Oh, the sweet irony.
Democrat Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s latest venture in Hollywood is a complete and utter disaster.
Watch Amanda break down the situation below:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Florida law enforcement officers apprehended a teenager for threatening voters with a machete.
Caleb James Williams, 18, was arrested after two women called the Neptune Beach Police Department when he allegedly brandished the weapon against them at an early voting polling station.
Authorities say he stood inside the parking lot posing in pictures with the machete with several other male juveniles who were chanting in support of former President Trump.
“The investigation revealed that the group arrived to protest and antagonize the opposing political side,” Police Chief Michael Key told reporters at a briefing, saying the incident, which comes amid rising fears of political violence surrounding the 2024 election, “escalated into a verbal disturbance.”
Williams, the only individual over 18, was also the only one arrested. He was charged with aggravated assault on a person 65 years of age or older and improper exhibition of a firearm or dangerous weapon.
Law enforcement said the other individuals’ actions did not warrant criminal charges.
“The group was there for no other reason but for ill intentions to cause a disturbance,” Key said. “This is not an incident of solely a First Amendment protected right, but rather one where they were simply there to cause a raucous. Voting in our country is one of the most sacred and protected rights we have. Ensuring everyone’s right to vote is crucial, and it will not be impeded upon in Neptune Beach or Duval County.”
Williams was given a GPS monitor and freed on $55,006.00 bail according to Mediaite.
Fears of violence or other forms of voter intimidation have been running rampant in the months leading up to Election Day. (RELATED: Woman Arrested For Alleged Terroristic Threats Against Trump Ahead Of Penn State Rally)
A Pennsylvania woman was arrested earlier this week after allegedly making threats against former President Donald Trump before a planned rally at Penn State University.
Paul J. Gavenonis, 74, a registered Democrat and resident of Spring Township, reportedly made alarming comments while purchasing a parking pass at the university’s transportation office. According to witnesses, Gavenonis, who identifies as transgender, expressed hostility toward Trump, stating, “I hate Donald Trump. I’d like to shoot that guy,” while making a gesture that resembled cocking a gun.
The remarks prompted the transportation office staff to alert authorities. According to The Daily Wire, Gavenonis also allegedly referenced climbing a building in the area but expressed concern over being spotted by students if carrying a firearm.
Article Published With The Permission of American Liberty News
ANALYSIS – From the beginning, conspiracies surrounded the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021. Stunned conservatives couldn’t believe Republicans caused that mayhem. Some called it a deliberate false flag operation by the feds to entrap innocent Trump supporters and launch a massive witch hunt.
Both last two things did occur.
Meanwhile, the Democrats and media called the afternoon event an attempted coup and later more steadily ‘the insurrection.’
It was neither. But it also wasn’t a well-orchestrated false flag operation. The truth is just as bad but less planned.
I was at the Capitol on Jan 6 as a security contractor for a foreign TV news crew, and I condemned the violence the next day. I wrote that the, at times, violent riot wasn’t a coup, or an insurrection but the violence was criminal behavior, and should be punished.
I also noted that the rioters all appeared to be passionate Trump supporters, and not likely a false flag operation by the feds, or ANTIFA infiltrators.
Since then, I have defended many of the peaceful protesters unfairly caught up in the FBI dragnet and harshly charged for minor nonviolent crimes.
I have also written about the large number of undercover police and federal agents and their informants since identified at the Capitol that day. And I have noted how the Democrats in charge of the House and Senate that day refused National Guard support, as did the Democrat mayor of DC.
At least until it was too late.
Now, former Capitol Hill Police Chief Steven Sund has added his insight into the events. And he claims that it seems as if they wanted something to happen.
Sund resigned from his post shortly after the riots. He had been chief of the Capitol Police since 2019 and had served as a police officer for more than 30 years in total.
