaccination for children, people aren’t heeding him anymore. And there are threats of investigation into his corruption related to COVID origins, vaccine kickbacks, medicine kickbacks, and a whole lot of other crimes he’s committed. Personally, I think he should be prosecuted for every COVID-19 death that resulted from prevention of early treatment and by vaccine or Remdesivir adverse reactions.

§      More truth continues to come out about election fraud.

§      This week Biden announced he is forgiving student loan debt for vast swaths of that demographic—to be paid for by people saved, scrimped, paid off their debts, or had to forego the education for lack of money. And his answer to whether that’s fair is to mumble something unintelligible. It appears to be a brazen attempt to buy votes. And even Nancy Pelosi has pointed out that he doesn’t have the power to do it.

If history and recent primaries are an indicator, this November election could mean a switch of power in the legislature. And that could lead to some good things, like clearing out some of the swamp, even without Trump in office.

I can’t say whether November 8^th is going to be the “Let me put you on hold” moment, when the enemy suddenly and decisively gets taken down. I’d like that moment to be soon—for everyone’s sake. But if not then, the tension is mounting, and it will be coming.

And we know the outcome. Truth wins.

Unprecedented

The unprecedented raid on the former president of the United States is such a big news story, it’s totally eclipsing the promise of an additional army of 87,000 IRS agents—far more than necessary to audit every household making over $400,000. That’s a big and horrendous story. But this attack on President Trump is even more shocking. We talked about it here last week. But of course there’s more to learn about it every day.

the vague and general warrant, from here

 

Another Possible Motive

Attorney Robert Barnes has been giving his take on the Mar-a-Lago raid since that Monday afternoon, a week ago now. And as news comes out, he finds his take is still accurate. As he explains it, there are two basic narratives—on the Trump side; the FBI/DOJ side is something else altogether. These two narratives are trying to figure out what the FBI and DOJ are really up to. Barnes lays out the basic narrative first, and then his take:

The dominant narrative, this is an attempt by the Biden Justice Department to take Trump off of the 2024 election calendar by convicting him of a crime that removes—that has, as a consequence, the inability to hold federal office, and that it was based on Trump having documents he was not entitled to have, either because the archivist was entitled to them under the Presidential Records Act or that they were defense related documents and thus could not be in his private custody.

That’s basically the narrative we looked at here last Thursday. I should add that an additional scenario he doesn’t detail, and I don’t buy into either, is that they were fishing for incriminating evidence related to January 6^th. The reason they weren’t fishing for that is that they already know there isn’t any; Trump did not cause what happened at the capitol that day, nor was what happened an insurrection. But, as I said Thursday, their show inquiry is failing, so they’re moving on to the next attack.

Viva Frei (left) and Robert Barnes on their law vlog Sunday night livestream
screenshot from here

Here's Barnes’s take on their motive:

My theory was different. My theory was that this was a Deep State raid, that this was a raid not intended for the purposes of any kind of criminal prosecution or punishment, for the primary reason that the any criminal charge would require disclosure of what documents they were really, truly seeking…. Before Trump left, he asked all the agencies which documents they really wanted to keep classified. And there was speculation at the time that they basically gave him their Deep State, deep secret wish list to remain secret. And he declassified them but didn't publish them; he just took them with him. And that it would be potential insurance against indictment, insurance against assassination, insurance against other political threats that he knew he was going to be facing after leaving the presidency, particularly if he sought election again in 2024, and that they were paranoid about what was in those documents.

And so they were willing to risk the massive political blowback from an unprecedented raid of a former president and future presidential candidate’s personal residence for the purposes of getting those documents.

If I was right, what I predicted at the time was that when—this is before the warrant was released—that when the warrant is released, you'll find it to be very vague and very uncertain as to what exactly it’s seeking. It will be very elastic in what criminal statutes it claims there's probable cause of. That it will be notoriously overbroad in what it is seeking, and that they will be very bland and generic in their inventory. They won't list in detail what exactly they took, because they don't want anyone to know what exactly they were looking for. And that we would find out they would have kept the lawyers from overseeing it and anyone else in Trump world. They would ask cameras to be turned off, so nobody could know what it was they were actually seeking; that the goal wasn't to actually get these documents and restore them to their lawful owner, but to destroy them permanently and fully in the hopes that they were the only copies that existed.

It's not clear they have found such documents. They searched for a long time, you know, over 12 hours, then seized everything that was kind of there anyway. Apparently Trump had told them he kept the super secret documents in the safe. They had a safecracker there. They opened the safe, and the safe was empty, you know, Geraldo Rivera/Al Capone style.

