Tag Archives: FBI

If The Feds Go After A Pro-Lifer Who Shoved A Bully, They’ll Go After Anyone

LAW

BY: FRANK DEVITO

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

7 MIN READ

man wearing FBI gear standing outside swat truck

IMAGE CREDITSHINSUKE IKEGAME/CC BY 2.0

This is what we see when an out-of-control government tries to send a message of intimidation and fear to its perceived ideological enemies.

Author Frank DeVito profile

FRANK DEVITO

On Sept. 23, Pennsylvania pro-life activist Mark Houck was arrested on federal criminal charges. The details of the alleged crime and the arrest itself remain disputed, but we know enough to make a couple of observations about our nation and the current political climate.

Houck was arrested in connection with an alleged assault on a volunteer at a Philadelphia abortion facility. Unsurprisingly, the accounts differ as to what occurred. The Department of Justice issued a press release stating that Houck twice assaulted the alleged victim because he was a volunteer at an abortion facility.

Notice that the press release describes not only the alleged action but an alleged motive. Of course, the press release had to state that the assault occurred because the alleged victim was a volunteer at an abortion facility. If that was not the motive, there would be no jurisdiction for the feds to be involved at all. We will get back to that rather questionable issue.

Houck and his family give quite a different account of the alleged assault. Apparently, the abortion facility volunteer was getting into the personal space of Houck’s 12-year-old son and saying vulgar, inappropriate things to him. This harassment by the volunteer toward a young child allegedly went on for weeks. Houck first intervened by telling the volunteer he did not have permission to speak to Houck’s minor child. When the volunteer persisted, Houck eventually shoved him away from his child. Allegedly the man fell but suffered no injuries.

Where the Federal Government’s Jurisdiction Ends

Already we have a federalism problem here. Perhaps we have become too quick to accept the existence of an elaborate regime of federal criminal law. But as we know from the Tenth Amendment, the federal government has only the limited powers enumerated in the Constitution, with any remaining powers being reserved to the states or the people. From this comes the accepted principle in our federalist republic that states have the general police power. Federal criminal statutes and prosecutions must be limited to cases where the Constitution grants enumerated powers, such as interstate activity or crimes involving foreign agents and national security.

In this case, what we have is a very uneventful assault, where one man pushed another man. Hardly the stuff of a federal crime. An assault is a run-of-the-mill crime, and it is up to states to criminalize and prosecute such routine offenses. It is only when the assault occurs in a discriminatory way — in this case, because the alleged victim works at an abortion facility — that the feds claim jurisdiction. It remains questionable whether access to abortion facilities and assaults that occur on these properties should be within the jurisdiction of federal criminal authorities at all, but that goes beyond the scope of this essay.

A recent article on the incident explains that the Justice Department relies on the section of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act that “prohibits violent, threatening, damaging, and obstructive conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with the right to seek, obtain or provide reproductive health services.”

When you look at the statutes, they may be invoked only when a victim was attacked because he was affiliated with the abortion facility or when the attack attempts to interfere with a person’s seeking of an abortion. If Houck’s account is at all true and there was a dispute related to the volunteer speaking to the minor child, then the necessary element for these FACE Act federal charges disappears entirely.

If Mr. Houck has any evidence that he first warned the volunteer not to talk to his son, there is no way the federal government can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Houck pushed the man because he was a volunteer or that he was attempting to prevent anyone from obtaining an abortion by pushing the man. If Mr. Houck pushed the volunteer because of a dispute about the child, there is simply no material for a federal crime.

‘Rifles Pointed at Mark’

Besides the dubious federal criminal charges at issue, the circumstances of the arrest signal a growing crisis in our republic. While the circumstances of the arrest still need clarification, Houck’s wife claims that when the FBI came to arrest her husband, there were 25 to 30 FBI agents present.

She goes on to describe the early-morning scene. First, her husband allegedly told the agents “Please, I’m going to open the door, but, please, my children are in the home. I have seven babies in the house.” Mrs. Houck claimed “they had big, huge rifles pointed at Mark and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house . . . [t]he kids were all just screaming. It was all just very scary and traumatic.” Apparently in this exchange, Mrs. Houck claims she asked for a warrant and was told “that they were going to take him whether they had a warrant or not.” Eventually, they did produce a warrant.

From the Houck residence to Mar-a-Lago, we need to ask a very important question: why are federal law enforcement agents conducting high-profile, heavily-armed raids and arrests on people who show no sign of violence, flight risk, or non-compliance? It appears that not only did Houck do nothing to make the FBI think he would be violent or noncompliant with their investigation, but that in fact, Houck reached out to the FBI to try to learn more and resolve the situation.

