The revised contract’s projected new total $1.365 billion price tag — nearly five times what the original deal called for — would just pay the rental fees to more than 100 hotels that were converted into emergency shelters for illegals, the New York Postreported.
The price tag didn’t include the cost of city facilities and other rented sites housing homeless asylum seekers pouring into the “sanctuary city” by the thousands every week.
New Yorkers who have been voting for Democrats and open borders, in particular, for a very long time suddenly started opposing the recent decision after they realized that their city was being invaded.
These people specifically started criticizing the [Eric] Adams administration’s contract with the New York City Hotel Association, which is set to be extended from this year through August 2026. As a result, New Yorkers would be forced to fund all of that for these three years.
“Why are we extending this contract for three years? It sends the message of not wanting to reduce this migrant population,” Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow with The Manhattan Institute, said, adding that the city created “one big monopoly” by giving the hotel industry an overarching contract without competing bids that could lower costs.
Democratic Queens Councilman Robert Holden also criticized the decision.
“The migrant crisis has evolved into a financial boondoggle, with quietly extended contracts fattening the pockets of a few at the taxpayer’s expense. It’s time to halt this fiscal recklessness.”
Holden also proposed a solution to the invasion of the city that sounded like something that Gov. Ron DeSantis, R–Fla., and Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, would come up with.
“Let’s send those [migrant] buses to the White House and remember that ‘Right to Shelter’ shouldn’t be misconstrued as a global entitlement,” he said, referring to the city’s law that guarantees shelter to the homeless, including asylum seekers.
Esper and Clapper echoed the apprehensions expressed by outgoing General Mark Milley, who worried that he could be thrown in jail if Trump were to be re-elected in 2024. “He’ll start throwing people in jail, and I’d be on the top of the list,” Milley admitted in a Sept. 21 interview with the Atlantic.
During separate alarmist interviews with CNN on Sept. 25, both Esper and Clapper acknowledged their fear of becoming targets of Trump if he were to return to the presidency.
“I think there are probably a lot of people that are potentially on all sorts of lists,” Clapper told CNN host Abby Phillip. “That’s reprehensible. I think General Milley’s comment was he didn’t think President Trump would be reelected. Well, I’m not so sure about that. So, that’s a real concern for many of us.”
Former DNI James Clapper says General Milley’s belief that if Trump were reelected, he would jail his enemies is correct. “There are probably a lot of people that are potentially on such a list… That’s a concern for many of us” pic.twitter.com/gYZD5wsvdC
Esper echoed these concerns in an earlier interview on The Source with Kaitlan Collins. “I think it’s a legitimate fear,” Esper claimed. “Trump has poisoned the well. I don’t know that a jury or anybody could find, given what we call command influence, that such a thing could happen.”
Later in the interview, Esper alleged without evidence that Trump had vowed to go after his opponents if elected. “The president has also said that a second term would be about retribution, right?” he questioned. “So, I think these are all legitimate concerns.”
YOUR REACTION: Trump’s former Defense Secretary, @MarkTEsper, appeared on @CNN and claimed that if Trump were to become president again, he would seek retribution against people like Gen. Mark Milley, it would just be about revenge, revenge. WATCH
Clapper and Esper’s remarks came shortly after Trump commented on allegations that Milley had engaged in secret communications with China.
“If the Fake News reporting is correct, [Milley] was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States,” Trump wrote on Sept. 25 via Truth Social. “This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been death!”
Milley, who is expected to retire later this month, has been in the spotlight of criticism for his support of Critical Race Theory and other left-leaning ideologies within the U.S. military.
(Headline USA) President Joe Biden’s team has gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent him from tripping or falling in public, according to a new report from Axios.
Earlier this year, the White House physician reportedly diagnosed Biden with “significant spinal arthritis,” which aides claim have made his mobility much more difficult.
Biden is undergoing physical therapy with specialist Drew Contreras, but the White House is worried his public struggles will heighten voters’ concerns about his age and health. To prevent increased scrutiny, his aides have made him wear tennis shoes and limited his stair climbs.
