(Headline USA) Following in the wake of Bud Light’s disastrous trans marketing foray, Disney has teamed up with a male influencer who identifies as “gender-fluid” to promote its women’s apparel line.
In a promotional TikTok video for the company’s Disney Style channel, Seann Altman, is seen wearing a Minnie Mouse-themed red dress, along with yellow pumps and a red hair bow tie.
“I literally look like Minnie Mouse!” Altman said.
In the video’s caption, Altman wrote: “Minnie is ME! I fit right in with Mickey and his friends!”
Disney said its Disney Style channel, which is on both TikTok and YouTube, focuses on promoting “Disney-inspired makeup and outfit tutorials, DIY projects, and all things Disney art & fashion.” Its YouTube channel has more than 530,000 subscribers.
Conservatives quickly predicted the partnership between Disney and Altman will go down as well as Bud Light’s fateful ad campaign with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
“Completely boycott Disney at every level,” one Twitter user wrote.
Another user said, “Disney really needs a Bud Light moment.”
Like Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch, Disney has lost hundreds of millions of dollars over the past year after embracing a woke agenda. The company has reportedly lost $900 million on its recent movie releases alone.
“Disney continues to miss the mark from every studio that they have,” analyst Valliant Renegade explained, “and they’re not even done yet for this year, because Lucasfilm is on the table up next with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and as of right now, that’s going to be ringing up yet another loss for the Walt Disney Company unless something radical changes.”
Disney is reportedly feeling the losses, announcing it would be laying off more than 7,000 employees last month.
“The 7,000 layoffs — which represent 3.2% of Disney’s total headcount of about 220,000 worldwide as of Oct. 1, 2022 — are part of Disney’s efforts to achieve about $5.5 billion in cost savings,” according to Variety.
(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) The FBI reportedly killed a 75-year-old man who had made threatening posts against prominent Democrat government officials, including President Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Graig Deleeuw Robertson, a resident of Utah, had allegedly become the target of the FBI following anti-Biden posts on social media, which prosecutors believed presented a real threat against the government officials.
75 year old man who needed a cane to walk was selected for extermination by the FBI. Notice that none of the actual death threats against Trump led to this response. Dark times ahead. Read the book – “ordinary men”! https://t.co/jrLeM4TOoN
FBI special agents attempted to serve arrest and search warrants before the deadly confrontation ensued. The FBI released a statement on Wednesday, acknowledging the killing, according to KSL TV.
“The incident began when special agents attempted to serve arrest and search warrants at a residence,” a spokesperson for the FBI’s Salt Lake City field office said. “The subject is deceased. The FBI takes all shooting incidents involving our agents or task force members seriously.”
According to the felony complaint, Robertson’s online comments had attracted attention from federal prosecutors due to its anti-Biden sentiment and digital threats towards political figures.
In one of his posts, the 75-year-old man allegedly wrote, “I hear Biden is coming to Utah. Digging out my old ghillie suit and cleaning the dust off the M24 sniper rifle. Welcome, buffoon-in-chief!”
Another post targeted DA Bragg. Specifically, Robertson said, “I want to stand over Bragg and put a nice hole in his forehead with my 9mm and watch him twitch as a drop of blood oozes from the hole as his life ebbs away to hell!!
News of the killing ignited intense backlash from some X (formerly known as Twitter), further fueling allegations of political targeting.
Prominent political commentator Mike Cernovich criticized the FBI’s actions by pointing out the disparity between the FBI’s response to Robertson’s posts and those targetting former President Donald Trump.
He stated, “75-year-old man who needed a cane to walk was selected for extermination by the FBI. Notice that none of the actual death threats against Trump led to this response. Dark times ahead. Read the book – ‘ordinary men’!”
Conservative attorney Marina Medvin echoed Cernovich’s remarks, saying, “Something is off about this Utah man story. The FBI made a case against an obese man in his 70s based on his Facebook posts.”
The number of illegals who were held in detention across the southwest border neared 20,000 on Tuesday after a renewed surge of illegal border crossings, Breitbart reported. The directive called for the release of family unit members of illegals into the United States.
