The Durham Report And The FBI's Expertise In Violating Our Civil Rights.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. (Ben Franklin)

Just finished reading the Durham Report, and it’s every bit as damning as you could possibly imagine. Quentin Tarantino working with John Belushi’s ghost couldn’t come up with anything nearly as bizarre as the Steele Dossier. There are a lot of good articles about the Durham Report and the conduct of the FBI and MSM, but I think we are missing the most important point of the report - that since its creation the FBI has been a serial violator of our civil rights.

The short story of the Steele Dossier is Hillary Clinton’s campaign hired Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann - two partners at the law firm of Perkins Coe to conduct “oppo research.” These two then hired Fussion GPS to smear Trump by linking him to Russia. Fussion GPS in turn hired Christopher Steele, the former head of MI-6’s Russian desk who supposedly had a large network of Russian contacts, which turned out to consist of a single Russian living in the U.S. named Igor Danchencko. Of course, Steele hired Danchencko who also supposedly had a large network of Russian contacts. Alas, Danchenko’s network turned out to consist of a single American Hillary supporter named Charles Dolan who lived in Virginia. To be fair, Dolan did have some relatively high-level Russian contacts. However, the only information Dolan passed to Danchencko seems to be a description of the Presidential Suite at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow, that Trump once stayed there, and some info about Manafort who was Trump’s campaign manager for a short period of time.

From this vast non-network of Russian contacts consisting of a single American, Steele and Danchencko created the Steele Dossier consisting of fantasies built on a foundation of lies. Steele and the two ace lawyers then peddled this nonsense to the MSM, FBI, State Department and some Senators and Congressmen.

Until they got their hands on the Steele Dossier, the FBI didn’t have probable cause to seek a FISA warrant, well as Durham points out, they didn’t have probable cause even after getting their hands on the Steele Dossier. In fact, they had no legitimate reason to even open an investigation. Instead, they had a bunch of unverified information from unknown sources making wild allegations ranging from Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russians to Trump engaged in wild sexual exploits while in Moscow. But who needs probable cause when you have a bunch of narcissistic authoritarian elites who self-anointed themselves as the Praetorian Guard of democracy?

The FBI used the Steele Dossier to unlawfully manufacture probable cause to obtain a FISA warrant and two extensions of the warrant against Carter Page, a member of Trump’s campaign staff! The FBI probably didn’t know the Dossier was a fake when they initially sought the warrant…because they did not vet the information. If they would’ve done some simple research, they would’ve discovered that the Dossier was opposition research paid for by Hillary’s campaign, that Denchencko was the sole source of Steele’s information, and that Danchencko was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation from 2009 to 2011. They would also have discovered that the FBI closed its investigation into Danchencko when they erroneously concluded he left the U.S. in 2011. Honestly, I’m not getting a good feeling about the FBI’s investigative abilities.

Though the FBI didn’t know the Dossier was a fake when they used it to obtain the FISA warrant, they knew, or should have known, it was a fake by the time they sought the first extension, and certainly knew it was a fake by the time they sought the second extension. Simply put, they used information they knew was false in order to mislead a court into issuing and extending a warrant so they could illegally spy on an American citizen in an unlawful attempt to influence a presidential election, and when that failed, to usurp the authority of a sitting president. The Stasi would be envious…

What were the ramifications when the Steele Dossier unraveled? Well a few people were fired, one was convicted of altering an email, and no one went to jail.

In response to the Durham Report the FBI released the following statement on May 15, 2023:

The conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time. Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented. This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect.

Forgive me if I’m skeptical, but I’ve heard this ‘we made the necessary changes and this won’t happen again’ mantra time and time again. Yet, the same thing keeps happening - time and time again. It’s not a lack of procedures problem, it’s a lack of leadership problem.

Since it was founded the FBI has repeatedly shown it’s good at putting procedures in place, great at assuring Congress and the people they’re respecting the law and our civil liberties, and fantastic at violating both.

The FBI was established on July 26, 1908…a mere ten years later it embarked on a never ending journey of violating the laws of this nation and our civil liberties:

1. 1918-1921. In 1918 the FBI (then called the Bureau of Investigation) established the General Intelligence Division - lead by J. Edgar Hoover - to combat the non-existent communist threat that spawned the First Red Scare. In the next three years Hoover collected over 450,000 secret files on Americans. More impressively the FBI conducted the infamous Palmer Raids where an estimated 3,000 to 10,000 people were brutally arrested throughout the U.S., the vast majority illegally. During these three years the FBI violated literally every civil liberty protected by the Bill of Rights, except for quartering troops in civilian homes (3rd Am.), most likely because the FBI didn’t have troops to quarter.

2. 1941-1947. The day Pearl Harbor was attacked, the FBI unlawfully set about arresting Japanese-Americans on the A-B-C List because they committed the non-crime of being Japanese-Americans. These people where held throughout the war with some being held into 1947 - two years after WW II ended.¹ Again a complete disregard for every civil liberty in the Bill of Rights, except for those contained in the 3rd Amendment.

3. 1937 to at least the death of Hoover the FBI targeted gays because Hoover identified them as a threat to the country.² This time the FBI limited their violation of civil liberties to those set forth in the 1st and 4th Amendments.

4. 1947-1957. Hoover and the FBI played a central role in the Second Red Scare by conducting illegal surveillance, leaking information to the press, engaging in illegal break-ins, and once again creating and maintaining secret files on American Citizens. What better way to protect us, than for the FBI to deny us our 1st and 4th Amendment civil liberties all over a non-existent threat.

