Latest news with #J6
New York Post
19-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Miranda Devine: FBI emails revealed to The Post expose Biden DOJ's obsession with piling on Trump charges
Internal FBI emails reveal that rogue agents and prosecutors in the Biden DOJ were looking for ways to pile on new criminal charges against Donald Trump over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot — this time over his involvement with the J6 prisoner choir, based on a single partisan news article. The 2023 emails obtained by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and revealed exclusively to The Post, are an example of the nitpicking malice of anti-Trump lawfare that tainted special counsel Jack Smith's investigation, during Joe Biden's presidency. 'Can we do some work to nail down Trump's role in this,' writes prosecutor JP Cooney to DOJ colleagues on March 8, 2023, in an email with the subject line 'J6 Prisoner Choir/DJT' and an attached article titled 'Trump Collaborates On Song With Jan. 6 DefendantsTrump And Jan. 6 Prisoners Collaborate On New Song Called 'Justice For All.' ' Cooney was a deputy special counsel who worked on both the Robert Mueller and Jack Smith get-Trump special counsel investigations. 'Agent Zero' 'According to this Forbes article, Trump recorded the Pledge of Allegiance at MAL [Mar a Lago] and Kash Patel [Now FBI director] and Ed Henry [former Fox News host] were also involved,' Cooney wrote in the email chain. 'The profits are routed to an LLC run by Henry, and proceeds are intended for families of incarcerated J6 defendants — but there is apparently a vetting process that excludes families of defendants who assaulted police officers. 'I asked Ahmed [likely prosecutor Ahmed Baset, who was fired earlier this month] to preserve this last night. I'll talk to Maria/Erin and Julia about doing some follow up here to nail down Trump's role.' Cooney also instructed colleagues to look at starting 'some process on Ed Henry's LLC,' presumably a legal process such as a subpoena, search warrant or other court-authorized actions to gather evidence. His email was forwarded to eight agents and DOJ staff, including notorious anti-Trump FBI Special Agent Walter Giardina, who responded two days later to say he was investigating the claims in the Forbes article about Trump and the J6 prisoner choir: 'Esther and I are working on this today. We're going to put together our findings at 2 and get something to you shortly after that.' Giardina was 'Agent Zero' in a lot of overzealous FBI actions involving Trump and his allies, including the investigation of Trump White House advisor Dr. Peter Navarro on contempt of Congress charges for refusing to appear before the House committee investigating the J6 riot. It was Giardina's FBI team that arrested Navarro as he was about to board a plane at Reagan National Airport in 2022, put him in leg irons and threw him in jail instead of simply issuing a summons for him to come to court, as the federal judge overseeing the case later said while criticizing the heavy-handedness. Giardina was also significantly involved in Operation Crossfire Hurricane (the debunked Russia collusion investigation against Trump), Special Counsel Mueller's investigation and cases involving Trump allies Dan Scavino and Roger Stone, as well as the Hillary Clinton emails case. According to Sen. Grassley, Giardina was an 'initial recipient of the Steele Dossier' and falsely claimed that the bogus Clinton campaign smear sheet against Trump was corroborated as 'true.' Giardina also 'electronically wiped the laptop he was assigned while working for Special Counsel Mueller outside of established protocol for record preservation, raising the possibility that he destroyed government records.' Keep up with today's most important news Stay up on the very latest with Evening Update. Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters Whistleblown away Whistleblowers have told Grassley that Giardina 'openly stated his desire to investigate Trump, even if it meant false predication' because of his hostility to the past and future president. Grassley believes this email chain is another 'clear example' of how the federal law enforcement apparatus was weaponized to try to 'get Trump' at all costs. 'Instead of focusing on DOJ and FBI's core law enforcement responsibilities,' Grassley told the Post, 'partisan prosecutors and agents were surfing the web to find any shred of information they could use to spin another baseless case against Trump. Their actions are a disservice to Americans, who pay their salaries and depend on DOJ and FBI to keep them safe.' Grassley, known as the 'patron saint of whistleblowers,' is working with FBI director Kash Patel and his deputy Dan Bongino to ferret out the lawfare correspondence hidden at FBI headquarters and finger the culprits behind the anti-Trump lawfare of the past eight years. Patel also this week gave Grassley an FBI intelligence report alleging Chinese involvement in forging American driver's licenses intended to be used for fake mail-in ballots supporting Biden in the 2020 election. Whistleblowers had told Grassley that the FBI memo had been recalled after it was issued and no further action was taken, despite the fact that Customs and Border Protection seized almost 20,000 fake licenses three months before the election. 'Thanks to the oversight work and partnership of Chairman Grassley, the FBI continues to provide unprecedented transparency,' Patel told Just the News, which first reported on the CCP election plot. 'To that end, we have located documents Chairman Grassley requested.' 'My investigative work won't rest,' Grassley told the Senate on Wednesday. 'There'll be much more coming from this senator.' Among the charges Smith, Cooney, Giardina and pals were trying to drum up against Trump over his conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, were conspiracy to defraud the US, obstruction of an official proceeding and potential violations of the Insurrection Act. Ultimately, they failed. Trump comprehensively won the 2024 election, Smith was forced to drop the Jan. 6 and Mar-a-Lago cases against him — and Trump fired his team, targeted their law firms and pardoned every Jan. 6 defendant.
