Tag: democrats

4 Arrests Made in Connecticut Absentee Ballot Case

A Bridgeport city councilman and a Democratic Party operative were criminally charged on June 11 for allegedly unlawfully possessing another person’s absentee ballot.

Alfredo Castillo, 52, who represents Bridgeport City Council’s 136th District, and Bridgeport Democratic Party Vice Chairwoman Wanda Geter-Pataky, 67, were arrested this week following allegations they mishandled absentee ballots in the 2019 Democratic Party mayoral primary.

“Integrity of our voting process is vital to our democracy,” Chief State’s Attorney Patrick Griffin said in a statement.

“I appreciate the attention and time the Statewide Prosecution Bureau put into these investigations. I hope these prosecutions will send a message that deters tampering with election results in the future in Connecticut.”

Neither Mr. Castillo nor the Bridgeport Democratic Party responded to requests for comment.

Campaign workers Nilsa Heredia, 61, and Josephine Edmonds, 62, were also arrested and charged. Ms. Geter-Pataky, along with Ms. Edmonds and Ms. Heredia, were charged with tampering with a witness, and Ms. Geter-Pataky, Mr. Castillo, and Ms. Heredia were charged with misrepresenting eligibility requirements for voting by absentee ballot.

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Left-wing Chicago mayor spent $30,000 on makeup in one year: report

Progressive Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has spent $30,000 on personal grooming, primarily for makeup and hair appointments in just one year. The money used to finance these expenditures were contributions made by supporters to the Friends of Brandon Johnson campaign fund. 

The bulk of the money was paid to Denise Milloy, a makeup artist and “skincare enthusiast” based on the south side of Chicago, with an additional $4,000 spent on hair appointments. Johnson made over 30 payments to Milloy between 2023 and 2024, per the Daily Mail.  

During his campaign, these payments were categorized as “candidate makeup for TV” and “candidate makeup,” while post-election expenses were labeled more generally as “campaign expenses.” 

Bill Neidhardt, a campaign advisor for Johnson, issued a written statement to the Chicago Sun Times, emphasizing that taxpayer dollars were not used for the mayor’s grooming expenses 

“The mayor does not spend taxpayer dollars in preparation for the many public appearances and events he attends every day,” Neidhardt stated. 

In the past, Johnson’s campaign applauded the supporters that had donated to the Friends of Brandon Johnson campaign fund, publicly stating that the fund primarily came from “working-class people.” 

Neidhardt did not comment on whether the payments covered anyone other than the mayor but highlighted that Johnson’s spending supports black and women-owned businesses. 

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California Restaurants Have Slashed 10,000 Jobs Since Democrats Introduced $20 Minimum Wage

Restaurants across the state of California have cut at least 10,000 jobs since Democrat lawmakers mandated a $20 minimum wage, according to a major trade group.

According to the California Business and Industrial Alliance (CABIA), thousands of restaurant workers have lost their positions as businesses are forced to cut labor costs and raise their prices in order to survive.

The New York Post reports:

The California Business and Industrial Alliance (CABIA) slammed  Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom for pushing through the law, which went into effect April 1 – and was blamed for forcing one beloved taco chain to shutter 48 locations in the state last week.

“California businesses have been under total attack and total assault for years,” CABIA president and founder Tom Manzo told Fox Business. “It’s just another law that puts businesses in further jeopardy.”

Several major chains – including McDonald’s, Burger King, and even low-cost favorite In-N-Out Burger – jacked up prices to offset the higher wages. Many had to cut employee hours and some have expedited a move to automation.

Manzo said nearly 10,000 jobs have been cut across fast food restaurants since Newsom signed California Assembly Bill 1287 into law last year, adding that officials were living in a “fantasyland” by thinking that drastic wage increases will help workers or businesses.

Just this week, the beloved restaurant chain Rubio’s Coastal Grill, announced that it would be closing 48 locations statewide due to the unaffordable costs of doing business.

“The closings were brought about by the rising cost of doing business in California,” said a statement from a Rubio’s spokesperson. “While painful, the store closures are a necessary step in our strategic long-term plan to position Rubio’s for success for years to come.”

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Arizona Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes to Launch Criminal Investigation into Gov. Katie Hobbs for Bribery and Fraud

Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes, who “won” the 2022 election by 280 votes from Trump-endorsed Abe Hamadeh, will launch a criminal investigation into Governor Katie Hobbs over a pay-to-play scheme.

As reported by The Gateway Pundit, these allegations stem from significant donations made to a dark money group, which was used for Hobbs’ inaugural events, potentially influencing state contract decisions.

