ICE Plans to Issue Gloves That Can Deliver Electric Shocks

From Newsmax.com (Aug. 12):

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers may soon be outfitted with gloves that can deliver electric shocks intended to gain compliance from combative individuals.

ICE plans to spend up to $20 million to purchase thousands of "conductive distraction and de-escalation devices" for officers and agents by March, according to a notice published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security.

The devices are known as the G.L.O.V.E., which stands for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, and are manufactured by Compliant Technologies LLC of Lexington, Kentucky. They have been used in recent years by some jails and police departments.

DHS said Tuesday that it was working on a response to an Associated Press inquiry and offered no immediate comment. Jeff Niklaus, the founder and CEO of Compliant Technologies, wrote in an email, "Unfortunately, we are unable to speak on this subject."

The notice said the solicitation for a no-bid contract could be published as early as Friday.

Civil rights advocates expressed alarm at the plan, saying ICE officers already face criticism for their use of force with little oversight or accountability while enforcing President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.

Compliant Technologies says the devices function as a normal pair of patrol gloves until officers press a switch to activate their electrical mode. The gloves must be applied directly to someone's skin to deliver a pain stimulus that typically helps an officer gain compliance within seconds, according to the company.

"It's immediate and sharp, and it will distract you. I call it like a bee sting," said John Peters, president of the Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths, who is studying how the device has been used. "If the officer is getting any type of resistance from the person, this is certainly an effective tool."

Peters said he believed ICE's planned purchase would likely be the largest from the company to date. He said he could envision ICE officers using the gloves to help remove uncooperative subjects from cars and houses and in and out of detention facilities.

"For smaller officers or weaker officers or older officers, I think it has a great advantage" because it can produce faster takedowns and shorten confrontations, he said.

The manufacturer warns the device should not be used as punishment, against people merely exhibiting "verbal defiance or belligerence," or on high-risk populations such as children, pregnant women or elderly or disabled people.

Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, deputy project director on policing at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the public should have no confidence that ICE officers will use the devices appropriately. She questioned why the devices would be necessary for civil immigration enforcement and noted those getting shocked might have no advance warning.

"ICE spent the last year showing this country they are too quick to use force. Now they will be able to deploy electric shocks with the slight push of a button that maybe nobody else can see them do," she said. "Introducing gloves that can so easily be used to deliver terrible pain in encounters is a recipe for harm to the public."

Supporters say the devices are generally used in specific jail and transport situations, rather than broadly to patrol on the streets. They have been used to subdue violent suspects who are refusing to get into squad cars and inmates who are harming themselves and threatening officers, according to Compliant Technologies.

Peters said he expected the devices to be misused by a small number of employees, as with other policing technologies, but he said they are unlikely to cause injuries. He said it would be important for ICE to have robust policies and training in place.

To use the device, officers must complete a course and be recertified every two years, the manufacturer says. [source]

I guess cattle prods were out of the question? Maybe, they would have been too awkward to use. It seems, from the article, that ICE officers can't adjust the shock amount. Probably, a good idea.  The anti-ICE nuts' are going to love this tech! Their heads are going to explode when they hear this news.

Trump’s Immigration Enforcement Really Is Slashing Violent Crime

From The Federalist.com (July 9):

Is crime falling? Some conservatives, notably Steve Bannon, argue that Americans should ignore the FBI’s crime statistics showing record drops in violent crime. The murder rate last year fell to the lowest rate ever recorded, and the violent crime rate is clearly at the lowest in many decades. But Bannon recently declared that “nobody believes” FBI crime data or its director, Kash Patel, adding: “I don’t want to hear any more statistics about how crime’s coming down.”

That skepticism overlooks an important distinction.

The FBI has made mistakes in the past, particularly in its active shooter reports and hate crime data. Some police departments have also failed to report complete crime data to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports. But those problems do not explain the concerns with the measure of overall crime.

The real issue is understanding what different crime measures actually tell us. Past problems with the FBI’s measure of crimes reported to police do not mean anyone manipulated the data. Nor do they mean that last year’s reported decline in crime — or the declines so far this year — are inaccurate.

The United States has two primary measures of violent crime. The FBI tracks crimes reported to police. The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) estimates both reported and unreported crime. Researchers have known for decades that most crimes never reach the police. Victims report only about 40 percent of violent crimes and roughly 30 percent of property crimes.

The media focuses almost exclusively on FBI crime data. Before 2020, FBI data and the NCVS generally moved in the same direction. During the Biden administration, however, they sharply diverged. While reported violent crime fell by about 8 percent, total felony violent crime measured by the NCVS surged 59 percent — the largest four-year percentage increase since the survey began more than five decades ago.

Several factors explain that gap. Whether victims report crimes depends heavily on whether they believe police will catch and punish offenders. As cities reduced police staffing through budget cuts, retirements, and, in some places, “defund the police” policies, arrest rates declined. Lower arrest rates gave victims less reason to report crimes.

Some police departments also made reporting more difficult. In some jurisdictions, 911 operators asked whether the offender was still at the scene. If the answer was no — as it almost always was — they instructed victims to visit a police station later to file a report. Simply calling 911 does not place a crime in the FBI’s statistics; an officer must complete an official report. When governments make reporting more burdensome, some victims understandably decide it isn’t worth the effort.

Fortunately, many of those policies have been reversed.

Although reported crime has declined, we will not know whether total crime also fell in 2025 until the Bureau of Justice Statistics releases the next NCVS this September.

Even so, there is good reason for optimism.

Reducing crime is not complicated. Governments must make crime riskier by increasing arrests and convictions, imposing longer prison sentences, and allowing law-abiding citizens to defend themselves. The news on each of those fronts has been encouraging.

FBI arrests surged in 2025, rising 184 percent over 2024 levels. Total FBI arrests — a broader category that includes many joint operations with state and local agencies — increased by 197 percent.

Voters also replaced several George Soros-backed prosecutors in jurisdictions such as Los Angeles and San Francisco with district attorneys who prosecute criminals more aggressively and seek tougher sentences. Across the country, President Trump’s U.S. attorneys have also pursued criminals far more aggressively than their predecessors. In Washington, D.C., for example, the Biden administration’s U.S. Attorney declined to prosecute 67 percent of those arrested. Under U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, that figure has fallen to just 4 percent.

Nor is it a coincidence that the record influx of illegal immigrants during the Biden administration coincided with a sharp increase in violent crime. It is equally unsurprising that crime has fallen as deportations have increased. Deportation records show that 70 percent of illegal immigrants deported during the Trump administration had either criminal convictions or pending criminal charges in the United States. Even those who avoid arrest understand that any contact with law enforcement could lead to deportation, giving them a strong incentive to stay off the police’s radar and avoid committing additional crimes.

Finally, the number of adults carrying concealed handguns has risen sharply, with the latest survey data showing a 5-percentage-point increase in concealed carry over the past year and a half.

Americans shouldn’t blindly accept crime statistics, but they need to understand what the different numbers actually measure. The FBI’s numbers show that reported crime has fallen dramatically, while the NCVS will tell us this September whether total violent crime has also declined. Stronger law enforcement, more aggressive prosecution, and greater accountability provide good reasons to expect that the encouraging trend in reported crime reflects a real improvement in public safety. [source]

Good to know!  Glad that illegal migrant crime is going down. It’s bad enough when America’s own citizens are committing crime—we don’t need to add to the crime stats.

