Tag: corruption

Feds Charge Sinaloa’s Governor, Senator, Mayor, & Other Top Officials With Running A Narco-State

Federal prosecutors in New York have charged ten current and former senior Mexican government officials — among them the sitting governor of Sinaloa, a sitting federal senator, the mayor of the state capital, and the state’s former secretary of public security — with conspiring to protect the Sinaloa Cartel’s most powerful faction in exchange for millions of dollars in drug money, in what may be the most sweeping corruption indictment ever brought against a sitting government in the Western Hemisphere.

The superseding indictment, filed in the Southern District of New York and unsealed Wednesday, charges all ten defendants with narcotics importation conspiracy — specifically, conspiracy to flood the United States with fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine — as well as conspiracy to possess machineguns and destructive devices in furtherance of drug trafficking.

One defendant, a municipal police commander, faces additional charges of kidnapping resulting in death: the alleged abduction and murder of a Drug Enforcement Administration confidential source, his relative, and a 13-year-old boy, carried out using a police patrol car.

The document does not describe a cartel that corrupted a government. It describes a government that became the cartel’s operating infrastructure.

In what appears to be the first instance in American legal history of the Justice Department indicting a sitting Mexican governor, prosecutors allege that Ruben Rocha Moya, 76, who has served as governor of Sinaloa since November 2021, did not simply accept cartel money. He allegedly made his deal with the Chapitos — the sons of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman — before he was ever elected, in a meeting guarded by Cartel sicarios armed with machineguns, and delivered on every term thereafter.

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Senator Finds More Evidence Federal Officials Evaded FOIA

A U.S. senator and his team say they have uncovered additional evidence that federal officials worked to evade requests made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Several emails obtained by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) showed personnel with the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were aware of FOIA requests and sought to evade them. FOIA enables people to request records from the government. It requires officials to retain and produce requested records, subject to certain exemptions.

In a Nov. 26, 2022, missive, Allison Lale, a medical officer with the CDC, asked a colleague about receiving safety analyses of COVID-19 vaccination from the FDA.

Pedro Moro, a CDC epidemiologist, responded. “I think that because of the FOIAs we may have asked FDA to stop sending these weekly data mining outputs,” Moro wrote.

“Oh interesting,” Lale said. She added that during calls for a CDC-managed program, “we used to just verbally mention” that certain terms had not triggered safety signals, or signs vaccines were causing problems.

“But we could also leave it out if that [sic] this creates more hassle,” she added.

In a separate email chain, FDA officials were told by an FDA vaccine safety analytic expert, Dr. Ana Szarfman, that the approach they were using to analyze the safety of COVID-19 vaccines was faulty. The information sparked a long discussion, during which officials considered asking the expert to contact an outside expert on the matter.

“Before we potentially reach out to Ana, we should meet internally – many considerations not suited to email…” David Menschik, an FDA official who distributed the data mining reports, wrote on April 15, 2021.

“Sounds good,” Bethany Baer, another FDA worker, responded. “Happy to meet and discuss anytime open on my calendar.”

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Former Ukraine Top Spy and Currently Presidential Chief of Staff, Popular General Budanov Has Become a Danger to Zelensky’s Rule

Keep your enemies closer?

We have been reporting here on TGP on how the corruption scandal involving Volodymyr Zelensky’s close friend and partner Timur Mindich shook Kiev’s political landscape.

Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies NABU and SAPO exposed a $100 million embezzlement and kickback scheme at the state nuclear energy company Energoatom, which led to Mindich fleeing justice to Israel.

To survive the political crisis, the all-powerful chief of staff Andriy Yermak was sacrificed by the regime, and Zelensky appointed in his place Kirill Budanov, head of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR), and his moderate critic.

As journalist and political analyst Vitaly Ryumshin detailed in RT, this has been a dangerous idea.

Budanov started in his new role keeping a low profile, but soon he started making public statements at odds with those of Zelensky.

“While the president has prepared the country for a prolonged conflict, Budanov has spoken of ongoing negotiations and suggested that peace may not be as distant as many assume. When Zelensky highlighted Ukraine’s technological breakthroughs, Budanov has downplayed them. He has also openly acknowledged the growing difficulties of mobilization, a rare admission from a senior official in a country at war.

At the same time, Budanov has been carefully constructing his public image. In Western media, he is presented as both a war hero and a pragmatic ‘dove’, a man who understands the need to bring the conflict to an end. For domestic audiences, his team promotes stories of personal bravery, portraying him as a hands-on commander who has taken part in operations and narrowly escaped danger.”

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Son of Norwegian Diplomats, Who Inherited $10M From Jeffrey Epstein’s Will, Commits Suicide Days After Police Launch Investigation on His Parents

Late sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s impact on Norway keeps producing nefarious outcomes.

Since the US DOJ released the ‘Epstein files’, a lot of activity has been going on in the Norwegian kingdom, notably around Crown Princess Mette-Marit, who is suffering deep reputational damage, and former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland, who is under criminal investigation.

