The Postal Service is running a 'covert operations program' that monitors Americans' social media posts
Jana WinterWed, April 21, 2021, 9:00 AM·6 min read
The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has been quietly running a program that tracks and collects Americans’ social media posts, including those about planned protests, according to a document obtained by Yahoo News.
The details of the surveillance effort, known as iCOP, or Internet Covert Operations Program, have not previously been made public. The work involves having analysts trawl through social media sites to look for what the document describes as “inflammatory” postings and then sharing that information across government agencies.
A mailbox in New York City. (John Smith/VIEWpress via Getty Images)
“Analysts with the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) monitored significant activity regarding planned protests occurring internationally and domestically on March 20, 2021,” says the March 16 government bulletin, marked as “law enforcement sensitive” and distributed through the Department of Homeland Security’s fusion centers. “Locations and times have been identified for these protests, which are being distributed online across multiple social media platforms, to include right-wing leaning Parler and Telegram accounts.”
A number of groups were expected to gather in cities around the globe on March 20 as part of a World Wide Rally for Freedom and Democracy, to protest everything from lockdown measures to 5G. “Parler users have commented about their intent to use the rallies to engage in violence. Image 3 on the right is a screenshot from Parler indicating two users discussing the event as an opportunity to engage in a ‘fight’ and to ‘do serious damage,’” says the bulletin.
“No intelligence is available to suggest the legitimacy of these threats,” it adds.
The bulletin includes screenshots of posts about the protests from Facebook, Parler, Telegram and other social media sites. Individuals mentioned by name include one alleged Proud Boy and several others whose identifying details were included but whose posts did not appear to contain anything threatening.
“iCOP analysts are currently monitoring these social media channels for any potential threats stemming from the scheduled protests and will disseminate intelligence updates as needed,” the bulletin says.
The government’s monitoring of Americans’ social media is the subject of ongoing debate inside and outside government, particularly in recent months, following a rise in domestic unrest. While posts on platforms such as Facebook and Parler have allowed law enforcement to track down and arrest rioters who assaulted the Capitol on Jan. 6, such data collection has also sparked concerns about the government surveilling peaceful protesters or those engaged in protected First Amendment activities.
When contacted by Yahoo News, civil liberties experts expressed alarm at the post office’s surveillance program. “It’s a mystery,” said University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone, whom President Barack Obama appointed to review the National Security Agency’s bulk data collection in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks. “I don’t understand why the government would go to the Postal Service for examining the internet for security issues.”
The Postal Service has had a turbulent year, facing financial insolvency and allegations that its head, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, was slowing down deliveries just as the pandemic vastly increased the number of mail-in ballots for the 2020 election. Why the post office would now move into social media surveillance, which would appear to have little to do with mail deliveries, is unclear.
“This seems a little bizarre,” agreed Rachel Levinson-Waldman, deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s liberty and national security program. “Based on the very minimal information that’s available online, it appears that [iCOP] is meant to root out misuse of the postal system by online actors, which doesn’t seem to encompass what’s going on here. It’s not at all clear why their mandate would include monitoring of social media that’s unrelated to use of the postal system.”
A worker sorts mail-in ballots for last year's March 3 Super Tuesday primaries at the Orange County Registrar of Voters in Santa Ana, Calif. (Mike Blake/Reuters)
Levinson-Waldman also questioned the legal authority of the Postal Service to monitor social media activity. “If the individuals they’re monitoring are carrying out or planning criminal activity, that should be the purview of the FBI,” she said. “If they’re simply engaging in lawfully protected speech, even if it’s odious or objectionable, then monitoring them on that basis raises serious constitutional concerns.”
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service did not respond to specific questions sent by Yahoo News about iCOP, but provided a general statement on its authorities.
“The U.S. Postal Inspection Service is the primary law enforcement, crime prevention, and security arm of the U.S. Postal Service,” the statement said. “As such, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service has federal law enforcement officers, Postal Inspectors, who enforce approximately 200 federal laws to achieve the agency’s mission: protect the U.S. Postal Service and its employees, infrastructure, and customers; enforce the laws that defend the nation's mail system from illegal or dangerous use; and ensure public trust in the mail.”
