‘Really Scary’: FBI Asked Employee About Views on Covid Vaccine Mandates During Security Clearance Review
FBI officials asked a longtime employee if he opposed COVID-19 vaccination, supported former President Donald Trump or had ever attended a pro-Second Amendment rally, according to memos obtained by Just the News and published Monday.
Describing the incident as “The New McCarthyism” and a “shocking litmus test,” Just the News reported the memos “prompted a complaint to the Justice Department’s [DOJ] internal watchdog alleging political bias inside the bureau.”
The questions were asked during a spring 2022 security clearance — several months after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for private employers and another federal court issued an injunction on the government’s vaccine mandate for federal employees.
The employee’s security clearance was subsequently revoked, Just the News reported, noting that the interviews “confirmed his support for Trump and gun rights and his concerns about the COVID vaccine.”
“I think it’s becoming more and more apparent that we have entered the new American McCarthyism era,” said journalist Kim Iversen on Wednesday’s edition of “The Kim Iversen Show.” Iversen said people are routinely and openly punished for their views and opinions.
She added:
“If you were any of those things that might red-flag you according to the FBI’s security clearance … if you were skeptical of Big Pharma vaccines and if you actually are pro-Second Amendment, a right that’s enshrined in our Constitution, then you potentially are un-American and you potentially need to be red-flagged … or you might just have the propensity to become a terrorist.”
‘If you question the vaccine, you’re potentially an enemy of the state’
According to Just the News, “The memos show that agents for the FBI’s Security Division asked at least three witnesses in spring 2022 whether the employee, whose name and job title was redacted from the memos, had been known to ‘vocalize support for President Trump’ or ‘vocalize objections to Covid-19 vaccination.’”
One of the witnesses confirmed that the employee in question “had declined to get the coronavirus inoculation” but “was following the bureau’s rules for unvaccinated employees.”
“Very against masks and vaccines. Not vaccinated. … Not vaccinated and tried not to wear mask,” the agent noted for one of the security clearance interviews, adding that the employee was “connected to anti-vaccinated FBI groups” but had participated in “no anti-FBI rhetoric.”
Commenting on the memo, Iversen said, “Can you believe this? So, if you question the vaccine, you’re potentially an enemy of the state. You can’t have a security clearance. We can’t trust you.”
‘The FBI has always been the American Gestapo’
Experts who spoke with The Defender said they were not surprised about the revelations.
“I ran investigations into problems in the federal government as a Senate investigator and I’m shocked to see this stuff,” said investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker of The Disinformation Chronicle, adding:
“Government agencies should definitely be backgrounding people for political extremism. Asking them whether they support government vaccine mandates seems fair, since it’s questioning whether someone would follow federal policy. But asking potential government employees which politicians they support — that seems to cross so many lines.”
Mark Crispin Miller, Ph.D., an author and professor of media studies at New York University whose research focuses on propaganda told The Defender the FBI’s actions are reflective of “government’s police powers growing still more dangerous” in recent years.
“It’s therefore way past time to junk the old ‘left/right’ divide, in favor of a subtler split between authoritarians and real believers in American democracy — whom some may call ‘populists,’ perhaps,” Miller said.
Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., professor of international law at the University of Illinois, told The Defender, “The FBI has always been the American Gestapo.” Boyle cited his addition to the U.S. government’s terrorist watch lists in 2011 after he refused a joint FBI-CIA request to become an informant on his Arab and Muslim clients.
Boyle said that he remains on these lists, “five or six” in number, to the present day, noting that when he applied for Social Security benefits, he was told his name “had come up on a computer alert list” and he was “going to have to have a personal interview — which is not how it is usually done.”
“I had about a one-hour interrogation, where I politely and diplomatically had to convince the Social Security examiner that I was a law professor, not a terrorist,” he said.
Evidence the FBI’s practices were ‘not isolated’
The employee’s lawyer, Tristan Leavitt, submitted a letter to the DOJ inspector general with these whistleblower disclosures, alleging that the security clearance process was commenced after the employee self-reported taking a vacation day on Jan. 6, 2021, to attend the pro-Trump rally outside the U.S. Capitol that day.
“The FBl’s intentions are made clear by the questions it chose to put in black and white on a government document,” the letter states, arguing the FBI violated the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court precedent concerning the First Amendment and employment law.
