Tag: corruption

How a Member of a Powerful Utah Family Escaped a Federal Trafficking Investigation and Reinvented Himself as an Instagram Influencer

Former Utah County Attorney David Leavitt has outrun accusations of an illegal adoption and ritualistic child abuse after attorneys within US Homeland Security Investigations shuttered an investigation into his actions.

In an exclusive interview with The Last American Vagabond, a former Homeland Security Investigations analyst reveals how he was targeted by the US government for pursuing an investigation into a powerful Utah politician following a controversial adoption of a Native American baby.

The analyst said that he and his colleague were sidelined after attempting to subpoena the Mormon Church’s internal hotline for reporting sexual abuse as part of their investigation. The federal government would eventually turn its focus to him after he questioned why charges had not been filed, despite an admission of guilt by the suspect.

“They spent $2 million investigating, and they couldn’t even arrest me. They got into my phone, my iCloud, and still couldn’t find anything to arrest me on,” the analyst told The Last American Vagabond (TLAV) over the phone. “This was under Biden… signed off on by Secretary Mayorkas.”

Alejandro Mayorkas served as the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under former US President Joe Biden.

The analyst requested anonymity to speak freely on his role in the investigation. TLAV has independently verified the claims made by him.

Ritualistic Child Sexual Abuse

This saga begins with the Utah County Sheriff’s Office (UCSO) May 31, 2022, announcement that an investigation into “ritualistic child sexual abuse and child sex trafficking” in Utah County had begun in April 2021.

The UCSO statement noted that “multiple county and federal agencies are investigating reports of ritualistic child sexual abuse from as far back as 1990.” The investigation subsequently discovered previous reports alleging “similar forms of ritualistic sexual abuse and trafficking” that occurred in Utah County, Juab County, and Sanpete County during the time between 1990 and 2010.

In September 2022, former therapist David Hamblin was the first suspect to be arrested and charged by the UCSO for multiple first-degree felony sexual offenses against a child. He was booked for three counts of sodomy of a child, one count of rape of a child, two counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child, and one misdemeanor count of lewdness involving a child. His ex-wife, Roselle Stevenson, was later arrested on similar charges.

Keep reading

Federal Judge Orders DHS Not To Obey Order From Another Judge

A federal judge on July 8 said the Trump administration must not comply with an order from another federal judge and must continue to have key functions of an immigration database disabled.

Judge Sparkle Sooknanan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said that officials with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other agencies shall keep disabled the ability to look up Social Security numbers and carry out mass uploads in the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system.

Sooknanan ordered the Trump administration in June to disable the features, finding that recent updates to the database violated privacy laws by disclosing Americans’ Social Security numbers and other sensitive information.

Sooknanan said on July 8 that arguments from the government in favor of pausing her previous order were unpersuasive, including the argument that highlighted a July 7 ruling from Judge T. Kent Wetherell II of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida that ordered DHS to enable the functions for four states under a 2025 settlement that he had approved.

Wetherell had noted that he could have waited until the case in Washington proceeded, but that the four states had presented “unrebutted evidence showing that they are suffering real and concrete harm every day that passes without the disabled features of the SAVE system.”

He said that Sooknanan could have deferred to his previous determination that the functions were lawful, which was reached, he said, in part because the Social Security Act does not preclude disclosing Social Security numbers for immigration enforcement.

Sooknanan disagreed, describing Wetherell as having “erred in significant ways,” including by reaching a decision on the merits in the case without opinions from parties outside the federal and state governments that oppose the governments’ position.

Sooknanan said that settlements may warrant reexamination and that she acted properly by enjoining DHS from allowing officials to use the new features introduced in 2025 despite the existence of the settlement.

Even if Wetherell’s ruling ends up holding, the settlement is only with DHS, not the Social Security Administration (SSA), and only with four states, the judge wrote, so it would not prompt a stay of her earlier order with respect to the other 46 states.

DHS, which had declined to comment on Wetherell’s decision, did not return a request for comment on Sooknanan’s ruling by the time of publication.

The four states have not reacted to the competing rulings.

Keep reading

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer Pardons Albanian Refugee Facing Deportation Years After Murder Conviction

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer just pardoned an Albanian refugee who was convicted of murder and served a measly four year sentence back in 1978.

He was actually placed on a list for removal by the Biden administration but Whitmer just stepped in and granted the pardon, ending the removal process.

