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Posts Tagged ‘Merrick Garland’

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Erie Times E-Edition Article-Garland says feds to target school board threats

Posted by M. C. on October 7, 2021

The surveys are often created/administered by” Panorama Education. “Merrick Garland’s daughter is married to the president and founder.” As PDE’s Asra Nomani observes, “in its survey, [Panorama Education] asks students if they are ‘pansexual’ or ‘gender fluid.'” She argues that by investigating parents, “U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland is freezing parents protesting fraud and protecting his son-in-law’s business interest.”

https://cnsnews.com/commentary/hans-bader/investigating-anti-crt-parents-garland-may-want-address-conflict-interest

https://conservativedailypost.com/well-well-well-ag-merricks-son-in-law-is-co-founder-of-company-selling-crt-to-public-schools/

Follow the link below to view the article. Garland says feds to target school board threats https://erietimes-pa-app.newsmemory.com/?publink=0c118a592_1345f63

Garland says feds to target school board threats

Gary Fields ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON – Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday directed federal authorities to hold strategy sessions in the next 30 days with law enforcement to address the increasing threats targeting school board members, teachers and other employees in the nation’s public schools.

In a memorandum, Garland said there has been ‘a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools.’

To address the rising problem, Garland said the FBI will work with U.S. attorneys and federal, state, local, territorial and tribal authorities in each district to develop strategies against the threats.

‘While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution, that protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views,’ Garland said.

The action is in response to an urgent request last week from the National School Boards Association. The group, which represents school board members around the country, asked President Joe Biden for federal assistance to investigate and stop threats made over policies including mask mandates, likening the vitriol to a form of domestic terrorism.

The association asked for the federal government to investigate cases where threats or violence could be handled as violations of federal laws protecting civil rights. It also asked for the Justice Department, FBI, Homeland Security and Secret Service to help monitor threat levels and assess risks to students, educators, board members and school buildings.

The group’s letter documented more than 20 instances of threats, harassment, disruption, and acts of intimidation in California, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Ohio and other states. It cited the September arrest of an Illinois man for aggravated battery and disorderly conduct for allegedly striking a school official at a meeting. In Michigan, a meeting was disrupted when a man performed a Nazi salute to protest masking.

‘We are coming after you,’ a letter mailed to an Ohio school board member said, according to the group. ‘You are forcing them to wear mask – for no reason in this world other than control. And for that you will pay dearly.’ It called the member ‘a filthy traitor.’

Garland said the Justice Department will use its authority and resources to discourage the threats and ‘prosecute them when appropriate. In the coming days, the Department will announce a series of measures designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.’

School board members are mostly unpaid volunteers, parents and former educators who shape school policy, choose a superintendent and review the budget, but they have been frightened at how their jobs have suddenly become a culture war battleground. The climate has led a growing number to resign or decide against seeking reelection.

Chip Slaven, NSBA interim executive director and CEO, praised the Justice Department’s swift action and pointed to the detrimental impact the threats of violence and intimidation have had on the education system.

‘Over the last few weeks, school board members and other education leaders have received death threats and have been subjected to threats and harassment, both online and in person,’ Slaven said in a statement. The department’s action ‘is a strong message to individuals with violent intent who are focused on causing chaos, disrupting our public schools, and driving wedges between school boards and the parents, students, and communities they serve.’

Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, an Arlington, Virginia-based group formed in January, took the school board group and the Justice Department to task. In a statement emailed to The Associated Press she said: ‘It is shameful that activists are weaponizing the US Department of Justice against parents. This is a coordinated attempt to intimidate dissenting voices in the debates surrounding America’s underperforming K-12 education – and it will not succeed. We will not be silenced.’

School districts across the U.S. have contended with angry parents, school board members and the public on the questions of masks and mandated vaccines. Ben Gray/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP

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Pills And Profits: Merck To Make Billions From USG-Funded Covid Treatment

Posted by M. C. on October 6, 2021

Big Pharma Merck is set to rake in billions of dollars from its new “not-ivermectin” Covid treatment – despite the US taxpayer paying for the drug’s original development. Also today – no wonder Attorney General Merrick Garland loves Critical Race Theory: His family is set to make big bucks from pushing the curriculum to classrooms across the country.

Garland’s son-in-law deals in CRT curricula.

