You often hear stories about the abuse of power by our government, but they seem even more egregious when that abuse of power is targeting those who have dedicated their lives to protect and serve the citizens of the United States of America.
You may know the name Martha Byrne because of her work on daytime television for the past 30+ years. Unfortunately for her family, it’s her husband Michael who has been in the spotlight for the past couple of months. Not because he did anything wrong, but because our government failed to correctly do its job.
Michael is a private investigator, former law enforcement, and has worked closely with many federal agencies over the course of his career. In the Fall of 2016, a private construction company hired him to find assets for a civil matter (stolen money), complete background checks, and conduct surveillance.
“There was nothing about this case that seemed out of the ordinary,” Martha Byrne stated.
As he did with every case, after he was hired to do the job he notified local law enforcement to inform them he was doing surveillance. Michael completed the job and hadn’t thought about the case since 2017.
In October of 2020, their lives changed overnight.
Martha Byrne’s house was swarmed by federal authorities and local law enforcement. With their three kids inside, they were awoken by “the FBI pounding on our front door at 6 o’clock in the morning,“ stated Byrne.
Martha’s husband Michael was now part of a federal criminal investigation. He was charged with failure to register as a forgien agent, conspiracy stalking and is the first and only private investigator ever charged with FARA, which deals with lobbying members of Congress or agencies of the government - which clearly did not occur.
It turns out that the company that hired Martha’s Husband had ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
“There was nothing about this case that had red flags. None of these charges ever should have happened,” Byrne stated. “There is no way we could have ever known that China was involved. Nothing he did was illegal,” she continued.
Now there are a number of questions being asked - Doesn’t the US Government have a legal obligation to notify someone if they are being targeted by a forgien group? When did the US Government know that Byrne’s husband was being targeted? Why wasn’t he notified?
“None of this makes any sense to me,” Carl DeMaio stated. “I believe that if we look at something and establish the facts, then it’s not about what we’re looking at… in time, this will all come out,” DeMaio continued.
When Byrne told her family that she was going public with this story, her daughter had one plea for her mom. She wanted to tell the FBI one thing, “can you please tell them that they scared me?”
Listen to Martha Byrne tell her entire story HERE.
Photo Credit: Getty Images