Apparently, store owners in New York City think shoplifters are too dumb to counteract this security device on the lids of pints of ice cream
Source: https://nypost.com/2023/06/30/shoplifting-in-nyc-so-bad-that-pints-of-ice-cream-now-have-anti-left-lids/
Shame on these perverts who did this in front of children, and on the people who ran this event and allowed this to happen!
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/seattle-pride-parade-naked/
Claim:
Two videos authentically showed that some naked men participated in the June 2023 Seattle Pride Parade and also bathed in International Fountain, in both instances with families and children present.
Rating:
True
In late June 2023, we received mail from readers who asked about a story involving Seattle Pride’s annual parade. The main question from our readers appeared to be if it was true that viral videos showed some naked men had participated both in and nearby the all-ages parade that had occurred on June 25, with families and children in attendance.
For example, one reader asked us, “Is this real?,” and included a link to an article from The Washington Times. The Times’ headline read, “Naked men on bikes expose ‘all ages’ Seattle Pride Parade to criticism.”
Two videos referenced by the Times provided confirmation that at least a dozen naked men, and possibly some nude women, too, had participated in the festivities in front of families and children, both during and nearby the Seattle Pride Parade, including riding bicycles along the parade route, as well as washing themselves off in the water at International Fountain. The parade has historically drawn as many as 300,000 onlookers, according to a report from 2018.
The first video showed around a dozen naked men who were riding bicycles and waving before moving along, all while following the Seattle Pride Parade route. Signs on the bikes included the words, “Challenge Body Shame,” “Build Self Esteem,” and “Pride for EVERY Body.” Families and children were visible in the video, too, as the reporting said. Also, at least one child was seen riding alongside the men.
Hours after the first video appeared online, a second video was posted by the same source on Twitter that showed naked men, and again possibly some women, too, who appeared to be washing themselves in International Fountain. Families and children were also visible in this video, as the Times’ reporting mentioned.
NY Democrat complains about her student debt after SCOTUS ruling, gets slammed for million dollar home
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ny-democrat-complains-her-student-205825175.html
NY Democrat complains about her student debt after SCOTUS ruling, gets slammed for million dollar home
By Kyle Morris
June 30, 2023
Former New York state Democrat Sen. Alessandra Biaggi took to social media Friday to discuss the pricey student loans she had amassed during law school, despite purchasing a $1.14 million home last summer.
“In 2012, I graduated from Fordham Law School with $180,000 is student loan debt,” Biaggi wrote in a tweet. “I’ve been paying loans for 11 years. Even paid two of them off completely.”
“In 2023, my balance is $206,000,” added Biaggi, who represented New York’s 34th district during her three-year tenure in the state Senate.
The remarks from Biaggi — who posed an unsuccessful primary challenge to former Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., in the 2022 midterm elections — came nearly one year after it was reported that she and her husband had purchased and moved into a $1,137,500 home located in the state’s 17th Congressional District, which she had hoped to represent in Congress.
Biaggi, 36, and her husband, Nathaniel Koloc, puchased the three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in an upscale suburban area in July 2022, the New York Post reported last year.
The Post also noted that the house was a significant upgrade over Biaggi’s previous residence, a $691,006 condo in Pelham, New York, where she was registered to vote.
Biaggi’s comments followed a decision from the Supreme Court to strike down President Biden’s student loan-forgiveness plan, with the high court concluding that the White House lacked the legal authorization to provide billions in federal loan forgiveness for borrowers, absent clear authorization from Congress.
The move by the Supreme Court will prevent more than 40 million low- and middle-income borrowers from receiving $10,000 in federal loan forgiveness under the Biden administration’s plan — and is a major defeat for the president on one of his key 2020 election campaign promises.
Several social media users were quick to point out that Biaggi should have paid off her student loans before purchasing the expensive home located in Bedford, New York.
“You need Dave Ramsey, not Joe Biden,” Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told Biaggi in a tweet. Ramsey is a prominent radio host who offers financial advice.
Responding to Biaggi, another user wrote: “You signed the loan agreement. Didn’t you read it?”
“She could afford to buy a $1 million home but not pay off $180K of debt,” Greg Price, communications director for the State Freedom Caucus Network, noted in a tweet.
Offering his perspective on the issue, retired marine and talk show host Jesse Kelly wrote in a tweet: “BREAKING: Woman spends more than she makes.”
Originally announced by Biden from the White House last August, the debt-forgiveness plan would have canceled $10,000 of federal student loan debt for certain borrowers making less than $125,000 per year, and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.
In Chicago, only two of these teen criminals were arrested
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9hGG2aDmvs
https://wgntv.com/news/chicago-news/hundreds-of-teens-takeover-lakeview-destroying-neighborhood/
‘Terrifying’: Hundreds of teens takeover Lakeview, damage property
By Kelly Davis
June 27, 2023
CHICAGO — Hundreds of teens swarmed the streets in Lakeview Monday night, causing disorder and destruction in the neighborhood.
It’s the latest takeover in the city that has left residents and local leaders searching for solutions.
The teen poured off the Chicago “L” train at the Belmont Red Line stop, shutting the roadway for several hours in a scene that unfolded just after 10 p.m.
“They were jumping on cars, breaking glass, throwing things. I know my personal automobile was used as a bar for people,” said a concerned resident who did not wish to be identified.
The resident shared video with WGN News that shows kids surrounding a police car, with some even jumping on the vehicle.
The woman said that’s when she called 911.
“I was told that there was nothing they could do,” the woman said. “They were so overwhelmed at the moment that there were just way too many calls coming in.”
Chicago police officers worked to control the crowd and helped remove the teens from the area.
Neighbors told WGN News they were horrified by the extent of the damage Tuesday morning that included shoeprints on cars, dented hoods and broken windshields.
“It’s terrifying,” said Grace Rohen, adding that she heard gunshots and was too scared to leave her apartment. “It has been very chaotic and as somebody who’s lived in Lakeview for the past three years, it’s very scary to see how things have changed over time.”
Many hope the city steps up to prevent teen takeovers from reoccurring.
Ald. Bennett Lawson (44th Ward) helped with the cleanup Tuesday morning and released a statement saying:
“I will be meeting with the 19th district police, cta, and others to discuss what took place and identify ways we can prevent it from occurring moving forward.. As well as continue conversations with my colleagues on city council about how we can keep our youth from participating in these disruptive actions”
Chicago police arrested two people, including a 15-year-old girl. The teen is charged with aggravated assault of a first responder and resisting and obstructing traffic.
CBS: “Two IRS whistleblowers alleged sweeping misconduct in the Hunter Biden tax investigation, new transcripts show”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whistleblowers-hunter-biden-tax-investigation-new-transcripts/
Two IRS whistleblowers alleged sweeping misconduct in the Hunter Biden tax investigation, new transcripts show
By Catherine Herridge and Robert Legare
June 22, 2023
Two IRS whistleblowers allege sweeping misconduct, including interference in the Hunter Biden tax investigation, according to the GOP House Ways and Means Committee chairman and newly released transcripts of congressional interviews with the whistleblowers.
Earlier this week, Biden agreed to enter guilty pleas for two misdemeanor tax charges that related to his failure to pay tax on more than $3 million in income. As part of the deal with Delaware U.S Attorney David Weiss — who was appointed by then-President Donald Trump and was kept in the position by the current administration to continue the probe — Biden will avoid full prosecution on a separate gun possession charge. A Delaware judge must approve the agreement at a hearing currently set for July 26.
IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, who recently spoke exclusively with CBS News’ Jim Axelrod, told congressional investigators the IRS findings supported more severe penalties.
“This recommended felony tax evasion charges, that’s 7201, is tax evasion, and 7206(1) is a false tax return, also a felony, for the tax years 2014, 2018, and 2019. And for Title 26 7203, which is a failure to file or pay, that is a misdemeanor charge for ’15, ’16, ’17, ’18, and ’19,” Shapley said.
“The testimony we have just released details a lack of U.S. attorney independence, recurring unjustified delays, unusual actions outside the normal course of any investigation,” Chairman Jason Smith told reporters.
