Leftist Activists Establish ‘Autonomous Zone’ in Madison

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Leftist Activists Establish ‘Autonomous Zone’ in Madison

(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Far-left activists with apparent ties to the Democratic Socialists of America recently established their own autonomous zone in Wisconsin’s capital city, Madison.

The tent cities have become a familiar sight in far-left cities where the destructive and disruptive occupation is openly encouraged by government officials.

Investigative reporter Andy Ngo noted that similar protests had occurred in Minneapolis and Seattle, both of which were ground zero for BLM riots during 2020’s ironically dubbed “summer of love.”

Seattle’s 2020 autonomous zone, alternately called the CHAZ and the CHOP, became a haven for lawlessness and, eventually, murder.

Wisconsin-based conservative activist Eric Bott, a regional vice president at Americans for Prosperity, alleged that the democratic socialist officials in charge of Madison’s municipal government were “providing financial support and protection” to the current insurrection.

The far-left occupiers purported to be demonstrating on behalf of Corey Ruiz, a serial criminal who was killed on July 22 after allegedly stabbing a police officer during an altercation.

Ruiz’s lengthy rap sheet included eight prior convictions over a 17-year period for charges including resisting, obstructing, threatening or injuring police officers.

Further feeding the perception that the insurrection was being conducted with the blessing and imprimatur of city officials was a press conference the day after Ruiz’s death, during which a group of activists, led by local real-estate agent Carlos LeMar Dixon, hijacked a police press conference.

Dixon, who is believed to be staging a write-in campaign for governor, previously admitted to stealing the campaign signs of rival candidates.

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

Platner’s Replacement in Maine Accused of Incest

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Platner’s Replacement in Maine Accused of Incest

(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Democratic party elites in Maine are facing more criticism over their sub-par vetting process amid reports that new Senate nominee Troy Jackson has sex with his cousin.

After using a loophole in the primary process to swap out duly nominated Graham Platner, an alleged Nazi rapist, with Jackson, an accused socialist rageaholic, the latest development could further amplify calls for another audible, possibly helping to secure the ticket for transgender social-media star Ashley Webb.

The bombshell about Jackson’s incestuous relations with his second cousin, which led to the couple’s two children, was first reported on Thursday by independent journalist Steve Robinson.

Robinson noted that inbreeding not only was fully legal in the small Maine town where Jackson boasted of being a fifth-generation logger, but it was pretty widely accepted.

“The tiny St. John River Valley town of Allagash (population 240) has long been the butt of Maine jokes about its handful of last names and family trees that don’t so much branch as tangle,” he wrote.

The couple remains together, with Jackson often describing his cousin-turned-high-school-sweetheart, Lana Pelletier, as his wife, even though they never officially married.

The two share a common set of great-grandparents, with Jackson’s maternal grandmother and Pelletier’s paternal grandfather listed as siblings in records unearthed by Robinson.

While Maine law bans most forms of incest with immediate family members and those closely related genetically, it permits cousin marriages if the lovebirds “present a certificate of genetic counseling signed by a physician certifying their potential children have an acceptably low risk of physical deformity or cognitive impairment,” the New York Post reported.

Jackson suggested the scandal was a non-issue in a statement to the Post, while accusing his Republican rival, incumbent GOP Sen. Susan Collins, of having been behind it.

“Susan Collins will do anything to distract from the fact that she votes with Trump 96% of the time and has sold out working people in Maine,” Jackson’s campaign said in a statement. “Personal attacks on Troy’s family are shameful and desperate.”

But the revelation nonetheless drew ridicule from some on social media.

Even before his installment as the Democratic nominee, Jackson was raising concerns from both sides of the aisle.

In early July, with his anointment already apparent, the group Progressive Victory alleged that Jackson had hurled a water bottle at a fellow Democrat who disagreed with him in the state legislature.

“In our discussions we have received troubling information about not only Jackson’s behavior, but the behavior of many prominent Maine Democrats toward women more broadly,” wrote the group in a now-deleted July 7 post. “Both as a result of the credibility of the sources and in the interest of not seeing our movement make the same mistake twice, we are choosing to share some of this now.”

