Category: Scratch a Lib-Find a Tyrant

We already have that in Missouri

Texas Senators Approve Measure Strengthening Right to Self-Defense
While Texas is already a castle doctrine state, individuals whom a grand jury declines to prosecute may still face civil action after exercising self-defense.

Texas senators have approved a measure strengthening the state’s protections for justified use of force or deadly force in self-defense situations.

Senate Bill 1730, filed by State Sen. Bob Hall (R–Edgewood), passed 26-3-2 on Monday.

The measure would prevent a claimant from recovering civil damages for personal injury or death if a grand jury has declined to pursue, thrown out, or acquitted the defendant of criminal charges.

In addition, if the claimant is found to be prohibited from seeking civil action, the proposal would require them to pay court costs and the defendant’s attorney fees.

Hall explained when laying out the measure before lawmakers that Texas is a castle doctrine state, meaning individuals are permitted to use force or deadly force in order to defend themselves on their own property.

“However, under current Texas law, individuals may file civil lawsuits seeking damages for personal injury or death resulting from the use of force or deadly force, even in cases where the defendants’ actions have been deemed lawful in a criminal proceeding,” claimed Hall.

The senator further argued that the current system creates “a substantial financial and emotional burden” for defendants who are faced with lawsuits after having already been cleared of criminal charges.

State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt (D–Austin) pointed out that the standards for civil and criminal actions are different, with criminal action requiring proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” and civil action having lesser standards.

Hall said that, although he is not an attorney and could not speak on Eckhardt’s comments directly, the intent of his measure is to “protect someone who has acted lawfully in their home … from an arduous civil case.”

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SOMEONE SHOULD BE FIRED AFTER CNN ANALYST GOES ON RACIST RANT AGAINST WHITE AFRIKANERS

Things got wild on CNN on Monday night after a former Obama staffer and current CNN analyst decided to go on a racist rant over President Donald Trump admitting 48 South African refugees.

As RedState has reported, South Africa’s ruling party has infamously made singing “Kill the Boer,” which translates to “kill the farmer,” a staple of their political rallies. For context, the song specifically refers to white farmers (Afrikaners) and dates back to the country’s apartheid days. Laws to confiscate their land and extra-judicial killings have taken center stage over the last several years.

For some reason, though, that has greatly offended Democrats, who have finally found refugees they do not want to admit into the country. Funny how that works, right? I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. On the other hand, here’s Ashley Allison making it clear that it’s not one.

ALLISON: So if the Afrikaners don’t actually like the land, they can leave that country. 

JENNINGS: They are. They’re leaving to come here. These refugees are coming here.

ALLISON: No, they can leave and go to where their native land is, which is probably Germany or…

JENNINGS: Are you against them coming here?

PANELIST: Holland…

ALLISON: Holland, yes. 

JENNINGS: Are you against them coming here? 

ALLISON: I’m against the hypocrisy of this administration…

JENNINGS: No, no, that’s not the question. The question is are you against them coming here. 

ALLISON: If there was actually a genocide happening like there is other places in Sudan and the Congo, I would not, I’m not opposed for Congolese and for the Sudanese to come to Africa [America?] just like I’m not opposed to Venzualans and South Americans coming to America if they are fleeing and looking for asylum. What I am against…

JENNINGS: So just these 50 people, you’re against…

ALLISON: What I am against is that they are being given special treatment when there is not a genocide happening in South Africa, and they just don’t like the law of the land!

What an absolutely deranged thing to say on so many levels. Imagine, for a moment, if a Republican CNN panelist told black Americans that they can “leave and go to where their native land is” if they don’t like laws that physically and financially persecute them. Do you imagine that person would still have a job right now? Heck, they kicked Ryan James Girdusky off the air permanently for making a beeper joke about terrorist-supporter Mehdi Hasan, and the conservative commentator chimed in to provide this bit of insight on Allison’s rampant racism.

It should also be mentioned that pretending all South American refugees are legitimate and worthy of entry while singling out these South Africans is completely transparent. Most of the illegal aliens who crossed the border and claimed asylum were economic migrants. At no point did Allison have a problem with that or decry the standards by which they were being admitted. Let some white farmers with hundreds of years of lineage in Africa show up, and suddenly she wants to proclaim only the persecutions she approves of count. There’s no good explanation for that except that she’s exactly what she appears to be, which is a blatant racist.

