(LifeSiteNews) — Recent news on former President Trump being indicted for reportedly attempting to interfere with the 2020 election and the FBI going after Catholics brings to mind some things that should be considered about voting, the FBI, and all other Federal and local secret investigators or law enforcement.
First, it should be mentioned that the FBI is part of the Executive Branch of the federal government. The President of the United States, of course, is supposed to be in control of the Executive Branch.
And through voting, Americans are supposed to be in control of determining who is elected to be the controller of the Executive Branch, that is, the President of the United States. This implies that Americans are supposed to be, at least indirectly, in control of how the FBI and other Executive Branch law enforcement, intelligence, investigative, and similar entities operate.
Similarly, at the state and local level, attorneys general and prosecutors are elected by citizens of most states and many localities. Some might not realize the significance of those lawyers and other District Attorneys; they are considered to be chief law enforcement officers in their locations. Oftentimes people think of “law enforcement” merely as uniformed police. But there are several lawyers and other non-uniformed employees that might be considered to be more powerful than uniformed police.
Now, with the news that the FBI was, and possibly still is, going after Catholics, another significant fact to think about is that the FBI, local police, investigators, attorneys general, intelligence community, and other local and federal security entities keep confidential or secret how they operate. Their methods, sources, technologies, strategies, and many other actions are kept secret and hidden from Americans. (One might suggest the reason for this is because if their methods, technologies, sources, and techniques were publicized, Americans would oppose them and potentially even seek criminal charges against those entities for the harm they have caused others.)
WATCH: FBI terrorized pro-life Catholic Mark Houck. Now he is running for Congress
It is going to be elaborated in a moment, but think about it: how can Americans vote on the head of the Executive Branch of government, the President of the United States, if Americans do not know how the FBI (a part of the president’s Executive Branch of government) currently operates and plans on operating in the future? How can Americans vote for a county prosecutor or state attorney general if the methods, sources, technologies, techniques, and operations of police, investigators, and others are kept secret?
Those facts should bring to mind a few interesting things to think about regarding voting and elections in the United States. Thus, one should think somewhat critically about what it means to “vote” in a United States presidential or other election.
One could spend many words defining the term “vote”; however, for this article, the main thing to focus on is voting being an individual’s uncoerced decision, a voluntary decision.
To make a “decision” that is freely chosen, one must have some information. This is a significant point which requires emphasis: information has to be provided by other people for a person to make some decisions. An example of this is described in the following health care concept of “informed consent”:
Informed consent is the process in which a health care provider educates a patient about the risks, benefits, and alternatives of a given procedure or intervention. The patient must be competent to make a voluntary decision about whether to undergo the procedure or intervention. Informed consent is both an ethical and legal obligation of medical practitioners in the US and originates from the patient’s right to direct what happens to their body. Implicit in providing informed consent is an assessment of the patient’s understanding, rendering an actual recommendation, and documentation of the process.
The main point to take from the concept of “informed consent” is that to make a decision about health care, there is prerequisite or necessary information that one must have. Health care professionals are required by laws and regulations to provide such information; otherwise, it is implied that the patient cannot make a “free decision” or the decision to consent to a medication, procedure, operation, etc. It is common to describe some healthcare decisions as “elective,” or a procedure or treatment chosen by the patient rather than urgently necessary.
RELATED: Georgia grand jury indicts Trump, 18 allies on ‘racketeering’ charges
The ‘Garland 9’ Pro-Life Rescuers are threatened with 11-year prison sentences, an additional three years of supervised watch and $350,000 in fines each because they tried to save babies from abortion.
SIGN: Tell Merrick Garland to stop the DOJ’s persecution of pro-life activists. Save the Garland 9!
Nine pro-lifers who were unjustly arrested in October 2020 at the notorious Washington Surgi-Clinic are facing over a decade each in jail.
Nicknamed the ‘Garland 9’ after President Biden’s notorious Attorney General, Merrick Garland, the rescuers are being treated like criminals for simply trying to save lives.
So far the conditions of their indictment, the judge’s comments and a prejudicial jury selection seem to indicate the nine are going to be made examples of in a show trial that started August 6th, 2023.
One of the pro-life defendants, Lauren Handy, said: “Media reports have stated that we ‘invaded’ the abortion center and ‘disrupted’ women from exercising their ‘reproductive rights.’ No, that is not what we did. We entered the clinic and sought to love the women already there for their abortion procedures. We tried to offer them help so they would choose life. We non-violently defended the unborn who were about to be exterminated – the innocent, the most vulnerable, killed in horrific acts of violence and treated as so much trash.”