Republican critics also said that Jackson, who lost the Democratic primary for governor earlier this year, was ineligible to run again due to the state’s “sore loser” laws.

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

Trump Urged to Give Top Civilian Honor to NBA Star Who Refused Vax

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Trump Urged to Give Top Civilian Honor to NBA Star Who Refused Vax

(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Like the lockdowns, masks and vaccine mandates ordered by disgraced former COVID czar Anthony Fauci during the pandemic, the reckoning against Fauci himself is now having major reverse-ripple effects — including vindication for NBA star Kyrie Irving.

Following a Senate hearing last Wednesday in which Fauci invoked Fifth Amendment protections 111 times to avoid his subpoenaed testimony, ESPN host Stephen A. Smith said Irving deserved an apology.

“I watched Dr. Fauci on Capitol Hill yesterday, and the person I thought about most was Kyrie Irving,” Smith said Thursday on his SiriusXM show.

Going into the 2021-22 season, Irving — who was a point guard with the Brooklyn Nets at the time — was considered to be one of the league’s top 20 overall players.

But a series of COVID vaccine mandates implemented by then-New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo saw his fortunes drastically reversed.

Irving stood his ground in refusing to take the vaccine, even after President Joe Biden scapegoated skeptics by spuriously declaring it a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

Irving’s resistance helped give strength to others who were wavering between reluctance to submit to the gene-altering, experimental serums and the social pressures to do so, in some cases threatening their jobs and friendships.

However, the decision severely limited Irving’s playing time and made him something of a league pariah.

“New York City’s mandate made him ineligible for home games, and he linked his stance to people losing jobs over vaccine mandates,” Smith recalled.

“In my opinion, particularly hindsight-wise, it didn’t make him stubborn or selfish,” Smith added. “It made him brave. His willingness to stand up and say, ‘Nah, I’m not doing that.’”

In reaction to a viral clip of Smith calling for a Irving to be vindicated, other public figures chimed in, such as rapper Nikki Minaj, who offered her own jab at Smith for finally seeing the light.

“Is that a pair of balls I see?” she wrote.

Vernon Jones, a red-pilled ex-Democrat now running to be Georgia’s secretary of state, called for Irving to be reimbursed for his lost earnings.

“[T]he city of New York mandated he take the Covid jab in order to play home games,” Jones wrote. “When he refused, his pay was docked roughly $380,000 per game — more than $11 million that season.”

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., a close ally of President Donald Trump, said Irving should receive the nation’s highest civilian award for his courage in taking a stand against medical tyranny.

“I am calling on President Trump to give Kyrie Irving the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his immense act of bravery during one of the darkest times in modern history,” she wrote.

Ahead of Fauci’s hearing, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., released more than 1,100 pages from a diary of Fauci’s, discovered on the Health and Human Services Department servers, showing not only the then-NIAID director’s obsession with fame and media coverage, but also the gaping inconsistencies between his public and private opinions.

In an Aug. 13, 2022, entry, Fauci recounted a debate with officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the benefit of the vaccines — or lack thereof — since they “were not effective at all in preventing infection and transmission.”

Fauci and his team argued to tone down the language and say instead that the vaccines had “modest and waning efficacy.”

However, both anecdotally and in multiple scientific studies, the risk of potential vaccine injuries, such as myocarditis or stroke, has proven to be greater for healthy individuals without preexisting comorbidities or risk factors than the threat of the virus itself.

Indeed, the diary included a since-redacted revelation that Fauci himself suffered a blood clot in his lungs in June 2021, about six months after he received his first dose of the Moderna mRNA vaccine.

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

Mass Shooting Leaves Multiple People Dead in Idaho

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Mass Shooting Leaves Multiple People Dead in Idaho

(Headline USA) A shooting at an In-N-Out Burger restaurant in southern Idaho on Saturday afternoon left multiple people dead and others injured, police said.

The shooter was among the dead, Twin Falls Police Chief Matthew Hicks said in a news conference. Police were still trying to determine the shooter’s identity and motive.

