Tag: corruption

New Mexico says US Justice Dept hindering probe of former Epstein ranch

New Mexico’s top law enforcement official on Thursday accused the U.S. Department of Justice of hindering the state’s investigation into ​Jeffrey Epstein by withholding unredacted files on the late sex ‌offender.

The Democratic-run state re-opened an investigation in February into activities at Epstein’s former ranch south of state capital Santa Fe, where he is accused of abusing women and ​girls for nearly three decades.

Nearly five months into the investigation, New ​Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez has yet to announce any ⁠results.

Political pressure to release U.S. Department of Justice files on Epstein has dogged ​President Donald Trump during his second term. He has suggested the country move on ​from investigating the late financier’s crimes.

In a June 30 letter, opens new tab to Acting U.S. Attorney Todd Blanche, Torrez said the Justice Department had failed to respond to a state request ​in February for unredacted files containing names of Epstein survivors, witnesses, co-conspirators, ​and other individuals essential to the New Mexico probe.

In a statement on Thursday, Torrez said ‌the ⁠delay, which has now lasted 130 days, was “unreasonable under any rule of reason.”

In response, a U.S. Justice Department spokesperson said the agency responded to the New Mexico request in June.

“The DOJ reiterates that it welcomes New ​Mexico undertaking additional ​investigation of the ⁠Zorro Ranch and stands ready to provide necessary assistance with New Mexico’s investigation,” the spokesperson said, adding that ​the agency was ready to investigate and possibly prosecute ​any federal ⁠crimes the New Mexico investigation uncovered.

In March, Torrez said investigators faced significant obstacles in the Zorro Ranch probe. He cited the years that had passed ⁠since ​Epstein’s alleged crimes, possible deterioration or disappearance ​of evidence at the ranch which was sold in 2023, and possible jurisdictional issues surrounding any ​potential prosecutions.

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Prohibitionists Just Argued Themselves Into a Corner: To Stop Weed Reform, They Told a Court How Much Money They’d Lose

One of the loudest arguments against cannabis reform has always been about money. Legalizers are in it for the cash, prohibitionists have argued, and the science is just the wrapping paper. On July 2, in a filing before the D.C. Circuit, the Justice Department argued that the challengers’ alleged harms were commercial interests the CSA was never written to protect. Two of the groups trying to freeze marijuana rescheduling asked the court to hit pause on the reform, and the government told the judges that those two were guarding their own revenue.

The two groups behind the request are a drug-testing trade association and a pharmaceutical company that has never brought a product to market. The DOJ told the court that both of them “invoke pocketbook interests served by keeping all marijuana in Schedule I.” Their own sworn declarations, the government argued, undercut their request for a stay.

Here is the shape of it. In April, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche moved FDA-approved cannabis medicines and state-licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III. A coalition of prohibition and drug-testing groups, two state attorneys general and a pharmaceutical developer is suing to undo that order, Kevin Sabet’s Smart Approaches to Marijuana and the attorneys general of Nebraska and Indiana among them. But the request to freeze the order while the case plays out came from just two of those parties, the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association, or NDASA, and MMJ International Holdings. The government’s answer was blunt. The petitioners, it wrote, “come nowhere near satisfying the demanding standard for that extraordinary relief.”

The Accusation, Turned Around

For over a year, the case against reform has run on a single accusation. Sabet has made it repeatedly, including in a video posted as the DEA hearing opened: the government moved on marijuana because of industry money and campaign donations from cannabis executives, not because the science changed. The July 2 brief never answers Sabet directly. But read against that year of messaging, it lands as an inversion. If this is about money, it is worth asking whose.

Their Own Declarations

The answer is in the challengers’ own paperwork. NDASA told the court that its members would lose money if employers stopped screening for marijuana. In a sworn declaration, the group’s executive director estimated that marijuana-positive results are the largest source of revenue at the medical review offices that read drug tests, and projected a revenue decline of “at least 35%” over the next 6 to 12 months if the order stands. NDASA also attached a number to what compliance would cost its members: about $700,000, spread across 700 employers. Do the arithmetic and it comes to a thousand dollars each. That is the figure the group called irreparable harm, the kind of injury that is supposed to justify a court freezing federal drug policy. A thousand dollars per employer. One cannabis attorney who reviewed the motion did the same math and called the argument “ridiculous.”

