The FBI has arrested Roger Stone, a former campaign adviser to US President Donald Trump, in a surprise early morning raid on his home. Stone has been indicted on charges including obstruction and witness tampering.
He was arrested at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, following Thursday’s indictment by the office of the US Special Counsel Robert Mueller which is investigating Trump and his associates over allegations surrounding his 2016 campaign.
Stone is facing one count of obstruction of proceedings, one count of witness tampering, and five counts of false statements.
It is alleged that Stone, who officially left the Trump campaign in August 2015, told campaign officials in July 2016 about future WikiLeaks (referred to in Mueller’s document as “Organization 1”) releases of damaging information found in leaked Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails. US intelligence claims the emails were hacked by Russian “government actors.”
During Trump’s campaign, Stone boasted about having connections with WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, but later said it wasn’t a direct link. Instead, he said that he relied on New York radio host Randy Credico (named “Person 2” in the Thursday indictment) as a “go-between.”
The indictment says Stone lied to the House Intelligence Committee about his alleged contacts with WikiLeaks and tried to convince another person to give false testimony.
Stone, a long-time ally of Trump, was recently praised by the US president for saying he would “never testify against Trump”and for having “guts” in the face of the “rogue and out of control prosecutor” Mueller.
The FBI showed up at Stone’s door in force. Agents arrived armed with assault rifles and clad in body armor, and without warning.
FBI agents are among those left without pay due to the ongoing US government shutdown, and the fact that they still went and arrested Stone had the anti-Trump ‘Resistance’ praising on them on Twitter for “protecting this country.”
Since Trump came to power, FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ‘Russiagate’ probe has been investigating the US intelligence community’s allegations that he had colluded with Russia during the 2016 campaign. Stone’s arrest is arguably the most significant of the probe, which has so far resulted in several high-profile arrests on charges unrelated to the still unproven “collusion.”
Russia has dismissed all allegations of working to put Trump in power or control his decisions.
Many of Trump’s opponents blame Russia for his surprise 2016 victory against Hillary Clinton. In April 2018, the House Intelligence Committee concluded that Trump had not colluded with Moscow, but later the Senate committee said he did, choosing to side with US intelligence assessments.
Those assessments, as well as media reports often based on unnamed sources (many of which have since proven to be false) remain the chief basis for the ‘Russiagate’allegations, as Mueller’s team has so far failed to uncover proof of collusion in its two-year probe.
Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar is back in the news afterdefendinga 2012 tweet she wrote stating that “Israel has hypnotized the world.” In a recent CNN clip, she questioned how her comments could be construed as “offensive to Jewish Americans.”
Yes, comparing the Jewish state to some sort of manipulative global force — how could anyone possibly find that offensive?
Omar’s comment alone is striking, but what is more concerning is that her comment represents a growing strand of casual anti-Semitism in progressive politics. Activists and politicians on the far-left are continually finding themselves embroiled in controversies related to remarks on Jews and the Jewish state. Clearly, it’s time for progressives to get their house in order.
Jews are right to be concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism in America.
In 2017, incidents related to anti-Semitism increased by a whopping 57 percent in the United States according to the Anti-Defamation League. Making up only 2 percent of the population, Jews faced more physical attacks than all other religions combined in 2017. The notorious Boycott, Sanction, and Divestment (BDS) movement is gaining steam across the country.
Despite this growing problem, some progressive politicians and activists seem to have no concern espousing the historically hateful rhetoric that leads to wide-scale anti-Semitism. Omar’s 2012 tweet is a great example. As Bari Weiss noted in a recent op-ed for the New York Times, Jews “hypnotizing” the public was the very plot of Jud Süss, a popular Nazi propaganda film.
The Jew as a “manipulator” has also made its way into the public discourse after Trayon White, a Democratic Member of the D.C. City Council, stated in a Facebook video last year that Jews were responsible for controlling the weather.
“Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation … And that’s a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful,” White noted in the video.
The Rothschilds frequently play boogie man in a host of other anti-Semitic conspiracies.
Anti-Zionism also makes up an important facet of this brand of progressive politician and activist. Sure enough, Omar supports the deeply flawed BDS movement meant to harm the Jewish state.
Omar’s anti-Israel views are backed by Michigan Congresswoman and progressive firebrand Rashida Tlaib. A widely circulated picture of a map in her Congressional office showed a sticky note of the word “Palestine” covering Israel’s existing borders. References to Palestine engulfing Israel are a not so subtle hint at the dissolution of the Jewish state.
Tlaib also makes no qualms paling around with Abbas Hamideh, a known pro-Hezbollahactivist. Hezbollah, a Lebanese terrorist organization, frequently hosts rallies where supporters chant “Death to Israel!” Choice exerts of Hamideh’s tweets include clamoring against the “criminal Zionists” and praise for Samir Kuntar, a convicted terrorist, and murderer.
Prominent left-wing grassroots activists have also had their fair share of controversy. Tamika Mallory, the President of the Women’s March, has become embroiled in scandals related to her stances on the Jewish state and who she chooses to associate with.
In a recent interview on PBS’ “Firing Line,” Mallory refused to answer whether Israel should have the right to exist. “I just don’t feel that everyone has a right to exist at the disposal of another group,” she noted during the back and forth. After being pressed, Mallory angry stated that she was “done talking” about the subject.
Mallory also refuses to disavow her association with Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan who she once dubbed“The greatest of all time.” Yes, this is the same Farrakhan who proudly compared Jews to “termites” and that “Lying, murderous Zionist Jews” were behind the 9/11 terrorist attack.
Asked to condemn Farrakhan’s blatant anti-Semitic remarks in an interview on ABC’s “The View” by Meghan McCain, Mallory refused based on the grounds that McCain’s line of questioning was “racist.”
The past few months make clear that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has work to do. Progressives can either choose to stop associating with politicians and activists who spew hate towards Jews or continue down a dangerous path of mainlining anti-Semitism. For the Jewish people and America’s sake, we should hope they choose the former.
During the crossing, which happened near Yuma, Arizona, on Monday, the migrants climbed over a 18-foot, bollard-style border fence using a ladder you can see a smuggler running away with at the end of the video.
“It shows how brazen these smugglers are and the fact that they’re unafraid,”said Jose Garibay, the Border Patrol’s Yuma Sector spokesman. “They know that we’re not gonna go into Mexico to apprehend them.”
“So once he puts up that ladder, gets his commodity — in which he looks at these humans — in the United States, then he takes down his ladder, and as you saw in the video, just walks back to wherever he hid the ladder and continues on with his day.”
“It’s presumable that this individual has done it more than once,” he added.
Last week, Customs and Border Patrol also apprehended around 375 migrants who dug short, shallow holes under barriers that were not concrete reinforced at several spots east of San Luis, Ariz., which is near Yuma.
“The area became a major corridor for illegal crossings in the mid-2000s, prompting the federal government to weld steel plates to a barrier made of steel bollards that had been designed to stop people in vehicles, not on foot, Border Patrol spokesman Jose Garibay III said,” reported KTLA. “In those spots, there is no concrete footing to prevent digging.”
The Democrats are pushing the narrative that securing the border should not be a priority. Alex Jones has a message for the president about using his authority to do the right thing.
A fascinating report from News Australia published Jan. 20 reveals a startling fact about some of Mexico’s most notorious drug cartels: they rip out the hearts of their murder victims and eat them.
“But some barbaric factions of the gangs are believed to have even turned cannibal and actually eaten parts of their rivals,”the report said. “And in a particularly twisted initiation ritual, young members of the Jalisco New Generation cartel were forced to eat the hearts of murder victims. Local prosecutors claimed two teenagers, aged 16 and 17, remained unrepentant after they were drugged with crack then forced to eat human flesh by senior cartel bosses.”
