Tag: corruption

Hunter Biden Voluntarily Surrenders D.C. Law License to Dodge Disbarment Battle Over Criminal Convictions

Hunter Biden, the scandal-plagued son of Joe Biden, has voluntarily agreed to give up his license to practice law in Washington, D.C., according to Politico.

The decision, revealed this week by the D.C. Bar’s Board on Professional Responsibility, comes as no surprise to those who’ve followed the younger Biden’s laundry list of legal troubles.

It’s a blatant attempt to sidestep the inevitable—a full disbarment proceeding that would have laid bare the consequences of his criminal behavior.

Last June, a jury convicted him of felony gun charges—owning a firearm while using illegal drugs and lying about that drug use on a federal form.

Then, in September, he pleaded guilty to tax evasion and a slew of other tax-related crimes, admitting he’d dodged the law while living a life of excess.

Yet, in December, his father—Joe Biden himself—swooped in with a presidential pardon, wiping the slate clean for his wayward son. How convenient.

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Biden Judge Shocks, Dismisses Case Against NYC Mayor Eric Adams, Blasts DOJ

A federal judge ended the case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday.

US District Judge Dale Ho, a Biden appointee, sent shockwaves after he dropped the DOJ’s case against Eric Adams.

Judge Ho previously declined to dismiss the case and said he would be appointing outside counsel to look into the Justice Department’s decision to drop the charges.

The DOJ wanted to drop the federal charges against Adams without prejudice which means they could refile them in the future. Judge Ho dismissed the case without prejudice and ended the case permanently.

Judge Ho also blasted Trump’s DOJ officials and accused them of a quid pro quo.

“Everything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the Indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions,” judge Ho wrote in his order.

“Taking a step back from the particulars of this case, DOJ’s immigration enforcement rationale is both unprecedented and breathtaking in its sweep,” the judge wrote, according to NBC News.

“DOJ cites no examples, and the Court is unable to find any, of the government dismissing charges against an elected official because doing so would enable the official to facilitate federal policy goals,” he said.

Adams was recently indicted on charges including wire fraud, bribery and conspiracy out of the Southern District of New York, becoming the first sitting New York City mayor to face criminal prosecution.

According to federal prosecutors, Adams accepted $10 million in illegal “straw” campaign contributions and bribes from foreign countries, including Turkey, Israel, China, Qatar, South Korea, and Uzbekistan, going back nearly a decade.

“For nearly a decade, Adams sought and accepted improper valuable benefits, such as luxury international travel, including from wealthy foreign businesspeople and at least one Turkish government official seeking to gain influence over him,” the indictment reads.

In February, the Trump Justice Department moved to drop federal charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

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Big Balls To The Rescue: DOGE Saves A Terabyte Of Data Destroyed By Exiting USIP Employees

I’ve never heard anything good about the United States Institute for Peace.

It’s been in bed with neocons, coupmeisters, and the Soros color revolution crowd for years. The quasi-government agency that runs like a private NGO is always sneaky and non-transparent.

So it didn’t surprise me a bit to learn that USIP showed unusual resistance to anyone poking into their spending from DOGE.

They even called the cops on DOGE, only to get arrested and hauled off themselves…

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The Swirling Vortex Of Weaponized Lawfare

Like a bad ‘When a chicken walked into a pub’ type of joke, when activist litigants walk into a courtroom and meet injunction-happy judges, the result is a swirling vortex of weaponised lawfare. In discussing the current jurisdictional kerfuffle between the US federal executive and judiciary, I find it impossible to overlook the total failure of the courts to protect people’s rights, dignity, and liberty under comprehensive assault from the administrative state during the Covid years. I accept the possibility that this may colour my judgment on the controversy.

It has become sadly obvious in recent years that the gravest threat to the theory and practice of democracy is not the rise of populism with wannabe fascists and neo-Nazis as their seductive tribunes, but technocratic elites with barely concealed disdain for the political beliefs and voting behaviour of the ‘deplorables.’ Moreover, as the firewalls of resistance to populist advance crumble one by one under assault from enraged voters, the final frontier of elite resistance is the courts. The legal clerisy—lawyers, law professors, and judges—is part of the ruling elite and the last line of defence for safeguarding victories already won by social justice warriors in their long march through the institutions.

