It was one final long shot, but since Travis had decided to not retain another lawyer in an attempt to change his designation, he phoned the Rochester FMC again. His hope was to get any information or options for reporting to Yankton rather than Rochester. Again, a human answered the phone at Rochester. They listened to Travis’s concern and questions and placed him on hold to speak with someone else who would not disclose their identity. When the staff came on the phone, they said Travis could choose to report to Yankton—there was nothing Yankton would be able to do about it. Then the employee abruptly ended the call. This seemed so strange that Travis decided to wait for a different shift to call back, speak to someone else who also would not disclose their identity, listened to Travis’s concerns and questions, placed him on hold, came back on the line telling him he could report to Yankton because there was nothing Yankton could do about it, and then ended the call abruptly.
Déjà vu. I was beginning to understand why they would conceal their identity if this was the advice he was receiving. While intuition said this is a horrible idea, the fact two people had told him the same thing did cause us to consider if there was something really to this.
In the research I had done previously in the Bureau of Prison’s (BOP) processes and guidelines, I had remembered seeing transfers occur in a specific travel loop. Meaning, you may only be a four hour direct drive from one facility to the other, but you would be transported in this pre-designed travel pattern which may take several days of travel and several nights in other facilities to reach your destination. This didn’t seem like a risk worth taking. Not to mention, if Travis reported to Yankton with his designation assigning him to Rochester, would he receive credit for the time he was at other facilities? He should but nothing was as it seemed, and we were tired of taking calculated risks.
Travis decided to call Yankton to see what they had to say. Of course, they told him absolutely no, do not report to our facility. They didn’t know why Rochester would make this suggestion and strongly discouraged him from even considering it a possibility. He needed to report to where his letter had stated: Rochester FMC.
One thing consistent with the government is inconsistency.
This same week Travis received a forwarded email from his attorney. The email chain was between his supervision officer and Judge Gerard. His supervision officer had searched for the legal document which would have ordered Travis’s supervision and could not locate it. A judge can’t simply state on record that someone is to be supervised by the probation office. There has to be an accompanying court order to make it official. In the email chain, the probation officer was asking Judge Gerard if an order should be sent to the court for Judge Gerard’s signature and was verifying the language of conditions which should be imposed for Travis’s supervision.
The common citizen might not think this means much, but I knew this affected their legal authority over Travis until the order was signed by both the Judge and Travis. For the first 30 days of his 90 day self-surrender period, Travis was not bound by supervisory authority. Yet another error in the system. With Travis being a man of integrity and concerned with doing the right thing, he checked in with his probation officer as he had been directed after the sentencing hearing and willingly signed the order for supervision once his supervision officer received it from the judge.
Another noteworthy event to happen the first week in November was Jim Jordan’s committee letter being released in the media. It is a 1,050 page long document, but you will want to know what this document contains. I say this being neither Republican nor Democratic. This is not about politics. It is about freedom and rights afforded to Americans. In my opinion, what is happening in the world around us at a much deeper level is the polarity of good and evil; not political. However, this document is very politicized and whether Mr. Jordan is accurate or purely on a partisan mission of slander is in the eye of the beholder. When I read the document some of the items brought to light, such as the DOJ ignoring exculpatory evidence, we had certainly just lived. From our experience the information contained within was real life. Considering much of the letter and investigation was sparked by whistleblowers and real people’s experiences such as ours, it’s compelling to know the information it contains. Here are my personal key take-aways from the report:
- Many individuals holding very high political positions (Christopher Wray, Alejandro Mayorkas, Merritt Garland, etc) had received letters from this committee seeking information and correspondence from them as a part of the Congressional investigation. All parties just ignored these letters, provided no response, or their attorneys responded with lengthy responses that according to Mr. Jordan did not actually address the information being requested from these individuals. Our government has checks and balances, and it’s astounding the level of disrespect for the system to see Congressional investigations being blocked or blatantly ignored. If there’s nothing to hide, then why ignore or deflect the correspondence?
- The number of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) search warrants had increased exponentially under the current administration. In short, FISA search warrants are obtained to conduct surveillance on those who are believed to be terrorists. It is suspected these warrants were being obtained to surveil American citizens who had been labeled “domestic terrorists” rather than foreign terrorists which was the original intention of FISA warrants. At one point these warrants were obtained to investigate Americans holding security clearances who had contacts with foreign officials AND had demonstrated a willingness to give these foreign individuals information. These warrants are now being used to investigate Americans who do not hold a security clearance or have foreign ties. In the case of Carter Page, who was giving information to the CIA regarding his Russian contacts, an FBI attorney was prosecuted (and sentenced to probation) for doctoring an email stating Mr. Page was not a CIA contact in order to get Mr. Page’s FISA warrant renewed. This topic goes much deeper than what this summary entails as the way FISA warrants are obtained is vastly different than how criminal warrants are obtained. Researching this topic is time well spent.
- Evidence obtained by this Congressional Committee demonstrated the DOJ was ignoring exculpatory evidence (evidence in support of defendants). We experienced this exact thing occurring with Travis’s case. (reference page 24 of Mr. Jordan’s document)
- Operation Bronze Griffin is a politically one-sided surveillance partnership with Facebook and the FBI. As a part of the program the FBI allegedly accepts private user information from Facebook without the user’s consent or the legal process the FBI would otherwise need to independently pursue to obtain user-related information. The content Facebook provides have a partisan focus, tending only to concern users from one side of the political spectrum, the conservative side. (reference page 45 of Mr. Jordan’s document)
- Pegasus spyware was used in foreign countries to surveil both Apple and Android users. The FBI considered purchasing a version of similar spyware called Phantom which would also have surveillance capabilities to be used in America. Based upon my personal research, the details of how this spyware would have been utilized is unclear. (reference page 28 of Mr. Jordan’s document)
Also in November, Senator Paul Rand interviewed FBI Director Christopher Wray during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing. It’s intriguing to watch. Mr. Rand probes about the processes the FBI use to obtain evidence, specifically with social media companies. If you’d like to watch a clip from the hearing, you can do so here. A few of the questions Mr. Rand implored of Mr. Wray:
- Is social media or other companies supplying private data to the FBI, and is the FBI using that data without a warrant or reason? Doing so would be in violation of the 1986 Electronic Communication Privacy Act, and therefore should have legal recourse.
- Does the FBI purchase anonymous social media data and then pierce the anonymity of the data?
- Does the FBI take social media information obtained not through warrant processes and then use this data to get a warrant?
Mr. Wray failed to answer most of these questions, claimed to not understand what was being asked, or deferred to needing to confer with his subject matter expert staff members before providing a follow up response. I find these answers to be disturbing at best. The elusive nature of the FBI may be a sign of attempting to not disclose unlawful practices. If nothing else, it does not inspire confidence that the agency has nothing to hide.
Was this how evidence had been obtained in Travis’s case? Is this why the FBI agent had so casually mentioned a point of contention with the prosecution may be evidence being illegally obtained? Is this why no search warrant was provided? Is this why the plea agreement forced Travis to sign away his right to ever be able to obtain the evidence in his case?
What other pieces of this puzzle would we be able to collect from Committee hearings and court cases? We were inspired to keep digging and researching to see what we could find. Nearly each new day led to revelations illuminating a story line of good versus evil.
Lesson learned: There’s a lot of noise so it can be difficult to discern the truth. Be informed, do your own research, use your critical thinking skills, and follow the evidence.
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Peace & Love,
Janessa
Continuing prayers ~ 🤍🕊🤍
Thank you!