Tag: corruption

Supreme Court Reverses Former Cincinnati Councilor’s Bribery Conviction

The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for a former Cincinnati City Council member convicted of bribery and attempted extortion but later pardoned by President Donald Trump to have those charges dismissed in the lower courts.

The ruling came as the high court has, in recent years, been willing to overturn corruption convictions involving public officials engaging in activities some consider normal political activity. For example, in 2016, the Supreme Court vacated the conviction of the former Republican governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, for accepting gifts from a benefactor without actually taking action to benefit that person.

On April 6, the justices granted Alexander “P.G.” Sittenfeld’s petition in an unsigned order. The court did not explain its decision. No justices dissented. The court disposed of the case summarily without hearing oral arguments. 

The Supreme Court also vacated the convictions and sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to be reconsidered in light of a pending motion to dismiss the indictment against Sittenfeld.

The new ruling came after Trump pardoned Sittenfeld on May 28, 2025. This act of presidential clemency eliminated his 16-month sentence of incarceration after he had served almost five months of it.

A presidential pardon forgives federal criminal offenses and removes the legal consequences of those offenses, but does not change history by erasing the judicial finding of guilt.

The pardon covered Sittenfeld’s October 2023 conviction for bribery and attempted extortion related to an FBI-led sting operation that involved campaign contributions. Prosecutors said he accepted $20,000 in donations to his political action committee from undercover FBI agents who feigned interest in developing a specific property. Prosecutors also said Sittenfeld’s actions went beyond mere campaign fundraising to bribery that constituted an illegal quid pro quo for backing the development project.

A quid pro quo—from Latin, meaning “this for that”—is something given or received in exchange for something else.

Sittenfeld’s attorney said in the petition that he was considered “a rising star in Ohio politics,” first elected to the Cincinnati City Council in 2011 at age 27, making him the youngest person ever elected to the council.

“A defining trait of Sittenfeld’s political identity was his unwavering support for economic development. He voted for every economic development deal put in front of him while on the Council,” according to the petition.

In 2018, Sittenfeld approached a local developer to help raise money for his mayoral campaign, in order to match contributions from other developers, and “nothing about this was unlawful,” the petition said.

The government was informed about this, and the FBI organized a sting operation. The local developer contacted Sittenfeld about a specific project, which the then-elected official was already supporting, and offered to connect him with potential investors, who were actually undercover agents. The agents proposed a quid pro quo, saying if Sittenfeld agreed to back the project, they would donate to his campaign, the petition said.

The petition said Sittenfeld filed a motion after the conviction for post-trial relief, saying the evidence at trial was not sufficient to prove an “explicit” quid pro quo, as required by McCormick v. United States (1991). In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that the receipt of a campaign contribution was not a federal crime unless the payment was part of an “explicit quid pro.”

The federal district court ruled that the evidence was “ambiguous” at best and believed that, despite that, the jury could still surmise an “explicit” exchange from the record. The court sentenced Sittenfeld to 16 months and fined him $40,000. A divided panel of the Sixth Circuit upheld the conviction, finding the jury was allowed to conclude based on the ambiguous evidence that he had accepted an illegal bribe.

In the petition, Sittenfeld’s attorney urged the Supreme Court to take up the case, saying candidates “routinely raise money based on pledges of official action: ‘Donate to me and I will vote to repeal the law my opponent supported!’ ‘Send me a campaign check and I will cut your taxes—I can’t do it without you!’”

Keep reading

California Supreme Court Orders Sheriff Bianco to Pause His Massive Election Fraud Investigation and Preserve 650,000 Ballots He Seized

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered Sheriff Chad Bianco to pause his massive election fraud investigation and preserve the 650,000 ballots he seized.

Last month, a state appellate court rejected California Democrat Attorney General Rob Bonta’s emergency writ to halt Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s bombshell investigation into 45,000 extra votes mysteriously counted in the November 2025 special election.

Chad Bianco, a Republican currently running for California governor as a Republican, moved to seize approximately 650,000 ballots and initiate a recount after a citizens’ group reported significant discrepancies, according to CalMatters.