“Testimony shows that U.S. Attorney of Delaware David Weiss tried to bring charges in the District of Columbia around March of 2022 and was denied,” Smith asserted. “Weiss sought special counsel status from the [Justice Department] in the spring of 2022 and was once again denied. Weiss sought to bring charges in the Central District of California in the fall of 2022 and had that request denied in January of 2023.”
A spokesperson for Weiss declined to comment, but earlier this month, in a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan, the GOP chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Weiss wrote, “I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges.”
“Throughout my tenure as U.S. Attorney my decisions have been made — and with respect to the matter must be made — without reference to political considerations,” Weiss said.
In a statement issued Thursday, the Justice Department said, “As both the Attorney General and U.S. Attorney David Weiss have said, U.S. Attorney Weiss has full authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges as he deems appropriate. He needs no further approval to do so.”
“Two interviews do not make an investigation when more than 50 employees were named, especially when you consider that one recanted key elements of his testimony earlier this week,” House Ways and Means Committee Ranking Democrat Richard Neal wrote after the release of the interview transcripts, “It’s all premature, and the rush shows how pretextual this is in this stunning abuse of power.”
This week, after Biden’s plea deal was announced, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Justice Department leadership had no role in the charging decision. “As I said from the moment of my appointment as attorney general, I would leave this matter in the hands of the United States attorney who was appointed by the previous president,” referring to Weiss.
Since gaining the majority in the House, Republican members of Congress have focused their investigatory powers on Hunter Biden’s business deals, in some cases as far back as when his father was vice president.
During the presidential campaign, Joe Biden consistently maintained that he was not involved in any of his son’s business dealings and the White House has continued to deny any connection exists.
Congressional Republicans have alleged that Hunter Biden and the president’s brother James Biden were involved in a deal with Chinese conglomerate CEFC China Energy in August 2017. And in particular, GOP lawmakers are interested in an email that became public in 2020, when Republicans obtained information from a laptop alleged to have belonged to Hunter Biden.
The message, which bore the subject line “Expectations,” outlines a “provisional agreement” for “equity” in a deal with a Chinese energy company.
Two of Hunter Biden’s former business partners who received the message, including Tony Bobulinski, told CBS News that a line in the email, “10 held by H for the big guy?” is shorthand for 10% held by Hunter Biden for his father.
According to the now-public transcripts of the interview with the committee, Shapley told congressional investigators that interest in references to “dad” and “the big guy” was blocked by a senior prosecutor working for Weiss.
When the email became public in 2020, the author, James Gilliar, told the Wall Street Journal that Joe Biden was not involved. Gilliar did not respond to CBS News’ questions.
Hunter Biden’s team did not respond to a request for comment from CBS News. One of his lawyers, Christopher Clark, has in the past denied that Biden ever gave his consent “to access his computer data or share it with others,” alleging “there have been multiple attempts to hack, infect, distort, and peddle misinformation regarding Mr. Biden’s devices and data.”
In his congressional interview, Shapley also alleged that there was a recovered WhatsAPP message from Hunter Biden dated July 30, 2017, that was addressed to a Chinese businessman with whom he was involved at the time about an outstanding payment.
“I am sitting here with my father..we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” Hunter Biden allegedly wrote, according to the transcript. He added, “I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand” and “now means tonight.”
In a statement, Shapley said of the now public transcript, “I believe Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate should come together to examine these facts by interviewing other witnesses and reviewing documents to fully understand what happened during this five-year long investigation. I fulfilled my oath of office by participating in this process, following the rules, and telling the truth to the best of my ability — despite the risks.”
The White House referred CBS News to an earlier statement to reiterate only that the president has not been involved in the investigation into his son. “President Biden has made clear that this matter would be handled independently by the Justice Department, under the leadership of a U.S. Attorney appointed by former President Trump, free from any political interference by the White House,” the statement said. “He has upheld that commitment.”
CBS News asked Hunter Biden’s legal team for comment and there was no immediate response.
NBC: “IRS agent tells House committee there was meddling with Hunter Biden case”
IRS agent tells House committee there was meddling with Hunter Biden case
Gary Shapley testified last month before the House Ways and Means Committee, and the transcript was made public Thursday.
By Tom Winter
June 22, 2023
A former IRS employee told the House Ways and Means Committee that U.S. Attorney David Weiss sought authority to charge Hunter Biden in two federal districts with charges broader than the tax-related misdemeanors the president’s son agreed this week to plead guilty to, according to a 212-page transcript of his interview.
The whistleblower, Gary Shapley, says Attorney General Merrick Garland was not telling Congress the truth when he asserted in earlier testimony that Weiss, who is based in Delaware, had the authority to charge in other jurisdictions, including California and Washington, D.C. Shapley said bringing charges in those districts is not something the U.S. attorneys there, who were appointed by President Joe Biden, would do.
The Justice Department denied Shapley’s assertions.
“As both the Attorney General and U.S. Attorney David Weiss have said, U.S. Attorney Weiss has full authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges as he deems appropriate. He needs no further approval to do so,” said Wyn Hornbuckle, the deputy director of the Justice Department Office of Public Affairs.
Shapley told the committee that as an investigator for the IRS, he obtained messages Hunter Biden sent on the WhatsApp platform, including one that he read demanding payment from a Chinese businessman named Henry Zhao. In the message, Biden appeared to suggest that he was sitting with his father, then the former vice president, saying, “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”
Shapley, a supervisory special agent with IRS criminal investigations who has worked for the agency since July 2009, testified in May, and the committee made the transcript available Thursday.
The Justice Department has insisted that Weiss, who remained the U.S. attorney in Delaware after having been appointed by President Donald Trump, was allowed to act with independence and that no pressure was put on him to go easy on Biden.
Weiss’s office declined to comment but pointed to his June 7 letter to the House Judiciary Committee in which he said his decisions were made independently.
“Throughout my tenure as U.S. Attorney my decisions have been made — and with respect to the matter must be made — without reference to political considerations,” he wrote.
However, critics of the president have charged that he put his thumb on the scale in favor of his son and that Hunter Biden’s agreement to plead guilty to two misdemeanors and avoid jail time was a “sweetheart” deal.
In his opening statement before the Republican-controlled Ways and Means Committee, Shapley said, “I am alleging, with evidence, that DOJ provided preferential treatment, slow-walked the investigation, did nothing to avoid obvious conflicts of interest in this investigation.”
He added, “The investigation into Hunter Biden, code name Sportsman, was first opened in November 2018 as an offshoot of an investigation the IRS was conducting into a foreign-based amateur online pornography platform.”
Biden pleaded guilty in connection with his 2017 and 2018 tax filings. Shapley said he saw evidence that Biden should also have been charged in connection with his tax filing for 2014 — a year his father was vice president.
The Justice Department would have charged in “any other case I ever worked with similar fact patterns, similar acts of evasion and similar tax due and owing,” Shapley told the committee.
In his interview with the committee, he was shown an email — first reported by NBC News in December — from Biden’s business associate stating that Biden needed to re-state his income on his tax returns in large part because of his Burisma payments.
Shapley said that the email is important to that case but that it was not brought because the statute of limitations was allowed to expire.
In addition, Shapley says efforts to search Biden-associated properties and a public relations firm named Blue Star Strategies were not approved. The latter “was a significant blow to the Foreign Agents Registration Act piece of the investigation,” referring to the law that requires people working in the U.S. on behalf of foreign governments to register.
Shapley said he participated in the investigation of the 2018 tax filing. Court filings in Delaware indicating that a plea agreement is forthcoming have been sparse on detail, but Shapley testified under oath that Biden was listing personal expenses as business expenses.
“He was expensing personal expenses, his business expenses,” Shapley said. “So, I mean, everything, there was a payment that — there was a $25,000 to one of his girlfriends, and it said, ‘golf membership.’ And then we went out and followed that money, it was for a sex club membership in L.A.”
Shapley says travel costs to visit prostitutes were also improperly booked as business expenses.
He says he thought it was valuable for the FBI and the IRS to ask questions about the now infamous e-mail “10 for the big guy,” an apparent reference to money for Joe Biden out of one of Hunter Biden’s attempted businesses with a Chinese firm.
