There’s been a case in New York that I should have been following more closely. Dexter Taylor was a hobby gunsmith. He liked the nature of putting together guns from lawfully purchased parts.
However, the state of New York disapproved of this pastime. They arrested Taylor and, on Monday, he was convicted.
My friend Jeff Charles over at our sister site RedState has been covering this case pretty much from the jump, and in his story from Monday about the sentencing, there was something we had to talk about.
From the beginning of Taylor’s trial, it was evident that the court would be biased against the defendant, according to [Taylor’s attorney, Vinoo] Varghese, who explained that two judges presided over his case before the current official, Judge Abena Darkeh, took over.
The judge disrupted Varghese’s opening statement multiple times as he tried to set the stage for Taylor’s defense. Even further, she admonished the defense to refrain from mentioning the Second Amendment during the trial. Varghese told RedState:
She told us, ‘Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York.’
Varghese said he had filed the appropriate paperwork to “preserve these arguments for appeal” but that the judge “rejected these arguments, and she went out of her way to limit me.”
The Second Amendment doesn’t exist there? Excuse the hell out of me?
“This is New York?”
This just smacks of “the Aloha spirit” nonsense where some parties seem to think that the Constitution doesn’t actually apply because they really, really don’t like it.
Is the judge in this case, Judge Abena Darkeh, suggesting that the Second Amendment doesn’t apply anywhere she doesn’t approve? What other rights don’t exist in New York under Judge Darkeh’s paradigm? Do defendants not have the right to representation? Is free speech non-existent?
Oh, one might make the case that I’m being ridiculous, but I don’t think I am. Not based on Darkeh’s other actions.
Varghese also tries to take a jury nullification approach. Jury nullification basically means you convince the jury that while a crime might have occurred, the law in question is the real problem. It’s rare, but it’s still a thing. Judges aren’t supposed to encourage it, but they’re not supposed to stop it.
Yet Judge Darkeh did just that. She reportedly warned jurors in such a way as to suggest they could face consequences if they didn’t vote to convict.
So, basically, it feels like Taylor got railroaded and that Darkeh doesn’t actually think people have rights unless she, personally, approves of them.
Yet that’s not how rights work. They exist even if they’re inconvenient. They exist even if you don’t approve of how they’re used.
Varghese says he tried to preserve Darkeh’s comments for appeal and was stymied. However, her comments should still be on the record somewhere. If not, her attitude should be clear from the transcripts.
But either way, Darkeh makes it clear that at least some jurists in New York really don’t think the Second Amendment applies in either their courtroom or the state as a whole.
It’s time they’re disabused of that notion by higher courts.
According to a report from Law Enforcement Today, recent revelations have exposed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for allegedly suppressing data on defensive gun use (DGU). This action has ignited debates over the transparency and potential politicization of the agency’s research on gun policy and public health.
The CDC, which studies various factors contributing to injury and mortality including firearm incidents, has been criticized for omitting defensive gun use statistics from its public communications. Despite commissioning a study from The National Academies’ Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, which recognized DGUs as a “common occurrence,” the CDC chose to exclude these statistics following pressure from gun-control advocates.
Documents obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests revealed that individuals such as Mark Bryant of the Gun Violence Archive, Devin Hughes of GVPedia, and Po Murray engaged with top CDC officials. They were introduced by the White House and Senator Dick Durbin’s office and pressed the CDC to downplay DGU frequencies, which range from estimates of 60,000 to 2.5 million annually in the U.S.
Mark Bryant was particularly outspoken, vehemently opposing the highest estimates of DGU. He was quoted in correspondence saying, “that statistic needs to be killed, buried, dug up, killed again and buried again. It is highly misleading, used out of context, and holds zero value even as an outlier in honest discussions surrounding DGUs.”
Despite initial reluctance, the CDC ultimately removed references to DGUs from its publications, a move that has been perceived as aligning the agency more with gun-control advocacy groups than with unbiased scientific inquiry. This has raised concerns about the CDC’s commitment to providing comprehensive and unbiased data.
Gary Kleck, professor emeritus at Florida State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice and a long-time researcher of DGUs, criticized the CDC’s actions, suggesting they indicate the agency is a tool of gun-control advocates rather than a neutral body. Kleck, whose research supports at least 760,000 DGUs annually, emphasized the importance of rigorous methodology and empirical evidence in academic research.
This situation highlights the ongoing tension between scientific research and political influence, particularly in the contentious arena of gun policy. Critics argue that the CDC’s actions compromise its credibility as an evidence-based institution and call for greater transparency and accountability in its research practices.
“CDC is just aligning itself with the gun-control advocacy groups. It’s just saying: ‘we are their tool, and we will do their bidding.’ And that’s not what a government agency should do,” Kleck told Eddie Killian, the author of the Law Enforcement Today article.
Progressive Oakland District Attorney Pamela Price is set to face a recall after just 15 months, with a mass movement to get rid of her getting enough signatures over the soaring crime rate in the area.
Alameda County DA Price has been under pressure over the soaring levels of crime in the Bay Area city, with a recall effort she has claimed is ‘financed by billionaires’ and based in ‘hatred and racism’ gaining momentum.