Judicial Fallibility

Unlike every other profession, is the judiciary infallible? Clearly not, else they would not have been complicit in the biggest violation ever of people’s liberties and freedoms during the Covid years. Every country with a credible rule of law every so often overturns wrongful convictions from the past. Among the best-known Australian examples are those of Lindy Chamberlain and Cardinal George Pell.

As a corollary, are judges individually infallible and free of any influence of personal prejudices, beliefs, and life experiences? Again, clearly not. If they were, then in every single verdict heard by a bench of judges, verdicts would be unanimous and we could save considerable time and expense by dispensing with layers of appeal. From Australia consider the case of Cardinal Pell once again. He was convicted by jury verdict, the conviction was upheld 2-1 by the state appeals court, but overturned unanimously by the High Court of Australia (our apex court). Same laws, same evidence, different judgments.

Is every judge a paragon of judicial integrity and competence? Not so. A few are corrupt or guilty of other acts of malfeasance. Many more, I suspect, are incompetent rather than dishonest or corrupt. Mechanisms for acknowledging incompetence are fewer and less frequently invoked than for detecting and punishing corruption and malfeasance. Yet, even the latter cannot always be relied upon.

There is an interesting scandal playing out in India even now. On the night of 14 March, the official residence of a judge of the Delhi High Court,  Justice Yashwant Varma, went up in flames. Firefighters and police officers who rushed to deal with the conflagration discovered jute sacks of burnt-out cash. The Police Commissioner got in touch with the chief justice of Delhi High Court on the 15th to apprise him of developments, who in turn communicated the information to the Supreme Court of India. The Chief Justice of India established a three-judge panel to probe the matter and its report, which has been uploaded online (with redactions) in the interests of transparency given the intense public interest, substantiates that there are grounds for a full and proper inquiry. Justice Varma meanwhile has been transferred to another high court (against the protest of that court’s bar association) pending further investigations and action.

The hint of corruption would very likely have gone entirely undiscovered but for the fortuitous fire in the judge’s house. This in itself is an indictment of the inadequacy of oversight mechanisms for judges.

A final preliminary question: Unlike all other branches of government, is the judiciary collectively and are judges individually magically incapable of judicial overreach and in need of being put back in their lane? I suppose that such a perfect distribution of relative self-discipline among the branches of government is possible but, being an old cynic, forgive my scepticism. Not all judges have the necessary self-awareness and strength of character to avoid the temptation to abuse their powers and authority. On the contrary, the legal profession has a collective self-interest to expand the reach of its authority over all other sectors and, conversely, to protect itself from pushback by others.

A follow-up question is: How can the slow and deliberative process of judicial decision-making be reconciled with the need for sometimes urgent action by the executive? The judiciary is habituated into its own sequence and pace of actions. Thus for judges, the ultimate acquittal of Cardinal Pell by the High Court of Australia was a triumph of judicial institutions and process. To ordinary mortals, the process itself was a harsh punishment, and the 405 days that the aging cardinal spent behind bars was a damning miscarriage of justice.

In other words, from the date of his indictment in June 2017 through two jury trials, a first failed appeal, the final successful appeal, release from prison in April 2020, and death in January 2023 still unable to fully cleanse the taint of paedophilia, more than half of Cardinal Pell’s remaining time on earth was under malicious trial and punishment by a cadre of anti-Catholic Church activists out for blood. The nation demanded a scapegoat for the Catholic clergy’s historical sexual abuse of children. I write this not just as a non-Christian but as an atheist.

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Third Former Rotherham Police Officer Arrested Over Child Sex Abuse Investigation

A former police officer accused of raping a teenager in child-sex scandal town Rotherham has been arrested, the third such arrest in the investigation so far.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) announced a former police constable of the South Yorkshire Police was arrested on Monday. The former officer, a man in his 50s, is suspected of raping a teenage girl in the town of Rotherham in 2004.

IOPC spokesman Emily Barry said the investigation into the South Yorkshire Police is being conducted by the South Yorkshire Police under the Office’s direction, and that they have received complaints against police officers from six women. This new arrest pertains to the sixth and latest woman to come forward, she said.

