Report: US Forces Raided Ship Headed From China To Iran Last Month

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Report: US Forces Raided Ship Headed From China To Iran Last Month

(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com)The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that US special operations forces raided a ship last month, several hundred miles off the coast of Sri Lanka, that had departed China and was bound for Iran.

The report, which cited unnamed US officials, said that US special operators who boarded the vessel seized the cargo and then left. Officials said that the ship was carrying components potentially useful for Iran’s weapons and that they were “dual-use items, with both civilian and military applications.”

The US officials said that the purpose of the operation was to disrupt Iran’s procurement of goods for its military following the 12-day US-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic, which damaged the country’s air defenses and other military equipment.

The report didn’t name the ship or provide any other details about the operation, and so far it hasn’t been publicly confirmed by the US, China, or Iran. But the news came a few days after the US seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, demonstrating that the Trump administration is willing to use the military to enforce sanctions in a way that marks a dramatic escalation.

Iran also seized a ship in the Gulf of Oman over the weekend that it claimed was smuggling Iranian fuel and detained the crew. The Iranian military carried out a similar seizure of a Marshal Islands-flagged tanker in the Gulf of Oman last month and released the ship a few days later without its cargo.

After the Iranian seizure last month, US Central Command put out a statement condemning the move as “illegal,” calling it “a blatant violation of international law, undermining freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce.”

Tehran has also been very critical of the US’s seizure of the tanker near Venezuela. “The United States’ detention and seizure of trade vessels belonging to other countries amounts to flagrant disregard for international law and is a blatant violation of principles ruling international maritime security and safety,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said

This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com. 



Rob Reiner and Wife Reportedly Killed by Their Son

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Rob Reiner and Wife Reportedly Killed by Their Son

(Headline USA) Rob Reiner, the son of a comedy giant who became one himself as one of the preeminent filmmakers of his generation with movies such as “The Princess Bride,” “When Harry Met Sally …” and “This Is Spinal Tap,” has died. He was 78.

Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer, were found dead Sunday at their home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Authorities were investigating an “apparent homicide,” said Capt. Mike Bland with the Los Angeles Police Department. The Los Angeles Fire Department said it responded to a medical aid request shortly after 3:30 p.m.

According to People Magazine, Reiner’s son, Nick Reiner, is suspected of the murder.

“Multiple sources tell PEOPLE that the killer was the couple’s son, Nick Reiner,” the magazine reported Sunday night. “Police say Nick, 32, is alive and being questioned. No arrests have been made.”

Reiner grew up thinking his father, Carl Reiner, didn’t understand him or find him funny. But the younger Reiner would in many ways follow in his father’s footsteps, working both in front and behind the camera, in comedies that stretched from broad sketch work to accomplished dramedies.

“My father thought, ‘Oh, my God, this poor kid is worried about being in the shadow of a famous father,’” Reiner told “60 Minutes” in October, recalling the temptation to change his name. “And he says, ‘What do you want to change your name to?’ And I said, ‘Carl.’ I just wanted to be like him.”

After starting out as a writer for “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” Reiner’s breakthrough came when he was, at age 23, cast in Norman Lear’s “All in the Family” as Archie Bunker’s liberal son-in-law, Michael “Meathead” Stivic. But by the 1980s, Reiner began as a feature film director, churning out some of the most beloved films of that, or any, era. His first film, the largely improvised 1984 cult classic “This Is Spinal Tap,” remains the quintessential mockumentary.

After the 1985 John Cusack summer comedy, “The Sure Thing,” Reiner made “Stand By Me” (1986), “The Princess Bride” (1987) and “When Harry Met Sally …” (1989), a four-year stretch that resulted in a trio of American classics, all of them among the most often quoted movies of the 20th century.

A legacy on and off screen

For the next four decades, Reiner, a warm and gregarious presence on screen and an outspoken liberal advocate off it, remained a constant fixture in Hollywood. The production company he co-founded, Castle Rock Entertainment, launched an enviable string of hits, including “Seinfeld” and “The Shawshank Redemption.” By the turn of the century, its success rate had fallen considerably, but Reiner revived it, and this fall released the long-in-coming sequel “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.”

