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    FBI Sued For Records On Collusion With Anti-Trump Group

    By
    Donny Ferguson
    -
    2

    Americans may soon learn more about how a FBI agent worked with a liberal group to target President Donald Trump in a criminal investigation.

    The non-profit public interest law firm Judicial Watch announced in a statement it “filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for communications between former Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault and the anti-Trump organization American Oversight.”

    “It’s a shame that we must sue to get these records about how the Biden gang at the FBI and DOJ tried to rig an election by jailing Trump for disputing the 2020 election,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It’s past time for these institutions to focus on transparency under law, so the American people can know the full truth on the lawfare attack perpetrated on Trump.”

    Judicial Watch reports it filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia “after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) failed to respond to a January 31, 2025, FOIA request for:”

    Records and communications between Timothy Thibault, former [Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Washington Field Office] and the non-profit organization American Oversight, 1030 15th St. NW, B255, Washington, D.C. 20005, email domain: @americanoversight. The search terms for this request are a) Trump b) Electors c) Investigation d) election

    According to Judicial Watch, “in July 2022, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) reportedly warned then-Attorney General Merrick Garland that Thibault and an official in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, Richard Pilger, were ‘deeply involved in the decisions to open and pursue election-related investigations against President Trump. At the time, whistleblowers told Grassley that the Thibault-Pilger investigation’s predicating document was based on information from “liberal nonprofit American Oversight.”’ Thibault retired in August 2022.”

    Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) have revealed in a statement that:

    Internal FBI emails and predicating documents provided to Grassley and released jointly by the two senators show Timothy Thibault, a former FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) who was forced to retire from the Bureau after Grassley exposed his public anti-Trump bias, authored the initial language for what ultimately became Jack Smith’s federal case against Trump regarding the 2020 presidential election. Records show Thibault essentially opened and approved his own investigation.

    Judicial Watch reports American Oversight describes itself as “founded in 2017 in response to the unprecedented challenges that the Trump administration posed to our nation’s democratic ideals and institutions.…” Earlier this year, Politico described it as, “A left-leaning watchdog group … working to gather materials that could feed Congressional investigations into the Trump administration.”

    Senator Kennedy’s Latest Book Strikes Back — Politicians Are Stunned [CONTRIBUTE TODAY TO RECEIVE A FREE COPY]

    Mexican Cartels Sending Migrant Mobs to Overwhelm US Border Agents

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    9
    President Donald J. Trump participates in a roundtable discussion on immigration and border security at the U.S. Border Patrol Calexico Station Friday, April 5, 2019, in Calexico, Calif. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

    ANALYSIS – Joe Biden’s border disaster is getting worse by the day as thousands of illegal immigrants swarm U.S. border entry points daily. And as I have repeatedly noted the Mexican drug cartels essentially control the border regions of Mexico.

    Across the entire southwest border, as many 9,400 migrants have crossed into the US in a single 24-hour period. That is tens of thousands a week or over 100,00 per month. Over a million a year.

    And now, thanks to Joe Biden and his band of merry leftists, the cartels essentially control the U.S. side of the border as well, flooding our border with illegal migrants to overwhelm our border patrol agents and divert them from the drug smuggling points.

    As the New York Post reported: “The way it’s being orchestrated through the cartels, I believe it’s meant to overwhelm the system. The [places] that are being impacted the most are border communities,” said former El Paso City Councilmember Claudia Rodriquez.

    The Post added:

    Cartels unleashed turmoil on the city before, stirring up rumors of the border being open to all back in March and again in April, prompting hundreds of migrants to storm one of El Paso’s international bridges.

    “If you’re at the border, go this morning,” a social media screenshot of the rumor said. “Don’t miss this opportunity.”

    Aid workers previously told The Post how migrants are particularly susceptible to tricks orchestrated by the cartel, as most are in a vulnerable position and in unfamiliar territory.

    “A lot of the folks that are waiting in Juarez [across the border from El Paso] are very desperate, and they’ll believe anything,” Crystal Sandoval of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center said in March.