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Look Ye, Shipmates — He Breaches! | Kunstler

Posted by M. C. on September 18, 2021

Mr. Garland will be left having to explain why the DOJ and the FBI were never self-accountable for the illegal acts of their employees, including Robert Mueller’s fishy special counsel team, which now looks like a cover-up operation, not to mention current and continuing matters such as the DOJ sitting on the laptop of President “Joe Biden’s” son, Hunter, and its bales of incriminating memoranda detailing payoffs to the Biden family from companies run by the CCP. Really, the fate of the Democratic Party is on the line with what might potentially develop if Mr. Durham’s actions go beyond Michael Sussman’s little caper.

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/look-ye-shipmates-he-breaches/

James Howard Kunstler

Like the white whale of legend surfacing close to the mainland, special counsel John Durham popped up this week with one Michael Sussmann in his jaws, a smallish fish among the squamous and tentacled monsters hiding in the depths of the Deep State below the raging political seas. Who he, anyway?

Among the now well-known cast of creatures involved in the panoramic episode of perfidious sedition known as RussiaGate, Mr. Sussmann was a bit-player, an errand boy for the Perkins Coie law firm that did much of Hillary Clinton’s dirty work in the 2016 campaign and for the Democratic Party beyond. Mr. Sussmann is charged with lying to the FBI in conveying campaign dirt paid-for by Mrs. Clinton to the FBI’s general counsel, James Baker, Mr. Sussmann’s old colleague from the days when he worked as a cyber-security expert at the bureau. He also peddled-around the same material, cooked up by Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS company and man-of-mystery Christopher Steele, to The New York Times and other news media, who ran with it like kids with a kite.

I have a theory about the case. It is a shot across the bow of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s ship, testing whether main DOJ will attempt to interfere with Mr. Durham’s mission to uncover the predicates of RussiaGate and the vast web of dishonest and illegal acts carried out subsequently by figures in the FBI, the DOJ, and other dark corners of a government gone rogue against its own citizens. Mr. Baker has long been suspected of acting as a cooperating witness in the RussiaGate matter, perhaps realizing early-on that he’d been played by old pal Mr. Sussmann and set up for prosecution.

The problem for Merrick Garland is that Mr. Sussmann’s activities amounted to a mere preface for the graver development of the Crossfire Hurricane operation, which involved a shoal of much-bigger fish across several agencies including Directors John Brennan of the CIA and James Comey of the FBI and many others. The Sussmann indictment also provides a window into the FISA Court fakery that federal law enforcement used to go after people connected to candidate and then President Donald Trump.

Mr. Garland will be left having to explain why the DOJ and the FBI were never self-accountable for the illegal acts of their employees, including Robert Mueller’s fishy special counsel team, which now looks like a cover-up operation, not to mention current and continuing matters such as the DOJ sitting on the laptop of President “Joe Biden’s” son, Hunter, and its bales of incriminating memoranda detailing payoffs to the Biden family from companies run by the CCP. Really, the fate of the Democratic Party is on the line with what might potentially develop if Mr. Durham’s actions go beyond Michael Sussman’s little caper.

The overwhelming body of opinion for more than a year is that John Durham is a phantom doing next-to-nothing about the greatest political scandal in US history. If his efforts end with Mr. Sussmann, he will disgrace himself, of course, and that’s a possibility. But I would venture to suppose that it won’t end there. The insult to the nation of all the epic dishonesty is too grave, even potentially fatal — since it has enabled a depraved skein of additional seditious activities afterward, including the 2020 election subterfuge, the lawlessness of BLM and Antifa, the psychotic race-and-gender “Woke” mind-fuckery infecting the US military, the ongoing invasion across the US-Mexican border, all the coercion around Covid-19, especially “mandated” shots of a dangerous so-called “vaccine,” and the destruction of small business from sea to shining sea. All of that has left the American public demoralized and economically savaged, and with the country’s standing in the world dangerously reduced.

I hope you are ready for a month of shocks to the system. The deceit of the CDC and the FDA in gaming and cooking their Covid-19 data is now emerging from the fog of pandemic hysteria. I will also dare to conjecture that the number of recent and current Covid-19 “cases” turns out to be actually and overwhelmingly adverse reactions to the mRNA experiment, not the disease itself, and that holy hell will erupt among the public as it becomes understood that their livelihoods — and their health — are being stolen as part of this fraud. A week from today, the Arizona election audit results are now scheduled to be released. Expect trauma. Tomorrow, a demonstration in support of the 1/6 political prisoners is on-board for Washington, DC. The potential for Deep State manipulation of the event is high, so stay away from it. There are enough other forces in motion now to throw a spanner in the engine of malice our government has become. Let Karma do its thing and hold on tight for a rough ride.

