Top Tweets for #AgExtortion

STATEMENT FROM TENNESSEE RANCHER AND AGRICULTURAL ATTORNEY, DUSTIN J. KITTLE: It’s been 50 years since a Federal Court decided Minnesota Chippewa Tribe v. Carlucci. The case set the framework allowing a citizen to bring suit against a sitting United States President, when that President has failed in their duty to make political appointments mandated by federal law; thereby causing that citizen to be harmed. Today, I have filed suit against President Biden. The suit is based upon President Biden’s failure, for more than three years now, to fulfill the duties required of his Office to appoint the full Board of the United States Farm Credit Administration — a duty solely vested in the President alone. In 2021, my lender, Alabama Farm Credit, hired a private lawyer who engaged in an egregious campaign of retaliation and extortion against me and against my family; resulting in my family losing our home. The retaliation and extortion was reported to the Farm Credit Administration, who failed to intervene and refused to provide us with any substantive response for 657 days. During that time, President Biden made only one of three political appointments required by law to establish a fully-functional Farm Credit Board. This left Farm Credit Board Members, who were continuing to serve in expired terms, either unwilling or unable to act on my family’s behalf. To date, though the Farm Credit Administration’s Office of Congressional and Public Affairs found that Alabama Farm Credit and its private lawyer, Chris Glenos of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings in Birmingham, Alabama, violated federal laws and regulations in their campaign against my family, no action has been taken. I was informed, at the conclusion of an investigation that spanned from August 24, 2021 until June 12, 2023, that me and my family had no recourse whatsoever, given we were coerced, under the threat of a wrongful foreclosure, to liquidate 100 acres of farmland, a herd of registered cattle, and our own home to pay off our Farm Credit loans 20 years early. Without a Farm Credit Administration Board to protect us, as federal law requires, we had no choice. We had never missed nor even been late on a loan payment — but we were told by our farm credit lender, through Glenos, they could foreclose on us within 45 days if we refused to sign a release of legal claims with confidentiality. It was not a close call. It was a hit on innocent people; because of the discovery and knowledge of an active and ongoing fraud by a lender in the United States Farm Credit System. Our hope is that, through this action, there will be awareness to what has been allowed to go on in Alabama — and that someone, specifically the President of the United States of America, will intervene as to the harm against my family and so many others. The Farm Credit System is vital to the continued success of agriculture in this great nation. We cannot allow a System charged with supporting America’s farmers and ranchers to become a political platform to cause those families harm. We urge President Biden and those with political authority who believe in the future of agriculture to take action on this — and to do so with the urgency as if their own homes depend on it, because for many of us, that is what is at stake. God bless America’s farmers and ranchers.