Prior to the FBI’s raid Monday on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, a string of whistleblower reports alleged that senior officials at the FBI exhibited a pattern of bias in their handling of politically sensitive investigations and also reclassified cases without justification to substantiate the White House’s public narratives on crime and extremism.

Beginning in late May, Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley called attention to then-Washington Field Office Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault over political bias concerns. Thibault expressed support for several “highly partisan” opinion articles on LinkedIn and made a series of politically charged social media posts, according to Grassley, who referred Thibault to the Office of Special Counsel to address the federal agent’s potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government officials from partisan political activity.

Concerns surrounding Thibault escalated in July, as whistleblowers came forward claiming Thibault’s partisan persuasion directly impacted his work at the bureau. While seeking approval from FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland to open an investigation into Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, Thibault withheld from them that his predicating evidence was based in “substantial part” on information from a “left-aligned organization,” according to Grassley’s office.

In a separate instance, whistleblowers claim Thibault worked to falsely discredit evidence against President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and prevent the bureau from investigating him.

“Whistleblowers have told my office that the FBI maintains many sources that have provided extensive information on Hunter Biden,” Grassley said in August. “That information allegedly involves potential criminal activity such as money laundering. According to allegations, the underlying information was verified and verifiable. However, instead of green-lighting investigative activity, the FBI shut it down.”

Grassley also pointed to Robert Pilger of the Election Crimes Branch, who he alleges was of vital aid to Thibault in his efforts to open the investigation into Trump. Former Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, the Iowa Republican noted, testified that “Pilger’s conduct frustrated the department’s ability to properly operate the Election Crimes Branch.”

Thibault, Grassley confirmed, was reassigned to an unspecified posting prior to the bureau securing a warrant to raid Trump’s estate. Sources briefed on the raid confirmed to Just the News that the agents came from the Washington Field Office, in which Thibault was serving until just days prior.

In late July, whistleblower reports emerged that bureau supervisors were pressuring agents to reclassify cases under the label of “domestic violent extremism” (DVE) without substantive justification in order to support White House narratives.

House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Wednesday outlined the issue in a letter to former Assistant Director of the FBI Counterterrorism Division and Executive Assistant Director of the National Security Branch Jill Sanborn seeking her testimony.

Citing remarks from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the pair noted that the Biden administration has ranked domestic violent extremism as the “greatest threat” to the United States. Whistleblower claims allege the FBI’s top brass has worked to pad the number of DVE cases to support that claim.

“Whistleblower disclosures made by multiple FBI employees from different field offices suggest that FBI agents are bolstering the number of cases of DVEs to satisfy their supervisors,” Jordan and Johnson wrote. “For example, one whistleblower explained that because agents are not finding enough DVE cases, they are encouraged and incentivized to reclassify cases as DVE cases even though there is minimal, circumstantial evidence to support the reclassification.

One of the senior officials allegedly applying improper pressure to manipulate data to support ideologically predetermined conclusions, the lawmakers notified Sanborn, was Sanborn herself.

“Another whistleblower stated that a field office Counterterrorism Assistant Special Agent in Charge and the FBI’s then Assistant Director of the Counterterrorism Division pressured agents to move cases into the DVE category to hit self-created performance metrics,” they wrote.

Sanborn is no longer with the FBI and is now an employee of Roku, Inc.

The FBI declined to comment on reported whistleblower allegations against Thibault and Sanborn. The bureau sent this statement on DVEs:

“The threat posed by domestic violence extremists is persistent, evolving, and deadly. The FBI’s authority to investigate a case as domestic terrorism requires the existence of a potential criminal federal violation, the unlawful use or threat of force or violence, and ideological motivation. The motivation behind threats or acts of force or violence in violation of federal criminal law is not always readily apparent, but is often discovered during the course of an investigation. If the FBI obtains evidence that someone was motivated by violent extremist ideology of any type, a case classification may be changed. In other cases, an investigation may indicate that an ideological motivation was not involved in a criminal act. In either case, the FBI will follow the facts as they develop, and classify our investigations accordingly and appropriately. The FBI’s goal is to detect and stop terrorist attacks. At the same time, we are committed to upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans and will never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity.”

The U.S. National Archives responded to a claim made by former President Donald Trump that former President Barack Obama had taken 30 million pages of documents from the White House.