    These waves of migrants egged on by cartel-driven misinformation online on social media overwhelms and distracts the Border Patrol, and diverts federal resources, when they are most needed to combat the smuggling of fentanyl into the U.S. 

    It also overwhelms the local communities.

    Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), who represents both Eagle Pass and El Paso, has warned about the raw numbers of illegal migrants.

    “Eagle Pass is completely overrun right now. El Paso is getting overwhelmed right now. Arizona is getting overwhelmed right now.”

    “The only way we can regain control of the southern border is by enforcing the laws that are on the books. That’s exactly what the administration needs to do. That’s exactly what Congress needs to focus on.”

    Meanwhile, as Fox News reported, things are getting so bad that a Mexican railway company has halted operations after a video showing migrants packed into freight cars riding into the U.S. went viral earlier this week.

    Note, the rail company didn’t halt the trains because the migrants were swarming into the U.S., but because some were getting hurt along the way, and it was becoming too public.

    According to Fox: “Migrants have long used the trains, known collectively as ‘The Beast,’ [or ‘train of death’] to hitch rides to the U.S. border, and a video of a Ferromex train out of Zacatecas, Mexico, packed with migrants — heading toward the U.S. southern border — went viral on Sunday.”

    As long as Biden continues his deliberately disastrous open border policy, the cartels will continue to push waves of illegal migrants into the U.S., overwhelm the Border Patrol, and send more deadly drugs into America across the Rio Grande.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    ‘Deranged’ Leftist NY Judge Declares Trump Guilty of Fraud Before Trial Begins

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    15
    Gavel via Wikimedia Commons Image

    ANALYSIS – In what is only the latest weaponized, partisan legal action against former President Donald Trump, the far-left Democrat New York state attorney Letitia James and her leftist cohort Justice Arthur Engoron have just found Trump guilty of civil fraud before his trial even began.

    Never mind that the case is obscene to begin with and should not even exist. And the law it is based on is obscene as well and should not exist either. Andrew McCarthy explains in National Review:

    James, an ambitious progressive authoritarian who campaigned for office on a vow to weaponize the Empire State’s legal processes against Trump, decided to package the scraps [of leftover fraud charges no one else could prosecute] into a lengthy civil complaint. After all, she had a secret weapon: New York’s Executive Law 65(12), which empowers an abusive prosecutor to put partisan enemies out of business without having to prove anything. Although this provision purports to outlaw “repeated” and “persistent” “fraud” and/or “illegality,” in reality, as I explained last week in a column for The Messenger:

    “The law doesn’t require a showing of harm. The state need not prove the defendant even intended to defraud anyone, much less actually defrauded someone. It need not be established that any creditor or financial institution even relied on the defendant’s misrepresentations, that those misrepresentations were material, or that anyone was actually fooled by them. The state just has to show that a defendant made false claims with enough “persistence” and “repetition” that at least two persons were “affected” — which, whatever it means, is not a synonym for ‘harmed.’”


    Claiming Trump significantly overvalued his properties and assets when presenting his company’s financials to banks and lenders and that this somehow “affected” someone, James is seeking at least $250 million in penalties, a ban against Trump and his sons Donald Jr. and Eric from running businesses in New York, and a five-year commercial real estate ban against Trump and the Trump Organization.

    The accusations are that Trump inflated the value of assets by $1.9 billion to $3.6 billion annually between 2011 and 2021 to save hundreds of millions on loans and insurance.

    This, even though no one has been claimed to have been harmed, and all financial institutions take self-declared valuations like those made by Trump, with a grain of salt when making loans and other major financial decisions.

    Bankers and insurance executives have a fiduciary obligation to conduct their own due diligence to determine what they believe are fair market valuations of assets. And they always do.