Understand that as much as Trump brought these Afrikaners over to help them, he also did it because he knew Democrats would react like this and expose themselves. He threw the bait out there, and they gobbled it up because they just can’t help themselves. Meanwhile, CNN is just fine with racism on their airwaves as long as it comes from the “right” people.

Inside the mind of the politically violent

Starting in 2016, how many of us heard the phrase “bash the fash” or “punch a Nazi” somewhere? I know I heard it or saw it all over the place. Those who espoused such things argued that this kind of thing was acceptable because the threat was so dire. They had every right to resort to violence in the face of what they argued was violence.

Of course, no one actually did anything to hurt them, but it didn’t matter because they’d already rationalized it in their minds.

Most of those who said it were big on talk, short on action. That’s probably for the best, really, because most of those couldn’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag.

But now, with Trump’s return to the White House, I expected to hear a repeat of those mantras. I really haven’t, all things considered.

Instead, the violence is real, not rhetoric.

And while the firebombings and attempted assassination make the bigger news, even more pedestrian assaults happen, and we’ve got a glimpse inside the mind of one of those attackers.

WSU student Jay Sani said he was attacked by instructor Patrick Mahoney and Gerald Hoff after Mahoney forcibly took his red Trump hat which read “Trump 2024 Take America Back.” The altercation reportedly occurred outside The Coug, a well-known campus bar, and was captured on surveillance cameras.

According to Sani, Mahoney ripped the hat off his head and taunted him by saying “Go get it, b***h,” before repeatedly punching him in the back. Hoff then kicked Sani several times, while Mahoney grabbed him by the chest and slammed him to the ground. Sani said he was left with multiple bruises.

Pullman police located and interviewed Mahoney and Hoff within hours. Both men admitted to the attack.

Mahoney told police that he had seen Sani on campus before and knew he was a “right-wing dude.” He admitted that he grabbed his hat, threw it, and said “Go get it.”

Hoff admitted, “We did grab him and threw him to the ground.”

Despite their admissions, Mahoney claimed he did not hit Sani and said he didn’t believe he had done anything illegal. Police, however, emphasized that the incident involved unwanted physical contact. Mahoney also blamed Sani, telling officers he “got what’s coming to him.”

Sani only came forward now because it looks like Mahoney might be reinstated, even after assaulting a student.

What’s interesting to me, though not surprising, is the argument that Sani “got what’s coming to him” simply because he wore a Trump hat.

Note that nothing we see here that these two said to the police really contradicts anything of relevance. They say they didn’t punch Sani, which isn’t surprising since it’s clear they figure that’s what assault is, but they admit to throwing him on the ground. They admit to taking his hat and throwing it, telling him to go and get it like he’s a dog.

They admitted to everything needed to justify charges, and they did it because they felt completely justified. They even told the police Sani “got what’s coming to him” simply because he was a Trump supporter.

In the mind of the leftist, everything they want to do is righteous, and anyone who opposes it is evil. They believe anything necessary to achieve their goal is good and just, including blatant assault over simply supporting the “wrong” guy for president.

Sani didn’t do anything. There’s no evidence he said anything. Even if it did talk smack, that’s grounds for talking smack in return, not snatching his property and assaulting him.

Now, let’s think about things like the vandalism of Teslas, the attacks against Tesla dealerships, the Trump assassination attempts and plots, the attack on the Pennsylvania Governor’s Mansion, and whatever other insanity is yet to come.

These people all believe what they’re doing is righteous, that they’re the ones in the right, and everyone who opposes them is aligned with the forces of evil. The guy who attacked the governor’s mansion, for example, claimed that he was justified because of what Gov. Josh Shapiro—a Democrat, it should be noted—wanted to do to the Palestinian people.

They have decided that elections only have consequences when they win, and they will be the consequences when they lose. They’re ready to destroy each and every one of us if given half the chance.

Hell, look at Taylor Lorenz fangirling over Luigi Mangione. Yes, I get that there are a lot of people who have absolutely no sympathy for Magione’s alleged victim, but she crossed an insane line, not by just shrugging off a bad person dying, but by celebrating his murderer as if he’s the messiah or something.

As I noted over at Townhall, people like Taylor Lorenz are why I carry a gun. People like Mahoney and Hoff are, too.

Sooner or later, one of these leftist nutjobs is going to go beyond a simple assault and try something else.