Even with hundreds of stories about illegal aliens brutally killing Americans, (here) raping children, (here and here) and selling drugs en masse, (here) some Americans still support open borders.
Is a culture that cannibalizes its murder victims a bridge too far? Likely not for the Democrats, who will oppose President Donald J. Trump and his border wall at all costs.
“A similar event took place in 2015 when hopefuls of La Familia Michoacana were forced to eat their rivals after torturing them and cutting them up while alive,” the report continued.
The report continued:EL BLOG DEL NARCO,LO
Los Zetas cocaine kingpin Heriberto Lazcano, who was killed in a shootout with Mexican Marines in 2012, was notorious for feeding victims to the lions and tigers he kept on his ranch.
But it was his practice of eating human flesh that thrust him into international headlines two years ago.
A reporter who spent time with him told El Blog del Narco, “After sentencing him (the victim) to death, he orders him to bathe, and even to shave his whole body and let him de-stress for two or three hours, even better sometimes he gave them a bottle of whisky to relax, then he ordered a very quick death so there is no adrenaline in the meat to prevent it getting bitter or hard.”
He would then devour the man’s buttock flesh in tamales after it had been cooked in lemon and served on toast.
The Senate on Thursday rejected both the Democratic and GOP proposals to end theongoing partial federal government shutdown, with both measures falling far short of the 60-vote threshold needed to pass.
Although each of the dueling measures was expected to fail even before Thursday, it was hoped twin defeats might spur the two sides into a more serious effort to strike a compromise. Almost every proposal needs 60 votes to advance in the Senate, which is under 53-47 Republican control.
The final vote on the GOP bill was 50-47. West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin was the lone Democrat to cross over and support the GOP package, which would have provided $5.7 billion for President Trump’s proposed border wall while also offering several immigration-related concessions and tightening asylum rules. GOP Sens. Tom Cotton and Mike Lee voted against the Republican measure.
“If this had been a vote to begin debate on a deal to end the shutdown, I would have happily voted yes,”Lee told Fox News. “But this was a vote to end debate on a bill that I believe is fundamentally flawed. In fact, after specifically asking for assurances that we would be allowed to offer amendments, no assurances were given. This bill as is simply does not do enough to reform our immigration system or address the crisis at our southern border.”
The Democrats’ plan would have reopened agency doors through Feb. 8 while bargainers seek a budget accord, but included no wall funding. The vote was 52-44 on the Democratic bill, with all Democrats voting yes and several Republicans crossing over, including Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson, and Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander. Not voting on the bill were Sens. Richard Burr, Rand Paul, James Risch, and Jacky Rosen.
Both the GOP and Democratic measures would have reopened federal agencies and pay 800,000 federal workers who are about to miss yet another paycheck amid the shutdown, now in its 34th day.
In the wake of the failed votes, a bipartisan colloquy was underway on the Senate floor between senators trying to forge a bipartisan solution to reopen the government.
Several House Democratic representatives, including Reps. John Lewis, Bobby Scott, Gregory Meeks, and Jamie Raskin, were gathered in the back of the Senate chamber during the vote, apparently to protest the Senate’s failure to consider several bills to end the shutdown that passed the Democratic-controlled House.
Border Patrol agents in Yuma, Arizona apprehend a group of over 100 Central Americans who illegally scaled the border wall.
Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a moderate, told Fox News before the votes that she would support both of the proposals, and that Congress has an obligation to work on further negotiations through the weekend.
“I personally think both of them are flawed, but having said that, I’m going to vote for both of them,” Murkowski said. “We’re going to have two show votes, and my hope is that after that, it will allow us to really get down to work.”
