Month: February 2018

WASHINGTON ― The FBI has “grave concerns” about a secretive Republican-authored memo that members of Congress have been using to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference with the 2016 election.

In an extraordinary public statement on Wednesday, the bureau said the classified four-page memo authored by Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee had “material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

In a party-line vote, the House Intelligence Committee used a rarely invoked procedure to approve the release of the memo, which is based on classified documents the Justice Department provided to the committee. The memo reportedly alleges that the Justice Department and the FBI abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on Carter Page, who was associated with the Trump campaign, ahead of the 2016 election.

Actual FISA experts have treated that claim with extreme skepticism.

President Donald Trump has indicated he supports the memo being made public, telling a House Republican after the State of the Union address that he would “100 percent” release it. Trump’s statement was at odds with the position of his own White House, which had insisted an actual review process was in place. 

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Tuesday urged his colleagues not to use the memo to undermine the Mueller probe, calling it “a completely separate matter.” His statement was a bit late ― Republicans and Fox News anchors had been using the mysterious memo to suggest it was time to fire Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has oversight of the special counsel investigation.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and the man chiefly responsible for the memo, issued a statement on Wednesday saying DOJ and the FBI “stonewalled” Congress for nearly a year and that they issued “spurious objections to allowing the American people to see information related to surveillance abuses.”

“The FBI is intimately familiar with ‘material omissions’ with respect to their presentations to both Congress and the courts, and they are welcome to make public, to the greatest extent possible, all the information they have on these abuses,” said Nunes, a member of Trump’s transition team. “Regardless, it’s clear that top officials used unverified information in a court document to fuel a counter-intelligence investigation during an American political campaign. Once the truth gets out, we can begin taking steps to ensure our intelligence agencies and courts are never misused like this again.”

Asked if the Justice Department backed the FBI’s position, a department spokesperson noted that the FBI is part of DOJ, and did not immediately respond to a follow-up question. A spokesperson for Mueller’s office declined to comment.

Here’s the FBI’s full statement:

The FBI takes seriously its obligations to the FISA Court and its compliance with procedures overseen by career professionals in the Department of Justice and the FBI.  We are committed to working with the appropriate oversight entities to ensure the continuing integrity of the FISA process.

With regard to the House Intelligence Committee’s memorandum, the FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it.  As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.

This article has been updated with comment from Nunes, a response from Mueller’s office, and information from the HuffPost/YouGov poll. 

Ryan Reilly is HuffPost’s senior justice reporter, covering criminal justice, federal law enforcement and legal affairs. Have a tip? Reach him at ryan.reilly@huffpost.com or on Signal at 202-527-9261. 

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) announced Wednesday that he will not seek re-election this year.

“Instead I will be returning to the justice system,” Gowdy, who previously worked as an attorney and prosecutor, said in a statement. “Whatever skills I may have are better utilized in a courtroom than in Congress, and I enjoy our justice system more than our political system.”

Gowdy was first elected to Congress in 2010. He has served as the chair of the House Oversight Committee since June, and chaired the House Benghazi Committee from 2014 to 2016, investigating the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Libya that left a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans dead. During that probe, Gowdy faced criticism for focusing the investigation on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was running for president at the time. 

Gowdy is one of several high-profile Republican House members to announce their retirement ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. According to Cook Political Report, there are currently 32 open Republican seats in the House and 13 open Democratic seats.

On Monday, 12-term Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) said he wouldn’t run again, setting up a battle to take over his chairmanship of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. Other significant GOP retirements include Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (Va.), Financial Services Committee Chair Jeb Hensarling (Texas) and Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Ed Royce (Calif.).

On the Senate side, Tennessee’s Bob Corker, Arizona’s Jeff Flake and Utah’s Orrin Hatch have said they will step down after this term. 

An 18-year-old in Florida allegedly shoots and kills two of his roommates. A 21-year-old, also in Florida, plots to bomb synagogues and a nuclear power plant. A 17-year-old in Virginia allegedly shoots and kills his girlfriend’s parents. And a 20-year-old in California allegedly stabs a gay Jewish college student 20 times, burying him in a shallow grave.

All of these young white men had connections to the Atomwaffen Division, a well-armed neo-Nazi group enamored with Charles Manson and Adolf Hitler whose members harbor grand and demented delusions of fighting a “race war” and overthrowing the U.S. government.

Their alleged crimes all occurred in just the last eight months, most recently in January, adding to fears that an emboldened American white supremacist movement is growing more violent by the day. White supremacists, after all, murdered twice as many people in 2017 as they did the year before, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

But while the Atomwaffen Division — which translates from the German as the “Atomic Weapons Division” — represents perhaps the most extreme faction of organized fascism in the U.S., these five recent murders thus far don’t appear to have been coordinated. Nor does it appear that they were all completely motivated by ideology.

Most, it seems, arose partly from domestic disputes, highlighting the volatility and desperation of young men who become enthralled by white supremacy.

