An HIV-positive former Maryland school aide and track coach pleaded guilty Friday to sexually abusing students and filming child pornography, prosecutors said.
Carlos Deangelo Bell, 30, of Waldorf, signed a plea agreement admitting guilt on 27 counts, including sexual abuse of a minor, porn charges and attempted transmission of HIV, the state’s attorney for Charles County, Tony Covington, said.
“You really can’t imagine what had to be gone through when investigating this case,” he said, alluding to the hours of video in the case that “nobody ever wants to see.”
Covington said one of his goals was maintaining the privacy and anonymity of the victims in the case, something made easier by avoiding a trial that would have been open to the public.
The charges cover conduct that spanned from May 2015 to June 2017, and the 42 victims range from 11 to 17 years old, Covington said.
Bell, who was originally facing 206 counts, will be sentenced March 28. Prosecutors said they will recommend up to 190 years in prison. Covington said another of his goals was to make sure that Bell spends the rest of his life in prison.
Bell also faces federal charges and is due in court again later this month.
“Based upon the evidence that the state presented it was in his best interest to enter into this negotiated guilty plea,” defense attorney James Crawford said, adding Bell would also plead guilty in federal court.
Covington said investigators are not aware of any victim testing positive for HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus. HIV is a virus that can destroy the immune system if left untreated.
The investigation started in December 2016 when detectives received a tip about “possible inappropriate behavior with a student while he was coaching track,” the Charles County Sheriff’s office said in a statement.
“A student’s parent observed suspicious text messages on their child’s phone that were sexual in nature,” Charles County Sheriff Troy Berry said.
Investigators sent Bell’s electronic devices from work and from home to the Maryland State Police crime lab, which recovered sexually explicit images involving the boys, Richardson said.
“Some of the evidence … included graphic images of Bell sexually assaulting victims. Some of the crimes appeared to have been committed on school property, and others at his home in Waldorf,” Berry said.
After a six-month investigation, Bell was arrested June 30 on charges of assaulting at least seven boys, mostly of middle school age, Charles County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Diane Richardson said at the time.
He was removed from his jobs as an instructional assistant at Benjamin Stoddert Middle School and as a track coach at La Plata High School late in 2016 when the investigation began. He began working for the school system in 2014.
Charles County Schools Superintendent Kimberly A. Hill applauded the plea deal and said, “Since learning of the charges against Mr. Bell we have focused on supporting the students affected.”
She said school district staff members were also getting additional training.
“We are taking every precaution that we can to make sure our employees are aware of the signs” of sexual abuse, she said.
Oprah Winfrey supported and help get Barack Obama Elected. I’m done with the damn argument.
The media mogul delivered a powerful speech at the Golden Globes Sunday night, almost immediately launching speculation on the topic.
Bringing a room full of Hollywood’s elite to their feet several times during the speech, Winfrey addressed the Me Too movement head on, lighting up social media with the hashtag #Oprah2020.
“It is not lost on me that at this very moment there are little girls watching me become the first black woman to get this award,” said Winfrey as she collected her Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award.
This is not the first time rumors have circulated regarding Winfrey’s presidential aspirations. Political observers compared her speech to then Sen. Barack Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
Oprah herself has denied that she’s considering a run for president, but her partner Stedman Graham was later quoted as saying she “absolutely” would if people wanted her to.
For some, the specter of an Oprah presidential campaign raises questions on whether the country needs another big name celebrity with no political experience. But many don’t seem to mind.
Yes she will clean up the mess in Hollywood. Looks like she needs to start with her friends.
“I don’t see her as a celebrity, I see her as a leader,” said West Loop resident Kristine Singer.
“As a longtime Chicago resident, she’d have my vote,” said Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.
According to political veteran Thom Serafin, the bigger question is whether Winfrey would be willing to put herself through a grueling presidential campaign.
“I think she has the ability to educate, the ability to inspire, the ability to legislate. But you have to have the guts and stamina to go out on the campaign trail and take the crap you have to take 24-7. . . She was perfect in that event. She was just perfect. Can she be perfect in Iowa, New Hampshire, in Peoria where Caterpillar is leaving and there are no jobs? Those are questions I would suggest she has no interest in getting into,” said Serafin.
For those who’ve known her from the beginning, like Dennis Swanson, whom Winfrey thanked on stage for giving her a chance on AM Chicago many years ago, the possibility is not that far-fetched.
“I said, are you going to be able to handle success, that is my concern. She said, ‘Do you think I’ll be that successful?’ I said ‘Lady, you’re going to cost me a lot of money but you are going to shoot the lights out,'” said Swanson.
Winfrey finished her speech to a standing ovation.
