also, i woke up today to having my twitter locked. someone reported me for a reply i sent to trump jr several months ago. i don't remember what he said specifically but my reply was simply "i hope you spend your final days in prison".
i had to delete the tweet to get out of jail.
yeah, i've got priors.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
also, i woke up today to having my twitter locked. someone reported me for a reply i sent to trump jr several months ago. i don't remember what he said specifically but my reply was simply "i hope you spend your final days in prison".
i had to delete the tweet to get out of jail.
yeah, i've got priors.
Lol now think of all the shit that Trump got away with that was way worse than that for years.
also, i woke up today to having my twitter locked. someone reported me for a reply i sent to trump jr several months ago. i don't remember what he said specifically but my reply was simply "i hope you spend your final days in prison".
i had to delete the tweet to get out of jail.
yeah, i've got priors.
Lol now think of all the shit that Trump got away with that was way worse than that for years.
i know, right? i mean, he threatened to used nukes on north korea, and nothing happened to him, haha.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
What kinds of pics and videos do you think reside in that safe? You know, of Moscow Mitchy Baby, Lindsey Flimsy Flip Flop Faloozy Graham, Kevin McHearty, et al? Any guesses? C'mon, there's got to be a reason for the sway and the shwiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing.
WASHINGTON — A network of conservative activists, aided by a British former spy, mounted a campaign during the Trump administration to discredit perceived enem...
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
I did it so you didn't have to. Thank you and you're welcome. But my gawd. I can't stop laughing.
I have just learned, through leaks in the mainstream media, that after being under investigation from the time I came down the escalator 5 ½ years ago, including the fake Russia Russia Russia Hoax, the 2 year, $48M, No Collusion Mueller Witch Hunt, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and others, that the Democrat New York Attorney General has “informed” my organization that their “investigation” is no longer just a civil matter but also potentially a “criminal” investigation working with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. There is nothing more corrupt than an investigation that is in desperate search of a crime. But, make no mistake, that is exactly what is happening here. The Attorney General of New York literally campaigned on prosecuting Donald Trump even before she knew anything about me. She said that if elected, she would use her office to look into “every aspect” of my real estate dealings. She swore that she would “definitely sue” me. She boasted on video that she would be, and I quote, “a real pain in the ass.” She declared, “just wait until I’m in the Attorney General’s office,” and, ”I’ve got my eyes on Trump Tower.” She also promised that, if elected, she would “join with law enforcement and other Attorney Generals across this nation in removing this President from office,” and, “It’s important that everyone understand that the days of Donald Trump are coming to an end.” The Attorney General made each of these statements, not after having had an opportunity to actually look at the facts, but BEFORE she was even elected, BEFORE she had seen even a shred of evidence. This is something that happens in failed third world countries, not the United States. If you can run for a prosecutor’s office pledging to take out your enemies, and be elected to that job by partisan voters who wish to enact political retribution, then we are no longer a free constitutional democracy. Likewise, the District Attorney’s office has been going after me for years based on a lying, discredited low life, who was not listened to or given credibility by other prosecutorial offices, and sentenced to 3 years in prison for lying and other events unrelated to me. These investigations have also been going on for years with members and associates of the Trump Organization being viciously attacked, harassed, and threatened, in order to say anything bad about the 45th President of the United States. This would include having to make up false stories. Numerous documents, all prepared by large and prestigious law and accounting firms, have been examined, and many hours of testimony have been taken from many people, some of whom I have not seen in years. These Democrat offices are consumed with this political and partisan Witch Hunt at a time when crime is up big in New York City, shootings are up 97%, murders are up 45%, a rate not seen in 40 years, drugs and criminals are pouring into our Country in record numbers from our now unprotected Southern Border, and people are fleeing New York for other much safer locations to live. But the District Attorney and Attorney General are possessed, at an unprecedented level, with destroying the political fortunes of President Donald J. Trump and the almost 75 million people who voted for him, by far the highest number ever received by a sitting President. That is what these investigations are all about—a continuation of the greatest political Witch Hunt in the history of the United States. Working in conjunction with Washington, these Democrats want to silence and cancel millions of voters because they don’t want “Trump” to run again. As people are being killed on the sidewalks of New York at an unprecedented rate, as drugs and crime of all kinds are flowing through New York City at record levels, with absolutely nothing being done about it, all they care about is taking down Trump. Our movement, which started with the Great Election Win of 2016, is perhaps the biggest and most powerful in the history of our Country. But the Democrats want to cancel the Make America Great Again movement, not by Making America First, but by Making America Last. No President has been treated the way I have. With all of the crime and corruption you read about with others, nothing happens, they only go after Donald Trump. After prosecutorial efforts the likes of which nobody has ever seen before, they failed to stop me in Washington, so they turned it over to New York to do their dirty work. This is what I have been going through for years. It’s a very sad and dangerous tale for our Country, but it is what it is, and we will overcome together. I have built a great company, employed thousands of people, and all I do is get unfairly attacked and abused by a corrupt political system. It would be so wonderful if the effort used against President Donald J. Trump, who lowered taxes and regulations, rebuilt our military, took care of our Veterans, created Space Force, fixed our border, produced our vaccine in record-setting time (years ahead of what was anticipated), and made our Country great and respected again, and so much more, would be focused on the ever more dangerous sidewalks and streets of New York. If these prosecutors focused on real issues, crime would be obliterated, and New York would be great and free again!
I did it so you didn't have to. Thank you and you're welcome. But my gawd. I can't stop laughing.