Newsmax reported on his untelevised interview with Tucker Carlson taped before Carlson was fired from Fox News:
“Everything appears to be a cover-up,” Sund told Carlson. “I’m not a conspiracy theorist … but when you look at the information and intelligence they had, the military had, it’s all watered down. I’m not getting intelligence, I’m denied any support from National Guard in advance. I’m denied National Guard while we’re under attack, for 71 minutes …”
… “Could there possibly be actually … they kind of wanted something to happen? It’s not a far stretch to begin to think that. It’s sad when you start putting everything together and thinking about the way this played out … what was their end goal?”
Sund told Carlson he believes that Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had intelligence of what was coming on Jan. 6 but failed to communicate it and subsequently covered it up.
“If I was allowed to do my job as the chief we wouldn’t be here; this didn’t have to happen,” he said.
Carlson also said on Russel Brand’s podcast that Sund told him: ‘Oh yeah, that crowd was filled with federal agents.’
This all fits neatly with much of what I have noted previously. But while I blamed Democrat leaders for holding back needed support to defend the Capitol for other political reasons, Sund seems to believe they held it back because they started hoping for a big chaotic show they could then turn into a political circus.
And the chaos ensued, and so did their circus.
Sadly, Donald Trump and some of his supporters fell for the trap.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – The separate disclosures of highly classified materials found in three different locations tied to Joe Biden, and his delay in making public the first discovery in November seem to be souring even the most ardent Bidenistas.
Per the New York Post, Biden’s loyal lap dog, Attorney General Garland, “solidifying his reputation as a bitter partisan hack, kept secret the first Biden document finding of Nov. 2 until after the midterm elections and seemed to be hiding each new finding until it was forced into the open.”
Biden’s prior harsh words about Trump “how could anyone be that irresponsible?” with classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago in August are now coming back to haunt him.
And the president’s responses to questions about the documents, like dismissing the risk to national security, because, you know, they were in a locked garage next to his prized Corvette, have only made things worse.
And so has his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, whose avoidance, refusal to answer, dissembling, and nonsensical doublespeak, has become a serious sore spot among White House correspondents, not to mention the public at large.
The New York Post reports:
When reports emerged last Monday that multiple classified documents were found in an office Biden used after leaving the White House as vice president, the propaganda media circled the wagons around him by insisting he’s no Donald Trump. They had a point — up to a point.
But when reports two days later said a second batch of supposedly secret papers was found in Biden’s Delaware garage, the wall of media protection showed some cracks as the differences between the presidents’ cases narrowed. And when an additional classified page was found in Biden’s Delaware library, and a special prosecutor was appointed Thursday to investigate him, the defenders made a hasty retreat.
What makes this far more than just a mishandled classified documents scandal though, is the two locations where the materials were found.
Both connect to far bigger scandals — Chinese influence on the Biden family, corruption, pay-to-play schemes, and Hunter Biden.
One – The Penn Biden Center – (well a closet in an office at this Center’s office space). This is the essentially made-up entity created to pay Biden $900,000 for doing almost nothing after leaving the White House as VP in 2017.
But beyond the sleaziness of that deal, the University of Pennsylvania got $54.6 million in donations from Communist China from 2014 through June 2019, including $23.1 million in anonymous gifts starting in 2016.
The Post reported: “The Penn Biden Center is a dark-money, revolving-door nightmare where foreign competitors like China donated millions of dollars to the university so that they could have access to future high-ranking officials,” said Tom Anderson, director of the Government Integrity Project at the Virginia-based National Legal and Policy Center.
Was some of that money siphoned off to pay Joe? Was this a result of payoffs tied to Hunter’s Chinese business deals? And, did China gain access to the documents found there, or others ones not found?
Two – Biden’s beach house. Hunter lives in the Delaware house, raising concerns he might have seen the documents, which were not secured beyond being in a locked garage next to Joe’s Corvette, while others were apparently found in the house itself.
Did Hunter have access to these highly classified documents? Did he disclose the contents to his Chinese colleagues?
We may soon have answers to these important questions. Especially since they have resurfaced now just the aggressive new GOP-led house begins its investigations into the Bidens.
