In the final minutes of his presidency, Joe Biden pre-emptively pardoned several family members, including his brothers James, Francis and Frank Biden, and sister Valerie Biden Owens.
Biden said the pardons were intended to shield his family from politically motivated attacks and should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment of any wrongdoing.
I would like to see someone challenge preemptive and blanket pardons. It doesn’t seem Constitutional to pardon people for unnamed crimes for which they have not been charged.
Excellent. The People voted for change and reversing Biden’s traitorous dissolution of our national borders is Job #1.
Trump said his administration is planning on executing mass deportations on undocumented immigrants “very quickly” after he takes office, reiterating his desire to “get the criminals out of our country.”
“It’ll begin very early, very quickly,” he told NBC News. “I can’t say which cities because things are evolving.”
“We have to get the criminals out of our country,” he added.
Trump has long previewed plans for mass deportations of immigrants. CNN previously reported the incoming Trump administration will focus at first on deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal backgrounds in major metropolitan areas such as Chicago, Denver and Washington, DC.
I encourage you to go read the Weiss Report regarding the investigation and prosecution of Hunter Biden in full. The media is fixating on hoe Weiss claps back at President Biden for slandering the investigators and prosecutors. You get gems like this:
The Constitution provides the President 8 with broad authority to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United 9 States, U.S. Const. art. II, § 2, cl. 1, but nowhere does the Constitution give the President 10 the authority to rewrite history.
But what really sticks out is the sleazy, illegal lifestyle Hunter was leading while spending millions of dollars. Where did these millions come from? Hunter didn’t hold down an actual job. He wasn’t running an enterprise. His lifestyle didn’t allow any time to conduct legitimate business. How was he able to obtain and spend millions of dollars without owning anything or working?
It’s clear as day. He was selling policy and access while kicking up a percentage to the Big Guy. This criminal enterprise makes Gotti look like a lightweight. Not to mention the fact that he did all of this while refusing to pay millions of dollars in taxes. When Joe Biden rails against millionaires not paying their fair share (whatever that means), he’s talking about his own son, and, probably, himself.
The Bidens might be the most corrupt family to ever reach the height of political power in America.
Two prisoners who are among the 37 federal inmates whose death sentences were commuted last month by President Joe Biden — a move that spares them from the death chamber — have taken an unusual stance: They’re refusing to sign paperwork accepting his clemency action.
Shannon Agofsky and Len Davis, both inmates at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, filed emergency motions in federal court in the state’s southern district on Dec. 30 seeking an injunction to block having their death sentences commuted to life in prison without parole.
The men believe that having their sentences commuted would put them at a legal disadvantage as they seek to appeal their cases based on claims of innocence.
Good. This has been a witch hunt and massive misallocation of resources. I hope Trump every DOJ official who participated in seeking out and prosecuting any but the handful of malcontents who deserved it.
CNN —
President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t been sworn in yet, but his looming return has already upended hundreds of pending prosecutions against his supporters who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and has disrupted the ongoing effort to arrest more rioters.
The historic effort by Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents to investigate the deadly Trump-inspired storming of the Capitol has led to more than 1,570 arrests in nearly all 50 states, making it the largest criminal probe in American history. New arrests are slowly still trickling in, four years later, including recent cases against a member of the Proud Boys and a rioter who tried to stab police with a flagpole.
But the political reality has already tanked morale inside the Justice Department division that handles these cases — and is hampering efforts to secure guilty pleas in about 300 pending cases, as defendants balk at negotiations, according to a federal law enforcement official involved in the sprawling investigation.
My prayers go out to the families impacted by the school shooting in Madison yesterday. There is always a flood of wrong information and bad “hot takes” after something like this. I’ve followed the news closely and it appears to be yet another troubled child who lashed out. It looks like there were significant warning signs, but hindsight is always 20/20. I thought the police chief’s press conference yesterday was pure Madison where the most animated he got during the entire time was when he was talking about whether or not the shooter was trans. This part of the story struck me as odd too:
It is not yet confirmed if Rupnow’s family – who are cooperating with the investigation – were gun owners.
Police raided her Delaware Boulevard home on Monday night to find anything she may have left behind. A door appeared to have been battered down and left on the ground and CNN reported that officers had thrown stun grenades into the home.
Barnes said they’re currently speaking with the shooter’s father at one of their facilities and that he’s cooperating.
‘The parents are fully cooperating, we have no reason to believe that they have committed a crime at this time,’ Barnes said, before offering empathy for her father.
