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Man Released by First Step Act Rearrested for Meth Trafficking

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Trump’s often-spoken instincts on punishing drug traffickers were correct. Therefore, he might want to think twice before his son-in-law or Kim Kardashian convince him to stand at a podium with drug traffickers released early from prison like Obama did. Now, one of those who spoke at a jailbreak press conference with him has been rearrested for drug trafficking after obtaining early release under the First Step Act.

On April 1, 2009, Trump held a summit with prisoners released under the First Step Act to celebrate passage of the bill. One of those convicts celebrated at the podium was Troy Powell, whom Trump referred to as a great electrician and even joked about using him one day for work in the White House. He celebrated the fact that Powell was hired by a lumber company in North Carolina.

Trump then brought him to the lectern amid rousing applause from the crowd. Powell thanked all of the jailbreak organizations like Cut 50 that helped get the legislation passed. Choked up with emotion, Powell said that “more needs to be done” and that he left many others behind in prison. “There’s people doing 40, 50 years, for nothin’, I mean absolutely nothing,” lamented Powell. The Republican National Committee even tweeted out the video.

It was one of those heartwarming moments. The tenor of that press conference was all about the injustice to criminals, not victims, as if the federal government just randomly grabbed great people and locked them up forever, and if only we abolished prison, we’d live happily ever after.

Fast-forward roughly a year later, and Powell was arrested in North Carolina with three others and charged with meth trafficking. Thousands of Americans are dying because of people like this. And this can’t be blamed on lack of job opportunities. This is a man who literally has the president’s ear and was given a job, but he was allegedly back to his old ways almost immediately.

The reality is, as Reagan warned, that some people are just irremediably broken and a danger to society. It takes talent to get into state prison these days, much less to graduate to federal prison. While no system is perfect, the fact that someone gets mandatory minimums in federal prison usually means he had multiple opportunities to escape the longer sentencing.

The sad thing is that this happens all the time. I’m told by sources at the DEA who are not authorized to speak to the media that they see many people who have been released in recent years, including under Obama, back to trafficking for the cartels within days of their release. If not for a local North Carolina TV station, we would never have known about this case.

The chickens of the First Step Act came home to roost even more severely in Providence, Rhode Island, last year when Joel Francisco, who was released under the First Step Act, was charged with murder. Francisco was serving life in prison for a third drug trafficking charge in 2005 under the “three strikes and you’re out” law. However, he got such a severe sentence not because of drugs but because he was a known Latin Kings member responsible for a lot of violence in the city, including shooting a man in the back of the head, execution-style, in 1997. He pleaded no contest for that, so at the time, he escaped full justice in the state system. The feds targeted him specifically for this reason, yet the First Step Act released him.

It’s unclear whether the judge in Powell’s case believed he was responsible for crimes more severe than the drug trafficking that landed him in prison for 20 years, but may never know, sense his sentencing report is sealed.

Numerous violent offenders have been released under this bill. We will never know how many reoffend, because 18 Republicans joined every Democrat in defeating an amendment by Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., that would have required the Bureau of Prisons to publish the rearrest information of released prisoners.

This is the big lie. Just as with numerous crimes committed by illegal aliens that get reported as “a New York man,” so many crimes committed by those released under these jailbreak programs never get traced back to the political movement that released them.

What is so jarring about the jailbreak of drug traffickers is that it comes amid the worst meth crisis in our nation’s history. Congress passed dozens of bills clamping down on prescriptions and spending billions of dollars for drug treatment. It is preparing more bills this year. Yet, when it comes to the people actually supplying this stuff, lawmakers are treating them like heroes. Which one is it? Is this the worst drug crisis ever, engendering a full-scale response from government, or are we going to celebrate drug traffickers and virtue-signal on how they were wronged?

Most of all, this tragic story demonstrates the fallacy behind one of the major talking points of the pro-criminal movement. Proponents of jailbreak constantly speak of the need for “second chances.” Aside from the fact that, with few exceptions, our system is full of endless chances for the criminal but no second chance for victims, they are missing the most important factor in rehabilitation. Someone who has truly reformed would recognize what he did wrong and commit to rectifying his mistake. Yet these people think they did nothing wrong, as Powell himself said last February. And therein lies the problem.

