Tag: corruption

Report: Gavin Newsom Builds Wine Empire Using Illegal Migrant Labor

A report from City Journal accuses California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) of building his multi-million-dollar wine empire using illegal migrant labor — suggesting the potential presidential candidate has held a secretive, vested financial stake in promoting illegal immigration.

The report, published by Christopher Rufo, Ryan Thorpe, and Kenneth Schrupp, investigated Newsom’s PlumpJack Collection of Wineries and Oso Vineyard, which was purchased by PlumpJack in 2022.

Newsom, who continues to hold a financial stake in PlumpJack, and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, reported at least $11 million in income from 2019 to 2024, according to the report, with most of the money coming from Newsom’s stake in wineries and restaurants.

The report, which the journalists write is based on court documents, labor reports, and interviews with various sources in California’s wine industry, reveals that “Newsom’s business has contracted the services of a vineyard management company with a long history of employing illegal labor.”

City Journal reports:

And as governor, Newsom has leveraged tax dollars to facilitate the presence of illegal immigrants in California, which, in turn, helps prop up the struggling Napa wine industry from which he profits.

…

But according to multiple industry sources in Napa, the real percentage of illegals working in the vineyards is considerably higher.

“I think it’s 80 percent,” said the owner of a vineyard management company, who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity. “If you’re legal, you have your Green Card, you have your driver’s license and all these things, you don’t want to be working in the vineyards.”

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Dem. Judge Picked by Dem. CA Gov Removed from Bench Over Racist, Sexist Comments

A Los Angeles County judge appointed by former California Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown has been removed from office over a persistent pattern of misconduct in the courtroom.

On Tuesday, the California Commission on Judicial Performance ordered Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert Draper to be removed from office for making a number of racist and sexist remarks in court, according to Courthouse News Service.

“Judge Draper persistently violated the standards governing judicial behavior and engaged in extensive and severe misconduct,” the commission said in a statement.

“Judge Draper’s misconduct reflected either a concerning lack of familiarity with ethical precepts, or an unwillingness to conform to those precepts,” the statement continued.

The California Commission on Judicial Performance’s 87-page order listed numerous examples of Draper’s behavior, including one from February of 2023, when he was presiding over Odom v. Los Angeles Community College District, a sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit.

During a posttrial hearing featuring a black female attorney working for the defense, Draper launched into an unsolicited discussion about the skin tones of blacks, interracial relationships and racial mixing, black football players and the history of black quarterbacks, and Lyndon Johnson and the Civil Rights Act.

When talking black skin tones, he used terms like “coal black” and “light brown.”

The commission found these comments irrelevant and gratuitous, and concluded that they constituted prejudicial misconduct.

During another incident connected to the Odom litigation, Draper invited two female attorneys into his chambers. During the ensuing conversation, he recounted how male attorneys at his former law firm supposedly treated female secretaries.

At one point, he described the male attorneys telling their secretaries, “You better be able to f*** better than you can type.”

The commission concluded that this behavior also constituted prejudicial misconduct.

The most serious finding from the order was that in June of 2023, Draper sent an email to commission personnel and several other judges, including retired Judge Lance Ito (who presided over the 1995 double-murder trial of former football star O.J. Simpson), that included confidential records from a 2017 juvenile dependency case involving child sexual abuse allegations.

Among the records were multiple photographs of two minors naked in a bathtub. The commission found that disclosing these confidential juvenile records was misconduct.

According to the commission’s report, Draper also repeatedly made inappropriate comments about female colleagues.

For example, on two occasions he told Presiding Judge Samantha Jessner that she was “cute when [she was] mad.” After Jessner explained that the remark was inappropriate, Draper doubled down and repeated it, the report stated.

Draper also repeatedly told court administrator Lindsey McFarlane that she was cute, including in emails copied to other employees. In addition, he patted female court counsel Phu Nguyen on the head several times during a hallway encounter. She testified that she hadn’t welcomed the contact and was embarrassed, the report stated.

The commission concluded that this behavior reflected gender bias and was inappropriate for a judge.

