"The FBI Is Investigating Me Because I Tweeted A Joke About Fake News"

[muriel_volestrangler]

I responded with a joke about Raandy's joke:

Nick Baumann ✔ @NickBaumann
@lachlan i love my job working at a voting site in washington dc destroying trump ballots
4:43 PM - 31 Oct 2016

...
None of that stopped the outrage. One Twitter user warned that she had reported me to the FBI and to Project Veritas — a right-wing organization led by James O’Keefe that stages elaborate stings of reporters, liberals and others; heavily edits its gotcha videos; and then tries to get those people fired.
...
On Nov. 4, I received a call from someone who said he was an FBI agent and wanted to speak to me. I figured it was a prank. I get a lot of hate emails and angry voicemails, and I dismissed the insane possibility that the FBI would investigate an obvious joke on Twitter. I would’ve called back anyway, just to be sure. But it was right before the election, and I forgot about it.

Then, on Monday, a month later, I received a followup message. It was the same person. It turns out he really is a special agent in the Washington Field Office of the FBI.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fbi-investigates-journalist-joke-tweet_us_58471b9fe4b0fe5ab6936b54?sojvpldi

Everyone seemed to know it was a joke - even Project Veritas did nothing with it - except the mouthbreather who reported him to the FBI, and the FBI themselves, who are trying to pretend they have to investigate anything reported to them, but Baumann, who has written about the FBI many times, says that isn't true.

[DonCoquixote]

1. These are the people the right emboldens and exploits

They did it this way in the McCarthy era, now they do it with brietbart. Of course it helps that the FBI itself, at the very least, has shown they bow to pressure, as Mr. Comey showed.

Those folks do not get stopped until they are embarrassed and exposed, and sadly, that does not happen until they overreach or get dumped by their exploiters. That mouth breather is probably going to wonder why his or her mother ended up on the street after medicaid and SS get offered to Paul Ryan's goddess Ayn Rand.

[DonCoquixote]

2. there is one sad lesson here

As we deal with the enemy, we have to realize that even those with common sense and a three digit IQ will bend to those that do not. As yeats put it: "the best lack all conviction, the worst are full of passionate intensity."

[Daxter]

3. Your tax dollars at work

What a waste of time and money calling a journalist about a dumb tweet.like he said in his article, if he was really destroying votes for trump. Why would he brag about it?

[neeksgeek]

4. This reminds me of...

This story from 2003:

http://www.clatl.com/news/article/13011815/careful-the-fbeye-may-be-watching

[Grey Lemercier]

5. holy shit, that is chilling

[neeksgeek]

8. Yes, it is. At the time, I was outraged...

But I suspect that story is nothing compared to what's coming in 2017.

EDIT to add, all three of these stories (the Huffpost piece, Marc Shulz's story, and the original Hal Crowther piece Marc read) are going in my anti-memory-hole collection of PDF files.

[zippythepinhead]

6. trump's gestapo

the fbi is run by conservative right wingers. trump has comey in his pocket. the fbi is the one who should be investigated.
this is really scary stuff.

I remember what they did to John Lennon.

It's like being back in the Nixon era.

The FBI is too political favoring the republicans.

[Hortensis]

9. Comey's corrupt, but he's cooperating with far more powerful

people than that dysfunctional buffoon we unbelievably elected. The ones who will decide whether to keep and use or discard Trump.

[zippythepinhead]

7. The FBI

should be investigating wikileaks/Putin/Trump about the election sabotage