Live from Room 2021 of the Rayburn Building on the Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C., Firebrand reacts to FBI Director Christopher A. Ray's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on spying on millions of Americans, including a Florida Republican Congressman, Rep. Matt Gaetz, who asked the question, "Is this a shakedown?" and the FBI Director refused to answer it. Also, the FBI has been accused of spying on over 3.4 million Americans, but the DOJ says that figure is in error, and the inspector general says it's actually closer to 3.5 million. And then, of course, there's the pipe bomb threat, which is being investigated by the FBI as a possible link to the "Pipe Bombing" plot by a former member of the Democratic National Committee. Firebrand is a production of Firebrand, a conservative advocacy group that fights for freedom, liberty, and justice for all Americans. Firebrand's mission is to inform, educate, and empower Americans on issues affecting their civil liberties, and fight for their rights. The Firebrand Podcast is produced and promoted by Firebrand Media and the Firebrand Project, a group dedicated to exposing the truth about what's going on in the world, and fighting for what matters. Thank you for listening and supporting our mission. We are always grateful for your support, and we will continue to do our best to bring you the most authentic and uncensored version of the truth. Thank you, Firebrand. - Your support is what matters the most! - Firebrand and we thank you for your continued support, your support and your support is so important to us, we will keep fighting for freedom and justice, and equality, liberty and justice. . Thank You! - Our mission is not finished yet! . . . - Let's keep fighting, we won't stop fighting for you, we'll keep fighting until we get there! , and we'll get there next week. -- Firebrand! -- Let's get there, we're here! ! -- -- Thank you! -- -- We'll see you in the next episode! -- We're watching you there! -- Tweet us out there! and we're listening to the firebrand -- And we'll talk about it! Timestamps: 3:00 - 4:00 5:00, 6:30, 6:15, 7:00s, 8:30s, 8:00 s, 9:40s, 11:00 , 12:30 13:00 | 14:15 15:40 16:00_ 17:15s, 16:10s, 15:00 & 16:40, 17,15s
00:04:50.000Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.
00:04:57.000Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem in the Democratic Party.
00:05:00.000He can cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.
00:05:03.000So we're going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him.
00:05:06.000If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots.
00:05:43.000We are live broadcasting out of room 2021 of the House Office Building, the Rayburn Building here on the Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C. And what a day it was with the FBI director testifying before the House Judiciary Committee.
00:05:55.000I've got all the highlights, all the reactions.
00:06:01.000Bones Mama on Rumble wants to know if anything is going to happen with the revelations that we were able to glean from Director Ray's testimony today.
00:06:10.000And Jeff on Facebook has a far more vulgar way of asking the very same question.
00:06:18.000The first is over the authorization to renew some of the spying authorities that the FBI had been abusing more than a million times.
00:06:27.000You're going to see the questions about that, how Director Ray answered it, how foolishly, purposefully ignorant he was on the facts of the FBI's abuses, We should not reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
00:06:40.000Two days ago, I introduced legislation to call for the expiration of those authorities that you're about to see abused very, very frequently.
00:06:51.000Now, there are some Republicans who do want to reauthorize those authorities.
00:06:56.000There are even Democrats making valid points about surveillance and privacy.
00:07:01.000Democrats we typically don't agree with on a lot, but we're going to show you the points they made.
00:07:06.000To see if maybe there's an opportunity for the populist right and the populist left to work against the abuses of our civil liberties and our constitutional rights.
00:08:03.000I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge, that you will regret not following my direction.
00:08:13.000I am sitting here, waiting for the call with my father.
00:08:19.000Sounds like a shakedown, doesn't it, Director?
00:08:23.000I'm not going to get into commenting on that.
00:08:25.000You seem deeply uncurious about it, don't you?
00:08:34.000The FBI does not and has no interest in protecting anyone.
00:08:37.000You won't answer the question about whether or not that's a shakedown and everybody knows why you won't answer it.
00:08:42.000Because to the millions of people who will see this, they know it is.
00:08:46.000And your inability to acknowledge that is deeply revealing about you.
