Is Entrapment the Tactic of Choice for the FBI?
Greg Penglis and I debate the recent stunning verdict in Michigan, my article over the weekend, and more
Earlier this morning, I joined Greg Penglis of Action Radio to talk about my article over the weekend about the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
I come on in hour three.
In that article, I examined a case from 2017 in which an Oklahoma resident named Jerry Varnell was lured by an informant and the FBI into a plot to blow up a bank building in Oklahoma.
I had attempted to turn this into a story in 2017, but I was denied with one editor saying, “Maybe speak with a legal expert to get a decent definition of entrapment. If something here is not by the book, I would be interested in a piece, but this sounds like fairly standard practice for the FBI in an undercover investigation.”
Obviously, the FBI no longer enjoys the same deference.
As with the case in Michigan- in which the FBI claimed to have stopped a purported plot to kidnap Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer- the FBI swooped in using informants and undercover agents to create most of the conspiracy with the alleged criminals being pulled along.
“We introduce the undercover, the undercover, Varnell, and you all start making this massive plan. The substitution unit provides the undercover with some of the stuff. Varnell, the undercover, and you go out in the field,” the FBI agent states in a recording, “We provide him with a Ryder truck and it’s got ten barrels of ammonium nitrate in the fuel. He thinks in the truck. You guys put these things together and he drives it somewhere. He dials the numbers and blows this thing up.”
Greg and I debated if these tactics are common, if they’re proper, and finally some reforms for fixing the FBI.
At the end, Greg argues that the FBI is not a constitutional organization and it should be stripped of its law enforcement powers and be only an investigative agency.
Here again is the podcast with Greg.
I have always believed entrapment is when a government induces a defendant to commit an offense for which he or she wasn't already predisposed.