Construction Magnate Sentenced for Funneling Foreign Funds to NYC Mayor Eric Adams

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Construction Magnate Sentenced for Funneling Foreign Funds to NYC Mayor Eric Adams

(Headline USA) A Brooklyn construction magnate was sentenced Friday to a year of probation for working with a Turkish government official to funnel illegal campaign contributions to New York City Mayor Eric Adams, resolving one of two related federal cases after the mayor’s criminal charges were dropped.

Erden Arkan, 76, told Manhattan federal Judge Dale Ho that he regretted his “poor judgments” in engaging in the straw donor scheme, which helped Adams fraudulently obtain public money for his 2021 mayoral bid under the city’s matching funds program.

Ho cited Arkan’s age and otherwise clean record in imposing the sentence, telling the Turkish-born businessman that his immigrant success story “exemplifies the American dream.”

“I hope that you don’t let this one mistake define you,” Ho told Arkan.

Arkan faced up to six months in prison under federal sentencing guidelines, but prosecutors and the federal probation officer agreed that no prison time was warranted. In addition to probation, he must also pay a $9,500 fine and $18,000 in restitution.

Arkan pleaded guilty in January to a conspiracy charge in Manhattan federal court. Weeks later, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department pressured prosecutors to drop their underlying case against Adams, ultimately getting it dismissed.

In court Friday, Arkan’s lawyer Jonathan Rosen blasted the government for continuing to pursue his case after getting Adams’ charges dismissed.

“To put it mildly, this is a very unusual case. In fact, it is unprecedented,” Rosen argued.

In February, Justice Department leadership ordered Manhattan federal prosecutors to drop Adams’ case, arguing that it was hindering the Democratic mayor’s ability to assist the Republican administration’s immigration crackdown.

Ho, who also oversaw the mayor’s case, dismissed his charges in April. In a written opinion, he agreed it was the only practical outcome but also criticized what he said was the government’s “troubling” rationale for wanting the charges thrown out.

While Adams was spared, prosecutors continued to pursue related cases against Arkan and a former aide to the mayor, Mohamed Bahi.

Bahi, who served as City Hall’s chief liaison to the Muslim community, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to soliciting straw donations for Adams’ mayoral campaign from employees of a different Brooklyn construction company at a December 2020 fundraiser.

Arkan acknowledged in his January plea that he knowingly violated the law by reimbursing employees of his construction firm for their donations to Adams’ campaign.

In brief remarks Friday, he apologized to city taxpayers who bankroll the matching funds program, telling Ho: “I love this city. I dedicated my life to making it better. It pains me that I have harmed it.”

According to prosecutors, Adams personally solicited donations from Arkan and a Turkish consular official at an April 2021 dinner. The following month, Arkan held a fundraiser at the headquarters of his construction company, KSK, in which 10 employees donated between $1,200 and $1,500 to the campaign. They were later reimbursed by Arkan, making them illegal straw donations.

Adams then used those funds to fraudulently obtain public money under the city’s matching funds program, which provides a generous match for small-dollar donations, prosecutors allege.

A well-known member of New York’s Turkish community, Arkan’s ties to Adams first emerged in November 2023 after federal investigators searched the businessman’s home, along with the home of Adams’ chief fundraiser and his liaison to the Turkish community.

Adams pleaded not guilty to bribery and other charges after a 2024 indictment accused him of accepting illegal campaign contributions and travel discounts from a Turkish official and others — and returning the favors by, among other things, helping Turkey open a diplomatic building without passing fire inspections.

At a Feb. 19 hearing that precipitated the dismissal of his case, Adams told Ho: “I have not committed a crime.” The first-term mayor, a former police captain, skipped the June Democratic primary and is currently running for reelection as an independent.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

 

Maine Man Turns Devalued Fiat Money to His Advantage By Paying Fine With Tons of Coins

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Maine Man Turns Devalued Fiat Money to His Advantage By Paying Fine With Tons of Coins

(Mike Maharrey, Money Metals News Service) Government currency debasement steals your wealth and erodes your purchasing power, but there is a situation in which you can use the devaluation of our money to your advantage.

