Political Targeting. When Did it Really Begin?

SUBMITTED BY GEORGE MCCLELLAN

A com­ment in a recent arti­cle on the “Amer­i­can Lib­er­ty” inter­net site titled: “Sur­veil­lance State: How Jan­u­ary 6th Turned Finan­cial Scruti­ny Into Polit­i­cal Tar­get­ing,” starts on what I believe is a mis­tak­en premis­es, that the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol protest changed the gov­ern­ments pro­to­cols on sur­veilling Amer­i­can cit­i­zens. It did­n’t change them, it expand­ed them! Since that 06 Jan 21 post elec­tion event, the new pres­i­dent, Joe Biden direct­ed his Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment to go whole-hog total­i­tar­i­an, employ­ing the FBI, IRS and ATF under the DoJ for plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty, to seek out any and all MAGA Amer­i­cans who was at the Capi­tol on 06 Jan­u­ary.  It was a designed attack on Don­ald Trump and a direct attempt to destroy his MAGA move­ment. They met suc­cess for a while, but since stab­bing Joe Biden in the back and push­ing that total idiot, Kamala Har­ris as their can­di­date of choice, all their clever plan­ning has turned into a Demo­c­rat sham­bles. They’ve cleared their bench!

Pri­or to 06 Jan, finan­cial sur­veil­lance oper­at­ed with­in a con­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work designed to iden­ti­fy and com­bat crim­i­nal and ter­ror­ist mon­ey laun­der­ing schemes. That may be so but what the 06 Jan­u­ary protest real­ly did was pro­vid­ed Democ­rats the excuse they need­ed to attempt the destruc­tion of Trump and his MAGA move­ment. In fact, they took advan­tage of the protest to make it hap­pen! The four years of Trumps ban­ish­ment as we know, was filled with law­fare attacks, pho­ny accu­sa­tions of pet­ty crimes raised to the lev­el of felonies, claims of mis­han­dling clas­si­fied doc­u­ments, et al., all designed to con­vince Amer­i­cans not to return him to the White House to com­plete his promised destruc­tion of the bureau­crat­ic deep state. Since 9/11 and the Patri­ot Act, judi­cial over­sight (FISA Court) sup­pos­ed­ly oper­at­ed as an essen­tial link in defend­ing the fourth amend­ment process ensur­ing that any gov­ern­ment intru­sion into cit­i­zens’ finan­cial lives fol­lowed the law. Oba­ma, from the moment of his first elec­tion, changed the tar­gets of who was Amer­i­c­as real ter­ror­ist threat from Islam­ic Jihadists to White Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ists. Oba­ma was offend­ed that Islam, sim­ply because of 9/11 was by law, to be con­sid­ered Amer­i­c­as main ter­ror­ist threat.

Until Trumps 2016 vic­to­ry, there exist­ed an uneasy bal­ance of apply­ing the law that last­ed until the 06 Jan Capi­tol event altered the bal­ance. Under Biden’s admin­is­tra­tion, fourth amend­ment safe­guards were swept aside and sur­veil­lance efforts shift­ed from a nec­es­sary tool for nation­al defense to become a blunt instru­ment wield­ed against pro-Trump sup­port­ers and the broad­er “MAGA” move­ment. Capi­tol protest atten­dees, if they were any­where with­in sight of the US Capi­tol build­ing, or their cell phones indi­cat­ed they were, were hunt­ed down by the FBI, arrest­ed, inter­ro­gat­ed, tried and impris­on­ment in con­di­tions nor­mal­ly afford­ed to real crim­i­nals. The Demo­c­rat Par­ty lead­er­ship saw a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty to neu­tral­ize the Con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, and took it!  Under Biden’s lead­er­ship the law­fare against Trump ran for four full years unknow­ing­ly for them cre­at­ing an unin­tend­ed lev­el of fear and dis­trust of gov­ern­ment agen­cies. By ensur­ing  the destruc­tion of many Amer­i­cans rep­u­ta­tions, expend­ing their finances and drain­ing their bank accounts to pro­tect them­selves, how could they not have known? Indi­vid­u­als from far away, who attend­ed the ral­ly or donat­ed to con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es soon found them­selves sub­ject­ed to the sur­veil­lance of their com­mu­ni­ca­tions, trav­el his­to­ries, hotel book­ings, but espe­cial­ly the unlaw­ful exam­i­na­tion of their finan­cial trans­ac­tions. This is how the East Ger­man Stasi and the Sovi­ets KGB oper­at­ed.

