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Ex-Republican South Carolina House member admits to distributing hundreds of child sex abuse videos

Former Republican South Carolina Rep. RJ May admitted in court Monday that he sent hundreds of videos of children being sexually abused to people across the country on social media.

May pleaded guilty to what prosecutors in court papers called a “five-day child pornography spree” in the spring of 2024.

May, who resigned earlier this year, is accused of using the screen name “joebidennnn69” to exchange 220 different files of toddlers and young children involved in sex acts on the Kik social media network, according to court documents that graphically detailed the videos.

“Bear with me. This is very hard to read,” U.S. Attorney Bryan Stirling said as he haltingly read a brief description of each video for television reporters outside of court since cameras aren’t allowed in federal courtrooms.

May, 38, pleaded guilty to five counts of distributing the videos and faces five to 20 years in prison on each charge. He will have to register as a sex offender and could be fined up to $250,000, according to his plea agreement.

The five counts represented the worst videos May shared, Stirling said.

Felony convictions bar May from voting or having a weapon

The felony convictions means the political consultant and National Rifle Association member cannot vote, hold public office, carry a gun or serve on a jury the rest of his life.

May’s sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 14 — the second day of the South Carolina legislature’s 2026 session.

The evidence against May included logs of his laptop and cellphone use, showing he was uploading and downloading the child sexual abuse videos at the same time he was emailing work files, making phone calls, doing web searches and messaging someone on Kik asking for “Bad moms. Bad dads. Bad pre teens.”

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Jeffrey Epstein Worked to Coordinate Former Israeli Prime Minister’s State-Level Investment Meetings in Mongolia

Epstein planned Ehud Barak’s meeting with the Secretary of the National Security Council of Mongolia.

Jeffrey Epstein’s ability to pull strings at the highest echelons of global power is no longer just rumor—it’s confirmed by a cache of leaked emails from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. These documents expose Epstein—already notorious for his criminal life and intelligence connections—as a behind-the-scenes fixer, using his network and financial heft to help broker a security and technology deal between Israel and Mongolia.

Epstein’s Network Reaches Ulaanbaatar

Epstein’s personal ties to Israeli leadership, including Barak and Ehud Olmert, were already well-known, as were his donations to Israeli causes like Friends of the IDF. Yet, these emails, released by the pro-Palestinian hacking group Handala(possibly tied to Iran), and published via Distributed Denial of Secrets, prove for the first time that Epstein facilitated a state-level deal leading to a formal bilateral security agreement.

The leak includes unpublished photos and documents spanning 2013–2016 with virtually daily correspondence between Barak and Epstein, showing Epstein arranging Barak’s meetings with Mongolia’s top brass.

Orchestrating State Security

In April 2013, only a month after stepping down as Israel’s Defense Minister, Barak landed in Mongolia to meet President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj and key security officials. The trip’s real architect? Not Barak, but Epstein—coordinating logistics, introductions, and the broader strategy behind the scenes. The emails make it clear: Epstein was instrumental in setting up Barak’s meeting with Enkhtuvshin Tsagaandari, Secretary of Mongolia’s National Security Council. At this pivotal exchange, the CEO of Israel Weapon Industries delivered a gift—a Jericho pistol engraved for the occasion—cementing ties and paving the way for deeper cooperation.

Barak’s Official Offer: Spying Tech for Mongolia

The Israeli push didn’t stop at gifts or diplomacy. Ehud Barak submitted an official Israeli memorandum to Terje Rød-Larsen, president of the International Peace Institute, outlining a proposal for advanced spying technology, electronic surveillance, and intelligence support for Mongolia. Tellingly, the letterhead bore Israel’s official emblem above Barak’s name—a detail legally requiring Israeli Minister of the Interior’s approval.

Barak’s memo also promised support in modern agriculture, water management, and medical diagnostics, while Barak himself cut deals with Israeli biotech and mining firms on the side—showcasing how political and private profits were deeply entwined.

Epstein, the Mongolia Advisory Board, and Global Power Brokering

The “advisory team” concept in Mongolia wasn’t organic; it was proposed by Terje Rød-Larsen (president of IPI and prominent Oslo Accords mediator), another figure deep within Epstein and Barak’s network. Barak, Rød-Larsen, and even Lawrence Summers (former Harvard president and U.S. Treasury Secretary) were tapped by Epstein to serve on the “Mongolia Presidential Advisory Board” with each reportedly earning up to $100,000 for their efforts.