They deserve the Kyle Rittenhouse Special, and they deserve it good and hard.

Why Do I Have Guns? Because of People Like Taylor Lorenz.

Former New York Times and Washington Post “journalist” Taylor Lorenz is not a very good person, but I want to start by making it very clear that the headline is not a threat against her. I wish her absolutely no physical or even psychological harm from any kind of violent encounter.

No, I carry a gun because of people like her, but not so much because I’m looking to hurt them.
I’m looking to make sure me and mine don’t get hurt by the kind of people who want to impress people like her.

As you may have heard, Lorenz embarrassed herself by fawning over UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s alleged killer. Luigi Mangione reportedly shot Thompson with a privately made firearm with a privately made suppressor on the streets of one of the most anti-gun cities in the country.

Mangione is someone that, apparently, many women find to be a good-looking guy. He doesn’t do it for me, but then again, dudes never will.

Lorenz, however, celebrated the murder from the start, and in her latest comments during an interview with CNN, she literally called Mangione “moral.”

Yes, the guy accused of killing another, who Lorenz believes did it, was the moral one. A lot of people agree with her.

This is sick and twisted, especially as this kind of celebratory attitude encourages others to kill people they disagree with or simply don’t like because they did something “bad.”

Yet Lorenz isn’t exactly my biggest fan, apparently. She blocked me on X shortly after I criticized what one might laughingly call her work. I said she sucked at her job and she got bent out of shape over it. It’s safe to say, at least at that moment, that she probably thought I was a bad person.

And now we know what Lorenz wants to see happen to “bad people.”

In this day and age, there are a ton of people who think like this. They’re the people firebombing Tesla dealerships or plotting to kill President Donald Trump or Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro because they don’t like what they believe these people represent.

So why would anyone believe those deemed “bad” won’t become the target of people who want to be seen as “good” by their side, by people like Lorenz?

While I don’t think I’m likely to ever be the victim of any such thing, I’d be stupid to act like I’m impervious. That’s true of just about everyone out there, even those of us who don’t have a particularly high profile. I mean, despite being a health insurance CEO, Brian Thompson wasn’t that well known, all things considered.

People like Lorenz celebrate the murder of people they don’t like, which feeds into the idea that the ends justify even the most violent means. It doesn’t matter whether there are non-violent means available; they still support violence.

Taylor Lorenz will likely never act violently herself. Not for her politics and not for much of anything else, except maybe in her own defense.
But her and people like her celebrating and swooning over a killer and pretending he’s a hero has the potential to result in a whole lot more deaths than Luigi Mangione could have possibly carried out himself.

 Would The Violent Left Try to Influence the Supreme Court if it Takes the Maryland ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban Case?

I haven’t wanted to be so grim and say it out loud, but the results of this survey raises another separate reason I’ve been hoping Snope, the Maryland “assault weapons” ban case the Supreme Court is thinking about taking, is a per curiam decision despite the long odds of that happening.

If SCOTUS grants cert, I deeply fear unhinged anti-gunners will commit mass shootings to try and sway the Court in the months between a grant and a ruling.

This isn’t a farfetched fear. We’ve already had at least two high profile mass shooters say in their manifestos they were motivated in part by wanting to advance gun control.

In an environment where some of the left seems to be embracing political violence, committing terrible crimes to influence a Court ruling wouldn’t be all that surprising. Better to decide Snope instantly on a per curiam and deny them that motivation. And it should be decided per curiam anyway, given Heller should have settled any hardware issues as to commonly used arms.

The Globalist Authoritarians Are Playing With Fire

What happened with Marine Le Pen, the most popular politician in France who was just banned from standing for election on the flimsiest of pretenses, is no exception. It’s becoming the rule around the West and in other places, too, where being outside the mainstream of authorized establishment left-leaning globalist politics has become criminalized.

In some places, like the UK and Spain, it takes the form of persecuting people for saying things that those in power don’t want to hear. In other places, like Germany, upstart populist parties that earned a significant number of votes are informally, and sometimes formally, marginalized and threatened with being banned. But it’s the criminal persecution of leaders that is becoming the go-to.