Newsweek
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
The 1600: The Political Showdown We Deserve
The Insider's Track Good morning, Four days from now, the Army will celebrate its 250th birthday. The original plan had been for a daytime festival on the National Mall, complete with displays, flyovers, meet-and-greets with Medal of Honor recipients, etc. Then President Trump, whose 79th birthday happens to also fall on Saturday, decided he wanted a bigger event complete with a grand evening parade. He's been wanting to preside over a military parade since his first term, when he went to France and was awed by the Bastille Day celebrations. (Maybe it's just me but I don't think the USA needs to emulate the French when it comes to the military). They told him then it was a bad idea and the DC streets would just get chewed up from the tank treads. More trouble than it's worth. But now he's back and there's no one left to say no, so Trump is getting his parade. Thousands of soldiers will march down Constitution Avenue alongside M1 Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and howitzers while the president looks on. Very Pyongyang-on-the-Potomac. Hopefully we keep the big, phallic ICBMs in their silos or else it's really gonna look like something out of Putin or Lil Kim's fantasies. Put aside the dumb optics of Abrams tanks rolling through DC, this is happening at a precarious moment. All of this simmering rage that we're starting to see boil over, first on the streets of LA, will have a convenient new target. I hope I'm wrong and this event goes off fine, but you couldn't pay me to be in Washington this weekend. The good news this morning seems to be that the clashes/riots in LA appear to have been more scattered overnight. Hundreds of Marines from Camp Pendleton are on their way to the city, which seems both inflammatory and unnecessary, but as we said yesterday, this is a fight the White House wants. Newsom is playing to his base, turning this into a referendum on Trump's draconian immigration raids while images of burning self-driving Waymos and Mexican flags become the lasting images on TV and social media. Trump is, cleverly, playing up Newsom as his foil because there would be no better situation for JD Vance in '28 than running against someone who presents as the embodiment of blue-state dysfunction. Everybody wins but us, the voters, as usual. A couple other random thoughts on LA: It's hard to take Trump's tough guy law-and-order stance seriously after he just pardoned every violent J6 protester, including those who attacked cops with flagpoles and bear spray. Have we noticed how ICE is doing their most over-the-top, military-esque raids in deep blue cities? Do you think that's a coincidence? I sure haven't seen any big workplace raids in, say, South Dakota (where Kristi Noem is from), or Iowa, where Trump-voting farmers have been employing illegal immigrants just as long as anyone. There's something amusing about watching the "Don't Tread on Me" right, people who are supposed to be skeptical of the federal government, all of a sudden come to the support of masked, anonymous federal agents jumping out of trucks to snatch people at their jobs and homes. And then refusing to acknowledge when they make mistakes and accidentally arrest or deport the wrong guy. Remember when they told us they were focused only on those here illegally with criminal records or who present a threat to the community? Democrats who equivocate on this are digging their own grave. You simply cannot appear to be on the side of people throwing cement at cops. It doesn't matter that most of the protests were calm, or that things were relatively peaceful until the feds came in, or that LA is a sanctuary city and should therefore be immune from federal immigration enforcement. What matters with riots is the optics of disorder, and it never works in the protesters' favor when it comes to public opinion. I saw some talking head on CNN yesterday say that "99.9%" of L.A. was peaceful. That may be true, but it's like saying JFK's trip to Dallas was 99.9% successful until he made that left onto Dealey Plaza. The Rundown As violence erupts out of immigration enforcement protests in Los Angeles, images of protestors waving Mexican flags became a focal point of the coverage and for the Trump administration's reaction. Senior administration officials said this proved there had been an "invasion" by illegal immigrants, particularly over the past four years under former President Joe Biden, and that it was necessary to send in the National Guard and deport those in the country without legal status. Read the story. Also happening: New Jersey primaries: President Donald Trump's second-term agenda faces an early test with voters Tuesday in New Jersey, a blue state holding the first statewide elections since Trump won back the White House last year. "Trump looms large over this entire race on both sides of the aisle," said Ashley Koning, the