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FBI Rules Gabrielle Petito’s Death as a Homicide

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The FBI announced on Tuesday that they identified the remains investigators uncovered on Sunday in the Teton-Bridger National Forest. The body they found has been identified as 22-year-old Gabrielle Petito, who went missing late in August while she was on a road trip with her boyfriend Brian Laundrie.

The Bureau’s initial findings are that Petito’s manner of death is a homicide. On Twitter, the agency released a statement:

Teton County Coroner Dr. Brent Blue confirmed the remains are those of Gabrielle Venora Petito, date of birth March 19, 1999. Coroner Blue’s initial determination for the manner of death is homicide. The cause of death remains pending final autopsy results

Fox News reported:

The FBI and local law enforcement agencies were searching for Petito over the weekend in a remote campsite area on the border of the national forest and Grand Teton National Park. Remains discovered on Sunday were transported to Blue’s office for an autopsy, which he performed on Tuesday.

Petito’s parents filed a missing report for their daughter on Sept. 11 after they stopped hearing from her in late August. Laundrie returned to his Florida home on Sept. 1 without Petito, but last Friday, he left for the Carlton Reserve with his backpack. Law enforcement has been searching for him since last week, but recently indicated they were no longer searching the Carlton Reserve area.

On Monday, the FBI declared Laundrie’s home, which he shared with his parents, a crime scene. Agents were seen entering the home and taking Brian’s parents to sit in a car. They were serving a federal warrant issued by a judge. It is not yet known whether they found evidence of a crime.

Authorities also recovered the white van the couple was driving during their trip on Sept. 11, and started a forensic examination on Sept. 14. Laundrie is still considered a person of interest in the case and has not been designated a suspect.

In mid-August, officers with the Moab City Police Department in Utah responded to a domestic disturbance call due to a physical altercation between Petito and Laundrie. According to the police report, the couple got into a heated argument over a phone. Petito reportedly slapped Laundrie repeatedly, after he told her to take a walk so they could both settle down. A witness saw the altercation and contacted local law enforcement.

The officers who responded to the scene decided not to arrest either Petito or Laundrie, or charge her with domestic violence. They deemed the incident to be a mental health matter and separated the two for the night.

FBI Denver Special Agent in Charge released a statement Tuesday:

The FBI and our partners remain dedicated to ensuring anyone responsible for or complicit in Ms. Petito’s death is held accountable for their actions.

As Fox News’ report mentioned, “The final report nor the exact cause of death have been released.”

People Play 'Spot the Fed' at Today's 'Insurrection' as Embarrassing Spectacle Unfolds

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While I’ve been driving across the country today, others gathered in Washington, D.C., for the so-called “Justice for January 6th” rally. So, was there an insurrection, as so many in cable news predicted? In a word, no. Rather, there was an embarrassing spectacle, where media members and undercover feds seemed to outnumber the protesters.

Despite it being obvious that this wouldn’t be a big event, the USCP laughably put up fencing around the Capitol like they were protecting from an onslaught of fully-armed revolutionaries. But perhaps cosplaying revolution is the point for our government? Gotta really make it seem like the threat is real to justify the overbearing police state.

Hilariously, onlookers spent most of the day playing “spot the fed.”

Once it became clear that no violence was going to take place, the police, in full riot gear, marched out of the area. Apparently, the USCP employs some four-foot-tall officers.

Meanwhile, the actual crowd was full of press members hoping to provide fodder for Democrats as we head into 2022. For them, today was the day they were banking on to turn Joe Biden’s slide around. They desperately wanted another January 6th incident to hang their hat on. Instead, they got… well, they got nothing.

If you are keeping score at home, the US government is now 0-7 in predicting “right-wing” violence since January 6th. Maybe we ought to look into some new intelligence agencies? Just a thought, given their penchant for never getting anything right. After all, we did just drone seven kids in Afghanistan, so Joe Biden could claim victory in the midst of his failure.

Where do things go from here? They go nowhere. There is no massive “right-wing” threat. There will be no redux of January 6th. Democrats are going to have to compete in 2022 on their own merits, and boy, do their merits suck. The feds can keep poking and prodding, hoping to stoke a reaction that provides fodder, but it seems no one is up for taking the bait. Thus, you end up with today’s laughable scene.

This country has real problems. People gathering to protest is not one of them. And let’s not forget that while the feds were wasting masses of men and resources to stand around at a non-violent rally, the Southern border is quite literally being invaded due to a lack of law enforcement personnel. That’s the idiocy of our government perfectly illustrated.