The Amer­i­can Lib­er­ty arti­cle claimed that 06 Jan was the chang­ing point. It was­n’t! In light of cur­rent events we see it as a clum­sy attempt by the Democ­rats to destroy con­ser­vatism and keep polit­i­cal pow­er for­ev­er. Well, for­ev­er end­ed on 05 Nov 2024! In any event, the vehi­cle for plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty for vio­lat­ing the con­sti­tu­tion was the Patri­ot Act. That act appeared off the shelf imme­di­ate­ly after 9/11 to “cre­ate appro­pri­ate tools to inter­cept and obstruct ter­ror­ism, enhance law enforce­ment tools for inves­ti­ga­tion ter­ror­ism, deter and pun­ish ter­ror­ist acts, Increase penal­ties for ter­ror­ism crimes, expand the list of activ­i­ties that qual­i­fy as ter­ror­ism charges” The act gave law enforce­ment and intel­li­gence agen­cies increased sur­veil­lance pow­ers, includ­ing: expand­ed wire­tap­ping and pen reg­is­ter mon­i­tor­ing, expand­ed access to elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions, allowed secret search­es, Removed pri­va­cy pro­tec­tions to allow fed­er­al agen­cies to share more infor­ma­tion and Increased fund­ing for fed­er­al law enforce­ment agen­cies.” Isn’t that won­der­ful? Who could pos­si­ble be against our gov­ern­ment pro­tect­ing us from anoth­er Islam­ic ter­ror­ist attack? Why, you’re unAmer­i­can if you did­n’t agree.

Of course, to “remove prva­cy pro­tec­tions” as the act states, ignores the fourth amend­ment. The Depart­ment of Jus­tice ignored warn­ings to that affect claim­ing: “the act pro­tects Amer­i­cans’ First Amend­ment rights and that ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tors are not inter­est­ed in the library habits of ordi­nary Amer­i­cans.” The hell they’re not! It’s the sec­ond amend­ment that pro­tects our first amend­ment rights and the fourth amend­ment that pro­tects Amer­i­cans from the intru­sions of their hos­tile gov­ern­ment. Effec­tive­ly, the Patri­ot Act, for con­nivence sake, allowed the com­bin­ing of the Counter Intel­li­gence func­tion with law enforce­ment plac­ing both in the hands of the FBI. What could pos­si­bly go wrong? Why, noth­ing, except that for the sake of con­nivence, it cor­rupts the mech­a­nism of safe-guard­ing Amer­i­can’s pro­tec­tions against unlaw­ful search­es by the inves­tiga­tive process. This is where FISA Court judges were sup­posed to inter­vene, if con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions were in dan­ger of being ignored for the sake of mak­ing an arrest or…claiming politi­cians like Don­ald Trump were in cahoots with those awful Rus­sians. After Oba­ma, that whole process changed from know­ing who is our out­side ene­mies (Islam) to charg­ing White Chris­t­ian Males as our inter­nal ene­mies and destroy them before they can inter­fere with their Glob­al­ism agen­da.

The Patri­ot Act was altered to “allow (non gov­ern­ment) Inter­net ser­vices to dis­close (man­date) cus­tomer records “vol­un­tar­i­ly” to the gov­ern­ment in emer­gen­cies involv­ing imme­di­ate risk of death or seri­ous injury.” And that’s how it’s been since Oba­ma came on the scene. Bud­get­ing was still an impor­tant issue to gen­er­ate up the resources to fund the gov­ern­ments total­i­tar­i­an efforts against the MAGA state. The Nation­al Defense Autho­riza­tion Act (NDAA) was the log­i­cal vehi­cle for that and so Biden’s fas­cist state grew apace until 05 Nov 2024. Trumps mas­sive man­date of claim­ing both the elec­toral and pop­u­lar votes brought the Glob­al­ism busi­ness to a halt, for now! But, be aware, we can­not drop our guard, at all. We still have nev­er Trump RiNO prob­lems wait­ing to do their dam­age as well.

Con­fir­ma­tion of ille­gal tar­get­ing is found in a report by the House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee, togeth­er with the Select Sub­com­mit­tee on the Weaponiza­tion of the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment that reveals exten­sive abuse of the law by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. Con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tors exposed the FBI’s abused of the Bank Secre­cy Act to tar­get oppo­nents of Biden’s admin­is­tra­tion and iden­ti­fy Trump sup­port­ers. The infor­ma­tion obtained dur­ing the Com­mit­tee and Select Subcommittee’s inves­ti­ga­tions, revealed that fed­er­al law enforce­ment works hand-in-glove with finan­cial insti­tu­tions, to seek unchecked access to pri­vate finan­cial data while test­ing new meth­ods and new tech­nolo­gies to con­tin­ue their finan­cial sur­veil­lance of Amer­i­can cit­i­zens.” We should be writ­ing our con­gress­men and sen­a­tors right now. Ya think?

Remem­ber, free­dom is the goal, the Con­sti­tu­tion is the way. Now, let’s go help Don­ald Trump Make Amer­i­ca Great Again. (09Dec24)