All the while, Reiner was one of the film industry’s most passionate Democrat activists, regularly hosting fundraisers and campaigning for liberal issues. He was co-founder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which challenged in court California’s ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8. He also chaired the campaign for Prop 10, a California initiative to fund early childhood development services with a tax on tobacco products. And Reiner was an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump.

That ran in the family, too. Reiner’s father opposed the Communist hunt of McCarthyism in the 1950s and his mother, Estelle Reiner, a singer and actor, protested the Vietnam War.

“If you’re a nepo baby, doors will open,” Reiner told the Guardian in 2024. “But you have to deliver. If you don’t deliver, the door will close just as fast as it opened.”

‘All in the Family’ to ‘Stand By Me’

Robert Reiner was born in the Bronx on March 6, 1947. As a young man, he quickly set out to follow his father into entertainment. He studied at the University of California, Los Angeles film school and, in the 1960s, began appearing in small parts in various television shows.

But when Lear saw Reiner as a key cast member in “All in the Family,” it came as a surprise to the elder Reiner.

“Norman says to my dad, ‘You know, this kid is really funny.’ And I think my dad said, ‘What? That kid? That kid? He’s sullen. He sits quiet. He doesn’t, you know, he’s not funny.’ He didn’t think I was anyway,” Reiner told “60 Minutes.”

On “All in the Family,” Reiner served as a pivotal foil to Carroll O’Connor’s bigoted, conservative Archie Bunker. Reiner was five times nominated for an Emmy for his performance on the show, winning in 1974 and 1978. In Lear, Reiner also found a mentor. He called him “a second father.”

“It wasn’t just that he hired me for ‘All in the Family,’” Reiner told “American Masters” in 2005. “It was that I saw, in how he conducted his life, that there was room to be an activist as well. That you could use your celebrity, your good fortune, to help make some change.”

Lear also helped launch Reiner as a filmmaker. He put $7.5 million of his own money to help finance “Stand By Me,” Reiner’s adaptation of the Stephen King novella “The Body.” The movie, about four boys who go looking for the dead body of a missing boy, became a coming-of-age classic, made breakthroughs of its young cast (particularly River Phoenix) and even earned the praise of King.

With his stock rising, Reiner devoted himself to adapting William Goldman’s 1973’s “The Princess Bride,” a book Reiner had loved since his father gave him a copy as a gift. Everyone from François Truffaut to Robert Redford had considered adapting Goldman’s book. It ultimately fell to Reiner (from Goldman’s own script) to capture the unique comic tone of “The Princess Bride.” But only once he had Goldman’s blessing.

“At the door he greeted me and he said, ‘This is my baby. I want this on my tombstone. This is my favorite thing I’ve ever written in my life. What are you going to do with it?’” Reiner recalled in a Television Academy interview. “And we sat down with him and started going through what I thought should be done with the film.”

Though only a modest success in theaters, the movie — starring Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, André the Giant and Robin Wright — would grow in stature over the years, leading to countless impressions of Inigo Montoya’s vow of revenge and the risky nature of land wars in Asia.

‘When Harry Met Sally …”

Reiner was married to Penny Marshall, the actor and filmmaker, for 10 years beginning in 1971. Like Reiner, Marshall experienced sitcom fame, with “Laverne & Shirley,” but found a more lasting legacy behind the camera.

After their divorce, Reiner, at a lunch with Nora Ephron, suggested a comedy about dating. In writing what became “When Harry Met Sally …” Ephron and Reiner charted a relationship between a man and a woman (played in the film by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan) over the course of 12 years.

Along the way, the movie’s ending changed, as did some of the film’s indelible moments. The famous line, “I’ll have what she’s having,” said after witnessing Ryan’s fake orgasm at Katz’s Delicatessen, was a suggestion by Crystal — delivered by none other than Reiner’s mother, Estelle.

The movie’s happy ending also had some real-life basis. Reiner met Singer, a photographer, on the set of “When Harry Met Sally …” In 1989, they were wed. They had three children together: Nick, Jake and Romy.

Reiner’s subsequent films included another King adaptation, “Misery” (1990) and a pair of Aaron Sorkin-penned dramas: the military courtroom tale “A Few Good Men” (1992) and 1995’s “The American President.”