“The Internet Covert Operations Program is a function within the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which assesses threats to Postal Service employees and its infrastructure by monitoring publicly available open source information,” the statement said.
“Additionally, the Inspection Service collaborates with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to proactively identify and assess potential threats to the Postal Service, its employees and customers, and its overall mail processing and transportation network. In order to preserve operational effectiveness, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service does not discuss its protocols, investigative methods, or tools.”
A Postal Service worker in New York City. (Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
The Postal Service isn’t the only part of government expanding its monitoring of social media. In a background call with reporters last month, DHS officials spoke about that department’s involvement in monitoring social media for domestic terrorism threats. “We know that this threat is fueled mainly by false narratives, conspiracy theories and extremist rhetoric read through social media and other online platforms,” one of the officials said. “And that's why we're kicking off engagement directly with social media companies.”
DHS is coordinating with “civil rights and civil liberties colleagues, as well as our private colleagues, to ensure that everything we're doing is being done responsibly and in line with civil rights and civil liberties and individual privacy,” the official added.
Stone, the University of Chicago professor, questioned why the post office would be tasked with something like identifying violent protests two months after the Jan. 6 attack, which would appear to have little or nothing to do with the post office’s role in delivering mail. “I just don’t think the Postal Service has the degree of sophistication that you would want if you were dealing with national security issues of this sort,” he said.
“That part is puzzling,” he added. “There are so many other federal agencies that could do this, I don’t understand why the post office would be doing it. There is no need for the post office to do it — you’ve got FBI, Homeland Security and so on, so I don’t know why the post office is doing this.”
Undocumented minors have continued to overwhelm the U.S. southern
border as migrants keep moving across Central America and Mexico.
According to a UNICEF
(United Nations Children’s Fund) report on Tuesday, the number of
migrant children crossing through Mexico has surged in the last three
months as overcrowding at shelters on both sides of the border reach new
levels.
Regional Director Jean Gough recently finished a five day visit to
migrant shelters along the U.S.-Mexico border. A representative for
Gough said the official was heartbroken to see the suffering of so many
young children inside these packed facilities. She explained the
shelters were very full, which prevents them from providing appropriate
space for those arriving with children.
The representative also conveyed Gough’s warning that
human-traffickers are taking advantage of families who are trying to
flee, putting their lives at risk in order to make the dangerous
journey.
While the United Nations has stepped in to help U.S. and Mexican
authorities deal with the migrant crisis, officials said food and health
resources are running scarce. Gough’s representative noted, “investment
needs to be increased for coordination at the local level to be boosted
and for all these shelters to be mapped.”
UNICEF hopes to acquire $23 million in funding in order to continue with humanitarian operations in Mexico.
Article by Clifford C. Nichols in The American Thinker
Supreme Court's failures are putting America on a path to tyranny
Rarely
do the generation experiencing the actual events and decisions that
lead to their nation's demise fully appreciate the enormity of their
oversight until sometime after their culture's destruction has been
rendered incurable. Largely, it is not due so much to their negligence
as it is to most of them being too preoccupied with simply living and
making a living.
Perhaps
that would explain why, in just the first four months of 2021, the
Supreme Court issued four decisions — or, perhaps better viewed as non-decisions — that should have caused all legitimately patriotic Americans to be alarmed and called to action...but did not seem to.
Only
a few weeks ago, without offering any substantive explanation, the
Court summarily refused to even look at — much less seriously consider —
any of the evidence of the 2020 election irregularities offered
by attorney Sidney Powell and others. Evidently, the Supreme Court of
the United States of America was not interested in doing what it could —
and should — to let America know decisively whether or not its
presidential election had been shamelessly stolen by those now in power.
Why would they not do this?
Perhaps
the answer is best revealed by the fact that, at the same time, the
Court was also apparently too busy to halt a New York prosecutor from
obtaining former president Trump's tax returns. The practical effect
was for SCOTUS to give that prosecutor an assist with his
unconstitutional effort to search for any crime that might make
President Trump's ouster from office permanent.