If you have to pay a fine and want to make a point.

That’s exactly what a Maine man did.

When the city of Palermo fined Kirk Sherman $20,000 for disturbing wetlands on his waterfront property, he ponied up. But he paid the penalty using loose change. The pile of coins weighed in at over 12,000 pounds.

Sherman and his partner said they approached the city before purchasing the land.

“[Palermo’s Code Enforcement Officer] stated that we could do a six-foot meandering path for 100 feet, then the next into the next 200 feet we could fill in 1/10 of an acre.”

However, city officials say Sherman built the road too close to a lake.

Sherman said the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) told him that if he quickly remedied the situation, he wouldn’t face any penalties from the department.

Sherman insists he followed the state’s instructions.

“Within a day of the notification, we’d hired the people that we had were supposed to. We’d contacted DEP. We’ve done exactly everything the DEP asked us to do, and the DEP is fine with it without, they didn’t write a violation or even give a fine.”

However, the municipality has the authority to pursue further disciplinary action. And city officials did just that. The Palermo select board voted to levy the fine. According to WAIBI, the city wanted “to ensure property owners on Lake Sheepscot know that they must follow codes and ordinances, even if they remediate damages once a violation has been issued.”

Sherman said he didn’t feel like pursuing the issue in court, so he paid the fine and got a little payback in the process.

 “I’m paying it, and I just want them to realize that they weren’t fair with us. So this is our kind of one fun way of saying, ‘Here’s your payment, good luck.’”

A city official called Sherman “unprofessional” and said the city was considering charging a handling fee because somebody has to count all those coins.

I reckon if they levy a fee, he can pay that in change too.

Pettiness Made Possible By Fiat Money

One news reporter joked that Sherman should go into the “Pettiness Hall of Fame.” But I’ve got to give the guy props. We’ve all been hosed by the government at some point. We’ve all felt that powerlessness and frustration. Kudos to Sherman for getting a little satisfaction of his own.

Ironically, his little stunt wouldn’t be possible in a world with sound money. The reason it took more than six tons of coinage to pay a $20,000 fine is that the government has made our money virtually worthless.

If he had paid his fine in U.S. quarters minted before 1965, it would have taken about 80,000 coins weighing about 16,000 ounces or 1,000 pounds. That’s a lot of coins. But one-half ton pales in comparison to the 6-ton pile of metal Sherman delivered.

But that was a different age. In those days, U.S. quarters were 90 percent silver.

That changed under the Coinage Act signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, the U.S. Treasury removed all of the silver from dimes, quarters, and half-dollars. Instead, the government mints coins from “composites, with faces of the same alloy used in our 5-cent piece that is bonded to a core of pure copper.”

You will sometimes hear coins minted before 1965 referred to as “junk silver.”

In reality, we should call modern American coins junk.

Johnson promised that removing silver would have no impact on the value of U.S. coinage, asserting that “[The] Treasury has a lot of silver on hand, and it can be, and it will be used to keep the price of silver in line with its value in our present silver coin.”

You’ll be shocked to learn he was lying.

Richard Nixon told a similar fib when he severed the last tie between the U.S. dollar and gold. When he announced the closing of the gold window, Nixon said, “Let me lay to rest the bugaboo of what is called devaluation,” and promised, “Your dollar will be worth just as much as it is today.”

As we all know, that’s not what happened. The dollar buys a fraction of what it did in 1971, and U.S. quarters minted after 1965 are virtually worthless.

Sherman could have made things really easy by paying in gold. He could have covered his fine with 6 1-ounce gold coins.

That’s real money.

Instead, it looks like he gave the city a lot of pennies. Pennies are so worthless, the government doesn’t even mint them anymore. It simply became too expensive to produce them. According to the U.S. Mint, it costs 3.69 cents to mint and distribute one penny.

The bottom line is that the government is destroying your money.