director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Read more. President Donald Trump's second-term agenda faces an early test with voters Tuesday in New Jersey, a blue state holding the first statewide elections since Trump won back the White House last year. "Trump looms large over this entire race on both sides of the aisle," said Ashley Koning, the director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Read more. Trade talks: President Donald Trump described China as "not easy" to deal with, but touted progress between the two countries as negotiations in London go into their second day. "We are doing well with China. China is not easy," Trump said. Read more. This is a preview of The 1600—Tap here to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump-Pardoned Proud Boy Leaders Just Filed Outrageous January 6 Suit
Donald Trump pardoned the Proud Boys for invading the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Now they want compensation. On Friday, a coalition of the far-right paramilitary group's leaders filed to sue the federal government for $100 million—plus 6 percent in interest—claiming that, in light of their pardons, their arrest and various charges had actually violated their constitutional rights. The group, composed of Enrique Tarrio, Zachary Rehl, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, and Dominic Pezzola, refer to themselves in the filing as 'J6 defendants.' In it, they cite the 'egregious and systemic abuse' of the legal system to punish Trump's allies as the basis for their damages. 'Through the use of evidence tampering, witness intimidation, violations of attorney-client privilege, and placing spies to report on trial strategy, the government got its fondest wish of imprisoning the J6 Defendants, the modern equivalent of placing one's enemies' heads on a spike outside the town wall as a warning to any who would think to challenge the status quo,' claimed their attorneys. 'Now that the Plaintiffs are vindicated, free, and able to once again exercise their rights as American citizens, they bring this action against their tormentors for violations of their Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment Rights,' the filing continued. The filing leveraged Trump's own language to further argue their case, citing the president's January 20 executive order in which he referred to their prosecution as a 'grave national injustice' as means to seek damages.
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's pick for a key watchdog role is irresponsibly unqualified for the job
Picking Paul Ingrassia to lead the U.S. Office of Special Counsel is not like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. It's more like setting fire to the whole farm. On Thursday, President Donald Trump nominated the former far-right podcast host to lead the important albeit little-known federal agency office. OSC is not to be confused with the special counsel position recently occupied by Jack Smith, who was appointed under federal regulations by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Trump for alleged violations of criminal law. Instead, OSC is an independent agency created by Congress as part of the Civil Service Reform Act in the wake of the Watergate scandal. The office protects whistleblowers and other federal workers from unlawful employment practices. OSC also enforces the Hatch Act, the law that bars political activity in the federal workplace. The nature of the work demands an experienced investigator who is scrupulously apolitical. Ingrassia is anything but. The 30-year-old Ingrassia has been a lawyer for only three years. He previously worked at the Claremont Institute, the same far-right think tank that brought us John Eastman, a key alleged architect of the 2020 election's fake elector scheme. According to its website, Claremont is currently 'working to undermine the Left's hold over America's institutions and conscience.' Ingrassia doesn't have the legal experience for the role. But he has something more important, at least for this administration. Early in Trump's second term, Ingrassia served as the president's liaison to the Justice Department, where he referred to himself as Trump's 'eyes and ears,' according to NBC News. He was reassigned to the Department of Homeland Security after he reportedly clashed with DOJ officials by pushing to hire candidates with 'exceptional loyalty' to Trump, reports ABC News. His views on the Jan. 6 riot are extreme, even by MAGA standards. In December, Ingrassia called for not only pardons of the Jan. 6 defendants, but also for $1 million per family in reparations. He advocated for Trump to 'expressly name, in a public proclamation, any judge and prosecutor involved in the J6 scam — and call on them to resign from their offices, and pressure Congress to undertake impeachment proceedings against them if they do not cooperate.' Ingrassia also urged Congress to make Jan. 6 a national holiday to place 'the day's events in their proper