Clearly, these two SCOTUS decisions alone evidence the fact that the agenda of the justices has become politically driven.
It doesn't end there.
Two
weeks later, the Supreme Court — again without explanation — summarily
refused to reverse the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals' denial of Judicial
Watch's request that it be allowed to take the deposition of a member
of this country's ruling political elite — Hillary Rodham Clinton. At
the end of the day, Judicial Watch was only asking the Supreme Court to
uphold the rule of law by finding that all Americans — including elites
like Hillary Clinton — are to be treated equally under the
law. Instead, the Supreme Court unfortunately — and inexplicably —
declined the opportunity to do even this.
Then
this week, SCOTUS put the final nail in the coffin containing the GOP's
2020 election disputes with its denial of a petition for a writ of
certiorari in Bognet v. Dagraffenreid. Again,
it refused to rule on whether a state's courts are qualified or not
under Article 2, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution to modify that
state's presidential election laws. In short, whether Pennsylvania's
Supreme Court violated the U.S. Constitution by usurping the state
Legislature's authority to extend the time allowed for counting mail-in
ballots is apparently not an issue worthy of this SCOTUS's time.
From
such glaring displays of indefensible Supreme Court inaction, the
following incontrovertible truths have been set out in plain view before
the nation's very eyes:
1. The Supreme Court today is thoroughly politicized...and thus corrupt.
2. In America, the rule of law is now dead.
3.
Worse yet, by these decisions, America's Supreme Court has put on open
display its utter disregard — and absolute contempt — for whatever the
American people may think about the future unavailability of equal
justice in a nation that once promised that such justice would be
available to all.
Such
truths should be cause for greater alarm for the American people than
even the now almost Orwellian silence of John Durham. Consider the
following recent words of attorney Sidney Powell:
The
Supreme Court's failure to date to address the massive election fraud
and multiple constitutional violations that wrought a coup of the
presidency of the greatest country in world history completes the
implosion of each of our three branches of government into the rubble of
a sinkhole of corruption. It is an absolute tragedy for the rule of
law, the future of the Republic, and all freedom-loving people around
the world.
She
is not overstating the matter in the least. An American government
unleashed from the constraints set in place by the rule of law can be
headed in only one direction: toward some form of centralized
dictatorship limited only by the whims of those in power — i.e., a
tyranny.
A
tyranny is a state that, for instance, would order its people to
accommodate its importation of a new class of indentured slaves that it
is encouraging to enter across the borders of this country, which it has
opened simultaneously to endeavoring to seize the weapons of anybody
already here — i.e., patriotic citizens — who might object. And all
while, the state uses an imagined pretense — e.g., a fraudulently hyped
pandemic — to terminate the rights of those patriotic Americans to
engage in commerce, speak freely, and even freely assemble to peacefully
protest or even worship. It's a place where unquestioned obedience is
expected and dissent from any of the state's propaganda narratives is
silenced, censored, shadowbanned, and de-platformed.
Sound familiar? It should. It is where America is today.
All
of us — both conservatives and liberals — would do well to take off our
government-mandated masks long enough to read out loud and seriously
reflect upon the following words of a woman — Ayn Rand — who knew more
than just a little about how to identify a tyranny:
When
you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from
men who produce nothing — When you see that money is flowing to those
who deal, not in goods, but in favors — When you see that men get richer
by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you
against them, but protect them against you — When you see corruption
being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice — You may know that
your society is doomed.
We're
left to ask: does America still have the option of reversing course,
or, in its march toward some form of tyranny, has it already put the
Rubicon in its rearview mirror?
After all, how is a nation supposed to lawfully remedy the corrupt silence of a politicized Supreme Court from which there is no readily apparent peaceful means for appeal?
If the guilty verdicts in the Derek Chauvin trial had any chance of quelling the angry, already gathered “protest” crowds around the country right now, this incident may blow all that up
Police in Columbus, OH have reportedly shot and killed a 15-year old girl. Crowds of yelling bystanders are already gathering. Videos are being posted from the scene of the incident.