Based on the CPI, prices have increased by over 713 percent since 1970. A penny gumball I bought when I was a kid would cost about 8.1 cents today.

This is bad news for the average person who is trying to protect their hard-earned wealth. But at least you can use the government’s monetary malfeasance to make a point of your own.

Mike Maharrey is a journalist and market analyst for Money Metals with over a decade of experience in precious metals. He holds a BS in accounting from the University of Kentucky and a BA in journalism from the University of South Florida.

National Debt Blows Past $37 Trillion! So What?

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National Debt Blows Past $37 Trillion! So What?

(Mike Maharrey, Money Metals News Service) On August 11, the national debt officially topped $37 trillion for the first time.

It took a little longer to hit this milestone. It only took 188 days for the debt to grow from $35 trillion to $36 trillion. It took another 265 days to reach $37 trillion.

But don’t be fooled – the growth of the debt didn’t slow down.

The federal government ran up against the debt ceiling on January 1. As a result, the federal government couldn’t borrow any money until the enactment of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which raised the debt ceiling by $5 trillion as of July 1.

At that time, the national debt stood at $36.2 trillion. It took less than two months for the federal government to borrow more than $800 billion, pushing the debt over $37 trillion.

The growth of the national debt is increasing at an exponential rate. In 2020, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that the debt wouldn’t hit $37 trillion until 2030.

Putting the growth in context, the national debt hit $34 trillion in January 2024 and $35 trillion in November 2024.

Going back a little further, when Congress effectively eliminated the debt ceiling on June 5, 2023, the national debt stood at $31.46 trillion. Since then, the Biden administration has added $4.54 trillion to the national debt. That’s in just 18 months for those of you keeping track at home.

This isn’t shocking when you realize Uncle Sam is blowing through about half a trillion dollars every single month.

And federal spending isn’t going to slow down anytime soon.

The Big Beautiful Bill “cut” some spending but increased it in other areas. Furthermore, those “cuts” were from projected spending increases. Actual spending will still go up, just not as fast as originally planned. The bottom line is that even with the Big Beautiful Bill, spending will increase on an absolute basis. The CBO estimates the legislation will result in an additional $4.1 trillion budget deficit over the next decade. That will have to be covered by additional borrowing, further accelerating the growth of the national debt.

To be fair, this isn’t just a Trump problem. Every president since Calvin Coolidge has left the U.S. with a bigger national debt than when he took office.

The National Debt in Perspective

It’s hard to fathom $37 trillion. What does that even mean?

Here’s some perspective.

Every U.S. citizen would have to write a $108,509 check to pay off the debt.

Of course, a lot of people don’t pay taxes. That means the taxpayer burden is much higher. Every U.S. taxpayer would have to write a check for $323,053 to wipe out the debt.  And that’s on top of the taxes we already pay!

Looking at it another way, $37 trillion is more than the annual GDP of China, Germany, India, Japan, and the UK combined.

It’s hard to wrap your head around how big 1 trillion is, much less 37 trillion. Here are a few factoids to help you visualize just how big that number is:

  • There are 1 million seconds in 11.5 days. A trillion seconds is about 32,000 years.
  • If you could say one number every second, it would take about 11.5 million days to count to 1 trillion.
  • If you had spent $1 million every day since the birth of Christ, you still wouldn’t have spent $1 trillion.
  • If you line up dollar bills end-to-end, you could go to the moon and back around 203 times with $1 trillion. You could wrap them around the Earth about 3,893 times.
  • If you stacked up 1 trillion dollar bills, the dollar tower would rise to 67,866 miles.
  • If a cup of coffee costs $3, you could buy 333 billion cups of coffee with $1 trillion.
  • If you had 1 trillion dollars, you could give every person on Earth approximately $125.
  • One trillion grains of rice would weigh about 20,000 metric tons.

Keep in mind that all these examples illustrate the size of $1 trillion. The national debt is 37 times that number.

So What?

I consistently report on budget deficits and the growth of the national debt, but the truth is, most people don’t really care.