CNN: “Whistleblowers say IRS recommended far more charges, including felonies, against Hunter Biden”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/22/politics/irs-whistleblower-hunter-biden/index.html
Whistleblowers say IRS recommended far more charges, including felonies, against Hunter Biden
By Marshall Cohen, Evan Perez, Alayna Treene, Lauren Fox, and Holmes Lybrand
June 22, 2023
Two whistleblowers told Congress that IRS investigators recommended charging Hunter Biden with attempted tax evasion and other felonies, which are far more serious crimes than what the president’s son has agreed to plead guilty to, according to transcripts of their private interviews with lawmakers.
The IRS whistleblowers said the recommendation called for Hunter Biden to be charged with tax evasion and filing a false tax return – both felonies – for 2014, 2018 and 2019. The IRS also recommended that prosecutors charge him with failing to pay taxes on time, a misdemeanor, for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, according to the transcripts, which were released Thursday by House Republicans.
It appears that this 11-count charging recommendation also had the backing of some Justice Department prosecutors, but not from more senior attorneys, according to documents that the whistleblowers provided to House investigators.
In a deal with prosecutors announced earlier this week, Hunter Biden is pleading guilty to just two tax misdemeanors.
The allegations come from Gary Shapley, a 14-year IRS veteran, who oversaw parts of the Hunter Biden criminal probe, and an unnamed IRS agent who was on the case nearly from its inception. Shapley approached Congress this year with information that he claimed showed political interference in the investigation. He and the entire IRS team were later removed from the probe.
“I am alleging, with evidence, that DOJ provided preferential treatment, slow-walked the investigation, did nothing to avoid obvious conflicts of interest in this investigation,” Shapley told lawmakers.
David Weiss, the Trump-appointed US attorney in Delaware who oversaw the Hunter Biden criminal probe, eventually reached a plea deal where the president’s son will plead guilty to two misdemeanors for failing to pay taxes on time. The plea agreement will also resolve a separate felony gun charge, if Hunter Biden abides by certain court-imposed conditions for a period of time.
Hunter Biden isn’t pleading guilty to any felonies, and he wasn’t charged with any tax felonies. CNN reported that prosecutors are expected to recommend no jail time. He is scheduled to appear in federal court in Delaware on July 26.
It isn’t uncommon for there to be internal disagreements among investigators over which charges to file against the target of an investigation, much like the disagreements that the IRS whistleblowers described. CNN reported last year that some FBI and IRS investigators were at odds with other Justice Department officials over the strength of the case, and that there were discussions over which types of charges were appropriate and whether further investigation was needed.
Sources familiar with the criminal probe told CNN in April that prosecutors were still actively weighing a felony tax charge against Hunter Biden. And it is common for prosecutors to strike deals with defendants where they plead guilty to a small subset of the possible charges they could’ve faced.
Alleged roadblocks inside DOJ
The Justice Department probe into Hunter Biden was opened in November 2018, and was codenamed “Sportsman.” According to Shapley’s testimony, federal investigators knew as early as June 2021 that there were potential venue-related issues with charging Hunter Biden in Delaware. Under federal law, charges must be brought in the jurisdiction where the alleged crimes occurred.
If the potential charges couldn’t be brought in Delaware, then Weiss would need help from his fellow US attorneys. He looked to Washington, DC, where some of Hunter Biden’s tax returns were prepared, and the Central District of California, which includes the Los Angeles area where Hunter Biden lives.
But Shapley told the committee that the US attorneys in both districts wouldn’t seek an indictment.
A second whistleblower, an IRS case agent who also testified to the committee but hasn’t been publicly identified, also told lawmakers that this is what happened. He agreed that Weiss was “was told no” when he tried to get the cooperation of the US attorneys in in DC and Los Angeles, who are Biden appointees.
Hunter Biden’s eventual plea agreement was filed in Weiss’ jurisdiction, in Delaware.
Shapley contends in his interview that Attorney General Merrick Garland was not truthful when he told Congress that Weiss had full authority on the investigation.
Shapley recounted a meeting on October 7, 2022, where, according to Shapley’s notes memorializing the meeting, Weiss said, “He is not the deciding person on whether charges are filed” against Hunter Biden. This undermines what Weiss and Garland have publicly said about Weiss’ independence on the matter.
Shapley also testified to committee investigators that it was during this October 2022 meeting that he learned for the first time that Weiss had requested to be named as a special counsel, but was denied.
In testimony to Congress in March, Garland said Weiss was advised “he is not to be denied anything he needs.”
Regarding the claims of political interference with the Hunter Biden criminal probe, Weiss told House Republicans in a recent letter that Garland granted him “ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges.”
After the transcripts were released Thursday, spokespeople for the US attorney’s offices in DC and Los Angeles issued near-identical statements reiterating that Weiss “was given full authority to bring charges in any jurisdiction he deemed appropriate.” The Justice Department echoed those comments in a statement saying Weiss “needs no further approval” to bring charges wherever he wants.
The whistleblowers also allege that at multiple key junctures, investigators were thwarted in their efforts because prosecutors were concerned about interfering in the 2020 presidential election.
In 2020, IRS investigators sought to conduct search warrants and take other overt steps. But according to Shapley, several weeks before the election, in September 2020, a Justice Department prosecutor questioned the optics of searching Hunter Biden’s residence and Joe Biden’s guest home.
Later that year, other planned searches were delayed because then-President Donald Trump was refusing to concede and was continuing to contest the results.
Republicans claim unequal justice
Republicans have slammed the plea agreement Hunter Biden struck as a “sweetheart deal,” and said it amounted to “a slap on the wrist.”
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith said earlier Thursday that the transcripts reveal “credible whistleblower testimony alleging misconduct and abuse” at the Justice Department that “resulted in preferential treatment for the president’s son.”
The Missouri Republican highlighted the whistleblowers’ allegations that the Justice Department “overstepped” in their efforts to intervene in the Hunter Biden criminal probe.
“The testimony … details a lack of US attorney independence, recurring unjustified delays, unusual actions outside the normal course of any investigation, a lack of transparency across the investigation and prosecution teams, and bullying and threats from the defense counsel,” Smith said.
Democrats on the committee said the transcripts were “a premature and incomplete record” of what happened with the Hunter Biden probe and accused the GOP of a “stunning abuse of power.”
Hunter Biden’s lawyer pushed back in a statement Friday against the whistleblowers claims, saying it was “preposterous and deeply irresponsible” to suggest that federal investigators “cut my client any slack” during their “extensive” five-year probe.
“A close examination of the document released publicly yesterday by a very biased individual raises serious questions over whether it is what he claims it to be,” attorney Chris Clark said. “It is dangerously misleading to make any conclusions or inferences based on this document.”
Hunter Biden invoked dad’s name to get paid, text shows
Shapley, the IRS supervisor-turned-whistleblower, told House lawmakers that Justice Department prosecutors denied requests to look into messages allegedly from Hunter Biden where he used his father as leverage to pressure a Chinese company into paying him.
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” according to a document Shapley gave to Congress, which quotes from texts that are allegedly from Hunter Biden to the CEO of a Chinese fund management company.
The message continues: “Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand. And now means tonight.” The message goes onto say, “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”
The second, unnamed IRS whistleblower also testified to lawmakers about this alleged WhatsApp message, saying prosecutors questioned whether they could be sure Hunter Biden was telling the truth that his father was actually in the room in the messages. The unnamed whistleblower testified that they did not know whether the FBI investigated the message.
Shapley told House investigators that a Justice Department attorney insisted that the FBI not ask directly about Joe Biden when doing interviews. But the FBI did manage to ask one key witness about Joe Biden, and Shapley said the witness told investigators that some suggestions of the president’s involvement were overstated.
An email sent among business partners of Hunter Biden said an equity stake should be held “for the big guy,” an apparent reference to Joe Biden, who was vice president at the time. But one of the associates told the FBI that it was probably just “wishful thinking or maybe he was just projecting” that Joe Biden would get involved if he did not run for president in 2016.
Joe Biden has repeatedly denied having any involvement in his son’s overseas business dealings, where he made millions of dollars from China, Ukraine and other countries. House Republicans have used their oversight probes to look for evidence that Joe Biden was actually involved.
