Tag: corruption

Federal Judge Violates Judicial Code While Lecturing Justice Alito on Ethics in New York Times Essay, Forced to Issue Apology for Misconduct

Senior U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor of Massachusetts openly criticized Justice Samuel Alito’s ethics in a New York Times guest essay, violating the sacred trust of impartiality expected from the judiciary.

The conservative advocacy group, the Article III Project, filed a formal complaint against Ponsor, leading to a misconduct finding and a public apology from the senior judge.

The complaint, filed in May 2024, stemmed from an op-ed authored by Judge Ponsor and published in The New York Times.

The article discusses the controversy surrounding Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s display of an upside-down American flag and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at his properties, which some media outlets tied to Trump supporters during the events of January 6, 2021. Ponsor declared the flags as symbols of partisanship and questioned Alito’s ethical judgment.

Despite lacking direct evidence of ethical violations or pending cases involving the flags, Ponsor’s essay implied that Alito’s actions warranted recusal from cases related to January 6, casting doubt on the Supreme Court justice’s impartiality.

“To me, the flag issue is much simpler. The fact is that, regardless of its legality, displaying the flag in that way, at that time, shouldn’t have happened. To put it bluntly, any judge with reasonable ethical instincts would have realized immediately that flying the flag then and in that way was improper. And dumb,” Ponsor wrote in the essay.

“The same goes for the flying of an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at Justice Alito’s vacation house along the New Jersey shore. Like the upside-down flag, this flag is viewed by a great many people as a banner of allegiance on partisan issues that are or could be before the court.”

Chief Judge Albert Diaz of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued a scathing rebuke of Ponsor’s actions.

“The essay expressed personal opinions on controversial public issues and criticized the ethics of a sitting Supreme Court justice. Such comments diminish the public confidence in the integrity and independence of the federal judiciary in violation of Canons 1 and 2A.” said Diaz in the filed reply.

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‘The View’ Co-Host in Hot Water: Alyssa Farah Griffin Caught Coaching Federal Witness and Known Liar Cassidy Hutchinson – May Face Criminal Investigation

The Committee on House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight Chairman Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) released a second interim report on Tuesday addressing the events surrounding January 6, 2021.

The report not only highlighted widespread failures but also issued damning allegations against key members of the now-disbanded January 6 Committee.

“This interim report reveals that there was not just one single cause for what happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6; but it was a series of intelligence, security, and leadership failures at several levels and numerous entities,” Loudermilk said.

The most explosive revelation from Loudermilk’s report pertains to the conduct of Liz Cheney. The report alleges that Cheney personally coached the committee’s so-called “star witness,” Cassidy Hutchinson, to alter her testimony—without Hutchinson’s attorney present.

Witness tampering is a federal crime.

Now we know why the sham committee deleted their communications from the public.

They all should be looking at prison time.

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House GOP accuses Liz Cheney of tampering with J6 witness, ask FBI to investigate criminality

The House Administration Oversight Subcommittee and its chairman Barry Loudermilk on Tuesday released an interim report on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, concluding the attack was preventable and also asking for an investigation into former Rep. Liz Cheney for criminally tampering with a witness during the Democrat-led congressional inquiry of the tragedy.

“Based on the evidence obtained by this Subcommittee, numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, the former Vice Chair of the January 6 Select Committee, and these violations should be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the report released by the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee and its chairman Barry Loudermilk stated.

“Evidence uncovered by the Subcommittee revealed that former Congresswoman Liz Cheney tampered with at least one witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, by secretly communicating with Hutchinson without Hutchinson’s attorney’s knowledge.,” it added. “This secret communication with a witness is improper and likely violates 18 U.S.C. 1512. Such action is outside the due functioning of the legislative process and therefore not protected by the Speech and Debate clause.”

Federal law criminalizes witness tampering of varying degrees, and subjects a defendant to as many as 20 years in prison.

You can read the full report here.

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Final_Report_Compiled_Working_Doc__final_locked_version_.pdf

The report also took direct aim at former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, Cheney’s star witness at the nationally televised hearings, alleging that Cheney encouraged false testimony about a handwritten document and noting her sensational claim that former President Donald Trump tried to commandeer his presidential limousine that day to take it to the Capitol was directly refuted by the Secret Service.

