FBI Agent Richard Trask was arrested in Kalamazoo for smashing is wife's head into a nightstand after attending a swingers party earlier this week. Agent Trask was the lead agent in charge of investing the alleged plot to put Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer on trial for treason last year. The FBI has said that they are aware of the charges but will not comment on Trask's status with the agency despite him being released on conditions that make it almost impossible for anyone to work in law enforcement. Trask's arrest jeopardizes the credibility of everything he has ever said and could turn the tide in the Whitmer case.
ANALYSIS
We found an excellent analysis of this case on YouTube by an attorney named Robert Gruler who runs a channel called Watching the Watchers. The analysis is over 20 minutes long, but the last 10 minutes have more to do with the Witmer case than this one. We are embedding the video below this article. Gruler summarizes information about the case from multiple media outlets. The allegations are that Mr. and Mrs. Trask attended a swingers party at the Delta Hotel located at 2747 S. 11th St. in Oshtemo Township. His wife told police that she did not like the party despite the two of them drinking heavily and that they began arguing in the car on the way home. Then she says that Trask got on top of her, grabbed both sides of her head and smashed it into a nightstand multiple times. Then she says that she grabbed his beard in an effort to get him off her and he responded by choking her until she grabbed his testicles. Realizing that she had him by the balls he stopped choking her. He then grabbed some clothes and fled the scene in his wife's car. When police arrived they said that Trask's wife was bleeding from the head, had multiple cuts, and severe bruising. Police eventually found Trask in the Meijer parking lot at 6660 W. Main St. where he was read his rights, said he understood his rights, refused to make a statement, was arrested, and taken to jail.
TRASK's STATUS WITH THE FBI
Trask was quickly released on a personal recognizance bond with conditions. Those conditions include that he not return to his home or possess a firearm. We don't know how anyone can continue to work as a FBI agent doing the types of tasks that he performed without carrying a firearm. It is possible that he could be reassigned to desk duty pending the outcome of the case, but it is more likely that he has been placed on administrative leave. However, law enforcement agencies are usually quick to tell the public that an officer has been placed on leave in high profile cases like this one. FBI spokeswoman Mara Schneider released a statement saying, "in accordance with FBI policy, the incident is subject to internal review, and we cannot comment further at this time." That tells us that an internal investigation has begun. That investigation is most likely being led by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Justice because it involves allegations of misconduct outside the scope of professional duties. That was the case when our founder accused several federal officers of battery a few years ago. Because the allegations involved criminal conduct outside the scope of their duties it was referred to OIG even thought the officers were on duty at the time. The OIG's primary function in such cases is to rubber stamp official statements made by those under investigation so that they can make it look like an independent third party thoroughly investigated the matter, but if those investigations were truly independent and objective then people like our founder would not win lawsuits despite their findings (https://copblaster.com/blast/34427/feds-agree-to-settle-usp-victorville-brutality-lawsuit). This case however seems like one in which they might actually do their jobs because the victim is not a suspect/convict, it took place off duty, and the perpetrator has already been arrested.
THE GRETCHEN WHITMER CASE
Trask's arrest is great news for the Wolverine Watchmen he arrested last year (https://copblaster.com/blast/26001/wolverine-watchmen-busted-for-plotting-gretchen-whitmer-treason-trial). Trask signed the criminal complaint in that case (see PDF link above map) and wrote the probably cause statement in support of that complaint (https://copblaster.com/uploads/files/us-v-wolverine-watchmen.pdf). In the complaint he alleged that a group of patriots fed up with being governed by traitors took steps to hold one of them accountable for her actions. He described their motive as "creating a society that followed the U.S. Bill of Rights." To those ends they allegedly identified "state governments they believed were violating the U.S. Constitution, including the government of Michigan and Governor Gretchen Whitmer." However, Trask admitted that law enforcement had a powerful incentive to find any excuse they could to take them down, "The militia group had already been brought to the attention of the FBI by a local
police department in March 2020, when members of the militia group were attempting to obtain the addresses of local law-enforcement officers." It is not a crime to obtain addresses of law enforcement officers, but that does not stop them from doing all them can to stop you.