“Democrats, including some in the administration, are terrified that Biden will have a bad fall—with a nightmare scenario of it happening in the weeks before the November 2024 election,” Axios reported.
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates dismissed concerns about Biden’s health.
“This isn’t new—it was proactively and transparently disclosed in a 2021 report from the president’s doctor and again this year,” Bates said of the arthritis diagnosis. “This article fits an unfortunate pattern of media attempting to sensationalize something that has long been public, rather than covering the president’s very real achievements for hardworking Americans.”
Unfortunately, the White House’s efforts to shield Biden from more physically demanding tasks haven’t seemed to help much. On Tuesday, just hours after Axios published its report, Biden nearly took a tumble down the stairs while getting off Air Force One in Michigan, the New York Post reported.
Biden has already been relegated to the lower staircase in Air Force One to prevent such falls.
And in July his aides acknowledged that there had been an “intentional shift” to avoid displays of “physical frailty.”
Recent polls found that a majority of voters, including Democrats, are concerned about Biden’s age and think he’s too old to run for reelection.
In an Associated Press survey this summer, for example, 77% said Biden is too old to be effective for four more years, including 89% of Republicans and 69% of Democrats.
(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Vice President Kamala Harris could find herself facing a storm of criticism, with many American voters dubbing her the worst vice president in decades in yet another scathing poll.
The poll, conducted by the Daily Mail and released on Sept. 26, paints a grim picture for Harris, revealing that 40 percent of respondents consider her the ultimate worst second-in-command, surpassing former vice presidents Mike Pence and Dick Cheney.
Notably, the poll found some damning words used by voters to describe Harris. Some describe her as “incompetent,” “idiot” and “unqualified.” However, it is independent voters’ inclusion of words like “poop” and “bozo” in an archived version of the poll that has caught the most attention.
Daily Mail asked Independent voters to describe Kamala Harris…
“Poop” was a more popular choice than “respectable,” “powerful,” or “underutilized” pic.twitter.com/nF2yn9ac4D
The survey, conducted by pollster J.L. Partners with a margin of error of 3.1 points, highlights a damning sentiment among voters. The results come as embattled President Joe Biden faces mounting pressure to oust Harris ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
James Johnson, co-founder of the firm, reacted to the poll’s findings, stating, “In the eyes of voters, if there is anyone more incompetent than President Biden it is his VP.”
Harris was first tasked with addressing the Biden border chaos, a responsibility she eventually abandoned, leading to the current mayhem at the southern border. Subsequently, Biden appointed her as the election czar, aiming to overhaul elections through a series of leftist electoral wish lists. Fortunately for conservatives, this effort culminated in no results.
Harris was tapped to lead artificial intelligence efforts as the “AI czar,” a role that was fraught with a viral video in which she laughably attempted to explain the definition of AI technology.
Most recently, Biden anointed her as the gun control czar, a move that garnered praise from Republicans who believed her failed track record would ensure that gun rights would be safeguarded.
“I’m glad they put her in charge of this because it guarantees nothing will ever get done,” best-selling author Sean Parnell said on Sept. 23. “Another Twitter said, “No worries. She will probably suck at that like everything else,” another user added on Twitter.
On Tuesday the court denied a bid by state lawmakers for another look at the fight about the state having a second black majority congressional district.
Several groups sued to overturn the state’s 2021 congressional maps, which had one of seven districts majority black.
It was a last-ditch effort by the state to keep maps drawn during July’s special session and rejected by a three-judge federal panel earlier this month.
The U.S. District Court will pick between three congressional maps drawn by a court-appointed special master and a cartographer.
All three will create black-majority districts and be a likely pickup for Democrats.
“This is a victory for all Americans, particularly voters of color, who have fought tirelessly for equal representation as citizens of this nation,” former Attorney General Eric Holder said in a release.
Holder, who oversees the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, has been laser-focused on waging lawfare attacks with the express purpose of securing political advantages for Democrats through court-enforced gerrymandering, relying in part on a massive war-chest conveyed to him after former President Barack Obama transferred over his extra campaign funds to the activist group.