Price herself has taken over $1 million from three political action committees funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros, according to the Washington Times. Continue reading “”
LEFT: Attack women, get released with no bail, out on the streets immediately to brutally attack a little girl.
RIGHT: Don’t attend your son’s graduation or we will lock you up.
JUST IN: Reporter Catherine Herridge testifies that CBS News locked her out of the building and seized all her files, says she was working with sources to "expose government corruption."
Gun control activist David Hogg has been hit with allegations over the spending practices of his group Leaders We Deserve PAC. Conservative outlets are reporting that the group spent comparably little on actual candidates as opposed to travel and expenses. His prior counsel is a familiar name in such controversies in Washington: former Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias.
Hogg created a group in the aftermath of the 2022 midterm elections to elect Generation Z politicians to offices throughout the country. The group was given favorable national coverage in major media outlets. He explained that contributions would be used to elect young Democrat candidates:
“[We’re] trying to pick them and say, you know, we would like to help you run for office, we’ll supply you with all of the resources that you need and help basically coach you and hold your hand to get there, which is kind of the gap that’s in the space right now, for at least young people at the state legislative level.”
Federal filings reportedly show that year-end 2023, Leaders We Deserve raised over $3 million. That is impressive for its first year in operation.
The conservative sites allege that the group spent “only about $263,000 on its stated mission of electing candidates from Generation Z to office combined with donations to other Democrat Party committees and groups—and instead spent more than $1.4 million on disbursements to themselves for payroll and to political consulting firms and legal fees, in addition to travel and entertainment expenses like hotels, flights, and meals.”
However, it reportedly spent more than $1,314,000 on travel and related expenses while giving $80,000 to the Elias Law Group.
This week, Harvard University has shut down a Bill Gates-funded geoengineering experiment. The controversial Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment, or SCoPEx, run by professors David Keith and Frank Keutsch, aimed to study the potential future implementation of geoengineering by crop dusting sulphuric acid into our stratosphere. Nice.
Even if you put aside the almost instant validity such an experiment would give to conspiracy theories like chemtrails and HAARP, it still sounds a bit too much, playing with our thin air like that — in an unprecedented, and potentially catastrophic, manner, too.
But let’s not kid ourselves. The plug wasn’t pulled over fears of playing fast and loose with the venusformation of Earth’s atmosphere.
Nor was it due to the Harvard faculty’s occasional (yet frequent) dalliance with plagiarism or concerns over the lack of diversity within the ivory tower.
No, according to the MIT Technology Review, it was something else entirely: “Even studying the possibility of solar geoengineering eases the societal pressure to cut greenhouse gas emissions,” it clarified.
The Harvard Crimson picked up the scent too, noting that “a vocal minority of scientists have voiced concern that [the experiment’s] technology may provide an excuse to reduce pressure to cut emissions.”
And that’s the irony. Fixing “climate change” without destroying capitalism and everything the West stands for does nothing for the revolution.
What a waste of a good crisis!
It turns out, the climate change business thrives on more climate change alarmism. Whodathunk?
To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, here is a tale of financial shenanigans at the American Irish Historical Society, in which Trump-deranged New York Attorney General Letitia James is hoist by her own petard.
It involves a grand old building on Fifth Avenue, an unpaid loan, a fading family dynasty, a James Joyce theatrical production which almost ended in fisticuffs, and hypocrisy from the AG as obvious as a glass of green beer.
It all began when James Doyle, a wealthy Georgia businessman with a love of his Irish roots, joined the board of the nonprofit society, whose crown jewel is a rare Gilded Age mansion at 991 Fifth Ave., right across from Central Park and the Met.
Over the years, financial mismanagement and misfortune had befallen the society, and it was facing foreclosure. So in 2017, the board turned to Doyle for a $3 million loan, structured like a private mortgage. He was told that the Beaux-Arts townhouse was worth $80 million that included valuable air rights.
However, the society only made a few payments and Doyle soon found things weren’t quite as they seemed.
The society had been dominated for half a century by the Cahill family, and president emeritus Dr. Kevin Cahill was accused of treating the townhouse as his own “private club,” with one of his four sons, Christopher, becoming its “well-compensated executive director,” according to the New York Times. Christopher earned $88,459 in 2020, and between $134,768 and $179,402 in previous years, according to IRS returns.
Cahill, a tropical disease specialist said to have treated Pope John Paul II after he was shot, reportedly raised the money to renovate the mansion to its former glory when he took over in the 1970s. A stocky man with bushy white eyebrows, he would dress each year in morning coat and Irish tri-color sash to preside over the St. Patrick’s Day parade from its Fifth Avenue balcony. He held a grand annual gala where he would hand out gold medals to the great and the good.
Then, in 2019, his son Christopher, then 55, got embroiled in an ugly confrontation with the director of the Irish Repertory Theater, which was staging a play in the townhouse, adapted from the James Joyce short story “The Dead.”
“I’m going to kill you, Ciaran!” yelled Christopher, while lunging at the director after the performance, according to the Times.
