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(FreedomWire.org) – After months of speculation, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis officially jumped into the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination during a Twitter Spaces session co-hosted by Elon Musk.

In a post-announcement interview on Fox News hosted by his former congressional colleague Trey Gowdy, DeSantis laid out his day-one agenda should he manage to win the presidency.

DeSantis says he would fire FBI Director Christopher Wray on his first day as president.

DeSantis went on to say, “The border, there’s a lot you can do, ripping out President Joe Biden’s anti-American energy policies. You probably could do most of the executive, you’ll probably need to do some of that legislative as well.”

Continuing, he said a priority is “re-constitutionalizing the administrative state.”

“We have a bureaucracy that’s totally out of control. You need to be willing to use Article 2 power to bring the administrative state to heel,” he added. “I will do that.”

“I think Congress also has a role in reigning in the abuses through both the power of the purse and through making sure that they are legislating through clear and defined laws that aren’t delegating huge swaths of power to unelected bureaucrats,” DeSantis said.

He also added: “One thing I think we can do legislatively is national school choice. We’ve done it in Florida, it’s made a huge difference for low-income families.”

DeSantis now faces a battle with the party’s current frontrunner — Donald Trump.

Trump responded to the news on Wednesday evening by trolling DeSantis on Truth Social with a series of posts, images of the recent polling, and even some opinions of social media users.

“I’d like to personally congratulate ‘Rob’ DeSanctimonious on finally announcing that he will be entering the race for President of the United States. Hopefully, he will get the full experience of being attacked by the Marxists, Communists, and Radical Left Lunatics of our Country, without which he will never know the kind of job he is doing. These Lowlifes & Misfits are far worse than the leaders of hostile foreign countries. They must be soundly defeated in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump posted.

“Ron DeSantis’ decision to announce his 2024 White House bid in a conversation with Elon Musk on Twitter on Wednesday will make a typically blunt statement about his campaign, the unruly populism of the modern Republican Party, and an accelerating conservative media revolution,” CNN’s Stephen Collinson wrote in an analysis Tuesday ahead of DeSantis’ launch.

Fox News added that DeSantis’ announcement coincided with a meeting he had this week in Miami with top financial backers.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported earlier Wednesday that, in support of DeSantis’s presidential campaign, a prominent political group is gearing up for an extensive voter-outreach initiative.

The ambitious endeavor aims to reach every potential DeSantis supporter in New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina at least four times, with an additional fifth contact in the pivotal Iowa caucuses. To accomplish it, the group is preparing a substantial $100 million investment in their outreach efforts.

“As part of a comprehensive on-the-ground organizing operation, the campaign plans to hire over 2,600 field organizers by Labor Day. This substantial number of personnel is quite extraordinary, even for campaigns with substantial funding, highlighting the significant scale and scope of their organizational efforts,” the Times added.

(FreedomWire.org) – Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is no fan of the U.S. spy network and on Wednesday tweeted a picture of President John F. Kennedy, Jr. while calling for the CIA, NSA, and FBI to be split “into a thousand pieces” and their remains scattered “into the winds.”

Dorsey has been a relatively quiet public figure since stepping down from the company he founded and ceding control to Elon Musk. His latest message indicates deep reservations about the nation’s intelligence gathering services which have come under heavy scrutiny for political bias and invasion of American’s privacy.

Attacks on the agency have been buoyed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a candidate for president and the nephew of President Kennedy who was assassinated in 1963. RFK recently claimed that the CIA had a role in his uncle’s murder and has proposed a three-step plan if elected to dismantle state censorship, citing efforts by the FBI to isolate dissenters on Twitter and conduct “mass surveillance” on citizens.

