Oh, that’s rich. So he can execute someone by his authority for whatever reasons he likes, but he shouldn’t be killed because the government didn’t follow procedures. He’s a coward. If he wants to be a martyr to his monstrous cause, he should man up and welcome the chair.
Luigi Mangione asked a federal judge in New York on Friday to stop the government from seeking the death penalty if he’s convicted of federal charges related to the shooting death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, arguing the Justice Department made a “political, arbitrary, capricious” breach of protocol.
“When the United States plans to kill one of its citizens, it must follow statutory and internal procedures,” defense attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo said. “Mangione seeks Court intervention now not merely because the Government has failed to follow these procedures but because it has abandoned them.”
A state of emergency has been declared in New Mexico‘s largest city, as the governor calls in the National Guard to help combat out of control crime.
Action by the Democratic governor clears the way for dozens of guard members to help the Albuquerque Police Department starting next month.
About 60 to 70 soldiers will be stationed in largest city, home to over a quarter of the state, for six months to a year, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham told reporters Tuesday.
Grisham pulled the trigger after the chief of police asked for assistance at the end of March, as the city of dealing with a fentanyl crisis, violent crime and growing homelessness problem.
Some of the troops will be assigned to Central Avenue, part of the historic Route 66.
The area is known as ‘The War Zone’ by locals, and is the site of homeless encampments and open-air drug use.
I have not been willing to send my DNA to someone to satiate my curiosity for exactly this reason. The DNA of millions of people is this company’s most valuable asset. They are going to sell that asset to pay the bills (if they haven’t already been doing so). Insurance companies, Big Pharma, and any number of other firms will pay for that data. Furthermore, they can sell it more than once. No thanks. I don’t need to know that I’m 27% Irish.
Genetic testing company 23andMe announced on Sunday that it has filed for bankruptcy due to low demand for its ancestry kits and after a 2023 data breach damaged its reputation.
The company, which has over 15 million customers worldwide, said it voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to “facilitate a sale process to maximize the value of its business.” 23andMe is seeking authorization from a bankruptcy court in Missouri to “sell substantially all of its assets.”
The company’s market value peaked at almost $6 billion after it went public in 2021, but 23andMe reported a 7% decline in revenue and losses of $174 million in the first nine months of its current fiscal year.
President Donald Trump’s administration is directing immigration agents to track down unaccompanied migrant children in the U.S., a source familiar with the plans told ABC News.
An internal document from Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE), headlined the “Unaccompanied Alien Children Joint Initiative Field Implementation,” said the initiative claims to prevent children from being human trafficked or other types of exploitation.
There are more than 600,000 migrant children who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without a legal guardian or parent since 2019, according to government data.
A South Carolina death row inmate has chosen to die by firing squad, a controversial and rarely used execution method that’s legal but is viewed as an inhumane form of justice by many Americans. Brad Sigmon, 67, is scheduled to be executed on March 7. He was convicted in 2001 of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents at their home. Prosecutors said Sigmon also held his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint and attempted to kidnap her, but she escaped. He shot at her as she ran, but missed.
Sigmon’s execution next month will be South Carolina’s first death by firing squad, which was legalized in the state in 2021.
Sigmon didn’t choose electrocution because it would “burn and cook him alive,” his attorney, Gerald King, said in a statement, according to the Associated Press.
[…]
In the U.S., 34 people have been executed by firing squad, according to data from the DPIC. It’s the only method of execution that has a 0% botched rate. Comparatively, death by lethal injection has the most botched execution rate at 7.12%.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California woman was sentenced Monday to more than 3 years in prison in a long-running case over a business that helped pregnant Chinese women travel to the United States to deliver babies who automatically became American citizens.
U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner gave Phoebe Dong a 41-month sentence and ordered her immediately taken into custody from his federal court in Los Angeles. Dong and her husband were convicted in September of conspiracy and money laundering through their company, USA Happy Baby.
The sentencing came as birthright citizenship has been thrust into the spotlight in the United States with the return of President Donald Trump to the White House. Since taking office, Trump issued an executive order to narrow the definition of birthright citizenship, a move quickly blocked by a federal judge who called it “blatantly unconstitutional.”
Dong and her husband, Michael Liu, were among more than a dozen people charged in an Obama-era crackdown on so-called “birth tourism” schemes that helped Chinese women hide their pregnancies while traveling to the United States to give birth. Such businesses have long operated in various states catering to people from China, Russia, Nigeria and elsewhere.