Their inaugural meeting—at Davos, naturally—included the Mongolian President, National Security Advisor, and Rød-Larsen, with Epstein joining as “financier”[meeting notes PDF]. Advice flowed on everything from creating a Mongolian sovereign wealth fund to importing Israeli “zero-click” cyber-surveillance capability.

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Trump Admin Seeks to Block Harvard From Federal Funding Through HHS

The Trump administration said on Sept. 29 that it was referring Harvard University for proceedings that could end with the university losing federal funding over alleged civil rights violations.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act generally prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin. According to the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department, Harvard violated Title VI through “deliberate indifference” to anti-Semitic discrimination and harassment on campus after the Hamas-led terrorist attack of Oct. 7, 2023, on Israel.

HHS Office of Civil Rights (OCR) Director Paula Stannard said in the press release that “OCR’s referral of Harvard for formal administrative proceedings reflects OCR’s commitment to safeguard both taxpayer investments and the broader public interest.”

“Congress has empowered Federal agencies to pursue Title VI compliance through formal enforcement mechanisms, including the termination of funding or denial of future Federal financial assistance, when voluntary compliance cannot be achieved,” she continued.

The university is expected to undergo a proceeding where an administrative law judge within HHS determines whether Harvard in fact violated Title VI. It’s also being referred for proceedings under a program that could result in suspension or debarment–both of which entail government-wide blocks on participation in federal procurement for periods of time.

HHS’s announcement comes alongside multiple actions that the Trump administration has taken against Harvard and other universities over alleged civil rights violations, including a separate HHS investigation into suspected race-based discrimination in the Harvard Law Review.

Harvard did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment before publishing time.

Harvard sued the Trump administration earlier this year after the administration announced it would freeze billions of dollars in funding for the university. After months of litigation, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that the administration was violating the First Amendment.

“The government-initiated onslaught against Harvard was much more about promoting a governmental orthodoxy in violation of the First Amendment than about anything else, including fighting antisemitism,” U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs said.

The administration made several demands that Burroughs said included changes to activities protected by the First Amendment. These protected rights include a school’s ability to manage its academic community and evaluate teaching without government interference.

Burroughs also said that the university was taking steps to combat anti-Semitism. “Harvard is currently, even if belatedly, taking steps it needs to take to combat antisemitism and seems willing to do even more if need be,” she said.

Harvard President Alan Garber similarly said that the university has implemented a series of campus measures designed to fight anti-Semitism.

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Look At NYT Coverage Of Comey, Trump Indictments To See How The Propaganda Machine Operates

On Thursday, disgraced former FBI Director James Comey was indicted by a grand jury on two counts: false statements within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. In other words, Comey allegedly broke the law — and the evidence appears to support the charges. But you wouldn’t necessarily glean that if you read The New York Times’ editorial board meltdown about the indictment.

“The Comey Indictment Plunges the Country Into a Grave New Period,” the piece is headlined. The esteemed “opinion journalists” at The Times warn that Trump “is undermining a core promise of the American justice system: the fair and equal enforcement of the law.”

It matters naught to the board that Comey allegedly provided false testimony to Congress in September of 2020 about his handling of the Russia collusion hoax. Comey previously testified in 2017 that “he did not authorize leaking information regarding the FBI’s investigations into President Donald Trump or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,” as described by NBC News. Comey later told Sen. Ted Cruz he stood by the testimony.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said Comey was made aware of the leak of information to the press and essentially gave it the stamp of approval after the fact, a 2018 Justice Department inspector general’s report found.

But no, according to The Times, Trump is apparently a “despot” who is “persecuting people he considers his enemies, with little justification other than raw political power.”

Although, however, the board even highlights that the grand jury that indicted Comey declined to bring a third false statement count.

“Grand juries typically file the indictments that federal prosecutors ask for,” the board writes, unwittingly undercutting its own hysteria. You see, by conceding that the grand jury — not Trump — declined to pursue the third charge (which according to The Times is atypical) it must mean the grand jury found credible evidence to indict Comey on the other two charges, but used their discretion and declined to bring the third charge. In other words, the charges stand on merits, not Trump’s alleged desire for retribution.

