In a determined effort to utilize the full force of the federal government against supporters of former President Donald Trump who were present at the Capitol during the unrest on January 6, 2021, FBI Director Christopher Wray sought to reassure Americans that his agency had "deployed every single tool at its disposal and its full arsenal of investigative resources" to target their families, friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens who exercised their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly.
"This ideologically motivated violence," Wray informed a Senate committee, "underscores the symbolic nature of the National Capital Region and the willingness of domestic violent extremists to travel to events in this area and violently engage law enforcement and their perceived adversaries."
As reported by The Blaze, Wray's characterization of 'domestic violent extremism' is a contrived narrative designed to portray the political right as terrorists and inflate FBI budgets.
The FBI's operations following the January 6 incident were aimed at intimidating the opposition into silence. Dissidents would continue to face prosecution, and anyone audacious enough to organize in the "National Capital Region" the operational center of former President Barack Obama would have their lives upended, much like the January 6 defendants. This political endeavor to dismantle the opposition coincided with the professional aspirations of Washington's entrenched bureaucracy.
As the U.S. started to reduce its presence in the Middle East, national security bureaucrats and their private sector partners saw the industry that had enriched them now under threat. Counterterrorism is a multibillion-dollar industry in the Beltway, providing sustenance to both Republican and Democratic constituencies, including the State Department, the FBI, other spy services, defense contractors, NGOs, and think tanks.
The so-called "insurrection" breathed new life into the industry, which effortlessly adapted to the new model. Counterterror experts recycled the same keywords radicalization, self-radicalization, lone wolves, etc. for what is essentially the same enterprise, except that instead of combating dangerous terrorists abroad, they are now targeting Trump supporters. Wray's term, domestic violent extremism, is a fabricated narrative designed to label the political right as terrorists and boost FBI budgets.
Former FBI agent Stephen Friend revealed the lack of legitimate domestic terror threats in their Daytona office. "There were no active cases that were any good. My first day in Daytona they gave me this case with these guys that just lived in the backwoods. They hadnt done anything. A tip came that these guys might be domestic terrorists, but there was nothing to it. And I wanted to close it, and then supervisors were insisting, No, we should get an undercover or an informant to go bump these guys and see if theyll sell us a weapon and then we could charge them with a gun crime. And I said, Thats entrapment, and Im not interested in doing that.
For the FBI, January 6 was a windfall. It allowed Wray and the FBI leadership to inflate the nearly nonexistent numbers of domestic terrorists to thousands to appease their political masters and strengthen their position in bureaucratic disputes. With a live-action example of domestic violent extremism in the nation's capital broadcasted globally, the FBI leadership had the leverage it needed to pressure Congress for more funding.
Friend explained the unusual handling of the January 6 cases. "They stood up a task force in Washington, D.C., which was doing the investigative actions. So these tips would come in by the hundreds and the thousands with the directive to field offices to open a case on these people. And we did it for every single person."
By instructing the field offices to open separate cases, the FBI transformed January 6 into thousands of cases, one for each investigative subject. Distributing these cases across the country is how the FBI manipulated its records to declare right-wing extremism as the No. 1 threat to U.S. national security. The reality is that most of the January 6 cases were not even domestic terrorism cases.
"All the January 6 cases are either one of two things," Friend said. "Theyre either 266, which means domestic terrorism, but the lions share of them are 176, which is a criminal charge, parading and rioting. But those riot charges are being investigated by joint terrorism task forces, and theyre being called domestic terrorist cases for statistical reasons. Theyre juking the numbers. But people dont know that. They think, January 6, oh, thats domestic terrorism. Theyre not, not even by the way the FBI treated it.
When Friend pointed out to his supervisors that they were violating FBI procedures, they turned on him. The once world-renowned law enforcement agency had morphed into a domestic version of a Soviet-style internal security service, an American Stasi.