[…]
Federal prosecutors sought a more than five year sentence for Dong and argued that she and Liu helped more than 100 pregnant Chinese women travel to the United States. They said the pair worked with others to coach women on how to trick customs officials by flying into airports believed to be more lax while wearing loose-fitting clothing to hide their pregnancies.
For the record, I think that Oswald killed JFK just like we’ve been told for years. But I also think that his hostile communist radicalism was nurtured by the Soviet Union and ignored (intentionally?) by the CIA for years.
US President Donald Trump has ordered officials to make plans to declassify documents related to three of the most consequential assassinations in US history – the killings of John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.
“A lot of people are waiting for this for long, for years, for decades,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. “And everything will be revealed.”
The order directs top administration officials to present a plan to declassify the documents within 15 days. That does not make it certain it will happen, however.
In the final minutes of his presidency, Joe Biden pre-emptively pardoned several family members, including his brothers James, Francis and Frank Biden, and sister Valerie Biden Owens.
Biden said the pardons were intended to shield his family from politically motivated attacks and should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment of any wrongdoing.
I would like to see someone challenge preemptive and blanket pardons. It doesn’t seem Constitutional to pardon people for unnamed crimes for which they have not been charged.
Excellent. The People voted for change and reversing Biden’s traitorous dissolution of our national borders is Job #1.
Trump said his administration is planning on executing mass deportations on undocumented immigrants “very quickly” after he takes office, reiterating his desire to “get the criminals out of our country.”
“It’ll begin very early, very quickly,” he told NBC News. “I can’t say which cities because things are evolving.”
“We have to get the criminals out of our country,” he added.
Trump has long previewed plans for mass deportations of immigrants. CNN previously reported the incoming Trump administration will focus at first on deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal backgrounds in major metropolitan areas such as Chicago, Denver and Washington, DC.
I encourage you to go read the Weiss Report regarding the investigation and prosecution of Hunter Biden in full. The media is fixating on hoe Weiss claps back at President Biden for slandering the investigators and prosecutors. You get gems like this:
The Constitution provides the President 8 with broad authority to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United 9 States, U.S. Const. art. II, § 2, cl. 1, but nowhere does the Constitution give the President 10 the authority to rewrite history.
But what really sticks out is the sleazy, illegal lifestyle Hunter was leading while spending millions of dollars. Where did these millions come from? Hunter didn’t hold down an actual job. He wasn’t running an enterprise. His lifestyle didn’t allow any time to conduct legitimate business. How was he able to obtain and spend millions of dollars without owning anything or working?
It’s clear as day. He was selling policy and access while kicking up a percentage to the Big Guy. This criminal enterprise makes Gotti look like a lightweight. Not to mention the fact that he did all of this while refusing to pay millions of dollars in taxes. When Joe Biden rails against millionaires not paying their fair share (whatever that means), he’s talking about his own son, and, probably, himself.
The Bidens might be the most corrupt family to ever reach the height of political power in America.
Two prisoners who are among the 37 federal inmates whose death sentences were commuted last month by President Joe Biden — a move that spares them from the death chamber — have taken an unusual stance: They’re refusing to sign paperwork accepting his clemency action.
Shannon Agofsky and Len Davis, both inmates at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, filed emergency motions in federal court in the state’s southern district on Dec. 30 seeking an injunction to block having their death sentences commuted to life in prison without parole.
The men believe that having their sentences commuted would put them at a legal disadvantage as they seek to appeal their cases based on claims of innocence.
Good. This has been a witch hunt and massive misallocation of resources. I hope Trump every DOJ official who participated in seeking out and prosecuting any but the handful of malcontents who deserved it.
CNN —
President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t been sworn in yet, but his looming return has already upended hundreds of pending prosecutions against his supporters who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and has disrupted the ongoing effort to arrest more rioters.
The historic effort by Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents to investigate the deadly Trump-inspired storming of the Capitol has led to more than 1,570 arrests in nearly all 50 states, making it the largest criminal probe in American history. New arrests are slowly still trickling in, four years later, including recent cases against a member of the Proud Boys and a rioter who tried to stab police with a flagpole.
