Exclusive: Rep. George Santos charged by Justice Department in federal probe | CNN Politics

Unhappy_Earth1 · 2023-05-09T22:02:53+00:00

From article:

Federal prosecutors have filed criminal charges against New York Rep. George Santos, the Republican lawmaker whose astonishing pattern of lies and fabrications stunned even hardened politicos, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

Santos is expected to appear as soon as Wednesday at federal court in New York’s eastern district, where the charges have been filed under seal.

The exact nature of the charges couldn’t immediately be learned but the FBI and the Justice Department public integrity prosecutors in New York and Washington have been examining allegations of false statements in Santos’ campaign finance filings and other claims.

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The congressman’s attorney declined to comment. Spokespeople for the Brooklyn US Attorney’s Office, the Justice Department and the FBI declined to comment.

The freshman congressman, who was elected last year to represent a district that includes parts of Long Island and Queens, has been under investigation in multiple jurisdictions and by the House Ethics Committee.

Top Democrats, joined by some New York Republicans, have been calling on Santos to resign over allegations ranging from criminal behavior on the campaign trail to petty personal dishonesty stretching back more than a decade.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he will look at the charges before determining if he thinks Santos should be removed from Congress.

“I’ll look at the charges,” the California Republican told CNN on Tuesday.

During his brief time in office, Santos has been accused of breaking campaign finance laws, violating federal conflict of interest laws, stealing cash meant for an Iraq War veteran’s dying dog, masterminding a credit card fraud scheme and lying about where he went to school and worked.

Santos has admitted to making some misleading claims about his education and financial status, but continues to deny the more serious allegations.

During his victorious campaign last year, Santos ran according to the Republican midterm playbook, hammering his Democratic opponent over crime and inflation. The message resonated in the New York suburbs, where GOP candidates flipped four seats on their way to winning a narrow House majority.

But as Santos’ past came under closer scrutiny, with large chunks of his official biography revealed to be conjured from nothing, he increasingly adapted the persona of a right-wing troll.

He played up his support for former President Donald Trump and once claimed that Democrats were “trying to ban toilet paper.”

New York Republicans have sought to distance themselves from Santos, repeatedly urging him to leave office and insisting they knew nothing about his shadowy past. Democrats, meanwhile, are attempting to shake off the embarrassment of not exposing Santos sooner ahead of what promises to be an expensive race to win back his and other neighboring seats in 2024.

The cracks in Santos’ façade first made national headlines in late December 2022, when The New York Times published a long investigation that questioned large chunks of the personal story he sold to voters during the campaign. What followed, though, was often stranger than fiction. A seemingly endless string of new revelations ranging from allegations he stole a dog from an Amish dairy farmer to his own past claims – all false – of playing high-level college volleyball.

As the stories piled up, former friends and associated of Santos began to come forward and share stories claiming he had ripped them off or misled them about his financial and professional situation. A former roommate of the congressman told CNN earlier this year that Santos showed signs of “delusions of grandeur” during their time living together.

“The truth has finally come out,” said Gregory Morey-Parker, who also accused Santos of stealing his scarf. An allegation, like so many others, that Santos denies.

Unhappy_Earth1 · 2023-05-09T18:47:22+00:00

From article:

The leader of a right-wing antigovernment militia-style group who was convicted of leading a seditious conspiracy against the U.S. — culminating in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — has asked a judge to issue him a sentence of time served.

Stewart Rhodes, who founded the Oath Keepers in 2009, was convicted in November of plotting to use violence to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral win in order to keep Donald Trump in power on Jan. 6. At trial, prosecutors had presented jurors with evidence a plan between Rhodes and his co-defendants — Florida chapter leader Kelly Meggs, Ohio State Regular Militia founder Jessica Watkins, retired Navy Lieutenant Commander Thomas Caldwell, and Florida Oath Keepers member Kenneth Harrelson — to stockpile a cache of weapons in a hotel room in Arlington, Virginia, and tried to procure a boat to ferry them across the Potomac River to the Capitol.

The Capitol riot did stop Congress from its certification of the results, which is mandated by the Constitution, and forced lawmakers and staffers to either flee or spend hours sheltering in place as members of the pro-Trump crowd violently raged through parts of the building.

Rhodes and Meggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy, widely seen to be the most serious charge in the federal government’s expansive prosecution of Jan. 6 rioters. They were also convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, which, like the seditious conspiracy charge, carries a potential 20 years behind bars. Meggs, Harrelson, and Watkins were found guilty of conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging duties, which carries a potential six years in prison, while Rhodes, Meggs, Harrelson, and Caldwell were all convicted of tampering with documents or proceedings, a 20-year felony charge that Watkins did not face.

