President Joe Biden hugs his family during the 59th Presidential Inauguration ceremony in Washington, Jan. 20, 2021. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. (DOD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos M. Vazquez II)
A Virginia mother charged with lying about her drug use when purchasing a handgun, which her six-year-old son took to school and used to wound a teacher, is asking a federal court for leniency – citing the light sentence given to President Joe Biden’s adult son Hunter for the same crime.
“Deja Taylor, 25…has pleaded guilty to lying about her marijuana use when she applied for a gun purchase. Her 6-year-old son used the 9 mm semi-automatic pistol on Jan. 6 to shoot his elementary school teacher in Newport News, Virginia, in a case that has received massive media coverage,” The Washington Times reports.
Taylor faces as much as two years in federal prison for not reporting her drug use on her gun purchase application, but her sentencing will come weeks after Biden, the wealthy white son of the President, got a sweetheart plea deal to his offense of not reporting his drug use.
While Taylor’s marijuana use is legal under Virginia law, Biden’s crack cocaine was illegal under both Delaware and federal law.
Biden received no jail time for his offense, and will likely have his guilty plea erased from his criminal record after participating in a pretrial diversion program.
Taylor may not be as lucky.
“In our sentencing memo, we will surely raise the inconsistency in the government’s approach to a vulnerable and scared very young mother, who does not have a privileged background and connections,” defense attorney Eugene Rossi told The Washington Times.
“Why does the prodigal son of a president get diversion on the same gun charge — along with the sweetheart deal on the tax crimes?” Rossi told the Times. “The disparity is a bit hard to comprehend — let alone swallow.”
While Taylor’s gun was left unsecured, and used in a school shooting, observers note Biden’s handgun was left discarded in a public trash can near a Delaware school.
Others are noticing the double standard, too.
“Biden’s DOJ is giving Hunter a sweetheart deal for lying on a firearm background check,” tweeted U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN.) “Meanwhile, the same DOJ is sending Deja Taylor to prison for 18-24 months for the exact same offense.”
“What happened to equal justice under the law?,” Blackburn asked
Biden’s DOJ is giving Hunter a sweetheart deal for lying on a firearm background check.
Meanwhile, the same DOJ is sending Deja Taylor to prison for 18-24 months for the exact same offense.
Expert election prognosticator and FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver called on President Biden to immediately resign and let Vice President Kamala Harris carry out the remainder of his term.
Silver’s argument came in response to a Washington Post article about Biden’s recent trip to Brazil that began like this:
MANAUS, Brazil — President Joe Biden was in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, unprotected from mosquitoes, fire ants and loud, squawking macaws. But there was another pest he did manage to avoid: the pack of reporters traveling with him.
For a short speech in front of about two dozen people, the journalists were initially instructed to watch Biden on a flat-screen television placed amid sand and lush trees as the president spoke about 50 feet away, though they were eventually moved closer. As Biden finished his remarks, maracas rattled by a local group prevented him from hearing reporters’ shouted questions about Ukraine.
During a six-day foreign trip to Peru and Brazil that wrapped up Monday, the president rarely spoke in public, answering almost no questions despite repeated efforts to engage him. One television producer took to writing messages on a large pad of paper, holding it up as Biden boarded and departed Air Force One.
The story went on to note that Biden has been conspicuously quiet about the results of the 2024 presidential election, which he “repeatedly called the most important election in history” and “warned would change the country forever if [Donald] Trump prevailed.”
Silver was unamused by Biden’s performance as described by the Post.
“Is there any particular reason to assume Biden is competent to be president right now?” he asked rhetorically on X. “It’s a very difficult job. It’s a dangerous world. Extremely high-stakes decisions in Ukraine. He should resign and let Harris serve out the last 2 months.”
Nate, you’re a little late to the game on this one.
President Joe Biden hugs his family during the 59th Presidential Inauguration ceremony in Washington, Jan. 20, 2021. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. (DOD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos M. Vazquez II)
ANALYSIS – Hunter knew how to party. The problem is a lot of his fun may have been highly illegal. And we aren’t just talking about run of the mill illegal drugs or prostitutes but hiring Russian hookers from an ‘Eastern European Sex Trafficking Ring.’
And at times he used tens of thousands of dollars in cash funneled through a China-based company to pay for them.