We found this out shortly after this site was launched in 2017 when our founder was arrested by U.S. Marshals for allegedly violating supervised release condition stemming for a 2013 federal conviction for making threatening communications and a 2014 conviction for assaulting a federal employee while serving a 24 month sentence in the threat case. Probation had already served him with a summons for allegedly violating his conditions by not participating in computer monitoring, but that summons said that they would not seek to revoke his release and they simply wanted to ban him from computers for disabling the monitoring software (https://copblaster.com/uploads/files/matt-preuitt.pdf). He fought back by lawfully obtaining and publishing home addresses of ever police officer, prosecutor, judge, and snitch involved in his cases so that they would have no choice but to let him use computers if they wanted that information suppressed. They elected to arrest him instead hoping that he wouldn't be able to keep the site running from jail. They had precedent for that because it worked in his threat case when their true target was a network of legal websites because his hosting company did not accept automatic payments and his own people betrayed him after his arrest by not following directions he sent from jail, but it didn't work the second time. As a result their home addresses remained live on the site for over a year while he served his six month revocation and fought new charges of assaulting a federal officer for throwing spicy chips into the faces of correctional officers. He had been told to move to the entrance area of his housing unit because he would be going to the disciplinary unit, but instead he went back to his cell to flush contraband and told officers that he would publish their home addresses on this site if they took him to the disciplinary unit. They responded by assaulting him, breaking his arm, and falsely accusing him of throwing punches/elbows striking them in the face several times. Their actions were a desperate attempt to keep their information off this site by getting him a third strike under the federal sentencing guidelines as a career offender (they only require two prior violent felonies even if the person is not a career criminal, so if you punch three mailmen in your life you could get at least 15 years for that third mailman). He went from facing at least 15 years to time served after an expert witness provided proof that his arm was intentionally broken (https://copblaster.com/uploads/files/expert-witness-report_compressed.pdf) and the officers could provide no evidence of injuries (none of them sought medical care or took pictures). This is relevant to this case because it shows just how far law enforcement personnel are willing to go to keep people from figuring out where they live. After his release he put a block on all home addresses in the police, prosecutors, corrections, and judges categories of this website, but setup a timer so that if he doesn't login to his account after more than 14 days for any reason the block won't work. One time he forgot to login and got an instant visit from probation about all the addresses being up, so he fixed the problem by logging in. He credits his willingness to suppress that information while giving officers an incentive not to screw with him as the key to his success on supervision.
The Wolverine Watchmen case appears to involve similar law enforcement motivations. We believe that when the FBI found out about their intention to acquire home addresses that they set out on a mission to take them down by any means necessary. Most of the evidence in the Watchmen case came from a snitch wearing a wire. That struck a cord with us because while our founder was facing the assault charge for the chips he too was targeted by an FBI snitch wearing a wire. It was his cellmate at FCI Sheridan. That man turned out to be a notorious rat with an extensive criminal history which included convictions for making false statements (https://copblaster.com/blast/124/scott-joseph-franklin-is-a-wire-wearing-hole-rat). That didn't stop the FBI from wiring him up when he sent a bogus tip claiming to have been offered $250,000 a head to kill United States District Judge Marco Hernandez and others. Despite that alleged offer coming from a man so financially strapped that all of his lawyers were court appointed the tip was treated literally for the purpose of denying him pre-trial release after the weakness of the case against him began to emerge. His case showed that the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office cannot be trusted to provide an accurate picture of events when their personal information is on the line. The arrest of Richard Trask means that many of the sworn statements in the Watchmen case are not credible. The Watchmen did talk about wanting to kill people including Governor Whitmer and we think they would love to make those fantasies a reality. Some of the messages between group members sound really damning, but they are surely just a small percentage of what was really said. To Trask's credit they did take steps beyond talking such as buying equipment and going on reconnaissance missions to survey her property at night, but that does not mean that they were actually going to go through with it. People talk about doing stuff like that all the time. Sometimes they even do minor things to feel like they are really doing something like going somewhere and watching the place they wish they could do something at, but that does not mean that they are going to do it. People that have gone that far often get cold feet at the end. This isn't like the time the FBI gave a fake fertilizer bomb to an Al-Qaeda supporter and arrested him after calling the number he though would set it off twice (https://copblaster.com/blast/57/senior-district-judge-garr-m-king-violated-my-neighbors-rights). This case is like arresting Mohamed Mohamud after repeating his intentions, meeting with undercover agents, and testing a mini-version of the explosives he wanted to use. In this case the FBI didn't even bother to see if the Watchmen could actually acquire the explosives they claimed they needed to blow up a small bridge leading to Whitmer's home. Even if they couldn't acquire the explosives the feds could have built a case selling them high quality fakes and waiting to see if they tried to use them. One of them did buy a taser, but tasers have so many other uses it can't be said that buying one means you will carry out your plans. We think that Trask jumped the gun and should have waited to see if they actually acquired explosives or could be convinced to try using fake bombs. He had them under such close surveillance that he could have waited until the day of the alleged kidnapping to arrest them if he really wanted his case to be solid. The fact that they were arrested so soon demonstrates to us that Trask wanted to make a move before anyone could change their minds.
MORE INFORMATION ABOUT TRASK
According to public records, Richard James Trask is a 39 year old resident of Kalamazoo, Michigan living in an area also known as Oshtemo Township. In 2014 he was fined $30 for failing to obey a highway sign in Spotsylvania (case # 177GT14019832-00) and in 2008 he was fined $25 for driving with an improperly equipped speedometer in Harnett County (case # 01420HARNETT 2008CR 702896). His voter registration does not specify a political party affiliation.