    And as McCarthy further explains, everyone involved knew Trump exaggerated just about everything:

    …this was for political consumption and the burnishing of celebrity. In the league of sophisticated financial actors in which Trump plays, where corporate departments are dedicated to valuation analysis because that’s the bread-and-butter of finance, nobody took this nonsense seriously. Indeed, Trump even included a “worthless clause” in his SFCs which, in so many words, warned that they were apt to be, you know, somewhat less than perfectly accurate. Many of the financial institutions that did business with Trump did so for years, and knew exactly the cat they were dealing with. They made loans and indemnified Trump because they knew, based on their own expertise and experience with him, that he was quite wealthy (even if not as wealthy as he claimed) and that he would pay up.

    But that didn’t stop Justice Engoron, who ruled preemptively on September 26 that James had proven Trump and his co-defendants fraudulently inflated his assets. 

    Engoron, in his ruling, ordered the cancellation of certificates that 10 of Trump’s business entities need to operate some of his marquee properties — including Trump Tower and his golf clubs in New York — and said he would appoint independent receivers to oversee their “dissolution.”

    The judge thus essentially imposed the corporate death penalty on Trump’s businesses BEFORE the trial even began.

    Trump responded in a post on his Truth Social platform the day of the ruling, calling accusations that he committed fraud “ridiculous and untrue,” and hit back, calling Engoron a “DERANGED” judge.

    In this case, I must agree with Trump’s wording. The judge is deranged, but he is also a partisan hack and embarrassment in what is already a highly partisan and embarrassing New York judicial system.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Amanda Head: Tim Allen Masterfully Strong-Arms Disney Into Christian Content

    By
    Amanda Head
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    0

    Tim Allen is reprising his beloved role as Santa Claus in Disney’s latest Christmas series. The original 1994 “The Santa Clause” movie saw massive success and Allen went on to play the role for two more movies. However, Allen says that he had some big conditions for Disney before returning to the iconic role for the new series- one of them being Disney must incorporate Christianity into the show.

    Watch Amanda break down the situation below:

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    WATCH: Truck Tries to Crash Through White House Barrier

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    2
    President Joe Biden delivers remarks in National Statuary Hall on the one-year anniversary of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Thursday, January 6, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Cameron Smith)

    ALERT – In what appears to be an idiotic attempt to supposedly kill Joe Biden, a 19-year-old man repeatedly rammed a U-Haul truck into the barriers around the White House at Lafayette Park on Monday night. 

    To be clear these barriers (or bollards) are designed to stop large vehicles and are a substantial distance from the White House perimeter fence.

    There was no mention of explosives or other dangerous materials aboard the truck. Had there been this would be an entirely different story.

    Still, the incident prompted the evacuation at The Hay-Adams Hotel on the 800 block of 16th Street.

    The driver, Sai Varshith Kandula of Chesterfield, Missouri has reportedly been arrested and charged with multiple crimes, including threatening to kill, kidnap, or inflict harm on the president, vice president or family member.

    He was also charged with assault with a dangerous weapon and reckless operation of a motor vehicle.

    A man who said he was walking home from his run on the mall videotaped a driver in a U-Haul truck repeatedly ram the barricade at Lafayette Park near the White House.  

    “I decided it was time to get the hell out of there” he says

    See the video below.

    According to a United States Park Police statement, the driver “intentionally crashed into the bollards on the outside of Lafayette Park.”

    Ya, that looks about right.

    The Secret Service spokesman also tweeted:

    Shortly before 10:00 p.m. Monday, Secret Service Uniformed Division officers detained the driver of a box truck after the vehicle collided with security barriers on the north side of Lafayette Square on 16th Street. There were no injuries to any Secret Service or White House personnel and the cause and manner of the crash remain under investigation. 

    Seems to me that the cause and manner of the crash are pretty obvious – the guy kept trying to ram through the barricades.

    In a follow-up tweet, the spokesman said: “Charges will be filed by the United States Park Police with investigative support from the #SecretService.” 

    In the photo below the truck can be seen more clearly after the driver was secured and removed. The bollards can also be more clearly seen.

    Meanwhile, is that a swastika flag on the pavement at the police officer’s feet?