When ‘Hunter goes wild’ it’s on an epic, global scale. And it appears his dad, Joe Biden knew about it, and at times may have helped pay for it.
Hunter also shamelessly deducted some hooker payments on his taxes, according to IRS whistleblower Joseph Ziegler, who ran a five-year investigation into Hunter’s alleged tax crimes.
As part of the ongoing banking investigation into Hunter’s financial transactions, which appear to have been monitored by Wells Fargo bank as late as 2019, numerous Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) were generated and sent to the Treasury Department.
While not proof of wrongdoing, SARs are red flags that provoke added scrutiny.
According to previously reported documents, including SARs, texts and video, Hunter spent a mind-blowing $30,000 on escorts in just five months, many secured via traffickers from overseas, and most transported across state lines in this country.
This would violate the Mann Act’s prohibition on interstate prostitution.
In addition to payments laundered through offshore business accounts, Hunter spent thousands of dollars from his joint personal account he had with his ex-wife Kathleen, who divorced him in 2017.
But the latest SAR being reported flagged even larger amounts potentially spent on illegal drugs and prostitutes. The Daily Mail reported that $1,162,732 was sent to Hunter’s China-based company Owasco from business partner and Biden family friend Rob Walker.
Walker was also a former Clinton administration official.
The Hunter payments appear to be part of larger sums paid from a group of 25 individuals linked to the suspected sex trafficking ring. In total this group was responsible for almost $7million in suspicious transactions.
JUST IN – Hunter Biden was suspected of hiring prostitutes from an "Eastern European sex trafficking ring" and falsifying checks to pay the women, Treasury documents reveal.https://t.co/OhlJz5JiKf
Investigators also noted that some of the checks from Hunter’s business account may have been falsified to hide his payments to hookers.
Hunter reportedly wrote checks disguised as medical services to escorts supplied by Ekaterina Moreva in New York, whose website UberGFE.com offered a ‘girlfriend experience’ with escorts as young as 20.
‘This investigation observed that Biden and related business accounts received unknown sources of funds, which funded cash withdrawals, outgoing transfers, and outgoing checks that appeared to be needlessly split into smaller amounts for no clear economic purpose.
‘The overall activity appeared related to prostitution or drugs. The review also found that several customers suspected of participating in a sex trafficking ring associated with Biden continued to have what appeared to be an unusual movement of funds in their accounts.’
The British outlet added that “Wells Fargo investigators traced payments to suspected members of the prostitution ring back to a Hong Kong company.”
One suspected member Hunter sent money to was Ekaterina Pitula, the 39-year-old Russian owner of an Irvine, California, retail store Victoria Rossi, the SAR said.
In 2019, Investigators spotted 25 cash deposits by Pitula totaling $18,728 in her personal and business accounts, which were then wired to a Chinese account of a company called HECNY International Ltd, to another woman’s account in Russia, and to a man in Ukraine.
But the bigger issue is that Joe Biden appears to have helped his son pay for some of these potentially trafficked Russian sex workers. Some of Hunter’s hooker payments came just hours after he received thousands of dollars from his dad.
The Washington Examinershowed texts from January 2019 noting that Joe Biden sent Hunter $5,000 just before he got into a dispute with a prostitute he claimed he paid $10,000.
Comer added: “These women may be victims under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act and may also be afforded mandatory restitution pursuant to the Mandatory Victim Restitution Act.”
This entire sordid Hunter affair brings to memory former Democrat New York Governor Eliot Spitzer who resigned from office in 2008 after reports were published about his penchant for high priced call girls, some whom he paid to travel across state lines.
But Hunter takes everything to a whole new level.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America,
ANALYSIS – In his Twitter Spaces debut Tuesday night, called “Tucker on Twitter,” former Fox News host Tucker Carlson immediately accused Ukraine of being responsible for the catastrophic attack on the Nova Kakhovka dam in Southern Ukraine.
And he may be right.
Ukraine and Russia have routinely accused each other of shelling the dam, the hydroelectric station and the nearby Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.
Both sides have blamed the other for the attack, in what appears to be a war crime. Kyiv blamed Moscow for the “terrorist attack,” but the Kremlin claimed that Ukraine had struck the dam to impact Russian-controlled Crimea’s water supplies.