MMJ’s claim is stranger. The company says it spent eight years and $10 million developing cannabinoid drugs the proper way, through the FDA, and that rescheduling rewards state-licensed competitors who skipped that path. The problem, as the DOJ pointed out, is that MMJ has no product on the market. It has applications pending, not medicine on shelves. You cannot lose your share of a market you have not entered. Its complaint, the government argued, describes a policy it dislikes, not an injury a court can fix.

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London Police Accused of Letting Algerian Attempted Rapist Walk Free After Being Caught ‘Red Handed’ Near Buckingham Palace

London’s Metropolitan Police officers have been accused by a judge of letting an attempted rapist go after being caught “red-handed” outside Buckingham Palace, the trial of the migrant has revealed.

In the early morning of Sept 7, 2024, Algerian migrant Ramzi Barkat, 54, came upon a woman in St James’s Park, attempted to flirt with her, and when he was shot down, tackled and “straddled” her while holding down her wrists.

Fortunately for the woman, three nearby soldiers heard her screams and prevented Barkat from going further.

However, despite the apparent risk he posed to the public, police chose to release the Algerian migrant on bail or under investigation after the victim was interviewed, The Telegraph reported.

Judge Justin Cole of the Southwark Crown Court accused the police of a “catalogue of incompetencies” during the incident.

“He was simply let go in a situation in which frankly he had been caught red-handed and presented a continuing danger to the public,” Judge Cole said.

“The bottom line is this man was set free for a period of a year, a year to do what he likes, in a situation where he had attacked a lone female in a park. The public would be appalled to hear of such laxity.”

“The public would be appalled to hear of such laxity.”

The revelations came during this week’s sentencing hearing for Barkat, who was jailed for seven years and three months on Friday. Judge Coles said that Barkat “sought to take advantage of a lone vulnerable woman” and “acted like a predator”.

In addition to being found guilty of attempted rape, Barkat was also found guilty of assaulting one of the soldiers who prevented the rape, The Independent reported.

The Algerian migrant had claimed that he was merely attempting to steal the woman’s phone. On top of his prison sentence, he received a 10-year restraining order and a 10-year sexual harm prevention order.

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When Billion-Dollar Non-Profits Stop Looking Like Charities

AltaMed Health Services reported $1.72 billion in revenue in 2024, which is more than many publicly traded healthcare companies. Yet unlike a public corporation, the nonprofit entity answers to no shareholders, enjoys broad tax exemptions, and derives much of its revenue from taxpayer-supported healthcare programs.

AltaMed also reported $1.66 billion in assets and its revenues exceeded expenses by $68.4 million. It operates more than 70 clinics, employs roughly 5,000 people, and serves more than 700,000 patients throughout Southern California, making it one of the nation’s largest federally qualified health center (FQHC) systems.

But AltaMed’s extraordinary growth raises another question that extends far beyond Southern California: What happens when a nonprofit grows into a multibillion-dollar enterprise while retaining the governance structure of a traditional charity?

That question has become increasingly relevant as individual nonprofit hospital systems, universities, and other charitable organizations now control hundreds of billions of dollars in assets while benefiting from tax exemptions, government reimbursements, tax-deductible donations, and public financing. Their primary accountability mechanism is a board of directors charged with ensuring that charitable resources remain devoted to public benefit rather than private profits.

Since 2001, AltaMed has paid more than $32 million in compensation to its CEO, Castulo de la Rocha, his wife Zoila Escobar, and one of their sons – which is significantly higher than most of its peer FQHCs. For instance, the chief executives of Family Health Centers of San Diego, Family HealthCare Network, and Comprehensive Community Health Centers each earned substantially less than de la Rocha in 2024 despite overseeing similarly large healthcare organizations.

Following scrutiny of excessive executive pay more than a decade ago, AltaMed adopted a split-dollar life insurance loan program designed to help retain selected executives. The program has provided substantial loans to a small group of senior leaders to finance life insurance policies. Split-dollar arrangements are technically legal, although federal officials have cautioned that similar structures have been used improperly in certain tax-avoidance schemes.