“A new day is on the horizon. When that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women…and some pretty phenomenal men fighting hard to make sure they become the leaders who take us to the time nobody ever has to say ‘me too’ again,” Winfrey said.
Only time will tell whether an Oprah for President campaign will materialize. If social media is any indication, just the idea of it has sparked tremendous debate. Oprah related posts have reached more than 1.5 million people on ABC7’s Facebook page.
A full transcript of Winfrey’s speech can be found here.
Michael Wolff’s sensational new book on the early days of the Trump administration is riddled with errors and dubiously sourced claims.
Here’s what The Daily Caller has found so far:
1. The most striking portrait of Wolff’s carelessness in checking basic facts occurs in the early chapters of the book where he misspells a CNN political analyst’s name, misidentifies the position commerce secretary Wilbur Ross was nominated for at the time, and places a reporter at a restaurant he says he has never been to.
2. Wolff parroted a claim that the president once skipped a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in order to get a haircut. Washington Post White House reporter Ashley Parker noted several journalists heard the claim, “but no one wrote it bc every source w first-hand knowledge said it simply wasn’t true.”
McConnell’s chief of staff Don Stewart followed up on Parker’s tweet, saying the incident absolutely had not happened.
3. Wolff printed an unsubstantiated claim that Trump had no idea who former House speaker John Boehner was after the election. Trump, however, has tweeted about the former House speaker seven times since July 28, 2011 referencing ongoing political events.
Boehner even told a Stanford audience in April of 2016 that Trump was his “golfing and texting buddy.” Worse, Wolff claimed Boehner was forced to resign from intra-party strife four years earlier than he actually did so.
4. Wolff’s book claimed that CNN is the outlet which published in full the unsubstantiated salacious dossier on the president compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele. BuzzfeedNews is the outlet which published the dossier in January 2017.
5. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders noted to reporters Thursday that Wolff printed communications director Hope Hicks’ age as 26 when she is actually 29.
6. Several persons included in the book have denied outright quotes attributed to them by Wolff in the book. Former UK prime minister Tony Blair said a supposed recreated conversation between him and Jared Kushner was “categorically absurd” and “simply untrue.” Several former Trump aides quoted at length in the book have vehemently denied quotes attributed to them, including former deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh and Breitbart chairman Steve Bannon.
7. Wolff appears to have gotten one of his own quotes wrong writing in one column that media-mogul Rupert Murdoch called the president a “fucking moron” and writing elsewhere that he said “fucking idiot.”
8. Wolff characterized counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway as a “small time pollster” never involved in a national campaign.” Pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson noted however that Conway in fact was involved in a number of major national corporate projects prior to joining the Trump 2016 campaign and previously was a national pollster for former House speaker Newt Gingrich.
Wolff’s sourcing note in an excerpt explains many of the myriad inaccuracies, saying, “Many of the accounts of what has happened in the Trump White House are in conflict with one another; many, in Trumpian fashion, are baldly untrue. These conflicts, and that looseness with the truth, if not with reality itself, are an elemental thread of the book.”
The author added, “Sometimes I have let the players offer their versions, in turn allowing the reader to judge them. In other instances I have, through a consistency in the accounts and through sources I have come to trust, settled on a version of events I believe to be true.”
Why do the liberals hate this black man? He is a lot smarter than Obama but they praise that fraud.
Justice Clarence Thomas is in his 27th term in the U.S. Supreme Court, and he agreed to become the 341st leader interviewed for my Daily Caller News Foundation series.
Now at age 69, he is looking back on his life with gratitude and discernment with valuable lessons for others.
People often want to define you by the bad things that happen in your life, he says, but there has been so much good amidst the challenges he told me, his wife, in this exclusive interview for TheDCNF.
From a life that launched from economic deprivation, illiteracy, family dysfunction and even time as a radical leftist, his accomplishments now reach to the U.S. Supreme Court — where he faces constant vilification and defamation. He says he learned the value of humility, patience, and persistence, but the bedrock of his rules for living came from simple aphorisms from his illiterate grandfather.
At a young age, he learned how to build bridges and find something in common with other people, be it sports, a hobby, religion or experiences, rather than focusing on differences and divisions. “Everyone has inherent value and is worth listening to,” he believes.
Looking back, he credits divine providence for the path of his life. From the burning of a house, to being raised by his grandparents, to the nuns who taught in Savannah’s inner city, to attending the seminary and to getting his first job with Missouri Attorney General Jack Danforth who was interviewing at Yale. Nothing could have foreseen his sitting on the Supreme Court today.
Faith, he says, gives him “the strength to do what I have to do every day, to assert the independence, to be willing to take the beatings, the criticism, the unfairness.” When he attends daily mass, he says, it helps him do his “job, a secular job, in the right way and for the right reasons.” It reminds him that his work has nothing to do with what is said about him, but is rather about doing what he took an oath to do.