Dorsey’s comments are in line with those of Musk and others in the tech community who have publicly complained about interference from the FBI as the agency conducts domestic surveillance during its efforts to ostensibly root out threats of terrorism. In December, Musk tweeted that the government “paid Twitter millions of dollars to censor info from the public,” retweeting a message about the FBI’s involvement in sowing doubt about information found on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Congressional oversight of the intelligence community has intensified as well. House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY) continues to pressure the FBI to release details of a meeting that he alleges showed how President Joe Biden is tied to a bribery scandal involving members of his family. Last week whistleblowers from the agency testified before the House Judiciary Committee about the repercussions they have suffered after coming forward to claim that the Bureau and Department of Justice have become “weaponized” against perceived enemies of the president. Separately, a group of veteran former FBI agents have slammed the agency as “politicized” and in need of reform.

(FreedomWire.org) – Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) said he was “speechless” when he learned that a senior FBI official had not read the Durham report, which was released more than a week ago.

Pfluger, chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence, questioned Jill Murphy, deputy assistant director of counterintelligence at the FBI, during a hearing on May 23.

“Special Counsel Durham assesses that neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” Pfluger said. Crossfire Hurricane is the FBI codename for the agency’s 2016–17 FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

Pfluger continued, “The bureau subsequently discounted or willfully ignored material that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship between former President Donald Trump and Russia.”

“As the deputy assistant director for the FBI Counterintelligence Division, are you familiar with this report?” Pfluger asked.

In response, Murphy said, “I have not read that report.”

“I’m honestly speechless at this point in time,” Pfluger said in reply.

When pressed on why she had not read the report, Murphy said, “I just haven’t had time.”

“This is a sincere question. Does election collusion worry you?” Pfluger asked Murphy, who said it “obviously” worried her.

“I would highly recommend reading that because we spent four years discussing that. There was uncorroborated evidence—the Durham report specifically outlines the outcome of that. It’s very disappointing to hear this.”

John Durham, appointed by then-Attorney General William Barr in October 2020 to review the 2016–17 FBI investigation of alleged ties between Trump and Russia, found that the FBI “relied on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” for its investigation.

“The objective facts show that the FBI’s handling of important aspects of the Crossfire Hurricane matter were seriously deficient,” Durham added in the report.

Following the report’s release, the FBI acknowledged mistakes in its investigation of the Trump campaign, while Trump said in a statement that “the American Public was scammed.”

“The Durham Report spells out in great detail the Democrat Hoax that was perpetrated upon me and the American people. This is 2020 Presidential Election Fraud, just like ‘stuffing’ the ballot boxes, only more so,” Trump added.

Other Republicans at the hearing shared Pfluger’s astonishment that Murphy had not read the report.

“I also was surprised at your answer—you haven’t read the Durham report,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.). “Why is that not a matter of such import that you would want urgently to understand what the special counsel concluded about the work of the counterintelligence division? In such a grave case?”

Murphy replied, “Sir, if you’d like a brief on the Durham report from the counterintelligence division, I’m happy to take that back.”

“Wow, that sounds almost contemptuous,” Bishop said in response. “Do you intend to read it?”

“I do intend to read it,” Murphy told Bishop.

During the hearing, Pfluger also revealed that the FBI has not responded to a letter he and House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) sent on April 24. The letter, sent to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, requested information on the Chinese regime’s clandestine “police stations” in the United States, including New York City.

“It’s now been two over two weeks past that deadline that we asked for. So I would ask you, please, to respond to that letter in writing,” Pfluger said.

On April 17, the FBI arrested two individuals on charges of operating a secret police station in New York City on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). They allegedly took orders from the regime in order to track down and silence Chinese dissidents living in the United States, prosecutors said.

In their letter, Pfluger and Green wanted answers to multiple questions, including when the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were notified of the Chinese police station in New York.

“In addition to the Chinese police station operating in Manhattan, New York, there are allegations of these illegal organizations operating in a separate location in New York, NY, Los Angeles, California, San Francisco, California, Houston, Texas, as well as cities in Nebraska and Minnesota,” the letter says. “What is DHS and the FBI doing to combat the malign influence occurring in these additional locations and across the homeland?”