Barry said: “These complaints are being handled sensitively and thoroughly investigated and a third former officer has now been arrested. At the end of the investigation we will decide whether a file of evidence will be referred to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider criminal charges.”

As previously reported, two former police officers were arrested on suspicion of child sex abuse last year. One of those former officers, a man in his 60s has been arrested twice over the course of the investigation in relation to separate allegations, including alleged child sex abuse against a victim between 1997 and 2002, and indecent assault against two other girls between 1995 and 1999.

A second former officer, a man in his 50s, was arrested on suspicion of “sexual assault and misconduct in public office and one count of indecent assault in connection to incidents that reportedly occurred around 1995-1996.”

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Newly Revealed FBI Messages Expose Agency’s Suppression of Hunter Biden Laptop Story Ahead of 2020 Election: Report

Newly revealed internal FBI messages have uncovered a startling effort by the agency to quash the explosive Hunter Biden laptop story in the lead-up to the 2020 election. These documents, released by the House Judiciary Committee, show a coordinated effort by senior FBI officials to suppress any discussion of the laptop, which could have severely impacted the Biden campaign.

The documents reveal that on October 14, 2020, the FBI had possession of the laptop and confirmed its authenticity but still sought to downplay its significance. One internal message from that day advised agents, “Please do not discuss Biden matter,” despite the fact that the story was breaking across news outlets.

This coordinated effort allowed Big Tech companies to censor the story, claiming it was “Russian disinformation” without evidence, according to Trending Politics.

In testimony to Congress, Laura Dehmlow, head of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, confirmed that an FBI analyst attempted to confirm the laptop’s authenticity to Twitter, only to be admonished and silenced by senior officials. These actions contradicted the FBI’s public stance that it was working to combat foreign interference, raising concerns about the agency’s role in suppressing free speech.

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Colorado Bill Would Classify ‘Misgendering,’ ‘Deadnaming,’ as Child Abuse, Impact Parental Rights, Custody Cases

Colorado Democrats are proposing a bill that would classify “misgendering” and “deadnaming” as forms of child abuse, or “coercive control,” that would be considered in child custody disputes.

The bill, HB25-1312, was introduced on Friday and is set to go before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. The bill’s sponsors are Democrat Reps. Lorena García, Rebekah Stewart Faith Winter, and Sen. Chris Kolker.

The bill subscribes to the false idea that one can identify as or become a different sex than they were born as, often called “gender identity.” The bill defines “deadname” as “to purposefully, and with the intent to disregard the individual’s gender identity or gender expression, refer to an individual by their birth name rather than their chosen name.” The bill defines “misgender” as “to purposefully, and with the intent to disregard the individual’s gender identity or gender expression, refer to an individual using an honorific or pronoun that conflicts with the individual’s gender identity or gender expression.”

According to the bill’s summary, the legislation would direct courts making child custody decisions and determining the best interests of a child “for purposes of parenting time” to consider “deadnaming,” “misgendering,” or threatening to publish material related to an individual’s sex change services as types of “coercive control.”

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‘Largest Tax-dodging Scheme in the History of Big Pharma’: Pfizer Sold $20 Billion of Drugs to Americans in 2019, Paid No Taxes

By shifting profits offshore, Pfizer carried out what lawmakers say may be the ‘largest tax-dodging scheme in the history of big pharma,” according to Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

In 2019, Pfizer sold $20 billion worth of drugs to American consumers but reported zero dollars in taxable income to the U.S. government — the drugmaker claimed that all of its profits were earned offshore, according to a new investigation into the company published by the committee last week.

The scheme allowed Pfizer to avoid billions of dollars in taxes in a single year, Wyden said.

The company also signed nondisclosure agreements with the governments of Singapore and Puerto Rico about special tax deals in a move to conceal from Congress the details of its tax-avoidance plan.

Since 2021, Wyden has been spearheading investigations into large drugmakers’ tax strategies. He said Pfizer’s scheme was even larger than those of other Pharma giants, including AbbVie, Merck, Bristol Myers Squibb and Amgen. The committee’s investigation of the other drug companies uncovered similar large schemes to avoid paying corporate income tax rate on profits from drug sales to U.S. patients.

“Pfizer joins a growing list of massively-profitable pharmaceutical corporations that show little-to-zero U.S. profits on tax returns, even though the U.S. is big pharma’s largest customer market,” the report said.