Trump ATF Scraps Dozens of Gun Rules in Sweeping Rollback

From Newsmax.com (July 5):

The Trump administration is dismantling more than three dozen federal firearms regulations, ending a zero-tolerance policy against wayward gun dealers, easing scrutiny of stabilizing braces, and clearing a path for some Americans with a history of mental illness to buy firearms, part of what officials call the broadest rewrite of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives rules in the agency's history.

The rollback, executed under President Donald Trump's Executive Order 14206 on Second Amendment rights, was formally launched April 29, when acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and newly confirmed ATF Director Robert Cekada unveiled 34 notices of final and proposed rulemaking.

Officials called it the most comprehensive regulatory reform package in ATF history. Cekada was confirmed by the Senate hours earlier and signed off on the changes within an hour of taking office.

The package raises the legal bar for stripping a federal firearms dealer of a license, requiring evidence that the dealer knew it was breaking the law.

It formally rescinds the Biden-era pistol brace rule, which has already been blocked in much of the country by federal courts.

It narrows the Biden administration's "engaged in the business" rule, which was designed to force more sellers at gun shows and online marketplaces to run background checks, a measure gun-control advocates called a partial closure of the so-called gun show loophole.

Other proposalswould allow some Americans previously flagged for mental health reasons or an inability to manage their finances to purchase firearms.

On Friday, the ATF unveiled further changes, including a proposal to trim fingerprinting requirements for National Firearms Act applications.

Under the plan, individual applicants would submit a single fingerprint card instead of two and could verify identity with a photo ID rather than a passport-style photo. The rule is scheduled for publication in the Federal Register on July 6, opening a comment period through Oct. 5.

The administration is simultaneously challenging state gun laws in court.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department sued California over Assembly Bill 1127, which bars sales of Glock-style pistols with a cruciform trigger bar that officials say can be readily converted to fully automatic fire, and over the state's Handgun Roster, which restricts which models may be sold.

It also sued Virginia and the Virginia State Police over Senate Bill 749, which criminalizes the sale or transfer of AR-15-style rifles and magazines holding more than 15 rounds. The department earlier filed similar challenges to semiautomatic rifle bans in the District of Columbia in December and Colorado in May.

Blanche said the rules had been written "without any real understanding of how firearms businesses operate, how lawful gun owners actually handle their firearms, or what truly improves public safety."

Gun control advocates rejected that framing. Kris Brown, president of Brady, told The New York Times the moves take the country "back 100 years" and are "decimating A.T.F.'s ability to regulate this industry." [source]

Another win especially for gun rights advocates! 

Florida woman forced to forfeit lotto prize after USPS loses ticket

From Fox News.com (Sept. 30, 2020):

A Florida woman says she was forced to forfeit her lotto prize after the US Postal Service lost her winning ticket in the mail.

Sue Burgess, of Hernando County, said she was thrilled to discover earlier this summer that she snagged $1,000 in the state’s Second Chance Lottery game, news station WFLA.

“I was elated. It was like winning a million dollars to me,” Burgess told the outlet.

But at the time, she couldn’t claim her winnings at any of the local lottery offices since they were closed due to the pandemic.

She followed the state lottery’s instructions and went to the post office to send in her ticket via certified mail, the outlet reported.

Burgess said the ticket, however, never made it to the lottery office in the one-week time frame required to claim the prize.

Her tracking information last showed the ticket in transit on Aug. 12 at a Tallahassee post office, WFLA reported.

“They said, ‘We have not received this ticket.’ They said, ‘No ticket, no prize,’” said Burgess, whose prize money went to an alternate winner.

Burgess said she’s frustrated because she could’ve left her ticket in a dropbox at a local lottery office, but she believed that certified mail was the safer and more efficient option.

“That’s why you choose certified mail,” Burgess said. “With COVID, I understand the mail is a little bit slow. But for safety sake, certified mail usually has priority.”

Six weeks later, the winning ticket is still unaccounted for.

The USPS apologized to Burgess and said it’s working with the state lottery to help her cash out her prize.

“We apologize to this specific customer for any inconvenience they may have experienced,” the postal service said.

“In this specific instance, we are continuing to work with the lottery office to confirm receipt of the mailpiece.”

The Florida Lottery said it’s not responsible for mistakes made by the postal service, though it will make an exception for Burgess and pay out her prize if the package shows up postmarked by the original deadline, WFLA reported.

“Ms. Burgess’ situation is an unusual circumstance and, to our knowledge, no other winner has experienced a similar issue,” the lottery said.

“Because the Lottery did not receive Ms. Burgess’ ticket within the seven-day claim period, an alternate winner was selected and paid. However, if Ms. Burgess’ package arrives at Florida Lottery Headquarters with a date stamp prior to the original expiration date, our Claims Processing department will process and pay her claim.” [source]

That’s too bad. I hope the Lottery finally receives her ticket.

The Remaking of America

From AM Greatness.com (Aug. 7, 2023):

We are in the midst of one of the most radical revolutions in American history. It is as far-reaching and dangerous as the turbulent years of the 1850s and 1860s or the 1930s. Every aspect of American life and culture is under assault, including the very processes by which we govern ourselves, and the manner in which we live.

The Revolution began under the Obama administration that sought to divide Americans into oppressed and oppressors, and then substitute race for class victimization. It was empowered by the bicoastal wealth accrued from globalization, and honed during the COVID lockdown, quarantine-fed economic downturn, and the George Floyd riots and their aftermath. The Revolution was boosted by fanatic opposition to the presidency of Donald Trump. And the result is an America that is unrecognizable from what it was a mere decade ago.

Here are 10 upheavals that the Left has successfully wrought.

Free expression. In large swatches of American society—particularly the corporation, the media, the government, the public schools, and the university—it is suddenly dangerous to speak freely. At a DEI workshop, politely object that “whiteness” does not account for all the challenges of “marginalized peoples,” and you will become either ostracized, reprimanded, or perhaps fired.

Suggest to a class that man-made climate change and the state remedies for it, are still under debate—and your career and livelihood are endangered. In 2020, state that Covid lockdowns would do more eventual damage than the virus—and your career was through. Express doubt that there are more than two biological sexes, and if an athlete or high school principal you will be shunned or rendered professionally inert.

The government, in league with social media, censors the news. “Liberal” universities often first require McCarthy-era type “diversity” statements for one to be hired. Commissars review syllabi to spot incorrect or improper speech or insufficient DEI zeal.

The Left now seeks to modify the First Amendment, and its empowerment of “hate speech,” defined as most anything impeding the progressive project. The state and the universities properly issue word lists of approved vocabularies.

The old ACLU or Sen. Church Committee would now probably be deemed rightwing. The methodologies of Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover are the preferred models, once they were rebooted to the right cause.

The Weaponization of Justice. Administrations and their efforts to stock the justice department with supporters come and go. But in the last decade the Left has viewed the Department of Justice as a political extension of the party—whose unchecked power must properly be directed to hurt enemies and help friends. No wonder Eric Holder described himself as Obama’s “wingman” and became the first Attorney General to be held in contempt for ignoring a congressional subpoena.