In response, Murphy told Pfluger that the FBI would provide a “fulsome response” probably in a classified setting.

“The threat from China is complex and vast,” Murphy added. “So when we talk about universities, or researchers, or academics, or innovation, China proliferates all those spaces to include in our communities where Chinese Americans live as a way to influence those communities. And we work actively to identify those and investigate that.”

“Would you say that they’re using every available tactic, technique, and procedure to infiltrate American national security interests and interests writ large?” Pfluger asked about China.

In response, Murphy said, “I would say that their attack surface is large, and they are using all the tools in their toolbox to gather information, whether it’s classified, intellectual property, sensitive, unclassified, anything that they consider [of] value.”

(FreedomWire.org) – House Republicans are threatening to file contempt charges against FBI Director Christopher Wray after the agency failed during a closed-door meeting to hand over a document lawmakers subpoenaed.

House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer detailed how lawmakers are seeking a document from the FBI that allegedly details a “criminal scheme” involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and an unnamed “foreign national.”

Comer threatened to hit Wray with contempt charges.

“They don’t respect anyone in Congress,” Comer said on Fox News. “They’ve been able to get away with this for a long time. The media continues to turn a blind eye. The Senate Republicans continue to fund the FBI. Why would you change your business model when you’re getting everything you want?”

Comer requested the document from Wray on Friday, accusing the agency of interfering with his subpoena launched on May 3 with Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley. The bureau has yet to hand over the document.

“At today’s staff briefing with FBI officials, the FBI again did not produce the unclassified record subpoenaed by Chairman Comer. The Oversight Committee will announce the next steps soon,” said Jessica Collins, a spokeswoman for the committee.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said on Sunday that he is anticipating that the FBI will turn over a file that is believed to contain evidence of bribery involving President Joe Biden after a weeks-long impasse.

In an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” the California Republican said the potential breakthrough came after he personally spoke with FBI Director Christopher Wray last week, the Daily Wire reports. The conversation pertained to the bureau’s failure to comply with a lawful congressional subpoena for the file.

“I explained to the director that we will do everything in our power, and we have jurisdiction over the FBI, that we have the right to see this document,” McCarthy said during the interview. “I believe after this call, we will get this document.”

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) issued a subpoena with a deadline of May 10 for the file. According to GOP investigators, whistleblower disclosures suggest the existence of a form completed by the FBI, outlining an alleged influence-peddling scheme involving Biden during his tenure as vice president and a foreign national.

On the day of the deadline, the FBI responded to the request, with an official declining to acknowledge the existence of the mentioned record. The response further cautioned against the release of “unverified or incomplete” information that could “harm investigations, prejudice prosecutions or judicial proceedings, unfairly violate privacy or reputational interests, or create misimpressions in the public.”

Even though Christopher Dunham, the acting Assistant Director for Congressional Affairs, expressed in his response a commitment to collaborate with lawmakers to address the issue, Comer appeared dissatisfied.

“It’s clear from the FBI’s response that the unclassified record the Oversight Committee subpoenaed exists, but they are refusing to provide it to the Committee,” Comer said at the time. “We’ve asked the FBI to not only provide this record, but to also inform us what it did to investigate these allegations. The FBI has failed to do both.”

(FreedomWire.org) – The FBI had at least four open investigations into Bill and Hillary Clinton that were suddenly dropped in the months before the 2016 presidential election, special counsel John Durham’s report shows.

Durham blasted Hillary Clinton personally in his report over her “plan to stir up a scandal against US Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee.”

The Durham Report says:  “Beginning in late 2014, before Clinton formally declared her presidential candidacy, the FBI learned from a well-placed [source] that a foreign government was planning to send an individual to contribute to Clinton’s anticipated presidential campaign, as a way to gain influence with Clinton should she win the presidency.

“Beginning in January 2016, three different FBI field offices, the New York Field Office (“NYFO*), the Washington Field Office (“WFO*), and the Little Rock Field Office (“LRFO**), opened investigations into possible criminal activity involving the Clinton Foundation.