Of course, the glaring question is why this person has been allowed to stay in the U.S. for so many years despite a murder conviction. Shouldn’t that warrant an instant one-way ticket out of the country?

The Midwesterner reports:

Gretchen Whitmer pardons Albanian refugee facing deportation for murder conviction

An Albanian refugee convicted of murder in Michigan will likely avoid deportation following a recent pardon by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Whitmer granted Deda Malota Margilaj, 74, a full pardon on July 2, 50 years after he was convicted of second-degree murder for shooting and killing a man at a Detroit gas station in 1975.

President Joe Biden’s administration placed Margilaj in removal proceedings based on the 1978 conviction, but Whitmer’s pardon erases that basis and allows for the termination of the removal proceedings, according to the Perlumutter Center for Legal Justice that represented Margilaj.

“Now more than ever, this case demonstrates the power of executive clemency to correct the lifelong collateral consequences of decades-old convictions,” said Joshua Dubin, Executive Director of the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice. “Thanks to Governor Whitmer, Mr. Margilaj will be able to do what he enjoys the most ⎯ spend time with his family and friends, free of the fear that has limited his life for so many decades.”

Margilaj came to the U.S. alone as a refugee from Albania at 17 years old, and later started a business in Detroit. In 1975, he was charged with second-degree murder after shooting a man in defense of his brother, who was shot by the victim, according to the Perlmutter Center.

Some people are saying that the pardon doesn’t even matter.

Keep reading

Brazil’s Dictator-Judge Orders Raid on Jair Bolsonaro’s House, Finds Nothing

Officials from Brazil’s Federal Police (PF) searched the residence of conservative former President Jair Bolsonaro for weapons and ammunition on Wednesday — and found nothing.

The search was carried out on the order of Brazilian Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who demanded a wide search of all firearms registered under Jair Bolsonaro’s name this week even though all of the firearms have been accounted for by Bolsonaro’s legal team.

De Moraes reportedly justified the search on the grounds that there was an alleged “discrepancy” between the number of firearms registered under Bolsonaro’s name and the number relinquished by the former president during the legal proceedings against him. The STF justice is widely known for being at the forefront of a persecution campaign against Bolsonaro and for executing a litany of judicial actions against the conservative former president and his family,

Bolsonaro is presently serving a 27-year prison sentence for “crimes against democracy” under a strict house arrest at his home in Brasília. The former president, who suffers from multiple health conditions, was granted temporary humanitarian house arrest provisions this year after a severe case of bacterial pneumonia sent him to an Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

Despite the justice’s assertions, Brazilian lawyer João Henrique Nascimento de Freitas, who is part of Bolsonaro’s legal team, announced on social media that no firearms were found by the police during the search at the residence.

“I have just left President Jair Bolsonaro’s residence after accompanying yet another Federal Police search-and-seizure operation ordered by Justice Alexandre de Moraes,” the Portuguese-language message read. “The warrant sought weapons, ammunition, accessories, and registration documents. The defense had already previously disclosed the whereabouts of all the weapons.

“Result: nothing was found. It is regrettable that a former President of the Republic is still subjected to this type of action,” he concluded.

Keep reading

SoCal Education Leaders Stole Nearly $20M From Schools; Report

A new report has revealed that a pair of Southern California school leaders separately stole nearly $20 million from their schools in order to fund lavish personal lifestyles.

According to The New York Post, the report was co-authored by the State Financial Officers Foundation, a watchdog made up of state treasurers and auditors, and OpenTheBooks, a nonprofit focused on transparency in government spending.

The cases of the two Southern California educators were among the most expensive examples of K-12 education fraud documented nationwide.

Jorge Armando Contreras, the former fiscal services director for the Magnolia Elementary School District in Orange County, was charged with altering school checks over several years to funnel $16.7 million into his personal accounts.

Contreras was spending the money on everything from a luxury home and a BMW to designer clothes and pricey tequila and federal investigators found stacks of cash stuffed into a mini-fridge and luxury designer bags at his home.

He was sentenced to nearly six years in federal prison in 2024 and order to pay $16.7 million in restitution to the Magnolia School District in Orange County.

Another case highlighted in the report revealed that Janis Bucknor, the head of the Community Preparatory Academy charter school in Los Angeles, stole more than $3 million in taxpayer funds to cover travel, restaurants, shopping and private school tuition for her children.

