Biden Secret Service Records Show Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Was Denied Protection Despite Numerous Threats
Biden Agency Spends $100 Million to Help Disadvantaged Communities by Fixing Broken Electric Vehicle Chargers
Biden Homeland Security Department Greatly Inflates Number of Transnational Criminal Organizations It Dismantles
Biden Secret Service Records Show Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Was Denied Protection Despite Numerous Threats
The Biden administration doesn’t look good on this one – to put it mildly.
We received 11-pages of Secret Service records detailing the denial of protection to presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., despite his having received numerous threats from “known subjects.”
We received the document from the in response to a July 28, 2023, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records and communications of:
a) Director Kimberly A. Cheatle
b) Deputy Director Ronald L. Rowe, Jr.
c) Chief Operating Officer Cynthia Sjoberg Radway
d) Assistant Director, Office of Protective Operations, Michael Plati
On July 28, 2023, Kennedy posted to X (formerly Twitter), “Since the assassination of my father in 1968, candidates for president are provided Secret Service protection. But not me.”
Just last week, Kennedy again requested Secret Service protection following an incident on the campaign trail involving an armed man impersonating a police officer.
The records we obtained include a Secret Service “Protective Intelligence and Assessment” that reveals numerous threats to Kennedy (“Behaviors of Interest”):
On April 23, 2023, a known subject [Redacted] submitted an inappropriate comment on the White House website addressed to President Biden [Redacted] stated, “Born to a political family, his twelfth cousin—Robert Kennedy—announces their candidacy to succeed Joseph Biden for ‘President of the United States.’ There’s no way you’d… assassinate former president Donald Trump. `Go get ‘ern, kiddo!” No further USSS investigation was conducted.
[Redacted]
A known subject [Redacted] mailed a nonsensical letter to the hotel where Kennedy held his presidential campaign announcement event [redacted] warned a “madman” may commit a “serious terrorist act” and wanted to discuss his sins with Kennedy. [Redacted] is of record with the USSS [Secret Service] since March 2023 after he sent a nonsensical letter to President Biden with similar rhetoric. The USSS investigation is complete.
A known subject [Redacted] sent numerous packages, including gifts and a wedding band, to Kennedy [Redacted] stated that she loves Kennedy and expressed anger about being kept away from him. [Redacted]
A known subject [Redacted] sent materials to Kennedy’s residence. One letter contained a 32-page manifesto in which [Redacted] made nonsensical religious references and described himself as a “commissioned messenger of God.”
A known subject [Redacted] regularly sends threatening emails, stating he will “bury” Kennedy, “everyone will die,” and that he will make Kennedy “suffer.”
A subject [Redacted] sent inappropriate communications to Kennedy. The subject believed Kennedy was spying on him, paying people to follow him, and was responsible for vandalism against him. The subject state “your behavior has complete [sic] freaked me out. Focus on your damn campaign and leave me the hell alone.”
The assessment also notes:
Many comments suggested that, for no other reason than that he is a Kennedy, he would be at risk of assassination. In May 2023, Kennedy received increased media attention after accusing the CIA of involvement in the assassination of his uncle. Kennedy has advocated for the release of the individual currently imprisoned for assassinating his father, Sirhan Sirhan, because he believes a CIA contractor was responsible for the death.
Kennedy has received both support and criticism for his stance on vaccines and has been described as an anti-vaccine activist.
In a July 28, 2023, email chain with the subject line “RFK Jr Says Biden Administration Denied Him Secret Service Protection – The Messenger” Secret Service officials discuss a news article in which Kennedy makes a case for protection.
The chief of communications, whose name is redacted, writes to Michael Plati, the assistant director of Protective Operations, and others: “We’re getting Press calls on this and sending to DHS.”
An official in the Office of Intergovernmental and Legislative Affairs, whose name is redacted, responds: “Request for protection to DHS dated 5/26; Response by Congressional Advisory Board 7 /11; Passed to DHS front office on 7 /14.”
The deputy special agent in charge, whose name is redacted, adds:
[T]he following language was key to the recommendation and subsequent decision.
