Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) continues to push campaign cash to a firm run by her alleged boyfriend, filings show.
Omar’s new committee filings submitted Friday morning show that between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, 2019, her committee made $215,000 in additional payments to the E Street Group, a firm run by political consultant Tim Mynett, Omar’s alleged boyfriend. The payments were reported as going toward consulting, direct mail, research services, travel expenses, advertisements, and graphic design.
The new payments mark another increase in money funneled to the firm. Mynett’s group is yet again the highest-paid vendor from Omar’s campaign.
The committee reported hauling in $403,000 in individual contributions while disbursing $404,000 over the last three months of 2019. The $215,000 paid to Mynett’s group for its services accounts for 53 percent of the total disbursements from the campaign during this time.
Over the first three quarters of 2019, Omar’s campaign paid out a total of $310,000 to the E Street Group. Accounting for the fourth-quarter payments, Mynett’s firm collected a total of $525,000 from Omar’s campaign in 2019. (Read more from “Omar Paid Additional $215,000 From Campaign Coffers to Alleged Boyfriend’s Firm” HERE)
Clermont County lawmaker John Becker has accused a local Republican party leader of offering him a $50,000 bribe in exchange for his endorsement last year.
Becker wrote in his monthly newsletter that he was “willing to testify under oath and under penalty of perjury regarding my first-hand knowledge of a $50,000 bribe offered by a high-ranking Clermont County Republican Party official in exchange for an endorsement in 2019.”
“After a moment of shock and disgust, the person offering the bribe was asked if he was wearing an FBI wire,” Becker wrote.
Becker told The Enquirer that he was offered the bribe, didn’t take it and reported it to the Joint Legislative Ethics Committee. JLEC executive director Tony Bledsoe said he could not discuss any specifics but would have encouraged any lawmaker to report serious allegations of bribery to law enforcement.
Becker would not say who offered the bribe. He did not report the allegations to law enforcement at the time. (Read more from “Republican Lawmaker Says GOP Official Offered Him a $50K Bribe” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/17123250059_5479539f4f_b-11.jpg6801023Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2020-02-01 00:33:492020-02-01 01:13:42Republican Lawmaker Says GOP Official Offered Him a $50K Bribe
No ordinary citizen can legally carry a gun in New York City, yet shootings are up 59.6 percent over this time last year. On Sunday, a pregnant woman was shot while sitting in her own car in front of her home in Queens. This is becoming the new normal in New York after the memo has gone out to criminals in the city that politicians fear growing the prison population more than they fear crime.
According to NYPD crime data, in addition to the 59.6 percent spike in shootings over this time last year, robberies increased 32.8 percent and grand larceny auto crimes were up a whopping 62.8 percent. Burglaries rose by 17 percent. This is just for the first 26 days of 2020.
What gives? According to NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, it’s no mystery. It’s all about New York’s law abolishing bail. “If you let out individuals that commit a lot of crime, that’s precision policing in reverse and we’re seeing the effects in a very quick time,” Shea said at a press conference last Friday. He decried the undeniable “correlation” between the rise in crime and the jail and prison “populations dropping significantly.”
This is the other side of the criminal justice equation that politicians, including country club Republicans, refuse to recognize. As they are focused like a laser beam on reducing the prison population, they are ignoring the human nature of violent criminals. These criminals simply see no deterrent against their destructive behavior, and for good reason. Thus, whatever form of crime it is they like to engage in, they will continue repeating it until they are locked up. One criminal in Staten Island, who had a history of vehicle theft, was arrested for breaking into vehicles three times in three weeks. He was released every time!
The backward priorities of criminal over victim inherent in criminal justice “reform” are perhaps best reflected by an anecdote told by Commissioner Shea during last week’s press conference. Last week, a drunk driver slammed his minivan into a police officer who had pulled over another driver at the side of a road, catching the officer between his car and the officer’s car. “I stopped at the hospital the next day, right before he was wheeled into surgery,” related Shea in front of reporters last Friday. “He got out of the hospital today. Individual that did it was out [of jail] before him. I mean, something’s wrong with that picture. And not his first DWI arrest.”
With a rampant drug crisis raging, the worst drug traffickers face no deterrent. This week, six fentanyl traffickers working for Dominican cartel distributors, three of whom are in the country illegally, were released without bail. Over 1,400 people have died every year over the past few years as a result of drug overdoses in the big city.
Repeat armed robbers are being let out only to rob again. Then, once the criminals are out, they have no incentive to show up for their court date, and many are just ignoring the notices to appear. After all, what are the cops going to do to them?
The fact that criminals know the entire weight of the political universe is against incarceration these days is incentivizing them to victimize with impunity. New York’s experience is demonstrating that most people locked up are dangerous to society. When they are let loose, crime will go up. This is not about nonviolent, victimless crimes, as proponents of these “reforms” repeat ad nauseum.