“Even with this court’s landmark decision to uphold Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Alabama Republicans have defied court orders at every turn by refusing to enact a map that gives Black Alabamians the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice in two districts,” Holder said.
“These shameful, odious efforts to diminish the rightful voting power of Black Alabamians have finally been defeated,” he continued. “As a result, we will see more representative maps in places that were once thought to be unreachable in the fight for fairness: Alabama, Louisiana, and Georgia. Justice has prevailed.”
On June 8, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Allen v. Milligan that said Alabama’s previously-drawn map violated the Voting Rights Act and ordered new maps that create an “opportunity district” for minority voters to cast ballots for the candidates of their choice.
In a statement, Booker called the allegations against Menendez and his wife Nadine “shocking” and “disturbing” and said stepping down from “is best” for Menendez’s constituents.
“The details of the allegations against Senator Menendez are of such a nature that the faith and trust of New Jerseyans as well as those he must work with in order to be effective have been shaken to the core,” Booker said in a statement.
“Senator Menendez fiercely asserts his innocence and it is therefore understandable that he believes stepping down is patently unfair,” he added. “But I believe this is a mistake.”
On Friday, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York unsealed a 39-page indictment accusing Menendez and his wife of accepting “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in bribes in exchange for using his political influence to benefit the Egyptian government and business associates in New Jersey.
Menendez and his wife received bribes including cash, gold, luxury vehicles and vacations, mortgage payments and other forms of compensation, prosecutors say.
Federal agents said a search of his home found more than $480,000 in cash—some of it in envelopes stuffed into a jacket with his name on it—gold bars and a Mercedes Benz.
This is the second time Menendez has been indicted on allegations of bribery while a senator. In 2015, he was charged with illegally accepting favors from a Florida physician, including trips on a private jet, vacations to Paris and more than $700,000 in political contributions.
But unlike the previous allegations of bribery, when Democratic colleagues rushed to defend the longtime senator, his support is waning following the latest indictments.
Booker joins a group of 17 Democratic senators—including Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and Jon Tester of Montana—who have publicly called on Menendez to step down.
Menendez is also facing calls to resign from other top Democrats including New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who said in an interview that it would be a “good idea” if he stepped down.
On Monday, Menendez defended himself in public remarks and predicted that despite the charges he would be “exonerated” and retain his post as New Jersey’s senior senator.
Menendez is up for reelection in the 2024 elections when Democrats will be seeking to retain control of the Senate. In 2018, he was elected to a third term with 54% of the vote, according to New Jersey election results.
On Saturday, Rep. Andy Kim, a third-term Democrat from South Jersey, announced that he will challenge Menendez in next year’s Democratic primary.
The test is expected to take place at 2:20 p.m. Eastern on Oct. 4, ostensibly to ensure that the federal government is capable of alerting American citizens as to large-scale disasters, Yahoo! News reported.
The Federal Communications Commission said the test will take place on TV stations and over the radio waves as well.
But some have suggested that the 5G-tower testing has a much more nefarious purpose: triggering another epidemic by activating cells injected into people via the COVID jabs.
The claims are not just coming from tin foil hat conspiracy theorists. Rather, they were made by military attorney Todd Callender, who has led dozens of anti-jab mandate lawsuits in the past three years.
According to Callender, American taxpayers have already paid for the impending Marbug epidemic, which will allegedly be activated by the 5G signal next month.
“Inside of these shots that people already received. . . there exist pathogens inside of the particles that have not yet opened,” he said in a recent interview.
Callender says that those pathogens include E. coli, Marburg and Ebola, among others.
“We know from the broadcast of the 5G system that is now employed across the United States, and the world for that matter,” he continued, noting that the pulse sent out across the U.S. will activate the dormant particles, kicking off another pandemic.
The legal expert concluded that the matter is settled, and it is simply an issue of being prepared to deal with the consequences.
“The Marburg epidemic for purposes of law has already happened, and now we just need the actual disaster to happen,” he added.
Some on social media speculated that the mysterious emergency alert test could be setting the stage for something else, with the hashtag #ZombieApocalypse and others linked to the Oct. 4 date generating a wide array of reactions on social-media platforms such as TikTok.