“The IRFO case opening communication referred to an intelligence product and corroborating financial reporting that a particular commercial “industry likely engaged a federal public official in a flow of benefits scheme, namely, large monetary contributions were made to a non-profit, under both direct and indirect control of the federal public official, in exchange for favorable government action and/or influence.”

“The WFO investigation was opened as a preliminary investigation, because the Case Agent wanted to determine if he could develop additional information to corroborate the allegations in a recently-published book, Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer, before seeking to convert the matter to a full investigation.

“Additionally, the LRFO and NYFO investigations included predication based on source reporting that identified foreign governments that had made, or offered to make, contributions to the Foundation in exchange for favorable or preferential treatment from Clinton.

“According to another agent, the application lingered because “everyone was ‘super more careful’” and “scared with the big name [Clinton]” involved. 321 

“[T]hey were pretty “tippy-toeing’ around HRC because there was a chance she would be the next President.”

The Department of Justice Public Integrity Section Chief, Ray Hulser, said FBI leadership held a joint meeting with the three field offices, FBI Headquarters, and appropriate United States Attorney’s offices.

But it was “poorly presented,” and the FBI saw “insufficient predication for at least one of the investigations.”

A spokesperson for the Clinton Foundation denied the non-profit has ever been involved in any illegal activity:

“The Durham report, the spokesperson said, emphasized what’s been clear for many years – there’s never been any wrongdoing by the Clinton Foundation.

“None of the Clintons have ever taken any money from the Clinton Foundation — in fact, the Clintons themselves are major donors to the Clinton Foundation.”

(FreedomWire.org) – Whistleblower FBI agents who came forward claiming that “politicized rot” was destroying the agency from within have now been suspended and had their security clearances pulled, a development that House Republicans sought to put on display Thursday morning.

Steve Friend, one of the whistleblower agents, detailed his experience in front of the House Judiciary Committee. He claimed the FBI “closed rank and attacked the messenger” while preventing him from seeking another form of employment to support his family.

Friend’s opening statement drew praise from conservatives.

A second agent, Marcus Allen, had his security clearance revoked after investigating open-source materials related to the January 6, 2021 riots, according to a report by the House committee.

“Because these open-source articles questioned the FBI’s handling of the violence at the Capitol, the FBI suspended Allen for ‘conspiratorial views in regard to the events of January 6th,’” the report states, adding that Allen was likewise not permitted to seek outside employment during his unpaid suspension.

Garret O’Boyle testified that the FBI ruined his family life because he stood up for what he believed was right.

“Bad guys have begun running parts of the government, making it difficult to continue to serve this nation and protect the innocent.”

In a letter to House Republicans, the agency defended its punishment of both whistleblowers, arguing that Friend refused to follow an order to conduct a search-and-arrest of a suspect, performed unauthorized downloads of classified materials, and conducted media interviews without prior approval from the Office of Public Affairs (OPA). Allen was suspended for allegedly hindering investigations while espousing alternative views regarding the FBI’s involvement in the J6 riots, the letter states.

In recent weeks, a coalition of veteran FBI agents have come forward to defend the actions of the whistleblowers and call for reform at the agency, saying in a public letter that politicization which began under former Director James Comey has continued to the present day and continues to benefit President Joe Biden.

(FreedomWire.org) – Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced articles of impeachment against FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday.

Greene’s move to impeach Wray comes in the wake of special counsel John Durham’s final report on his investigation into the FBI’s inquiry into the alleged ties between former President Donald Trump and Russia.

Greene claimed that the FBI has “intimidated, harassed, and entrapped” people under Wray’s watch and that he has turned the FBI into President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s “personal police force,” according to a statement from Greene.

“Not only has Director Wray persecuted political opponents in an unprecedented and partisan way, but he has also overseen his agency take actions to shield and protect the current President and his family,” the statement read. “A senior FBI official left the agency under a cloud of accusations that he shielded a laptop belonging to the President’s son, Robert Hunter Biden, from a criminal probe.”