Bianco revealed that a team of 10 investigators had already begun counting ballots before being ordered to halt their work, as part of an ongoing election investigation, The Sun reported.

According to Bianco, the team’s initial progress suggested that counting the approximately 611,000 ballots would take about five days to complete. However, the effort was paused before a full review could be conducted.

Earlier this week Bianco paused his investigation because of the onslaught of legal issues.

California Attorney General Bonta slammed Sheriff Bianco and celebrated the State Supreme Court’s order.

Keep reading

Media Lies About ICE: Shot for No Reason, Suicide in Custody, and Married to a Soldier

The media keeps misrepresenting stories by focusing on half-truths and omitting crucial details of ICE cases with the intent of evoking emotions and hatred toward law enforcement. These stories often include emotional and irrelevant framing, such as claims that someone was on his way to see his premature baby, his wife was having chemo, someone close to him had a heart attack for unrelated reasons, or he was on his way to donate a kidney when he was arrested for no reason or for being brown.

They say he was in the process of getting his paperwork done, he was hardworking, she just wanted a better life, or they were confused because they spoke no English. But when you investigate the cases, you find that ICE was right, the people were in the country illegally, and here is what actually happened.

Three cases this week follow the same pattern.

The first narrative is of an innocent man shot by ICE for no reason. The facts are that an illegal alien, a gang member wanted for murder, was shot while using his vehicle as a weapon against ICE agents.

ICE identified the target as Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez, an illegal alien and 18th Street Gang member wanted in El Salvador for questioning in connection with a murder. He was flagged by the National Targeting Center.

The Department of Justice has described the 18th Street Gang, a designated transnational terrorist organization, as a “well-known and established international criminal organization and violent street gang” with more than 100,000 members in the United States.

ICE agents conducted a targeted vehicle stop near Interstate 5 in Patterson, about 90 miles south of Sacramento. As agents approached the car, Mendoza Hernandez used his vehicle in an attempt to run over an agent. Officers fired defensive shots to protect themselves, their fellow agents, and the public.

Keep reading

Only Prosecutions Can End Dems’ DOJ Weaponization, But Media Pretend That’s Not Obvious

It used to be understood, before we started rewarding lawbreakers with goodies like birthplace citizenship, that punishing bad guys was the most effective way to stop bad actions. The best way to drop the murder rate, for example, is to swiftly and justly execute murderers.

For the same reason, the best way to end the political weaponization of the bureaucracy is to punish the weaponizers. As long as the architects of the most infamous abuses — from the Russia collusion hoax to the Biden DOJ effort to throw its political opposition in prison — escape accountability, new partisans will be emboldened to abuse their prosecutorial power for political ends.

The role of consequences as deterrent is obvious to any disciplined child. It’s obvious to members of the American public who want to see the likes of James Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper, Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith held accountable for their war on the rule of law. It’s so obvious, in fact, that the corporate press feels compelled to work very hard to pretend that’s not the case.

During a DOJ press conference on Tuesday, CNN’s Paula Reid delivered a perfect example of the media’s feigned stupidity on the subject.

“President Trump has made no secret of the fact that he wants to see his perceived political enemies prosecuted,” she said, setting up a question to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “So now that you’re in this position, how are you going to balance that relentless pressure with this administration’s promise to end the weaponization of this department?”

The hackery becomes more obvious when you distill the question down to its parts. Put another way, she’s asking: How are you going to balance the relentless pressure to prosecute criminals with your promise to stop crimes?

The media’s definition of “ending weaponization” is having the Trump DOJ do absolutely nothing about the decade of the Obama and Biden DOJ’s partisan lawfare, until Democrats can take over and start doing it again. The one thing they don’t want the Trump DOJ to do is actually take the steps required to hold the serial weaponizers accountable. When the media talk about “ending weaponization,” they mean the exact opposite.

It’s the same playbook they use to guilt Republicans into being useless on deportations. Democrats can blow up our immigration laws all they want, but if Trump tries to fix it, he’s not allowed, because norms. The only approach acceptable to the media is that he do nothing until Democrats can take control.

