Tag: crime

DoJ accuses far-right Epoch Times of being money-laundering operation

The far-right Epoch Times media company was at the center of a fraudulent money-laundering and cryptocurrency scam involving tens of millions of dollars, the justice department said on Monday as it announced the indictment of its chief financial officer Bill Guan.

The 61-year-old executive “conspired with others to participate in a sprawling, transnational scheme to launder at least approximately $67m of illegally obtained funds”, according to a statement from the US attorney’s office of the southern district of New York.

Proceeds went to the company, it said, and for the personal enrichment of individuals including Guan, who faces up to 70 years in prison on one count of conspiring to commit money laundering and two counts of bank fraud.

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10,000 human remains found on serial killer’s farm — and authorities are still identifying victims

For years, a peaceful million-dollar farm in Indiana hid a dark secret — it was a serial killer’s playground.

When cops finally raided Herb Baumeister’s 18-acre property in Westfield, north of Indianapolis, they uncovered some 10,000 pieces of human remains — mostly crushed and burned skeletal fragments of the teenage boys and young men whom he had abducted and murdered in the 1980s and 90s.

Nearly 30 years after Baumeister killed himself while on the run from police, authorities are still sifting through the remains and identifying victims.

The Hamilton County Coroner announced last month that human remains recovered from Herb Baumeister’s Fox Hollow Farm in 1996 were positively identified as belonging to Jeffrey A. Jones, who went missing in 1993.

Jones is the third victim to be identified in recent months.

There are an additional four DNA profiles found at Baumeister’s property that have not been identified, bringing the total number of his victims to 12, Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison said.

“Because many of the remains were found burnt and crushed, this investigation is extremely challenging; however, the team of law enforcement and forensic specialists working the case remain committed,” Jellison said.

Baumeister, a businessman and married father of three, hunted gay teens and men in central Indiana beginning in at least 1980. He’s believed to have killed at least 25 people, Fox News Digital reported.

He reportedly used the fake name “Brian Smart” and targeted young gay men he met at bars.

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Trump’s Conviction Requires Him To Surrender His Guns. Civil Libertarians Should Be Troubled.

Last September, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung caused a kerfuffle by mistakenly reporting that the former president had bought a Glock 19 pistol decorated with his portrait during a visit to a gun dealer in Summerville, South Carolina. At the time, Trump faced four criminal indictments, which would have made him guilty of several federal felonies—the purchase itself, plus two more felonies related to falsely presenting himself as an eligible buyer—if he had actually completed the transaction that Cheung described. Now that a New York jury has convicted Trump of 34 felonies involving falsification of business records, he is barred from possessing firearms as well as buying them.

Trump, who had a concealed carry permit, owned at least two handguns prior to his conviction: a Heckler & Koch HK45 pistol and a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. As the New York Post notes, Trump will now have to surrender those guns and any others he has acquired or transfer them to someone (such as one of his sons) who is legally allowed to own firearms. The fact that Trump, a self-described “very strong person on the Second Amendment,” has lost the right to keep and bear arms may add to the delight of opponents who welcomed his conviction. But however you feel about Trump, this detail is a reminder that federal law arbitrarily strips people of their Second Amendment rights for reasons that have nothing to do with public safety.

Leaving aside the shaky legal reasoning that allowed New York prosecutors to convert a hush payment into 34 felonies, falsification of business records, even to aid or conceal “another crime,” is not the sort of offense that marks someone as apt to injure or kill people with a gun. 18 USC 922(g)(1), which prohibits receipt or possession of a firearm by anyone who has been convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year of incarceration, is “wildly overinclusive,” UCLA law professor Adam Winkler notes, because it encompasses many people with no history of violence.

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34 REASONS the Bragg-Biden Show Trial Should Have Been TOSSED OUT — Each One Alone Providing Grounds for a Mistrial

1. Unconstitutional Gag Order that prevented President Trump from criticizing the trial, exposing the many conflicts that should have forced the judge to recuse himself, and the railroading of his fundamental due process rights.

2. Judge Merchan’s many, many conflicts of interests – all of which were disqualifying. His daughter, Loren Merchan, is President of Authentic Campaigns, a political consulting firm that hires the likes of the Biden-Harris Campaign, Adam Schiff, Ilhan Omar, and many other far left Democratic lawmakers. Loren’s firm has made tens of millions off these clients – Juan Merchan, through his daughter, had a direct financial stake in the outcome of this trial, a flagrant breach of the canons of legal ethics, both under the ABA and NY State, that under any other judge would have been grounds for a recusal.

3. Judge Merchan’s wife was previously employed by Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York State who campaigned on “getting” Donald Trump.