I have just learned, through leaks in the mainstream media, that after being under investigation from the time I came down the escalator 5 ½ years ago, including the fake Russia Russia Russia Hoax, the 2 year, $48M, No Collusion Mueller Witch Hunt, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and others, that the Democrat New York Attorney General has “informed” my organization that their “investigation” is no longer just a civil matter but also potentially a “criminal” investigation working with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. There is nothing more corrupt than an investigation that is in desperate search of a crime. But, make no mistake, that is exactly what is happening here. The Attorney General of New York literally campaigned on prosecuting Donald Trump even before she knew anything about me. She said that if elected, she would use her office to look into “every aspect” of my real estate dealings. She swore that she would “definitely sue” me. She boasted on video that she would be, and I quote, “a real pain in the ass.” She declared, “just wait until I’m in the Attorney General’s office,” and, ”I’ve got my eyes on Trump Tower.” She also promised that, if elected, she would “join with law enforcement and other Attorney Generals across this nation in removing this President from office,” and, “It’s important that everyone understand that the days of Donald Trump are coming to an end.” The Attorney General made each of these statements, not after having had an opportunity to actually look at the facts, but BEFORE she was even elected, BEFORE she had seen even a shred of evidence. This is something that happens in failed third world countries, not the United States. If you can run for a prosecutor’s office pledging to take out your enemies, and be elected to that job by partisan voters who wish to enact political retribution, then we are no longer a free constitutional democracy. Likewise, the District Attorney’s office has been going after me for years based on a lying, discredited low life, who was not listened to or given credibility by other prosecutorial offices, and sentenced to 3 years in prison for lying and other events unrelated to me. These investigations have also been going on for years with members and associates of the Trump Organization being viciously attacked, harassed, and threatened, in order to say anything bad about the 45th President of the United States. This would include having to make up false stories. Numerous documents, all prepared by large and prestigious law and accounting firms, have been examined, and many hours of testimony have been taken from many people, some of whom I have not seen in years. These Democrat offices are consumed with this political and partisan Witch Hunt at a time when crime is up big in New York City, shootings are up 97%, murders are up 45%, a rate not seen in 40 years, drugs and criminals are pouring into our Country in record numbers from our now unprotected Southern Border, and people are fleeing New York for other much safer locations to live. But the District Attorney and Attorney General are possessed, at an unprecedented level, with destroying the political fortunes of President Donald J. Trump and the almost 75 million people who voted for him, by far the highest number ever received by a sitting President. That is what these investigations are all about—a continuation of the greatest political Witch Hunt in the history of the United States. Working in conjunction with Washington, these Democrats want to silence and cancel millions of voters because they don’t want “Trump” to run again. As people are being killed on the sidewalks of New York at an unprecedented rate, as drugs and crime of all kinds are flowing through New York City at record levels, with absolutely nothing being done about it, all they care about is taking down Trump. Our movement, which started with the Great Election Win of 2016, is perhaps the biggest and most powerful in the history of our Country. But the Democrats want to cancel the Make America Great Again movement, not by Making America First, but by Making America Last. No President has been treated the way I have. With all of the crime and corruption you read about with others, nothing happens, they only go after Donald Trump. After prosecutorial efforts the likes of which nobody has ever seen before, they failed to stop me in Washington, so they turned it over to New York to do their dirty work. This is what I have been going through for years. It’s a very sad and dangerous tale for our Country, but it is what it is, and we will overcome together. I have built a great company, employed thousands of people, and all I do is get unfairly attacked and abused by a corrupt political system. It would be so wonderful if the effort used against President Donald J. Trump, who lowered taxes and regulations, rebuilt our military, took care of our Veterans, created Space Force, fixed our border, produced our vaccine in record-setting time (years ahead of what was anticipated), and made our Country great and respected again, and so much more, would be focused on the ever more dangerous sidewalks and streets of New York. If these prosecutors focused on real issues, crime would be obliterated, and New York would be great and free again!
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Since leaving office, Trump has charged the Secret Service more than $40,000 to use space at Mar-a-Lago
By David A. Fahrenthold and Josh Dawsey
May 21 at 5:30 AM ET Former president Donald Trump charged the Secret Service more than $40,000 this spring for rooms that Trump’s own protective detail used while guarding him at his Mar-a-Lago Club, according to federal spending records. The records show that Trump’s club charged the Secret Service $396.15 every night starting Jan. 20, the day he left the White House and moved full-time into his Palm Beach, Fla., club. [Receipts: Charges to Secret Service from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club] Those charges, ultimately paid by taxpayers, continued until at least April 30, the spending records show, for a total of $40,011.15. The charges were for a single room used as a workspace by Secret Service agents, according to one person familiar with the payments. The Secret Service released spending records up to April 30. Trump stayed at Mar-a-Lago more than a week beyond that before moving to his Bedminster, N.J., club for the summer. It was unclear whether he continued to charge the Secret Service into May. Records documenting the charges were released by the Secret Service in response to a public-records request from The Washington Post. They are the first evidence that Trump has continued a controversial and lucrative practice — charging rent to his own protectors — into his post-presidency. While he was president, Trump’s properties charged the U.S. government more than $2.5 million, often so that Secret Service agents could use rooms near him. The Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment. Trump’s post-presidential office and the Secret Service both declined to comment. The rate Trump billed the Secret Service at his Florida resort is the same as the $396.15-per-room rate he charged as president. Agents this spring rented fewer rooms at a time than they had when Trump visited Mar-a-Lago as president; back then, records show, they rented four or five rooms at the club for every night Trump was there. But costs for the single room in recent months added up because Trump was at Mar-a-Lago every night, not just on weekends and vacations. The end result: The Secret Service paid Mar-a-Lago nearly as much in the spring of 2021 as it had during comparable periods in 2018 or 2019. Trump’s decision to charge the Secret Service rent appears unusual — both for a sitting president and now for a former one. Former presidents get Secret Service protection for life. But last year The Washington Post spoke to historians and representatives for recent presidents and could not find another example of a president charging the Secret Service rent on this scale. The closest parallel to Trump was the man who succeeded him: Joe Biden. While he was protected as vice president, Biden charged the Secret Service $2,200 per month to use a cottage on his property in Delaware. In total, Biden received $171,600 between 2011 and 2017. Biden has not charged the Secret Service rent since becoming president in January, a White House spokesman said. Historians said they were surprised Trump was still charging the Secret Service, considering that ex-presidents are entitled to an array of other taxpayer-funded benefits, including paid staff and a $219,000-per-year pension. Trump, by his own account, is a billionaire. On his personal blog this week, he celebrated the $1.2 billion refinancing of a San Francisco office building in which Trump’s company owns a 30 percent share. That deal could bring Trump’s company a massive payout. “It’s tacky,” Jeffrey A. Engel, the director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, said of Trump’s new charges. “Just because you can make a buck doesn’t mean you should make a buck. And especially when you have a situation where you’re an ex-president. You’re not going to starve.” Trump, like other past presidents, is entitled to taxpayer funding for office space. A General Services Administration representative said this month that the government had not paid Mar-a-Lago any rent for Trump’s office space there. “There is no agreement to pay rent at Mar-a-Lago for any space the former president is using at the club,” the representative said. Most Secret Service agents who guard Trump at Mar-a-Lago stay elsewhere. But security experts say that the agency still needs one or more spaces near the protectee for meetings, breaks, communications equipment and supervisors. At Mar-a-Lago, that means renting from Trump. Since fall 2017, Mar-a-Lago has charged the agency the same rate of $396.15 per night. On its invoices to the Secret Service, Mar-a-Lago wrote that this rate was “billed at cost.” The Trump Organization has not explained how it chose that rate, down to the penny. The figure is far above the $205 spending limit that has applied to most government employees looking for rooms in Palm Beach County this spring. The Secret Service is allowed to spend more than the limit if its protective mission requires. Trump is expected to remain at Bedminster for most of the summer, following his seasonal pattern. While Trump was president, the Bedminster club also charged the Secret Service for a four-room cottage used by the agents guarding Trump. The rate there was $567 per night. It is unclear whether those charges have resumed, now that Trump has returned. Both the Secret Service and the Trump Organization declined to say.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Who are these “many” people? Moscow Mitchy Baby, Lindsey Flimsy Flip Flop Faloozy Graham, Marj Three Names, Tom I’m A Warrior Hear Me Roar (he needs to get laid by the way), Kevin McCarty Horse Before the Cart, Matt Getts Off? Many people?