Murkowski continued: “So to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, if you don’t like the provisions that have been laid down, then let’s let’s work them through. Let’s get to yes here. I don’t like the asylum provision, quite honestly, that the president laid out there. So let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about this. But if we do these two votes this afternoon and then everybody skedaddles for the weekend –Wow. What kind of a message is that?”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said the Democratic plan was a “down the middle (to) reopen government and has received overwhelming support from both sides before President Trump said he wouldn’t do it.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., countered that the GOP proposal was “a compromise package the president will actually sign,” calling Schumer’s alternative a “dead-end proposal that stands no chance.”
“It’s hard to imagine 60 votes developing for either one,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. GOP moderates such as Murkowski and Susan Collins of Maine are expected to vote for the Democratic plan, as is Cory Gardner of Colorado, one of the few Republicans representing a state carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The White House was eagerly watching Thursday’s votes. Officials think it will be harder for Democrats to keep sticking together amid Trump’s offers, according to a person familiar with White House thinking who was not authorized to speak publicly. They are hopeful for defections by Democrats who may cross party lines to vote with the president.
At a panel discussion held by House Democrats on the effects of the shutdown, union leaders and former Homeland Security officials said they worried about the long-term effects. “I fear we are rolling the dice,” said Tim Manning, a former Federal Emergency Management Agency official. “We will be lucky to get everybody back on the job without a crisis to respond to.”
The partial shutdown began just before Christmas after Trump indicated that he wouldn’t sign a stopgap spending bill backed by top Republicans like McConnell, who shepherded a bill through the Senate that would have funded the government up to Feb. 8. The House passed a plan with money for the wall as one of the last gasps of the eight-year GOP majority.
On Thursday, almost five weeks later, House Democrats continued work on a package that would ignore Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion for a wall with Mexico and would instead pay for other ideas aimed at protecting the border.
How do past border proposals stack up to President Trump’s? GOP strategist Lauren Claffey explains.
Details of Democrats’ border security plan and its cost remained a work in progress. Party leaders said it would include money for scanning devices and other technological tools for improving security at ports of entry and along the border, plus money for more border agents and immigration judges.
A poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research was the latest indicator that the shutdown is hurting Trump with the general public. While his approval among Republicans remains strong, just 34 percent of Americans like his performance as president and 6 in 10 assign a great deal of responsibility to him for the shutdown, about double the share blaming Democrats, according to the poll out Wednesday.
SpeakerNancy Pelosi(D-Calif.) said Thursday that House Democrats are not working behind the scenes to craft a counteroffer toPresident Trump’s border wall demands as a strategy for ending the history-making partial shutdown.
“That’s not true. That’s not true. That’s not true,” Pelosi said during a press briefing in the Capitol.
Instead, the Speaker asserted that Democrats’ strategic blueprint remains unchanged: The House will continue to pass spending bills already authored and endorsed by Republicans, while insisting that Trump reopen the government as the prerequisite for bringing Democrats to the negotiating table on his border wall.
“We are doing what we have been doing all along: working on our congressional responsibility to write bills, appropriations bills, to keep government open,” she said.
The remarks arrive as Democratic leaders are expected to release their own plan to bolster border security, to include enhanced surveillance technologies and reinforcement of existing physical barriers — but no new wall construction.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Wednesday that the Democrats are prepared to match Trump’s figure of $5.7 billion for border security — with two stipulations: it can’t be used for new wall construction, and the negotiations must happen after the shutdown has ended.
“Using the figure that the president has put on the table, if his $5.7 billion is about border security then we see ourselves fulfilling that request, only doing what I like to call using a smart wall,” Clyburn told reporters after a Democratic caucus meeting. “These are the types of things that we are going to be putting forward.”
Pelosi on Thursday framed the Democrats’ emerging border security proposal — expected to be released as early as Thursday afternoon — as a standard part of the appropriations process.
“Many of those bills have come to the floor again and again, just this week. The Homeland Security Bill was not finished. Hopefully it will be finished soon, and out of that you will see our commitment to border security,” she said. “That’s not any negotiation behind the scenes, or anything like that.”