The directive was sent to Border Patrol sector chief patrol agents on Monday. As a result, the detention count had been reduced the next day by nearly 2,000 illegals and remained slightly above 17,000 illegals held in the custody of the agency at temporary detention centers.
The expiration date of the order to release illegals was not given and the releases will be a short-term “decompression” measure in place until illegals custody numbers reach a “more manageable level,” the anonymous source said.
However, the release of illegals into the country sharply contrasted with CBP’s social media propaganda, Breitbart noted.
“The US border is not open to irregular migration. Don’t listen to the lies of smugglers, US immigration policies have not changed,” a CBP official said in a video that was posted on social media.
“Under Title 8, individuals and families who arrive without authorization will be subject to removal and can be returned to their country of origin.”
NOTICE: People should not believe smugglers or others claiming the borders are open. The borders are not open to irregular migration, and people should not make the dangerous journey. https://t.co/WM82es32fOpic.twitter.com/OmQghDCkJD
CBP agents reportedly panned the video, which they claimed only irritated the morale of the agents in the field, according to the source.
“The use of Title 8 has never been a speedy process. With nearly 6,000 migrant encounters daily, the flow has overwhelmed us… The messaging coming from headquarters seems more like propaganda than policy,” the source said.
“To allege consequences will be applied and that smugglers lie about releases flies in the face of reality when it comes on the very day we are instructed to release as many migrant family unit members as we possible can to bring the detention numbers down.”
(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Antifa rioters destroyed a Post Millennial reporter’s car at the courthouse where she was covering the verdict to a case involving one of the outlet’s reporters who was suing the domestic terror group.
Andy Ngo, a senior editor and investigative reporter with the Post Millennial, had brought a civil case against Rose City Antifa and its alleged members.
Over the course of trial, Ngo presented an overwhelming amount of physical evidence and testimony to support his case, which accused the alleged Antifa members of assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The case included evidence of Antifa “doxxes” identifying Ngo, which led to a well-documented series of physical beatings on May 28, 2021.
The jury on Tuesday shocked legal pundits and analysts when it found the defendants not liable in the civil case brought against them.
I spoke with @IngrahamAngle about how a Portland jury cleared two Antifa defendants in Ngo v. Rose City Antifa, et al. following a tense seven-day-long trial marred by repeated security incidents & a threat that outsiders were trying to find the jurors' identities. Full:… pic.twitter.com/vOxCGhdx7n
After the defendants’ attorney “admitted that the ‘black clad people’ that had physically beaten Ngo were, in fact, ‘terrorists,'” she proudly declared, “I am Antifa” and told the jurors that she would remember each of their faces, Post Millennial reported.
“It’s truly remarkable the amount of evidence that the jury must have discounted,” attorney Eric Sell told Fox News. “It really leads to the conclusion that jury intimidation was a factor here.”
The intimidation reportedly extended beyond the courtroom.
Katie Daviscourt, the reporter who was covering the Ngo, returned to her car after attending the court session to find it vandalized by the far-left thugs.
“After I left the courthouse where I was reporting on @MrAndyNgo’s trial against Antifa, I found that my car was broken into by my hotel. The windows were busted out, items were stolen, and personal identification documents were taken—I’m obviously upset” Daviscourt tweeted.
She later noted that personal identification documents were also stolen from the vehicle. The shocking incident was not Daviscourt’s first encounter with Antifa that day.
The two defendants in the case allegedly harassed and intimated Daviscourt when they encountered her at a courthouse elevator and began calling her derogatory names.
“Why are you avoiding the elevator with us? Step inside,” they continued, giving Daviscourt what she called a “death glare” as they called her a “fascist,” to which they are antithetical.
The Antifa treatment was not new to Daviscourt, who was attacked on camera by Antifa.
Antifa militants just assaulted me after an Antifa live-streamer pointing me out in the crowd. pic.twitter.com/UJ0TVZd3Pc
(By Adam Andrzejewski, RealClear Wire) New Orleans has lost so many police officers that it could be responsible for $38 million in fines over the next 15 years thanks to a state law meant to protect pension funds, according to 4WWL, a New Orleans CBS affiliate.
