Body Cam Shows ‘Execution’ of Young White Male – Officer Found Not Guilty

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By TMZ. Police body cam footage shows the moment a Mesa, AZ police officer gunned down an unarmed man in a hotel hallway — a shooting where the jury found the officer not guilty of 2nd degree murder.

The 2016 shooting happened in a hotel where police were responding to a report of someone pointing a gun out a window. Philip Brailsford was one of the responding officers, and in this video you see and hear the cops barking out commands to a man and woman the moment they walk out of their room.

While attempting to take Daniel Shaver into custody … Brailsford fired his AR-15 five times, shooting and killing 26-year-old Shaver. Brailsford, who is no longer on the force, was on trial for 2nd degree murder and reckless manslaughter — until the jury returned not guilty verdicts Thursday on both counts. (Read more from “Body Cam Shows ‘Execution’ of Young White Male – Officer Found Not Guilty” HERE)

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Daniel Shaver Police Shooting Video Released

By Tom Cleary. The Mesa Police Department has released the full body camera video showing ex-Officer Philip “Mitch” Brailsford fatally shooting 26-year-old Daniel Shaver at an Arizona motel in January 2016.

Shaver, a married father of two young children, was unarmed and begged for his life in the moments before he was shot, sobbing and saying to Brailsford and the other officers, “please don’t shoot me.”

The video was made public after Brailsford was found not guilty of second-degree murder and reckless manslaughter by a Maricopa County jury on Thursday, the Arizona Republic reports. It was posted online by the attorney for Shaver’s wife, Laney Sweet, who is suing the Mesa Police Department for $75 million and had been fighting for the release of the video . . .

The video shows an intoxicated Shaver, who was staying at the motel while on a work trip and had been drinking with two people he had met earlier that night, being ordered to crawl out of the room after police responded to a report of a man pointing a gun out of the room’s window. It was later determined that Shaver had a pellet gun in the room for his pest control job, but he did not have it with him in the hallway at the time Brailsford shot him. The two motel guests who were in the room testified that Shaver had been playing with the pellet gun near the room’s window earlier . . .

In the video, Shaver is told by the officer to obey his commands and “not make a mistake” after he exits the room and gets down face-first on the floor. He tells him to keep his legs crossed and then put both of his hands out in front of him and then pull himself up into a kneeling position. As he struggles to get to his knees, the officer yells, “I said keep your legs crossed.” Shaver then apologizes and the officer says, “I didn’t say this was a conversation.” (Read more from “Daniel Shaver Police Shooting Video Released” HERE)

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Trump to Undergo Physical Exam After Slurred Speech

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The day after President Trump slurred through part of a speech, the White House announced that he will undergo a physical exam.

Trump will take the exam at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington, D.C., early next year and the results will be made public, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday.

Questions about the President’s well-being were raised on Wednesday after he garbled the tail-end of a speech about moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Trump’s cap-off — “God bless the United States” — was barely audible because of the speech flub . . .

“The President’s throat was dry, nothing more than that,” [Sanders] told reporters. (Read more from “Trump to Undergo Physical Exam After Slurred Speech” HERE)

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What’s Going on in Cuba? US Embassy Workers Found to Have Brain Abnormalities

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By Nicole Darrah. Brain abnormalities have been found in the U.S. diplomats who were victims of suspected attacks at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, according to a new report.

Doctors discovered that white matter in the brains of Embassy workers had “developed changes,” The Associated Press reported. White matter allows different areas of the brain to communicate.

At least 24 U.S. Embassy officials in Cuba had reported hearing loud, grating noises before experiencing ear issues, hearing loss, dizziness, headache, fatigue, cognitive issues and difficulty sleeping.

Some victims knew immediately that the attack was affecting their bodies, while some developed physical symptoms within 24 hours.

Other Americans who were not working but were traveling in Cuba had also reported experiencing weird symptoms similar to those that the U.S. officials reported, the State Department said. (Read more from “What’s Going on in Cuba? US Embassy Workers Found to Have Brain Abnormalities” HERE)

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Mysterious Cuba Embassy Attacks Left Victims With Brain Anomalies

By Avery Thompson. Back in September, a strange mystery was unfolding in Cuba. American officials and their spouses were experiencing some kind of attack, but nobody was really sure what was going on. People experienced a wide range of symptoms, from headaches and difficulty concentrating to hearing loss and brain damage. Many reported hearing high-pitched, painful noises prior to experiencing the symptoms.