Four more co-defendants, who were tried separately, were all convicted of seditious conspiracy and other charges. Edward Vallejo, Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, and David Moerschel were additionally convicted of obstructing an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding of Congress, and conspiring to obstruct an officer from discharging duties.

Rhodes has been in custody since his arrest in Jan. 2022.

Unhappy_Earth1 · 2023-05-08T13:20:29+00:00

From article:

A gunman who killed eight people and wounded seven others at an outlet mall in Texas has been identified as neo-Nazi sympathizer Mauricio Garcia.

The 33-year-old Garcia was wearing a patch when he was killed Saturday by police that read “RWDS,” an acronym for the phrase “Right Wing Death Squad,” which is popular among Proud Boys and other militant extremists, reported the Associated Press.

His social media history shows an interest in white supremacist and other racist and extremist content, and investigators are interviewing his family members and associates about his ideological beliefs.

Law enforcement is also reviewing his financial records and other communications he made on electronic media for clues to help determine a motive for the massacre.

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Investigators have been searching a Dallas motel near an interstate where Garcia had been staying and a Dallas home connected to him.

Police found multiple weapons, including an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun, at the scene where Garcia was killed.

No motive has been formally established, but the RWDS patch and his possible involvement in a local neo-Nazi group has led investigators to approach the mass shooting as a possible hate crime or domestic terrorism attack.

Unhappy_Earth1 · 2023-05-07T19:45:25+00:00

From article:

According to close associates of ousted Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, the conservative network can expect an onslaught of attacks now that the dust has settled over his firing.

Axios founder Mike Allen is reporting that Carlson is planning to go to war with his former employers and that it is going to get ugly very soon.

According to his report, "Tucker Carlson is preparing to unleash allies to attack Fox News in an effort to bully the network into letting him work for — or start — a right-wing rival."

Carlson's attorney Bryan Freedman told Axios, "The idea that anyone is going to silence Tucker and prevent him from speaking to his audience is beyond preposterous."

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The report notes that Carlson and Twitter honcho Elon Musk have been in contact and that "Carlson is busy plotting a media empire of his own. But he needs Fox to let him out of his contract, which expires in January 2025 — after the presidential election."

"We're told Carlson has been contacted by outlets — including the right-wing Rumble and Newsmax — that offered to pay him more than his Fox contract," Allen wrote.

One confidante of the fired Fox host gave a preview of what to expect, telling Axios that Carlson "knows where a lot of bodies are buried, and is ready to start drawing a map."

Unhappy_Earth1 · 2023-05-06T22:25:18+00:00

From article:

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine on Saturday said it had used the U.S.-made Patriot air defense system to shoot down a Russian hypersonic missile in the skies over the capital region — potentially demonstrating that it now has the ability to thwart one of Moscow’s most-feared weapons.

Until now, the hypersonic missile, called Kinzhal, “Dagger” in Russian, had been unstoppable by Ukraine, and several had struck targets since the start of Russia’s war in February 2022. Traveling five times faster than the speed of sound, and at a lower elevation than traditional ballistic missiles, the Kinzhal was too fast for Ukraine’s air defenses to even react.

“Congratulations to the Ukrainian people on a historic event!” the head of Ukraine’s air command, Mykola Oleshchuk posted on Telegram, along with a lightning bolt emoji. “Yes, we brought down the ‘unparalleled’ Kinzhal!”

Reports had circulated in recent days that Ukraine had stopped a Kinzhal as part of a broader Russian air attack on Kyiv, which also included drones, in the early hours of Thursday. The drones were also stopped, officials said.

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The destruction of the missile, reported to be a Kh-47 fired by a Russian MiG-31K fighter jet, demonstrated the potentially game-changing role of the Patriot system, which costs roughly $1 billion per installation.

The United States and the Netherlands each agreed to donate a Patriot system, and Ukrainian soldiers had gone to Oklahoma to be trained to use it.

Unhappy_Earth1 · 2023-05-06T06:42:13+00:00

From article:

Former Attorney General Bill Barr said Friday that former President Trump will deliver “chaos” and a “horror show” if he returned to the White House in 2024.

“If you believe in his policies, what he’s advertising as his policies, he’s the last person who could actually execute them and achieve them,” Barr said of Trump at an event in Cleveland. “He does not have the discipline.”

