All elected officials in the United States take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC.

Very few, if any, honor that oath!

It is therefore, up to The People to ensure that the Constitution of the United States is indeed, preserved, protected, and defended. Hence, it is necessary for The People to institute the concept of “National Domestic Security” to preserve, protect, and defend the several Constitutions, the institutions created by the Constitutions—and The People themselves—from domestic enemies, some of whom are unelected, unprincipled, unaccountable, unidentifiable, federal government employees.

The concept that internal security rests with the federal government and the State governments, is inadequate in light of the erosion of Constitutionally guaranteed rights over the past one hundred years, beginning with the administration of Woodrow Wilson.

Wilson, with the support of the Congress, passed amendments to the Espionage Act of 1917, popularly called the Sedition Act of 1918, that criminalized any “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the U.S. government or military, that extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds.

It forbade the use of “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt.

The federal government utilizes the police power of the federal state via the Department of Justice and the FBI/National Guard/and other federal agencies to address attacks on judicial order (law & order), and federal constitutional order, such as insurrections, invasions, rebellions, and subversions.

Because these bad actors use America’s great institutions to attack certain unfavored segments of American society–specifically, any citizen expressing “conservative values”, State governments must utilize the police power of the several States’ departments of justice and State bureaus of investigation and State police to address federal attacks on judicial order, as well as the various State Militias (National Guard Reserve forces under the exclusive authority of the State governors), either independently or in concert with other States, to address attacks on both federal and State constitutional order, such as insurrections, invasions, rebellions, and subversions, not adequately addressed by the federal government.

In addition, the various State Militias must be able to employ asymmetric tools such as counter-intelligence assets to expose government and corporate physical and digital intelligence gathering campaigns against The People and their institutions, to identify non-secure digital systems, and to gather crowd-sourced actionable intelligence on nefarious federal and State actors supporting attacks on constitutional order.

In addition to the involvement of the FBI in the Ruby Ridge and Waco fiascoes, the 9/11 “connect-the-dots failure, in the phony Trump-Russia collusion fraud, and the highly suspect incarcerations and prosecutions of people who entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the FBI continues to function as a rogue agency of the federal government.

Such behavior makes the Federal Bureau of Investigation itself a threat to The People and to the internal security of the United States. For example:

“Ken Silva of The Epoch Times writes of one man’s quest for Oklahoma bombing records leading to an  unprecedented court fight, including allegations that FBI tampered with witnesses and infiltrated alleged right-wing extremist groups in order to have them incite violence.

An FBI right-wing infiltration operation tangled in allegations of witness tampering, evidence suppression, and connections to the Oklahoma City bombing has been exposed through one man’s unprecedented Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. government.

And the case isn’t over yet. Utah attorney Jesse Trentadue’s 2006 FOIA lawsuit against the FBI and CIA for Oklahoma City bombing records is indeed still an open matter, having been sealed and litigated behind closed doors since 2015 over witness tampering allegations.

Trentadue’s case is unprecedented, according to Judicial Watch. It’s rare for a FOIA case to go to trial and even rarer for one to entail allegations as serious as federal government witness tampering, according to Judicial Watch senior investigator Sean Dunagan.

“We’re one of the largest FOIA litigants in this country, and we’ve never been involved in anything that involves that degree of alleged misconduct by the [FBI],” Dunagan said. “It’s astounding.”

Trentadue declined to comment on the sealed aspects of the case, including when the litigation might conclude. However, he did agree to an interview about the events leading up to 2015. He also provided The Epoch Times with access to a trove of court documents, transcripts, and other records that show details about the federal government’s domestic counterterrorism operations.

His records describe an FBI program known as Patriot Conspiracy (PATCON)—a secret operation to infiltrate right-wing and domestic extremist groups.

PATCON has been in the public record for years, described in detail by historian Wendy Painting’s 2016 doctoral thesis-turned-book “Aberration in the Heartland of the Real.” But PATCON has received little media attention outside of the late journalist Will Grigg. Other journalists have attempted to cover PATCON, only to run into censorship issues.

The reasons for the alleged attempts to suppress PATCON are clear, according to Trentadue. “The FBI’s real objective in PATCON had been to infiltrate and to incite these fringe groups to violence,” he said. Trentadue started seeking Oklahoma City bombing records from the FBI in the early 2000s.

The Utah attorney believes that the U.S. government is suppressing surveillance footage of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh with an unidentified accomplice on the morning of April 19, 1995, the day of the bombing. Trentadue also believes that this is connected to his brother’s murder. The reasons for Trentadue’s beliefs are complex and have received numerous book-length treatments.

But to summarize, 24 witnesses told the FBI that they saw McVeigh with an unidentified person during the morning of the attack—and none were used by the government during the trial. The FBI initially released sketches and appealed to the public for help in finding this mysterious “John Doe #2,” only to later deny that the man ever existed.

