MSU Mass Shooting: The Blame Game

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MSU Mass Shooting: The Blame Game

(John R. Lott Jr., RealClear Wire) If you believe tweets from Michael Bloomberg’s The Trace and its employees, I am “one major factor” why the U.S. hasn’t passed stronger gun control laws and thus, they claim, responsible for mass shootings in the United States. These are becoming regular tweets after each mass public shooting.

They are upset that I have quoted mass murderers on their decisions to target gun-free zones. Yet, statements such as, “Areas where CCW are outlawed or prohibited may be good areas of attack” are common among mass murderers.

That doesn’t make sense to gun control supporters. Immediately after the shooting at Michigan State University, President Biden led a chorus of politicians and gun control groups in calling for more gun control laws.

Biden used his pulpit to call for banning “assault weapons and magazines that hold 50, 70 bullets.” Shannon Watts, who heads Bloomberg’s Moms Demand Action, called for a broad range of laws: background checks for long guns, red flag laws, disarming domestic abusers, banning assault weapons, limiting magazine capacity, and regulating open carry of guns.

None of these proposed laws would have stopped this attack. The murderer, Anthony McRae, used handguns with multiple standard size magazines, not assault weapons with large-capacity magazines –  not remotely close to the 50- to 70-round magazines that Biden was describing. More broadly, 58% of mass public shootings are committed only with handguns. Just 14% are committed solely with any type of rifle.

Lax law enforcement, however, did have something to do with this attack. District Attorney Carol Siemon should have prosecuted the Michigan State University murderer for a felony gun charge in 2019. It would have been an easy conviction, but Siemon substituted a misdemeanor charge in the name of “race equity.” A felony conviction means the killer would likely still be in jail.

Ingham County Sheriff Scott Wriggelsworth had argued that East Lansing’s city council should “reconsider her internal felony firearm charging policy,” because it “does not hold people properly criminally accountable, and increases the likelihood of additional gun violence.”

Gun control groups haven’t complained about the DA’s refusal to prosecute the murderer for the felony gun charge. But the background checks that these groups champion are designed to stop people with any felony or misdemeanor domestic violence convictions from buying guns. Not that a felony conviction would have stopped the killer from getting a gun anyway, as he could have used someone else’s gun or bought one illegally.

Of course, among the other proposed laws, domestic abusers are already banned for life from owning a gun. Open carry was also not relevant, as the killer used his backpack to carry the guns.

As to red flag laws, McRae did indeed have a history of mental illness, and police performed a welfare check just the week before. But if the police had a “reasonable belief” that McRae posed a danger to himself or others, they already had authority under Michigan’s involuntary commitment law to have him evaluated by mental health care experts. If the mental health care experts agreed that McRae was a danger to himself or others, there would have been an immediate hearing and a lawyer provided if he could not afford one. While judges can involuntarily commit individuals, they have other options such as voluntary mental health treatment and a follow-up hearing or taking away a person’s guns.

Red flag laws start with the same “reasonableness” test but don’t give people a hearing. The judge only sees a written complaint. There are no mental health care experts involved in the process. And the judge is only given the power to confiscate a person’s legally owned guns. If the person is actually dangerous, there are so many other ways to commit suicide or to kill others. Red flag laws ignore due process and are also ineffective.

But the key point here is that the same reasonableness standard applies to both red flag laws and involuntary commitment, and the police didn’t think that McRae met that standard, so a red flag law wouldn’t have prevented this attack.

Gun control advocates keep pushing laws that won’t do anything to stop the crimes in question. Many proponents seem to have little interest in getting tough on crime, and it’s as though they want to make life difficult for law-abiding gun owners and not punish real criminals. Let’s get serious about crime by enforcing existing laws.

With a $49B Budget, Education Dept. Can’t Pass Audit

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With a $49B Budget, Education Dept. Can’t Pass Audit

(Adam Andrzejewski, RealClear Wire) The Department of Education recently received an unusual audit opinion, thanks to poor data quality and uncertainty in the cost of subsidy programs, according to an Inspector General report.

After conducting their yearly audit, auditors at KPMG issued a “Disclaimer of Opinion.” This means auditors felt they did not have enough information to issue an opinion on whether the Department of Education was fairly representing their financial statements.

This opinion was largely a result of President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, which created a large amount of uncertainty in calculating how much the forgiveness would cost.

