Tag: cover ups

Pentagon officials ‘cover up’ mounting casualties of troops in West Asia: Report

Nearly 750 US soldiers have been injured or killed since October 2023, The Intercept revealed in a new investigation released on 1 April – citing a defense official as saying that Washington is engaged in a “casualty coverup.”

At least 15 soldiers were injured last week in an Iranian attack on an air base in Saudi Arabia, two officials confirmed to the outlet, adding that “Hundreds of US personnel have been killed or injured in the region since the US launched a war on Iran just over a month ago.”

The report adds that CENTCOM’s updates have been outdated. 

“Since the start of Operation Epic Fury, approximately 303 US service members have been wounded,” CENTCOM spokesman Tim Hawkins said at the start of this week. 

The Intercept found that “The comment was three days old and excluded at least 15 wounded in the Friday attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia,” adding that “The command did not reply to repeated requests for updated figures.”

The US military also refused to provide the outlet with a number of deaths since the start of the war on Iran. The Intercept says it is “no less than 15.” Washington has not publicly admitted to more than 13 deaths.

“This is, quite obviously, a subject that [War Secretary Pete] Hegseth and the White House want to keep under major wraps,” the anonymous defense official said. 

The report accuses the US Army of “hiding losses.”

The Intercept said that in 2024, the the government of former president Joe Biden provided it with detailed information regarding the attacks on US bases which began after the start of the Gaza genocide. 

At least 175 soldiers were injured or killed as a result of those attacks, including the three who died in January 2024 when an Iraqi drone struck a base on the Jordan–Syria border.

This number does not include contractors. “Statistics show that there were almost 12,900 cases of injuries to contractors in the CENTCOM area of operations during 2024 alone. More than 3,700 were the most serious non-fatal injuries, including traumatic brain injuries, requiring more than seven days away from work,” the report reveals.

Eighteen contractors were also killed, all of them in Iraq, according to The Intercept. “The numbers are likely significant undercounts, but if even the fractional number of known contractor injuries is added to the tally, the casualty count for Americans and those on US bases may top 13,600.”

Numbers released by US President Donald Trump’s government, on the other hand, “lack detail and clarity.”

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BROADCAST BIAS: Networks downplay illegal immigrant crime, even when women are murdered

On Thursday, March 19, an 18-year-old college student at Loyola University in Chicago named Sheridan Gorman was allegedly shot dead by an illegal alien from Venezuela, Jose Medina. The networks could barely touch the story, or talk about the immigration status of the alleged shooter. CBS only spent two minutes, followed by ABC at 79 seconds and NBC at 23 seconds. Searching for it on PBS or NPR found nothing.

PBS stations did waste 90 minutes on a documentary titled, “White With Fear,” about how Republicans use overtly racist tactics to win elections, and one of those, they claimed, was highlighting violent crimes by illegal immigrants. Their primary example was conservatives reporting on the 2015 killing of Kate Steinle in San Francisco.

The networks hate reporting on crime committed by illegal immigrants. They would insist it’s atypical. They love to proclaim that illegal immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born Americans – if you’re willing to dismiss the crime of entering the country illegally or overstaying a visa. But this ignores the obvious logic for grieving families like Gorman’s – if the alleged illegal alien killer hadn’t been allowed into the country, their loved one would still be alive.

Gorman’s family put out a statement about their loss and the politics of it: “Sheridan’s death cannot be reduced to a general ‘tragedy,’ nor can it be explained away by broad references to failures somewhere else,” the family said. “We are not interested in political arguments or in watching responsibility shift from one place to another. If there were failures—as the Governor [J.B. Pritzker] himself has acknowledged—then every one of them must be identified, examined, and addressed directly.”

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He Compared a Black Child to a Dog and Withheld Evidence in Death Row Cases. Now He’s Running for Judge.

Hugo Holland’s aggressive legal tactics made him one of Louisiana’s most renowned prosecutors and helped turn Caddo Parish, a majority Black community in the northwest corner of the state, into one of the nation’s leaders in death penalty convictions.

His nearly 40-year career, though, has been marked by controversies.

In at least two death penalty cases, Louisiana judges found that Holland withheld evidence. In a third, he secured the conviction of a Black 16-year-old, comparing the boy to a dog and telling the jury to “get rid of it”; prosecutors later admitted that Holland and his team had failed to turn over evidence.

Defense attorneys have also accused him of racism, pointing, for example, to a capital murder case several years ago in which Holland emailed one of them to say he was going to spend Veterans Day in his pickup truck looking for “a Black guy or a Mex-can.” Holland called it a joke.

Holland, 62, is now running for judge in the First Judicial District Court in Caddo Parish, and his nascent campaign appears to have substantial backing. He has raised more than $61,000 in less than two months, according to the first campaign finance report released in February — twice the amount many candidates running for the 1st Judicial Court spend in an entire campaign, said Jeffrey Sadow, an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University in Shreveport.