Then it was revealed in 2004 that the U.S. Secret Service had conducted its own investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing, separate from the FBI’s. A Secret Service document on the investigation shocked observers with the following statement: “Security

Sean Dunagan, senior investigator, Judicial Watch videotapes from the area [around the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building] show the truck detonation three minutes and six seconds after the suspects exited the truck”—supporting suspicions by many that McVeigh indeed had an accomplice and that there exists surveillance footage that confirms this.

 With McVeigh’s one known accomplice, Terry Nichols—who’s serving life behind bars for providing some assistance to McVeigh—confirmed to have been in Kansas on the day of the bombing, the possible identity of the man seen with McVeigh on April 19, 1995, remains a subject of debate.

Seeking to solve this mystery, Trentadue used the Secret Service memo to help underpin his FOIA lawsuits against the FBI. For its part, the FBI said the Secret Service’s investigation was riddled with errors. While there were video cameras on the Murrah building, they weren’t working on the day of the attack, according to the U.S. government.

The Secret Service also walked back its memo, saying that its agents never actually saw any surveillance footage of the Oklahoma City bombing and that some of the conclusions in its investigation were unconfirmed. Trentadue and the U.S. government argued these points and others for years as their case crawled toward an eventual trial in 2014.

Leading up to that trial, something unexpected happened in 2011: Trentadue was contacted by a former federal informant named John Matthews. A retired U. S. Marine, Matthews had worked as a federal asset throughout the 1990s on FBI’s PATCON operations. Matthews had been following Trentadue’s case and became infuriated when he saw that the FBI had released some records to Trentadue that identified him as an informant.

“All those years, I’ve been a good boy and kept my mouth shut,” Matthews said in 2011, explaining his decision to go public. “Then you [the FBI] release my name? What kind of [expletive] is that?”

Matthews told Trentadue all about PATCON, from selling guns to domestic extremists for FBI sting operations to sitting in on meetings by white supremacists about attacking a nuclear plant in Alabama.

“He told me that he had been told by the FBI that the purpose of PATCON was to infiltrate and to monitor the activities of [the] extreme political right consisting of organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and various Neo-Nazi groups, but that he no longer believed what he had been told by the FBI about the purpose of PATCON,” Trentadue said in a sworn declaration to the court. “Mr. Matthews told me that, based upon his experience, he now believed that the FBI’s real objective in PATCON had been to infiltrate and to incite these fringe groups to violence.”

Matthews’s most jolting claim was that he saw McVeigh in 1994 with a German national named Andy Strassmeir—whose name appears in CIA records in relation to the Oklahoma City bombing investigation. “Mr. Matthews even told me that prior to the Oklahoma City Bombing he had seen Timothy McVeigh and a German National by the name of Andreas Strassmeir at a militia training facility near San Saba, Texas,” Trentadue said in his sworn declaration.

“According to Mr. Matthews, he had reported the McVeigh–Strassmeir [sighting] to the FBI, and was told by the FBI that the Bureau was already aware of that fact, which indicated to Mr. Matthews that others within the FBI were monitoring McVeigh on the [run-up] to the attack on the Murrah Building.”

With former Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives informant Carol Howe on the record saying that she dated Strassmeir in the early ‘90s, the revelation from Matthews put McVeigh within two degrees of separation from a known federal informant.

Trentadue and his friend Roger Charles—a nationally acclaimed journalist who also worked a brief stint as an investigator on McVeigh’s defense team— connected Matthews with journalists at Newsweek to tell his story.

Trentadue and Matthews expected their information would result in a media frenzy that would rock the country. But when Newsweek published its article about Matthews on Nov. 11, 2011, the former informant was dismayed to find the FBI’s most damning secrets unreported.

“Mr. Matthews was upset with the Newsweek story,” Trentadue said in a sworn declaration for his FOIA case. “He expressed to me that he felt betrayed because all Newsweek had done was … expose him to possible retribution from the various groups that he had infiltrated as part of … PATCON without exposing PATCON.”

Exposing the FBI’s wrongdoings through the mainstream media was apparently not an option. However, Trentadue had another idea: for Matthews to testify at his upcoming FOIA trial. The two agreed: Matthews would help Trentadue make his case in court, while receiving the benefit of being able to tell his story in court without the threat of media censorship.

The trial of Jesse C. Trentadue v. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, et al. happened in Utah over a four-day period from July 28 to July 31, 2014. Matthews never testified. According to Trentadue and Charles, the FBI intimidated Matthews into abandoning his plans to testify. The Epoch Times interviewed Charles on Feb. 7; before he tragically died a week later. “John told me he didn’t want to end up another homeless Vietnam veteran,” he said.