Embarrassed yet?
Donald J. Trump
6:17pm May 21, 2021
Many people have asked about the beautiful Boeing 757 that became so iconic during the Trump rallies. It was effectively kept in storage in Upstate New York in that I was not allowed to use it during my presidency. It is now being fully restored and updated and will be put back into service sometime prior to the end of the year. It will soon be brought to a Louisiana service facility for the completion of work, inspection and updating of Rolls-Royce engines, and a brand new paint job. When completed, it will be better than ever, and again used at upcoming rallies!
An
obscure security unit tasked with protecting the Commerce Department’s
officials and facilities has evolved into something more akin to a
counterintelligence operation that collected information on hundreds of
people inside and outside the department, a Washington Post examination
found.
The Investigations and Threat Management Service(ITMS)
covertly searched employees’ offices at night, ran broad keyword
searches of their emails trying to surface signs of foreign influence
and scoured Americans’ social media for critical comments about the
census, according to documents and interviews with five former
investigators.
In
one instance, the unit opened a case on a 68-year-old retiree in
Florida who tweeted that the census, which is run by the Commerce
Department, would be manipulated “to benefit the Trump Party!” records
show.
In
another example, the unit searched Commerce servers for particular
Chinese words, documents show. The search resulted in the monitoring of
many Asian American employees over benign correspondence, according to
two former investigators.
The
office “has been allowed to operate far outside the bounds of federal
law enforcement norms and has created an environment of paranoia and
retaliation at the Department,” John Costello, a former deputy assistant
secretary of intelligence and security at Commerce in the Trump
administration, said in a statement for this story.
ITMS
“rests on questionable legal authority and has suffered from poor
management and lack of sufficient legal and managerial oversight for
much of its existence,” Costello said.
Concerns
have long simmered internally about the Commerce unit, which was led
for more than a decade by career supervisor George D. Lee.
The unit’s tactics appear as if “someone watched too many ‘Mission Impossible’ movies,” said Bruce Ridlen, a former supervisor.
Investigators
lodged complaints with supervisors, and the department’s internal
watchdog launched multiple inquiries, documents show. In an internal
memo laying out his concerns about the unit, Costello described an
inspector general’s investigation that he said had found it had no legal
authority to conduct criminal investigations.
But
the unit has managed to keep a low public profile until now, while
pursuing investigations into “counterintelligence, transnational crime
and counterterrorism,” as it described its activities in a 2018 budget
document submitted to Congress.
Incoming
Commerce leaders from the Biden administration ordered ITMS to pause
all criminal investigations on March 10, and on May 13 ordered the
suspension of all activities after preliminary results of an ongoing
review, according to a statement issued by department spokeswoman
Brittany Caplin.
The suspension came two days after The Post presented its findings about the unit to the department and sought interviews.
“The
current Commerce Department leadership team takes this issue
seriously,” the statement said. “The Department expects that at the end
of the review it can and will implement a comprehensive solution to the
issues raised.”
The minority-party staffof the Senate Commerce Committee,under Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.),has
been investigating ITMS’s activities since early this year, records
show. More than a dozen whistleblowers have given closed-door
statements, among them former investigators who allege that the office
routinely overstepped its legal limits and has operated without
meaningful oversight from within Commerce since the mid-2000s.
Costello privately proposed dissolving ITMS in October after he conducted an internal review, according to a report he wrote. Costello resigned after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, before the department could acton his recommendation.
An expanding portfolio
Former
investigators, supervisors and government contractors who have worked
with the unit in recent years said it operates largely on the whims of
Lee, 48, who oversaw an expansion of the unit’s reach.
As
of last September, ITMS had 17 employees and a $5.38 million budget,
Caplin, the department spokeswoman, said. The entire Commerce Department
had 54,000 employees and a budget of $15.2 billion at the same time.
Lee
did not respond to multiple requests for comment conveyed through
numbers listed for his home and cellphones, an email to his Commerce
account and a letter sent to a home address. He also did not reply to an
interview requestsubmitted to the department.
Caplin
said on May 15 that Lee is “not currently supervising the work or the
employees of ITMS, and is not performing any investigatory duties.”
Before joining Commerce in 2004, Lee worked as an officer with thefederal
police force that protects the U.S. Supreme Court and before that as an
investigator at a medical center in North Carolina, internal records
show.
A
year after his arrival, Lee appeared to acknowledge that special agents
within the department had limited law enforcement powers. In a memo
obtained by The Post, Lee wrote to his supervisors in the Office of
Security that the office’s agents “may lack legal authority to conduct
an appreciable portion of its investigative efforts, particularly
criminal investigations.”
He
cited agreements with the U.S. Marshals Service, which grants law
enforcement powers to Commerce agents for specific purposes and under
certain limitations.
The
so-called special deputations for the Commerce agents are “for
protection of the Secretary of Commerce,” James Stossel, a spokesman for
the Marshals Service, wrote in a statement to The Post. He declined to
elaborate on the limitations of that authority but added that it is “the
responsibility of the requesting agency to supervise these special
Deputy U.S. Marshals.”
