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Category: Politics

Classified whistleblower complaint about Tulsi Gabbard remains stuffed in a safe, hidden from Congress

Classified whistleblower complaint about Tulsi Gabbard remains stuffed in a safe, hidden from Congress

The Wall Street Journal reports: A U.S. intelligence official has alleged wrongdoing by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in a whistleblower complaint that is so highly classified it has sparked months of wrangling over how to share it with Congress, according to U.S. officials and others familiar with the matter. The filing of the complaint has prompted a continuing, behind-the-scenes struggle about how to assess and handle it, with the whistleblower’s lawyer accusing Gabbard of stonewalling the complaint. Gabbard’s…

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Trump’s direct involvement in FBI search hints, again, at effort to pursue a vindictive prosecution

Trump’s direct involvement in FBI search hints, again, at effort to pursue a vindictive prosecution

The New York Times reports: In an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, denied that Mr. Trump had played any role in the search or that he had been briefed on the inquiry. “I don’t believe he was involved,” he said. “This is a criminal grand jury investigation, and I can’t comment on it.” Pressed on Ms. Gabbard’s involvement, Mr. Blanche said he did not know the reasons for her presence,…

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Has DOJ illegally released the names and nude photos of Epstein victims in order to denigrate them?

Has DOJ illegally released the names and nude photos of Epstein victims in order to denigrate them?

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Justice Department exposed the names of dozens of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, including many who haven’t shared their identities publicly or were minors when they were abused by the notorious sex offender. A review of 47 victims’ full names on Sunday found that 43 of them were left unredacted in files that were made public by the government on Friday, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Several women’s full names appeared more than 100…

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The U.S. can no longer be trusted ‘as a reliable ally on military security, economic security, or any other major matter’

The U.S. can no longer be trusted ‘as a reliable ally on military security, economic security, or any other major matter’

John Cassidy writes: It’s been a couple of weeks since Donald Trump and his cohort tried to bully the U.S.’s European allies into submission over Greenland, but the reverberations are still being felt. “There was a real sense that we were witnessing a moment of rupture,” Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University and the Brookings Institution, who was attending the annual World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, when Trump flew in, recounted to me. “One thing that was clear…

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Two experienced CBP agents identified in Alex Pretti shooting

Two experienced CBP agents identified in Alex Pretti shooting

By J. David McSwane This story was originally published by ProPublica The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez. The records viewed by ProPublica list Ochoa, 43, and Gutierrez, 35, as the shooters during the deadly encounter last weekend that left Pretti dead and ignited massive protests and calls for criminal investigations. Both men were assigned to…

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Crime rate inside CBP higher per capita than crime rate of undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

Crime rate inside CBP higher per capita than crime rate of undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

Garrett Graff writes: On Friday, I testified in front of Governor J.B. Pritzker’s “Illinois Accountability Commission,” the state government body he set up after the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” attack on Chicago last summer and the precursor of the even larger federal occupation of Minneapolis that we’re experiencing now. The body’s goal is to both document what happened to Chicago, with an eye on future prosecutions, understand the role of various Trump officials in this federal occupation, and offer…

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Ohio Haitians targeted for ethnic cleansing in hate campaign led by JD Vance and American Nazis

Ohio Haitians targeted for ethnic cleansing in hate campaign led by JD Vance and American Nazis

Timothy Snyder writes: In the schools and churches of Springfield, Ohio, people are making hasty preparations for a “large deportation” promised by the president. To all appearances, and according to local sources, the city is two or three days away from a federal ethnic cleansing, grounded in a hate campaign organized by the vice-president and American Nazis. The destined victims are ten thousand or more Haitians. Its origins are in racist fantasy. During the last presidential campaign, JD Vance, then…

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UAE ‘spy sheikh’ bought secret stake in Trump company

UAE ‘spy sheikh’ bought secret stake in Trump company

The Wall Street Journal reports: Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in their fledgling cryptocurrency venture for half a billion dollars, according to company documents and people familiar with the matter. The buyers would pay half up front, steering $187 million to Trump family entities. The deal with World Liberty Financial, which hasn’t previously been reported, was signed by…

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Jerusalem Post: Removed file stated Epstein would bring children for Trump to auction off

Jerusalem Post: Removed file stated Epstein would bring children for Trump to auction off

