Category: Fbi
Biden’s FBI Met with Twitter Days Before 2022 Election
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The game was fixed long before the bets were legal
The integrity of sports is in trouble again, or so the headlines say. The FBI last week arrested more than 30 people in a wide-ranging gambling probe that ensnared Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier.
A former Cleveland Cavaliers player, Damon Jones, was also charged in two separate cases — one involving sports betting improprieties, the other tied to Billups’ alleged participation in an illegal poker ring linked to the mafia.
Cheating is illegal. Addiction is tragic. But gambling itself isn’t a sin against the republic.
Given the timing — amid public debate over legalized sports wagering since 2018 — the FBI’s sweep might look like vindication for critics of betting. It isn’t.
Millionaires behaving badly
When federal agents arrest millionaire athletes and coaches for gambling crimes, it raises an obvious question: Is legalized sports betting really to blame?
Rozier’s salary cap for the 2025-26 season is $26.6 million. His career earnings total more than $160 million. Billups made $4.7 million during the 2024-25 NBA season. Disgraced Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter, 25, had earned $2.7 million before his ban for sharing medical information to steer bets.
When people earn sums that most Americans can’t even imagine, they often invent new ways to ruin themselves. The average NBA salary in 1991 was $800,000; today it’s more than $8 million. As David Cone of Crain and Company observed, “Even if you’re just on a roster, you make more than doctors make. There’s no excuse.”
There really isn’t. This scandal is less about gambling and more about human nature — about greed, self-destruction, and the moral rot that wealth alone can’t fix. The Supreme Court’s decision to legalize small wagers didn’t make multimillionaires betray their sport for a few illegal dollars. They did that on their own.
The moral lesson that hasn’t changed
When infielder Fred McMullin went down in the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal, he earned $3,500 a year — roughly $67,000 in today’s money. Those players were underpaid and easily tempted. No one can say that about professional athletes or coaches today.
Legalized betting didn’t create this corruption, and FBI Director Kash Patel said as much during an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News.
Critics overplay their hand
A video clip from ESPN’s “Get Up” made the rounds this week after producers hastily removed an on-screen ad for ESPN Bet during coverage of the scandal. The network’s discomfort spurred an online feeding frenzy from the right’s new morality police, who pounced on the moment as proof of hypocrisy.
Saagar Enjeti circled the ad and captioned it, “Spot the problem.” But the real problem isn’t the ad; it’s addiction and bad character. Billups apparently got hooked on poker. Rozier and Jones broke the law and got caught in an era when every transaction and text leaves a trail.
Enjeti calls this “uncontrolled.” Tell that to the players facing federal indictments. Gambling today is more visible, traceable, and regulated than ever before. The temptation hasn’t changed — the surveillance has.
RELATED: The myth of the online gambling ‘epidemic’
Hirurg via iStock/Getty Images
Americans were always betting
Critics say the explosion of legal sportsbooks has opened new avenues for corruption. Maybe. But it has also pulled a massive shadow economy into the light. Americans didn’t wait for the Supreme Court’s permission to wager; by 2015, they were already betting an estimated $150 billion a year on illegal offshore sites.
Yes, the sector’s growth has been explosive. And yes, it’s unsettling to see leagues, networks, and sportsbooks growing so intertwined. But that doesn’t make moral crusaders the saviors of integrity.
The real vice
Take Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who reportedly won $1.4 million playing blackjack in Las Vegas last year — less than 1% of his net worth. Critics didn’t call that a moral crisis.
The point is simple: People should be free to spend their discretionary income as they choose. Cheating is illegal. Addiction is tragic. But gambling itself isn’t a sin against the republic.
The latest pro sports scandal offers a moral lesson, but not the one the prohibitionists want to hear. Legalized betting didn’t corrupt sports — people did. And no law can outlaw greed.
Republicans torch Obama judge over his role in Biden FBI’s ‘partisan vendetta,’ demand impeachment
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and other Republicans are seeking the impeachment of U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, the Obama appointee who apparently helped the Biden FBI spy on Republican lawmakers’ phone records.
During a press conference on Wednesday regarding the latest insights into the FBI’s Arctic Frost operation, Cruz called on the House to impeach Boasberg, stating, “Judge Boasberg put his robes down, stood up, and said, ‘Sign me up to be part of the partisan vendetta against 20% of the Republicans in the Senate.'”
‘This order is an abuse of power.’
