How in the HELL is this the USA’s problem. Close the damn border and send their asses back to the hell hole they came from.
CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico (AP) — Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the border, a growing throng of Central American migrants resumed their advance toward the U.S. border early Sunday in southern Mexico.
Their numbers swelled to about 5,000 overnight and at first light they set out walking toward the Mexican town of Tapachula, 10 abreast in a line stretching approximately a mile.
This Is A Damn Invasion.
Kate Linthicum
✔@katelinthicum
I’m only just realizing the massive scale of this caravan as they march north into Mexico. It’s several thousand people. Just look.
Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the border, a growing caravan of Central American migrants on Sunday resumed their advance towards the US border in southern Mexico.
Their numbers swelled to about 5,000 overnight and at first light they set out walking.
It was not immediately clear where the additional travelers had materialized from since about 2,000 gathered on the Mexican side Saturday night. They seemed likely to be people who had been waiting on the bridge over the Suchiate River or in the Guatemalan town of Tecun Uman and who decided to cross during the night.
At dawn there were still an estimated 1,500 migrants on the Guatemalan side hoping to enter legally.
They marched on through Mexico like a rag tag army of the poor, shouting triumphantly slogans like “Si se pudo!” or “Yes, we could!”
As they passed through Mexican villages on the outskirts of Ciudad Hidalgo, they drew applause, cheers and donations of food and clothing from Mexicans.
Maria Teresa Orellana, a resident of the neighborhood of Lorenzo handed out free sandals to the migrants as they passed. “It’s solidarity,” she said. “They’re our brothers.”
Olivin Castellanos, 58, a truck driver and mason from Villanueva, Honduras, said he took a raft across the river after Mexico blocked the bridge. “No one will stop us, only God,” he said. “We knocked down the door and we continue walking.” He wants to reach the U.S. to work. “I can do this,” he said, pointing to the asphalt under his feet. “I’ve made highways.”
The migrants, who said they gave up trying to enter Mexico legally because the asylum application process was too slow, gathered Saturday at a park in the border city of Ciudad Hidalgo. They voted by a show of hands to continue north en masse, then marched to the bridge crossing the Suchiate River and urged those still on it to come join them.
The decision to re-form the migrant caravan capped a day in which Mexican authorities again refused mass entry to migrants on the bridge, instead accepting small groups for asylum processing and giving out 45-day visitor permits to some. Authorities handed out numbers for people to be processed in a strategy seen before at U.S. border posts when dealing with large numbers of migrants.
But many became impatient and circumventing the border gate, crossing the river on rafts, by swimming or by wading in full view of the hundreds of Mexican police manning the blockade on the bridge. Some paid locals the equivalent of $1.25 to ferry them across the muddy waters. They were not detained on reaching the Mexican bank.
Sairy Bueso, a 24-year old Honduran mother of two, was another migrant who abandoned the bridge and crossed into Mexico via the river. She clutched her 2-year-old daughter Dayani, who had recently had a heart operation, as she got off a raft.
“The girl suffered greatly because of all the people crowded” on the bridge, Bueso said. “There are risks that we must take for the good of our children.”
In addition to those who crossed the river, immigration agents processed migrants in small groups and then bused them to an open-air, metal-roof fairground in Tapachula, where the Red Cross set up small blue tents on the concrete floor.
Mexico’s Interior Department said it had received 640 refugee requests by Hondurans at the border crossing. It released photos of migrants getting off buses at a shelter and receiving food and medical attention.
At least half a dozen migrants fainted in the crush.
Some tore open a fence on the Guatemala side of the bridge and threw two young children, perhaps age 6 or 7, and their mother into the muddy waters about 40 feet below. They were rafted to safety in on the Mexican bank.
Mexican workers handed food and bottled water to the migrants on the bridge. Through the bars, a doctor gave medical attention to a woman who feared her young son was running a fever.
Sustenance also came from Guatemalan locals — for Carlos Martinez, a 24-year-old from Santa Barbara, Honduras, the plate of chicken with rice was the first bite to eat he’d had all day.
“It is a blessing that they have given us food,” Martinez said. “It gives me courage to keep waiting, as long as I can.”
