News of the World

[kyonides]

Uvalde cops slammed as ‘cowards’
after speedy Nashville school shooting response

Police in Uvalde, Texas, sparked intense outrage 10 months ago when it was revealed they allowed a school shooter to roam free for more than an hour, killing 21 young kids and teachers along the way.

Now, those officers are facing renewed criticism after it was learned that two Nashville cops took just 14 minutes to take down mass shooter Audrey Hale in the halls of The Covenant School on Monday.

Nashville officers Rex Englebert and Michael Collazo have been hailed heroes after haunting bodycam footage showed them running towards a hail of gunfire and immediately killing the 28-year-old shooter with a slew of precision shots.

Their response is a “glaring” difference to that of their law enforcement colleagues over in Uvalde, retired NYPD sergeant Joseph Giacalone told The Post on Tuesday.

Giacalone praised the quick-thinking Nashville cops for acting with “zero hesitation.”
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“The longer you wait the more you hesitate or think about these things. It’s paralysis by analysis and that didn’t happen.”

Giacalone added: “You think about what’s going on with the heart rate and all the other things that go along with this. They did a great job.”
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“In Uvalde the shooter had an AR-15 and dozens of armed cops waited outside for almost an hour while wounded children bled out In Nashville the shooter had an AR-15 and 5 cops rushed in and took them out in minutes Nashville PD just set the standard for the entire country,” Rogan O’Handley tweeted.

FTX Founder Bankman-Fried Bribed Chinese Officials With $40 Million in Crypto

Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, bribed Chinese government officials with $40 million in cryptocurrency, the Department of Justice alleged in a new 13-count indictment.

Federal prosecutors stated that accounts belonging to Bankman-Fried and others “directed and caused the transfer” of at least $40 million in crypto “intended for the benefit of one or more Chinese government officials in order to influence and induce them” to unfreeze some of the accounts.

In November 2021, accounts for Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, were frozen by Chinese authorities.

The Chinese government has been cracking down on cryptocurrency since 2017, banning digital currencies in September 2021.

Bankman-Fried and his colleagues employed “numerous” legal and personal methods to unfreeze the accounts that contained approximately $1 billion worth of crypto, according to prosecutors.

“After months of failed attempts to unfreeze the accounts, Samuel Bankman-Fried discussed with others and ultimately agreed to and directed a multimillion-dollar bribe to seek to unfreeze the accounts,” prosecutors wrote in the indictment.

Once the funds were released, the money was utilized to fund his hedge fund’s loss-generating trades.

Bankman-Fried is accused of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, an anti-bribery statute.

A letter to the federal district court judge managing the case confirmed that a grand jury returned the indictment on March 27.

 Here's another FTX Update!

Sam Bankman-Fried, Prosecutors Reach New Bail Agreement

Lawyers for Sam Bankman-Fried said they reached an agreement with U.S. prosecutors on Monday on revised bail conditions, after a judge raised the prospect of sending the indicted FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder to jail pending trial.

Under some of the proposed new conditions, Bankman-Fried would have a new phone with no internet capability and a basic laptop with limited functions, but be forbidden from using other electronic communication devices.

The laptop will have monitoring software to track user activity and Bankman-Fried won’t have administrative access to prevent tampering with the restrictions. Additionally, the new phone’s communication functions will be limited to text messages and voice calls, with all other messaging applications prohibited.

In Monday’s letter, Bankman-Fried’s parents agreed to restrict his access to their devices, while also signing sworn affidavits to not bring prohibited electronic devices into their home.

If there’s reasonable suspicion of a violation, Bankman-Fried must submit his devices for a search, the letter added.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing Bankman-Fried’s case, would need to approve the new terms before they go into effect.

China Spent $240 Billion Bailing Out ‘Belt and Road’ Countries

The study published on Tuesday by AidData, a research lab at William & Mary, a public university in Virginia, notes the significant scale of China’s cross-border rescue lending: it says that China’s $240 billion bailout is more than 20 percent of total International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending over the past decade, with an accelerating trend—$185 billion, or nearly 80 percent, of the total $240 billion was extended during the recent five years between 2016 and 2021.