00:08:50.000But let's go from the uncurious to the downright nosy.
00:08:54.000How many illegal FISA queries have occurred under your leadership of the FBI? Well, there are reports that have come out with different numbers about compliance incidents.
00:10:18.000Okay, so now let's pull up what the court said, which was something a little different than what you said.
00:10:22.000The government has reported additional significant violations of the querying standard, including several relating to the January 6th, 2021 breach at the Capitol.
00:10:31.000So I guess the question, Director A, is did you not know when you were answering these questions that the FBI was engaging in these illegal searches, or did you perjure yourself to Senator Lee?
00:11:05.000The answer is, the FBI has broken so bad...
00:11:08.000That people can go and engage in queries that when you come before the Congress to answer questions, you're like blissfully ignorant.
00:11:16.000You're blissfully ignorant as to the unlawful queries.
00:11:18.000You're blissfully ignorant as to the Biden shakedown regime.
00:11:23.000And it just seems like it gets into a kind of a creepy place as well.
00:11:27.000Go to our next image on what the court said.
00:11:30.000Like, just so the American people realize, The court has smacked you down, alleging, or ruling, FBI personnel apparently conducted queries for improper personal reasons.
00:11:46.000Who has been held accountable or fired as a consequence of the FBI using the FISA process as their, like, creepy personal snoop machine?
00:11:58.000There have been instances in which individuals have had disciplinary action and who are no longer with it.
00:12:04.000I can't get into it here, but we can follow back up with you.
00:12:07.000But don't you see that that's kind of the thing, Director Ray, that you preside over the FBI that has the lowest level of trust In the FBI's history, people trusted the FBI more when J. Edgar Hoover was running the place than when you are.
00:12:20.000And the reason is because you don't give straight answers.
00:12:22.000You give answers that later a court deems aren't true.
00:12:26.000And then at the end of the day, you won't criticize an obvious shakedown when it's directly in front of us.
00:12:31.000And it appears as though you're whitewashing the conduct of corrupt people.
00:12:36.000In your home state of Florida, the number of people applying to come work for us and devote their lives working for us is up over 100%.
00:12:44.000We're deeply proud of them, and they deserve better than you.
00:12:49.000It was quite something that Director A believed that a retort to the extensive illegal behavior of the FBI was that people in the state of Florida still want to join the FBI. And maybe it's because people want to help save this institution from the corrupt and irresponsible leaders who've been in charge of it for far too long.
00:13:10.000So for those Floridians, for our fellow Americans who want to serve in the FBI, we want you to do that.
00:13:16.000We don't want to discourage your interest in this entity, but we believe it ought to reflect the patriotism of those very people who are stepping forward to serve.
00:13:28.000An FBI former special agent from my state of Florida was working cases of online exploitation of children, and he got moved off of that to go spy on parents at school board meetings.
00:13:43.000We're going to get to that in a moment.
00:13:45.000But I want to break down some other features of Chris Ray's testimony.
00:13:49.000Often times when these folks come before Congress, you learn more based on which questions they won't answer.
00:13:57.000You see, they prepare for hours on how to obfuscate and dodge and avoid, and sometimes they get lucky when a member of Congress will just read a four-minute speech at them and then they don't have to really engage with a thoughtful response.
00:14:11.000But in this case, I wanted to read him the obvious shakedown text message from Hunter Biden to the Chinese.
00:14:20.000And I wanted to show you, the country, the viewer, my constituents, I wanted to show you that these people are so wrapped up in bureaucratic BS, they're so beholden to the swamp of Washington and the power structures that be in this town, That no less than the head of the FBI couldn't look at a criminal shakedown and call it a criminal shakedown.
00:14:45.000Now, if you'd have served up the question that I served up to Director Wray as like a basic entry-level test question at Quantico, there would have only been one right answer.
00:15:20.000And I think it's going to help inform how people in the coming weeks and months evaluate this relationship between the FBI and the Biden that's become very corruptly symbiotic in a lot of ways.
00:15:35.000The Bidens whitewash the corruption of the FBI. The FBI whitewashes the corruption of the Bidens.