Holland’s donors include an assistant district attorney with the Caddo Parish DA’s office, the district attorney of neighboring Bossier and Webster parishes, a former state judge, and members of major law firms throughout the area.

Holland’s funding haul might prove to be so daunting that it scares off potential challengers, Sadow said, though candidates have until the end of July to enter the race. “It shows he’s got an awful lot of support and that he’s considered a quality candidate,” he said.

In addition to his robust campaign fundraising, Holland has been able to bring on the head of the local Republican Party, Matthew Kay, as his campaign chair. (Kay also served as an elector for Donald Trump in 2024.)

Holland declined multiple requests for comment about his candidacy and record as a prosecutor. Neither Kay nor nine of the 10 donors Verite News and ProPublica reached out to would respond or agree to speak about their support for Holland.

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‘Refuses to enforce its own precedents’: Sotomayor torches SCOTUS for inaction on ‘significant’ buried evidence in slaying of teen pizza delivery driver

Justice Sonia Sotomayor registered a sharp dissent Monday as the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the case of a man sentenced to life in the 1998 slaying of a teenage pizza delivery driver in Louisiana, accusing her colleagues of refusing to “enforce its own precedents.”

Joined only by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor argued that it made little sense for the Supreme Court to effectively free James Skinner’s co-defendant from death row with a decision a decade earlier but to leave Skinner in prison for the rest of his days without parole, when both men were incarcerated for the murder of 16-year-old Eric Walber based on “similar sets of evidence, which centered on the same two eyewitness accounts.”

“Equal justice under law, the phrase engraved on the front of this Court’s building, requires that two codefendants, convicted of the same crime, who raised essentially the same constitutional claims, receive the same answer from the courts,” Sotomayor said. “Here, because the Louisiana courts refused to apply this Court’s Brady precedents, including a decision by this Court involving the very same evidence, Skinner risks spending the rest of his life in prison while [Michael] Wearry walks free,” Sotomayor said. “Because the Court refuses to enforce its own precedents, I respectfully dissent from the denial of certiorari.”

Under Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors must hand over “Brady material,” evidence that is exculpatory or tends to be favorable to the defense. The “withholding of evidence that is material to the determination of either guilt or punishment of a criminal defendant violates the defendant’s constitutional right to due process,” the Supreme Court held in 1963.

The evidence of Brady violations in the case of Michael Wearry was egregious to the point that the Supreme Court ruled his conviction and death sentence had to be set aside in 2016, and a new trial was “required.” Of particular concern was what the state hid from the defense about its star witness, a “jailhouse snitch” named Sam Scott who two years after the slaying claimed a lesser level of responsibility in Walber’s death while pointing to Wearry, Skinner, and three others.

That story not only changed, but was also wrong about basic facts. For instance, the witness claimed Walber was shot to death — but the evidence showed that on that April 1998 day, the Albany High School football player was filling in for someone who didn’t show up for work at Pizza Express and was beaten and run over by his own car, local CBS affiliate WAFB reported. Skinner was allegedly behind the wheel.

Further explaining why the Supreme Court found Scott’s account “dubious,” one of his versions of the crime said Randy Hutchinson — who had “undergone knee surgery to repair a ruptured patellar tendon” nine days earlier — ran after the pizza delivery driver.

Worse yet, Scott had made statements behind bars that he wanted to “‘make sure [Wearry] gets the needle cause he jacked over me,'” an inmate reported. Neither the defense nor the jury were aware of this evidence.

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SNP slammed for bid to suppress sex predator scandal

Leaked recordings of SNP politicians trying to shut down the Jordan Linden sex scandal have been branded ‘disgraceful’.

Scottish Labour said it showed the true nature of the ‘Scottish Nasty Party’.

A North Lanarkshire councillor posted the recordings to show how Linden’s colleagues tried to protect him days after he quit as council leader in 2022 over misconduct claims.

Councillors can be heard backing Linden, 30, who is said to have ‘support from the party’. They also warn against leaks to the press which could add to the crisis.

The Scottish Tories called it ‘manipulation and cover-up’.

Linden was put on the sex offenders register last week after being found guilty of ten offences against young men, including five sexual assaults, between 2011 and 2021.

His trial heard victims warned the SNP about him, but complaints were ignored and whistleblowers treated like liars.

John Swinney ordered a review of the SNP’s complaints process, but it then emerged he ignored a plea for better safeguarding from Linden’s former colleagues six months ago.

Meghan Gallagher, Scottish Tory candidate for Linden’s hometown of Bellshill, said: ‘These recordings highlight the scale of manipulation and cover-up the SNP were engaged in.

‘Swinney’s independent review into the SNP’s complaints procedure is a cynical PR exercise.