It happened to Bolsonaro in Brazil, Netanyahu in Israel, Georgescu in Romania, and Le Pen in France. In each of these cases, the establishment authoritarians essentially attempted to frame a politician they couldn’t beat at the ballot box. Of course, their American analogs tried to do the same thing to Donald Trump here, and when that didn’t work, their allies tried to murder him. Thankfully, they failed at both – with the people who instigated these atrocities too dumb to know that they are the ones who should be the most thankful they failed.

These are not the acts of strong and confident leaders who believe in the strength and popularity of their ideology. These are the cowardly acts of authoritarians who differ from Putin not in their nature but only in their extent. They haven’t thrown anybody out of a fifth-story window yet that we know of, though we don’t know if they actively put the murderer who tried to kill Trump in Butler up to it – the one who tried to ambush him in Florida was an active member of their collective – but they would’ve cheered if either attempt had succeeded.

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Manhattan DA calls on 3D printing companies to deter creation of ghost guns

With crimes involving ghost guns on the rise, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., is calling on a 3D printer manufacturer to put more safeguards in place to prevent the spread of 3D-printed guns and gun parts.

Bragg penned a letter to Shenzhen Creality 3D Technology Co., Ltd. (Creality), which produces 3D printers available to individual consumers, to install their printers with an available 3D-printing software program that detects the shapes of common gun parts and blocks their printing. Bragg also called on Creality to take down any online blueprints, also known as CAD files, from its cloud platform, and to ban the creation of illicit weapons in the company’s user agreement.

The letter comes after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold federal regulations, which the DA’s office filed an amicus brief in support of last summer, requiring ghost gun parts to have serial numbers and compelling background checks for prospective buyers of ghost gun home-assembly kits.
“We are calling on companies that sell 3D-printers to work with us to stem the flow of dangerous weapons into our communities by implementing targeted, commonsense fixes. Too often, gun violence tragically takes innocent lives and tears at the fabric of our communities. Over the past several years, the number of illegal, 3D-printed firearms and ghost guns has increased significantly. We have an aggressive and holistic approach to combatting gun violence alongside our law enforcement partners but we cannot do it alone. We are hopeful that we can partner with these companies and make a meaningful impact on public safety,” said District Attorney Bragg.

Creality printers have been previously seized during searches by law enforcement in New York City, including recent cases; the DA’s office cites the cases against Luigi Mangione and Robert Guerrero, which are still in progress, as well as Cory Davis and Cliffie Thomspon, both of whom plead guilty to manufacturing ghost guns.

Since 2020, the DA’s Office has been cracking down on use and possession of ghost guns and illegal firearms, creating the Ghost Gun Initiative with the NYPD. Between 2021 and 2024, homicides decreased by 20%, and shootings decreased by 45% in Manhattan.

In 2023, Bragg introduced legislation to close loopholes in New York’s gun laws to make manufacturing 3D-printed and ghost guns and gun parts a felony. The legislation would also make it a misdemeanor to share, sell or distribute files containing blueprints for 3D-printed firearms components.

Bragg will be sending similar letters to other leading consumer brands of 3D printers in the coming weeks. Click here to read the full letter.

“The Real Motive of Liberals have nothing to do with the welfare of other people. Instead, they have two related goals–to establish themselves as morally and intellectually superior to the rather distasteful population of common people, and to gather as much power as possible to tell those distasteful common people how they must live their lives.”
– Thomas Sowell

Attendees at AOC and Bernie Sanders Denver Rally Openly Threaten to Kill President Trump.

Attendees of a recent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders rally in Denver were openly calling for the murder of President Donald Trump. We guess the Democrat Party has abandoned its ‘Joy’ message from the 2024 presidential election.

Have a listen, they’re not bashful. (WATCH – PROFANITY WARNING)

As ambassadors of the far left wing of the Democrat Party, this sentiment is in line with the socialism and Marxism the two advocate.

We’ll be hearing a lot more of this the closer we get to the midterm elections. Commenters say it’s bad for America.

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Keep right on talking Chuck…….

UN Judge, Onetime Columbia University Human Rights Fellow, Found Guilty of Slavery.

A United Nations judge was convicted on Thursday of trafficking a young woman to the United Kingdom and forcing her to work as a slave.

Ugandan judge Lydia Mugambe, 49, “exploited and abused” the victim, prosecutors said, forcing her to work as an unpaid maid and caregiver while barring her from seeking other employment. A jury found Mugambe guilty of multiple offenses, including facilitating illegal immigration, forced labor, and witness intimidation, the Independent reported.

