MLK/FBI movie poster.

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

A new documentary explores the FBI’s relentless surveillance and harassment of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.

The Sam Pollard documentary relies on recently declassified files, interviews and archival imagery of the civil rights movement.

“We felt it was important to really look at how King was looked at from the perspective of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, that they considered him a very dangerous man,” Pollard tells The Hollywood Reporter. “They were going at him by any means necessary to destroy him. At the same time, we wanted to convey King’s trajectory as we see the FBI is really digging into him, wiretapping, bugging his hotel rooms, and finding out that he was not a monogamous man.”

Pollard, who is known for editing Spike Lee films, said he sees a parallel between the civil rights movement a half century ago and the Black Lives Matter movement today.

The documentary will make its world premiere at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival.

Special counsel Robert Mueller. Photo via FBI.

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

Top Senate Republicans are calling on the Justice Department to investigate whether special counsel Robert Mueller and his team violated federal record-keeping laws by erasing their official cell phones of data.

In a letter to the FBI and Justice Department, Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, also is requesting the Justice Department to determine whether the deleted data can be recovered.

“It appears that Special Counsel Mueller’s team may have deleted federal records that could be key to better understanding their decision-making process as they pursued their investigation and wrote their report,” Grassley wrote. “Indeed, many officials apparently deleted the records after the DOJ Inspector General began his inquiry into how the Department mishandled Crossfire Hurricane. Moreover, based on this new information, the number of times and the stated reasons for the deletions calls into question whether or not it was a widespread intentional effort.”

A Freedom of Information Act request revealed that at least 15 phones used during the Russia investigation were wiped of information.

Homeland Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson requested an investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

On Twitter, President Trump compared the matter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton deleting thousands of emails off a private server.

“ALERT: So now we find out that the entire Mueller ‘hit squad’ illegally wiped their phones clean just prior to the investigation of them, all using the same really dumb reason for this ‘accident’, just like Crooked Hillary smashing her phones with a hammer, & DELETING HER EMAILS!” Trump tweeted early Saturday morning.

….It has now been determined that the Mueller Scam should never have been set up in the first place, there were no grounds. It was all an illegitimate Witch Hunt, & a big price must be paid. How different my life would have been if this fraud on America was never committed!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 12, 2020