FBI downplayed support for 'Kneel Team Six' agents who kneeled with BLM, according to docs obtained by Heritage Oversight



The Heritage Oversight Project exposed efforts by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to downplay its support for agents who publicly kneeled with Black Lives Matter protesters against police.

Mike Howell, the executive director of the Oversight Project, spoke to Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck about the revelations from documents his organization obtained about the FBI agents referred to as "Kneel Team Six."

'It wasn't just this isolated incident of a liberal sect of the FBI. No, it was approved and sanctioned by the FBI brass in their reaction to it.'

Howell explained how some FBI agents, whom he said were predominately female, had kneeled in solidarity during a BLM riot in Washington, D.C., in 2020.

"Think about how outrageous that is. The FBI is supposed to be the top legal arm in this country, and here they are in the midst of the country burning down, in front of everybody's eyes, kneeling in solidarity with the rioters," said Howell.

"This garnered some traction on social media and elsewhere and some of the pictures are absolutely outrageous. You have a woman in there who clearly can't pass any sort of physical fitness test. It's just a terrible look for the FBI," he explained.

The Oversight Project sued the FBI in 2020 for the release of documents related to the incident and published some of the findings on Monday.

"It wasn't just this isolated incident of a liberal sect of the FBI. No, it was approved and sanctioned by the FBI brass in their reaction to it," he said.

Howell said the FBI tried to downplay the incident as an act of de-escalation and not to show solidarity with rioters, but the documents published by the Oversight Project show that the agents were rewarded for their outrageous behavior.

"They were greeted with gift cards, rewards, promotions, all praise from the tippity-top of the brass, including Director Christopher Wray," said Howell.

He also suggested that the disappearance of a viral video on TikTok about the incident pointed to possible measures taken by the FBI to prevent the public from seeing what happened.

"You have elements potentially of what screams of a cover-up," he concluded.

The FBI declined a request for comment from Blaze News.

Here's part of the Howell interview with Glenn Beck:

.@Heritage's @MHowellTweets reveals just how deep the FBI's support of BLM went during the 2020 riots. A lawsuit uncovered that the agents dubbed "Kneel Team Six" didn't take a knee as a "de-escalation tactic":

"The FBI ended up REWARDING these agents...They were greeted with… pic.twitter.com/bmv1RX6vZm
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) October 22, 2024

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Oversight Project punches back after NYT tries to downplay registration of illegal alien voters in Georgia



The Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project has in recent months highlighted the threat of election interference by both the Biden-Harris administration and illegal aliens. This has evidently made some establishmentarians uncomfortable.

Over the weekend, the New York Times published a report characterizing concerns about interference by groups of noncitizens as a "false, but snowballing, theory" — claiming "there is no evidence to support Heritage's findings in Georgia ... or, for that matter, anywhere else in the country."

The Oversight Project is punching back, reiterating that the threat is real, that "the system has been designed to be abused," and that the Times is now "protecting the ability of noncitizens to participate in American elections."

Mike Howell, executive director of the Oversight Project, told Blaze News, "The fact that they're upset and jumping to the defense of noncitizens being able to vote in elections, I think, tells Americans all they need to know and what they probably already know."

Howell, who explained to Blaze News how the Times' hit piece was as hollow as it was transparent, tweeted to the Times article's author, Ken Bensinger, "If you're going to be our dedicated oppo journalist you need to do better. This was too easy."

'Systems are being taken advantage of, and the outcome of the 2024 election will be difficult to determine.'

A spokesman for the Times told Blaze News in a statement, "This is a piece of thorough and deeply-reported independent journalism based on original reporting and pursuit of facts amid explicitly politicized agendas. The Times stands behind our reporting."

When pressed for comment, Mike Hassinger, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's (R) elections public information officer, defended a number of claims made in the Times report and accused the Oversight Project of "an out-and-out fabrication."

Background

The Oversight Project published troubling footage in conjunction with Anthony Rubin's Muckraker earlier this summer that showed a handful of noncitizens at the apartment complex Elliot Norcross in Norcross, Georgia, admitting they were registered to vote. Some indicated on camera that they were registered at work. At least one indicated she had already voted.

The results were comparable to those in another Oversight Project investigation conducted in Charlotte, North Carolina.

According to Rubin, 14% of the respondents in Norcross said they had been registered. The Oversight Project was unable to locate these noncitizens on Georgia voter rolls, indicating that "shoddy address history records" and fake documents might be to blame.

Noting that there are an estimated 339,000 noncitizens living in Georgia — an apparent reference to Migration Policy Institute's 2019 "unauthorized population" estimate on the basis of U.S. Census Bureau data — the Oversight Project suggested that "if the 14% proportion holds true state wide, this would equate to over 47,000 registered non-citizens" in the Peach State alone.