SIGN: Merrick Garland must stop the DOJ’s persecution of pro-life activists
Joe Biden’s rogue Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Gestapo-esque FBI have raided and arrested the legendary Joan Andrews Bell and eight other pro-lifers (Lauren Handy, 28; Jonathan Darnel, 40; Jay Smith, 32; Paulette Harlow, 73; Jean Marshall, 72; John Hinshaw, 67; Heather Idoni, 57; and William Goodman, 52) charging them with “conspiracy against rights” and “FACE Act” offenses after they tried to rescue babies from death at the prominent D.C. late-term abortion mill, Washing-Surgi Clinic.
“This unprecedented attack on rescuers by the federal government, including terrorizing raids and potentially draconian prison sentences, has not been seen in this country since the enforcement of the immoral Fugitive Slave Act,” Handy said.
A federal Grand Jury handed down the indictment, including Federal Civil Rights Conspiracy charges.
This is the latest in a wave of state-sponsored persecution of pro-life activists. If these loving counsellors can be apphedended as felons, so too might parents be at school board meetings, as well as other peaceful protesters, and those who support life, family, faith, and freedom.
Among other violations of their human rights and the bypassing of jurisprudence, the Garland 9 are prohibited from mentioning the word ”abortion” during the trial, denied the right to provided character witnesses and expert witnesses, and cannot even address this misapplication of the law during their trial.
If we ignore the battle of the Garland 9, other ordinary people will also be labelled criminal conspiracists by corrupt law enforcement and the courts. If we do not succeed in fighting these dangerous precedents now, we may not have many future opportunities left to fight at all.
SIGN: Tell Merrick Garland to stop the DOJ’s persecution of pro-life activists
Handy also stated: “Sadly, this arm of the government under the current administration is being used as a weapon against the ‘most vulnerable members of our society’ — the pre-born babies.”
Since the 1994 passing of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, the law has ignored virtually all attacks on churches and pro-life facilities to focus solely on presumed attacks on abortion facilities and personnel.
Recently, while disregarding other serious incidents against conservatives, the DOJ has used the law as a Stasi-like hammer since the overturning of Roe vs. Wade to target pro-lifers.
SIGN: Help stop the DOJ from using the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act to silence Pro-Life advocates, while ignoring pro-abortion terrorism
Why are loyal law-abiding American Catholics being surveilled at church by the FBI? The Biden regime is undemocratically cracking down on its political and ideological opponents and violating their rights.
Another defendant, Will Goodman, told LifeSite: “Peaceful pro-lifers committed to non-violent direct action in the American tradition of civil disobedience are being treated like ‘enemies of the state’ and are being refused any legal opportunities to advocate for the constitutional civil rights of the preborn humans in the womb.”
Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta recently said that overturning Roe (Dobbs) made it more ”urgent” to target pro-lifers, remarks that conservatives are taking as an admission that the DOJ has been intentionally targeting pro-lifers instead of impartially upholding the law.
Gupta listed among new and “insidious” challenges to “civil and constitutional rights” the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
SIGN: Tell Merrick Garland to stop the DOJ’s persecution of pro-life activists. Save the Garland 9!
Arrested veteran Pro-Life Rescuer Lauren Handy (28), who organized the rescue, told LifeSiteNews at the time that “we are no longer having a debate with evil but confronting it head on — today we are using our bodies as shields to protect our pre-born siblings from abortion.”
The Biden administration is by-passing local law enforcement, State’s rights and misusing the Federal Courts and FBI to make all pro-life activity effectively illegal.
Dr. Monica Miller, the director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society and leader of Red Rose Rescue, told LifeSiteNews that “as a consequence, warrants were immediately issued, and eight of the nine pro-lifers were rounded up in an FBI raid of their homes and places of work.” Miller noted that “this is the first time any of them face federal charges. That FBI agents hunted down the rescuers is unprecedented in the history of pro-life activism.”
SIGN: Tell Merrick Garland to stop the DOJ’s persecution of pro-life activists
The FACE Act (18 U.S.C. § 248(a)(3)) prohibits “violent, threatening, damaging, and obstructive conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with the right to seek, obtain, or provide reproductive health services.” It also is supposed to protect places of worship and facilities where reproductive health is not a euphamism for murder, but it does not.
The law has never been evenly applied, and is predicated on the lie that the Pro-Life movement is inherently violent, while ignoring actual increasing violence against places of worship and pro-life pregnancy help centers.
Thomas More Society senior trial counsel Martin A. Cannon told The Epoch Times that while the FACE Act violation “under the circumstances charged is a misdemeanor,” the conspiracy charge, if proven, “is a felony.”
According to Cannon, that’s “a lot of overcharging.”