“The Supreme Court held that terminating public employees for political patronage purposes — belonging to the wrong political party — ‘to the extent it compels or restrains belief and association is inimical to the process which undergirds our system of government and is at war with the deeper traditions of democracy embodied in the First Amendment,’” the letter states.
According to Just the News, FBI officials declined to comment on the story. However, two sources revealed that “there is evidence that information was gathered during FBI security clearance reviews on other employees’ political views, suggesting the practice was not isolated.”
In late 2022 and early 2023, subsequent releases of the “Twitter Files” showed the FBI colluded with Big Tech platforms such as Twitter — now X — and Facebook to keep track of and censor individuals who questioned the Biden administration’s COVID-19 policies or the 2020 U.S. presidential election results.
These documents included revelations that the FBI flagged specific users for Twitter to take action against, pressured platforms to remove purported “COVID misinformation” — including information confirmed to be true — and partnered with Stanford University’s “Virality Project” to develop an internal “ticketing” system for tweets to be further scrutinized for their content.
The Virality Project is affiliated with the Stanford Internet Observatory. Platformer reported Thursday that Stanford is “winding down” the observatory’s operations, as “the lab will not conduct research into the 2024 election or other elections in the future.”
Referring to the Just the News revelations, Iversen said, “This is really scary.” She added:
“We’ve talked to several FBI whistleblowers who’ve said, look, they’re going after Catholics. They’re going after parents at parent-teacher … conferences where the parents were angry, saying, ‘Hey, we don’t want our kids to be masked up all the time and we want you to open the schools back up.’ And they’re labeling all these people as terrorists. …
“We can’t be allowing the elites, the Deep State, the powers that be to be just eroding every right that we have and telling us that we need to become robots, just gobbling up everything they tell us or else we’re enemies of the state.”
New Poll: J.D. Vance Massive Favorite for Trump VP Pick
J.D. Vance emerged as the overwhelming favorite to be Donald Trump’s vice-president, in a straw poll conducted at the Turning Point Action’s People’s Convention, in Detroit.
Nearly 2000 respondents took part in the poll, in which Vance racked up 43% of votes. Tim Scott was a distant second, with 15.4%, followed by Marco Rubio and Doug Burgum, with 7.7% and 7.0% respectively. Just over a quarter of respondents remained undecided.
BASED JD VANCE DESTROYED CNN HOST: JAILING POLITICAL OPPONENTS IS “THE DEFINITION OF FASCISM” ? pic.twitter.com/SqXusc5RO4
— 1776 (@TheWakeninq) June 16, 2024
The poll also included questions about policy priorities. 83.3% of respondents said that immigration and border security should be the main focus of the first 100 days of a Trump second term. Economic issues were identified as the main priority by 14% of respondents.
A mere 2.7% believed that Ukraine and foreign aid should be the primary focus of an incoming administration. 91.7% of respondents expressed opposition to continuing aid for Ukraine.
Both Mitch McConnell and Mike Johnson took a battering in the poll. Just shy of 80% of respondents said they strongly disapproved of McConnell’s performance as Senate Minority Leader, and 58.6% said the same about Johnson in his role as House Speaker.
In other notable news from the Convention, Alex Jones made a surprise appearance on stage with Jack Posobiec. Jones laid out his predictions for the 2024 election and the deep state’s attempts to thwart a Trump victory.
Alex Jones Gives Powerful Speech At Turning Point Action In Detroit pic.twitter.com/ahtfoMEbZ4
— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) June 16, 2024
He also said that the regime’s attempts to censor and persecute Trump and key Trump allies were backfiring. He warned the audience to remain vigilant about election interference and attempts to demonise the populist movement.
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China Rapidly Expanding Nuclear Arsenal – Report
China has been expanding its nuclear arsenal “faster than any other country” in recent months, an annual report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has claimed. Beijing has supposedly added 90 warheads to its inventory since January 2023.
The document does note, however, that other nuclear-armed nations have also been modernizing their weapons of mass destruction and ramping up the number of operational nuclear warheads at their disposal.
According to the SIPRI report published on Sunday, the US and Russia are by far the largest nuclear powers, possessing nearly 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons.