New York Times: “I.R.S. Agent Told Congress of Hunter Biden Invoking His Father in Business Deal”
I.R.S. Agent Told Congress of Hunter Biden Invoking His Father in Business Deal
A whistle-blower said the tax agency found a message from 2017 in which Hunter Biden pressured a Chinese business partner by saying he was with his father, who was then out of office.
By Luke Broadwater and Michael S. Schmidt
June 22, 2023
The lead I.R.S. agent investigating whether Hunter Biden committed tax crimes told Congress his team uncovered evidence that Mr. Biden had invoked his father, who was then out of office, while pressing a potential Chinese business partner in 2017 to move ahead with a proposed energy deal, House Republicans said.
In testimony made public on Thursday, Gary Shapley, an I.R.S. agent since 2009 who supervised the tax agency’s investigation into Hunter Biden, said his team used a search warrant to obtain a July 30, 2017, WhatsApp message from Mr. Biden to Henry Zhao, a Chinese businessman.
In the message, provided to the House Ways and Means Committee by Mr. Shapley, Mr. Biden told Mr. Zhao that he was sitting with his father and that “we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.”
“Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” Mr. Biden wrote, referring to other participants in the proposed deal. “And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”
Taken at face value, the message would undercut President Biden’s longstanding claims that he had nothing to do with his son’s international business deals.
Coming days after Hunter Biden agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges of failing to file his taxes on time in 2017 and 2018, the release of the information underscored the determination of House Republicans to continue to try to tie his father to his business dealings and suggest that they were corrupt.
But it was not immediately clear whether Hunter Biden had been with his father when he sent the message or what his father — then a private citizen, having finished his term as vice president six months earlier — knew about his son’s negotiations with his potential Chinese partners.
It is also not clear whether Mr. Biden was using his father’s name without his knowledge to extract money in business deal. Mr. Shapley, in fact, also told Congress that his investigation had uncovered some evidence that some of the claims of the elder Mr. Biden’s involvement were mere “wishful thinking.”
He told of an interview conducted with Hunter Biden’s business associate Rob Walker, who told investigators that it was “projection” that former Vice President Biden would get involved in their business ventures.
“I certainly never was thinking at any time the V.P. was a part of anything we were doing,” Mr. Walker said, according to Mr. Shapley.
Hunter Biden at the time was addicted to crack cocaine, engaging in tawdry and self-destructive behavior, and facing financial pressures. He had spent years pursuing ventures that raised ethical concerns about their intersection with his father’s career, especially during the eight years the elder Mr. Biden spent as vice president. And the death of his brother, Beau, in 2015 had contributed to his downward spiral.
Mr. Shapley said that investigators had received the WhatsApp message in response to a search warrant. But the message was not among those that Mr. Biden’s lawyers handed over to federal prosecutors in response to grand jury subpoenas during the lengthy investigation run by the Justice Department with help from the I.R.S., according to a person familiar with the matter, nor was the message one that prosecutors pressed Mr. Biden’s lawyers to explain.
It was also not among the trove of messages that have surfaced from a laptop Mr. Biden left at a repair shop in Delaware and was later made available to journalists.
The WhatsApp message was among a batch of documents released by the Ways and Means Committee along with the transcripts of interviews with Mr. Shapley and a second I.R.S. investigator whose name was redacted.
The two investigators, one of whom described himself as a Democrat, told Congress of a lengthy period of strife between them and others involved in the investigation. They said a particular prosecutor at the Justice Department blocked some of their efforts and communicated too much information to Hunter Biden’s legal team.
Mr. Shapley suggested that I.R.S. investigators believed there were grounds to charge Mr. Biden with more serious crimes than he ultimately agreed to plead guilty to as part of his deal with the Justice Department. Mr. Shapley told the committee that he was “alleging, with evidence, that D.O.J. provided preferential treatment, slow-walked the investigation, did nothing to avoid obvious conflicts of interest in this investigation.”
House Republicans sought to portray the testimony as further evidence that Hunter Biden had gotten what they call a sweetheart deal from the Justice Department, even though his agreement to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges appeared in line with how other first-time, nonviolent offenders were typically treated. Mr. Biden paid his back taxes and penalties in 2021.
In a letter to Congress this month, David C. Weiss, the U.S. attorney from Delaware who charged Hunter Biden over his tax issues and a separate gun purchase, said he had “ultimate authority” over the case. Mr. Weiss was appointed by President Donald J. Trump and was kept on to complete the investigation under President Biden.
A Justice Department spokesman reiterated on Thursday that Mr. Weiss had “responsibility for deciding where, when and whether to file charges as he deems appropriate,” and did not need any further approval to do so. The White House said President Biden had no involvement in the investigation and that it had been conducted “free from any political interference.”
“Hunter Biden profited off his father’s name. He didn’t report millions of dollars in income from foreign sources,” said Representative Jason Smith, Republican of Missouri and the chairman of the Ways and Means committee. “Any ordinary American caught doing that would have faced severe consequences. Hunter Biden didn’t. Why not?”
Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, accused Republicans of rushing out piecemeal findings from their work without conducting a complete investigation.
Washington Post: “IRS whistleblower says Justice Dept. slowed, stifled Hunter Biden case: Tax investigator says prosecutor decisions whittled down the case against the president’s son”
IRS whistleblower says Justice Dept. slowed, stifled Hunter Biden case
Tax investigator says prosecutor decisions whittled down the case against the president’s son
By Devlin Barrett, Jacqueline Alemany, and Perry Stein
June 22, 2023
Washington Post
An IRS agent who supervised the investigation into President Biden’s son Hunter told lawmakers that Justice Department officials slowed and stymied the investigation, whittling away the most serious evidence of alleged tax crimes, according to a transcript of his account released Thursday.
The agent, Gary Shapley, offered a detailed and potentially damning account of prosecutors who were either timid or uninterested when it came to examining the financial misdeeds of Hunter Biden, which Shapley said included instances in which the president’s son treated prostitutes and their travel costs as his business expenses.
The agent’s account to the House Ways and Means Committee also directly challenged congressional testimony from Attorney General Merrick Garland, in which he said that Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss — a holdover from the Trump administration — had full authority to lead the investigation into Hunter Biden and could do whatever he wanted in the case.
A Justice Department spokesman stood by Garland’s previous comments, and the lead Democrat on the House committee said the allegations should not have been released publicly while lawmakers are still vetting them.
The transcript almost certainly will fuel criticism of the Justice Department’s five-year investigation of Hunter Biden, which this week led to a proposed plea agreement on two misdemeanor charges that will probably allow him to avoid jail time. Biden is due in federal court in Wilmington, Del., on July 26 to enter his guilty plea, which must be approved by a judge.
The criminal probe of Biden was given the code name Sportsman, Shapley told lawmakers, and it was “an offshoot of an investigation the IRS was conducting into a foreign-based amateur online pornography platform.”
His account offers a host of new allegations, including a text message that Biden allegedly sent on July 30, 2017, that invoked his father — at that time a former vice president — as he tried to get a business partner to fulfill some expected promise.
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” the younger Biden allegedly told businessman Henry Zhao. “And Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”
It is unclear what specific commitment the message refers to. A spokeswoman for Hunter Biden’s legal team did not immediately comment.
Shapley sought whistleblower protections through his attorney in April and was interviewed by the committee in May, behind closed doors. Mark Lytle, Shapley’s lawyer, said his client “was brave and he stood up and he said something. He has endured some tough times because of it. But he said he would rather stand up and say something than not say something about it.”
Some of Shapley’s most eyebrow-raising allegations center on a meeting on Oct. 7, 2022. By that point, The Washington Post reported that federal agents had concluded there was enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with tax and gun violations.
That discussion at the U.S. attorney’s office in Wilmington, which included prosecutors, FBI agents and IRS agents, “ended up being my red-line meeting,” Shapley told lawmakers. He said Weiss claimed to the agents that he was not, in fact, the “deciding official on whether charges are filed.”
Weiss then surprised the agents, Shapley said, by saying that “the Biden-appointed D.C. U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves would not allow him to charge in his District.” Up until that point, Shapley said, he had expected Biden would face the most serious tax-related charges in Washington, because that’s where he was living in 2014, when Shapley said he believes Biden’s most serious misconduct occurred.