The timing could not be worse for Biden.
As the POST writes: “Long before the document bombshells, GOP leaders vowed to follow the millions upon millions of dollars that Hunter Biden and Jim Biden, Joe’s brother, got abroad from selling access to Joe. Based on the contents of Hunter’s laptop, it’s certain that Joe benefited from foreign payments.”
As Rep. James Comer of Kentucky put it, “We’re not investigating Hunter Biden. We’re investigating Joe Biden.”
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
It is not hyperbole to speak of a golden age. The phrase has been cheapened by pundits and prematurely invoked by partisans, but now it fits. Something has shifted in the tectonic plates of American politics, culture, and global influence. And unlike prior inflection points, this one is not merely symbolic. It is empirical. Measurable. Concrete. We are not gazing at a mirage, but witnessing a renaissance. The agent of this change is President Donald J. Trump.
In 2019, the New York Times launched the 1619 Project with a simple proposition: that the true founding of America occurred not with the Declaration of Independence, but with the arrival of the first African slaves. What followed was a coordinated attempt to reframe the country as irredeemably racist, its history irreparably stained. Under the Biden administration, this view metastasized. Patriotic symbols were treated as threats. The FBI circulated training documents labeling common American flags as markers of “domestic extremism.” Catholics were surveilled, not for terrorism, but for attending Latin Mass. And over 800 January 6 defendants were held for years, many for crimes more symbolic than violent. Meanwhile, across the country, statues of Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson were torn down by mobs or removed by local governments in the dead of night. Schools named after America’s founders were renamed for lesser figures more palatable to progressive tastes. Military bases, long-standing monuments to American history, were stripped of their names and given bland, ideologically approved replacements. The point was not justice. It was deterrence. It was ideological conformity enforced by state power.
Then Trump returned.
His re-election, certified on January 6, 2025, and his inauguration on January 20, marked not merely the return of a man, but the restoration of a nation. Within 100 days, Trump had secured the border, reversing years of open-border chaos. Migration flows dropped to levels unseen since the early 1990s. His decisive action became a global model. From England to Romania, political movements took note. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK surged. The AfD in Germany crept into double digits. Marine Le Pen’s party is now the frontrunner in France. Elites sneered, but voters saw results.
At home, Trump wielded his mandate like a scalpel. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, began a forensic audit of the administrative state. Within weeks, billions in funding were clawed back from useless programs and slush funds hidden in alphabet agencies. USAID, long a globalist piggy bank, is being dismantled. The FBI, purged of its partisan leadership, is now focused on actual crime. DEI offices, once metastasizing across government and corporate America like ideological tumors, were defunded. Wokeness, once a cultural juggernaut, is now a punchline.
The military, gutted by social engineering and recruitment failures under Biden, is now over capacity. Credit belongs not only to President Trump’s message of strength and national pride, but also to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who moved swiftly to eliminate identity-based promotions and reinstate merit as the lodestar of advancement. Hegseth’s decision to end the inclusion of transgender individuals in combat roles and restore a focus on unit cohesion and battlefield readiness was met with predictable outrage from progressive quarters, but it worked. Military service is now admired again. Recruiters have lines out the door. The stars and stripes, once seen as fraught, are fashionable again. The American flag, once viewed with suspicion on elite campuses, is now trending in TikTok videos of patriotic Gen Z influencers. Coolness, that elusive cultural currency, has shifted.
Internationally, Trump has turned the tide. China is back at the negotiating table, offering market access in exchange for tariff relief. For the first time in decades, Beijing blinked. Iran, isolated and bleeding economically, has returned to disarmament talks. The Abraham Accords have expanded to include Oman and Tunisia. Just today, Trump announced a new trade deal with the United Kingdom that will open British markets to American farmers, slash tariffs, and generate billions in revenue. It is the first of more than a dozen similar deals being negotiated with U.S. trading partners, all aimed at restoring prosperity and security to the American heartland. American prestige, once bartered away for UN resolutions and climate pledges, has been restored. Even the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church’s College of Cardinals seems to have acknowledged this new moral order.
