MAGA is the gift that keeps on giving to grifters

 

If you want to be a rich pedophile, you need to be American

 

Wonder of wonders

 

Trump 2.0: Free the criminals, deport the innocent

 

At least it used to b be illegal

 

How professionals conduct raids and fight crime in Chicago

 

The USPS Inspection agents have a sterling record and are considered the best of the best.  Now you see why.

Full on Nazis

 

 

Yeah, that makes them angry.

"Euthanizing" makes Kilmeade sound compassionate.

UPDATE 09/14/2025:

Did Fox owners write that for him?  Or - is he saying some homeless people don't deserve empathy and compassion.

Addressing the causes of crime in cities

 Three black mayors are getting to the root of the problem.

Johnson on the spot

 

Eventually he says it's not his call.

Wuss

 

UPDATE 08/14/2025:  Fake stats!  Just ask Trump.

Ballsy WSJ

 No shit.

Hortman assassination - I have questions

From the first 911 call, moments after Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot at their home in the early morning of June 14, police knew a masked gunman was impersonating an officer, had targeted a politician and was on the move.

Yet it would take 10 hours for law enforcement to systematically alert lawmakers to the exact nature of the danger they faced. Communication across a patchwork of agencies was also spotty, leaving some officials unaware of the threat for hours and raising questions about whether the suspect, Vance Boelter, could have been caught earlier.

In at least one instance, police didn’t follow their own procedures when they responded to attacks on the homes of lawmakers.

[...]

The initial 911 call, made at 2:05 a.m. by the Hoffmans’ daughter, Hope, included the fact that the suspect was disguised as a police officer and wearing a mask.

In a deviation from department policy, Brooklyn Park police waited more than an hour to enter the home of Melissa Hortman after watching Mark Hortman get shot in the doorway.

  Minnesota Star Tribune

What?!

At 3:35 a.m., two Brooklyn Park police officers arrived at the Hortman residence. Those officers fired at Boelter as he entered the house after shooting Mark Hortman. Additional muzzle flashes from Boelter inside the home lit up the entryway.

Despite the gunfire, officers didn’t enter the house until 4:38 a.m., according to timestamps on the bodycam footage. Instead of entering the home immediately to check on Melissa Hortman, the officers waited for a drone to be deployed to see if Boelter was inside and if Melissa Hortman was still alive.

She might have been an hour earlier!

After shooting the Hortmans and the family dog, Gilbert, Boelter allegedly escaped out the back door, which was propped open. He then dumped his mask, wig and gun, and was on the run for 43 hours before being captured.

[...]

Bruley said in an interview with the Minnesota Reformer this month that his officers were using de-escalation tactics in the pursuit of Boelter.

That's some serious de-escalation - wait an hour for him to get away.

Brooklyn Park’s use-of-force policy says officers can use deadly force to prevent death or great bodily harm. It says de-escalation can only be used when delay will not “compromise the safety” of someone else, lead to another crime or result in the suspect’s escape.

[...]

A senior law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity and has been in several active shooter situations, said this was not a situation that called for de-escalation but fit the description of an active shooter. That meant officers should have gone into the house to confront Boelter.

No shit. This is very strange. Were these cops new hires from Uvalde, Texas?

Asked if it seemed reasonable that it took an hour for anyone to physically check on whether Melissa Hortman was still alive, Masson said, “It seems like a long time. But I don’t know the circumstances of why.”

[...]

New Hope police didn’t immediately communicate an officer’s interaction with Boelter, which occurred after the Hoffmans were shot but before the Hortmans were killed.

Some police officers and legislators weren’t made fully aware of the threat for several hours.

It almost sounds like the police were in on the assassinations.  Not sure they could have been much more helpful to the killer if they had been.

State Public Safety Commissioner Bob Jacobson said that “law enforcement did an admirable job of trying to respond and make sure they were doing their very best in this case.”

Really?

“We have received several requests to do an inquiry or a review related to the communication around the rapid response,” Legislative Auditor Judy Randall said Thursday.

I should hope so.

