Federal Prosecutors Investigate Political Firm Owned by Daughter of Crooked Judge in Trump’s Hush Money Trial

Federal prosecutors are investigating the firm once owned by the daughter of the crooked judge who oversaw President Trump’s hush money trial in Manhattan.

Juan Merchan was the far-left, conflicted judge who oversaw Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s Stormy Daniels ‘hush money’ trial against President Trump.

The judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, is a far-left political operative who worked for the Biden-Harris campaign.

Loren Merchan’s firm, Authentic Campaigns, Inc., has received tens of millions of dollars from Democrats who want to take down Trump.

According to The New York Post, Loren Merchan helped Democrats raise $93 million off of her father’s case.

The New York Times reported that the US Attorney’s Office in Chicago subpoenaed Authentic Campaigns Inc for internal communications with Democrat clients.

The subpoena initially asked for communications from the Biden and Harris campaigns, New York Governor Kathy Hochul and the DNC, according to The Times.

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Former Democrat Activist Explains How the Party Got Captured by the Radical Left

Evan Barker is a former Democrat activist who broke with her party following the 2024 election. She recently wrote a book about it and has been making the media rounds for the last few weeks.

During a recent appearance on FOX News, she offered an explanation for how the Democrats became captured by the radical left.

According to Barker, when the Democrats repeatedly blocked Bernie Sanders from being the party nominee, the activist base of the party doubled down and began organizing with their own networks and donors. In other words, the Democrat Party did this to themselves.

From FOX News:

A former Bernie Sanders operative is sounding the alarm over what the Democratic Party has become, warning the far left has “overtaken” the party from within.

“Part of the reason it’s been overtaken is because the establishment tried really hard in 2020 to block us, and in 2019, after AOC won, they did a blacklist, and that actually backfired on them. And it made the far left grow stronger,” Evan Barker told “Jesse Watters Primetime.”

Barker, who raised money for Democratic candidates throughout her career before deciding to vote for Trump in 2024, argued that the Democratic establishment’s efforts to contain its insurgent flank ultimately backfired, pushing activists to build their own political infrastructure, from training one another to recruiting donors, including billionaires.

The result, Barker argued, is a party increasingly influenced from the inside by its activist base, donors and staffers, some of whom she says are considerably further left than the politicians they work for.

“I think they’ve kind of been captured from all sides. They have these hyper-left-leaning donors coupled with the staff that’s been radicalized and the base,” she said.

Barker said she has watched that shift play out even within the movement she once joined, pointing to Sanders’ positions on issues, including guns and immigration.

“I’ve seen him kind of be dragged further and further to the left by what he views as his message bearers, people like AOC and Ilhan Omar and now Abdul El-Sayed,” she added.

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Who Killed Jason Arday?

The strange and fascinating tale of the greatest con-man and fantasist of the twenty-first century has come to a macabre and shocking end. On Friday, Jason Arday was found dead in his London home. Police said that while his death was “unexpected, but is not believed to be suspicious,” which, whatever else it may mean, indicates that he wasn’t murdered, and apparently that he committed suicide. Yet the question of who really killed him, in a moral if not in a criminal sense, is still very much on the table.

Arday’s family immediately went into aggrieved victimhood mode, issuing a statement that clearly put the onus on those who had ridiculed and mocked Arday in the wake of the exposure of his truly breathtaking web of lies: “Jason was subjected to a campaign of sustained abuse” the family claimed, referring not simply to when his lies and plagiarism were exposed, but to his becoming the youngest black professor ever at Cambridge University four years ago. “The campaign of misinformation,” they added, “was too much for Jason, who was a gentle man and who always wanted to see the best in everyone.”

Wait a minute. Whose “campaign of misinformation”? Jason Arday was in no conceivable sense a victim of any “campaign of misinformation.” The only “campaign of misinformation” in the entire bizarre story of Jason Arday was the one he waged himself, in spinning what The Atlantic dubbed “a fabricated backstory filled with hard-to-believe details.”