When pressed further, Barr claimed his former boss doesn’t have “the ability for strategic thinking” or “setting priorities.”

“It is a horror show when he’s left to his own devices,” Barr said. “And so, you may want his policies, but Trump will not deliver Trump policies.”

“He will deliver chaos and, if anything, lead to a backlash that will set his policies much further back than they otherwise would be,” he added.

Barr, who served as attorney general under Trump and former President George H.W. Bush, was in Cleveland discussing his book, “One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General.”

The former attorney general has become a frequent critic of Trump since leaving the administration in December 2020. Shortly before resigning, Barr revealed the Department of Justice found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, despite then-President Trump’s claims.

Last month, he suggested Trump was the Republican candidate “most likely to lose again” to President Biden in 2024.

Unhappy_Earth1 · 2023-05-06T01:09:34+00:00

From article:

Eight of the 16 fake "electors" who convened to declare former President Donald Trump the winner of Georgia in 2020 have accepted an immunity agreement from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

"Prosecutors with the office of Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) told the eight that they will not be charged with crimes if they testify truthfully in her sprawling investigation into efforts by Trump, his campaign and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia, according to a brief filed Friday in Fulton County Superior Court by defense attorney Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow," reported Amy Gardner and Holly Bailey. "Willis has said that the meeting of Trump’s electors on Dec. 14, 2020, despite Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s certification of Biden’s win, is a key target of her investigation, along with Trump’s phone calls to multiple state officials and his campaign’s potential involvement in an unauthorized breach of election equipment in rural Coffee County, Ga."

"Georgia was among seven states where the Trump campaign and local GOP officials arranged for alternate electors to convene with the stated purpose of preserving legal recourse while election challenges made their way through the courts," said the report. "Among the questions both Willis and federal investigators have explored is whether the appointment of alternate electors and the creation of elector certificates broke the law. Another question is whether Trump campaign officials and allies initiated the strategy as part of a larger effort to overturn Biden’s overall victory during the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021."

Willis is set to decide whether or not to move forward with charging former President Donald Trump himself in recent weeks.

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She has investigated several facets of the plot to overturn the election in Georgia, including Trump's phone call with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger demanding he "find" extra votes to declare him the winner, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a key ally of Trump, similarly speaking to state officials.

"Among the electors who appear to remain targets are David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party who presided over the gathering, and Shawn Still, a state senator who at the time was state finance chair for the party and who told congressional investigators he played a role confirming electors’ identities and admitting them into the room at the Georgia Capitol where they convened," said the report. "Shafer has denied that convening to cast electoral votes for Trump was improper, saying repeatedly — including during the gathering itself — that the electors were meeting on a contingency basis to preserve Trump’s legal remedy in the event that he prevailed in an ongoing lawsuit challenging the Georgia result."

Unhappy_Earth1 · 2023-05-05T17:57:29+00:00

From article:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is facing a fresh round of scrutiny after the third blockbuster report in less than a month links him financially to GOP megadonor Harlan Crow.

ProPublica reported Thursday that Crow, a Dallas-based real estate developer, paid thousands of dollars in tuition to a private boarding school for Thomas’s great-nephew, whom Thomas has said he raised “as a son.”

Federal ethics laws require the justices to report gifts given to a “dependent child,” but that term is defined to only include the justices’ children or stepchildren. Thomas’s allies have insisted the payment doesn’t violate the disclosure law since it was for Thomas’s sister’s grandson.

But the revelation has only added to the increasing pressure from Democrats for the justices to adopt a binding code of ethics.

“Today’s report continues a steady stream of revelations calling Justices’ ethics standards and practices into question. I hope that the Chief Justice understands that something must be done—the reputation and credibility of the Court is at stake,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in a statement.

When asked during a SiriusXM interview about impeaching Thomas, however, Durbin said “no.” He noted that only one justice, Samuel Chase, had been impeached previously, and Chase was acquitted in the Senate in 1805.

“I don’t think an impeachment is in the works, particularly with the House in a political situation that it’s in today,” Durbin said on “The Briefing with Steve Scully.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a Judiciary Committee member, argued the matter should be referred to the Department of Justice.

“There’s a potential criminal violation in the misreporting or failure to report certain benefits, gifts and financial transactions. There’s just a drip, drip, drip of additional information that is gravely undermining the Court, but also creating the need for a full factual investigation,” Blumenthal said.

“If [the Justice Department] fails to do so, Congress definitely has a role,” he added.

Thomas did not return a request for comment through a court spokesperson.