By the late ’90s, Reiner’s films (1996’s “Ghosts of Mississippi,” 2007’s “The Bucket List”) no longer had the same success rate. But he remained a frequent actor, often memorably enlivening films like “Sleepless in Seattle” (1993) and “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013). In 2023, he directed the documentary “Albert Brooks: Defending My Life.”

In an interview earlier this year with Seth Rogen, Reiner suggested everything in his career boiled down to one thing.

“All I’ve ever done is say, ‘Is this something that is an extension of me?’ For ‘Stand by Me,’ I didn’t know if it was going to be successful or not. All I thought was, ‘I like this because I know what it feels like.’”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

 

DHS Confirms TSA Sharing Data with ICE in Major Reversal

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DHS Confirms TSA Sharing Data with ICE in Major Reversal

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) The Trump administration confirmed Friday that the Transportation Security Administration is forwarding the names of all airline travelers to Immigration and Customs Enforcement as part of a broader effort to detain criminal illegal aliens. 

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the collaboration in a statement to the leftist New York Times, which first reported the development. 

“The message to those in the country illegally is clear: The only reason you should be flying is to self-deport home,” McLaughlin said.  

As reported by the Times, TSA started providing ICE with passenger name lists in March, sharing the data several times a week. 

Immigration agents then compare the lists against their databases in search of individuals with final deportation orders. 

If a foreign national with a deportation order is flagged, ICE agents may be deployed to airports to detain the individual, the outlet reported. 

TSA has long shared limited passenger information with federal law enforcement officials after airlines confirm reservations.  

This is done primarily to identify potential terrorists or other individuals flagged as security threats, according to the Times. 

In another remark to CNBC, a DHS spokesperson said the practice is “nothing new.” 

“Under President Trump, TSA and DHS will no longer tolerate this,” the spokesperson said. “This administration is working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport.” 

Police Release Suspect in Brown University Shooting; Suspect Still At Large

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Police Release Suspect in Brown University Shooting; Suspect Still At Large

(Headline USA) A person of interest detained after a Brown University shooting that killed two students and injured nine will be released after an investigation took law enforcement authorities in a “different direction,” officials said Sunday night.

The disclosure, made at a hastily convened late night news conference, represents a stunning turn of events in an investigation into killings that rattled the Ivy League campus and came more than 12 hours after officials had announced that they had taken a person into custody in connection with the attack.

The release means that whoever is responsible for the killing may remain at large.

“We know that this is likely to cause fresh anxiety for our community,” Mayor Brett Smiley said.

The attack Saturday afternoon set off hours of chaos across campus and surrounding Providence neighborhoods as hundreds of officers searched for the shooter and urged students and staff to shelter in place. The lockdown, which stretched into the night, was lifted early Sunday, but authorities had not yet released information about a potential motive.

On Sunday morning, officials took a person into custody that two people familiar with the matter identified as a 24-year-old man from Wisconsin. That individual, whose name was never released by authorities, is now being released.

“I’ve been around long enough to know that sometimes you head in one direction and then you have to regroup and go in another and that’s exactly what has happened over the last 24 hours or so,” said Attorney General Peter Neronha.

Col. Oscar Perez, the Providence police chief, said Sunday afternoon that no one has been charged yet. Perez, who also said no one else was being sought, declined to say whether the detained person had any connection to Brown.

The person was taken into custody at a Hampton Inn hotel in Coventry, Rhode Island, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Providence, where police officers and FBI agents remained Sunday, blocking off a hallway with crime scene tape as they searched the area.

The shooting occurred during one of the busiest moments of the academic calendar, as final exams were underway. Brown canceled all remaining classes, exams, papers and projects for the semester and told students they could leave campus, underscoring the scale of the disruption and the gravity of the attack.

As police scoured the area for the shooter, many students remained barricaded in rooms while others hid behind furniture and bookshelves. One video showed students in a library shaking and wincing as they heard loud bangs just before police entered the room to clear the building.

University President Christina Paxson teared up while describing her conversations with students both on campus and in the hospital.

“They are amazing and they’re supporting each other,” she said at a news conference. “There’s just a lot of gratitude.”

The gunman opened fire inside a classroom in the engineering building, firing more than 40 rounds from a 9 mm handgun, a law enforcement official told AP. Two handguns were recovered when the person of interest was taken into custody and authorities also found two loaded 30-round magazines, the official said. One of the firearms was equipped with a laser sight that projects a dot to aid in targeting, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity.