The society’s financial woes and dysfunction had reached a crisis point by 2021, when Cahill tried to sell the building for $52 million (later reduced to $44 million).
He died the following year, and in stepped the New York attorney general, citing a petition she had received opposing the sale.
She announced that, by state law, any sale of a nonprofit asset had to be approved by her, effectively kiboshing the plan.
“It’s an amazing place,” James gushed to the Irish Voice. “We had to save it, had to save it … One day people can come in there and enjoy it again.”
Which was all very well, but Doyle still was owed $3 million.
Letitia James opposed the sale of the American Irish Historical Society.Helayne Seidman
The AG appointed an interim board of directors and Doyle was persuaded not to try to collect his money or foreclose on the mortgage before July 2023.
But by August 2023, he still hadn’t been repaid, so he initiated foreclosure proceedings — and promptly was blocked by the AG, who claimed the mortgage was invalid because he was a board member.
On Friday, Doyle launched a lawsuit against the society and requested a subpoena be issued against James requiring her to produce a raft of documents, including anything relating to campaign events hosted at the townhouse or any contributions to her political campaigns from the society or any of its members or directors.
Doyle’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, alleges that James’ enthusiastic involvement in the Doyle case may be driven by “connections with the Defendant.”
Cahill and the society’s current president-general, James Normile, “made representations to [Doyle] that the building had ‘air rights’ and could be built, or rebuilt, higher than its current height.”Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty Images for BT Sport Industry Awards
And he points out the uncanny similarities between his client’s predicament and the notorious case James brought against Donald Trump for supposedly inflating the value of his properties to get a better mortgage, “although her office is now taking a polar opposite position.”
The lawsuit alleges that Doyle was given “fraudulently inflated valuations” of the townhouse, putting its market value at over $80 million. Cahill and the society’s current president-general, James Normile, “made representations to [Doyle] that the building had ‘air rights’ and could be built, or rebuilt, higher than its current height.
“In reality, there were no ‘air rights’ and the actual value is closer to $20 million. [The society] made a gross over-valuation” of the townhouse, which induced Doyle to make the $3 million loan.
“Tish James said, ‘Nobody is above the law,’ which should include Tish James, who seems to have actively aided and abetted in the art of the steal,” Parlatore told The Post.
Doyle’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, alleges that James’ enthusiastic involvement in the Doyle case may be driven by “connections with the Defendant.”Getty Images
“This organization fraudulently inflated the value of their building to induce my client into giving them a mortgage which Tish James is now trying to help these fraudsters avoid having to repay.
“The theory of fraud Tish James accused the Trump Organization of engaging in is identical to the fraud she is aiding and abetting here.”
James has come down on the side of the society against its lender, Doyle. And yet, in her signature case of People v. Trump, she took the opposite position, holding that “where an organization inflates the value of a property to obtain a loan, that is fraud, even where the lender was aware of the actual value and was paid in full,” Doyle’s lawsuit says.
Trump was punished with a $355 million fine. So delighted was James by the verdict last month that she started live-tweeting Trump’s daily interest bill: “+$114,553.04.”
Parlatore points out that the society inflated the value of its property to obtain a loan, just like Trump was accused of doing, but the difference was that Doyle could not conduct the sort of “sophisticated due diligence” that Deutsche Bank did. Therefore, unlike Trump’s lenders, Doyle didn’t know the true value of the townhouse.
An even more important difference is that Trump paid back every penny he owed, but the society never paid back Doyle.
As the old Irish proverb says, forgetting a debt doesn’t mean it’s paid.
Former CEO of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, has finally admitted virtually everything that he’s been accused of over the past five years, and a jury has found him liable for padding his own pockets to the tune of $5.5 million.
LaPierre’s hand-picked Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer, Woody Phillips was also found liable for $2 million in personal profit at NRA members’ expense, and the NRA itself (really the NRA’s current Board of Directors) was found to have failed in its fiduciary obligations to shepherd and safeguard the members’ assets. Keep in mind that none of this really takes into account the millions paid to “consultants” with nothing of substance to show for it, or the hundreds of millions spent on lawyers and the losses in membership and revenue over the past five years.
All told, the bogus spending and lost income amount to something north of a billion dollars!
Now, New York Acting Supreme Court Justice Joel Cohen has the difficult task of deciding how best to remedy the situation. Unfortunately, there’s an important absence in Justice Cohen’s courtroom: the members of the NRA!
On one side of the table is Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York, who, during her election campaign, pledged to destroy the NRA and called it a terrorist organization.
On the other side of the table is the ridiculously overpriced lawyer William Brewer for the NRA (the Board), whose firm has been paid approximately $2 million per month – every month – for the past 5 years.
Every move William Brewer has made in that time has done nothing but dig the NRA’s hole deeper.
AG James and her office have a legal obligation to represent and protect the interests of the members of the NRA. Does anyone believe that she is, or has any interest in living up to that legal obligation? Is the interest of the NRA membership her primary motivation – or any part of her motivation – in this action?