Of course, there’s typically more to any story like this, and other reports are alleging that the girl had a knife. In fact, the above poster put out another comment admitting that not only did she have a knife, but she was in an altercation with another girl.
If that account is true, the officer was almost certainly justified. If someone is fighting with another person and the police witness the drawing of a weapon, they have a duty to stop the armed person from harming or killing the other person they are fighting with. I have no idea how that’s even controversial, yet social media is abuzz with claims that they should have used a taser or that this was somehow a purposeful killing in retaliation for the Chauvin verdict.
We’ll keep you updated on this story, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it led to more rioting, violence, and destruction despite the fact that the information that’s out there seems to point to the officer acting properly.
Along with slashing a hostile Department of Defense budget, the Right should seriously consider defunding some of the police as an act of self-defense.
Objects thrown by a mob smashed into Jonathan Pentland’s home last Wednesday, shattering a window and breaking a light fixture. As things turned violent, Pentland’s family evacuated to a secure location, but nowhere is truly safe in the age of high-tech lynching.
Jonathan Pentland is a U.S. Army sergeant first class stationed at Fort Jackson near Columbia, South Carolina. His military resume includes time with 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson in Colorado, and the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum in New York. At least six years of service in the Army are typically required to become a sergeant first class, though many soldiers at this rank have more than 15 years of military service behind them. Pentland has sacrificed a not insignificant part of his life for this country—and yet the military, along with the Richland County Sheriff’s Department and the Black Lives Matter mob, have turned his life upside down.
Pentland is being investigated over a video showing him confronting a black man in the Columbia neighborhood where Pentland lives. According to Heavy, “the video was posted on Facebook by a Columbia woman, Shirell Johnson, who said she was walking in the neighborhood with a friend, Vinnetta Yvonne Knight Osborne, on Monday night, April 12, 2021, when she saw the incident unfolding.” Johnson said that the video was recorded by a woman named Shadae McCallum and given to her to post online.
In the video, Pentland repeatedly demands that the man, who has only been identified as Deandre, leave the area. Deandre refuses, and at one point, begins to approach Pentland’s wife—so the drill sergeant shoves him away from her. Deandre continues to refuse to leave and insists that he lives in the same neighborhood as Pentland but won’t say where. “We are a tight-knit community—we take care of each other,” Pentland says, adding, “I have never seen you before in my life.”
In a longer version of the video posted by Johnson, Pentland’s wife, Cassie, can be heard saying to Deandre: “Sir, you’re acting like a child. Move on. You picked a fight with some random young lady that’s one of our neighbors.” The Pentlands notify Deandre that the police are on their way.
When the Richland County Sheriff’s Department arrived, Johnson told the responding officers that Deandre was the victim and that Pentland had slapped Deandre’s phone out of his hand—an incident that Johnson said occurred off-camera. Curiously, both Johnson and the officers didn’t seem to think much at first of Pentland shoving Deandre away from his wife; the focus was on the broken phone.
“When the officer arrived,” McCallum said on Twitter, “he said that the taller man could only be charged with malicious intent to property, despite the video showing Deandre being assaulted.” Johnson added an officer told them “that his supervisor told him that he could only charge the white guy with malicious injury to property and not assault!”
Screenshot/Twitter
Pentland initially received a citation for malicious injury to property for allegedly slapping Deandre’s phone from his hand and causing it to break. But then pressure from the mob began to mount against RCSD.
“Why was Jonathan Pentland only issued a citation for property damage when he is on video clearly assaulting a young man and there were multiple witnesses stating they saw the assault?” one woman complained on Facebook on the department’s page. “Who was the RCSD supervisor who issued the directive not to proceed with assault charges?” she went on. “Why were the proper charges not filed? Is this the narrative that RCSD wants to support—that a stranger can walk up to you during your afternoon walk and assault you with no consequences?”