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Defund the FBI › American Greatness

Posted by M. C. on July 5, 2021

“Obviously it was stupid to talk to the FBI, but we’re not criminals, we weren’t hiding anything, [and] I knew he did nothing wrong that day,” she told me by text. “I’d like to think I answered their questions wisely and honestly but now I realize . . . how they turn everything against you. Most of the questions I answered I don’t know or I can’t remember. I feel so stupid!!!”

She shouldn’t feel stupid for cooperating with a powerful government agency entrusted with tracking down real criminals, as opposed American citizens who did nothing wrong on January 6. The only people who should feel stupid are the FBI officials and agents conducting this destructive farce disguised as a legitimate investigation.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/01/defund-the-fbi/

By Julie Kelly

It’s been a gold star week for the men and women of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Nearly six months after the events of January 6, the FBI, under the direction of Joe Biden’s vengeful Justice Department, is accelerating the nationwide manhunt for anyone involved. Since June 23, agents have arrested 17 people from Florida to California. Charges range from assaulting police officers and criminal trespassing to something called “destruction of property in special maritime and territorial jurisdiction and aiding and abetting.”

The dragnet is part of the nonstop campaign of terror unleashed by the Biden regime against the political Right. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who compares January 6 to the Oklahoma City bombing and Capitol protesters to terrorists, pledged the “Capitol breach” probe would be his top priority. Garland last week bragged in a press release that his department reached the “benchmark” of arresting 500 people and warned he would “hold all January 6 perpetrators accountable” for their actions that day. His prosecutors routinely ask the courts to keep the accused behind bars awaiting trials that won’t start until late this year or perhaps even 2022; dozens have been held for months in a D.C. jail that specifically houses January 6 defendants.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, despite assurances his agency treats all protesters the same regardless of partisan affiliation (LOL), is happy to assist Garland in his mission. Wray insists “domestic violent extremists”—code for Trump supporters—pose the greatest security threat to the country.

The Elderly Menace

His agency has been on a tear of late. One of the dangerous perpetrators captured by the FBI this week is Lois Lynn McNicoll, who was arrested in California on June 28. McNicoll, 69, is a Los Angeles County public employee; the FBI was tipped off by one of her co-workers.

As is often the case, McNicoll talked to Special Agent Daniel Dale without an attorney present. (Many January 6 defendants have cooperated with the FBI under the presumption they did nothing wrong and wanted to help the agency catch the real bad guys.) Dale “interviewed the defendant at her place of employment in a non-custodial capacity,” the agent wrote in McNicoll’s criminal complaint. “The defendant was informed that any participation was voluntary and that she was free to terminate the interview at any time. The defendant affirmed that she understood.”

So, what did this alleged domestic terrorist do? A little before 3:00 p.m. on January 6, McNicoll entered the Capitol building through an open door. Surveillance video captured by the U.S. Capitol Police security system—more than 14,000 hours of footage to which only the government and a few congressional committees have access—shows McNicoll taking a few photos inside the building. After being ushered out of the building by police, she exited the complex about 30 minutes later.

McNicoll didn’t vandalize anything, she didn’t steal anything, she didn’t attack anyone. It’s not even clear whether she spoke to anyone; it appears as though she went in the building alone.

But Dale claimed there is “probable cause” to conclude McNicoll committed at least four federal offenses during her half-hour “crime spree.” This includes trespassing and “willfully and knowingly . . . utter[ing] loud, threatening, or abusive language, or engage[ing] in disorderly or disruptive conduct, at any place in the Grounds or in any of the Capitol Buildings with the intent to impede, disrupt, or disturb the orderly conduct of a session of Congress.”

For this, McNicoll will have her reputation destroyed and her finances depleted. She probably will lose her job. Presumably, this gratifies the rank-and-file of the FBI, who can pat themselves on their backs for ruining the life of an American citizen on the wrong side of the political aisle.

“So Shaky She Can’t Hardly Talk”

See the rest here

About Julie Kelly

Julie Kelly is a political commentator and senior contributor to American Greatness. She is the author of Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right Tried―And Failed―To Take Down the President. Her past work can be found at The Federalist and National Review. She also has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and Genetic Literacy Project. She is the co-host of ‘Happy Hour podcast with Julie and Liz.’ She is a graduate of Eastern Illinois University and lives in suburban Chicago with her husband and two daughters.

