Anonymous
Under normal litigation circumstances, I wouldn’t dream of writing this many blogs or sending out this many e-blasts. But this is far from normal. Our web community has become a journal of recorded history, and the first major battlefield will either be won or lost by Tuesday night at 11:59 p.m.
That’s the moment the FBI is telling federally-licensed dealers in firearms with business premises in New York that it will cut off FFL dealers and pawnbrokers from their direct connection to the federal NICS background check system, the FBI, and the ATF.
Yesterday, we were DENIED a stay of execution by the Second Circuit to our Emergency Motion of 08.29.2023.
Monday, we will file an Emergency Application for Stay to the Supreme Court of the United States. It will be our third effort to get their attention.
Allow me to take one moment to show you and tell you more about the FBI role in this hostile take-over by the NYS Police and NYS Governor Kathleen Hochul.
As of this morning’s latest, the FBI has sent out five (5) known e-mails to FFLs with the same essential content and attachment, but with important subtle differences to the signature block and boilerplate beneath that signature block.
We knew from the FBI’s first three e-mail attempts that they weren’t reaching all federally-licensed dealers with business premises in New York. Our lawsuit, Gazzola v. Hochul, includes eight plaintiffs, seven of whom have both federal and state dealer or pawnbroker licenses. Even just among our plaintiff team, not everyone received each FBI e-mail.
Two days ago (FBI e-mail #3), the “TO” e-mail addresses were exposed and visible on a straight copy (so, not using a “bcc” or “blind copy”). This is court-admissible documentation that not all plaintiffs were copied on the notice. It also gave us a multi-hundred list of e-mail addresses as broader admissible documentation that not all 1,700+ dealers and pawnbrokers were notified through that particular e-mail.
Yesterday (FBI e-mail #4), the “TO” was a massive list of e-mail addresses that were exposed and visible on a straight copy. This admissible documentation would benefit prosecutors of dealers, if it is, indeed a complete list, because it would establish one “notification” touch point in a criminal prosecution.
What spooked dealers and had them sending me super hesitant questions was the added verbiage under the signature block. It had appeared in the Thursday FBI e-mail #3, but that only went to a smaller percentage of dealers. The Friday FBI e-mail #4, reaching a much larger percentage of dealers, was the statistical push to trigger all the added traffic to me.
The question from dealers was “can I actually get in trouble for sharing this with you?”
Here’s the added language, which first appeared on FBI e-mail #3:
“This message, along with any attachments, is to be considered confidential and legally privileged.”
Nothing about a conversion of a state from Brady background to partial POC to even full POC has anything to do with the Patriot Act. This is not a DHS “National Security Letter.” There is no reference in the entire White Book of federal laws, regulations, guidance documents, and ATF rulings that speaks to ANY legal privilege between the FBI, the ATF, and federally-licensed dealers of any license type - and there are 11 license types to choose from. The FBI e-mails #4 and #5 contain no citation to any law or regulation.
As far as I can tell from any and every place I went to for confirmation research these past 48-hours, there’s no legal support for these FBI words on an e-mail.
So who started this game of “telephone?”
The New York State Police.
I’ve been highlighting this since the NYSP “Angie” e-mail hit on 08.10.2023. The NYSP have been asking federally-licensed dealers and pawnbrokers to keep secrets. A law enforcement officer, investigator, or administrator even asking a compliance-minded FFL to keep a secret automatically triggers a question in the mind of the FFL whether there could be some statute or regulation lurking in some shoebox that they haven’t seen, even if they have been licensed more than 50 years, as three of the plaintiffs have been.
And that, my dear friends, is exactly what scare tactics are designed to do. This is exactly what a bully does when they have no substance to back up their assertion.
Listen, our Emergency Motion of 08.29.2023 to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals may have been DENIED at just gone 5:00 p.m. yesterday, but what came in about two hours before that was a paper from the state’s attorneys. The state did not rebut even one allegation of fact made in our Emergency Motion. My lengthy “Attorney Declaration.” The Declarations (federal court term for “affidavits”) of Mr. Jarrett Ford (FFL), Mr. Craig Serafini (Plaintiff FFL), Mr. Richard Sehlmeyer (FFL), and Ms. Nadine Gazzola (Plaintiff FFL), plus the numerous documents attached as exhibits to each of the Declarations. Not one sentence we wrote to record history of the abuses and excesses of the power grab going on were contradicted.
Oh, and the other change in the FBI e-mail? Well, it seems that Mr. Eric Moore from the FBI-NICS Unit took his name off the e-mails. This, sadly, and “too,” is lock-step with NYSP behavior as we keep exposing what they’re trying to do. NYSP officers answering the telephone at Division have started telling FFLs and citizens who are calling them for answers “I’ve been told not to give you my name - just Officer number 3 - 2 - 0.”
The defendants in Gazzola v. Hochul want no accountability. Those who aid and abet want no accountability. The investigators from NYSP-JTTF going into dealers’ shops masquerading as pretenders of “I don’t have any training - I don’t know what I’m doing with this 31-point inspection checklist - could you just help me and tell me what you’re doing and not doing?” Same coordinated script.
We see you! We may still lose this thing and this system may well go live on Wednesday in violation of everything I ever studied, learned, and argued about civil rights and the Rule of Law and the Supremacy Clause and especially Fourteenth Amendment protections of the rights of state citizens being equal to federal standards. But I will be damned if you think I am not going to bring the facts before the Court so that they can give full consideration to what is happening.
This is still these United States, and this is still a judicial system to which we have a right to bring the grievances of ordinary citizens, especially where the downside threatens a stoppage of all firearms and ammunition sales in New York through an untested system (at the least) to the creation of a gun owners’ registry (as our worst fears, realized). The new state law states this is the purpose. The state’s attorneys confirmed, in writing, to the Second Circuit, this is the purpose of the new New York State Police administered background check system.
Be informed. Bring forth what is happening in New York.
