Tag: politicians

Accuser Tells House Ethics Panel Democrat Rep. Jimmy Gomez Assaulted Her

Attorneys for an unnamed woman told the House Committee on Ethics that Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) sexually harassed and assaulted her, disputing the California Democrat’s claim that his conduct was “consensual in nature.”

The statement, released Wednesday by attorneys Lisa J. Banks and Sarah E. Nesbitt, escalates a probe the committee announced Monday into whether Gomez engaged in “inappropriate sexual contact with a House staffer.”

The attorneys said their client sat for an interview with the panel and directly contradicted the congressman’s account of his own behavior.

“We represent one of the women who was interviewed by the House Committee on Ethics about her experience of sexual harassment and assault by Representative Jimmy Gomez,” Banks and Nesbitt wrote. “Contrary to Representative Gomez’s assertion in his statement, his actions were not ‘consensual in nature’ with respect to our client. We fully expect that the House Committee on Ethics will come to the same conclusion in its investigation.”

Keep reading

Pay The Money Back: Ford cabinet ministers’ riding associations spent $356,000 on meetings, restaurants and events

Five riding associations represented by Ontario Progressive Conservative cabinet ministers spent more than $356,000 over two years on expenses categorized as “meetings hosted,” according to an analysis first reported by the Toronto Star.

The expenses were paid from political donations, which qualify donors for provincial tax credits. Elections Ontario records do not identify who was reimbursed for the meetings or, in many cases, who attended.

The biggest spender was Associate Solicitor General Michael Tibollo’s Vaughan—Woodbridge PC riding association, which reported $47,200 in meeting expenses in both 2024 and 2025, for a two-year total of $94,400. The money went to Venu Event Space for Tibollo’s annual “Chestnut Roast” fundraiser.

Energy Minister Stephen Lecce’s King—Vaughan association came next at $79,647 over two years. Its expenses included nearly $15,000 for Beretta Farms beef at a 2024 community barbecue, $1,850 at Mr. Congee Chinese Cuisine and $900 at Eagles Nest Golf Club.

Former tourism minister Stan Cho’s Willowdale association spent $68,646 over two years. In 2024 alone, it reported $54,000 in meeting expenses, including $4,333 in meals at the Niagara Marriott on the Falls, $3,409 at Japanese restaurant and oyster bar Nome Izakaya, $6,970 listed as “Rogers Blue Jays” and $9,708 at Sher-E-Punjab.

Labour Minister David Piccini’s Northumberland—Peterborough South association spent $57,325 over the two years. Expenses previously reported by the Star included sushi-rolling classes and restaurant meals in Toronto and Fort Lauderdale. In 2025, the association also spent $1,533 at BATL Grounds, an axe- and knife-throwing venue.

Solicitor General Michael Kerzner’s York Centre association rounded out the top five with $40,472 over two years. Its 2024 expenses included $17,374 in hospitality catering, plus $831 at Chicken’s Nest Kosher Restaurant and another $5,642 in catering from the restaurant.

The five associations spent $356,312 combined. By comparison, riding associations representing the other 32 cabinet and associate ministers spent a combined $325,720 over the same period. Premier Doug Ford’s Etobicoke North association reported just $2,548 in “meetings hosted” expenses.

The Ontario PC Party said riding association budgets can be used for fundraising, volunteer appreciation, stakeholder outreach and community events. The spending complied with Ontario election financing rules.

Keep reading

German Parties Converge To Change Law that Makes It a Crime To Insult Politicians

To call German Chancellor Friedrich Merz ‘Pinocchio’ hardly classifies as a crime.

Germany has become a repressive society where the politician overlords are shielded from online insults by an absurd law.

But now, parties from all political stripes have come to a rare consensus: the law criminalizing citizens for offending politicians needs to change.

This comes after outrage broke over investigations of people who mocked failing Chancellor Friedrich Merz and called him names like ‘Lying Fritz’.

Politico reported:

“But while politicians across the spectrum agree the law needs fixing — they just can’t agree how, or when, to change it, according to a POLITICO survey of the lawmakers responsible for the issue from each of the parties represented in the Bundestag.

‘We take seriously the criticism that, in practice, it may have created the impression of a special legal privilege for politicians’, said Susanne Hierl, a lawmaker from Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). ‘Such preferential treatment was never the intention of the legislature’.”

While the Left Party and right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) want to abolish the law, the establishment political forces like the CDU, the Greens, and the Social Democratic Party just want to ‘revise’ it.

“’Politicians like Friedrich Merz insult ordinary people in this country every day by calling them lazy or malingerers’, said Luke Hoss, a Left lawmaker, referring to the chancellor’s remarks that Germans should work more to boost economic growth. ‘The provision creates a special criminal offense that applies only to politicians and should be abolished’.