The first interaction between law enforcement and Boelter took place near the home of Sen. Ann Rest at 2:36 a.m. when a New Hope police officer “self-dispatched” to perform a spot check on Rest’s home. The officer, a 12-year veteran, encountered Boelter sitting in his makeshift police vehicle.

The officer believed Boelter was a police officer who was checking on Rest and asked Boelter to roll down his window. He was a “bald, white male, staring straight ahead,” according to court records. Boelter didn’t respond to the New Hope officer, who left to check on Rest.

WTF?

When the officer returned, Boelter was gone.

It also isn’t clear what the New Hope officer knew at that time and why she was on her way to Rest’s home.

[...]

The New Hope Police Department has declined several requests to share more information about the interaction. They provided the Star Tribune with a police report on the incident that doesn’t make any mention of the encounter with Boelter.

Is it a cover up, or are the New Hope police just terribly incompetent. Perhaps we should rename the town: No Hope.

Inside law enforcement circles, Boelter’s interaction with the New Hope officer after the shooting of the Hoffmans was instantly critiqued.

A video shared with the Star Tribune that was allegedly passed among officers within days of the shootings includes a clip from the film “The Town” that shows a group of bank robbers dressed as nuns and wearing silicone masks when they pull up beside a Boston police officer. The men are holding guns and the officer stares at them for several seconds before letting them leave.

In the modified clip, the logo for the New Hope Police Department is superimposed on the cop car.

[...]

After he escaped, the dire nature of Boelter’s plans was not immediately conveyed to politicians. Several were told to contact local law enforcement for protection only to learn their local law enforcement had no idea about the attack.

[...]

The first widespread dissemination of the information to law enforcement was sent out at 4:25 a.m. via teletype to agencies in the seven-county metro area. Jacobson said it’s the only system that exists to get the information to every dispatch center.

Teletype? In 2025?

Jacobson shared a message for legislative leaders to send to their members, warning of a “dangerous individual” who’s made threats against state legislators and other prominent figures. He urged lawmakers to contact their local law enforcement. He did not mention the suspected gunman impersonated a police officer and carried a list of targets.

And threats. Not attacks. What on earth?

[Gov Tim] Walz and public safety leaders held the first news conference about the lawmaker shootings around 9:45 a.m., discussing what happened and sharing that the alleged assailant impersonated a cop and carried a list of targets.

The Department of Public Safety worked with federal authorities to share the initial list with relevant local law enforcement. But the DPS didn’t share the list with the House and Senate caucuses until 11:59 a.m., after Boelter had been on the run for several hours.

Maye Quade, the state senator from Apple Valley, said her local police department didn’t learn she was on the target list until about 9 a.m. Apple Valley police reached out to her quickly, but by that time, Maye Quade said she and her wife had already fled their home.

“It’s hard for me knowing that I was on a terrorist’s hit list, and he was successful in shooting one of my colleagues and his wife and murdering another colleague and her husband, and that information wasn’t shared with my local police department for hours,” she said.

[...]

“When you hide information like the shooter is impersonating a police officer, and then no one tells you that,” said Sen. Heather Gustafson, DFL-Vadnais Heights. “I would have answered my door to Vance Boelter, and five out of my six family members were here.”

“I don’t know how to feel about that,” Gustafson added. “Who was supposed to tell me not to answer my door, and why didn’t they?”

[...]

“There’s nothing else my police department could have done because they didn’t know,” Maye Quade added.

Jacobson said his department is close to finalizing an agreement for an independent after-action review to show “what went well in a horrible situation and here’s what we can improve on.”

I'm very curious. What went well?

He added that he’s already hearing from law enforcement agencies across the state that are starting to build their own databases of local elected officials.

There are police departments that don't have that? I bet they have a database of all the Mexicans in their town.

Where did Epstein get his money?

A few days ago, as the Jeffrey Epstein scandal gripped Washington, Senator Ron Wyden offered a striking revelation in an interview with The New York Times. The Oregon Democrat said that his investigators had discovered that four big banks had flagged to the Treasury Department $1.5 billion in potentially suspicious money transfers involving Epstein, much of which appeared to be related to his massive sex-trafficking network.

[...]

Wyden’s office just sent a new letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi—which The New Republic obtained—suggesting seven potent lines of inquiry that the Justice Department could follow, right now, to dig more deeply into Epstein’s web of financial relations with global elites.