Hobbs’ ethical conduct was called into question by GOP State Legislators after she solicited donations of up to $250,000 using a 501(c)(4) nonprofit group for inaugural events.

Interestingly, the nonprofit used by Hobbs shares an address with Coppersmith Brockelman PLC, the Democrat law firm that represented her in Kari Lake’s lawsuit challenging the 2022 midterm election results.

Among the donors to Hobbs’ inauguration were Sunshine Residential Homes and its affiliates, who contributed significant sums only to later receive a rate increase for their youth group home services.

According to The Arizona Republic reporter, Stacey Barchenger, “DCS approved what amounts to a nearly 60% increase in the rate that Sunshine Residential Homes Inc. charges to care for a child for a day, meaning potentially millions of dollars more going to the company at taxpayers’ expense.”

Interestingly, no other standard group home provider was approved for any rate increase during Hobbs’ tenure.

Sunshine Residential Homes initially sought a 20% rate increase in December 2022 but was denied by DCS on February 6, 2023. Just three days later, Sunshine donated $100,000 to a dark-money fund created by Hobbs’ campaign. Notably, the company had only recently begun contributing to political campaigns in Arizona.

Sunshine made two six-figure donations totaling 200,000 to the Arizona Democratic Party when Hobbs was running for governor. Additionally, Sunshine’s CEO and his wife personally donated nearly the maximum amount, 5,000 each, to Hobbs’ campaign. After Hobbs’ election, the company donated another $200,000, half of which went directly to Hobbs’ inauguration fund through her dark money group.

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NY Dem Suggests Trump Supporters Need ‘Re-education Camps’ Following ‘MAGA Nightmare’

A Democrat running for Congress in New York suggested that supporters of Donald Trump might need to be subjected to “re-education camps.”

Paula Collins argued during a heated Zoom Townhall meeting that these camps would “put it all together again” after enduring what she described as a “MAGA nightmare.”

Her remarks came while discussing the aftermath of the 2024 election.

“Even if we were to have a resounding blue wave come through, as many of us would like, putting it all back together again after we’ve gone through this MAGA nightmare and re-educating basically, which, that sounds like a rather, a re-education camp,” Collins said.

“I don’t think we really want to call it that,” she added. “I’m sure we can find another way to phrase it.”

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New Jersey Democrats Elect Dead Congressman Donald Payne Jr. in Primary

Democrat voters in New Jersey elected deceased Representative  Donald Payne Jr. in Tuesday’s primary.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, Representative Donald M. Payne Jr. (D-NJ) died on April 24th at 65.

Before his death, Payne spent the last two weeks in a coma due to having a heart attack and complications with diabetes.

Despite being dead, Payne won New Jersey’s 10th District Democratic primary with 99.9% of the vote.

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Chuck Schumer’s Brother Works For Law Firm Behind Bragg’s Get-Trump Indictment

Following Donald Trump’s conviction in Manhattan last week, Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer proclaimed, “The undeniable fact is Donald Trump went through the same legal process that all Americans go through, he was tried according to the facts and the law, and he was found guilty by a jury of his peers.” 

Nothing could be further from the truth, and Schumer knows it because his brother’s law firm, branded the “Biden-Era N.Y. Power Center” by Bloomberg, spurred the indictment of the former president.

Sen. Schumer’s brother, Robert Schumer, is a partner in that law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison. As I detailed Monday, Paul, Weiss granted three highly paid attorneys leaves of absence to join the Manhattan district attorney’s office in its targeting of Donald Trump. And Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of the former president came about only after the intentional leaking of a resignation letter from Mark Pomerantz, one of the Paul, Weiss attorneys on loan to the DA. 

In his resignation letter, Pomerantz criticized Bragg for failing to seek criminal charges against Trump and for indefinitely suspending the investigation into the former president. The letter was soon provided to The New York Times, creating a political firestorm over the news that Bragg did not intend to charge Trump.

Pomerantz’s ploy worked: Bragg soon publicly claimed the investigation was ongoing and then moved to “jump start” his investigation into Trump by hiring yet another outsider, Matthew Colangelo.

Colangelo left Biden’s Department of Justice to join Bragg’s get-Trump team, having previously been appointed by Biden as acting associate attorney general — the third-highest-ranking official in the DOJ. Following Colangelo’s arrival, Bragg indicted Trump, resulting in last week’s conviction.