John Durham Reportedly Preparing a Surprise Indictment

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Does John Durham actually exist? That’s a question many on the right have pondered for years after the career DOJ official was appointed as special counsel regarding the Trump-Russia investigation. I’m not even sure he’s been seen in public since his first appointment by then-Attorney General Bill Barr.

That’s what makes this new report from The New York Times so surprising. Durham is apparently readying an indictment of Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussman, a key player in spreading uncorroborated accusations of collusion between Russia and Donald Trump.

WASHINGTON — John H. Durham, the special counsel appointed by the Trump administration to scrutinize the Russia investigation, has told the Justice Department that he will ask a grand jury to indict a prominent cybersecurity lawyer on a charge of making a false statement to the F.B.I., people familiar with the matter said.

Any indictment of the lawyer — Michael Sussmann, a former federal prosecutor and now a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm, and who represented the Democratic National Committee on issues related to Russia’s 2016 hacking of its servers — is likely to attract significant political attention.

Sussmann was behind the spread of a conspiracy theory involving Trump and Alfa Bank in which some genius thought servers at the bank were being used as a secret communications link between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. That turned out to be completely unsubstantiated like essentially everything else related to the Russia collusion hoax.

But what Durham apparently has on Sussmann is a lie he told to the FBI about who he was working for. Initially, Sussmann told James Baker, the FBI’s top lawyer at the time, that he wasn’t representing anyone. Later, he admitted to Congress that he was working on behalf of an unnamed client. Later still, billing invoices revealed that he had charged his time to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

But Mr. Durham did apparently find an inconsistency: Mr. Baker, the former F.B.I. lawyer, is said to have told investigators that he recalled Mr. Sussmann saying that he was not meeting him on behalf of any client. But in a deposition before Congress in 2017, Mr. Sussmann testified that he sought the meeting on behalf of an unnamed client who was a cybersecurity expert and had helped analyze the data.

Moreover, internal billing records Mr. Durham is said to have obtained from Perkins Coie are said to show that when Mr. Sussmann logged certain hours as working on the Alfa Bank matter — though not the meeting with Mr. Baker — he billed the time to Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

For his part, Sussmann is denying lying about who he was working for, insisting that he was working for a cybersecurity expert and that the bills to the Clinton campaign are not indicative of what he was actually doing. Yet, it’s long been known that Sussmann was meeting with Christopher Steele during that time, who was working for the Clinton campaign. It’s quite obvious what he was doing and that his pursuit of the Alfa Bank story was not independent.

In short, his denials don’t add up, and that’s likely apparent to Durham, who would not be moving forward if he didn’t feel as if he had a good case. As the Times also notes, Durham may be looking further than just Sussmann, possibly pursuing a broader theory that the Clinton campaign used proxy organizations (i.e. Perkins Coie) to submit bad information to the FBI. By doing so, they could effectively kneecap Trump’s campaign (and his future presidency) from behind closed doors under the guise of a legitimate government investigation. That likely means that Marc Elias, who has moved on to grifting donors by attacking Republican voting reform bills, is probably in the crosshairs as well.

Of course, a healthy dose of skepticism about all this is warranted. Obviously, Hillary Clinton is the big fish here given it was her campaign orchestrating all this, but it’s unlikely she’ll ever be touched. America’s royalty is never held accountable for anything, after all. Regardless, even regarding Sussmann, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Lastly, Democrat apparatchik and current AG Merrick Garland can nuke any indictment and we’d never even know. I fully expect that to be the end result here, at least if Durham tries to move past just the lower levels of Perkins Coie.

After 20 Years, Families Finally Force Release of First Doc on Secret, FBI Investigation Into Saudi-9/11 Connection

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On the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the families of the people killed said they’d have enough. After 20 years, they were tired of getting the runaround when it came to getting documents released regarding the investigation into the Saudi role in relation to the hijackers.

Families even told Joe Biden they didn’t want him at the Ground Zero remembrance , unless he ordered the information released. So Biden ordered the release a week ago.

One of the family members shared with Catherine Herridge their effort. She also spoke to two former FBI agents involved in the investigation who said as much as they could, but one said obviously, there was a “domestic support network” who helped the hijackers in different ways.

Now, the first document came out last night, exactly 20 years after the attack.

