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If the FBI Asks, Do You Answer?
I was a student traveling in an airport when three men with FBI credentials stopped me and asked me about a foreign national I had just spoken to. I explained that he was a professor at my university whom I had happened to run into. I was running a personal server in the late ’90s when I received a call from an FBI agent regarding a fraud complaint related to my domain name. I provided the agent with the details of the DNS features I used to assure that responsible ISPs will block email using my domain name but originating from an unauthorized IP address. The agent took copious notes and I never heard any more about the matter. And then there was the time they called to ask me questions about a coworker who tried to blackmail me using baseless accusations.
While I have never been naive about the FBI, in each of these occasions, I was presented with natural law enforcement concerns and engaged the situation respectfully and constructively. I am not sure I could do that today. The sheer dishonesty of the FBI’s public conduct suggests any trust in the FBI pursuing its law enforcement mission is misplaced.
So, if the FBI asks, do you answer? Do you tell the truth? Do you dummy up? Do you lawyer up?
Published in Policing
One of my law school professors emphatically and persuasively says, “no, don’t talk to them.”
Exactly. Besides, if your directions are just a little off, you will be lying to the FBI . . .
The weird thing is that FBI agents would be more likely to follow the rules required by the Constitution if you were suspected of involvement with a criminal matter than if you are a partisan political enemy. A federal judge, even one carefully selected, will not easily look past procedural violations in a criminal investigation and prosecution but in the current climate, harassment of MAGA citizens will likely go unpunished. The same judges in DC who would likely be among those typically accused of being soft on crime, tough on cops, and light on sentencing are now tossing Jan 6 defendants in jail for very trivial involvement.
In the plotline of the Terminator movies, Skynet became self-aware on August 29, 1997. I don’t know whether we should date the weird new self-awareness of the Deep State or (whatever we should call it) with the election of Trump or Jan 6 but they have definitely formed an unambiguous hostility towards dissident normals.
I like that!
Although I’ll continue prefer the pronoun, “deplorable”
Here’s a more recent talk given by Prof. James Duane to the Cato Institute regarding the problem of self-incriminating statements. It’s because of the book he wrote called You Have the Right to Remain Innocent.
Slightly off the topic but not really: at one point I had a Low Explosives User Permit issued by the BATF, to cover materials and activities related to making my own solid rocket motors and fireworks. Those hobbies got shelved a few years ago when I blew out my back, and I let the LEUP expire. While active, it required an annual visit from a BATF agent. Without exception they were polite and professional, and there was no problem at all.
I would not expect the same circumstances now. That’s why, even though I collect old handguns, I have not applied for a C&R (Curios and Relics) FFL (Federal Firearms License). Until things change drastically, and I have proof of it, I will not be sticking my head up above the crowd. Even though Kathy Hochul is trying desperately to make me a felon for purchases I made legally ten years ago. I’m enough of a target just for donating to the various New York State groups that are suing to get the absurd laws into court.
The FBI raided a home in Homer, Alaska because the lady who lived there had the same jacket as a woman who might have entered the capitol on Jan 6th. So, no. If the FBI agents in Anchorage, AK are so careless as to break down the door of a simple couple in a little touristy town in the middle of nowhere then they’re all merely taking marching orders from D.C.
I have been considering that very thing.
I would tell them nothing, and then smirk like Strzok.
If they had done that to innocent people at the wrong address for a drug bust, the US attorney’s office would already be computing what amounts would be required to settle the likely civil damages. But MAGA-related “crimes” will always be part of an eternal ongoing investigation and nothing can be admitted or revealed.
Who says I would call my lawyer on my cell phone? Especially if I were at home.
Sounds like a move south is in order . . .
Which seems like one reason why they would go after him somewhere other than home.
Remember, the FBI is legally permitted to lie to you about who they are and why they want to talk to you. I suspect if they lie about their identity as FBI, that will prevent them from charging you with lying to the FBI, but they they can still try to find something else in what you say on which to fabricate a charge. Or they may just be setting up the predicate for some future prosecution.
The FBI senior management seems determined to reinforce the public’s worst suspicions about the FBI. They clearly have no interest in rebuilding public trust.
Not sure just having a lawyer present will do the trick.
When I was summoned for jury duty last year I was prepared to answer that I would consider any evidence from the FBI as suspect. I didn’t get any individual questions and was still dismissed.
They are either domestic foreign enemies or foreign domestic enemies. A case could be made for either.
Neither do I, which is why I would only talk to my lawyer and not the FBI once I am in the presence of my lawyer. Do a lot of “tell them I am standing mute.”
This is pretty much the response I expected. I had hoped that someone here might rise to extend some form of a civic duty counter-argument, and that still may happen, but this discussion leads to another one.
Federal law enforcement plays an important role to play in active areas of conflict. In countering the mayhem of organized crime and foreign espionage. In countering slavery in this country, from sex trafficking to drug trafficking to illegal immigrant trafficking to the replacement of education with indoctrination. Without an effective federal law enforcement activity tracking interstate criminal activity and foreign agent infiltration of critical US corporations we are watching the final days of the free world. It will take a truly heroic transformation of American society, akin to that which occurred from 1942 to 1947, to reverse the corruption and restore the republic. A call to duty that says the values we live by matter, that a society that systematically subverts and perverts our children and denies fundamental science from human sexuality to immunology in the name of Totalitarian conformance. That systematically silences and oppresses leading scientists who dare to speak out against the government’s chosen narrative. They say that free speech is too dangerous in the modern world. I first heard that line from Soviets a lifetime ago.
It is a little like waking up to discover that hurricane has leveled your house. First you dig out your toolkit. You start standing up unsplintered two by fours to reestablish the wall framing. You drag the ruined, crumbled drywall out of the way. And then it hits you. The sun is going down and this little home repair job is a long term project.
And if we are going to effectively reform federal law enforcement, what are we going to do different?
One problem with your analogy is that once the hurricane has leveled your house, it moves on. Imagine trying to rebuild your house while the hurricane is still there knocking down everything you try to do?
Very true. It used to be that hurricanes would move on eventually.
I think we are well past the point of worrying about a few bad apples. The entire basket of apples is rotten to the core. Could there somehow be a good one hiding in the bottom of the basket? Perhaps. But I wouldn’t take a chance on it. Not a word without a lawyer and the conversation recorded regardless of what office the agent works out of.
Ever since Martha Stewart the answer is, ‘here is the name of my lawyer.’
Great minds run along the same gutters.
Excellent. Watched the video, bought the audiobook, listened to that. Thanks!
The higher up the bureaucrat, the less I would want to talk to him/her
My limited dealings with the FBI at work, as a DoD civilian, have been good. It has been with a group with an foreign focused mission. They are looking at a protecting the defense supply chain and looking for foreign actors going after our research. The next time I’m at a conference with one of them, I want to ask if he’s embarrassed by the rot in the agency and how they discredit him by association.
Please do and report back. I’m sure we’d all love to know the answer.
If we don’t hear from Bishop Wash after that we will know the answer.
His name was Bishop Wash.