Executive compensation is only one measure of nonprofit governance. Equally important is how charitable organizations deploy their resources and whether those expenditures advance the mission for which they receive tax-exempt status.

Over the past two decades, AltaMed has built one of the country’s most prominent collections of Chicano and Latino art. It says the collection supports its “Art as a Holistic Approach to Healthcare” initiative, and that artwork displayed throughout its clinics creates a more welcoming and therapeutic environment for patients.

However, AltaMed’s involvement in the arts extends far beyond decorating clinic walls – it owns a collection of approximately 4,000 works of Chicano, Mexican, and Latin American art, the value of which exceeds $6 million. It has spent as much as $2 million on art-related activities outside the United States in places like Mexico City, Rome, Berlin, and Madrid. More recently, it has supported plans for a Museum of Chicano and Mexican Art in downtown Los Angeles, spending at least $150,000 on lobbying related to the proposal.

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ICC Prosecutor Who Sought Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu Over Crimes Against Humanity Found Guilty of Predatory Sexual Misconduct

The International Criminal Court’s own internal oversight body has just exposed its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, as a sexual harasser who abused his power over a junior female subordinate.

A 21-member bureau investigating the allegations concluded that Khan engaged in sexual activity with the junior staffer, constituting sexual harassment, and abused his authority in the process.

He pressured her into sex amid a blatant power imbalance. Khan later tried to dissuade her from pursuing misconduct claims against him.

UN investigators laid out the disgusting details: “He would grab and paw at her breasts, try to access her pelvic area, and suck on her neck,” i24 News reported.

Khan never clearly denied the sexual relationship despite being given 30 opportunities to do so during the UN probe. His main concern at the time? Whether the woman might have made recordings implicating him.

Only after it became clear no recordings existed did he offer denials, which the report slammed as “devoid of credibility.” At least two-thirds of the bureau members found his credibility utterly lacking.

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California Is Actively Recruiting Noncitizen Teenagers to Serve as Poll Workers in Elections

California has once again ignited concerns over election integrity after revelations that the state is recruiting noncitizen teenagers to work inside polling places during elections.

Natalie Winters first reported this outrageous development out of the Golden State.

Green card holders as young as 16, noncitizens who cannot legally vote in American elections, are being recruited to check voters off official rosters, distribute ballots, handle election equipment, assist voters, and help close polling locations.

The state admits it does not fully track how many of these noncitizen teenagers are being used in these sensitive positions of trust.

This is not a hypothetical. This is happening right now in Democrat-run California.

Natalie Winters reported:

Documents reviewed by this publication reveal that California officials are directing public schools to identify teenagers as young as 16 to work inside polling locations during the November 2026 election, including lawful permanent residents who are not United States citizens.

These students are not being enlisted to hand out stickers or direct voters toward the entrance. County election agencies say they may issue ballots, check voters off official rosters, help operate election equipment, assist voters throughout the day, prepare ballots for pickup, and participate in closing polling locations.

In other words, California has made citizenship optional for the people performing frontline election duties.

The recruitment campaign appears in a June 30 letter signed by California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and State Superintendent Tony Thurmond and distributed to county superintendents, charter school administrators, and high school principals across the state.

The officials ask schools to provide their campuses as voting locations and encourage students to become poll workers for the November 3 general election.

“High school students who are at least 16 years of age, are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents, and maintain a 2.5 grade point average are eligible to serve as poll workers,” the letter states.

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REPORT: 3 California School Districts Suspected of Shielding Teachers From Sexual Abuse Allegations as Feds Launch Nationwide Probe

Two California school districts, suspected of protecting sexual predators and allowing them to teach, received letters from the Trump Department of Education on Friday in a national crackdown on schools sweeping sexual abuse allegations under the rug. 

The letters were sent to the Tulare City Unified School District and Wilsona School District.

The New York Post reports that Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent letters to school districts across the country, reminding them that federal law requires them to investigate allegations and prevent teachers accused of abuse from quietly moving to another school.

The Los Angeles Unified School District was already under scrutiny for reassigning teachers to different schools under an agreement with the teachers’ union.

This comes as the Education Department plans to launch a new initiative with 20 civil rights investigations into school districts that failed in their duty to address sexual misconduct by school employees, according to the Post.