Keep reading

The biotechnology industry has no right to secrecy

In his column ‘Biosafety Now’, Dr. Simon Wain-Hobson revisits controversial gain-of-function research conducted in 2014, funded by US NIH contract HHSN26620070001, which successfully managed to transfer the H7N1 avian (bird flu) virus from ostriches to ferrets. Once transferred, the virus established itself in the “captive” laboratory ferrets sufficiently to cause airborne transmission to other ferrets without loss of virulence.

H7N1 is as deadly for humans as Ebola, but up until now has been rarely contracted. The implications of a biotechnology research programme which transformed the virus sufficiently to enable airborne transmission between mammals will not be lost on any of our readers. This is just another of the almost pandemics that gain-of-function research regularly creates. As we reported in our article, ‘Government Assurances of Biotech Safety Are Worthless. Here is the Evidence’, exotic gain-of-function experimentation is still continuing around the world to this day, whilst lab escapes are routine. 

However, biotechnology researchers are undaunted by the risks to public health, like Margaret Thatcher, “they are not for changing.” One can only presume that they have confidence that there will be enough body bags to go around when the inevitable next pandemic happens.

The UK Guardian reports that a 51-year-old career criminal, ironically called James Farthing, who won US$167 million in the lottery a year ago, has been arrested three times since for petty theft. He has been unable to change the direction of his life even though he has the material means to do so. “A leopard cannot change its spots.” Nothing could be more true of the mad disregard for risk that has continued on from the pandemic. The NZ Herald records an interview with New Zealand Labour Leader Chris Hipkins, who says he has no regrets that he failed to inform the public of the significant risk of heart disease that teenagers faced following the mRNA covid vaccine. A matter that was flagged by the recent Royal Commission Report. Hipkins excused himself, saying:

“In terms of my conscience, I never communicated medical advice around vaccination. That was always done by relevant health practitioners, including the director-general of health and the director of public health. I did not communicate, at any point, right the way through, that information other than reiterating the high-level messages around making sure you’re making informed decisions and consulting with medical practitioners.”

Of course, the “high-level messaging” that Hipkins is referring to was his constant encouragement for everyone, including school children, to get mRNA vaccines immediately on pain of losing their job or their ability to participate in social activities. If that is not offering medical advice, I don’t know what is. Hipkins appeared before the Royal Commission to answer questions but, incredibly, was allowed to do so in private. 

Keep reading

Total Cost of California High-Speed Rail Line Rises to $126 Billion, With a Big Funding Shortfall

California’s high-speed rail project connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco is now estimated to cost $126 billion, a rail authority board member said in an interview released by CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday.

But the High-Speed Rail Authority, according to its 2026 Business Plan issued in February, forecasts $39.3 billion in capital funding through 2045, a shortfall of around $87 billion.

“It is a big gap to fill,” board member Anthony Williams said, “[but] we have an understanding of how to get there and to fill that gap.”

The project, approved by voters in 2008, was supposed to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles by high-speed rail for around $33 billion and a completion date of 2020.

“We’re now in 2026,” Republican Congressman Vince Fong of Bakersfield said in the interview. “There are no trains. There’s no track laid. It was a complete bait and switch. The business plan that was put out in 2008 was very theoretical. You know, ‘This is what we think is gonna happen.’ And it became very clear that they didn’t have the specifics worked out.”

Toks Omishakin, who became California’s secretary of transportation in 2022, admitted that mistakes had been made and a lot of the project’s criticism is “very fair.”

Keep reading

Swalwell Caught Paying His Wife with Campaign Cash for Child Care in 2026 California Governor’s Race

If you were a donor to Eric Swalwell’s gubernatorial campaign, how would you react to learning that your contributions were used to pay his own wife to watch their children?

As Swalwell now runs for governor of California, a troubling pattern of campaign spending is drawing scrutiny, one that now includes direct payments to his spouse for “childcare.”