Greene specified several times the FBI had targeted people “deemed enemies of the Biden regime,” including how FBI whistleblower Garret O’Boyle told congressional investigators the agency had created a terrorist threat tag in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s overturning. In a raid performed by the FBI last September, armed agents raided the home of Mark Houck, an anti-abortion Catholic and father of seven young children, in response to his obstructing access to an abortion clinic.

The Georgia congresswoman also mentioned the raid the FBI performed on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence last August to recover classified documents the former president had in his possession. Shortly after, classified documents were also found to be in Biden’s Delaware home and in his office at the Penn-Biden Center.

“It is unacceptable for the Director of the FBI or any civil officer to exercise his power in a way that targets one political class while doing favors for the other,” Greene’s statement read. “Therefore, by the powers vested in Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene as a duly elected Member of the House of Representatives, she is officially introducing Articles of Impeachment against the corrupt FBI Director Christopher Wray.”

In addition to Wray, Greene has also introduced articles of impeachment against U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves. Greene said under Graves’s time as attorney for Washington D.C., he “has totally subverted the justice system of the United States.”

Durham’s 306-page report on his investigation into the Trump-Russia report stated that the FBI and Department of Justice had no proper basis for launching the investigation and cast doubt on the idea that the FBI should have ever even launched its investigation into allegations of collusion between Trump and the Russian government during the 2016 election.

Trump claimed the public had been “scammed” by people trying to undermine the country in a post written on Truth Social. Likewise, Trump’s rivals in the 2024 race, including former South Carolina GOP Gov. Nikki Haley, former Arkansas GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson, and business entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, criticized the agency in the wake of the report.

(FreedomWire.org) – House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said he believes former President Barack Obama knew about Joe Biden’s alleged foreign influence peddling schemes.

Comer told Lou Dobbs: “I believe, Lou, that it’s because he knew what Joe Biden was doing the last year of his vice presidency. He knew his son Hunter Biden was no good, and he knew this was nothing but a political liability not just for our country, not just for the Democrat party, but for Obama’s legacy.

“Because a lot of this happened during the Obama administration. So, I think that’s why Obama didn’t want Joe Biden to run for president. I think they knew about this.

“And remember a lot of these coverups would have happened during the Obama administration with Obama appointees in these deep state bureaucracies.

“This would be a great question for Obama: Were you aware of what was going on with Joe Biden with respect to foreign policy and some of these ragtag countries around the world,” he said.

The FBI refused to comply with a subpoena issued by Comer for an informant file where a confidential source alleges that Biden accepted bribes from a foreign national to influence U.S. policy when he was VP.

Christopher Dunham, FBI acting assistant director for congressional affairs, told Comer:

“As is clear from the name itself, confidentiality is definitional to the FBI’s Confidential Human Source program.

“Confidential human sources often provide information to the FBI at great risk to themselves and their loved ones. 

“The information they provide also can create significant risks to others who may be referenced in their reporting.

“Information from confidential human sources is unverified and, by definition, incomplete.

“The mere existence of such a document would establish little beyond the fact that a confidential human source provided information and the FBI recorded it.

Comer said:

“It’s clear from the FBI’s response that the unclassified record the Oversight Committee subpoenaed exists, but they are refusing to provide it to the Committee.

“We’ve asked the FBI to not only provide this record but to also inform us what it did to investigate these allegations.

“The FBI has failed to do both. The FBI’s position is ‘trust, but you aren’t allowed to verify.’ That is unacceptable. We plan to follow up with the FBI and expect compliance with the subpoena.”

The GOP-led probe is demanding to know why the federal government refuses to investigate the high-level corruption the Biden family has committed. Comer said that all evidence points to the fact that Biden lied and that he and nine other family members did receive money from China. 