But a horrifying development involved diplomat Terje Rod-Larsen and his wife Mona Juul, a former ambassador.

Days after an investigation into their ties to Epstein was launched, their 25-year-old son has reportedly died by suicide.

Daily Mail reported:

“Edward Juul Rod-Larsen, 25, was found dead in Oslo on Wednesday, just days after Norwegian and French police launched a joint investigation into his parents,

[…] ‘It stands in the shadow of months of a public spotlight that has long since ceased to be critical, and has instead become suspicious, speculative and at times limitless. A spotlight that has not only affected two parents, but has also drawn their children involuntarily into the relentless machinery of the public,’ [his family] lawyers wrote.

‘Speculating on connections is both irresponsible and undignified. Suicide is always complex. There is never one explanation, never one cause, never one blame’.”

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Biden-Appointed Judge Orders Release of Dominican Illegal Alien Wanted for Murder by Interpol Red Notice Fugitive Now Roaming Free After ICE Arrest!

A Biden-appointed federal judge in Rhode Island has ordered the release of a Dominican illegal alien who is the subject of an Interpol Red Notice for murder in his home country.

The criminal illegal alien, Bryan Rafael Gomez, was arrested by ICE Boston in Worcester, Massachusetts on April 4th.

He had just been picked up locally for domestic abuse when a background check revealed Dominican authorities issued a criminal arrest warrant against him for homicide in 2023.

He is also the subject of an active Interpol Red Notice, an international arrest warrant for murder.

Gomez was detained at an ICE facility in Rhode Island. An immigration judge issued a deportation order on April 28th. But on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose, a Biden appointee confirmed in 2024 as the first Black and openly LGBTQ federal judge in Rhode Island, ordered him released on the grounds of “continuous unlawful detention.”

ICE argued Gomez was subject to mandatory detention because of the international homicide warrant. The judge ignored that and set the wanted murderer free.

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More Details Emerge of Trump’s Secret Use of ICE to Spy on Critics

Lawmakers and privacy advocates are demanding answers from the Trump administration about its weaponization of digital tools and popular web platforms to spy on critics and activists. Targets have included a student who attended a pro-Palestine protest and anonymous web users posting about President Donald Trump’s violent immigration crackdown, but the administration’s secret systems of surveillance likely cast a wide net.

Privacy groups are also making demands of Big Tech firms such as Meta and Google, which have come under pressure from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to hand over identifying information for anonymous users. Officials from the agency have wielded legally dubious administrative subpoenas — meant to be used to determine duties on imported products — in an attempt to compel the information.

The efforts to expose domestic spying under the Trump administration offer a preview of how Democrats could yield subpoena power next year if voters hand them the House majority in November. Rep. Delia Ramirez, a Democrat from Illinois who was appointed ranking member of the cybersecurity subcommittee of the House Committee on Homeland Security this week, said emerging technologies are being used to violate civil rights and target Trump’s critics.

“The Trump-Miller regime is weaponizing the government and abusing every authority to persecute anyone whom they perceive as an enemy,” Ramirez told Truthout in a text on April 29, referencing Stephen Miller, the anti-immigrant extremist serving as a top adviser to Trump. “And fascism always requires a public enemy.”

ICE Targets Personal Information of Trump Critics

On April 17, attorneys with the Civil Liberties Defense Center filed a motion in federal court to throw out a grand jury subpoena that Reddit received from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) demanding “extensive private information” about an anonymous user. The user had posted statements critical of ICE and other political content on Reddit, a popular online discussion forum.

Reddit originally received an administrative subpoena from an ICE official in Virginia demanding the user’s personal information, The Intercept first reported earlier this month. The Civil Liberties Defense Center, representing the Reddit user, immediately filed a motion against the summons. Rather than defend the original administrative subpoena in court, ICE switched tactics in early April and demanded that Reddit attorneys appear before a secret grand jury, according to organization’s executive director Lauren Regan.

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COVID Vaccine Hearing Exposes Deliberate Blind Eye to ‘Overwhelming Evidence of Harm’

For four years, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) has wondered how US health officials could ignore “overwhelming evidence of harm” from the COVID vaccine.

“Now I know,” he says.

The truth is, health officials didn’t “ignore” safety signals. They buried them instead.

And now we have the receipts:

The US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations investigated what federal health officials knew and when they knew it—and dug out a timeline that would make any American furious.

This is not a fringe “conspiracy theory.” It was revealed by the government’s own investigation—and it’s a story they don’t want you to read.

According to VAERS, the US’s vaccine adverse event reporting system, more adverse events and deaths have been reported following COVID vaccines than from all other vaccines combined over the system’s 30+ year history.

More dangerous than ivermectin. More dangerous than hydroxychloroquine (which turned out not to be so dangerous after all).

It was 55 times more deadly than the flu vaccine (0.46 deaths vs 25.5 deaths per million doses).