On May 8, 2025, for the first time in 2,000 years of Catholic history, an American was elected pope. The symbolism is staggering. For a Church whose demographic heart now beats in the Western Hemisphere, the election of an American Pontiff signals a new center of gravity. It is not just Rome that looks to America. It is the world.
America’s 250th anniversary is now on the horizon. The semiquincentennial of 1776 looms not as a melancholy remembrance of faded glory, but as a celebration of resurgence. The events planned for 2026 reflect this. Trump has ordered a return to original principles: liberty, individual rights, national pride. Not apologies. Not guilt. Not equivocations. But more than that, he intends to use the anniversary as a global advertisement. A demonstration of American resolve. A reminder to our enemies that this is a nation of strength, unity, and enduring purpose. And a signal to our allies that America, once written off as declining or distracted, is once again the anchor of the free world. A nation built on the proposition that all men are created equal should not teach its children that they are born guilty because of their skin or their flag. Trump understands this, and his policies reflect it.
Consider economics. In just over three months, Trump has attracted over $8 trillion in foreign investment back to American shores, revitalizing the heartland. Factories are reopening in Ohio, chip manufacturers are building plants in Texas, and manufacturing is surging with new, higher-paying jobs for American workers. Trump’s commitment to the American farmer is unwavering, with policies boosting agriculture, creating robust farming jobs, and safeguarding rural communities. AI and crypto, once fields dominated by offshore interests and regulatory chaos, are now firmly within American jurisdiction. His administration is protecting America’s supply chains from global threats, ensuring self-reliance in critical industries. Trump’s policy is clear: innovation without apology, regulation with reason, and a fierce dedication to bringing back manufacturing, mining, drilling, and farming. He is not afraid of technology or competition but is resolute against decay, acting decisively to secure prosperity for American workers and farmers.
And yet, symbols matter. Culture matters. Which is why the upcoming twin spectacles of the FIFA World Cup and the Summer Olympics cannot be dismissed as fluff. Trump’s personal involvement in securing these events was not mere vanity. It was strategy. It was signal. During his first term, Trump courted FIFA President Gianni Infantino with unusual persistence. Infantino credited Trump’s enthusiasm as pivotal to the U.S. winning the bid. “You are part of the FIFA team now,” he said in the Oval Office. That statement, once treated as flattery, now seems prophetic.
The 2026 World Cup will be the longest in history: 104 matches across 16 U.S. cities. It will not be a tournament. It will be a coronation. The same applies to the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Trump personally engaged with the IOC before even taking office in 2016, offering federal guarantees for security and logistics. He met with IOC President Thomas Bach in 2017. The result? A winning bid. The message is clear: if America is back, it must also be seen. And what better global stage than the Olympics?
Critics will scoff. They always do. They did in 2016. They did in 2020. They did in 2024. They were wrong every time. Trump’s critics have spent years arguing that he is a fluke, a menace, an aberration. What they have missed, and what they still refuse to see, is that Trump is not the outlier. He is the correction. He is the pendulum swinging back. And this time, it is not swinging timidly. It is swinging with force.
What makes this era a golden age is not merely policy success or economic growth. It is coherence. It is the re-alignment of institutions with the people they purport to serve. It is the re-legitimization of patriotism. It is the death of the idea that to love one’s country is to be blind, or bigoted, or bitter. America, like Rome at its height, is asserting its identity not through conquest, but through clarity. Through excellence. Through example.
The left has spent years insisting America was founded on sin, sustained by oppression, and systemically incapable of redemption. Trump has answered not with theory, but with action. He has rebuilt the house while others argued about whether it deserved to stand. And now, the house is full again. Full of workers. Full of industry. Full of flags. Full of hope.
That is what a golden age looks like. And for the first time in a long time, the gold is real.