And, despite his spotty track record on speculation, in this case, he may be right. Or at least, the assumption that Russia is always the culprit is no longer valid.
Based on recent reporting, which I wrote about here, Ukraine may, in fact, have been responsible for the serious sabotage of the Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines in September 2022, which was long blamed on Russia.
This makes the always-blame Russia crowd look less credible. But that doesn’t mean Tucker’s always-blame-everyone-except-Russia approach is any better.
While on Fox, Tucker repeatedly blamed the United States and Joe Biden for being behind the Nord Stream attack.
On Feb. 24 he said: “So the Biden administration committed the single largest most profound act of industrial terrorism of sabotaging history. They blew up the Nord Stream pipeline …”
Thus, as far as we can tell, Biden knew about it beforehand but was unwilling or unable to do anything about it.
Tucker’s claims aren’t helped when he spouts pro-Russian talking points in his video, such as:
The Kakhovka dam was effectively Russian. It was built by the Russian government. It currently sits in Russian- controlled territory. The dam’s reservoir supplies water to Crimea, which has been for the last 240 years home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
Firstly, the ‘Soviets’ built the dam during the USSR, not the ‘Russians,’ and the USSR no longer exists. Secondly, it doesn’t matter how long Russia’s Black Sea Fleet was based in Crimea; it belongs to Ukraine because that’s what happened when the USSR dissolved in 1991 and Ukraine became independent.
Tucker’s Trumpian personal insults, like describing Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a “sweaty and rat-like comedian-turned-oligarch,” probably don’t help his credibility much either.
Tucker is on firmer ground when he argues that: “Blowing up the dam may be bad for Ukraine, but it hurts Russia more, and for precisely that reason, the Ukrainian government has considered destroying it.”
Especially when he cites a December report from The Washington Post in which a Ukrainian general spoke of using U.S.-made HIMARS launchers to “test strike” on the Kakhovka dam.
So, what are the facts?
The dam spanning the Dnipro River was breached on Tuesday, flooding swaths of territory and threatening crucial water supplies to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
At least 42,000 people and 1,500 square miles of land are at risk from the flooding caused by the destruction of the dam, likely slowing any potential Ukrainian military advance in the Dnipro River delta.
Much of the Dnipro River delta will become inaccessible for land operations, raising suspicions that Russia deliberately sabotaged the dam to prevent an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive.
However, the flooding has disproportionately affected the Russian-occupied side of the river.
The Kakhovka reservoir does supply Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast and the Crimea peninsula with fresh water.
Zelensky has said that the only way to destroy the dam is through mining and explosives and emphasized that Russian forces have now occupied the dam for over a year.
In a statement, Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command said, “Russian occupation troops blew up the dam” at Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region.
Blaming “Russian terrorists” for the attack, Zelensky said on Twitter that “the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam only confirms for the whole world that they must be expelled from every corner of Ukrainian land.”
In the end, Tucker may be right. Ukraine could have been behind the attack.
But he is far more credible when he is less bombastic and emphatic with his theories. Such as when he states:
So really, once the facts start coming in, it becomes much less of a mystery what might have happened to the dam, and a fair person would conclude that the Ukrainians probably blew it up, just as you would assume they blew up Nord Stream, the Russian natural gas pipeline last fall.
Tucker ended his new Twitter show by promising to be back with “much more, very soon.” I’m looking forward to it.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Michael J. McCord provide testimony at a Senate Armed Services Committee budget hearing, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., March 28, 2023. (DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley)
ANALYSIS – General Milley’s comments were beneath him, even if Trump provoked him. As I wrote about earlier, former President Donald Trump made typically inappropriate remarks when he implied outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, due to his back-channel calls to China’s top general, deserved the ‘DEATH’ penalty for treason (all caps were in Trump’s post on Truth Social).
While no one should take Trump’s bombastic social media posts too seriously, I did say Trump was wrong to add fuel to an already flammable political environment in our country with his comments. I have also criticized Milley for his many overreactions to Trump’s words and deeds during his time in office.
In doing so, Milley made Trump out to be something he wasn’t, placed himself smack in the middle of the Democrat Party narrative of Trump, and undermined the commander-in-chief and the presidency.