Still, America is waking up to the threat of a group like Atomwaffen, which operates largely anonymously and in the shadows, radicalizing young men, holding military-style training camps and making explicit calls for violence against minorities.

This is what we know about them.

Whereas much of the optics-obsessed “alt-right” is shy about deploying Third Reich imagery, Atomwaffen is not. Its photos, videos and artwork are flush with swastikas and SS lightning bolts. Its members love to throw up a Nazi salute.

The group published its latest propaganda video earlier this month. It features members dressed in camouflage and skull masks shouting “gas the Kikes” and “race war now” as they LARP about the countryside, firing guns and practicing military maneuvers. A previous video included footage of members setting both an American flag and a copy of the U.S. Constitution on fire during a “Doomsday Hatecamp.”

When Charles Manson died in November, Atomwaffen members mourned the murderous cult leader. “A great revolutionary,” one person wrote on a now defunct Atomwaffen message board. “The world really does feel a little emptier,” wrote another.

On its website, Atomwaffen describes itself as “a revolutionary national socialist organization centered around political activism and the practice of an autonomous fascist lifestyle.”  

In practice, this has meant distributing racist recruitment flyers on college campuses, hanging banners with racist messages from bridges, graffiti, and showing up at white nationalist rallies to wave the Atomwaffen flag.  

It’s estimated there are only about 80 Atomwaffen members, though according to the Anti-Defamation League, Atomwaffen activity has been reported in multiple states, including Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Texas, Massachusetts, Washington and Wisconsin.  

“The group’s vile propaganda often promotes violence against minority communities, including LGBT people, Jews, Muslims, and African Americans,” the ADL wrote. 

In May, Devon Arthurs, an 18-year-old Atomwaffen member who had converted to a violent, fundamentalist version of Islam — a conversion that isn’t as unlikely as it seems — allegedly shot and killed two of his roommates, both of whom were allegedly also Atomwaffen members. Arthurs later confessed that his roommates had disrespected his new faith, so he decided to kill them.

Brandon Russell, a fourth roommate who was not killed, was also connected to Atomwaffen. During a search of the house after the murders, authorities discovered bomb-making equipment and radioactive material they determined belonged to Russell. In Russell’s bedroom, police found a framed photo of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. In his car were rifles, ammunition, binoculars and a skull mask. Prosecutors later alleged that Russell had planned to bomb civilian targets, including synagogues and a nuclear power plant in Miami. He was recently sentenced to five years in prison.

Seven months later, in Reston, Virginia, 17-year-old Nicholas Giampa reportedly grew angry after his girlfriend broke up with him. Giampa held neo-Nazi beliefs, and her parents had convinced her to end the relationship. In December, Giampa allegedly shot and killed the parents inside their home. He then turned the gun on himself, surviving a gunshot wound to the head.

HuffPost found Giampa’s Twitter account, which he used to tweet about his hatred of transgender people, his admiration for Hitler, and how he would use Jewish people for target practice. He often retweeted posts from Atomwaffen-affiliated accounts, including a photo of armed Atomwaffen members posing with the group’s flag. 

Giampa also praised a 1992 book called Siege — a racist tome penned by career neo-Nazi and Charles Manson devotee James Mason. The book, which argues for waging a violent “Helter Skelter” race war and condones murder and terror attacks, was plucked from obscurity by Atomwaffen members and republished on the group’s website last year.  

Before Giampa allegedly killed his girlfriend’s parents, he retweeted a photo of Mason reading a copy of Siege. He also praised a Twitter user named @RyanAtomwaffen for owning a copy of the book.

Earlier this month, a site called SIEGE Culture, which appears to be affiliated  Atomwaffen, started crafting original pieces of Atomwaffen propaganda featuring photos of Giampa’s face. 

Earlier this month, police in Orange County, California, found the body of Blaze Bernstein, a 20-year-old college student. Rainfall had uncovered his final resting place: a pit dug in Lake Forest’s Borrego Park. Bernstein — who was gay and Jewish — had been stabbed at least 20 times.

His former high school classmate, Samuel Lincoln Woodward, was arrested for the murder a few days later. Last week, ProPublica reported that Woodward is a member of the Atomwaffen Division.

Three people who knew Woodward, one of whom is a former Atomwaffen member, identified Woodward as belonging to the group. The former member told ProPublica that Woodward attended an Atomwaffen training camp in Texas in 2016, where he learned about firearms, hand-to-hand combat and how to survive in the wild.

It’s unclear if Woodward will face hate crime charges.

Bernstein’s mother, Jeanne Pepper Bernstein, told the Los Angeles Times she had always worried her son could be the victim of hate. She said it always concerned her that he was gay, Jewish and small.

“I was concerned for his safety always,” she added. “I was concerned sending him out into the big world. But at some point you have to let go and they leave the nest and fly. I couldn’t protect him from everything.”

America does not do a good job of tracking incidents of hate and bias. We need your help to create a database of such incidents across the country, so we all know what’s going on. Tell us your story.