Migrants cited widespread poverty and gang violence in Honduras, one of the world’s deadliest nations by homicide rate, as their reasons for joining the caravan.
Juan Carlos Mercado, 20, from Santa Barbara, Honduras, says corruption and a lack of jobs in Honduras has stymied him. “We just want to move ahead with our lives,” he said Sunday. He said he’d do any kind of work.
The caravan elicited a series of angry tweets and warnings from Trump early in the week, but Mexico’s initial handling of the migrants at its southern border seemed to have satisfied him more recently.
“So as of this moment, I thank Mexico,” Trump said Friday at an event in Scottsdale, Arizona. “I hope they continue. But as of this moment, I thank Mexico. If that doesn’t work out, we’re calling up the military — not the Guard.”
“They’re not coming into this country,” Trump added.
“The Mexican Government is fully engaged in finding a solution that encourages safe, secure, and orderly migration,” State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Saturday, “and both the United States and Mexico continue to work with Central American governments to address the economic, security, and governance drivers of illegal immigration.”
After an emergency meeting in Guatemala, presidents Hernandez of Honduras and Jimmy Morales of Guatemala said an estimated 5,400 migrants had entered Guatemala since the caravan was announced a week ago, and about 2,000 Hondurans have returned voluntarily.
Morales said a Honduran migrant died in the town of Villa Nueva, 20 miles from Guatemala City, when he fell from a truck.
Sen. Spartacus Booker of New Jersey is shaping to be quite a piece of work.
After grandstanding through the Senate confirmation hearings about the evils of sexual harassment as he sat there in high-eyed judgment on the blameless Judge Brett Kavanaugh, calling himself ‘Spartacus’ for his feigned moral courage, he found himself exposed as a hypocrite as word of his 1992 first-person essay about how he sexually harassing a woman made its way back to print, in that Internet-is-forever reality.
Not much moral authority over Kavanaugh, pal.
Now it’s gotten even worse: Some man has come out and said Booker sexually assaulted him, in 2014.
According to GatewayPundit, which has a four-page written statement from the still-anonymous victim:
An anonymous gay male stepped forward today and released a shocking description on how he was sexually assaulted by Senator Cory Booker back in 2014.
Here is T-Bone excited that 2 Gay men are married and kissing. Any more questions?
The man claims Booker came to his workplace to speak, met him as he was coming out of the men’s room, and then pulled him back into the restroom and sexually assaulted him.
The young man is a gay man and Democrat. The man tells a very detailed analysis on what took place at his work.
The accusation, published on GatewayPundit’s page and given a curt no-comment from Booker’s lawyer, appears substantial.
Apparently, sexual harassment has been a way of life for him, given the long span in years between each fairly strong looking accusation. And this is one of the Democrats’ new generation of leaders, the answer to its Jurassic Park of current leadership.
Booker is a grandstander, a posturer, an attention-seeker, and now a sexual problem. Bob Menendez, the other New Jersey Senator, seems to be getting a run for his money. When are New Jersey’s voters going to get rid of these people?
Nellie Ohr, the wife of Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, claimed spousal privilege on Friday in order to avoid certain questions from House Republicans about the controversial anti-Trump dossier.
While describing her as cooperative in the voluntary appearance, Republican and Democratic lawmakers told Fox News that Ohr took spousal privilege, which Republicans said did not allow them to get to core questions about the salacious dossier, and how it got into the hands of the FBI.
Nellie Ohr worked for Fusion GPS, the research group that commissioned the dossier.
Glenn Simpson, Fusion GPS’ co-founder, earlier this week invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions during a separate Capitol Hill appearance before congressional investigators. Bruce Ohr has previously testified about his contact with Simpson during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The dossier, authored by former British spy Christopher Steele and commissioned by Fusion GPS, was paid for by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign through law firm Perkins Coie. It included salacious and unverified allegations about Trump’s visit to Russia before he was president and has become a central focus as lawmakers investigate the origins of the Russia investigation.
The Ohrs’ role also has become a key focus for Republican congressional investigators as they investigate the origin of the FBI’s Russia investigation. They alleged in a January 2018 House Intelligence Committee FISA memo that Ohr was the backchannel for Steele after he was fired by the bureau in November 2016 over his contacts with the media.