In fact, a lot of people are under the illusion that the debt doesn’t matter.

James Madison disagreed. He called public debt “a public curse, and in a Rep. Govt. a greater than in any other.

Thomas Jefferson also disagreed. He called public debt “the greatest of dangers to be feared.”

So did George Washington.

“No pecuniary consideration is more urgent than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt. On none can delay be more injurious or an economy of time more valuable.”

But why does it matter?

In the first place, large government debts put a drag on economic growth. According to the national debt clock, the current debt level represents 123.3 percent of the GDP. Studies have shown that a debt-to-GDP ratio of over 90 percent retards economic growth by about 30 percent.

Even more concerning is the fact that at some point, the world will decide it’s no longer interested in financing the U.S. government’s borrowing and spending.

And as the Bipartisan Policy Center points out, the growing national debt and the mounting fiscal irresponsibility undermine the dollar.

“Confidence in U.S. creditworthiness may be undermined by a rapidly deteriorating fiscal situation, an increasing concern with federal debt set to grow substantially in the coming years.”

This appears to already be happening. Demand for U.S. Treasuries is sagging, and yields are rising. That means it costs more for the federal government to service the massive debt.

Interest on the national debt cost $91.9 billion in July alone. That brought the total interest expense for the fiscal year to $1.01 trillion, up 6 percent over the same period in 2024.

So far, in fiscal 2025, the federal government has spent more on interest on the debt than it has on national defense ($758 billion) or Medicare ($823 billion). The only higher spending category is Social Security ($1.31 trillion).

It’s quite possible that the Fed won’t be able to lower federal borrowing costs with even with deeper interest rate cuts.

Ultimately, the federal government needs the Fed to step in and put its big fat thumb on the bond market. That would mean a return to quantitative easing (QE).

In QE operations, the central bank buys Treasuries on the open market. This increased (artificial) demand drives bond prices higher and puts downward pressure on yields. This would be an ideal scenario for the U.S. government. It needs all the help it can get to facilitate its borrow/spend addiction.

But the Fed runs QE operations with money created out of thin air. The new money gets injected into the monetary system and the economy. This is, by definition, inflation.

People seem unconcerned about the growing debt because people have warned about it for decades, and the promised crisis hasn’t occurred – yet.

But the bottom line is that just because the debt hasn’t caused a crisis doesn’t mean it won’t. After all, things happen slowly and then all at once.

Grand Jury Indicts Accused Killer of Minnesota Lawmaker

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Grand Jury Indicts Accused Killer of Minnesota Lawmaker

(, The Center Square) The man accused of killing Minnesota’s former House speaker and her husband faces state charges of first-degree murder.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said Thursday a state grand jury indictment of Vance Luther Boelter includes two first-degree premeditated murder charges for the killing of House Speaker Emerita Mellisa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman.

The charges also included attempted first-degree murder of Sen. John Hoffman, Yvette Hoffman, Hope Hoffman and Rep. Kristin Bahner, along with felony cruelty to an animal and impersonating a police officer.

The murder charges could bring a sentence of life with the possibility of parole.

“The damage done to the victims – those with us, those who were taken from us, and to our entire community – has opened wounds that will never heal,” Moriarty said in a release. “These charges reflect the weight of Mr. Boelter’s crimes, and our thoughts are with Melissa and Mark Hortman’s family, the Hoffman family, Rep. Bahner, and Sen. Rest.”

Boelter also faces federal charges of stalking and murder in the deaths of Melissa and Mark Holtman, along with the stalking and shooting of John and Yvette Hoffmam and the attempted shooting of Hope Hoffman. 

The federal charges could carry the death penalty.

An affidavit from prosecutors details what officials call Boelter’s detailed planning and actions the night before and during the early-morning hours of the shootings July 14 in Brooklyn Park, along with circumstances that took place during Boelter’s nearly two days on the run.

Boetler bought a Buick sedan and an electric bike from an individual he met at a bus stop as he worked to escape authorities, prosecutors say.

Moriarty said Boelter will face the state charges when the federal charges are completed.

