Our Guardians Have Become The Enemies Of The People

History is replete with examples of the guardians of a nation turning into its enemies. The Praetorian Guard was created to protect the Roman Emperor. It eventually morphed into an entity that decided who got to rule and in one particularly unsavory moment even auctioned off the throne to the highest bidder. The Janissaries were once the elite troops of the Ottoman Empire charged with protecting the Sultan at all costs. They too eventually decided to go into the business of determining who would rule.

We think of those as interesting historical anecdotes. We do not connect them to our own time. We should. Many of the men and women in our Intelligence Community who are our first line of defense have crossed the same line. They now believe it is their right to decide who will sit in the White House.

Most Americans are aware that in advance of the 2020 election 51 former “spies”, all senior intelligence officials, signed onto a letter branding Hunter Biden’s laptop a fraud. They assured Americans it was Russian disinformation and covered up what is likely the greatest counterintelligence threat in American history. They did it for one reason. They wanted Joe Biden in the White House.

Every American who is conscious and at all open-minded understands this. They do not understand that interference in the democratic process by these former intelligence officials did not stop in 2020. It continues today. It has intensified. No longer are these individuals content simply to focus on Donald Trump. They have taken it upon themselves to wage war on anyone who supports Trump and opposes the power of the Deep State.

In 2023 the Department of Homeland Security formed what it called the Experts Group, which we reported on at the time. It provided an official platform from which a number of the key members of the infamous group of 51 former “spies” could continue to interfere in American domestic politics. That group was eventually shut down after a huge public outcry, but we are only now learning the full details of its activities.

Thanks to info obtained by America First Legal we now know that the Experts Group was involved in planning for the infiltration of local communities to spy on Americans deemed to be threats. In order to determine whom to target the Experts Group came up with a list of “indicators” of extremism. If you fit into any of these categories you were judged to be a potential threat.

Those indicators included: military service, being religious, or being tied in any way to Trump and the MAGA movement. These things made you a security threat. Not to the nation obviously, but to the ruling elite in Washington which the top “spies” had determined to protect.

“If you ask researchers to dive into indicators of extremists and terrorism, they might indicate being in the military or religious,” one portion of the documents obtained by America First Legal states. “This being identified as an indicator suggests we should be more worried about these. We need the space to talk about it honestly.”

“There is a political backdrop to all of this. It seems that most of the Domestic Terrorism threat now comes from supporters of the former president,” the document continues. “It is not like you want a political advantage, but people have attacked the government and its institutions for the last six years.”

The Experts Group was so terrified of what all those religious veterans in the MAGA movement were up to that they spent a significant amount of time planning how to get Americans to spy on each other. The Group noted that the “see something say something” campaign after 9/11 never really worked and blamed it on the reluctance of Americans to inform on each other. This was a bad thing you understand. The Experts Group needed to make Americans more willing to be snitches.

The Group noted that the “See Something, Say Something” campaign after 9/11 fell short because “Americans have an ambivalent feeling of telling on each other.” The problem, as one attendee phrased it is, “How do we get into local communities in a non-threatening way? How do people safely report a concern about their neighbors?” 

One of the ideas considered was to reclassify political dissent as a public health crisis. This it was suggested might prompt mothers and teachers to begin to turn in children and students out of “health” concerns.

As noted above, the Experts Group was ultimately shut down after intense public criticism. What is critical to understand, however, is that nothing really changed. An office was shut down. The effort continued and still continues to this day.

The FBI is now, in advance of the 2024 election, aggressively targeting Trump supporters claiming that it is fighting domestic terrorism. You may not have seen any evidence of a real threat from domestic violent extremists, but the United States Government still says that the biggest terrorist threat we face is from those people “clinging to their Bibles and guns” that Barack was so worried about back in the day.

In fact the FBI expanded its “anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists” (AGAAVE) classification to include the “furtherance of political and/or social agendas,” and created a whole new terrorism category, “AGAAVE-Other,” in October of 2022. This category is for those who are anti-government or anti-authority. It means MAGA. It would also neatly cover every man who signed the Declaration of Independence, but that’s a discussion for another time.

None of this should surprise anyone. Joe Biden himself has said, “MAGA Republicans are a threat to the very soul of this country.”

We have resolved nothing. The threat to democracy from the very individuals and institutions charged with protecting it is growing. Our guardians have become the enemies of the people.