With Matthews off the grid, Charles and Trentadue both delivered signed declarations to the court in August 2014. Charles said he received a phone call on July 30, 2014, the night before Matthews was set to testify.

“John Matthews said that he had been told by the FBI to ‘stand down.’ John Matthews also said that he had been told by the FBI to take a vacation so that he could not be subpoenaed,” Charles said in his Aug. 7, 2014, sworn declaration to the court. “He likewise said that the ‘Bureau’ had made it very clear to him that if he did testify, it could result in the loss of his Veteran’s health coverage, and Veteran’s disability pension.”

Trentadue’s declaration says he spoke with Matthews after his phone call with Charles. The conversation revealed more specifics of the FBI’s coercion tactics against Matthews, according to the Utah attorney’s declaration.

“During that conversation, Mr. Matthews related to me the events leading up to his refusal to testify, including the name of the FBI agent who had contacted him, Adam Quirk,” Trentadue said in his declaration.” “According to Mr. Matthews, FBI Agent Quirk had called him several times, telling him that it would be best for everyone if he did not testify. Agent Quirk told Mr. Matthews to take a vacation so that he could not be subpoenaed, and if he was subpoenaed that Mr. Matthews should answer questions put to him about PATCON with: ‘I don’t recall.’”

The FBI vigorously denied Charles’s and Trentadue’s allegations of witness tampering. The bureau obtained an Aug. 2, 2014, email from Matthews to both parties in the FOIA dispute. In there, Matthews said he declined to testify based on the advice of his friend and former handler, retired FBI agent Don Jarrett.

“Like we both agree, I had nothing to do with the Oklahoma City bombing or the tapes. I did not want to testify and I did not want to get caught in a crossfire with both sides,” Matthews wrote. “If I took a trip, no one could find me to give a subpoena to. Don told me we should inform the FBI in Salt Lake City and let them know what I was going to do.”

According to Matthews, that’s why he was contacted by FBI agent Quirk. “I told him of what me and Don talked about. He agreed with me that if there was no subpoena, I did not have to show up,” Matthews wrote. “It was my understanding that he was going to let the court know I was not showing up.” In his email, Matthews confirmed that he spoke with Trentadue and Charles. “I told them that I was not going to testify. That Agent Adam Quirk was supposed to [have] told the court,” he wrote. “This is how this mess got started.”

Matthews emphasized in all capital letters: “NO ONE FROM THE FBI OR DOJ HAS MADE ANY THREATS TO ME OR MY FAMILY.”

The FBI also obtained a sworn declaration from Jarrett. According to Jarrett, Matthews called him in July 2014, expressing concerns about testifying for Trentadue. “I had never heard of the case that Mr. Matthews was describing, and I did not have any idea what Mr. Matthews might be asked to testify about. As far as I am aware, Mr. Matthews would not have any relevant information about the Oklahoma City bombing,” Jarrett wrote. “I suggested to Mr. Matthews that the best thing to do would be to contact the FBI’s attorney handling the case.”

Despite Jarrett’s and Matthews’s denial that the FBI prevented him from testifying, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups said he found the witness tampering allegations to be at least plausible. “The current record at least permits a reasonable inference of wrongdoing by Defendant or its agents in influencing Mr. Matthews not to testify,” he said.

On April 30, 2015, Waddoups appointed a separate magistrate judge—a “special master”—to investigate the witness tampering allegations. The special master was assigned to collect an internal report of the allegations from the FBI, along with copies of all recorded communications between Matthews and the FBI, any reports prepared of interviews with Matthews, and any other records related to the matter.

“The special master shall attend the depositions of Mr. Matthews, Mr. Don Jarrett, agent Quirk (and others, as relevant), as well as [Trentadue and Charles], in which the parties will be able to cross-examine these individuals as to matters relevant to the witness tampering allegations,” Waddoups said.

“Upon the conclusion of his investigation, the special master shall prepare a report and recommendation, including proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law on … specifically the allegations of the witness tampering involving Mr. Matthews.”

Nearly ten years later, the special master has yet to issue his report and recommendations.

Waddoups is reserving his decision on the July 2014 trial until the witness-tampering matter is resolved. With the court-ordered inquiry taking place behind closed doors, there’s no indication of when that may be. Even if Trentadue wins a judgment in his favor, it isn’t clear what the outcome would look like.

He seeks to depose FBI agents and search their physical archives. But the FBI has said in court briefings that the court doesn’t have the power to provide the kinds of remedies demanded by Trentadue—suggesting that the bureau would appeal any judgment against it. Such an appeal could extend the litigation for years.