00:15:43.000But it's not just partisan discourse that occurred at this hearing.
00:16:44.000Unless the information has already been collected by a data broker.
00:16:48.000Then sometimes they just do an end run around the Fourth Amendment, around the Constitution, and they go get the data.
00:16:57.000My colleague from Washington State, Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat who chairs the House Progressive Conference, who I agree with on almost every issue, she made brilliant points on the FBI's abuses of the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment by using stuff from data brokers.
00:17:15.000I'm going to let you listen to her testimony.
00:17:19.000I do want to focus on some areas of concern around American civil liberties.
00:17:25.000that I have had long-standing concerns about.
00:17:28.000In testimony to Senate Intelligence in March, you stated that the FBI had previously purchased commercial database information that includes location data derived from internet advertising, but that, to your knowledge, the FBI does not currently purchase data.
00:17:46.000But just last month, the ODNI declassified a report Revealing that the FBI and other agencies do purchase significant amounts of commercially available information about Americans from data brokers.
00:18:01.000And the report notes that commercially available information, quote,"...has increasingly important risks and implications for U.S. persons' privacy and civil liberties, as commercially available information can reveal sensitive and intimate information about individuals." It is public information that the FBI uses Babel Street and Ventel and has a Lexus account.
00:18:24.000All of these companies provide data for purchase.
00:18:27.000Can you tell me how the FBI uses that data?
00:18:32.000Respectfully, this is a topic that gets very involved to explain and so what I would prefer to do is have our subject matter experts come back up and brief you and they can answer your questions in detail about it because there's a lot of confusion That can be unintentionally caused about this topic.
00:19:21.000Do you know if the contracts with data brokers, like the ones I described, provide location data?
00:19:30.000My testimony about purchasing commercial database information that includes location data derived from Internet advertising Remains the same, which is that we currently do not do that.
00:19:43.000But the information that you have that has already been purchased, does it contain location information?
00:19:49.000Again, I'm not trying to be obtuse or difficult here.
00:19:51.000I just know from experience that the more you drill into this whole issue of commercial data, geolocation data, etc., that it gets very involved.
00:20:03.000In some cases, it involves pilot projects that are in the past.
00:20:07.000In some cases, it involves I just want to make sure that we get you the information you need.
00:20:14.000I will take that, but I do want to say that this is just an extremely important issue for the American people to understand how their data is being used.
00:20:41.000Does the FBI have a written policy outlining how it can purchase and use commercially available information?
00:20:49.000There are a number of policies that bear on this topic.
00:20:52.000Again, that could be part of the same briefing that we're happy to provide.
00:20:55.000I don't dispute at all that this is an important topic.
00:20:58.000I'm simply saying that precisely because it's such an important topic that a minute and 12 seconds counting down is not the best way for me to explain it.
00:21:06.000I understand that, but I'm asking whether there is a policy.
00:21:13.000As I sit here right now, I don't have the answer for you on that.
00:21:16.000But again, there are a number of policies that are relevant to this, and so that may be And you'll commit to providing those to us so that we can explore them too?
00:21:23.000I would commit to providing you a briefing that will provide very helpful information to help you understand better this whole topic.
00:21:30.000What about a written policy governing how commercially available information can be used in...
00:21:34.000We're back live, so he'll provide the information.
00:21:38.000And really, if you want to know how the FBI is buying data on the open market, To avoid having to go before a grand jury, a judge, to establish probable cause.
00:22:03.000And if there is this unprecedented tool to suck up information from all of us, the Fusion of big tech and big government in the national security state and the surveillance state becomes ever the more dangerous.
00:22:31.000And Gail on YouTube says that Congresswoman Jayapal surprised her and that she sounded like a Republican today.
00:22:38.000Here's the reason I showed you Congresswoman Jayapal's remarks and her questions.
00:22:43.000If we want enduring change to protect us from the excesses and the abuses of the national security state, we are going to have to work with progressive Democrats at times.
00:22:55.000Because there are Republicans, some of whom, my colleagues, people I know well, Well, they just believe the FBI is right every time.