Hard to believe is an understatement. The Atlantic provides a helpful summary: “He claimed to have been mute until age 11 and illiterate until 18, disadvantages that did not deter him from getting a Ph.D., which he earned by age 30. He claimed, too, that he had suffered from various medical conditions throughout his life, including autism, epilepsy, locked-in syndrome, testicular cancer, and a brain tumor. He was, by his account, a world-class endurance athlete who had racked up a variety of impressive feats, including running 600 miles in six days.”

Interestingly, The Atlantic then continues this list with examples of how rapturously the academic world received Arday, as if these were more examples of his “hard-to-believe” life story, when actually these are examples of how supposedly rational, evidence-based academics react when they encounter an obvious mountebank who just happens to confirm everything they want to believe about the world: “Then there were his academic accomplishments: Arday was billed as a once-in-a-generation talent, whose research in his field—the sociology of education—was ‘the best in the world,’ according to Hilary Cremin, the head of Cambridge’s faculty of education. He claimed to have received a book advance of 1.4 million in unspecified currency for his memoir, released this week by Simon & Schuster. It was a meteoric rise, until it wasn’t.”

Yes, and it was a meteoric rise, and a spectacular fall, not because of Arday’s talents, or lack thereof, or because of the skillfulness of his lies and plagiarism. In fact, he wasn’t actually very good at either. His purloining of other people’s work was clumsy and obvious, and his autobiographical claims strained credulity well beyond the breaking point for anyone who dared to ponder them rationally, but clearly, no one around him was willing to do so. He was more powerful than a locomotive? Okay. He could leap tall buildings in a single bound? Sure.

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U.S. Infrastructure Strikes Have Left Iranians in the South Without Livelihoods

When U.S. missiles struck the harbor outside in the port city of Badar Abbas last month, Sajjad saw his livelihood literally go up in smoke.

The small wooden fishing boat that had supported the 56-year-old and his family for years was reduced to a charred husk, along with dozens of other boats lining the docks. Sajjad told Drop Site News that nearly every fisherman he knows lost a vessel that night. Replacing a single boat now costs around 2 billion tomans (around $1,050)—far beyond what most families can afford.

“Both my children are in university,” Sajjad said. “Everything depended on that boat. Soon, I may not even be able to pay their tuition.”

When U.S. strikes resumed in early July following a two-month pause, the attacks focused heavily on southern Iran. Interviews with residents in hard-hit southern provinces like Khuzestan, Hormozgan, Sistan, and Baluchestan describe strikes not only on military facilities, but also on critical civilian infrastructure, including fishing ports, bridges, telecommunications networks, power plants, hospitals, and transportation corridors.

Dozens of communications towers have been knocked offline in repeated attacks, disrupting internet and telephone services. One attack on a transmission tower near Tappeh Aluakbar in Bandar Abbas killed five people, including a woman who died shielding her son with her body, local residents told Drop Site.

Transportation infrastructure has sustained similar damage. Alireza, a resident of Hormozgan who studies screenwriting and is carefully tracking recent events in the hopes of making a documentary about the war, described strikes on Tappeh Aluakbar overlooking Bandar Abbas, bridges linking Bandar Abbas to Khamir and Rudan, railway infrastructure, and key transportation routes connecting the province. At one destroyed crossing, road crews carved a temporary dirt route through a dry riverbed within hours simply to keep vehicles moving.

The damage extends to the sea as well: Alireza estimates that roughly 300 civilian fishing boats have been destroyed across Bandar Abbas, Bandar Lengeh, Sirik, and Jask, affecting the livelihoods of thousands of people. Two maritime search-and-rescue vessels operating near Bandar Abbas, Qeshm, and Hormuz Island were also put out of service.

Kharg Island, Iran’s principal oil export terminal, has long featured in discussions among U.S. officials and defense analysts as a strategically significant site and was bombed in March during the U.S.-Israeli aerial campaign. According to an Iranian military analyst who spoke to Drop Site on condition of anonymity for security reasons, if the U.S. ever sent ground troops to take over the island, Iran’s ability to reinforce Kharg would depend heavily on the transportation networks running through Hormozgan.

“They’re not simply destroying roads,” the analyst said. “They’re reducing Iran’s ability to move personnel, equipment, and supplies before any future operation ever begins.”