Even with that projected number halved, a noncitizen cohort participating in the election could prove hugely consequential in November. After all, President Donald Trump lost Georgia by under 12,000 votes the last time around.

"Systems are being taken advantage of, and the outcome of the 2024 election will be difficult to determine given the near impossibility of auditing in a short period of time," said the Oversight Project.

The watchdog's damning exposé created waves, especially after Elon Musk shared the video on Aug. 1 with the caption, "Extremely disturbing!" — a post that netted over 52.8 million impressions since.

Within hours, Raffensperger tweeted, "The state of Georgia aggressively investigates specific claims of voter fraud and we welcome any individual or group to submit specific, evidence based claims, and we will investigate."

The NYT hit piece

The New York Times published an article Saturday titled "Heritage Foundation Spreads Deceptive Videos About Noncitizen Voters."

According to Ken Bensinger and Richard Fausset, "The right-wing think tank has been pushing misinformation about voting into social media feeds."

'We have noncitizens in Georgia on camera admitting to being registered to vote.'

Despite acknowledging that noncitizens did in fact speak to persons linked to the Oversight Project in the video and that they had said plainly on camera they were registered to vote, the Times labeled the video as "misleading."

The Times further claimed that the Oversight Project's claims "do not hold up," suggesting that "three of the seven people Heritage filmed later said they had misspoken," even though they had conversed with the questioners in the video in Spanish.

One of the three women who allegedly recanted their earlier statements told the Times she lied in the video for fear of being deported. The woman, an illegal alien who referred to herself as Marta, claimed she "just wanted them to go away."

In its attempt to discredit the video, which included a rehash of the false and well-worn Democratic talking point about Project 2025, the Times also said state investigators "found no evidence that any of the seven people on the tape had ever registered to vote," despite admitting deeper in the piece that Raffensperger's investigation into Heritage's claims was still ongoing.

The Times' Bensinger and Fausset confidently asserted days after the DOJ announced it had charged an illegal alien in Alabama "in connection with her fraudulent assumption of a United States citizen's identity and her use of that identity to vote in multiple elections," that "there is no evidence to support Heritage’s findings in Georgia, a critical swing state with a large immigrant population, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the country."

They proceeded to cite the findings of the Brennan Center for Justice — a leftist advocacy organization that has received funding from George Soros' Open Society Institute and the Tides Foundation — that supposedly only "one-ten thousandth of 1 percent of votes in the 2016 election were cast by noncitizens."

Rebuttals

The Oversight Project responded to the Times article with a thread on X, suggesting it amounted to an "election lie."

After noting that the article's title conflated noncitizens who were registered to vote with noncitizen voters, Oversight Project zeroed in on the retraction by one of the illegal immigrants interviewed in the video.

"Ken [Bensinger] stakes his credibility on a noncitizen named Marta who told us on camera that she was (1) a noncitizen and (2) registered to vote," wrote the watchdog group. "He claims she lied to us because she was afraid of being deported."

Howell told Blaze News that made "zero sense because if you're afraid of being deported, why would you admit to a deportable offense on camera? It's so counterintuitive, it doesn't pass the laugh test."

Howell also raised the possibility that those who retracted their statements may have done so after being coached on what to say by Lead Stories, the left-leaning fact-checking group that tracked them down, or others.

"That reeked of a cleanup effort," said Howell. "We put our stuff out on video. Or [do you] take the word of these other political actors who did not videotape their encounter?"

'People are going to get through the cracks and the cracks are there because they want them to.'

The watchdog group further indicated on X that of the seven individuals who admitted to being both noncitizens and registered to vote, four had yet to walk back their statements.

"What about the other four, Ken?" asked the Oversight Project.

— (@)

The Oversight Project also seized upon the Times' claim that state investigators under Raffensperger had found no records to indicate the people in the video had registered or voted.

"They said they don't know and only checked the records from that address," said the watchdog group, whose executive director does not appear entirely convinced the Georgia secretary of state's office is altogether eager in "actually investigating this."

"Instead of them saying outright, 'Zero of the seven people are registered in the state of Georgia,' they played a weird rhetorical game where they say, 'We checked the registrations at that address,'" said Howell. "OK, so did we. That's what we told them."

"Just because they're at that address now does not mean that they are registered there. In fact, over the course of our investigations nationwide, several people have indicated that they're registered at work," continued Howell. "Just checking people out at their current address is insufficient to prove that they are not registered at all."

While the watchdog group highlighted other issues with the Times report, it emphasized that the reporters' word choice and framing gave them away as biased ideologues. For instance, whereas the Brennan Center for Justice was referred to as a "policy group," the Times referred to the Oversight Project as a "right wing think tank."

