In wake of Jan. 6 Capitol attack, woke FBI surveillance must be fixed

One of the most amazing stories that I’ve seen in a long time, about big government overreach, is something which the Judiciary Committee Chairman, Jim Jordan revealed, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working with the Bank of America, without any legal process, without any legal requirement, convinced the Bank of America to turn over an amazing volume of documents, including everybody who used a credit card in the Washington, D.C. area in the three or four days around January 6^th, 2021. And they were looking for certain key indicators, I want you to think about this, your Federal Bureau of Investigation wanted to know whether or not you went to a Pro Bass fishing store, they wanted to know whether you went to Dick’s athletic store, they wanted to know whether or not you bought a religious book, they wanted to know whether or not you used key code words like MAGA or Trump. This is your government trying to find information without any reference to – you haven’t committed a crime. I just [sic] absolutely in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. And they were just out trolling.

In fact, when the head of the FBI anti-terrorism group finally figured out what they’re doing, he said, get rid of all that stuff! We have no right as an agency to go out randomly looking for people to see later on whether or not they commit a crime, you’re only allowed to gather data if you already think they’re guilty of committing a crime. And they have to be tried, or you have to build a case.

But this is typical of what’s happened. As government has grown bigger and bigger, as it has spied more and more often, you may remember recently, there was [sic] entire project to determine whether or not Catholics were a terrorist group. And in particular, if you’re a Catholic who went for example to a Latin Mass, was this a sign that you were a threat to the country? And the FBI initially said, well, it was only one agency in Richmond, Virginia. Turned out that was not true, that there was a network across the whole country.

And it just makes you wonder, what has gone wrong with our intelligence agencies and our law enforcement agencies? And are they subject to the same kind of problems as Harvard and other places, in that they have become so Woke that they can’t figure out that freedom of religion, the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty? Following the rules of law, enforcing the Constitution, all of these things have to be kept into account. And I think it’s going to take some very serious hearings, probably some new laws, and some very serious I suspect firing of some people. I mean, I don’t particularly want somebody in the FBI who thinks that if you happen to be Catholic, that’s an indicator you could be a terrorist, or somebody who thinks if you go to a Pro Bass store, that doesn’t mean every bass fisherman in the country is potentially a terrorist, this is nuts. And yet, it’s exactly what we’ve gotten to. And it is a huge, huge problem. And I hope that the Congress has the courage to dig into it and clean it out.