Residents and medical workers in Khuzestan also describe the toll on civilians caused by the bombing campaign, particularly children.

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The Policewoman Who Remembered Britain Was Still Britain

Metropolitan Police officer stood on Whitechapel Road surrounded by men who wanted a Christian preacher stopped. One of them gave her his reason plainly: “This is Whitechapel. This is a Muslim area.”

Her answer shouldn’t have required courage.

“In this country, we have freedom of speech.”

From The Standard:

The video, filmed in Whitechapel, shows the officer defending a Christian preacher’s freedom of speech while being surrounded by a group of men.

The encounter, filmed in Whitechapel Road, has been widely shared on social media, and appears to have been shot last Monday, a day before the beginning of Ramadan.

In the footage, uploaded to YouTube channel Auditing Britain, a man holding a Bible can be heard preaching the Gospel just yards from the East London Mosque, one of the largest mosques in Western Europe, accommodating up to 7,000 worshippers for daily prayers.

The officer tells the group: “I understand that you guys don’t want to hear it, so I would just recommend that you walk away and don’t listen to him. He’s not in your home.”

A man wearing a facemask can be seen replying: “This is Whitechapel, this is a Muslim area.”

People are seen yelling at the preacher, with one bearded man shouting: “Talk about Jesus, don’t talk about Muhammad”, and another shouting “Your God is a Jew.”

One man accuses the preacher of “spreading hatred”, alleging that he was calling the Black Stone in the sacred Kaaba building in Mecca “a box”.

The preacher is also physically attacked by one man wearing a black duffel coat and mask, who shoves him in the back, causing him to stumble forward.

The officer continues to defend the preacher, explaining to the group: “In this country we have freedom of speech, the same way you guys have your freedom of speech.

“You guys don’t need to see eye-to-eye, and you don’t need to agree. You’re all more than welcome to stand here and have conversations with them, but they’re not being aggressive.”

She adds: “I understand that you guys don’t want to hear it, so I would recommend that you just move away and don’t listen to him.”

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This Might Be the Most Brutal Diagnosis of AOC You’ll Ever Hear

Kellyanne Conway appeared on Fox News’s The Five this week and gave a blunt yet extremely fair assessment of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.): she’s not actually doing her job.

“AOC stands for Always On Camera,” Conway said. “She is a performer, not a reformer. She went to Washington to legislate; that’s her job. She’s a pontificator, not a legislator.”

Conway piled on by pointing out that, in four years under President Joe Biden, AOC passed one bill. One. Conway’s point was simple: if you’re not good at legislating, you find something else to be good at, like living online, playing with your hair, and giggling every time someone asks whether you’d be fit to serve as commander-in-chief. Conway didn’t think that was funny. With the whole world watching, she said, that kind of response would be “embarrassing and a disaster.”

Just watch The Brink of War and imagine AOC in a similar situation. You can’t, because she’s an absolute joke. But I digress.

AOC has tried to distance herself from her old positions by claiming her rhetoric from years ago doesn’t reflect where she is today. Conway found that laughable. Five years isn’t ancient history, and she made the point with a sharp comparison: does AOC‘s position change with the seasons, too? If it’s raining, does she flip? If it’s October instead of April? Conway called the whole excuse disgraceful, and said both failed Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong and AOC had proven themselves untrustworthy to voters.

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Al Sharpton: If Dems Take House, Should Subpoena Police Who Said No Foul Play in Death of Black Teen Nolan Wells

Al Sharpton called on Democrats to investigate the death of 18-year-old Nolan Wells if they take control of the House.

Wells died after a July 4 boat trip to Horn Island, Mississippi, with three white teenagers. Sharpton, speaking alongside civil rights attorney Ben Crump and Wells’ family at a National Association of Black Journalists convention panel in Atlanta, said questions surrounding what happened and Mississippi’s racial history warrant further scrutiny.

“I don’t know what happened, but I got your history in Mississippi. And the history tells me: Black boy go out with three white kids, three white kids come back. There’s a blurred story on what happened,” Sharpton said.

“Some about this don’t make sense, given your history. And I’m going to stay on this until we find out what happened. It may be nothing, but we’re not going to leave that up to chance with people that are distorted. We’re going to stay on this case.”