Nonetheless, according to the board, the “biggest law enforcement scandal of the past 50 years” is that Trump (according to the “experts”) ran on “promising to prosecute his enemies.” (Notably, the editorial board must have forgotten about New York Attorney General Letitia James’ campaign promise to nail Trump).

And yet here I was thinking the “biggest law enforcement scandal of the past 50 years” was the last administration trying to throw a former president in jail. But The Times disagrees with me there, you see.

In fact, the editorial board was quick to declare that “Donald Trump Is Not Above the Law,” in a 2022 piece that claimed the criminal investigation into the then-former president was “required.”

“Mr. Trump’s unprecedented assault on the integrity of American democracy requires a criminal investigation. The disturbing details of his postelection misfeasance, meticulously assembled by the Jan. 6 committee, leave little doubt that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the Constitution and overturn the will of the American people,” the board wrote.

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Democrats’ Relentless Demonizing Paves Way For The Next Political Assassination

n their perverse pursuit of power, leftist politicians are daily signing the death warrant for the next political assassination. 

It’s now a matter of when, not if. 

You can’t relentlessly call your political enemies “Nazis”, “fascists,” and “tyrants” without giving license to homicidal leftists to do what they do best: Attack their perceived existential threats. Just ask the family and friends of Christian evangelizer and conservative icon Charlie Kirk. Or President Donald Trump, who is intimately familiar with what the unhinged left is capable of. 

American politics is a tinder box right now, and leftists like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker keep striking matches. GOP Rapid Response on Monday released a list of 10 of the more incendiary comments from Democrat pols in the days following Kirk’s cold-blooded murder on Sept. 10. It’s a veritable who’s who of hate from liberal politicians stoking the fires of political violence. 

‘FASCIST!’

Newsom, who has visions of presidential sugar plums dancing in his head, has cranked up the hateful political vilification, even as his fellow Democrats offer platitudes about “turning down the heat.” Newsom’s official state press X account on Friday called Trump adviser Stephen Miller an all caps “FASCIST!” 

“DING DONGS IN THE WHITE HOUSE: IF YOU DON’T WANT US TO CALL YOU A FASCIST THEN STOP DOING FASCIST THINGS,” Newsom’s team declared in a separate post.

Apparently to Newsom and crew, enforcing federal law, restoring America’s borders, and in general doing what voters elected you to do in a constitutional republic is the stuff of dictators.  

According to Pritzker, the duly elected Republican president of the United States and his administration are architects of the next Holocaust.  

“Look, I’ve built a Holocaust museum with survivors, I’ve also read a whole lot about authoritarian regimes, this is the playbook folks,” the morbidly obese liberal told former Biden liar Jen Psaki a week after Kirk was murdered by a suspect saturated in leftist hate. I don’t know what the hell Pritzker is reading, but Trump 2.0 is nothing like the Third Reich’s systematic extermination of millions of human beings. It is a false and vile equivalency. 

Pritzker urged his liberal listeners to do something about it.   

“If you’re not paying attention now and doing something about it, well then you’re going to have to sit down for the rest of your life because democracy is being taken away,” he told Psaki. 

What does that mean? What does that mean to the violence-inclined liberal in the throes of severe Trump Derangement Syndrome? Here’s the Democrat Party’s constant message: You will lose “democracy” if you don’t stop Trump. That seems like a lot to lose. It isn’t true, but it is urgent. 

“This type of vile rhetoric led to Charlie Kirk’s assassination,” the Republican National Committee said in response to Pritzker’s violence-stoking comments. “When will enough be enough?”

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Gavin Newsom Escalates Rhetoric That Makes Political Violence Inevitable

Charlie Kirk was murdered less than three weeks ago by a deranged leftist who inscribed anti-fascist slogans on bullet casings. Kirk’s murder should have been a wake-up call that inflammatory rhetoric smearing conservatives as “fascists” or “Nazis” or “Hitler” has deadly consequences. Instead, it’s only emboldened the left to increase such rhetoric.

Nowhere is that more apparent than California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s official press account, which spent the weekend calling White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller a “fascist” and demanding Miller kowtow to the left if he wants to stop being slandered.

