According to internal emails, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Secret Service coordinated with the FBI secretly in order to strip U.S. citizens of their rights to own, use, or even buy firearms.
The firearms rights group Gun Owners of America were the first to obtain the email, amid its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the FBI. A more widespread effort than was previously known by the federal government to use the forms is being demonstrated by them, which the Daily Caller revealed in September had been presented between 2016 and 2019 by FBI agents to people at their homes in Maine, Michigan, and Massachusetts, as well as in other undisclosed locations.
The FBI has stripped gun rights from at least 23 people with internal forms, which they did behind closed doors and without congressional approval.
Emails show, however, that the Secret Service and ICE, which are two agencies under the Department of Homeland Security, have also quietly used these same forms, reported the Washington Examiner.
With the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System signatories were registered and asked to declare that they were a “danger” to themselves or other people or lacking the “mental capacity adequately to contract” their lives.
In the past, the FBI targeted mostly people who had reportedly made violent threats on social media, in chat rooms, and in person, internal records show, as reported. On March 30, 2018, a Secret Service employee wrote to an FBI employee: “Good evening [redacted], Attached is a NICS self-submission form for [redacted] (DOB: [redacted].”
It was noted that the email was sent from a supervisory protective intelligence research specialist. “His USSS case number is 127-679-0044105,” the email continued. “If you have any questions, please let me know. Thank you,” said the email.
Records show that a form intended to waive the gun rights of the signatory was attached to the email.
Light shedding on the Secret Service’s usage of the form was also shown in an email from June 4, 2018.
“Can you please enter [redacted] into NICS and advise me when it has been entered. Thank you,” a Secret Service employee wrote to an FBI employee.
In November, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) put forth a resolution, which Democrats rejected recently, that would request Attorney General Merrick Garland turn over documents in connection to the forms. The congressman also said that he wants to know if more federal agencies have used the NICS forms.
“It’s just really, really concerning,” Clyde said, asking: “Is Veterans Affairs using this form to try and get veterans to self-report and deny themselves their Second Amendment right?”
“That needs to be discovered. We need to investigate that. In the majority, I think it becomes a valid question and a valid investigation, and I think we need to spotlight that,” he said.
ICE, which is an agency tasked with protecting the border and stopping illegal immigration, is being referred to in the other set of emails.
“Please see attached signed form,” wrote an undisclosed ICE employee to a NICS liaison specialist on March 26, 2019.
10 minutes later, the specialist wrote back in response: “Entered.”
The ICE employee wrote back, saying: “Awesome!”
A former top DHS official under former President Donald Trump, Ken Cuccinelli finds it “shocking” that ICE appears to have used the FBI forms. Cuccinelli said that it is because ICE and the FBI have different areas of focus.
Cuccinelli, the former attorney general of Virginia, also said that “it certainly suggests to me that a certain type of agent is talking across the federal spectrum.”
“They were doing it when they had to know their leadership would have opposed it. It really speaks to the rogue nature of the ‘Deep State’ mentality,” he added.