The Louisiana law is meant to ensure municipal pensions are fully funded, and it stipulates that cities or municipalities may be responsible for lost pension fund contributions if municipal pension funds have unfunded liabilities.
The New Orleans Police Department had so many departures in 2021 and 2022 that the Municipal Police Employee Retirement System considers the department partially dissolved. This triggered the state law, which in effect makes the city pay for the lost pension contributions of the departed officers.
The city already paid $50,314 in July, and is set to owe $214,000 per month, totaling $38 million over the next fifteen years. These payments could be avoided if the city hired more officers. Returning their staffing numbers to their June 2021 level, 1,119 staff participants in the fund, would stop the need for payments.
New Orleans is struggling to find money to make the payments with, as these sizable monthly installments were not budgeted for. In fact, many city council members were taken by surprise at the bills. For this fiscal year alone, New Orleans will be on the hook for about $600,000 in payments.
As police departments across the country face staffing shortages, it’s important to remember there is a cost to downsize major institutions, a lesson New Orleans is quickly learning.
(By Brett Rowland, The Center Square) Average per-unit costs were $232,000, most for one-bedroom apartments, in a review of a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development program designed to build and preserve affordable housing.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Housing Trust Fund program needs better oversight, according to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
The report found that Housing Trust Fund grantees had developed 2,186 rental units (in 263 projects) for households with extremely low incomes (not exceeding 30% of the area median) as of March 1, 2022. Grantees had also committed Housing Trust Fund money to another 519 projects with an estimated 6,646 units designated for extremely low-income households.
The report also looked at the pace of completion.
“Once grantees began receiving [Housing Trust Fund] funds in late 2016, production of completed units averaged about seven units per quarter from the fourth quarter of 2017 through 2018, but grew to almost 300 units per quarter in 2021,” according to the report.
For the 12 selected grantees the report reviewed, Housing Trust Fund accounted for about 10% of the total funds for 70 completed projects. Equity from investors in Low-Income Housing Tax Credits was the largest funding source, according to the report.
“The average development cost for these 70 projects was about $232,000 per unit but varied by project type and location,” according to a summary of the report.
About 41% of the units created through the program were one-bedroom units, according to the report. Another 16% were smaller efficiency units with a single room.
In June, the median existing-home sale price was $410,200 in the U.S., according to the National Association of Realtors.
(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) The DNC spin machine known as the mainstream media was in overdrive last weekend churning out a carefully crafted and delicately nuanced message that offered unique insight into their current mindset of evasion and deflection.
The partisan motives of the Justice Department could not be more obvious, and any sort of performative outrage would be wasted on both skeptics and true believers who felt the ends justified the means to prevent another Trump presidency.
Likewise, media efforts to brush off the clear evidence of corruption among the Biden family crime syndicate—which points to a possible impeachment, although Republicans remain divided over its practical benefit—presented a dilemma for journalists who wished to emerge with their last vestiges of credibility unscathed.
“Eventually, the truth will come out, and all of those in the political and media establishment who have been in denial or part of the cover-up will once again, deservedly, look like fools or worse,” noted Richard W. Rahn, a former Nixon campaign staffer who had a “front-row seat to the Watergate scandal,” in a recent Washington Times op-ed.
WEAPONS OF MASS-MEDIA DEFLECTION
Instead of addressing these delicate issues head-on, some pundits sought to shift the focus onto conservatives, who were quick to criticize both Trump’s spurious indictments and efforts to cover up the Biden family’s casebook felonious conduct by pointing out the clear double standard.
In honor, perhaps, of the recently deceased Pee Wee Herman (one of TV’s pioneer child-groomers), the secret word of the day on Sunday was “whataboutism.”
According to the Media Research Center, the jargonistic buzzword prominently figured into retiring Meet the Press host Chuck Todd’s interview with Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.—the ranking minority member of the House Oversight Committee, which has led the way in investigating Biden’s bribery and other alleged crimes.
“We’re gonna have a campaign that is gonna be filled with a lot of ‘whataboutisms,’” Todd fretted.