Sharpton then turned to the November elections, arguing that a Democrat-controlled House could investigate the case if authorities fail to provide satisfactory answers.

“If we have a change in January and there is a Democratic House, I said that if Hakeem becomes the speaker, he needs to have the chair of Judiciary subpoena them to the Judiciary Department,” Sharpton continued.

Questions about Wells’ death have fueled widespread attention and demands for more information from authorities. Sharpton, actor and producer Tyler Perry, and former NFL player Terrell Owens have put up a combined $125,000 reward for information that could help authorities identify and convict anyone responsible for Wells’ death.

Sharpton also criticized local law enforcement for publicly suggesting that no crime had occurred.

“We can’t have someone in law enforcement saying there was no foul play before there was an investigation,” Sharpton said.

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High-End Russian Escort Plants Trash Bin Bomb That Kills Ukrainian Submarine Commander Defector on Orders of Kiev

Not a word of condemnation of Kiev’s bombing spree by the Western media.

While all the MSM trumpets that Ukraine is ‘turning the tables in the war’ and highlights every single missile and drone strike on Russian territory, there’s one aspect of this war that is literally booming.

The Kiev bombing campaign abroad: be it a Ukrainian oligarch in Monaco, a Russian General in Moscow or a Submarine commander defector in Crimea, the ‘defenders of democracy’ are blasting away, as the West applauds.

This last Thursday, a Ukrainian submarine commander who defected to Russia was killed when a Russian high-end escort, acting on Kiev’s orders, blew him up with a bomb hidden inside a trash bin.

The 32-year-old Russian woman, later identified as Margarita Reut, was following orders from Ukraine’s intelligence network to kill Robert Shageev, now an officer in the Kremlin’s Black Sea Fleet, according to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).

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Strava Is Still Killing Operational Security — And The Pentagon Still Can’t Stop It

Eight years after the United States military first warned that commercial fitness app data could expose troop movements and endanger personnel, the problem remains unsolved. A new investigation by Sky News found that more than 1,300 Strava users have shared workout data from sensitive U.S. military installations across the Middle East — revealing patrol routes, daily routines, troop movements, and activity at bases that do not appear on any public map.

Many of those users posted under their real names.

The data is not hidden. It is publicly accessible to anyone with a Strava account and the knowledge to look for it. Security analysts told Sky News that Iran could have cross-referenced this fitness tracking information with other intelligence streams to monitor American forces in real time and identify potential targets for attack. Sky News further identified instances from Bahrain and Jordan where real time military operations relocation of personnel through changes in posted Strava workouts were conducted before those locations were then attacked by the Iran-aligned forces.

These concerns have been known for some time. The Pentagon issued some very clear statements on the use of fitness apps in 2018, after Strava’s workouts were posted on a military fitness tracking heat map. New policies were put in place and new guidelines were issued.

As of 2026, workouts and runs from classified bases are still posted on Strava — including RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. Sky News also documented posted workouts from Strava from the Dimona nuclear research facility in Israel.

The real question is, why can’t the agency charged with the protection of our U.S. service members implement a basic digital discipline policy when corporate security teams have likely put similar policies into practice years ago?

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Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer Team Up for Cringeworthy Video Congratulating Each Other for How They Handled the Pandemic

California Governor Gavin Newsom and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer are apparently big fans of each other, not to mention themselves.

The two recently joined forces to make a video where they talk about how well each of them handled the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gretchen Whitmer has already said that she is not running for president in 2028, but that doesn’t preclude her from being selected to be someone’s running mate. Is that what we’re seeing here? Is this a preview?

Check out this clip, via RNC Research:

NEWSOM: What did you make of Fauci and all that?

WHITMER: “I feel bad for him, ya know?…people were trying to do the right thing with the information we had…”

Here’s another, also from RNC Research:

Gretchen Whitmer says she and Gavin Newsom did the “right thing” by locking down their states during COVID.

WHITMER: “Everyone was so pissed off that I pulled kids out of school.”

NEWSOM: “Yes.”

WHITMER: “We were doing what we thought was the right thing to do at the time.”

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