Never in U.S. history have the Department of Justice and sympathetic state and local prosecutors indicted a leading opposition candidate and likely nominee of one of the two major parties, and at the beginning of a presidential campaign. Donald Trump is currently charged with nearly 100 felonies by at least two prosecutors. He likely eventually will be hit with more than- 500 indictments, from four prosecutors, every one of the latter with a long record of either leftwing associations or Democratic service.

The mass murderer Charles Manson faced less legal exposure. No one believes Trump would have been indicted on such counts—most of them involving allegations from years past—were he not running for President.

One count that Donald Trump is not charged with is bribery, or taking money while in office, a crime cited as impeachable in the Constitution and germane to the accusations that Joe Biden and his family raked in millions from foreign governments due to the improper use of his prior Vice Presidency. For what reason did Joe Biden lie that he never discussed his son’s business? Why did Hunter complain to his daughter that Joe demanded half of his own grifting income? Why would a Vice President serially call disreputable American grifters and foreign corrupt oligarchs? Can Joe’s lifestyle ever be reconciled with his reported income?

Given such asymmetry in the application of the laws, conservative or even apolitical Americans are apprehensive that any political prominence will draw the attention of government in effort to either indict or bankrupt them with legal expenses.

The last four FBI Directors have either admitted they lied under oath, or preposterously under oath claimed ignorance or amnesia about events directly under their control. Or they simply stonewalled subpoenas and testimonies about alleged FBI crimes.

The former CIA Director admitted to lying twice under oath. The FBI hired social media corporations to suppress election-cycle news deemed unhelpful to the Left. The agency, along with Democratic operatives, helped hatch the election-cycle conspiracy of the 2015-2016 Russian-Collusion hoax, and the 2020 Russian disinformation laptop hoax. The FBI played a central role in many of the 2024 indictments. In other words, the FBI along with the DOJ, has sought to warp three presidential elections in a row.

On the prompt of a Joe Biden campaign official (and now Secretary of State) and a former interim CIA director, 50 former intelligence officials lied to the electorate that an authentic but incriminating Biden computer was a likely Russian plant—a fact known to be lie but not disclosed as such by the FBI. [read more]

This is the blueprint how the Left is radically transforming America. Another great article by VDH.

FBI arrests 5 people in connection with drone attack plot against White House UFC Freedom 250 event

From NY Post.com (June 16):

WASHINGTON — The FBI thwarted an explosive drone attack targeting Sunday’s UFC Freedom 250 event on the White House South Lawn and have already taken five suspects into custody, officials told The Post Tuesday.

The multi-phase terror attack allegedly involved using explosive-laden drone aircraft to strike buildings in the vicinity of the event, sparking mass panic and driving the fleeing crowd toward a sniper team poised to pick victims off, the officials said.

A “second wave” of attackers then allegedly planned to storm the White House gate, the officials added.

Fox News Digital first reported on the attack plan.

The plot was “stopped cold” on June 10 after investigators executed a search warrant in Cincinnati, where the first arrest was made, FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement.

Some of the suspects traveled to Fredericksburg, Va. on June 12 or 13 to make preparations for the attack.

Upon investigating a suspect’s iPhone, authorities found at least 23 users of encrypted chat app Signal involved in discussing parameters of what could have been a devastating terror attack in the heart of the nation’s capital.

A suspect told investigators the goal of the attack was to target “capitalist elites,” “billionaires” and politicians who received money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), officials also said.

“While the result represented the best of investigative work, it was also nothing out of the ordinary for this law enforcement team — we are built to detect, respond to, and bring to justice those who threaten the lives of American citizens — particularly during large gatherings like the historic UFC 250 fight,” Patel later wrote on X praising the coordinated law enforcement effort.

The high-profile combat sports extravaganza coincided with President Trump’s 80th birthday, and was attended by around 4,300 people, including 1,200 active-duty service members.

An estimated 80,000 to 85,000 more fans attended a ticketed watch party on the Ellipse just south of the executive mansion, while thousands more without tickets gathered on the National Mall to try to catch a view of the seven-fight card on giant screens. [source]

Kudos to the FBI stopping the attack. Good for the mother alerting the authorities. Sounds like these potential terrorists are anti-Semitic.

More articles on potential attack:

• DHS: Illegal Alien Led Foiled White House UFC Terror Plot
• Whistleblower lawyer was targeted in UFC terror plot, FBI still trying to figure out why

Trump ATF Targets Biden Gun Rules in Major Rollback

From Newsmax.com (June 5):

The Trump administration is advancing a broad rollback of federal firearms regulations, including proposals that would allow Americans to ship handguns through the mail, rescind Biden-era background check requirements, and make it harder for federal regulators to revoke gun dealers' licenses.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) said the changes are meant to modernize firearms rules and reduce burdens on law-abiding gun owners without undermining law enforcement.

In late April, the agency announced nearly three dozen final and proposed rules following President Donald Trump's directive to reexamine federal regulations affecting gun owners and the firearms industry.

One key proposal would repeal a 2024 Biden administration rule that expanded the definition of who qualifies as a gun dealer under the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The rule was aimed at closing the so-called "gun show loophole," but the Trump administration is seeking to scrap it.

Gun control advocates criticized the White House's move.

"This is, to us, absolutely the gun industry's wish list," Kris Brown, the president of Brady: United Against Gun Violence, told Axios.

Brown noted that industry leaders were present when the proposals were announced.

Supporters of the rollback argue Biden-era rules imposed unnecessary restrictions on lawful gun owners and firearms businesses.

A recent investigation by The Trace found prosecutions of people accused of dealing firearms without a license did not significantly increase after the Biden rule took effect.

Other proposals would ease rules for transporting firearms, remove a requirement that licensed dealers provide youth handgun safety notices, and revise standards governing when dealers can lose their federal licenses.

Separately, the U.S. Postal Service is considering allowing individuals to mail handguns under the same rules that apply to lawful shipments of rifles and shotguns.

That proposal follows a Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion concluding the long-standing federal ban on mailing handguns is unconstitutional.

The National Rifle Association's lobbying arm argued the current ban creates "massive and needless headaches for law-abiding gun owners."

Critics say the change could increase risks involving theft, trafficking, and unlawful firearm transfers.

In one proposed rule narrowing who is considered mentally unfit to possess firearms, the ATF noted that the "risk may be minimal, or may be considerably greater (up to and including potential mass casualty events)."

Brown told Axios that the agency knows "it raises the risk of mass shootings."

"They know that violent crime is likely to go up," she added. "They know it's going to hinder law enforcement, and they do it anyway."

Meanwhile, gun rights advocates and industry groups welcomed the proposals.

In a press release, National Sports Shooting Foundation Senior Vice President Lawrence G. Keane called the rollback "the dawning of a new era."

ATF rejected claims that the changes were designed to satisfy the gun lobby.

"The repeal of the regulation has no effect on the scope of the law and signals that ATF will abide by the laws enacted by Congress," an agency spokesperson told Axios in a statement.

Daniel Webster, a professor at Johns Hopkins University's Center for Gun Violence Solutions, disagreed.

"This is a green light to the segment of the gun industry that profits from crime and gun violence," he said.

Brown's prediction was equally grim.

"We think it is going to be the worst delivery of regression in the history of the country in terms of gun violence prevention," she said. [source]

Good!  Call it another win, especially for gun rights. Although, the Left doesn’t think so because they are obsessed with guns and don’t understand what really causes crime.