William Brewer, III, the New York lawyer who claims residence in Dallas (and who was a big contributor to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and “Beto” O’Rourke (Seriously!), is supposedly representing the NRA. You’d think that his obligation would be to the NRA members, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. He was initially hired by Wayne LaPierre and has spent almost all of his efforts over the past 5 years making terrible legal moves that gave every appearance of protecting LaPierre at NRA members’ expense. Then, right before the trial started last month, LaPierre stepped down for “health reasons.”
Brewer then declared that the NRA’s position has always been that the Association was the victim of “unscrupulous vendors and insiders,” and, with LaPierre’s departure, the NRA has fixed all of the problems that allowed that victimization…
Sitting next to Brewer at the table isNRA Board President Charles Cotton and the NRA Board of Directors. Like AG James and attorney Brewer, Cotton and the Board have a legal, ethical, and moral duty to act in the best interest of the National Rifle Association – its members.
Well, there’s a problem. Like AG James and Attorney Brewer, President Cotton and the NRA Board appear to have divided loyalties as well.
Not only did they sit by and allow LaPierre, Phillips, and those “unscrupulous vendors” [read friends of Wayne] to siphon hundreds of millions of dollars out of NRA accounts over at least two decades, when the evidence of the corruption came to light in 2019, they rallied around LaPierre, loudly pronounced him innocent of any wrongdoing, and shunned, defamed, and denounced anyone who dared to even ask questions or suggest an investigation.
Rather than demanding an accounting and miscreants’ heads on pikes, Cotton and the assembled Board took every action to cover Wayne’s increasingly exposed backside.
Even as LaPierre’s story shifted over time, with new lies replacing old lies and newer lies replacing the previous lies, Cotton was at the forefront, repeating the lies – and adding in a few of his own – while defending LaPierre at every turn with the docile Board meekly “believing” and parroting each and every iteration as gospel.
So where is Justice Cohen supposed to turn to find a voice that truly represents NRA members?
He certainly can’t have any confidence that AG James, Attorney Brewer, or the officers or directors of the NRA truly represent the interests of rank-and-file NRA members. With this menagerie of conflicted and self-serving individuals, how is the judge supposed to determine what’s best for the NRA and its members? He should realize that the majority of NRA members who vote in Board elections and keep reelecting the same people to the Board, don’t trust the legacy media at all and get almost all of their trusted information about the NRA from NRA publications, which are controlled by the current regime. If he removes the obviously complicit Board members, how many would be left, and how many of those are incompetent and/or cowardly?
It would be pretty arrogant and presumptuous to suggest that the four of us who are running as reform candidates for NRA Board seats in the current 2024 election (Phil Journey, Rocky Marshall, Dennis Fusaro, and me, Jeff Knox) could speak for all NRA members. We do think we understand most members’ interests better than any of the previously mentioned characters, but who could possibly fairly represent three to four million others, and how is the judge supposed to find those representatives?
As you might have guessed, I have a few ideas on this topic.
The NRA has thousands of volunteers working every day all around the country.
From local state Friends of NRA committees, to Volunteer election Coordinators, to coaches, Range Safety Officers, match coordinators, Hunter Safety Education instructors, gun club officers, state association leaders, and more. Most of those volunteers, though not all of them, work through or under their local state association. The state associations are the natural heirs and beneficiaries of NRA’s assets, and they actively work to serve the needs of the NRA members in their state. While not all NRA members in a state are members of the state association, all members of the state associations are NRA members, and they are typically the most active and involved NRA members in the state.
Judge Cohen needs ready access to people who can authoritatively speak for NRA members. State associations and other NRA state affiliates are in the best position to provide him with that access.
It is my hope that the judge will remove all officers and directors who have failed in their fiduciary obligations to NRA members, appoint a Special Master or Receiver to oversee a thorough housecleaning and reorganization of the Association, and appoint a Members’ Committee, made up of candidates recommended by the various state associations, to help guide and direct that reorganization.
It all sounds simple on paper, but there’s a lot to do in a very short time.
The first step is to convince you that this is a good idea that should be pursued.
The second step is for you to help convince your local state association leaders that they really need to get involved and run with this idea.
The third step is for the state association leaders to petition the judge and convince him that he needs their help. Finally, the judge and the state association leaders will need to come up with some guidelines and processes for nominating candidates and submitting them to the judge.
The key to all of this is the involvement of state association leaders, and the key to getting those leaders involved is your advocacy. This can only happen if large numbers of NRA members begin pushing the idea at their local gun clubs and directly petition their state associations. Begin by sharing this article with your gun-owning friends and the leadership of your local clubs, Friends of NRA committees, and state association leaders. Follow that with calls and emails asking those leaders to take immediate action.
The NRA is literally on the verge of insolvency. The Association’s future is about to be decided by a New York judge who has limited knowledge or experience with the NRA or NRA members, and his only points of reference are the NRA-hating Attorney General, legacy media, and the self-serving NRA “leaders” who got the Association into this mess in the first place. The judge needs an alternative source of information. He needs to give NRA members a voice in the future of their organization, and a Members’ Committee nominated by state associations could provide that voice.