Medical experts have been unable to explain what kind of weapon is affecting these officials, or even what’s wrong with them. But new results from doctors at the University of Miami and the University of Pennsylvania have provided a valuable clue: The victims appear to have abnormalities in their brains’ white matter.

White matter refers to the sections of the brain filled with dense nerve connections, which are primarily responsible for learning and higher brain functions. Doctors often see white matter damage when people suffer concussions or other brain damage, which likely means the victims are suffering something similar. (Read more from “Mysterious Cuba Embassy Attacks Left Victims With Brain Anomalies” HERE)

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Bill and Hillary Clinton Were Weinstein’s ‘Celebrity Shields’

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By Robert Donachie. Former President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton were key players in a Democratic cover-up of former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault, The New York Times detailed in an exclusive report Tuesday.

Two prominent women in media told TheNYT that they personally warned Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2016 that Weinstein was a known sexual assaulter and that it was highly unwise to be so closely connected with him.

“I just want you to let you know that Harvey’s a rapist and this is going to come out at some point,” actress and writer Lena Dunham reports telling Kristina Schake, the Clinton campaign’s deputy communications director, in 2016. “I think it’s a really bad idea for him to host fund-raisers and be involved because it’s an open secret in Hollywood that he has a problem with sexual assault.”

Dunham says the Clinton staffer appeared to be shocked at her statement and told her she would immediately report it to Clinton Campaign Manager Robby Mook.

Mook told TheNYT that he was never warned about Weinstein. (Read more from “Bill and Hillary Clinton Were Weinstein’s ‘Celebrity Shields'” HERE)

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Actress Says She Warned Clinton Campaign About Harvey Weinstein

By Fox News. Actress Lena Dunham said she warned Hillary Clinton’s campaign about disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and was uncomfortable with his presence during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to a report out Tuesday.

The “Girls” star told The New York Times that she heard stories about Weinstein from other actresses who claimed they had troubling interactions with him, so in March of 2016 she warned Clinton campaign deputy communications manager Kristina Schake about him.

“I just want you to let you know that Harvey’s a rapist and this is going to come out at some point,” Dunham said she told the campaign. “I think it’s a really bad idea for him to host fund-raisers and be involved because it’s an open secret in Hollywood that he has a problem with sexual assault.”

Dunham, who said she has “an incredible allegiance to Hillary,” claimed Schake told her she’d relay the message to campaign manager Robby Mook, but that she was surprised at the warning.

The controversial actress said she also told another Clinton campaign member, spokeswoman Adrienne Elrod, about Weinstein. Dunham said “the campaign had not responded to her concerns” about the disgraced megaproducer, who’s been accused of sexually assaulting or harassing more than 100 women. (Read more from “Actress Says She Warned Clinton Campaign About Harvey Weinstein” HERE)

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Russian Lawyer Who Met Don Jr. Submits Senate Testimony — There’s Just One Problem

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The Russian lawyer who attended the infamous Trump Tower meeting denied interacting with the founder of Trump dossier research firm Fusion GPS that same day, in direct contradiction to what the opposition researcher told Congress last month.

Natalia Veselnitskaya told the Senate Judiciary Committee in written testimony submitted last month that she did not have contact with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson on the day of the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

But her denial is inconsistent with previous reporting and with what Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) in a closed-door interview last month.

“Did you have contact with Glenn Simpson on June 8, 9, or 10, 2016?” reads one of the 94 questions posed to Veselnitskaya by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“No, there had been no contacts with him on [sic] specified dates,” Veselnitskaya said in her written testimony, which was submitted electronically on Nov. 20 and published on Tuesday by NBC News. (Read more from “Russian Lawyer Who Met Don Jr. Submits Senate Testimony — There’s Just One Problem” HERE)

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GOP Bill Would Land Sanctuary City Officials in Prison

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A Republican congressman will introduce a bill Monday that would punish any elected official who shelters illegal immigrant criminals from deportation.

Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Ind., will introduce the “Stopping Lawless Actions of Politicians (SLAP) Act,” a bill that would impose criminal penalties for elected officials who obstruct federal immigration enforcement officers. Anyone convicted under Rokita’s proposed law would be subject to a $1 million fine and up to five years of prison.