One student of the nine wounded students had been released from the hospital, said Paxson. Seven others were in critical but stable condition, and one was in critical condition.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

 

Syrian Who Killed American Troops Was Member of U.S.-Backed Security Forces

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Syrian Who Killed American Troops Was Member of U.S.-Backed Security Forces

(Headline USA) A man who carried out an attack in Syria that killed three U.S. citizens had joined Syria’s internal security forces as a base security guard two months earlier and was recently reassigned amid suspicions that he might be affiliated with the Islamic State group, according to The Associated Press.

The attack Saturday in the Syrian desert near the historic city of Palmyra killed two U.S. service members and one American civilian and wounded three others. It also wounded three members of the Syrian security forces who clashed with the gunman, interior ministry spokesperson Nour al-Din al-Baba said.

Al-Baba said that Syria’s new authorities had faced shortages in security personnel and had to recruit rapidly after the unexpected success of a rebel offensive last year that intended to capture the northern city of Aleppo but ended up overthrowing the government of former President Bashar Assad.

“We were shocked that in 11 days we took all of Syria and that put a huge responsibility in front of us from the security and administration sides,” he said.

The attacker was among 5,000 members who recently joined a new division in the internal security forces formed in the desert region known as the Badiya, one of the places where remnants of the Islamic State extremist group have remained active.

Attacker had raised suspicions

Al-Baba said the internal security forces’ leadership had recently become suspicious that there was an infiltrator leaking information to IS and began evaluating all members in the Badiya area.

The probe raised suspicions last week about the man who later carried out the attack, but officials decided to continue monitoring him for a few days to try to determine if he was an active member of IS and to identify the network he was communicating with if so, al-Baba said. He did not name the attacker.

At the same time, as a “precautionary measure,” he said, the man was reassigned to guard equipment at the base at a location where he would be farther from the leadership and from any patrols by U.S.-led coalition forces.

On Saturday, the man stormed a meeting between U.S. and Syrian security officials who were having lunch together and opened fire after clashing with Syrian guards, al-Baba said. The attacker was shot and killed at the scene.

Al-Baba acknowledged that the incident was “a major security breach” but said that in the year since Assad’s fall “there have been many more successes than failures” by security forces.

In the wake of the shooting, he said, the Syrian army and internal security forces “launched wide-ranging sweeps of the Badiya region” and broke up a number of alleged IS cells. The interior ministry said in a statement later that five suspects were arrested in the city of Palmyra.

A delicate partnership

The incident comes at a delicate time as the U.S. military is expanding its cooperation with Syrian security forces.

The U.S. has had forces on the ground in Syria for over a decade, with a stated mission of fighting IS, with about 900 troops present there today.

Before Assad’s ouster, Washington had no diplomatic relations with Damascus and the U.S. military did not work directly with the Syrian army. Its main partner at the time was the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the country’s northeast.

That has changed over the past year. Ties have warmed between the administrations of U.S. President Donald Trump and Syrian interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, the former leader of an Islamist insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham that used to be listed by Washington as a terrorist organization.

In November, al-Sharaa became the first Syrian president to visit Washington since the country’s independence in 1946. During his visit, Syria announced its entry into the global coalition against the Islamic State, joining 89 other countries that have committed to combating the group.

U.S. officials have vowed retaliation against IS for the attack but have not publicly commented on the fact that the shooter was a member of the Syrian security forces.

Critics of the new Syrian authorities have pointed to Saturday’s attack as evidence that the security forces are deeply infiltrated by IS and are an unreliable partner.

Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an advocacy group that seeks to build closer relations between Washington and Damascus, said that is unfair.

Despite both having Islamist roots, HTS and IS were enemies and often clashed over the past decade.

Among former members of HTS and allied groups, Moustafa, said, “It’s a fact that even those who carry the most fundamentalist of beliefs, the most conservative within the fighters, have a vehement hatred of ISIS.”

“The coalition between the United States and Syria is the most important partnership in the global fight against ISIS because only Syria has the expertise and experience to deal with this,” he said.

Later Sunday, Syria’s state-run news agency SANA reported that four members of the internal security forces were killed and a fifth was wounded after gunmen opened fire on them in the city of Maarat al-Numan in Idlib province.