Trump Admin Ends Biden’s Organ-Transplant-By-Race Policy

From The Federalist.com (June 3):

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) ended a Biden administration policy that required racial considerations be made to determine who was eligible to get a kidney transplant.

CMS published a final rule Monday governing the Increasing Organ Transplant Access (IOTA) Model, a mandatory, six-year program that ostensibly sought to “increase access to kidney transplants for patients with end-stage renal disease.” However, the Biden rule, which took effect July 1, 2025, also required participating hospitals to consider race, ethnicity, and “equity” in the decision-making process for allocating organs to patients.

“CMS also wants to reiterate that allocation and transplantation decisions should be made based on objective and measurable medical criteria through the framework set up by the [Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network] OPTN … and should not be made on the basis of race or other criteria not laid out by the goals described in this section of the [Code of Federal Regulations],” the Trump CMS final rule, set to take effect July 1, 2026, states.

The rule came in response to public comment made by America First Legal (AFL) and others arguing that “transplant allocation decisions should remain grounded in objective medical criteria,” the rule states.

As AFL pointed out, the Biden rule encouraged transplant hospitals to “identify disparities among racial and demographic groups, develop Health Equity Plans, conduct resource gap analyses, establish equity-focused goals, and implement targeted interventions designed to preference selected populations.”

The Biden CMS said that “Health Equity Plans,” which were meant to determine areas where hospitals were not meeting its equity goals and then recommend remedial action, were “voluntary,” but AFL stated that they were actually embedded into the IOTA Model.

“The Biden Administration designed the IOTA Model to advance its broader equity agenda within the nation’s organ transplant system,” AFL attorney Megan Redshaw said in a press release. “Life-saving transplant decisions should be guided by medical criteria and clinical urgency — not race. We applaud CMS for removing this framework and restoring a transplant system grounded in medical need and clinical urgency.”

The Biden IOTA Model also sought to fast-track transplants and increase their raw number by paying hospitals to do more, while penalizing hospitals that are not performing to their specifications.

“Tying institutional revenue to transplant counts encourages aggressive procurement and transplant practices in a system already marred by ethical failures, oversight breakdowns, and documented patient-safety concerns,” AFL stated.

The Biden rule was an outgrowth of an executive order — “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government” — that claimed the “unbearable human costs of systemic racism” and forced government programs to have non-white racial preferences for program allocation across numerous initiatives, including in business, federal contracting, housing, health care, and much more.

The Biden administration even went as far as to suggest the necessity of “racial concordance” between health care workers and patients. “Racial concordance” is the theory that health outcomes are worse when the race of the doctor is different than the race of the patient, and that therefore patients should be race-matched with a doctor. It is also an artificial way of shoehorning tacit racial quotas into the medical profession, which was the goal of the Biden administration and many medical schools. [source]

Good!  Glad that Marxist policy was ended. Should have never started to begin with.

IRS Chief: I Didn't Retaliate Against Hunter Biden Probe Whistleblowers—It Was the DOJ

From Bob Hoge on Red State.com (May 23, 2023):

In response to the whistleblowers who alleged that the IRS gave preferential treatment to first son Hunter Biden being abruptly taken off the case last week in what appeared to be an obvious retaliatory move, Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Daniel Werfel said that it wasn’t his call.

Instead, it was the Department of Justice.

No surprise there, considering we’re living under probably the most politicized DOJ in our history, one that routinely applies two different standards depending on which side of the political aisle someone stands on.

In a letter to the House Ways and Means Committee dated May 17 and obtained by Fox News, the commissioner explains what went down:

“I want to state unequivocally that I have not intervened—and will not intervene—in any way that would impact the status of any whistleblower,” Werfel said.

“The IRS whistleblower you reference alleges that the change in their work assignment came at the direction of the Department of Justice. As a general matter and not in reference to any specific case, I believe it is important to emphasize that in any matter involving federal judicial proceedings, the IRS follows the direction of the Justice Department.” [Bolding mine.]

I love that phrase, “change in work assignment.” We know that means the whistleblower was punished and given some junk job like mopping the closets. Werfel proceeded to use the tactic that it seems all agency heads who appear before Congress use. Namely, cite the desperate need for secrecy:

“When I first learned of the allegations of retaliation referenced in your letter and in media reports on May 16, 2023, I contacted the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). In light of laws and policies designed to protect the integrity of pending proceedings, I am unable to provide details on this matter,” Werfel wrote.

As Red State‘s Bonchie reported last week, a whistleblower claimed that the entire IRS team working on the Hunter Biden probe was removed from the case. The whistleblower’s attorneys formally alleged that the move was “clearly retaliatory” in a letter to Congress soon after.

n an April 27 appearance before the committee, the commissioner said “I can say without any hesitation there will be no retaliation for anyone making an allegation or a call to a whistleblower hotline.”

That didn’t age well.

As I reported in April, an IRS watchdog turned whistleblower alleged that federal prosecutors engaged in “preferential treatment and politics” in their treatment of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter—and even tried to block criminal tax charges against him. On Monday, a second whistleblower was revealed who worked under the original informant and who backed his claims. He was immediately threatened with prosecution from IRS brass. Meanwhile, there are multiple whistleblowers over at the FBI alleging corruption within its ranks.

It’s apparent that Attorney General Merrick Garland and the DOJ aren’t even bothering to pretend anymore that their raison d’être is to pursue equal justice for all. They—the very people in charge of upholding the law—think they’re above it. [source]

Makes sense. The stooge Attorney General Merrick Garland is Crooked Joe's John Mitchell.

FBI Obtained Kash Patel and Susie Wiles Phone Records Under Biden: Reuters

From Newsmax.com (Feb. 25):

The FBI subpoenaed records of phone calls made by Kash Patel and Susie Wiles, now the FBI director and White House Chief of Staff, when they were both private citizens in 2022 and 2023 during the federal probe of Donald Trump, Patel told Reuters on Wednesday.

Reuters is the first to report on FBI actions that took place during the Biden administration, largely when Special Counsel Jack Smith was investigating whether Trump had interfered with the 2020 election and had hidden classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, according to Patel.

Smith was appointed to take over that probe in November 2022.

Patel portrayed the seizing of his phone records by the FBI and efforts to conceal them as an example of overreach by unelected government officials under Biden, a theme often repeated by President Trump.

“It is outrageous and deeply alarming that the previous FBI leadership secretly subpoenaed my own phone records – along with those of now White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles – using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight,” Patel said in a statement to Reuters.

Reuters could not independently verify many of the details about Patel’s claims, including the full extent and timing of the seizure of phone records and the motive for doing so. Patel said the records were filed in a way that made it difficult for him and other FBI leaders to find them after taking over the bureau in February 2025.

Democrats in Congress have consistently defended Smith from GOP criticisms, saying he had acted appropriately in seeking phone records and other evidence they said was necessary to thoroughly investigate allegations of wrongdoing by Trump and his associates.

Investigators routinely subpoena and collect records of phone calls during investigations, even of prominent people, while seeking to determine the key facts in a case and who might be involved in a particular incident. Patel publicly said in 2022 that Trump had declassified the documents taken to Mar-a-Lago, a claim prosecutors disputed and Trump’s lawyers did not make in court.

Patel was summoned before a grand jury hearing evidence in the case that year after he was given limited immunity from criminal charges.