The affidavit contains a letter written by Boetler addressed to Patel that officials found in the Buick after it had been abandoned. It said Gov. Tim Walz wanted him to kill Minnesota’s two U.S. senators so Walz could take one of those seats.

Following the manhunt, Boelter was arrested around 9 p.m. on June 15 near his home in Green Isle.

Under Pressure, RFK Jr. Brings Back Childhood Vaccine Safety Committee

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Under Pressure, RFK Jr. Brings Back Childhood Vaccine Safety Committee

(, The Center Square) U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Thursday the reinstatement of the Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines, the day before he had to respond to a lawsuit over his alleged failure to stand up the task force.

Health and Human Services said Congress created the federal panel to improve the safety, quality and oversight of vaccines administered to American children.

“By reinstating this Task Force, we are reaffirming our commitment to rigorous science, continuous improvement, and the trust of American families,” National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya said. “NIH is proud to lead this effort to advance vaccine safety and support innovation that protects children without compromise.”

The original task force was disbanded in 1998.

Ray Flores, an attorney, filed the lawsuit in May alleging that Kennedy was violating the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. That law requires the HHS secretary to create a task force that includes the director of the National Institutes of Health, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The law also requires the HHS secretary to provide Congress with progress reports every two years.

That never happened, according to Flores’ lawsuit.

Kennedy, for years, sought the same records. Kennedy sued the government for records in 2018 related to the task force prior to running for president as an independent. Kennedy later dismissed the case after HHS said it couldn’t find reports submitted to Congress.

Kennedy dropped his presidential bid before the election and campaigned for President Donald Trump. Trump later picked Kennedy to lead the Health and Human Services department.

Flores alleged in his lawsuit that Kennedy had not created such a task force since taking office and that the federal government has failed to follow a law passed by Congress for decades.

“In over 35 years, all ten of Secretary Kennedy’s predecessors failed to report to Congress the steps taken towards making safety improvements in childhood vaccines as required by the [19]86 Act,” Flores wrote in the initial suit.

“Over 100 days have passed since President Trump formed the Make America Healthy Again Commission chaired by Secretary Kennedy, and no statutorily required Task Force on childhood vaccine safety has been established. Therefore, any grace period for Mr. Kennedy to rectify the failure of his predecessors has ended.”

Ahead of Alaska Summit, Putin Says Trump Making ‘Sincere’ Effort Toward Ending Ukraine War

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Ahead of Alaska Summit, Putin Says Trump Making ‘Sincere’ Effort Toward Ending Ukraine War

(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com) Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the Trump administration was making “sincere” efforts toward ending the war in Ukraine, comments that came a day before the two leaders hold a highly anticipated summit in the US state of Alaska.

“The current American administration… is making, in my opinion, quite energetic and sincere efforts to stop the hostilities, stop the crisis and reach agreements that are of interest to all parties involved in this conflict,” Putin said.

The Russian leader also suggested that the US and Russia could make progress on arms control if the talks go well, saying that in the next stages of “discussions” with the US, “we reach agreements in the area of control over strategic offensive weapons.”

Arms control between the US and Russia has crumbled in recent years, and Moscow recently announced that it was no longer bound by a moratorium on the deployment of missiles previously banned by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which the US withdrew from in 2019. Russia said it took the step in response to US deployments of missile systems once banned by the INF.

The last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the US and Russia is the New START, which limits the number of nuclear warheads and launchers that either side can have deployed. Russia technically suspended its participation in the treaty in 2023, but both the US and Russia continue to abide by the limits set by the treaty. So far, there’s been no work to negotiate a replacement for the New START, which expires in February 2026.

A de-escalation in Ukraine is likely required for any progress on arms control, and it remains unclear if a deal can be reached. President Trump said on Thursday that there’s about a 75% chance that the meeting will be successful.