Auditors state, “[Department of Education] management was unable to provide adequate evidential matter to support certain key assumptions used to estimate the [student loan forgiveness] subsidy costs.”

Because of this, auditors were unable to determine if adjustments had to be made to the balance sheet. Specifically, there was uncertainty with the “take up rate,” or how many people would opt into the debt forgiveness program, making it impossible to calculate how much debt the department would actually be forgiving and taking as a loss.

Auditors also found a material weakness in the department’s internal controls that led to imprecise data collection, with KPMG commenting, “controls were not properly designed at an appropriate level of precision to address the relevance and reliability of the underlying data.”

The Department of Education has a budget of $48.8 billion, but taxpayers can’t be sure where that money is going or if its financial statements are accurate thanks to poor data and lack of basic accounting controls.

FBI Has until March 1 to Turn Over Info. of Probe Targeting Parents

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FBI Has until March 1 to Turn Over Info. of Probe Targeting Parents

(Bethany Blankley, The Center Square) U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona have until March 1 to turn over documents to the House Judiciary Committee about alleged FBI investigations into parents attending school board meetings in response to a memo Garland issued 17 months ago.

Since October 2021, Republican members of the committee have sent over 100 letters to Biden administration officials “requesting answers about how the Administration used federal counterterrorism resources against American parents,” the committee said in a news release earlier this month.

“Whistleblowers have disclosed how, shortly after Attorney General Garland formally directed the FBI to take action, the FBI’s Counterterrorism and Criminal Divisions created a specific threat tag for school board-related threats and even opened investigations into parents simply for speaking out on behalf of their children,” the committee said.

Garland’s directive was issued after the National School Boards Association sent a letter to President Joe Biden “urging him to weaponize the Patriot Act against parents. Emails later showed how the Biden White House had advance knowledge of this letter and its contents and raised no objection,” the committee said.

His memo referred to a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff,” and directed FBI and other federal law enforcement agents to monitor activities of parents and school boards nationwide.

Soon after Garland issued it, he was called to testify before the committee and said he issued the memo because there were “reports of violence and threats of violence.” In a news release at the time, he also said, “Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values. Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.”

He testified before the committee, “I can’t imagine any circumstance in which the Patriot Act would be used in the circumstances of parents complaining about their children, nor can I imagine a circumstance where they would be labeled as domestic terrorism,” saying the DOJ wasn’t targeting parents. The DOJ continues to maintain this claim.

Shortly thereafter, a coalition of attorneys general called on Garland to produce evidence to support his claims. They argued the DOJ targeting parents is unconstitutional and an abuse of power and said Garland must revoke his directive, which he has yet to do. The AGs received no response to their requests and sued last March.

Meanwhile, an FBI whistleblower came forward and by May 2022, Republican U.S. Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mike Johnson of Louisiana sent a letter to Garland stating the whistleblower provided evidence that contradicted his testimony. The FBI was in fact investigating parents, according to an Oct. 20, 2021, email made available to the committee. The FBI’s Counterterrorism Division and Criminal Division announced it created a new threat tag for its internal system to label parents, called “EDUOFFICIALS,” and directed FBI personnel to apply the tag to all “school board-related threats,” according to their letter.

The FBI maintains it hasn’t and isn’t targeting parents or investigating speech at school board meetings.

After the whistleblower information was made public, Florida-based Moms for Liberty founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich said, “We now have proof of what many of us suspected and some of us knew: that the Department of Justice was using counter-terrorism authority under the PATRIOT Act to investigate parents of schoolchildren who were exercising their first amendment right to petition their local government for a redress of grievances.”

Justice and Descovich the group already was aware of one of the examples Jordan cited, because she was one of their members.

“The mother was terrified,” they said. “She had been contacted by the FBI. She had been told by the FBI not to say anything about that call. She had also been told that there were many other mothers being investigated.

“Once the federal government uses our own taxpayer money to harness federal resources and federal officials to investigate law-abiding parents who attend public meetings and speak their minds, everyone’s free speech is at risk. We have the right to ask questions of public officials and demand accountability from those in public office.”

In response to public backlash over its letter to Biden, the National School Board Aassociaten issued an apology, which wasn’t enough for some states. According to a Parents Defending Education analysis, 26 states withdrew membership, participation, or dues from NSBA as a result of the letter.