Tobias Peterka, an AfD lawmaker, said tough criticism comes with the job. ‘Anyone who voluntarily enters politics and exercises public authority must — as Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has repeatedly emphasized — tolerate harsher criticism than private citizens, not less’, he argued.”

The absurd law applies to insults that ‘impede the politicians’ work’.

The ‘criminals’ face up to three years in prison.

Keep reading

Democrat Massachusetts Mayor Arrested on Fraud and Money Laundering Charges – Used $1.6 Million in Covid Loans as Personal Slush Fund to Pay Off Mortgages

A Democrat Massachusetts mayor was arrested and charged on Friday with fraudulently obtaining over $1.5 million in Covid business loans.

The Mayor of Lawrence, Massachusetts, Brian Depena, used the proceeds from Covid small-business loans to fund his campaign, pay his personal taxes and pay off nearly $900,000 in high-interest, hard-money mortgages on his properties, according to the Department of Justice.

According to the charging documents during the pandemic back in 2020 and 2021, Depena applied for a taxpayer-funded Covid-era Economic Injury Disaster Loans (“EIDL”) for his tire business.

The EIDL loans must be used as working capital to provide relief to businesses that suffered economic losses during Covid.

However, Depena used the Covid loans to fund his struggling campaign, pay off two high-interest mortgages, and pay back taxes.

Per the DOJ:

Depena allegedly caused Tenares Tire to apply for and obtain an EIDL in the amount of $150,000 in June 2020 and then used the majority of those funds as working capital for the business. However, according to the charging documents, Depena needed cash by early 2021. It is alleged that his mayoral campaign was struggling to pay bills, he owed the IRS for back taxes and he owed almost $900,000 to two private, hard money lenders who were charging Depena 12% and 8% interest – significantly more than the EIDL rate of 3.75% – on loans that encumbered various properties Depena owned in Lawrence.

In April 2021, Depena allegedly caused a request for an increase of the Tenares Tire EIDL. On July 14, 2021, the SBA approved an increase of the loan by $350,000, bringing the total Tenares Tire EIDL to $500,000. However, the SBA did not release the funds for another month. While waiting, Depena allegedly sent the following texts (originally in Spanish, here translated to English) to his accountant and financial advisor, who had been assisting Depena with the EIDL application and modification.

Keep reading

Ontario’s free-spending politicians are nowhere to be found

The Doug Ford Progressive Conservatives are currently mired in an expense scandal. And that stench isn’t going away any time soon…

Here’s the skinny: several MPPs who live within a short driving distance from Queen’s Park were staying at ritzy downtown Toronto hotels rather than bothering to commute home. Hey, we get it: nothing beats room service and maid service.

But the thing is, all these MPPs charged these hotel stays to the ever-beleaguered Ontario taxpayer and/or party donors.

One of the worst offenders is Stan Cho, MPP for Willowdale. Cho’s north Toronto residence is just a handful of subway stops away from the legislature, about 12 km in total. And yet even he had the audacity to stay at swank hotels! Why?

Predictably, there has been much blowback. And so it was that Doug Ford – whose polling numbers are currently plummeting – rightfully punished these big spenders.

In the case of Cho, he lost his cabinet position. And he’s been ordered to pay back the more than $13,000 he squandered on hotels.

But Ford himself is certainly not leading by example. The province’s chief cherry cheesecake connoisseur was scrummed on this matter late last month. A journalist asked him if he plans to pay back the $200,000 his aborted private plane purchase cost the Ontario taxpayer. Ford’s answer? When he’s on the road, he eats at McDonald’s. We’re not making this up…

In any event, we paid a visit to Cho’s constituency office as well as a couple of other MPP big spenders – Paul Calandra in Markham and Hardeep Grewal in Brampton. And a trend emerged: all of the constituency offices were in lockdown mode, as if we were still living in the dark days of Covid-19. Either that or nobody would answer the door (it was impossible to see inside these offices, so we had no idea if anybody was home.) The question arises: what is the purpose of maintaining an office in the first place if MPPs and their staffers are not going to be accountable to the people they allegedly serve?

We then visited Mel Lastman Square in Cho’s riding to see what constituents had to say about the various spending sprees on the taxpayer dime. Predictably, they were not amused.

It is all so perversely ironic given that once upon a time Ford ran on the election slogan, “Respect for Taxpayers.”

To quote the late, great Fred Willard: “Hey! Wha’ happened?!”