The truth of the “reform” movement was boldly revealed last week by Danielle Sered, the head of one of these well-monied interests seeking to abolish the concept of incarceration. In an op-ed for USA Today titled, “To end mass incarceration, U.S. needs alternatives to prison for violent crimes,” Sered concedes that the entire narrative for jailbreak is built on a fallacy.
As consensus and momentum to end mass incarceration have grown, the reform narrative, though compelling, has been based on a fallacy: that the United States can achieve large-scale, transformative change by changing responses primarily to nonviolent offenses. That is impossible in a nation where 55% of people incarcerated in state prisons in 2016 (the latest available Bureau of Justice Statistics data) were convicted of violent crimes. To truly have an impact on mass incarceration, we need to reckon with that reality.
Indeed! As I’ve noted before, there are actually very few people in prison for nonviolent offenses, and in fact, there are hundreds of thousands of violent offenders who are not locked up. Sered lives in her own alternative reality of abolishing prison even with this in mind. But for the 90 percent of the country that doesn’t want that, they are seeing the reality of violent crime, undeterred, play out every day in New York. Prison culture ain’t pretty. But turning every American city into a violent prison is not an option. (For more from the author of “NY Crime Skyrockets, Shootings up 60%, Following Prison Reduction Agenda” please click HERE)
KC Chiefs’ Frank Clark Wears Trump Sweater to Super Bowl Press Conference
By Michael Chapman. During a press conference about the upcoming Super Bowl, Kansas City Chiefs defensive end Frank Clark wore a sweatshirt displaying a photograph of President Donald Trump and musician Kanye West.
Clark said that the meeting between Trump and Kanye was “a very historical moment” for the country:
(Read more about KC Chiefs and Defensive End Frank Clark HERE)
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This video of KC Chiefs’ star Patrick Mahomes thanking a veteran will make you cry
By Tessa Robinson. We already love Kansas City Chiefs’ star quarterback Patrick Mahomes for his contagious spirit, incredible arm and infectious attitude. Plus, the fact that he builds homes for veterans in his spare time doesn’t hurt. And now, this video of him writing a letter of support and gratitude to die hard fan and Army veteran Scott Buis will bring a tear to your eye:
By Valerie Richardson. Lyric Gillett, founder of Faces of Choice, accused Fox, which is broadcasting the game, of stringing her along after she began negotiating in July to air a powerful black-and-white ad featuring adults and children of different genders and ethnicities with one thing in common: They survived abortions.
(Read more about the banned ad for the KC Chief’s Super Bowl HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/KC.jpg520780Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2020-02-01 00:05:332020-02-01 22:17:53WATCH: Trump on KC Chief’s Shirt at PR; KC Chief’s QB’s Video Tribute to Vet; Fox Won’t Air this Ad
With nothing going on in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, I had to find a shiny object to draw my attention. And there it was on the wrist of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. It caught my eye as he moved his pen or tilted his glasses.
The Internet, an infallible source of truth, says Chief Justice Roberts is wearing a Patek Philippe 5205G. We’re talking well-equipped SUV money for that time piece, $49,780 according to Patek Philippe’s website. The yearly rate for chief justices nowadays is $267,000, so he can afford it without going total ramen. . .
Roberts’ watch is part of a category known as complications. Complications display more than one concept. The 5205G has an analog clock face, plus day, date and month in apertures (oh, that’s what they’re called) and a moon phase indicator.
The 5205G is a mechanical watch. It needs to be wound, but not by twisting a stem. The 5205G is self winding, meaning every motion stayed, every appeal denied, every bang of the gavel winds the mainspring.
No need to worry that Chief Justice Roberts might go on a signing or gavel banging spree and overwind the watch. Adrien Philippe (same family) patented the design that prevents that in 1863. (Read more from “Chief Justice John Roberts Wears a $50K Watch at Impeachment Proceedings” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/20050905_p090505pm-0066jpg-515h.jpg345515Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2020-01-31 21:57:582020-01-31 21:55:23Chief Justice John Roberts Wears a $50K Watch at Impeachment Proceedings
By Daily Wire. The U.S. Senate officially voted late on Friday to put an end to Senate Democrats’ attempts to prolong President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial by calling on new witnesses to testify and new documents to be brought into the trial.
The move to prolong the trial was shot down in a 51 to 49 vote, which saw establishment Republican Senators Mitt Romney (UT) and Susan Collins (ME) defect from the party and join the Democrats. . .
Democrats had suffered another defeat late on Thursday night when Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) announced that he was also not in favor of calling for additional witnesses and documents.
