The Feds Are Coming for Libertarians (and Anyone Else That Disagrees With Politicians)by Jim Bovard

Posted by freedomforall 2 years, 11 months ago to Government
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Excerpt:
"In the coming years, the feds may treat libertarians like Muslims were treated after 9/11. Any new crackdown on terrorism will turn into a numbers game in which justice and fair play don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. Between 2001 and 2006, federal prosecutors charged 10 times as many people in terrorism investigations as they convicted on terrorism-related charges. President Bush declared in 2005 that “federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted.” But only 39 people were convicted on crimes tied to terrorism or national security, a Washington Post analysis found.

Entrapment opened the floodgates to federal terrorism indictments. Trevor Aaronson, author of The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism, estimated that only about 1 percent of the 500 people charged with international terrorism offenses in the decade after 9/11 were bona fide threats. Thirty times as many were induced by the FBI to behave in ways that prompted their arrest. In 2006, the FBI fabricated a terror scheme by the Liberty City Seven, where an informant encouraged a bunch of dimwits in Florida to babble about blowing up government buildings. That group was so knuckle-headed that they asked the FBI informant for military uniforms and wanted to conduct a parade.

Few Americans recognize how badly the legal playing field is tilted against them. When FBI agents knock on their doors, many Americans won’t hesitate to open up because they assume “those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear.” But the FBI is exploiting a sweeping law that criminalizes casual comments. Federal agents have the right to lie to you and to put you in prison if you lie to them. Any citizen who makes even a single-word (“no” or “yes”) false utterance to a federal agent faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

It gets worse. You don’t have to actually lie. FBI agents can fabricate the sentences they use to hang you. Unlike most law enforcement agencies, the FBI rarely videotapes interviews, thereby permitting agents to create the narrative or “facts” which then can be used to charge individuals with false statements. Instead of a transcript, an FBI agent writes up a memo a day or two later asserting what you said. FBI agents have been taught that subjects of FBI investigations “have forfeited their right to the truth,” which helps explain the vast increase in federal entrapment operations.

If the FBI shows up at your door, they might have already accessed every email and text message you sent in recent years. They may have vacuumed all your social media activity—those private Facebook messages you sent—HA! They may have also accessed all your credit card and other financial data. And the FBI may have already interrogated other people to squeeze out accusations against you that they can throw in your face. Then they launch into a game of 20 questions—with a federal indictment awaiting if they claim you answered untruthfully.

Politicians in Washington don’t see such abuses as a problem; instead, they are a grand opportunity to smite people who don’t kowtow. It wasn’t that long ago—in the final 15 years of J. Edgar Hoover’s reign—that the FBI became America’s thought police. The FBI’s COINTELPRO program conducted thousands of covert operations to incite street warfare between violent groups, to get people fired, to portray innocent people as government informants, to destroy marriages with poison pen letters, and to cripple or destroy leftist, black, white racist, and anti-war organizations. A 1976 Senate report warned, “The American people need to be assured that never again will a federal agency be permitted to conduct a secret war against those citizens it considers threats to the established order.” But legal and administrative restrictions on the FBI evaporated in the post 9/11 panic, resulting in pervasive abuses of Americans’ rights.

The FBI now operates with near-total impunity. The same is true of many state and local police departments who may be hungering for new federal subsidies to crackdown on the extremist peril.

How might this play out in the daily lives of people guilty of entertaining libertarian ideas? Consider Duncan Lemp, a 21-year-old Maryland man who was shot to death in a predawn raid in March 2021 after police smashed in his bedroom window and tossed flash bang grenades into his bedroom. Lemp was active on Twitter and liked several tweets by Libertarian presidential candidate John McAfee. Lemp’s last tweet declared, “The Constitution is dead.” Two months later, so was Lemp.