Unhappy_Earth1 · 2023-05-05T17:54:11+00:00

From article:

Fox Corp., the parent company of Fox News, has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Media Matters for America over its publication of leaked videos showing Tucker Carlson, a former host at the network, making crude and offensive comments off the air.

“We write on behalf of Fox Corporation to clarify any misunderstandings Media Matters

may have had regarding previously unaired footage that Media Matters has published in a series of articles headlined “FOXLEAKS,” attorneys for the network wrote in a letter dated Friday.

“That unaired footage is Fox’s confidential intellectual property; Fox did not consent to its distribution or publication; and Fox does not consent to its further distribution or publication.”

The network’s lawyers said the videos were given to the liberal media watchdog group “without Fox’s authorization” and demanded it “cease and desist from distribution, publication, and misuse of Fox’s misappropriated proprietary footage, which you are now on notice was unlawfully obtained.”

In a statement to The Hill on Friday, Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters said “reporting on newsworthy leaked material is a cornerstone of journalism. For Fox to argue otherwise is absurd and further dispels any pretense that they’re a news operation.”

“Perhaps if I tell them that the footage came from a combination of WikiLeaks and Hunter Biden’s laptop, it will alleviate their concerns,” Carusone added.

Over the past several days, Media Matters has published a series of videos of Carlson, who was ousted from his show on Fox, making sexist and crude comments about women and complaining about the network on the set of his wildly popular show.

In one video, he referred to a woman as “yummy” and in another, he is seen asking a female makeup artist if women have “pillow fights” in the restroom.

messages, which came to light as part of the defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems the network recently settled for $787 million, played a factor in his ouster, including messages in which he disparaged female executives at the company.

Like Fox, Carlson has not publicly commented on the circumstances surrounding his departure from the network.

Unhappy_Earth1 · 2023-05-05T12:43:10+00:00

From article:

The U.S. economy added 253,000 jobs in April, surpassing analyst forecasts of 180,000 new jobs, according to Labor Department data released Friday.

The unemployment rate remained historically low at 3.4 percent, down from 3.5 percent the previous month.

The jobs report reveals that the economy is slowing, but the labor market remains surprisingly robust. The U.S. added 236,000 jobs in March, 311,000 jobs in February and a stunning 504,000 jobs in January.

The Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes aimed at slowing the economy and taming inflation are impacting hiring. Many economists expect higher rates and a lending slowdown by banks to further weigh on job growth and potentially cause a recession by the end of the year.

In March, the number of job openings fell to the lowest level in nearly two years, according to government data released Tuesday. Consumer spending is falling amid high prices and reduced access to credit.

Still, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday that the U.S. could avoid a recession, citing “excess demand in the labor market.”

“Avoiding a recession is, in my view, more likely than having a recession,” Powell told reporters. “But I don’t rule that out either. It’s possible that we have a mild recession.”

Unhappy_Earth1 · 2023-05-05T01:02:10+00:00

From article:

Clarence Thomas' wife, "Ginni" Thomas, reportedly received tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work, and her name was intentionally left off of the paperwork.

Ginni Thomas received the funds from conservative activist Leonard Leo—who has also helped former President Donald Trump select judicial nominees—according to the Washington Post's investigation. The news comes at a time when Clarence Thomas himself is under fire for reportedly receiving undisclosed gifts.

Leo made the arrangements through former Trump Administration official Kellyanne Conway, according to the Washington Post's report.

"In January 2012, Leo instructed the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group he advises and use that money to pay Virginia 'Ginni' Thomas, the documents show," according to the report. "The same year, the nonprofit, the Judicial Education Project, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case."

The investigation further uncovered the circumstances surrounding how the payments were made secret.

"Leo, a key figure in a network of nonprofits that has worked to support the nominations of conservative judges, told Conway that he wanted her to 'give' Ginni Thomas 'another $25K,' the documents show. He emphasized that the paperwork should have 'No mention of Ginni, of course,'" according to the Washington Post.

The Polling Company, Conway's firm, reportedly sent the Judicial Education Project a $25,000 bill, and listed the reason only as "Supplement for Constitution Polling and Opinion Consulting."

"In all, according to the documents, the Polling Company paid Thomas’s firm, Liberty Consulting, $80,000 between June 2011 and June 2012, and it expected to pay $20,000 more before the end of 2012," according to the Washington Post's investigation. "The documents reviewed by The Post do not indicate the precise nature of any work Thomas did for the Judicial Education Project or the Polling Company.

In a statement, Leo reportedly told The Post that, “Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni.”

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