California is believed to be one of the biggest offenders, with at least three school districts at risk of losing $50 million in federal funding.

Per the New York Post:

Tulare City Unified School District and Wilsona School District, located in Palmdale, were two of the districts warned under federal law to promptly investigate allegations of sexual abuse and harassment and block suspected predators from quietly moving to other schools — a practice known as “passing the trash.”

“Our schools must protect America’s children. Parents should never have to wonder whether their kids’ school employs and protects sexual predators,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said.

“Schools that receive federal funding have a duty to protect students, report sexual misconduct honestly, and follow the law.”

Los Angeles Unified School District has already been investigated over rules that allegedly shielded predatory teachers. An agreement between the school district and the teachers’ union guaranteed teachers accused of certain serious misconduct are reassigned — rather than immediately terminated or removed from student-facing positions — while investigations are pending.

Investigations are also targeting three school districts in Georgia and three in Michigan, as well as districts across 12 other states.

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UKRAINE FARCE: Lviv Draft Clash Prompts Criminal Probes And Military Self-Review As ‘Bounty Hunters’ Encite Rage Among Ukrainians

After morbid videos of press-ganging of men across Ukraine have surfaced for years, as thousands die weekly at the front, the Ukrainian government is now pretending to notice as it tries to appease an angry populace.

It has been obvious for some time that ‘helping Ukraine’ is not the agenda, but rather depopulating the country for the EU globalist reich. The Ukrainian population is beginning to realize this reality. Evidence of this agenda is well-documented.

While Ukraine Empties Out Due To Mass Ethnocide, Globalist NGOs Are Filling It Back Up — With Someone Else

A crowd of approximately 200 civilians surrounded and overturned a Ukrainian Territorial Recruitment Center (TRC) vehicle in Lviv’s Sykhiv district on the evening of July 8, triggering two criminal investigations and an unusual internal review by the military into the conduct of its own recruitment officers.

Reports one of the bounty hunters pointed at a man and yelled, “Get that one, he’s worth $2,000!” This is reportedly what set off the crowd.

The EU just gave Ukraine EUR 90B and it seems some of these funds are paying for bounty hunters to seize men off the streets across Ukriane; the price used to be $200 per head.

Ukraine’s prosecution service announced on July 9 that it had opened proceedings against participants in the clash, charging them with obstructing the activities of the Armed Forces during martial law and with violence against a law enforcement officer. Prosecutors said a responding police officer was attacked by members of the crowd.

According to authorities, TRC officers had detained a man born in 1996 who was wanted for violating military registration requirements. Video footage circulating on social media showed protesters chanting “shame,” tearing off the vehicle’s front bumper, and eventually flipping the vehicle.

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WE FINALLY HAVE THE EVIDENCE! After Examining Over 155,000 Absentee Envelopes…We’ve Discovered Over 26,000 Absentee Ballots Were Unlawfully Counted In Detroit’s 2020 Election

This is the most important investigative piece I have ever worked on in my 15 years of reporting.

Before I report our findings, I want to thank Yehuda Miller of New Jersey for never giving up on the belief that Detroit’s election was stolen in November 2020.

I also want to thank the brilliant (an understatement) Phani Mantravadi for his tireless contribution to this project. In addition to his patience and guidance on all the technical aspects, he also uploaded and sorted almost a million documents on his Check My Vote website, so that over 100 well-trained volunteers could painstakingly enter the data from each and every envelope into a data field that would create a permanent record of each envelope and tie it to a registered voter. The actual envelope image would then be placed side by side with the voter’s registration and vote history from Detroit’s November and December 2020 Qualified Voter Files.

To be clear: Phani, Yehuda, and I are not working alone on this historic project.

In only 9 months, we’ve created a powerhouse investigative team of all volunteers who are the most dedicated and committed individuals I have ever known. These smart, ambitious, and hard-working Americans from across the country have given up family time, vacations, special events, and stolen personal time from their lives to make this monumental task bear fruit we could only have dreamed of.

