Blog

Former Atlanta official gets 14 years in corruption case

A pastor, political operative and former high-ranking Atlanta city official was sentenced Thursday to 14 years in prison after a jury found her guilty of charges stemming from a long-running federal investigation into corruption at City Hall.

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones told Mitzi Bickers that the evidence showed that she was involved in “a deliberate, calculated plan to cheat” the taxpayers of Atlanta over a number of years. In addition to the prison time, he ordered Bickers to pay nearly $3 million in restitution to the city and to serve three years of supervised release once she’s out.

Bickers, 56, was the first person to go to trial in the investigation into corruption during the administration of former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. She helped Reed win election and then worked as his director of human services for several years. Prosecutors said she used her influence to funnel roughly $17 million in business to city contractors Elvin “E.R.” Mitchell Jr. and Charles P. Richards Jr. in exchange for more than $2.9 million in bribes for herself and others.

A jury in March found Bickers guilty on charges including money laundering, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit bribery.

Prosecutors had asked Jones to sentence Bickers to serve 17 and a half years in prison. Her lawyers asked for a much lower sentence, pointing to the five years that Mitchell got and the two years Richards got.

Keep reading

Oh, So Here’s the ‘White Supremacist’ Accused of Vandalizing a Gay Pride Crosswalk With Swastikas

A black male suspect has been identified as the repeat vandalism suspect accused of defacing the Rainbow Crosswalk in Atlanta, Georgia, last month with swastikas after leftists online blamed white supremacy for the spray paint across the LGBTQ street art, a cultural landmark known as the city’s emblem of gay pride.

30-year-old Jonah Jade Sampson is charged with criminal trespass, felony interference with government property, and three counts of second-degree criminal damage to property for allegedly vandalizing the rainbow stripes painted at the intersection of 10th St and Piedmont Ave in mid-town Atlanta on two separate occasions.

Keep reading

FBI Hiding Potentially Explosive Records On Jeffrey Epstein, Internet Sleuth Claims After FOIA Denial

A well-followed internet sleuth believes he has uncovered evidence that the FBI could be sitting on potentially explosive secret records involving dead sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The anonymous Techno Fog, an self-described lawyer and writer who has nearly 400,000 followers on Twitter and also writes a popular Substack column, says a recent response to a Freedom of Information Act request indicates the beleaguered bureau may be hiding something. Techno Fog sought all records relating to any interviews the FBI had done with Epstein.

“The records responsive to your request are law enforcement records; there is a pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding relevant to these responsive records, and release of the information could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings,” was the answer he said he received, which he posted online.

Keep reading

New Video Shows Cops Casually Walk Into Unarmed Man’s Home, Wake Him Up, Execute Him

Last week, TFTP reported on disturbing body camera footage out of Columbus, Ohio, released as part of a push for transparency in the city. The footage showed police enter the apartment of 20-year-old Donovan Lewis who was undressed, in bed, and was attempting to raise his hands when he received a fatal, taxpayer-funded 9mm round to the chest.

The video went underreported in the media for several days and now, new video has been released showing the complete and callous disregard for life by officer Ricky Anderson as he casually executed Lewis in his own bed.

Despite the warrant for his arrest, Lewis was innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately, he was denied that right.

For some reason, Columbus police thought it was a good idea to serve an arrest warrant at 2:30 a.m. at Lewis’ apartment. Footage shows multiple officers outside Lewis’ door knocking for several minutes before one of the man’s roommates opens the door. Moments later, officers would open the door to Lewis’ bedroom and execute him.

“We need to get rid of middle of the night arrest warrants unless there’s a dangerous emergent circumstance,” said the family’s attorney, Rex Elliot. “We need to have police officers who are trained to come into these communities that understand these communities.”

Keep reading

George H.W. Bush, the CIA, and the Pennington Ruse

Officially, George H.W. Bush’s association with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began with his appointment to the post of Director of Central Intelligence by then President and former Warren Commission member Gerald Ford. However, speculation persists that Bush’s relationship with the Agency began long before his tenure as DCI.

How a politician with no known background in intelligence was able to ascend to the top post of a famously insular and opaque organization remains unclear. According to the CIA’s internal history, Bush was selected as an outsider to improve both morale and the Agency’s relationship with Congress.

However, evidence exists which points to a connection between George Bush and the CIA long before his assent to the Agency’s top post.

After the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reported in a memo to the State Department that he had verbally briefed a man named George Bush of the CIA on the reaction to President Kennedy’s death in the Cuban exile community.

During this time in Bush’s career, he was in charge of Zapata Offshore Company in Houston, Texas. When The Nation first published evidence of Bush’s involvement with the Agency in 1988, reporter Joseph McBride alleged that Bush’s position at the oil company was a cover for clandestine operations. McBride cited a November 29, 1963 memo from J. Edgar Hoover saying Bush “started working for the Agency in 1960 or 1961, using his oil business as a cover for clandestine activities.”