Bucknor also pleaded guilty to spending more than $220,600 on Disney cruise line vacations, theme park admissions, and other Disney-related expenses.

According to prosecutors, Bucknor admitted in 2020 to stealing the funds, and was sentenced to three years’ probation and ordered to pay $2.5 million in restitution.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, State Financial Officers Foundation CEO OJ Oleka said:

All fraud is harmful, but defrauding education dollars meant to help kids learn and succeed is especially hideous. The findings in this report should alarm every family, teacher, and civic leader.

The California cases were part of nearly 90 cases identified by a coalition of auditors over the past six years involving embezzlement, phony invoices, inflated enrollment, bid-rigging and kickbacks, among other crimes.

The report follows the Trump administration’s promise to crack down on government waste, with Vice President JD Vance leading a nationwide “War on Fraud” that has raised new questions about oversight of federal education spending.

Keep reading

Israel Debated: Why Palestine Is Rewriting the Rules of Domestic US Politics

A major showdown on the House floor seemed imminent. An amendment, advanced by the Rules Committee, was poised to force a rare and telling record vote on stripping Israel of $3.3 billion in annual US military aid.

Brought forward by Republican Representative Thomas Massie and drawing support from key progressive Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Greg Casar, the measure was set to put every lawmaker’s stance on unconditional foreign assistance under a public microscope.

However, the high-stakes vote never actually happened. On June 30, the entire legislative package collapsed under the weight of Washington’s internal political warfare. In a dramatic procedural twist, a coalition of Democrats and disgruntled conservative Republicans voted down the mandatory ‘rule’ required to even begin debating the underlying State Department spending bill.

But even if the vote on Massie’s amendment had occurred, the result would have been entirely predictable. It would have been defeated, as support for Israel on both sides of the congressional aisle remains structurally entrenched – even as the American public shifts against Israeli policy in historic numbers.

According to a watershed Gallup poll published on February 27, a plurality of Americans now sympathize more with the Palestinians than the Israelis, leading by a margin of 41 percent to 36 percent. This marked the first time since Gallup began tracking the metric over two decades ago that Israel did not hold the upper hand in public sympathy.

Yet the shift is part of a broader, undeniable trend. A nationwide survey published in late June 2026 by Quinnipiac University revealed that an unprecedented 48 percent of American voters now think the United States is “too supportive” of Israel – the highest percentage recorded since the pollster first began tracking the question in 2017.

This is precisely why Massie’s amendment carries such profound weight. It is significant not because US politicians have suddenly developed a collective moral conscience, but because recent election cycles represented the first time in modern American history where Palestine factored as a major, decisive variable in how citizens cast their ballots.

For years, conventional political analysts dismissed pro-Palestinian mobilization, claiming Americans only vote based on immediate socioeconomic interests and rigid party loyalties. That assessment has since proven faulty.

The political cost of Washington’s complicity became undeniable following the fallout of the 2024 presidential race, a reality later confirmed by those within the inner sanctums of power. In the post-election debates, senior administration insiders admitted that the handling of the Gaza genocide alienated core voter blocks.

The political cost of Washington’s complicity became undeniable after the 2024 presidential race. According to Axios, top Democratic strategists conducting the party’s post-election audit explicitly admitted to advocacy groups that internal party data proved the administration’s Gaza policy was a “net-negative” on the ballot.

This finding – disclosed during internal briefings by DNC autopsy author Paul Rivera – confirmed that the party’s unconditional backing of Israel directly fractured its base, and ultimately contributed to its loss of the elections.

Keep reading

The ABA Wants The White House’s Receipts On The Biglaw Executive Orders

In 2025, Steve Bannon said the quiet part out loud, on his own podcast, when it came to the Trump administration’s goals when issuing (unconstitutional) executive orders aimed at Biglaw firms. Bannon said of the targeted firms, “What we are trying to do is put you out of business and bankrupt you.” Now the ABA wants to know how much of that he was really involved with.

In a Tuesday filing in American Bar Association v. Executive Office of the President, the ABA asked U.S. District Judge Amir Ali to force the White House to hand over internal communications, including those involving Bannon and Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s personal senior counsel. According to reporting, Epshteyn connected two firms that struck deals with the administration, Kirkland & Ellis and Skadden, with the Commerce Department on matters related to U.S. trade negotiations.

