President Biden on Friday fired Social Security Commissioner Andrew Saul, a holdover from the Trump administration, after Saul refused a request to resign from his position.
A White House official confirmed that Saul’s employment was terminated. The move was first reported by The Washington Post.
David Black, Saul’s deputy who was also appointed to the position by former President Trump, resigned at Biden’s request, the official said. Continue reading.
MEXICO CITY — The Trump administration began separating migrant families along a remote stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border months earlier than has been previously reported — part of a little known program coming into view only now as the Biden administration examines government data.
In May 2017, Border Patrol agents in Yuma, Ariz., began implementing a program known as the Criminal Consequence Initiative, which allowed for the prosecution of first-time border crossers, including parents who entered the United States with their children and were separated from them.
From July 1 to Dec. 31, 2017, 234 families were separated in Yuma, according to newly released data from the Department of Homeland Security, almost exactly the same number as were separated in a now well known pilot program in El Paso that year. Because the Yuma program began in May, and the existing data on family separations begins only in July, the number of separations there was likely higher than 234, a prospect the Biden administration is now investigating.
The Florida man who served as the co-founder of the “We Build The Wall” project has been indicted on another charge for tax fraud, according to a report from the Associated Press. The latest charges are in addition to his previous tax and fraud charges.
On Tuesday, July 6, Brian Kolfage of Miramar Beach, Fla. was indicted by a grand jury for filing a false tax return. This new charge expands on allegations first brought against Kolfage two months ago. In May, the prosecutors offered details about Kolfage’s involvement in a previous scheme “to defraud the government in relation to his 2019 federal income tax returns.” The leaders of the “We Build the Wall” project were first indicted for allegedly defrauding donors in August 2020.
Per the AP:
“Kolfage received hundreds of thousands of dollars from multiple organizations during 2019, including We Build the Wall Inc., which were deposited into his personal bank account, prosecutors said. Kolfage failed to report this income to the IRS, officials said. The new charge is related to Kolfage filing a false amended tax return in December 2020, investigators said.”
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is raising concerns about the possible violence that could erupt as a result of the dangerous falsehoods currently being perpetuated about former President Donald Trump and his allies
According to CNN, Trump and a number of his allies are spreading a conspiracy theory about the possibility of him being reinstated next month. Since there is no constitutional mechanism that would allow for such action to be taken, the claim is nothing more than a misguided falsehood. The DOJ believes it will only lead to an angry, violent response from Trump’s loyal base.
During a court hearing, Marine Corps veteran Alex Harkrider, who is facing charges for his alleged participation in the Capitol riots requested that the judge allow for his ankle monitor to be removed. The DOJ expressed concern about doing so amid possible backlash from Trump’s base in the wake of the latest claims. Continue reading.
A former Donald Trump campaign aide faces 12 years or more in prison after pleading guilty to a child pornography charge in a case as luridly disturbing as any QAnon conspiracy theory.
Ruben Verastigui admitted possession of 152 videos and 50 images of child pornography and to receiving and distributing sexual depictions of children as part of a plea agreement in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., reported Politico.
Prosecutors said the 27-year-old Verastigui, who had been president of the Northwest Vista College Students for Life before going to work on Republican campaigns, sought out images of the rape of infants during an online chat last year and fantasized online about killing children and babies while abusing them. Continue reading.
White House staffers got so used to seeing a vast retinue of unlikely figures in President Donald Trump’s Oval Office that they nicknamed it the ‘Star Wars bar,’ according to Michael Wolff, author of a new exposé on the Trump administration.
In an interview with The Times of London published Wednesday,Wolff discussed his new book, “Landslide,” which the newspaper has been publishing excerpts of.
In the interview, Wolff claims that he travelled to meet Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort despite the unflattering portrayal of the former president in his two previous books on his time as president. Continue reading.
Allen Weisselberg, the indicted Trump Organization executive, was removed today as a director of Donald Trump’s golf resort in Aberdeen, Scotland, public records show. The move is the first to indicate how the indictment is affecting operations of the Trump Organization.
His removal comes as Scottish lawmakers and Avaaz, a global do-gooder organization, are pushing for an “unexplained wealth” inquiry into how Trump got the money to buy and refurbish both of his money-losing Scottish golf courses.
A 2018 British law lets investigators examine company and personal financial records to determine sources of money and riches that they deem suspicious. It’s been called the McMafia law. Continue reading.
Rudy Giuliani’s law license was suspended in the state of New York over his ‘professional misconduct.’
Responding to his recent suspension from practicing law in the state of New York, Rudy Giuliani on Saturday compared his work as former President Donald Trump’s lawyer to that of lawyers defending terrorists who “have killed innocent people.”
A panel of judges of the New York Supreme Court determined in June that Giuliani had violated the New York Rules of Professional Conduct for lawyers by making false claims that there had been fraud in the 2020 presidential election win by Joe Biden and that “false statements made by respondent constitute uncontroverted proof of respondent’s professional misconduct.”
In its decision, the panel pointed out, “Respondent repeatedly represented to the court that his client, the plaintiff, was pursuing a fraud claim, when indisputably it was not. … Respondent’s mischaracterization of the case was not simply a passing mistake or inadvertent reference. Fraud was the crown of his personal argument before the court that day.” Continue reading.
Donald Trump ripped into Attorney General Bill Barr as a “phony” who “would have licked the floor if I won,” after the former president unsuccessfully tried to get U.S. attorneys in swing states to open investigations into his false claims of election fraud, according to Landslide, a new book from journalist Michael Wolff.
The Daily Beast reports that it obtained a copy of Landslide in advance of its publication next week.
“‘Trump had been personally calling around to various U.S. attorneys in swing state districts, among them his appointee William McSwain in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania,’ to try and convince them to open their own probes,” the Daily Beast reports. “When they did not, Trump blamed his A.G., saying that ‘if I had won, Barr would have licked the floor if I asked him to. What a phony!'” Continue reading.
Toyota announced Thursday that its political action committee would no longer make donations to Republican members of Congress who objected to certifying the presidential election results in January, after uproar over newsthat the automaker’s corporate PAC had supported those lawmakers at a higher level than other PACs.
“Toyota is committed to supporting and promoting actions that further our democracy,” the company said in a statement Thursday. “We understand that the PAC decision to support select Members of Congress who contested the results troubled some stakeholders. We are actively listening to our stakeholders and, at this time, we have decided to stop contributing to those Members of Congress who contested the certification of certain states in the 2020 election.”
Supporters of President Donald Trump overran the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, in large part to protest the certification of Joe Biden’s victory because Trump asserted, and they might have believed, that the election was “stolen.” The violent siege left five people dead, including a police officer; two other officers who were on duty that day later died by suicide. Continue reading.