PDE also said, “Since DOJ’s memo was released, a number of parents have confirmed that they were, indeed, contacted by the FBI after speaking up at school board meetings – confirming the American public’s worst fears about the memo’s repercussions.” It also demanded the DOJ issue an apology to “American citizens who advocate on behalf of students, and redirect their finite time and resources to catching real criminals – not parents.”

Supreme Court Cancels Oral Arguments on Title 42

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Supreme Court Cancels Oral Arguments on Title 42

(Bethany Blankley, The Center Square) The U.S. Supreme Court canceled oral arguments scheduled for March 1 in a case filed by Arizona and 18 other states against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and several federal officials and agencies.

President Joe Biden has said the national public health emergency issued by former President Donald Trump over COVID-19 will expire May 11. Once the national public health emergency expires, so also will Title 42 enforcement. The public health authority was implemented to curtail the spread of the coronavirus by expanding expulsions of illegal foreign nationals.

On Feb. 16, the court removed the case from its calendar for March 1 after the Biden administration filed a motion arguing the lawsuit was moot.

Last December, Chief Justice John Roberts issued an administrative stay of a lower court’s ruling requiring the termination of Title 42 pending the court’s decision after it heard oral arguments scheduled for March 1. This was after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last May attempted to terminate Title 42 but were halted from doing so by a federal judge after attorneys general led by Arizona sued. While Title 42’s been one tool used by Border Patrol agents to expel foreign nationals, it was never designed to be used in lieu of enforcing federal immigration laws, critics have argued.

U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Florida, has pointed out that Title 42 hasn’t really been effective in preventing illegal entries as a record number of people have been unlawfully released into the U.S. by the Biden administration, at a rate of 7 to 1. He told Fox News last December, “for every one person that’s sent back for Title 42, you have got seven people that are released into the United States.” Title 42 has been “better than nothing,” he said. “But the whole problem is actually the policies that have been implemented by the Biden administration, and that have caused this tremendous influx” of illegal foreign nationals into the U.S.

Gimenez, like Texas and Arizona congressmen, has called for Mayorkas to be impeached.

CBP officials have said they’re preparing for an unprecedented deluge of people arriving at the southwest border and overwhelming Border Patrol agents once Title 42 ends. Their plan includes releasing those entering the U.S. illegally en masse into local communities. Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Gloria Chavez said she was working with local NGOs to facilitate moving them north into Texas and the U.S.

Since Biden’s been in office, over 5 million foreign nationals have been apprehended or reported evading capture from law enforcement, including over 3.3 million in fiscal 2022 alone. While Mayorkas repeatedly claims “the border is closed,” he’s also announced a plan to increase the processing and release of even more people into the U.S. once Title 42 ends. The president also said he plans to make it easier for people to get here, using an “asylum” phone app.

When meeting with the presidents of Mexico and Canada in early January, he said his administration was working “to make it easier for people to get here.”

In a speech in Mexico City, he said, “right now the cartels make a lot of money, which they use for drug trafficking as well. People make it through jungles and … a long journey to the border. Many are victimized, not only in terms of what they have to pay, but victimized physically in other ways. We’re trying to make it easier for people to get here, opening up the capacity to get here, but not having them go through that … awful process.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott proposed five policies the president could implement to secure the border immediately and called on him to designate Mexican cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Abbott says he hasn’t heard back.

In the federal government’s absence, Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, Texas’ border security mission, in March 2021, and the state legislature also allocated more than $4 billion for border security efforts. Abbott’s made border security an emergency legislative item this legislative session, including allocating nearly $5 billion to border security over the next two years.

His plan includes passing legislation to impose a mandatory minimum jail sentence for anyone caught smuggling people in Texas, enhancing the minimum penalty for operating stash houses to a third-degree felony, enhancing penalties for foreign terrorist organizations operating in Texas, among other measures.

Texas, which shares the longest border with Mexico, has borne the brunt of cartel and illegal activity stemming from the border. Texas law enforcement officers working through OLS are thwarting the smuggling of people and drugs north from Mexico and the smuggling of weapons, cash and other contraband south. They’re also seeking to prevent, detect, and interdict transnational criminal behavior between ports of entry.

Since Abbott launched OLS, Texas law enforcement officers have apprehended more than 350,000 illegal foreign nationals and made over 24,000 criminal arrests, with more than 22,000 felony charges reported, according to state data. They’ve also seized over 362 million lethal doses of fentanyl, enough to kill more than everyone in the U.S.