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) underscored that what Boasberg “did to Senator Cruz and maybe other senators absolutely — and I don’t say this lightly — absolutely is worthy of impeachment proceedings. There has to be accountability.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) published documents earlier this month detailing how the Biden FBI sought private cellphone records from at least nine Republican lawmakers during Arctic Frost — an operation that set the stage for at least one case brought against President Donald Trump by former Attorney General Merrick Garland’s special counsel, Jack Smith, whose appointment was ruled unconstitutional.
Grassley released additional documents this week showing that Smith and his team subpoenaed records for over 400 Republican individuals and entities as part of what the Iowa senator called a “fishing expedition.”
Cruz — whose Senate office hardline and cellphone records were reportedly targeted — suggested on Wednesday that the indiscriminate targeting of conservatives was “egregious” and that the secret subpoenaing of lawmakers’ communication records was executed “in complete contravention of the Constitution, of separation of powers, of the Speech and Debate Clause, of free speech, of basic rights and property.”
The Texas senator produced a court order apparently indicating that Boasberg barred AT&T from informing Cruz that his phone data was being collected by the Biden administration. The prohibition was to remain in effect for at least one year.
RELATED: Damning new docs reveal who’s on Biden admin’s ‘enemies list,’ expose extent of FBI’s Arctic Frost
Photo by Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images
The order reportedly stated as cause that “the court finds reasonable grounds to believe that such disclosure will result in destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses, and serious jeopardy to the investigation.”
“I can tell you there is precisely zero evidence to conclude that I am likely to destroy or tamper with evidence or to intimidate potential witnesses. Zero evidentiary basis for that,” stressed Cruz. “This order is an abuse of power. This order is a weaponized legal system.”
‘Boasberg is that radical leftist judge who is out of control.’
Cruz admitted that he had not yet seen the subpoenas for the other senators but speculated “Judge Boasberg printed these things out like the placemats at Denny’s, one after the other.”
The Texas senator noted that if a litigant makes a claim for which there is no factual basis, “that litigant is subject to sanctions in federal court — and if a judge signs an order reaching a factual conclusion for which there is zero evidence whatsoever, that judge is abusing his power.”
Blaze News has reached out to Boasberg for comment.
‘Who is Boasberg?’
“Now who is Boasberg? Boasberg is that radical leftist judge who is out of control, who has been issuing nationwide injunctions, one after the other, trying to stop President Trump from carrying out his mandate from the voters,” said Cruz.
Boasberg has worked ardently in recent years to earn the label “radical leftist.” For instance, he:
- ordered in August the release of a woman accused of repeatedly threatening Trump’s life;
- temporarily blocked summary deportations of apparent Tren de Aragua terrorists by the Trump administration under the Alien Enemies Act;
- tried unsuccessfully to hold Trump administration officials in contempt for deporting illegal aliens to El Salvador;
- kept Kevin Clinesmith — the former FBI attorney who, according to the DOJ, fabricated evidence to support a surveillance application to the same FISA court, lying about Carter Page’s past cooperation with the CIA — out of jail; and
- mandated a right to Medicaid for able-bodied adults without work requirements.
The demands that Boasberg face accountability for his involvement with the FBI’s Arctic Frost “fishing expedition” come just months after Attorney General Pam Bondi slapped him with a misconduct complaint for allegedly “making improper public comments about President Trump and his administration.”
This is also not the first time that Republicans have called for his impeachment.
After ordering the Trump administration not to deport suspected members of the Tren de Aragua terrorist organization, President Trump called for Boasberg to be impeached, suggesting in a March 18 post on Truth Social that Boasberg was a “radical Left Lunatic of a Judge.”
That same day, Republican Rep. Brandon Gill (Texas) introduced articles of impeachment accusing Boasberg of attempting to seize power from the executive branch, thereby interfering with the will of the American people; jeopardizing the safety of the nation; and engaging in actions that prioritize political gain over the duty of impartiality owed the litigants in the case.
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Trump Task Force Catches 3,000 Cartel and Gang Members, 1,000 Guns, 91 Tons of Drugs in Weeks
A Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) established by President Trump on the day of his inauguration to tackle a pandemic of transnational organized crime created by the Biden administration’s “disgraceful” open border policies has made thousands of arrests in recent weeks and seized over 1,000 illegal firearms, 91 tons of drugs and $3 million in […]
The post Trump Task Force Catches 3,000 Cartel and Gang Members, 1,000 Guns, 91 Tons of Drugs in Weeks appeared first on Judicial Watch.
Is this the insidious reason Biden’s FBI chose ‘Arctic Frost’ for anti-Trump weaponized investigation?
“Arctic Frost” was an FBI operation greenlit in April 2022 by former Director Christopher Wray and ex-Attorney General Merrick Garland that targeted various individuals supportive of President Donald Trump and/or skeptical of the results of the 2020 election.