In Illinois, state lawmakers noticed the trend and decided to get out in front of it, urging constituents to be prepared for anything in a press release after a formal resolution declaring October to be “Zombie Preparedness Month.”
“One of our top priorities is encouraging people to be prepared for all types of emergencies and disasters,” said Illinois Emergency Management Agency Director James K. Joseph.
“TV shows and movies about zombies are very popular today, particularly with young adults,” he added. “Focusing on zombie preparedness is a fresh way to call attention to the importance of personal preparedness.”
The hearing is being touted by conservative establishment media as a red-letter day for Republicans, and as a sign that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is living up to the promises he made to secure power at the beginning of the year.
But according to Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., the impeachment hearing is a total sham.
“I don’t believe we’re endeavoring upon a legitimate impeachment of Joe Biden,” Gaetz told political kingmaker Steve Bannon on Tuesday, during an event promoting his colleague Rep. Matt Rosendale’s apparently impending candidacy for Senate.
“Kevin McCarthy didn’t even have enough votes to launch an impeachment inquiry, and you’re telling me he’s somehow going to get the votes for impeachment? I think McCarthy is using the specter of impeachment to subjugate the threat to his power as an impeachment impediment,” he said.
“The game you’re watching is not really the game being played,” he added.
Gaetz noted that the recent House Oversight investigation of the Biden family receiving payments from foreign nationals should be enough to impeach Biden.
Gaetz was referencing the Oversight Committee’s findings that more than 20 companies, 12 banks and nine Biden relatives were used in an alleged complex money-laundering scheme to influence U.S. policy. But McCarthy won’t even subpoena Hunter Biden over the matter, Gaetz said.
“The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act says money paid to people’s children constitutes a corrupt act,” Gaetz said. “I think there’s a lot of good law year that would support our theory of the case that when Joe Biden’s granddaughter’s getting paid, that’s exactly how you bribe a politicians in his 70s.”
Gaetz’s comments come with a federal government shutdown looming. His comments also come amidst his heated dispute with McCarthy and other establishment Republicans over federal spending.
Gaetz has argued for a vote on single-issue legislation as opposed to one omnibus bill to fund the entire federal government. His argument is that each bill should be debated and voted on separately.
One such poll from Rasmussen Reports showed that 57% of probable Democrat voters planned to support Biden in the Democratic primary and 25% for Kennedy, according to a report form Newsweek.
It comes on the heels of a shock poll released over the weekend by ABC News that suggested former President Donald Trump may have a 9 point advantage over current President Joe Biden among voters in a head-to-head matchup.
However, many of those surveyed in the Rasmussen poll said they had a favorable view of Kennedy and indicated they would be willing to vote for him should he run against both Biden and Trump.
If Kennedy ran as an independent, 33% of of Democrat voters said it was likely they would vote for him; 14% said it was very likely.
“The fact that President Biden is so unpopular that fully a third of Democrats would vote for an independent candidate in the general election underscores the importance of running a fair and competitive primary election,” said a spokesperson for Kennedy’s campaign.
“If the DNC fails to do that, it will likely be saddled with a weak candidate who lacks the popular appeal to defeat the Republicans—whether or not there is a strong third party candidate in the race,” the spokesperson added.
Meanwhile, as Biden’s approval ratings continue to decline, failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned him recently of the potential threats from third-party candidates, the Daily Mail reported.
In addition to Kennedy, he faces potential challenges from prominent Ivy League intellectual Cornel West, who is seeking the Green Party nomination; as well as the nascent No Labels party, which is likely to run a centrist candidate, with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., being the most discussed name.
When pollsters included third-party candidates, such as Kennedy, in the polls, Trump trounced Biden, 39% to 36%.
A libertarian candidate would siphon 5% of the vote; an independent would take 5%; and a Green Party candidate would take 4%.
Currently, 62% of possible Democrat voters want someone other than Biden to run, and 59% want Biden to face challengers in a primary leading up to the election.
