The documents, along with other records obtained by Property of the People, reveals that the FBI has changed its domestic terrorism designation “Anti Abortion Extremists” to “Abortion Extremism” in order to include pro-choice activism within this official domestic terrorist category.

One of the newly-obtained documents, titled “Abortion Extremism Reference Guide for Law Enforcement,” was distributed by the FBI at a counterterrorism training for local law enforcement in 2017. The opening line of the document reads dubiously, “Both pro-life and pro-choice abortion extremists engage in criminal activity and seek to further their ideology, wholly or in part through force or violence.”

The FBI’s Abortion Extremism Reference Guide for Law Enforcement further informs that, “Catalysts which may lead to an increase in pro-choice extremism include […] “restricted access to abortion services.” The FBI’s Guide continues that, “Characteristics of pro-choice extremism include belief in a moral duty to protect those who provide and receive abortion services.”

“Pro-choice activists should not have to worry about being targeted as terrorist extremists simply for advocating for bodily autonomy and a woman’s right to choose,” said Gunita Singh, Staff Attorney for Property of the People.

“The FBI has a long, sad history of targeting progressive movements as threats to American security,” stated Ryan Shapiro, Executive Director of Property of the People. At its core, the FBI is, as it has always been, a political police force that primarily targets the left. However, what we’re seeing here is in some ways even more disturbing than the FBI’s routine policing of progressive dissent. Pro-choice activism isn’t even dissent. It’s literally a movement to uphold the existing constitutional order.”

The FBI’s message appears to be taking hold. As revealed in another document obtained by Property of the People, one Washington State Sheriff who attended the FBI’s counterterrorism training shared the Bureau’s Abortion Extremism Reference Guide for Law Enforcement (along with other FBI domestic terrorism reference guides) with the rest of his department. In his email distributing the guides, the Sheriff added, “I attended a counter terrorism meeting with the FBI and other agency heads a short time back. Attached is the latest and greatest about groups we should be aware of.”

In July, President Trump imposed wide-ranging tariffs on Chinese goods, ostensibly over unfair trade practices regarding American intellectual property. In response, China imposed retaliatory tariffs on an assortment of U.S. goods, including agricultural products. The U.S. then imposed additional levies on Chinese goods, even threatening to impose them on virtually all Chinese exports to the United States. Foreseeably, China retaliated in like vein, warning that the dispute will result in “the largest trade war in economic history to date.”

In August, Trump tweeted, “Tariffs will make our country much richer than it is today.” Yet, as foreign policy think tank the Council on Foreign Relations recently retorted, “So far, there’s not much evidence of that.” Continued CFR, “U.S. exports to China have plummeted since June—while U.S. imports from China have continued to rise. Meanwhile, U.S. importers (many of whom are exporters) have seen their U.S. tariff bill more than double since May, topping $5 billion in October.”

U.S. industries far removed from the intellectual property issues purportedly underlying the President’s tariffs are taking the hit. One of the hardest stung industries is U.S. agriculture. American farmers are direct casualties of President Trump’s trade war, and Trump’s self-congratulatory tweets do little to alter this reality.

Property of the People has submitted a series of open records requests through the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and state public records laws to illuminate the fallout from Trump’s trade policies. Among the documents we obtained is an August 17, 2018 draft letter from Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to President Trump expressing palpable dismay at the President’s actions.

Trump’s trade policies, asserted Walker in his letter, are likely to “cause damage to our farmers through an escalating trade war.” Pointedly, Walker noted, “China has specifically targeted major Wisconsin products in their retaliatory tariffs.” Walker continued that this causes serious and direct harm to Wisconsin farmers, who, for example, “produce approximately 85 percent of all ginseng in the country and send nearly half of their exports to China.”

Walker’s letter, available in full on Property of the People’s website, concluded with a plea to President Trump to “take steps that look out for the American farmer[.]” To do this, Walker insisted that President Trump must “maintain our current trading partners and grow new ones.”