‘His party will always put their interests before doing the right thing.’

One of Linden’s key allies during his offending was Tracy Carragher, now leader of the SNP opposition on the council and a Holyrood list candidate for Central Scotland.

She and fellow SNP councillor Fiona Fotheringham were defence witnesses in the trial.

On the leaked recordings, Cllr Carragher is heard saying: ‘Jordan’s got a lot of support. He’s got support from the party, from his family and from his partner. The party told him not to comment.

Cllr Fotheringham cited the backlash to then SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford for urging colleagues to ‘give as much support as possible’ to sex pest MP Patrick Grady,

She said: ‘We are supportive of Jordan. We send our love. We’ve sent our support.’

She then added: ‘I would not expect to read anything like that in the papers.’

Cllr Claire Barclay said she was ‘disgusted’ at leaks, claiming whoever leaked one particular email had ‘put the party at risk and independence at risk’, adding: ‘It’s evil, absolute evil.’

She said: ‘If it doesn’t stop, we’ll find out who that person is and the full force of disciplinary [action] will go against them. That is a final warning. The cameras are on us.’

Cllr Kirsten Larson said: ‘Based on the information I have, the only thing Jordan Linden is guilty of is being a young person.’

Scottish Labour deputy leader Dame Jackie Baillie said: ‘These recordings prove that the Scottish Nasty Party are determined to bully and gaslight victims of sexual abuse to try and desperately preserve their reputation.

‘Disgraceful remarks can be heard from several SNP councillors in these recordings.

‘Despite the SNP attempting to deny knowing about Linden’s despicable behaviour, they were told explicitly about him in emails sent in 2017 and 2022.

‘The SNP and Swinney are not fit for office. They are a party that is addicted to cover-up and secrecy.’

The four councillors who were taped were approached for comment.

The SNP said it ‘welcomes the verdict against Mr Linden and commends the bravery of the individuals who came forward and shared their experiences with the police’.

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Youth centre did not report 16-year-old girl’s rape to authorities because ‘Muslim boys are already under enough police scrutiny’, German media claims

A report in the German media has claimed that a youth centre did not report a girl’s alleged rape to authorities due to concerns that ‘Muslim boys are already under enough police scrutiny.’

The claims emerged regarding the handling of serious allegations at the Wutzkyallee youth centre in Neukölln, Berlin.

German outlet Bild reported that a sworn affidavit from employees at the neighboring facility, MaDonna, confirmed suspicions that authorities failed to report alleged rapists due to concerns over scrutiny of Muslim boys. The claims have been denied.

The affidavit is said to detail the case of a 16-year-old Turkish-Kurdish schoolgirl who was allegedly raped by an Arab boy and subsequently sexually assaulted by eight others in a secluded area of the youth centre.

The document has been submitted to both the Senate and district politicians.

It indicates that the alleged perpetrators filmed the assaults and used the footage to blackmail the victim.

Additionally, the group reportedly attempted to persuade the victim’s younger sister to meet with them.

In the affidavit, it was stated: ‘In this context, we informed the social services coordinator that a report must be filed. The social services coordinator refrained from doing so, as she feared it would marginalize the perpetrators.

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Democrat Congresswoman Indicted Over Stolen Millions, Radio Silence From Legacy Media

Political commentator Scott Jennings raised concerns about allegations against Florida Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus McCormick, who has been indicted in connection with an alleged scheme involving $5 million in FEMA disaster relief funds.

“By the way, have you heard the one about the sitting Florida Congresswoman who stole millions of dollars in FEMA disaster relief funds and then used the money on her campaign for Congress?” Jennings said.

He questioned the level of public attention surrounding the case, adding, “No, you haven’t heard this story? Well, I wonder why that might be.”

Political commentator Scott Jennings raised concerns about allegations against Florida Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus McCormick, who has been indicted in connection with an alleged scheme involving $5 million in FEMA disaster relief funds.

“By the way, have you heard the one about the sitting Florida Congresswoman who stole millions of dollars in FEMA disaster relief funds and then used the money on her campaign for Congress?” Jennings said.

He questioned the level of public attention surrounding the case, adding, “No, you haven’t heard this story? Well, I wonder why that might be.”

Jennings continued, “Because I’ll tell you why the congresswoman in question is a Democrat, and that tells you everything you need to know about the state of the American media.”

He described the allegations as significant, stating, “Now this is not some minor ethics flap.”

Jennings emphasized the seriousness of the case, saying, “This is not a paperwork error. This is not a technicality here, folks.”

He added, “This is one of the most serious corruption cases involving a sitting member of Congress to come along in years.”

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Report Alleges Trump’s Daily Military Briefing Scrubs Out Iran War Setbacks

A fresh NBC report has alleged that President Trump is being presented with a very incomplete picture of how the Iran war is going, with the conflict now approaching its first month, and as Washington struggles to find an offramp amid global oil market disruptions.