“We believe the threat to the community is over,” Hicks said. He added that he did not yet know exactly how many were killed or wounded, and officials were still in the process of notifying next of kin. “It was a very chaotic scene.”

Before the news conference, Twin Falls County Commissioner Brent Reinke said Sheriff Jack Johnson had told him five people were hurt.

Lane Koehn, 34, said he was at a stoplight near the In-N-Out when he saw a person with an AR-style rifle emerge from the drive-thru. A man with a pistol started firing at the shooter.

He then saw someone in an In-N-Out uniform drag a person, also uniformed, bleeding from a gunshot wound in her chest across the parking lot. The employee, Koehn and the man with the pistol stayed until paramedics arrived for her.

“She was pretty bad off, but I don’t know. I hope she made it,” Koehn said.

Koehn said he was told by police to evacuate because the shooting was still active.

He also said the shooter fired at least three or four rounds and it was not clear whether or not anyone in particular was targeted.

Video taken by a driver from across the street captured a shooter, who appeared to be dressed in black, walking up to a white car carrying a long rifle, opening the driver-side door and popping the trunk. The person then walked to the trunk and reached inside. At that point the driver who shot the video left quickly, fearing that the man might be getting more weapons.

Twin Falls resident Haley Dodaro, 43, and her mother went to In-N-Out for lunch Saturday afternoon. While waiting in the drive-thru line, they saw people running across the road and workers bolting out of the restaurant. At first Dodaro thought there might have been a fire, but then a man directing traffic in a reflective vest said there was a shooter.

“So that’s when we knew there was a shooting. People were running out crying and screaming. It was very scary,” Dodaro said in a text message to The Associated Press.

Nayeli Rodriguez, 40, of Burley, was inside waiting for food with her daughters when she heard shots from the kitchen. An employee said it was a shooting and told people to get down. Rodriguez said an older man tried to protect her and her daughters, and they were among the last to run outside.

“We were trying to get as far as we could and some angels let us in their car,” Rodriguez said, also via text message. “I left my car there in the parking lot.”

The shooting took place near a busy shopping area and hundreds of people were there at the time, Hicks said. Police where interviewing witnesses and asked for anyone with information to contact authorities.

The In-N-Out opened just about a week earlier, on July 24, as part of the company’s recent expansion to Idaho.

Reinke said he learned of the shooting just before 4 p.m. and multiple agencies responded.

Police advised people to avoid the area as they closed roads.

Police said multiple people were taken to St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center. Hospital spokesperson Taylor Marschner said in a statement that it was “working closely with law enforcement and emergency responders as they manage the situation.”

Twin Falls, a city of about 56,000 people, is about 130 miles southeast of Boise and about 75 miles north of the Nevada border.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

FBI Investigates Cyberattacks on Water Systems in Michigan and Minnesota

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FBI Investigates Cyberattacks on Water Systems in Michigan and Minnesota

(Headline USA) Michigan on Saturday joined Minnesota in reporting cyberattacks on nine of the state’s water systems but an official said all systems were operating “safely.”

Earlier this week, authorities said cyberattacks targeted over 30 water systems in Minnesota. The source of the attacks is being investigated, but they came amid warnings that Iranian hackers have been focused on such systems.

The reports in Michigan surfaced after the state received a federal cyber alert Tuesday about attempts to tamper with operational technology at water systems.

Soon after, the state received “a small number of reports from Michigan communities indicating activity consistent with what federal agencies described,” said Dale George, the director of communications at the state’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. He later said nine systems were impacted.

“All systems continued to operate safely, issues were addressed by local operators, and there are no known impacts that posed a public health concern,” George said in an statement.

The FBI, which is investigating, has not publicly identified a culprit and a spokesperson declined to say Thursday who the bureau thought might be responsible. The FBI, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and other agencies warned in an advisory last week that Iranian hackers have been targeting water and wastewater systems and the operational controls of other critical infrastructure sectors.

“The FBI is aware of recent public reporting around Water and Wastewater (WWS) sectors,” the agency said in a statement Saturday. “The FBI and our interagency partners are fully engaged to protect critical infrastructure and we remain well-equipped to protect against cyber threats of all varieties.”