“I worked with other senators to make sure that we have the right to ask for more documents and witnesses, but there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the U.S. Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense,” Alexander said, later adding, “But the Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate. The question then is not whether the president did it, but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did.” (Read more from “Senate Officially Votes to Stop Democrats’ Attempts to Prolong Trial” HERE)
Andrew McCarthy: In Trump Impeachment Trial, Senate Right to Block New Witness Testimony
By Fox News. The Senate was right to vote Friday against hearing new witness testimony at President Trump’s impeachment trial. The Democrats’ demand for new witnesses at the trial was a red herring – a talking point that had some surface appeal but, upon scrutiny, was nonsense.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and the other impeachment managers claim that there have been no witnesses in the trial. They said before the Senate voted 51-49 Friday to block more witnesses that if Republicans did note vote to approve subpoenas for former National Security Adviser John Bolton, among other top current and former administration officials, that the trial will be a “sham” – an exercise in “cover-up.” You can’t have a real trial, was their refrain, unless witnesses are called.
It is nonsense. There have been plenty of witnesses. Schiff’s problem is that the additional witnesses he wanted to call would not change what has already been proved in any meaningful way.
Obviously, what’s happening in the Senate is not a trial in any familiar sense. We are used to judicial trials. Impeachment presents something completely different, a Senate trial. The Senate is a political body, not a law court. (Read more from “Andrew Mccarthy: In Trump Impeachment Trial, Senate Right to Block New Witness Testimony” HERE)
A top al-Qaeda terror leader who previously mocked President Donald Trump has been killed in a US airstrike in Yemen according to top Pentagon sources.
Qassim al-Rimi ridiculed the president in 2017 after a failed US military strike in Yemen intended to target him.
“The fool of the White House got slapped at the beginning of his road in your lands,” al-Rimi said on a recording after the strike.
The New York Times reported that several American officials were confident that al-Rimi was killed in the January airstrike.
BREAKING: A senior DoD source tells me Al-Qaeda leader Qassim al-Rimi was the target of a strike by U.S led forces in Yemen today. Intelligence agencies currently working to confirm his death.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/49436159673_0c037dde9f_b.jpg6831024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2020-01-31 21:13:342020-01-31 21:11:36Top Al Qaeda Leader Who Taunted Trump Has Been Reportedly Killed in U.S. Airstrike (VIDEO)
As The Daily Wire previewed weeks ago and as has also been rumored for much of this current week, the Trump administration on Friday imposed travel restrictions on six new countries.
“President Donald Trump is expected to reveal an expansion of his controversial travel ban on Friday, the same day he could be acquitted in his impeachment trial and just days ahead of the president’s annual State of the Union address,” Politico reported yesterday. “The expected announcement — confirmed by two people familiar with the matter — had initially been planned for this past Monday to coincide with the three-year anniversary of the original order, which restricted travel from several majority-Muslim nations.”
On Friday afternoon, The Wall Street Journal confirmed the news. The six new countries to have various types of travel restrictions imposed upon them are Nigeria, Eritrea, Myanmar, Kyrgyzstan, Sudan, and Tanzania.
“Citizens from Nigeria, Eritrea, Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan won’t be allowed to apply for visas to immigrate to the U.S. under the policy, which the Trump administration said was designed to tighten security for countries that don’t comply with the U.S. minimum security standards or cooperate to prevent illegal immigration,” the Journal reports. “Two other countries, Sudan and Tanzania, will be barred from participating in the diversity visa lottery, which randomly awards green cards to 50,000 immigrants from underrepresented countries annually. Many of the recipients are from African countries.”
Specifically, Nigeria, Eritrea, Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan will have the issuance suspended of all visas that might lead to permanent residency, according to Reuters. (Read more from “Trump Admin Adds New Travel Restrictions For Six Countries” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/49461487086_2414988572_b.jpg6831024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2020-01-31 20:59:262020-01-31 20:58:01Trump Admin Adds New Travel Restrictions For Six Countries
By Fox News. Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander announced late Thursday night that he would not support additional witnesses in President Trump’s “shallow, hurried and wholly partisan” impeachment trial, seemingly ending Democrats’ hopes of hearing testimony from former National Security Advisor John Bolton and paving the way for the president’s imminent acquittal as soon as Friday night.
Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the chamber, and can afford up to three defections when the Senate considers whether to call additional witnesses on Friday. In the event of a 50-50 tie, by rule, the vote on witnesses would fail in the Senate. Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts is likely to abstain rather than assert his debatable power to cast a tie-breaking vote.
GOP Sen. Susan Collin has announced she wants to hear from a “limited” number of additional witnesses; Utah GOP Sen. Mitt Romney has strongly signaled he wants to hear from Bolton; and Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski told Fox News late Thursday she was still weighing the issue and would decide in the morning. (“I’m gonna go back to my office and put some eyedrops in so I can keep readig. That’s gonna be my job,” Murkowski told Fox News, adding that she anticipates a “long night.”)