Trump made the claim while defending himself after the FBI performed a search warrant at his residence in Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on Monday.

Ahead of the release of the warrant on Friday, Trump assailed the FBI and implied that Obama had committed far worse offenses.

“What happened to the 30 million pages of documents taken from the White House to Chicago by Barack Hussein Obama?” wrote Trump. “He refused to give them back! What is going on? This act was strongly at odds with NARA. Will they be breaking into Obama’s ‘mansion’ in Martha’s Vineyard?”

A statement from the National Archives addressed Trump’s claims.

“NARA moved approximately 30 million pages of unclassified records to a NARA facility in the Chicago area where they are maintained exclusively by NARA,” the archives wrote.

“Additionally, NARA maintains the classified Obama Presidential records in a NARA facility in the Washington, DC, area,” the statement continued. “As required by the PRA, former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores the Presidential records of his Administration.”

The warrant was unsealed by a U.S. federal judge and revealed what was taken by the FBI at Trump’s residence. The list of items taken from the residence lists 11 sets of classified documents, and several documents listed as “top secret.” The warrant also indicated that Trump was being investigated for a potential violation of the Espionage Act.

The search at Trump’s residence was conducted on Monday morning and was confirmed by the former president in a scathing statement he released later that evening. The former president’s supporters have accused the FBI of being politically motivated, but his critics hailed the development as being long overdue.

After facing criticism about the raid, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Thursday that he had signed off on the search warrant and said that the Department of Justice would ask a federal judge to unseal the order.

The former president then released a statement declaring that he would not fight the unsealing of the search warrant but would actively seek for it to be unsealed.

Defenders of the former president argue the power of the president to declassify any documents exonerates him, but critics say there is a process to declassify those documents that the former president didn’t appear to follow.

President Joe Biden’s (D) administration has reportedly launched an investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) over its handling of alleged scandals within the church.

The SBC is the largest protestant faith group in the United States and is among the most politically conservative as 64% of the church’s members are Republican, according to a report from Pew Research Center.

“The SBC Executive Committee recently became aware that the Department of Justice has initiated an investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention, and that the investigation will include multiple SBC entities,” the church’s executive leadership said in a statement. “Individually and collectively each SBC entity is resolved to fully and completely cooperate with the investigation.”

The news comes as the Biden administration authorized a raid on former President Donald Trump — a Republican who was Biden’s political opponent in the 2020 election — this week which has generated a significant amount of backlash over accusations of political targeting.

Democrats in Washington, D.C., are also pushing to add 87,000 new employees to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The IRS was forced to delete a job posting this week that stated applicants needed to be willing to “carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary.”

The SBC said that they were already working on addressing past alleged instances of abuse as evidenced by a recent investigation that they had completed.

“We recognize our reform efforts are not finished,” the church said. “In fact, those efforts are continuing this very moment as the recently announced Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force begins its work and as each entity has strengthened its efforts to protect against abuse.”

The letter was signed by Daniel L. Akin, President, SEBTS; Jason K. Allen, President, MBTS; Bart Barber, President, SBC; Bart Barber, President, SBC; James K. Dew, President, NOBTS; D. Hance Dilbeck Jr., President, Guidestone; Kevin Ezell, President, NAMB; Adam W. Greenway, President, SWETS; Jeff Iorg, President, Gateway Seminary; Brent Leatherwood, Acting President, ERLC; Ben Mandrell, President Lifeway; Willie D. McLaurin, Interim President, SBC EC; R. Albert Mohler Jr., President, SBTS; and Sandra Wisdom-Martin, Exec. Director, WMU.

Someone had to lead the first thrust against the Department of Justice, but it appears there were no takers except Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who showed why she was elected to her congressional seat in the first place. Greene is a fighter who will throw the grenades back whenever possible. She was sent to Washington to upset the established order, and she’s done that, even leading to Democrats stripping her of committee assignments over her views. I hope they enjoy the precedent they just set—when the Republicans retake the House, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should lose her committee assignments because we don’t like her.