Ultimately, Howell said that the "short of it is the New York Times is clearly working with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office in an effort to discredit the video, which hasn't been discredited in the least. We have noncitizens in Georgia on camera admitting to being registered to vote."

When pressed for comment, Hassinger told Blaze News, "The fundraising stunt created by Project Oversight and funded by Heritage was more than disinformation, it was an out-and-out fabrication. Our office learned that it was fabricated by verifying voter registrations at the apartment complex, and by sending investigators to speak to the people featured in the video."

"Our investigation revealed that no one in the video was registered to vote, nor had they voted," continued Hassinger. "When this office asked The Oversight Project for any other evidence that these apartment residents were A) in the country illegally or B) registered to vote, they couldn't provide anything."

"The Oversight Project may have valid concerns about illegal aliens voting in Georgia, but they have yet to express them in any serious way and have chosen instead to tell lies in order to create fear and distrust in Georgia’s election processes," added Hassinger.

When asked whether President Joe Biden's Executive Order 14019, which effectively mobilizes the federal government to turn out votes for Democrats, is connected to the potential registration of illegal aliens, Howell told Blaze News, "The system basically makes it easy for them. ... The system has been designed to be abused."

The Biden Department of Justice, various other federal agencies, and White House staff held a "Listening Session" on July 12, 2021, regarding the order's implementation. Referencing the session, Howell noted that champions of open borders engaged in the discussions suggested illegal aliens should be trusted to operate within the bounds of the law.

"This is kind of the high-level politics of it all. They want to create such a loose system and have no checks on it. People are going to get through the cracks, and the cracks are there because they want them to," said Howell.

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Democrats traffic in falsehoods about Project 2025 at DNC — and the AP appears happy to assist



The post-Biden Democratic establishment now coagulating around the Harris campaign has worked for months, in concert with the liberal media and various radical groups, to mischaracterize the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 and weaponize the resultant mischaracterization against President Donald Trump.

Rather than recognize 2025's "Mandate for Leadership" for what it is — a "candidate-agnostic" policy document developed by various conservative groups with the aim of detailing popular ways a future president might "take down the Deep State and return the government to the people" — Democrats have suggested it is instead a weird and authoritarian "blueprint" for ushering America into a dystopian future lifted from the pages of a Margaret Atwood novel.

Democrats leaned into their false narrative at the Democratic National Convention this week and once again found willing collaborators in the mainstream media.

On Monday, Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D) carried an oversized prop representing Project 2025's policy book to the DNC stage and slammed it on the lectern, stating, "This is Project 2025. Now, over the next four nights, you are going to hear a lot about what is in this 900-page document. Why? Because this is the Republican blueprint for a second Trump term."

Contrary to McMorrow's claim, the GOP has its own blueprint for Trump's second term. Furthermore, Trump has disavowed Project 2025, stating, "Some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal."

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), a strong Trump supporter, recently emphasized, "It's not a problem for the president because the president is already on the record saying that he has nothing to do with it."

"Their focus on Project 2025 is insanity," added Donalds.

Despite the inaccuracy of McMorrow's opening assertion, the Associated Press — an outfit that has similarly had troubles with facts in recent years — regurgitated McMorrow's claim nearly verbatim online.

Project 2025 responded on X, "Is this the AP or the DNC account? Project 2025 does not represent any candidate or campaign. We are a coalition of over 110 conservative groups offering policy and personnel recommendations. We expect a correction and apology, or a disclaimer that you're now DNC surrogates."

The AP only corrected its error and deleted its post Tuesday afternoon, noting it had "misidentified the blueprint as Republican."

McMorrow did not limit her comments about Project 2025 to the one claim that the Associated Press was forced to walk back.

"That's right," continued McMorrow. "They went ahead and wrote down all the extreme things that Donald Trump wants to do in the next four years. And then they just tweeted it out, putting it out on the internet for everybody to read. So we read it and whatever you think it might be, it is so much worse."

According to McMorrow, Project 2025 aims to turn Trump "into a dictator."

'They know Project 2025's ideas are popular, which is why they are lying about what's in it.'

After slamming the prop against the lectern once more, the Michigan Democrat pointed to the 2025 recommendation that Trump re-establish the Schedule F employment category for federal employees as evidence of dictatorial aspirations.

Trump issued an executive order establishing the category prior to the 2020 election in an effort to make it easier for future administrations to remove insubordinate and poorly performing bureaucrats from an estimated pool of 50,000 eligible candidates. Accordingly, those civil servants — some self-described and others dubbed by the media as the "resistance" — who had worked for years to prevent the democratically elected president from executing the will of the American people could be canned.