In its final report, the commission slammed Draper for refusing to accept responsibility or display even a modicum of remorse.

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South Korea Election Officials Suspected of FORGING Vote Tally Sheets and COVERING UP Discrepancies — Special Prosecutor RAIDS Election Commission Offices

What was dismissed as a simple clerical mistake in June has now escalated into a criminal investigation involving allegations of falsified election records and an attempted cover-up inside South Korea’s National Election Commission (NEC).

South Korea’s election system is facing another explosive controversy after a special prosecutor announced Tuesday, November 10, that investigators had uncovered evidence suggesting an election commission employee concealed and forged official vote tally sheets during the June 3 local elections.

The allegations involve the election for superintendent of education in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea’s most populous province.

According to Yonhap News Agency, the special counsel team led by independent prosecutor Lee Tae-han suspects an employee of the Gwangju City Election Commission in Gyeonggi Province manipulated election records, resulting in discrepancies between the reported vote totals and the actual count.

Even more troubling, investigators are examining whether officials within the local election commission attempted to conceal the suspected wrongdoing.

On Tuesday, investigators executed court-authorized search-and-seizure operations at the Gyeonggi Provincial Election Commission and the Gwangju City Election Commission.

The searches were conducted as part of an investigation into suspected violations of South Korea’s Public Official Election Act.

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Beijing’s alleged police stations in Canada jump from five to 18 — Ottawa has laid no charges

Four years ago, Canadians learned that Beijing was allegedly running five police stations on our soil. My colleague David Menzies went to one in Markham. Nobody came to the door.

Nobody was charged, either.

Now the group that found those five says there are at least 18. And the foreign influence registry, the one the minister points to when he’s asked about this? Not one of them is on it.

The report, A Formula for Repression, comes from Safeguard Defenders, the Spain-based human rights group. It alleges at least 18 overseas Chinese associations in Canada are acting as police monitoring stations, part of a network of nearly 1,250 in 91 countries. CTV calls that a 12-fold increase over what the group found four years ago. It says the network exists to watch and police the Chinese diaspora.

CTV News, which reported the findings on November 6, put them to Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree.

He said foreign interference won’t be tolerated. He also said “they are allegations and have not been investigated.” Some of the associations are sports or book clubs, he said, and mislabelling them could frighten communities for no reason.

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Jill Biden Says Fauci and Covid Vaccines “Saved the World”

Dr. Jill Biden appeared over the weekend on “Get Real with Jim Weiss” to discuss a variety of topics, including Joe Biden’s presidency.

Jill Biden also promoted her book, “View from the East Wing,” and discussed life after the White House.

During the interview, Jill Biden recalled traveling the country with Dr. Fauci and Vivek Murthy to force the jab onto Americans.

“I traveled the country with Dr. Fauci and Vivek Murthy to try to get shots in the arms,” Jill Biden said.

“So my company worked with Pfizer and the vaccine launch…we did a lot with the vaccine…. and how that kind of saved the world and got us out,” Jim Weiss said.

“Of course it saved the world!” Jill Biden said of Covid vaccines and her Covid vaccine tour.

Over the summer, Senators Ron Johnson and Rand Paul released the first batch of text messages from Dr. Fauci’s Covid-era iPhone.

The text messages revealed that Fauci privately knew that the Covid vaccine caused miscarriages in pregnant women.

Fauci covered up the data that revealed an 82% miscarriage rate in women vaccinated during the first trimester.

Last year, seven states accused Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, and others of heinous crimes, including murder, medical coercion, and even terrorism stemming from their COVID-era policies and decisions.

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Government Official Behind Nation’s ‘AI Arms Race’ Poised to Profit From Personal Investments in AI Companies

The Trump administration has likened the need to build out the nation’s artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure to the Manhattan Project, the World War II effort that produced the world’s first atomic bomb.

The White House’s point person on the effort, U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, has spoken of the “AI arms race” with China as an existential issue for the nation.

“AI is manufacturing intelligence, and, if we don’t manufacture more intelligence than our adversaries, it affects every job, every company and every industry,” he said during his U.S. Senate confirmation hearing in January 2025.