This road to Trump’s conviction isn’t even in the same universe as the “legal process that all Americans go through.” In fact, the Manhattan DA scoring a top criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor on leave of absence from Paul, Weiss to work “solely on the Trump investigation” was so out of the ordinary that even The New York Times acknowledged that “the hiring of an outsider is a highly unusual move for a prosecutor’s office.” 

Even more unusual, though, was Pomerantz’s resignation letter that declared, “I believe that Donald Trump is guilty of numerous felony violations of the Penal Law in connection with the preparation and use of his annual Statements of Financial Condition” — accusations soon leaked to The New York Times, which led to a Biden administration lawyer leaving the DOJ to work on a state court prosecution. This is most assuredly not business as usual in the criminal justice system.

Sen. Schumer undoubtedly knows this and Paul, Weiss’s connections to the Manhattan DA’s prosecution of Donald Trump because his brother is a partner at the firm. And so does Joe Biden, who during a June 2019 fundraiser at Paul, Weiss gave a “shoutout” to Robert Schumer. 

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Making Over $141K, Minneapolis Mayor Thanks Biden For Student Loan Forgiveness

If you weren’t already infuriated by Joe Biden’s exploitation of the federal student loan program as a means of buying votes and redistributing wealth, this should do the trick. 

On Wednesday, Minneapolis Mayor Melvin Carter — who earns makes takes $140,814 a year before benefits — rushed to Twitter to thank President Biden for erasing his remaining student debt, sharing a screen shot showing his outstanding balance had turned to zero. 

The latest drip in the fiscal Chinese water torture that’s being inflicted on responsible, productive Americans came earlier that day, with Biden announcing he was cancelling another $7.7 billion of debt. With that, the total such debt wiped away by his administration has reached $167 billion.  

After emphasizing that the average beneficiary of Biden’s self-serving abuse of taxpayers has had $35,000 in debt forgiven, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre fielded a challenging question from, of all sources, NBC News. Correspondent Peter Alexander asked, “Why don’t those individuals who didn’t receive $35,000 in debt cancellation deserve a $35,000 check from other Americans for what other means they would want to use it?”

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Gloat While You Still Can

In the pre-gloat hours before the verdict in Judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom,

Lawfare caporegime Andrew Weissmann (“Mueller’s Pitbull”) confessed Valley Girl style from his MSNBC clubhouse perch, “. . . I mean, I am, like, now I have a man-crush on him, he is such a great judge!” Bromance on, looks like! If the two happen to frequent the same athletic club in downtown Manhattan, Judge Merchan better be careful in the post-workout shower when he  bends over to pick up the soap. The Pitbull cometh!

     Of course, the Alvin Bragg victory in the artfully constructed “Stormy Daniels Payoff Case” decided late Thursday calls to question how come the Mueller Special Counsel Probe into 2016 election interference (actually run by Mr. Weissmann, due to Mr. Mueller’s declining cognitive ability) failed to spot the same web of evidence — hard as they toiled, and they had a good two years and millions of taxpayer dollars to git’er done?

     My guess: too many white lawyers on the Mueller staff. Everybody knows now from watching the latest crop of television commercials that white people are unusually stupid and helpless and cannot cope with common problems without assistance from helpful people of color (POCs). So, God bless Alvin Bragg for finally fixing what Bob Mueller’s fifteen bloodhounds led by a pitbull somehow botched.

The former president is now convicted on thirty-four counts of book-keeping errors in furtherance of an alleged 2016 federal election violation that the Federal Election Commission declined to charge — that is, paying a porn star to sign a non-disclosure agreement about a sexual liaison — because it is not a crime under federal election law, and about which the head of the FEC, James E. “Trey” Trainor III, was barred by Judge Merchan from testifying on during the course of the trial for reasons yet unknown.

     Of course, that is but one of a great many points of law that will merit appeal in what everybody — even some white people (people of non-color, PONCs) — knows was a case so crookedly contrived that it is fated to get tossed in the higher courts, and probably with harsh remonstrance to the degenerate officers of the court who brought it and adjudicated it. But you will have to wait on that because the mills of the law grind slowly.

     Now, in the radiance of the full Woke gloat, we await Judge Merchan’s sentence, to be announced a mere few days before the Republican Convention in Milwaukee in early July. Jail time at Rikers? Home confinement (with ankle bracelet)? Severe travel restrictions? Reporting to a parole officer? Drug tests? Hey, No one is above the law! It is hard to imagine that the judge will demur from inflicting maximum humiliation on this wanton repeat violator (thirty-four times!) of book-keeping errors. It would tend to interfere with the presidential candidate’s campaign schedule, but so what? Where does it say in the Constitution that an election must be fair?

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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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