Sponsored by the John Milton Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to helping independent journalists overcome formidable challenges in today’s media landscape and bring crucial stories to you.
ANALYSIS – I have long argued that Joe Biden’s border crisis is absolutely self-created, and it has become increasingly obvious that he in fact has essentially opened the border.
And worse this is absolutely intentional.
There can be no other explanation.
Biden’s shameful denials that there is no border crisis show that he is either delusional or a pathological liar.
Or both.
But his appointment of Kamala Harris, who can barely find Mexico on a map, as his border czar, also speaks volumes.
Neither has visited the border since coming to office two years ago.
Yet the illegal migrant numbers and incidents are only mushrooming in magnitude.
And getting worse every day.
The border is going from disastrous to cataclysmic.
And it’s not just incompetence or bad policy.
It is part of a plan.
Mark Morgan, former acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection says Team Biden “intentionally unsecured” the southern border because “they see a perceived political benefit from open borders.”
In a recent podcast with the Heritage Foundation, Morgan said of the border:
It’s a total disaster, simply getting worse. And I think what’s important is we really need to compare it to the last year under the Trump administration. Now, look, this is not a Right or Left thing for me. This is about factual data.
So if you look in the last fiscal year under the Trump administration, I think we were around 400,000 total encounters. What we saw the first fiscal year under the Biden administration, as you said, over 2 million. This last fiscal year, we had 2.7 million total encounters. In the first 23, now almost 24 months under this administration, we’ve seen over 4.7 million total encounters with another 1.2 million “got-aways.” So we’re actually getting close to 6 million total encounters, plus got-aways, in the first 24 months of this administration.
Those data points, Virginia, alone are staggering. It’s the worst self-inflicted border crisis we’ve ever seen on our southern border and our lifetime and the data is undeniable.
In response to a question about what the future may hold for the border under Team Biden’s remaining two years, Morgan said worst case things stay the same.
Horrible.
And that is unacceptable. As he added :
It’s insanity. It’s absolutely unsustainable. And again, it’s jeopardizing every aspect of our nation’s safety and national security. We cannot allow this to happen.GAND
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and his wife, Katie Miller, have welcomed their fourth child, adding another member to one of the most prominent families in the Trump administration.
While details surrounding the birth have remained private, congratulations quickly poured in from friends, colleagues, and supporters celebrating the newest addition to the Miller family.
With four children now keeping the household busy, Miller may find that negotiating Capitol Hill is easier than negotiating bedtime.
The news also comes during what seems to be an ongoing White House baby boom.
Just last month, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt welcomed her second child, daughter Viviana “Vivi” Riccio, with husband Nicholas Riccio. Leavitt announced the joyful arrival on social media, sharing that her family’s hearts had “instantly exploded with love” after welcoming their baby girl.
Leavitt’s son, Niko, was promoted to big brother, while the youngest press secretary in American history has temporarily stepped away from the briefing room to enjoy life in the newborn bubble.
Now, the Miller family is celebrating a similar milestone.
For all the attention Washington places on politics, moments like these offer a reminder that many of the administration’s most recognizable faces are also parents juggling diapers, school schedules, and family responsibilities alongside their public duties.
In fact, supporters have increasingly noted that President Trump’s team includes a number of young families raising children while serving in high-pressure government roles. Whether it’s Leavitt balancing motherhood and press briefings or the Millers welcoming their fourth child, family life remains a central part of the Trump administration’s story.
As the Miller family settles into life with its newest member, supporters across the country are sending their congratulations and best wishes.
From all of us, congratulations to Stephen and Katie Miller on their newest blessing.
A nonprofit legal watchdog has filed a federal lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency, seeking documents and records over an election-year government effort to cover up reporting seen as damaging to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
In particular, the group seeks information on the agency’s role in a letter signed by 51 intelligence officials that falsely claimed the Russian government “planted” evidence of criminal activity on a laptop owned by Biden’s middle-aged son Hunter.