“Protection under these guidelines should only be granted within one year prior to the general election. Protection more than one year prior to the general election should only be granted in extraordinary, case by case circumstances in consultation with the committee, based on threat assessment and other factors.”
The records were produced earlier this week, the day after we filed a FOIA lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over similar but broader requests for DHS/Secret Service leadership records regarding the decision to not provide Secret Service protection for Kennedy (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:23-cv-02846)).
The Biden administration’s refusal to provide Secret Service protection to Mr. Kennedy is dangerous and vindictive. These FOIA requests and our new lawsuit aim to get the full truth on why Mr. Kennedy’s life is being put at unnecessary risk by the Biden administration.
We’ll be sure to keep you apprised if we uncover any other documents on this disturbing issue.
Biden Agency Spends $100 Million to Help Disadvantaged Communities by Fixing Broken Electric Vehicle Chargers
What happens when two of the ideology-driven Biden administration’s policies come in contact? You get an outrageous waste of your tax dollars, as our Corruption Chronicles blog reports.
Besides subsidizing the electric vehicle (EV) industry with a staggering $15.5 billion, the Biden administration is investing an additional $100 million in federal funding to prioritize the repair and replacement of EV charging stations throughout the U.S. The venture will “ensure disadvantaged communities benefit from upgraded charging infrastructure,” according to the Department of Transportation (DOT), which is doling out the money. The costly EV charger project is part of the administration’s Justice40 Initiative which requires 40% of all federal government investments to flow to “disadvantaged communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened with pollution.” The president signed an executive order within days of taking office to allocate unprecedented public funds to poor minority communities in the name of environmental justice.
The multi-million-dollar EV charger restoration project will operate under a Justice40 initiative known as National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program that provides states with money to strategically deploy charging stations and establish an interconnected network to facilitate data collection, access and reliability. “The Biden-Harris Administration has set a goal of building a convenient, affordable, reliable, equitable, and Made-in-America electric vehicle (EV) charging network along the Nation’s highways and within our communities,” according to the grant announcement issued this month by the DOT. Because it is a Justice40 program the feds will use a White House Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool to track how assisted chargers aid needy communities. “Recipients of awards under this program can also use the tool to ensure disadvantaged communities benefit from upgraded charging infrastructure,” the grant document states, adding that “the tool can be used to help prioritize and sequence projects to maximize benefits to disadvantaged communities.”
The White House launched the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool in response to the president’s January 2021 order to tackle the “climate crisis at home and abroad.” The directive includes an extensive section dedicated to securing environmental justice for disadvantaged, historically marginalized and overburdened communities, by among other things, creating a White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council consisting of top government leaders.
The heads of key federal agencies—including the attorney general, secretaries of defense, labor, transportation and energy—were essentially ordered to address environmental justice in minority and low-income populations. “Agencies shall make achieving environmental justice part of their missions by developing programs, policies, and activities to address the disproportionately high and adverse human health, environmental, climate-related and other cumulative impacts on disadvantaged communities, as well as the accompanying economic challenges of such impacts,” according to Biden’s order.
It is not clear what the EV ownership rate is in marginalized or overburdened communities or the demand for chargers because the government has failed to provide that information. However, the administration does reveal that as of this month, 6,261 public charging ports out of 151,506 nationwide were identified as being temporarily unavailable. California has the largest number (1,707) of broken chargers followed by New York (541), Texas (379), Florida (356) and Massachusetts (265). The objective of the administration’s $100 million investment is to enhance and maintain the reliability of the charging network by focusing on the repair or replacement of existing chargers that are currently non-operational, a goal it asserts “will be aligned with the Biden-Harris Administration’s Justice40 Initiative.” The connection is not fully explained.
Just weeks before the charger allotment the administration announced that, as part of the president’s Investing in America agenda, the Department of Energy is disbursing $15.5 billion to “support a strong and just transition to electric vehicles.” The money will focus on “retooling existing factories for the transition to electric vehicles,” according to the agency. Jennifer Granholm, Biden’s energy secretary, claims the funding shows that the president “understands that building the cars of the future also necessitates helping the communities challenged by the transition away from the internal combustion engine.”