historical context: as a peaceful protest against a great injustice affecting our electoral system.' Ingrassia has referred to former Vice President Mike Pence as a traitor who belongs in 'the ninth circle of hell.' Of course, all private citizens are entitled to express their opinions, but someone who is either as delusional or sycophantic as Ingrassia is, in my opinion, simply unfit to lead an agency that is tasked with enforcing nonpartisanship. In February, Trump fired the prior head of OSC, Hampton Dellinger, a Joe Biden appointee who was only one year into a five-year term set by Congress. Dellinger challenged his removal, alleging it violated a federal law that prohibits termination except for 'inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.' A court had found Dellinger's dismissal unlawful, but Dellinger dropped his lawsuit when an appeals court declined to reinstate him. Trump's move to effectively neuter OSC may be in response to the agency's oversight during his first term, when investigators found that 13 senior administration officials violated the Hatch Act by campaigning while conducting official government business. A loyalist at the helm of the agency could help Trump avoid similar findings. What's more, without an independent watchdog in charge, whistleblowers may be reluctant to come forward with complaints of fraud, waste and abuse at federal agencies. Federal employees will also lose their advocate in cases of prohibited personnel practices, such as discrimination, coercing political activity or violations of our merit system in the civil service. This move threatens the integrity and efficiency of our civil service. The selection of Ingrassia to lead OSC rivals the nomination of Ed Martin as U.S. attorney in Washington. Trump ultimately withdrew Martin's nomination after he failed to earn support from key Republican senators. Martin now leads the Justice Department's 'Weaponization Working Group' and serves as Trump's pardon attorney, where he has already processed two dozen pardons that include corrupt public officials, business executives and Trump supporters. Last week, Martin posted on social media, 'No MAGA left behind.' Like the U.S. attorney position, the head of the Office of Special Counsel must be confirmed by the Senate. For the sake of our federal workforce and the important work they do for our country, let's hope this nomination meets the same fate as Martin's. This article was originally published on
New York Post
10-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Trump advisory board member wants Jan. 6 to be a national holiday: ‘Will look like July 4'
Jan. 6 should be a national holiday, one Trump advisory board member declared, guaranteeing that in 10 years 'it will look like July 4.' The push to create a new US holiday 'has been on my mind for four years, I just didn't have the chutzpah to talk about it,' Jason Meister, 43, told The Post. 'That would be the biggest way to honor these American heroes who risked their lives, freedom and honor to protest what they perceived to be a stolen election.' 3 Jason Meister wants January 6 to be a national holiday. Jason Meister/ Instagram The former Trump surrogate, who sits on the Trump 2020 Advisory Board, is also pushing for J6 'political prisoners' to sing the National Anthem at the 2027 NFL Draft, which is set to take place at the National Mall. The New Jersey lawyer, who was in the Big Apple when protestors stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, plans to raise the issue with Trump the next chance he gets. Meister also hopes to see the J6ers memorialized in Trump's 'National Garden of American Heroes' monument, which is scheduled to open in time for the US' 250th birthday on July 4, 2026. 3 Meister is also pushing for Jan. 6 'political prisoners' to sing at the draft. Newsmax 2 'The elites weaponized J6 to crush dissent. These men and women have lost everything – jobs, families, their very liberty – for refusing to kneel,' said Meister, who blasted the 'hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars' used to 'investigate, prosecute, and imprison more than 1000 Americans' who were exercising their First Amendment rights 'without due process.' 3 Meister wants Jan. 6 to be known as 'Patriot's Day' Getty Images Bring out the barbeque and fireworks, said the fired-up MAGA man. 'J6 must be celebrated and forever known as Patriot's Day,' he said. 'American citizens exercised their right of assembly and redress. All of these Americans were unarmed. 'In response, the regime murdered a woman who was protesting and sent thousands more to federal prison without fair trial.' The family of Ashli Babbitt, the unarmed US veteran who was shot to death by a federal officer on Jan. 6, settled a $30 million wrongful death suit earlier this month with the DOJ. 'We talk about due process for illegal gangbangers who beat their wives,' fumed Meister. 'I want to celebrate these heroes who sacrificed it all to protect our democracy.'