Calif. Bill Would Ban Tobacco for Future Generations

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Calif. Bill Would Ban Tobacco for Future Generations

(Tom Joyce, Center Square) A California bill would prevent future tobacco sales for those born on or after January 1, 2007.

Assembly Bill 935, filed by Assemblyman Damon Connolly, D-San Rafael, would make this change. If someone were born on January 1, 2007, they would be 16 years old today.

“The impetus for the bill is really that we’ve known for 50 years that tobacco and nicotine products cause cancer, are incredibly addictive and decrease quality of life,” Connolly told the Sacramento Bee.

The bill is similar to a law New Zealand enacted last year. The country’s law prohibits tobacco sales to those born on or after January 1, 2009.

During his time as a Marin County supervisor, Connolly led an effort to ban the sale of flavored tobacco products in his county.

Connolly’s bill has support from various organizations. Supporters include: the Union of American Physicians and Dentists; the American Academy of Pediatrics – California; Smoke-Free Marin; African American Tobacco Control Leadership; Public Health Advocates; and International Youth Tobacco Control.

However, it also has opposition from the tobacco industry.

Joshua Habursky, deputy executive director of The Premium Cigar Association, opposes the bill.

“These proposals are not based on scientific evidence, but rather on a political agenda that seeks to demonize adult cigar smokers and restrict their freedom to enjoy a legal product,” Harbusky told the Sacramento Bee. “Clearly, it is no longer a hidden agenda of the anti-tobacco groups to support full prohibition.”

The Premium Cigar Association urges people to contact their lawmakers, telling them to oppose the bill.

The bill may have a committee hearing as soon as March 17, according to LegiScan.

Mississippi Legislature Votes Overwhelmingly to End Sales Taxes on Gold and Silver

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Mississippi Legislature Votes Overwhelmingly to End Sales Taxes on Gold and Silver

(Jp Cortez, Sound Money Defense League) State lawmakers of both houses have just voted overwhelmingly to exempt physical gold, silver, platinum, and palladium coins and bullion from the Mississippi state sales tax, sending the bill to Governor Tate Reeves (R) for his signature.

Senate Bill 2019, sponsored by Sen. Chad McMahan (R – 6), passed yesterday out of the full senate by a vote of 47-2. This afternoon, Rep. Jody Steverson’s identical House Bill 1661 passed out of the full house chamber on an overwhelming voice vote.

Backed by the Sound Money Defense League, Money Metals Exchange, and in-state Mississippi dealers and investors, the legislative effort built upon last year’s momentum. In 2022, a similar sales tax exemption bill had passed out of the Mississippi House of Representatives overwhelmingly but it missed a deadline in the Senate needed to receive a hearing.

If Gov. Reeves signs the bill next week (or if he simply chooses not to veto it), Mississippi will become the 43rd state to exempt sales of sound money from state sales tax. The effective date is July 1, 2023.

Every one of Mississippi’s neighbors (Alabama, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee) have already stopped taxing the monetary metals. Most recently, Tennessee ended this tax in 2022, and Arkansas and Ohio eliminated this tax in 2021.

Under the status quo in Mississippi, citizens are discouraged from protecting their savings against the devaluation of the dollar because they are penalized with sales taxation for doing so.

Eliminating sales taxes on gold and silver is good public policy for several reasons:

  • Levying sales taxes on precious metals is inappropriate. Sales taxes are typically levied on final consumer goods. Computers, shirts, and shoes carry sales taxes because the consumer is “consuming” the good. Precious metals are inherently held for resale, not “consumption,” making the application of sales taxes on precious metals inappropriate.
  • Studies have shown that taxing precious metals is an inefficient form of revenue collection. The results of one study involving Michigan show that any sales tax proceeds a state collects on precious metals are likely surpassed by the state revenue lost from conventions, businesses, and economic activity that are driven out of the state.
  • Taxing gold and silver harms in-state businesses. It’s a competitive marketplace, so buyers will take their business to neighboring states, such as Alabama or Louisiana (which have eliminated or reduced sales tax on precious metals), thereby undermining Mississippi jobs. Levying sales tax on precious metals harms in-state businesses who will lose business to out-of-state precious metals dealers. Investors can easily avoid paying $136.50 in sales taxes, for example, on a $1,950 purchase of a one-ounce gold bar.
  • Taxing precious metals is unfair to certain savers and investors. Gold and silver are held as forms of savings and investment. Mississippi does not tax the purchase of stocks, bonds, ETFs, currencies, and other financial instruments.
  • Taxing precious metals is harmful to citizens attempting to protect their assets. Purchasers of precious metals aren’t fat-cat investors. Most who buy precious metals do so in small increments as a way of saving money. Precious metals investors are purchasing precious metals as a way to preserve their wealth against the damages of inflation. Inflation harms the poorest among us, including pensioners, Mississippians on fixed incomes, wage earners, savers, and more.