The ABA sued the administration back in June 2025, arguing that the executive orders, plus the wave of “deals” that spooked firms into capitulating before an order ever came for them, amounted to a coordinated policy, not isolated grievances against a handful of firms. As noted when the suit was first filed, the ABA had reason to worry about standing before it ever got to the merits, given this particular Supreme Court’s track record on associational standing.

Those worries didn’t pan out, at least not yet. In April, Judge Ali rejected the DOJ’s motion to dismiss, finding the ABA had plausibly alleged a real threat of retaliation and a documented chilling effect on its members, including instances of firms declining pro bono work seen as adverse to the administration. That ruling is what put the case into the discovery fight now playing out over Bannon, Epshteyn, and the rest of the internal White House record.

The underlying grievance predates the ABA suit by months, of course. Four firms — Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey — fought their individual executive orders in court and won, repeatedly, sweeping the district court level on First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment grounds. Nine other firms didn’t fight, cutting deals worth roughly $940 million in pro bono commitments to Trump-approved causes instead. And DOJ’s posture toward the winning firms has been anything but consistent: in March, the department dropped its appeals of those district court losses, only to reverse course about two weeks later and go back to defending the orders, this time citing the nine capitulating firms as proof the policy worked exactly as designed.

The DOJ, as you’d expect, does not want to produce any of this. The government has argued the requests raise separation-of-powers concerns and are overbroad, and last week, it asked a federal court in New York to block the ABA from deposing Epshteyn altogether. Whether that gambit works is now Judge Ali’s problem; DOJ’s response to the ABA’s Tuesday brief is due July 17.

Keep reading

“JUSTICE IS COMING” – Spencer Pratt GOES OFF On California Election Fraud, Says He Has Evidence and Suggests Criminal Investigation Underway in Epic New Video

Former Los Angeles Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt released a new video on Wednesday, bringing the receipts and evidence that the election was stolen from him. 

Pratt went over it all: homeless people being paid to vote Democrat, NGOs “hoarding ballots,” hundreds of thousands of dead and out-of-state voters on the voter rolls, fraudulent signature verification on mail-in ballots, and ballot harvesters filling out mail-in ballots for voters.

It can be recalled that Pratt emerged as an early leader in the mayoral primary, trouncing City Councilwoman Nithya Raman by about 40,000 votes on election night, but she staged a miraculous comeback with fraudulent mail-in ballots.

In an impossible upset, Raman surged, netting roughly 70,000 votes over Pratt and finishing roughly 30,000 votes ahead in the final results. Los Angeles took nearly two weeks to count all of the ballots.

The “late-arriving” fraudulent mail-in ballots knocked Pratt out of the race, and he explains exactly how they did it with evidence.

Keep reading

Newsom Lashes Out at Trump When asked About Federal Investigation Into Wife Jennifer Newsom

California Governor Gavin Newsom lashed out at President Trump and the Trump DOJ when asked about the federal investigation into his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

Last month, Newsom fumed as he announced the corruption probe had expanded, and he and his wife are now under investigation.

Newsom said federal agents have contacted people and organizations close to him and his wife, Jennifer Newsom.

People close to the Newsoms have been subpoenaed for records, according to the governor.

According to Semafor, there are several investigations related to Newsom and they are focused on Jennifer Newsom’s taxes (+ his chief of staff).

Contrary to Newsom’s claims, the investigations did not originate from main DOJ in DC, but are out of Sacramento and involve whistleblowers, Semafor reported.

The investigation began under the Biden Regime, but Newsom lashed out at President Trump during a question and answer session on Thursday.

Keep reading

HARMEET DHILLON Puts Michigan’s Dirty Sec of State Jocelyn Benson On Notice—Warns She and Local Election Officials Are “Subject to Criminality” For Knowingly Allowing Non-US Citizens To Remain On Voter Rolls

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division just put Michigan Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson on notice, cautioning her in a strongly worded letter about federal law requirements for maintaining clean voter rolls and ensuring only eligible U.S. citizens vote in federal elections.

The July 7, 2026, letter was sent directly to Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s chief election officer — the same dishonest secretary of state who is currently running for the Democratic candidate for Governor of Michigan and will be overseeing her own election.

The letter reminds Benson of multiple federal statutes, including the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), the Voting Rights Act (VRA), and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), and explicitly threatens her with potential criminal liability for election officials who knowingly allow non-citizens to remain on voter rolls or cast ballots.

Keep reading