Marianne Williamson and Kennedy appear to be Biden’s only viable challengers for the Democratic nomination, although the outsize influence of so-called super-delegates in the Democratic National Committee’s nominating process means anything could happen right down to its convention in late August of 2024.
If Biden—who will turn 81 on Nov. 20—were to be a late scratch, resulting in a brokered convention, it would require a replacement candidate to have immediate name-recognition and a massive war-chest already built up.
Considerable speculation in 2020 surrounded the possibility of a Michelle Obama candidacy, although she was quick to dismiss the talk at the time.
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth installment of the Fed Files, a series revealing the sinister relationships between the FBI and groups associated with U.S. right-wing extremism.
(Ken Silva, Headline USA) On Aug. 11, 2017, right-wing extremists converged on the college town of Charlottesville, Virginia. Wielding tiki torches, they marched up the steps of the University of Virginia’s Rotunda, shouting slogans such as, “You will not replace us!”
The following day, roughly two miles away, they gathered near the city’s Downtown Mall to protest the illegal efforts by the city council to remove two nearly century-old monuments to Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
The groups involved in the “Unite the Right” rally had legally obtained all the necessary permits to protest—despite efforts by local officials to thwart them in a city, once home to Thomas Jefferson, that had prided itself on its tolerance and embrace of free speech.
But while there, the demonstrators were met by Antifa counterprotesters, some wielding improvised flame throwers and other projectiles. At least one of the left-wing activists, University of North Carolina teaching assistant Dwayne Dixon, brought a gun, which he used to patrol the mall and intimidate the right-wingers.
Sure enough, deadly violence ensued.
A 20-year-old Ohio man, James Alex Fields Jr., found himself surrounded by counterprotesters at the pedestrian crossing at the intersection of 4th and Main streets, and accelerated his car into the crowd, killing onlooker Heather Heyer and injuring several others.
In the aftermath, then-President Donald Trump sought to defend, in principle, the rights of the protesters by arguing that there were “very fine people on both sides”—comments often distorted and taken out of context by the mainstream media.
Democrat Joe Biden would go on to claim that he entered into the 2020 presidential race after witnessing the Charlottesville violence.
“Close your eyes—you remember what those people looked like coming out of the fields carrying torches,” he said during one debate, falsely implying that the U.Va. athletic fields were some backwoods, Southern farm to conjure images of a Ku Klux Klan cross-burning.
As it turns out, both men may have been far off-base about what really happened in Charlottesville—something more akin to a powder keg of racial tensions that exploded with the knowledge and tacit support of federal law-enforcement.
The FBI declined to comment for this story. The White House did not respond to questions.
A Confederacy of Feds?
Last week, Headline USA revealed that a longtime FBI informant co-founded one of America’s oldest and largest neo-Nazi groups, the National Socialist Movement, which participated and committed violence in the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally.
With only a little over 20 NSM members at Charlottesville, the group’s involvement could, at first blush, be viewed as relatively minor—if viewed in isolation.
But that’s far from the whole story.
Court records further show that the NSM was part of a larger neo-Nazi coalition called the Nationalist Front, an alliance comprising a number of other groups at Charlottesville that were allegedly infiltrated by the FBI, including the Confederate Hammerskins and the League of the South.
Moreover, a fourth member of the FBI-linked Nationalist Front, the now-defunct Vanguard America, was seen marching with James Fields—the man who killed counterprotester Heather Heyer with his car.
Vanguard America has since mutated into yet another group widely believed to be infiltrated by the FBI: the Patriot Front.
The accusations about the League of the South and the Confederate Hammerskins come from former NSM member and convicted felon Bill White. As Headline USA reported last week, the prison inmate’s accusations are newsworthy because he’s provided FBI memos and affidavits to support at least some of his claims, and because the U.S. government has retaliated against him for his disclosures.
In a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in 2017, White cited the book Undercover Nazi, written by former FBI informant David Gletty, to support his allegations that the League of the South and Confederate Hammerskins were infiltrated by the FBI.
“I know from Gletty’s book that the FBI used the NSM to infiltrate a group of Confederate Hammerskins in Florida,” said White, whose FOIA lawsuit was ultimately unsuccessful for procedural reasons.