The Montgomery County, Maryland government later admitted that Lemp was targeted in part because was “anti-government” and “anti-police.” Plus, Lemp was outspoken about his support of the Second Amendment and posted photos of himself with guns on Instagram. Police saw one such photo and concluded that Lemp possessed a semi-automatic rifle that was illegal to own in Maryland. After they killed him and searched the Lemp home, they realized they had mis-identified the firearm—it was legal. But police, prosecutors, and local politicians treated that like a harmless paperwork error: nobody cared about the wrongful killing of Duncan Lemp."
SOURCE URL: https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-feds-are-coming-for-libertarians/


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  • Posted by $ blarman 2 years, 11 months ago
    Minor detail: Muslims are legitimately a threat to the Constitution. Libertarians aren't. And we'll all be in trouble if the Dems succeed in destroying the Constitution with their mad spending and voting reforms.
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    • Posted by Flootus5 2 years, 11 months ago
      And don't forget about the threat of a "Convention of States". That topic has been unusually quiet for some time now, which means the advocates are probably planning something. With the Deep State in charge along with the Kool-Aid drinking Rinos, this is likely a serious threat.
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      • Posted by $ blarman 2 years, 11 months ago
        I'm not sure what you mean. Are you saying that a Convention of States is a threat to the Constitution? I find that a little hard to swallow given that it is the Democratic States which oppose a Convention. It is the Democratic states which are trying to mandate that their State's vote go to the populist candidate for President - a proposal I find abhorrent living in a "small" state.
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        • Posted by Flootus5 2 years, 11 months ago
          This is an issue where one must definitely check the premises. There is a long history of debate on whether or not a "COS" could or could not become a "Con-Con". The viewpoints should not be parsed along the tired lines of just Democrat vs Republican, but rather, along our more modern needed distinction of globalist pro-Washington crowd vs those that read and understand Constitutional history. The line-up of Soros backed Young Turk types in tandem with "conservatives" is rather alarming in arguing that there is no way a COS could turn into a "runaway" convention like the 1787 Convention. Myself, I find their argument lacking in substance.

          The other aspect follows the old adage that in politics "What it shows the most, it is the least". The appearance that it is not on the radar in the midst of all this attempted radical overall suggests that it is a "watch this hand that I am showing, while the other hand is busy......" type of gambit. Just saying.
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  • Posted by JohnWesley 2 years, 11 months ago
    I believe most of the shootings and riots are because of Government encouragement. In the early '80s, I was a small business owner in a small city. Several men offered me an opportunity to make some easy money. I refused their offer. Years later, after my banker and several other businessmen in the community ended up in jail, I learned the Government used entrapment to get these men into positions that they never would have chosen without strong encouragement.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 2 years, 11 months ago
    "Maryland government later admitted that Lemp was targeted in part because was “anti-government” and “anti-police.” "
    Put me down as anti-government and anti-police, as we know them today, among other reasons because of stupid raids like this. At a BLM march a year ago, someone commented on my "Reform the police now" sign, saying we need more than reform. A year later I'm starting to see he was saying. Abolish/defund the police, not because we want no policing system, but what we have is beyond reform. I want something that looks completely different, something where we start from scratch and consider things like what threats really merit a military-style raid like the one that killed Duncan Lemp.
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    • Posted by Ben_C 2 years, 11 months ago
      There are two levels - federal and local. Federal is controlled by those in power with little checks and balances and serve their agenda. Local is controlled by the citizens for the most part. The bigger problem is the demise of the family unit. ADC and government. "Feel good" programs have resulted in generations of welfare recipients. Have a kid get a check. Father? No idea. Family unit. What's that? Friends on mine who are teachers in less than affluent neighborhoods see this every day. And these children are pretty much out of control. Want reform? Start here
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    • Posted by JohnWesley 2 years, 11 months ago
      I do not believe there should be "no-knock raids" for any reason. I do not believe we need "police reform." We need criminal reform. If felons do not resist police there should be no need for Police use of force. No resistance calls for no overwhelming response. I believe in deadly force to protect me from injury, or death.
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 2 years, 11 months ago
        "I do not believe there should be "no-knock raids" for any reason"
        Tactical teams started as a special force to handle extreme things rescuing hostages. That's the only time we need to do raids like that.
        Unfortunately armed raids have become a routine thing. In a place where people have a right to defend their home, it's just asking for tragedies.
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