A recent news update revealed that the Philadelphia criminal authorities refused to press charges, that a civil complaint by the abortion volunteer against Houck was dismissed, and that shortly thereafter Houck received a “target letter” from the Department of Justice informing him of the federal criminal investigation. Houck’s attorney attempted to contact the DOJ to discuss the situation, but received no response until a large contingent of armed FBI agents came to his door last Friday.

These cases should greatly trouble normal Americans. All the available evidence indicates that Mr. Houck was an ordinary, pro-life activist, that there was a minor altercation with an abortion volunteer, and that the altercation likely had to do with the volunteer’s constant harassing of Houck’s minor child. There were no serious injuries, and the normal state authorities (the Philadelphia police and district attorney) never pressed charges.

We should be concerned that the FBI — who should be quite busy investigating drug cartels and thwarting of major human trafficking rings — is charging Houck with a federal crime that could carry substantial jail time. We should be concerned that there is a statute that even makes such a charge possible. And we should be concerned when this pro-life family man is apprehended by a large number of federal agents with guns drawn, as his wife and several children watch in horror.

This, frankly, is not the stuff of American life, liberty, and happiness. This is what we see when an out-of-control government regime is trying to send a message of intimidation and fear to its perceived ideological enemies. There did not need to be an armed raid on the home of Mark Houck because he pushed an abortion facility volunteer who was likely harassing his son. The Biden administration should already be concerned that the FBI is suffering from a legitimacy crisis in the eyes of the American people. Such terrifying misuses of federal law enforcement only justify that legitimacy crisis.


Frank DeVito is an attorney and a current fellow in the Napa Legal Good Counselor Project. His work has previously been published in The Federalist, The American Conservative, the Quinnipiac Law Review, the Penn State Online Law Review, and the Washington Examiner. He lives in eastern Pennsylvania with his wife and three young children.

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The FBI Management of its Confidential Human Source Validation Processes.

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Why Is This Mueller Alumnus in Charge of the Justice Department’s FARA Unit?

Of the thousands of attorneys in the Department of Justice, it should be possible to find one who was not so closely associated with a project to use the Foreign Agents Registration Act as a pretext to meddle in and undermine the results of an American election.

Adam Mill – October 29th, 2019

Did the FBI tamper with the record of what former Trump campaign official and National Security Advisor Michael Flynn said to FBI agents? According to documents filed by Flynn’s attorney last week, it appears that none other than former FBI attorney Lisa Page participated in the editing of Flynn’s statement.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team then used the edited statement as proof of Flynn’s “lie.”

How can Brandon Van Grack, the lead prosecutor in the Flynn case, possibly defend a conviction of Flynn for lying to the FBI when the “lie” Flynn supposedly told was actually a statement edited and altered without Flynn’s participation? This latest bombshell is disturbing evidence that the U.S. Department of Justice remains a weapon in the hands of Democrats and the permanent bureaucracy.

Van Grack is more than just the tip of the spear for a particularly egregious operation to criminalize the Justice Department’s political targets—in this case, members of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. He’s also a key veteran of the Mueller investigation. Unlike his colleagues who returned to private practice, Van Grack stayed behind to assume a powerful position within the Justice Department.

Van Grack currently wears two hats. In one of Attorney General Barr’s less-considered decisions, he placed Van Grack in charge of enforcing the very law that the Justice Department (and later the Mueller team) used as a pretext to spy on and leak against Trump in the 2016 election and his subsequent administration. Yes, Van Grack now wields the awesome and highly discretionary power of the unit that investigates and prosecutes violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).

To understand what a colossal mistake it is to put Van Grack in charge of FARA, it is helpful to review the FARA statute and its history.

In 1938, Congress passed the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which was intended to force agents of enemy governments such as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union to self-identify so the public could evaluate their speech or propaganda in light of their stated loyalties. Between 1966 and 2015, the Justice Department brought a total of seven cases, only one of which resulted in a conviction.

Beginning in 2016, however, FARA cases became all the rage.

The Justice Department recently created a new unit dedicated to sniffing out potential violators. On its surface, the statute has a politically neutral objective of informing the public of foreign influence. In practice, however, the law has become the go-to tool for partisan federal prosecutors. FARA prosecutions have tended to focus on Republicans even when Democrats commit the mirror image of the same violations.

One obvious recent example was the blatantly political selection of Paul Manafort as a FARA defendant, while politically connected Tony Podesta received an immunity deal for essentially the same behavior involving the same foreign clients.

Fusion GPS, which famously underwrote the Russia collusion hoax dossier, has piled up multiple FARA complaints (including unregistered work for Russia) that the Justice Department continues to ignore.

FARA is vague and subject to unbridled prosecutorial discretion. To demonstrate how vague, travel agents now register as “foreign agents” under the theory that marketing a tourist trip is a legally reportable act. It’s a perfect weapon to invoke secret surveillance pursuant to FISA and can be used against anyone with an international clientele. Nobody really knows what’s illegal until the Justice Department targets you.

