According to a new interim report released Friday by the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government – a title that might inspire Americans to look at the long history of Federal Government Weaponization going back to John Adams’ “Sedition Act” or George Washington marching on whiskey makers – the Biden FBI has used the so-called “Suspicious Activity Report system” foist on banks in order to skirt the Fourth Amendment and vacuum-up private financial data without a judge issuing public warrants that cited the targets or what was sought.
Brooke Singman writes for FoxNews:
“The committee said in the report that the FBI ‘has manipulated’ the SAR's filing process to treat financial institutions ‘as de facto arms of law enforcement,’ issuing ‘requests’ without legal process, that amount to demands for information related to certain persons or activities it considers ‘suspicious.'”
Concerned citizens likely heard the first proverbial alarms about this in January, when FoxNews Digital obtained a letter from the House Judiciary Committee outlining its members’ concern about the FBI targeting participants in the January 6, 2021 election protest and virtually anyone who might have engaged in peaceful market activity that, in ways the FBI viewed, might, somehow, be tied to the January 6 DC visitors or their relatively “conservative” politics.
At that time, Ms. Singman reported:
"Federal investigators asked banks to search and filter customer transactions by using terms like 'MAGA' and 'Trump' as part of an investigation into Jan. 6, warning that purchases of 'religious texts' could indicate 'extremism,' the House Judiciary Committee revealed Wednesday in a letter obtained by Fox News Digital.
Fox News Digital has learned the committee also obtained documents that indicate officials suggested that banks query transactions with keywords like Dick's Sporting Goods, Cabela's, Bass Pro Shops and more.”
Related: Rep. Boebert Introduces Bill To Defund Biden's 'Ministry of Truth' | MRCTV
Subsequent to that initial letter, the committee appears to have discovered many alarming facts, outlined in their new interim report, and covered by Ms. Singman, who now writes:
"’With narrow exception, federal law does not permit law enforcement to inquire into financial institutions’ customer information without some form of legal process,’ the report states. ‘The FBI circumvents this process by tipping off financial institutions to ‘suspicious’ individuals and encouraging these institutions to file a SAR — which does not require any legal process — and thereby provide federal law enforcement with access to confidential and highly sensitive information.’"
This revelation is important, and helps observers focus on the larger, longer-standing problems and pressures created by the feds and placed on banks.
Because the bulk of Americans have not stood up for the Fourth Amendment -- which requires any agency of any level of US government to obtain a publicly-viewable warrant from a judge who issues said warrant based on his or her determination of probable cause and who cites the person(s) being searched and the item(s) sought -- because of the US government already creating and expanding its Constitution-flouting “War on Drugs” and its concomitant Bank Secrecy Act and “Know Your Customer” reporting “rules” for banks, and, finally, because the US government and Federal Reserve have woven federal incentives like “Deposit Insurance” and Fed loans to banks, those banks have become easy targets for the FBI to “suggest” they engage in searches FOR the Bureau, allowing the FBI and its political pals in DC to obtain financial info on people without bothering to get warrants.
An important point to note here is that the House Judiciary Committee cites “legal process,” which is a smokescreen that hides the constitutionally required WARRANT, as mandated by the Fourth Amendment. This, itself, is revelatory, indicating that the committee, itself, does not stand up for a strict reading of the Constitution.
Thus, we see the members of the committee cite the aforementioned 1970 “Bank Secrecy Act” – something that, itself, skirts the Fourth Amendment by requiring financial institutions to report any cash transactions exceeding $10,000 to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), mandating that banks maintain records of certain transactions for at least five years, and claiming the power to impose “penalties” such as fines or even total closure.
People who think that such “requirements” in order to do business comport in any way with what the Founders envisioned might want to think again.
About the new, added, level of FBI abuse, this new utilization of the federal pressure it can exert, Singman writes:
“The committee said that, in doing so, the FBI ‘gets around the requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act,’ which specifies that it is a bank’s responsibility to file a SAR whenever it identifies a ‘suspicious transaction relevant to a possible violation of law or regulation.’
The committee acknowledged that ‘at least one financial institution requested legal process from the FBI for information it was seeking,’ but noted that ‘all too often the FBI appeared to receive no pushback.’"
Of course they received no pushback. The banks must comply, or they will run the risk of being closed or hit with massive fines.
The subcommittee has done us a great service by pointing out this wrongdoing, and they do offer a short reference to the Fourth Amendment, but they conveniently do not mention the word “warrant.” Instead, the committee allows observers to believe the mistaken notion that federal “policing” arms can simply conduct their own searches if the bureaus, themselves, deem that they have “probable cause” and they particularize the targets of their searches.
"In sum, by providing financial institutions with lists of people that it views as generally ‘suspicious’ on the front end, the FBI has turned this framework on its head and contravened the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of particularity and probable cause," the report states.”
The Fourth Amendment requires a warrant from a judge, not a bureau or its agents to offer their own definition of “probable cause” or “particularity,” and the Committee only makes passing reference to that standard.
“The committee added that their oversight of ‘financial surveillance’ had shed ‘new light on the decaying state of Americans’ financial privacy and the federal government’s widespread, warrantless surveillance programs.’"
But, in its response, the FBI shows itself to be much worse, far more disconnected from the Constitution.
Singman offers a portion of the bureau’s statement on the committee’s report:
"The FBI cannot open an investigation without evidence of a federal criminal violation or a threat to national security. We follow the law and the facts, and we never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment activity."
All of which, by focusing on “the law” rather than the Constitution, claim by implication that they feel it is perfectly appropriate to threaten banks via the Bank Secrecy Act and, as a result, continue to skirt the Fourth Amendment.
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