Billionaire pedophile prison papers leave many questions unanswered

US Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) documents released to RT investigative unit The Detail pose serious questions about Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged attempt to kill himself while incarcerated in the Metropolitan Correctional Center. The files, released in response to a Freedom of Information request, cast doubt on this key component of the official narrative surrounding his ever-mysterious alleged suicide – namely, did it even happen?

According to the established timeline of events, Epstein was found injured and semi-conscious on the floor of his cell in the early hours of July 23, 2019, 17 days after his imprisonment on charges of child sex trafficking, with marks of an unspecified nature around his neck. Claiming to remember nothing about what happened, his cellmate, former NYPD officer Nicholas Tartaglione – who has coincidentally shared the same legal representation as Epstein’s partner and ‘madam’ Ghislaine Maxwell – likewise pleaded ignorance.

The files show that within minutes of the alleged incident, an attempted suicide by “hanging/asphyxiation” was officially logged, although sections of the report describing what happened are totally redacted, as is the name of the individual who authored it. In a report written by the doctor who examined Epstein around five hours later, Epstein’s own account of how he sustained the injuries is, too, entirely blanked out.

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The following day, Epstein was taken off suicide watch and charged with violating prison code 228, “tattooing or self-mutilation.” He was subject to a psychological assessment, with one official suggesting, “most likely he will be found competent because he is not mentally ill,” while another enquired as to whether or not Epstein was “mentally capable of proceeding with the disciplinary process.” Oddly, in response, an unnamed staffer wrote, “I would feel really uncomfortable doing this.”

Several copies of the incident report are reproduced in the files, but it wasn’t until a week later, on July 30, that the document was amended to include “self-mutilation” as the cause of suicide attempt, specifying “lacerations”. But the doctor’s report from just hours after the incident doesn’t mention lacerations at all – in fact it explicitly states none were found – begging the question of why this was written into the official record days later.

Pending investigation for that breach, Epstein was placed in disciplinary confinement away from the “general population,” and refused to be returned there. Meanwhile, officials probed “appropriate candidates” for a new cellmate.

A thorough review was clearly conducted, with one memo noting that other inmates in the Secure Housing Unit were deemed “not appropriate to be housed with Mr. Epstein,” for reasons unstated, although one “notable” prisoner “with a history of sex offenses” was explicitly ruled out “due to his threatening nature.”

After the psychological evaluation found him competent to take part in the disciplinary process, the files record the prison’s brief investigation into the “self-mutilation” charge, on July 30.

A resultant report noted that, “no witnesses [were] requested” and “inmate Epstein had a poor attitude,” refusing to say anything. Despite this, the investigator concluded “the report to be accurate as written and the charge warranted.” The matter was kicked upstairs for “further disposition,” but it appears Epstein died before a final decision on his supposed infraction was taken.

Even more curiously, a classified internal BOP memo notes that the incident report related to self-mutilation was “expunged” – in other words stricken from the record, as if it never happened – five days after Epstein’s death. An official added that it was “unclear why it had been expunged and whether Mr. Epstein knew this.” 

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This may account for why the entire bizarre episode, in which prison authorities sought to punish the billionaire sex offender for the crime of trying to take his own life, has never hitherto been mentioned by the mainstream media.

Complicating the confused picture even further, on August 14, 2019, four days after his death, the New York Post published a sensational exclusive, claiming that Epstein informed his lawyers Tartaglione “roughed him up,” and this was not only the reason he was discovered out cold in his cell, but why he was removed from suicide watch.

Tartaglione’s lawyer, Bruce Barket, has vigorously disputed this account, suggesting the story was planted in the Post by a prison guard “angry at [Epstein] for complaining at the deplorable conditions at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.” Moreover, Barket records that Epstein and Tartaglione “regularly walked from their cell to the visiting area together,” as their lawyers were on the “same schedule,” and the pair “got along real well.”

“I’d be surprised if they later claimed Nick attacked him, because that’s not what we were told all along,” Barket has declared.

The records released to The Detail make it abundantly clear that Epstein did indeed complain frequently to prison authorities. However, his grievances were fairly routine – a lack of toilet paper, the toilet flushing continuously for 45 minutes, his cellmate talking too much, especially at night. There isn’t the slightest indication he ever felt threatened or in danger, either from inmates or guards.

This may in part result from him being placed for much of his stay with the hulking Tartaglione. A veritable man mountain, he faces the death penalty for allegedly committing a quadruple homicide in furtherance of a conspiracy to sell cocaine – one victim was strangled with a zip tie. He was chosen to bunk with Epstein due to cooperating with authorities in his case, and having much to lose if he committed an infraction of any kind, let alone attacked his cellmate.

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Such pally protection may moreover to some degree account for why, in several psychological assessments at the prison in the wake of his apparent suicide attempt, Epstein was a picture of optimism and stability.

One noted the subject was “alert … polite, calm, and cooperative in demeanor,” and explicitly denied “recent and current suicidal ideation, planning, and intent.” He was said to be “future-oriented,” and “expressed a commitment to life and safety, agreeing to contact staff immediately should he experience suicidal ideation or psychological distress.”

“He exhibited a neutral affect with appropriate range. Eye contact and hygiene were appropriate … His thoughts were organized and coherent, with no loosening of associations or tangential, circumstantial, or irrelevant content,” a prison-designated psychologist wrote. “There was no evidence of perceptual disturbance, delusional ideation, or a formal thought disorder. He did not engage in any bizarre or inappropriate behavior.”

Another appraisal spelled out “protective factors” determined from conversations with Epstein, noting he “he denied current suicidal or self-harm thoughts” or “feeling hopeless.”

“He denied fearing for his safety … He stated he lives for and plans to finish this case and to go back to his normal life … His friends and lawyers are emotionally supportive … He is Jewish [and] suicide is against the religion. Overall, his current protective factors override his risk factors for suicidality,” they remarked. “Suicide watch is not warranted at this time.”

Despite this, Epstein was briefly placed on suicide watch, and the documents show detailed accounts were filed every 15 minutes by guards as to his activities – “inmate Epstein is sleeping; inmate Epstein is lying quietly in bed; inmate Epstein is pacing around in his cell,” etcetera. This intensive surveillance was downgraded on July 24, 2019, to the lesser “psychological observation.”

Six days later, Tartaglione was replaced by Efrain Reyes, who was assisting the government in a drug distribution conspiracy case, although on August 9, he too was removed, leaving Epstein alone – in breach of internal procedures, and despite the classified files making clear the urgent need for a new cellmate was communicated between day and evening watch shifts at the jail.

The next day, he was dead. Contemporary news reports noted his associates were “surprised” at the news, as the prolific pedophile “seemed recently to be in good spirits,” leading them to express concern “about the possibility of foul play.” 

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Regular half-hour checks on the inmate also ceased, contrary to standard procedure, as designated guards Tova Noel and Michael Thomas spent substantial portions of shift at their desk, browsing the internet, and moving around the common area, mere meters away from Epstein’s cell.

Moreover, two cameras in the vicinity apparently malfunctioned, while a third in the adjacent hallway was also corrupted. Some footage in some areas is said to exist, but has not been released publicly. Noel and Thomas subsequently admitted to fabricating log entries, and were charged with lying on prison records.

A serious crime indeed, but on December 13, 2020, the charges were summarily dropped. This wasn’t disclosed publicly until December 30, though – a day after Maxwell was found guilty of recruiting and trafficking young girls for sexual abuse.

Strikingly, in its reporting on the prison’s psychological assessments of Epstein, the New York Times framed the prolific sex offender’s insistence he had no intention whatsoever of committing suicide as a testament to his “life of manipulation,” immense skill at deceiving others, and endless ability to “[create] illusions.”

Another obvious interpretation, apparently unconsidered by America’s purported paper of record, is that his denial of suicidal intentions and hopefulness about the future could well have been sincere – and his death may thus be attributable to external actors and factors unknown.