“We know the Republicans are gonna talk about Hunter Biden here,” he added. “And I know that the—a lot of the technical defense of the president with Hunter Biden is, well, the president didn’t do anything wrong.”
However, Todd wasn’t the only one to deflect from the Biden family by accusing Republicans of whataboutism.
Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, invoked the term in a so-called news analysis on Thursday, MRC reported.
“The wave of whataboutism from Trump world crested with this week’s indictment but has been building for months, a way of shifting attention from the former president’s kaleidoscopic legal troubles,” Baker began.
“…Never mind that Hunter Biden was not and is not seeking to be the president of the United States and that no hard evidence has emerged indicating that his father used his office improperly,” he then falsely claimed.
LIES UPON LIES
The layers of brazen irony involved in not only accusing one’s political rivals of the very offenses for which they, themselves, are guilty—but then accusing their critics of deflection for attempting to call attention to the underlying issue—go part and parcel with the Democrats’ No. 1 political strategy for neutralizing Trump: the “Big Lie.”
Their Hitler-inspired gaslighting psy-op happens to be a particular favorite of Raskin, who has routinely accused Republicans of conducting their own “Big Lie” campaign for pursuing election integrity and other constitutional norms.
But the Left’s web of deception aside, conservatives have every right to own and embrace whataboutism since legal precedent is central to many of the defenses that Trump is now tasked with putting forward, both in the court of law and public opinion.
Indeed, in some of special counsel Jack Smith’s more experimental and theoretical lawfare attacks, Democrats’ past impunity may be the only thing to go on.
Without further ado, here are 10 shining examples of the unethical—and arguably illegal—misconduct that Democrats shamelessly and hypocritically have turned a blind eye toward when politically inconvenient, only to weaponize at their leisure.
The list below is by no means comprehensive, of course. And it certainly does not reflect all the things Democrats have done that they falsely accused their Republican counterparts of doing.
I have limited it only to those in which they have, in the face of credible evidence, avoided any serious legal consequences, only to turn around and try to prosecute their enemies on a far shakier foundation.
The list also is limited largely to situations that have arisen since the beginning of the Trump era, in 2016, although there are undoubtedly many more examples reaching back to the Clinton and Obama eras—and beyond—that may have fit the bill.
Finally, it is in no particular order, although clearly some of the crimes listed have more serious implications than others.
1. Violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act
Prior to the Mueller investigation, FARA was rarely taken seriously in Washington, D.C. However, its targeted deployment against several Trump allies including George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn—along with other menial “process” charges—was designed to get them to flip on Target No. 1.
Most recently, the Justice Department used FARA in a bid to intimidate and discredit Biden whistleblower Gal Luft, who is currently in hiding.
Luft is accused of being a foreign agent for the same Chinese energy company on which Hunter Biden was a board member, although the president’s son thus far has managed to avoid any FARA charges of his own.
After a failed plea bargain, that may change. But it doesn’t change the fact that several members of the Biden family, and many other China-friendly Democrats, have a long history of blurring the lines between their foreign business deals and political advocacy while managing somehow to steer clear of FARA.
2. Contempt of Congress
When the DOJ charged former Trump campaign adviser Steve Bannon with contempt of Congress last year, it was the first such criminal case in nearly 40 years.
That is not to say that several other cases had not been recommended—including attorneys general Eric Holder by a Republican Congress and William Barr by a Democrat one. Neither opted to pursue charges against himself.
Lois Lerner, the corrupt IRS administrator who weaponized her authority to target Republican nonprofits during Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, also faced no consequences after being held in contempt for refusing to testify and instead pleading her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Ironically, while leading the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section at the same time, current anti-Trump special counsel Jack Smith pressed to criminally investigate the nonprofits from which Lerner had withheld tax-exempt status for political reasons.
3. Delete evidence/obstruct justice
Even after former special counsel Robert Mueller found that there was no predicating cause for the FBI to launch its Crossfire Hurricane investigation against Trump, Democrats still complained that Mueller’s report had accused him of attempting to obstruct justice for his refusal to comply with the sham investigation. To this day, they continue to point to that accusation as proof that Trump did commit a crime in connection with the Hillary Clinton-concocted Russia-collusion hoax.