READ MORE: UN chief sounds nuclear war alarm
However, China is “expanding its nuclear arsenal faster than any other country,” according to Hans M. Kristensen, associate senior fellow with SIPRI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Program. SIPRI’s findings indicate that Beijing’s nuclear arsenal grew from 410 to 500 warheads between January 2023 and January 2024.
A separate report by the US Department of Defense last October concluded that China “possessed more than 500 operational nuclear warheads as of May 2023 – on track to exceed previous projections.”The Pentagon predicted at the time that this number would likely exceed 1,000 by 2030.
SIPRI claims that, “for the first time, China may also now be deploying a small number of warheads on missiles during peacetime.” While Beijing allegedly has 24 nuclear warheads on high operational alert, that number stands at more than 1,700 each in the case of the US and Russia.
The report concludes that “China could potentially have at least as many intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) as either Russia or the USA by the turn of the decade, although its stockpile of nuclear warheads is still expected to remain much smaller than the stockpiles of either of those two countries.”
READ MORE: US may expand nuclear arsenal – Biden aide
In an interview with The Telegraph on Sunday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg revealed that member states were discussing the removal of more nuclear-capable missiles from storage and placing them on standby. He cited perceived threats emanating from Russia and China, insisting that the US-led military bloc needed to send a clear message regarding its own nuclear capabilities to Moscow and Beijing.
Intelligence Committee Chair: “Highest” Threat of Terrorist Attack to US
The US is currently facing the “highest level” of threat from a terrorist attack, said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio).
Turner made the remarks in an interview with CBS News on Sunday. He was asked about reports of recent arrests of illegal immigrants with known ties to terrorist groups including ISIS. At least eight Tajikistan nationals with links to ISIS are reported to have been arrested across the US in recent weeks.
“What’s important about these reports and what we’re seeing, especially in conjunction with [FBI] Director Wray’s public statements, that we are at the highest level of a possible terrorist threat, that the administration’s policies have absolutely directly related to threats to Americans,” Turner said.
At the beginning of the month, FBI Director Wray told a Senate committee that the risk of terrorist attacks had risen “to another level” since the 7 October attacks on Israel, and he also pointed to the Moscow theatre attack, which was apparently orchestrated by the ISIS faction known as ISIS-K, as further evidence of the increased danger.
Turner made it clear that the threats were no longer “speculative” and that the Biden administration’s border policies are making the country far less safe.
“We have actual administration officials stepping forward and certainly our committee and our committee members have concurred on the intelligence that we’re seeing,“ Turner continued.
”That as a result of the administration’s policies allowing people to cross the border unvetted, we have terrorists that are actively working with inside the United States that are a threat to Americans.”
Earlier in the month, Sen. Lindsay Graham sent a letter to Senate majority and minority leaders requesting a briefing for all senators about potential threats from ISIS.
“I have never been more worried than I am right now about an attack on our homeland” after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, combined with what he described as lax border security,” Graham wrote on Twitter.
In recent months, a worrying trend has emerged of foreign nationals attempting to gain entry to US military facilities. In Quantico, Virginia, two Jordanian nationals, both in the country illegally, attempted to ram their way onto a Marine base in a box truck, in an apparent “dry run” for a terrorist attack.
Vehicles have attempted to breach gates at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek–Fort Story, in Virginia, Naval Base San Diego and the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, California. The attempted breach at the Air Ground Combat Center involved a Chinese national.
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Zelensky’s ‘Peace Conference’ was Doomed to be Pointless Without Russia – Bundestag MP
Zelensky’s summit on Ukraine held in Switzerland fell short of its goals, with major powers and high-level representatives largely absent, including US President Joe Biden, China’s President Xi Jinping, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Volodymyr Zelensky’s Swiss-hosted “peace conference” on Ukraine was bound to be pointless without Russia’s participation, Steffen Kotre, Bundestag MP for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, told Russian media.
As a result, it was reduced to nothing more than a venue for political posturing and wishful thinking, he said.
“It was to be expected that the conference would not bring any results, since Russia did not take part in it. The United States and its allies once again offered Ukraine pledges of support, and promised to supply it with weapons. Therefore, Zelensky spouted assurances that Russia can be defeated. This is nothing but wishful thinking, and is far from reality. In three weeks, everyone will have forgotten about this conference,” Kotre said.
