In a confession that's raising more questions than it answered, the U.S. Postal Service has confessed to spying on peaceful pro-gun activists' social media accounts and reporting political lobbying as potential terrorism.
“A FOIA obtained by Cato Institute senior fellow Patrick Eddington shows that the United States Postal Service (USPS) inspectors have been monitoring pro-gun activists,” Ammoland reports.
It is unclear why the Postal Service was engaged in domestic surveillance of Facebook accounts.
“The USPS Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) monitored the social media accounts of gun rights advocates from September 2020 through April 2021. The postal inspectors tracked the online activities of gun activists that attended Virginia Citizens Defense League's (VCDL) ‘Lobby Day' and protests over the killing of Breonna Taylor,” Ammoland adds.
In one “Situational Awareness Bulletin” distributed to law enforcement, the USPS reported as a potential terrorist attack the VDCL's “Lobby Day,” in which Virginia residents go the State Capitol in Richmond to speak with legislators.
“Lobby Day” has been a decades-long tradition with no acts of violence. Not only has the VCDL has never threatened violence, it coordinates its Lobby Day with police due to constant death threats from anti-gun activists.
Nonetheless it – and peaceful protests against President Joe Biden – were treated as a potential terrorist acts.
“This smacks of a politically-based anti-gun agenda,” Van Cleave told AmmoLand News.
“If that's not the case, then the Postal Service is pretty inept if they think a VCDL rally needs to be monitored for any reason. If they had done even the tiniest amount of research, they would have realized that VCDL had a rally with over 50,000 people the year before with zero problems, and we left Richmond cleaner than it was before our rally,” Van Cleave told AmmoLand News
In fact, VCDL has always coordinated its rallies with the police to ensure that the gun-control crowd doesn't start any trouble. In what alternate universe would VCDL in any way be a threat to the postal service or its employees?,” Van Cleave added.
Other pro-gun groups were also spied on by the Postal Service.
Prior to the Virginia lobby day in 2021, the US Postal Service was tracking gun owners who, we now know, were 100 percent law-abiding and committed no crimes at the event,” said Erich Pratt, Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America.
“This just shows the anti-gun animus at USPS. After all, did the agency track the Antifa rioters who tore apart city after city during 2020-21? Or did the Postmaster General track the thugs who burnt St. John's Church, when the Secret Service had to whisk away the President to safety? Ignoring the real criminal element just shows that anti-gun Leftist bureaucrats are ignoring the ‘elephant in the room' in order to persecute and harass their political opponents,” asked Pratt.
Several labor unions and other leftist groups with reported histories of violence appear to not be the subject of warnings.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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Yet another reason the post-office should be disbanded and mail given to private contractors for states. Anything the feds touch gets politicized. It’s none of their business if I own a gun, if I protest against a demonstration, or what I post on social media. What’s that got to do with my mail and the price of bananas in Israel?
Are you mixing the price of tea in China with your prejudice?
Seems to me to be yet another case of the kettle calling the pot – black. Our government, are the terrorists performing terrorists acts – against the USA’s Constitution and against the USA’s citizens. The USPS, just proved me right again.
END this USPS Not your job
De-program this administration, it is starting to remind us of the start of “Hitler”, control all, and no regard to human rights or the Constitution.
Another boot licking agency trying to curry favor with Brandon.
I support Donny’s endeavors and believe he does a great job. However, he needs someone to step up and help with editing. It will give him even more credibility plus he will only have to worry about the content. Sometimes the sentences don’t quite make sense due to errors.
The USPS needs to fire all employees in the program because the cannot even balance their budgets and there are all these people working for them that have nothing to do with mail delivery.