They finally got their vindication in the first federal indictment against Trump after the DOJ suspiciously tacked on two late-breaking obstruction charges that accused him of attempting to destroy security-camera footage from his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Further, DOJ admits it has NINE MONTHS of security footage from inside Mar-a-Lago. Defense attys told Judge Cannon last week the total footage equates to THEEE YEARS of video bc multiple cameras.
It doesn’t get more obstructive than that. However, then-FBI Director James Comey, who was tasked with determining whether to file charges after the suspicious recusal of Attorney General Loretta Lynch, decided it would be impossible to prove Clinton’s intent for such an unfortunate mishap.
4. Mishandle classified documents
Speaking of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago case, “obstruction” is not the only crime for which there is a Clinton precedent. The underlying accusation that Trump mishandled classified documents also poses problems for those claiming equal protection under the law was afforded.
Hillary’s use of a private email server to re-route her State Department emails and avoid Freedom of Information exposure revealed 91 instances of classified information appearing on her server—which, incidentally, is believed to have been hacked by the Chinese.
Bill Clinton also mishandled classified material in his post-presidency—a situation that most parallels Trump’s since both men can argue that the Presidential Record Act gave them broad authority to determine what records to maintain in their private archives versus turning over to the National Archives. In President Clinton’s case, he kept tapes of secret audio recordings in his sock drawer but successfully argued that they were “personal items.”
Lastly, there is President Joe Biden, who was revealed to have been stashing classified documents in multiple locations at his home and a D.C. office space that Chinese investors may have had access to.
Special counsel Robert Hur has been tasked by Attorney General Merrick Garland with slow-walking that investigation until it is an entirely moot historical footnote, at which point the DOJ will quietly bring it to a close—unless it becomes politically necessary to dispatch with Biden before then.
5. Demand a quid pro quo from Ukraine
The anonymous whistleblower allegation that famously triggered Trump’s first impeachment was that he had threatened to withhold military aid to Ukraine while also encouraging newly elected President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to reopen a dormant investigation into the Burisma energy company that was likely to enshroud the Bidens at a time when Joe Biden was a potential campaign rival.
As it turns out, the corruption involving the Bidens’ Burisma dealings was entirely valid, and Trump’s urging that Zelenskyy reopen the probe was justified. His supposed“quid pro quo” linking of that request as a condition of military aid was tenuous at best.
Biden, on the other hand, had made explicit to Zelenskyy’s predecessor his linking of a $1 billion loan guarantee with the firing of the prosecutor who had been investigating Burisma. It is now clear why, since Obama’s vice president had accepted a $5 million bribe from Burisma, along with a separate $5 million kickback for his board-member son.
Stunningly, Biden even bragged about his coercion of Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko in a now notorious 2017 panel at the Council on Foreign Relations.
6. Election meddling/disinformation
Democrats accused the Trump campaign of soliciting Russia’s help in the 2016 election and again claimed that Russian “disinformation” had aided Trump in 2020 via Hunter Biden’s laptop from Hell.
As it turned out, both were abjectly false and were, in fact, propaganda campaigns being waged by America’s own deep-state intelligence operatives to meddle in the election outcomes.
While demanding that social-media sites censor accurate conservative speech under the pretense of “disinformation” U.S. intel agencies have been openly engaging in information warfare against their own citizens to cover the tracks of the true criminal conspiracy.
As for involving foreign entities, it has been documented that the Democratic National Committee was working with Ukraine to solicit dirt on Trump officials, even as it falsely decried Trump’s role in Russia’s alleged hacking of the DNC servers.
And the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations all have been linked to Chinese campaign donations of dubious legality through dark-money intermediaries and laundering operations. Not to even mention Hillary Clinton’s foreign-money campaign slush fund, which she began accruing while jet-setting as head of the State Department.
7. Illegal ballot harvesting
This is a bit of a standalone offense, in the sense that many blue states have decriminalized and actively encourage the practice of ballot harvesting, despite its potential use as a conduit for widespread vote fraud.