Surrounded and Under Siege
Mob pressure works. The Richland County Sheriff’s Department announced over Twitter on April 14 that Sheriff Leon Lott would meet with elected officials and various organizations to discuss the incident. Protesters swarmed Pentland’s neighborhood ahead of a scheduled 5 p.m. press conference, Heavy reported. Democratic State Senator Mia McLeod would add to the flames on Wednesday as well.
“My sons have a freaking right to live,”said McLeod, who is black. “Another unarmed black man could be dead today because he was walking in a neighborhood that, I am told, is adjacent to his, doing absolutely nothing.”
Assuring the mob that “no special considerations were given whatsoever” to Pentland, Lott revealed that Pentland had been arrested that morning and charged with third-degree assault. According to South Carolina state law, Pentland now faces a possible sentence of up to 30 days in jail and a fine of up to $500. Pentland has also been barred from having contact with Deandre and must stay 1,000 yards away from him, his home, and his place of work, school, or worship. More importantly, his life is ruined.
The community board of directors released a statement “strongly” condemning Pentland. “He does not represent this multi-cultural and multi-racial community,” it reads. “There is racism in every community in every city, state, county, and country.”
Fort Jackson Commanding General Milford Beagle Jr. tweeted about Pentland: “This is by no means condoned by any service member. We will get to the bottom of this ASAP.” The 10th Mountain Division posted this virtue signal on a 2017 photo of Pentland in uniform: “There is no place in the Army for extremist ideologies. We support the decision of the Fort Jackson Commanding General to look into this matter. This image will remain viewable to foster dialogue.”
Fort Jackson spokesperson L.A. Sully told reporters that Pentland’s “behavior is not consistent with our Army Values and will not be condoned. We have begun our own investigation and are working with the local authorities.” Fort Jackson Command Sergeant Major Philson Tavernier tweeted that the “Department of Justice at the federal level is also looking into the incident. . . . The command team, our Criminal Investigation Division (Army CID) agents, and our Staff Judge Advocate teams are all engaged with their professional counterparts and civil authorities to seek the facts which will determine how the investigations progress.”
Come nightfall on Wednesday, Pentland’s home was surrounded and under siege by agitators hurling objects through the windows of his home. “The protests at the Pentland home have become violent,” tweeted RCSD. “The family was removed after it was vandalized. They were moved to another location and the neighborhood is being closed off except to residents. Please stay out of the area.”
Beyond the Viral Footage
The irony, of course, is that Pentland appears to have been sacrificed on the altar for the mob by the sheriff’s department.
During the Wednesday press conference, Sheriff Lott said that his officers did not have evidence to charge Pentland with more than the initial property damage crime. Lott said that the video was the evidence needed to charge Pentland. “He put his hands on somebody, that’s assault and battery when you place your hands on someone.” But the incident report states that the officers who reviewed the cellphone footage saw “Jonathan pushing [redacted] because [he] was walking towards Jonathan’s wife, that was on her property.”
Did Lott lie? That’s what it looks like. Either that, or he doesn’t read his officer’s incident reports. “This shows what our community can do when we work together,” he said—which is another way of exalting mob justice.
The officers saw Pentland shove Deandre away from his wife, and that protective push only seems to have transformed into the basis of an assault charge after RCSD faced pressure to crucify Pentland. One would think Castle Doctrine in South Carolina would provide robust protection for Pentland preventing Deandre coming onto his property to accost his wife. S.C. Code Section 16-11-440(C) states:
[a] person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in another place where he has a right to be, including, but not limited to, his place of business, has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force, if he reasonably believes it is necessary to prevent death or great bodily injury to himself or another person or to prevent the commission of a violent crime.
Further, Lott also confessed that there “were some other things that occurred—that really doesn’t justify the actions of [Pentland].” Indeed, the viral footage doesn’t show what sparked the confrontation, or why Pentland and his wife’s comments suggested familiarity with Deandre, or that, as the Washington Postreported, deputies were told Deandre approached “several neighbors in a threatening manner” and that someone had asked Pentland to “intervene.”
As it turns out, Deandre’s crime was not, as Johnson claimed, merely “walking while black.”