Yet, China’s lending is opaque, more expensive at an average 5 percent interest rate versus IMF’s 2 percent, and is offered almost exclusively to BRI countries.

BRI, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) multibillion-dollar global infrastructure development strategy, has long been criticized for saddling host countries with debt, ignoring the local environmental impact, and exporting Chinese labor, therefore not creating local jobs. Moreover, when the host countries couldn’t repay BRI loans, the CCP seized assets that expanded its strategic and military reach.

Hence, BRI is also known as “debt-trap diplomacy.” An example is Sri Lanka, an island country in South Asia. In December 2017, the government gave the CCP a 99-year lease of its Hambantota Port—located near busy Indian Ocean shipping routes—and 15,000 acres of land around it after defaulting on a $1 billion BRI loan.

According to the authors of the study, the CCP does not bail out all distressed BRI borrowers. Instead, it tends to offer low-income debtors debt restructuring plans but no new money. Meantime, middle-income debtors, such as Argentina, Pakistan, Egypt, Ukraine, and Venezuela, received new money. For example, Argentina received the most at about $112 billion.

The report’s authors also raised an issue regarding China’s central bank using its global swap lines for debt servicing. They noted that the CCP’s swap line rescue loan operations “complicated the challenge of monitoring debt vulnerabilities in the developing world.”

About 70 percent of the $240 billion bailout was conducted through the global swap line of China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC). Such swap lines are set up to improve the liquidity conditions of central banks.

DOJ Memos Dissuaded Marshals From Arresting
Protestors at SCOTUS Justices’ Homes

A Senate Republican revealed during a March 28 hearing that an internal Department of Justice (DOJ) memo dissuaded U.S. Marshals from arresting protestors in violation of laws against picketing the homes of judges.

The materials revealed during the hearing show that U.S. Marshals were explicitly directed not to arrest protestors at the homes of Supreme Court (SCOTUS) justices.

“People want justice to be blind,” said freshman Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), who unveiled the findings during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Attorney General Merrick Garland appeared before the panel to testify on the DOJ side of President Joe Biden’s proposed budget.

Section 1507 of U.S. Code prohibits the picketing of Supreme Court (SCOTUS) justices or other federal judges to change the outcome of a legal case. But when protestors demonstrated at the homes of conservative justices to protest their leaked abortion decision in June 2022, U.S. Marshals made few arrests in connection to the statute.

This, Britt revealed, was not a mistake. Rather, she showed that a DOJ memo had directly dissuaded agents from making arrests on the basis of Section 1507, instructing them to arrest protestors only as a “last resort” to protect the justices.
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“U.S. Marshals have the authority to arrest anyone under that statute or any other federal statute,” Garland said. “The attorney general does not make the decision to arrest. The Marshals on the scene—they do make the decision of whether to arrest.”

But newly uncovered materials used to train Marshals to protect the homes of SCOTUS justices show that they were “actively discouraged” from making arrests on grounds of this statute, Britt said.

“Those materials show that the Marshals likely didn’t make any arrests because they were actively discouraged from doing so,” Britt said.

The training materials told the Marshals “to avoid, unless absolutely necessary, any criminal enforcement action involving the protestors.”

Marshals were also told, “Making arrests and initiating prosecutions is not the goal of the [Marshal Service] presence at SCOTUS residences.”

“The ‘not’ is actually italicized and underlined,” Britt noted.

John Durham Expected to Finish His Report ‘Relatively Soon’

U.S. special counsel John Durham is poised to finish his report soon, Attorney General Merrick Garland said on March 28.

Garland, testifying before a U.S. Senate committee, was asked about how Democrat lawyer Michael Sussmann had a badge that let him access the FBI’s headquarters. Sussmann used the the badge to gain entry on Sept. 19, 2016, when he handed over unsupported allegations against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump to an FBI lawyer.

