When the government breaks its own laws: Part 2 of 2
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Give me Liberty
Rodger Williamson
The main focus for today’s observations of obvious tyranny committed by our very own federal government as related to the trial of several members of the Proud Boys and their participation within the January 6, 2021, invasion of the U.S. Capitol building, by the rightful owners of said building, collectively known as “we the people.”
In earlier testimony, Special Agent Nicole Miller of the FBI admitted under cross-examination that she was asked to alter evidence so as to remove the name of another FBI agent as having been present during a critical government meeting between agents and a confidential source. Just in case you were not aware, materially altering government records, particularly those likely to be evidence in a criminal case, is an actual crime!
The same agent also revealed that she was asked to destroy 338 items of evidence by her FBI superiors (it is unknown if she did or did not destroy said evidence). The same agent also revealed that the FBI has been surveilling the communications between one of the defendants and his legal team. Since no warrant was referenced for the authorization, it is presumed that the surveillance of the defendant and his lawyers was done without a warrant, which also happens to be another federal crime.
Special Agent Miller was then required by the court to turn over any written statements that were related to her testimony. A close examination of the Excel file that the agent submitted revealed there were more than 1,000 hidden Excel rows of messages.
Not only is the government admitting under oath that it is breaking its own laws, but we are witnessing the exposure of a culture in federal law enforcement that blatantly chooses to ignore our constitution, federal laws and societal norms, whenever those checks prove to be the slightest hindrance of their efforts to produce citizens to prosecute.
This week, the Proud Boys trial was halted after yet another example of government corruption and tyranny was revealed. Jen Loh, a Texas woman, was called to testify in the case, whereupon she admitted that she had, over the past year, been talking with the members of the far-right group and their defense counsel about the case and suggesting possible witnesses and attorneys who could help; all the while, she was also a paid FBI informant.
The attitude that law enforcement is free to break the laws that it enforces goes back to 2001 when then President George W. Bush began shredding our constitution by unleashing federal agencies to spy on all Americans without warrants. Each president since; including Obama, Trump and Biden; has continued his approval of this continued tyranny. The Biden administration has only recently asked our congress to continue to permit federal agents to continue to spy on Americans without search warrants with a re-authorizing of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978.
You should note that while FISA does require warrants from the FISA Court for all domestic spying, Section 702 is a 2008 amendment to FISA, wherein it expressly authorizes warrant-less spying of foreign persons, inclusive of all of their interactions with U.S. citizens.
Regarding what has been happening, the Supreme Court has previously characterized spying as surveillance and surveillance as a “search” under the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment specifically requires search warrants to be issued by a judge, based upon probable cause of crime to be demonstrated to the judge under oath, and specifically describing the place to be searched or thing to be seized, for the surveillance to be lawful.
FISA Court warrants are different, in that they are issued by a secret court in Washington, D.C., are not based on probable cause of a crime, and since Section 702 does away altogether with the warrant requirement when foreign persons are even peripherally involved, both FISA and its Section 702 are unquestionably unconstitutional!
Meanwhile, for two decades now, all 330 million Americans, as in ALL of us, have had our phone calls and digital communications systematically recorded, without one person in the federal government being prosecuted for violating our 4th Amendment right to privacy. Is it any wonder then, that a generation of federal agents has come of age, lying, cheating, stealing, and getting away with it? Despite the obvious violation of their oaths to uphold our constitution, the Feds still see no wrong in their own obstruction of justice, and they will not prosecute their own for doing what they were told to do, even when that duty is in contravention to both our constitution and the federal criminal laws they are legally bound to uphold.
When the government breaks its own laws, and the law breakers go unpunished, it becomes a precedent for others in government to do the same. That precedent tramples human liberty and makes those in government who do so into tyrants.
Again I ask, as I did last week, which is more harmful to personal liberty, someone thinking and wishing the government ill, which is a constitutionally protected right, or agreeing to uphold the constitution as an agent of our government, and then that agent, or agency, violating the civil liberty protections that are guarantied to the citizens?
While we are not yet at the point of no return, the current news reports bring to my mind the words of Thomas Jefferson, penned into our Declaration of Independence, the document that founded these United States: (That) “governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.”
I hope that we will never have to repeat our Revolution, but I can feel the rumblings of discontent slowly growing.