It was not immediately clear who the gunmen were or whether the attack was linked to the Saturday’s shooting.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

 

‘Seditious Six’ Wife of Russia-Hoax Plotter Oversaw DOJ’s Dud Durham Investigation

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‘Seditious Six’ Wife of Russia-Hoax Plotter Oversaw DOJ’s Dud Durham Investigation

(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Efforts to investigate the Russia-gate hoax during the first Trump administration may have been derailed by one of the members of the notorious “Seditious Six,” according to a prominent Russia-gate victim and Soviet scholar.

Svetlana Lokhova—who was falsely smeared as a Russian honeytrap to Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the first national security adviser for the Trump administration—said the wife of Biden’s national security adviser had a lead role in thwarting the investigation of special council John Durham, in part to cover for her husband.

The allegation centers around Maggie Goodlander, who served as a counselor to Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland and later as a deputy assistant attorney general overseeing the antitrust division of the Justice Department.

Goodlander, now a Democrat congresswoman from New Hampshire, is also married to Jake Sullivan, a top surrogate for Hillary Clinton who subsequently became President Joe Biden’s national security adviser.

The two married in 2020 at a ceremony chock full of deep-state operatives including Clinton, Biden CIA Director William Burns, Biden Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Biden Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco.

As Lokhova noted in a series of recent posts on social media, Sullivan likely was one of the masterminds in crafting the Russia hoax while serving as a top policy adviser for Clinton’s failed 2016 campaign.

“Sullivan conspired with Hillary’s lawyers Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann, along with Hillary campaign advisors, to manufacture the Russiagate lies via the Steele Dossier and other means, and to feed them to the FBI and the media,” Lokhova wrote.

“… After the 2016 presidential election, Sullivan participated in the conspiracy to overthrow President Trump,’ she added. “This included participating in meetings with Soros– and Hoffman-financed Daniel Jones, a former aide to California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and Glenn Simpson and his partner Peter Fritsch of Fusion GPS, as part of the 2017-2018 effort to impeach President Trump for the manufactured ‘Russia ties.’”

Sullivan—a former State Department aide to Clinton who also had his hands dirty in the Benghazi and email scandals—additionally helped to devise the parallel Alfa Bank hoax that the White House used to spy on Trump.

Sussmann, a lawyer with the deep-state friendly Perkins Coie firm, was one of only three individuals indicted as part of the Durham investigation. However, he was eventually acquitted by a Washington, D.C., jury of making false statements to the FBI about the Alfa Bank hoax.

The other two individuals indicted by Durham also got off lightly. Igor Danchenko, a top source for the phony Steele Dossier, was acquitted of lying to the FBI.

Kevin Clinesmith, a low-level FBI attorney, pleaded guilty to falsifying documents that would have provided exculpatory evidence for Trump associate Carter Page on a surveillance application to the secretive FISA court. However, he received no jail time and was given only 12 months probation by corrupt D.C. Judge James Boasberg. Clinesmith even had his law license reinstated by the D.C. Bar Association, despite the serious nature of his crime.

Following Biden’s installation as president, the Durham investigation—which many already suspected was being slow-walked to exceed the statute of limitations—ultimately fizzled out.

“Special Counsel Durham had all this evidence about Jake Sullivan and co trying to overthrow President Trump with the fake Russiagate lies in 2016-2018,” Lokhova noted. “But the Durham investigation came to nothing. There were no high-profile arrests.”

While conflicts of interest abound in the interwoven world of D.C.’s deep-state operatives (such as Boasberg’s uncanny ability to land many of the Trump-connected cases, despite his obvious Trump Derangement Syndrome), Goodlander’s marriage to Sullivan almost certainly helped to undermine any serious efforts on Durham’s part.

According to Lokhova, Goodlander was, in fact, “overseeing the Durham investigation” until it ended in May 2023.

The documents released this year by Trump’s current director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, have confirmed that key players in the Obama and Biden administrations had direct knowledge of the Russia hoax and conspired to weaponize it against Trump.

A long-hidden annex to the Durham report that was released in August likewise revealed that the Obama administration directly pressured the FBI to downplay Clinton’s email scandal ahead of the 2016 election.