Reuters could not independently establish what records the FBI obtained or who approved the subpoenas. The news agency also couldn’t ascertain if Patel or Wiles themselves were under investigation and, if so, why. Both were close to Trump during this period, as he built toward and ultimately launched his campaign to reclaim the presidency in 2024.

Both Patel and Wiles were known to have been interviewed by investigators as part of Smith’s investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents following his first term.

A spokesperson for Smith declined to comment on Patel’s allegations on Wednesday. Biden, former Attorney General Merrick Garland, and former FBI director Chris Wray, who oversaw the bureau during Smith’s investigations, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Garland appointed Smith as special counsel.

A federal judge on Monday permanently barred the Justice Department from releasing Smith’s report on the documents investigation. Smith has told Congress that he is barred by court orders from discussing any aspects of the probe that have not been previously disclosed in court filings.

Smith previously told Congress that his investigators had serious concerns about obstruction of justice in their investigations. He told lawmakers last month that his office “followed Justice Department policies, observed legal requirements and took actions based on the facts and the law.”

The White House and Wiles did not immediately comment.

Patel said investigators used subpoenas to obtain what are known as “toll records,” which detailed the timing and recipients of calls he and Wiles made, but not what was said on the calls. The government may lawfully obtain phone records via subpoena without a judge’s approval.

Patel said investigators obtained the records around the time Smith led the probe into allegations that Trump illegally took classified documents to his South Florida property, Mar-a-Lago, after he left the presidency in 2021 and allegedly obstructed federal efforts to return those documents.

Smith charged Trump with felonies related to this investigation in 2023 but that case was ultimately dismissed by a federal judge, and Smith dropped an appeal of that ruling after Trump won election to a second term. Trump has denied wrongdoing related to Smith’s investigations.

Patel said he did not know the FBI’s purpose in seizing the phone records of him and Wiles, who became a top Trump adviser after he left office in 2021 and eventually co-campaign manager for his 2024 run against Biden. Patel also was a Trump political ally during this time.

Patel said the collection of phone records extended into Wiles’ time as Trump’s co-campaign manager, though he did not say when exactly the record collection began or ended.

The FBI discovered the phone records in files categorized as “Prohibited,” which makes them difficult to discover on the bureau’s computer systems. Patel said he recently ended the FBI’s ability to categorize files as “Prohibited.”

Smith's investigative techniques have previously drawn denunciation from GOP leaders, including the seizure of phone records of U.S. senators and other Republican officials during Smith’s probe into alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Smith testified last year that records of members’ calls helped investigators verify the timeline of events around the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and that prosecutors “followed all legal requirements in getting those records.” He told a House panel that the records obtained from lawmakers did not include content of conversations. [source]

Another example of abuse of power by Briben's FBI.

Patel: FBI Leaving Hoover Building, Transferring Agents

From Newsmax.com (May 16, 2025):

FBI Director Kash Patel has confirmed that the bureau will leave its headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington D.C. and transfer 1,500 employees to other locations around the United States.

Patel said the Hoover Building is being vacated as it is "unsafe," adding that the agency does not deserve to work in the aging structure, reports The New York Post Friday.

"We want the American men and women to know if you're going to come work at the premier law enforcement agency in the world, we're going to give you a building that's commensurate with that, and that's not this place," he told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo in an interview for her Fox News program "Sunday Morning Futures."

The FBI chief didn't outline what safety hazards are going on at the giant building, located on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the U.S. Capitol, but the building has been draped with nets to keep passersby from being hit with concrete that has been falling from it.

Patel also did not specify a time frame for the move or where the bureau's new headquarters will be located.

The Hoover Building, which has come under complaints from President Donald Trump during both terms, was finished in 1975 after being under construction for 10 years.

Before he entered politics, Trump in 2013 said he was considering buying the structure from the U.S. government to use as a private project.

And by 2018, when Trump was in his first term as president, he insisted that he wanted the building to go, as he thought it was "one of the ugliest buildings in the city."

"It's one of the brutalist-type buildings, you know, brutalist architecture," he commented.

Earlier this year, Trump said his administration would build another FBI building in the same location as the Hoover Building, "because the FBI and DOJ have to be near each other."

Former President Joe Biden's administration, however, had plans for moving the headquarters to Greenbelt, Maryland, but Trump blocked that plan after an inspector general's report determined that the selection process had passed over a site in Springfield, Virginia.

Patel told Bartiromo that the FBI is not fully manned, but when it is, 38,000 people are employed.

"In the national capital region, in the 50-mile radius around Washington, D.C., there were 11,000 FBI employees," he said. "That's like a third of the workforce. A third of the crime doesn't happen here, so we are taking 1,500 of those folks and moving them out."

This means every state will get a supplemental supply of agents.

"When we do things like that, we inspire folks in America to become intel analysts and agents and say 'We want to work at the FBI because we want to fight violent crime and we want to be sent out into the country to do it,'" said Patel. "In the next three, six, nine months, we're going to be doing that hard." [source]

I like the idea of decentralizing the FBI agents to the States.  That will make them more effective in fighting federal crimes.

Whistleblower Warns: 'The FBI Will Crush You'

From Newsmax.com (May 18, 2023):

FBI whistleblower Garret O'Boyle, one of three testifying before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government Thursday, had a warning for any of his former colleagues who may be thinking about testifying against the agency: Don't do it.

"The FBI will crush you," O'Boyle warned, when committee member Rep. Kelly Armstrong, R-N.D., asked him what he'd advise. "This government will crush you and your family if you try to expose the truth about things that they are doing are wrong, and we are all examples of that."

O'Boyle said he would tell colleagues that he would take their complaints to Congress for them or put them in touch with Congress, "but I would advise them not to do it."

He admitted that not testifying would not solve the issues the FBI has, or shine light on corruption, but based on his experience, he'd still urge them to turn away.

O'Boyle's words came at the end of a lengthy, often-heated hearing in which he joined two other FBI whistleblowers, Stephen Friend, and Marcus Allen, to testify about the retribution they experienced for coming forward with statements on several issues.

This included the investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, protests at the Capitol, the investigations of parents speaking out at school board meetings, and other instances that the Republicans on the committee say show the weaponization of the government against the American people.

In O'Boyle's case, he told the committee that he was forced to rely on charity after the FBI moved him and his family from Kansas to Virginia, but soon ended his assignment. He claimed he bureau blocked him for six weeks from getting his family's personal property back.

Chairman Jim Jordan asked all three men for their reactions to the FBI's activities against them, and all insisted they followed the oaths they had taken when they went to work with the agency. They agreed with Jordan that they felt the "full weight of the federal government" come down on them, particularly when the FBI sent a letter to members of the committee to inform them that the agents' security clearances had been revoked.

"Of course, they timed it perfectly," said Jordan. "It's in the letter to us yesterday. We knew they would. We knew it was going to happen that way."

They also testified that their former colleagues have not reached out to them to support them after they found themselves put out.

"I know for a fact that my former supervisor had a meeting with my squad shortly after I was suspended, and he told them that I was going to be arrested, fired, and charged. So if that's not chilling, I don't know what it is," said O'Boyle.

Friend agreed, commenting that those who have reached out to him "have used encrypted ways to do it because they fear retribution."

Allen added that he's been "ghosted by everybody."