“The American people are rightfully infuriated watching politicians put their open-borders ideology before the rule of law, and the safety of the people they represent. Politicians don’t get to pick and choose what laws to comply with. Americans are dying because politicians sworn to uphold the law refuse to do so,” Rokita said in an email press release. “It’s time the federal government gets serious about enforcing immigration laws and holding politicians accountable who conspire to break them.”

“This elitist mentality that everyone is not equal under the law must come to an end. These politicians want one set of rules for hard working Americans, but a different set of rules for illegal immigrants, and themselves,” the press release stated.

Rokita’s bill comes days after illegal immigrant Jose Ines Garcia Zarate was acquitted of murder charges in the 2015 killing of Kate Steinle. Prior to Steinle’s death, Zarate, who had been previously deported to Mexico five times, was released from jail by San Francisco officials despite a federal request to detain him for deportation.

San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy was directly responsible for putting Steinle’s killer on the streets. Rokita’s bill will target the local officials who created this lawless sanctuary city policy and others like them around the country. (For more from the author of “GOP Bill Would Land Sanctuary City Officials in Prison” please click HERE)

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New Warning Over Trump Tweets

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By Reuters. A series of tweets by U.S. President Donald Trump about the investigation into contacts between his 2016 campaign and Russia prompted concerns on Sunday among both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham saying Trump could be wading into “peril” by commenting on the probe.

U.S. President Donald Trump waves as he boards Air Force One at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, before his departure back to Washington, U.S., December 2, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
“I would just say this with the president: There’s an ongoing criminal investigation,” Graham said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”

“You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril,” he added.

On Sunday morning, Trump wrote on Twitter that he never asked former FBI Director James Comey to stop investigating Michael Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser – a statement at odds with an account Comey himself has given.

That tweet followed one on Saturday in which Trump said: “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President (Mike Pence) and the FBI.” (Read more from “New Warning Over Trump Tweets” HERE)

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Trump Lawyer Takes Blame for Flynn Tweet: ‘I Did Not Mean to Break News’

By Joseph Weber. John Dowd, President Trump’s personal attorney, took responsibility Sunday for a Trump tweet about the president firing Michael Flynn as national security adviser that sparked speculation about Trump having obstructed justice.

“I did not mean to break news,” Dowd said. “I’m out of the tweeting business.”

Flynn on Friday pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI over conversations with to Russia’s ambassador to the United States after Trump was elected last year.

The guilty plea was part of deal Flynn struck in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump associates colluded with Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies,” said the tweet Saturday, on Trump’s official Twitter account. (Read more from “Trump Lawyer Takes Blame for Flynn Tweet: ‘I Did Not Mean to Break News'” HERE)

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Lawmaker Behind Secret $84K Sex-Harassment Settlement Unmasked

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Rep. Blake Farenthold used taxpayer money to settle a sexual harassment claim brought by his former spokesman — the only known sitting member of Congress to have used a little-known congressional account to pay an accuser, people familiar with the matter told POLITICO.

Lauren Greene, the Texas Republican’s former communications director, sued her boss in December 2014 over allegations of gender discrimination, sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment.

Greene said another Farenthold aide told her the lawmaker said he had “sexual fantasies” and “wet dreams” about Greene. She also claimed that Farenthold “regularly drank to excess” and told her in February 2014 that he was “estranged from his wife and had not had sex with her in years.”

When she complained about comments Farenthold and a male staffer made to her, Greene said the congressman improperly fired her. She filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, but the case was later dropped after both parties reached a private settlement . . .

House Administration Committee Chairman Gregg Harper (R-Miss.) told GOP lawmakers in a closed-door Friday morning meeting that only one House office in the past five years had used an Office of Compliance account to settle a sexual harassment complaint. Harper said in that one instance, the settlement totaled $84,000. (Read more from “Lawmaker Behind Secret $84K Sex-Harassment Settlement Unmasked” HERE)

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ICE Tracks Down Illegal Alien From Newspaper

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A man who recounted his longtime girlfriend’s arrest in a Seattle Times story about ramped-up immigration enforcement in Pacific County last month has now been detained, and says U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents told him the arrest was because he was in the newspaper.

Baltazar “Rosas” Aburto Gutierrez, speaking by phone from the Northwest Detention Center, where he is being held, said he got off work about 4 a.m. Monday — he harvests clams around Willapa Bay — went back to his Ocean Park home and, a few hours later, headed to Okie’s Thriftway Market for coffee and eggs.