The trend across the nation is to eliminate taxes on precious metals. The state of Louisiana and Ohio both experimented briefly with reimposing sales taxes on precious metals purchases. They both quickly reversed course (within two years) and reinstated their sales tax exemptions on precious metals — because businesses, coin conventions, and state tax revenues were leaving the state.

After the two identical Mississippi bills are transmitted from their respective chambers, Gov. Tate Reeves must sign or veto the legislation within 5 days after transmittal (excluding Sunday), or it becomes law without his signature.

In 2023, bills to restore sound, constitutional money have also been introduced in Alaska, Iowa, West Virginia, South Carolina, Missouri, Minnesota, Tennessee, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming,  Kansas, and more.

Currently Mississippi is tied for 45th out of 50 in the 2023 Sound Money Index. Passage of these measures would increase the state’s ranking dramatically.

Jp Cortez is the Policy Director for the Sound Money Defense League, a non-partisan, national public policy group working to restore sound money at the state and federal level and publisher of the Sound Money Index.

PALUMBO: Corrupt N.Y. Judge Has Financial Stake in Case Against Anti-CCP Dissident

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PALUMBO: Corrupt N.Y. Judge Has Financial Stake in Case Against Anti-CCP Dissident

(Matthew Palumbo, Headline USA contributor) From day one, acting New York Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager—the Democrat handling the case between Miles Guo and Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity Fund (PAX)—was a gift to the Chinese Communist Party.

The timing of the lawsuit couldn’t have been any more suspect, coming just one day before Mr. Guo made an appearance on Voice of America that was infamously shut down on air right before he was about to expose Wang Qishan, then vice president of China, and Wang’s connection with HNA Group, a state-owned-enterprise that he exposed as a money-laundering front for Wang and CCP kleptocrats.

Voice of America is paid by the U.S. taxpayer, and this was the first time in its history it had ever cut off a live program. Five journalists were put on leave after—one of whom said it was because someone “caved to the Chinese government’s demand.”

This VOA interview was Mr. Guo’s first time speaking out publicly against the CCP—and they wanted it to be his last. Despite their best efforts, Guo has continued fighting the CCP ever since, and he later founded the New Federal State of China organization to further expose them.

The day the lawsuit was filed, China announced that interpol had issued a notice for Mr. Guo’s arrest, leaving no doubt that these events were being orchestrated by the CCP.

PAX is a subsidiary of Pacific Alliance Group, which is one of the largest private investment firms based in Hong Kong. The firm is headed by Shan Weijian, who has extensive ties to the CCP.

Shan’s public writings regularly espouse CCP propaganda. Shan praised China’s widely protested “National Security Law” in Hong Kong that enabled extradition to the mainland, claiming that it restored “social stability” and freedoms that he claims were “suppressed by violent protesters.” In reality, peaceful protesters were protesting the removal of their freedoms from an authoritarian state.

He claimed that Hong Kong “remains an open and free society under the rule of law”—but in the two years following the passage of the law, Hong Kong’s freedom in Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World rankings dropped by 12 points, from 55 to 42 (on a scale where 100 is the highest).

Shan has defended the persecution and cultural genocide of the Uyghurs in an article criticizing U.S. and European Union sanctions on China for their well-documented human rights violations.

han has also financed the publication of articles in U.S. media attacking Mr. Guo.

The case between Mr. Guo and Pacific Alliance Group made headlines for its conclusion with Ostrager ordering Mr. Guo to pay $134 million within five days or face arrest, claiming that the yacht was moved to the Bahamas after being ordered to keep it in the U.S.

The fine equaled $500,000 per day. Ostrager says the boat (the “Lady May”) remained out of U.S. jurisdiction.