4. Bragg’s Lead Prosecutor was Matthew Colangelo, the former #3 official at the DOJ. We are told Colangelo graciously decided to step down from his prestigious office to work for a lowly state DA’s office – of course, a reasonable inference would be that he was directed to do so by the Biden Regime to persecute his leading political opponent in Donald John Trump.

5. Statute of Limitations (2 years, NY State) had long expired for the business records falsification scheme that served as the primary charge brought against Trump. For this reason, the case was passed over by the DOJ and even Alvin Bragg over seven years because it was so weak. Only once Bragg felt political pressure, externally via Clinton attorney Mark Pomerantz, who previously worked in Bragg’s office, and internally via Colangelo, a Biden lackey, did Bragg buckle under the political weight and press charges.

6. Venue in bright-blue Manhattan, a borough that voted for Joe Biden over Donald Trump at almost a 9 to 1 clip, prevented the President from ever getting a fair trial, because the pool of jurors was naturally biased against the 45th President, and could not possibly rule fairly and impartially (8 of the 12 cited the NY Times as their main source of news). Any pro-Trump jurors who were considered chose to self-select out themselves because they claimed they “could not rule fairly.” Case in point: no way in hell is the burden of proof met on any of these charges, and yet the jury pool consisted of two lawyers, who evidently believed just that. No reasonable juror, and especially no reasonable lawyer-juror, would have found that the elements of every single crime brought against Trump met the burden of proof of beyond a reasonable doubt.

7. Election Interference: This was not a new case: it had been circulating in various court systems, federal and state, for years. These charges were only brought this year to interfere with the 2024 presidential race, period. President Trump is now the leading presidential candidate, by every reputable poll, and the frontrunner by significant margins, a gap that has only expanded over time. There is no reason why this case should be brought now, six months before Election Day, unless there was a conspiracy to prevent President Trump from being on the campaign trail in key swing states, like PA, MI, AZ, and GA, which is exactly what occurred.

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Disgraced Professor Sentenced for Action That Could Have Trapped Firefighters in Deadly Blaze

A former college lecturer on “criminal justice issues” is going to get some first-hand experience in the subject after he was sentenced to spend five years and three months in prison on Thursday.

Gary Stephen Maynard had pleaded guilty in January to starting a number of fires in California that could have had much more disastrous results than they did.

Maynard, 49, had formerly lectured at Santa Clara University and Sonoma State University, KCRA reported.

The former lecturer admitted to starting at least four fires in July and August of 2021, according to a Justice Department news release, and pleaded guilty to three counts of arson.

One count of arson was dismissed as part of a plea agreement, according to court records cited by The New York Times.

Maynard was charged with starting fires behind firefighters who were working to contain the Dixie Fire, which eventually destroyed more than 1,000 homes and spread over 1,500 square miles, according to KCRA.

“He intentionally made a dangerous situation more perilous by setting some of his fires behind the men and women fighting the Dixie fire, potentially cutting off any chance of escape,” Phillip A. Talbert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, said in a statement (available in full below).

It eventually grew to become the second-largest fire in California history, according to the outlet.

“Maynard faced the possibility of up to 20 years in prison and a $750,000 fine,” KCRA reported. “Besides the prison sentence of more than five years, he was ordered to pay $13,081 in restitution.”

His attorney argued that Maynard was “suffering from untreated and significant mental health issues when he set the fires and has sought treatment since then,” according to Fox News.

“A Santa Clara University colleague of Mr. Maynard, who was not identified, told the police in October 2020 that Mr. Maynard was struggling with anxiety, depression, split personality, and wanted to kill himself, the complaint said,” according to The Times.

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Alvin Bragg’s Office Accused of Leaking Trump’s Potential Sentence to ‘The View’ — Likely to Recommend a Year Behind Bars for Trump at Rikers Island

The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is backed by Soros, is now under fire for allegedly leaking sensitive sentencing information about former President Donald Trump to the far-left media.

In the wake of a trial widely criticized as a sham, where Trump was convicted on all 34 felony charges in a ‘hush money’ scandal, sources suggest that DA Bragg’s office may recommend Trump serve a year at the notorious Rikers Island.

Judge Merchan told jurors they did not have to agree on a crime—a practice unheard of in US history. The jury only had to agree that something bad happened.

This, of course, is completely unconstitutional. This was clearly the greatest travesty of justice in American history.

So now we have a convicted US President with 34 felony counts, and NO ONE knows what crime President Trump committed!

The sentencing was set for July 11—three days before the Republican convention!

Now, ‘The View’ co-host Sunny Hostin, who seemed quite pleased with the developments, shared on the air that she had spoken with someone from Bragg’s office.

She described them as ‘street fighters,’ who indicated that Bragg might push for a tough one-year imprisonment, primarily to ensure Trump faces the daunting conditions of Rikers Island.

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Prominent Islam Critic Wounded During Brutal Stabbing Rampage in Germany

Multiple people were seriously injured when a knife-wielding suspect ambushed a prominent critic of Islam during a public event in Germany on Friday, according to reports.