Property of the People also obtained a briefing document prepared for Governor Walker’s then upcoming meeting with the President of the China Investment Corporation. Drafted by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, the document underscores Walker’s warning to Trump. The brief noted that China has been a key buyer of American ginseng since the 1700s and that Wisconsin accounts for 90% of U.S. ginseng exports to China. The brief then asserted that Wisconsin farmers simply cannot afford losing access to the Chinese market.

All of the documents obtained by Property of the People from the Wisconsin Governor’s Office, including Walker’s letter to Trump and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation brief, are available on our website. This document cache includes numerous examples of American farmers struggling with and living in fear of what Trump’s trade war might bring next.

Earlier this month, the U.S. and China agreed to temporarily refrain from imposing additional tariffs on the other. However, President Trump’s belligerent, impetuous approach to international trade bodes poorly. As Trump tweeted in September, “I hate to say this, but behind that [tariff] is another $267 billion ready to go on short notice if I want.” Property of the People will continue to obtain documents on the consequences of President Trump’s reckless trade war and its impact on Americans of all walks of life.

The report, produced by the Clark County Sheriff’s Office in Vancouver, Washington, details an internal investigation that ultimately culminated in the termination of Deputy Sheriff Erin Willey. The investigation found Deputy Willey’s affiliations with the Proud Boys, and her production and sale of Proud Boys’ Girls merchandise benefitting the group, violated the Sheriff’s Office’s policy on non-discrimination and anti-harassment (General Order 01.29.180).

According to the Internal Report: “The FBI categorizes the Proud Boys as an extremist group with ties to White Nationalism.  The FBI has warned local law enforcement that the Proud Boys are actively recruiting in the Pacific Northwest and that some in the group have contributed to the escalation of violence at political rallies held on college campuses, and in cities like Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington.”

The Report Continues: “The Proud Boys were publicly categorized as an extremist group by the FBI in 2018 and a Hate Group by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2018.”

The Report Further Continues That: Though the FBI failed to initially designate the Proud Boys as an extremist group with close ties to White Nationalists, “upon closer examination of publicly available source materials and publications, the Proud Boys at its foundation were transparent about what they believed in and what they promoted.”

The Report Also Notes That: The Proud Boy Girls “exist to support their Proud Boys, and are often seen posting approval and supportive comments on social media sites after Proud Boy clashes with Antifa[.]”

Additionally: The Clark County Sheriff’s Office began its investigation of Willey after The Columbian received a photograph of Willey in a Proud Boys’ Girls sweatshirt alongside a photograph of her in her Sheriff’s Office uniform.  According to the investigation’s findings, the photographs were sent by Graham Hayden Jorgensen, Willey’s abusive ex-boyfriend and active Proud Boy in the Vancouver region. Court records indicate Jorgensen sent text messages indicating he hoped Willey would die or get injured on the job. Jorgensen was arrested on domestic violence charges earlier this year.

According to Ryan Shapiro, Executive Director of Property of the People: “The FBI’s failure to initially identify the Proud Boys as a violent organization allied with White Nationalists is hardly surprising given the FBI’s long record of targeting social justice activists as terrorists while turning a blind eye to the threat posed by the radical right.”

“With the newly released documents, we again find a U.S. agency targeting anti-fascists as security threats while downplaying the menace posed by white nationalists,” said Ryan Shapiro, Executive Director of Property of the People. “The Army’s intelligence center warned of Antifa protests yet ignored the then-upcoming Unite the Right rally, and also uncritically accepted far-right talking points whitewashing ‘Anti-Antifa’ groups’ racist underpinnings. In so doing, the Army continues the American intelligence community’s long tradition of finding more common ground with violent, jingoistic bigots than those devoted to stopping them.”

Read Kelly Weill and Spencer Ackerman’s exclusive story on the documents for the Daily Beast.