The Lady May isn’t even owned by Miles, but to his daughter, Mei Guo. Both the ownership and financing for the purchase of the boat belong to Mei Guo. Despite that, Ostrager issued an order stating that Mr. Guo is the ultimate owner of the ship—the only evidence for which is hearsay.

The purpose of the judgment was simple: so that Ostrager could deprive Miles Guo of the right to go to trial, and thus force him into bankruptcy—and thus the arms of the Department of Justice’s U.S. Trustee Office.

This was merely the latest in a series of biased rulings from Ostrager throughout the case. Ostrager denied Mr. Guo the ability to provide evidence in his favor.

Ostrager himself made note of how egregious his fine was, as it exceeded “PAX’s outstanding judgment of $120 million” and was a “multiple” of the £28 million purchase price of the Lady May. The fine was unfair—Ostrager openly came short of saying just that—and then implemented it anyway.

Mr. Guo did declare bankruptcy—and the DOJ manipulated the trustee appointment process to install Luc Despins as the trustee for his case.

Despins has been linked to the CCP through him being a partner in Paul Hastings, LLC, a law firm that has done business in China and Hong Kong; and he has represented many state-owned (i.e. CCP owned) Chinese companies. As one writer noted in Newsmax, the CCP’s influence is direct here:

Not only is the Chinese Communist Party a client of Paul Hastings, but they also control the licenses to keep their law offices open in both China and Hong Kong. Effectively, the CCP controls the purse strings to hundreds of millions of dollars for Paul Hastings and Mr. Despins as a partner in Paul Hastings.

To better understand the motivations behind Ostrager’s rulings in the case, it’s essentially to understand his many conflicts of interests pertaining to China.

Justice Ostrager is a 1973 graduate from the New York University School of Law who was appointed to the New York Court of Claims by disgraced Gov. Andrew Cuomo in June 2015. He served as an acting New York Supreme Court justice and was assigned to the Commercial division. He was appointed to the New York State Supreme Court in June 2017, and remains assigned to that same division.

Previously, Ostrager spent the entirety of his career at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where he was a partner since 1980. He was also chair of the firm’s litigation department, and as a litigator he tried and won numerous multi-billion-dollar cases.

Simpson–Thatcher’s business presence in China is extensive, with them having been active there for roughly three decades with offices in Beijing and Hong Kong.

They have, according to their own corporate documents, represented “China state-owned” and non-state owned companies (over which the CCP still maintains extensive control).

In the past, they’ve represented (among dozens and dozens of CCP-backed clients) state-owned companies such as:

  • Shanghai Electric Group Corporation, when they purchased a U.S.-based supplier
  • China’s leading mobile television advertiser, VisionChina Media Inc.
  • Focus Media Holding Ltd, which operates the largest out-of-home advertising network in China and dozens and dozens more.

Simpson–Thacher represented private equity giant Blackstone in their first ever investment in China—a $600 million investment for 20% of China’s National Bluestar Corporation.

They also represented Blackstone in an agreement with Great Eagle Holdings Limited, and represented them in connection to their 95% purchase of Changshou Commercial Plaza in Shanghai.

Simpson–Thatcher also lists “A chinese company in an investigation by the DOJ into potential theft of trade secrets” among their clients—an odd thing to boast about.

Thacher is a leading player in bringing Chinese companies public through America’s stock exchanges—despite Chinese companies having notably weaker accounting requirements than U.S.-based companies, making them more susceptible to fraud. In 2010 for example, of the 34 IPOs of Chinese companies on U.S. markets, 18 had involvement from Simpson–Thacher.

Judges with conflicts of interest ruling America’s courts are surprisingly common. A 2021 Wall Street Journal investigation found that at least 131 federal judges had overseen court cases in which they or their family members owned stock between 2010-2020.

Their verdicts leave no question as to why rules against conflicts of interest exist: Judges ruled in favor of their own financial interests in two-thirds of cases (a far cry from the half you’d expect by random chance). That’s the same for the likes of Ostrager.

Pacific Alliance Group is one of the largest independent alternative asset firms in Asia, and has over $20 billion under capital under management. In March 2018, Blackstone announced a $400 million in PAG for 17.6% of its equity, giving a direct link between Blackstone and the CCP-linked PAG.

This was hardly the first time Blackstone had been tied to the CCP—and hardly is the most direct connection. As early as May 2007, the CCP-controlled China Investment Corporations spent $3 billion for 8% of Blackstone. This stake was raised to 12.5% in 2008.