In hisinternal assessment last fall, Costello cited the Commerce Department’s Office of the Inspector General:
The inspector general’s office declined to comment. The Post was not able to obtain a copy of the inspector general’s report.
It is not clear preciselywhen
Lee expanded the unit’s portfolio. But a February 2014 investigative
guide for the office, then called the Investigations and Threat
Division, contains a section entitled “counterintelligence inquiries”
that instructs agents on “baseline steps,” including determining whether
there are “indicators of tradecraft.”
Former
investigators said that in recent years the unit operated under a broad
interpretation of its powers and its investigative purview.
It
looked for suspicious foreign connections among employees and
surreptitiously monitored employees’ communications on work computers
and phones, they said.
It
also opened cases on people who wrote nonthreatening letters to the
commerce secretary, documents show. One was a former federal lawmaker.
Jim
Bates, a Democratic California congressman from 1983 to 1991, wrote to
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Nov. 22, 2019, alerting him to the
work of a nonprofit organization that Bates had founded.
In
the handwritten letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, Bates
wrote that his group was working to promote the idea that the electoral
college was unconstitutional because it was based on a census count
that included “noncitizens.”
ITMS
initiated a case on Bates and it remained open as of May 21, according
to a current Commerce employee familiar with the officewho spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive investigative matters.
“I
think it’s absurd,” Bates said after learning about the probe. “They’re
bureaucrats who create these things because they don’t really deal with
substantive issues.”
Bates said he never received a response to his letter.
ITMS
also launched probes starting in April 2020 into the authors of dozens
of social media posts that questioned the integrity or fairness of the
census, according to internal records.The cases were billed as an effort to detect any “organized disinformation campaign,”according to a memo the unit sent to the FBI.
Dozens
of postings were compiled in a spreadsheet called the Social Media
Tracker, internal records show. The spreadsheet shows that investigators
completed “high-side” checks — a nickname for searches on secure
intelligence databases — on dozens of accounts holders.
The
former supervisor, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to
discuss sensitive investigations, said investigators identified the
posts through keyword searches on social media platforms, with no other
indication of an organized attempt to sow false or misleading
information.
The posts flagged for investigation cross the political spectrum, documents show.
Lee
conveyed the information to the Foreign Influence Task Force at the FBI
and the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of
Homeland Security, according to a lettersent by himto the FBI and obtained by The Post.
The
FBI declined to look into the posts, saying they were protected free
speech, according to the former supervisor. An FBI spokesperson declined
to comment.
Ridlen, a supervisor in the unit hired in March 2020, was alarmed by the inquiries intofree-speech activities, he said. He quit the job in late October.
“I
chose to resign from my position with ITMS after it became clear there
was no authority to perform law enforcement functions,” said Ridlen, who
briefly took over as acting director in August. “There were no policies
in place to outline standards of conduct or to establish parameters for
investigative activities, which led to investigative inquiries of U.S.
persons over protected free speech found on several social media
platforms.”
Multiple former investigators saidLeewould rarely close cases, even if evidence of wrongdoing did not materialize.
As
of Oct. 23, the office had 1,183 open cases, nearly half dating to 2018
or earlier and the large majority still in preliminary stages, an
internal document shows.
David
Harris, chief executive of ADV, a government contractor that supplied
about a dozen intelligence analysts and support personnel to the office
from 2018 to 2020, called the unit “basically a collector of
information.”
“No one could articulate its mission,” he said. “It was whatever direction the wind was blowing that day.”
Harris also told The Post that the unit’s leadership was “disorganized and abusive.”
Over
the years, investigators had warned Commerce leaders about the unit and
Lee’s management. On his last day on the job after 2½ years working
with Lee, former investigator Christopher Cheung emailed then-secretary
Ross with allegations about the unit.
“Mr.
Lee has discriminately targeted ethnic Chinese foreign guests/visitors
and employees as well as other ethnic personnel,” Cheung wrote on June
21, 2019. “When investigations on these ethnic personnel are
inconclusive, Mr. Lee refuses to allow agents to close the cases.”
Cheung also alleged that Lee had ordered illegal searches on employee work spaces in addition to a range of other improprieties.
A
spokesperson for Ross said he did not recall the email from Cheung or
any investigations opened into people who wrote letters to him.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
By July 2020, Commerce leaders realized they had to rein in the unit, documents show.
In
a meeting that month, Costello told the agency’s assistant secretary
and chief financial officer that he had “received numerous credible
complaints against George Lee, his investigators, and the ITMS
investigation writ-large,” according to a slide presentation prepared
for the meeting.
“Most
significantly, George Lee’s management has made it difficult or
impossible for a supervisor to conduct meaningful oversight and
decision-making over ITMS investigations,” he wrote. “These problems
have persisted despite numerous attempts at correction by supervisors.”
In subsequent months, Costello invited former investigators to lay out their concerns in memosto him that further revealed details of the office’s past operations, some of which were obtained by The Post.
Martin C. Kehoe, one of the former investigators, wrote:
Former
investigator Martin C. Kehoe wrote a memo to then-Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Commerce John Costello last September, alleging
long-standing mismanagement and improprieties at ITMS.
Cheung
also wrote a memo to Costello, alleging that during investigations into
suspicious foreign visitors to Commerce facilities, Lee “fosters a
mind-set that all DOC employees that come into contact with that foreign
visitor and are of the same ethnicity are now suspects as well.”
Kehoe
and Cheung confirmed the authenticity of the memos obtained by The
Post. They are among three agents who formally filed complaints about
Lee and the office climate to the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, according to copies of their complaints.
Lee
also ordered two agents to conduct broad searches on department
servers, scanning Commerce employees’ emails for certain
Chinese-language keywords, Cheung’s memo to Costello alleged. The
keywords are listed in a document that characterizes them as words that
appear in the names of talent recruitment programs sponsored by the
Chinese government, a copy of the list shows.
The
search brought back the names of predominantly Asian American
employees, and investigators began monitoring the employees’ emails,
said two former agents directly involved in some of the searches who
spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the operation.
Cheung also alleged in the memo to Costellothat
the unit improperly searched employees’ storage areas, including in
2018 when the lock was picked on a cabinet used by a worker at Commerce
headquarters.