But the political reality has already tanked morale inside the Justice Department division that handles these cases — and is hampering efforts to secure guilty pleas in about 300 pending cases, as defendants balk at negotiations, according to a federal law enforcement official involved in the sprawling investigation.
My prayers go out to the families impacted by the school shooting in Madison yesterday. There is always a flood of wrong information and bad “hot takes” after something like this. I’ve followed the news closely and it appears to be yet another troubled child who lashed out. It looks like there were significant warning signs, but hindsight is always 20/20. I thought the police chief’s press conference yesterday was pure Madison where the most animated he got during the entire time was when he was talking about whether or not the shooter was trans. This part of the story struck me as odd too:
It is not yet confirmed if Rupnow’s family – who are cooperating with the investigation – were gun owners.
Police raided her Delaware Boulevard home on Monday night to find anything she may have left behind. A door appeared to have been battered down and left on the ground and CNN reported that officers had thrown stun grenades into the home.
Barnes said they’re currently speaking with the shooter’s father at one of their facilities and that he’s cooperating.
‘The parents are fully cooperating, we have no reason to believe that they have committed a crime at this time,’ Barnes said, before offering empathy for her father.
If the parents are cooperating, why did they smash in the door and throw grenades? Were they worried about another threat inside? Why? This seems like a ridiculous overreaction if the parents were cooperating.
These pardons are not grants of clemency for people wrongly punished or an acknowledgement of a life well lived after a grave error. These pardons are for truly vile people, rightfully convicted, who have not paid for their crimes. Is Biden selling these pardons or is he just evil?
Victims of major public corruption cases in Pennsylvania and Illinois are angry that President Joe Biden granted clemency this week to two convicted officials.
The commutations were announced Thursday as part of a historic clemency package for 1,500 convicted criminals who, the White House said, “deserve a second chance.”
The two convicted officials whose cases sparked outrage – a crooked Pennsylvania judge and a notorious Illinois fraudster – both had already been released from prison early and put on house arrest during the Covid-19 pandemic. Biden’s actions now end that punishment.
The president has already faced bipartisan criticism over his highly controversial pardon of his son Hunter Biden, who was convicted earlier this year of 12 tax and gun crimes.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said there were more than two dozen confidential human sources in the crowd on Jan. 6, but only three were assigned by the FBI to present for the event, while stressing that none of the sources were authorized or directed by the bureau to “break the law” or “encourage others to commit illegal acts,” Fox News has learned.
[…]
“Today’s report also details our findings regarding FBI CHSs who were in Washington, D.C., on January 6,” the report states. “Our review determined that none of these FBI CHSs was authorized by the FBI to enter the Capitol or a restricted area or to otherwise break the law on January 6, nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6.”
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security said Thursday that they had seen “no evidence” that mysterious drone sightings over New Jersey and adjacent areas in recent weeks “pose a national security or public safety threat.”
The agencies also said they had no evidence of a “foreign nexus” to the drones.
“Upon review of available imagery, it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft, operating lawfully,” the agencies said in a statement.
“There are no reported or confirmed drone sightings in any restricted air space,” the agencies said.
As New York City prosecutors worked Thursday to bring murder charges against Luigi Mangione in the brazen killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, supporters of the suspect are donating tens of thousands of dollars for a defense fund established for him, leaving law enforcement officials worried Mangione is being turned into a martyr.
Several online defense funds have been created for Mangione by anonymous people, including one on the crowdfunding website GiveSendGo that as of Thursday afternoon had raised over $50,000.
The GiveSendGo defense fund for the 26-year-old Mangione was established by an anonymous group calling itself “The December 4th Legal Committee,” apparently in reference to the day Mangione allegedly ambushed and gunned down Thompson in Midtown Manhattan as the executive walked to his company’s shareholders conference at the New York Hilton hotel.
A judge granted a motion from Manhattan prosecutors to dismiss the more serious charge of second-degree manslaughter against Daniel Penny on Friday in his trial over the chokehold death of Jordan Neely on a New York City subway last year.
The ruling clears the way for the jury to consider a remaining lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide. It came after a Manhattan jury said they were deadlocked twice on the manslaughter charge and Penny’s defense attorneys renewed their motion for a mistrial.
Over defense objections, Judge Maxwell Wiley agreed with prosecutors, who argued that dismissing the first count of second-degree manslaughter eliminates the defense’s concern about a compromise verdict.