00:23:03.000They think the CIA, NSA, that all these groups are the good guys in every circumstance.
00:23:08.000And the reality is if we want to still live in a free society where liberty is protected, we have to have tough questions and aggressive oversight.
00:23:16.000And I welcome progressive Democrats to our cause if they see the light and don't want our fellow Americans living this way.
00:23:27.000And we should be willing to work with everyone to vindicate that interest that we have.
00:23:32.000Now, I also want to show you some breaking footage from Congressman Thomas Massey.
00:23:38.000And this goes back to the pipe bomber.
00:23:40.000And if you're one of our tens of thousands of listeners, this won't be as helpful to you because this is a very visual presentation from Congressman Massey.
00:23:51.000He actually had a staffer go and hunt down some videos that hadn't been seen by the public And it shows a very curious case about a pipe bomber.
00:24:02.000Well, about someone who found the pipe bomb, I should say, in almost a perfect timing and sequence to distract from what was going on at the Capitol.
00:24:13.000Thomas Massey with the video receipts.
00:24:20.000Director Wray, in light of information provided to us about The FBI's investigation of the January 6th pipe bombs.
00:24:28.000In an interview with Assistant Director Steven Duantuano, Chairman Jordan and I sent you a letter a month ago.
00:24:35.000Some of the information that we found in that interview was that phone data that could have helped to identify the pipe bomber was corrupted, was unusable.
00:24:46.000He also wasn't sure who found or how the second bomb was found at the DNC. Do you know how the second bomb was found at the DNC? And when do you plan on answering our letter?
00:24:58.000Well, as to the letter, I will work with the department to make sure we can figure out what information we can provide.
00:25:04.000As you know, this is a very active, ongoing investigation, and there are some restrictions on that.
00:25:10.000Yes, we can handle classified information, and we fund your department, and so you need to provide that.
00:25:15.000It's not, respectfully, it's not an issue of classification.
00:25:19.000It's an issue of commenting on ongoing criminal investigations, which is something that by long-standing department policy, we are restricted in doing.
00:25:28.000And in fact, the last administration actually strengthened those policies partly because...
00:25:32.000That's not our policy, though, and we fund you, so let's move on.
00:25:35.000Do you know how the second pipe bomb...
00:25:37.000Can you tell us how the second pipe bomb was found at the DNC? Again, I'm not going to get into that here.
00:25:44.000900 days ago is when this happened, and you said you had total confidence we'd apprehend the subject.
00:25:50.000We've found video that looks like somebody, a passerby, miraculously found this pipe bomb at the DNC and then notified the police.
00:26:29.000And within a minute, they start scrambling.
00:26:32.000You'll see the camera turn to the pipe bomb, the location of the pipe bomb.
00:26:37.000By the way, I believe the Metro Police are now getting out of their car, and that's Vice President-elect's detail in the black SUV, I believe.
00:26:46.000Parked about 30 feet from the pipe bomb, eating lunch.
00:26:50.000Okay, now we go over to the location of the pipe bomb.
00:26:58.000That that's not a coincidence, that the person with the backpack who walked by that bench and then went up to the police and the detail didn't do that accidentally.
00:27:09.000They had a purpose in mind, and then what transpired after that was the result of information that person gave to them.
00:27:16.000If that person found the pipe bomb, would they be a suspect?
00:27:22.000Well, again, I don't want to speculate about specific individuals.
00:27:25.000I will tell you that we have done thousands of interviews, reviewed something like 40,000 video files, of which this is one, assessed 500-something tips.
00:27:47.000You need to tell us what you found because we're finding stuff you haven't released into the public.
00:27:53.000In my remaining minute, I want to turn to another issue.
00:27:57.000George Hill, former FBI supervisory intelligence analyst in the Boston field office, told us That the Bank of America, with no legal process, gave to the FBI gun purchase records with no geographical boundaries for anybody that was a Bank of America customer.
00:28:20.000Well, what I do know is that the A number of business community partners all the time, including financial institutions, share information with us about possible criminal activity, and my understanding is that that's fully lawful.