A spike in law enforcement fatalities last year is linked to exposure to Covid in the line of duty and subsequent illness

A recent report has indicated a 55% year-on-year rise in police fatalities across the US in 2021. Infection with Covid-19 in the line of duty – and the health complications that followed – emerged as the biggest culprit.

The analysis published by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund on Tuesday said a total of 458 officers lost their lives in 2021 either while doing their job, or as a direct consequence thereof. One noteworthy finding in the report is that “some 301 officer fatalities have been identified as caused by Covid this year,” thus making the virus “the single highest cause of law enforcement deaths occurring in 2021.” Researchers warn the figure “appears to increase almost daily.”

According to the report, those Covid-related deaths count as in-the-line-of-duty fatalities because the “officers have died due to direct exposure to the virus during the commission of their official duties."

In comparison, 62 officer deaths in 2021 are said to have been firearms-related. However, it is worth noting that fatalities resulting from criminal assaults, including what the report describes as “ambush-style attacks,” also rose last year compared to 2020.

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Most Covid-related deaths among officers were recorded in Texas, where 84 succumbed to the deadly disease, followed by 52 victims in Florida and 39 in Georgia. In contrast, in 11 states and Washington, DC, no officer was lost to Covid, the report says.

The analysis is, however, preliminary and does not specify how many of the fallen law enforcement personnel had been vaccinated. Drawing on the accumulated pool of data, the researchers conclude that it is already clear that “America’s front-line law enforcement officers continue to battle the deadly effects of the Covid-19 pandemic nationwide.”

‘The most nuclear bombed nation on the planet’ is the unwanted accolade claimed by the Shoshone Native American tribe. This has had devastating effects for the community, and RT spoke to one campaigner fighting for justice.

“They are occupying our country, they are stealing our opportunities and we are expected to die because of that. We are still trying to grapple with and understand what happened to us, and find ways to stop it, correct it and prevent it happening in the future.”

Ian Zabarte’s voice is angry but does not falter as he describes the stark fate of his people, Native Americans who have - by anyone’s estimation - been subjected to the most unimaginable horrors for decades, all perpetrated by their government in Washington. 

Zabarte, 57, is the Principal Man of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation and he is spearheading a campaign to expose what he describes as the “ethnic cleansing” of his tribe.

Shoshone land stretches from Death Valley in the Mojave Desert in eastern California to Yellowstone Park in Wyoming. But in 1951, the US started nuclear weapon testing on Western Shoshone territory at the Nevada Proving Grounds (now known as the Nevada National Security Site). The Shoshone can now lay claim to be the most nuclear bombed nation on the planet.

Over a period of just over 40 years, there were 928 tests conducted there – around 100 in the atmosphere and more than 800 underground – resulting in nuclear fallout of around 620 kilotons, according to a 2009 study. In comparison, there were 13 kilotons of fallout when Hiroshima was bombed in 1945.

This obviously is a massive health risk and Zabarte, who lives in Las Vegas but runs a healing centre at Death Valley, is understandably angry. Although he’s engaging and friendly, a sense of rage regularly creeps into his voice as he becomes more animated about the injustices his people have endured. But he never lapses into self-pity; there’s always a steely aura of defiance.

The Shoshone signed the Treaty of Ruby Valley in 1863, which handed certain rights to the United States. But they did not give up their land. “We wouldn’t have signed a treaty that would end in our ultimate destruction,” Zabarte told RT.

According to the tribe, the testing programme has killed thousands of people and many have developed a range of cancers and illnesses.

Zabarte’s grandfather’s skin fell off due to an autoimmune deficiency, and he died soon after from a heart attack. Other family members have had pacemakers fitted at very young ages, while his cousin’s twins died aged 11.

“My family have a high incidence of thyroid cancer, but we’re not following those individuals – we don’t have the capacity,” he explained.

“The United States doesn’t want to study our own adverse health consequences. [It] would be no different to Nazi Germany studying the health consequences of their testing on Jewish people. That is so far from right. We have to do it ourselves and we need help.”

The Shoshone have no medical equipment or computer databases to track their people. So deaths from suspicious conditions are generally not recorded. In addition, the Shoshone are, by tradition, proud people, so not all of them speak out about their health issues.

Although the nuclear testing went underground in 1962, even that wasn’t safe.

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As Zabarte explained, “Even though it went underground, venting took place and we don’t know where that fallout went.”

That’s borne out by the Mighty Oak incident, a botched test that destroyed $32 million of equipment in April 1986. It was weeks before Chernobyl and experts claim the US government vented the radiation under the cover that everyone would assume it was from the Soviet catastrophe.

“The Department of Energy doesn’t consider that an accident because they manually released the gas inside the underground chamber where the weapon detonated. It went around the world and beat the Chernobyl radiation back to the United States,” Zabarte claimed.

Of course, the US is not the only country to have conducted nuclear testing. The United Kingdom also used Western Shoshone land, in 24 tests that were joint operations with the US. France completed 210 nuclear tests in Algeria and the South Pacific from 1960 to 1996. And the Soviet Union used the Semipalatinsk site in Kazakhstan until 1989 to perform its testing.

But even to this day, lots of secret activities continue on Shoshone land, as proven by JANET flights regularly flying from Las Vegas to the classified Area 51. (The call sign stands for Just Another Non-Existent Terminal).

There’s also the contentious issue of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, first planned in 1987 and later approved by the Obama administration, which the Shoshone have stalled. It’s intended to store high-level radioactive waste.

Zabarte has a US Department of Energy study for the project which he says refers to “cultural triage” defined as “a forced choice situation in which an ethnic group is faced with the decision to rank in importance equally valued cultural resources that could be affected by a proposed development project.”

It goes on to state that this triage could be “emotionally taxing for the Indian person.” The United Nations backed these claims in a 2006 report, and Zabarte believes they perfectly encapsulate the problems faced by his people.

“We have a deliberate act by the United States government to dismantle the living life ways of my people, my family, in relation to our property, our sacred land.

“The United States has developed a systematic process to ethnically cleanse us from that land, so that they take all the profits and give them to other Americans,” he said. “In order to prove genocide we need to consider, what is the intent? It is the culture of secrecy, that is the intent.”

A prime example of how the Shoshone’s life has been eradicated came in 1971 with the Wild Free-Roaming Horses Act. As Zabarte explained: “Politicians in Washington DC defined our Indian horses as wild and started coming after our ranchers, who have a guaranteed right as hunters or herdsmen under the treaty to have livestock.

“The United States Bureau of Land Management determined our horses, our cows, our livestock were destroying the land. But the land was destroyed by nuclear weapons testing fallout and the United States government blamed the Shoshone people.”

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There is no economy or sustainable lifestyle, and the nearest town is 80 miles away. “I have nothing on my reservation to go back to,” said Zabarte, who can trace his direct descendants to the Kawich region, which houses Area 51. “They stole my horses, they stole my livelihood. There are no jobs, there are no opportunities; the United States has stolen our economy, our hunting, our fishing… and made us trespassers in our own country.”

But the reservation only makes up a tiny part of the entire Shoshone land. The rest is used by the American government and population, sometimes unwittingly. People are buying houses and living on land that the Shoshone feel they should control – but all tax from economic activity goes to the US. The Shoshone have no claim over it.

“The United States cannot prove ownership to it but they come into our country and they provide tax money to the state of Nevada, and the state of Nevada takes that money and provides it to every other non-Shoshone unit of local government, and we get nothing. That is taxation without representation,” Zabarte said.

Despite the obvious sense of injustice, he feels an obligation to warn Americans who live in or go through the Shoshone nation of the danger it presents.

“My grandfather always said, ‘don’t kick up dust’ because of the radioactive fallout. I care for these people because of that treaty of peace and friendship, and have an obligation to provide aid and comfort to other Americans passing through. But I watch them kick up dust in their off-road vehicles and they are quite likely exposing themselves. There is plutonium in a lot of the roofs of their houses, too.”

The key for Zabarte is awareness. The more people know the history of the land and understand the issue, there is greater chance of meaningful action. That could involve providing medical surveillance and advising the next generation how to protect themselves.