Greene did what she could in the wake of the FBI ransacking of Mar-a-Lago. The residence of former President Donald Trump was swarmed by federal agents looking for any presidential documents throughout his presidency, along with alleged classified documents on-site. The search warrant is a stream of nonsense rehashing obstruction of justice allegations and violations of the Espionage Act. This raid’s crème de la crème involved the suspicion that Trump has classified nuclear secrets at his residence. The history of the FBI’s near-obsessive fixation with ensnaring Donald Trump in a legal tangle is too long to recollect here. From falsifying evidence to secure FISA warrants on Trump campaign officials to surveillance operations on the former president’s 2016 campaign proper—the campaign of overreach finally boiled over with this raid. Oh, and remember that Crossfire Hurricane, the spy operation on the Trump 2016 effort, was not spying but informants infiltrating the campaign under false pretenses, gleaning information from top officials, and then relaying that intelligence to a supervisory agent.

That’s not spying at all, no sir. The FBI and their media allies told me that.

Greene filed a motion to impeach Merrick Garland, which is symbolic but could be the first glimpse of the fight to come when the Republicans regain the majority in the House (via The Hill):

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) announced on Friday that she had filed articles of impeachment against Attorney General Merrick Garland as the FBI’s search of the former president’s Florida residence roils Republicans.

Greene’s resolution claims that the attorney general’s “personal approval to seek a search warrant for the raid on the home of the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, constitutes a blatant attempt to persecute a political opponent.”

[…]

The warrant showed that the FBI secured classified materials that were taken to Mar-a-Lago and suggests the former president is being investigated for possible violations of the Espionage Act.

Republicans, including Greene, have repeatedly accused the Justice Department of going after Trump for political reasons.

Her resolution claims that Garland’s “effort to unseal the search warrant for the home of former President Donald J. Trump constitutes an attempt to intimidate, harass, and potentially disqualify a political challenger to President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.”

Mike Davis, a former law clerk for Justice Neil Gorsuch, went on a lengthy thread on Twitter, noting that a) the president is the ultimate authority when it comes to declassifying sensitive records, b) he can’t be charged with mishandling classified information, and c) the statutes and regulations regarding classification do not apply to the office of the president which the Supreme Court affirmed in 1987. He also called on Garland to resign after this presser this week about the raid in which Davis accused the attorney general of defending the indefensible and called for his resignation.

Before Attorney General Merrick Garland's spin:

The President of the United States has both the constitutional (and statutory) power to declassify anything he wants.

If President Trump left the White House with classified records, they are declassified by his actions.

Period.

— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) August 11, 2022

All Presidents take records when they leave.

They don't pack their own boxes.

National Archives takes the position that almost everything is a "presidential record."

The federal government over-classifies almost everything.

— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) August 11, 2022

We've been all over this at @Article3Project — and defending President Trump consistently:https://t.co/18SCO6fG0C

— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) August 11, 2022

AG Merrick Garland attempted to defend the indefensible in his political press conference.

He left more questions than answers.

He's a former federal judge and prosecutor.

He should be ashamed of himself for politicizing the Justice Department so dangerously.

He must resign.

— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) August 11, 2022

The FBI’s use of confidential human sources is again a centerpiece of a second trial of two men accused of conspiring to kidnap the governor of Michigan.

A jury hung on federal conspiracy charges against Adam Fox and Barry Croft in April while acquitting two other men charged in the conspiracy. Two more men pleaded guilty to the charge before the first trial began in March.

After the government failed to secure a conviction on a single charge in April, federal prosecutors chose to pursue the case against Fox and Croft again. The FBI arrested the two men in October 2020 after a seven-month investigation into a conspiracy to kidnap and potentially assassinate Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

While the men made violent statements against Whitmer and concocted plots, sometimes extravagant, against the governor over her COVID regulations and other actions, the defendants’ attorneys have argued that their clients were just venting. The attorneys further argued that the investigation, which involved dozens of FBI agents and informants, amounted to entrapment.

Prosecutors have said that the defendants were part of a dangerous and radical group that took concrete steps to carry out kidnapping and potentially killing the governor. Those steps included several training camps and two trips to survey the governor’s vacation cottage.

Like the first trial, a key part of Fox and Croft’s legal defense is the behavior of the FBI’s confidential human sources. In testimony on Friday, defense attorneys focused on the relationships that two informants, Jenny Plunk and Steve Robeson, had with the defendants. Both informants smoked marijuana, a federal crime, with Croft. At one point, Plunk also shared a hotel room with the defendant, according to Yahoo News.