Loudermilk’s report suggested Cheney also bore responsibility for Hutchinson’s testimony.

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New Evidence of Alleged ActBlue Foreign Money Laundering Operation Revealed

ActBlue and other campaign donation platforms are at the center of an investigation being conducted by at least 20 State’s attorneys general, as well as the House Administration Committee in Congress.  It is also the subject of a lawsuit in Waukesha County, where earlier this month a judge allowed limited discovery into ActBlue to proceed.

The colloquial term used to describe this alleged operation is “smurfing.”  Peter Bernegger, Chris Gleason, and their team discovered this suspected campaign money laundering operation and went public with it in 2023 when James O’Keefe’s OMG published videos interviewing suspected victims of this scheme.

According to the FEC.gov website, there are potentially thousands upon thousands of individuals whose identities are being stolen to launder millions of dollars to political campaigns and PACs across the country.  This scheme can be verified by anyone:

  1. Simply go to FEC.gov.
  2. Under “Campaign Finance Data”, select “Look up contributions from specific individuals.”
  3. Put “ActBlue” as the “Recipient Name”
  4. Select a zip code or city you’d like to search
  5. Under “Occupation” put “retired”
  6. Uncheck the Report Time Period box or expand it to the date range you’d like to check

The last step is to click “Export” in the top right hand corner.  This will download the data in a spreadsheet format.  When you open it up, sort the data by name.  Each contribution in this alleged scheme is typically under $5.

On Friday, Bernegger joined the Why We Vote podcast to discuss the recent reports that have come out of Congress via Rep. Bryan Steil and Rep. Jim Jordan.  According to subpoenaed records from ActBlue, Just The News reported that ActBlue updated its policy on Sept 9th to “automatically reject donations that use foreign prepaid/gift cards, domestic gift cards, are from high-risk/sanctioned countries, and have the highest level of risk as determined,” by its solution provider, Sift.

Bernegger had several crucial updates regarding their own investigation into this money-laundering scheme regarding an automated process to make the donations, why ActBlue’s policy update likely won’t have any impact on any accounts established before the change, and whether or not the incoming Trump administration will engage in this investigation.

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“Crazy”: Trump Weighs In On Biden SELLING OFF Border Wall Sections For $5 Each

President Trump has called for a stop to be put to the Biden Administration selling off vast swathes of unused border wall sections at auction for as little as $5 a piece, calling it “crazy.”

As we highlighted last week, the wall sections, which have been laying on the ground unused for years due to Biden halting construction, are being hauled away on the back of flatbed trucks from a section of the border just south of Tucson.

Up to half a mile of unused wall is being moved every day, according to a Border Patrol agent.

“Joe Biden keeps talking about a smooth transition and unified government, and yet he races to sell desperately needed border wall for pennies on the dollar,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Friday.

He continued, “It will cost the U.S. a fortune, and time, to get the exact same wall to replace what has been sold, and the new wall will cost triple the price.”

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Cracking Down on Big Tech: New Bill’s Plan to Expose Government Collusion

A new legislative effort has been launched in the US Senate in order to prevent any future instances of government Tech collusion from flying under the legislators’ radar.

The Transparency in Bureaucratic Communications Act, introduced by Republican Senator Eric Schmitt, would have inspectors general (IGs) inform Congress in detail about any communication, and circumstances of that communication, between the agencies these watchdogs are in charge of, and companies benefiting from Section 230 protections.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

Judging by a press statement by Schmitt, the concern is that, even with the government accused of such collusion now on its way out, what he refers to as “the deep state” might still continue to “work” with Big Tech.

“The incoming Republican Congress cannot allow deep-state bureaucrats to continue censoring the free speech of our constituents any longer (…) We will find the bureaucratic rot and we will rip it out,” Schmitt stated.

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Biden grants clemency to ex-doc sentenced to 20 years for diluting cancer patients’ chemotherapy drugs

President Joe Biden granted clemency to nearly 1,500 Americans this week, including to a former doctor convicted of Medicare fraud for providing diluted chemotherapy drugs to cancer patients.