    The location of the crash is noteworthy since it lies at the south end of 16th St where it is now known as Black Lives Matter (BLM) square. Fox 5 reported:

    Had the barriers been breached, two fences providing additional layers of security would have been in-between the driver and the White House. Lafayette Square has long been one of the nation’s most prominent venues for demonstration near the Executive Mansion. The park was closed for nearly a year after federal authorities fenced off the area at the height of nationwide protests over policing following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, but it reopened in May 2021.

    What the news outlet doesn’t say is that during those violent BLM riots at Lafayette Park in 2020 numerous officers were injured, cars and property burned, and the thin blue line of police at the park between the rioters and White House fence were almost overrun.

    During the height of the rioting on May 31st, President Trump was also briefly rushed to the underground bunker by the Secret Service.

    These barriers are designed to stop vehicles, not mobs of angry rioters.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Biden Defense Department Tells Soldiers To Treat Pro-life Americans As Potential Terrorists

    By
    Donny Ferguson
    -
    4
    Washington D.C., USA - January 22, 2015; A Pro-Life woman clashes with a group of Pro-Choice demonstrators at the U.S. Supreme Court.

    A group of United States senators and representatives are demanding answers after United States military servicemembers received anti-terrorism training that included instructions to consider pro-life Americans as potential terrorists.

    It is unclear why the military would be training for combat against Americans on American soil.

    Senators James Lankford (R-OK) and Ted Budd (R-NC), along with Representative Richard Hudson (R-NC) and their colleagues, “sent a letter to Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth demanding answers after an anti-terrorism training conducted at Fort Liberty, North Carolina depicted Pro-Life Americans as terrorists,” Lankford’s office reports.

    “We write regarding social media reports that anti-terrorism training conducted at Ft. Liberty, North Carolina depicts Pro-Life Americans as terrorists. Specifically, the slides identify National Right to Life, ‘Choose Life’ license plate holders, and anyone who opposes the Supreme Court’s rightfully overturned decision in Roe v. Wade, which was rightfully overturned by the Supreme Court, as members of terrorist groups. Smearing Pro-Life Americans is despicable and emblematic of the ongoing politicization of the military under the Biden-Harris Administration,” the Members wrote.

    The National Right to Life Committee is a peaceful mainstream conservative organization.  The training did not mention pro-abortion groups such as “Jane’s Revenge,” which have been engaged in a nationwide campaign of domestic terrorist attacks on pregnancy centers and Catholic churches.

    “It is no wonder that the Army is struggling to recruit young men and women to join its ranks when it appears the service attacks their values and promotes a woke agenda rather than improving readiness and lethality…The American people deserve to be assured that these slides truly do not reflect the Army’s views, that a full investigation will be conducted, and that any offending employees will be properly held accountable. Finally, we must be assured that similar materials are not being utilized at other installations across the Army,” the Members continued.

    Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC), John Barrasso (R-WY), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), Steve Daines (R-MT), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Todd Young (R-IN), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Eric Schmitt (R-MO), Mike Braun (R-IN), Jim Risch (R-ID), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Mike Crapo (R-ID), and Bill Hagerty (R-TN) also signed the letter. 

    The letter is supported by Catholic Vote, National Right to Life Committee, Family Research Council, Americans United for Life, Concerned Women for America, Students for Life Action, SBA Pro-Life America, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, and ACLJ Action.

    The letter reads:

    Dear Secretary Wormuth,

    We write regarding social media reports that anti-terrorism training conducted at Ft. Liberty, North Carolina depicts Pro-Life Americans as terrorists. Specifically, the slides identify National Right to Life, “Choose Life” license plate holders, and anyone who opposes the Supreme Court’s rightfully overturned decision in Roe v. Wade,which was rightfully overturned by the Supreme Court, as members of terrorist groups. Smearing Pro-Life Americans is despicable and emblematic of the ongoing politicization of the military under the Biden-Harris Administration.