The shocking incident unfolded at around 11:30 a.m. local time in Mannheim, a city in the state of Baden-Württemberg.

Michael Stürzenberger, a well-known political figure and opponent of the Islamization of Europe, was preparing for an event in the city’s central square when a crazed man brandishing a large blade launched a brutal stabbing rampage.

The entire episode was caught on camera by a member of Stürzenberger’s team who was live-streaming at the time.

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Trump campaign announces $34.8 million fundraising haul after NY criminal trial verdict

Former President Donald Trump on Friday announced a sizeable fundraising haul in the wake of his guilty verdict in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s hush money case.

A New York jury on Thursday found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records after a weeks-long trial. The verdict appears to have energized his supporters, however, as the campaign’s donation page crashed, evidently due to the volume of traffic.

The campaign on Friday announced it had brought in $34.8 million in small dollar donations, marking a near-doubling of its single largest day total on WinRed.

“From just minutes after the sham trial verdict was announced, our digital fundraising system was overwhelmed with support, and despite temporary delays online because of the amount of traffic, President Trump raised $34.8 million dollars from small dollar donors,” said Trump Campaign Senior Advisors Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles.

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Trump’s Conviction Suggests Jurors Bought the Prosecution’s Dubious ‘Election Fraud’ Narrative

After deliberating for a little more than a day, a Manhattan jury on Thursday found Donald Trump guilty of falsifying 34 business records to aid or conceal “another crime,” an intent that turns what would otherwise be misdemeanors into felonies. If you assumed that the jury’s conclusions would be driven by political animus, this first-ever criminal conviction of a former president is the result you probably expected in a jurisdiction where Democrats outnumber Republicans by 9 to 1. But in legal terms, the quick verdict is hard to fathom.

That’s not because there were so many counts to consider, each related to a specific invoice, check, or ledger entry allegedly aimed at disguising a hush-money reimbursement as payment for legal services. Once jurors accepted the prosecution’s theory of the case, it was pretty much inevitable that they would find Trump guilty on all 34 counts. But that theory was complicated, confusing, and in some versions highly implausible, if not nonsensical. Given the puzzles posed by the charges, you would expect conscientious jurors to spend more than an afternoon, a morning, and part of another afternoon teasing them out.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump stemmed from the $130,000 that Michael Cohen, then Trump’s lawyer and fixer, paid porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election to keep her from talking about her alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump. When Trump reimbursed Cohen in 2017, prosecutors said, he tried to cover up the arrangement with Daniels by pretending that he was paying Cohen, whom he had designated as his personal attorney, for legal work.

Cohen testified that Trump instructed him to pay off Daniels and approved the plan to mischaracterize the reimbursement. Cohen was the only witness who directly confirmed those two points, and the defense team argued that jurors should not trust a convicted felon, disbarred lawyer, and admitted liar with a powerful grudge against his former boss. But even without Cohen’s testimony, there was strong circumstantial evidence that Trump approved the payoff and went along with the reimbursement scheme.

The real problem for the prosecution was proving that Trump falsified business records  with “an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof”—the element that was necessary to treat the misleading documents as felonies. Prosecutors said the other crime was a violation of Section 17-152, an obscure, little-used provision of the New York Election Law. Section 17-152 makes it a misdemeanor for “two or more persons” to “conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.” But prosecutors never settled on any particular explanation of “unlawful means,” and Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over the trial, told the jurors they could find Trump guilty even they could not agree on one.

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The EU is on the Brink off Making “Hate Speech” a Serious Crime

The EU’s European Commission (EC) appears to be preparing to include “hate speech” among the list of most serious criminal offenses and regulate its investigation and prosecution across the bloc.

Whether this type of proposal is cropping up now because of the upcoming EU elections or if the initiative has legs will become obvious in time, but for now, the plans are supported by several EC commissioners.

The idea stems from the European Citizens’ Panel on Tackling Hatred in Society, one of several panels (ECPs) established to help EC President Ursula von der Leyen with her (campaign?) promise of ushering in a democracy in the EU that is “fit for the future.”

That could mean anything, and the vagueness by no means stops there: the very “hate speech,” despite the gravity of the proposals to classify it as a serious crime, is not even well defined, observers are warning.

Despite that, the recommendations contained in a report produced by the panel have been backed by EC’s Vice-President for Values and Transparency Vera Jourova as well as Vice President for Democracy and Demography Dubravka Suica.

According to Jourova, the panel’s recommendations on how to deal with “hate speech” are “clear and ambitious” – although, as noted, a clear definition of that type of speech is still be lacking.

This is the wording the report went for: any speech that is “incompatible with the values of human dignity, freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and respect of human rights” should be considered as “hate speech.”

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