The White House has described the summit as a “feel-out meeting,” and Trump has said the plan is to get Russia’s terms for a peace deal and convey them to Ukraine and its European backers. Russia has reportedly offered to end the war if Ukraine withdraws from the territory it controls in the eastern Donetsk Oblast, and the frontlines are frozen, a climbdown from Russia’s previous demand for a full Ukrainian withdrawal from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

According to a report from POLITICO, Ukraine’s conditions include keeping the territory it controls, Russia paying for damages in Ukraine, and a security guarantee similar to NATO membership, which are all non-starters for Moscow.

This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com.

DEA Boss Takes over DC Police Force

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DEA Boss Takes over DC Police Force

(Headline USA) Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday named the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Terry Cole, as Washington’s “emergency police commissioner” as she carries out President Donald Trump’s decision to take over the Washington police department.

Bondi said she’s giving Cole the powers of police chief and the Metropolitan Police Department must receive Cole’s approval before issuing any orders.

The move comes less than a month after the U.S. Senate conformed Cole to be the DEA’s leader and he was sworn in as head of the agency.

Here’s what to know about Cole:

Three decades in law enforcement

Cole was most recently Virginia’s secretary of public safety and homeland security under Gov. Glenn Youngkin, according to his biography on the DEA’s website.

He’s spent more than 31 years as a law enforcement officer, including 22 at the DEA. At the agency, he worked in Oklahoma, New York and Washington. He spent time overseas in Colombia, Afghanistan and the Middle East. The agency said he fought drug cartels and transnational criminal organizations.

He was the DEA’s acting regional director of Mexico, Canada and Central America when he retired from the federal government in 2020.

Prior to joining the DEA, he was a police officer in New York State.

Bachelor’s in criminal justice

Cole graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. He has certificates in leadership from the University of Virginia and the University of Notre Dame Mendoza School of Business.

Late-night announcement of a new job

Bondi announced Cole’s new role in a directive Thursday evening. It said Cole would assume “powers and duties vested in the District of Columbia Chief of Police.” It wasn’t immediately clear how this affected Pamela Smith, the city’s current police chief, who works for the mayor.

Hours earlier, Smith had directed Washington police to share information with immigration agencies regarding people not in custody — such as someone involved in a traffic stop or checkpoint.

But the Justice Department said Bondi disagreed with the police chief’s directive because it allowed for continued enforcement of “sanctuary policies.”

Bondi said she was rescinding that order as well as other department policies limiting inquires into immigration status and preventing arrests based solely on federal immigration warrants. All new directives must now receive approval from Cole, the attorney general said.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Mike Huckabee Justifies Israeli Military Killing of Aid Seekers in Gaza

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Mike Huckabee Justifies Israeli Military Killing of Aid Seekers in Gaza

(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com) In an interview published by The Times of Israel on Wednesday, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee justified the Israeli military’s shooting of unarmed Palestinians attempting to get aid in the Gaza Strip.

Defending the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), Huckabee downplayed the reports of people being killed by the IDF near GHF sites but admitted that it does happen. “Have there been instances where maybe people were shot by IDF soldiers? Best I can tell, that has happened,” the ambassador said.

Huckabee claimed that IDF soldiers only fire at civilians when they’re being rushed by a large crowd. “You have a group of, let’s say, 10 or 15 IDF soldiers. They’re manning a perimeter. You have 2,000 or 3,000 people who suddenly are rushing toward a position. They’re first given a verbal warning. Please stop. Second thing they get, shots fired in the air. Third thing, shots fired at the ground. And if they’re still rushing toward them, it’s probable that some people are shot in the midst of that because [the soldiers] don’t know why they’re coming. Are they coming to overrun the position?” he said.

But eyewitness accounts from Palestinians contradict Huckabee’s claims, and videos have shown groups of unarmed Palestinians coming under fire while taking cover. Tony Aguilar, a retired US Army Green Beret who worked at GHF sites, has said the IDF regularly fires live ammunition at unarmed people as a form of “crowd control,” including when their backs are turned and they are walking away from GHF sites.