Weiss allegedly told the group that he had known for months that Graves’s office had rejected filing charges against Biden there. Shapley also said Weiss told the group that he had asked the Justice Department to appoint him as a special counsel, which would give him broader independence in the investigation, “and was denied that authority.”
Everyone at the meeting, Shapley said, “seemed shell-shocked, and I felt misled by the Delaware United States Attorney’s Office. At this point, I expressed to United States Attorney Weiss several concerns with how this case had been handled from the beginning. The meeting was very contentious and ended quite awkwardly.”
Shapley said he was later told that another possible jurisdiction to bring charges, California, had also rejected them.
Asked about Shapley’s account, a Justice Department spokesman stood by Garland’s past remarks. “As both the Attorney General and U.S. Attorney David Weiss have said, U.S. Attorney Weiss has full authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges as he deems appropriate. He needs no further approval to do so,” the spokesman said in a written statement.
Weiss’s office declined to comment Thursday. But earlier this month, responding to a letter from House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) seeking documents related to the Biden investigation, Weiss said the attorney general had granted him “ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges and for making decisions necessary to preserve the integrity of the prosecution, consistent with federal law.”
“I have fulfilled my responsibilities, consistent with Department practices and procedures, and will continue to do so,” the letter said, denying Jordan’s request for documents. “Throughout my tenure as U.S. Attorney my decisions have been made — and with respect to the matter must be made — without reference to political considerations.”
In an emailed statement, Patricia Hartman, a spokeswoman for Graves and the U.S. attorney’s office for D.C., wrote: “As the Attorney General has said, U.S. Attorney Weiss was given full authority to bring charges in any jurisdiction he deemed appropriate. He did not need approval from this office or the U.S. Attorney to bring charges in the District of Columbia.”
Shapley said that in many ways, the Biden evidence was textbook evidence of tax evasion.
“He was expensing personal expenses, his business expenses,” Shapley said. “There was a $25,000 to one of his girlfriends and it said, ‘golf membership.’ And then we went out and followed that money it was for a sex club membership in LA. … There were multiple examples of prostitutes that were ordered basically, and we have all the communications between that where he would pay for these prostitutes, would book them a flight where even the flight ticket showed their name. And then he expensed those.”
A week after Shapley’s May 26 appearance before the House Ways and Means Committee, the panel heard from an IRS investigator who worked under Shapley. That transcript was also made public Thursday, though the investigator’s name was redacted. Both Democrats and Republicans participated in both interviews. The investigator largely echoed Shapley’s testimony, adding details about Biden’s alleged tax evasion and saying he had been barred from taking routine investigative steps in ways he had not encountered in other cases.
In one instance, the investigator said that when he expressed interest in interviewing Hunter Biden’s children about expenses deducted on their behalf on Biden’s tax returns, he was told by a prosecutor that “it will get us into hot water if we interview the President’s grandchildren.”
“That was completely abnormal, out of the question,” the investigator said, according to the transcript. “And it’s a part of our normal process that we go and interview people, especially people who are receiving money or receiving payments related to a case like this.”
The top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Richard E. Neal (Mass.) criticized the chairman, Rep. Jason T. Smith (R-Mo.), for what he called a premature release of the two interviews.
“The Minority takes whistleblower allegations extremely seriously, but the fact is today’s exercise was not ready for primetime,” Neal said in a statement. “Two interviews do not make an investigation when more than 50 employees were named.”
Smith told reporters that the allegations were too significant to keep under wraps. “Not one, but two IRS employees are blowing the whistle with evidence that the federal government is not treating taxpayers equally when enforcing tax laws,” he said. “Let me emphasize: This was an investigation in the ordinary course of work at the IRS. It was not ordered by any individual, any chairman or any political entity.”
I solved the June 16, 2023 Wordle in just one guess!
I solved the June 16, 2023 Wordle in just one guess!
My guess was STRAP. I’ve been using STRAP as my first guess for a very, very long time, as I have previously documented here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. In each of those seven times, while using STRAP as my first word, I managed to solve the puzzle on my second guess. The answers were SCRAP, RECAP, SPELL, SKIRT, SWEAT, SYRUP, and HORSE.
On June 16, 2023, for the first time ever, I solved the puzzle on my very first guess.
Here’s a screenshot:
Wesley Hunt Uses Hunter Biden’s Crack Addiction to EXPOSE Two Tiered Justice System
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnuaqAmAoI8
Famous rapper’s lawyer blasts Hunter Biden’s sweetheart deal after his client received prison for same crime
https://www.theblaze.com/news/kodak-black-lawyer-hunter-biden-plea-deal
Famous rapper’s lawyer blasts Hunter Biden’s sweetheart deal after his client received prison for same crime
By Chris Enloe
June 21, 2023
The lawyer for a prominent rapper is speaking out over Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal that allows him to avoid prison for illegally possessing a firearm.
In 2019, rapper Kodak Black pleaded guilty to providing false information on a federal form when purchasing multiple firearms.
Black pleaded guilty to violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(6), using false statements to obtain a firearm. Biden was charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) and 18 U.S.C. § 924(a)(2). The latter statute says that anyone who who “knowingly violates” several subsections of 18 U.S.C. § 922, including (a)(6), can be imprisoned for up to 10 years.
Thus in the eyes of the law, Black and Biden committed the same crime. They both provided false information on federal forms to acquire firearms despite being legally disqualified from making those purchases.
Yet Black was sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison for his crime. Biden, on the other hand, was given pre-trial diversion and the opportunity to expunge the charge from his record after 24 months.
Attorney Bradford Cohen, who represents Black, called out the glaring disparity in outcomes.
“There’s no such thing as not getting jail time on a gun charge, on any kind of gun charge,” Cohen told Fox News. “I’ve never seen anyone where this offense was charged and they didn’t get some sort of prison sentence. And in fact, most of the time in federal court, you very rarely see people get anything but a prison sentence.”
Cohen cited the college admissions scandal as evidence that federal authorities rarely let offenders off without spending time behind bars.
“So, in this Felicity Huffman case, to give the woman two weeks in prison, you know that you actually have to surrender yourself going for two weeks, change her clothes out to all this stuff, for literally 14 days. And this guy gets absolutely nothing? I’ve just never seen it happen,” Cohen said.
“A federal crime is supposed to be a federal crime,” he explained. “And federal crimes are supposed to be very serious federal crimes, and that’s why you look at prison sentences.”
Earlier in the day, Cohen suggested Biden’s plea deal showed there are two tiers of justice in America.
Cohen wrote on Instagram, “2 tiers of justice? Kodak was charged for the same crime. Got over 3 years. Mr. Biden will not serve a day. Feels right? Do FBI agents and federal authorities take cases personally?”
Rapper Lil Wayne similarly faced significant prison time — up to 10 years — after he pleaded guilty to illegally possessing a firearm, charged under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), the same subsection as Biden.
Wayne, however, never spent time in prison for the crime because Donald Trump pardoned him. Trump also commuted Black’s sentence before leaving office.
To be fair, Black and Wayne were repeat offenders with prior criminal histories. Biden, by contrast, does not, which mitigates potential criminal penalties. But to Cohen’s point, it’s jarring that federal prosecutors would let the gun crime slip away altogether.
In my opinion, California should build its wind farms in California, not Wyoming. This is totally unfair to the people of Wyoming. The people of California are hypocrites.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/build-begins-wyoming-california-power-125225690.html
Build begins on Wyoming-to-California power line amid growing wind power concern
By Mead Gruver
June 20, 2023
RAWLINS, Wyo. (AP) — Portrait photographer Anne Brande shoots graduation and wedding engagement photos at scenic spots throughout southeastern Wyoming’s granite mountains and sprawling sagebrush valleys, but worries what those views will look like in a few years. Wind energy is booming here.
In a state where being able to hunt, fish and camp in gorgeous and untrammeled nature is a way of life, worries about spoiled views, killed eagles and disturbed big-game animals such as elk and mule deer have grown with the spread of wind turbines.
On Tuesday, state and federal officials will break ground on TransWest Express, a transmission line that will move electricity from the $5 billion, 3,000-megawatt, 600-turbine Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind farm to southern California, a place legally mandated to switch to clean energy. The wind farm will be the country’s biggest yet.