Digital warfare has become ingrained in military conflict, and local water plants or healthcare facilities often lack the funds and know-how to install the latest software patches or take other security steps. That has made them a favorite target, both because of the relative ease of penetrating them and because of the panic such disruptions can cause.

Iran’s interest in the operations of water systems inside the U.S. dates back years. In 2016, the Justice Department charged a group of Iranian hackers in connection with a cyberattack targeting a small dam near New York City.

Minnesota IT Services said that as of Thursday, there were no active requests from Minnesota communities for residents to modify usage of their drinking water. The state agency said most of the confirmed attacks involved technology that water systems use to remotely monitor and control equipment. It said that being impacted meant investigators confirmed there was malicious activity involving the system’s technology and didn’t mean every impacted community had their water service disrupted.

For a few hours on Monday, the city of Braham asked residents to minimize water use as they tried to determine why the water plant was offline. The city of about 1,700 people, located about 70 miles north of Minneapolis, said in a news release that the water plant outage was due to a cyberattack, but it didn’t cause any issue with water quality.

The city said the attackers shut down the operating controls that shut down the well and water treatment plant. That left the city for a time only able to provide residents with the water held in the water tower.

In Plymouth, a city of about 80,000 located outside of Minneapolis, officials said on social media that their water infrastructure communications had been restored by Tuesday afternoon following a cyberattack.

During a Cabinet meeting on Friday at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, President Donald Trump claimed without evidence that recent cyberattacks in Minnesota were the fault of the state, including Democratic Gov. Tim Walz.

Waltz responded on social media, saying Trump “knows exactly who is responsible for this attack, and knows that other states were hit too.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

California Offering Free Meth and Crack Pipes, Reporter Finds

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California Offering Free Meth and Crack Pipes, Reporter Finds

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Drug paraphernalia is among the growing list of taxpayer-funded perks given to homeless individuals in California, according to an undercover investigation by journalist Christopher Rufo.

Rufo’s investigation targeted the Skid Row Care Campus, an infamous public-private facility in downtown Los Angeles that provides services to the homeless.

In a video posted to X on July 29, Rufo said he entered the facility undercover and was able to obtain a meth pipe at no cost and with little questioning from staff.

As seen in Rufo’s video, a facility staff member said the center also distributes syringes, petroleum jelly, “straight shooters” (glass pipes commonly used to smoke crack cocaine) and oil burners (pipes used to smoke methamphetamine or freebase cocaine).

Rufo’s video also showed several individuals, many of them apparently homeless, smoking from what appear to be glass pipes. Other individuals were seen smoking unidentified substances from what appears to be either tobacco cigarettes or marijuana joints.

Officially launched in 2025, the Skid Row Care Campus describes itself as a “welcoming and safe space” and refers to the distribution of the drug-related items as “harm reduction supplies.”

Headline USA has learned that the center is a project of the Los Angeles County departments of Homeless Services and Housing, Health Services, Mental Health and Public Health. It also receives support from the City of Los Angeles, according to its website.

The federal government has also reportedly provided taxpayer funding for the project, bringing its total operating budget to approximately $26 million.

The facility is operated by the nonprofits Homeless Health Care Los Angeles, Social Model Recovery Systems and Wesley Health Centers.

In his video, Rufo urged the federal government to halt funding for the center, arguing that taxpayers should not subsidize the distribution of drug paraphernalia.

He said that while government officials defend the project as so-called harm reduction, Los Angeles continues to struggle with widespread drug addiction and overdose deaths.

Government officials, primarily in leftist metropolitan areas, have defended distributing drug-related products as a strategy intended to prevent the spread of diseases among drug users. For example, sharing contaminated needles can transmit HIV, hepatitis C and other bloodborne diseases.

Other cities that provide similar services include New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Richmond, according to multiple news reports.

Fauci Could Face Lifetime Punishment After Contentious Senate Hearing

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Fauci Could Face Lifetime Punishment After Contentious Senate Hearing

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Embattled Dr. Anthony Fauci could face a growing list of repercussions after invoking the Fifth Amendment during a Senate hearing, including a proposed permanent ban from future federal service.