    The American public expects the Department of Defense and its personnel to defend the homeland from actual terrorists, not Americans who seek protections for children in the womb. Labeling Pro-Life organizations as threats challenges servicemembers’ moral obligation to defend and protect even the smallest among us. In fact, around half of all Americans identify as Pro-Life. It is no wonder that the Army is struggling to recruit young men and women to join its ranks when it appears the service attacks their values and promotes a woke agenda rather than improving readiness and lethality.

    We understand that the anti-terrorism slide was in fact briefed to a group of soldiers as recently as July 10th. What is unclear is how long these slides have been utilized at Ft. Liberty and whether similar briefings have been used at other installations. We also understand from a statement released by Ft. Liberty that these slides were not vetted by appropriate approval authorities.  

    While Ft. Liberty’s statement asserts that the slides “do not reflect the views of the … US Army or the Department of Defense”, the American people are rightfully concerned that training of this kind is being disseminated in the first place and possibly at other military installations. The American people deserve to be assured that these slides truly do not reflect the Army’s views, that a full investigation will be conducted, and that any offending employees will be properly held accountable. Finally, we must be assured that similar materials are not being utilized at other installations across the Army. 

    Therefore, we request responses to the following questions no later than July 29, 2024: 

    Is it official Army policy to identify Pro-Life Americans and Pro-Life Organizations as “terrorist groups”?

    How long have these slides been briefed to soldiers and how many soldiers have been briefed with these slides? 

    What is the current process by which the Army reviews anti-terrorism training materials disseminated on Army bases? 

    Who are the appropriate approval authorities charged with vetting training materials disseminated to soldiers across the Army?

    What action is the Army taking to investigate the distribution of training materials depicting Pro-Life Americans as terrorists? 

    What statutes or Army regulations were potentially violated and what action is the Army taking with regard to any offending employee? 

    Will you commit to an installation-by-installation review to ensure that these or similar materials are not being disseminated elsewhere and that Army anti-terrorism training aligns with DoD anti-terrorism standard guidance and training? 

    Will you commit, in writing, that these slides will no longer be used and all future training materials reviewed will align with current DoD anti-terrorism guidance?  

    We look forward to your prompt attention and response.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.


    FBI Continues Armed Raids Against Peaceful Americans

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    4
    I, Aude, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

    ANALYSIS – Following Joe Biden’s new rule restricting feds from investigating or arresting journalists and the ongoing outcry against FBI agents using ‘storm-trooper’ SWAT-style raids against peaceful American pro-life activists, the Bureau goes and does it again.

    Most recently, Joerg Arnu, owner of www.Dreamlandresort.com, a popular Area 51 website issued a statement after heavily armed federal agents reportedly raided his homes at gunpoint several weeks ago.

    Dreamlandresort.com was founded in 1999 and has long hosted information about the restricted military base widely known as Area 51, but also called Homey Airport or Groom Lake.

    The extremely well-guarded Area 51 is classified as a ‘Military Operating Area’ by the Pentagon, but for most in the military, it’s simply known as the Nevada Test and Training Range, part of Edwards Air Force Base.

    “The base itself is fairly small, but the restricted area around it is over 90,000 acres —  partly to prevent prying eyes and partly because they need to test classified aircraft,” Benjamin Radford, a writer on the subject, told Space.com earlier.

    The raid of Arnu’s Nevada home, conducted jointly between the FBI and U.S. Air Force, was first reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

    In his statement on Nov. 3, Arnu said that an FBI search warrant was executed and his “laptops, phones, backup drives, camera gear and my drone were seized.”

    Arnu told Business Insider (BI) that he had “not been charged with a crime,” adding that since the Nov. 3 search, he has “not heard from the FBI agent in charge at all, despite numerous attempts to reach him to discuss the damages and return of my items.”

    In response to an inquiry from BI, Lt. Col. Bryon McGarry, with the U.S. Air Force stated minimally that: “Nellis Air Force Base is aware of the joint-AFOSI (Department of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations), FBI investigation involving Mr. Arnu.”