As elsewhere, opposition to wind farms in Wyoming correlates with proximity to homes and cabins: Chokecherry and Sierra Madre is massive but isolated, and has generated less opposition than some others. But Brande and rural property owners opposed a 500-megawatt, 120-turbine wind farm soon to be built near the Colorado state line. They lost, but the matter reached the Wyoming Supreme Court.
The contentious county approval process included a five-hour public hearing in a packed courtroom in Laramie in 2021. Residents expressed a range of concerns, from turbine blades killing birds to construction blasting damaging home foundations.
Scientists have proven that pollution by humans has caused an increase in the LGBTQ population of flies
https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientists-discovered-alarming-side-effect-100000446.html
Scientists have discovered an alarming new side effect of air pollution: ‘We had not thought about this before’
By Eliot Engelmaier
June 20, 2023
Air pollution is having an unbelievable effect on flies, altering how they attract one another and mate.
What’s happening?
Insects typically find their mates by heavily relying on pheromones –– chemicals that allow males and females to locate each other and mate.
These pheromones are distinctive to males and females of a species, and in the case of flies, they are being disrupted and degraded by the pervasive increase of ozone in the air, which is a result of air pollution.
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Germany discovered these effects by developing an experiment that mimicked ozone levels similar to what is measured during the summertime in cities.
Typically, male flies’ pheromones attract females while simultaneously repelling other males. But increased ozone levels caused a decrease in pheromones, which caused females to be less attracted to males and led to courtship between male flies.
“We could explain that males started courting each other after a short ozone exposure because they obviously could not distinguish ozonated males from females,” said researchers Nanji Jiang and Markus Knaden. “However, we had not thought about this before. Therefore, we were quite puzzled by the behavior of the ozone-exposed males, which lined up in long courtship chains.”
Why is this important?
The effects of this news are substantial. It is not just flies that are affected –– ozone is thought to affect the patterns of many insects.
Pheromone communication is not only used for mating. It also helps insects identify members of the same species and their communities, such as bee hives, wasp nests, and ant colonies. Nothing sounds more chaotic than a bunch of ants, bees, and wasps confused and out of place.
The chaos doesn’t stop there –– insects such as bees and butterflies are vital pollinators. A decrease in pheromones equals a decline in reproduction and population. The effects could be detrimental, as 80% of our crops require insect pollinators.
What can I do to help prevent this?
According to Bill Hansson, head of the Evolutionary Neuroethology Department and co-founder of the Max Planck Center Next Generation Insect Chemical Ecology, “the only solution to this dilemma is to immediately reduce pollutants in the atmosphere.”
Immediately reducing pollutants in the atmosphere will require efforts from large brands and corporations that release a significant amount of pollutants. Still, some steps can be taken on an individual level as well. Individuals can drive their cars less, use less energy, and opt for more sustainable shopping options, to name a few.
California gave early release from prison to a reckless driver named Derrick John Thompson who had caused a crash which put an innocent person in a coma. Anyone who’s not a bleeding heart can guess what he did after he got out.
California gave early release from prison to a reckless driver named Derrick John Thompson who had caused a crash which put an innocent person in a coma. Anyone who’s not a bleeding heart can guess what he did after he got out.
This time, his reckless driving killed five innocent people in Minnesota. All five of those people would still be alive if California had kept him locked up for his full sentence. This is yet one more example of how California is pro-violent crime.
Here’s a video of Derrick John Thompson killing five innocent people:
https://twitter.com/lizcollin/status/1670471436446867456
And here’s an article that explains how those five innocent people would still be alive if California had not let him out of prison early after he put an innocent person in a coma:
Who is Derrick John Thompson? Man kills 5 women preparing for friend’s wedding after crashing SUV into their car
By Divya Kishore
June 18, 2023
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA: Four young women and one juvenile lost their lives after a speeding SUV crashed into their car. The victims have reportedly been identified as Sahra Gesaade, 20, Salma Abdikadir, 20, Sagal Hersi, 19, Siham Adam, 19, and Sabiriin Ali, 17, who died Friday night, June 16, after leaving a Minneapolis mall.
The five left Karmel Mall around 10 pm after applying heena for their friend’s wedding when an SUV jumped a red light before fatally hitting their car, the Daily Mail reported. It has been said that at the time of the accident, the SUV was being chased by a state trooper as it was driving at approx 100 mph despite the speed limit set at 55 mph in south Minneapolis.
The women’s deaths have left their community devastated. Khalid Omar, director of Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, where the five used to go as attendees, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, “These are pearls of our community. They leave a big void. All five of them had bright futures,” before adding, “They weren’t doing anything wrong. They were just getting ready for their friend’s wedding.”
Who is Derrick John Thompson?
Though police have not yet released the identity of the SUV driver responsible for the deadly crash, Minneapolis Star-Tribune citing two sources has identified him as Derrick John Thompson. The publication also stated that his father is former DFL State Representative John Thompson. As per reports, he was not caught immediately after the accident but was arrested after being seen at a Taco Bell.
The 27-year-old accused also suffered some injuries and is currently admitted to a hospital. Omar said, “I hope they try everything they can to bring justice to this family and this community. I talked to the chief and said, ‘Something has to be done. We gotta make sure we’re enforcing the traffic laws.'”
However, this was reportedly not the first time when Derrick was involved in a car crash. He was responsible for a September 2018 accident, which left a pedestrian severely injured in Montecito, according to MN CRIME. He pled guilty in that incident and was awarded eight years behind bars in state prison in 2020.
But it is not confirmed yet if he was on bail during the current crash. At the time, a statement from the DA’s Office said, “The victim, a tourist, was staying at a nearby house with several friends when she was struck by the defendant’s vehicle. The defendant immediately fled the scene, while the victim fought for her life in a coma for several weeks.”
Fundraiser started for victims’ families
Meanwhile, a fundraiser has been started to support victims’ families. The message on the campaign read, “We find ourselves in deep sorrow today, for our community experienced a heartbreaking tragedy last night. We have lost five of our bright, young sisters in a severe car accident. May Allah grant mercy upon the departed and open the doors of Jannah for them.”
“We belong to Allah and to Him we shall return. These young Muslim sisters were shining stars of hope for our future. Unfortunately, their lives were cut short last night by a driver evading the police. We earnestly implore Allah to bestow His mercy upon them, to show them His boundless generosity as they return to Him, and to grant them the highest place in Firdaws. May He lend strength and patience to their grieving families in these trying times. Ameen,” it added.
A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags
A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags
Many liberals celebrated when Hamtramck, Michigan, elected a Muslim-majority council in 2015 but a vote to exclude LGBTQ+ flags from city property has soured relations
By Tom Perkins
June 17, 2023
In 2015, many liberal residents in Hamtramck, Michigan, celebrated as their city attracted international attention for becoming the first in the United States to elect a Muslim-majority city council.
They viewed the power shift and diversity as a symbolic but meaningful rebuke of the Islamophobic rhetoric that was a central theme of then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign.
This week many of those same residents watched in dismay as a now fully Muslim and socially conservative city council passed legislation banning Pride flags from being flown on city property that had – like many others being flown around the country – been intended to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community.
Muslim residents packing city hall erupted in cheers after the council’s unanimous vote, and on Hamtramck’s social media pages, the taunting has been relentless: “Fagless City”, read one post, emphasized with emojis of a bicep flexing.
In a tense monologue before the vote, Councilmember Mohammed Hassan shouted his justification at LGBTQ+ supporters: “I’m working for the people, what the majority of the people like.”
While Hamtramck is still viewed as a bastion of multiculturalism, the difficulties of local governance and living among neighbors with different cultural values quickly set in following the 2015 election. Some leaders and residents are now bitter political enemies engaged in a series of often vicious battles over the city’s direction, and the Pride flag controversy represents a crescendo in tension.
“There’s a sense of betrayal,” said the former Hamtramck mayor Karen Majewski, who is Polish American. “We supported you when you were threatened, and now our rights are threatened, and you’re the one doing the threatening.”