I truly believe Judge Cohen wants to do the right thing. He’s been very fair and reasonable throughout this whole long, drawn-out process. Let’s get the judge what he needs to make good decisions about the future of our organization. Let’s get our state associations to intervene in this case and give our members a real voice in the upcoming trial and the Association’s future.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other New York Democrats are in hot water after being caught on video appearing to pay homage to China, which is supposed to be the United States’ most significant rival on the world stage.
Schumer waved the flag “just moments after the organizers of a Lunar New Year event blasted China’s national anthem in the middle of Manhattan,” the National Review reported.
“Schumer’s apparent willingness to wave the flag of a foreign authoritarian government calls attention to the strange nature of the New York political world’s engagements with community events that feature a pro-Beijing twist,” NR reported further.
The Senate leader and other leading New York politicians were onstage at a rally ahead of an annual parade in Manhattan’s Chinatown district with Huang Ping, a hard-line Chinese ambassador who has denied China’s human rights abuses, as well as “Wu Xiaoming, a senior consular official linked to China’s secret police station in New York,” the outlet added.
New: Senator Chuck Schumer waved the People's Republic of China flag onstage at a Lunar New Year event on Sunday.
He and other top New York politicians appeared onstage at a rally, preceding an annual parade in Manhattan’s Chinatown, alongside Huang Ping, a hard-line Chinese… pic.twitter.com/seqf0RhOl0
Besides Schumer, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, NYC Mayor Eric Adams, and several New York legislators and city council members were also in attendance.
The “Star-Spangled Banner” and “March of the Volunteers,” the national anthems of China and the United States, respectively, were both performed near the event’s conclusion by a singer.
NR noted further:
At one point during the latter song, Schumer appeared to put his hand over his heart, before quickly removing it. Then, someone in the crowd attempted to hand Hochul — who waved China’s flag at last year’s event — an American and a Chinese flag. She appeared not to accept them. Instead, Schumer grabbed the two flags and vigorously waved them for a moment.
During his speech, Schumer also called for more immigration from China to the U.S.
“I am proud to say that I am a fighter to get comprehensive immigration reform to allow many more Chinese to come to America,” he said.
In December, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned President Joe Biden that he planned to absorb Taiwan at some point, even if it meant doing so by force, during their recent summit in San Francisco, according to sources who spoke to NBC.
The outlet noted that the sources said Xi told Biden that China would unify with Taiwan but did not give a timetable. The Chinese leader added during “a group meeting attended by a dozen American and Chinese officials that China’s preference is to take Taiwan peacefully, not by force,” NBC News reported.
During the meeting, the Chinese leader also addressed public forecasts by U.S. military leaders suggesting that Xi intends to annex Taiwan in 2025 or 2027.
According to two current and one former official briefed on the meeting, Xi informed Biden that such predictions were incorrect because he had not specified a specific timeframe for such actions.
Before the summit, Chinese officials requested that Biden publicly affirm that the U.S. supports China’s pursuit of peaceful reunification with Taiwan and does not endorse Taiwanese independence.
The White House declined this request, NBC News reported.
The newly revealed information sheds light on a pivotal meeting between the two leaders to ease tensions between their respective nations, which did not appear to happen.
How many people died from the COVID shot? Do vaccines actually cause autism? Steve Kirsch has looked at the data. pic.twitter.com/QIriwDP6x5
Police in Dolton, Illinois could soon be walking their beat instead of cruising the streets of the Chicago suburb after a bank moved to repossess much of the police department’s fleet of vehicles for non-payment. According to KS StateBank, the village is behind on its payments to the tune of $76,000, and the bank has been unable to reach anyone at City Hall who could rectify the problem.
Burt Odelson, the legislative counsel for the Village of Dolton Board of Trustees, says the board authorized the payments last May, and he and others are pinning the blame for the snafu on Dolton’s anti-gun mayor Tiffany Henyard.
As questions over unpaid bills have come to light in recent months, WGN Investigates previously uncovered exorbitant spending on lavish trips and experiences by Henyard, which included a trip to Las Vegas that cost more than $12,000 and fell in the same month the loan payment on the village vehicles was due.
… Village of Dolton trustees have gone head-to-head with Henyard at village meetings, calling for transparency, so residents know where taxpayer dollars are going.
“The residents of Dolton deserve to know how the money is being spent,” trustee Brittney Norwood told WGN-TV Thursday.
The board of trustees is in charge of overseeing finances, but some said Henyard has restricted them from access to village financial records, leaving them mostly in the dark. On top of that, several trustees told WGN News Thursday they recently heard from several vendors who claimed they were hired by the mayor for work and never paid for their services. The village is in millions in debt, and did not approve of those expenses, Norwood told WGN.
There’ve been questions about Henyard’s spending for years now. Back in 2021, Second Amendment advocate John Boch detailed that the mayor of the village was doling out hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for a team of officers to serve as her personal security detail, even as she was calling on lawmakers to pass more gun control laws that would make it harder for Dolton residents to protect themselves. The three officers, which accounted for almost 1/10th of the entire police force, cost taxpayers about $100,000 a year each, even though they were tasked almost exclusively with shadowing the small-town mayor.