An SUV blocked his path into the parking lot, he said. An ICE agent got out and approached his car.

“You are Rosas,” the agent said, according to Aburto Gutierrez. “You are the one from the newspaper.”

Aburto Gutierrez, 35, was not identified by name in The Seattle Times, though his nickname appeared in the Chinook Observer in an August story about his girlfriend, Gladys Diaz, and her arrest by immigration officials who he said answered an online ad she placed to sell a homemade piñata. (Read more from “ICE Tracks Down Illegal Alien From Newspaper” HERE)

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Bristol Gives Names of Celebrities Who Sexually Harassed Palin Women, Points out Biggest Problem

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Bristol Palin, the daughter of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, watched as recent accusations of sexual misconduct ended the careers of high-profile figures in media, entertainment and politics.

She kept up with the #MeToo movement, where countless women have taken to social media to say that they too are victims of sexual harassment, assault and even rape.

Now, she has decided to speak out.

While Palin wrote in a blog post published Friday that she was “truly amazed by the unity that has been brought on by these courageous women (and men),” she noted that there is one thing “wrong” with the #MeToo campaign.

The media, Palin claimed, has a double standard when it comes to reporting on allegations of sexual harassment.

“What we need to look at is a real TRUE standard that needs to be set,” she wrote. “But here’s a question. How do we pick and choose whom to hold accountable? Why aren’t we looking at all of the sexual harassment? Why are some things ‘just a joke’ for some, and serious offenses for others?”

Palin asserted that it’s time “to come together and treat sexual harassment the same, no matter what side of the aisle you may be on.”

Her argument is not just based on conjecture. Instead, she claims that at least seven well-known celebrities harassed her or her family. The media, she said, did nothing.

“Are you ready to hold these people accountable?” Palin asked. “Here is a small example of what our family has gone though.”

The first name Palin put forth was that of Fox News host Chris Wallace. In 2010, radio host Don Imus asked Wallace, who was preparing to interview Palin, if, “When you interview her, will she be sitting on your lap?

“One can only hope,” Wallace replied, according to CNN.

“Did Wallace receive any consequences for this kind of sexual harassment?” Palin asked. “None. No one at Fox Radio batted an eye with his violent misogynist rant — in fact he’s still celebrated.

Palin then went on to talk about late night talk show host David Letterman, who in 2009 made an inappropriate remark directed at the Palin family. Letterman joked that one of Sarah Palin’s daughters got “knocked up” by New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez at a Yankees game.

Letterman claimed he was talking about Bristol Palin, who was 18 at the time. Sarah Palin, though, pointed out that then-14-year-old Willow had attended the game.

“Did he get reprimanded by CBS for this? No, no one batted an eye at it,” Bristol wrote.

The next name on her list was rapper Azeala Banks. In 2016, the entertainer advocated for Palin to be raped.

“Sarah Palin needs to have her hair shaved off to a buzz cut, get headf—ed by a big veiny, ashy, black d— then be locked in a cupboard,” Banks tweeted.

Later, she added, “Honestly… Let’s find the burliest blackest n—-s and let them run a train on her. Film it and put it on worldstar.”

Bristol Palin noted that Banks received no consequences for her tweets, and Twitter even allowed her keep her account open.

In 2011, former boxer Mike Tyson made similarly graphic remarks about the former governor of Alaska.

Up next was former “Fox & Friends” host and current CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota, who asked Sarah Palin in 2011 about her breasts.

“Harassing lines of questioning like that is to sexualize the female guest, thus discrediting the important issues she’s there to discuss,” said Bristol. “Gee, I wonder why voters have a hard time taking female politicians seriously when a news organization is more interested in the size of their bra than their brain?”

Finally, she called out two rappers — Macklemore and Eminem — for making sexual references to her mother in two of their songs.

Palin concluded that she is trying to “point out a very real issue – as a society, we cannot have double standards on sexual issues. We won’t fix it until victims of all political stripes are treated with respect and dignity!”

“Sexual harassment will never change when we have the double standards that we do today,” she wrote. “This isn’t about me or my family. Though the comments that have been made about us are horrible, this movement is way bigger than that.” (For more from the author of “Bristol Gives Names of Celebrities Who Sexually Harassed Palin Women, Points out Biggest Problem” please click HERE)

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