Trump seemed unfazed and unbothered by what took place. That was outrageous and offensive, what took place. And he brought that to the court of public opinion. But he personally, by everybody who has talked to him since then, is not rattled and saw this coming at some level, understood the Deep State war that he's in the middle of—and has been ever since his candidacy rose to prominence in 2016.

In short, they are after evidence of Deep State wrongdoing—which is likely to begin to come out after the November midterm election, as soon as there is a shift in power in the House and hopefully the Senate. Such exposures will be easier and more complete with a return of Trump or a non-Deep-State Republican to the White House, but the threat to their power is much more immediate than keeping Trump from running in 2024.

What Barnes predicted turned out to be true: their warrant was vague and broad—which is not a legal warrant for a criminal investigation. Barnes lays out what we should have seen in a legal investigation, compared to what we saw:

The constitutional requirement is three-fold. There has to be probable cause of a crime for which there is specific evidence in the place that you're asking to be searched, and you can only request that which is evidence in support thereof. That's probable cause.

The second aspect is presentment, which means that when you get to the place you're going to search, you give the warrant to the person who you're—who has custody over the property, so that they can make sure you actually comply with what the warrant states and don't execute what's called a general warrant, which we'll get to in a minute.

Then the third aspect is particularity. This is the requirement that you specify individually which documents you're seeking and how probable cause exists both for the crime and for that document being evidence of the crime. Unlike civil discovery, which is under a general rule that if it could lead to discovery in America, you can request and get the information. That's not the case in a criminal search warrant context. You have to have particularity. You have to meet probable cause that both the crime exists and probable cause that the document you're asking to search and seize is evidence of that crime. What you cannot do is say, “I want to search your whole house and see if maybe there's some evidence of some kind of crime there.” That's what's not allowed.

That was the general warrants that the British were given prior to the American Revolution, which allowed the army basically to come in, and the colonial authorities, to come in and ransack your home—raid and ransack your home in search if maybe they’d find something. They could search anything, and they could seize anything, in the hopes that maybe it would be evidence of some sort of crime. That’s why we imposed the particularity, presentment, and probable cause preconditions for the execution of the search warrant.

Everything about this “criminal search warrant,” then, is bogus. Its vague and general, and the crimes they have hinted at are not possible crimes for the former president to have committed.

Other weird things about the warrant: they needed a separate, additional warrant to break into the safe, which they just happened to have a safecracker on hand to break into (it was empty). And the unprecedented gall of doing this at a former president’s residence is increased when you know that—it was supposedly urgent, but they waited three days before getting a judge to sign it—a judge who recused himself from a Trump case just six weeks ago, admitting he could not be unbiased. Hmm.

We learned today that they are fighting the request to publish what was in the affidavit requesting the search warrant—the statement of suspected crime and the reason the particular items to be searched would be evidence of such crime. However, such information might not be made public until there is an indictment. And in this case, since there is not likely to be an indictment, we may not get to see it for some time.

The reason there is not likely to be an indictment is that they do not want it known what they were searching for—which has nothing to do with any criminal lawbreaking of President Trump, because they know he didn’t do any.

One surprising thing Barnes said Sunday night was that he thought they didn’t think word would get out about the raid:

I don't think they thought this would ever become public knowledge. They went in with plainclothes. It did not leak at all until Trump himself told everybody about it. That means the Deep State didn't leak it in advance, like they do cases where they want the world to know about it.

They probably thought Trump would be too embarrassed by the fact of the raid to publicly disclose it, not understanding that Trump understands this game very well—or  well enough at this point. And so he was—Trump is the one saying, “These nuts are raiding my house; they're ransacking Melania's closet.”

Plainclothes or not, 30 FBI agents showing up anywhere is likely to raise attention. They’re doing something that egregious, and they think Trump will be embarrassed to let the world know? And yet, these are desperate times for the ones on the verge of losing their power.

  

They Can’t Be Trusted

On the Will Cain podcast today, about 20 minutes in, he talks why we should not believe the government in this case.  He says,

Will Cain on his August 15 podcast
screenshot from here

For 6 years Donald Trump has been the subject of an attack by many American people and many institutions, from the media to the national security state apparatus, who believe that he is illegitimate. That has been consistent. And that brings us to our final category: the credibility of these institutions. We’ve talked about this in the past. If there are many people that believe that Donald Trump is illegitimate, there are perhaps more who believe that the institutions of the United States are now illegitimate. And why would they believe that? Why would they have such little faith? Why would the believe the FBI, the DOJ, the media have no credibility? It might be because of this, over the past six years.