Keep reading

CIA Helps Ukraine Compile “Death List” Website

History reveals the CIA has an affinity for death lists. In 1990, The Washington Post reported the agency “supplied the names of thousands of members of the Indonesian Communist Party to the army in Jakarta, which at the time was hunting down the leftists and killing them in a crackdown branded as one of the century’s worst massacres” in 1965.

The late investigative journalist, William Blum, wrote in his book “Killing Hope,” that the CIA has assassinated or attempted to assassinate leaders in China, India, Panama, Zaire (then the Congo), Haiti, Cuba, and numerous other countries. (See “The CIA’s Greatest Hits – US Government Assassinations”).

Thus it makes perfect sense the CIA would be involved in compiling a list of “terrorists” for the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) to eliminate. As Max Blumenthal recently tweeted, the Ukrainian Myrotvorets website lists “Langley, VA, USA” as a partner in the effort to track down dissidents and murder them. Langley is the hometown of the CIA.

Note: if you are upset by dead and mutilated bodies, do not visit the website. The front page, above the fold, displays dead Russian soldiers.

According to Whois, an internet domain lookup, the site is registered to OroCommerce, a “digital commerce solutions” company. The OroCommerce website’s front page mentions the Ukraine specifically. It features a “Donate Now” button for something called the “Stand with Ukraine” fund.

The StandWithUkraine website, like much of the corporate media, puts forward a number of lies and falsifications to justify its existence in supporting the Ukraine. The opening paragraph:

“On Feb. 24, 2022 Russia declared an unprovoked war on Ukraine and launched a full-scale invasion. Russia is currently bombing peaceful Ukrainian cities, including schools and hospitals and attacking civilians who are fleeing conflict zones.”

YouTube is replete with interviews of Ukrainians escaping the violence (most are now deplatformed). Invariably, they claim the UAF (Ukrainian Armed Forces), in particular its neo-Nazi contingents, have fired upon them as they attempted to escape the fighting. The truth is the opposite of what is claimed by StandWithUkraine and the western corporate media. The UAF has occupied hospitals and schools and used them as firing positions.

Keep reading

State Lawmaker Advised Mormon Bishop Against Reporting Church Member Who Sexually Abused Daughters, Lawsuit Filings Say

A Utah state representative told a Mormon bishop not to report a church member’s sexual abuse, advice that led to seven years of rape and abuse committed by the church member against his own daughters, according to new lawsuit documents.

State Rep. Merrill Nelson (R-UT), a prominent lawyer for the Mormon church, allegedly answered the first call from a help line when Bishop John Herrod told him that Arizona church member Paul Adams had admitted to sexually abusing two of his daughters. For more than two years, Nelson communicated with Herrod and another bishop who knew about the abuse allegations, according to call records, the Associated Press reported.

Nelson told Herrod “that he could be sued if he reported, and the instruction by counsel not to report Paul [Adams] to the authorities was the law in Arizona and had nothing to do with Church doctrine,” according to the plaintiff’s filings. However, as the AP reported, Arizona law allows blanket immunity for those who report child sexual abuse or neglect.

The sex abuser’s two daughters and one of his sons are trying to gain access to records from the Mormon church, but the church has refused them based on confidentiality. After a county judge ruled in the victims’ favor to see the records, the Mormon church took the case to the Court of Appeals.

Keep reading

Former Utah mayor, bishop arrested for sex abuse of multiple children, including toddlers

A former bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been arrested as part of an ongoing sex abuse investigation involving multiple victims over the course of several decades.

Carl Johnson, 77, was arrested in Orem on Wednesday and booked into the Davis County Jail on seven counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child.

Detectives say Johnson abused children as young as 2 years old and held numerous positions of trust in the Church, including as a bishop. Johnson also served as Mayor of West Bountiful City in the 90s.

“In all these cases, the victims were told not to tell anyone else about what happened to them. In some cases, these crimes were suppressed in one way or another by Johnson when any disclosures were made. Johnson used his position of trust to influence any disclosures,” a police affidavit says.

Keep reading

‘Deeply dangerous’: Network host says media need to stop covering ‘both sides’ of issues

MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan called for media outlets to not cover both sides of what he called “major issues” during a Wednesday forum.

“There are two words we need to remove from our media vocabulary right now and that is ‘both sides,’” Hasan told Semafor’s Ben Smith, a former New York Times reporter, in a video posted on Twitter and YouTube. “This fundamental crutch, this reliance on ‘both sides’ as a kind of lazy way of covering our political moment is deeply dangerous.”

“There are a bunch of major issues on which there are not both sides,” Hasan continued. “There are not both sides on climate change. There are not both sides on white supremacy. There are not both sides to democracy. Ben, there are not both sides on the Holocaust.”

Hasan referenced comments by an administrator at the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas, in October 2021 that said students should learn opposing views about the Holocaust.

“That’s not what the bill says,” Republican State Sen. Bryan Hughes of Texas, who wrote the legislation that required providing contradictory views on controversial issues, told NBC at the time.

“On the big issues of our time, on whether people should be able to vote, on whether they should be able to get to a ballot box, on whether one party should be able to overturn elections, no there are not both sides,” Hasan said.

Keep reading