The proposed ban would come under legislation reintroduced by Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., that would bar government officials and employees from future federal service if they “refuse to answer questions before Congress or are convicted of perjury.”

Named the Stop the SWAMP Act, the bill would also authorize Congress to refer uncooperative witnesses to the DOJ for criminal prosecution if they withhold information during congressional investigations.

McCormick unveiled the bill after Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination over 100 times during a tense hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The hearing centered on the release of Fauci’s pandemic-era government notes, which appear to contradict several of his public statements on COVID-19 policies.

The notes also shed light on Fauci’s apparent eagerness to appear on cable news programs and included multiple references to him as “America’s doctor.”

McCormick described the Stop the SWAMP Act as a way to hold individuals like Fauci accountable for stonewalling investigations.

“If you can hide from Congress, you shouldn’t be able to work for the federal government,” McCormick said in a statement. “Congress has a constitutional duty to conduct oversight, and federal employees have a duty to tell the truth.”

He added, “If someone lies under oath or refuses to cooperate with a lawful investigation, there should be consequences. Public service is a privilege, and no one is above the law.”

Separately, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, pledged to schedule a committee vote to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress.

Paul contended that Fauci cannot invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination because former President Joe Biden granted him a preemptive pardon for potential federal offenses committed between Jan. 1, 2014, and Jan. 19, 2025.

Paul said that the legal implications of that theory will ultimately have to be addressed by the courts.

Vivek Ramaswamy Booed Off Stage At Libertarian Youth Convention

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Vivek Ramaswamy Booed Off Stage At Libertarian Youth Convention

(José Niño, Headline USA) A clip of Vivek Ramaswamy walking out on a libertarian youth convention tore through X this week, driven largely by a post from the account The Constitutionalist. The video catches Ohio’s Republican nominee for governor watching a right leaning audience turn on him in the city where he grew up.

Ramaswamy topped the bill at the Young Americans for Liberty convention at Xavier University in Cincinnati on Wednesday night. The schedule gave him 30 minutes. He used 14. Jeers greeted him before he opened his mouth and continued without pause as hecklers challenged him over Israel, immigration, and H-1B visas, according to a Daily Beast report.

Everything snapped when he told the students, “The truth of the matter is, you know no matter what happens in whichever direction we go, people in my generation have already made it. We’re gonna be fine. It’s going to be your generation that pays the price. That choice belongs to you.”

Seconds later an attendee delivered the line the tweet features, “You’re a political cretin, and you need to get the f*** out of here!”

Ramaswamy answered rather than backing down. He invited anyone still committed to capitalism to clap, then informed those who did that they would shoulder the rest of the room, Newsweek wrote. He ended with “Peace out, see you guys” and exited through another surge of jeers, as The Independent reported. 

The moment could hardly land at a worse point. Ramaswamy, sits level with Democrat Amy Acton across recent polling. A New York Times/Siena University poll of 601 likely voters conducted June 15-28 placed each candidate at 47 percent, prompting the Cook Political Report to reclassify the race from lean Republican to toss-up.

José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino 

Trump Appointee Gets Into Fight at State Dept.

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Trump Appointee Gets Into Fight at State Dept.

(José Niño, Headline USA) A senior Trump appointee stands accused of pushing a State Department colleague and vowing to beat him inside the agency’s Washington headquarters, according to a formal complaint the Daily Mail obtained.

Ali Motamedi, a special assistant to the U.S. special envoy to Greenland, says Gavin Wax confronted him in early July beside a sixth floor elevator bank inside the Harry S Truman Building. Wax, 32, holds the chief of staff post under the under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. A department source says investigators now treat it as an assault case.

Wax pressed a hand to his chest, Motamedi recounts, and told him, “If you ever talk s*** about me or my family again, I will beat the f*** out of you.” The complaint continues, “He then forcefully pushed me before turning around and reentering the elevator.”