Alice Johnson has become a celebrity for Republicans and is now a de facto spokeswomen for the Trump administration. She was a top-level cocaine trafficker for the Colombian cartels, and her prosecution was the biggest drug case in Tennessee’s history at the time. To this day, she doesn’t believe she did anything wrong. One would think a reformed person would go around with the DEA and federal prosecutors and warn about the dangers of cocaine trafficking, which is killing thousands of African-Americans. Instead, she is agitating for release of more traffickers.

At some point our government needs to pick a side in this battle. As for President Trump, he must remember that his initial instincts, opposed to “swampthink,” are always correct. (For more from the author of “Man Released by First Step Act Rearrested for Meth Trafficking” please click HERE)

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Senator Introduces Bill Authorizing Death Penalty for Those Who Intentionally Kill With Fentanyl

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There is no crime killing more people in this country than fentanyl trafficking – not terrorism, not shootings, not stabbings, not any other form of violence.

There are roughly 16,000 official homicides a year, but 30,000 a year are dying from fentanyl, and likely more from other drugs that are laced with it. They are usually unsuspecting youngsters who think they are getting regular pain pills but are purposely sold chemical warfare as a death sentence. Rather than wringing our hands about the problem and spending billions on wasteful programs, shouldn’t we finally get serious about deterring it?

To that end, Sen. Tom Cotton has introduced a bill to finally treat fentanyl trafficking with the seriousness the crime deserves. The Zero Tolerance for Deceptive Fentanyl Trafficking Act would create a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison for those convicted of dealing fentanyl while misrepresenting it as something else. If the offender has a prior felony conviction or is here illegally, he would get life in prison. And if the dealer intended to kill someone with fentanyl and succeeded, this bill would make that crime eligible for the death penalty, as any other first-degree murder is.

This bill does not target someone who possesses fentanyl or consumes it. This is solely targeting those who engage in mass chemical warfare that is killing more people than any other form of murder.

The bill is co-sponsored by Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga.

At present, there is very little deterrent against fentanyl traffickers. Virginia Krieger, who lost her daughter to fentanyl in Ohio, told me on my podcast that the two people who sold her daughter Tiffany the fentanyl under the guise that it was a prescription-type painkiller for her back injury got no jail time.

“Once Tiffany was incapacitated, the two women then spent the next six to eight hours going back and forth to two separate ATMs near the home, making withdrawals from Tiffany’s bank account using her ATM card and even going back the last time only hours after the coroner had come to the residence and removed my child’s lifeless body,” Krieger said on my podcast.

What ultimately happened to the two women who sold Tiffany the drugs?

“In the end, one woman served 28 days in jail for her participation in my daughter’s death,” according to Krieger. “The other (much worse) woman and the ringleader was not punished at all and was subsequently present at two other opioid overdose deaths with similar circumstances of theft. She was also revived herself with narcan after an overdose, but charges against her for possession of illegal narcotics were later dismissed. This woman has a very lengthy criminal record involving petty crimes, possession and drug trafficking and remained in the public domain to eventually contribute to my daughter’s death.”

Later on, the second woman was sentenced to two years in prison, only because she was convicted on a subsequent robbery. “I went out of my way to travel the one hour to Warren, Ohio, to remind the prosecutor who she was and that given her long list of criminal activity and her participation in Tiffany’s death, she should not be given a light sentence again,” Krieger told me.

What about the guy who distributed the drugs to those two women? “The drug dealer has a long criminal history involving drug trafficking and domestic violence, and he continues to traffic drugs with impunity, including illicit fentanyl.”

Trump is 100 correct when he talks about the need for deterrent. “States with a very powerful death penalty on drug dealers don’t have a drug problem,” said Trump earlier this month during a White House event with governors. “I don’t know that our country is ready for that, but if you look throughout the world, the countries with a powerful death penalty — death penalty — with a fair but quick trial, they have very little if any drug problem. That includes China.”

Well, now it’s time to put this into legislation before hundreds of thousands more are killed. Do we want to solve the problem or not?