In one case, Ostrager recused himself because of his own personal investment ownership in Blackstone—but not in Mr. Guo’s case. Ostrager began overseeing a lawsuit brought by Stuyvesant Town tenants against Blackstone in 2020, but recused himself in 2021 because Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett had performed work for Blackstone, and that his pension is “derived at least in part from the substantial revenue the firm receives from Blackstone.” Yet there were no such concerns when it came to their investment in PAG.

And this isn’t the first time Ostrager questionably refused to recuse himself.

A shareholder of up to $250k in Exxon Mobil stock, Ostrager didn’t voluntarily recuse himself from a case involving them, leading to calls for his recusal that went ignored.

Ostrager would rule that New York “failed to establish” that Exxon violated the Martin Act and any other laws in their public disclosures related to so-called climate change risks—a major win for Exxon.

“The Office of the Attorney General failed to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that ExxonMobil made any material misstatements or omissions about its practices and procedures that misled any reasonable investor,” Ostrager wrote in his ruling that protected his own financial interest.

Regardless of what one thinks about the validity of New York’s lawsuit, and even if one believes that this was the correct verdict, it remains the case that Ostrager was the wrong person to make it, and didn’t recuse himself when he clearly should’ve.

Ostrager has had other controversies throughout his career. On Oct. 26, 2018, as Mr. Guo’s case was still ongoing, Justice Ostrager allegedly made anti-Greek comments while handling a different case that involved Greek real-estate managers John Pappas and Peter Skeadas, who accused steakhouse owner Alan Stillman of mismanaging a restaurant they owned called Maloney and Porcelli.

According to Pappas and Skaedas’s lawyer, Michael Camarinos, Ostager told him and a colleague about their client, “You have a couple of old pigheaded Greek clients that don’t know what they are doing.”

Among other oddities, Barry Ostrager seems to have defeated the vig—and has racked up over $3.3 million from bets placed on horse racing. Given the relatively high house edge on horse racing, these kinds of winnings certainly are suspect, but they offer enough plausible deniability to be attributed to an extreme statistical uncertainty.

If the CCP were to have handpicked a judge in this case, they couldn’t have done any better than Ostrager. The obvious flaws in his character aside, his firm’s and his personal ties to the CCP’s created a situation where the case of Mr. Guo was destined to be a show trial from day one.

While Ostrager has recused himself in cases in the past, as you saw in the case of Exxon, he’s far less likely to do so when he decides he has enough skin in the game to make it worthwhile. And in this case, he was doing the bidding of his most valuable ally out there.

Matt Palumbo is the author of The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros (2021), Dumb and Dumber: How Cuomo and de Blasio Ruined New York (2020), Debunk This!: Shattering Liberal Lies (2019) and Spygate(2018).

Editor’s Note: The above piece is an opinion piece. Although Headline USA does curate and edit such pieces for style purposes, the views expressed in it do not necessarily represent those of the publication. Headline USA did not receive nor furnish any compensation for the submission. 

Leftist Pundit Goes on Racist Tirade against ‘Alpha Karen with Brown Skin’ Nikki Haley

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Leftist Pundit Goes on Racist Tirade against ‘Alpha Karen with Brown Skin’ Nikki Haley

(Headline USA) MSNBC pundit Wajahat Ali claimed during a racist screed that GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley uses her “brown skin to launder white supremacist talking points.”

“​I see her​ ​and I feel sad because she uses her brown skin as a weapon against poor black folks and poor brown folks, and she uses her brown skin to launder white supremacist talking points​,” Ali, a Daily Beast columnist, told MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan.

He went on to describe Haley as an “alpha Karen with brown skin” and the “perfect Manchurian candidate” for white supremacists. 

“Instead of pulling us up from the bootstraps, and pulling others from the bootstrap, we’re told to take your boot and put it on the neck of poor browns, immigrants, refugees, and black folks,” Ali claimed, adding that he is “disgusted” by Haley.

Ali denied that his attacks on Haley were “racist,” suggesting in a follow-up statement that his critics are the real racists.

Haley said in her campaign announcement video that she is proud of her Indian heritage. She also described growing up in a racially segregated town.​

“I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants — not black, not white. I was different,” she said. “My mom would always say, ‘Your job is not to focus on the differences but the similarities.’ My parents reminded me and my siblings every day how blessed we were to live in America.”