Zabarte is also keen to build momentum so the Shoshone, including his own son, can have access to all of their land and create a functioning economy that fits with their traditions.

“We need to continue to make our people aware the next generation don’t have a safe place to live; we have these tiny reservations and they are colonies created by the United States. They exist only to the extent that the United States provides the funding. We don’t have ways to survive on our own land.”

He is a man on a mission and has sacrificed his life to shoulder this burden. “I have dignity and my family has dignity and that’s what I’m fighting for. These a**holes aren’t going to get away with it.”

Leonard Glenn Francis is a Malaysian businessman who infiltrated the greatest power on the high seas and built a billion-dollar empire by providing officers with sex, champagne, and security. And now, he’s ready to talk.

 “Manilla, 2007. The chauffeured Mercedes crawled south for half an hour in the interminable traffic – the turbid waters of Manilla Bay on the right. The middle-aged men packed inside the cars were in an exuberant mood … Leonard Glenn Francis was taking out the senior commanders of the US 7th Fleet. These were the most powerful navy officers in Asia, and they controlled the movements of around sixty ships and submarines, 150 aircraft, and 20,000 sailors in a huge operational area, stretching from Hawaii to India …”

“The men moved quickly through an air-conditioned lobby and through a curtain at the back. On the other side, Filipino women – many just students – sat in rows in a kind of fish bowl, identifiable not by their names but by the numbers attached to their skimpy outfits … Always the … big boss or Lion King to these navy officers, Leonard dominated the action …”

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“The afterparty was in the $4,000-a-night McArthur Suite at the Manilla Hotel … It was General Douglas McArthur’s home and operational command during World War II. The men piled into the Spanish-Mission-style room with wooden ceiling beams, marble tiles, an ornate chandelier and heavily draped curtains. Leonard … stocked the suite with $10,000 bottles of Dom Perignon … The two-bedroom suite was filled with McArthur memorabilia. In the suite’s study, two ornately carved wooden chairs – the only objects to survive the Battle of Manilla, stood in front of a desk … One of the men, quite drunk by now, opened a case on the desk containing a replica of McArthur’s famous corn-cob pipe and grabbed a woman.”

Fat Leonard, as he came to be known, recalls the scene as follows: “Being warriors, they had been at sea for such a long time – the aviators, your nukes … they’re, uh, captains of ships. They’ve got this inner side of them that is a beast that needs to come out … We went there and picked up a bunch of karaoke girls and booked them out and brought them back. They are like rockstars. They are living their life – living their dreams – things that they will never ever, ever again do in their lifetime. Nobody would give them that kind of party that I do … You know, they just started stripping and having sex right there … The pipe was used as a dildo on the hooker, making a mockery of General McArthur’s memorabilia … they totally desecrated and insulted,” he says, laughing.

“It was a mass orgy … That’s how deep we were with the navy … The entire command – the chain of command – had to be in your pocket. And that’s what happened. Everybody was in my pocket … I had them in my palm and was just rolling them around.”

As he says in the trailer to the interview, “I had the navy by their balls … I turned my guns against them because they betrayed me.”

Fat Leonard was a Malaysian businessman who bribed numerous officers and others in the US Navy until he was arrested. He paid for prostitutes and orgies for naval officers, ranking all the way up to admiral. He threw lavish parties and $30,000 dinners, sent gifts for the officer’s wives – little things like Chanel and Gucci handbags, Cohiba Cigars – the nice stuff that no officer or his wife should have to live without.

In return, the officers he corrupted made sure their ships docked at ports across Asia that Fat Leonard controlled. Since the 1980s, Leonard made bank by provisioning the Navy at extortionate rates for fuel, food, even security, by providing what he called a “ring of steel” around the ships – as if the US Navy should need help defending itself. The ring of steel was nothing but a line of barges tied up around the military ships to prevent an assault like the one that happened in 2000 in Yemen’s harbor when two Al-Qaeda operatives rammed a boat full of explosives into the side of the USS Cole, a guided-missile destroyer, killing 17 sailors and injuring another 37.

2001 became a very good year for Leonard after 9/11 for the “husbanding” monopoly of his provisioning company called Glenn Defense Marine Asia. You might say Leonard got fat off his contracts with the US government from that period on, living in a $130-million mansion in Singapore where he kept 20 cars, including Rolls-Royces and militarized Hummers, all proceeds from his US Navy contracts.

Fat Leonard was a larger-than-life character in more than just weight (where he took the scales up to 160 kilograms – a whopping 352 pounds on his six-foot-three frame). He wore Stars-and-Stripes ties, had Lee Greenwood’s ‘God Bless The USA’ as his ringtone, ate sloppy joes and rooted for US baseball teams, so the people he served really liked him. And he liked the USA because it was very good to him – without most people in government knowing it was being very good to him. Fat Leonard loved to contract with the US military.

But now Fat Leonard is mad. It’s not just that his money-making empire came crashing down around his feet in 2013 when he was arrested. He pled guilty in 2015 to all that and is still awaiting sentencing under house arrest in San Diego. No, Fat Leonard is mad because some of the people in his pocket – the highest higher-ups who took his bribes – didn’t get taken down with him, though none of what he did could have happened without them. They remain at large while the legal system shows no apparent interest in them, and that made the usually jolly Leonard, who sounds drunk with power in his interviews, mad enough to speak out publicly.

Oh sure, the corruption scandal led to various naval officers being charged, jailed for a while and demoted, and to broken marriages, the usual falderal that comes with such scandals. But Leonard wants to know, where is the prison time for the high brass that he himself is now facing?

Now that advanced kidney cancer has left him without much to lose, Fat Leonard is crying out publicly. Journalist Tom Wright recently interviewed him, and even Wright admits that, during the first interviews, Leonard’s natural charm conned him into feeling sympathetic toward his tale of a tough childhood and a man who made good by taking care of the US Navy’s most urgent ‘needs’.

“I did like him at one point,” says Wright, “but then … there was some personal cruelties to women in his life … The misogyny that runs through this whole story is shocking … At the very end of our interaction … I challenged him on a lot of these things … That was the last time we talked … and his reactions to it is very, very telling.”

At one point in that final episode, Leonard said to Wright in apparent surprise, “I don’t know why you’re so worried about hookers,” and the hooker they were talking about was the mother of his children. Wright ties his concerns about the misogyny to the kinds of things that happened in the Tailhook scandal in the 90s as becoming endemic in the armed forces back then, because women were new in the US military, and some male soldiers apparently did not know how to comport themselves around them as colleagues in war.

It’s not a salacious connection for Wright to make because the big key to Leonard’s success with the Navy was orchestrating orgies. Leonard’s long success story wasn’t just about the great job he did in providing the ‘ring of steel’. He also did an enthusiastic job of running sex rings for soldiers – a ring of beds, as it were. It didn’t matter that he charged exorbitant fees for providing these illegal services, because those buying were using US government money, not their own, and their participation in such services virtually guaranteed they’d never squeal on Leonard.

Leonard got a taste of his own treatment of women when he was arrested for his crimes. He was stripped, chained, handcuffed, and made to squat.

“Here you are treated like an animal once inside,” he complained.

They stripped away the dignity of a man who claims he had enjoyed the power of steering $20-billion ships to ports of his own choosing, boasting that he could effectively position the US Navy as a civilian by choosing where he’d offer particular services. He was also charged with obtaining classified information from those he corrupted.

Leonard says the real scandal is that some top admirals who benefited from his provisioning remain free, some of them having been allowed to retire honorably, even though he had submitted evidence that incriminated them.

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“I feel completely betrayed,” says Leonard. “They asked me to name all those involved or face 50 years in jail and I spilled the beans … I gave them about 40 names. I told basically how deep the bribery was in the US Navy. It basically shook the foundation of the navy … I felt very upset because just look at what I am going through … My entire life has been destroyed. My businesses, my family, everything is gone, you know, being hit like a tsunami … [Yet,] One four-star admiral I named was let off scot-free just because he was appointed by the president and the senate. There is no way they are going to embarrass the government by indicting him. It would have been a humiliation.”