1.      The Russia collusion hoax.

2.      The Steele dossier hooker story.

3.      Russia paying bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan.

4.      Trump calling neo-Nazis, supposedly, “very fine people.”

5.      Trump suggesting drinking, injesting, injecting bleach to fight COVID.

6.      Trump overfed koi fish in Japan.

7.      Trump cleared protesters with teargas for a Bible photo op.

8.      Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation.

9.      Elections were fair, because no court found major fraud.

10.   January 6 was an insurrection to overthrow the government

11.   Trump tried to grab the steering wheel of the Beast—he leaned over the Secret Service and grabbed the steering wheel of the Beast.

All of these stories are false. Cain points out that each one was debunked. (I had to look up the one about the koi fish; I hadn’t heard that one.) A lot of people still don’t know those are all lies. But a lot of us do. Cain adds, for those of us who recognize all these past lies, “We’re just going to jump on the bandwagon and believe that Donald Trump stole the nuclear codes?” I don’t think so.

By the way, nuclear codes are changed daily. Former President Trump doesn’t have them. I don’t know who’s making that up—the Washington Post story claimed it was about documents related to nuclear weapons—but there’s a scary pattern of these enemies of freedom doing whatever they’re accusing the other side of doing.

 

Attorney/Client Privilege

Over the weekend it came out that, among the documents seized by the FBI in last Monday’s raid were attorney/client privilege documents. That is, correspondence between Trump and his counsel, which the FBI had no business taking. They cannot use them against him, and they should not be able to view them; they are private. It’s a constitutional right.

What should happen isn’t what is happening. What should happen is that, as soon as it was noticed that the FBI had “accidentally” seized documents were attorney/client privilege documents, they should have arranged for them to be returned. That could have been done simply and directly by returning them. Or, to ensure security of the documents, they could have had a court-appointed person, called a special master.

But they did not do that. Instead they appointed a “filter team” of FBI agents going over the documents to decide which they should be reviewing and which they shouldn’t. Then they still wouldn’t return them; they’d send them on to a “tank team” of FBI agents, another level up, for review. It’s a fox guarding the henhouse scenario. As Jay Sekulow asks in his ACLJ broadcast, “Does anybody believe these are not being reviewed by the FBI?”

That’s multiple sets of eyes. They saw the documents when they were deciding what to box up and take from Mar-a-Lago. With anything but a general warrant, they would have recognized these as “do not take.” They had many hours at Mar-a-Lago to see them and make that decision; they took them. Then they went through them somewhere, enough to recognize they were attorney-client privilege documents, because they identified the boxes that contain them: A-13, A-14, A-26, A-33, A-43, and one labeled “set of documents.” Then there’s the “filter team,” followed by the “tank team”—all of these various FBI officials.

And remember, last Thursday DOJ Merrick Garland said it was wrong to question the FBI—which was something of a veiled threat toward anyone with common sense enough to question what this FBI is doing.

Law vlogger Robert Gouveia goes over the DOJ objection to 
warrant affidavit release, screenshot from here

We’ve never seen anything like this in America before—because the institutions that are clearly corrupt have never been this openly brazen before.

Again, I say they are desperate to maintain their power, at any cost, even at the cost of unveiling how corrupt they truly are. If they don’t succeed in maintaining their power in November, then it’s game over. So watch for more desperation in the next few months. It isn't going to be pretty. But it sure is unprecedented.

We Agree; We Don't Want Authoritarian Rule

Can we agree on this? We don’t want to be under authoritarian rule. We don’t want a Big Brother, totalitarian tyranny.

For years now—since the noted descent on the escalator—opponents of Donald Trump have been describing him as a Hitler wannabe. A fascist. Racist, etc., to boot. They are afraid of him; he wants to control us all.

If you’ve been one of those, then it’s time for a paradigm shift. In his four years in office, I defy you to find an action that he took as president that was authoritarian.

He reduced regulation. He lowered inflation and unemployment rates. The economy thrived—except during the couple of quarters of 2020 when the economy shut down because of COVID-19. Note that the President did not shut the country down; that was done by local and state authorities, under the unauthoritative direction of deep state actors in the NIH, CDC, and WHO.