    However, as non-informative as the Air Force was, the FBI declined to comment at all.

    The Epoch Times reported further on the seemingly outrageous incident:

    Elaborating to news outlets, Arnu said that some 15 to 20 federal agents arrived at his home in “full riot gear.” He said the search pertained to photos that were posted on his website.

    “The doors were broken open and I in [sic] Rachel and my girlfriend in our Las Vegas home were detained and treated in the most disrespectful way,” he told Insider. “My girlfriend was led out into the street barefoot and only in her underwear in full view of our neighbors; I was led outside, handcuffed and only in t-shirt and sweats in sub-freezing temperatures.”

    Arnu added: “I am not sharing anything on my web site that cannot be found on dozens of other web sites and news outlet publications. Considering how this went down I have no intention of removing any more material unless ordered to do so by a federal judge.”

    In his interview with Insider and Fox News, Arnu said he will now pursue legal action against the federal government.

    “The federal government has the right to harass and traumatize random citizens that are not accused of any crime,” Arnu told Fox on Saturday. “Kick in their doors, manhandle them and take whatever they want from them. Said citizens have no rights whatsoever to reimbursement of their damages, return of their property or compensation for the trauma they were subjected to.”

    Arnu added to Fox that “this is America … land of the free.” But now, it’s “not so much from where I am standing right now. Everyone should know about this injustice. It could be your door that is kicked in next!”

    The seizure of Arnu’s aerial video drone may hint at a potential motive for the raid, as there are signs all around the military installation warning that photography in the area is prohibited and that drones cannot be flown in its vicinity.

    However, if that is the case, then the FBI and AF-OSI should tell Mr. Arnu this and make a public statement to that effect.

    Either way, the storm-trooper-type armed raid used against a well-known, elderly amateur journalist is outrageous and just the latest example of the FBI’s increasingly heavy-handed tactics being employed against peaceful American citizens.

    Add this to the long list of FBI abuses the new, GOP-led Congress must investigate in 2023. 

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Should Trump Bring Back His Winning ’16 Campaign Chief?

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    2

    ANALYSIS – Will Kellyanne Conway return to Team Trump? As Kamala Harris, who recently stole the campaign from her boss, Joe Biden, basks in her current sugar high glory, some in the Trump campaign are wondering if his team needs a reboot. 

    Or maybe an injection of a 2016 winner.

    And who better to revitalize Trump’s campaign, than his winning campaign manager from 2016, Kellyanne Conway.

    At least Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, reportedly thinks so.

    And a recent post on X showing pics of Conway and Trump together in New Jersey has fueled the speculation that a return to the campaign is in the works.

    In 2016 the brash flaxen haired pollster-turned campaign chief swooped in after the campaign’s failing start with its B Team and is rightly credited as helping to get Trump across the finish line to victory against Hillary Clinton.

    According to the Daily Beast:

    Donald Trump is looking to bring in Kellyanne Conway to shake up his faltering campaign, according to a new report.

    The outspoken adviser is seen as a trusted confidante by both the former president and, importantly, by Melania Trump who is “pushing” for Conway to return because she sees her as “a familiar face amid a sea of relative newcomers,” says Tara Palmeri in the online magazine, Puck.

    Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee and wife of Trump’s son, Eric, is also said to be pushing for Conway to be brought on board to reignite campaign stalwarts taken by surprise by Kamala Harris’ fast start after Joe Biden’s sudden departure.

    One adviser told Puck that Trump listens to powerful women, more than men. “He listens to Hope Hicks. He listens to Brooke Rollins,” they tell Puck. “Ironically, he likes powerful women. If you’re a sharp woman, he will listen to you. Hope and these people could tell him the hardest shit. He may not have done anything, but at least he listens.”

    While she was a key player in Trump’s 2016 win, eight years ago, she could still be the spark that relights the fire of a campaign still unsteady after Harris’ surprising Democrat Party coup and subsequent rise.