But advancing the administration’s AI objectives also could benefit Burgum’s own finances.

Much of his wealth is held in Arthur Ventures, an investment firm he co-founded, according to his 2026 financial disclosure form, which has not been previously reported.

Between $18.1 million and $64.4 million of those investments are in AI companies, according to an analysis of the companies’ marketing materials shared with ProPublica by public lands advocacy group Save Our Parks. (Government financial disclosure forms allow filers to report wide ranges instead of the specific value of their investments.)

Burgum made his fortune 25 years ago when he sold a software company to Microsoft and has remained heavily invested in technology. In the year before joining the administration, when he was North Dakota’s governor, he made between $2.1 million and $11 million in capital gains from AI-related investments, Save Our Parks’ analysis showed.

In 2025, he sold millions of dollars of stocks and equity in AI companies, bringing in capital gains worth between $2.5 million and $15.1 million.

In the ethics agreement Burgum signed as part of his Senate confirmation, he agreed to resign from his positions at Arthur but not give up his financial interests there.

“Secretary Burgum has met his federal ethics and financial disclosure obligations,” a U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) spokesperson told ProPublica in a statement.

“Any suggestion that his office decisions are driven by personal investments are false and completely unsupported.”

Officials across the Trump administration also stand to profit from the White House’s support for AI and data centers.

For example, 380 of President Donald Trump’s political appointees or their spouses hold stocks or have other financial connections to Nvidia, which has become the world’s most valuable company thanks to the data center boom.

More than 320 have ties to Alphabet, Google’s parent company, which plans to spend at least $195 billion this year building data centers and AI-related technology.

And more than 240 are invested in or otherwise have financial ties to Meta platforms, which is developing a “fleet” of data centers. This is according to an analysis of records added last week to the Trump Team Financials database developed by ProPublica to make accessible the financial disclosures of administration officials.

Federal officials’ activities are governed by a criminal statute that sets a high burden of proof for potential wrongdoing — for example, approving permits for a company in which they are substantially invested, multiple ethics professors and lawyers told ProPublica. They said that Burgum’s investments appear to be acceptable under this law.

But ethics rules that do not carry criminal penalties also apply, explained Cynthia Brown, senior ethics counsel with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group.

These rules, she said, “instruct officials not to work on anything that would create the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

She said this would include Burgum’s support for data centers on federal land while holding investments in AI.

Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and President George W. Bush’s chief ethics lawyer, agreed that Burgum should avoid making decisions benefiting an industry in which he is heavily invested.

“I, as the ethics lawyer, would insist he stay away from it,” Painter said. “In the Bush administration, the answer would’ve been ‘he has to recuse,’ I can guarantee you that.”

A review of recent DOI secretaries’ financial holdings suggests it’s common to have some potential conflicts, but Trump’s appointees are more heavily invested in the industries they oversee than their predecessors.

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Lawyer preps class action over Veterans Affairs MAID offers as more veterans come forward

Two days before Remembrance Day, Ezra Levant opened Monday’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show with Rudyard Kipling’s poem Tommy, about a country that cheers its soldiers in wartime and forgets them in peacetime.

“But simply ignoring or underfunding veterans is one thing,” Ezra said. “But how about actively proposing to veterans that they should kill themselves or be killed by doctors.”

His guest was Catherine Christensen of Valour Law, who is working toward a class action on behalf of Canadian veterans who say Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) steered them toward medical assistance in dying (MAID).

Christensen said the practice is “a lot more prominent than Veterans Affairs would be willing to admit.” Younger veterans are being offered MAID over the phone, she said, “in an unexpected way, so they’re not able to record it.” But in the last few months, she said, older veterans have started receiving letters from Veterans Affairs suggesting it.

She said more veterans have contacted her since the Daily Mail covered her clients’ stories, including a senior veteran who told someone at a service that he was appalled to have received a letter offering him MAID. She said a copy of one such letter is on its way to her.