Friend recalled, "They said that I was a simp for January 6, but I said, You have righteous cases here if somebody was engaging in violence, but as a matter of disclosure, you have to turn over Brady material [information favorable to the defendant] that you departed from your own rules. If the defense finds out about that, thats a bad black eye for us. What if the guy is a really bad dude and now you lost because you were so hell-bent on hitting your numbers that you violated your own protocols and now he walks?' And they said to me, Well, Steve, were not losing any of the cases.
Indeed, that was true. The Justice Department has secured convictions against nearly every January 6 defendant who has appeared before a Washington, D.C. jury. This is another reason why federal law enforcement made all its cases out of a jurisdiction that votes overwhelmingly Democratic. It remains unclear, however, when left-leaning citizens first decided to punish fellow Americans for voting differently.
Friend's concerns began to mount. When he was assigned to transport a January 6 suspect, he voiced his objections. "They were going to send a SWAT team, arrest him, and then my job was to take him from where we arrested him to court and drop him off. I said, This isnt fair, and this is dangerous. Were sending SWAT teams to guys houses that said theyd cooperate. The guy said 18 months ago that he would cooperate, and you have no contact with him for a year and a half, and now you send a SWAT team to his house? He has no expectation that youre coming. Theres lots of different ways you can bring him into custody. You guys are a hammer looking for a nail.
Friend's superiors couldn't comprehend his concern. "I said, You gave me training on identifying if I think that were doing things the wrong way, and Im throwing the flag, and they said, Yeah, you have an oath of office, you have training, but your real duty is to the FBI, and you follow orders and do what youre told. Whats your problem with it?' And I just said were supposed to be part of something bigger than that.
In 2022, Friend became an FBI whistleblower after making protected disclosures to Congress about the FBIs manipulative investigations of January 6 protesters. The once world-renowned law enforcement agency had transformed into an arm of the ruling party, a domestic version of a Soviet-style internal security service, an American Stasi serving not the people it was sworn to protect but the regime that funded and armed it. Thousands of Americans were ensnared in the nationwide January 6 dragnet, detained for months, then years, their charges being bulked out with years-long sentencing enhancements.
One such individual was Matthew Perna, a 37-year-old from Sharpsville, Pennsylvania. "Matt decided to go to the Stop the Steal rally because he wanted to be part of what he thought was going to be a historic celebration," said his aunt, Geri Perna. "He did not believe that the election results were going to be certified. And he felt that by joining this huge crowd, they would be heard, and something unprecedented would take place. And actually, something unprecedented did take place, and Matt got caught up in it.
Perna walked into the Capitol through open doors past five Capitol Police officers. He held his cell phone aloft to record the events. He walked around for less than 15 minutes, then left through a different door.
"He went back to his hotel room and did a live Facebook feed where he talked about the day," his aunt said. "He was upset that Pence certified the vote and Biden was named president. He said its not over yet. He meant that there will be investigations and that the truth will eventually come out.
Geri Perna was at home in Florida a week or so later and saw a Facebook post saying the FBI was looking for people who had attended the rally. "I clicked on the link, and I was shocked to see my nephews picture as one of the people that was wanted, she says. And I let my family know. My brother visited Matt at 6:00 that morning and Matt already knew about it. He honestly didnt think he did anything wrong. He didnt hurt anybody, didnt steal anything, he didnt break anything.
Perna told his attorney that he wanted it to end as quickly as possible. The attorney told him that the quickest way to make it end would be to plead guilty.
"He called the local FBI field office and explained who he was. The FBI made an appointment to visit him the following day. Two officers showed up to question him about what happened, Geri Perna told me. He told them everything. Matt did not have an attorney because he thought this was just a mistake. And the FBI left that day giving Matt the impression that they had everything they needed.
When she heard about the meeting with the FBI, she got on a plane to Pennsylvania to see Matt. We got an attorney, she says. The FBI called, and they said they had a few more questions, and they showed up with five more officers and thats when they arrested Matt. They searched his home, confiscated his laptop and all his phones. They took him to the local office in New Castle, and they booked him, then released him three hours later. They took the sweatshirt that he was wearing that day that said Make America Great Again as evidence, and that was when the nightmare began.