And even more dangerous than Remdesivir, which earned the nickname “Run Death Is Near” after it wreaked havoc on the kidneys and livers of tens of thousands of COVID patients in the hospital.

But still the question remains. How did US health officials miss a safety signal this big?

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Federal Judge Dismisses DOJ Lawsuit Requesting Arizona Voter Data

A federal judge on April 28 dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) against Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes that sought access to state voter registration data.

Judge Susan Brnovich of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona wrote in a 13-page ruling that Arizona’s voter registration list is “not a document subject to request by the Attorney General“ and that the DOJ did not provide sufficient argument to ”convince the court” to allow access to the data.

“Accordingly, the Court will dismiss the Attorney General’s claim with prejudice because amendment would be legally futile,” Brnovich wrote.

The DOJ filed its lawsuit against Fontes’s office in January, saying he refused to provide the department with the list in August 2025.

It asked for Fontes to provide the DOJ with “the current electronic copy of Arizona’s computerized statewide voter registration list, with all fields, including each registrant’s full name, date of birth, residential address, and either their state driver’s license number, the last four digits of their Social Security number, or [Help America Vote Act] unique identifier” within five days of a court order.

The DOJ had argued that the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act require that states maintain voter lists to ensure their accuracy. Further, it said that Congress provided the attorney general with the capacity to request state voting records under Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960.

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DOJ Sues Big Tech Giant Cloudera for Blocking American Workers in Favor of Foreign Visa Holders, Same Company Sued Trump in 2017 Over Refugee Ban

The Trump Department of Justice has filed a federal lawsuit against Cloudera Inc., a major Silicon Valley tech company, for deliberately discriminating against qualified American workers in favor of foreign visa holders for high-paying tech positions.

The Civil Rights Division’s lawsuit accuses Cloudera of violating the Immigration and Nationality Act by creating a sham, separate hiring process designed to deter and exclude American citizens while fast-tracking foreign workers on temporary visas.

“Employers cannot use the PERM sponsorship process as a backdoor for discriminating against U.S. workers,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said. “The Division will not hesitate to sue companies who intentionally deter U.S. workers from applying to American jobs.”

According to the DOJ, Cloudera set up a dedicated email address for job applications that was deliberately configured not to accept emails from outside the company.

American workers who followed the company’s posted instructions received automatic bounce-back messages stating that their applications could not be processed.

The DOJ said in a press release:

The complaint alleges Cloudera intentionally created a separate recruitment and hiring process to deter U.S. workers from applying, and also did not consider them, for lucrative technology jobs that the company earmarked for people with temporary employment visas. Cloudera created an email account that did not allow external emails, but still instructed applicants to use that unworkable email address to apply for jobs. The Division received a charge of employment discrimination from one U.S. worker who tried to apply using the email account Cloudera set up, but received a bounce back notification. When sponsoring current employees under the permanent labor certification program (PERM), Cloudera purposely failed to recruit U.S. workers in good faith.

At the same time, Cloudera was actively sponsoring foreign workers for permanent residency through the Department of Labor’s PERM program, a process that legally requires employers to make a genuine good-faith effort to recruit and hire qualified American workers first.

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North Carolina Uncovers 34,000 Dead Voters Still on the Rolls, State Board Admits it’s ‘Higher Than We Anticipated’

The North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) announced Monday that it has identified approximately 34,000 deceased individuals still listed on the state’s voter rolls.

The discovery was made through a comprehensive data cross-check against the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, the same system used to verify the U.S. citizenship of registered voters.

Officials submitted 7,397,734 voter records to the SAVE system in April as part of an ongoing effort to clean up the rolls and ensure only eligible citizens can vote.

NCSBE Executive Director Sam Hayes admitted the massive number of deceased people on the state’s voter rolls caught them off guard.

“While we expected to find some cases, this is higher than we anticipated,” Hayes said in a press release.

Hayes continued, “The benefit of entering into cross-state and federal database checks is that it allows us to uncover issues like this. Our goal is to use every available and legal tool at our disposal to achieve the most accurate voter rolls possible. Now, we must roll up our sleeves and begin the hard work to act of verifying that every person registered to vote in North Carolina is eligible. Our team, along with our state and federal will do what’s necessary to meet this responsibility.”

The press release stressed that North Carolina already receives weekly updates on in-state deaths from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, which are handled at the county level.

However, the SAVE match is helping catch voters who moved out of state, registered in North Carolina, and later passed away elsewhere, a gap that regular state processes had missed.

Election officials said that the presence of these names on the rolls does not mean illegal votes were cast in their names.

The Board says it will now follow established verification procedures, cross-check additional databases, and work with county boards to remove the deceased voters.

Republican North Carolina Congressman Mark Harris reacted on X, calling the situation “a failure” and demanding immediate action.

“This isn’t a mistake—it’s a failure,” Harris wrote.

Harris continued, “Election integrity is non-negotiable. Fix it now. Pass the SAVE American Act!”

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