The report says that his daily military briefing provided by the Pentagon features a roughly 2-minute long video update for President Trump that shows the biggest, most successful strikes on Iranian targets of the prior 48 hours. Negative developments frequently get omitted or glossed over.

Anonymous US officials have voiced fears that the video briefings, which the president tends to respond positively to, fail to represent the full scope of what’s going on. Also, Trump’s aides have reportedly voiced greater approval for the briefings, which feature Iranian military equipment and bases and sites getting blown up.

The NBC report, which has been rejected by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, in essence suggests Trump is not getting properly briefed on major negative developments.

Or in other words, the fear is that briefers are simply favoring information that he wants to hear, and too afraid to deliver bad news. According to NBC:

They said the videos are also driving Trump’s increasing frustration with news coverage of the war. Trump has pointed to the success depicted in the daily videos to privately question why his administration can’t better influence the public narrative, asking aides why the news media doesn’t emphasize what he’s seeing, one of the current U.S. officials and the former U.S. official said.

Again, Leavitt has called all of this “an absolutely false assertion” from people who aren’t in the briefing room; however NBC does offer the following example which seems consistent with its reporting:

One example came this month when five U.S. Air Force refueling planes were hit in an Iranian strike at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, according to one of the current U.S. officials. Trump wasn’t briefed about the strikes, and he learned what had happened from media reports, the official said. When Trump inquired, he was told the planes weren’t badly damaged, the official said.

The official said Trump reacted angrily behind the scenes to the news coverage. Publicly he posted on Truth Social calling coverage of the strike misleading and accusing media organizations of wanting the U.S. “to lose the War.”

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‘Arctic Frost’ Scandal: Biden FBI Wiretapped Trump Adviser Susie Wiles During Privileged Attorney Call, Then Hid Evidence in “Prohibited” Files

During a high-stakes hearing of the Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) dropped a series of nuclear revelations regarding the “Arctic Frost” investigation, a sweeping, clandestine operation by the Biden-era DOJ and FBI designed to spy on the political opposition.

The Gateway Pundit has been hammering this story since February, when we reported that Biden’s FBI secretly snatched the phone records of Kash Patel and Susie Wiles in 2022 and 2023 as part of deranged Special Counsel Jack Smith’s sham classified-documents probe into papers lawfully stored at Mar-a-Lago.

Joe Biden’s FBI wiretapped a privileged attorney-client call involving top Trump adviser Susie Wiles, without the consent of either party, and then attempted to bury the evidence.

Axios reporter Marc Caputo reports that the lawyer, who has not been publicly identified, denied the accusation that he approved the FBI recording.

The revelations were confirmed during the hearing titled “Arctic Frost: A Modern Watergate,” held by the Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights.

Witnesses included:

  • Will Chamberlain (Article III Project)
  • Margot Cleveland (The Federalist)
  • Christopher O’Leary (former FBI agent)

What they described was nothing short of chilling.

Cruz walked Cleveland through the scope of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation, and the numbers alone are staggering:

  • Nearly 200 subpoenas issued
  • Over 400 Republican individuals and organizations targeted
  • Some targets had no connection to January 6
  • Others didn’t even exist at the time

Cruz asked about subpoenaing toll records of members of Congress. Cleveland confirmed it raises massive Speech and Debate Clause problems. When Jack Smith tried to force AT&T to cough up Ted Cruz’s own records, AT&T flat-out refused, saying it violated the Constitution. Smith backed down like a coward and never even tried to enforce it in court.

Cleveland made it crystal clear, Smith knew well what he was doing was illegal.

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California Court SMACKS DOWN Corrupt AG Rob Bonta’s Attempt to Block Sheriff Chad Bianco’s Massive 650,000 Ballot Investigation

A state appellate court has flat-out rejected 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.

This is the latest chapter in Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s fearless fight against the Sacramento swamp.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican currently in a tight 2026 gubernatorial race with fellow Republican Steve Hilton, moved to seize approximately 650,000 ballots and initiate a recount after a citizens’ group reported significant discrepancies, according to CalMatters.

Sheriff Chad 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.

The investigation was launched following a complaint filed by a citizen-led election watchdog group. The Riverside Election Integrity Team alleges a discrepancy of roughly 45,000 votes between the number of ballots received and those officially counted in Riverside County during the November election tied to Proposition 50.

AG Bonta’s office had demanded the sheriff’s department pause everything, claiming “grave concerns” and whining that Bianco hadn’t identified a specific crime.

Bonta tried to claim that Bianco, a veteran law enforcement officer, had no “legal authority” to act as an election monitor. He called the investigation a “fishing expedition” and a “threat to democracy.”

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