Who is the other official #whistleblowers identified, along with Thibault, as being "deeply involved" in launching DOJ's "false-electors scheme" criminal probe?
Richard Pilger, Director of the Election Crimes Branch, who has a history with Lois Lerner & IRS targeting.
Pilger contacted Lerner in 2013 asking to coordinate with the IRS on an idea from @SenWhitehouse for DOJ to "piece together false statement" cases against certain nonprofits.
3. You remember Lois Lerner.
She's the IRS official held in contempt of Congress.
And yet, @TheJusticeDept refused to even present the contempt citation to a Grand Jury, as required by statute.
6. ...and the press. A @nytimes article that "the IRS assisted in preparing" becomes the catalyst for @FBI to start Hoovering-up confidential tax filings (pun intended).
7. Then Pilger sets-up a meeting with Lerner to coordinate and discuss how to get access to nonprofit donor lists and tax info to do some "6103 fishing."
26 U.S.C. § 6103 is supposed to protect the confidentiality of your tax returns from political abuse.
8. Lerner and Pilger worked together "to arrange for the transmittal of 1.1 million pages of non-profit tax return information to the FBI."
9. Although @TheJusticeDept initially claimed the information was public, it later conceded that the data dump from the IRS to the FBI "did, in fact, contain confidential taxpayer information protected by federal law."
10. So there's the history on how Richard Pilger, DOJ's Director of the Election Crimes Branch, helped the FBI collect a "massive database" of confidential tax information from the IRS about Americans engaged in "lawful political speech," according to the Congressional report.
11. Pilger quit (temporarily) in a huff over his disagreement with Attorney General Barr about whether law enforcement agents should be able to interview witnesses and pursue leads about ballot fraud in the 2020 election without Pilger's permission.
12. NPR thought it was a big deal, and published his resignation email. But, he resumed his previous position in February 2021 under the Biden administration.
14. Under Pilger's leadership, the Election Crimes Branch asserted the authority to veto investigative steps to uncover ballot fraud, although it lacked any authority to do so.
In reality, "the AG gets to make that call."
15. Pilger resigned when Barr insisted that, actually, the AG is in charge. Then the press pretends (when it suits them) that the career bureaucrat is the one with the authority.
This is how the permanent bureaucracy dictates policy w/o accountability to your elected leadership.
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Our new court filing opposing @TheJusticeDept's effort to impose permanent secrecy on how it sought to hide the collection of my phone and email logs—along with the records a dozen other attorneys for oversight committees in Congress. ⬇️🧵 empowr.us/wp-content/upl…
1. Did @TheJusticeDept fail to alert the court the phone and email logs it sought belonged to Congressional oversight attorneys?
2. Did it also fail to alert the court that sought to renew the gag orders on @Google even after the leak probe that supposedly justified the subpoenas was closed?
How could gag orders possibly be justified long after the case is closed? It's reasonable to suspect it was to hide from the public the extent of its secret collection of Congressional communications records and the abuses committed in the process.
Unless the court unseals the records, you are not allowed to know.
Chairman Smith: “New documents provided by the whistleblowers show that Hunter Biden repeatedly lied to Congress in his February deposition to distance his involvement in what should be considered a clear scheme to enrich the Biden family.” gop-waysandmeans.house.gov/chairman-smith…
But the bottom line is that the @FBI is not following the law.
It built a bureaucratic box designed to force employees to resign by withholding their pay and any meaningful appeal rights until they have to choose between vindication and feeding their families.
Highlight 🧵for our motion to intervene and unseal @TheJusticeDept arguments for hiding its broad subpoenas for phone and email logs of attorneys advising congressional oversight committees. ⬇️
In 2017, when @TheJusticeDept and @FBI were resisting aggressive congressional oversight of FISA abuses, they secretly launched what looks like a broad retaliatory effort to target attorneys for their congressional oversight committees.
Using grand jury subpoenas and gag orders to companies like Google, they deployed a broad dragnet to covertly collect detailed logs of their overseers' patterns of communications.
NEW FOIA: Two weeks ago, we sought documents on the @FBI's #whistleblower retaliation against Marcus Allen by denying him the ability to work while suspended w/o pay—for the last two years
Now, we are seeking documents on @FBI's claim that his family is not allowed to accept charitable contributions from the public to meet basic living expenses.
🧵2. A successful @GiveSendGo campaign raised thousands of small-dollar donations to help the families of Marcus and other @FBI #whistleblowers like @GOBactual.
But, a politically motivated #WarOnWhistleblowers pressured @TheJusticeDept and @FBI to block the charity.
🧵3. Marcus sought independent legal advice and we have been pressing the @FBI to explain how and why prohibitions on gifts should apply to Marcus's family under these circumstances.
The @FBI has been slow to respond b/c delay benefits them while Marcus and his family deplete their savings. So, now we're seeking all their internal communications about the issue.