Trump Sending Special Border Patrol Units to Sanctuary Cities02/18/2020 Source:AANby: Paul Crespo
President Trump is fulfilling his promise to enforce the nation's immigration laws and crack down on so-called "sanctuary cities" who refuse to cooperate with federal immigration agents. Many of these localities also subvert federal law enforcement by warning illegal aliens of impending immigration raids.
In response, the Trump administration will be deploying specialized law enforcement tactical units as part of arrest operations in these cities across the country. As reported by the New York Times, among those being deployed are members of the elite tactical unit known as BORTAC, which acts as the Border Patrol's SWAT team.
Carrying special gear such as stun grenades and with enhanced tactical training, the officers typically conduct high-risk operations targeting known violent offenders, many of them career criminals. Some may remember unfavorably that it was armed BORTAC agents who entered the Miami home where Elian Gonzalez was residing in 2000 to remove him, while the boy was involved in an asylum case involving Cuba.
But now as PBS reports, "more commonly, they're breaking into stash houses that smuggling organizations are running. So these are places that are known to be full of drugs and weapons and dangerous people and they're breaking down the door to get them out."
In these operations, BORTAC units are expected to mostly back up ICE agents during deportation efforts and act as a show of force.
These tactical officers are being sent to cities including Chicago and New York to reinforce the enforcement power of local Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Agents are also expected to be sent to other major sanctuary cities.
According to the NYT, ICE leadership requested this added help in sanctuary cities because agents there often struggle to track down undocumented immigrants without the help of local police and other local agencies in these jurisdictions.
ICE's acting director said the deployment is needed in response to policies adopted by sanctuary cities which have made it harder for immigration agents to do their jobs, adding that if ICE isn't allowed to take custody of criminal aliens from jails, they are forced to make more dangerous "at-large" arrests.
MAGA' hat-wearing pigeons released in downtown Las Vegas, group says 7 hrs ago FOX News
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — An anonymous group calling itself "P.U.T.I.N." said they released pigeons wearing "MAGA" hats into downtown Las Vegas.
According to an email from the group's apparent leader "Coo Hand Luke," P.U.T.I.N. — which stands for Pigeons United To Interfere Now — released the birds purposely on the eve of the Democratic debate set for Las Vegas on Wednesday.
The group included video of the pigeons' release in their media alert.
One of the pigeons was attached with a small orange hairpiece. The rest wear "MAGA" (Make America Great Again) hats, synonymous with supporters of President Donald Trump.
The group said they were inspired by "the 1970’s Cold War Operation, 'Tacana,' in which the CIA explored the use of pigeons equipped with tiny cameras to spy on Soviet sites of interest."
The group called the pigeon release an "aerial protest."
In December, someone or some people attached small cowboy hats to several pigeons found in the Las Vegas Valley. Lofty Hopes pigeon rescue recovered two of them and removed their hats. One of the pigeons later died.
Neither Las Vegas Metropolitan Police nor a local pigeon rescue group were available for comment on Tuesday night.
White House Blasts Claim Trump Offered Pardon to Julian Assange: ‘Complete Fabrication and a Total Lie’ Josh Feldman 1 hr ago MSM news
A new claim from a lawyer for Julian Assange got a lot of attention — and skepticism — on Wednesday.
The statement centers on former Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who met with Assange in 2017 and subsequently said he wanted to meet with President Donald Trump to relay informationfrom that meeting.
According to the Daily Beast, Assange’s lawyer Edward Fitzgerald apparently brought up the following statement during the Wikileaks’ founder’s extradition trial:
Fitzgerald said a statement produced by Assange’s lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, showed “Mr Rohrabacher going to see Mr Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange … said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks.”
District Judge Vanessa Baraitser, who is presiding over the pre-trial hearing in Westminster Magistrates’ Court, said the allegation should be admissible during the extradition hearing, which is due to begin next week.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham called the claim a “complete fabrication and a total lie” in a statement, whilst putting distance between the president and the former lawmaker. “The President barely knows Dana Rohrabacher other than he’s an ex-congressman,” she said. “He’s never spoken to him on this subject or almost any subject. It is is a complete fabrication and a total lie. This is probably another never ending hoax and total lie from the DNC.”