If the parents are cooperating, why did they smash in the door and throw grenades? Were they worried about another threat inside? Why? This seems like a ridiculous overreaction if the parents were cooperating.
These pardons are not grants of clemency for people wrongly punished or an acknowledgement of a life well lived after a grave error. These pardons are for truly vile people, rightfully convicted, who have not paid for their crimes. Is Biden selling these pardons or is he just evil?
Victims of major public corruption cases in Pennsylvania and Illinois are angry that President Joe Biden granted clemency this week to two convicted officials.
The commutations were announced Thursday as part of a historic clemency package for 1,500 convicted criminals who, the White House said, “deserve a second chance.”
The two convicted officials whose cases sparked outrage – a crooked Pennsylvania judge and a notorious Illinois fraudster – both had already been released from prison early and put on house arrest during the Covid-19 pandemic. Biden’s actions now end that punishment.
The president has already faced bipartisan criticism over his highly controversial pardon of his son Hunter Biden, who was convicted earlier this year of 12 tax and gun crimes.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said there were more than two dozen confidential human sources in the crowd on Jan. 6, but only three were assigned by the FBI to present for the event, while stressing that none of the sources were authorized or directed by the bureau to “break the law” or “encourage others to commit illegal acts,” Fox News has learned.
[…]
“Today’s report also details our findings regarding FBI CHSs who were in Washington, D.C., on January 6,” the report states. “Our review determined that none of these FBI CHSs was authorized by the FBI to enter the Capitol or a restricted area or to otherwise break the law on January 6, nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6.”
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security said Thursday that they had seen “no evidence” that mysterious drone sightings over New Jersey and adjacent areas in recent weeks “pose a national security or public safety threat.”
The agencies also said they had no evidence of a “foreign nexus” to the drones.
“Upon review of available imagery, it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft, operating lawfully,” the agencies said in a statement.
“There are no reported or confirmed drone sightings in any restricted air space,” the agencies said.
As New York City prosecutors worked Thursday to bring murder charges against Luigi Mangione in the brazen killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, supporters of the suspect are donating tens of thousands of dollars for a defense fund established for him, leaving law enforcement officials worried Mangione is being turned into a martyr.
Several online defense funds have been created for Mangione by anonymous people, including one on the crowdfunding website GiveSendGo that as of Thursday afternoon had raised over $50,000.
The GiveSendGo defense fund for the 26-year-old Mangione was established by an anonymous group calling itself “The December 4th Legal Committee,” apparently in reference to the day Mangione allegedly ambushed and gunned down Thompson in Midtown Manhattan as the executive walked to his company’s shareholders conference at the New York Hilton hotel.
A judge granted a motion from Manhattan prosecutors to dismiss the more serious charge of second-degree manslaughter against Daniel Penny on Friday in his trial over the chokehold death of Jordan Neely on a New York City subway last year.
The ruling clears the way for the jury to consider a remaining lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide. It came after a Manhattan jury said they were deadlocked twice on the manslaughter charge and Penny’s defense attorneys renewed their motion for a mistrial.
Over defense objections, Judge Maxwell Wiley agreed with prosecutors, who argued that dismissing the first count of second-degree manslaughter eliminates the defense’s concern about a compromise verdict.
Any system can be hacked. The fact that this exists is a risk to the privacy and security of all Americans. TBF, it poses the same risk even if it wasn’t hacked.
The third has been systems that telecommunications companies use in compliance with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which allows law enforcement and intelligence agencies with court orders to track people’s communications. CALEA systems can include classified court orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which processes some U.S. intelligence court orders. The FBI official declined to say whether any classified material was accessed.
We all knew it was coming, but that doesn’t make it any less scummy. The Bidens are dirtbags to the core and prove it again and again.
WashingtonCNN —
President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he has pardoned his son Hunter Biden, who faced sentencing this month on gun crime and tax convictions, marking a reversal as he prepares to leave office.
“Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter,” the president said in a statement. It is a “full and unconditional pardon,” according to a copy of the executive grant of clemency.
[…]
By pardoning his son, Joe Biden has reneged on a public promise that he made repeatedly before and after dropping out of the 2024 presidential race. The president and his top White House spokesperson have said unequivocally, including after Trump won the 2024 election, that he would not pardon Hunter Biden or commute his sentence.
The pardon means Hunter Biden won’t be sentenced for his crimes, and it eliminates any chance of his being sent to prison, which was a possibility. Once the judges overseeing his cases are notified of the pardon, they’ll likely cancel the sentencing hearings, which were slated for December 12 in the gun case and December 16 in the tax case.