Alas, the good times did not last forever. Fat Leonard’s empire has collapsed, and he is palpably angry because the Epstein-like secrets that he held on military brass did him no good. The protection he thought he had wrapped around himself like a ring of steel failed to hold together.

“I had over 2,800 staff working for me in over 30 countries and everything folded. So many innocent people lost their jobs, many families were destroyed. This was deliberate financial ruin brought upon me.”

Leonard’s crimes and those who joined in them were reported to the NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) by a Navy wife who was physically mistreated, yet for years, nothing was done about anything that was reported because Leonard had, via his secrets, essentially bought everyone off while people were still enjoying his services. According to Wright, Leonard even managed to corrupt one of the top NCIS officers – ‘corrupt’ usually meaning, in stories like this, to get someone to partake in these sexual services, thereby assuring Leonard’s protection from the top of the NCIS, lest the officer in question incriminate himself.

As Leonard put it in the initial interview, “Everybody has their needs. And I gave them that sense of confidence, and I also provided them what they wanted … and they could trust me … I played professional. I played sexual – whatever you needed – anything.”

It worked like a well-lubricated machine, concealing its own misdoings… until one day it didn’t.

By David Haggith is an author published by Putnam and HarperCollins. He is publisher of The Great Recession Blog and writes for over 50 economic news websites. His Twitter page of economic humor is @EconomicRecess.

Disparate reactions to left-wing protesters at the DOI versus the ones at the US Capitol show how biased the mainstream media truly is.

One year after the US Capitol riot, Washington seems worried about domestic terrorism only when conservatives are perpetrators, but polling suggests no one outside the establishment echo chamber is swayed by the skewed narrative.

As a GOP congressman held up nearly identical photos of federal buildings being breached – one of the US Capitol last January and another of the Department of the Interior in October – Attorney General Merrick Garland sat stone-faced.

Try as he might to provoke the nation’s top law enforcement official to characterize leftist protesters who fought their way into the Department of the Interior (DOI), Representative Greg Steube (R-Florida) couldn’t goad Garland into offering an opinion. While Garland has called the Capitol riot “the most dangerous threat to democracy” seen in his 44-year legal career, the attorney general said he couldn’t make any determinations about what happened at the DOI.

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What Garland said next at the House Judiciary Committee hearing on October 21 stunned Steube. When asked if he believed the DOI rioters, like the Capitol rioters, were domestic terrorists, Garland replied, “I’m not going to be able to reference that specific incident since this is the first I know about it.”

The riot in question involved the storming of a restricted federal government building just about a 30-minute walk from Garland’s office and just one week before the committee hearing. Environmental extremists injured multiple security officers, including at least one who was hospitalized, and 55 were arrested.

If Garland seemed suddenly unconcerned about attacks on federal buildings in Washington, he wasn’t alone. The Washington Post referred to the violent breaching at the DOI as “clashes” between protesters and officers. Other media outlets referred to the rioters as “occupying” the building and being arrested after a “sit-in.”

There was no hyping of the incident like that done over the Capitol riot, which media and political pundits have likened to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Some, such as political strategist Matthew Dowd, have called it “worse” than 9/11. Huffington Post White House correspondent S.V. Date said it was “1,000 times worse,” at least partly because it was led by then-President Donald Trump. Family members of 9/11 victims were outraged by such rhetoric.

President Joe Biden – whose victory over Trump was challenged by the election-fraud protestors who breached the Capitol – went so far as to call the riot the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” Apparently fond of such hyperbole, he later called laws passed by several Republican-controlled states to deter election fraud “the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.” He went on to weave the riot and the new state legislation together, suggesting they were rooted in the same ideology.

Such statements might seem outlandish, but the narrative fed a theme: branding opposition to the ruling party as domestic terrorism – in fact, the only real domestic terrorism – and portraying the threats posed by American right-wingers as even worse than overseas terrorists. And a threat that big obviously required a harsh crackdown.

Despite the fact that no one was killed by the Capitol rioters, contrary to false media reports, they’ve been portrayed as racist and bloodthirsty insurrectionists. US Representative Hank Johnson, the Georgia Democrat who once theorized that an expansion of US military operations in Guam might cause the island to capsize, argued that lawmakers would have been murdered if a Capitol police officer hadn’t fatally shot one of the rioters (the only person who was killed that day). “I have no doubt that some of us who look like me would have been hanging from the railings . . . swinging like fruit, strange fruit,” said Johnson, who is black.

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Reporters reacted similarly. In fact, six months after the riot, Vice News reported that some of the correspondents who “survived” the incident were still afraid to go back into the Capitol to do their jobs. Erik Wasson of Bloomberg News told Vice that he’s suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and has researched survival techniques, such as how to use a metal pen as a weapon. Another reporter opted to take early retirement rather than face the trauma of going back into the Capitol. 

Garland’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has prosecuted more than 700 alleged rioters, dozens of whom were held without bail pending trial. Many were locked in solitary confinement. Republican lawmakers have accused jailers of beating and verbally abusing the January 6 suspects, in some cases with racist attacks. Some have allegedly been denied visits with their lawyers and family members.

US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) last month contrasted the treatment of alleged pro-Trump defendants to that of race rioters who torched American cities, causing more than $2 billion in damage, and killed dozens of people in the summer of 2020. US District Court Judge Trevor McFadden said prosecutors were undermining the DOJ’s credibility by failing to be “even-handed” about riots arising from opposite ends of the political spectrum. 

Other judges have enthusiastically gone along with the January 6 crackdown. For instance, Jacob Chansley, the costumed rioter famously known as “QAnon Shaman,” was sentenced in November to 41 months in prison, despite not even being accused of any acts of violence. Prosecutors called for a tough sentence against Chansley to “set an example” and deter any future “assault on our democracy.”

No such example was needed, apparently, in the prosecution of Joshua Warner, a transgender Antifa activist also known as Eva Warner. The DOJ last month dropped charges against Warner after the defendant completed 30 hours of community service. Warner, who was arrested for allegedly assaulting officers at a Portland riot in August 2020, also was busted for alleged offenses at multiple other riots and let go without being charged.

Portland was plagued by rioting for more than 100 straight days in 2020, when Antifa activists laid siege to the Mark O. Hatfield federal courthouse. Officers were assaulted with hammers, slingshots and other weapons. Warner’s alleged tool of choice was a powerful laser that can cause permanent damage when shined into someone’s eyes.

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But politicians and media outlets reacted to the violence in Portland by expressing outrage over the tactics of federal law enforcement under the Trump administration. Mayor Ted Wheeler demanded that federal officers “stay inside their building or leave Portland altogether.” The city of Portland fined the Trump administration $11 million for blocking a bike lane when it erected a fence around the embattled courthouse.

The New Republic characterized efforts to quell the riots as “a historic federal crackdown on dissent.” Ironically, CNN opined that by calling protesters who disagree with him “terrorists, ”Trump had put himself “in the company of the world’s autocrats.” Never mind that the protesters were committing assault, arson and other acts of violence in pursuit of their political cause. Under Trump’s watch, calling violent rioters domestic terrorists was autocratic.

Just as the political violence in Portland was downplayed and largely forgiven, an Antifa activist who bashed the office entrance of US Senator John Hoeven (R-North Dakota) with an axe in December 2020 was spared incarceration. Alexander Starks was sentenced to probation, rather than the 10-16 months imprisonment that he could have gotten, and reportedly gushed on Facebook that the DOJ was kind enough to return his axe. Law professor Jonathan Turley decried the move, saying the axe was returned “as if it was a form of political expression.”

While the DOJ is cracking down on the Capitol trespassers, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives has formed a committee to undertake a “9/11-style” probe of the riot’s origins. The apparent idea is to show how Trump and his allies incited the “insurrection,” just as Democrats claimed when the House voted to impeach the former president last January.