“Two reports of alleged assault were also made against the young man after deputies responded Monday, according to the sheriff’s department, and they are being investigated,” the Post noted. Most media outlets, including the Army Times, haven’t mentioned this.
According to the Post, on April 8, one incident report says, Deandre “allegedly put his arm around a woman’s waist, put his hand down the right side of her shorts and then put his arm back around her waist as her pants were partly down.” And on April 10, another report alleges Deandre “repeatedly picked up a baby without permission and tried to walk away.” A second video shows a witness who says a woman claimed Deandre “sexually assaulted her daughter” and “tugged” on her shirt, and that she ran to Pentland for help. Another witness talking to the hosts of “The Real” panel show said that a woman in the neighborhood recognized Deandre and warned her “daughter-in-law to get back in the house” upon seeing him.
The reactions these witnesses reported to Deandre’s presence suggest that the community was familiar with and felt threatened by him—a response that corresponds with the two reports of alleged assault against him.
U.S. Army
A Bigger, Disturbing Picture
Pentland confronted Deandre on April 12, four days after he sexually harassed one woman and two days after he attempted what most people would consider kidnapping. That would explain Pentland’s anger at seeing Deandre, once again, in the neighborhood, walking free under RCSD’s watch. Put another way, Pentland was asked to confront Deandre because the police did not do their job—and in fact, it seems they went out of their way to keep Deandre on the streets.
According to RCSD, Deandre has “an underlying medical condition that may explain the behavior exhibited in the alleged incidents.” Heavy, one of the few outlets reporting on the April 8 and April 10 incidents, also notes that the “Richland County Sheriff’s Department said the victim has an underlying medical condition and the RCSD is working to get him help he needs in order to divert him from the criminal justice system.” Of course, Pentland won’t be spared the criminal justice system, and it’s not clear Deandre is a stranger to it himself.
On January 30, “Deandre Williams” appeared in a local Columbia, South Carolina news story, portrayed as a “vulnerable adult” with a “medical condition.” Recent South Carolina Court records for one “Deandre Demetrius Williams” show “malicious/malicious injury to animals, personal property,” drug possession, “trespassing/entering premise after warning or refusing to leave on request,” in the Richland County and Pontiac Magistrate court agencies.
Even if it’s true that Deandre has a medical condition, RCSD failed to keep the community safe by allowing him to go free on more than one occasion, and put Pentland in the position of reluctant protector. According to Lott, however, it is a worse crime to confront a black deviant than it is for them to put their hands down a woman’s pants or attempt to take a baby.
It’s hard to avoid coming away with the impression that the Army, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, and the mob have destroyed Jonathan Pentland’s life, put his family in danger, and destroyed his name. For protecting his community when called upon, the 10th Mountain Division with whom Pentland served called him an “extremist.” Who would die for this?
America loved its heroes in the past. Movies like “Die Hard” immortalized in our popular culture the quintessential everyman, reluctant hero. After John McClane, played by Bruce Willis, interrupts Hans Gruber’s plans, the villain grills McClane over the radio on his motives. “Just another American who saw too many movies as a child?” Gruber inquires. “Another orphan of a bankrupt culture who thinks he’s John Wayne, Rambo, Marshal Dillon?” McClane defiantly signs off with the now immortal “Yippee Ki Yay” line.
But America now appears to hate heroes. Our elites, our ruling class—and those allied with them—do not deserve Pentlands or John McClanes. “You don’t deserve to serve another second in the United States Army,” yelled an agitator at Pentland’s home on Wednesday. The opposite is true—as an institution today, the military does not deserve the blood its soldiers have shed and are willing to shed. And bureaucrats with badges do not deserve the “back the blue” support they have long enjoyed from the Right.
For now, Pentland has retreated from the spotlight. His Instagram profile reads simply, “Nothing to say.” That’s understandable, considering the way the country he has served has treated him.
But his case should be understood as part of a bigger, disturbing picture.
Police in Retreat—Now What?