One of her clients is Corben McGown, who says a VAC caseworker raised MAID as his first option for treatment when he was a 22-year-old veteran with PTSD. He is now 26 and suing the federal government in Federal Court.

Christensen said Veterans Affairs’ defence was that the call never happened, so her team set out to prove it did. She told Ezra that McGown is physically healthy. “This is a big problem with Veterans Affairs and it needs to stop,” she said.

The government disputes McGown’s account. A 2023 VAC investigation confirmed four cases in which one employee inappropriately raised MAID with veterans, and said it found no further validated incidents.

Asked whether the push is ideological or about money, Christensen said she believes it is about cost. “As gross as it sounds this close to Remembrance Day, the truth of it is that dead veterans are cheaper than live ones, especially young veterans,” she said. “It’s a budget thing, in my opinion.”

Christensen, a former registered nurse, also questioned how informed consent is possible when a veteran with a severe brain injury can be lined up for MAID within a couple of days.

The biggest challenges in the class action, she said, will be defining the classes and getting documents out of the Canadian Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs. She pointed to the case of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, whose emails were hard to find because officials used a code name. “I’ve never seen defendants fight discovery harder than the Canadian Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs,” she said.

She said veterans have been afraid to come forward because they fear losing their benefits, and that she is in talks with members of the opposition. Veterans can learn more at the Valour Legal Action Centre, a nonprofit.

“Veterans are very vulnerable and they deserve better treatment than this,” she said.

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Flock Safety Is Financing the Politicians Who Oversee Its Surveillance Contracts

Why on earth does a company that supposedly sells license plate readers need to contribute to politicians’ campaigns? The Chicago Sun-Times has exposed how Flock Safety has been contributing to the campaigns of local officials whose jurisdictions purchase its technology. We are told these cameras are necessary to protect the public from crime. Yet the company collecting information on the movements of millions of Americans is now financially supporting politicians connected to its government customers. At what point do we begin questioning why a surveillance contractor needs political influence in the first place?

Illinois election records show that Flock contributed $6,000 between 2021 and 2025 to the political organization supporting Cicero Town President Larry Dominick. Cicero began working with Flock around 2020 and now operates 31 of its cameras. Flock also contributed $1,000 to Lake County Sheriff John Idleburg’s campaign in 2025 after the county approved the purchase of 15 cameras the previous year. Another $500 went to Dan Jungles, an unsuccessful candidate for Will County sheriff, whose department operates 25 Flock readers. These contributions are documented, although there is no evidence that contracts were awarded in exchange for campaign money. The officials involved insist the donations had no influence over their decisions. Fine. Then why is a surveillance company contributing to their political campaigns at all?

Flock also maintains a lobbying operation in Illinois, employing firms including Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies and National Strategies LLC. Cozen O’Connor reported approximately $485,000 in political contributions since early 2024, although that spending covers numerous clients and cannot be attributed entirely to Flock. The company’s CEO, Garrett Langley, has also made political contributions personally. Flock is not simply selling cameras and waiting for police departments to place orders. It is participating in the political system that determines how surveillance technology is purchased and regulated.

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Report: Former NYPD Detective Busted in NYC Drug Ring

A former New York Police Department (NYPD) detective was among four people busted in a drug ring that involved funneling narcotics from Manhattan to Staten Island, authorities said.

Police found at least 13 unlicensed firearms inside 60-year-old retired NYPD detective Philip Pietrunti’s home after investigators intercepted his phone, according to a report by the New York Post.

In one conversation the alleged ringleader, 44-year-old Shanta Sawyer, was reportedly heard speaking to Pietrunti about selling cocaine to him for resale.

“You can’t wait until you get off from work?” Pietrunti allegedly asked, to which Sawyer replied, “No, because I’m selling to someone at work.”

Sawyer is charged with conspiring with Pietrunti — a former NYPD Emergency Service Unit member — along with his wife, 37-year-old Sophia Abinacer, and 35-year-old Michael Giordano, to supply illegal narcotics to customers in Staten Island.