For about a century, Polish and Ukrainian Catholics dominated politics in Hamtramck, a city of 28,000 surrounded by Detroit. By 2013, largely Muslim Bangladeshi and Yemeni immigrants supplanted the white eastern Europeans, though the city remains home to significant populations of those groups, as well as African Americans, whites and Bosnian and Albanian Americans. According to the 2020 census some 30% to 38% of Hamtramck’s residents are of Yemeni descent, and 24% are of Asian descent, largely Bangladeshi.
After several years of diversity on the council, some see irony in an all-male, Muslim elected government that does not reflect the city’s makeup.
The resolution, which also prohibits the display of flags with ethnic, racist and political views, comes at a time when LGBTQ+ rights are under assault worldwide, and other US cities have passed similar bans, with the vast majority driven by often white politically conservative Americans.
While the situation in Hamtramck largely evolved on its own local dynamics, some outside rightwing agitators connected to national Republican groups have been pushing for the ban on Hamtramck’s social media pages and voiced support for it at Tuesday’s meeting. They are from nearby Dearborn where they were part of an effort last year to ban books with LGBTQ+ themes.
Their talking points mirror those made elsewhere: some Hamtramck Muslims say they simply want to protect children, and gay people should “keep it in their home”.
But that sentiment is “an erasure of the queer community and an attempt to shove queer people back in the closet”, said Gracie Cadieux, a queer Hamtramck resident who is part of the Anti-Transphobic Action group.
Mayor Amer Ghalib, 43, who was elected in 2021 with 67% of the vote to become the nation’s first Yemeni American mayor, told the Guardian on Thursday he tries to govern fairly for everyone, but said LGBTQ+ supporters had stoked tension by “forcing their agendas on others”.
“There is an overreaction to the situation, and some people are not willing to accept the fact that they lost,” he said, referring to Majewski and recent elections that resulted in full control of the council by Muslim politicians.
Though the city’s Muslims are not a monolith and some privately told the Guardian they were “frustrated” with council, the only leader to publicly question it was the former city council member Amanda Jaczkowski, a Polish American who converted to Islam.
In a statement, she raised concerns about the move’s legality: “There are far too many questions to pass this today with any semblance of responsibility.”
On one level, the discord that has flared between Muslim and non-Muslim populations in recent years has its root in a culture clash that is unique to a partly liberal small US city now under conservative Muslim leadership, residents say. Last year, the council approved an ordinance allowing backyard animal sacrifices, shocking some non-Muslim residents even though animal sacrifice is protected under the first amendment in the US as a form of religious expression.
When Michigan legalized marijuana, it gave municipalities a late 2020 deadline to enact a prohibition of dispensaries. Hamtramck council missed the deadline and a dispensary opened, drawing outrage from conservative Muslims who demanded city leadership shut it down. That ignited counterprotests from many liberal residents, and the council only relented when it became clear it had no legal recourse.
At other times, the issues are not unique to Hamtramck. In the realm of local politics, personal fights among neighbors, warring factions and dirty politics are a common part of the democratic process across the US.
“I don’t know that we’re really all that different from other cities in most ways,” Majewski said.
However, race and religion add more fraught layers to Hamtramck’s issues. Islamophobia exists here, and some Muslims say they saw bigotry in local voter fraud investigations, and in LGBTQ+ supporters not respecting their religion.
But Majewski said the majority is now disrespecting the minority. She noted that a white, Christian-majority city council in 2005 created an ordinance to allow the Muslim call to prayer to be broadcast from the city’s mosques five times daily. It did so over objections of white city residents, and Majewski said she didn’t see the same reciprocity with roles reversed.
Ghalib disagreed, and labeled the prayer broadcast a “first amendment issue” while noting no one was asking for city hall to broadcast the calls.
Moreover, the white majority council was not always hospitable to Muslim residents who have previously faced overt racism. And with a majority-Muslim council in place, more Muslims had been appointed to boards and commissions, and hired in city hall. So had some LGBTQ+ residents, Ghalib added.
Despite the political clashes, he thinks there is hope for Hamtramck to live up to its multicultural ideals.
“We can get along and people are not violent here,” he said.
Cadieux agreed peaceful coexistence was possible.
“We aren’t in the business of excluding people from our society and I’m not going to exclude socially conservative Muslims – they have a place at the table just like everyone else,” she said. “However, they cannot, and will not, shove another community out of the way.”
ABC News report on San Francisco: “We are not at Union Square or the Westfield Mall this morning because we have been advised it is simply too dangerous”
Every city has exactly as much crime as its voters are willing to tolerate.
The voters of San Francisco sure are willing to tolerate a very large amount of it.
Check out this report from ABC News:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7at8A2NdRM
Girl Sues Hospital for Removing Her Breasts at Age 13
Girl Sues Hospital for Removing Her Breasts at Age 13
By Zachary Stieber
June 15, 2023
Layla Jane speaks at a Detransition Awareness Day rally at the state Capitol in Sacramento on March 10, 2023. (Courtesy of Pamela Garfield-Jaeger)
Layla Jane after her operation. (Courtesy of Dhillon Law Group)
A hospital and doctors in California are facing a new lawsuit for removing the breasts of a 13-year-old girl after she claimed she was a boy.
The defendants carried out “ideological and profit-driven medical abuse” when they prescribed her puberty blockers and hormones and, later, performed a double mastectomy, Charles LiMandri, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiff, Layla Jane, said in a statement.
Jane, now 18, was influenced by people online when she was just 11 and told her parents that she was a boy, prompting them to ask for guidance from doctors.
While three doctors said Jane was too young for cross-sex hormones, she was eventually referred to several other doctors who prescribed her puberty blockers and hormones. Within six months, they removed her breasts.
The hormones and puberty blockers were given based on a single, 75-minute session with Susanne Watson, a psychologist, according to the suit. Dr. Winnie Tong, a plastic surgeon, concluded after a 30-minute session that Jane could have her breasts removed.
“Defendants did not question, elicit, or attempt to understand the psychological events that led Kayla to the mistaken belief that she was transgender, nor did they evaluate, appreciate, or treat her multi-faceted presentation of co-morbid symptoms,” the suit reads.
“Instead, Defendants assumed that Kayla, a twelve-year-old emotionally troubled girl, knew best what she needed to improve her mental health and figuratively handed her the prescription pad. There is no other area of medicine where doctors will surgically remove a perfectly healthy body part and intentionally induce a diseased state of the pituitary gland misfunction based simply on the young adolescent patient’s wishes.”
Doreen Samelson, a psychologist not named as a defendant, by contrast, told Jane and her parents that she couldn’t receive puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones due to factors such as her age.
Jane, whose given name is Kayla Lovdahl, has since “detransitioned,” or resumed identifying as a girl.
She’s currently receiving psychotherapy for mental health issues such as social anxiety disorder. That kind of treatment should have been offered instead of the drastic steps the defendants took, the suit states, noting that, per a number of studies, youth who experience gender dysphoria often ultimately become comfortable with their birth sex.
Other papers have found that people who underwent chemical or surgical procedures to “transition” experience mental health issues and higher suicide rates. And some countries have restricted the usage of puberty blockers to certain settings due to a dearth of clinical research on using them on youth wanting to transition.
The lack of therapy and outlining of possible side effects from the surgery means the doctors didn’t provide Jane with informed consent, according to the suit. Instead, the defendants claimed that the dysphoria wouldn’t resolve unless she underwent the procedure.
At one point, one allegedly told her parents, “Would you rather have a live son or a dead daughter?”
“Nobody—none of my doctors—tried anything to make me comfortable in my body, or meaningfully pushed back or asked questions; they only affirmed,” Jane told The Epoch Times.
Jane said she didn’t feel better after her surgery. She suffered nerve damage and other issues. She says she’s happier since she detransitioned.
“The law says children aren’t mature enough to make serious decisions that could have long lasting consequences like getting a tattoo, driving with friends, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, or even voting,” Jane said in a statement. “So why is it acceptable for 13-year-olds to decide to mutilate their body?”
The defendants are Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and the Permanente Medical groups, both part of the nonprofit Kaiser Permanente; Watson; and doctors who work for or are affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
Kaiser Permanente and Watson didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The suit was filed in the Superior Court of the state of California.
