In the wake of the tragic Covenant Christian Elementary School shooting there has been a renewed push to employ school safety officers throughout the country…
What do you think?
Watch Amanda explain the controversy below:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
The Manhattan grand jury weighing an indictment against former President Donald Trump will reportedly not meet again until late April, delaying any potential charges.
A source close to the matter told POLITICO that the grand jury investigating the alleged hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels isn’t expected to hear evidence in the case for the next month largely due to a previously scheduled hiatus.
However, District Attorney Alvin Bragg can adjust the schedule and ask the grand jury to reconvene if prosecutors want the panel to meet during previously planned breaks.
POLITICO reports:
The grand jury, which heard testimony in the Trump case on Monday, isn’t meeting Wednesday and is expected to examine evidence in a separate matter Thursday, the person said. The grand jury, which typically meets Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, is scheduled to consider another case next week on Monday and Wednesday, the person said, and isn’t expected to meet Thursday due to the Passover holiday.
The following two weeks are set to be a hiatus that was scheduled when the grand jury was first convened in January, the person said.
The unprecedented indictment hanging over Trump’s head stems from a $130,000 hush money payment he allegedly made to porn actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Prosecutors are expected to charge Trump with a felony by arguing that the alleged crime was committed to hide an illegal campaign contribution. The potential problem for Trump centers around how his company reimbursed former attorney Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to related charges and served time in prison.
The payment to Daniels was listed as a legal expense and Trump’s company cited a retainer agreement with Cohen. The retainer agreement did not exist and the reimbursement was not related to any legal services from Cohen, thus setting up a potential misdemeanor criminal charge of falsifying business records. A report by NBC News said that Trump personally signed several of the checks to Cohen while he was serving as president.
Prosecutors can elevate the misdemeanor to a felony if they can prove that Trump’s “‘intent to defraud’ included an intent to commit or conceal a second crime.”
Prosecutors argue that the second crime is that the $130,000 hush payment was an improper donation to the Trump campaign because the money was used to stop a story to benefit his presidential campaign.
ANALYSIS – The Musk ‘Twitter Files’ exposé showing links between the federal government, prominent Democrat politicians and unconstitutional censorship at Twitter, has been mostly ignored or dismissed by the establishment media.
However, the Twitter censorship collusion saga is being pursued on Capitol Hill. And apparently, the issue is getting a bit hot for the increasingly Nixonian Team Biden.
So hot that Joe Biden’s IRS reportedly sent an IRS agent to harass and intimidate the long-time Rolling Stones reporter who has been doggedly pursuing this scandal since Elon Musk gave him access to a boatload of internal Twitter documents.
An IRS agent suspiciously visited Matt Taibbi’s home the same day he was testifying before congress’ Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, according to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan.
Why would Team Biden be worried?
Well, Taibbi found in the Twitter Files that Big Tech has turned “the internet into an instrument of censorship and social control. [And] Unfortunately, our own government appears to be playing a lead role.”
Plus, the timing of the IRS visit couldn’t be more sinister.
Michael Shellenberger tweeted:
While@mtaibbi & I were testifying before Congress on the weaponization of the federal government, an IRS agent showed up at his house. What an amazing coincidence
Musk replied to the tweet, saying simply: “That’s very odd.”
However, as the Blaze reported:
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) reckoned it was more than odd, tweeting, “This absolutely stinks to high heaven. The IRS has a troubling history of targeting the political enemies of Democrats. The IRS should NEVER be in the business of harassing the American people.”
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, responded, “Gangster government.”
Jordan is demanding an explanation over the suspiciously timed IRS visit.
It appears Team Biden is weaponizing the IRS to intimidate a witness testifying about how Team Biden is weaponizing the government.
The Blaze continued:
Jordan noted that this interpretation may be apt in light of the “IRS’s history as a tool of government abuse” — citing its hounding of conservatives during the Obama administration” — and the “hostile reaction to Mr. Taibbi’s reporting among left-wing activists.”
A federal agent appeared at Taibbi’s New Jersey home on March 9 and left a note, according to an editorial in The Wall Street Journal.
The note reportedly instructed Taibbi to call the IRS four days later.