Pelosi declined to put a figure on the border security provisions to be included in the Department of Homeland Security bill, being spearheaded by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who heads the Homeland Security Committee. But she emphasized that it will come in addition to other border-related funding already included in House-passed bills to to fund other agencies with a hand in security, including the Treasury, Justice and State departments.
“Within our $49 billion Homeland Security bill there will be some provisions,” she said.
Pelosi’s remarks highlight the disagreement at the crux of the shutdown standoff: Democrats are insisting the government be reopened as a condition of negotiating on the border wall; Republicans are demanding negotiations on the border wall as a condition of reopening the government.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Wednesday that the Democrats “are prepared to spend a very substantial sum of money because we share the view that the borders need to be secure.”
But Hoyer, speaking for most Democrats, said there’s no “crisis” at the southern border, as Trump has insisted, and he amplified the party’s position that the Democrats will start negotiating new border security spending only after the government has been reopened, even if only temporarily.
“The letter is not a negotiation,” Hoyer said. “The letter is going to articulate what we believe is an effective investment to accomplish border security.”
Amid the standoff, Pelosi on Wednesday postponed Trump’s State of the Union address, initially scheduled for Jan. 29, citing the injustice of requiring federal law enforcement officials to secure the Capitol while they aren’t getting paid.
Trump late Wednesday acquiesced to the postponement.
“This is her prerogative,” he tweeted. “I will do the Address when the Shutdown is over.”
Pelosi on Thursday thanked Trump for assent, saying the fight over the speech was an unneeded distraction that’s “so unimportant in the lives of the American people.”
“Thank goodness we’ve put that matter to rest and that we can get on to the subject at hand: open up government, so we can negotiate how best to protect our borders,” she said.
While about two percent of Finland‘s rejected asylum seekers have been found to pose a security threat, the authorities are having trouble in locating them, as some have already left the country.
An intelligence risk assessment of 9,000 asylum seekers who have received negative asylum decisions since the autumn of 2017 has established that over 200 of them pose a potential danger, national broadcaster Yle reported.
The aim of the risk assessment carried out by the National Bureau of Investigation was to identify “individuals who have the potential to commit crimes in Finland,” who later will be prioritised for deportation. The list includes those who have been suspected of committing a crime at some point or those suspected of posing a threat to national security.
“It is determined by the whole picture, although attempted murder and assault on its own can also lead to prioritisation,”NBI crime inspector Ritva Elomaa told Yle.
The actual number of rejected asylum seekers who made the list and are still in the country may be much smaller than that the NBI assessment, though, as many are believed to have left the country.
The National Police Board admitted that the list of priority deportations will be subject to daily changes.
Western culture has been under attack on multiple fronts and now is in crisis after years of demoralization.
“We have to go through the names on the list one by one and see who has already been deported”, police inspector Mia Poutanen told Yle.
The authorities’ campaign to identify and deport dangerous asylum seekers has been further complicated by the fact that the police are seldom informed about rejected asylum seekers that choose to leave the country of their own accord.
Furthermore, some individuals with criminal records may have reapplied for asylum, while international laws say they cannot be deported as long as their application is pending.
The Finnish police are trying to prevent their “disappearance” by interning rejected asylum seekers in detention centres until they can be deported.
“People who have committed serious crimes are usually in prison, and deportation takes place once their prison sentence has been served,” Poutanen explained.
However, this system doesn’t always work as intended, as the authorities identified as many as 5,000 “missing” asylum seekers in 2017.
The risk assessment for rejected asylum seekers was commissioned by the government of Finland after the Turku stabbing on 18 August 2017, when rejected Moroccan asylum seeker Abderrahman Bouanane killed two and left eight injured in Finland’s first-ever terrorist attack. Bouanane was later given a life sentence.
In the past few weeks, a grooming gang scandal involving migrants and asylum seekers assaulting underage schoolgirls as young as 10 has left Finland deeply shaken.