“Does the FBI have a policy about opposite-gender sources sleeping in the same room?” Croft attorney Joshua Blanchard asked FBI Special Agent Christopher Long. Croft then asked if Long had ever been a part of a case in which an informant was sleeping in the same room as someone under investigation. Long replied that he had not.

Long also faced questions over a text he sent to Plunk during the investigation when a group of militia members wanted to distance themselves from Croft. Long pushed Plunk to keep the group together: “You just have to find common ground … Show them the good ideas Croft brought, and show them what’s workable and not. A compromise may be needed on both sides,” he said according to FOX 17.

Robeson’s conflicts during the investigation ran so deep that he was later accused by the federal government of being a “double agent” for the alleged conspirators.

New York State Police identified the man who allegedly stabbed author Salman Rushdie during a speech in Chautauqua, New York, on Friday.

A spokesperson for the New York State Police identified the suspect as Hadi Matar, 24, who allegedly “jumped onto the stage” and stabbed Rushdie “at least once in the neck.”

Rushdie is undergoing surgery at an area hospital, according to the spokesperson.

Andrew Wylie, an agent for Rushdie told the New York Times that the author is on a ventilator and cannot speak.

“The news is not good,” Wylie said. “Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.”

Rushdie was stabbed multiple times before a speech at the Chautauqua Institution on Friday in an attack that also injured the moderator of the event.

“Rushdie suffered an apparent stab wound to the neck, and was transported by helicopter to an area hospital,” the New York State Police said in a statement following the attack. “His condition is not yet known. The interviewer suffered a minor head injury. A State Trooper assigned to the event immediately took the suspect into custody. The Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office assisted at the scene.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said during a press conference that the state trooper involved “stood up and saved” Rushdie’s life.

The Chautauqua Institution is a performing arts center and community from June through September that hosts major artists and celebrities like Rushdie related to the fields of visual arts, dance, theater and music.

It is an exclusive institution near Buffalo that carries entry fees ranging from $200-$2,600

Rushdie has lived under the threat of a fatwa on his life issued by Iran in 1989 after he published a book called “The Satanic Verses” that was banned in the country and considered blasphemous by some Muslims.

Iran has also offered over $3 million in reward for anyone who kills Rushdie.

Iran’s government has long since distanced itself from Khomeini’s decree, but anti-Rushdie sentiment lingered. In 2012, a semi-official Iranian religious foundation raised a bounty for Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million.

There’s more than one fashion plate in this famous family.

While appearing on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” music and style icon Madonna revealed her son David Banda, 16, is already out-dressing her.

“He can put on any outfit and look swag as you know what,” she told Fallon on Wednesday night.

“It’s really irritating. He wears my clothes and looks better in them. He can even wear a dress and look butch.”

The “Material Girl” wasn’t joking. Back in May, the mother-son duo matched in Adidas outfits at the WBA World Lightweight Championship at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Banda, who’s known for his gender-fluid fashion choices, stole the show in a bright red three-stripe dress from Adidas’ collaboration with Gucci. The teen paired the eye-catching look with a pair of yellow sunglasses, layered silver jewelry and black sneakers.

But David inherited more from his mother than just her fashion sense. The “Like a Virgin” singer went on to tell Fallon that her son, whom she adopted in 2006, is working on music of his own.

“He’s going to end up being one of your guests,” the 63-year-old gushed about Banda, saying he has “everything” needed to be a star.

Fallon agreed with the Queen of Pop, saying, “He’s got ‘it.’ He’s got magic. He’s funny, he’s charming, he’s athletic, he’s a good-looking dude.”

During the same interview, the hitmaker revealed the moment she believed her career was “over with” after accidentally flashing the crowd during her performance of “Like a Virgin” at the first-ever MTV Video Music Awards in 1984.

According to Madge, after her stiletto slipped off onstage, she dove to grab it — accidentally flipping up her dress and exposing her backside to the audience.

“Those were the days when you shouldn’t show your butt to have a career,” the singer joked. “Now it’s the opposite.”

Although her reps thought her career would crash after the incident, the superstar went on to become one of the bestselling female artists of all time.