Tuesday, September 26, 2023

As I recall, they violated the limits on the search warrant just to begin this mess,

and now this:
“All we know is that their property was in a box and safe before the FBI broke into the box,” Joe Gay, an attorney with the nonprofit law firm Institute for Justice, told Fox News. “Once the FBI broke into the box, we honestly don’t know exactly what happened.”

“We don’t know if they lost it. We don’t know if somebody pocketed it and walked away,” he continued. “We have no way to know.”

Once upon a time my first thought would've been "Holy crap!"  Now, it's more of "So what's new?

And you knew this was coming:
Pearsons said she’d never heard of civil forfeiture before.(i.e.'Theft under color of law')

But after doing research, she discovered that one of the options to reclaim items presented on the notice essentially gave the FBI all rights to decide what’s done with the property.

“It was very disingenuous and shady even,” she told Fox News. “It’s the least transparent process. It’s not something that you would do if your intent was to find out who these items belonged to.”
No, it's deliberate theft.  'Justified' with this:
When pressed for a copy of the video inventory of the box, the FBI said that in its rush to process so much property, it had abandoned its initial plan to film the process, completing inventory paperwork instead, according to the Institute for Justice.("Hey, now, if we video all this we can't just do what we want!)
...
He said the FBI inventories listed items like “miscellaneous coins” or “miscellaneous items” which were “utterly useless” for the intended purpose of protecting owners’ property.
As if the gave a crap for that.

And the crown on top of this crap sundae:
Mellein sued the government to force the return of the coins in August 2021.

Months later, the government found and returned 47 of them but told Melleine he must dismiss his lawsuit and file a claim with the FBI in order to track down remaining 63.

In March 2023, after filing his claim, the FBI told Mellein it had investigated itself and that there was no evidence that it had done anything wrong or careless, according to the Institute for Justice.

Used to be that "We have investigated ourselves and found ourselves innocent/justified" was a joking statement; they've worked hard to make it their standard response.

Clean the place out from top to bottom, or just get rid of the Bureau.  At this point I lean toward the latter.

5 comments:

rickn8or said...

This will change only when Effa Bee Eye agents are discovered bludgeoned to death on a regular basis.

Firehand said...

Speaking of which, I remembered hearing this before on talking to the feds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMZrdyCWu7M

Ruggles said...

Would the RICO statutes apply to the FBI like they do for the Mafia ?

Rob said...

It's a gang now, a gang with badges.

Chris Mallory said...

MYOB, the same advice given by Vin Suprynowicz. In his dealings with Federal Agents, they would use aliases, but those aliases were not recorded anywhere. On Monday you could be talking to "Agent Brown", but on Tuesday "Agent Green" would tell you he had no clue who "Agent Brown" was.