The media cover-up of another FBI fiasco

 Julie Kelly:

Once upon a time in America, a high-profile federal prosecution imploding amid credible accusations of FBI entrapment would earn wall-to-wall headlines in the national news media. A wife-beating FBI agent who used at least one criminal informant and a dozen more government assets to concoct a plot to abduct a sitting governor—intended to create damaging headlines for an incumbent president right before Election Day—would receive nonstop coverage on cable and broadcast news outlets.

Social media would be flooded with all the juicy details. Names like “Richard Trask” and “Stephen Robeson” would be household names.

But none of that is happening with the Justice Department’s rapidly crumbling case against several men arrested for allegedly conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer from her vacation cottage in the fall of 2020. Defense attorneys have made a strong case that without the FBI’s guiding hand—and deep pockets courtesy of American taxpayers—the scheme never would have materialized past random social media chatter.

“[The] undisputed evidence . . . establishes that government agents and informants concocted, hatched, and pushed this ‘kidnapping plan’ from the beginning, doing so against defendants who explicitly repudiated the plan,” five defense attorneys wrote in a December 25 motion, one of several defense filings that details proof of an elaborate FBI operation to lure their clients into the abduction caper.

And the bad actors in the government’s script keep finding themselves in more trouble.

Richard Trask, the lead FBI agent on the case, was fired for physically assaulting his wife in a drunken rage following a swinger party last summer. Body-camera footage made public last month shows a shirtless and clearly inebriated Trask being arrested by local police. (He was not charged with driving under the influence.)

A Michigan news station recently unearthed Trask’s Trump-hating rants posted on social media in 2020. “If you still support our piece of shit president you can fuck off,” Trask wrote on Facebook at the same time he was “investigating” threats against Whitmer. Trask said he hoped people who support Trump “burn in hell.”

Two other FBI agents working with Trask at the Detroit FBI field office who handled multiple informants also have been dismissed from the case; FBI agent Jayson Chambers is accused of running a security business on the side and FBI agent Henrik Impola is accused of committing perjury in another case. The Justice Department just notified the court that Trask, Chambers, and Impola are no longer on the government’s witness list.

And just when it looked like things couldn’t get worse for prosecutors, Stephen Robeson, a main informant and convicted felon, has been charged with committing two other crimes while directing the Whitmer kidnapping ruse. Prosecutors last week accused Robeson of acting as a “double agent.” Prosecutors said Robeson “broke an agreement with the FBI by offering charity money to buy weapons to be used in attacks, illegally obtained weapons, and offered personal equipment, including a drone, to aid in committing domestic terrorism.”

Not only is Robeson off the government’s witness list but the Justice Department is fighting to stop defense attorneys from presenting damning evidence of Robeson’s involvement during the trial scheduled to begin in March.

All of this salacious drama should be front-page news. After all, when the Justice Department announced the kidnapping charges in a press release on October 8, 2020, it was a bonanza for the corporate media right before Election Day. The shocking news resulted in widespread condemnation of Donald Trump, blamed once again for promoting violence against his political opponents and emboldening so-called “militia” groups loyal to him.
...

The FBI appears to be broken.  It willfully participated in the Russian collusion hoax against Trump and it has increasingly like a political hit squad rather than a competent law enforcement organization.  It is an organization that desperately needs competent leadership.  It also needs to get rid of the CRT ideas it is operating under.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains