Tag: corruption

Former CNBC Analyst To Admit Conning Investors Out Of Nearly $3 Million

Former CNBC financial analyst James Arthur McDonald faces decades behind bars after defrauding investors out of at least $2.7 million, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Feb. 19.

McDonald, 53, a former resident of Arcadia, Calif., agreed to plead guilty to one count of securities fraud, a felony that carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.

“This defendant was entrusted by his clients to care for their money and he violated that trust by using it to enrich himself,” said acting U.S. Attorney Joseph McNally.

In June 2024, federal officers arrested McDonald in Washington state, where he fled in 2021 to avoid appearing before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

At his Washington hideout, officers found a fake Washington, D.C., driver’s license bearing McDonald’s photograph and the name “Brian Thomas,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.

McDonald was the CEO and chief investment officer of two companies headquartered in Los Angeles—Hercules Investments LLC and Index Strategy Advisors Inc. He also often appeared on the CNBC financial news network.

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Conflicts of Interest in Climate Science: A Systemic Blind Spot

The field of climate science has long been presented as an objective, data-driven discipline, immune to the biases and financial conflicts that plague other scientific domains. However, a recent preprint study by Jessica Weinkle et al, Conflicts of Interest, Funding Support, and Author Affiliation in Peer-Reviewed Research on the Relationship between Climate Change and Geophysical Characteristics of Hurricanes, challenges this assumption, shedding light on an alarming lack of conflict of interest (COI) disclosures in climate research, particularly in studies linking hurricanes to climate change​. She also has an excellent write up of the study on her Substack, Conflicted.

The study’s findings reveal a disturbing trend: not a single one of the 331 authors analyzed disclosed any financial or non-financial conflicts of interest​. Moreover, the research found that funding from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) was a significant predictor of studies reporting a positive association between climate change and hurricane behavior​.

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New Hampshire’s ‘first black sheriff’ pleads guilty to a laundry list of felonies…

Here’s another big win for DEI hiring—Mark Brave, New Hampshire’s first black sheriff, just pled guilty to a laundry list of felonies. Shocking? No, not one bit. This is what happens when you focus on checking diversity boxes instead of hiring the best person for the job. Sadly, we see this happening everywhere these days.

Brave’s fall from grace is nothing new. Sadly, it follows a very familiar pattern if you’ve been paying attention to the left’s DEI circus. Back in August 2023, Brave was arrested for stealing nearly $19,000 in county funds. This “stand-up guy” used taxpayer money to fund his extramarital affair and bankroll romantic trips to Boston and Florida.

Mark filed bogus claims for airfare, hotels, and meals—all while conveniently covering up the fact that he wasn’t exactly traveling solo… or with his wife. He actually doctored receipts to hide the identity of his mistress.

But don’t worry—it gets worse…

Sheriff Brave flat-out lied to a grand jury. He spun stories about attending official events, meeting a US congressman, and, of course, denied his mistress was anywhere near those trips. All lies. One Boston getaway, supposedly for a “charity fundraiser,” turned out to be nothing more than a romantic dinner cruise with his side piece.

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DOGE vs Corrupt Media

Well, the country is still divided, with the Democrats screaming about DOGE. I would love to see Chuck Shummer in handcuffs and sent to Riker’s Island, where he belongs.  All we hear is how evil Musk is, and that he is UNELECTED. I do not recall ever voting for the head of any agency. They are their own independent auditors. If you go to a bank and want to borrow money for your business, you cannot say here is my audit of myself.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) refused to indict Lois Lerner, who was the IRS former executive who was at the heart of a scandal involving the deliberate targeting of political opponents of the Obama administration. The IRS had to apologize for letting the Obama Administration target conservatives publicly. I do not recall that Lerner was ever on any ballot asking for my vote.  The DOJ waited for almost two years to go by to dispose of this case quietly, even after Lerner herself apologized for targeting Tea Party groups attempting to qualify for tax-exempt status.

This is what the Democrats are protecting. I was told by a former Executive VP of a major NY Newspaper that the government intimidates journalists into killing stories or twisting them to the government’s favor, threatening endless IRS audits. These Democrats have the audacity to object to Musk when they have abused the power of every agency they can.

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MUST SEE: LA Officials Blame Residents for Wildfires, Admit They Knew The Fires Were Coming and Pacific Palisades Reservoir Was Empty for “A Year” – Official Threatens to Call 911 When Confronted

James O’Keefe’s O’Keefe Media Group has released a new investigative report on Los Angeles officials’ response to the wildfires last month, which raged across LA County. 

