90 Miles From Tyranny

Thursday, July 21, 2022

Mystery solved: DOJ secretly thwarted release of Russia documents declassified by Trump

Department used last-minute privacy concerns to halt release, then ignored direct order from president to make memos public.

In the final hours of the Trump presidency, the U.S. Justice Department raised privacy concerns to thwart the release of hundreds of pages of documents that Donald Trump had declassified to expose FBI abuses during the Russia collusion probe, and the agency then defied a subsequent order to release the materials after redactions were made, according to interviews and documents.

The previously untold story of how highly anticipated declassified material never became public is contained in a memo obtained by Just the News from the National Archives that was written by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows just hours before Trump left office on noon of Jan. 20, 2021.

Meadows' memo confirmed prior reporting by Just the News that Trump on Jan. 19, 2021 declassified a binder of hundreds of pages of sensitive FBI documents that show how the bureau used informants and FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign and misled both a federal court and Congress about flaws in the evidence they offered to get approval for the investigation.

The declassified documents included transcripts of intercepts made by the FBI of Trump aides, a declassified copy of the final FISA warrant approved by an intelligence court, and the tasking orders and debriefings of the two main confidential human sources, Christopher Steele and Stefan Halper, the bureau used to investigate whether Trump had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

In the end, multiple investigations found there was no such collusion and that the FBI violated rules and misled the FISA court in an effort to keep the probe going.

The documents that Trump declassified never saw the light of day, even though they were lawfully declassified by Trump and the DOJ was instructed by the president though Meadows to expeditiously release them after redacting private information as necessary.

"I am returning the bulk of the binder of declassified documents to the Department of Justice (including all that appear to have a potential to raise privacy concerns) with the instruction that the Department must expeditiously conduct a Privacy Act review under the standards that the Department of Justice would normally apply, redact material appropriately, and release the remaining material with redactions applied," Meadows wrote in the memo.

Just the News obtained the memo after going to the Trump collection at the National Archives and asking it to look for the binder of documents Trump had declassified. The Archives said it did not possess the documents, the Justice Department did and provided a copy of Meadows' memo.

In an interview Tuesday night on the "Just the News, Not Noise" television show, Meadows said he was dismayed that DOJ ignored a lawful instruction from a sitting president and said it was part of a larger...

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The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1786

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,

from the beautiful to the repugnant,

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,

you could be inspired, you could be appalled.

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

You have been warned.

Hot Pick Of The Late Night

Girls With Guns

Visage à trois #358

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #540

Justice Department Designates Obstruction as an Act of Terror In yet another example of the double-standard of justice from this vengeful regime, Trump supporters are trapped in a legal circle of hell in the nation’s capital.

To hear federal prosecutors tell it, Guy Wesley Reffitt almost single-handedly organized and led a bloodthirsty mob to overtake Congress on January 6, 2021.

One of the first protesters arrested in the Justice Department’s “shock and awe” dragnet of Donald Trump supporters, Reffitt was immediately indicted on numerous offenses. He spent more than a year in the D.C. gulag set aside for Americans who protested Joe Biden’s election under pretrial detention orders sought by the Justice Department—and he was the first January 6 defendant to stand trial in a city that voted nearly 93 percent for Biden in 2020.

In a matter of a few hours in March, 12 residents of the nation’s capital—not only one of the most lopsidedly Democratic cities in the country but one whose residents view the events of January 6 as an intrusion of their private fiefdom—found Reffitt guilty on all charges: two counts of civil disorder, two counts of obstruction, and one count of carrying a handgun on restricted grounds. (Prosecutors came up with the firearms charges months after he was initially indicted, claiming a holster he wore that day contained a semi-automatic handgun.)

Without question, Reffitt engaged in bad behavior that afternoon; he recorded himself making derogatory comments about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) before confronting Capitol police on the steps outside the building. The government’s most incriminating evidence in the case came from Reffitt’s teenage son, who secretly taped conversations with his father a few days after Reffitt returned to their Texas home, which the FBI raided on January 16, 2021. (I wrote about the case here.)

But Reffitt’s misconduct doesn’t come close to the overdramatic if not wholly dishonest account described in a 58-page sentencing recommendation the Justice Department filed last week. And it does not make him, or others in similar circumstances, part of a domestic terrorism plot as the Biden regime now insists.

Despite the fact Reffitt traveled to D.C. with only one other person and never entered the building, Jeffery Nestler, the federal prosecutor handling the case, repeatedly alleged that Reffitt played a “central role in leading a mob that attacked the United States Capitol.” Rather than show remorse for his action, Nestler wrote, “Reffitt returned home to Texas on January 8, triumphant about the integral role he played in the attack on our democracy.”

For several pages, Nestler portrays Reffitt as a dangerous militia leader who used his influence to initiate a violent assault against lawmakers that afternoon. “Reffitt did not intend to simply obstruct Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote. Rather, Reffitt intended to physically remove the legislators from the building (using his firearm and flexicuffs, and the power of the crowd) and actually ‘take over’ Congress,” Nestler wrote. (Reffitt’s companion, an alleged militia member, was not charged for similar conduct after he agreed to cooperate with the government.)