The document details a 2015 interview with an official who worked at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, according to the Daily Mail, and helped two of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon on September 11. They were believed to be members of al-Qaeda, chosen by Osama bin Laden.

He admitted that he allowed two hijackers to use his apartment and helped them travel around LA. He was found to be an al-Qaeda ‘facilitator’ by the FBI and the Saudi Consul General wanted to fire him for distributing extremist Muslim literature.

He was also a close associate of two other Saudis, Omar al-Bayoumi and Fahad al-Thumairy, who the [sic] helped the hijackers.

The new FBI file reveals that al-Bayoumi, who has admitted befriending them, worked as a ‘ghost employee’ at a Saudi aviation firm in the US.

And it details how al-Thumairy gave the hijackers money, travel assistance and lodging.

The FBI memo said Omar al-Bayoumi was a frequent visitor to the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles despite his official status at the time as a student.
Mr Bayoumi, the source tells the FBI, had “very high status” at the consulate. “Bayoumi’s assistance to Hamzi and Midha included translation, travel, lodging and financing,” the memo said.

The FBI document also says there were links between the two hijackers and Fahad al-Thumairy, a conservative imam at the King Fahad Mosque in Los Angeles. He was described by sources as “having extremist beliefs”.

Both Mr Bayoumi and Mr Thumairy left the US weeks before the 9/11 attacks, according to the AP news agency.

Saudi Arabia has continued to deny any involvement. Fifteen of the hijackers were Saudi nationals.

Whitmer Kidnapping Plot Prosecutors Want To Stack The Deck

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Perhaps one of the more troubling stories we’ve seen of late is that of the alleged plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer.

The basic premise is that a bunch of right-wing types were angry about Whitmer’s COVID response, so they plotted to kidnap and potentially execute her in an act of armed rebellion. This is very ungood, to say the least.

However, since thing, we’ve learned just how much of a role FBI informants may have played in the actual planning of this plot, enough to wonder just how much of this was these guys’ idea in the first place.

If that wasn’t enough, now it seems the prosecutors are trying to stack the deck against the accused.

Have you ever blown up a bomb? How do you feel about face masks, the right to own a gun, or the governor’s handling of the pandemic?

These are some of the questions potential jurors will have to answer in the alleged Gov. Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot case, which is set to go to trial in a month.

After much haggling, federal prosecutors and defense lawyers have agreed on a list of 75 questions that prospective jurors will answer in the case involving five men accused of plotting to kidnap Whitmer, largely fueled by anger over mask mandates and state restrictions on business and travel during the pandemic. The alleged plot also included a plan to blow up a bridge near Whitmer’s vacation house, prosecutors say, though defense lawyers have argued there was no real plan to kidnap the governor, and that the suspects were merely engaged in puffery and tough talk.

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Meanwhile, the jury questionnaire seeks to find out how jurors feel about the governor’s efforts to fight COVID-19, asking questions like: “Do you have any strong feelings about masks?”

It also gets into the issue of guns and militias, as the five defendants allegedly belonged to militias and are gun enthusiasts with strong views about the Second Amendment.

“Please explain your view on whether citizens should have the right to bear arms,” the questionnaire asks.

Honestly, the idea that the defense lawyers agreed to this seems more than a bit baffling to me.

See, the problem isn’t that such a questionnaire will weed out militia members so much as it may well weed out anyone who isn’t a liberal. While it’s entirely possible that such people will reserve judgment until they’ve seen all the facts, I have yet to see evidence of that in our day-to-day lives, so color me skeptical.

Granted, I’m not a lawyer, so maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there are enough other questions in there to keep the juror pool from being prejudicial, but I kind of feel bad for the guys now.

To be clear, I don’t approve of what they allegedly plotted. Even if the whole thing was an FBI informant’s idea, they still reportedly thought it was a swell idea and even recorded their weapons training to make life so much easier for the FBI. If they did all of that, then they screwed up and will probably pay the price.

As for me, I just want a fair trial. I want to know the facts of what happened and just how big a role the FBI informant played. I want to know so we know just how much to demand from the agency going forward. I don’t like the idea of entrapment in the least and I suspect part of what will come out of this will be calls for reform at the FBI.

The Whitmer kidnapping plot has been a sore point, to be sure, and it hasn’t painted our side in any glory, but the trial needs to be scrupulously fair. That includes having a juror pool that’s not slanted in such a way as to make their conviction a foregone conclusion.