The
unit’s equipment for covert searches, kept in duffel bags, included
latex gloves, shoe coverings, hairnets, balaclava-style face masks and a
lock-picking set, according to two former investigators and a current
Commerce employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss
unit operations.
During
some covert searches, investigators wore the face masks and avoided or
blocked the view of security cameras, former investigators said on the
condition of anonymity to discuss the office’s operations.
“It was so we didn’t leave a trace,” said one of the former investigators.
Ridlen,
the former supervisor, said Lee “favored cloak-and-dagger methods of
obtaining evidence over proven investigative techniques practiced by all
other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies I have worked
with in the last two decades.”
Investigators
also complained that Lee compelled new hires to attend a training
program he personally designed in the Shenandoah Mountains in Virginia,
according to documents and interviews with investigators who attended.
For surveillance training, Lee made investigators trail him as he drove
erratically at high speeds on mountain roads, investigators said.
It was “the most reckless and unsafe training I have ever attended,” Cheung wrote to Costelloin a memo.
“It
was clear that SAC [special agent in charge] Lee had limited real world
surveillance experience and it felt as if he learned it all by reading a
book on it the day prior to class,” Kehoe wrote in a memo.
Despite opening more than 1,000 cases, few resulted in arrests or criminal charges, investigators said. And a casethat prominently cited work by the unit and drew national attention was quickly dropped.
Sherry
Chen, a Chinese American hydrologist for a National Weather Service
office in Wilmington, Ohio, was arrested by the FBI in 2014 on suspicion
that she was providing information about the nation’s dams to a
high-ranking Chinese official who was also a former classmate. Lee and
the Investigations and Threat Management Division were credited in a
Justice Department news release.
The
case was dropped within months by federal prosecutors in Ohio who
provided no explanation in court filings. Chen has since filed a civil
lawsuit against former investigators who interrogated her, as well as
others, alleging their conduct amounted to false arrest and malicious
prosecution. In court filings, the defendantshave denied Chen’s
claims, maintaining that she accessed a restricted government database
using a colleague’s password and lied to federal agents.
She
filed suit in 2019 in Cincinnati at the U.S. District Court for the
Southern District of Ohio. The lawsuit is still in its preliminary
stages.
Chen
said in the lawsuit that the two agents who interrogated her “ignored
exculpatory evidence throughout the interview, reached false conclusions
without even a cursory investigation of underlying facts, and reported
false results reflecting their racial and ethnic bias.”
ITMS in its more recent monitoring of social media has provoked similar outrage.
The Florida retiree was alarmed to learn from a Post reporter that his tweet had drawn the Commerce Department’s scrutiny:
An
excerpt of an ITMS letter sent to the FBI cites social media posts
critical of the census, including one by a 68-year-old retiree in
Florida.
He has just over 100 followers.
“I’m
not part of any disinformation campaign. I’m just an American,” the
retiree said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear he would
be harassed for his political views. “I just expressed my opinion
online.”
Shawn
Boburg is a reporter for The Washington Post's investigative unit. He
was previously an accountability reporter for the Metro section. He
joined The Post in22015
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Comments
-EV 8/14/93
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"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
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i had to delete the tweet to get out of jail.
yeah, i've got priors.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Erik Prince recruited spy to run honeypot traps against Trump enemies (msn.com)
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WASHINGTON — A network of conservative activists, aided by a British former spy, mounted a campaign during the Trump administration to discredit perceived enem...
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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Gotta hit rock bottom.....
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Clearly we are Bipolar Nation. And obviously self-defeating as seen in your [fixed] decent-president begets loser-president scenario as show above.
I have just learned, through leaks in the mainstream media, that after being under investigation from the time I came down the escalator 5 ½ years ago, including the fake Russia Russia Russia Hoax, the 2 year, $48M, No Collusion Mueller Witch Hunt, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and others, that the Democrat New York Attorney General has “informed” my organization that their “investigation” is no longer just a civil matter but also potentially a “criminal” investigation working with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. There is nothing more corrupt than an investigation that is in desperate search of a crime. But, make no mistake, that is exactly what is happening here. The Attorney General of New York literally campaigned on prosecuting Donald Trump even before she knew anything about me. She said that if elected, she would use her office to look into “every aspect” of my real estate dealings. She swore that she would “definitely sue” me. She boasted on video that she would be, and I quote, “a real pain in the ass.” She declared, “just wait until I’m in the Attorney General’s office,” and, ”I’ve got my eyes on Trump Tower.” She also promised that, if elected, she would “join with law enforcement and other Attorney Generals across this nation in removing this President from office,” and, “It’s important that everyone understand that the days of Donald Trump are coming to an end.” The Attorney General made each of these statements, not after having had an opportunity to actually look at the facts, but BEFORE she was even elected, BEFORE she had seen even a shred of evidence. This is something that happens in failed third world countries, not the United States. If you can run for a prosecutor’s office pledging to take out your enemies, and be elected to that job by partisan voters who wish to enact political retribution, then we are no longer a free constitutional democracy. Likewise, the District Attorney’s office has been going after me for years based on a lying, discredited low life, who was not listened to or given credibility by other prosecutorial offices, and sentenced to 3 years in prison for lying and other events unrelated to me. These investigations have also been going on for years with members and associates of the Trump Organization being viciously attacked, harassed, and threatened, in order to say anything bad about the 45th President of the United States. This would include having to make up false stories. Numerous documents, all prepared by large and prestigious law and accounting firms, have been examined, and many hours of testimony have been taken from many people, some of whom I have not seen in years. These Democrat offices are consumed with this political and partisan Witch Hunt at a time when crime is up big in New York City, shootings are up 97%, murders are up 45%, a rate not seen in 40 years, drugs and criminals are pouring into our Country in record numbers from our now unprotected Southern Border, and people are fleeing New York for other much safer locations to live. But the District Attorney and Attorney General are possessed, at an unprecedented level, with destroying the political fortunes of President Donald J. Trump and the almost 75 million people who voted for him, by far the highest number ever received by a sitting President. That is what these investigations are all about—a continuation of the greatest political Witch Hunt in the history of the United States. Working in conjunction with Washington, these Democrats want to silence and cancel millions of voters because they don’t want “Trump” to run again. As people are being killed on the sidewalks of New York at an unprecedented rate, as drugs and crime of all kinds are flowing through New York City at record levels, with absolutely nothing being done about it, all they care about is taking down Trump. Our movement, which started with the Great Election Win of 2016, is perhaps the biggest and most powerful in the history of our Country. But the Democrats want to cancel the Make America Great Again movement, not by Making America First, but by Making America Last. No President has been treated the way I have. With all of the crime and corruption you read about with others, nothing happens, they only go after Donald Trump. After prosecutorial efforts the likes of which nobody has ever seen before, they failed to stop me in Washington, so they turned it over to New York to do their dirty work. This is what I have been going through for years. It’s a very sad and dangerous tale for our Country, but it is what it is, and we will overcome together. I have built a great company, employed thousands of people, and all I do is get unfairly attacked and abused by a corrupt political system. It would be so wonderful if the effort used against President Donald J. Trump, who lowered taxes and regulations, rebuilt our military, took care of our Veterans, created Space Force, fixed our border, produced our vaccine in record-setting time (years ahead of what was anticipated), and made our Country great and respected again, and so much more, would be focused on the ever more dangerous sidewalks and streets of New York. If these prosecutors focused on real issues, crime would be obliterated, and New York would be great and free again!