Although evidence validates concerns that the practice undermines election integrity, Democrats continue to argue in debates that no such evidence exists and that the only thing ballot harvesting facilitates is a more perfect democracy.
That is, unless it happens to benefit a Republican candidate in a red state where the rules are more restrictive.
Such was the case in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District following the 2018 election, when Baptist minister Mark Harris prevailed in what many hoped would be a seat flip after Democrats gerrymandered the state’s congressional maps.
The district included parts of suburban Charlotte and several rural counties stretching eastward,where Harris had outsourced his get-out-the-vote effort to local political operatives—one of whom was later accused of ballot-harvesting.
In a high-profile case, Democrats brought out heavy-hitting lawyer Marc Elias—who was notorious for finding extra bags of ballots in mysterious places and reversing the outcome of must-win elections—to play hardball against the Christian pastor, even forcing Harris’s own son to testify against him.
Elias succeeded in breaking Harris’s will to fight, but the architect behind the Steele dossier ultimately lost the war as Rep. Dan Bishop, one of the most conservative House members, prevailed in the election rematch with no allegations of ballot harvesting to impugn his victory.
8. Call for ‘fake’ electors
The Jan. 6 federal indictment against Trump and a recent Michigan stunt that saw alcoholic state Attorney General Dana Nessel indict 16 GOP “fake electors” for conspiracy have two slight problems.
The first is historical precedent. In previous disputed elections—notably Hawaii’s 1960 presidential election—there have been two slates of electors sent when questions about the outcome lingered past the deadline for the Electoral College vote. In December 2020, Michigan’s final tally was still pending the outcome of several court cases, despite the election’s certification by far-left Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
However, the second problem with Democrats’ efforts to criminalize this political maneuver is even more damning. Evidence exists showing Michigan Democrats had plotted to do the exact same thing, sending an alternate slate of electors, in the event that Trump had won the 2020 election.
There also are several historic precedents for so-called faithless electors who opted to vote for someone other than the person they were designated to elect, an affront to democracy if ever there were one.
Hillary Clinton hoped to reverse Trump’s 2016 victory through just such a procedure and recruited a cabal of celebrity influencers to wage a seditious campaign to that effect.
Trump and hundreds of political dissidents have all been accused of disrupting congressional proceedings during the Jan. 6 uprising at the U.S. Capitol, which forced the Joint Session of Congress intended to confirm the Electoral College votes to recess for several hours.
Democrats claim that this was some sort of an unprecedented affront, with then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling it a “gleeful desecration” of the “temple of Democracy,” despite the Constitution’s provisions requiring separation of church and state.
She had no such reaction, however, when left-wing activists repeatedly disrupted the Senate confirmation hearings for future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
In the most outrageous of these instances, two women believed to be paid activist cornered then-Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., in an elevator and screamed at him, coercing him to withhold his “yes” confirmation vote until an FBI investigation into Kavanaugh had been completed.
A sexual assault survivor confronted Sen. Jeff Flake in the elevator. The incident happened right before he requested a delay in the Senate vote. pic.twitter.com/QR8hNix0Ci
Rather than facing federal charges, one of these insurrectionists was even invited by newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-N.Y. to be her guest at the following year’s State of the Union address.
AOC's guest for the #StateOfTheUnion is Ana Maria Archila, who screamed at Jeff Flake in an elevator before the Kavanaugh vote.@AOC has not said a single word about about Lt. Gov. Fairfax, whose accusations are almost exactly the same as Kavanaugh: totally uncorroborated pic.twitter.com/qfVRZuwpTT
The dubious rape allegations lodged against Kavanaugh by leftist college professor Christine Blasey Ford and several others became a shining example of the pernicious, Crucible-like mob mentality of the #MeToo movement when intermingled with political motives.
Ford could not recall the specific details of her alleged assault, which she claimed had occurred decades prior during a drunken high-school party and had been buried so deep in her subconscious that the memory was not triggered until her assailant became a national news figure on the other side of the political spectrum.