Earlier in the hearing, Allen testified that he was targeted based on "unsubstantiated accusations that I hold 'conspiratorial views' regarding the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and that I allegedly sympathize with criminal conduct. I do not."

O'Boyle said the actions against him came after his testimony in another proceeding that the FBI prioritized investigations of anti-abortion activiy after the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision that overturned the Roe v. Wade decision on legal abortion.

He said Thursday that he was forced to accept a new position in another state and that the FBI ordered him to report when his family's youngest child was only two weeks old.

Friend, meanwhile, said he has filed a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel saying he was suspended after he raised concerns about the FBI's manipulation of crime statistics, the treatment of Jan. 6 defendants, and the agency's use of SWAT teams.

"The FBI weaponized the security clearance processes to facilitate my removal from active duty within one month of my disclosures," he said, also alleging the agency "initiated a campaign of humiliation and intimidation to punish and pressure me to resign" and refused his request for records so he could get another job "in an obvious attempt to deprive me of the ability to support my family."

He also accused the FBI's Inspection Division of having "imposed an illegal gag order in an attempt to prevent me from communicating with my family and attorneys."

The hearing was organized by Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and comes after the release publication of Special Counsel John Durham's report that revealed the FBI lacked evidence to open its investigation on former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.

The hearing also comes after the Judiciary Committee's Republicans released a 1,000-page report with the allegations of the politicization of the FBI and Justice Department politicization. [source]

Not good. Definitely an abuse of power. Good thing America has Kash Patel head of it. But in the future if a Democrat becomes POTUS who knows...

Biden Sues DOJ Over Release of Interview Audio

From Newsmax.com (May 26):

Former Democrat President Joe Biden sued the Department of Justice on Tuesday, seeking to bar the release of audio recordings and transcripts of private conversations with his biographer in 2016 and 2017.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington D.C., comes ahead of the department's planned June 15 release of ​the materials to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and the conservative Heritage Foundation. The foundation sought them after they ⁠were used as part of then-special counsel Robert Hur's 2023 ​investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents. Hur declined to bring criminal charges.

The ⁠department fought the Heritage Foundation's 2024 request for the records as exempt from the Freedom of Information Act until President Donald Trump took office, the lawsuit claims. It announced it would be releasing the records ​in response to the committee's request, which the lawsuit claims is meant only to skirt federal law barring their release.

The lawsuit asks the court to declare the committee's request pretextual and invalid, and permanently bar the release of the ⁠records to the committee.

Representatives for the Department of Justice ⁠did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The recordings, made in Biden's ⁠home, ⁠were part of the writing process for his 2017 memoir, "Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose," which detailed Biden's decision to pursue the presidency while his eldest son Beau fought brain cancer. Earlier this month, Biden sought to intervene ​in the Heritage Foundation's lawsuit against the Justice Department over the materials.

Last week, a judge allowed Biden to join the case but barred ​him from pursuing claims about the committee's request for the materials, according to court records. [source]

Why?  What's Briben worried about--or afraid of?

Trump Set to Slash Grocery Costs With EPA Fix

From Newsmax.com (May 21):

President Donald Trump is set to roll back two Biden-era EPA refrigerant rules Thursday in a move the administration says will slash grocery costs and save businesses billions of dollars.

According to an administration official who spoke with USA Today, the changes target federal regulations on hydrofluorocarbons, refrigerants widely used in freezers, refrigerators and air-conditioning systems.

The Trump administration argues the Biden rules imposed costly mandates on supermarkets and other businesses without meaningful environmental benefits.

One action would extend compliance deadlines under the EPA’s 2023 Technology Transitions Rule, giving grocery stores and other companies more time to phase out hydrofluorocarbons used in refrigeration systems.

Hydrofluorocarbonsare considered powerful greenhouse gases, though they remain in the atmosphere for shorter periods than carbon dioxide.

The White House estimates the rollback will generate roughly $900 million in savings, including $800 million for grocery stores, by increasing the supply of approved refrigerants available to businesses and homeowners.

The EPA is also expected to revise the agency’s 2024 Emissions Reduction and Reclamation program by exempting refrigerated trucks and other road transport refrigeration units from new hydrofluorocarbon leak requirements. The administration projects that move alone will save another $1.5 billion.

Trump is expected to announce the changes during a Thursday morning Oval Office event attended by executives from Kroger, Piggly Wiggly, Fareway Stores, and other grocery chains.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin blasted the Biden administration’s rules in a statement to USA Today, saying they burdened businesses with unnecessary costs.

"The Biden administration’s refrigerant rules didn’t protect human health or the environment and instead piled on costly, unattainable restrictions beyond what the law requires," Zeldin said.

"Our actions allow businesses to choose the refrigeration systems that work best for them, saving them billions of dollars. This will be felt directly by American families in lower grocery prices," he added.

The refrigerant rollback is the latest step in Trump’s aggressive deregulation agenda, which has targeted a wide range of Obama- and Biden-era environmental and climate policies.

The administration is also seeking to highlight efforts to reduce consumer costs as inflation continues to weigh on Americans ahead of the November midterm elections.

The Consumer Price Index rose 3.8% in April, the sharpest inflation increase in three years, driven largely by rising oil prices tied to the U.S. conflict with Iran.

Meanwhile, grocery prices climbed 2.9% compared with a year earlier and increased 0.7% from March to April. [source]

More stupid Biden regulations that needed to be undone. Another win!

FACT CHECK: Tulsi’s remarkable record at DNI…

From Revolver.news (May 22):

Tulsi Gabbard has resigned as the Director of National Intelligence after quite a remarkable run.

Enrique Alejandro had a remarkable rundown on X of her accomplishments:

Tulsi Gabbard’s Record as America’s TOP Director of National Intelligence❗️

– Referred Russiagate Criminals to DOJ for Prosecution

– Declassified “Russian Collusion” & Impeachment Conspiracy Documents

– Spearheaded the Investigation into Voter Fraud in Georgia

– Investigated the Dark Origins of COVID-19

– Fought the CIA to Declassify Hidden JFK Assassination + MK-Ultra Files

– Revoked Security Clearances From 37 Officials (Russia Hoaxers, Biden/Obama Holdovers, and Impeachment Letter Signers)

– Fired Officials Who Contradicted Trump on Venezuelan Gangs

– Moved CIA’s In-Q-Tel Under DNI Oversight for Greater Accountability

– Uncovered Ukraine Government Plot to Illegally Reroute Hundreds of Millions in U.S. Taxpayer Dollars to Biden’s 2024 Campaign

– Launched Declassification Effort to Expose the Truth About UAPs

– Slashed Bloated Intel Bureaucracy With 50% Staff Cuts at ODNI, Saving $700 Million

– Exposed the Intel Community’s Political Weaponization

All of this, even as the CIA breathed down her neck and tried to tie her hands at every turn.

THIS IS WHAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE VOTED FOR.

We looked into Enrique’s claims below and they all checked out. [read more]

Hope her replacement does just as good a job. Prayers and thoughts to her husband getting better.

At least 5 whistleblowers come forward against Biden family

From Breitbart.com (May 15, 2023):

The whistleblowers are in addition to the multitude of witnesses that Republican members of Congress have interviewed behind closed doors.

The whistleblowers range from an IRS agent to an Obama administration stenographer, encompassing alleged corruption in Ukraine and Mexico, along with the FBI and DOJ.