A Potent Political Weapon in the Wrong Hands

Van Grack, who donated to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, will also have enormous power in 2020 to decide whether candidate Joe Biden’s family should be investigated for foreign entanglements. For example, if Biden represented Ukraine natural gas company Burisma’s interests in demanding that the Ukrainian prosecutor be fired, Van Grack might be the person evaluating whether to charge that conduct.

FARA is a potent political weapon. Candidate Hillary Clinton hired Fusion GPS to gin up suspicions of a Trump-Russia association in order to create a hook for the Justice Department to launch a surveillance operation. The department predicated the application for the Carter Page FISA warrant upon supposed suspicions that he worked as an “agent” of a foreign power. Once the intelligence community had its surveillance in place, it repeatedly and illegally leaked the fruits (or supposed fruits) to undermine the insurgent candidate and later the new president.

Many of those illegal leaks appear to have come directly from the Mueller team during Van Grack’s tenure. It’s highly problematic that Barr would place Van Grack in charge of the kind of sensitive FARA-related information the Mueller team may have leaked during the investigation.

Indeed, Van Grack is a logical witness in potential investigations into those leaks. Guilt by association with foreigners remains such an irresistible weapon that Hillary Clinton recently (and improbably) accused Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. military veteran Tulsi Gabbard of being groomed by the Kremlin to run as a third-party spoiler in 2020.

But Van Grack’s participation in the abuse of the FARA law might not have begun with the Mueller team. Prior to working as the head of the FARA Unit and on Mueller’s team, Van Grack worked in the Justice Department’s national security division. There he worked with John Carlin, the architect of the Carter Page FISA warrant application. Carlin also signed one of the FISA court certifications that the court later found to be deceptive.

Conflicts of Interest

The Trump-hating press has already started cheerleading the prospect of Van Grack opening up a new front against Trump. A few days ago, The New Republic ran a story, “The Law that Could Take Down Rudy Giuliani,” referring to Van Grack’s new area of responsibility, the FARA law.

The New Republic is not alone. The corporate leftist legacy media, including the Washington Post, NPR, and Politico, have pushed Justice Department to use FARA to take down the president’s current attorney. Politico asks, “Is Rudy Giuliani Going To Jail?” The author is optimistic that Van Grack is well positioned to stick it to Giuliani. Another author drew up a mock indictment of Giuliani incorporating allegations related to the recent arrest of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two non-citizens the media have tied to the former New York City mayor.

Van Grack’s role as the Flynn prosecutor is totally incompatible with the role of prosecuting new FARA violations. Flynn’s attorney has accused Van Grack’s prosecution team of several acts of misconduct. I profiled a number of these violations here. Flynn’s legal defense team alleged multiple incidents of the government failing to disclose and/or preserve evidence. Remember the text messages between Lisa Page and her lover, former FBI counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok? There were actually two sets of cell phones, one issued by the FBI and a second the couple used while working for Mueller. When Mueller learned of the disturbing text messages sent between the first set of cell phones, he allowed the second set to be wiped of their data.

Flynn’s attorneys have alleged Van Grack committed misconduct in failing to ensure those cell phones were preserved and disclosed before Flynn’s plea. Questions about the political motivations of the Flynn prosecution persist. Flynn’s attorney also accused Van Grack’s team of attempting to coerce Flynn into lying, threatening to prosecute Flynn’s son, and hiding and even destroying evidence.

Thus, Van Grack brings all of that baggage into any new FARA prosecution which makes him less effective at catching real criminals posing real security threats to the United States. Indeed, Van Grack (who considers himself to be a “trial attorney”) has already lost two high profile cases in his new role.

Mueller’s entire investigation will be forever tainted by the blatant political corruption that infected it from the very beginning. Under Mueller, the spying and surveillance that began against candidate Trump continued against our sitting president (sometimes in coordination with Mueller and likely Van Grack).

In the Summer of 2017, Justice Department agents raided the offices of Trump’s private attorney, Michael Cohen, securing audio recordings that later leaked to the press. Justice officials obtained warrants for surveillance against Cohen. Mueller seized thousands of the Trump transition team’s emails without a warrant. Roger Stone complained that the Mueller’s team pressured him to lie in the headlong effort to get Trump at any cost.

Of the thousands of attorneys in the Department of Justice, one hopes it would be possible to find one to supervise the FARA unit who was not so closely associated with a project to use FARA as a pretext to meddle in and undermine the results of an American election. Van Grack should not be in a position to meddle in the 2020 election until he is cleared of any involvement in the FARA abuses and leaking of sensitive FARA-related information.

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