To put that into perspective, that’s the same number of bodyguards that protect Birmingham, Alabama’s mayor but that city has almost ten times the population of Dolton.
At the same time, Mayor Henyard’s armed personal security detail affords her far more protection than the residents of her city enjoy. One of her first acts after taking office involved organizing an “anti-violence” march. She was joined at that march by anti-gun activist and accused pedophile Father Michael Pfleger.
Henyard was actually recalled by residents in 2022, but the recall election was ruled invalid by state courts and she’s remained in office ever since. With the next mayoral election not scheduled until 2025, there’s no telling how much of a financial hole the village will find itself between now and next November, but it sounds like it’s a distinct possibility that the Dolton Police Department is going to be crippled by the repossession of much of its fleet. I’m guessing that Henyard will ensure that there’s still money to pay for her team of bodyguards or hire convicted child sex offenders for positions that require them to enter residents’ homes, but everyone else who lives in the village is going to be impacted by the financial mismanagement at City Hall.
It’s pretty clear given her anti-gun activism that Henyard doesn’t want those folks to be able to protect themselves with a firearm, and based on the complaints from the trustees and their attorneys it might not be long before Dolton PD isn’t in a position to serve and protect the community at large either. What are they supposed to do to keep themselves and their families safe? I guess the obvious answer is “run for mayor”, since it sounds like Henyard is the one person in Dolton who’s guaranteed to be protected by armed individuals who are still legally allowed to purchase and possess so-called assault weapons and large capacity magazines for the mayor’s defense.
Co-authored by Natasha Bertrand, the gargantuan exposé claimed a mysterious “binder” of “highly classified information related to Russian election interference” went “missing” in the chaotic waning days of Donald Trump’s presidency in January 2021, raising concerns that some of America’s most “closely guarded national security secrets… could be exposed.”
CNN and its intelligence sources meant “exposure” in a bad way. Sources have told Public and Racket, however, that the secrets officials worry might be “exposed” are ones that would implicate them in widespread abuses of intelligence authority dating back to the 2015-2016 election season.
“I would call [the binder] Trump’s insurance policy,” said someone knowledgeable about the case. “He was very concerned about having it and taking it with him because it was the road map” of Russiagate.
Transgressions range from Justice Department surveillance of domestic political targets without probable cause to the improper unmasking of a pre-election conversation between a Trump official and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to WMD-style manipulation of intelligence for public reports on alleged Russian “influence activities.”
The CNN report claimed intelligence officials were concerned about the disclosure of “sources and methods that informed the U.S. government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election.”
They should be concerned. The story of how a team “hand-picked” by CIA Director John Brennan relied on “cooked intelligence” to craft that January 6th, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment is the subject of tomorrow’s story, the last in this three-part series.
Corruption, not tradecraft, is what officials are desperate to keep secret.
The ”missing binder” story has several variants. Sources offer differing answers on the question of whether anything of consequence is missing. They give mixed accounts of Trump’s frantic last efforts to declassify Russia-related material.
But nearly everyone Public and Racket spoke to agreed that the tale obscured a broader and more important story.
Dating back to the release of the so-called “Nunes memo” in 2018 exposing the corruption of the FISA application process, senior intelligence officials, including Trump’s CIA Director, Gina Haspel, have repeatedly blocked attempts to declassify information about the Trump-Russia investigation.
They had good reason to obstruct the release of these documents.
On Thursday, special counsel David Weiss charged a former FBI informant who claimed President Biden was bribed by Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma. The indictment claims the informant lied about Biden’s alleged role in the business dealings.
Alexander Smirnov, 43, was arrested on Thursday at the Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, per CNN.
Smirnov has been accused in the indictment that his story to the FBI “was a fabrication, an amalgam of otherwise unremarkable business meetings and contacts that had actually occurred but at a later date than he claimed and for the purpose of pitching Burisma on the Defendant’s services and products, not for discussing bribes to [Joe Biden] when he was in office.”
The informant, who has now been identified as Smirnov, provided testimony to House Republicans and their investigation into the Biden family’s alleged illegal foreign business dealings. He claimed that Burisma executives paid President Biden and his son Hunter Biden $5 million each to have a Ukrainian prosecutor fired who had been investigating Burisma at the time.
The informant claimed that the bribery occurred while Biden was vice president serving under Barack Obama.
The indictment states, “In truth and fact, the Defendant had contact with executives from Burisma in 2017, after the end of the Obama-Biden Administration and after the then Ukrainian Prosecutor General had been fired in February 2016, in other words, when [Joe Biden] had no ability to influence U.S. policy and when the Prosecutor General was no longer in office.”
“In short, the Defendant transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [Joe Biden], the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for President, after expressing bias against [Joe Biden] and his candidacy,” it continues.
FLASHBACK: Joe Biden previously said “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings”
Today it’s reported that Biden met with the chairman of the Chinese energy firm Hunter sought to create a joint venture with at the Four Seasons.pic.twitter.com/mTsD5XItMI
You’d have to be as senile as Joe Biden is not to realize just how senile Joe Biden is. The man can’t remember which world leaders are alive and which are dead. His staff could put JFK on his calendar, and he’d get excited and dressed up. When the report came out this week calling him an “elderly man with a poor memory,” there was shock on the left, then about 20 minutes of honest analysis about the implications of that. Then it shifted. The outrage moved to the fact that anyone would dare report such a thing and that the Attorney General would allow it to be written in an official report. What no one did was deny it.