Wax’s allies describe the encounter differently. One source traced the conversation to dinner receipts and expense reimbursements, and said it soured only after Motamedi mocked Wax’s Jewish background and cast doubt on his wife’s Catholic faith, citing a “pre-existing animus.” A source in Motamedi’s corner denied all of it, insisting he never raised Wax’s background anywhere. Motamedi himself wrote, “For the record, I do not know what Mr. Wax was referring to with respect to his allegation that I had spoken about him or his family.”

Special adviser Charles Yockey shared that elevator and is “the only real witness who saw what transpired,” one official said. Wax’s camp says Yockey assured Diplomatic Security nobody got touched or threatened. Sources also disagree about what security cameras recorded. A department official responded only, “We do not comment on internal personnel matters.”

The Office of Special Investigations now handles the file. One official cautioned the case may bypass ordinary procedure because Wax “has the ear of Donald Trump.” A colleague rejected that, replying, ‘A lot of people claim to have a relationship with Trump and don’t.’ Motamedi reports to Gov. Jeff Landry, R-La., whom Trump tapped as special envoy to Greenland.

A similar statement surfaced a year ago. Small Business Administration senior adviser Michael Bartels attested in a notarized affidavit that Wax pressured him in a phone call to release the entire Telegram chat log, and “threatened my professional standing” by raising the possibility of legal action over an alleged NDA breach. 

Wax rejected claims he leaked the Young Republican messages to Politico and kept his standing. He had run the New York Young Republican Club from 2019 to 2025 before joining the FCC as chief of staff to Commissioner Nathan Simington in April 2025—a role he held until June—then moved to the State Department in August 2025 as chief of staff to acting Under Secretary Darren Beattie.

José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino 

George Santos Agrees to $35,000 Settlement in Federal Probe over Kalshi Trades

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George Santos Agrees to $35,000 Settlement in Federal Probe over Kalshi Trades

(Headline USA) Disgraced former Congressman George Santos agreed Friday to pay $35,000 to settle a federal investigation into his suspicious trades on the prediction marketplace Kalshi after he bet against his own plans to attend President Donald Trump’s State of the Union.

The onetime Republican lawmaker from New York said he settled with the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission to “put this matter behind him,” noting that he did not admit to doing anything wrong.

“He chose a prompt, practical resolution, rather than protracted, costly litigation, and that choice should not be mistaken for admission of any wrongdoing, because it is not one,” Santos’ lawyer Joseph Murray said in a statement Santos shared on X.

The commission said Friday’s settlement represents the more than $17,000 Santos earned from the unlawful trading as well as a fine of $17,500. The agency also imposed a three-year trading ban on Santos.

Kalshi, which had reported Santos to regulators, said it will also pursue its own enforcement action and work to reimburse traders if monetary penalties are recovered.

Leading up to Trump’s February speech, Santos had talked frequently about his plans to be in the crowd. But minutes into the speech, he posted on X to say that he had been waylaid at the airport and couldn’t make it to Capitol Hill.

Social media users called him out, noting that Kalshi had put the odds of Santos attending the address at close to 75%.

Santos shrugged off the complaints at the time.

“I guess people lost money,” he said on his podcast in March. “Some people made unexpected money. That’s to show you how fragile these markets are.”

But the federal probe into the Kalshi trading prompted rival online prediction platform Polymarket to cut ties with Santos in June.

Santos’ lawyer, in his statement Friday, said his client had a “genuine intention” to attend the State of the Union, even booking a hotel and plane ticket before a winter storm scuttled the plans.

“Mr. Santos concealed neither his intention to attend, nor his change of plans to not attend the SOTU, from anyone,” Murray said. “There was absolutely no intent to deceive any person, nor intent to manipulate any market.”

Santos, who is set to appear on Fox’s reality contest “Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test” this fall, shot to political fame after winning a seat representing parts of the New York City borough of Queens and Long Island.

But his bogus life story of being a wealthy Wall Street player with a college degree and other accomplishments quickly unraveled.

Santos was eventually expelled from Congress and charged with federal wire fraud and identity theft charges as investigators probed how he funded his campaign. He pleaded guilty and served less than three months of a more than seven-year sentence before Trump granted him clemency last year.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

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