Remember, this is not primarily about drug addiction. Most people do not intend to consume fentanyl. It’s being laced into other drugs or being packaged and sold as prescription painkillers. We have a drug problem in this country, but what is going on with the fentanyl trafficking is chemical warfare.

At some point, the political elites must be confronted with their hypocritical approach. When it comes to drug treatment, they are spending billions of dollars on dubious programs and clamping down on legitimate prescription painkillers. But when it comes to the worst illicit drug trafficking, they are frantically promoting jailbreak. Which one is it? Do we have a fentanyl crisis or not?

“There was no justice for my family,” lamented the Ohio mom. “We were first victimized by government legislation that denied my daughter the care of her physician, then we were denied justice when she was killed by the very illicit narcotics that were at the heart of the ‘opioid epidemic.’ The very same illicit narcotics that drove panicked legislation that ultimately caused her physician and many, many others to be fearful of treating their patients, thereby driving valid patients out of the doctor’s office and to the street corners, where the dealers and cartel drugs were waiting for them.”

Last March, speaking to a crowd in New Hampshire, which is a hard-hit state, Trump laid down the gauntlet:

You know, it’s an amazing thing. Some of these drug dealers will kill thousands of people during their lifetime — thousands of people — and destroy many more lives than that. But they will kill thousands of people during their lifetime, and they’ll get caught and they’ll get 30 days in jail. Or they’ll go away for a year, or they’ll be fined. And yet, if you kill one person, you get the death penalty or you go to jail for life.

That is the story of Virginia’s daughter and countless thousands of others over the past five years.

Well, Senator Cotton has now laid down that marker with a bill to make the president’s long-standing priority a reality. Who’s in? (For more from the author of “Senator Introduces Bill Authorizing Death Penalty for Those Who Intentionally Kill With Fentanyl” please click HERE)

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“Unprecedented Levels”: New Record for Meth Seizures at Border in 2014

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Photo Credit: Utsandiego Methamphetamine seizures at U.S. ports of entry on the California-Mexico border reached unprecedented levels in fiscal 2014, as drug trafficking organizations strive to smuggle growing quantities of the low-cost Mexican-made product into the United States.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures show 14,732 pounds of meth seized by the San Diego field office during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, accounting for 63 percent of the synthetic drug seized at all land, air and sea ports of entry nationwide.

With the California border as their main smuggling route, “the Mexican cartels are flooding the U.S. marketplace with their cheap methamphetamine,” said Gary Hill, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s assistant special agent in charge in San Diego.

Undercover agents are purchasing meth in San Diego for $3,500 a pound, versus about $11,800 for a pound of cocaine, Hill said. “We have seen the trend of the price of meth decreasing tremendously since 2008.”

Methamphetamine, a highly addictive synthetic drug, once was primarily produced in the United States, and San Diego was infamous as its manufacturing capital. But with a U.S. law enforcement crackdown on the precursor chemicals used to make meth, the drug is now largely produced in Mexico. (Read more about the meth seizures at borders HERE)

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Obama’s DOJ retaliates against high profile GOP donor Sheldon Adelson with money laundering investigation?

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Photo credit: freddthompson

The Justice Department is investigating whether Las Vegas Sands Corp., owned by high-profile Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, broke federal law by failing to report millions of dollars of potentially laundered money transferred to its casinos by two high-rolling Las Vegas gamblers, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles is investigating deposits made in the mid-2000s by a Mexican pharmaceutical businessman, later indicted for drug trafficking in 2007, and a California executive with Fry’s Electronics, who later pleaded guilty to taking illegal kickbacks, the newspaper said, citing lawyers and federal officials working on the case.

The Journal said there were no indications that the investigation included actions by Adelson, Sands’ chief executive and a major political donor for the Republican Party. Adelson has pledged to spend as much as $100 million to help Republican candidates in this election cycle.

Federal investigators have begun focusing on casinos amid concerns that the industry’s lax financial systems could be used for money laundering and other illegal activities, according to Justice Department officials cited by the Journal.

Sands Corp. did not immediately return calls from the Associated Press on Sunday. A company spokesman, Ron Reese, told the Journal that the company believes “it has acted properly and has not committed any wrongdoing.”

Read more from this story HERE.