When Taibbi did call, an agent told him his 2018 and 2021 tax returns had both been rejected due to identity theft concerns. Yet, Taibbi sees no reason for that visit, nor the alleged rejection which wasn’t communicated before to him or his accountant.
And since when does the IRS send an agent to your house to leave a note over a simple tax return issue?
Jordan called this an apparent executive branch “attempt to intimidate a witness before Congress.” On Monday he sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel and the Department of Treasury on Monday demanding answers.
And he needs answers. As the Wall Street Journal noted:
Mr. Jordan is right to want to see documents and communications relating to the Taibbi visit. The fear of many Americans is that, flush with its new $80 billion in funding from Congress, the IRS will unleash its fearsome power against political opponents. Mr. Taibbi deserves to know why the agency decided to pursue him with a very strange house call.
This type of government harassment should worry all Americans, and its at the heart of why the GOP Congress has created the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
We all need answers.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – The communist regime in China raided a private U.S. investigations company’s office in Beijing on March 20.
This brazen, and likely unlawful, act against the New York-based due diligence firm, the Mintz Group, follows the FBI raid last fall of an illegal Chinese overseas ‘police station’ in New York City.
And some see it as a heavy-handed, and non-symmetrical retaliation.
But the raid in Beijing is also likely tied to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s draconian security crackdown on the information inside China.
“Red alerts should be going off in all boardrooms right now about risks in China,” said one source in the New York Post.
The same U.S. business person also said that the Mintz Group raid sent a “remarkable signal” that Beijing will suck up foreign money and technology but won’t accept credible U.S. firms conducting research and investigations on Chinese partners or the country’s business environment.
Reuters reported that the company confirmed that “Chinese authorities have detained the five staff in Mintz Group’s Beijing office, all of them Chinese nationals, and have closed our operations there.”
The detained employees are reportedly being held somewhere outside Beijing. The company has not been able to contact the employees since they were detained.
Unlike the official police status of the Chinese outposts raided in NYC, the Mintz Group is a purely private company.
The firm describes itself as “a corporate investigations firm that gathers information before hiring, before transactions, during litigation disputes and after frauds, all over the world.”
According to its website, the company has over 450 investigators in 18 offices worldwide, but its Beijing office is the only one in mainland China. It has a second office in Hong Kong.
It also does background checks, asset tracing, and fraud and corruption investigations for businesses planning acquisitions or other large investments.
This corporate mission will likely be used by Chinese authorities to accuse the company of being spies.
And it wouldn’t be the first time western due diligence companies have gotten into trouble with Chinese authorities.
British corporate investigator Peter Humphrey and his American wife Yu Yingzeng, who ran a risk advisory firm, ChinaWhys, were detained in 2013 for work they did for a giant British pharmaceutical firm.
They spent two years in jail.
But there is an added twist to this latest raid.
While there may not be a direct link, the New York Post reported that: “Randal Phillips, a partner at the firm [Mintz Group] who heads its Asia operations but is based outside of China, is listed on its website as the Central Intelligence Agency’s former chief representative in China. Phillips worked in Beijing for years after leaving the CIA.”
Even though the raid can be seen as a response to the FBI raid against Beijing’s illegal NYC police outpost, one of 100 stations around the world, the additional motive is also clear.
As the New York Times reports:
…the move [also] highlighted the risks that firms involved in due diligence face in China as Xi Jinping, the country’s top leader, has repeatedly called for a greater emphasis on security and has tightened the ruling Communist Party’s grip on information.
The firm stated that it “has not received any official legal notice regarding a case against the company and has requested that the authorities release its employees.”
Perhaps not coincidentally, reported the Wall Street Journal, the Mintz Group raid is putting foreign companies in China on alert just as the country hosts an international economic conclave called the ‘China Development Forum’ set for this weekend.
The high-profile event is expected to be attended by Apple CEO Tim Cook, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Ray Dalio, who founded the world’s biggest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, and other top executives.
According to a survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China, with increasing tensions between the U.S. and China, U.S. businesses already operating in China are increasingly pessimistic about their prospects.
Maybe this latest Chinese act will make more U.S. firms think twice about investing there.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Former President Donald Trump has revealed a significant new hire to lead his efforts in New Hampshire in 2024.