The commutations, which the White House is lauded as “the largest single-day grant of clemency in modern history,” has drawn significant criticism as some of those on the list have been reported on. According to a report from The Washington Free Beacon, several recipients were involved in serious offenses.

Meera Sachdeva, a Mississippi doctor, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2012 for defrauding Medicare and was required to reimburse $8.2 million to her former cancer facility. Sachdeva provided cancer patients with diluted chemotherapy drugs. She also provided them with old needles, which resulted in one patient claiming to have gotten HIV from a needle used by her clinic.

The White House announced that the individuals who received clemency had demonstrated rehabilitation and “a strong commitment to making their communities safer.” In addition to commuting sentences for nearly 1,500 individuals on home confinement, Biden pardoned 39 people convicted of non-violent offenses.

“Together, these actions build on the President’s record of criminal justice reform to help reunite families, strengthen communities, and reintegrate individuals back into society,” the White House said in its announcement. “The President has issued more sentence commutations at this point in his presidency than any of his recent predecessors at the same point in their first terms.”

Other recipients of clemency included Daniel Fillerup, an Alabama physician sentenced to 10 years in prison for illegally distributing fentanyl that resulted in a fatal overdose. The Department of Justice said that Fillerup “directly contributed to the opioid epidemic.” Also included was Wendy Hechtman, who was serving 15 years for leading a drug ring linked to a surge in overdose deaths in Nebraska in 2017.

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Biden slammed for commuting sentence of notorious ‘Kids-for-Cash’ judge convicted of imprisoning juveniles for $2.1M kickbacks

The corrupt former Pennsylvania judge convicted of funneling juveniles to for-profit detention facilities in exchange for $2.1 million in kickbacks had his lengthy prison sentence commuted Thursday by President Biden. 

Former Luzerne County Judge Michael Conahan, the jurist at the center of the so-called “Kids-for-Cash” scandal, was among 1,499 commutations the 82-year-old lame-duck president granted in the largest presidential act of clemency on a single day in modern history, according to the White House. 

The mother of a victim of Conahan’s disturbing crime fumed upon hearing of his commutation. 

“I am shocked and I am hurt,” Sandy Fonzo, whose son committed suicide after he was locked up as part of the scheme orchestrated by Conahan and former judge Mark Ciavarella, said in a statement.  

“Conahan‘s actions destroyed families, including mine, and my son‘s death is a tragic reminder of the consequences of his abuse of power,” she added, according to The Citizen’s Voice. “This pardon feels like an injustice for all of us who still suffer.”

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‘Fabrications’: FBI informant who lied about Biden family Ukraine bribery scheme takes plea deal for false records and tax evasion, faces up to 35 years in federal prison

A longtime FBI informant will soon be an admitted federal criminal.

Nearly 10 months passed between the first and second time Alexander Smirnov was indicted by special counsel David Weiss — for two different suites of federal crimes. Just over two weeks passed between the second indictment and the agreed upon plea deal.

The storyline here implicates a yearslong narrative about the alleged perfidy of President Joe Biden and his adult son Hunter Biden — as well as several million dollars hidden from the government.

In a 24-page Thursday filing, the defendant and the government made short work of those two cases. In sum, Smirnov was charged with 12 federal counts for a combination of misleading investigators and tax-related crimes. To cap things off, Smirnov will accept legal culpability for one count of causing the creation of a false and fictitious record in a federal investigation and three counts of tax evasion.

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Bank of England announces it will keep the names of non-bank financial institutions it bails out a secret

On Monday, the Bank of England announced it will hide the identities of any pension funds, insurers or hedge funds bailed out to avoid the stigma.  This new policy of secrecy to protect banks’ identity will begin in 2025 when the central bank launches its Contingent NBFI Repo Facility.

Also in 2025, the final parts of Basel III will be implemented.  Basel III introduces bail-ins, where account holders rather than the government bail out a failing bank.

But that’s not all. In the “second half of this decade,” i.e. any time from 2025, is “the earliest” the Bank of England would issue a central bank digital currency.

In the past, wars and oil embargoes have been used to justify implementing new global financial systems.  Could we be seeing signs they are preparing for a crisis that they won’t let go to waste?

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