Biden Homeland Security Department Greatly Inflates Number of Transnational Criminal Organizations It Dismantles
The massive Department of Homeland Security is enabling a literal invasion is also dropping the ball on related criminal threats on our unsecured borders. Our Corruption Chronicles blog explains.
The U.S. government has long assessed that Mexican drug cartels are the greatest criminal threat to the country and earlier this year federal sources in counterterrorism, intelligence and drug enforcement confirmed in a congressional hearing that the illicit operations have seized unprecedented control of the southwest border. They are officially known as Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCO) and the Biden administration’s reckless open border policies are facilitating their business model, which includes operating in cities throughout the nation with the help of U.S.-based street gangs that have overrun American communities with drugs.
To address the crisis President Trump issued an executive order in 2017 to dismantle TCOs and prevent international trafficking by, not only strengthening the enforcement of federal law, but also ensuring that Homeland Security agencies devote sufficient resources to identifying, interdicting and disrupting TCOs. “These organizations derive revenue through widespread illegal conduct, including acts of violence and abuse that exhibit a wanton disregard for human life,” Trump’s order states. “They, for example, have been known to commit brutal murders, rapes, and other barbaric acts.” In the document the former president also directs federal agencies to share information and coordinate with each other to identify, interdict and destroy TCOs. This includes improvements in the collection, reporting and sharing of relevant data as well as quarterly reports detailing convictions in the U.S. relating to TCOs and their subsidiaries.
All these years later the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has no clue how many TCOs it has dismantled and, even worse, the agency created after 9/11 to safeguard the country inflates the figures markedly. During a recent five-year period Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), DHS’s principal investigative arm responsible for disrupting terrorist and transnational threats, failed to accurately measure and publicly report its progress dismantling TCOs, according to a report issued this month by the DHS Inspector General. The watchdog reviewed a sample of 422 Significant Case Reports (SCR) and determined that 253 (60%) did not describe an entity that aligned with HSI’s definition of a TCO. “From FY 2017 through FY 2022, HSI did not accurately publicly report its progress against its established performance measure of disrupting or dismantling TCOs,” investigators write in the report. “Instead, the results that HSI publicly reported included cases that did not involve entities meeting itsdefinition of a TCO.” Specifically, many of the approved case reports identified in the probe as not TCO-related involved one individual committing a crime in the United States and not crossing any international borders. “HSI included 171 of these non–TCO-related SCRs in its public reporting of TCO disruptions and dismantlement’s,” the IG found.
HSI created the SCR process over a decade ago to identify its most important cases and measure its success in disrupting criminal organizations such as TCOs as well as to justify more congressional funding. The DHS IG found that the embellished stats occurred because the agency relied on data in the case reports which conveniently failed to distinguish between TCO-related and non-TCO-related probes. Nevertheless, the agency repeatedly reported them as successful TCO disrupting investigations. As a result, the report states that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Congress and the public do not know how many TCOs HSI succeeded in dismantling or interrupting during the period examined. The DHS watchdog reveals that “to be considered significant, the investigation must involve a high-threat TCO engaged in criminal activity related to child exploitation; travel or finance (both drug-related and non– drug-related); illicit trade; counterterrorism; worksite enforcement; gangs; or national security.”
Nine Mexican TCOs have the greatest drug trafficking impact on the U.S. according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Among them are the Sinaloa and Juárez cartels, Los Zetas, La Familia Michoacána, Los Rojos and Guerreros Unidos. The TCOs maintain drug distribution cells in cities across the U.S. that report to leaders in Mexico and dominate the nation’s drug market. In a DHS identifies Mexican cartels as the greatest threat to the U.S. because of their ability to control territory and co-opt parts of government, particularly at a state and local level. “They represent an acute and devastating threat to public health and safety in the Homeland and a significant threat to U.S. national security interests,” the DHS writes in the document. Just this week the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned several Sinaloa Cartel affiliates and fugitives.
Until next week,