Trump has hired Jeb Bush’s 2016 field coordinator, Trevor Naglieri, to serve as his campaign’s New Hampshire state coordinator, according to reports from The Daily Wire.
The move by the former president to hire a former Bush campaign hand comes after Trump has repeatedly claimed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a part of the Republican Party establishment and sought to tie DeSantis to Bush and former House Speaker Paul Ryan.
The New Hampshire presidential primary, which takes place Feb. 13, 2024, is the nation’s first primary and the second party contest, after the Iowa caucuses. Although New Hampshire is a small state, its primary is seen as a critical chance for candidates to build momentum for their campaigns.
Trump handily won the New Hampshire primary in 2016, he lost the state in the general election in both 2016 and 2020.
Naglieri marks the second high-profile hire for the Trump campaign in New Hampshire. Two months ago, POLITICO first reported that former state GOP Chair Steve Stepanek, a longtime ally, would serve as a senior adviser to the former president in the first-in-the-nation primary state. The two join Alex Latcham, one of Trump’s Iowa hires, who’s overseeing all early state operations.
His opponents have yet to take similar steps on the staffing front however Vivek Ramaswamy is launching a six-figure advertising blitz in Iowa and New Hampshire, marking the first time his campaign has gone on the air since he announced his candidacy last month.
“We’re in the middle of a national identity crisis,” Ramaswamy says in the ad. “Faith, patriotism and hard work have disappeared. Wokeness, gender ideology and the climate cult have taken their place.”
“We spend so much time celebrating our diversity that we forget the values that bind us together,” he adds. “I believe deep in my bones those values still exist.”
Have you seen the results of this poll? Are you concerned?
Watch Amanda explain the situation below:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Florida Democrat chair Nikki Fried has filed an ethics complaint against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), accusing him of violating state law by accepting gifts from his political committee.
The complaint centers primarily on a three-day retreat at the Four Seasons in Palm Beach, Fla., where DeSantis met with donors and Republican lawmakers.
According to The Hill, the complaint cites several other expenditures by the committee, including $142,000 at the Four Seasons Hotel Miami for a meeting expense and nearly $12,000 for food and beverages at Dirty French Steakhouse in Miami.
“This is yet another example of Ron DeSantis arrogantly thinking he is above the law. No one is above the law,” Fried said in a statement. “While Floridians face some of the highest property insurance and mortgage rates in the state’s history, DeSantis is hobnobbing with special interest donors and lining his pockets with freebies. Floridians deserve answers, and DeSantis needs to be held accountable.”
DeSantis’s office brushed off that complaint as “politically motivated,” and dismissed Fried’s complaint on Monday with a similar remark.
“Just like the one from two weeks ago, we’ll just add this to the list of frivolous & politically motivated attacks,” Taryn Fenske, DeSantis’s communications director, tweeted. “Louder for the Dems in the back: It’s inappropriate to use ethics complaints for partisan purposes.”
Fried’s complaint is the second filed against DeSantis in less than two weeks.
Make America Great Again Inc., the main super PAC aligned with former President Trump, filed a complaint earlier this month accusing the Florida governor of violating state and federal law by running a “shadow presidential campaign.” (RELATED: Ron DeSantis Hit With Ethics Complaint From Trump Super PAC)
NBC News first reported the complaint alleges that DeSantis has already checked all the boxes for someone considering a run for the White House, including making stops in early primary states; writing a book; raising tens of millions of dollars to go into a state-level committee that could be transferred to a federal super PAC; and watching a constellation of supporter-led super PACs and an outside nonprofit group pop up, some with the stated intention of getting DeSantis to run for president.
The pro-Trump super PAC says the combination of those steps violates a handful of Florida laws about officeholders’ accepting illegal gifts.
“This letter provides ample evidence to support a finding of probable cause by the Florida Commission on Ethics that Governor DeSantis, in concert with certain associated political committees, political consultants and a 501(c)(4) organization, has solicited and received millions of dollars’ worth of illegal gifts in violation of Florida State ethics laws and the Florida Constitution,” the draft complaint reads.
Sometimes reality is even stranger than fiction…
Is conservative satire site Babylon Bee psychic?
Let Amanda explain the controversy below:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Former vice president Mike Pence appears to be inching toward a 2024 White House announcement.