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Merrick Garland really is anti-gun: Column

Posted by M. C. on January 20, 2021

Today the USAToday, in one of it’s guises as the Erie Times-News, is singing Garland’s praises.

The Harris…err…Biden administration plan is coming to fruition.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/05/01/merrick-garland-guns-supreme-court-second-amendment-column/83670044/

Michael E. Hammond

Supreme Court nominee had 4 chances to vote against gun rights, and he took them all.

The usual gaggle of anti-gun suspects has come out of the woodwork to attack the “gun lobby” for its opposition to any action on behalf of Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.

Hand guns for sale in Mesa, Ariz.

Coupled with their typical protestations that their attacks on Second Amendment advocates are not attacks on the Second Amendment itself, their words are laden with half-truths and selectively culled “facts.”

But the truth is simple. Second Amendment issues have come before Garland, at least four times. He voted anti-gun every time.

In 2007, Garland was one of four judges on the District of Columbia Circuit who voted for the full court to rehear a pro-gun holding of a three-judge panel overturning Washington’s draconian gun ban in District of Columbia v. Heller.

And, yes, although Garland was joined by A. Raymond Randolph, appointed by George H.W. Bush, Garland’s vote was not merely a matter of intellectual curiosity. A comparable case, Seegars v. Gonzales, was decided differently two years earlier by an anti-gun panel of the same court. That time, Garland voted against a rehearing by the full court.

In 2000, Garland voted to allow the FBI to retain background check records well beyond the immediate destruction required by the Brady Law. I drafted the original version of the Smith Amendment that prohibits the FBI from keeping such records and taxing gun transactions that require a background check, which was in effect at the time. And, as the draftsman, I can tell you that Garland’s position was contrary to statutory law.

Finally, in 2012, Garland voted to allow prosecution (with a 30-year mandatory minimum sentence) of automatic firearms offenses without the prosecutor having to prove the accused knew the weapon was automatic, known as a showing of mens rea or a guilty mind, a requirement common in criminal law.

We know that with his anti-gun record, Garland would be the “swing vote” on the Supreme Court with respect to the 5-to-4 Heller decision and the subsequent McDonald decision that extended it. These cases recognized that the Second Amendment applied to individuals and to states.

We also know that Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer have called for reconsideration of Heller — both from the bench in the McDonald dissent and, in the case of Kagan, in a public speech. Whatever the unanimous Supreme Court rejection of a Massachusetts court ruling that upheld the state’s stun gun ban meant, it surely does not mean that these four justices have suddenly reversed their narrow reading of the Second Amendment.

If Garland were perfectly consistent with our views on every other issue, the possibility that the Supreme Court would fundamentally rip the Second Amendment from the Constitution would be enough to justify our position.

Some argue that it is somehow either a matter of precedent or a matter of “decorum” to give Garland a hearing or at least a vote, a point made last week by the conservative former senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. But in an era where the court has turned itself into a super legislature, the Senate clearly has not only the right but also the obligation to block any nominee who would further that usurpation of power.

I was general counsel to the Senate Steering Committee — the Senate’s conservative Republican caucus — during the Bork nomination. I can tell you that both Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas were crucified by the Senate. With the balance of the court at stake, Senate Democrats would have done anything they thought would be helpful (and politically doable) to stop either of the nominees.

Finally, the argument has been made recently that, on the D.C. Circuit, Garland and John Roberts voted together on 85% of the 34 cases they shared. I’m not sure that conservatives are thrilled about the prospect of another “John Roberts” on the court. Setting that aside, the fact is that a substantial majority of lower court cases revolve around narrow questions of fact and law.

Because the Supreme Court largely selects its docket, the percentage is lower with them. But even with the Supreme Court, 66% of the cases were decided by a 9-0 decision in the 2013-14 term (40% in 2014-15), and only about 15% of the outcomes were 5-4 (26% in 2014-15).

Put another way: Because not all 5-4 splits are strictly ideological, one or more conservatives voted with one or more liberals in more than 85% of Supreme Court decisions in 2013-14. Yet, despite the fact that all liberal and conservative justices agree (unanimously) up to two-thirds of the time, it is the blockbuster cases where the difference between Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia matters.

So, yes, the gun lobby will continue to support the Second Amendment and oppose the Garland nomination. And, yes, Democrats in tight Senate races in pro-gun states might want to keep this in mind.

Michael Hammond, general counsel of Gun Owners of America, is the former executive director of the Senate Steering Committee. 

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