Law enforcement across the country have retreated from policing black crime in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. As a result, violent crime has exploded. According to Jason Johnson, the former deputy police commissioner for Baltimore, preliminary FBI data for 2020 points to a 25 percent surge in murders—the largest single year increase since the agency began publishing uniform data in 1960. The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund examined those soaring murder rates in the country’s major cities and found that “tangible de-policing,” which started in June 2020 amid anti-police protests and policy decisions, fueled the rising tide of homicide.
In places like New York, random attacks on civilians are increasingly common, often in connection to a so-called “knockout game,” where thugs sucker-punch random people—sometimes with deadly consequences. As with murders, most of the weight of criminality rests disportionately on black suspects. In Philadelphia, roving black motorcyclists cause car collisions—then mercilessly maul drivers in the streets, pulling guns on their victims.
Pentland’s case shows “de-policing” is a misnomer. Police are retreating from violent black crime but citizens—especially white citizens—are forbidden from protecting themselves.
Big-city police departments, and even sheriff’s departments where the county’s top lawmen are elected—Leon Lott won Richland County’s Democratic primary for sheriff in 2020—are still policing, but they mostly exist to repress everyday Americans, upholding a system of anarcho-tyranny. The Right must therefore think about law enforcement and the military differently because blindly standing with the enforcers of the managerial regime is tantamount to a long, agonizing suicide. Along with slashing a hostile Department of Defense budget, the Right should seriously consider defunding some of the police as an act of self-defense, and learn to fight fire with fire.
Dershowitz: Maxine Waters’ Tactics Similar to Those Used by Ku Klux Klan
Rep. Maxine Waters
(D-Calif.) was clearly trying to influence the jury in the Derek
Chauvin trial when she traveled to Minnesota and said Chauvin should be
found guilty, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz charged on Tuesday.
“Her message was clearly intended to get to the jury—‘If you will
acquit or if you find the charge less than murder, we will burn down
your buildings. We will burn down your businesses. We will attack you.
We will do what happened to the witness—blood on their door,’” he said
during an appearance on Newsmax, referring to how the former home of
defense expert Barry Brodd was recently vandalized.
“This was an attempt to intimidate the jury. It’s borrowed precisely
from the Ku Klux Klan of the 1930s and 1920s when the Klan would march
outside of courthouses and threatened all kinds of reprisals if the jury
ever dared convict a white person or acquit a black person. And so,
efforts to intimidate a jury should result in a mistrial with the judge,
of course, wouldn’t grant a mistrial because then he’d be responsible
for the riots that would ensue, even though it was Waters who was
responsible,” Dershowitz added.
Waters told a crowd in Brooklyn Center, just outside of Minneapolis, over the weekend that they should “get more confrontational” if a guilty verdict isn’t handed down.
“We’re looking for a guilty verdict and we’re looking to see if all
of the talk that took place and has been taking place after they saw
what happened to George Floyd,” she also said. “If nothing does not
happen [sic], then we know that we got to not only stay in the street
but we have got to fight for justice.”
Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill, the judge overseeing the trial of
Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer accused of killing Floyd, told the court on Monday he was aware of Waters’ statements.
Cahill rejected a motion from Chauvin’s lawyer for a mistrial.
However, he told the lawyer that he could submit articles about the
remarks for an “appeal that may result in this whole trial being
overturned.”
Eric Nelson, the lawyer, had argued that Waters was making “threats
against the sanctity of the jury process” and “threatening and
intimidating the jury” into delivering a guilty verdict against his
client.
Waters’ office has not responded to requests for comment.
The longtime congresswoman told TheGrio this week that she did not agree with the characterizations of her remarks.
“I am nonviolent,” she said. “Republicans will jump on any word, any
line and try to make it fit their message and their cause for denouncing
us and denying us, basically calling us violent.”
But Dershowitz predicted the case could be dismissed upon appeal if there is a conviction.
“I think there will be a conviction, at least on the manslaughter
charge. The issue will go to the Court of Appeals,” he said on Newsmax.
“And will the Court of Appeals have the courage to reverse this
conviction on the ground … that the jury was subjected to intimidation
tactics, not only by Waters but by others as well who threatened
violence in the event of an acquittal or a lesser charge than murder?”