  New Republic

That went straight to the shredder.

“I am convinced that the DOJ ignored evidence found in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Epstein file, a binder that contains extensive details on the mountains of cash Epstein received from prominent businessmen that Epstein used to finance his criminal network,” Wyden writes in the letter.

The Treasury Department has this information because that’s where banks file suspicious activity reports, or SARS. Wyden’s letter says his staff has documented that Epstein-related filings by banks contain “information on more than 4,725 wire transfers involving Epstein’s accounts, all of which merit further investigation.”

[...]

Wyden’s move here is in some ways a trolling exercise, since DOJ won’t act on it. But such trolling by lawmakers can be constructive if it communicates new information to the public or highlights the failure of others in power to exercise oversight and impose accountability. Wyden’s letter does both.

[...]

Wyden’s investigators know of these records because his office has been examining Epstein’s financial transactions for several years. In February 2024—when Democrats controlled the Senate—Wyden’s staff viewed in camera (that is, privately) thousands of pages of Treasury files documenting those transactions.

Epstein clearly had access to enormous financing to operate his sex trafficking network, and the details on how he got the cash to pay for it are sitting in a Treasury Department filing cabinet.

[...]

Wyden’s letter also lays out other lines of inquiry for DOJ, urging examination of a number of specific payments to Epstein by several wealthy financiers that his investigators discovered.

[...]

In an intriguing move, Wyden also presses DOJ to examine “hundreds of millions of dollars in wire transfers” discovered by his investigators that passed through “several now-sanctioned Russian banks.” The latter adds suggestively: “It appears that these wire transfers were correlated to the movement of women or girls around the world.”

[...]

Right now the White House insists that [Trump] personally favors transparency on the Epstein files but is letting Bondi, DOJ, and the FBI decide how to proceed.

Yah, sure.

The in-camera review by Wyden staffers of Treasury documents in February 2024 itself shows that Wyden sought this info from the Biden administration—and that he got access to it.

What’s more, a Wyden aide tells me that in 2024, soon after Wyden’s staff viewed these Treasury documents in camera, Wyden actively moved to get the Senate to subpoena their release. Because Finance Committee rules require bipartisan support for subpoenas, Wyden sought the backing of several GOP senators on the committee, including now-chairman Mike Crapo and Marsha Blackburn. But none would support a subpoena, the aide says.

Imagine that.

Here's a little background from January 2024...

The first batch of court documents naming numerous figures tied to Jeffrey Epstein was released Wednesday, as part of New York Southern District Judge Loretta Preska's December order unsealing filings in a prior defamation case against Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. But word about the banking community's ties with Epstein has been trickling out for more than two years.

Executives at JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and Barclays have faced considerable blowback from federal regulators after the organizations continued to keep Epstein on as a client for years after he was was convicted in 2008 of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute.

[...]

Barclays Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley is stepping down amid a U.K. regulatory probe into how he characterized his past ties to [...] Epstein.

Staley, 64, is leaving immediately.

[...]

Before the announcement, regulators told Barclays the preliminary findings of a two-year investigation into how Staley explained his long-running relationship with Epstein to the bank. "In view of those conclusions, and Mr. Staley's intention to contest them, the board and Mr. Staley have agreed that he will step down from his role as group chief executive and as a director of Barclays," the lender said in a statement. "The board is disappointed at this outcome." The findings have not yet been made public.

[...]

Jeffrey Epstein was accused and convicted of sex trafficking over a period of years. After he was convicted, and despite the bank's knowledge of his chronic and criminal behavior, Epstein became a client at Deutsche Bank. And then, after he became a client, Epstein tripped multiple red flags during his five-year relationship with the bank.

  American Banker

Deutsche Bank was backing Epstein's friend, Donald Trump, too. Those dealings were frought with suspected money laundering deals.

Epstein is referred to in the [July 2020 New York State Department of Financial Services order] as "a wealthy financier with hundreds of millions of dollars in assets and an extensive network of friends and connections that included prominent financial institutions, politicians, royalty, and billionaires."

[...]