In my view Milley has also been at the very least deliberately and willfully ignorant of the extreme woke policies the Pentagon has been pushing. Still, despite all my jabs at Milley, I respected his decades of service to the uniform and our country.
It’s a shame then, that Milley chose to take the low road on his way out of the DC swamp, demeaning himself and the institution, while himself politicizing the military against Trump.
Gen. Milley retired this week after four years as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “We are unique among the world’s militaries,” the top military officer said at a retirement ceremony on Friday, noting that service members swear an oath to the Constitution.
“We don’t take an oath to a country. We don’t take an oath to a tribe. We don’t take an oath to a religion. We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.”
Readers will catch the parting shot at Mr. Trump. The media certainly did. And who could blame Gen. Milley for loathing Mr. Trump? Casually floating the idea of harming a U.S. military officer is conduct unworthy of a wannabe Commander in Chief.
Yet it was still dispiriting to hear Gen. Milley’s remarks about a former President, in public, while wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army. Mr. Trump is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. Like it or not, he commands political support in the country. That doubtless includes a large chunk of the enlisted ranks of the United States military services. The end-of-tour catharsis of a swipe at Mr. Trump isn’t worth polarizing the force over politics.
I agree wholeheartedly with the Journal. Milley knows better, and with his bitter and snarky jabs at Trump chose to take the low road rather than the high road on his way out.
Despite my great misgivings about the truly woke new Joint Chiefs Chairman, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, I also concur with the Journal’s parting words: “We hope that turning down the temperature of politics in the U.S. armed forces is a priority for the new chairman—perhaps behind only the military threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party.”
Message to Brown: We need an apolitical military leadership no matter the provocations from any political leader. That also means being non-ideological and non-woke.
It’s a shame Milley couldn’t see that while he was chairman, and also couldn’t just leave gracefully.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – It isn’t news that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has proven to be vulnerable to political pressure. Just look at the threat assessments produced in 2020 that single out ‘white supremacists’ as the ‘most lethal domestic terror threat’ in the U.S., despite their numbers being minuscule.
According to that report, self-described ‘white supremacists’ were responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks spread across more than a decade and a half – from 2000 to 2016.
Yes, that’s more murders than any other specific domestic extremist group but let’s get real.
There are more murders in Chicago in one weekend than the entire number of white supremacist killings nationwide in those sixteen years.
This DHS report, though produced under the last year of Trump’s term, like many others recently by different federal agencies, like the FBI, is part of a wider political campaign that conflates the relatively small number of white supremacists, and other so-called right-wing extremists, with the tens of millions of mainstream conservatives and Trump supporters.
And we can now add traditional Catholics to the feds’ “most wanted” list.
The FBI recently produced a memo by its Richmond, Virginia, Field Office that was leaked on Jan. 23, 2023.
That memo, according to a group of 20 GOP state attorney generals, “identifies ‘radical-traditionalist Catholic[s]’ as potential ‘racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.’”
In their letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Fox News reported, the AGs told the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) to “desist from investigating and surveilling Americans who have done nothing more than exercise their natural and constitutional right to practice their religion in a manner of their choosing.”
The AGS also asked that the DOJ and the FBI “reveal to the American public the extent to which they have engaged in such activities.”
The AGs letter notes that the FBI memorandum deploys “alarmingly detailed theological distinctions to distinguish between the Catholics whom the FBI deems acceptable, and those it does not.”
It’s in this context of politicized and weaponized federal law enforcement agencies, that this latest report of DHS malfeasance deserves special attention.
Specifically, we are talking about the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis (OIA), whose leadership, according to Politico, was called “shady” and run “like a corrupt government.”
For years it has been operating a secretive domestic-intelligence gathering program that many DHS employees have complained may be illegal.
The OIA’s Overt Human Intelligence Collection Program allows DHS officials to bypass lawyers and seek intelligence interviews with individuals being held in local jails, federal prisons, and immigrant detention centers.
While most law-abiding U.S. citizens may not care much about this DHS target group, remember this is just another example of how elements of DHS appear corrupt, and play fast and loose with the law, and all our civil liberties.
But the Department’s politicization is probably the biggest danger according to documents obtained by Politico.
The ability of DHS to be impartial and withstand caving to political pressure was also a major concern, documents show.