A few commentators tried to downplay it, but no one in the media insisted the President was even as sharp as a butter knife. They couldn’t; we have eyes. (Apologies to blind people, but how blind could you be if you’re reading this?)
The man is not well; if he had any family members who loved him more than they love their proximity to power and the attention and opportunities that afford them, they wouldn’t put him through this. But Joe has been a short-tempered, entitled jackass his entire life. People like to surround themselves with similar people, if only because decent people avoid them like the plague. And when it comes to family, the apple doesn’t rot far from the tree.
Jill, Hunter, his brother James, and all the random Bidens with LLCs in their names who, since they do literally nothing to earn the money that randomly shows up in their accounts from overseas, have to at least be in on the grift by omission. If any of them cared, wouldn’t they stop this humiliation? I can think of a couple of people I really disliked in high school who I wouldn’t mind seeing shuffling, confused off a stage, or looking confused as to whether or not they simply passed gas or some post-digested food while being asked a basic question. Still, I don’t let those thoughts go very far because, even with them, I’d feel too bad to enjoy it. I’d like to help. I wouldn’t, but I’d at least consider it for a few minutes.
Joe has no one who dislikes him only slightly, who feels bad enough for him to put that aside and have “the talk” he needs to have, probably a number of times.
Instead, he must get a steady stream of reassurance. That it works is another sign of just how far gone he is.
By the way, have you noticed how no MSNBC host has called for the release of the video of his discussion with the special prosecutor? Just like the release of Biden’s bank records would clear up so much about where his money came from or whether or not he’d actually “loaned” his son and brother a bunch of money they curiously “repaid” with about 10 percent (for the big guy) of what they received from foreign governments, the release of this video, or even just the audio or transcript, would demonstrate the mental capacity of Joe Biden as it exists today.
That’s what terrifies Democrats.
Rather than even risk the naked truth being shown, they adopted the Clinton defense.
So much of what the Democrats do in the face of corruption is what they learned from Bill and Hillary. With Bill, it was denied for as long as possible; then, once they broke out the black light and saw he’d definitely been there, they declared it to be an old story and insisted everyone had already moved on. With Hillary, it was a lie for as long as possible, then when the truth comes out, act indignantly about someone telling the truth because that’s not what they’re supposed to do.
James Comey laid out one hell of a damning case against Hillary’s abuse and mishandling of classified material, then announced he’d decided she will be allowed to get away with it. The outrage wasn’t over Clinton’s lies or illegal, reckless actions, it was over how Comey wasn’t supposed to point out all of her corrupt actions, just say she’d done nothing wrong and walk away.
Comey became the story, not the lawbreaking. He’s spent every day since trying to suck up to the left over it.
The left tried to make Special Counsel Robert Hur the issue. Democrats were mad that he actually laid out the case he uncovered about how a US Senator managed to remove classified material from skiff (sic) [SCIF], which is highly illegal and would send everyone reading this (even the blind people) to prison for a long time, and how a Vice President took classified material home even though he had zero authority to do it. And he never returned any of it, just let it flop around his various offices and garage, all of which were easily accessible to his junkie son who just so happened to be “doing business” in the countries those US intelligence documents were about.
It’s just the damnedest coincidence, isn’t it?
Democrats would much rather make a stupid argument about “How dare he?” then discuss why the White House has to have Biden enter and exit Air Force One from the kiddie door rather than add a senior assist chairlift on the adult stairs.
They know Joe isn’t up to the job, they’re just terrified it will become so obvious that even the people who don’t pay attention to the news will see it. That’s it; that’s what they’re scrambling to hide. That is what Hur’s report showed. And that’s why he will be the target of left-wing vitriol from now through November.
Robert Mueller, or more accurately the people who propped him up (he might make Biden look spry and alive by comparison), did to Donald Trump exactly what Robert Hur did to Joe Biden – lay out what their investigation found and explained why they didn’t pursue criminal charges. They were cool with it when Mueller’s team did it, even praising him, but with Hur, it’s somehow an outrage. Of course, the only difference between Biden and Trump is Trump didn’t commit any crimes; the Russia hoax was a lie. Biden actually did steal classified material and disseminate it.
Whatever, they don’t care. The only thing that matters to the left is the party to which someone belongs; everything else is foreplay. Unfortunately, in the end, we’re all the ones who are getting screwed. And Joe Biden is blissfully unaware of any of it.
For your consideration.
I too, ‘sorta’ agree with Ms. Hammer.
And I totally agree with Mr. Richarson.
As weird as it may seem I find myself somewhat in agreement with Marion Hammer. I was forwarded an email from her to the NRA-EVP Search Committee.
She made the point that the committee needs to look outside the current NRA operations for the person that can be a success as the next CEO and EVP of the NRA.