Bruce Ohr previously told the FBI about his wife’s work for Fusion GPS, as well as his reservations about the credibility of the document and Steele’s animus for then-candidate Donald Trump. However, this was not shared with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when the dossier was used to help secure a surveillance warrant for then-Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Congressional Republicans argue the dossier was improperly used to obtain that warrant and subsequent renewals.
Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill’s husband was accused of domestic violence by his ex-wife, and his company once victim-blamed a woman who sued for sexual misconduct, Fox News has learned.
A graphic protection order once filed by Joseph Shepard’s ex-wife even alleged he hit her, tripped her and “peed on” her.
Shepard, who married McCaskill in 2002, has come under increasing scrutiny amid media reports detailing his financial decisions and wealth-building while his wife was in office. He reportedly has received more than $131 million in federal subsidies since 2007, the year McCaskill became a U.S. senator, and also invested $1 million in a hedge fund in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven his wife wants to crack down on.
His Democratic senator wife is currently facing a challenge from Republican state Attorney General Josh Hawley in one of the tightest races in the upcoming midterms. Multiple polls indicate the candidates are virtually tied.
The allegations against Shepard and the sexual harassment lawsuit against his company date back years, but nevertheless are a startling backdrop to the senator’s message regarding sexual harassment.
In a 2015 letter about sexual harassment, McCaskill wrote that “Victim-blaming in the context of sexual violence is as old as the crime itself” and that some “law enforcement officials sometimes unwilling to pursue justice because of the victim’s behavior prior to the crime.”
“’She was asking for it,’ is a sentence I have longed to see stripped from our cultural vocabulary,” she added. McCaskill also said multiple times that she believes women and their allegations of sexual misconduct.
In 1993, Shepard’s then-13-year-old daughter called the police to report that her mother, Suzanne Shepard, was a victim of a late-night assault, according to a police report obtained by Fox News. Shepard was listed as the only involved person. No charges were filed after the incident.
Five years later, in 1998, police were called again to the Shepard house. The police reported the wife claiming Shepard came to retrieve a carpet from the house and got involved in a dispute over marital problems. He then “proceeded to grab her right arm and push her,” the incident report read.
A 1998 police report. (Fox News)
The incident prompted the wife to file an adult abuse petition for order of protection against Shepard, where she provided additional details on what happened that night.
“Police called by friend in my home. Joseph entered my home. I told him to leave. He came up to me looking angry,” she wrote. “I put my hands up to protect my breasts as they are sore (cancer). He has hit me before in the breast. He grabbed my wrist and arm and pushed me up against the wall & I hit my head & back & he bruised my arms by pinching me.”
“I put my hands up to protect my breasts as they are sore (cancer). He has hit me before in the breast. He grabbed my wrist and arm and pushed me up against the wall & I hit my head & back & he bruised my arms by pinching me.”
— Suzanne Shepard
Shepard told the police officers at the time that his wife got physical first. “He said while he was attempting to load the [carpet] Mrs. Shepard began pushing him trying to get him out of the house,” police report states.
Fox News could not reach Suzanne Shepard, while the McCaskill campaign did not respond to multiple requests for a comment or an interview. Joseph Shepard also did not return requests for comment.
The protection order she filed against Shepard also recalled other previous incidents of alleged abuse.
“I am afraid of respondent and there is an immediate and present danger of abuse or stalking of me,” she claimed in the report. “He has tripped me, hit me before (police were called by my daughter), punched my cancer breast, peed on me, pushed me down and slapped me.”
“He now threatens that everything I have is his and I will end up in his low income housing and he wants to take my things,” she added.
“I am afraid of respondent and there is an immediate and present danger of abuse or stalking of me,” she claimed in the report. “He has tripped me, hit me before (police were called by my daughter), punched my cancer breast, peed on me, pushed me down and slapped me.”
— Suzanne Shepard
In later years, accusations of misconduct were also leveled against his businesses. Sugar Creek Realty – a company founded and owned by Shepard – was sued in 2009 in federal court for sexual harassment, prompting a campaign by the firm’s lawyers against the accuser.