Ali isn’t the only leftist pundit who has insulted Haley since she launched her bid for the White House last week. CNN’s Don Lemon claimed during a segment that Haley is “not in her prime,” arguing that women are only in their “prime” when they are in their “20s, 30s, or 40s.”

Legal Loophole Saves Alec Baldwin from Firearm Enhancement Charge

Contributing Author
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Legal Loophole Saves Alec Baldwin from Firearm Enhancement Charge

(Headline USA) New Mexico attorneys revealed this week that they dropped a firearm-enhancement charge against actor Alec Baldwin after the gunslinger’s attorneys argued the charge was “unconstitutional.”

Baldwin, 64, was charged last month for his role in the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust. His legal team filed a motion in court to dismiss one of the charges against him, arguing that it was based on New Mexico law that did not pass until after the shooting had already happened.

“The prosecutors committed a basic legal error by charging Mr. Baldwin under a version of the firearm-enhancement statute that did not exist on the date of the accident,” a court filing from Baldwin’s lawyers said.

Heather Brewer, a spokesperson for the Santa Fe District Attorney’s office, confirmed the enhancement had been removed from the case against Baldwin.

“In order to avoid further litigious distractions by Mr. Baldwin and his attorneys, the District Attorney and the special prosecutor have removed the firearm enhancement to the involuntary manslaughter charges in the death of Halyna Hutchins on the ‘Rust’ film set,” Brewer said. “The prosecution’s priority is securing justice, not securing billable hours for big-city attorneys.”

Baldwin is still facing charges for involuntary manslaughter, but the decision to drop the enhancement charge could reduce the prison time he could face by at least five years.

Baldwin’s legal team is also seeking to disqualify the special prosecutor assigned by the Santa Fe District Attorney to oversee the case, arguing that her appointment is “unconstitutional” since she was elected to serve in the New Mexico House of Representatives in November.

“The special prosecutor in this case, Andrea Reeb, is a member of the New Mexico House of Representatives. Under Section 1 of Article III of the New Mexico Constitution, however, a sitting member of the Legislature may not ‘exercise any powers properly belonging’ to either the executive or judicial branch,” they said in a motion.

NYC Mayor Using Immigration Crisis to Funnel Cash to Real-Estate Moguls

Ezekiel Loseke
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NYC Mayor Using Immigration Crisis to Funnel Cash to Real-Estate Moguls

(Ezekiel Loseke, Headline USA) New York City Democrat Mayor Eric Adams is using taxpayer dollars and the crisis of illegal aliens to subsidize his donors in the real estate industry.

Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants have been bused and flown to New York City from Texas and Florida.

These illegals have stayed in a total of 85 hotels across the city, according to Breitbart News.

One such hotel, the Wingate by Wyndham in Queens, has 144 rooms available for illegals. The rooms cost paying customers almost $600 a night. Of course, the tax payers are funding the stay for the illegals.

Housing illegals has been very expensive for the city. The total cost of caring for illegals is over $2.1 billion most of which goes directly to their landlords, according to Breitbart News. Future spending on this project is estimated to be over $4 billion in the next two years.

Coincidentally, real-estate oligarchs own the hotels and are thus being subsidized by the taxpayers. Indeed, the entire program could be described as a wealth transfer from tax-paying Americans to real estate oligarchs.

While this subsidization has enriched the oligarchs it has cost other businesses significant amounts of money, according to the New York Post. Businesses that depend upon tourists and restaurants that have to sit their customers around the hotels housing illegal immigrants have reported rapidly dropping sales.

Owners said they are preparing to lay off workers because their neighborhoods are transforming into “ghost towns.”

If illegals were known to perform menial tasks for hotels, like doing laundry, cleaning rooms, or performing maintenance below the legal minimum wage without taxation, then the oligarchs would benefit even more from the sanctuary status of the city.

These real estate moguls happen to be Adams’s core supporters, according to Politico, which analyzed the mayor’s fundraising using data from the New York City Campaign Finance Board.

“Of the $850,077 the new mayor raised during his first six months in office … at least $156,000 stemmed from people working in the real estate industry,” it reported.

Politico also reported that a large number of the real estate bigwigs gave $100 short of the maximum amount of money allowed to be donated by law.

Politico also found that many of the donors gave more than the law permitted. One real estate mogul, Azar, apparently gave $4,000 to Adams, double the legal amount.

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