He alleged that no other president has been involved in such crimes and that China and Romania—two countries where Biden helped lead U.S. policy during the Obama-Biden Administration— are just some countries Biden has illegally been making money from. 

(FreedomWire.org) – A coalition of former senior FBI agents have spoken out about what they claim is a “politicization” of the country’s top domestic security agency based on recent statements and positions that favor incumbent President Joe Biden.

Speaking with the Daily Caller, the agents — each of whom served for more than 20 years — cited several instances of favoritism for Biden:

“We agree privately and uniformly that [the] FBI is heading in the wrong direction and has been too entrenched with partisan politics, starting from Director Comey and intensified under Director Christopher Wray. We identified with Nicole Parker’s claim that ‘The FBI became politically weaponized, starting from the top in Washington trickling down to the field offices,’ illustrated by inflating domestic violent extremism statistics, directing big tech companies to censor Americans, conducting an unprecedented raid on President Trump’s home while suppressing key details related to the Hunter Biden probe as ‘disinformation’ and so on. We have observed firsthand that too many FBI current agents are suffering low morale and too many Americans have lost trust in FBI,” wrote the agents.

Before his firing, former Director James Comey famously investigated President Donald Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn, and current Director Wray authorized the sweeping search of Trump’s Florida resident under the auspices of recovering classified materials. In April, House Republicans claimed Biden Secretary of State Anthony Blinken worked with former intelligence officials to categorize Hunter Biden’s laptop as “Russian disinformation” ahead of the 2020 elections.

In February, former FBI Agent Nicole Parker testified before Congress about partisanship spilling into the bureau’s ongoing investigations, citing as an example an instance where agents kneeled in solidarity with Black Lives Matter protestors. She added that changes in recruitment policies have diluted the FBI’s ability to find quality field agents.

The group of former agents echoed Park’s call for a top-down house cleaning at the FBI:

“It is no exaggeration to say that [the] FBI has no longer functioned as an apolitical agency, an agency with no bias. The top two floors of the Hoover building are filled with self-served and greedy bureaucrats, not doers, just talkers. It’s time to clean house, restore public trust and start over. A thorough investigation is justified. Creating a select subcommittee and opening up investigation is a step in the right direction. More FBI agents need to come forward, tell the truth and uncover the extent of the FBI’s weaponization. Change only happens when we fight for it. I believe deeply that we need a reformed FBI. To address and fix the problems, we should first identify the problems,” wrote the agents.

(FreedomWire.org) – In a tweet posted on Sunday, Tara Reade, the former staffer who accused Joe Biden of sexual assault in the 1990s, placed blame on Biden if something happened to her.

“I want to make something clear. If something happens to me, all roads lead to Joe Biden,” Reade wrote Sunday afternoon. “Joe Biden and DNC political machine threats, bullying and intimidation over the last three years will not work.”

“I am not suicidal,” she added.

“I should not be under investigation nor am I a foreign agent. I am a private citizen. I was a former staffer of Joe Biden’s that has chosen to step forward to tell the truth,” Reade continued.

She added: “The tactics using intimidation and bullying to silence me and suppress me using DOJ and FBI and social media will not work. Leave me alone. I will testify under oath in Congress if asked to do so and tell what happened and what I know.”

“The Biden corruption must end. Period,” Reade said. 

She concluded her tweet by thanking Reps. Greene and Gaetz for inviting her “to testify and caring about the truth!”

Ms. Reade claimed that since accusing her former boss of sexual assault she has been bullied by government  and subjected to investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The cryptic message was posted after Dr. Gal Luft, a co-director of a Washington D.C.-based think tank, claimed he was arrested in an effort to stop him from revealing information about the Biden family.

“I’ve been arrested in Cyprus on a politically motivated extradition request by the U.S. The U.S., claiming I’m an arms dealer. It would be funny if it weren’t tragic. I’ve never been an arms dealer,” Luft tweeted on Feb. 18.

He added: “DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe, Jim, and Hunter Biden. Shall I name names?”