From the Desk of Donald J. Trump: I have just learned, through leaks in the mainstream me… | Donald J. Trump (donaldjtrump.com)
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EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
and all these sidewalk murders in NY sounds frightening. Can't believe the MSM and twitter have covered it up.
-EV 8/14/93
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HILARIOUS
no no no. stop BEING a criminal.......
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
By David A. Fahrenthold and Josh Dawsey
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-secret-service-charges/2021/05/20/d328eb5c-9d36-11eb-b7a8-014b14aeb9e4_story.html
Former president Donald Trump charged the Secret Service more than $40,000 this spring for rooms that Trump’s own protective detail used while guarding him at his Mar-a-Lago Club, according to federal spending records.
The records show that Trump’s club charged the Secret Service $396.15 every night starting Jan. 20, the day he left the White House and moved full-time into his Palm Beach, Fla., club.
[Receipts: Charges to Secret Service from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club]
Those charges, ultimately paid by taxpayers, continued until at least April 30, the spending records show, for a total of $40,011.15. The charges were for a single room used as a workspace by Secret Service agents, according to one person familiar with the payments.
The Secret Service released spending records up to April 30. Trump stayed at Mar-a-Lago more than a week beyond that before moving to his Bedminster, N.J., club for the summer. It was unclear whether he continued to charge the Secret Service into May.
Records documenting the charges were released by the Secret Service in response to a public-records request from The Washington Post. They are the first evidence that Trump has continued a controversial and lucrative practice — charging rent to his own protectors — into his post-presidency.
While he was president, Trump’s properties charged the U.S. government more than $2.5 million, often so that Secret Service agents could use rooms near him.
The Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment. Trump’s post-presidential office and the Secret Service both declined to comment.
The rate Trump billed the Secret Service at his Florida resort is the same as the $396.15-per-room rate he charged as president.
Agents this spring rented fewer rooms at a time than they had when Trump visited Mar-a-Lago as president; back then, records show, they rented four or five rooms at the club for every night Trump was there. But costs for the single room in recent months added up because Trump was at Mar-a-Lago every night, not just on weekends and vacations. The end result: The Secret Service paid Mar-a-Lago nearly as much in the spring of 2021 as it had during comparable periods in 2018 or 2019.
Trump’s decision to charge the Secret Service rent appears unusual — both for a sitting president and now for a former one.
Former presidents get Secret Service protection for life. But last year The Washington Post spoke to historians and representatives for recent presidents and could not find another example of a president charging the Secret Service rent on this scale.
The closest parallel to Trump was the man who succeeded him: Joe Biden. While he was protected as vice president, Biden charged the Secret Service $2,200 per month to use a cottage on his property in Delaware. In total, Biden received $171,600 between 2011 and 2017.
Biden has not charged the Secret Service rent since becoming president in January, a White House spokesman said.
Historians said they were surprised Trump was still charging the Secret Service, considering that ex-presidents are entitled to an array of other taxpayer-funded benefits, including paid staff and a $219,000-per-year pension.
Trump, by his own account, is a billionaire. On his personal blog this week, he celebrated the $1.2 billion refinancing of a San Francisco office building in which Trump’s company owns a 30 percent share. That deal could bring Trump’s company a massive payout.
“It’s tacky,” Jeffrey A. Engel, the director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, said of Trump’s new charges. “Just because you can make a buck doesn’t mean you should make a buck. And especially when you have a situation where you’re an ex-president. You’re not going to starve.”
Trump, like other past presidents, is entitled to taxpayer funding for office space. A General Services Administration representative said this month that the government had not paid Mar-a-Lago any rent for Trump’s office space there. “There is no agreement to pay rent at Mar-a-Lago for any space the former president is using at the club,” the representative said.
Most Secret Service agents who guard Trump at Mar-a-Lago stay elsewhere. But security experts say that the agency still needs one or more spaces near the protectee for meetings, breaks, communications equipment and supervisors. At Mar-a-Lago, that means renting from Trump.
Since fall 2017, Mar-a-Lago has charged the agency the same rate of $396.15 per night. On its invoices to the Secret Service, Mar-a-Lago wrote that this rate was “billed at cost.” The Trump Organization has not explained how it chose that rate, down to the penny.
The figure is far above the $205 spending limit that has applied to most government employees looking for rooms in Palm Beach County this spring. The Secret Service is allowed to spend more than the limit if its protective mission requires.
Trump is expected to remain at Bedminster for most of the summer, following his seasonal pattern. While Trump was president, the Bedminster club also charged the Secret Service for a four-room cottage used by the agents guarding Trump. The rate there was $567 per night.
It is unclear whether those charges have resumed, now that Trump has returned. Both the Secret Service and the Trump Organization declined to say.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Embarrassed yet?
Donald J. Trump
6:17pm May 21, 2021
Many people have asked about the beautiful Boeing 757 that became so iconic during the Trump rallies. It was effectively kept in storage in Upstate New York in that I was not allowed to use it during my presidency. It is now being fully restored and updated and will be put back into service sometime prior to the end of the year. It will soon be brought to a Louisiana service facility for the completion of work, inspection and updating of Rolls-Royce engines, and a brand new paint job. When completed, it will be better than ever, and again used at upcoming rallies!
