Horowitz: Time to end FBI group infiltration and surveillance schemes

One of the foundational jobs of the federal government, pursuant to our national social contract, is to establish justice and ensure domestic tranquility. Yet what our federal government has done in recent years is sow discord, disquiet, division, and chaos in our society through anarcho-tyranny. This mixture of anarchy and tyranny has included releasing violent criminals, keeping an open border, and allowing unfettered BLM riots on the one hand, while surveilling, investigating, and prosecuting political opponents on the other hand. Therefore, the time has come to shut down all these programs within the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security designed to carte blanche surveil and target ideologies, religions, and political and social groups.

On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee revealed how the FBI’s Richmond, Virginia, field office conducted an operation designed to sow disquiet in the Catholic Church by infiltrating various churches and working with some factions to marginalize others. The FBI sought to place informants in churches to work with “mainline Catholic parishes” and the “diocesan leadership” to “sensitize these congregations to the warning signs of radicalization and to enlist their assistance to serve as suspicious activity tripwires.”

This comes on the heels of revelations that the FBI was working to flag the fingerprints of New York City teachers who were unvaccinated.

Thus, we’ve moved well beyond the level of abuse in which agents would surveil, disrupt, infiltrate, and sow disquiet among Americans under the veneer of dealing with a known security problem, such as Islamic terror. Now they are plainly targeting organizations that have no proclivity for violence and illegal behavior. They do so simply for the purpose of engaging in psyops against those with different religious, social, and political views from the regime. January 6 is the ultimate example.

The more information we discover about January 6, the more it becomes clear that it was a federal operation, with the most violent individuals seemingly associated with the same sort of federal informants the FBI sought to infiltrate into the Catholic Church. New defense filings in the case of the Proud Boys show how there were at least 50 federal agents and informants embedded in the crowd instigating and provoking an unnecessary confrontation that clearly was not naturally progressing without their premeditation. According to defense counsel, the DOJ now admits that at least eight of the 13 Proud Boys involved with January 6 were paid by the FBI to provide the government with information about the group, which is why, not surprisingly, only five are being prosecuted.

The DOJ also now admits that another 40 undercover agents were with the Proud Boys that day from Homeland Security Investigations, an agency that should be focused instead on infiltrating the Mexican cartels and traffickers. On top of that, D.C. metro cops were identified in plain clothes on video shouting “Stop the Steal” to egg on the crowd.

In the past, we were convinced to believe that the FBI and similar agencies used these infiltration and informant tactics to bust up organizations that prima facie engage in dangerous and criminal behavior. But it has become clear that the government is now targeting political enemies and is the sole fomenter of the violence. As we witnessed in the Whitmer “fednapping” plot, there was no legitimate plot to kidnap the Michigan governor absent federal involvement. Agents’ modus operandi is to target the loosest of loose cannons and lowlives of any particular group and get them to engage in violence so they can taint an entire movement in a negative light, thereby promoting a political agenda for the regime at an opportune time. Even then, we see how miserably they fail to get them to do their bidding because their accusations of violence are the ultimate exercise in projection.

This is why the time has come for Congress not just to call for subpoenas and hearings, but to back those hearings by an ironclad promise to defund these activities – either in the debt ceiling bill or budget bill. All sting operations against political or religious organizations – left or right – must be terminated. If the government has a beef with a particular individual for whom there’s probable cause that a crime has been committed, then agents should target that individual. But these infiltration programs must come to an end, because they never turn out well.

We now know that the government creates more criminality with these operations than it solves. Let’s not forget that in 2016, thanks to the release of the 28 pages of the classified Saudi portion of the 9/11 Commission report, we know that the San Diego cell, which hijacked the plane flown into the Pentagon, rented a room together with an FBI informant. In 2020, while taking English and flight lessons, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi rented a room in the residence of Abdussattar Shaikh, co-founder of the Islamic Centre of San Diego, who had been an FBI informant since 1994. Yet the FBI tells us it didn’t find out about this until three days after the attacks. What did the FBI know, and when did they know it?

Either way, when was the last time you saw a high-profile terror attack or mass shooting disrupted by the FBI’s vaunted and vast network of infiltration activities and informants? They always seem to fall through when you need the FBI the most. It sure seems like the impervious FBI intel and surveillance juggernaut deployed against right-wing organizations suddenly melts to mush when it comes to legitimate national security threats. Therefore, the time has come to trade what little security we might have had from these programs in exchange for liberty from our own government violating our rights worse than what any external enemy has ever done to us.

To that end, 90% of the FBI’s $11 billion budget should be devolved to the states to engage in their own state law enforcement activities to replace the FBI, except for a few categories, such as international child sex trafficking. Likewise, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s $2.9 billion budget needs to be stripped of all domestic spying programs, and Homeland Security Investigations needs its $2.3 billion transferred to ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Office, which deals with removing criminal aliens, not targeting Americans.

Enough with the talk. Now is time for Republicans to deliver on their promises to defund and defang weaponized surveillance against Americans by utilizing the budget bills. If they wait much longer, it will likely be the last opportunity we have to even mount political opposition at all.