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FCC Is Finally Going After Corporate Media Hacks, And Democrats Are Outraged

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr joked recently that “[m]ore Americans trust gas station sushi than the legacy national media.” That statement, sad but true (or perhaps not so sad), is indicative of the new Trump chair’s approach to his job: to call out the powerhouse institutions that have long gotten a free pass on their relentless bias, illegal DEI practices, and general disservice to the American people. The chairman has had enough, and the left is losing its collective mind as a result.

The current iteration of that fight is prompted by a complaint filed by my organization, the Center for American Rights, against CBS for its misleading editing of then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ interview with 60 Minutes. The chairman has taken those charges seriously (as he should) and held a public comment period that ended this week. Numerous everyday Americans spoke up, critical of CBS’s electioneering, while left-wing senators and media groups are outraged at the supposed assault on the First Amendment.

Typical is Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who has opened an “Inquiry into FCC’s Political Targeting of Newsrooms” from his post as ranking member of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. In his release announcing the probe, Blumenthal lambasts the FCC for its “unprecedented, intrusive investigations against media broadcasters under arbitrary and capricious pretenses.” The senator is concerned that these “vexatious investigation[s]” by the FCC “may be designed to intimidate newsrooms,” so he’s apparently decided to launch his own investigation to intimidate the chairman into dropping the commission’s investigations. 

Democrat Sens. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, and Gary Peters of Michigan sent a similar letter blasting the chairman, intoning against the agency “weaponizing its authority over broadcasters and public media for political purposes.”

That’s rich coming from anyone who supported the Biden administration’s weaponization of the U.S. Department of Justice against pro-life grandmas and K-12 school moms. But it’s especially ironic coming from Blumenthal and Markey. 

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Former federal officer sentenced for smuggling aliens and receiving bribes from cartel

A former Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer has been sentenced to federal prison in two separate cases for allowing aliens and cocaine across the border, announced U.S. Attorney Nicholas J. Ganjei.

Emanuel Isac Celedon, 37, Laredo, pleaded guilty March 11, 2024, for his role in illegally smuggling illegal aliens into the United States through the Lincoln Juarez Port of Entry (POE) in Laredo. He also admitted to bribery and attempted importation of cocaine for accepting money to allow what he thought was cocaine to cross into the United States from Mexico. 

U.S. District Judge Diana Saldana has now imposed a total of 117 months in prison for both cases to be immediately followed by four years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay a money judgment of $17,980. At the hearing, the court noted Celedon’s job was to protect the United States from introduction of controlled substances and people not authorized to be in the country, and that he had failed in both regards. Judge Saldana added that Celedon was deeply involved in the organization and appeared to want to go even deeper.

“Anybody who aids or works for the cartel is going to find themselves on the wrong end of a federal indictment,” said Ganjei. “This case was especially troubling given the position of trust the defendant held. His criminal conduct stands in stark contrast to the heroic work the men and women of CBP are doing every day to keep our border and ports secure.”

While employed as a CBP Officer in Laredo in 2023, Celedon sought contacts within the Mexican criminal organization known as the Cartel del Noreste in order to smuggle drugs and aliens through his inspection lane in exchange for monetary payment.

During an undercover operation, Celedon expressed his interest in smuggling cocaine for payment, provided his duty schedule and gave instructions directing a loaded vehicle to his inspection lane at the port of entry. He then allowed the vehicle to safely cross into the United States. 

Using his position as a CBP officer, Celedon allowed several kilograms of what he believed to be cocaine into the United States on two separate occasions in October 2023. In exchange, he received $6,000.

Further investigation revealed Celedon also conspired with at least three others to bring illegal aliens into the United States without inspection. Celedon provided his daily lane assignment to Mexican national Homero Romero-Hernandez, 32, who passed the information to Jose Osvaldo Zapata-Vasquez, 25, another Mexican national with ties to the cartel. Zapata-Vasquez hired Cotulla resident Beatris Guadalupe Martinez, 22, to act as the driver.

Zapata-Vasquez relayed instructions to Martinez based on information Celadon provided regarding when to pick up the aliens in Mexico and which lane to approach when making entry to the United States.

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