The panel has tried to play hardball with Trump allies who have declined to testify in the investigation. Last month, it voted to hold former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress, calling for him to be prosecuted by the DOJ for refusing to cooperate. Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon was indicted by the DOJ in November on the same grounds.

The House committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi), suggested last month that Trump allies who decline to answer his questions by exercising their constitutional right against self-incrimination are essentially admitting to illegal activity. In some instances, he added, invoking the 5th Amendment right “says you are part and parcel guilty of what occurred.”

And just as in the case of the QAnon Shaman, Democrats are seeking to make examples of the Republicans who they believe promote domestic terrorism. Representative Cori Bush (D-Missouri) said last week that Congress should commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Capitol riot by expelling those members who helped incite the “violent insurrection.” Presumably, Bush and her colleagues would get to decide which democratically elected representatives are guilty of incitement – and therefore fair game to be thrown out of office.

While vilifying the Trump supporters who breached the Capitol, legacy media outlets have sought to paint other political opposition with the same brush. For example, the media reaction was intense when an Oregon man, Jared Schmeck, trolled Biden by saying “Let’s Go Brandon” during a “Santa tracker” livestream on Christmas Eve. Ron Brownstein, editor of the Atlantic, told CNN that the stunt was “fundamentally about insurrection.” 

Media coverage of the insolent jokester’s use of an anti-Biden slogan was so overheated that some online commentators mocked the press for giving Schmeck more critical and extensive coverage than Darrell Brooks, the Black Lives Matter supporter who allegedly killed six people and injured 62 by ramming his car into a Wisconsin Christmas parade in November.

Conservative author Dinesh D’Souza said Schmeck struck a nerve because he used a slogan that mocks both Biden and the media, and he exposed the president’s lack of mental acuity. “Let’s Go Brandon, I agree,” Biden replied on the livestream, apparently missing the fact that he was the butt of Schmeck’s joke.

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace was among those who blasted Schmeck’s insult against Biden, calling it “slow-motion insurrection.” Her guest, author Jason Johnson, called for a DOJ or CIA investigation and said the “Let’s Go Brandon'' phrase is “the cry of people who want to violently take over this country and oppress anyone who is not like them.” 

The statement was one of many examples of mainstream outlets trying to paint anti-Biden Americans as dangerous. When supporters of the riot defendants organized a September rally in Washington, media outlets predicted a possible sequel to January 6. CNN said Capitol Hill was gripped by renewed fears of political violence. NBC News said that as “Trump fans” gathered again in Washington, “the specter of white privilege looms large.”

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As it turned out, the approximately 400 attendees were outnumbered by police and reporters. An armed man at the rally was arrested, only to be released after it was revealed that he was a federal officer.

The media’s messaging appears to have done little to change public opinion. A University of Massachusetts Amherst poll released last week showed that 71% of Republicans still believe that Biden stole the 2020 presidential election from Trump. Only 58% of Americans overall said Biden is the rightful president, while 22% of Republicans said the election result was “definitely not legitimate” – results that were almost identical to the responses when the same survey was carried out last April.

The poll showed predictable polarization on the Capitol breach, with 62% of Republicans seeing the participants as “protesters,” rather than rioters, and 68% of Democrat respondents considering them “insurrectionists” and “white nationalists.” A whopping 86% of Democrats support continuing efforts to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of the riot, compared with just 29% of Republicans. 

UMass Amherst professors lamented the survey results, saying the poll showed “Republicans and Democrats living in diametrically opposed realities.” They also knew who to blame, citing “persistent and baseless claims by the former president and his sycophants.” Perhaps just like their survey respondents, the pollsters saw reality through the lens of their political ideology. UMass Amherst ranks as one of the most liberal colleges in Massachusetts.

Another poll suggested that Americans are about equally divided on the seriousness of the Capitol riot. A November survey by Iowa’s Des Moines Register revealed that half of respondents believe the breach was an insurrection and a threat to democracy. Republicans and Democrats were polar opposites on the question, while 50% of independents agreed that the riot was a threat to democracy.

Still another poll found that more Americans are worried about US-based extremist groups than overseas terrorist organizations. The August survey, which was done by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that 65% of Americans are highly concerned about domestic terrorism, compared to 50% who are troubled by extremist groups based outside the US.

As for the perceived political bent of the domestic extremists who merit concern — whether the chief bogeymen come from the far left or right — likely depends on the eye of the beholder. Increasingly, political views shape opinions of the alleged perpetrators.

Consider the case of Thomas Sibick, a New York man who was charged as a Capitol rioter but later renounced Trump, saying he loathed the former president. After receiving a letter from the defendant about his change of heart, US District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered that Sibick be released into the custody of his family, saying he had earned “the benefit of the doubt.”

From the tragic to the comic, here’s a recap of some of the standout foreign policy snafus of the George W. Bush years

Newly released state papers reveal that George W. Bush admitted in 1998 he “did not know much about international affairs.” Winning the presidency two years later, Bush would go on to demonstrate this on numerous occasions.

The files, released by the British National Archives, reveal Bush told then-UK Ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer that, in Meyer’s words, “he did not know much about international affairs and that he would do well to broaden his experience.” Bush at the time turned down an opportunity to visit the UK as he was focused on the upcoming Texas gubernatorial election, but two years later he would find himself in office as governor getting a crash course in international diplomacy.

Here’s some of Bush’s even less shining moments.

Massaging Merkel

Foreign policy is an arena defined by unspoken rules and protocol, with ‘don’t grope the German chancellor’ a seemingly obvious diplomatic commandment.

Yet Bush did just this at the 2006 G8 Summit in St. Petersburg, back when Russia was still invited to the group’s meetings. Strolling into a meeting room, Bush ambushed Angela Merkel from behind, attempting to massage the German chancellor’s shoulders. Merkel, taken by surprise, threw her arms into the air and shrugged off Bush’s impromptu massage.

Throw back to when G. W. Bush gave Angela Merkel the most awkward back-rub massage in the history of the world. pic.twitter.com/bwJA1XMbW6

— The Greek Analyst (@GreekAnalyst) November 23, 2015

The incident went viral on the internet at the time, and even in those years before the #MeToo movement existed, Bush was accused by Democrats of “sexual harassment.”

Mission Accomplished

In a classic case of counting his chickens, Bush appeared on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003 to declare the end of major combat operations in Iraq, less than two months after the war began. Draped behind Bush was a gigantic banner reading “Mission Accomplished,” and Bush himself said that “the United States and our allies have prevailed” in Iraq.

As it turned out, the war would soon turn into an insurgency, ISIS would rise to power, and although their combat mission would wind down significantly after 2011, US troops would remain in Iraq until the present day. The vast majority of American and Iraqi casualties, both military and civilian, would also take place in the years following Bush’s ill-timed speech.

The speech became a symbol of Bush’s unrealistic expectations for the war, and in 2009 he told reporters that “clearly, putting ‘Mission Accomplished’ on an aircraft carrier was a mistake.” Similarly, Bush admitted that not finding the weapons of mass destruction he assured the world Saddam Hussein possessed was “a significant disappointment.”

Escaping the Press

In 2005, Bush touched down in China several days after encouraging the Chinese Community Party to be more like Taiwan, which he said “has delivered prosperity to its people and created a free and democratic Chinese society” by embracing Western-style democracy.

As China does not consider Taiwan a separate country, Bush’s statement got the trip off to a bad start, and the president’s problems only piled up from there. Hassled by reporters over an apparently lackluster press conference alongside Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing, Bush snapped at a reporter who suggested he was “off [his] game.”

“Ever heard of jet lag?” Bush responded, before making for an exit. Foiled by two locked doors, Bush was forced to walk back to the podium to a chorus of laughter, where he told the journalists, “I was trying to escape. It didn't work."

The Bushisms

Though some of Bush’s confidants insist that he was exceptionally well read and informed, the then-president often displayed a loose command of the English language, mangling common phrases and idioms, and seemingly inventing new words on the fly. Here’s a few of his most notable blunders on matters of foreign policy.