BUT Alexander, in his dramatic late-night statement that came at the close of the Senate’s session Thursday, torpedoed Democrats’ hopes that he would be the fourth Republican defector they need. Alexander began by flat-out dismissing Democrats’ “obstruction of Congress” article of impeachment as “frivolous” given the president’s long-established principle of executive privilege. (Read more from “Key Swing-Vote Comes out Against Witnesses, Paving Way for Imminent Trump Acquittal” HERE)
Roberts Visibly Reacts to Warren’s Impeachment Question About His ‘Legitimacy’ Without Trial Witnesses
By Fox News. Chief Justice John Roberts seemed visibly irritated when Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., formally asked a question during President Trump’s impeachment trial Thursday that referenced him and questioned the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and Constitution in relation to the proceedings.
In accordance with Senate rules, the chief justice of the United States must read aloud the questions posed by senators to the impeachment managers and the president’s counsel. Roberts formally recognized Warren, a Democratic presidential candidate, who then submitted her written question to a clerk.
Roberts read her question from the card — which referenced him.
“At a time when large majorities of Americans have lost faith in government, does the fact that the chief justice is presiding over an impeachment trial in which Republican senators have thus far refused to allow witnesses or evidence contribute to the loss of legitimacy of the chief justice, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution?” Roberts read from the card handed to him by the clerk.
When he finished reading the question — explicitly posed to the House Impeachment managers — Roberts pursed his lips and shot a chagrined look.
(Read more from “Roberts Visibly Reacts to Warren’s Impeachment Question About His ‘Legitimacy’ Without Trial Witnesses” HERE)
Trump Impeachment Trial: Question Period Ends as GOP Swing Votes Emerge
By ABC News. Senators have returned Thursday for a second day of questions to House managers and President Donald Trump’s legal team in his impeachment trial as attempts by Democrats to rally votes for new witnesses appear to have stalled. . .
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a GOP senator who could vote in favor of calling witnesses, has just explicitly asked the president’s legal counsel why the senate should not call Bolton as a witness in this trial.
“You explain that Ambassador [Gordon] Sondland and Sen. [Ron] Johnson both said the president explicitly denied that he was looking for a quid pro quo with Ukraine,” Murkowski’s question read. “The reporting on Ambassador [John] Bolton’s book suggests the president told Bolton both directly and indirectly that the aid would not be released until Ukraine announced the investigations the president desired. This dispute about material facts weighs in favor of calling additional witnesses with direct knowledge. Why should this body not call Ambassador Bolton?”
White House counsel Pat Philbin’s response focused largely on the role that he argued the Senate ought to play in in an impeachment.
“I think the primary consideration here is understand that the House could have pursued Ambassador Bolton,” Philbin said, arguing that the House chose not to subpoena Bolton. (Read more from “Trump Impeachment Trial: Question Period Ends as GOP Swing Votes Emerge” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/48679737087_543ed6dd6e_b-4.jpg6831024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2020-01-30 20:04:592020-02-01 21:43:35Key Swing-Vote Comes out Against Witnesses, Paving Way for Imminent Trump Acquittal; Roberts Visibly Reacts to Warren’s Impeachment Question About His ‘Legitimacy’ Without Trial Witnesses; Murkowski Asks Point Blank: Why Not Call Bolton?
U.S. health officials confirmed on Thursday the nation’s first person-to-person transmission of the coronavirus, which has already killed at least 171 people in China and infected more than 8,200 since emerging less than a month ago.
The new patient is the husband of the Chicago woman who brought the infection back from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak, CDC and Illinois health officials said during a press briefing. Health officials said the man, in his 60s, has “some underlying medical conditions” but was in good condition. His wife was doing well but remained in isolation at a local hospital, they said. . .
“This is a very serious public health situation,” said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “Moving forward, we can expect to see more cases, and more cases means more potential for person-to-person spread.”
The virus, which emerged Dec. 31, has already spread to more people than the 2003 SARS epidemic, which sickened roughly 8,100 people across the globe over nine months. The transmission makes the U.S. at least the fifth country where the infection is now spreading through human-to-human contact, including China. Officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there are at least nine cases of human-to-human transmission outside of China, as of Thursday. . .
U.S. officials are working to contain the outbreak from spreading in the country, including by increasing travel warnings and expanding screening at 20 U.S. airports. Trump administration officials have said they are constantly evaluating the situation and could take more drastic action if needed. (Read more from “Cdc Confirms First Human-To-Human Transmission of Coronavirus in U.S.” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Belvoir-Community-Hospital-2.jpg428720Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2020-01-30 20:03:482020-01-30 20:03:34CDC Confirms First Human-To-Human Transmission of Coronavirus in U.S.