“STEPHEN MILLER IS A FASCIST!” the account posted on X on Sept. 26.

Newsom’s team doubled down on the rhetoric, saying they are “calling out [Trump] and his authoritarian stooges for being fascists.”

“Textbook definition,” Newsom’s team posted with a graphic they made claiming to prove Trump and Miller are “fascists.”

“DING DONGS IN THE WHITE HOUSE: IF YOU DON’T WANT US TO CALL YOU A FASCIST THEN STOP DOING FASCIST THINGS,” a separate post read.

This isn’t random name-calling. It’s an assassination prep campaign. The left — and in particular, the office of the governor of one of the largest states in America — is demonizing and vilifying conservatives as fascists in order to desensitize Americans to political violence.

Such language implicitly justifies resistance by any means necessary, since no free person wants to live under a fascist dictatorship. The logic goes: If Trump and his administration are legitimate fascists — the same people who slaughtered and oppressed millions during WWII — then violence against them is not merely permissible, it’s actually noble. The left preys on these historical associations, knowing that when people hear “fascist” or “Nazi,” they think of enemies who rightly had to be defeated. By blurring that line, the left conditions its audience to see violence against today’s so-called “fascists” as not only acceptable but necessary.

Even Pennsylvania Democrat Sen. John Fetterman has the clarity to see the danger of such rhetoric, posting on X: “Unchecked extreme rhetoric, like labels as Hitler or fascist, will foment more extreme outcomes. Political violence is always wrong — no exceptions.”

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Denmark Accused of Spreading False Claims to Push EU’s Mass Surveillance Law

A growing confrontation over major digital surveillance powers is unfolding within the European Union, as Denmark’s Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard stands accused of using false claims to pressure hesitant governments into backing the European Commission’s proposed Chat Control 2.0 regulation.

In a press release, digital rights campaigner and former Member of the European Parliament Patrick Breyer has denounced what he describes as a manufactured crisis aimed at forcing through legislation that would subject all private communications in the EU to automated scanning.

Classified minutes obtained by Netzpolitik from a September 15 Council meeting reveal that Hummelgaard, currently presiding over the EU Council, told interior ministers that the European Parliament would block any renewal of the existing voluntary scanning framework unless governments agreed to adopt the new regulation.

Breyer immediately pushed back on this claim.

“This is a blatant lie designed to manufacture a crisis,” said Breyer.

“There is no such decision by the European Parliament…We are witnessing a shameless disinformation campaign to force an unprecedented mass scanning law upon 450 million Europeans. I call on EU governments, and particularly the German government, not to fall for this blatant manipulation. To sacrifice the fundamental right to digital privacy and secure encryption based on a fabrication would be a catastrophic failure of political and moral leadership.”

The regulation in question, officially called the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR), would compel messaging platforms, email providers, and cloud storage services to scan all user content for potential child abuse material.

This would apply even to services using end-to-end encryption, meaning private conversations on platforms like WhatsApp, Signal, and iMessage would no longer be truly confidential.

Although supporters describe the system as targeted and limited, the legal framework allows broad application.

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Defense says more time needed for Tyler Robinson case

The defense won’t waive its right to a preliminary hearing but needs more time before a date is set, the court-appointed attorney for Tyler James Robinson, the 22-year-old man charged with the murder of conservative leader Charlie Kirk, said Monday during a Utah County court waiver hearing.

Kathryn Nester, Robinson’s lawyer, told Judge Tony Graf in the Provo courtroom that she needs at least another month to weigh through a massive amount of documents before further discussion about a preliminary hearing.

Graf set another waiver hearing for 10 a.m. Mountain Standard Time Oct. 30, and the prosecution and defense had no objections to the date and time. Nester said Robinson will be at that hearing in person.

Robinson was not in the courtroom Monday but participated virtually from Utah County Jail, where he remains incarcerated without bail. He didn’t speak.

Nester said she is waiting later for her motion on a detention hearing and may wait until the preliminary hearing to make it.

Nester talked in court about what she called “the voluminous nature of discovery” coming from the prosecution. Discovery is the process in which prosecution and defense exchange information and evidence before a trial to avoid surprises.