    Puck notes:

    …it may also be fair to question whether his brain trust is living in the past. Chris LaCivita, who famously ran the Swift Boat Veterans campaign against John Kerry, has spearheaded an attack on Walz’s military record, but it’s yet to have the same impact as it did in 2004, when the U.S. had recently invaded Iraq. Other Trump allies are wondering if pollster Tony Fabrizio is likewise frozen in carbonite, as he considers a race-baiting strategy against Harris akin to the Willie Horton ads against Dukakis back in 1988. 

    Team Harris has raised $310 million in July, and another $36 million in the 24 hours after announcing her stolen Valor radical VP choice, Tim Walz.

    So far Team Trump hasn’t been able to land any significant blows on his younger female political opponent.

    According to Puck, Trump’s campaign team is split in half over whether she should return in a similar role to the one she had in 2016.

    Meanwhile, Conway is smoothing over any ruffled feather with JD Vance after openly suggesting Marco Rubio as Trump’s VP.

    As part of her mending relations effort, Conway recently tweeted “Brilliant” to Vance’s stunt when he landed at the same airport as Harris and Walz and challenged her to debate.

    One big potential drawback to Team Trump is the fact that Conway recently registered as a $50,000- a month foreign agent for a Ukrainian oligarch.

    This is already provoking accusations among her critics that it would be a conflict of interest. However, a campaign manager or advisor is not the same as a member of the administration. So, that issue may not matter much in these final three months of the campaign.

    The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk.

    NYC to Pay BLM Rioters Nearly $14 Million for Mass Arrests – What About Jan 6 Rioters?

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    0
    Elvert Barnes, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

    ANALYSIS – In what is again an egregious example of disparate treatment for rioters with different political views, New York City has agreed to pay violent Black Lives Matter (BLM) rioters $13.7 million after being sued over the mass arrests in 2020. 

    If approved by a judge, it would reportedly be one of the most expensive payouts ever over mass arrests.

    Each BLM rioter can receive a payout of nearly $10,000 ($9,950 to be exact) as part of the settlement, whether they were arrested or not if their First Amendment rights were found to have been suppressed or infringed on by police.

    The settlement applies to protestors at 18 marches or demonstrations in Brooklyn and Manhattan between May 28 and June 4 of 2020.

    Meanwhile, many nonviolent Jan. 6 Capitol rioters are still in jail pending trial after a massive nationwide FBI manhunt. And others are receiving outrageous prison terms.

    The message here is – if you are a left-wing rioter in a left-wing city you can expect to be rewarded, but if you are a conservative rioter in the ‘People’s Republic of DC,’ and Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DoJ) oversees prosecutions, you will get fried.

    Attorneys from the left-leaning National Lawyers Guild accused the NYPD of violating rioters’ First Amendment rights by being excessively violent and making illegal arrests.

    However, the riots in NYC were far more violent, and damaging, and lasted far longer than the few hours-long Capitol riot in DC.

    During the two years of litigation, NYC attorneys argued police tactics had been appropriate to the situation and noted that rioters had thrown projectiles at police and torched police cars.

    As the Daily Wire reported:

    In New York, police arrested just over 2,000 people between May 28, three days after Floyd’s death, and June 7, according to the New York State attorney general’s office.


    Thousands of people protested in New York City, some violently. Rioters injured dozens of police officers, damaged dozens of police cars — setting some of them on fire and graffitiing them — and looted or damaged at least 450 businesses.

    In one instance, two NYPD officers in Brooklyn were shot and one was stabbed in the neck as they tried to prevent looting during a protest.

    The mayor placed the city under a curfew for the first week of June, the city’s first curfew in 75 years, but the curfew was frequently violated by protesters.

    Overall, at least 10,000 people were arrested across the country during the summer 2020 BLM riots. They caused nearly $2 billion in damages, the largest from riots in U.S. history.

    According to court documents, the NYC did not admit fault in the lawsuit, but settled to avoid rehashing the events at trial and “resolve the issues raised in this litigation without further proceedings.”