White further noted that Gletty was “tasked to infiltrate” the League of the South, according to Undercover Nazi.
Additionally, White noted that the League of the South’s merchandising store, the Southern Patriot Front, was at one point operated by the father of a confirmed FBI informant, Joshua Sutter—another reason to suspect that the League of the South was federally co-opted, White argued in his lawsuit.
As for former Nationalist Front member Vanguard America—now infamous for marching with Fields before he killed Heyer—White’s lawsuit doesn’t mention the group by name. By the time Vanguard was formed, White had already been incarcerated for nearly a half-decade.
A ‘Front’ for What?
Since mutating into the Patriot Front, the group’s online presence has exploded—though perhaps not in a way that its members intended. With their khakis and freshly ironed polo shirts, the Patriot Front has frequently been mocked online for being an apparent FBI front group.
And while the Patriot Front hasn’t been outright accused in lawsuits of being an FBI subsidiary, its infiltration by federal informants is well documented.
As Headline USA reported, one of its former members admitted to being an FBI informant in court documents earlier this month. That admission followed the Patriot Front’s disclosure earlier this year that it had been infiltrated by a leftist.
Additionally, undercover FBI-JTTF agents have been spotted at Patriot Front rallies, and records show that the group was monitored—and therefore likely infiltrated—for more than a year before dozens of its members were arrested for allegedly plotting to riot in Idaho.
Patriot Front members and groups in the now-defunct Nationalist Front have all denied working with law enforcement. The Confederate Hammerskins could not be reached for comment, while the League of the South did not respond to email questions.
Along with naming the NSM, Confederate Hammerskins and League of the South as groups that were allegedly co-opted, White’s 2017 FOIA lawsuit also described how the FBI would use such groups to ignite racial violence.
“The FBI-JTTF would also arrange for violent counter-demonstrations against these rallies through informants in groups such as Anti-Racist Action,” White added, referencing the ARA, a precursor to Antifa.
A lawsuit in July 2017 accused the FBI of using the National Socialist Movement to hold phony white supremacist rallies, and use counterprotesters to turn those rallies violent. Weeks later, Charlottesville happened.
White’s lawsuit was prescient: Weeks after it was filed, the NSM marched on Charlottesville, clashing with counterprotesters in an event that turned deadly.
Did White have a crystal ball in his prison cell? Hardly.
White’s foreshadowing of Charlottesville came from firsthand experience at a similar event 12 years prior in Toledo, Ohio.
In October 2005, the NSM organized a march through black neighborhoods in Toledo.
The event, predictably, ended in disaster, with angry residents responding violently to the Nazis walking through their neighborhoods.
“Local residents and counter-demonstrators began throwing rocks and bricks at vehicles, local residences and businesses,” an FBI memo said of the event. “Local residents and counter-demonstrators continued with the clash with the police, looting a store and setting fire to a local bar.”
According to White, law enforcement was a big reason why things got out of hand at Toledo.
In a 2020 sworn declaration, White said on the morning of the 2005 Toledo demonstration, police and the FBI occupied a parking lot where the NSM members were convening. About an hour later, police directed NSM members to enter the parking lot by driving through a crowd of angry counterprotesters, White said.
“This started problems,” he said.
“After the mob began throwing things at the police, the police then continued to direct traffic through the mob, leading to one person·having the windows broken out of their car,” he said.
“Eventually, about 32 people, including the 9 who started out with me, made it through the mob, and, we began our march. At this time, violence broke out on the street on the other side of the school at, where the Communists attacked the police,” he added.
“The police then blocked our march, and, I led the NSM contingent back to [the parking lot].”
About a year later, the NSM planned another march through a black neighborhood, this one in Orlando.
Luckily for all civilians involved, there was no violence reported at that event.
However, the noteworthy fact about the Orlando event is it was later revealed to have been organized by an FBI informant.
“That revelation came Wednesday in an unrelated federal court hearing and has prompted outrage from black leaders, some of whom demanded an investigation into whether the February 2006 march was, itself, an event staged by law-enforcement agencies,” the Orlando Sentinel reported at the time.