That same template—and its call to “believe all women”—was echoed in the spotty recollections of Trump rape accuser E. Jean Carroll. But the difference was that Carroll actually won her suit against Trump in a Manhattan court, with judge and jury pool stacked against the former president.
It later turned out that Carroll, who was bankrolled by anti-Trump tech billionaire Reid Hoffman, had been active in lobbying for New York to pass its special window temporarily repealing the statute of limitations on sex assaults—a move some suspect was specifically enacted to target Trump.
But while Trump faced specious accusations from sometime in the mid-1990s, the top Democrat in New York when the state first initiated its so-called Adult Survivors Act, then Gov. Andrew Cuomo, somehow managed to evade any serious legal consequences for much more recent—and credible—allegations of sexual assault involving at least 11 women.
Conveniently, Cuomo was not charged criminally due to the statute of limitations. As of May, he remained unremorseful and was eyeing a possible political comeback while insisting that he was the true victim.
Cuomo’s exoneration by the leftist Establishment puts him in good company with President Joe Biden, who has enjoyed widespread media dismissal of one credible sexual assault allegation involving a former Senate staffer, Tara Reade, and has been accused of inappropriate behavior involving women and children—including his own daughter—countless other times.
(Ken Silva, Headline USA) After a leaked FBI intelligence bulletin showed in February that the FBI was spying on “radical-traditionalist Catholics,” bureau Director Chris Wray apologized for the matter and claimed that the surveillance of Catholics was limited to “a single field office” in Richmond, Virgina.
But information released Wednesday by the Judiciary Committee shows that the FBI’s operation against Catholics was more widespread than Wray originally claimed.
According to the committee, a new document explicitly shows that both FBI Portland and FBI Los Angeles field offices were involved in or contributed to the creation of FBI’s assessment of traditional Catholics as potential domestic terrorists. The new document is the same intelligence bulletin, but it contains fewer redactions.
Along with showing the involvement of other FBI field offices, the new document also reveals that an undercover FBI employee in California was reporting on the activities of the “radical” Catholics.
Elsewhere, an “FBI Portland liaison contact”—perhaps referring to a local law enforcement source—was monitoring an alleged extremist who was allegedly trying to join a Catholic church. The alleged extremist, Robert Reynolds, is now dead, the memo said.
“Thus, it appears that both FBI Portland and FBI Los Angeles field offices were involved in or contributed to the creation of FBI’s assessment of traditional Catholics as potential domestic terrorists,” the Judiciary Committee said of the new information.
The Judiciary Committee now seeks answers about why this information about other field offices was initially withheld from lawmakers, and why Wray apparently lied about the operation being confined to one stray office.
In a Wednesday letter to Wray, the committee asked for all records and communications between the FBI’s Richmond, Portland and LA field offices about “radical” Catholics. Wray has until August 22 to respond.
FBI whistleblower Stephen Friend had harsher words in wake of the new information: He accused Wray of committing perjury.
“Perjury and Obstruction of an Official Proceeding charges for FBI Director Wray by close of business. Or defund DOJ entirely,” Friend said on Twitter.
“We are either equal under the law or there is no law and no need for a DOJ.”
(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) After engaging in a racial brawl in Montgomery, Alabama, three arrest warrants were issued for three white men who now face assault charges, the Guardianreported.
The brawl, which took place Sunday night, escalated after the three men allegedly assaulted the co-captain of the Harriett II riverboat, Damien Pickett, which was trying to dock.
The brawl took place on the edge of a river, and several people in the fight were throwing punches, others were thrown into the river, and still others were hit with chairs.
Montgomery Police Chief Darryl Albert announced Tuesday that one of the three men were in custody, and that the other two planned to turn themselves in, the Montgomery Advertiserreported.
The men are named Richard Roberts, 48, who faces two assault charges, Allen Todd, 23, and Zachary Shipman, 25, each of whom face one assault charge. Videos of the incident posted online show a number of black spectators piling on the fight after the initial confrontation, with one using a chair as a weapon. One commentator praised the beatings, claiming “We made our ancestors proud.”