"They're talking about replacing the entire federal government with an army of loyalists who answer only to Donald Trump," continued McMorrow, who appeared to gloss over the fact the policy document was drafted long before Trump became the Republican nominee.

It became clear Tuesday night that Democrats had manufactured the Project 2025 prop book for more than just McMorrow's tirade.

Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta similarly trotted out the prop, saying, "Usually Republicans want to ban books, but now they are trying to shove this down our throats."

"It is a radical plan to drag us backwards, bankrupt the middle class, and raise prices on working families," said Kenyatta.

The Pennsylvania Democrat suggested further that under Project 2025, families would pay more in federal taxes and workers would see cuts in their overtime pay.

Blaze News previously reported that the project's policy recommendations actually include:

  • increasing oversight of the Department of Justice and FBI;
  • eliminating the Department of Education and "moving control and funding of education from D.C. bureaucrats to parents and state and local governments";
  • unfettering American energy production as a means to reduce prices and boost the economy;
  • ousting those obstructionist partisans in the federal bureaucracy who may again attempt to prevent the duly-elected president from realizing his mandate;
  • securing the border and ousting illegal aliens;
  • cutting the growth of government spending annually to reduce inflation; and
  • banning men from participating in women's sports.

Heritage president Kevin Roberts emphasized in his foreword to the policy book that the aim should be to: "Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children"; "dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people"; "defend our nation's sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats"; and "secure our God-given individual rights to live freely."

Roberts suggested to "Blaze News Tonight" last month that Project 2025 represents a "return to common sense policy."

- YouTubeyoutu.be

Project 2025 noted Tuesday, "Despite calling Project 2025 'radical, extreme, and dangerous', the DNC platform ironically takes a shocking number of ideas from Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership."

"They know Project 2025's ideas are popular, which is why they are lying about what's in it. The only radical thing about Project 2025 is how radically popular their ideas are with the American people," continued the Heritage project, adding:

Their new platform takes a page out of Project 2025 on a host of issues, including securing the southern border and reducing illegal immigration, reducing the federal debt, supporting a fairer tax code that ends special interests and helps small entrepreneurs compete, encouraging the reshoring of American jobs and products, blocking the CCP from buying U.S. farmland, expanding alternative pathways to college, cracking down on Big-Tech abuses online, building off of the Abraham Accords, and strengthening our defense industrial base. Of course, they don't actually want to do any of this. If they were sincere about implementing these ideas, they would stop lying and demonizing Project 2025.

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CONNECT THE DOTS: Did Thomas Crooks meet FBI before Trump Shooting?

CONNECT THE DOTS: Did Thomas Crooks meet FBI before Trump Shooting?

Why Leftists are TERRIFIED of 'Project 2025' | Heritage President SPEAKS OUT

Why Leftists are TERRIFIED of 'Project 2025' | Heritage President SPEAKS OUT

Heritage report breaks down precisely how to hold China accountable for the COVID-19 cover-up, $18 trillion in damages



There have a been multiple efforts in recent years to hold the Chinese regime accountable in full or in part for the pandemic. For instance, Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) introduced the China Lied, People Died Act last year, which would have prohibited "the availability of Federal funds for programs, projects, or activities in the People's Republic of China until amounts made available for COVID-19 relief in the United States have been reimbursed, and for other purposes."

Like Nehls' bill, most efforts to make Beijing pay for its maleficence have gone sideways or nowhere at all. According to the Heritage Foundation's Nonpartisan Commission on China and COVID-19, not all is hopeless.

The commission, chaired by former Director of National Intelligence and Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe (R), released a report Monday both assessing the cost of the pandemic and outlining ways that China can be made to answer for its role in maximizing the fallout of COVID-19.

The report noted that while other states, organizations, and individuals may have played contributing roles in the pandemic, "China has been in a league uniquely of its own in its active and aggressive opposition to honesty, transparency, and accountability regarding the virus and its spread."

"This behavior by the Chinese government, more than anything else, was the proximal origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, added the report."

Cover-up

The Heritage commission's report underscored both the intentionality and impact of the Chinese regime's cover-up of the spread of COVID-19.

"There were seven weeks during which Chinese officials could have shown good faith and honored their international commitments to try to prevent a domestic epidemic from becoming a global pandemic," said the report. "They consistently chose to do otherwise."

Blaze News previously detailed how Chinese authorities delayed warning the world about the emergency of COVID-19 and silenced those individuals who tried to raise the alarm.

While it appears the virus began spreading by the fall of 2019 at the latest, communist officials waited until Dec. 31, 2019, to alert the World Health Organization, then claimed, "The disease is preventable and controllable."