Meanwhile, lest there be any doubt about Goodlander’s agenda, she confirmed her seditious impulses with the release of a controversial video in November urging military service-members to defy orders from Trump officials that they disagreed with politically by claiming them to be “illegal.”

Not surprisingly, the Seditious Six video, like the original Russia hoax, also has the fingerprints of billionaire oligarch George Soros on it, with some suggesting it may be the opening salvo in yet another attempted domestic color revolution.

Ben Sellers is a freelance writer and former editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.

Report: DOJ May Charge Alleged Charlie Kirk Assassin w/ Anti-Christian Hate Crime

Ken Silva
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Report: DOJ May Charge Alleged Charlie Kirk Assassin w/ Anti-Christian Hate Crime

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The Justice Department is considering charging alleged Charlie Kirk killer Tyler Robinson with an anti-Christian hate crime, according to NBC News.

Citing three people familiar with the matter, NBC reported Saturday that the justification for charging Robinson with a hate crime largely hinges on his alleged motivation to kill Kirk over his views about transgender people.

“Robinson’s partner is trans, and authorities have produced text messages from the suspect to his partner saying he was motivated to kill Kirk because he had ‘enough of his hatred,’” NBC reported.

Charging a hate crime would allow the DOJ to take action in a case that otherwise solely under state jurisdiction. Robinson did not cross state lines, and other potential federal statutes, like the stalking charge brought against alleged United Healthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione, do not appear to apply, NBC reported.

And while there’s widespread agreement that Robinon’s alleged actions constitute domestic terrorism, there are no federal domestic terrorism laws on the books.

NBC’s sources cast doubt on the hate crime strategy.

“They are trying to shove a square peg into a round hole,” one of the people familiar with the federal investigation told NBC.

Robinson had his first in-person court hearing Thursday, where lawyers largely argued about media access to the proceedings. Robinson’s attorneys also revealed that they filed a sealed motion to disqualify Utah County prosecutors from the case.

Robinson has not yet entered a plea. His next hearing is set for January.

Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.

‘Rolling Stone’ Magazine Questions Project Veritas’ Terror Plot Report

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‘Rolling Stone’ Magazine Questions Project Veritas’ Terror Plot Report

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Lefty magazine Rolling Stone has cast doubt on a Project Veritas report involving an alleged terrorist plot by two Brazilian nationals.

As reported by Project Veritas on Oct. 11, the FBI and local law enforcement in Florida raided the hotel room of Janaina “Jania” Toledo, 32, and Leonardo Corona Ramos, 42, over an alleged investigation into a potential terrorist threat against the Chabad of South Orlando. 

Rolling Stone disputed major aspects of Project Veritas’s reporting, confirming that Toledo and Ramos had been detained but claiming there was no active terrorism investigation. Instead, the outlet reported the two individuals had been detained on ICE immigration hold. 

Headline USA independently verified with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office on Friday evening that a complaint had been filed related to an address connected to the Chabad of South Orlando. Officials declined to provide further details.

Rolling Stone claimed the “almost-too-crazy-to-be-true story” may have been a “fabrication” of Brazilian influencer Patricia Lelis Bolín, whom the outlet described as “a serial forger, fabulist, and federal fugitive allegedly holed up in a Mexico hotel, on the run from the FBI in a major fraud case.” 

@patricialelis

Bolín is currently being sought by the FBI after a grand jury indicted her on charges alleging she stole $700,000 from illegal aliens while posing as an immigration attorney. She denied being the source of the Project Veritas story. 

“I hope you do better research on Janaina de Toledo and Leonardo Corona,” Bolín told Rolling Stone. “I am not the only person for whom a judge granted a protective order because of the harassment they were carrying out. Any defamation or baseless accusation attempting to claim that I produced messages or that I am Veritas source will be subject to legal action.” 

According to Rolling Stone, Bolín and Toledo, one of the ICE detainees, had a lengthy and public feud on social media, raising questions about whether the information provided to Project Veritas was motivated by a personal vendetta rather than evidence of an actual crime.

At the time of the initial reporting, Headline USA confirmed that Toledo had been booked into Florida’s Orange County Jail. This news outlet also noted uncertainty surrounding the story’s origins: “How Project Veritas became aware of the plot, and who may have conceived the idea, is not immediately clear.” 