“There’s another federal conspiracy statute they could have charged under that makes the conspiracy no worse than the underlying charge,” he said. “But if you’re pro-lifers, you don’t get that kind of prosecutorial consideration all the time. They just dogpile on you when they can.”
SIGN: Tell Merrick Garland to stop the DOJ’s persecution of pro-life activists – Help save your nation from tyranny and persecution
This vaguely worded FACE Act, which many legal experts regard as unconstitutional, was also weaponized to falsely, viciously, and unjustly arrest Mark Houck at his home.
Houck, who has since been vindicated, was threatened with the exact same draconian punishments of the Garland 9, having been apprehended by the FBI at his home in a manner that terrorized, his wife, seven children, and other pro-lifers.
No less than 25 FBI officers were present to arrest Houck, despite an offer by Houck to turn himself in. This is just another example of this police-state abuse, and why it needs to end now!
SIGN: Tell Merrick Garland to stop the DOJ’s persecution of pro-life activists
This weaponization of our courts and the FBI requires Congressional oversight (or the defunding and disbanding of this rogue law-enforcement agency) to bring these abuses to a halt. There needs to be checks on an administration that, operating like a banana republic, seeks to criminalize its opposition.
Beyond the attack on the pro-life activists, these unjust legal measures ignore the rights of the preborn, the coercive nature of the eugenic abortion industry, and they further restrict merciful and charitable options that can help so many in need.
The so-called “clinic” which the the Garland 9 were accused of blocking was notorious for performing late-term abortions – a brutal form of murder visited on the innocent.
These are not medical procedures, but inhuman, cruel perversions of the law. The false narratives around a mythical rise in violent anti-abortionists obscures the reality of the murder the Biden administration is covering up.
SIGN: Tell Merrick Garland to stop the DOJ’s persecution of pro-life activists
Our society needs pregnancy resource centers to help protect women and their babies. President John Adams had warned us that our Republic necessitates a religious and moral citizenry. When the state threatens draconian prison sentences, crippling fines, and surveillance for good-willed, ethical people seeking to help their neighbors, it is time to push back.
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MORE INFORMATION:
Potential jurors in DC trial of pro-lifers admit to being Planned Parenthood donors, abortion activists – LifeSiteNews
Now, apply the concept of informed consent to U.S. federal, state, and local elections (ignoring the obvious differences). Is there information that should be required by law and regulation to be publicized, rather than to be kept secret, so that Americans can freely choose which candidate to vote for? Again, much could be written on this subject, but only a few points are going to be mentioned.
The U.S. Constitution is relevant here. An introduction to the Constitution provided by the U.S. Senate is as follows:
Written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and in operation since 1789, the United States Constitution is the world’s longest surviving written charter of government. Its first three words – “We The People” – affirm that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens. The supremacy of the people through their elected representatives is recognized in Article I, which creates a Congress consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives. The positioning of Congress at the beginning of the Constitution affirms its status as the “First Branch” of the federal government.
“The government of the United States exists to serve its citizens” and this is partially or fully achieved “through the elected representatives.”
Now, what are some of the most common actions, entities, or operations of the U.S. federal, state, and local governments? Law enforcement, local and federal policing, national security, investigating (often secret investigating), and the so-called intelligence community make up a significant portion of government operations.
Think about this for a moment: if U.S. citizens are supposed to vote on how the government operates (through their elected representatives, president, etc.), and if law enforcement, police, investigative, intelligence, and other national, state, or local security entities are significant portions of government operations, should specific provision of information be required by law to vote on how those entities operate?
Refer again to the concept of “informed consent.” A person cannot make a health care decision about an operation without knowing specifics about the operation. Health care professionals can get into serious trouble, sometimes described as “defrauding” if they do not inform the patient of specifics of the operation.
Now, what about voting? To decide on how law enforcement, police, the FBI, investigative, intelligence, and other similar entities operate, information on the methods, technologies, surveillance, techniques, and sources of those entities is necessarily required to make the voting decision.
And if such prerequisite information is not provided to every American voter by law enforcement, police, investigative, intelligence, and other national security entities, could they be said to be “interfering with an election” or obstructing a proceeding insofar as elections include voting and voting is a decision on whether to maintain current government operating methods, techniques, technologies, etc., or operate differently after elections?
Former President Trump was apparently indicted on the charges of “conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.”
The “right to vote” implies the right to have specific information to make the voting decision. If government officials, employes, bureaus, and departments do not provide such information, could they be said to be conspiring against Americans’ rights or obstructing an official proceeding?
Should the FBI, law enforcement, police, investigative, intelligence, security, and similar entities be prohibited from secrecy and be required to publish for every American, or every American voter, all information on their methods, technologies, sources, and techniques so that Americans can have the “freedom to choose” how the previous entities operate?