5. 1956-1971; The FBI hadn’t finished their involvement in the First Red Scare when Hoover and gang embarked on an even more ambitious endeavor to suppress civil liberties and launched the “Counterintelligence Program” (CoinTelPro). During this 15 year period, the FBI routinely conducted illegal electronic surveillance; engaged in secret break-ins; sent fake documents to people’s wives, employers and friends to destroy their marriages, reputations and careers; and used friendly journalists to plant fabricated stories in the press. CoinTelPro targeted Communists, Socialists, the KKK, Black Panthers, the Civil Rights movement, anti-war protestors (Vietnam), the free speech movement, the new left, and even the Women’s Liberation Movement. A complete disregard for the 1st and 4th Amendments, and most likely the 5th as well.

   CoinTelPro wasn’t exposed by congressional oversight, or a whistleblower, or the press. It was exposed by 9 people calling themselves the “Commission to Investigate the FBI” who broke into the FBI’s Media, Pennsylvania office on March 9. 1971, stole the files, and shared them with the press. As a result the Church Commission was established and in 1975 issued the Church Report resulting in a number of significant reforms that were supposed to rein in the FBI. It didn’t work.

6. 2008 to the present. In 1978 the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was enacted which allows U.S. Intelligence agencies to collect electronic communications from non-U.S. persons who are not within the U.S., and store that information in a database (FISA Database). In collecting this data, the electronic communications of a huge number of U.S. citizens and legal non-citizen residents are ‘incidentally’ collected.

   Our intelligence services, including the FBI can access the FISA Database without a warrant but only if they have a legitimate foreign intelligence reason for doing so. However, in 2008 FISA was amended by adding §702 that allowed the FBI to access the FISA Database for law enforcement purposes but only if it obtained a warrant first. Of course, the FBI promptly ignored the warrant part and has been engaging in warrantless searches of the FISA Database since §702 was added to FISA.

   In April 2022 the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court released a 127 page redacted report on the FBI’s use of the FISA Database during 2020 and 2021. The Hill and ABC have good summaries.

   The high points are the FBI unlawfully used the FISA Database 278,000 times in 2020-2021, including running searches on 19,000 people who made political contributions to an unnamed congressional campaign, as well as running searches on people they believed were involved in the J6 riots, BLM riots, and there’s evidence the FBI even ran a search on Rep. Darin LaHood (R-IL)…all of which were conducted without a warrant and none of which were legal.

   To be fair the FBI has reduced it’s total number FISA Database searches from 2,964,643 in 2021 to 119,383 in 2022. To also be fair, the FBI still ran 32.7 times as many searches in 2022 than the combined total of the 3,656 searches the CIA and NSA ran.

   In any event, the use of warrantless searches of the FISA Database for criminal investigations is an ongoing violation of our civil liberties under both §702 and the 4th Amendment.

7. 2016-2017. Use of the Steele Dossier to unlawfully obtain FISA warrants in an attempt to subvert a presidential election, and when that failed, to usurp the authority of a sitting president. These acts not only violated the 4th Amendment but also the very foundation of our Constitution. Nothing could be more Orwellian.

8. 2021 to present. The FBI has been targeting Americans who belong to ‘disfavored groups.’ These include the DOJ’s directing the FBI to investigate parents who protest the actions of their local school boards (2021). The FBI targeting Catholics who prefer the Latin mass, which makes them “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics” in the eyes of the FBI (2023). Use of intimidation tactics against people in the pro-life movement, a few examples: sending over 20 armed agents in tactical gear with weapons drawn to arrest a father of seven at home who was later acquitted of all charges (2022); arresting a pastor and eleven others for conducting peaceful protests outside abortion clinics (2022); and sending FBI agents to the home of an activist’s mother (2023). At the very least, these acts infringe on our 1st Amendment rights by chilling speech and infringing on our freedom of religion.

Every time the FBI has violated our civil liberties, they did so in the name of protecting us from foreign and domestic threats. In both Red Scares they were protecting us from Communists. The internment of Japanese-Americans on the A-B-C List was to protect us from Imperial Japan. CoinTelPro and the targeting of gays were to protect us from subversive Americans. The FISA abuses are to protect us from foreign powers and terrorists. The war on ‘disfavored groups’ is to protect us from domestic extremists. Yet none of these supposed threats deprived us of a single liberty…but the FBI deprived us of every liberty enshrined in the Bill of Rights except for those in the 3rd Amendment.

It’s past time that we listen to Justice Brandeis’ caution that:

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent…and jealously guard our civil liberties. Or we can ignore the problem until one day we wake up to find our civil liberties exist only as words on paper that have no meaning.

What will it be - Keep what we guard or lose what we don’t? It’s past time to demand significant reform of the FBI.

1. The arrest of Japanese-Americans on the A-B-C list was in addition to the unconstitutional rounding up of Japanese-Americans and detaining them in what at best can be described as Prison Camps. The “internment” of Japanese-Americans is one of the few mass-violations of civil liberties in our country that the FBI has not been involved in, it was lead by the Army with the support and encouragement of FDR. See: Internment of Japanese-Americans: As Fear Increases, Civil Liberties Decrease and Custodial detention / A-B-C list.

2. Rumors of Hoover being gay have been around for as long as I can remember, but the reality is no one really knows. In fact there is some evidence that these rumors are just unfounded gossip. See: The Truth About J. Edgar Hoover’s “Cross-Dressing and J. Edgar Hoover: Gay or Just a Man Who Has Sex With Men?.