Waiting for Kash: COINTELPRO in the Trump Reich

The arrest of a judge is a signal to the rest of us.

This morning, the Director of the FBI Kash Patel gleefully announced on Twitter/X that he had arrested a judge for obstruction in an immigration case, then deleted it.

It’s unclear what caused him to delete his post. Nevertheless Judge Hannah Dugan was, in fact, indicted and arrested — at the court — for not allowing the defendant in her courtroom to be arrested by ICE. Here is the complaint.

Fbis Complaint Against Judge Hannah Dugan

1.12MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

The full state propaganda apparatus has already begun to tout this as an amazing day for accountability. Here is the Attorney General on Fox News this morning.

“What’s happened to our Judiciary is beyond me… They’re deranged… We’re sending a very strong message today… we will come after you. We will find you.”

—Pam Bondi [h/t Aaron Rupar]

While I try to keep my personal issues from interfering with my work, it’s frankly very hard to separate this from my personal situation. Kash Patel sued me in 2023, after his mentor and friend Mike Flynn’s frivolous lawsuit failed to silence me. Here’s Flynn’s take on the whole situation. [Full disclosure: Flynn is scheduled for a deposition in my case on Monday.]

“WHAT I WANT TO SEE ARE ARRESTS.”

So, I’m a designated target of this regime already — and now they’re arresting judges. Who could have known that putting a QAnon promoter who threatened retribution on Flynn’s enemies and was celebrated by Russian state media would prove to be a fascist?

One thing people should learn more about in preparation for this regime is COINTELPRO, short for “counter intelligence program”, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI campaign of trying to destroy or flat out murder his enemies through a variety of horrific means. [FBI Vault]

For example, Hoover’s FBI created the conditions for the assassination of Malcolm X, and tried to get Martin Luther King to kill himself. Here is part of the letter the FBI mailed anonymously to MLK in 1964.

Hoover’s FBI targeted numerous individuals and groups perceived as potentially unhelpful to the government.

Groups and individuals targeted by the FBI included feminist organizations, the Communist Party USA, anti-Vietnam War organizers, activists in the civil rights and Black power movements (e.g., Martin Luther King Jr., the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party), environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), Chicano and Mexican-American groups like the Brown Berets and the United Farm Workers, and independence movements (including Puerto Rican independence groups, such as the Young Lords and the Puerto Rican Socialist Party). Although the program primarily focused on organizations that were part of the broader New Left, they also targeted white supremacist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National States' Rights Party.

Arresting a judge and bragging about it is a massive, unmistakable flare to show the nation no one is safe from the ICE-Gestapo — and the judiciary better not get in the way. However, I expect to see more subversive tactics being used as well and it’s important to understand them. Here are some of goals of COINTELPRO as defined by the FBI in the 1960s.

1. Create a negative public image for target groups (for example through surveilling activists and then releasing negative personal information to the public)

2. Break down internal organization by creating conflicts (for example, by having agents exacerbate racial tensions, or send anonymous letters to try to create conflicts)

3. Create dissension between groups (for example, by spreading rumors that other groups were stealing money)

4. Restrict access to public resources (for example, by pressuring non-profit organizations to cut off funding or material support)

5. Restrict the ability to organize protest (for example, through agents promoting violence against police during planning and at protests)

6. Restrict the ability of individuals to participate in group activities (for example, by character assassinations, false arrests, surveillance)

Needless to say, a lot of this is already happening — some is in public, as with the executive orders against law firms and universities — but psychological warfare and subversion by the state, combined with lack of accountability for any of their actions, may be the biggest danger to successfully opposing this regime.

Every time a secret police force has been given unlimited power, it has become an internal terrorist organization. For reference: the NKVD/KGB, the Stasi, the Gestapo, and the DINA.

The Trump regime is now, obviously, a full-fledged fascist state with aspirations to full dictatorship. While the resistance is there, and good to see, it is not nearly enough — yet. But the more people understand what we’re up against, the better they will be at opposing it, and the more resolute.

In the meantime, I will be here writing — at least until Kash’s goons come knocking.

Long Live a Free America. Glory to Ukraine.

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