• “You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror” – From a 2006 CBS News interview, three years after connecting Iraq to the war on terror and invading the country

• “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we” – An unfortunate, and perhaps revealing, slip-up during a 2004 speech

• “I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office” – From a 2008 interview with the Jerusalem Post

• “Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter” – Bidding a bold farewell to G8 leaders in 2008 after rejecting climate change targets

• “Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease” – At a 2001 press conference with then-Prime Minister Goran Persson of Sweden

The US woman asked a flight attendant to lock her in the bathroom for 4 hours after taking the test during a trans-Atlantic journey

A teacher from Chicago had to self-isolate in an airplane’s lavatory for four hours over concerns for the health of fellow passengers, after a rapid coronavirus test she did mid-flight to Iceland turned out positive.

Marisa Fotieo was flying to Europe for a vacation last week when she suddenly developed a sore throat somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean.

The teacher took traveling during the pandemic seriously, bringing several rapid testing kits with her on the Icelandair liner. She went to the bathroom and used one of them, finding out in a matter of seconds that she had Covid-19.

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Fotieo swiftly informed the flight attendant, who ruled that there weren’t enough empty seats on the plane to properly isolate her.

The woman told 13 On Your Side that she feared she might infect other passengers and asked if she could “just stay in the bathroom for the rest of the flight.”

“I can’t believe I spent four hours in that bathroom, but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” the teacher pointed out.

She posted a video from the lavatory, which she described as her “VIP quarantine quarters,” on TikTok, garnering several million views and praise from commenters.

In the clip, Fotieo didn’t seem too upset that her vacation had been ruined. She was sporting at least three facemasks and displaying a victory sign to the camera.

@marisaefotieo

Shout out to @Icelandair for my VIP quarantine quarters.. #luxuryliving #imsolucky #covid #vaccinated #fyp #viralvideotiktok #quarantine

♬ I'm So Lucky Lucky - Grandzz

After the plane landed in Icelandic capital Reykjavik, the woman was placed in the Red Cross Humanitarian Hotel, with her ten-day quarantine currently in progress. However, she said she had been feeling well and planned to leave in a few days.

Fotieo’s father and brother, who were on the same flight, have both tested negative for the virus and could continue their journey to Switzerland.

Dozens of flights have been canceled across the US on Christmas Eve due to Covid staff shortages with thousands of passengers stuck at the airports and others forced to cancel holidays altogether.

“The nationwide spike in Omicron cases this week has had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people who run our operation. As a result, we’ve unfortunately had to cancel some flights and are notifying impacted customers in advance of them coming to the airport,” Chicago-based United Airlines said in a statement.

United did not specify how many flights have been affected by Covid-related issues, but according to media reports, about 120 got canceled, with Delta saying that it has canceled 90.

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The Atlanta-based Delta said that prior to this decision its teams “have exhausted all options and resources – including rerouting and substitutions of aircraft and crews to cover scheduled flying.”

This follows a call to US authorities by Delta CEO Ed Bastian, who asked to cut quarantine for fully vaccinated people to five days from the current 10. As a reason for his request, he cited Covid-related staff shortages. Earlier, JetBlue and the trade group Airlines for America addressed the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with similar requests.

According to an American Automobile Association forecast, more than 109 million people – almost 34% more than in 2020 – “will travel 50 miles or more as they hit the road, board airplanes or take other transportation out of town” between December 23 and January 2. Out of these 109 million, 6.4 million are going to travel by air.

Passengers affected by delays and cancellations took to Twitter to express their frustration over the unfortunate start to the holidays.

“My international flight just got canceled 5 hours before I have to leave for the airport. Canceling my family Christmas reunification. The wait to speak to a cust serv rep is 3, 4 hours according to the machine. I need help now. Please,” wrote one of the users tagging Delta airlines.

US President Joe Biden has signed into law a bill that effectively bans all imports of goods sourced fully or in part from China’s Xinjiang province. The measure is touted as combating forced labor.

The Uighur Forced Labor Prevention Act accuses China of keeping “as many as 1.8 million” Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and members of other Muslim minority groups “in a system of extrajudicial mass internment camps” in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

Once the legislation comes into force, all goods that can be shown to have been produced in Xinjiang will be presumed to be made with forced labor and banned from entering the American market. US Customs and Border Protection will be authorized to issue waivers to importers who manage to submit “clear and convincing evidence” that their merchandise is not tainted.

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While it remains to be seen how liberal the issuing of waivers would be, many observers predict that the law will constitute a de facto ban on all products sourced from Xinjiang. The policy dovetails with other US measures aimed at undermining Chinese economic and political power, like the campaign to convince US allies to join Washington’s diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Xinjiang is a major producer of cotton, agricultural products like tomatoes, and polysilicon – a key component of solar panels. The Muslim-majority Chinese province also has a strategically important location bordering a number of countries, from Russia in the north to Afghanistan in the west to India in the south.

Critics of China have long been accusing Beijing of suppressing ethnic minorities living in Xinjiang through mass surveillance and incarceration, coercive birth control, and forced labor, accusing the Chinese government of an attempted genocide.

Commenting on Biden’s signing of the new legislation, Senator Marco Rubio, who co-introduced the bill in January, called it “the most important and impactful action taken thus far by the United States to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for their use of slave labor.”

It will fundamentally change our relationship with Beijing.

China says its policies in the autonomous region successfully curbed radical Islamist ideology and helped lift people out of poverty. The accusations of persecution, Beijing officials insist, are lies meant to justify unilateral measures adopted by the US as part of its great-power competition against China.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in the US, called the new law a “severe violation of international law and norms of international relations.” He called on Washington to “stop using Xinjiang to spread lies, interfere in China’s internal affairs and contain China’s development,” and said Beijing will respond to the move.

Critics of the law say the US is acting hypocritically regarding Xinjiang. They argue that the clear benefactors of the import ban are US cotton producers and defense contractors who happen to stand behind vocal accusations against Beijing over the alleged use of slave labor.

It couldn't be more obvious that this bill isn't aimed at helping the Uyghurs in any shape or form but rather impoverishing them so they'll - presumably - be more inclined to revolt.

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) December 15, 2021

Meanwhile, they point out, the damage will be done to Xinjiang workers who may lose their jobs due to American pressure if the restrictions work as intended.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is one of the latest Republicans to make a 2024 presidential prediction, telling Fox News he believes Hillary Clinton could lead Democrats once again.

During a Wednesday appearance on ‘The Ingraham Angle,’ Gingrich blasted President Joe Biden and pointed to his handling of the economy, Covid-19 and the border crisis as the reasons behind bad polling numbers.

“I fully expect Biden not to run again,” Gingrich said, when speaking about potential 2024 presidential tickets. If Biden, now 79, ran for reelection, the Democrat Party would be “in a state of shock,” he added. 

As Vice President Kamala Harris is “weaker” than Biden, and has been polling similarly low, Gingrich believes 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton could run again, potentially setting up a rematch between her and former President Donald Trump, whom many pundits have predicted will likely run again.

“I think the Democratic Party would be in a state of shock if [Biden ran]. I think Kamala Harris is weaker than Biden,” Gingrich said. “So, the latest rumor I heard was that Hillary’s gonna run. And I think that would say a lot about the chaos of America if Hillary Clinton reemerged one more time.”

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President Biden and other Democrats have insisted he plans on running again in 2024, though critics have questioned the president’s advanced age and numerous public gaffes. He suggested this week he plans on running again if he is in good health and that the potential of Trump running once more only increases his desire.

“But look, I’m a great respecter of fate – fate has intervened in my life many, many times. If I’m in the health I’m in now – I’m in good health – then in fact I would run again,” he said. 

Clinton, who has an online ‘MasterClass’ where she reads what was meant to be her presidential victory speech, has predicted Trump will run again, though she has not indicated if she would consider running once more. 

Trump, meanwhile, has only said he has privately made a decision on 2024 and his supporters will be pleased with it.