“We need to reset for another conference, another waiver hearing down the road, so we have a better idea of seeing discovery as it rolls out,” Nester told Graf. “My understanding is there are massive amounts of digital [materials] that are coming. Until we can get our heads around that, it is going to be difficult for us to know when we will be ready to do the prelim.”

Attorneys representing Utah County and Robinson agreed there’s a potential for a large number of witnesses in the case because Kirk was shot and killed before a crowd of up to 3,000 people at Utah Valley University.

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Poland Arrests Ukrainian Diver Over Nord Stream Sabotage Explosions

The plot surrounding the mystery of the 2022 Nord Stream gas pipeline sabotage explosions and secret op continues to thicken, as Poland has on Tuesday issued a surprise announcement saying it has arrested a suspected connected with it.

“A Ukrainian man suspected of being involved in causing undersea explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Germany in 2022 was arrested in Poland, a spokesperson for the District Prosecutor’s Office in Warsaw said Tuesday,” The Associated Press reports.

Without irony or satire, the AP identifies further that “Volodymyr Z. was detained in Pruszkow, central Poland, according to Polish radio station RMF FM, which first reported his capture” – based on a European arrest warrant issued by German authorities. 

The man in custody has elsewhere been described, including in Reuters, as a Ukrainian diver wanted by Germany… and his name is Volodymr Z… though the reporting is not based on The Onion.

This is the second recent arrest related to the Nord Stream sabotage investigation, as last month another Ukrainian man was arrested in Italy in connection.

The mainstream media narrative on this major event which came early in the Ukraine war has shifted dramatically several times. In the opening months, the MSM was lockstep in collectively assuming Russia must have bombed its own key pipelines, effectively economically sabotaging itself and a (at the time) leading European energy export partner.

Then, as we highlighted, there was in 2024 the “bombshell” WSJ Nord Stream report which was a shift, but yet another attempt by mainstream gatekeepers to put official distance between President Zelensky and his supposedly ‘rogue’ top general at the time who ‘oversaw’ the covert op.

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Trump and Hegseth declare an end to ‘politically correct’ leadership in the U.S. military

U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared an end to “woke” culture in the military and targeted other policies of past administrations Tuesday before hundreds of top U.S. military officials who were abruptly summoned to Virginia from around the world.

Hegseth announced new directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness, while Trump bragged about U.S. nuclear capabilities and criticized the military leaders’ previous commander in chief, U.S. President Joe Biden.

“We must be so strong that no nation will dare challenge us, so powerful that no enemy will dare threaten us,” Trump said. ”And so capable that no adversary can even think about beating us.”

Hegseth had called military leaders to convene at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, near Washington, without publicly revealing the reason until this morning. Hegseth’s address largely focused on his own long-used talking points that painted a picture of a military that has been hamstrung by “woke” policies, and he said military leaders should “do the honorable thing and resign” if they don’t like his new approach.

Meetings between top military brass and civilian leaders are nothing new, but the gathering had fueled intense speculation about the summit’s purpose given the haste with which it was called and the mystery surrounding it.

Admirals and generals from conflict zones in the Middle East and elsewhere were summoned for a lecture on race and gender in the military, underscoring the extent to which the country’s culture wars have emerged as a front-and-center agenda item for Hegseth’s Pentagon, even at a time of broad national security concerns across the globe.

During his nearly hour-long speech, Hegseth said the U.S. military has promoted too many leaders for the wrong reasons based on race, gender quotas and “historic firsts.”

“The era of politically correct, overly sensitive don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings leadership ends right now at every level,” Hegseth said.

He said he is loosening disciplinary rules and weakening hazing protections, putting a heavy focus on removing many of the guardrails the military had put in place after numerous scandals and investigations.

Hegseth said he was ordering a review of “the department’s definitions of so-called toxic leadership, bullying and hazing to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second guessing.”

He called for “changes to the retention of adverse information on personnel records that will allow leaders with forgivable, earnest, or minor infractions to not be encumbered by those infractions in perpetuity.”

“People make honest mistakes, and our mistakes should not define an entire career,” Hegseth said. “Otherwise, we only try not to make mistakes.”

Bullying and toxic leadership has been the suspected and confirmed cause behind numerous military suicides over the past several years, including the very dramatic suicide of Brandon Caserta, a young sailor who was bullied into killing himself in 2018.

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