Today, Property of the People is making these 10 previously unreported FBI documents available to the public. The documents detail Roger Stone’s role as a bagman for the Nixon campaign, in which he funneled over $25,000 (equivalent to $150,000 in 2018) to fund political intelligence gathering and other dirty tricks, including mole embedding and a mysterious payment related to the Watergate break-in. The documents include a copy of the FBI’s interview with Stone, as well as others’ statements to the Bureau about Stone and Jason Rainier, the alias Stone used for his anti-Democratic spy operations.

The FBI restricted access to Stone’s file for decades, even denying a request for the file from Sen. Bob Dole, for whom Stone worked after his time with Nixon. When the documents were finally released in redacted form, they were buried amid 17,000 other pages of records on Watergate.

According to the documents, in one of his earliest acts for Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP), Stone travelled to Massachusetts with a duffle bag containing a jarful of cash intended to fund acts of political sabotage. Stone then recruited an operative and funneled approximately $10,000 (equivalent to $60,000 in 2018) to that operative to pay for surveillance of Democrats and sabotage of Democratic campaigns.

Roughly two weeks after the Watergate break-in and arrests, Stone served as Nixon’s bagman yet again. This time Stone funneled $16,050 (equivalent to $95,000 in 2018) in a mysterious payment from Darius Keaton, an oil executive and fundraiser for Nixon, to Herbert “Bart” Porter. Porter was Stone’s handler with CREEP, as well as the man responsible for paying both Stone and Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy. Stone informed the FBI only that he remembered the payment was more than $1,000. However, Keaton provided the FBI with a receipt for Stone’s Western Union money order, confirming the amount was an order of magnitude greater than what Stone suggested to the Bureau. Notably, Keaton was indicted several years later on insider trading and fraud charges in connection with the sale of his oil company to the Kuwaiti government.

According to the documents, two days after the Watergate break-in and arrests, Watergate burglar and former CIA security officer James McCord called Porter’s home. Stone was dog sitting for Porter at the time and answered the phone, informing McCord that Porter was not present. Stone quickly alerted Porter to the call — calling it a matter of “life and death”. The following day, a second CREEP official questioned Stone about the call.

The FBI documents include a list “highlights” of acts of political sabotage in which Stone was either directly involved or served as the handler for the relevant operative. In one case, Stone sent 200 Democrats invitations to a non-existent primary campaign breakfast. In another, Stone directed Democratic campaign literature intended for the black community to be sent to union workers, and literature intended for union workers to be sent to the black community. In yet another, Stone saw to it that phone lines used by a Democratic primary campaign were tampered with. This resulted in Democratic failure to contact many potential voters, while others were potential voters were inadvertently contacted “numerous times.” In still another instance, Stone made a phony donation from the Young Socialist Alliance to create and exploit divisions among Democrats.

Among other highlights, the FBI documents establish that Stone:

• Committed and directed acts of political sabotage

• Was investigated for possible “violations of election laws”

• Made a cash donation to the Democrats while posing as part of the Young Socialist Alliance

• Acted as bagman for a mysterious $16,050 payment two weeks after the Watergate break-in

• Ran a political spy operation until a month after the Watergate break-in, with operatives infiltrating Democrat campaigns

• Answered a phone call from a Watergate burglar at his handler’s house

• Stone’s handler and source of funds also paid a Watergate burglar

• Had a handler in contact with at least two of the Watergate burglars

• Planted information in the newspaper to divide the Democrats

• Played “political pranks” aimed at “disrupting the election campaigns of political opponents” for CREEP

• Was a bagman for operations “infiltrating the campaigns of the Democrats”

• Came to the attention of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, the FBI Director, and Members of Congress

• Had a file restricted enough that a Senator employing Stone was denied access

• Described political espionage and sabotage as a routine “way of life” for political campaigns – a sentiment Trump would later share

The passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965 legally guaranteed African Americans the right to vote. However, due to endemic racism, swaths of citizens in 1980s Alabama remained functionally unaware of this right.

Albert Turner was an African American civil rights activist from Alabama. Turner served as an advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and helped coordinate the historic 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery. By the 1980s, Turner devoted himself to organizing voter drives and voter education campaigns in Perry County, one of Alabama’s poorest counties. Turner’s efforts bore fruit, and African American voting rates rose significantly.