The pardon covers any potential federal crimes that Hunter Biden committed “from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024,” which, importantly, covers his entire tenure on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma. He had faced scrutiny for his controversial foreign business dealings.
(CNN) — Top telecom executives met with US national security officials at the White House on Friday as concerns mount over a long-running Chinese cyber-espionage campaign that has targeted some of the most senior US political figures in the country.
The hackers burrowed deep into some major US telecom providers to spy on phone calls and text messages and have proved difficult to kick out of some networks, people briefed on the matter said.
[…]
The hack is shaping up to be one of the biggest cyber and national security challenges facing the incoming Trump administration.
It is “by far” the “worst telecom hack in our nation’s history,” Sen. Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia and chairman of the intelligence committee, told CNN.
But the full scope of the hack, who it affects and its impact on national security are still being investigated.
The FBI has notified fewer than 150 victims, most in the Washington, DC, area, according to Warner. But all of those victims have likely called or sent texts to numerous people, meaning the number of records accessed by the hackers is likely far greater. The hackers could listen to the calls of specific targets for certain periods of time, according to Warner.
US officials and private cyber experts are keeping a running tally of the number of telecom firms breached. US broadband and internet providers AT&T, Verizon and Lumen have all been targeted in the hacking effort, CNN previously reported.
A small amount of justice for a murder that would not have happened if we had a secure border. May her family find some peace.
The man accused of killing Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, at the University of Georgia in February was found guilty of murder on Wednesday. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, is a Venezuelan citizen who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in 2022. He was released by border officials while his immigration case was awaiting review, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The messages “appear to be robotext messages,” and the Nevada’s Attorney General’s Office is working with law enforcement to investigate their source, the office said in a statement on X.
Whoever is sending the racist text messages is using anonymizing software to obscure their location, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told CNN on Friday. At least some of the messages were sent using an email service routing traffic through Poland, but it does not mean it is where the sender is, the attorney general said.
“They could be coming from Napoleonville, Louisiana, for all we know. We don’t know where they are originating from,” Murrill said.
Murrill said Thursday she directed state investigators “to fully investigate the origins of these disgusting texts that only intend to divide us.” The Louisiana Bureau of Investigations is “still trying to trace where everything is actually originating from,” she told CNN.
Attorneys general in Washington, DC, Virginia, New Jersey, Illinois and Maryland have condemned the messages and urged those who feel under threat to contact law enforcement.
The Dutch king says Jewish people must feel safe in the Netherlands, after violent attacks against Israeli football fans in the centre of Amsterdam.
Willem-Alexander said “our history has taught us how intimidation goes from bad to worse,” adding that the country could not ignore “antisemitic behaviour”.
Youths on scooters had criss-crossed the Dutch capital in “hit-and-run” attacks on Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters who were visiting Amsterdam for a Europa League match, authorities said.
Police said five people were treated in hospital and others suffered minor injuries. At least 62 people have been arrested.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation quietly updated its 2022 crime data to show an increase in violent crimes, despite previous data showing violent crimes had fallen that year, which was touted as a victory for the Biden-Harris administration.
“For some reason, the media, they did pick the crime data that they think goes and makes the Democrats look as good as possible. And then even when the crime data that they’ve relied on turns out by the very source of that data to be wrong, none of them fix it,” John Lott, the founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, told Fox News Digital in a Zoom interview this week.
The FBI released its annual crime in the nation data for 2022 last year, which found a 2.1% decrease in violent crimes compared to 2021, Lott explained. The data was lauded by Democrats and the media as part of a turning point for crime woes in the U.S., following the crime wave of 2020, when defund-the-police protests and riots swept the nation and the pandemic’s stay-at-home orders upended daily life.
Now, the data reflects a net increase of 80,029 violent crimes in 2022 over 2021. Lott found that under the umbrella of violent crime, there were an additional 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies and 37,091 aggravated assaults that year.
What a shame. Memphis is a fun city. Beale Street is getting a little worn, but still a lot of fun.
Memphis, Tennessee, once known for its blues, soul and rock ‘n’ roll music, has now turned into a haven for crime and drug abuse.
A study by WalletHub has named the Southern city the most dangerous city to live in America among the 182 cities surveyed.
The United States Department of Justice also declared that this once-flourishing metro has the highest number of homicides – 129 in the first half of 2024.