Justice Thomas frequently turns to the “Litany of Humility,” which helps focus and insulate him from the distractions, criticisms, or praise that can come from this world. In his view, what really matters is whether you do what you are called to do.
As we talked about the biggest blessings of his life, he named being born in America, his faith, his son, and our marriage. He also spoke of his love of University of Nebraska athletics, motor homing over the last 18 years through “fly over country,” and the gift of being able to read. When you grow up surrounded by illiteracy with adults asking, “What this paper say?” reading becomes a true blessing. “It is like Christmas every day” when he reads.
On inter-racial marriage he says, “if I were more progressive or liberal it [our marriage] would be considered progressive to be in an inter-racial marriage, but if you are not, then you are selling out.” He adds, “I don’t think of it as some statement. You’re my wife.”
Only after public outrage and congressional resolutions condemning the Smithsonian Institution’s refusal to honor Thomas in its African American museum did an exhibit get modified. Ritual defamation by an antagonistic cultural elite who hope to reduce his popular currency and make his views radioactive, especially for any black American to emulate, has become the way of life for him.
Although he knows the difficulty of taking the public beatings for his views, he often remembers his grandfather’s advice in the 1980s of “Boy, you have to stand up for what you believe in.” He acknowledges a certain peace that comes from knowing you did the right thing, and he talks about the importance of not allowing the critics to make you into someone you are not by overreacting negatively to them. He quotes the black author Richard Wright who said, “the worst I’ve ever been treated is when I told the truth.”
In an epic speech some 20 years ago to black judges in Memphis, Thomas boldly stated that he came not to defend his views, “but rather to assert my right to think to myself, to refuse to have my ideas assigned to me as though I was an intellectual slave because I’m black.” He wrote that speech, he says today, to draw attention to, “the right, among blacks, to think for themselves, the right to be that invisible man, to be the one who lays claim to his own thoughts.”
On the best part of being a justice, he praises our marriage to share the experiences, but also the joy of his four clerks each term. He promises his clerks that they “will leave this job with clean hands, clean hearts and clear consciences” They are “just a delight.” He enjoys the company of his colleagues and misses those who have retired and passed away.
Don’t miss his jovial ending where he wanted to turn the tables on the interviewee.
For more on Justice Clarence Thomas, read his autobiography, “My Grandfather’s Son,” see these articles or watch any of the 264 C-Span covered events of speeches he has given. To me, he is the best man walking the face of this earth!
A Burlington man faces attempted murder charges after allegedly attacking a woman with a machete.
“It’s pretty scary yes,” said Carl Mcmahon.
Mcmahon is staying at Harbor Place in Shelburne. Harbor Place provides temporary emergency housing with services, run by the Champlain Housing Trust. Early Friday, police responded to calls of a man with a knife smashing out car windows.
“On arrival we found that this person who was reported to have a knife, had actually attacked an elderly female,” said Corporal Jon Marcoux of Shelburne Police.
That female, was a 73-year-old Meals on Wheels volunteer who was dropping off meals on the regular route. It is unclear what provoked the attack, but police say 32-year-old Abukar Ibrahim was the one with a machete. He attacked the woman who sustained multiple injuries. She was sent to the hospital, and later released.
“He barricaded himself in the room. After two and a half hours, he came out on his own,” said Marcoux.
Corporal Marcoux says the Shelburne Police Department gets a fair number of calls, responding to Harbor Place.
“I think anytime you put a lot of people in a place, not necessarily Harbor Place, but any place, the more contact people have with others, especially under trying circumstances, I think generates more calls,” he said.
Just a couple of steps away from Harbor Place is the Natural Mattress Company. The owner says he sees police activity often, but says it hasn’t negatively affected his business.
“I don’t think most of my customers probably know that this is going on behind there, so I don’t really think it effects business, or that people are avoiding my store because it’s there,” said Michael Hassenberg; owner of the Natural Mattress Company.
When it comes to their safety, the reaction was mixed amongst the people we spoke with at the temporary housing facility.
“I’ve actually never felt safer, because this place has cameras all around the entire hotel and you could have someone knocking at your door and the office is calling you before you can even get to the door to answer it,” said Carol Van Wormer.
“I feel not safe,” said Mcmahon.
Ibrahim is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday, on the charge of attempted murder. He is being held at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility.
Why don’t Trey Gowdy talk to someone about getting these SOB’s locked up?
This damn government is so damn corrupt that it is not possible to have a proper investigation. How is it possible that no one is being indicted and locked up. This video proves the FBI and the DOJ is corrupt all the way up to Barack Obama.
Will anyone ever get locked up for all of this corrupt behavior.