New reports indicate Pence plans to travel back to Iowa this week, adding to the rumors he’s planning to mount his own White House campaign shortly.
The trip back to Iowa, the state that leads off the Republican Party’s presidential nominating calendar comes after Pence has repeatedly said he’ll decide in the spring whether to launch a 2024 White House run, joining a field of GOP contenders that already includes his one-time running mate – former President Donald Trump.
Fox News first reported the upcoming trip:
Pence will start his day in the Hawkeye State in Urbandale, just outside of Des Moines, where he’ll give remarks at a breakfast hosted by the Westside Conservative Club. The group usually holds two breakfasts a month but added a third in March for the former vice president’s visit.
Pence will then take part in a fireside chat at a luncheon in Cedar Rapids, which will also include a book signing for his memoir “So Help Me God.” The former vice president will conclude his day in Iowa by delivering remarks in Coralville at the Johnson County Republicans Reagan dinner.
The stop in Iowa will be Pence’s second in a month and his eighth since the end of the Trump administration in January 2021.
While momentum surrounding Pence’s potential campaign seems to be building in an interview earlier this month Pence said Republican voters’ familiarity with his story affords him some breathing room as he makes his 2024 decision
“I think the advantage that we have is I think the American people know the Pences,” the former vice president said. “By and large they know our story and our career, and some are getting to know it better every day. So, we think we have time to be discerning, to be reflective, to listen.”
“I do believe that different times call for different leadership. I think we’ll have better choices come 2024,” Pence said in a Fox News Digital interview earlier this month, when asked about his former running mate. “I’m confident that Republican primary voters are going to choose well, that are going to choose a standard-bearer that will be able to lead us to victory in 2024.”
Transgender Mass Murderer Targets Christian School – Kills Six
ANALYSIS – None dare call it hate. The recent horrific mass killing in Nashville is even more tragic when we understand who the killer was – and how the mass media has either ignored or downplayed her ‘trans’ identity.
Or has made it a point of calling her a man rather than a mentally ill woman.
It’s also tragic, no – outrageous – that none in the establishment media, or Joe Biden or anyone in his administration, has labeled the shooting a ‘hate crime’ even though it was.
Local law enforcement has called it a targeted attack against a Christian school.
The heavily armed 28-year-old mass murderer Audrey Hale who committed the massacre at Covenant School used two AR-style rifles and a pistol to kill three 9-year-old children and three adults.
Reportedly a former student, she was was killed by police.
Her ‘manifesto,’ discovered at her home, has still not been made public.
The killer was first reported correctly as a woman.
Then the media fell all over itself apologizing for its mistake and quickly began stealth editing its initial reports and started calling her a ‘transgender male’ (which in most cases is actually a female claiming to be male).
It is now mostly downplaying the trans issue and the fact that she was being treated for ’emotional’ issues.
And unlike the rhetoric often employed by Democrats after a shooter targets any minority community – like an LGBTQ club or killings simply in a neighborhood with a high number of Asian Americans – they aren’t calling this a ‘hate crime.’
The left is usually very quick to identify any crime it can committed by white conservatives, MAGA Republicans or Donald Trump supporters.
Sometimes it is valid. Most of the time it is not.
As my Georgetown roommate, and colleague, Quin Hillyer writes in the Washington Examiner:
First, let me be clear, most conservatives despise the ‘hate crime’ moniker because, well, a crime is a crime. Murder isn’t more of a murder because of the races or identities of the victims or perpetrators.
But if you are going to use the term and have it impact how cases are investigated, tried and suspects are sentenced, then call this what it was – a hate crime against Christians by a lunatic transgender person.
Federal law considers violence that causes bodily injury to a person to be a hate crime if it is motivated by race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability.
Of course, the fact that this killer was ‘trans’ shouldn’t become the sole focus, nor should it be used to unfairly label other trans persons.
But it should be noted by the media and included in the entire process.
And the targeting of Christians by a trans person should be a major focus.
Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who has opposed hate crime legislation in the past as too broad, quickly took action to ensure this anti-Christian hate crime perpetrated by a self-described transgender was treated as such.
He called on federal authorities Tuesday to investigate Monday’s massacre as a hate crime against Christian believers.
The New York Post reported:
Now, let’s see how Team Biden and the establishment media react.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.