A request for comment sent to Project Veritas outside of normal business hours was not returned. 

FBI Fires Whistleblower Steven Friend After Murky Reinstatement Deal, Social Media Threat

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FBI Fires Whistleblower Steven Friend After Murky Reinstatement Deal, Social Media Threat

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) The FBI on Thursday fired Steve Friend, the agent who exposed the Biden administration’s persecution of some Jan. 6 defendants, following a brief reinstatement. 

Friend’s ouster was first leaked to the New York Post, which contacted Friend the night before he was officially notified, according to journalist Steve Baker in a tweet reposted by Friend himself. 

In a letter signed by FBI Director Kash Patel, Friend was informed that his public conduct after being reinstated to the FBI violated internal protocol. 

The firing appears to have been triggered by a warning Friend gave during an interview with Kyle Seraphin about what he might do if he discovered evidence of a potential cover-up in the Jan. 6 pipe bomb investigation. 

Some social media users interpreted his comments as a threat directed at Patel. In the interview, Friend said: 

“May God have mercy on your soul, and I’m gonna end with this. I’m going to bring out my inner Commodus. You better pray to Gaia, Vishnu or whatever your maker is that ‘RealSteveFriend’ is never in a position to be an instrument of God’s wrath, because I will be merciful. I’ll allow you to breathe every breath that your body will have for the rest of its natural life inside of a box, and then when it ultimately fades to black, that’s when the real wrath begins.” 

Friend is known for telling Congress in 2023 that the Biden-era FBI used Jan. 6 cases to inflate domestic terrorism stats, and arrested individuals who never set foot inside the Capitol.  

He had been indefinitely suspended over these earlier revelations to lawmakers and ultimately resigned because of the suspension. 

In August 2025, Friend was part of a group of FBI agents who settled lawsuits with the Trump-led DOJ, which agreed to reinstate them, provide back pay and restore benefits. 

Friend returned to the FBI payroll on Oct. 10, according to the Post, though he had not yet been reinstated to active duty pending a security clearance. 

Friend reportedly had not received back pay following the settlement. 

The firing came just days after Empower Oversight informed Friend that they were terminating their contract, citing his failure to adhere to the protocols expected of active FBI agents. 

Biden Fails to Raise a Single Dollar for Presidential Library

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Biden Fails to Raise a Single Dollar for Presidential Library

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) After being ousted by his own party, former President Joe Biden ended 2024 with a humiliating feat: not a single dollar raised for the construction of his presidential library, raising serious doubts about the project’s viability. 

The fragile financial situation was revealed in IRS filings from the Joe and Jill Biden Foundation, the entity created to oversee the presidential library, according to a Saturday report from the leftist New York Times.

The outlet reported that the foundation was initially seeded with $4 million in leftover funds from Biden’s 2021 inauguration. The foundation did not disclose how much money it raised in 2025, claiming in remarks to the Times that Biden had only recently begun fundraising. 

The $4 million in seed funding falls well short of the $11.3 million the foundation projected it would raise by 2027 and even further below the $200 million Biden officials reportedly said they wanted to secure, according to the Times. 

By contrast, President Donald Trump has said he plans to raise more than $950 million for a presidential library in Miami. Trump has also secured several million dollars through major settlements with Big Tech companies and leftist media networks.

Trump’s figures would mirror the $1.5 billion former President Barack Obama raised for his presidential center in Chicago. 

But the outlook for Biden only worsens, a major Democratic donor told The Times that they will not give any money to Biden for the library. 

“The Biden staff, they ruined any type of good library for him,” Democratic donor John Morgan said. “He’ll be lucky to have a bookmobile.” He added that he recently met with former President Bill Clinton to expand the Clinton Presidential Library. 

Biden’s foundation attributed the fundraising delay to his cancer treatment. 

According to the Times, some donors have suggested Biden merge a potential presidential library with the “Joseph R. Biden Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration” at the University of Delaware. 

The embarrassing fundraising shortfall comes nearly a year after Biden’s exit from the White House, following his forced ouster from the 2024 presidential ticket by his own party.

Biden remains deeply unpopular within Democratic circles, with many voters viewing his presidency as a major catalyst behind President Trump’s return to office in 2025. 

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