The U.S. Virgin Islands is suing JPMorgan Chase for "turning a blind eye" to former client Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking on his private island there.

U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Denise George said her suit filed in late December 2022 in Manhattan federal court was part of an "ongoing effort" to hold accountable those who facilitated Epstein's activities. Epstein brought many of his victims to his villa on Little St. James, the private island he owned.

"Human trafficking was the principal business of the accounts Epstein maintained at JPMorgan," the complaint states.

[...]

According to the suit, JPMorgan concealed "wire and cash transactions that raised suspicion of a criminal enterprise whose currency was the sexual servitude" of women and girls in the Virgin Islands.

Woke works

 

Ooops

 

January 6 rioters - where are they now?

 The latest...

It's the logical outcome

 

Some criminals are good in Trump's America

 

Fake ICE becoming more prevalent

 

ICE raids are going to make it impossible for authorities to handle crime

 

[W]hen people who live near Bloomington Avenue and East Lake Street noticed federal agents gathering near Las Cuatro Milpas restaurant.

They quickly called for people to show up, and they did.

[...]

The crowd grew within minutes, as did their calls for members of the Minneapolis Police Department and the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office on scene to leave.

The crowd moved whatever they could in the path of officers and deputies as they escorted federal agents down Lake Street. Some threw garbage cans, and some even threw tires. WCCO's crew at the scene saw pop bottles and bricks hurled at law enforcement and some responded with force.

[...]

"This incident was related to a criminal search warrant for drugs and money laundering," [Mayor Jacob] Frey said.

Frey said the police department's only role was helping with crowd control and keeping the community safe. No arrests were made.

[...]

The sheriff's office says its partnership with federal officials includes "execution of multiple search warrants at multiple locations in the metro area."

"This incident was not related to any immigration enforcement. HCSO has no involvement in civil immigration. HCSO enforces criminal statutes and works on criminal investigations. We work with federal partners regularly on those criminal investigations," the sheriff's office said in a statement.

Police said on social media they didn't have "advance notice" of the federal operation, and "any claims to the contrary are false."

[...]

"The amount of presence they showed today on Lake Street, it was a show of power," Luis Arguenta, with Unidos Minnesota, an immigrant advocacy group.

Arguenta said that he wished "more information had flowed a little freely this morning, even from some of the agents that were on the ground."

  CBS

UPDATE 10:02 am:  And people will stop making the required check-ins.  But maybe that's the point.  Then they can go hunt them down and deport them for not complying with the rules.  It won't be as easy as picking them up where you know they'll be, but it will be more palatable for the general public.

Senior US immigration officials over the weekend instructed rank-and-file officers to “turn the creative knob up to 11” when it comes to enforcement, including by interviewing and potentially arresting people they called “collaterals”, according to internal agency emails viewed by the Guardian.

Officers were also urged to increase apprehensions and think up tactics to “push the envelope” one email said, with staff encouraged to come up with new ways of increasing arrests and suggesting them to superiors.

“If it involves handcuffs on wrists, it’s probably worth pursuing,” another message said.

[...]

The emails, sent by two top Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials this past Saturday, instructed officers around the country to increase arrest numbers over the weekend.

[...]

One of the emails, written by Marcos Charles, the acting executive associate director of Ice’s enforcement and removal operations, instructs Ice officials to go after people they may coincidentally encounter.

“All collaterals encounters [sic] need to be interviewed and anyone that is found to be amenable to removal needs to be arrested,” Charles wrote, also saying: “We need to turn up the creative knob up to 11 and push the envelope.”

[...]

In 2022, a court settlement put in place some rules for Ice, requiring the agency to have warrants to justify an arrest. If officers did not have a warrant during a collateral arrest, Ice had to show probable cause to justify the arrest and detention. Notably, an officer had to document that a person was likely to escape before getting the additional warrant.

The settlement terms ended in mid-May. But Fleming and the NIJC are challenging the Trump administration, claiming that the settlement should continue to protect people from warrantless arrests. They also accuse Ice of violating the settlement terms earlier this year when Ice officials unlawfully arrested a number of people without obtaining warrants, Fleming and the NIJC said, and then generating the warrant after the arrests.

  Guardian