White, who was also attended the Orlando rally, said in his 2020 declaration that he now believes the majority of Nazi demonstrators were informants.
“I estimate that about three of the twenty to twenty-five persons who participated were not federal agents: myself, Laura Sennett, aka Isis, and an undercover reporter for a local paper,” White said.
A Jan. 6 Test Run?
The troubling FBI involvement with the NSM Toledo, Orlando and Charlottesville rallies raises the question: Was the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riot taken from the same playbook?
In his 2021 documentary Patriot Purge, which aired on Fox Nation, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson first brought to widespread public attention the possibility that the Jan. 6, 2021, uprising at the U.S. Capitol might have been a government-organized campaign to undermine the out-going Trump administration and facilitate the transition of power after Trump insisted on challenging the highly suspicious 2020 election outcome.
If Carlson’s premise is to be accepted, then the 2017 Charlottesville riot can be considered as its bookend—used early in the Trump presidency to undermine the Republican leader, just three months after Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey and allowed his highly partisan deputy, Andrew McCabe, to take over as acting director.
Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI – A great day for Democracy. Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!
Although McAuliffe ordered the National Guard to be deployed on stand-by during the Charlottesville riot to support local law-enforcement, eyewitnesses said police were given a stand-down order, and many criticized the fact that they were slow to act in preventing violence and dispersing the crowds.
“State police and National Guardsmen watched passively for hours as self-proclaimed Nazis engaged in street battles with counterprotesters,” reported the left-wing ProPublica.
Other common threads between the Charlottesville and Jan. 6 events also suggest a government cover-up of some kind.
One of the lead investigators in both was Tim Heaphy, a former U.S. Attorney during the Obama administration, who was tasked by Charlottesville officials with leading their “independent review” following the 2017 riot.
After the out-going McAuliffe selected Harvard education school dean Jim Ryan to be U.Va.’s next president in 2018, Ryan then appointed Heaphy as his wing-man to oversee the school’s general counsel’s office. (Full disclosure: A relative of Headline USA’s editor worked alongside Heaphy in that office.)
But in 2021, Heaphy took a leave of absence from his U.Va. role to become the top investigator for the House’s Jan. 6 Committee.
A member of that committee, former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, now works as a professor in U.Va.’s politics department. However, a representative from the school’s Center for Politics denied that Heaphy played any role in facilitating Cheney’s hire.
“We had an existing connection with her because she was part of our Jan. 6 anniversary event in early 2022,” Kyle Kondik, the managing editor for Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, told Headline USA in March.
In addition to the actions of government officials, Jason Kessler, the local-activist-turned-patsy who supposedly organized the “Unite the Right” rally, acknowledged that he had previously been an Obama supporter and had even participated in an Occupy Wall Street rally before taking a turn to the hard right, Fox News reported.
Missing Evidence
At this point, any evidence of FBI involvement in Charlottesville may be long gone.
During the Charlottesville civil litigation, former NSM leader and alleged FBI informant Jeff Schoep had his phone “fall into a toilet” before it was turned over as discovery evidence, according to court records. It was also revealed during civil litigation that new NSM leader, Burt Colucci, deleted Schoep’s email accounts after he left the group.
Schoep has now purportedly repented from his neo-Nazi past, and is currently working with the FBI and other law enforcement groups on counter-extremism matters. Schoep has strongly denied being an FBI informant while he was a neo-Nazi, or that the NSM had anything to do with provoking violence at Charlottesville.
“Outright accusing me of being an informant: Wow,” he said in an email to this publication. “If I was still in the movement, you might have gotten a visit for that accusation—and not a visit from law enforcement.”
The Nationalist Front largely disbanded soon after Charlottesville. The movement remains in shambles, and the recent civil litigation aims to keep it that way.
In November 2021, a jury found the NSM, Vanguard America and the League of the South liable for $1 million apiece over their actions at Charlottesville.
Schoep—who punched a counterprotester at Charlottesville—was also ordered by a jury to pay $500,000. He has an appeal pending in that case.