“He was with the private law firm purpose Perkins Coie, which is the main counsel for the national Democratic Party. He had a special badge to get him into the … FBI building. Why did he have that special badge?” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) asked.

“I’m afraid I also don’t know anything about this. I assume from the reference that this is something that Mr. Durham was investigating as part of his investigation,” Garland said.

“No, I don’t think he investigated the badge,” Kennedy said.

“I know he was investigating Mr. Sussmann. I think this goes back to 2020. I don’t know the answer to that,” Garland said.

Kennedy asked Garland to find out the answer for him, noting that he tried getting it from FBI Director Christopher Wray during questioning in 2020 but that Sussmann’s trial was in process at the time. Sussmann, prosecuted by Durham’s team, was acquitted by a jury in Washington.

“The trial is over. I’d like to know why Mr. Sussmann, a private citizen, had a special badge to get into the FBI in the Department of Justice, and if there are other people out there who have special badges,” Kennedy said.

“On the particular question about Sussman, I think we’re going to have to wait until Mr. Durham finishes his report, which should be relatively soon,” Garland replied.
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“On the more general question, I can certainly ask my team to look into how lawyers have special badges.”
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Durham has only prosecuted three people. Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who doctored an email to state that a one-time Trump campaign associate was not a CIA asset when the associate actually was, pleaded guilty and received probation. Sussmann was acquitted by a jury, as was Igor Danchenko, a Russian national who was the primary subsource for the Trump dossier compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele for Hillary Clinton and other Democrats.

Barr, who has defended the probe, said he was disappointed by the acquittals but optimistic about the upcoming report.

DHS Secretary Mayorkas in Fiery Exchanges
With GOP Lawmakers
at Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing

Migrant encounters along the U.S.-Mexico border have soared to record highs since Mayorkas was sworn in as DHS Secretary in February 2021. The number rose to 250,000 last December and was reported at 155,000 in February.

CBP seized a record-high 2,900 pounds of fentanyl along the southern border last November. Three years ago, border agents were claiming around 380 pounds of fentanyl every month.

During the first week of Operation Blue Lotus, there were 16 federal arrests, two state arrests, and 18 seizures that prevented more than 900 pounds of fentanyl from crossing into the United States, DHS reported.
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Mayorkas said that the reduced numbers in February show that Biden’s regulations are working.

Overall, border patrol agents have encountered more than 4.8 million migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border since Mayorkas took office.

Border authorities reported 11 terror watchlist encounters on the southern border between 2017 and 2020. Last year, they said the figure escalated to 98.

“You want to fix this, Mr. Secretary? Go back to Trump policies. Just reimpose everything Donald Trump did to secure the border and your problem will dramatically be improved,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
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Most of the fentanyl that is detected enters the United States through border crossings and is not brought in between the ports of entry, Mayorkas stated.

Last week, Border Patrol chief agent in Tucson, Arizona, John Modlin told Congress that the migrants are used by cartels to distract agents.

Mayorkas told lawmakers that he did not know that cartels use illegal immigrants to cross into the United States from Mexico and sneak in contraband.

 Huh!? So you're the head of the department, and even so, you  DON'T KNOW that?

[Senator John] Cornyn told Mayorkas that during testimony to Congress earlier this month Attorney General Merrick Garland acknowledged the cartels’ strategy.

“You have no idea how many of those people were carrying fentanyl or other drugs with them, do you?” Cornyn demanded.

“Senator, the expert view that I received is that approximately 90 percent of the fentanyl…” Mayorkas responded.

“That’s a totally made-up number, Mr. Secretary. You know it. That’s a totally made-up number,” Cornyn proclaimed.
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“I have unflinching confidence in the integrity of my conduct,” Mayorkas declared.

“You said we do have operational control of the border in 2022,” Cornyn pointed out. “You said the border is not, in fact, open. And then I think I heard you say here that no administration has ever had operational control of the border. Isn’t that what you said?”

“No. That is not what I said,” Mayorkas replied.

Just waiting for the day he gets finally fired.