NBC/WSJ Poll: How Trump is on the Rise, and Why Democrats are Panicking Over Bernie Guy Benson Posted: Feb 19, 2020
There's plenty for Team Trump to like in the new NBC/Wall Street Journal national survey, and as usual, there are some warning signs, too. Among other things, it shows the president emerging from impeachment in a stronger position, equaling his all-time high on job approval, including (slim) majority approval from independent voters:
He's also at +15 (53/38) on his handling of the economy, for good reason:
This comes on the heels of a Gallup poll showing the president climbing to 49 percent overall approval, and far stronger on the economy. Remember, he won with just over 46 percent of the popular vote in 2016, which is almost precisely where his average approval rating sits now. He emerged victorious last time despite 61 percent of the electorate holding an unfavorable view of him. In hypothetical head-to-head battles, Trump trails all leading 2020 Democrats by relatively close margins -- except for the otherwise faltering Joe Biden, who holds an eight-point lead. Among the swing states that will decide the election, it's tight across the board (again, except for the former Vice President, who Democratic voters have shunted aside with humiliating losses thus far):
What is the 'boogaloo?' How online calls for a violent uprising are hitting the mainstreamBrandy Zadrozny 4 hrs ago NBCnews
An anti-government movement that advocates for a violent uprising targeting liberal political opponents and law enforcement has moved from the fringes of the internet into the mainstream in recent months and surged on social media, according to a group of researchers that tracks hate groups.
The movement, which says it wants a second Civil War organized around the term "boogaloo," now includes groups on mainstream internet platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Reddit as well as fringe websites including 4chan, according to a report released Tuesday night by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), an independent non-profit of scientists and engineers that tracks and reports on misinformation and hate speech across social media. While calls for organized and targeted violence in the form of a new Civil War have previously circulated among some hate groups, the emergence of the term "boogaloo" appeared to be a new and discrete movement. NCRI researchers analyzed more than 100 million social media posts and comments and found that through the use of memes — inside jokes commonly in the form of images — extremists have pushed anti-government and anti-law enforcement messages across social media platforms. They have also organized online communities with tens of thousands of members, some of whom have assembled at real-world events.
The report "represents a breakthrough case study in the capacity to identify cyber swarms and viral insurgencies in nearly real time as they are developing in plain sight," wrote John Farmer, a former New Jersey attorney general and current director of the Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience at Rutgers University, in the report's forward.
Remember that giant gavel that Nancy Pelosi carried in triumph across Capitol Hill after the House voted for Obamacare in 2010?
You know, the one that looked like a croquet mallet?
During the State of the Union address last week, she looked bereft without it as she chewed her lip, gauging the distance between her and Mr. Trump. It would have been so quick and easy. And who could have blamed her? Certainly none in the media. They would instantly have discovered all sorts of mitigating circumstances.
But, not having her mallet handy, she settled for ripping up her copy of his speech.
As political theater, it was enough to impress the “Squad,” who attended the event in their white uniforms along with other progressive women congresspersons. Their ringleader, New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, famed for her anti-cow, socialist Green New Deal, was a no-show.
Why they chose white is a mystery, unless they were 1) trying to convey virginal innocence to contrast with Mr. Trump’s famous coarseness, or 2) they were mimicking the real heroines of Cuba’s Ladies in White who resist the island’s communist regime (no, they’d be for Castro), or 3) they’re all racists.
In any case, rumors are floating about a second impeachment attempt, based on “new” evidence uncovered by the Democrats’ ongoing mugging of the Trump Administration.
You can say this about them; they’re like a Rottweiler with a bone, even when they’ve got nothing. Who else could have dragged out the Russian collusion fiasco for nearly three years? The real scandal is the politicized FBI’s lying by omission to the FISA court so they could spy on the Trump campaign in 2016. Shouldn’t that be actionable?
Likewise, the Dems still deny that the Russian collusion investigation was centered on the discredited Steele “dossier” full of racy stories about Mr. Trump. Never mind the official confirmation that it was the linchpin of the probe and was concocted by Russian agents and paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC. No scandal here. READ ON
Sidney Powell’s Confidential Letter To Barr Leads To New Review of Flynn Case
Posted February 17, 2020 by Sarah Le
FILE – In this July 10, 2018, file photo, former President Donald Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, right, arrives at federal courthouse in Washington, for status hearing. Prosecutors with the special counsel’s office say Flynn is not yet ready to be sentenced. The joint filing with defense lawyers Tuesday, Aug. 21, is a sign that Flynn’s cooperation with investigators is continuing.(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, Attorney General William Barr has increasingly become a target of the left, culminating over the last two weeks when progressive presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren called for his impeachment and the House Judiciary Committee called him to testify in March, ostensibly to discuss his “interference” in the sentencing of Trump associate Roger Stone.
But there’s surely another reason the left is ramping up their attempt to smear a man who, by all accounts, had been nearly universally respected prior to his involvement in ferreting out corruption in the previous administration’s dealings. Barr is a huge part of why an independent review of the prosecution of Ret. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn has been opened. The other person responsible is Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, who theWashington Times describes as “an appeals court specialist and longtime Justice Department critic.” Powell, who has recently been alerting the public to theatrocities in the Flynn case, sent Barr a letter in June requesting a new investigation due to what she called “prosecutorial misconduct” on the part of FBI investigators. “We request the appointment of new government counsel with no connection to the Special Counsel team of attorneys or agents to conduct review of the entire Flynncase for Brady material that has not been produced and prosecutorial misconduct writ large,” Ms.Powellwrote to Mr. Barr.