The Heritage commission's report noted that even when China finally got around to informing the WHO, it "withheld vital information," including the type of virus behind the illness, the actual number of infected persons, and insights into human-to-human transmission.

A Five Eyes intelligence dossier accused the Chinese regime in May 2020 of engaging in an "assault on international transparency" to the "endangerment of other countries," reported the New York Post.

The intelligence dossier indicated that Chinese officials had scrambled to bury evidence of the virus and its origins, "destroying" lab samples, censoring evidence of spread, and denying sample requests from other countries.

Extra to destroying lab evidence, the Heritage commission noted that Chinese authorities barred researchers and scientists, especially those linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, from sharing information about the virus their peers had likely engineered.

While lying to the world about the virus, the Department of Homeland Security intelligence service indicated that "the Chinese Government intentionally concealed the severity of COVID-19 from the international community in early January while it stockpiled medical supplies by both increasing imports and decreasing exports."

Not only did China deceive the world and exploit the deception, it locked down domestic travel while allowing infected Chinese citizens to travel internationally. According to the New York Times, 175,000 people left Wuhan on Jan. 1, 2020, alone. A total of 7 million people left Wuhan that month before travel was restricted, thousands of whom were infected.

The Heritage commission's report noted that there were 1,300 direct flights from Wuhan to 17 cities in the U.S. before the American government restricted travel on Jan. 31, 2021 — a move China and the WHO recommended against.

Costs

The commission noted that as of last month, over 1.1 million Americans were estimated to have been slain by the foreign-born virus. COVID-19 claimed the lives of roughly 28 million people worldwide.

Besides filling morgues and leaving empty chairs at dinner tables around the country, the report noted the pandemic drove roughly 97 million people worldwide into poverty; dropped the world's collective GDP by several points; sent unemployment skyrocketing; ejected billions of children out of classrooms, setting them back academically; and adversely impacted vulnerable persons' mental health.

'The Chinese government must be held accountable for its role in obfuscating the truth about the COVID-19 pandemic.'

The report emphasized that in the U.S., the pandemic left behind not only broken hearts and stunted children but also financial burdens.

The Heritage commission estimated that as of December 2023, the total cost of the pandemic in the U.S. had exceeded $18 trillion.

Deaths accounted for over $8.6 trillion of the total cost. Lost income alternatively accounted for $1.82 trillion of the total; chronic conditions for $6.02 trillion; mental health issues for $1.98 trillion; and educational losses for nearly a half-trillion dollars.

Comeuppance

The Heritage commission determined that "the Chinese government and its affiliates can be and should be held liable for damages to the United States and its people caused by Chinese negligence and malfeasance related to the COVID-19 pandemic."

To hold China accountable, however, the report noted that lawmakers must revise the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act to remove "a foreign sovereign's immunity in the specific context of the extraordinary circumstances of global pandemics that lead to more than one million excess deaths of American citizens and residents and are caused by a foreign state."

With FSIA amended to no longer stand in the way of holding China liable for damages, the commission indicated there would be several possible causes of action, including negligence; strict liability for abnormally dangerous activities; public nuisance; anti-competitive behavior; fraudulent misrepresentation; and civil Racketeer and Corrupt Organization Act violations.

In addition to targeting China generally, the commission indicated that two Chinese airlines that have subjected themselves to U.S. jurisdiction — China Southern Airlines Company Ltd. and China Eastern Airlines Company Ltd. — could also be fair game, along with Chinese manufacturers of personal protective equipment and the Chinese National Pharmaceutical Group.

The commission made clear, however, that there are other ways to skin a cat.

The commission made multiple recommendations, including:

  • Congress should create a reparations task force to cover claims against China and explore ways to expand U.S. federal court jurisdiction such that Chinese individuals and agencies can be held liable for U.S. civil claims.
  • Congress should pass former Republican Wisconsin Rep. Mike Gallagher's BIOSECURE Act to "begin decoupling U.S. government and commercial supply chains from Chinese state-backed companies."
  • Congress should pass a law requiring an audit of all American funding for biomedical and other such research activities in China, where the working presumption is that all research should be canceled unless "relevant sponsors can demonstrate that their research projects are overwhelmingly in the public interest and entail extremely low risk of harm."
  • The president should impose sanctions on Chinese officials and organizations linked to the cover-up of the virus and its initial spread and get serious about the threat of gain-of-function research.
  • The president should block U.S. outbound investment in the Chinese biotechnology sector.
  • The president should lean on the WHO to hold China accountable for violating Articles 6 and 7 of the International Health Regulations.

A failure by American leaders to act would incentivize the CCP "to persist in its nontransparent, noncooperative, and even hostile behavior," said the report.

