By Mike Huckabee
September 24, 2022
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BY MIKE HUCKABEE
Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee staff! Thank you for subscribing and I hope you enjoy today’s newsletter.
With gratitude,
Mike
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.
James 1:6
If you have a favorite Bible Verse you want to see in one of our newsletters, please email [email protected].
North Dakota Report
A North Dakota official reports that there is no evidence that 18-year-old Cayler Ellingson was a “Republican extremist,” the excuse given by a man who ran him down with his car and killed him (and who is already, inexplicably, free on $50,000 bail.) Then again, if we required any sort of evidence before accusing someone of being a “Republican extremist,” a lot of politicians and media figures wouldn’t have anything to say at all.
The scariest part of this story
This is the guy whose nickname is “Biden’s Brain.” Like the real thing, he appears to be completely out of touch with reality.
Line Drawn
Well, at least we now know where liberals will draw the line when it comes to exposing children to inappropriate influences. Sure, it’s fine to have a “goth” drag queen be part of an all-ages “drag bingo” event at a Texas church. But for once, the drag queen was canceled after they discovered that when he was 17, he was convicted in a 2004 school shooting plot in which he schemed to murder 20 of his classmates.
And let me apologize in advance if I have not used the mass murder-plotting drag queen’s correct preferred pronouns. I don’t know what they are, but I certainly wouldn’t want to do anything offensive.
A growing backlash towards Disney
If you’ve canceled plans for a Disney vacation recently, you’re not alone, but Disney’s alienation of loyal customers and steep stock price drop aren’t entirely because of its deep dive into leftwing politics and LGBTQ propagandizing of children. The Daily Mail reports that there’s a growing backlash among longtime Disney fans, who complain that the prices for parks like Walt Disney World are going through the roof, while quality has slipped in a way that would have infuriated Walt Disney.
Visitors are complaining about exorbitant prices, up over 3,000% since Disney World opened 50 years ago. Fox News reports that five days in the parks with lodging cost a family of four nearly $8500, not including airfare. Visitors say that after paying all that money, they’ve encountered broken rides, long waiting lines, malfunctioning robot characters, reduced amenities, trash, dirt and peeling paint. It used to be said that when Walt ran the parks, if you dropped any litter, it would be swept up within seconds of hitting the ground. One viral video claims to show guests stuck for over an hour on the “It’s a Small World” ride, which I think qualifies as torture under the Geneva Convention.
Disney fans claim that thanks to diehard Disney loyalists who’ll put up with anything, current management doesn’t care if attendance drops because prices are so high, they’re making bigger profits while serving fewer guests. I can’t imagine that’s a sustainable business model. If I wanted to pay an arm and a leg to visit a filthy place full of sexual deviants and large rodents, I’d go to New York City.
Upping the ante
Just when you think California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s radical leftism can’t get any more offensive, he ups the ante by placing billboards in conservative states promoting abortion services in California with a quote from Jesus: "Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these."
As the linked article points out, “abominable” and “Satanic” are just two of the terms that Christians are applying to Newsom’s attempt to co-opt the words of Jesus to promote murdering innocent babies in their mothers’ wombs.
Latest from Kurt Schlichter
Why Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis should run for President in 2024, no matter what Trump does, since it’s his moment and if he lets that window close, it may never open so wide again.
Related: You can tell the media expect DeSantis to run and are absolutely terrified of him because they’re already doing that thing they always do: trying to convince us that the next Republican (DeSantis) is even worse than the last Republican (Trump) whom they claimed was “literally Hitler.”
Whistleblower: FBI has "bought in 100 percent" to January 6
FBI Special Agent Kyle Seraphin has been in counterintelligence since the mid-2010s, first in the Washington field office, then in the Special Ops surveillance group. But he is now suspended, in so-called career limbo, after realizing the FBI was violating its own policies and deciding to become a whistleblower. He has quite the inside story to tell.
On Thursday, he told it, or the first half of it, during Dan Bongino’s podcast. Part 2 airs Friday.
As background, he offered some description of what the investigation process is generally like. Once a case is deemed worthy to be “briefed up” to the counterterrorism level, he said, the field office agent becomes essentially an order-taker. Headquarters sends in the folks they prefer to have on it. But guys like him who “have a pulse and can sit in cars for a long time” can pick up a lot of useful information, and that’s mostly what he did. “A lot of times, it’s just containment, as much as anything else,” he said. It’s essentially “babysitting,” to make sure the guy “doesn’t do the thing you think he might do.” And they do this because “it briefs well” in their reports.