…In her June letter to Mr.Barr, Ms.Powell recited her version of events. She said prosecutor Brandon Van Grack later acknowledged that the Flynncall was “perfectly legal.” It did not violate the Logan Act, which appeared to be the basis for theFBIvisitingFlynn that day. “There was no ‘Logan Act violation,’ and everyone knew it,” Ms. Powellwrote. “Yet General Flynnwas illegally unmasked by the Obama administration and his call leaked to explode the ‘Russia collusion’ narrative in the press. The FBI interview was worse than ‘entrapment.’ He was led to believe he was having a casual conversation with friends about a training exercise from a day or two before, when in truth, it was a set-up-tantamount to a ‘frame, manipulated by Yates, Comey, Strzok, McCabe, and others to take GeneralFlynnout of the administration. [Mueller team] then used it to pressure him to try to take out PresidentTrump.”
… TheBarr intervention came after U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan had rejected all of Ms. Powell’s arguments to date. She claimed that the Mueller team withheld exculpatory evidence and that the FBI maliciously edited 302 interview reports to hurt Flynn.
Flynn last month moved to rescind his December 2017 guilty plea of lying to Mr. Strzok and the other agent.
The New York Times reported Friday that Jeffrey Jensen, a formerFBI agent who serves as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, was appointed by Barr and will be reviewing Flynn’s case.
In the meantime, the hyperbolic caterwauling and attempts to smear Barr will continue unabated until U.S. Attorney John Durham finally releases his report on the origins of the Russian collusion probe.
“Judge Jackson now has a request for a new trial based on the unambiguous, self outed bias of theforeperson of the jury, whose also a lawyer,by the way. ‘Madam foreperson, you're a lawyer, you have a duty, an affirmative obligation, to reveal to us when we selected you the existence of thesetweets in which you were so harshly negative about the President ; the people who support him. Don’t you think we wanted to know that before we put you on this jury.’ Pretty obvious he should (get a new trial). I think almost any judge in the Country would order a new trial, I’m not so sure about Judge Jackson, I don’t know.”
Mandatory vasectomy at age 50? Alabama lawmaker proposes response to abortion banKristin Lam, USA TODAY
A proposed Alabama law would require that all men get a vasectomy after they turn 50 or after the birth of their third child, whichever comes first.
The bill's sponsor, Rep. Rolanda Hollis, said the measure gives perspective to reproductive health laws, including the state's contested abortion ban.
“It always takes two to tango," she told AL.com. “We can’t put all the responsibility on women. Men need to be responsible also.”
Hollis, a Democrat, added the proposal is meant to "neutralize" the Human Life Protection Act passed last summer, which would have made performing an abortion a Class A felony, punishable by life or 10 to 99 years in prison. A federal judge blocked the ban in October, and a lawsuit is pending.
If passed by the Republican-controlled state government, the bill introduced last week would also require men to pay for their vasectomy. The proposal has drawn criticism from outside the state, including from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
A national association making up more than 1,000 federal judges is holding an emergency meeting today to address mounting concerns by the judiciary about the Trump administration and DOJ officials intervening in politically sensitive cases.
Philadelphia U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, who heads the independent Federal Judges Association, said the group “could not wait” until its spring conference to weigh in on a deepening crisis that has enveloped the Justice Department and Attorney General William Barr.
“There are plenty of issues that we are concerned about,” Rufe told USA TODAY. “We’ll talk all of this through.”
Rufe, nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush, said the group of more than 1,000 federal jurists called for the meeting last week after Trump criticized prosecutors' initial sentencing recommendation for his friend Roger Stone and the Department of Justice overruled them.
Trump also took a swipe at the federal judge who is set to preside at Stone’s sentencing hearing Thursday.
Rufe declined to comment on the ongoing Stone trial while at the same time defending Judge Amy Berman Jackson's management of it.
The Federal Judges Association's meeting follows the submission of a group letter, signed by more than 2,000 Justice Department alumni, calling on Attorney General Bill Barr to resign.
Judge Refuses to Delay Sentencing of Roger Stone, But Will Consider Bid for New Trial By Ashraf Khalil •
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson indicated she will defer the execution of the sentence until the court rules on a request for a new trial.
The judge presiding over the case of President Donald Trump's confidant Roger Stone said his sentencing hearing will move forward as planned on Thursday, but indicated she will postpone the execution of the sentence, pending resolution of the defense's motion for a new trial.
Stone's legal team has requested a new trial and on Tuesday lobbied to delay the sentencing. But with Stone present on speaker phone from his lawyer's office, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that delaying the sentencing "would not be a prudent thing to do."
"We've already put the sentencing off once," Judge Jackson said, adding that it makes sense to proceed "since there is no harm that would flow to the defendant."
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