Ratcliffe said in a statement, "The Chinese government must be held accountable for its role in obfuscating the truth about the COVID-19 pandemic — a pandemic that caused more than 1 million American deaths and $18 trillion in economic damage in the United States."

"While most of our government and media have focused on legitimate concerns about the origins of the virus, we must also focus on how the [Chinese Communist Party's] lack of transparency and distortion of facts accelerated a global pandemic, regardless of how COVID-19 originated," added Ratcliffe.

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Blaze News exclusive: Heritage Oversight Project exposes Biden's 'election interference' scheme, identifies 3 ways states can fight back



President Joe Biden issued an executive order early in his presidency that effectively compels federal agencies to mobilize historically Democratic groups to vote. After investigating Executive Order 14019, its origins, and its application, the Heritage Foundation's government watchdog Oversight Project concluded it constitutes "election interference" and could be greatly consequential in November.

"The last election was decided by less than 40K votes in the determinative swings," Mike Howell, executive director of the Oversight Project, told Blaze News.

Howell highlighted further how Demos — a leftist think tank whose 2020 recommendations to the Biden administration appear to have helped inspire EO 14019 — has boasted that the scheme could bring in 3 million new voter registrations per year. Howell suspects the number could be far higher.

The Oversight Project has gone beyond merely diagnosing the problem. Today, it has exposed various agencies' strategic plans and identified three major steps that states can take to thwart or at the very least "frustrate" them.

The order

Months after taking office, Biden issued Executive Order 14019, alleging that minorities, particularly blacks, are disproportionately met today with "significant obstacles" to voting. According to the preamble, they are "disproportionately burdened by voter identification laws and limited opportunities to vote by mail."

Greater turnout from this particular cohort would likely be a boon for Biden, given that 83% of black voters are presently Democrats or lean Democratic, according to the Pew Research Center.

After intimating that minorities have trouble using IDs and mailboxes, the preamble suggests that in order to remedy this perceived racial discrimination and to "protect the right to vote," it is incumbent upon the Biden administration to enmesh itself more fully in the election process.

'Biden signed Executive Order (E.O.) 14019 directing every federal agency to get out the vote for his reelection campaign.'

To this end, Biden compelled federal agencies to "consider ways to expand citizens' opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process."

— (@)

The Oversight Project indicated this means those federal agencies that regularly engage with the American public must:

  • "use their resources, connections, and relationships with their clientele to facilitate registrations and mass mail-in ballot applications;
  • "use federal resources to assist in completing those registrations and applications"; and
  • "provide space on 'agency premises' and resources to 'approved' non-governmental organizations ('NGO') and 'state officials' to accomplish these directives."

The Oversight Project has summarized the situation thusly: "On March 7, 2021 Biden signed Executive Order (E.O.) 14019 directing every federal agency to get out the vote for his reelection campaign. This whole of government approach is partnering with exclusively left-wing dark money groups."

Partisan executors

There are various reasons to doubt the lawfulness and neutrality of these efforts — whether prospective voters in historically right-leaning areas will be sought out for registry with the same enthusiasm as potential Biden voters in blue enclaves. After all, the administrative state overwhelmingly leans left and and has made no secret in recent years of its anti-Trump skew.

The Hill reported that 95% of all campaign donations from 14 government agencies went to Clinton ahead of the 2016 election. In 2020, the majority of federal employees again donated to the Democratic candidate.

A balance is unlikely to be struck now, especially with former President Donald Trump expected to restore the Schedule F employment category for federal employees if re-elected, which would make it easier to kick insubordinate and poorly performing bureaucrats to the curb.

Oversight highlighted what are perhaps more pressing issues with the order's execution, such as its corresponding approval process for non-governmental organizations and state officials, noting that the evidence at hand — of which there would be more but for the administration's apparent aversion to transparency — "demonstrates a left-wing partisan implementation of E.O. 14019."

In a May 1 memo, Oversight indicated there was cause to suspect that the NGOs executing Biden's will were predominantly, if not entirely, populated by fellow travelers.

The Biden Department of Justice, various other federal agencies, and White House staff, held a "Listening Session" on July 12, 2021, with regards to the order's implementation. Oversight noted that there was not one identifiable Republican, Independent or politically conservative individual among the NGOs' representatives present for the session.

That is less surprising given the liberal, Democratic-aligned groups in attendance, which included the ACLU, the Anti-Defamation League, Black Votes Matter, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Open Society Policy Center, and the NAACP.

It's not just the political makeup and biases of the NGOs that warrant skepticism about the neutrality of the voter mobilization scheme.

According to the Oversight Project, Democratic state actors are similarly getting in on the scheme.