Keep reading

How Often Does Congress Show Up To Work? Will August Recess Be Cancelled? – Lawmakers Weigh-In

As the midterm elections loom and Republicans are at risk of losing at least one chamber, President Trump is pushing hard to pass his legislative agenda these next few months. Most notably the SAVE America Act.

Every single year, both the House and the Senate leave for the month of August for this yearly tradition known as “August Recess.” The House left at the end of July and the Senate is set to leave at the end of the week.

Given that Members of Congress will typically arrive in Washington DC around Monday afternoon the earliest and they usually fly back to their respective states by Thursday afternoon, they come to work an average of three days a week.

Keep reading

Federal government approved pay raises for 336,188 bureaucrats despite weak department performance

The federal government approved pay raises for 336,188 public servants in 2025, even as departments continued to miss nearly half of their own performance targets, according to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

The records show 78 per cent of federal employees received a pay increase last year, while only 596 employees — about 0.14 per cent of the federal workforce — saw their pay reduced.

“Taxpayers have every reason to question why the vast majority of bureaucrats are taking bigger paycheques when departments can barely pass their own test,” said CTF Federal Director Franco Terrazzano. “Federal bureaucrats shouldn’t feel entitled to more money every year just because they’re on the taxpayer payroll.”

The latest figures continue a long-running trend. About 385,000 federal employees received raises in 2024, while more than one million pay increases were granted between 2020 and 2023. The federal government has not disclosed the total cost of the salary increases.

CTF General Counsel Devin Drover criticized the government’s refusal to release the financial impact of the raises, calling it another example of Canada’s weak access-to-information system.

“Taxpayers are on the hook for another wage hike, but the government won’t tell Canadians the price tag,” Drover said. “Taxpayers pay these wages and they have a right to know the bill.”

According to federal performance reports, departments met just 54 percent of their own performance targets in 2024, their best result in the past five years. In two of those years, departments failed to meet even half of their stated objectives.

The report also points to research from the Fraser Institute showing government employees earned an average wage premium of 4.8 percent over comparable private-sector workers after accounting for factors such as education, experience and occupation.

Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Budget Officer projects the cost of the federal bureaucracy will reach $79.4 billion this year, exceeding spending levels during the final year of Justin Trudeau’s government after adjusting for inflation. Public Accounts data show the cost of the federal bureaucracy increased 80 percent between 2015 and 2024.

Despite Prime Minister Mark Carney’s pledge to “spend less” and Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne’s commitment to return the civil service to a “more sustainable level,” the Parliamentary Budget Officer projects personnel costs will continue to rise.

Keep reading

House approves long-awaited stock trading ‘ban’ — here’s who the largest traders are

The House passed a sweeping set of restrictions on stock trades by lawmakers and their spouses that was paired with a voter ID provision that scared off many Democrats. 

The “Stop Insider Trading Act” cleared the House 232 to 198, with the full support of Republicans and 13 Democrats on board.

This includes Reps. Kathy Castor of Florida, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine, Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Susie Lee of Nevada, Jared Moskowitz of Florida, Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Darren Soto of Florida, and Derek Tran of California.

Complicating things for Democrats was the voter ID provision in the bill, which would’ve required photo identification to cast a ballot. 

Given that dynamic, there appears to be little appetite for the “Stop Insider Trading Act” in its current form in the Senate, which is subject to the 60-vote filibuster.

Keep reading

Husband of Socialist Rep. Ayanna Pressley Responds to Dead Body Being Found on His Property

Boston police are investigating the discovery of a body at a property owned by Conan Harris, the husband of Rep. Ayanna Pressley.

Officers responded to a call at Harris’ property at 25 Malta Street in the Mattapan neighborhood on Saturday afternoon.

The call was later upgraded to a death investigation, with homicide detectives being brought in.

Newsweek reports, “The property, 25 Malta Street, has in the past been listed as the address of his business.”

The deceased has not yet been publicly identified.

Pressley and her husband reportedly do not reside at the Mattapan property, and it has been rented out.

A spokesperson for the congresswoman issued a statement on behalf of the family Saturday evening, saying, “The Congresswoman extends her deepest condolences to the impacted family.”

The Newsweek report adds:

Harris responded to the case in a post to Facebook on Saturday.

“Thank you Everyone for the care and concern, our family is safe,” he wrote. “My heart goes out to the family that lost a loved one today in Mattapan.”

Harris, Pressley’s husband since 2014, previously worked as a senior public safety adviser in Boston City Hall and now operates his own consulting firm.

He previously served ten years in prison for drug trafficking charges.

Details about the cause of death or any potential suspects have not been made public at the time of publishing.

Boston police have not released additional information beyond confirming the death investigation at the address.

Keep reading