00:28:38.000In the specific instance that you're asking about, my understanding is that that information was shared with field offices for information only, but then recalled to avoid even the appearance of any kind of overreach.
00:28:51.000But my understanding is that that's a fully lawful process.
00:29:08.000Okay, well we've got an email where it says the FBI did give the search queries to Bank of America and Bank of America responded to the FBI and gave over this information without a search warrant.
00:29:20.000Do you believe there's any limitation on your ability to obtain gun purchase data or purchase information for people who aren't suspects from banks without a warrant?
00:29:32.000Well, now you're asking a legal question, which I would prefer to defer to the lawyers, since I'm not practicing as one right now, including the department.
00:29:40.000But what I will tell you is that my understanding is that the process by which we receive information from business community partners across a wide variety of industries, including financial institutions, sharing information with us about possible criminal activity is something that is fully lawful under current federal law.
00:29:59.000It may be lawful, but it's not constitutional.
00:30:05.000Terrific questioning by Congressman Massey.
00:30:08.000Lacyface on YouTube says this is why she is canceling her BOA accounts.
00:30:14.000And William on YouTube is connecting the dots and wants everyone to know that it was indeed Chris Christie, none other than Chris Christie, who recommended Chris Ray for the position of FBI Director.
00:30:29.000But one thing you didn't see from Republicans in a lot of these clips was excessive discussion about President Trump.
00:30:35.000We've got Merrick Garland coming in in several weeks, and I think there are going to be appropriate questions to him about the way they've constructed the special counsel's office and the unfair targeting of President Trump and what that means for our civil liberties and how America looks to the world.
00:30:50.000But in this hearing, there was only one group obsessed about President Trump And it was the Democrats.
00:30:58.000Every person you're about to hear in this supercut is a Democrat and they are obsessed.
00:31:06.000This hearing is little more than performance art.
00:31:09.000It is an elaborate show designed with only two purposes in mind.
00:31:12.000To protect Donald Trump from the consequences of his actions and to return to the White House in the next election.
00:31:19.000We are here today because MAGA Republicans will do anything to protect Donald Trump, their savior, no matter how unfounded or dangerous it may be to do so.
00:31:31.000Welcome to the legislative arm of the Trump re-election campaign.
00:31:36.000Director Wray, would you disagree with the premise of this article that the FBI Delayed in looking at Mr. Trump himself.
00:31:49.000The January 6th committee, and I was a member, did find that the ex-president was the center of a wide-ranging conspiracy to overturn the election.
00:31:59.000You're being attacked and vilified by some of the members of this committee and others outside this committee because the Justice Department of the FBI has had the audacity to investigate serious allegations of criminal conduct by a former president.
00:32:13.000My Republican colleagues seem to believe that a former president similarly cannot be indicted.
00:32:17.000That would effectively make a president above the law, beyond the reach of the law.
00:32:24.000And in my view, there would probably be only one thing the founders would find more politically precarious and dangerous to our Constitution than the indictment of a president or former president, and that is the failure to indict a president or former president when they have engaged in criminal conduct.
00:32:41.000It is not the fault of the FBI that Donald Trump surrounded himself with criminals.
00:32:47.000Donald Trump brought that upon himself.
00:32:50.000Thank you to the FBI for exposing the cesspool of corruption of these Trump associates.
00:32:57.000Now I'd like to talk about efforts by MAGA Republicans to defund the FBI. Ted Lue's right.
00:33:05.000If we don't bring the FBI to heel, if we don't put that law enforcement agency on the side of law-abiding people, then, yeah, we should defund, dismantle, defang, deauthorize whatever it takes to save this country.
00:33:20.000And make no mistake, the corrupt people at the FBI are a threat to the country.
00:33:24.000Not the brave patriots like the whistleblowers who came forward, those who are working to protect us each and every day, but the folks who believe that the principal obligation of the FBI is to expand its power by helping its friends and harming its enemies.
00:33:42.000Really for regular Americans who had become engaged politically around the school board issue.
00:33:48.000You've heard it talked about a great deal.