These payments do not stand alone. They come after years of similar child care expenditures through his congressional campaign, which are already the subject of my formal complaint before the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

A New Round of Payments—This Time to His Wife

Recent disclosures from Swalwell’s gubernatorial campaign show multiple payments made directly to “Swalwell, Brittany” for child care: $2,301.00, $2,026.50, and $1,740.50.

These are not minor reimbursements; they are substantial, repeated payments to a candidate’s spouse.

Keep reading

U.S. Marshals RAID Home of Former Republican Lobbyist Jim Courtovich

U.S. Marshals raided the upscale home of former Republican lobbyist Jim Courtovich, enforcing a federal court order tied to a $4 million judgment stemming from allegations of financial misconduct.

Courtovich, the founder of Sphere Consulting and a fixture on the K Street party circuit, once rubbed elbows with media elites and GOP heavyweights.

During the 2016 Republican primary, Courtovich supported Jeb Bush, one of Trump’s main rivals. He reportedly did not vote in the 2016 general election.

According to a report from The New York Times and journalist Brody Mullins, a team of armed federal agents arrived at Courtovich’s multimillion-dollar residence near Kalorama just before 10 a.m., loudly announcing their presence and warning they were prepared to forcibly enter if necessary.

The raid enforces a federal court judgment ordering him to repay $4 million-plus, in what Saudi-backed investors claim was a brazen breach of contract and outright fraud.

“US Marshals this morning raided the home of Jim Courtovich, the once-high flying Republican lobbyist & fixer.
Saudi & other business partners had won a judgment against him for stealing $4m, & the raid was an effort to collect, reports Brody Mullins, who was on the scene & has a lively dispatch in his new Influence newsletter.”

Keep reading

Final charge dropped against David Daleiden for exposing Planned Parenthood’s aborted baby parts sales

After more than a decade of legal battles, the final charge against pro-life undercover journalist David Daleiden has been dropped and expunged.

In 2015, Daleiden published undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood executives in California casually discussing the sale of aborted baby body parts while sipping wine at an upscale restaurant.

The videos went viral, racking up millions of views and triggering a public backlash against Planned Parenthood. 

Nonetheless, California’s Department of Justice, headed by then-State Attorney General Kamala Harris, a Democrat, aggressively targeted Daleiden and his partner, Sandra Merritt, filing multiple felony charges against them. 

The young investigative reporter said at the time that the day that Harris sent agents to his doorstep “started out a day like any other … except like it was 1984.” 

“To storm into a private citizen’s home with a search warrant is outrageously out of proportion for the type of crime alleged. It’s a discredit to law enforcement, an oppressive abuse of government power,” legal adviser Matt Heffron said at the time. 

It was a clear example of legal warfare waged by the state against a private citizen for daring to expose Planned Parenthood’s grisly commodification of aborted baby body parts.  

The California DOJ’s egregious actions against Daleiden at the behest of Planned Parenthood were intended to shut him up about the abortion giant’s involvement in fetal trafficking and to punish him for speaking out. 

“They are not afraid to use every bit of power at their disposal to force their agenda through,” Daleiden later said. 

“It was Kamala Harris that was given the direction to arrest David Daleiden when he exposed Planned Parenthood’s Baby Body Parts Trafficking Ring,” Liz Churchill noted on X. 

Keep reading

O’Keefe Media Group: California’s Top Controller Communications Official Admits Audits “Are Not Getting Done”

The O’Keefe Media Group on Tuesday released undercover video of California’s top Controller Communications official admitting that audits “are not getting done” while acknowledging that fraud is rampant in the state.

Bismarck Obando told an undercover O’Keefe Media Group journalist that there is no plan to tackle homelessness.

“Do you feel there’s fraud going on in the state of California?” the OMG journalist asked Obando.

Without skipping a beat he replied, “Everywhere, cities, counties, special districts, hospitals, insurance companies.”

“We just can’t conduct the audits,” Obando told the journalist.

“It’s funny because they haven’t funded us to do those audits…they keep cutting our auditing teams,” he said.

Keep reading