Israel’s use of live ammunition on aid seekers has included tank and artillery shells. Huckabee appeared to mock the idea of using “non-lethal” means of crowd control during the interview. The interviewer said that he wished there were “non-lethal crowd control methods” being used in Gaza, and Huckabee replied, “Don’t we all.”

The interviewer then noted that there are non-lethal means to control a crowd, to which Huckabee replied, “What are you going to do? Get Girl Scouts to take them in?”

Since the GHF began operating at the end of May, the Health Ministry in Gaza has recorded the killing of 1,881 aid seekers and the wounding of 13,863. The majority of the casualties occurred near GHF sites, while many others were killed or hurt while attempting to reach UN aid trucks. According to UN numbers from August 1, 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food; 859 in the vicinity of the GHF sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys.

This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com.

Report: US Deploys Air and Naval Forces to Southern Caribbean To ‘Address Threats from Cartels’

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Report: US Deploys Air and Naval Forces to Southern Caribbean To ‘Address Threats from Cartels’

(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com) The Trump administration has ordered the deployment of US air and naval forces to the Southern Caribbean Sea to “address threats from Latin American drug cartels,” Reuters reported on Thursday, citing two sources briefed on the decision.

The report didn’t specify what sort of action the US forces may take in the Southern Caribbean, but the news comes about a week after The New York Times reported that President Trump secretly signed a directive to the Pentagon to begin using military force against Latin American cartels, including operations on foreign soil.

The Trump administration has also listed several Latin American cartels and gangs as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, including MS-13, Tren de Aragua, Cártel de Sinaloa, and Cartel de los Soles.

The US also claims that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is a leader of Cartel de los Soles, meaning the Trump administration may use the action against cartels as a pretext for another regime change effort in Caracas. Placing US military assets in the Southern Caribbean puts them in a position for potential military action against Venezuela.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a staunch supporter of the previous failed regime change attempt in Venezuela, announced last week that the US was raising the bounty on Maduro’s head to $50 million over claims that he is “violating US narcotics laws” The administration has provided no evidence to back up its claims about Maduro’s alleged involvement in drug trafficking.

The Trump administration has also said that Maduro was linked to Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, but Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has denied the claim and said that the statements from the US were the first time she heard the allegation. “On Mexico’s part, there is no investigation that has to do with that,” she told reporters last week. “As we always say, if they have some evidence, show it. We do not have any proof.”

This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com.

‘That’s OUR Story’: Clapper Force-Fed Russiagate Narrative to Intelligence Community

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‘That’s OUR Story’: Clapper Force-Fed Russiagate Narrative to Intelligence Community

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) A newly declassified email exposed former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper dismissing serious warnings from a top intelligence official about compromising standard procedures in the 2017 assessment on alleged Russian interference.

The email shows Clapper brushing aside concerns from former National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers, who cautioned against the intelligence community fast-tracking its dubious assessment that Russia meddled in the election to help President Donald Trump.

On Dec. 22, 2016, Rogers emailed Clapper, then–FBI Director James Comey and then–CIA Director John Brennan to warn the NSA lacked “sufficient access.”

Rogers also noted his staffers “aren’t fully comfortable saying that they have had enough time to review all of the intelligence to be absolutely confident in their assessments.”

Clapper’s response implied that the priority was following the Obama White House’s directive, not ensuring accuracy.

“Understand your concern. It is essential that we (CIA/NSA/FBI/ODNI) be on the same page. and are all supportive of the report — in the highest tradition of ‘that’s OUR story, and we’re stickin’ to it,’” Clapper replied.

“We will facilitate as much mutual transparency as possible as we complete the report. but, more time is not negotiable. We may hate to compromise on our ‘normal’ modalities. since we must do this on such a compressed schedule,” Clapper added.

The exchange came just days after then-President Barack Obama summoned his intelligence chiefs on Dec. 9, 2016, demanding a report detailing the “tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election.”

The directive was part of a broader effort to delitimize Trump’s victory by claiming Russian interference handing him the win. Newly released files show the intelligence community had no evidence to support that claim.

This is a developing story.

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