Did Trump deny the American people the use of oil and gas reserves? His successor has. Trump took us quickly to energy independence, with the largest resource supply of oil and gas in the world. Biden immediately shut that down, then went begging to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia—as if we couldn’t supply our own. And he drew down our strategic reserves—and sold them to the CCP, while Americans pay several dollars more per gallon at the pump.

image is screenshot from this Facts Matter video

Targeting Political Enemies

But the real sign of authoritarian rule is the targeting of political enemies. The Biden regime has quite a record of that—especially if you tag on the Obama/Biden years and the Deep State attacks during Trump’s presidency.

The “raid” seems to be a favorite authoritarian ploy—because it’s scary and pushy, and can be construed by media to be lawful.

Here are a few such stories:

·       “Feds Reportedly Raid Project Veritas-Linked Apartments over Ashley Biden’s Diary” by Ben Feuerherd, New York Post, November 5, 2021. / This was when Project Veritas was given Ashley Biden’s diary, reportedly left in a hotel room. They couldn’t verify its authenticity and didn’t want to touch it. They tried returning it, and whoever it was refused. So they turned it over to police. After doing so, James O’Keefe and several Project-Veritas employees had their apartments raided, purportedly looking for the “stolen” diary. More likely this was to scare them, and maybe to do a fishing search for something that could be twisted against them. Even if they’d still held the diary—which they were known not to have—there was no need for a raid. The diary has since been verified as authentic.

·    “FBI Raids Target Democrats’ Political Foes Instead of True Criminals” by Beth Whitehead, The Federalist, June 27, 2022.  This story talks about the FBI targeting a list of people: Roger Stone, Rudy Giuliani, James O’Keefe, and Jeff Clark. It says, “The FBI is now also engaging in raids on private homes of elderly Americans who peacefully attended the Capitol protest on Jan. 6, 2020. Compare this treatment to that of actual criminals affiliated with Democrats, such as Hunter Biden, Andy McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Michael Sussmann. The latter have seen no personal visit from the FBI since their crimes were committed or exposed.” They mention:

o   Stone’s home in January 2019

o   Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s home in April 2021, ostensibly searching for evidence that Giuliani broke the law regarding Ukraine. This was after Giuliani had offered twice to answer prosecutors’ questions. A year after the raid, Giuliani is still under investigation with no crimes charged against him nor the FBI willing to broadcast what they’re after. 

o   The FBI raided O’Keefe’s home and office under the allegation that O’Keefe had stolen Ashley Biden’s diary. Yet the diary was no longer in O’Keefe’s hands at the time, as he had turned it in to Florida police after evaluating its veracity. 

o   June 22, federal authorities searched the home of Jeff Clark, former assistant attorney general under Trump.

·       “Alaska Couple Says FBI Raided Their Home with Guns Drawn, Interrogated Them in Search for Pelosi's Laptop” by Breck Dumas, The Blaze, April 30, 2022.  This was a case of mistaken identity. Again, a nighttime raid was way over-the-top unnecessary.

·       “Why Were These Churches Raided by the FBI? HOPCC Churches and Seminaries Are Under Investigation for Fraud, Allegedly Targeting Veterans” by Collin Leonard, Deseret News, June 24, 2022. t I’m not defending these churches and their particular actions; it appears they may have been crossing the line into criminal activity. But the normal approach would have been through subpoena of documents, officially terminating their ability to use GI bill funds, and then pursue particular criminal claims. An FBI raid at three locations seems meant more to intimidate than to get evidence that could be obtained in no other way and was at risk of being destroyed.

·       “FBI Raids Home of Retired Texas Couple Who Attended Jan. 6 Capitol Rally” by Darlene McCormick Sanchez, The Epoch Times, June 25, 2022. Another case of mistaken identity. Startled homeowners hearing alarms in the pre-dawn got their guns out. A flash-bang was tossed into the home, upsetting the dogs. This was a year and a half after the January 6^th incident; the retired couple had attended the rally but had not gone beyond the capitol steps. What danger were they to the country on this date, at that hour? It’s fortunate no one was killed or injured.     

There's a whole "List of FBI Controversies" on Wikipedia, worth exploring.

Let’s add in that the administration has declared “domestic terrorists” to be the greatest threat to the nation—and domestic terrorists are redefined as people like us, who are normal, patriotic, good citizens. The NASB first suggested parents who spoke up at school board meetings were domestic terrorist threats—and the DOJ went along with that declaration, without evidence of a single threat.