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An obscure security unit tasked with protecting the Commerce Department’s officials and facilities has evolved into something more akin to a counterintelligence operation that collected information on hundreds of people inside and outside the department, a Washington Post examination found.
The Investigations and Threat Management Service (ITMS) covertly searched employees’ offices at night, ran broad keyword searches of their emails trying to surface signs of foreign influence and scoured Americans’ social media for critical comments about the census, according to documents and interviews with five former investigators.
In one instance, the unit opened a case on a 68-year-old retiree in Florida who tweeted that the census, which is run by the Commerce Department, would be manipulated “to benefit the Trump Party!” records show.
In another example, the unit searched Commerce servers for particular Chinese words, documents show. The search resulted in the monitoring of many Asian American employees over benign correspondence, according to two former investigators.
The office “has been allowed to operate far outside the bounds of federal law enforcement norms and has created an environment of paranoia and retaliation at the Department,” John Costello, a former deputy assistant secretary of intelligence and security at Commerce in the Trump administration, said in a statement for this story.
ITMS “rests on questionable legal authority and has suffered from poor management and lack of sufficient legal and managerial oversight for much of its existence,” Costello said.
Concerns have long simmered internally about the Commerce unit, which was led for more than a decade by career supervisor George D. Lee.
The unit’s tactics appear as if “someone watched too many ‘Mission Impossible’ movies,” said Bruce Ridlen, a former supervisor.
Investigators lodged complaints with supervisors, and the department’s internal watchdog launched multiple inquiries, documents show. In an internal memo laying out his concerns about the unit, Costello described an inspector general’s investigation that he said had found it had no legal authority to conduct criminal investigations.
But the unit has managed to keep a low public profile until now, while pursuing investigations into “counterintelligence, transnational crime and counterterrorism,” as it described its activities in a 2018 budget document submitted to Congress.
Incoming Commerce leaders from the Biden administration ordered ITMS to pause all criminal investigations on March 10, and on May 13 ordered the suspension of all activities after preliminary results of an ongoing review, according to a statement issued by department spokeswoman Brittany Caplin.
The suspension came two days after The Post presented its findings about the unit to the department and sought interviews.
“The current Commerce Department leadership team takes this issue seriously,” the statement said. “The Department expects that at the end of the review it can and will implement a comprehensive solution to the issues raised.”
The minority-party staff of the Senate Commerce Committee, under Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), has been investigating ITMS’s activities since early this year, records show. More than a dozen whistleblowers have given closed-door statements, among them former investigators who allege that the office routinely overstepped its legal limits and has operated without meaningful oversight from within Commerce since the mid-2000s.
Costello privately proposed dissolving ITMS in October after he conducted an internal review, according to a report he wrote. Costello resigned after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, before the department could act on his recommendation.
An expanding portfolio
Former investigators, supervisors and government contractors who have worked with the unit in recent years said it operates largely on the whims of Lee, 48, who oversaw an expansion of the unit’s reach.
As of last September, ITMS had 17 employees and a $5.38 million budget, Caplin, the department spokeswoman, said. The entire Commerce Department had 54,000 employees and a budget of $15.2 billion at the same time.
Lee did not respond to multiple requests for comment conveyed through numbers listed for his home and cellphones, an email to his Commerce account and a letter sent to a home address. He also did not reply to an interview request submitted to the department.
Caplin said on May 15 that Lee is “not currently supervising the work or the employees of ITMS, and is not performing any investigatory duties.”
Before joining Commerce in 2004, Lee worked as an officer with the federal police force that protects the U.S. Supreme Court and before that as an investigator at a medical center in North Carolina, internal records show.
A year after his arrival, Lee appeared to acknowledge that special agents within the department had limited law enforcement powers. In a memo obtained by The Post, Lee wrote to his supervisors in the Office of Security that the office’s agents “may lack legal authority to conduct an appreciable portion of its investigative efforts, particularly criminal investigations.”
He cited agreements with the U.S. Marshals Service, which grants law enforcement powers to Commerce agents for specific purposes and under certain limitations.
The so-called special deputations for the Commerce agents are “for protection of the Secretary of Commerce,” James Stossel, a spokesman for the Marshals Service, wrote in a statement to The Post. He declined to elaborate on the limitations of that authority but added that it is “the responsibility of the requesting agency to supervise these special Deputy U.S. Marshals.”
In his internal assessment last fall, Costello cited the Commerce Department’s Office of the Inspector General:
The inspector general’s office declined to comment. The Post was not able to obtain a copy of the inspector general’s report.
It is not clear precisely when Lee expanded the unit’s portfolio. But a February 2014 investigative guide for the office, then called the Investigations and Threat Division, contains a section entitled “counterintelligence inquiries” that instructs agents on “baseline steps,” including determining whether there are “indicators of tradecraft.”
Former investigators said that in recent years the unit operated under a broad interpretation of its powers and its investigative purview.
It looked for suspicious foreign connections among employees and surreptitiously monitored employees’ communications on work computers and phones, they said.
It also opened cases on people who wrote nonthreatening letters to the commerce secretary, documents show. One was a former federal lawmaker.
Jim Bates, a Democratic California congressman from 1983 to 1991, wrote to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Nov. 22, 2019, alerting him to the work of a nonprofit organization that Bates had founded.
In the handwritten letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, Bates wrote that his group was working to promote the idea that the electoral college was unconstitutional because it was based on a census count that included “noncitizens.”
ITMS initiated a case on Bates and it remained open as of May 21, according to a current Commerce employee familiar with the office who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive investigative matters.
“I think it’s absurd,” Bates said after learning about the probe. “They’re bureaucrats who create these things because they don’t really deal with substantive issues.”
Bates said he never received a response to his letter.
ITMS also launched probes starting in April 2020 into the authors of dozens of social media posts that questioned the integrity or fairness of the census, according to internal records. The cases were billed as an effort to detect any “organized disinformation campaign,” according to a memo the unit sent to the FBI.
Dozens of postings were compiled in a spreadsheet called the Social Media Tracker, internal records show. The spreadsheet shows that investigators completed “high-side” checks — a nickname for searches on secure intelligence databases — on dozens of accounts holders.
The former supervisor, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive investigations, said investigators identified the posts through keyword searches on social media platforms, with no other indication of an organized attempt to sow false or misleading information.
The posts flagged for investigation cross the political spectrum, documents show.