Judicial Watch filed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the CIA for all “communications of the spy agency’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB) regarding an October 19, 2020, email request to review and ‘clear’ a letter signed by 51 former intelligence community officials characterizing the Hunter Biden laptop story as having ‘all the earmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign,’” the group announced.
“The Deep State CIA, it seems, engaged in election interference and a political operation against the American people to help Joe Biden and hurt Trump,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And now the CIA is ignoring FOIA law to cover up its role in the scandal, censoring and suppressing the Hunter Biden/Joe Biden laptop story just before the presidential election.”
In October 2020, the New York Post broke a bombshell story revealing that Hunter Biden’s laptop, which he abandoned at a Delaware computer shop, contained photographs of Hunter Biden engaged in drug use and using prostitutes, as well as emails describing what appear to be shady foreign business deals.
Fearing the story could damage Biden’s presidential campaign, social media companies attempted to suppress the sharing of the Post’s reporting.
The Biden campaign also reached out to intelligence officials, including the CIA and FBI, seeking their help in falsely discrediting the story.
“In a May 10, 2023, report the House Judiciary Committee revealed that on October 19, 2020, three days before the second presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Democrat candidate Joe Biden, then-Acting CIA Director Michael Morell sent the PCRB the finalized letter for review, calling it a ‘rush job,’ and quickly secured its approval,” Judicial Watch reports.
Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit after the CIA failed to respond to a May 11, 2023, FOIA request for:
Records and communications of the Prepublication Classification Review Board, Central Intelligence Agency, including emails, email chains, email attachments, text messages, cables, voice recordings, correspondence, statements, letters, memoranda, reports, presentations, notes, or other form of record, regarding an October 19, 2020, email request to review and “clear” a letter involving the Hunter Biden laptop story potentially having Russian involvement or being a Russian disinformation plot.
An investigation by the House Judiciary Committee and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence found that the CIA, or a CIA employee, may have helped the Biden campaign find signers for the false letter.
One former CIA employee, David Cariens, reveals that while speaking with the PCRB in October 2020 to review materials for his memoir, a CIA employee “asked” him to sign the false letter.
“When the person in charge of reviewing the book called to say it was approved with no changes, I was told about the draft letter,” said Cariens.
“The person asked me if I would be willing to sign. . . . After hearing the letter’s contents, and the qualifiers in it such as, “We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement . . .’ I agreed to sign,” Cariens said.
“If accurate, this information raises fundamental concerns about the role of the CIA in helping to falsely discredit allegations about the Biden family in the weeks before the 2020 presidential election,” Judicial Watch notes.
Another former CIA officer, Marc Polymeropoulos, criticized the CIA’s involvement in his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee in the following exchange:
Q. Does what [Former CIA official David Cariens] described there, that interaction with the [Prepublication Classification Review Board], sound like a quid pro quo to you?
A. I can’t comment on this. This is—to me, this is something that the [Prepublication Classification Review Board] in my experience would never engage in something like that. They are just straightforward back and forth in terms of approval. The idea they would have a comment on any other thing that they were working on, that to me is not even close to what I’ve experienced with them.
Q. Does that concern you?
A. If it’s true, it would concern me, for sure. But I just—I have a hard time believing that occurred. If it did, that’s incredibly unprofessional.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk. It first appeared in American Liberty News.
READ NEXT: Longtime ACU/CPAC Leader David Keene Speaks Out After Vice Chair’s Resignation
Is it time to cancel PBS? Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt is leading the charge and says it’s time to stop using taxpayer dollars to fund controversial programming to indoctrinate kids.
Watch Amanda explain the situation below:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – No surprise to me. I ran against this disgrace in 2010 in the GOP primary. I highlighted his obscene corruption, but much of the GOP establishment backed him to the hilt.
In the ‘you can’t make this up’ category, the discredited GOP ex-congressman David Rivera has been arrested by federal officials for conspiring to lobby on behalf of America’s Latin American nemesis, socialist Venezuela.