It All Started With a Text Message From Yehuda Miller

In September 2025, I received a text from Yehuda Miller telling me that he was in Detroit and asked if we could meet. Little did I know that when I met him, Yehuda Miller would be driving a rented U-Haul truck filled with almost 1 million copies of the absentee ballot applications, absentee envelopes, absentee and in-person ballots, poll books, precinct tapes, and more from Detroit’s 2020 election. Not only did Yehuda possess hard copies of the documents, but he also had electronic files of the scanned documents. Yehuda’s only goal was to ensure that everything he had worked so hard to get would be made public. We couldn’t agree more, which is why we will always report our findings to you, the public, before turning them over to the proper authorities, where investigations often take years to complete and are conducted in total secrecy.

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Report: Indian Businessman Poses as CIA Agent to Land Billion-Dollar ‘Defense’ Deal with Indonesia

An Indian businessman named Gaurav Srivastava allegedly passed himself off as an operative of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to close a multi-billion dollar defense deal with the Indonesian government, according to civil suits filed in the United States by his former business partner.

A report from a U.S.-based non-governmental organization (NGO) called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) quoted the lawsuits filed in New York and California by Srivastava’s former business partner, Niels Troost.

According to the lawsuits, Srivastava somehow persuaded then-Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto, currently the president of the country, that he was a CIA agent when the two attended high-level military procurement meetings in Washington and Jakarta in 2020.

By the end of that year, the faux CIA agent had alleged secured three “letters of intention to purchase” jet fighters and other defense items from the Indonesian government. He scored two more defense procurement commitments in 2021 and 2022. Products mentioned in the deals included big-ticket items like F-15 jet fighters, UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, and C-130 transport aircraft.

Troost said Srivastava grew quite close to Subianto, becoming a frequent guest at his home and developing ties with his brother, a prominent Indonesian businessman. Subianto went on to become the president of Indonesia in October 2024.

The Indonesian Defense Ministry told Tempo, the OCCRP’s Indonesian partner, that all of the agreements secured by Srivastava were “preliminary,” none were binding contracts, and none led to a purchase by the Indonesian government.

“The entire process of Indonesian defense cooperation and procurement is always carried out with utmost caution, prioritizing the principles of good governance, national interest, and compliance with applicable mechanisms and regulations,” a defense ministry spokesperson insisted.

However, OCCRP noted that Subianto was photographed with Srivastava at signing ceremonies, Srivastava held press conferences to announce purchase agreements, and the U.S. government even issued formal approval for the sale of 36 F-15s in 2022 – the exact number of fighter jets mentioned in the agreements with Srivastava.

According to Troost, the reason he brought all of this up in a pair of U.S. lawsuits is that he was convinced Srivastava was a CIA agent. On that basis, he gave Srivastava a 50 percent share of his own company, believing the CIA man could help him win lucrative contracts with customers like Indonesia.

Srivastava allegedly proceeded to loot $51 million from Troost’s company and “loan” it to the Arsari Group, a company headed by Subianto’s brother. Srivastava then convinced the Arsari Group to give the loan money to him. He was able to wheedle the Indonesian company into giving him half, and proceeded to blow the money on a $25 million mansion in Los Angeles.

Srivastara allegedly presented himself as a mogul who controlled four firms of his own, but all four turned out to be shell companies that were eventually deregistered for not paying their taxes. None of those companies were named in the U.S. government approval for the F-15 sales to Indonesia. Boeing, which was involved in the process, gave up trying to sell F-15s to Indonesia four years later because Jakarta never finalized the deal. Subianto’s government is now shopping for Turkish-built KAAN jet fighters.

Indonesian authorities say they are investigating these transactions for possible corruption charges. Meanwhile, Troost went after Srivastava in New York and California on racketeering charges. In one of these filings, Troost referred to Srivastava as a “brazen con man of remarkable skill.”

Niels Troost is himself an interesting character, a Dutch commodities trader based out of Switzerland who was sanctioned by the European Union, and several individual European governments, for allegedly buying banned Russian oil after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The EU and Switzerland lifted their sanctions against Troost this year. Troost has claimed the sanctions were partly a result of his massive international business feud with Srivastava and has said he would not buy Russian oil because he supports Ukraine.

Srivastava, in turn, denies all wrongdoing and claims Troost’s allegations against him are part of an “aggressive scorched-earth disinformation campaign.”

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