The FBI’s use of an informant to infiltrate Black Lives Matter in Denver during the wave of protests over the 2020 police killing of George Floyd has prompted concern in Congress that the federal agency is once again abusing its powers to harass and intimidate minority groups.
Ron Wyden, the Democratic senator from Oregon, is calling for the FBI to explain how it came to recruit a violent felon as an informant who then went on to gain prominence among Denver racial justice activists. The informant is alleged to have encouraged protesters to engage in increasingly violent demonstrations while trying to entrap them in criminal misdeeds.
Meanwhile, Jim Jordan is trying to prove that it’s actually the RW politicians that are actually the victims here.
Infiltration is kind of de rigger, though, and sometimes the moles fuck up by becoming the instigators. BLM is for law enforcement reform, and the FBI is a LEA, so they are an interested party.
The FBI should be using their resources to investigate crimes and protect people. If they are infiltrating groups whose politics they don’t like in order to protect the Bureau then everyone involved should be kicked out on their asses.
Was walking home a few days ago about to reach my building when maganut was approaching from the other direction.
I’d already blocked his number, but he spoke and I thought I’d be polite. He went on about trans people, had something good to say about Santos, and confused me by saying the people who say republicans are nazis are themselves nazis! I didn’t ask how, as he would’ve stood there a lot longer. Sigh.
Yeah, I think “polite” ends with when they start spouting bullshit. By the time such a person had gotten partway into an assertion that I did not want to hear, I would either excuse myself or simply leave.
The FBI is a bunch of LEOs. BLM presents an impediment to law enforcement. Local law enforcement provides assisstance to the FBI from time to time, and it is a problem for them if the relationship becomes adversarial by nature. Hence, the FBI must come down on BLM in order to make the local LEAs feel like there is commity betwixt the two. Also, if it should come to pass that FBI agents actually have to bust heads, they want to be able to crush BLM before they start protesting them too.
Do we agree that it is a wholly improper abuse of their authority?
I agree that they have… incentive… to come down on BLM, I was simply concerned that your phrase “interested party” suggested that this interest is acceptable.
I think they have a legitimate interests in having “informants” in such organizations, to keep tabs on what is being planned. But when those people go from being quiet observers to actively pushing for more violence, then there’s a problem. The FBI shouldn’t be in the business of creating crime.
Let’s assume the FBI planted informants into a political group, you ask the agent in charge why he did it, and he responds with shocking truthfulness:
A) Because they are anti Law Enforcement and I want to know what they’re doing
B) Because one of the leaders is banging my ex wife
C) Because there have been crimes during their events and I want to see if the group is organizing that.
if I had to rank these in terms of best to worst, it would be C, B, A.
The thing about reason A is that Americans have the right to speak, assemble and petition the government with their grievances. Law enforcement should not be inserting itself into the free exercise of the first amendment. Speaking out against law enforcement, against the government, is as fundamental a right as any that we have and should be vigorously protected from the government’s intrusion.
In general I support the FBI, especially as how the MAGAnuts don’t like them. That and they infiltrated the Klan.
But…
They infiltrated the civil rights movement and kept dossiers on MLK, John Lewis, etc. Hoover denied the mob existed probably because they had dirt on him.
Plus thy have a track record of themselves “radicalizing” people in order to make an arrest so it looks like they are “doing something, keeping us safe”. I picture the feebs infiltrating a “cell” of Muslim extrmists, and this cell consists of two actual potential terrorists, and three agents, and the Feebs supply the weapons, the explosives, pick the targets, and drive the other two there. Then they arrest them, “Aren’t we the most SPECIAL of Agents!”
I’ve always suspected that the FBI faked the evidence in the Lockerbie bombing so they looked all powerful and all knowing. Turns out I was closer to being right than I ever thought.
But most of all, they never gave me a job! I guess I wasn’t LDS enough.
I’d say B is the worst, because that’s abusing his government position for personal reasons, and in a way that affects a lot of other, non-wife-banging people.
C is certainly a legitimate response.
A is a bit trickier, but it doesn’t seem inherently problematic. We know the FBI has placed informers with right-wing “anti government” groups, and I suspect most people here would have no problem with that. being “anti-cop” just seems like a more narrowly focused version of “anti-government”.
It depends. If your embedded person comes back and says, “They are planning on kidnapping the Governor.” then I’d say that’s useful intel that can be used to prevent crime.
If they come back, and say, “They are planning a demonstration at 6th and Main, Thursday at noon”, and you use that intel to disrupt their demonstration, then you are violating their rights.