Jane is seeking damages for her pain and suffering, additional money for medical expenses, and costs of the suit covered.
“Kaiser continues to engage in the quackery of subjecting innocent children to irreversible sex mimicry treatment, including drugs and surgery, without informed consent,” Harmeet Dhillon, CEO of the Center for American Liberty, which is also representing Jane, said in a statement.
“The medical providers responsible for Layla’s case, along with countless others, have substituted woke ideology for medically accepted standards of care, including lying to and manipulating vulnerable patients and families.
“We are committed to holding them accountable for the harm inflicted upon Layla, and together we intend to strongly deter Kaiser’s factory-line approach that permanently mutilates an unknown number of American children, subjecting them to a lifetime of harm, regret, and medical consequences.”
A similar lawsuit was filed by Chloe Cole, whose breasts were removed when she was 15, earlier this year.
An amazon delivery employee falsely accused an amazon customer of racism, so amazon shut down the customer’s Alexa access to all of the customer’s smart devices
From the people who see racism everywhere…
An amazon delivery employee accused an amazon customer of racism, so amazon shut down the customer’s Alexa access to all of the customer’s smart devices.
Later on, video and audio recordings showed that the customer wasn’t even home at the time of this alleged racist incident, and the automatic doorbell had simply said, “Excuse me, can I help you?”
So here’s what we know from this:
1) An amazon employee made a false accusation against the customer.
2) Without any proof that this accusation was true, amazon prevented the customer from using Alexa (which the customer had already paid for) to access the customer’s smart home devices (which the customer had also already paid for).
Shame on amazon!
Fresno man convicted of trafficking a minor in Seaside gets three years of probation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBneaIvwK0o
Fresno man convicted of trafficking a minor in Seaside gets three years of probation
By Ricardo Tovar
June 10, 2023
SALINAS, Calif. (KION-TV)- The Monterey County District Attorney’s Office says a man pled no contest Friday to a felony charge of trafficking a minor.
Tim Leavell Cook, 27, of Fresno was given three years of probation, said the DA’s office. He also pled no contest to a charge of furnishing a minor with marijuana.
The victim was identified as a missing 17-year-old from Fresno. She was brought to the area by Cook to have her engage in sex acts for money. This resulted in Cook receiving all the money, said Monterey County District Attorney Jeannine M. Pacioni.
The victim was taken to a safe area and returned to her guardian/parent, said Pacioni.
San Bernardino jury votes not guilty for assault and attempted murder charges even though video shows man assaulting police officer, grabbing her gun, pointing it at her, and pulling the trigger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-nTEeiFPY0
Ex-deputy who suvived beating in Victorville stunned at attacker’s acquittal
Jurors found Ari A. Young not guilty on May 31 of attempted murder and assault with a firearm on a police officer.
By Eric Leonard
June 6, 2023
A former San Bernardino County Sheriff’s deputy says she’s angry that a jury acquitted a man charged with her attempted murder, for a video-recorded attack in 2019 in Victorville in which she was beaten and her gun was taken during a fight.
“If he’s found not guilty, then what happened to me?,” ex-deputy Meagan McCarthy told NBC4 Monday. “This is just how I feel — if a video proof of a crime occurring is not enough to change a narrative that people hear, then what will be enough?”
Jurors found Ari A. Young not guilty on May 31 of attempted murder and assault with a firearm on a police officer, according to court records. Jurors convicted Young on a charge of firing a gun with gross negligence, and Young was released from jail.
The video, captured from a home nearby, begins some time after McCarthy and Young were fighting, and shows Young take McCarthy, then known as Meagan Forsberg, to the ground, where the two struggle over McCarthy’s pistol and rounds are fired into the ground.
“A portion of me accepted that I was about to get murdered,” McCarthy recalled.
Young’s defense lawyer said that while his client beat McCarthy, took her baton and gun, and fired the gun indiscriminately, the video also shows that Young never took aim at the deputy.
“This was an illusion,” attorney Raj Maline said of the prosecution’s attempted murder allegation, “because when you look at the video, certainly it looks bad.”
Maline said that video, other evidence, and eyewitness accounts presented at trial showed Young fired the gun but in a different direction from where McCarthy had run for cover. He said a forensic examination of McCarthy’s gun also raised questions about the prosecution’s theory of what happened, and the judge told jurors to disregard some of the prosecution’s case.
“The court intervened, took that count away and dismissed it right then and said the jury is not going to be able to deliberate on that issue or consider that issue, because it’s not even a close call,” Maline said.
Young, then 21, was experiencing mental health issues, which is what had prompted his mother to call for police that day to remove Young from her home.
McCarthy says she was terrified during the struggle with Young, during which she said she considered shooting Young as she was being overpowered and felt like she might lose consciousness.
“I remember hearing the trigger click and I had so much pain to my face from him hitting me that I didn’t know if I had been shot,” she said. “But I knew I had a little girl at home and I had to fight for her.”
McCarthy said she was given a medical retirement from the sheriff’s department in March 2022, in part due to the post traumatic stress she suffered from the attack.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said it would make a comment on the jury’s finding Tuesday.
The District Attorney’s Office said it was unable to comment because the case is, “still active.” Jurors were unable to reach verdicts on several less serious charges and it’s possible prosecutors could retry those counts.
A federal jury has awarded a Georgia couple $135.5 million for damages to their property by a Tennessee-based solar power company and its contractor
https://apnews.com/article/solar-company-land-pollution-verdict-7f04778f08e43fe11a30a517958de9a4
Georgia couple awarded $135.5M for polluted land and water
May 3, 2023
COLUMBUS, Ga. (AP) — A federal jury has awarded a Georgia couple $135.5 million for damages to their property by a Tennessee-based solar company and its contractor.
The award against Silicon Ranch Corp. and its contractor, IEA Inc., was announced Friday by James E. Butler, attorney for plaintiffs Shaun and Amie Harris who live near Lumpkin, Georgia, south of Columbus, WRBL-TV reported.
According to the lawsuit, Silicon Ranch Corp. has developed more than 160 solar panel facilities across the country, many of which were built by IEA. At “Lumpkin Solar,” IEA cleared and mass-graded about 1,000 acres of timberland, farmland and land near the Harris couple that was previously used for recreational hunting and fishing — without installing adequate measures for erosion and sediment control, Butler said in a news release.
“The result was what one would expect — when it rained, pollution poured downhill and downstream onto the neighbors’ property, inundating wetlands with silt and sediment, and turning a 21-acre trophy fishing lake into a mud hole,” Butler said.
The companies “created, operated and maintained a nuisance … that caused sedimentation to pollute plaintiffs’ wetlands, streams and lake. The court further finds that this nuisance has continued for approximately two years unabated,” U.S. District Judge Clay D. Land said in the order.
The jury returned a compensatory damage verdict of $10.5 million.
In the punitive phase, where jurors consider an amount that would punish the companies for their actions, the panel found that SRC, IEA and and an IEA subsidiary — IEA Constructors, LLC — acted with specific intent to cause harm. The jury imposed $25 million in punitive damages against SRC, $50 million against IEA Inc., and $50 million against IEA Constructors, LLC, the news release said.
Westwood Professional Services Inc., the engineering firm that designed the erosion and sediment control plan for SRC and IEA, was released from any liability, the law firm said.
“The SRC/IEA litigation and trial strategy was to blame everyone else and deny responsibility,” said plaintiffs’ counsel, Dan Philyaw. “They blamed Westwood, they blamed Shaun and Amie, they blamed too much rain, and they blamed ‘erodible soils.’”
“Meanness is not neighborly,” Butler said in summarizing the case, “and it is a terrible litigation and trial strategy.”
Silicon Ranch, located in Nashville, Tennessee, said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press that it would appeal the verdicts.
“We relied on our contractor to carry out this scope of work in compliance with applicable law and in keeping with industry best management practices, as specified by the appropriate regulatory bodies in the state of Georgia,” the company said.
“As the long-term owner of this facility, Silicon Ranch remains committed to the continued success of Stewart County and the surrounding region,” the company continued. “While we sincerely regret the unintentional damage to our neighbor’s property, Silicon Ranch does not believe the verdict in this trial is supported by the facts in this case.”
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