Dunagan, the senior investigator for Judicial Watch, said he’s surprised the case has even gotten this far. “It’s very good for Jesse that his case is not being litigated in D.C. If this case were litigated in D.C., it would have been closed years ago,” he said. “Judges in D.C. have a lot more deference to agencies, particularly when it comes to classification of law enforcement records.” This is scary stuff!

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Perhaps no failure of leadership has been as prolonged or punishing to the United States than that of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board writes; “In ignoring the most recent  Special Counsel John Durham indictment, most of the media and official Washington are ignoring the elephant between its written lines: the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mr. Durham, the special counsel appointed to investigate the government’s handling of the Russia collusion mess, levels a single criminal charge against Michael Sussmann, then a lawyer for the Democrat-linked firm Perkins Coie. In delivering to the FBI fanciful evidence of Trump-Russia collusion a few weeks before the 2016 election, Mr. Sussmann is alleged to have lied to the FBI’s chief lawyer, James Baker, claiming he was acting on his own behalf and not as a paid agent of the Clinton campaign.

Already you might be rolling your eyes. Mr. Durham provides ample reason in his own indictment for why the FBI would have known exactly whom Mr. Sussmann was working for. If Mr. Sussmann didn’t lie at the time, Mr. Baker may have lied since about what transpired between him and Mr. Sussmann.

Either way, we are free to suspect the FBI would have found it useful to be protected from inconvenient knowledge about the Clinton campaign’s role. The same FBI then was busy ignoring the political antecedents of the Steele dossier, also financed by Mr. Sussmann’s law firm on behalf of the Clinton campaign, information that the FBI would shortly withhold from a surveillance court in pursuit of a warrant to spy on Trump pilot fish, Carter Page.

Mr. Durham, in describing the Sept. 19, 2016, meeting with Mr. Baker, suggests that a properly informed FBI might have thought twice before opening an investigation into Mr. Sussmann’s phony story about the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank. This is a way also of saying the FBI might have found it harder to proceed without the political deniability that Mr. Sussmann’s alleged statement provided.

At this late date, none of this can be consumed without recognizing that the FBI was already hip-deep in the 2016 election. It began a few weeks earlier with Director James Comey’s insubordinate, improper (according to the Justice Department’s own inspector general) intervention in the Hillary email case. We learned much later that Mr. Comey justified this unprecedented action by referring to secret Russian “intelligence” that his FBI colleagues considered a red herring and possible Russian disinformation. Your eyes should really be rolling now.

Mr. Comey thereupon created the preposterous jam for himself when new information surfaced in the Hillary case, which led him to reopen the case shortly before Election Day and likely tipped the race to Mr. Trump. Of course, the “new information” turned out to be a nothingburger. Worse, the information had been sitting unnoticed in the FBI’s hands for weeks.

These antic actions, along with the subsequent FBI leak-fest aimed at undermining the president it just helped to elect, might be written off as a singular consequence of Mr. Comey’s overweened sense of importance.

But this doesn’t explain the FBI’s top counterintelligence deputy, Peter Strzok, engaging in compromising political banter on an FBI network while playing a central role in the FBI’s most politically sensitive investigations. It doesn’t explain FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith’s criminal act of falsifying agency submissions to the surveillance court.

Ask yourself: In what way, in anyone’s memory, has the FBI covered itself in glory? [The JFK, Waco, and Ruby Ridge assassinations? Connecting the dots before 9/11?] The Larry Nassar case, in which it failed to pursue a serial abuser of female teenage gymnasts? The Noor Salman case, in which it trumped up a failed prosecution of the innocent and abused wife of the Orlando nightclub shooter? The Hatfill case, in which it attempted to railroad an innocent scientist over the 2001 anthrax attacks?

Ironically, Hollywood is now the FBI’s biggest devotee because the agency’s screwups are fodder for its best movies. The FBI’s role in the assassination of Black Panther Fred Hampton was the subject of “Judas and the Black Messiah.” Its persecution of an innocent security guard in the Atlanta Olympics bombing was the theme of “Richard Jewell.” Its cosseting of the criminal psychopath Whitey Bulger was a central pillar of the Johnny Depp film “Black Mass.”

The FBI’s last extended run of good publicity, aimed at helping live down the smell of J. Edgar Hoover, came more than 50 years ago thanks to Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and his weekly show on ABC, “The F.B.I.,” which went off the air in 1974.

By now, after its performance in the 2016 election, the evidence might seem conclusive that the agency is a failed experiment, however able and dedicated many of its agents.

Its culture at the top seems incapable of using the powers entrusted to it with discretion and good judgment or at least without reliable expectation of embarrassment. The agency should be scrapped and something new built to replace it. One possibility is a national investigative corps that would be more directly answerable to the 93 U.S. attorneys who are charged with enforcing federal law in the 50 states.”

Next time: A federal court as an enemy of the People.