Apart from drawing the condemnation of high-ranking Finnish politicians including Prime Minister Juha Sipilä and President Sauli Niinistö, it also sparked a citizens’ petition demanding the deportation of migrant sex offenders.
The initiativee, backed by over 100,000 Finns, has been supported by the right-wing Blue Reform party, whose leader Sampo Terho expressed himself in favour of “speedy deportations.”
You can read this article as it originally appears at Sputnik here.
A Swedish political leader is calling on his government to establish a limit on incoming refugees.
Various political parties, specifically the Social Democrats, are abusing migration policies for short-sighted political gain, according to Moderate party chairman Christian Sonesson.
“I believe that Sweden must introduce a total refugee [limit], and many other moderates consider it too,” said Sonesson. “The Social Democrats are now selling out our common welfare by introducing an even more generous migration policy.”
“[The Social Democrats] use migration policy to bring together [government support] in Parliament. Apparently, power is more important than the country’s well-being.”
An agreement entitling 20,000 migrants to be reunited with their families is reportedly the “generous” migration policy Sonesson is referring to.
Sonesson goes on to stress the significance of migration policies by saying they impact almost everything else a government is capable of doing.
He ultimately wants to bring all parties to the negotiation table for objective cooperation to solve the crises stemming from the nation’s migration policies.
Correspondingly, another Swedish politician slammed Sweden’s policies as the most “disturbed” in the Western world.
“It’s probably one of the most disturbed countries in the West. And it’s not just about immigration,”said Alternative for Sweden’s Gustav Kasselstrand. “It is about all the authorities we have today where most of them are taken over by left interests.”
“So it is clear that it will take time. It has taken decades to make Sweden what it is today, thus in a negative way. So it will take decades to fix the problems.”
Allows members to justify their vile, racist abuse as “tough love”
Paul Joseph Watson | Infowars.com – JANUARY 24, 2019
The New York Times is running defense for the Black Israelites, the anti-Semitic hate group that abused the Covington High School students.
In an article entitled Hebrew Israelites See Divine Intervention in Lincoln Memorial Confrontation, the paper completely ignores the fact that the group called the Covington kids “white crackers,” “faggots,”incest kids” while also labeling them future school shooters and telling an African-American student that they would harvest his organs.
Instead, the piece, written by John Eligon, presents a sympathetic picture of the group, allowing one of its members to characterize what they do as “tough love”.
In reality, in addition to the racist and homophobic slurs the group was caught on camera hurling at children, members are known to hold overtly disgusting views.
Even the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center lists the organization as a hate group, warning that members “believe that Jews are devilish impostors and … openly condemn whites as evil personified, deserving only death or slavery.”
Despite the odious nature of the group, the NY Times piece gives them a cultural cache by noting that they were “name-checked by Kendrick Lamar in a rap called “Yah”.
The article also serves as a platform for the group to justify their actions, with several members quoted at length without being challenged.
One wonders whether a white supremacist group would have been treated with such kid gloves.
National Journal editor Josh Kraushaar denounced the article in a series of tweets, arguing that “the Black Israelites get a more sympathetic hearing than the Covington High students.”
“*Some say* they’re a hate group, but they’re also name-checked by a rapper. let’s call the whole thing off,” joked Kraushaar.
Rob Sanders, the Kenton County, Kentucky prosecutor toldLaura Ingrahamthe investigations against the terroristic threats against the Covington High School children is ALREADY UNDER WAY!
Sanders said he has had investigators inside of his office all day.
Rob Sanders: When it comes to the offenses that rise to the felony level we can extradite. Now it’s not as easy as arresting a Twitter handle we can’t just reach out and arrest someone, half the time they’re using a fake name, fake profile picture, that sort of thing. We have to go through the process of issuing subpoenas, search warrants… It’s already underway. I’ve had detectives in and out of my office all day today.
Tom's Blog 