Recently Senator Ted Cruz challenged FBI Director Christopher Wray about a document leaked to Project Veritas showing symbols associated with domestic terrorists, which included the Betsy Ross flag, the Gadsden flag, the Liberty Tree, the Gonzalez battle flag which reads “Come and Take It,” Revolutionary War imagery, and “Other Commonly Referenced Historical Imagery and Quotes.”  Wray, who heads the FBI, claimed ignorance of any memo regarding associating these symbols with domestic terrorism. (There’s a good body language analysis of this exchange here.)

FBI document leaked to Project Veritas,
identifying symbols of domestic terrorism

 

In case you only listen to broadcast and cable media, maybe you’re unaware that messages not aligned with the regime are not allowed on those platforms. And they are censored on public forums. You ought to be aware that Twitter took down President Trump’s account—including his tweet requesting that protestors on January 6^th needed to go home, because we needed to maintain peace (not because his Tweets inflamed his followers, but because they verified that he didn’t).

Differing views—including factual statements using government data—relating to election fraud, COVID-19 and its vaccines and other protocol or questions of origin, and anything else not approved get cautioned, censored, shadow-banned on Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube. It is a common “cost of doing business” on these platforms for conservatives to self-censor, use code wording, or otherwise tiptoe around vague "community standards" to avoid being shut down.

 

The Raid

This raid on President Trump’s home was a step too far.

Let’s clear up some legal details. First, the President is entitled to his personal documents. It is a matter of discussion between him and the National Archives as to whom should hold an original or copy of various things. Those discussions were ongoing, as expected. There were not any classified documents the President wasn’t entitled to. It isn’t illegal for him to possess them. He didn’t “steal” or “destroy, spindle, or mutilate” anything. If the National Archives wanted something, they needed to ask and negotiate—which apparently they have been doing.

There was no need of “an informant close to Trump” leaking news that the documents were at his Mar-a-Lago residence; the National Archives already knew that. They had been to the location where the documents were being stored and had recommended an additional lock on the location, for security—which was placed there. That additional lock was broken by the FBI in the raid. 

If this were some other case in which a former government employee had classified documents, or was keeping documents in an unsafe location that could lead to their being compromised, then there would be procedures for that. These would include a subpoena, possibly an arrest—although that would much more likely take place through lawyer negotiations and court hearings, not through an FBI raid using dozens of agents.

If there were a case in which documents were at risk of imminent destruction, ostensibly making an FBI surprise visit necessary, it still would not take an armed brigade.

But it would require a warrant. And the warrant would have to be shown immediately—and a copy would be made available to the subject of the investigation and his legal representation. Reports are that, during the 12-hour search, Trump lawyers were flashed the subpoena from ten feet away, and they were not allowed to keep a copy.

Tom Fitten of Judicial Watch, among others, has requested a copy of the warrant through a Freedom of Information Act request. So far, however, there has been no detailed information about what was being sought or what was taken. They may respond by Monday.

Judicial Watch FOIA request to see the warrant.
taken as a screenshot from here

In the service of a legal search warrant, anything taken by officials would be itemized, and a receipt given. This also did not happen. That means it is impossible to know what Trump had in his possession that they took—or, possibly, what they said he had. In other words, they have put themselves in the position of planting items among his possessions, so we cannot trust chain of custody of evidence. Again, whatever they claim he had or didn’t have shouldn’t matter, because the former president is entitled to his documents, regardless of classification. He committed no crime; the government may have.

There is speculation about what the FBI was after—which they even went through Melania Trump’s closet to search for. Some speculate it must have something to do with January 6^th. I doubt that. The most plausible reason is to find a way to keep Trump from running again. There is a statement in law (federal code section 2071) that a person convicted of mishandling classified documents (as Hillary Clinton clearly did) would not be allowed to run for any future public office. Nice try, but that law does not apply to the President of the United States; the documents are his. Former presidents fill their presidential libraries with such materials. The president can declassify at will. Classified materials may be kept and safeguarded by the National Archives as well—or copies.

What is important to the nation is the preservation of documents. And what we can’t be certain of is that a federal agency this reckless concerning the law would want to preserve documents, rather than destroy anything that might be embarrassing for the regime. There’s a strong possibility that Donald Trump has documents that could take down a great many Deep State players. And they want to stop that at all costs.

 

Why They Did It

In short, they have never hated Trump because he is an authoritarian, or racist, or any other epithet they have thrown at him. They have hated him because he is a threat to their way of doing business—their power mongering.