Mugambe was a fellow housed within Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, whose fellows work to “address some aspect of a history of gross human rights violations in their society, country, and/or region,” in 2017.

Columbia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mugambe became a judge on the U.N. International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in May 2023, even though police had been called to her home in Oxfordshire three months earlier, according to the Independent. Mugambe was studying for a law Ph.D. at Oxford at the time.

A jury agreed with the prosecution’s case that Mugambe, who also serves as a judge on Uganda’s High Court, conspired with Ugandan diplomat John Leonard Mugerwa in a “very dishonest” quid pro quo. Mugerwa, the prosecutors said, arranged for the Ugandan embassy to sponsor the victim’s entry into the United Kingdom under false pretenses, while Mugambe attempted to influence a judge overseeing a case in which Mugerwa was involved.

Mugambe denied the charges, insisting she always treated the young woman with “love, care, and patience,” the BBC reported.

SCOTUS is going to have to do something about this and slap these silly lower courts down, or things aren’t going to be pretty

Seventh Circuit Panel: SBRs Aren’t ‘Arms’ Protected by the Second Amendment

The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms. That should mean any weapon used for offensive or defensive acts. The reason was very clear. It was intended for us to be able to maintain a militia that could defend this nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

But the Seventh Circuit has decided that short-barreled rifles, or SBRs, aren’t arms covered by the amendment.

(I had to use a screenshot that I linked since X is having issues with the embed codes)

Now, this is a problem for a lot of reasons.

First, let’s talk a bit about the Miller decision. Yes, it’s a Supreme Court decision that lower courts have had to contend with for ages now. However, Miller dealt with a sawed-off shotgun. The Court in that decision said that such a weapon had no militia use, thus it wasn’t covered by the Second Amendment. That was wrong, of course, because that ruling was issued in 1934, so after shotguns had been used so effectively in World War I that the Germans tried to get using them considered a war crime.

Further, Miller himself was dead, so there wasn’t really another side arguing one way or the other in that case.

Still, when you look at Bruen, it doesn’t say anything about how you can just decide something isn’t an arm simply because you don’t think it’s useful for warfare.

Of course, then there’s the fact that if SBRs aren’t useful for warfare as a tool of the militia, then why is the standard issue weapon for the United States Army technically an SBR? The M4 has a barrel length of 14.5 inches, which is an inch and a half shorter than what is necessary for a rifle to not be considered an SBR. If SBRs aren’t useful for militia use, then why is it issued to every one of our combat troops and was used in pretty much every firefight out troops saw in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Now, let’s talk about the “step two in our Bruen” thing that’s cut off.

We turn to step two in our Bruen analysis in the interest of completeness. As discussed below, even if short-barreled rifles were “arms” within the meaning of the Second Amendment, historical tradition likely supports regulating them.

The court goes on to argue that Rahimi permits similar but more modern laws can be considered.

Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692. When the historical laws “address[ed] particular problems” there is a good chance “contemporary laws imposing similar restrictions for similar reasons” are also permissible. Id. The laws do not need to “precisely match”—the contemporary one must only “comport with the principles underlying the Second Amendment….” Id.

Now, I’m not an attorney, but this sure looks like the Rahimi decision seems to suggest that contemporary laws can be applied when the historical laws addressed either that problem or similar ones. In other words, if the Founding Fathers were trying to address drunk people carrying guns, as they did, a more contemporary law seeking to address a similar problem would apply.

Instead, the Seventh Circuit judges just decided to accept contemporary laws as good enough simply because they don’t like the idea of SBRs.

That’s not even getting into the possibility that these judges’ nominations might not even be valid since everything Biden signed looks to have been the result of an autopen and we can’t be sure Biden even knew what was happening in the first place.

Mr Keane is one of the top 3 men put forth to be the new ATF director

Gun Control Lawmaker Makes Actual Threats of Public Violence in Congress

By Larry Keane
Congressman Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) reminded the country last week why the Second Amendment is so vital to the United States.

The former Long Beach mayor called on the Democratic Party to “bring actual weapons” in the “fight for democracy.”

Those are chilling and dangerous words coming from a lawmaker who wants to strip every law-abiding citizen of their rights to keep and bear arms. Rep. Garcia made the call-to-action at the same time he used derogatory language to belittle Elon Musk, who has been heading up President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The remarks weren’t the product of heated and passionate debate. He planned them. Rep Garcia brought a poster-sized photo of Musk to the hearing, referring to the image as a “d— pic.”