Reffitt, however, wasn’t convicted of attempting to kidnap members of Congress or seize the Capitol building. He didn’t build a weapon of mass destruction, torch federal property, or plot to kill government leaders—crimes that are normally associated under the law with acts of terrorism. Prosecutors didn’t convince jurors that Reffitt was a self-styled American jihadist who developed elaborate plans to overthrow the U.S. government on January 6.

But that is precisely what the Justice Department now wants a federal judge to conclude—and punish Reffitt accordingly.

Nestler and his boss, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves, are seeking a 15-year prison sentence based in part on a terrorism enhancement provision in federal sentencing guidelines. And the alleged crime of terrorism? The vague “obstruction of an official proceeding” felony is a post-Enron law intended to prevent evidence tampering that has been bastardized by Biden’s Justice Department to criminalize political protest in America.

“The Court should depart upward under U.S.S.G. § 3A1.4 (“Terrorism”), because Reffitt’s conviction—for obstructing Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote ‘was calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct,’” Nestler argued, citing requirements under sentencing guidelines to support additional jail time. (“[T]he terrorism enhancement is applicable where a defendant acts according to a plan—whether developed over a long period of time or developed in a span of seconds—with the object of influencing government conduct or retaliating against a government.”

Now, most Americans who aren’t brainwashed members of the national news media or Democratic Party consider attempts to influence the government a fundamental constitutional right. The notion that protesting any public body, especially Congress, makes one a “domestic terrorist” if the protest gets out of hand isn’t just absurd; it sets an extremely dangerous precedent. Which is precisely what this Justice Department wants to do.

Further, nothing Reffitt did on January 6 came close to the organized, violent rioting that was intended to disrupt Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017. Nor did it approach the weeks of protests, which included the occupation of Capitol buildings, breach of police lines, and threats to sitting members of Congress, related to the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. And of course, Reffitt was not involved in riots coordinated by powerful, monied activist groups following the death of George Floyd in 2020, violence that actually terrorized the American people for months, causing numerous fatalities and at least $2 billion in property damages.

None of those events has been cited as examples of “domestic terror” by this regime—but FBI Director Christopher Wray officially designated January 6, a four-hour disturbance that resulted in the deaths of four Trump supporters, an act of domestic terror. Wray’s proclamation, made under oath to a Congressional committee in March 2021, gave prosecutors, judges, and the media all the ammunition they needed to...

Gun permits based on political views. It’s on the horizon for many Americans.

That’s because left-wingers in California, a trend-setting state, have cooked up a new way to stop Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, moderates, and anyone else who refuses to toe the politically correct line from defending themselves from the crime wave that their policies have unleashed on America.

The day after the Supreme Court recognized the constitutional right of Americans to carry guns in public for self-defense, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, began pressing officials across the state to deny public-carry gun licenses to people deemed to harbor feelings of “hatred and racism.”

Bonta, for what it’s worth, is in trouble because his office leaked the names and addresses of every single concealed carry permit holder in California. Some now fear for their lives thanks to his incompetence.

The high court ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, came down June 23. It held that part of New York state’s concealed carry gun permitting system was unconstitutional because it only authorized public-carry licenses “when an applicant demonstrates a special need for self-defense.” The landmark 6-3 decision (pdf), written by Justice Clarence Thomas, recognized a constitutional right to carry guns in public for self-defense for the first time in the nation’s history.

Of course, early gun control laws in America were in some cases motivated by racism. The “Black Codes” adopted in southern states prevented blacks from keeping and bearing arms.

As High Country News reported last year, in California a 1923 law blocked non-citizens from having concealable firearms. Because of the federal Chinese Exclusion Act, many Chinese people in the state could not own guns because they could not become citizens. A San Francisco Chronicle article from back then celebrated the disarming of Chinese and Latino residents.

“Where the officials have the discretion in terms of gun licensing, there’s a very clear historic pattern of discrimination,” the article quoted Robert Cottrol, a history professor at George Washington University, saying.

After the Supreme Court spoke, Bonta promptly pulled a bait-and-switch, following Bruen by dropping the state’s “good cause” requirement but beefing up California’s “good moral character” requirement. In his June 24 “legal alert” (pdf) to gun permit issuers, he said that to assess whether an applicant had “good moral character” authorities could rely on the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department policy, which states:

“Legal judgments of good moral character can include consideration of honesty, trustworthiness, diligence, reliability, respect for the law, integrity, candor, discretion, observance of fiduciary duty, respect for the rights of others, absence of hatred and racism, fiscal stability, profession-specific criteria such as pledging to honor the Constitution and uphold the law, and the absence of criminal conviction.”

Bonta also reminded the permit issuers that they “may search publicly available information, including social media accounts, in assessing the...