Over 12,000 homes were destroyed in the blazes, and at least 29 died.

Due to Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass’s failed leadership and radical leftist policies, which cut $17.6 million from the Fire Department’s budget a few months ago and reduced the city’s water supply available in fire hydrants, firetrucks were forced to use residential hoses to fill up their water tanks. The fire hydrants had run dry, exacerbating the crisis.

The Santa Ynez Reservoir, with a capacity of 117 million gallons, could have played a critical role in providing water pressure to firefighters battling the devastating fire that destroyed thousands of homes and buildings in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Malibu. However, it had been offline and empty for nearly a year, which incompetent Governor Gavin Newsom called “deeply troubling.”

Alexander Boz, an international relations official with the Los Angeles Mayor’s office, and LA Department of Water and Power project manager Angel Luna told an undercover journalist more about the state’s botched fire response.

Angel Luna acknowledged that the reservoir in Pacific Palisades was empty and taken out of service but claimed that the more than 100 million gallons wouldn’t have made an impact “because of the fact that you lost so many homes.” He further claimed that LA firefighters were “breaking our equipment” when the topic of empty fire hydrants was brought up.

Ignoring the incompetence that led to a lack of available water, Luna dismissed the notion that residents needed water, saying, “Yeah, but we like in a desert” and “It doesn’t rain here.”

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Musk Details How Treasonous The Biden Administration Was…

During comments at the CPAC conference Thursday, Elon Musk detailed just how extreme the Biden administration was when it came to the opening the border and flooding the country with illegal aliens.

“It’s important for people to understand the Biden Administration sent any possible money they could send to amplify illegal immigration,” Musk urged.

He explained, “They took money from FEMA meant for helping Americans in distress and sent it to luxury hotels for illegal immigrants in NY. That is an outrage. They actually did that.”

“Not only that, even after The President (Trump) signed an EO saying it has to stop, the deep state bureaucrats still pressed send on $80M last week to send money to The Roosevelt Hotel and other places. Now they’re mad and they’re trying to sue to have it restored. The gumption of these people,” Musk told the crowd.

Newsmax host, Rob Schmitt then asked Elon “Do you think they were trying to create a new voter class?”

Musk responded “Yes. Look at basic incentives. If the probability that an illegal is going to vote Democrat is 80-90% then the incentive is to maximized the umber of illegals in the country.”

“That is why the Biden administration was pushing to get in as many illegals as possible. because every one of them is a customer. Every one of them is voter. The entire thing is a giant voter import scam,” Musk asserted.

“Then they created this CBP1 app to literally fly people in. When people are being flown in at your expense that is crazy. Then we found out some guy in London was paid $100M to make this app,” Elon added.

“When they’re flying illegals into the swing states, it’s not going to be a swing state for long,” he further contended.

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“The Ever-Expanding Matrix Of NGOs Created An Army Of Useful Idiots…”

Funny Money

“The revelations that are coming for America possess the potential to reshape our entire notion of the relationship between citizen and state.” 

– El Gato Malo on Substack

You’ve got to wonder how the Party of Chaos thought they would get away with the Stacey Abrams grift-of-grifts. 

In case you forgot, Stacey Abrams ran for governor of Georgia twice, lost, and claimed she was “real governor” for years after.

In the meantime, she parlayed her celebrity persona to a $3.17-million net worth by 2022, doing nothing but running for office. 

She claimed it derived from giving speeches, publishing romance novels, and “wise investments.”

That was then, and this is now.

Stacey popped up again this week in what looks like a textbook case of political scamming, uncovered by The DOGE team of forensic financial investigators. 

As “Joe Biden” racked up Democratic presidential primary wins in 2024, the shadowy claque behind him allocated $27-billion to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from the huge Inflation Reduction Act, ostensibly for “climate change action.” 

The money was stashed at Citibank, where it became a hidden slush-fund to keep payoffs flowing to party favorites no matter who won the 2024 election. An EPA “special advisor on climate action,” one Brent Efron, told a Project Veritas investigative reporter that “President Biden” was “throwing gold bars off the Titanic”.

The key to understanding how the Democratic Party works is how it uses federal grants to redistribute taxpayer money into jobs programs for its rank-and-file. As seen in the recent USAID scandal, the action revolves around the creation of countless NGOs (non-governmental orgs). They are easily created, poorly supervised, and assembled into large networks of self-serving, inter-dependent organisms whose main mission is paying staffers — and secondarily pretending to do good works, as suggested by a given group’s name is. These staffers make up the matrix of Democratic Party activists, well-paid foot-soldiers in do-nothing jobs who can be called upon to cheer-lead for the party, organize street protests and, most critically, harvest ballots when the time comes.