    On a positive note, violent BLM rioters who were arrested for trespassing, property destruction, assaulting police, arson, weapons charges, and perhaps those who blocked police from arresting other rioters, will not be eligible for a payout.

    The settlement must still be approved by a judge. 

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    ‘Top Gun’ Blowback – Pentagon Won’t Help Hollywood if They Submit to China

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    Austin Green, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

    ANALYSIS – In an unexpected, but long overdue move, the Pentagon has stated it will no longer work with directors if their movies will be censored by Beijing. This follows directly on the heels of Vietnam banning the movie ‘Barbie’ over its inclusion of a China-friendly map of the South China Sea.

    That movie’s producers apparently caved to Chinese pressure and included the map showing China essentially owning the South China Sea, which it does not, despite its claims. And Vietnam wasn’t happy.

    But, as I previously wrote, this Chinese censorship problem really exploded with last year’s release of Tom Cruise’s blockbuster “Top Gun: Maverick.” 

    And now the Pentagon, thanks to GOP Senator Ted Cruz, has made it clear it now bans any military assistance to directors who plan to comply (or will likely comply) with censorship demands from the Chinese regime in order to distribute their movie in China.

    In trailers for the ‘Maverick’ film shown in 2019, the flags of Taiwan and Japan had been removed from Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell’s flight jacket worn by Cruise in the 1986 original “Top Gun” movie.

    The flags were part of a Far East Cruise patch commemorating the 1963-64 deployment by the USS Galveston off Japan and Taiwan. In the preview clip for the movie in 2019, those two historically accurate flags were replaced by generic nonsensical symbols.

    This shameless kowtowing was an apparent attempt to appease Chinese investor Tencent. But after serious blowback in the U.S. — and after Tencent reportedly dropped its investment in the film – the flags were restored in the final version of the film.

    In another example, Chinese government censors actually pushed the producers of “Spider-man: No Way Home” to remove the Statue of Liberty, according to Puck. This, likely due to its association with the Tiananmen Square protests.

    Thankfully, the studio did not comply, and that movie wasn’t shown in China.

    The Defense Department updated its rules for working with movie studios after Cruz (R-Texas) inserted language, known as the SCRIPT Act. into the fiscal 2023 defense policy bill.

    Cruz has strongly condemned Beijing’s censorship of Hollywood films.

    “What does it say to the world when Maverick is scared of the Chinese communists?” he said at the time.

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    The latest Top Gun movie also reportedly showed us a peek at what might be the SR-72 – the super-secret experimental hypersonic spy plane under development by Lockheed Martin. It was called the ‘Darkstar’ in the film.

    Providing more context, Politico reported:

    According to a new Defense Department document obtained by POLITICO, filmmakers who want the U.S. military to help with their projects must now pledge that they won’t let Beijing alter those films.

    The DOD “will not provide production assistance when there is demonstrable evidence that the production has complied or is likely to comply with a demand from the Government of the People’s Republic of China … to censor the content of the project in a material manner to advance the national interest of the People’s Republic of China,” the document reads.

    Hollywood and the Defense Department have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship for decades. The Pentagon has allowed filmmakers to shoot their projects on military bases, Navy ships, or other locations, and weighs in on filmmaking processes. The military benefits from positive portrayals of service members, and moviemakers benefit from authentic settings and technical expertise.

    But as China’s ruling Communist Party has developed increasingly advanced censorship and surveillance tools, countless American companies — including Hollywood studios — have sought to comply with Beijing’s demands while attempting to dodge stateside pushback.

    However, from now on, producers of films greenlighted by the Defense Department must notify the Pentagon “in writing of such a censorship demand, including the terms of such demand, and whether the project has complied or is likely to comply with a demand for such censorship.”

    But not just that. DoD will also weigh any “verifiable information” from people not involved in the production who indicate that producers could comply with a censorship demand.

    So, hopefully Hollywood will stop caving to China’s blackmail, or risk losing access to their much-loved Pentagon collaboration.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

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