In March, the U.S. Small Business Administration announced an agreement with the Michigan Department of State to oblige Biden and execute his order in the state. Similar initiatives in Michigan boosted Biden in 2020. Now his administration will be working hand in glove with Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, "a left-wing partisan who has embraced policy positions that undermine election security."

Benson has a spotty record when it comes to elections. A State Court of Claims judge ruled in 2021 that she had violated state law by unilaterally altering absentee voting rules ahead of the 2020 election. According to the Federalist, she worked with a nonprofit linked to Mark Zuckerberg-funded groups to influence state elections in 2019. In March, she was sued by the Republican National Committee for allegedly failing to clean up Michigan's "inflated and "inaccurate" voter rolls.

Despite branding Biden's opponent a "threat to democracy" in December and suggesting she was allied with her counterparts in swing states against a "common adversary," the law violating Democrat will nonetheless play a part in "connecting Michigan's small business community with the tools and information they need to play an even greater active role in our democracy."

'Biden bucks' strategies exposed

While concerns in recent years about the execution of Biden's order could possibly be allayed by the provision of greater insights into the nature of its rollout, Oversight indicated "the Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats have fought efforts to provide transparency about E.O. 14019."

Various attempts to obtain information via congressional oversight and Freedom of Information requests — such as those launched by the Foundation for Government Accountability and America First Legal Foundation — have apparently been met with resistance.

Upon suing 14 agencies in an effort to see the strategic plans they provided to the White House, the Biden DOJ told AFL to pound sand, claiming the plans were exempt from public disclosure as privileged presidential communications, according to Oversight.

These apparent efforts to keep the specifics of the scheme under wraps have prompted greater suspicion, especially at Oversight, which has apparently filed around 1,600 FOIA requests related to the EO and a lawsuit just last week against the Small Business Administration.

Oversight has, however, finally got its hands on various agencies' strategic plans along with internal communications about the executive order and correspondences with leftist NGOs.

Newly released and largely redacteddocuments detail some of the lengths federal agencies are going to mobilize friendly voter turnout per the EO, such as guaranteeing federal employees four hours of paid administrative leave per election to go vote or participate as supposedly non-partisan poll watchers. In the documents, there are also indications of internal concern over executing Biden's will whilst avoiding brazen violations of the Hatch Act.

While some proposals in the documents are relatively innocuous, those promising to be most impactful appear to be geared toward boosting Democratic numbers, as Oversight previously indicated.

Among the documents obtained by Oversight is a 2021 recommendation to the Department of Education from various Democrat-aligned groups, such as the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, suggesting that it include "check-the-box" automatic voter registration for individuals applying for federal financial aid via the Free Application for Federal Student Aid process. The activistic outfits note in their recommendation that the Office of Federal Student Aid presently has the contact information of 20 million Americans enrolled in post-secondary institutions.

Non-college educated voters lean Republican whereas voters with college degrees are much more likely to lean toward the Democratic Party, according to Pew. 20 million email addresses and automatic registries could go a long way in a tight race.

Oversight has indicated that it will continue to populate its repository of "Biden Bucks" documents as they become available.

Counteroffensive

When pressed on whether Congress could take meaningful action against the scheme, Howell responded, "Congress missed their shot. Ship sailed. They funded this."

States, alternatively, could throw a wrench in the works.

Oversight outlined three ways that states could go about doing so, the first of which is attacking the application of the order with regards to presidential elections.

"Presidential elections are governed by the Electors clause of the Constitution, which by its text and original understanding gives zero warrant for Congressional action. States are well within their powers to pass laws solely governing presidential elections," wrote the Oversight Project. "To be sure, different procedures for Presidential Elections impose increased administrative burdens and costs, but those are justified by insulating at least that electoral process from partisan Executive Branch action."

States could also raise hell about the "partisan political activity inherent in the plans and actions of the federal employees involved."

Complaints citing possible Hatch Act violations could potentially frustrate the scheme or at the very least force the administration to speak to its meddling.

Finally, Oversight highlighted how "Section 7 of the [National Voter Registration Act] provides that 'Federal and nongovernmental offices' can only engage in the type of activities directed by the Executive Order if a state 'designate[s]' that office to act as a voter registration agency."

"States could take all appropriate action to remove and attack designations of federal agencies to act under the NVRA that States did not make, or that were made by State officials without appropriate authority," wrote Oversight, stressing that college campuses and state prisons would be worth scrutinizing.

'Executive Order 14019 raises significant challengers for our nation's system of checks and balances that the framers carefully crafted in the Constitution to guard against attempts by the executive branch to circumvent the legislative process.'

Howell and his team at the Oversight Project are hardly outliers in figuring the so-called "Biden Bucks" scheme for a "threat to election integrity."