This, despite being the GOP’s South Florida poster boy for ‘anti-communism,’ an image he assiduously cultivated for years to curry favor with the Miami conservative base and deflect from his myriad failings.
When I ran against Rivera in the South Florida 2010 GOP congressional primary as a Tea Party outsider, my motto was ‘the Marine vs. the Machine’ due to Rivera’s lifelong ties to the GOP establishment.
During that race, Rivera, a termed-out state representative, got a massive number of Republican congressional leaders to back him, even though I was beating the drum about his corruption and lack of integrity.
Rivera won that primary, in part because a politically unknown woman, and possibly Democrat-linked spoiler, named Marili Cancio jumped into the race and siphoned off about 12% of the GOP voters I would have gotten.
Rivera then went on to win the congressional seat.
However, his corruption finally caught up with him and he lost his reelection to an equally distasteful Democrat – Joe Garcia.
That was the first time the GOP had lost that seat in 30 years, and Rivera became radioactive to most in the GOP afterward.
Thankfully, Democrat Joe only lasted one term himself.
But back to Rivera’s arrest.
CNBC reports that Rivera:
A former Miami congressman who signed a $50 million consulting contract with Venezuela’s socialist government was arrested Monday on charges of money laundering and representing a foreign government without registering.
Scandals have marred Rivera since he represented parts of the Miami metro area in Congress a decade ago.
The eight-count indictment against Rivera and lobbyist Esther Nuhfer chronicles the nefarious duo’s alleged dealings with Venezuela to help revive its state-run oil company.
The investigation stretches back to the start of the Trump administration when Rivera reportedly arranged meetings with an unnamed senator and a congressman as part of a conspiracy to ease tensions between the United States and South America’s socialist holdout. The unsavory politician ultimately hoped to lift sanctions on a regime universally reviled in South Florida.
Rivera began his efforts after signing a $50 million contract. Per Bloomberg, the indictment lays out the reputed method by which he unlawfully enriched himself:
The Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, Delcy Rodriguez, directed executives at CITGO, a Texas-based unit of PDVSA, to draw up a consulting contract with Rivera’s company, according to the indictment.
The contract was between Interamerican and PDV USA, which prosecutors allege was used by CITGO to facilitate “special projects” ordered by executives of the state-owned parent company.
Additional charges against Rivera and Nuhfer include conspiracy to commit offense against the US, conspiracy to commit money laundering and engaging in transactions in criminally deprived property. Nuhfer couldn’t immediately be located for comment.
At one point, note prosecutors, Rivera received a $5 million payment from PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-run oil company and personal piggy bank for its corrupt socialist leaders, in an account at Gazprom Bank in Russia.
Thankfully Rivera’s illegal pro-Venezuela outreach effort ultimately failed, as Trump in 2019 recognized opposition lawmaker Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate leader and imposed stiff oil sanctions on the OPEC nation in a bid to unseat Maduro.
The U.S. Marshals Service said Rivera bailed out of jail Monday afternoon after making an initial appearance in Atlanta federal court.
Even more concerning, though, the Associated Press’ initial report detailed how Rivera attempted to arrange a meeting between a prominent female Trump campaign adviser-turned-White House “counselor” and a pro-Maduro businessman on his jet in Miami on June 27, 2017.
Kellyanne Conaway was in Miami that day to headline a Republican Party fundraiser. At the time, she served the Trump White House as the Senior Counselor to the President.
This wouldn’t surprise me either, as Conway was very close to Rivera, and may have been behind efforts to keep me from entering the Trump administration during his term, at the behest of Rivera.
Trump’s hiring of Conway, who I admired and knew casually from years in conservative circles, was one of the reasons I believed Trump could win and helped convince me to back him.
Sadly, it seems Conway’s ties to slimy Rivera may have slimed her too.
All this should remind us all to be very careful when blindly backing politicians, no matter who they are.
Opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