The investigation, which was formally assigned to special counsel Jack Smith in November 2022, ultimately resulted in the four-count indictment Smith filed in August 2023 accusing Trump of attempting to disrupt the lawful transfer of power.
It turns out that the partisan nature of the investigation was baked in at the outset — right into its name.
‘They were so out of control, and thought they never would get caught.’
Following Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R) publication of documents on Friday showing that Wray, Garland, and former Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco approved the opening of Arctic Frost, Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, stated that “what you should know is that they were so out of control, and thought they never would get caught, that they named this investigation after an orange to mock Trump.”
RELATED: Damning new docs reveal who’s on Biden admin’s ‘enemies list,’ expose extent of FBI’s Arctic Frost
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Arctic frost is the name of a satsuma mandarin orange hybrid. Early in its investigation into Operation Arctic Frost, the Oversight Project revealed that “the corrupt FBI agents who opened this case named it this to mock” Trump.
Many of Trump’s detractors — including disgraced former FBI Director James Comey — have in years past suggested that he has an orange pigmentation.
In addition to serving as a nod to fellow Trump antagonists, the alleged naming of the operation as an intended insult to Trump signals that it was, from its very inception, nothing more than a partisan campaign aimed at the ruination of the president and his allies.
Blaze News has reached out to the FBI for comment.
Editor’s note: Mike Howell is a contributor at Blaze News.
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The bureaucracy strikes back — and we’re striking harder
Old habits die hard. The Oversight Project filed another lawsuit against the FBI today. During the Biden years, we were in court constantly, suing the bureau more than a dozen times over weaponization and abuse. Many of the cases we fought then connect directly to the scandals now surfacing under the Trump administration. We were over the target back then — and Washington doesn’t do coincidences.
But this case is different.
We’re suing the FBI to force transparency — not for politics, but for accountability. Because if we don’t fix this now, we’ll look back and wish we had.
Monday’s lawsuit strikes at a deeper problem: the FBI’s claim that it has been “reformed” and is now “the most transparent in history.” That phrase is absurd on its face. Compared with the post-COINTELPRO reforms and the Church Committee era, today’s FBI is anything but transparent.
We’re suing because the bureau has built a system designed to violate the Freedom of Information Act. Over time, the FBI has developed a “pattern and practice” of breaking the law to hide information. Reporters across the political spectrum can tell you the same thing. The bureau stonewalls, delays, and hides behind boilerplate responses that make a mockery of the law.
Our case asks the federal judiciary to step in and force the FBI to fix this — to overhaul its FOIA process and follow the law it routinely ignores. This isn’t a step we took lightly. For nearly a year, we tried to resolve these problems through other channels. But the bureau’s “fixes” never came.
Bureaucratic shell game
The FBI has perfected a set of tricks to avoid scrutiny. It uses canned denials for well-defined requests, ignores the public-interest standard written into law, and buries documents under layers of redaction. Even by Washington’s anemic transparency standards, the FBI stands out as the worst offender.
This isn’t theoretical. In practice, the Oversight Project submitted requests naming specific agents — like the infamous Timothy Thibault — and identifying internal systems such as the Lync messaging platform. We asked for communications containing key terms like “Republican” or “Mar-a-Lago.” Those are precisely the requests the bureau continues to battle with gusto.
FBI Director Kash Patel deserves credit for some high-profile disclosures, but we can’t depend on him to keep discovering incriminating documents in “burn bags” or forgotten closets. That’s not transparency — that’s triage. The FBI cannot investigate itself or selectively release information without feeding public cynicism.
The point of FOIA is citizen oversight — not bureaucratic discretion. In a republic, the people are supposed to control government institutions, not the other way around.
A pattern of abuse
If the FBI had obeyed its own transparency standards all along, Americans would already know far more about the scandals that shook their confidence in government: Russiagate, the Mar-a-Lago raid, Operation Arctic Frost, the targeting of Catholic parishes and concerned parents, and the January 6 excesses. Each of these was compounded by secrecy and delay.
RELATED: Video sleuth challenges FBI Jan. 6 pipe-bomb narrative, unearths new evidence
filo via iStock/Getty Images
The bureau’s institutional resistance to disclosure doesn’t just protect bad actors — it perpetuates them. It allows corruption to metastasize under color of national security and procedure.
Time to clean house
At some point, the FBI will no longer be in Kash Patel’s hands. That’s why reform should happen now while the issue is in the public eye. The systems that enable secrecy and abuse must be dismantled before the next crisis hits.
We’re suing the FBI to force transparency — not for politics, but for accountability. Because if we don’t fix this now, we’ll look back and wish we had.