While New York City’s Special Narcotics Prosecutor’s Office announced the arrests on Monday, the crew was busted last week after a six-month wiretap investigation that resulted in a raid of all of their homes.

Police reportedly found large quantities of fentanyl, crack cocaine, and heroin, along with a pill-pressing machine, while searching Sawyer and Abinacer’s Washington Heights residence — where two young children were present.

Meanwhile, inside Giordano’s home, authorities uncovered a small lockbox of crack cocaine, 40 envelopes containing heroin and cocaine, as well as two scales, and drug packaging materials.

In late August, Sawyer and Pietrunti were overheard discussing a plan to meet at a Wendy’s to sell cocaine and “Xannies,” also known as Xanax pills. Moreover, Sawyer reportedly informed the ex-detective that the pills were fake.

In early October, investigators intercepted a call, in which Sawyer planned to send Abinacer to meet a buyer for a narcotics deal involving “dog food,” “G’s,” “Hard,” “Candy,” and “Pebbles” — slang terms for heroin, crack cocaine, and fentanyl.

The next day, police spotted Sawyer’s wife showing up in Huguenot, Staten Island, to meet with the customer before driving back to her Manhattan residence, the New York Post reported.

Multiple phone calls also revealed that Sawyer and Giordano planned to sell cocaine and fentanyl to another customer from Giordano’s home. Police then saw a customer pull up to the residence, where Giordano came out and leaned into the vehicle. Sawyer left afterward.

“The defendants involved in this takedown are alleged to have participated in a multi-borough criminal conspiracy that sought to flood our borough with dangerous narcotics, including large quantities of fentanyl, heroin and oxycodone,” Richmond County District Attorney Michael McMahon said.

“One of the defendants, Philip Pietrunti, a Staten Islander and retired NYPD Emergency Service Unit member, is accused of amassing a small army’s worth of illegal firearms, jeopardizing our borough’s public safety and betraying his oath to protect the community he once served,” McMahon added.

Notably, this is not the ex-detective’s first run-in with the law.

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Bronx DA’s Office Told Prosecutors to Omit Child’s Age From Sex-Crime Pleas to Help Noncitizen Defendants Avoid Deportation

The Bronx District Attorney’s Office, led by Democrat Darcel Clark, trained prosecutors to offer plea deals in child sex cases that leave the victim’s age out of the offense, so noncitizen defendants can avoid deportation. The finding comes from an Oct. 26 House Judiciary Committee staff report. The report found that district attorneys in all five New York City boroughs weigh immigration consequences when charging noncitizens and negotiating pleas.

The report quotes a 2019 Bronx guide on “immigration-conscious plea bargaining.” For sexual offenses against minors, the guide tells assistant district attorneys to “[o]ffer something that does not have the child’s age as an element of the crime.”

The same materials tell prosecutors to “[k]eep the firearm out of the record of conviction” in weapons cases and to “[k]eep the domestic relationship out of the record of conviction” in domestic violence cases. In stalking cases, prosecutors were told to offer a charge without “repeated instances or an intent to instill fear.” The committee wrote that Clark’s office trains prosecutors to “conceal facts from the record of conviction.”

Bronx training materials from 2023 tell prosecutors to “strive to ensure that a conviction for certain offenses does not lead to unintended and severe consequences.”

Whether the victim’s age is an element of the offense can affect whether the conviction provides grounds for deportation. Federal immigration law lists “sexual abuse of a minor” as an aggravated felony, which makes a convicted alien removable. In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that for statutory rape offenses, the federal definition “requires the age of the victim to be less than 16.”

Immigration courts assess the elements of the offense to which the defendant pleaded guilty, so a plea that leaves out the victim’s age can fall outside that category. An alien removed after an aggravated felony conviction is “permanently ineligible for a visa,” according to the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual, unless the Secretary of Homeland Security consents to a new application.

In Queens, District Attorney Melinda Katz told prosecutors to “exercise extreme caution” with noncitizen defendants and not to “get caught up in the label of [f]elonies, [m]isdemeanors.” Her office employs an immigration specialist who “helps Assistant District Attorneys navigate through plea options.”

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