YouTuber Mr. Reagan lays out a scenario, which he imagines happened some years back. A group of these players sat together in a room, white board at the ready, and brainstormed ways to take out Donald Trump. They tried the Russia hoax—it failed. They tried impeachment over that; it failed. And eventually proof came out that the Clinton campaign had paid for the whole hoax.

Mr. Reagan imagines a list of things they went down. Both impeachments (including one after he left office) failed to show any wrongdoing on Trump’s part. They had to steal the election, of course. And then they tried to set up something they could blame on Trump, such as an insurrection. How inconvenient for them that there wasn’t one. They had gone through the dry run in Michigan, with a hoax attempt at kidnapping Governor Whitmer. Every person on trial in that case was acquitted or granted a mistrial—and the defense was government entrapment. There were more FBI agents and informants than actors—and the plot would simply not have been considered without the urging of those government agents.

The Detroit FBI Field Manager was promoted to DC field manager just in time for the January 6^th entrapment. (See the Revolver news story on that.) FBI agents and agent provocateurs instigated entering the capitol that day. Add to that, most of the crowd that did get agitated were provoked by Capitol Police, who shot them with rubber bullets, threw concussive grenades into the crowd, and beat nonviolent protesters. As more evidence comes out, it appears all six of the deaths that day were caused by the police, not the protesters. No police were killed; only protesters. (See the EpochTV documentary The Real Story of Jan. 6.)

Government business was continued as usual that same evening. People went home peacefully, as President Trump had asked them to do. And yet Biden calls it the worst attack on democracy in history—worse than Pearl Harbor or 9/11. The only way that is true is when you see the regime’s response (coupled with the election theft itself) as the regime’s attack on our constitutional republic.

After January 6^th, people were rounded up—often experiencing violent raids at their peaceful homes in the pre-dawn darkness. People have been taken into custody and kept there, without trial, without rights, without access to counsel, in solitary confinement—often without charges—now going on a year and a half. For misdemeanor trespass charges.

I got sidetracked from Mr. Reagan’s list. Anyway, they have tried this false narrative that Trump caused an insurrection on January 6^th, and the people aren’t buying it. Their Senate inquiry is going nowhere. More of their lies have come to light, rather than people getting convinced of Trump’s guilt. Mr. Reagan thinks that the very fact they have moved on down the list—and this raid was probably near the bottom—shows that they’re giving up on the insurrection lie.

This raid was unprecedented. You don’t raid a former president’s home and confiscate his belongings. It’s unthinkable outside a banana republic. 

Definition 2, from Dictionary.com

It obviously smacks of political weaponization of government law enforcement—which it is, whatever their stated reason on that warrant. The FBI is at fault. Director Wray has no explanation. The DOJ is at fault. What we can be certain of is that America dodged a bullet when the Republicans refused to allow Merrick Garland to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court in those last few months of the Obama administration. Garland clearly does not have the law or the best interests of the United States on his list of guiding principles. He’s about political vendettas and personal power mongering.

Under a president even slightly less weak than Biden, it’s hard to imagine this happening.

 

What Next

Is there something from that imagined white board list they haven’t gotten to yet? I don’t know. But their time is running out. This midterm election is critical. The raid this week was a Hail Mary pass. The thing about Hail Mary passes; they hardly ever work. That’s why football teams don’t do them all through the game—only when desperate.

If I were to guess at the next such desperate attempt, I would say they’ll try to keep the November midterm election from happening. Maybe because of riots. Maybe they’ll try to scare us about another pandemic. Maybe it will be something we haven’t even conceived of. Evil minds can be very inventive. All I know is, if they don’t keep their power now, good patriots have a chance to bring to light and clear the government and institutions of the evil cabal of tyrants. So they will pull out all the stops.

So, you Trump haters, if you have any actual concern about authoritarian rule: Wake up! The authoritarian, totalitarian, corrupt tyrants are the ones you put in power.

The rest of us are beyond our patience, waiting for you to wake up and see what’s been going on right in front of our eyes.

We’d like to be a country united—united against totalitarian tyranny. But we can’t unify with people who hate us and hate our freedoms and our Constitution. We can’t compromise like we’ve done in the past—live and let live. Because those tyrants aren’t letting us live.

We’ve agreed with you all along: authoritarian rule is wrong. We’re just not blind, as you have been, about where we see it.

What you’ll find, once you wake up, is that we won’t punish you for having been blind; we’ll just welcome you to the light of freedom. That’s the path to unity and peace.