After that, he doubled down. On both his foul language and his call to arms.

“I think [Musk is] also harming the American public in an enormous way,” Rep. Garcia told CNN’s host Brianna Keilar, according to Fox News. “And what I think is really important and what the American public want is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for democracy, for the future of this country.”

‘Incite Violence’

The row is rooted in President Trump’s slashing of the federal workforce, a promise he made on the campaign trail. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) wasn’t standing for it. She quickly introduced a censure resolution saying “violence, threats of violence, or attempts to incite violence against Federal employees should not be tolerated in the House of Representatives.”

“The Left is running like roaches with the light on over @DOGE,” Rep. Mace posted on X. “@RepRobertGarcia went far beyond the pale last night, calling for weapons to be used against @ElonMusk. This won’t be ignored. We’re making an example out of him.”

Rep. Garcia dismissed anyone considering taking him at his word for American citizens to heed his call and take up arms for his agenda.

“Obviously, I was using a figure of speech,” Rep. Garcia told The Long Beach Post.

Except he wasn’t. And he didn’t. Rep. Garcia said he wanted the Democratic Party to “bring actual weapons.” Then, he doubled down on it.

This might be the first time Rep. Garcia has indicated any support for private firearm ownership. He’s in favor of banning Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) and banning adults under 21 from possessing a firearm. He also wants so-called “universal background checks” which would require a national firearm registry to work and would be very convenient that Rep. Garcia would know exactly who owned what firearms and where they are stored. Rep. Garcia wants to institute a federal licensing system. That would be even more convenient because he could ensure only those who support his political agenda would be approved.

Sound Orwellian enough? Not for Rep. Garcia. He wants people to “bring actual weapons” in his fight against President Trump and those carrying out his agenda. That’s an actual threat of war. Pitting Americans against a duly-elected president and the administration carrying out that president’s agenda – and the duly-elected Congress and the judiciary – isn’t only maniacal. It’s the very definition of tyranny.

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Missouri Democrats Cry Foul as Governor Addresses Crime Without Gun Control

Given the pro-2A majorities in Missouri’s House and Senate, there’s virtually no chance that the scant number of Democrats elected to the legislature are going to be able to pass their extensive gun control agenda. The big question this year is what, if any, bills strengthening the right to keep and bear arms will make it to Gov. Mike Kehoe’s desk.

Still, that’s not stopping some Kansas City and St. Louis-area lawmakers from complaining about Kehoe’s plan to address violent crime and its lack of anti-gun initiatives.

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BLUF:
On Friday, all overseas USAID missions are to be shut down. For now, the gravy train is over, but given how they were able to hide what is arguably a covert piece of state-run media that targeted a president, what else is buried in these file grants? DOGE will find out.

Wait, USAID Was Involved in Donald Trump’s Impeachment?

USAID will effectively shut down on Friday. Most of the staff will be furloughed as it’s absorbed into the State Department. Under the president’s direction, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency unearthed a web of corruption, waste, and fraud that wasn’t necessarily shocking but jarring, nonetheless. Democrats are livid that this agency is being gutted, and we may know why. They seem to have subsidized and played a significant role in the 2019 impeachment of Donald Trump.

The agency appears to have been pulling the strings of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which was cited multiple times by the CIA whistleblower that sparked the quid pro quo circus surrounding Trump, Ukraine, and military aid. Independent journalists Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag did a deep-dive into this sordid government web, where the purpose of OCCRP wasn’t your usual investigative journalism—USAID seems to have had massive sway regarding agenda, hiring practices, and mission.

This story on Public ruffled the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project’s feathers, which threatened Shellenberger and company with a lawsuit, claiming their premise was false and defamatory. The second part is a lengthy sifting through of what USAID’s relationship is with OCCRP, the latter of which is trying to create degrees of separation. Even then, USAID officials offered statements that cast severe doubt on the OCCRP’s supposed independence, which even outlets like ProPublica admit. Drop Site News, an outlet helmed by former Intercept reporters, did well to piece together this seedy relationship. They, too, have been slapped with threats of a lawsuit. It’s quite the read here, folks. And given what we know about the waste and fraud from USAID, it was the perfect vehicle for the Deep State and other anti-Trump staffers at government agencies to farm this out (via Public):

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