Pernas attorney told him that he had nothing to worry about. He had no record, and all they would do was give him a slap on the wrist. About 10 days later, Geri Perna told me, they added the obstruction charge to over 200 of the defendants at the time, and Matt was one of them. And thats when everything got ugly. And this just began a series of postponements and delays.
And Matt was constantly worried, what were they going to find? Perna said. And every time there was a hearing, it got canceled and then postponed indefinitely. Matts mental state began to deteriorate. He saw how many more people were being arrested and charged with very serious crimes and taken to the D.C. jail. Matt had guilty feelings because he was not in jail and other people were. Time was wearing on, the cases kept mounting, Christmas was approaching, and Matt had become a recluse in his home. He was always a healthy eater. He was now eating destructively. He just didnt care any more.
Perna told his attorney that he wanted it to end as quickly as possible. The attorney told him that the quickest way to make it end would be to plead guilty.
They werent offering to drop any of the charges, Geri Perna explained. The lawyer told them that he was looking at a six- to 12-month federal prison camp, with minimum security. Matt agreed to this. His late father suffered from Parkinsons disease, and they were going to use the fact that Matt was his caregiver to maybe get the sentence reduced to house arrest. Thats what they were hoping.
On December 17, 2021, Perna pleaded guilty to obstruction of Congress, a felony, and three related misdemeanor charges.
His sentencing hearing was scheduled for March 3 and a week before he called his attorney, and he said, I have a very bad feeling about my sentencing hearing being on March 3, she said. That is the day his mother died. And honestly, I dont believe any of these dates are coincidental. They are playing with these peoples minds. They are torturing them mentally, and Matt just did not want to have the hearing on that date.
His attorney told him that his hearing was postponed, but the prosecution was planning to ask the judge to add a sentencing enhancement, which could increase the sentence by many years.
We later learned that Matt told his friend that he was looking at nine years. That just broke, Matt, his aunt said. He called me sobbing on the phone. I could barely understand him. He could barely put a sentence together. He was stuttering. He was sobbing and he was apologizing over and over to me about how this impacted my friendships and how much guilt this poor kid felt for bringing our name into the newspapers. I kept telling him, Dont worry, Matt. Were going to tackle this. And you have to have faith. I think they had at this point convinced him that he deserved whatever they gave him. That Friday afternoon, early evening, my brother called me and told me to book a plane ticket because Matt had just hanged himself in his garage.
Matthew Pernas funeral was held March 2, 2022 in Hermitage, Pennsylvania. We had an honor guard that requested to be there for the viewing the night before and then for the funeral, his aunt said. They did a flag-folding ceremony, and they handed my brother a flag, and my brother was confused and he said, I dont understand. Matt wasnt in the military. Arent these funerals normally reserved for veterans? And they told him, In our eyes, Matt was a bigger patriot than most of the veterans weve ever stood guard over.
The partisans in the FBI had driven a patriot, a good man, to despair. We found out after he died about all of these amazing random acts of kindness that he did for people, she says. People showed up at the funeral and told us about all the things he did. There was a family with a bunch of kids whod been in a restaurant one day and Matt picked up the bill for them.
I made a phone call when I was going through Matts paperwork from his case. There was a phone number and a name in there for the prosecutor on Matts case, the one that was going to try to push this sentencing enhancement. I called the number and got the prosecutor, and I said, I want to know why the sentencing enhancement. And he says, Let me start off by saying that if Matthew just could have waited another month, I dont think the sentencing enhancement would have stuck with the judge anyway. And I said, Do you realize the threat of that enhancement and the jail time that went with it is the reason my nephew took his life? And he says, Well, there are many people in our department who felt very bad that Matt took his life. And I said, You and the many people in your department are responsible for Matt taking his life.
Geri Perna advocates on behalf of January 6 defendants and speaks with the families constantly. I dont know how many people have committed suicide over J6, she told me. Youre never going to know. Ive had three people reach out to me to tell me about friends or neighbors who killed themselves after they saw their picture on there. And youve never heard about them because they never got that far. But what it did to our family has changed us all. The direction this country has taken is unbelievable. And it doesnt seem to have a light at the end of the tunnel. We are a nation in distress.
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