Residents of Baytown, Texas, had a rough night after their homes were shaken by a massive blast at an ExxonMobil refinery early on Thursday. The explosion caused a major fire and left at least four people injured.

Locals reported that their houses were “shaking” from the blast and their entire apartments “rumbled” from the incident that occurred in the early hours of Thursday. “Just had [a] big enough boom that [the] house shook & everything inside the house rattled,” one person wrote on Twitter.

😳 @XOM_Chemical Just had big enough boom that house shook & everything inside the house rattled. Sounded like freight train connecting cars outside the house😩 Hope there are no injuries🙏🏼 Now some loud droning mixed with low thunder rumbles but not the usual flare sounds #Exxon pic.twitter.com/RjtfKAnkd2

— Tonja Tolleson (@twotees68) December 23, 2021

Photos and videos shared on social media showed large plumes of gray smoke billowing over the ExxonMobil plant located just some 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Houston. The refinery, the second-largest petrochemical facility in the US, was seen engulfed by huge balls of fire illuminating the skies above the buildings.

Explosion at Exxon Mobil Plant in Texas — four reportedly injured#Texas #Exxon pic.twitter.com/CwLxlF9yPJ

— Hashtag Elyoum (@Hashtagelyoum) December 23, 2021

#fire #Exxon #explosión at Exxon. No news yet. Shook windows. Hope everyone is safe! #news #13news #baytownexxonmobil pic.twitter.com/dpncDZuVeJ

— Cheryl Merritt (@mimcheryla) December 23, 2021

At least four people were injured in the incident that saw the inferno raging over the plant, police said. Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez confirmed that all four people had been hospitalized, adding that three of them were rushed to a hospital by an air ambulance.

BREAKING: A fire and explosion has been reported at the Exxon/Mobile plant in #BaytownTX this morning. According to the Harris County Sheriff's Office, there are injuries reported and LifeFlight has responded to the scene.

This story is developing.#7News pic.twitter.com/EEAoOXSHX5

— Kevin Wiles Jr (@kwilesjrnews) December 23, 2021

#Exxon #exxonexplosion

(photos K. Freeland-FB) pic.twitter.com/GtRffFZ0CS

— Tonja Tolleson (@twotees68) December 23, 2021

The sheriff also said that “some type of explosion” had occurred inside the plant, resulting in what the local authorities described as a “major industrial accident.” Gonzalez said there was no reason for locals to evacuate, but urged people to avoid the area.

y’all….. the exxon refinery exploded and its catching on fire pic.twitter.com/jtmKH3Pkh3

— nick nick nick (@ironick_) December 23, 2021

The refinery manager, Rohan Davis, said he could not confirm what exactly caused the blast, but that a “full and thorough investigation” will be carried out.

The fire was contained after several hours, with locals confirming it eventually “died down.” The ExxonMobil facility houses a chemical plant, an olefins plant, and an oil refinery with a capacity amounting to 560,500 barrels per day, Reuters reported.

Top police officials in Fairfax, VA “secured sexual services from trafficked women” in an apparent collusion with criminals, according to a lawsuit. It also alleges an investigating detective has been forced to stay quiet.

At least 13 officers from the Fairfax County Police Department, including high-ranking ones, have for years undermined an investigation into a trafficking ring in Northern Virginia, according to a federal lawsuit that was recently filed by a civil rights attorney representing one of the victims.

The officers, some now retired, allegedly “secured sexual services from trafficked women, and may also have extorted money from the ring’s leadership,” the complaint seen by US journalists claims. Victimized women were forced to provide free sexual services to some of the cops, who were apparently aware the women had been “made to engage in commercial sex services by means of force, fraud or coercion.”

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In exchange for sex acts, police officers, including a captain and the former chief, hindered an investigation by providing information to the sex trafficking ring leadership that would protect it from law enforcement, according to the suit.

“Police officials regularly derided the notion that trafficked women were victims, insisting instead that they were simply prostitutes willingly engaged in unlawful commercial activity,” the document says.

One of the victims, referred to as Jane Doe, came to the US from Costa Rica in 2010. The single mother claims she was forced into prostitution, with her passport taken away. She was also threatened that her family would be harmed if she tried to escape, so she worked for the sex trafficking ring for five years. Thanks to her later tip, in 2019 the FBI arrested the ring’s female boss, who pleaded guilty to sex trafficking-related charges and was put behind bars. At least two county officers were involved in the ring in some capacity, the FBI then found.

Threats mentioning apparent harm to family were also made by police officials to a lone detective who tried to look into the sex trafficking case, the lawsuit alleges. William Woolf, who worked as the sole member of the department’s federally funded human trafficking taskforce, was told to “keep [his] mouth shut.” In an apparent threat, a lieutenant in the department allegedly told Woolf, “You have six kids, you have to think about them.” The detective eventually dropped the investigation.

The attorney who originally filed the lawsuit in October has recently amended it with information including the identities of police officials accused of misconduct. Prior to that, he said, he sought a monetary settlement and some level of accountability for the officers, trying to negotiate with the county to avoid filing the lawsuit. He said he didn’t want a further emotional burden for his client but, he shared with AP, he was told “to go pound sand.”

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) infiltrated far-left protests in Portland and recorded crimes committed by anarchist, antifascist, and racial justice protesters, a new report claims.

The New York Times reported on Wednesday a story detailing the FBI’s surveillance operations, which were deployed at racial justice protests in the city and at demonstrations during President Joe Biden’s inauguration in January.

Some FBI agents reportedly stood “shoulder to shoulder with activists, tailing vandalism suspects to guide the local police toward arrests and furtively videotaping” protesters during the wave of demonstrations, despite concern from some within the bureau that such operations could spark controversy.

Two unnamed officials reportedly told the newspaper that some agents were “worried that the teams could be compared to F.B.I. surveillance transgressions of decades past, such as the COINTELPRO projects that sought to spy on and disrupt various activist groups in the 1950s and 1960s.”

Some FBI agents reportedly wore black clothing in a seeming attempt to blend in with far-left protesters, who have been known to dress in black and wear masks to conceal their identities from law enforcement, and the operations led to the arrests of protesters who damaged property and carried weapons.

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Oregon Justice Research Center executive director Bobbin Singh condemned the “insidious tactics,” arguing that they “chill First Amendment expression and erode trust with local officials.”

Former FBI special agent Mike German also criticized the operations, telling The Times that the bureau “should focus its resources on groups engaged in deadly violence, not vandals.”

The alleged surveillance operations are just the latest to have reportedly been used in Oregon against civilian protesters. The Department of Justice was sued this month after its anti-terrorism Oregon TITAN Fusion Center was accused of illegally surveilling environmental protesters – including Native American activists – who protested a gas pipeline in the state.

Top White House Covid adviser Anthony Fauci has urged Americans to give the cold shoulder to unvaccinated family members, suggesting they not be invited to holiday celebrations due to their immunization status.

Speaking on MSNBC, Fauci said people should avoid seeing their unvaxxed relatives for the holiday season, suggesting get-togethers could resume at “another time,” when the Covid-19 pandemic is “all over.” He did not offer any estimate for when that might occur.

“I think we're dealing with a serious enough situation that if there's an unvaccinated person, I would say, 'I'm very sorry, but not this time,'” he said on Tuesday night, warning ominously that the coronavirus Omicron variant “is going to find [those]” who have not received the jab.

It's the best thing for you and your family but also your societal responsibility to not allow yourself to be a vehicle for [spreading] to someone else who might be very vulnerable.

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Fauci’s holiday advice didn’t end there, however, arguing later on Wednesday that even those who are fully vaccinated and received a booster dose should still avoid larger gatherings involving more than 30 people, as those would put attendees at “higher risk” regardless of how many shots they’ve had. 

The health expert’s comments come after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued its own set of holiday guidelines earlier this month, suggesting Americans get vaccinated and avoid crowded indoor spaces, among other things. The agency stopped short of calling to disinvite unvaccinated relatives to celebrations, however, recommending only that additional precautions be taken.