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Biden Soros-Linked EPA Official Tossed $5 Billion to Former Employer in Last-Minute Biden Heist – Lee Zeldin Responds

The Biden EPA’s “gold bar” scandal is growing by the day.

A Soros-linked Joe Biden EPA official awarded $5 billion to his former employer, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Jahi Wise, a Soros-linked senior EPA official, was tasked with overseeing Joe Biden’s $27 billion climate slush fund program.

Wise was the director of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF). The GGRF awarded grants totaling $20 billion to 8 entities. Wise awarded his former employer, Washington-based Coalition for Green Capital, $5 billion.

The Washington Free Beacon reported:

The senior Biden administration official tasked with directing former President Joe Biden’s $27 billion climate grant program oversaw a $5 billion grant from the program to his former employer, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Jahi Wise joined the Environmental Protection Agency in December 2022 as the founding director of the newly created Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, or GGRF, according to his LinkedIn profile. In April 2024, while Wise served in that role, the EPA announced that it would award GGRF grants totaling $20 billion to just eight nonprofits, including the Coalition for Green Capital, a Washington, D.C.-based group that received $5 billion as part of the announcement and where Wise previously worked as the director of policy. There is no indication that Wise recused himself from that process.

Wise departed the Coalition for Green Capital in January 2021 to join the White House Climate Policy Office as a special assistant to the president, a position he held until he joined the EPA less than two years later.

EPA chief Lee Zeldin called this a conflict of interest in a statement to the Free Beacon.

“The story of the Biden EPA’s gold bars never stops,” EPA Chief Lee Zeldin told the Washington Free Beacon in a statement. “The waste and abuse was so deeply interwoven in the last administration that not only did the leaders who oversaw this not bat an eye at billions of your taxpayer dollars going towards partisan pet projects, but serious conflicts of interest were ignored. That should have raised red flags.”

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Doctors Supporting Marijuana Rescheduling File Lawsuit Calling For DEA Witness Selection Redo Over Alleged Unlawful Conspiracy With Reform Opponents

A non-profit organization of pro-marijuana reform doctors has filed a brief in a federal appeals court arguing that new evidence has surfaced demonstrating that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) carried out an “arbitrary and capricious review” of witnesses for hearings on the ongoing cannabis rescheduling process that should now be redone.

The group is alleging that there’s “substantial evidence” of procedural violations committed by DEA leadership during the witness selection process—including previously unreported unlawful ex parte communications with certain parties, most of whom oppose the rescheduling proposal.

The suit from Doctors for Drug Policy Reform (D4DPR)—filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Monday—comes amid an indefinite delay of the DEA administrative hearings on the Biden administration-initiated proposal to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

At issue in the legal challenge is the fact that then-DEA Administrator Anne Milgram selected just 25 of more than 160 applicants that sought to provide input on the rescheduling proposal.

According to attorneys represented by D4DPR, which was among the groups denied designated participant status for the hearings, there’s substantial evidence that DEA’s ex parte communications were “motivated by the impermissible goal of creating an evidentiary record that would allow it to reject the proposed rule to reschedule marijuana.”

“The Agency gave no reasons for selecting only 25 participants or why it selected particular applicants,” the lawsuit says. “The Agency’s failure to explain the reasons for its selections warrants vacatur and remand with instructions to redo the selections.”

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Grand jury recommends Alabama police department be ‘immediately abolished’

An Alabama grand jury has recommended that a city’s police department be “immediately abolished,” finding there is a “rampant culture of corruption,” officials said Wednesday while announcing the indictment of five of the agency’s officers, including its police chief.

Five Hanceville police officers were arrested and charged amid a probe into the department, Cullman County District Attorney Champ Crocker said. The spouse of one of the officers was also charged, he said.

“This is a sad day for law enforcement, but at the same time, it is a good day for the rule of law,” Crocker said during a press briefing on Wednesday.

Crocker provided limited details on the case. Though the investigation encompassed the department’s evidence room and the death of a Hanceville dispatcher, 49-year-old Christopher Michael Willingham, who was found dead from a toxic drug combination at work, officials said.

The Cullman County grand jury found that the Hanceville Police Department has “failed to account for, preserve and maintain evidence and in doing so has failed crime victims and the public at large,” making the evidence “unusable,” Crocker said.

The grand jury further found that Willingham’s death was “the direct result of the Hanceville Police Department’s negligence, lack of procedure, general incompetence and disregard for human life,” Crocker said.

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