Enter Roy Lockhart Johnson.

Roy Lockhart Johnson was a white District Attorney in Alabama who served during the time Turner was organizing. For several years, Johnson had unsuccessfully tried to crack down on voter registration efforts like Turner’s. In 1984, having become aware of the climbing African American voting rates in Perry County, Johnson viewed this refreshing increase in representational democracy as a crisis that needed to be quashed.

Through a joint Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit with investigative journalist Jason Leopold, Property of the People obtained records from the Department of Justice’s U.S. Attorneys Office on Johnson’s response to this perceived crisis.

The documents showcase Johnson pleading to then-U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions for help. In his memorandum to Sessions, Johnson decried “irregularities” during the early voting period for the 1984 election. Specifically, Johnson highlighted for Sessions what he viewed as an alarming uptick in absentee voting – a direct result of Albert Turner’s voter registration efforts in which Turner helped elderly black Americans vote for the first time. “Voting fraud,” Johnson declared to Sessions, was most likely to blame for increased African American voting in Perry County.

In his letter, Johnson declared there was a “need for an extensive investigation into the voting process in Perry County.” He urged Sessions to “consider this letter to be an official, urgent request for all possible assistance in conducting this investigation.” Johnson concluded, “I cannot over-emphasize the importance and the urgency of this request.”

Sessions answered the call.

Persuaded that black voting presence in Alabama was so disturbing as to require a federal action, Sessions had the FBI send roughly a dozen Special Agents to investigate.[1]The DOJ convened a grand jury and served dozens of subpoenas. The FBI even obtained the actual ballots cast by the supposedly suspicious voters, thus violating the secrecy of the ballot. The FBI agents then visited and interrogated many of those elderly voters at their homes. They were terrified.[2]

The FBI’s investigation failed to produce actual evidence of voter fraud. Nonetheless, Sessions and the DOJ pushed forward with federal prosecution of Albert Turner, his wife Evelyn, and their colleague Spencer Hogue Jr.[3]They were referred to as the Marion three.

One of the records recently obtained by Property of the People further reveals that Sessions was informed there had been a suspicious fire in the Turners’ garage during the trial. There is a high likelihood the fire was caused by a bomb planted by white supremacists seeking to intimidate the Turners. The record, a memo drafted by Sessions titled “Turner Fire,” stated the Turners’ car was “engulfed in flames.”

Yet, it does not appear Sessions did anything about it. When poor African Americans dared to vote in rural Alabama, Sessions launched a federal investigation, grand jury, and prosecution. When a possible bomb attack targeted civil rights activists, Sessions remained silent.

The car bomb was never reported and Sessions’ memo remained in his Turner File, never to see the light of day –until now.

At his trial, Albert Turner declared, “This whole FBI investigation of absentee voting and the scheduled trials were set up to stop the political progress of black people in the Alabama Black Belt. The power structure wants to turn back the hands of time in Perry County and throughout west Alabama. I would encourage black people not to let my indictment stop them or discourage them. We need to vote in even larger numbers because they are trying to take our right to vote away again.”

Though Sessions’ racist investigations and prosecutions of voting rights activists in the 1980s were enough to sink his nomination for a federal judgeship in 1986, it failed to halt his appointment as Attorney General under President Trump. Now, as Trump, Sessions, and the broader administration employ yet another imaginary voter fraud crisis to disenfranchise people of color, the history of Sessions’ earlier crusades against voting rights becomes ever more critical.

The full story must be told.

[1]See e.g., Nomination of Jefferson B. Sessions III, to be U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Alabama, Hearings Before the Committee on the Judiciary, 99th Congress, March 13, 19, 20, and May 6, 1986, page 278, wherein Senator Denton recounts Albert Turner’s former testimony, stating that 10-15 FBI agents worked for six months on the investigation.