An internal analysis during the Trump administration found a “significant number of respondents cited concerns with politicization of analytic products and/or the perceptions of undue influence that may compromise the integrity of the work performed by employees. This concern touches on analytic topics, the review process, and the appropriate safeguards in place to protect against undue influence.”
The document adds that “a number of respondents expressed concerns/challenges with the quality and effectiveness of I&A senior leadership” such as the “inability to resist political pressure.”
“The workforce has a general mistrust of leadership resulting from orders to conduct activities they perceive to be inappropriate, bureaucratic, or political,” the document continues.
It is clearly time to rein in rogue elements at DHS and FBI, but also to clean house at the top levels of both organizations, and DOJ.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – The war against woke is raging across the nation. From school districts to corporations and even the Pentagon, conservative Republicans are on the front lines to get America to wake up to what woke really is.
And it’s not the dictionary definition of the term.
As Florida Governor Ron DeSantis battles Disney over its woke policies, and both he and the Texas legislature dismantle neo-Marxist Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives statewide, liberals still try to focus on the textbook description of woke, as being ‘socially conscious’ rather than the radical concept it is.
This, as a growing majority of Americans are supporting the war against woke, and saying that if you “go woke, you go broke.” Budweiser is certainly learning this lesson right now.
Bud Light is facing a massive boycott over its partnership with transgender influencer (aka man who is trying to look like a woman) Dylan Mulvaney. And thankfully, it’s hurting the company.
But it isn’t the only one – Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Miller Lite are also being hit by outrage over their woke advertising.
Still, in a Newsweek piece, the writer, Aleks Phillips, makes every effort to focus on the dictionary definition of woke, even in a report about how their recent poll shows that Millennials favor the expression “go woke, go broke.”
The term ‘woke’ is a colloquialism that has emerged in recent years. Its definition is to be “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice),” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
That’s the thoroughly watered-down dictionary definition. More specifically woke is an adjective derived from African American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning being “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination.”
But that too is less than meets the eye.
It’s a call to social justice activism. And social justice is a code for socialism.
Even so, the Newsweek poll contradicts the popular narrative that millennials are the most socially conscious group who care most about so-called ‘social justice’ issues.
The poll found that of those who were aware of the phrase “go woke, go broke,” an average of 71% of 25-44-year-olds agreed with the idea.
That’s a big chunk of adult folks who don’t seem to like woke.
Phillips later adds an earlier Newsweek reference where a clueless (and lefty) Kelly O’Keefe, founding partner of Brand Federation, said it was “really a minority on the right” that was “concerned about even the term ‘woke’.”
“They’ve essentially weaponized the term ‘woke’—which has a dictionary definition that almost no one could disagree with: standing up for those who have been misrepresented, poorly represented etc.,” he added.
But neither the leftist politicians and activists forcing the new wokeness, nor those suffering under the policies, see the term in such an innocuous manner.
Being woke isn’t about simply being socially aware. Not by a long shot.
It is a simple code word for a slew of policies based on a neo-Marxist ideology.
These policies include pushing a radical transgender agenda on our children, racial preferences, and discrimination in favor of minorities, and against whites (in schools, government and businesses), and outright socialism under the guise of ‘equity.’
To be clear – equity is the opposite of equality. It means the forceful creation of equal results rather than equality under the law, or equal opportunity. That is the textbook definition of socialism.
And more Americans, including Millennials, are seeing through the ‘textbook definition” of woke charade, and calling it what it is – a dangerous ideology – especially damaging to your corporate bottom line.
The outrage at woke brands like Bud Light has been sold by liberals as a reaction by a small minority of conservatives. But as noted earlier, the dramatic decline in Bud Light sales suggests that the boycott has widespread support.
Newsweek‘s poll also suggests that the opposition to everything woke isn’t just a preserve of conservatives anymore, it’s an increasingly American thing.
Phillips notes that:
A majority of both those who voted for Donald Trump in 2020 and those who voted for Joe Biden agreed with the sentiment of “go woke, go broke,” it found, with 71 percent of Trump supporters agreeing and 62 percent of Biden supporters.
So even a majority of liberal Biden supporters are coming around to see woke for the extremist ideology it is. And that’s not good for Democrats leaders who still seem hell-bent on pushing that radical agenda.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