Lee conveyed the information to the Foreign Influence Task Force at the FBI and the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, according to a letter sent by him to the FBI and obtained by The Post.
The FBI declined to look into the posts, saying they were protected free speech, according to the former supervisor. An FBI spokesperson declined to comment.
Ridlen, a supervisor in the unit hired in March 2020, was alarmed by the inquiries into free-speech activities, he said. He quit the job in late October.
“I chose to resign from my position with ITMS after it became clear there was no authority to perform law enforcement functions,” said Ridlen, who briefly took over as acting director in August. “There were no policies in place to outline standards of conduct or to establish parameters for investigative activities, which led to investigative inquiries of U.S. persons over protected free speech found on several social media platforms.”
Multiple former investigators said Lee would rarely close cases, even if evidence of wrongdoing did not materialize.
As of Oct. 23, the office had 1,183 open cases, nearly half dating to 2018 or earlier and the large majority still in preliminary stages, an internal document shows.
David Harris, chief executive of ADV, a government contractor that supplied about a dozen intelligence analysts and support personnel to the office from 2018 to 2020, called the unit “basically a collector of information.”
“No one could articulate its mission,” he said. “It was whatever direction the wind was blowing that day.”
Harris also told The Post that the unit’s leadership was “disorganized and abusive.”
Over the years, investigators had warned Commerce leaders about the unit and Lee’s management. On his last day on the job after 2½ years working with Lee, former investigator Christopher Cheung emailed then-secretary Ross with allegations about the unit.
“Mr. Lee has discriminately targeted ethnic Chinese foreign guests/visitors and employees as well as other ethnic personnel,” Cheung wrote on June 21, 2019. “When investigations on these ethnic personnel are inconclusive, Mr. Lee refuses to allow agents to close the cases.”
Cheung also alleged that Lee had ordered illegal searches on employee work spaces in addition to a range of other improprieties.
A spokesperson for Ross said he did not recall the email from Cheung or any investigations opened into people who wrote letters to him.
cont......
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
By July 2020, Commerce leaders realized they had to rein in the unit, documents show.
In a meeting that month, Costello told the agency’s assistant secretary and chief financial officer that he had “received numerous credible complaints against George Lee, his investigators, and the ITMS investigation writ-large,” according to a slide presentation prepared for the meeting.
“Most significantly, George Lee’s management has made it difficult or impossible for a supervisor to conduct meaningful oversight and decision-making over ITMS investigations,” he wrote. “These problems have persisted despite numerous attempts at correction by supervisors.”
In subsequent months, Costello invited former investigators to lay out their concerns in memos to him that further revealed details of the office’s past operations, some of which were obtained by The Post.
Martin C. Kehoe, one of the former investigators, wrote:
Cheung also wrote a memo to Costello, alleging that during investigations into suspicious foreign visitors to Commerce facilities, Lee “fosters a mind-set that all DOC employees that come into contact with that foreign visitor and are of the same ethnicity are now suspects as well.”
Kehoe and Cheung confirmed the authenticity of the memos obtained by The Post. They are among three agents who formally filed complaints about Lee and the office climate to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, according to copies of their complaints.
Lee also ordered two agents to conduct broad searches on department servers, scanning Commerce employees’ emails for certain Chinese-language keywords, Cheung’s memo to Costello alleged. The keywords are listed in a document that characterizes them as words that appear in the names of talent recruitment programs sponsored by the Chinese government, a copy of the list shows.
The search brought back the names of predominantly Asian American employees, and investigators began monitoring the employees’ emails, said two former agents directly involved in some of the searches who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the operation.
Cheung also alleged in the memo to Costello that the unit improperly searched employees’ storage areas, including in 2018 when the lock was picked on a cabinet used by a worker at Commerce headquarters.
The unit’s equipment for covert searches, kept in duffel bags, included latex gloves, shoe coverings, hairnets, balaclava-style face masks and a lock-picking set, according to two former investigators and a current Commerce employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss unit operations.
During some covert searches, investigators wore the face masks and avoided or blocked the view of security cameras, former investigators said on the condition of anonymity to discuss the office’s operations.
“It was so we didn’t leave a trace,” said one of the former investigators.
Ridlen, the former supervisor, said Lee “favored cloak-and-dagger methods of obtaining evidence over proven investigative techniques practiced by all other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies I have worked with in the last two decades.”
Investigators also complained that Lee compelled new hires to attend a training program he personally designed in the Shenandoah Mountains in Virginia, according to documents and interviews with investigators who attended. For surveillance training, Lee made investigators trail him as he drove erratically at high speeds on mountain roads, investigators said.
It was “the most reckless and unsafe training I have ever attended,” Cheung wrote to Costello in a memo.
“It was clear that SAC [special agent in charge] Lee had limited real world surveillance experience and it felt as if he learned it all by reading a book on it the day prior to class,” Kehoe wrote in a memo.
Despite opening more than 1,000 cases, few resulted in arrests or criminal charges, investigators said. And a case that prominently cited work by the unit and drew national attention was quickly dropped.
Sherry Chen, a Chinese American hydrologist for a National Weather Service office in Wilmington, Ohio, was arrested by the FBI in 2014 on suspicion that she was providing information about the nation’s dams to a high-ranking Chinese official who was also a former classmate. Lee and the Investigations and Threat Management Division were credited in a Justice Department news release.
The case was dropped within months by federal prosecutors in Ohio who provided no explanation in court filings. Chen has since filed a civil lawsuit against former investigators who interrogated her, as well as others, alleging their conduct amounted to false arrest and malicious prosecution. In court filings, the defendants have denied Chen’s claims, maintaining that she accessed a restricted government database using a colleague’s password and lied to federal agents.
She filed suit in 2019 in Cincinnati at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. The lawsuit is still in its preliminary stages.
Chen said in the lawsuit that the two agents who interrogated her “ignored exculpatory evidence throughout the interview, reached false conclusions without even a cursory investigation of underlying facts, and reported false results reflecting their racial and ethnic bias.”
ITMS in its more recent monitoring of social media has provoked similar outrage.
The Florida retiree was alarmed to learn from a Post reporter that his tweet had drawn the Commerce Department’s scrutiny:
He has just over 100 followers.
“I’m not part of any disinformation campaign. I’m just an American,” the retiree said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear he would be harassed for his political views. “I just expressed my opinion online.”
Alice Crites contributed to this report.
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14