(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Justice Department whistleblowers revealed recently that Facebook has spent the past 19 months spying on users who questioned the 2020 election results or expressed anti-government sentiments, and flagging their private messages for the FBI.
“It was done outside the legal process and without probable cause,” a DOJ source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the New York Post‘s Miranda Devine, according to a column published Wednesday.
“Facebook provides the FBI with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena,” the source added.
The new bombshell follows outrage over an admission that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg casually made on Joe Rogan’s podcast, in which he admitted that the corrupt federal law-enforcement agency had pressured social-media to suppress reporting about Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop prior to the 2020 election.
In recent weeks, the FBI has alarmingly targeted dozens of conservative critics of the Biden administration with subpoenas—a tactic previously deployed to affect the 2014 state election in Wisconsin as left-wing operatives waged an all-out war on then Gov. Scott Walker.
In at least one reported case, the FBI even raided the home of an innocent New Jersey woman, Lisa Gallagher, based on an “anonymous tip” that she had been present at the Jan. 6, 2021 protest at the U.S. Capitol.
In order to circumvent First Amendment protections, Facebook flagged users’ private messages and sent redacted versions to the FBI, which then used them as probable cause to request subpoenas and obtain the full messages, Devine noted.
“As soon as a subpoena was requested, within an hour, Facebook sent back gigabytes of data and photos,” said one DOJ source. “It was ready to go. They were just waiting for that legal process so they could send it.”
Local FBI field offices were then able to investigate the hapless citizens, sometimes using covert surveillance techniques.
“It was a waste of our time,” a source told Devine, noting that the dragnets ultimately yielded no criminal activity.
Nonetheless, the reports they generated might prove to be politically useful for the agency’s 7th Floor brass should they opt to compile a dossier of opposition research for the upcoming midterm election or the 2024 presidential race.
“They were gun-toting, red-blooded Americans [who were] angry after the election and shooting off their mouths and talking about staging protests,” one whistleblower told Devine.
“There was nothing criminal, nothing about violence or massacring or assassinating anyone,” the source continued.
The Post column noted that Facebook sent two contradictory statements—the first appearing to acknowledge the spying program while explaining the intent was to “protect people from harm.”
But company spokesperson Erica Sackin—a “crisis response” expert with a history of left-wing political activism—subsequently sent Devine a revised statement that appeared to retract the admission.
“These claims are just wrong,” Sackin claimed. “The suggestion we seek out peoples’ private messages for anti-government language or questions about the validity of past elections and then proactively supply those to the FBI is plainly inaccurate and there is zero evidence to support it.”
The FBI neither confirmed nor denied the operation.
Zuckerberg played a significant role in influencing the outcome of the 2020 election regardless of the degree to which his company colluded with the FBI.
Using two partisan “nonprofits” overseen by former Barack Obama and George Soros surrogates, he funnelled nearly half a billion dollars into efforts to undermine local election procedures in key battleground states, target blue cities with get-out-the-vote operations and install unmanned ballot drop-boxes, among other things.
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at truthsocial.com/@bensellers.