CNN producer John Griffin has pleaded not guilty to charges of child sex trafficking as he stands accused of luring children to his home for unlawful sexual activity.

During an arraignment in a Vermont court on Wednesday, Griffin pleaded not guilty to three child sex trafficking charges while attorney Michael Drescher warned that the 44-year-old posed too much of a danger to be released.

Drescher said Griffin had “dishonestly tried to talk his way out of being held accountable” and had “tried to buy his way out of trouble” He added: “There is no set of conditions that can assure the court of his continued appearance or address the danger he presents if released.”

According to Fox News, “Griffin entered the Burlington courtroom in an orange jumpsuit” and “was shackled from behind as two marshals led him inside and sat him beside his lawyer.” The arraignment lasted roughly 15 minutes.

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Griffin worked alongside CNN host Chris Cuomo, who was fired from the network this month for aiding his brother’s defense against sexual misconduct allegations. Cuomo was also accused of sexual misconduct following his dismissal.

According to the US Justice Department, Griffin convinced several parents “to allow him to train their daughters to be sexually submissive.”

In one case, Griffin allegedly paid $3,000 to fly a nine-year-old girl and her mother from Nevada to Boston, before he engaged in “unlawful sexual activity” with the girl in his home.

The CNN producer – who was suspended pending an investigation following news of his arrest – could face life in prison if found guilty of the charges.

US President Joe Biden has revealed that though he intends to run for reelection in 2024, his health and whether former President Donald Trump also decides to run are major factors that will decide his campaign’s fate.

After being asked by ABC News on Thursday whether he plans to run for re-election, Biden said, “Yes, but look, I’m a great respecter of fate. Fate has intervened in my life many, many times. If I’m in the health I’m in now, if I’m in good health, then in fact I would run again.”

Biden on 2024.
Says Trump running would make him more likely to run again.
Says he plans to run "but look. I'm a great respecter of fate. Fate has intervened in my life many, many times. If I'm in the health I'm in now, if i'm in good health, then in fact I would run again." pic.twitter.com/7G07P18Vxn

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) December 23, 2021

Asked if he would still run if that meant “a rematch against Donald Trump” – who Biden defeated in 2020 – the president responded, “You’re trying to tempt me now.”

Sure, why would I not run against Donald Trump if he were the nominee? That would increase the prospect of running

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Biden, who is the oldest serving president at 79, has previously committed to running for re-election. Biden will be 82 during the next election in 2024.

“The answer is yes, my plan is to run for re-election… That is my expectation,” he told reporters in March.

However, a majority of Democrats believe the party would have a better chance in 2024 if Biden did not run for re-election, with Vice President Kamala Harris and former First Lady Michelle Obama at the top of the list in polls as alternative candidates.

Washington, DC has joined a growing number of cities around the US requiring proof of vaccination in order to enter a litany of public spaces, citing the rapid spread of the Covid-19 Omicron variant.

“Beginning Saturday, January 15, 2022, at 6:00am, certain establishments will be required to verify that patrons ages 12 and older have received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine,” Mayor Murial Bowser said in a Wednesday press release, adding that residents will have another month to become fully immunized.

If you missed today's COVID-19 Situational Update, you can view the entire slide deck here: https://t.co/XWcZKLVSUn pic.twitter.com/nmiqcx7Vej

— Mayor Muriel Bowser (@MayorBowser) December 22, 2021

The new mandate is set to impact a long list of business and indoor public spaces, among them restaurants, bars, nightclubs, entertainment venues, gyms and fitness centers. Though no clear definition was provided for “event and meeting establishments,” they, too, will be subject to the vaccine requirement. 

The city will allow several different means to prove vaccinations, including an official CDC document, an “immunization record” provided by a health provider, or one of multiple verification apps, such as VaxYes or CLEAR. It remains unclear whether proof of natural immunity conferred from a prior infection will be accepted, as the mayor’s office spoke only of vaccines.

READ MORE: New Yorkers offered holiday booster deal 

Businesses were also provided with an example of the type of sign they should place outside their establishments to inform customers vaccinations are required for entry, however the city did not specify whether the signage itself is part of the new mandate.

The nation’s capital has joined a number of other localities to bring similar vaccine requirements, with Chicago, Boston and New York City also mandating the jab for various groups and certain settings. In contrast to DC’s rule, Chicago has mandated that all residents aged five and older receive the shot, while the Big Apple’s requirements have extended to private schools and those working in childcare.

The White House announced that US Vice President Kamala Harris tested negative for Covid-19 after she spent the day with a staffer who went on to test positive to the virus.

Harris tested negative in both an antigen and PCR test after a staffer – who spent the day with Harris on Tuesday – tested positive on Wednesday.

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The staff member had tested negative in daily tests until Wednesday and is “fully vaccinated and boosted and did not experience symptoms,” according to a White House statement, which noted that “others who were in close contact with this staff member are being contacted and will be advised to get tested per CDC guidance.”

Harris will be tested again on Friday and Monday to ensure that she has not caught the virus, however the Vice President will not be required to quarantine as she is fully vaccinated.

On Monday, an aide to President Joe Biden also tested positive for Covid-19 after working with Biden in the days prior on Air Force One. Biden received negative tests following the exposure and, like Harris, did not undergo quarantine due to his fully vaccinated status.

The State Department acknowledged the man arrested in Turkey last month was a US citizen, but denied he was a diplomat. Ankara earlier said the man had tried to sell a fake diplomatic passport to a Syrian national.

“We are aware of the detention of a US citizen in Turkey. The individual is not a US diplomat,” the State Department said on Wednesday afternoon. They gave no further details, adding only that the US was “providing appropriate consular services” to the individual, who has yet to be named.

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Earlier in the day, Turkish media reported that a man identified only as D.J.K. had been arrested at the Istanbul airport on November 11, citing a police statement. The Istanbul Police Department said that passport control had flagged a Syrian national – identified only as R.S. – attempting to fly to Germany with a fake document. 

After R.S. was caught at passport control, airport police checked surveillance cameras and found footage of him meeting with D.J.K. The two men exchanged clothes and R.S. received the passport, while giving D.J.K. an envelope.

When the American was searched, police found $10,000 in the envelope and a diplomatic passport to his own name, according to Turkish media. D.J.K. was arrested and remains in jail.

The US embassy in Ankara did not immediately comment on the reports. The State Department’s denial brings into question whether D.J.K.’s diplomatic passport the Turks say they found is authentic, or if he was posing as a diplomat in Lebanon. Either way, diplomatic immunity rules do not apply to him, as he was not accredited as such in Turkey, the newspaper Daily Sabah pointed out.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has released his seventh annual Festivus Report, aimed at highlighting wasteful government spending, with over $50 billion included in this year’s data.

The report on government spending highlighted more than $52 billion in government “waste,” broken down into topics of spending, including Covid, Afghanistan, and miscellaneous expenditures. 

Paul’s reports are known for highlighting odd research efforts that receive federal funding, and this year was no different. Included in the latest list of “grievances” from the Libertarian-leaning Republican was nearly $500,000 awarded to Reed College in Portland, Oregon to “create a token-based economy where pigeons are taught to gamble with slot machines.” 

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Another grant worth north of $2 million went to Giant Screen Films to “reach millions of theatrical viewers across the US” with works promoting paleontology and other sciences. What came out of the spending was a documentary, an educational miniseries, and museum exhibit to “inspire” young students. Admission to the museum was not free, according to the report.

Other spending highlighted includes $250 million to “build border walls in the Middle East and North Africa,” as well as $179 million to “fund green energy programs in Africa.”

“It seems like just yesterday the national debt was $20 trillion, but now the US has managed to breeze past $28 trillion,” Paul said, blasting government restrictions put in place in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, like lockdowns and mask mandates. 

Much of the spending highlighted in the report was Covid-related, with Paul dubbing spending like over $4 billion on “bad loans out of the Paycheck Protection Program” and $36 billion on “unemployment insurance payments” as wasted.