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee noted in their Monday letter to Shalanda Young, the director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, "Ensuring the safe and secure administration of elections and access for all legal voters is critical, but the authority to engage in such efforts is expressly delegated to the states and the Congress by the Constitution."

"Executive Order 14019 raises significant challengers for our nation's system of checks and balances that the framers carefully crafted in the Constitution to guard against attempts by the executive branch to circumvent the legislative process," continued the letter.

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Glenn Beck on Preserving History: Cotton Fiber Paper and the Iconic WWII Photo

Glenn Beck on Preserving History: Cotton Fiber Paper and the Iconic WWII Photo

A college program that linked conservative groups to Nazis secured a DHS grant. The Heritage Foundation is suing for answers.



The Heritage Foundation has taken legal action against the Biden administration for allegedly withholding answers about an anti-terrorism grant program that funded a group ostensibly hellbent on demonizing conservatives.

The Media Research Center published documents in May revealing the extent to which the Department of Homeland Security's Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program, used by the previous two administrations to combat actual terrorism, has been "revamped under the Biden administration and renamed to provide funding for localities to combat 'all forms of terrorism and targeted violence.'"

The watchdog report revealed that one grant recipient ran a seminar wherein the Heritage Foundation and other conservative outfits were branded as extremist and depicted as a stepping stones to Neo-Nazism.

The University of Dayton reportedly received $352,109 in fiscal year 2022 to establish the Preventing Radicalization to Extremist Violence through Education, Network-Building and Training in Southwest Ohio project.

"PREVENT-OH" received the grant after holding a seminar called "Extremism, Rhetoric, and Democratic Precarity," where Michael Loadenthal, a University of Cincinnati researcher and self-described Antifa member, shared a chart entitled, "The Pyramid of Far-Right Radicalization," which branded the Christian Broadcasting Network, the GOP, the Tea Party, the National Rifle Association, PragerU, Quillette, Turning Point USA, and other conservative outfits as extremist.

Besides this designation, the chart suggested the logical progression for some persons attracted to these groups would be toward becoming Neo-Nazis.

— (@)

Extra to the pyramid, the MRC noted that at the seminar Alexander Hinton, an anthropology professor from Rutgers University, compared former President Donald Trump's administration to Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, and Nicole Widdersheim suggested that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis might kick off a second Holocaust.

The New York Post reported that a DHS employee participated in the seminar.

The conservative-bashing seminar was ultimately referenced in the Dayton researchers' successful grant proposal for the TVTP.

A spokesman for the DHS told the Post the "seminar was not funded, organized, or hosted by the Department of Homeland Security."

"Similarly, the presented chart was not developed, presented, or endorsed by the Department of Homeland Security, and was not part of any successful grant application to the Department of Homeland Security," continued the spokesman. "DHS does not profile, target, or discriminate against any individual for exercising their constitutional rights protected by the First Amendment."

Dan Schneider, vice president at the MRC, said, "DHS is lying through its teeth once again. ... Laughably, the DHS Ohio grantee quickly scrubbed its website following this report, something innocent groups don't do. But it is too late; we have already copied it. We also have proof that 'PREVENTS-OH' actually hosted the conference and that DHS was an active participant, including featuring a senior DHS official at the conference."

Heritage filed a civil lawsuit Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeking to compel the DHS to comply with its FOIA requests for all records pertaining to the conservative organization. In its complaint, Heritage noted it filed a FOIA request seeking what DHS had on it in late May, but despite some back and forth, has yet to receive anything.

The complaint accuses the DHS of two counts of violating FOIA having "repeatedly failed to respond to Plaintiffs' FOIA Request," suggesting that "[p]laintiffs are thus left with no remedy but this lawsuit to determine if DHS in fact believes Heritage, Fox News, and others to be worthy of being lumped in the same group as Nazis."

Furthermore, Heritage wants "to determine to what extent Heritage has been targeted by DHS and labeled an 'extrem[e]' or 'radical[]' group when it awarded a grant to a program asserting that conservative organizations are the 'base' of a pyramid supporting some of the most foul and noxious organizations in the United States."

Mike Howell, director of the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project, said in a statement, "We've had enough. We're taking the weaponized Department of Homeland Security to court. They can try explaining to a federal judge why they believe themselves to be above the law and Constitution."

"It's a sad day in America when patriotic citizens have to sue their own government for targeting them," continued Howell. "The subversive element that has taken over the Department of Homeland Security gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to fellow travelers at a university program that labeled us as extremists but illegally refused to comply with the law and turn over documents related to their ridiculous targeting of conservatives."

MRC indicated that as of May 2023, 80 grants totaling just under $40 million had been awarded under the TVTP program to teach "media literacy and online critical thinking initiatives."

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