[2]Id., page 205, wherein James Liebman’s testimony describes FBI agents saying to one voter, inside her own home, “Ms. Green, your ballot has been tampered with,” leading a “scared witness to give cautious statements to the FBI.”

[3]United States v. Turner, Hogue, & Turner, Cr. No. 85-00014 (SD Ala. 4 July 1985).

This is the official opinion of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), the federal agency tasked with enforcing the Hatch Act. This opinion reinforces federal workers’ First Amendment liberties as Americans to exercise their right to peaceably assemble. The opinion was obtained by Property of the People under the Freedom of Information Act.

In effect since 1939, the Hatch Act provides parameters for which speech activities by federal workers are permissible on federal property, while on-duty, while in official uniform, and so on. From bumper stickers on cars parked in a federal lot to screensavers on computers in federal offices, the Hatch Act advisory opinions cover it all.

The primary purpose of the Hatch Act is to ensure, to the extent practicable, a politically neutral workplace. This is intended to protect federal employees from political coercion and ensure federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan manner. Many federal workers are confused about whether and to what extent they may exercise their free expression and assembly rights, even while off-duty and off federal property.

This is a real problem.

Through the Freedom of Information Act, over the last six months, Property of the People has received hundreds of advisory opinions from the Office of Special Counsel about the scope and application of the Hatch Act.

In light of the imminent Unite the Right Rally coming to D.C. this weekend, Property of the People wishes to showcase this particular OSC opinion, ruling that counter-protesting white nationalists does not run afoul of the Hatch Act.

So, if you’re a federal employee who wants to protest the white nationalist scourge converging on our nation’s capital, the Hatch Act has your back.

Searchable Archive of Documents Published Online Today

Washington, DC — Today, on the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth, Property of the People is making all documents about Mandela obtained through it’s FOIA litigation from the FBI, CIA, DIA, and NSA available to the public.  Spanning thousands of pages, the vast majority of these documents have never before been seen by the public.

For his role coordinating the movement to end apartheid in South Africa, Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, ultimately serving 27 years in prison. Though Mandela was freed in 1990, Mandela remained on the U.S. terror watchlist until 2008. Despite long standing public knowledge of U.S. intelligence agency assistanceto apartheid South Africa, and likely involvement in Mandela’s 1962 arrest in particular, little specific public information exists on these crucial matters.

Shortly after Nelson Mandela’s death in 2013, MIT PhD candidate and Property of the People president, Ryan Shapiro, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for records on agency efforts to counter Mandela and his movement for racial justice in South Africa.

Shapiro’s FOIA lawsuit, which remains ongoing, has forced the intelligence agencies to release thousands of pages of illuminating documents. Shapiro has made a portion of these documents available to the public, resulting in extensive press coverage of FBI efforts to surveil and subvert Nelson Mandela and his struggle for racial justice. Some highlights of these documents are provided below.

According to Shapiro

Regarding the released FBI documents specifically:

“These documents not only bring to light politically motivated FBI spying on Mandela, they also expose something even darker. The documents reveal that, just as it did in the 1950s and 60s with Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, the FBI aggressively investigated the U.S. and South African anti-apartheid movements as Communist plots imperiling American security. Worse still, the documents demonstrate the FBI continued its wrong-headed Communist menace investigations of Mandela and the anti-apartheid movement even after U.S. imposition of trade sanctions against apartheid South Africa, after Mandela’s globally-celebrated release from prison, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Ultimately, what the documents reveal is the FBI’s unflagging conflation of social justice efforts with security threats, and the FBI’s cartoonish obsession with Communist Party subversion in the United States even as the Cold War itself crumbled into obsolescence.”

Regarding the released documents more broadly:

“Democracy cannot meaningfully exist without an informed citizenry, and such a citizenry is impossible without broad public access to information about the operations of government. Secrecy is a cancer on the body of democracy. The records of government are the property of the people. Yet, unknown billions of pages are needlessly hidden from the people behind closed doors and “classified” markings. It is an honor to make public for all these critical documents about the United States’ long and continuing conflation of necessary social justice efforts with threats to American security.”