There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what the FBI is, he said. Americans might see the FBI as America’s premiere law enforcement organization, but it sees itself primarily as an INTELLIGENCE AGENCY. So these are “intelligence analysts, intelligence people,” who have a totally different mindset than you find in a criminal investigative group. Their job was on-background, and, unlike many in the Bureau, he “couldn’t grasp the idea of knowledge for the sake of knowledge that was non-operational.” So he worked as more of a support agent, as opposed to being an active case agent.
He made the important point that “it’s not about getting the case done anymore.” Cases rarely end; the focus is more on intelligence-gathering as an end in itself. Many agents reaching leadership roles come from that background and “have never touched a criminal case.” (!) They know FISAs and NSLs (national security letters), but not law enforcement.
Kyle got the impression they feel entitled to the information they gather. (To be fair, it’s often used to clear people.) But it’s open-ended; people can be surveilled, totally unaware, for years. The first several cases he got in 2017 had been open for “6, 7, 8 years.” Every 90 days, some “new paper” had to be generated on these cases --- it’s called “papering the file.” So, “these cases just exist to meet an administrative burden.” But he’d look through them and think, there’s really not anything more to do here, as there’s no indication of wrongdoing.
So he’d do a “ruse interview” with the subject, getting close enough to the topic to pick up what he needed to. Then he’d close the case. (When FBI agents drop by for a chat, he warned, “they’re probably not really talking about what they’re talking about.”)
What might cause a case to be opened? It could be something very subtle, not necessarily indicative of crime. You won’t know you’re being checked on. Maybe you’re just in someone’s circle of contacts, maybe you just “had breakfast once or twice,” or “wrote a term paper together.” Maybe you’re slightly connected through FB or LinkedIn. So, they want to find out: are you receiving money from somewhere? Do you have any contact?
Tips get called in to the National Hotline, etc. “One way or another, it ends up on your desk as an agent.” Hopefully, an agent just does a little research with the “tools” in the toolbox –- again, the target doesn’t know –- and determines these aren’t federal cases and tosses them.
My question: Since, according to Kyle, “none of these things even touch criminality at all,” does the FBI have to get a subpoena to check you out? Because it’s not a criminal investigation, the answer appears to be...no, they don’t.
When you’re doing a criminal investigation, he said, you have to show probable cause. For CT (counterterrorism), “the bar is different.” It’s “not meant for public consumption.” But those CT methods are “building blocks.” If you do find something criminal, you have to retrace your steps to rebuild the case, so as not to reveal sources and methods.
After years of this, the agent comes to a crossroads. He either thinks, “This is disgusting” and bails (“and there are a lot of really good people that have left the FBI”), or he thinks, I’ve done 10 years, I can retire in another 10 and get a pension of $50-60,000 a year plus benefits (this is called “the Golden Handcuff” for agents with a mortgage and kids), so, what the heck, I’ll play along.
But Kyle said there are more agents leaving than we might think. As for himself, he was indefinitely suspended on June 1, “just shy of 6 years.” Here’s how he got there:
In October 2021, while working in the New Mexico field office, he heard a couple of agents talking about an email and got it forwarded to him. This was the email sent to Jim Jordan about using the “Patriot Act tools” (counterterrorism resources) to “threat-tag” parents at school board meetings (an EDUOFFICIALS “threat tag” would initiate an investigation). He knew the attorney general had denied they were doing this.
“In the real FBI,” he said, “there’s no time for threats from some guy who’s yelling at a school board...mostly, this is a state and local issue.” But when he opted not to participate, that’s when things started getting awkward (my thought: it must’ve been like many Thanksgiving dinners in this hyper-partisan age). He told Bongino the order had been signed by assistant directors of both the criminal and counterterrorism divisions.
Fortuitously, he had just completed his whistleblower training, and ended up being one of two people who disclosed the order. He went to his congresswoman with email in hand and said he wanted to make a protected disclosure. This was new to her and her staff, as she was a freshman in Congress, so they brought in a law enforcement contact (now one of Kyle’s best friends), who likewise was unfamiliar with it. Kyle explained that he had a right to petition and wanted to disclose the email to show a violation of their policy in targeting these parents.