According to Albert, the investigation is ongoing, and more charges are possible.
Police have “many, many more interviews to conduct,” Albert said Tuesday. According to CNN, racial insults were allegedly hurled before the fight erupted.
“As we identify additional folks that we need to talk to, we will ask them to come in and we’ll try to locate them and do further investigation to see if the charges are appropriate,” he continued.
The debacle has become nationwide news, and the investigation has been complicated, according to Albert, by the hundreds of witnesses who say the fight unfold before them, many of whom caught footage of the brawl.
“I don’t think we’re near finished,” the chief said. “We have a lot more work to do on this.”
He noted that the police have “hundreds of videos and witness statements at this time” and said it was “highly likely” that there would be more arrests.
Unfortunately for the three white men, Albert suggested in an appearance on CNN that he would consider making an example out of them in the name of racial justice.
“Knowing Montgomery’s history, knowing all the civil rights things that we went through here in the city of Montgomery and what the means to the nation, we were very amped-up to get this right,” Albert said.
(Robert Jonathan, Headline USA) The late U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said that “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money.”
The financial status of the Justice Democrats, whose original mission included ousting corporate-compromised incumbents in primaries, might be a case in point.
The activist group that promoted the congressional candidacy of Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez and other Squad members is suffering “a major financial crunch,” according toPolitico.
Apparently, grassroots donations, the source of much of its cash, are no longer pouring in.
“Justice Democrats has had to bail itself out in past months, pulling hundreds of thousands of dollars from other affiliated PACs to help keep the lights on,” the Washington Free Beaconreported. “The fundraising dry-up could hurt reelection campaigns for progressive House members.”
Given the shortfall, the far-left political action committee—which supposedly was inspired by socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential run—recently had to lay off nine of 20 employees.
“It’s no secret that Democratic and progressive organizations like us are in a difficult fundraising environment right now,” Justice Democrats executive director Alexandra Rojas told Politico. “We had to make tough decisions to remain one of the most impactful progressive organizations in the country for years to come.”
Cenk Uygur, the blustering host of the “Young Turks” YouTube show, who was one of the Justice Dems’ cofounders, has implied that the elected Justice Democrats sold out to party bosses.
“The people who ran as Justice Democrats all promised to fight the establishment on our behalf,” Uygur toldThe Hill in a story about how de-energized progressives in general have supposedly become despondent about their clout. “In fact, it was their No. 1 promise. And they chose not to do that.”
Uygur, who left the organization in December 2017, said the Squad’s betrayal had been “devastating” for the overall effort.
“It took all the wind out of our movement,” he said. “…Our movement is shrinking and losing all hope because the people we sent to D.C. chose their personal comfort over their voters.”
Ironically, as political success led them to abandon their roots, the organization that spring-boarded them into their current position finds itself desperate for some of the filthy lucre.
“We have huge champions like Bernie Sanders, AOC, Ilhan Omar, who are able to be successful political fundraisers. But movement-wise, we’re not in a great place right now,” an unnamed U.S. House aide told the Huff Post in a recent profile of the foundering Justice Democrats
AOC, meanwhile, has fallen out of favor with at least some of her far-left constituency for voting—along with virtually every other Democrat on Capitol Hill—to continue sending billions of taxpayer dollars to Ukraine.
Yet, even while its former allies turn their backs, a new threat is emerging for those who remain loyal to the cause.
The Democrat establishment is purportedly putting lot of cash behind trying to win back some of the Squad seats or fending off Squad-affiliated primary challengers “forcing the group to subsist on a leaner budget,” the Huff Post noted.
Apathy on the Left toward Joe Biden as a 2024 candidate—even though he has rubber-stamped much of its agenda—is also the source of the fundraising problem.
“Biden does not engender the same level of rage as Trump, whose erratic actions and inflammatory rhetoric have sparked volunteering and financial contributions from all socioeconomic backgrounds,” progressive sources told The Hill.
In April, the Political donation aggregator ActBlue, which reportedly raked in a billions for Democrat candidates and allied groups in the 2022 election cycle alone, laid off about 20% of its staff.