The Jerusalem Post reports: The Department of Justice has removed files containing hundreds of mentions of US President Donald Trump from the latest wave of Epstein files documents that were released on Saturday. The removed files included descriptions of Trump sexually assaulting several women, some of them being underage. In the removed files, which still have a preview and broken link on the DOJ’s website, Trump is described by victims and friends of victims as, among other things, engaging in…

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Epstein files: FBI memo says Israel ‘compromised’ Trump, Epstein had Mossad ties

Epstein files: FBI memo says Israel ‘compromised’ Trump, Epstein had Mossad ties

Middle East Eye reports: A declassified FBI memo from the Epstein files, released on Friday, includes incendiary allegations about US President Donald Trump. The memo says that Trump was “compromised by Israel”, that convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein worked with Israeli intelligence, and that a Jewish religious group calling itself Chabad-Lubavitch sought to hijack his first term in office. The memo, written in 2020, formed part of an FBI investigation into domestic or foreign influence over the US electoral process. It…

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Thousands of new ICE observers hit the streets after two murders

Thousands of new ICE observers hit the streets after two murders

The Washington Post reports: Jordan’s parents didn’t want her to become an ICE watcher. But on Tuesday, after a single day of training, she climbed into her Jeep and joined hundreds of neighbors patrolling the streets of this embattled city, where federal immigration agents have shot and killed two people this month who were monitoring and attempting to disrupt their activities. “I’m not really nervous, it’s more like, I want to prevent bad things from happening in my neighborhood,” Jordan,…

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‘That’s him. Get him.’ Witness at an earlier shooting was arrested at the scene of Alex Pretti’s killing

‘That’s him. Get him.’ Witness at an earlier shooting was arrested at the scene of Alex Pretti’s killing

The Intercept reports: Less than 40 minutes after federal immigration agents shot and killed 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti on Nicollet Avenue in south Minneapolis, Clayton Kelly was thrown face-first onto the sidewalk, tasting snow and street grime as a federal agent’s knee drove into his back. The incident, a video of which The Intercept reviewed and corroborated with an independent eyewitness, occurred not long after Kelly and his wife arrived in the area where Pretti was killed. With protesters amassing…

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An immigrant who ICE says ‘ran headfirst into a brick wall’ — an echo of ‘shot while trying to escape’

An immigrant who ICE says ‘ran headfirst into a brick wall’ — an echo of ‘shot while trying to escape’

After World War One, German nationalist paramilitary groups frequently used the phrase “shot while trying to escape” (Auf der Flucht erschossen) to cover up the elimination of political opponents. During the Nazi era, this pretext was used for a range of extrajudicial killings. The Associated Press reports: Intensive care nurses immediately doubted the word of federal immigration officers when they arrived at a Minneapolis hospital with a Mexican immigrant who had broken bones in his face and skull. Immigration and…

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ICE expands power of agents to arrest people without warrants

ICE expands power of agents to arrest people without warrants

The New York Times reports: Amid tensions over President Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota and beyond, federal agents were told this week that they have broader power to arrest people without a warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo reviewed by The New York Times. The change expands the ability of lower-level ICE agents to carry out sweeps rounding up people they encounter and suspect are undocumented immigrants, rather than targeted enforcement operations in which they set…

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The blood-and-soil nationalism that killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti

The blood-and-soil nationalism that killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes: In the wake of poet and writer Renee Good’s killing, Donald Trump and his collaborators have done all they can to define her as an enemy of “The Homeland.” The administration claims, for instance, that Good was a “domestic terrorist,” a term it is now applying to Alex Pretti, the ICU nurse whom federal agents killed on Saturday. This rhetoric is employed to justify the state taking life, by associating the dead with national villainy. But the…

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What ICE should have learned from the Fugitive Slave Act

What ICE should have learned from the Fugitive Slave Act

Jelani Cobb writes: One measure of the numbing effect that the constant heedless and cruel assault on democracy and on simple reason that Trumpism has imposed upon American life is the fact that we no longer flinch at the word “unprecedented.” Now, a full decade since Donald Trump’s arrival on the national scene, we have reached a point where the violation of norms has become a norm in itself. At the same time, however, there has been a tendency to…

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