1) Chuck Grassley: Whistleblowers Say FBI Has Evidence Joe Biden Involved in Family Business Schemes

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who testified before the House’s new Select Subcommittee on Political Weaponization in 2023, said whistleblower disclosures indicate the FBI has evidence that Joe Biden is aware of the family business schemes, a statement that directly contradicts the president.

Grassley said the whistleblower disclosures “make clear the FBI has within its possession very significant, impactful, and voluminous evidence with respect to potential criminal conduct by Hunter and James Biden.”

It is unclear why the FBI has not acted on the alleged evidence.

The FBI is in possession of Hunter Biden’s infamous “Laptop from Hell,” which has caused many to dub the Biden family the “Biden Crime Family.”

2) Former Hunter Biden Partner Tony Bobulinski Meeting with Senate Investigators to Turn Over Information

Tony Bobulinski, a former business associate of Hunter, personally met with Joe and Hunter Biden in 2017 for an hour to discuss “the Bidens’ family business plans” for a Chinese energy deal. That deal appears to have never been finalized. The deal included ten percent “held by H for the big guy,” who Bobulinski said was Joe Biden.

“We discussed the Bidens’ history, the Bidens’ family business plans with the Chinese, with which he was plainly familiar at least at a high level,” Bobulinski told reporters in 2020 about the business meeting with Joe Biden.

Bobulinski has handed over intelligence about the deal to former FBI “point man” Timothy Thibault, who reportedly buried the information.

He also has conveyed emails, WhatsApp chats, agreements, documents, and other evidence to a Senate investigation committee.

3) Ex-White House Aide: FBI Ignored Joe Biden’s Role in Ukraine Business Dealings

Former Obama White House stenographer Mike McCormick alleged in 2023 that the FBI has ignored Joe Biden’s role in the family’s foreign influence-peddling “conspiracy” in Ukraine.

McCormick, who told the New York Post he has relevant information implicating Joe Biden in the family’s business affairs in Ukraine, submitted a tip to the FBI in February. McCormick said he never heard back from the FBI — the same law enforcement agency which allegedly “shut down” the investigation into Hunter’s abandoned “Laptop from Hell.”

According to McCormick, Biden’s former national security aide, Sullivan, told reporters on April 21, 2014, on Air Force Two as an anonymous “senior administration official” that the United States intended to help Ukraine’s natural gas industry.

Unknown to the public at the time, Hunter Biden was already a board member of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company. Hunter’s position on the board was not disclosed by the company until May 12, 2014, nearly a month after Sullivan’s statement to reporters.

4) IRS Whistleblower Says Biden Admin Interfering in Hunter Tax Fraud Probe

An IRS whistleblower alleged in 2023 that two Biden administration political appointees within the Justice Department are working to block charges against Hunter Biden for tax violations against recommendations.

In addition, the whistleblower alleges Weiss asked to be named as a special counsel in the probe to provide a degree of separation between the probe and Joe Biden. That request was apparently turned down.

According to the whistleblower’s attorney, Mark Lytle, his client wishes to speak with congressional investigators to corroborate his claims of political interference in the probe, which he has reported to the Justice Department’s top watchdog, according to a report.

5) Joe Biden Bribery Allegations Were Flagged to DOJ in 2018

Bribery allegations were brought to the Justice Department by a whistleblower in 2018 against President Joe Biden; but the allegations were ignored, a former federal prosecutor revealed last week. The second allegation of bribery against Joe Biden involves Hunter Biden’s board membership for Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, the New York Post reported:

Bud Cummins, a former federal prosecutor, first reported the bribery allegations to then-New York US Attorney Geoff Berman on Oct. 4, 2018, in an email claiming he had evidence that Joe Biden had “exercised influence to protect” his son’s Ukrainian employer “in exchange for payments to Hunter Biden, Devon Archer, and Joe Biden.”

In the email obtained by John Solomon’s Just The News, Cummins said that Ukraine’s then-Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko wanted to travel to the United States to meet Berman, and could produce two “John Doe” witnesses to corroborate his claims about the Bidens.

Despite Cummins claims, Berman did not respond. [source]

It's like Biden is a mob boss.

Treasury Sanctions Iran Shipping, Banking Networks

From Newsmax.com (May 19):

The Treasury Department announced new sanctions Tuesday targeting businesses, vessels, and financial networks accused of helping Iran move billions of dollars through oil sales, foreign currency exchanges and covert shipping operations despite existing U.S. sanctions.

The action targets more than 50 companies, individuals and vessels that Treasury said helped Iran access the international financial system and move money tied to oil, petrochemical and other commercial transactions.

"Iran's shadow banking system facilitates the illicit transfer of funding for terrorist purposes," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

"As Treasury systematically dismantles Tehran's shadow banking system and shadow fleet under Economic Fury, financial institutions must be alert to how the regime manipulates the international financial system to wreak havoc," he added.

Treasury said Iranian exchange houses and front companies use networks across multiple countries to process foreign currency transactions, move money for sanctioned Iranian banks and disguise the origin of Iranian oil and petrochemical exports.

Treasury accused some companies of managing cross-border money laundering operations, while others allegedly arranged payments tied to Iran’s petroleum, metals, manufacturing and automobile industries.

Treasury also targeted vessels accused of transporting Iranian oil, liquefied petroleum gas, petrochemicals and fuel products through shipping networks operating under multiple national flags.

The sanctions campaign aims to reduce revenue available to Iran’s government and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

"Treasury is aggressively advancing Economic Fury and has disrupted billions in projected oil revenue, taken actions that have led to the freezing of nearly half a billion dollars in regime-linked cryptocurrency, and cracked down on Tehran's shadow banking networks," the department said.

The Trump administration warned foreign companies and financial institutions that they could also face penalties if they help facilitate Iranian commerce or sanctions evasion.

The latest action follows other recent Treasury enforcement efforts tied to Iran sanctions.

One case announced Monday involved a settlement with a company tied to Indian billionaire Gautam Adani after Treasury accused it of arranging liquefied petroleum gas imports that allegedly originated in Iran.

Treasury said the imports were routed through a Dubai-based supplier claiming the gas came from Oman and Iraq, but investigators concluded warning signs should have alerted the company to the fuel’s Iranian origin.

The company agreed to pay $275 million and adopt additional compliance measures to settle potential sanctions violations. [source]

Good! It would be better if the IRGC's bank accounts were frozen, but a still pretty good tactics to put pressure on them.

CIA Officer: Agency Defies Trump's Order, Withholds 40 Boxes of JFK and MKULTRA Files

From JFK Facts.substack.com (May 13):

Active duty CIA officer James Erdman III testified in front of the Senate Oversight Committee on Wednesday about Agency obfuscation of findings around the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In his prepared remarks, he made an explosive detour into the JFK case.

He stated that the CIA took back control of 40 boxes of documents that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was reviewing for declassification under President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14176. That January 2025 decree ordered the release of records concerning the JFK, MLK and RFK assassinations.

Shortly after his testimony, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, the chair of House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, reacted bluntly with an X post addressed directly to the CIA:

“Return the documents immediately to” ODNI, she wrote. “JFK was declassified under an EO. MK ULTRA WAS REQUESTED BY CONGRESS.”