They had “a long conversation” with lots of note-taking. “The one that was published was not mine,” he said, adding that this made no difference to him. Anyway, the word got out in mid-November.
Around this time, he started building a group to share information, on this issue and also the FBI's COVID vaccination policy (a story for another time). They now number almost 400, and he still talks to them daily, going through intermediaries for some, he said, trying to protect their identities. Yes, he’s concerned about retaliation, especially after hearing from the chiefs of staff of two members of Congress who advised him to reconsider. “You should assume that people will come after you,” they said, though they were talking about social media, etc., not necessarily physical danger.
The day someone came into his office and casually asked, “Hey, you’re a whistleblower, right?,” he decided to just own up and say “Yeah.” As he told Bongino, “The fastest way to lose your job is lack of candor.”
Bongino made the point that what would’ve sounded wacko 10 years ago is now real. Kyle does worry, but he said that if senior levels retaliate against him, all it will do is prove what he’s saying. He noted that some of the supervisors’ names on his cases were the ones we know: Peter Strzok, Andy McCabe.
When Kyle and his colleagues sit around at lunch, he said, there are three topics: 1) “bitching about management,” 2) complaining about structure, and 3) “It’s not like it used to be. This is not what we signed up for.”
There was political pressure to do this stuff, he said, and “that’s when you get political hatchet jobs, and I didn’t sign up for that. And nobody I know signed up for that, either.”
“I think this country broke on January 6,” he said, “in so many different ways. The FBI has bought in, 100 percent, to the hype of January 6.” It’s the biggest investigation they’ve ever done, including 9/11. Kyle was given the leads that came out of those cases in the days afterwards. “I have friends who were gonna go down there,” he said, “...and just for logistical reasons didn’t make it.” So just because of that “mishap,” they’re able to retire safely instead of being put under investigation themselves. He said he knows two agents who simply attended the rally and have been suspended without pay and their security clearances revoked “because they showed up to hear the President of the United States.”
https://bongino.com/ep-1857-interview-with-fbi-whistleblower-kyle-seraphin-part-1
RELATED NEWS: In light of the above story, take a look at this opinion piece from JUDICIAL WATCH about the latest “open letter” from former government officials, this one signed by eight former U.S. defense secretaries and five former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The title: “To Support and Defend: Principles of CIVILIAN CONTROL and Best Practices of Civil-Military Relations.” [Emphasis ours.]
As JUDICIAL WATCH points out, “This letter comes five days on the heels of President Biden declaring, ‘MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law,’ and condemning half the American electorate as ‘represent[ing] an extremism that threatens the very foundation of our republic.’”
JW’s piece cautions us by citing the very order FBI Kyle Seraphin blew the whistle on, the one done in collaboration with the National School Board Association in which agents were supposed to investigate angry parents speaking up in school board meetings as if they were domestic terrorists. Is that the kind of “civilian control” our military wants to see?
One particular sentence in the “open letter” should leap off the page: “Politically, military professionals confront an extremely adverse environment characterized by the divisiveness of affective polarization that culminated in the first election in over a century when the peaceful transition of political power was disrupted and in doubt.”
Ah, we get it. Trump supporters are the problem. If it’s true that the FBI has bought in, 100 percent, to January 6, it appears the military has, too. See for yourself…
https://www.judicialwatch.org/
"Huckabee" Preview
Fluff up the couch pillows and get ready for a great new episode of “Huckabee” tonight on TBN! Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon will talk about the upcoming elections and Republican plans for getting America back on track. I’ll also welcome Ainsley Earhardt of “Fox & Friends” and actor/singer Robert Davi, who’s just added another page to his resume: director of the hot new movie, “My Son Hunter.” We’ll also bring you plenty of laughs, courtesy of comic/ventriloquist Willie Brown, plus the great music of chart-topping country star, Billy Dean.
All this and more kicks off tonight at 8 and 11 EST, 7 and 10 CST, and Sunday at 9 EST/8 CST on TBN. To find out how to watch TBN, from local cable and broadcast channels to streaming, visit https://www.huckabee.tv and click on “Channel Finder” on the top menu. You can stream previous episodes, highlights and online-only “Digital Exclusives,” including extended interviews, “In Case You Missed It” and “Facts of the Matter” segments, plus extra performances by our great musical and comedy guests and links to all their sites, at https://www.huckabee.tv. You can also find past shows, highlights and digital exclusives on YouTube and my Facebook page.
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