According to the German politician, there can only be one first step on the path to peace – an “unconditional ceasefire.” He added that the “rights of [Russian speaking] minorities must be respected,” and underscored that “Ukraine cannot become a member of NATO if Russia’s security interests are to be taken into account.”
“Territorial issues must be resolved jointly by the conflicting parties,” Kotre emphasized.
Global South neutrality highlighted as Swiss summit on Ukraine misses peace goals
— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) June 16, 2024
The Swiss-hosted summit on Ukraine, according to retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Earl Rasmussen, fell short of its goals, functioning more as a political rally than a true peace conference.… pic.twitter.com/ik8azLTWQt
Switzerland offered to host the conference to discuss Volodymyr Zelensky’s 10 -point “peace plan” at the Burgenstock resort near Lucerne on June 15 and 16. While delegations from 92 countries and eight organizations, including the European Union, Council of Europe, and UN agreed to participate, major heads of state such as US President Joe Biden, China’s President Xi Jinping, as well as the leaders of Brazil, South Africa, and India opted to give the summit a miss.
US Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the conference in place of Joe Biden, who opted to attend a California fundraiser instead. China urged for a real peace conference to be held that would be recognized by both Russia and Ukraine. Colombian President Gustavo Petro pulled out at the last minute, as the summit was not a “free forum” for peace between Moscow and Kiev.
The process of achieving peace in Ukraine requires Russia’s participation, Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan said. “Any credible peace process in Ukraine requires Russia’s participation,” he underscored during his speech at the conference in Switzerland.
BRICS countries, as well as several other states that attended the Swiss-hosted summit on Ukraine, did not sign a joint declaration on the results of the talks on Sunday, the signatory list displayed by the organizers on the screens of the press center revealed.
The document was signed by 79 countries out of 91 present, but Armenia, Bahrain, Brazil, the Holy See, India, Indonesia, Libya, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates did not sign it.
Russia dismissed the conference, to which it was not invited, as “meaningless.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the summit was not result-oriented, as it was impossible to hold peace talks on Ukraine without Russia’s participation.
The goal of the conference is to deliver an ultimatum to Russia in the form of Zelensky’s “peace plan,” Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia told Sputnik.
Broken Promises: Canada’s Censorship Law Targets User-Generated Content Despite Assurances
The Canadian government has submitted a court filing, based on one of the country’s online censorship laws of recent years, the Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11). And that filing critics say proves the opposite of what the authorities have been promising the law’s goal would be.
Namely, as C-11 was being pushed and eventually adopted, the promise was that it was not aimed at regulating user content on social media. But now a court filing reveals a very different story, observers of Canada’s, at this point burgeoning, online censorship legislation say.
C-11 was controversial – when it was proposed and debated, and eventually passed – but it’s just one of many over in Canada.
One thing the government said the Online Streaming Act wouldn’t do was affect third-party user content through regulation. However, the new court filing indicates that it, in fact, does.
C-11 was an updated version of C-10, and critics said before it became law that it addressed some of the precedent’s problems – but not the key ones.
The essence of the Online Streaming Act was to expand the powers of the Broadcasting Act to vest the CRTC (Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission) regulatory powers over online content as well – meaning Big Tech, such as YouTube (Google), all the way down to podcast clients.
Despite persistent protestations from government representatives to the contrary, the new court filing – that happened to be a response to a Google challenge – appears to paint a different picture.
“The Act does allow for regulation of user-uploaded programs on social media services,” the filing reads, as noticed by Professor Michael Geist.
The issue has always boiled down to whether Big Tech can be efficiently “taxed and regulated” – while third-party content they host remains unaffected. And these latest legal movements are not encouraging for “ordinary” internet users in Canada at all.
It was Google, trying to protect its business, that challenged CRTC ruling about online (and streaming) broadcasting fees.
The Canadian authorities wanted advertising dollars that come with user content to be inclined into revenue fees – despite the fact the ads are run by Google, not content creators.
Here C-11 comes out of the publicity closet and into its true life. Reads the filing:
“Contrary to the applicant’s (Google’s) position, the Act does allow for the regulation of user-uploaded programs on social media services, so long as certain conditions are met.”