Congresswoman Luna revealed on X that she had sent a preservation notice on the stationery of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

CIA spokesperson Liz Lyons said in a statement:

“The Committee acted in bad faith by subpoenaing an Agency officer for testimony today without notifying CIA, despite having already obtained closed-door testimony from the individual previously. The witness testifying today is not appearing as a whistleblower in pursuit of the truth, but instead in response to the subpoena issued by Chairman (Rand) Paul.

This proceeding amounts to nothing more than dishonest political theater masquerading as a congressional hearing. As the CIA has already assessed, COVID-19 most likely originated from a lab leak, and efforts to undermine that conclusion are disingenuous.”

The remark about withheld JFK documents came roughly 20 minutes into a 90-minute hearing focused on disclosure of the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. Erdman had served in a joint duty assignment within DNI in a unit called the Director’s Initiatives Group (DIG) from March 2025 until April 2026, at which time he returned to the CIA.

“The legislative and executive branches will continue to be misinformed if this type of behavior is not addressed,” Erdman said immediately after the comments about the JFK and MKULTRA boxes, but presumably also referring to the primary subject of the hearing, information regarding COVID-19.

Nearly 2,700 files have been released in full under Trump’s executive order. As recently as last month, Rex Bradford of the Mary Ferrell Foundation — the nonprofit whose vast digital archive contains nearly 2 million pages of documents, government reports, books, essays, multimedia, and innovative research tools focused on the assassinations of the 1960s — said he believed that the era of mass declassification was largely over.

Wednesday’s testimony could indicate that there is more to come, while also encouraging speculation as to why so much material was withheld in defiance of the executive order.

MKULTRA documents were understood to have been destroyed in 1973 under the orders of outgoing Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms. The possible existence of never-before-seen documents related to the Agency’s mind control experiments dating back to the 1950s could put the CIA’s bad behavior back on the Congressional agenda.

“The CIA famously said that all [MKULTRA] documents had been released and others were destroyed, so these are allegedly those documents that apparently never existed,” Congresswoman Luna told NewsNation’s Katie Pavlich.

At the end of his allotted five minutes during the hearing, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) called for a new Church Committee, referring to the mid-’70s Senate committee that explored possible misdeeds by U.S. intelligence agencies.

In his response contextualizing the challenge of forming a new congressional investigative body, Chairman Paul (R-Ky.) revealed that for the last two years the CIA has stonewalled his request to access the complete and unredacted final Church Committee report, now 50 years old.

This latest controversy puts Director Ratcliffe in a difficult political position. Erdman did not accuse the Agency of withholding the documents on Ratcliffe’s orders, meaning Ratcliffe may have been unaware of what career CIA officials were doing, thus raising the question of both his and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s control over the sprawling spy agency. [source]

The Agency should return the boxes. I wonder if Director Ratcliffe knew about this action or not. It does sound like a Deep State coverup.

Senator: Biden Agency Used ‘Benghazi’ To Hide Emails On Planned Parenthood Loans

From The Federalist.com (Apr. 29):

The moment is etched in 21st century memory. The shrill voice of then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, agitated and stretched, still rings in the ears. 

“With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?” Clinton, with dreams of the White House dancing in her head, scolded Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., during an early 2013 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

The Wisconsin Republican had gotten under Clinton’s skin, asking her about the secretary’s slow response to a preventable attack in September 2012 on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. Benghazi became a political lightning rod, the leading symbol of the Obama administration’s anemic, incompetent, and deceptive foreign policy, particularly Clinton’s ineffectual “Smart Power” strategy. More so, the committee investigating Benghazi opened the lock to Clinton’s emails, the secret server, and more Clinton lies and obfuscation that contributed to her stunning loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

So what on earth does Benghazi have to do with abortion factory Planned Parenthood? It appears to be the codename for cover-up involving some $90 million in taxpayer-funded Covid-era forgivable loans to a nonprofit organization ineligible to receive the government handout.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, is asking the Department of Justice to open an investigation into why President Joe Biden’s Small Business Administration used “Benghazi” in the subject lines of internal communications regarding the funding. Ernst, chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, asserts “Benghazi” is code for “the possible unlawful concealment and attempted concealment of federal records by President Biden’s Small Business Administration officials, and potentially their White House colleagues — a violation of the Federal Records Act.”

‘Benghazi (PPP/PPH) Decisions’

In a letter this week to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Ernst details the emails her office has obtained to date revealing that Biden officials, apparently led by the SBA’s top lawyer, developed strategies to explain how Planned Parenthood qualified for Paycheck Protection Program Loans.

An email from SBA General Council Peggy Hamilton, dated April 30, 2021, appears to be the first with the subject line, “Benghazi (PPP/PPH) Decisions” in the subject line. Note that the reference to the small business loan program and the abortion provider are in parentheses, making requests for communications about the Covid relief program nonresponsive, or not relevant to key records search terms. The agency arguably would not have to turn over the requested information because, understandably, “Benghazi” would not be in the Freedom of Information Act request.

Hamilton’s email was part of a months-long thread about Planned Parenthood’s SBA loans, as well as the abortion giant’s loan forgiveness requests.

“The context of Hamilton’s email, as subsequent SBA emails elucidate, is whether or not the Biden administration would require the repayment of COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans made to potentially ineligible Planned Parenthood affiliates and how the SBA would respond to Congressional inquiries over its decisions,” Ernst’s letter states.

The loans were meant for employers with less than 500 employees, designed to help cover the paychecks for employees of small businesses hit hard by the pandemic and the destructive government-ordered lockdowns that accompanied it. Republican lawmakers, upon learning of PPP loans going to to the abortion industrial complex, demanded President Donald Trump’s DOJ at the time investigate which Planned Parenthood facilities received forgivable loans.

“These Planned Parenthood entities self-certified eligibility for these loans despite the clear ineligibility under the statutory text of the CARES Act,” Republican senators wrote in a letter to then-Attorney General Bill Barr. The CARES Act was the first massive infusion of panic cash thrown about to deal with Covid and the fear attached to it.

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America denied any wrongdoing, asserting that some independent operations were awarded loans under the “eligibility rules established by the CARES Act and the Small Business Administration (SBA).” [read more]

More Biden regime corruption...

Democrat melts down after Secretary Doug Burgum drops bombshell about NGOs during committee hearing

From The Blaze.com (Apr. 21):

Democrats had a meltdown during a committee hearing while grilling Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum on all of the programs he is attempting to shut down.

And no one was ready for his answer.

In a Monday House Committee Hearing, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) asked for clarification on Burgum's proposed "complete elimination" of some programs in the Fish and Wildlife Service, including some state and tribal wildlife grants.

Burgum replied with a shocking statistic about where some "nongovernmental organizations" get their money.

"There was a review done of the grants," he said.

"And that is an area where there's been substantial review. We found organizations that were receiving grants from Interior where 80 to 100% of the revenue of that NGO was a grant from the federal government."

"And yet those organizations, we were the sole source of their revenue, but they would have a CEO making $650,000 and four $400,000 lobbyists," Burgum continued.

DeLauro stammered in reply: "It would be very interesting because we can't get any information. We may agree with you. Give us the reasons why all of these grants are cut, the organizations are cut. ... We just can't take your word." [source]

Gut away! Keep going!  You never hear the Left complaining about CEOs of NGOs (or for that matter labor unions) making huge salaries.