Here is her email and the members of the committee:
TO: The Members of the NRA-EVP Search Committee:
Congressman Bob Barr – Chairman Professor David Coy Carol Frampton, Esq. Curtis Jenkins, Esq. Sheriff Jay Printz Barbara Rumpel Chief Blaine Wade
Friends,
At the risk of being redundant, I must say that these are tough times for the NRA. The right leader or leaders is essential for NRA’s future. I say leaders because I’m not sure that you can find one person who can do the job.
You might need someone to be the public face of NRA. To do the TV and all media coverage and essentially be the person out front representing NRA and the work we do.
You also might need to find someone to be the workhorse. Someone to make the tough decisions about running the day to day operations who won’t be afraid to “break some eggs to make an omelet” and who isn’t afraid to terminate people who are only interested in themselves and not the NRA and our cause.
I seriously doubt that anyone currently involved with NRA operations meets either need. Don’t be afraid to look outside of NRA for fresh new leaders who care about NRA. Our members are depending on you to find the right person or persons.
When I look at you, I see 2 current NRA Officers, 2 lawyers, 2 law enforcement representatives and one average person. None of you is what I would consider a high end business person, yet we must look at the business perspective.
Whatever you decide, Is up to you. I wouldn’t want to be in your position with the world watching me and expecting perfection. Nonetheless, you must live in a “fishbowl” until the job is done, and then you must live with your decisions.
Please take your time and be thorough. Please be transparent with the NRA Board and don’t be afraid to reach out to Board members for information and advice. Always remember that there are good business people with incredible business knowledge on the Board who are there to serve. Use them.
I wish you all the very best of luck as you embark on a mission that is essential for the future of NRA and our members.
Marion Hammer
Now as to what bothers me in all of this.
The committee is composed of the same old Board members who allowed Wayne to get away with his grifting, who didn’t object to Brewer’s billing, and who allowed a whole host of things that has led the NRA to be reduced to a shadow of its former self. Unless I am greatly mistaken and we the members get really lucky, anyone chosen by this bunch will not renovate nor reinvigorate the NRA. The organization will continue to muddle along with same old mindset appealing to an ever aging membership.
Interesting that Buz Mills was left off the list. Likewise, it is interesting Charles Cotton is off the list. Could this be so that Cotton could be their pick for the next EVP? God forbid!
Gun control activists are thrilled that a federal appeals court has allowed the government of Mexico’s lawsuit against several major U.S. gun makers to proceed, at least for the time being, because they’re hoping that the litigation will lead to the obliteration of the firearms industry.
A new op-ed in Newsweek from Jonathan Lowy, head of Global Action Against Violence, makes that clear. Lowy, who was formerly the general counsel and vice president of Brady’s legal team, is the architect of Mexico’s lawsuit, though you have scroll all the way to the bottom of his op-ed to discover his role in the litigation.
From the outset of his piece, however, Lowy makes his hopes for the lawsuit clear: a way to impose all kinds of new gun control restrictions without a vote in Congress or even unconstitutional executive actions by
Joe Biden.
U.S. gun laws are broken. Even when states muster the political will to enact reasonable restrictions, for example as California did recently, they get blocked in federal court. With federal and state action on guns stymied, the gun violence epidemic can seem hopeless.
But now there’s finally some hope, and it’s coming from outside the United States. A federal appeals court just issued the most significant opinion ever to go against the gun industry, ruling that Mexico has the right to sue manufacturers to hold them accountable for gun trafficking and gun violence.
It’s always amusing to me when anti-gunners like Lowy use the phrase “reasonable restriction”, which implies there’s some gun control law that he would find unreasonable. I’ve been covering Lowy’s anti-2A efforts for two decades now, and I can’t recall him ever concluding that a gun control bill goes too far. Lowy has described the Heller decision as a “radical expansion of prior precedent limiting the Second Amendment to well-regulated militias—that is, today’s National Guard”, and warned ahead of the Bruen decision that striking down “may issue” licensing regimes “would have stark—and deadly—consequences in the real world”; a prediction not borne out by reality.
Lowy’s hope, in other words, isn’t that the courts will decide that gun makers and sellers have to jump through additional hoops before they can lawfully transfer a firearm. He’s aiming for the eradication of the firearms industry, and he’s using Mexico’s unwillingness to confront cartel violence head-on to do it, even as he promises that gun owners wouldn’t feel any impact if the courts ultimately accept his arguments.
Mexico has done what the U.S. failed to do: bring an effective lawsuit that could change the way guns are sold in this country and trafficked to others. It’s part of a promising new movement, led by my organization, Global Action on Gun Violence, to bring international pressure on the U.S. gun industry and policymakers to crack down on the illegal gun market like the rest of the world does. While the U.S. has abundantly demonstrated it can’t or won’t take effective action on guns, international actors, unconstrained by our gun-friendly politics, can and will.
The resulting reforms will not prevent law-abiding people from buying guns, but they will stop the supply of guns to straw buyers, traffickers, and other criminals. The U.S. stands to benefit as much or more than Mexico.
All you have to do is read Mexico’s initial complaint, which Lowy helped to create, to know what a lie that is.