00:33:50.000Parents started showing up at school board meetings complaining about mask mandates, vaccine mandates, critical race theory, radical gender ideology, bizarre manifestations of highly sexualized content in curriculum and instructional materials.
00:34:05.000And as a consequence of that, people showed up.
00:34:08.000A good thing about local control over education is that there's not some faceless bureaucrat 4,000 miles away making decisions about your family.
00:34:36.000They saw parents as threats, potentially domestic violent extremists.
00:34:40.000They even created a tag in the FBI system specifically for parents who attended school board meetings.
00:34:48.000Now, Director A was asked about this today.
00:34:50.000What I'm going to do is I'm going to show you two clips back-to-back.
00:34:53.000The first is what Director A said today, and the second half of the clip is Reveals the evidence that we got from an FBI whistleblower, Steve Friend, previously.
00:35:04.000Take a listen and let me know if the FBI director was lying.
00:35:09.000I will say to you the same thing that I said to all 56 of our field offices as soon as I read the memo, which is that the FBI is not in the business of investigating or policing speech at school board meetings or anywhere else for that matter, and we're not going to start now.
00:35:26.000Mr. Friend, you ever been to a school board meeting?
00:35:33.000And in the parking lot of a school board meeting where the FBI sent you, you were taking down information regarding people's license plates?
00:35:52.000The information of people, parents, attending school board meetings on behest of the FBI. And you had been one of those parents at a school board meeting.
00:36:19.000And then you were in the parking lot of a school board meeting, taking down the information of parents.
00:36:25.000What happened to the cases that you were working to protect our communities from the worst predators that exist?
00:36:32.000I was told they were not to be resourced, and then after I was suspended, they were handed off to local law enforcement.
00:36:40.000Wow, so the FBI just decided it was more important to have you in that parking lot of that school board meeting than getting the worst of the worst away from people that they could harm.
00:36:54.000Sure seems inconsistent for the FBI director to say, we were never investigating speech at a school board meeting, and then to have an FBI former Special Agent Steve Friend saying, yeah, we were there taking down license plate information at school board meetings for people who had showed up to speak.
00:37:14.000Maybe a criminal referral for perjury is in Christopher Wray's future.
00:37:18.000Maybe he deserves it on more than one count.
00:37:24.000I have seen several of you comment that you think this is wasted time, that Congress is just asking questions that we don't get answers to.
00:37:31.000But sometimes those lack of responses are revealing.
00:37:34.000And in a world in which members of Congress are actually doing their job, a day like this would piss you off.
00:37:40.000A day like this would show you that the FBI has completely come untethered from the Constitution and accountability and our due process rights.
00:37:51.000They're using information to go around the Fourth Amendment that they acquire on the private market.
00:37:56.000And then when they conduct illegal searches, the FBI director doesn't even understand the basics of the frequency of that problem.
00:38:21.000So we have to take this moment today and I need your help.
00:38:25.000I need you to get out there and share this information with your senators, with your representatives.
00:38:30.000We've got to get a Congress ready to fight to defund these entities and these authorities and these task forces that are cleaning up after the Biden family for all of their corruption.
00:38:50.000SinoHawk, CEFC, the Chinese energy entities that were using the Bidens to get cred to literally come in to our country and occupy part of the energy sector, which is pretty freaking important to our quality of life, our safety, our security, our military bases.
00:39:10.000And the first big original sin of the Republican Congress was passing the legislation that underwrit trillions of dollars in debt to allow all this to exist.
00:39:24.000Unfortunately, I was not able to unify my Republican colleagues around opposition to the debt limit bill, but now there's the money And that financial decision has to be made commensurate with the government funding bill that McConnell and Pelosi agreed to running out.
00:39:44.000So these are critical, critical weeks.
00:39:46.000There are times when you can take off, tune into sports, other things going on in your life, but right now we are buckling down to prepare for a fight about whether or not this woke, weaponized, corrupt government will continue to see...
00:40:01.000Money printed to service its misadventures.
00:40:12.000Thank you so much for being a part of our report today.
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