Kristin Glemser accused the company and her female boss there of sexual misconduct, including allegedly asking her put on already-worn underwear, following her into a restroom, unbuttoning her pants without her consent, taking pictures of her in underwear without her consent and forcing her to watch her female boss simulate a sex act with another woman.
She said in a complaint obtained by Fox News that she “suffered mental anguish, inconvenience, embarrassment, the loss of the enjoyment of life and loss of employment” as a result of the incidents. In a deposition in court, the woman reiterated the claims she made in the complaint. Fox News couldn’t contact Glemser.
She also said Shepard’s company turned a blind eye to the rampant alleged harassment. Glemser said she “verbally” reported the incidents, but the employee responsible for dealing with such incidents “chose to do nothing about it” and tried to convince her to “go back to work” instead.
Sugar Creek initially defended against the allegations of sexual harassment, saying they weren’t aware of the accusations and the woman didn’t go through the reporting process as according to the company rules.
But in a February 2011 motion for summary judgment, Sugar Creek’s lawyers argued that her sexual misconduct claims weren’t “sufficiently severe or pervasive,” she was a “willing participant” in the “modeling” of the underwear, and she didn’t follow the company policy.
The lawyers also went on to diminish Glemser’s credibility by pointing out to her previous career as a model, asking her whether some of her modeling “pictures show you in considerably less clothing” than during the incidents she spoke about.
The company also filed a motion to make the woman’s modeling pictures part of the evidence in the case of sexual harassment in the workplace because her previous career indicated to her colleague that she “had no reason” to not be “willing to participate in modeling the [underwear].”
The accuser ultimately lost the case for employer liability after the court ruled that her claims failed because she “never returned to work.”
This metro-sexual thinks he is a bad ass because he grew a beard.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey claimed in an interview this week that it was a “joke” when the social network described itself as the “free-speech wing of the free-speech party.”
Former Twitter vice president Tony Wang made the statement in 2012, declaring, “Generally, we remain neutral as to the content because our general counsel and CEO like to say that we are the free speech wing of the free speech party.”
In an interview with Wired this week, however, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey reversed on Wang’s old statement, claiming it had been a “joke.”
“I think Vijaya [Gadde]’s op-ed in the Washington Post captures our position—our most evolved position—the best. And that is around this balance of people feeling safe to express themselves,” expressed Dorsey. “But certainly, this quote around ‘free-speech wing of the free-speech party’ was never a mission of the company. It was never a descriptor of the company that we gave ourselves. It was a joke, because of how people found themselves in the spectrum.”
The interviewer then responded to Dorsey, declaring, “But it was a joke that people took seriously and their respect for you increased because of it at the time.”
“Well, yeah, I don’t think it takes away from our defense of freedom of expression and freedom of speech. But we were not absolute absolutists,” Dorsey replied. “A lot of people come to Twitter and they don’t actually see an app or a service, they see what kind of looks like a public square. And they have the same sort of expectations of a public square. And that is what we have to make sure that we get right. And also, make sure that everyone feels safe to participate in that public square.”
Last year, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams claimed he was “wrong” about his previous beliefs that freedom of speech would make the world a better place.
“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place… I was wrong about that,” proclaimed Williams, before apologizing for co-founding a company which allowed President Trump to speak freely during the 2016 presidential election.
In 2017, Twitter’s Vice President of Public Policy and Communications also announced it was “no longer possible to stand up for all speech.”
The top Treasury Department employee who was charged Wednesday with leaking confidential financial documents pertaining to former Trump officials was apprehended the previous evening with a flash drive containing the allegedly pilfered information in her hand, prosecutors said in court papers.
The dramatic arrest late Tuesday came on the heels of other high-profile, leak-related prosecutions under the Trump administration, which has pledged to go on the offensive against leakers that the president has called “traitors and cowards.”
Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, 40, a senior official at the department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), is accused of illegally giving a reporter bank reports documenting several suspicious financial transactions, known as Suspicious Activity Reports (“SARs”), from October 2017 to the present.
The financial transactions involved Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, campaign official Richard Gates, accused Russian agent Maria Butina and the Russian Embassy, federal law enforcement officials said Wednesday.
Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, a senior official at the department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, also known as FinCEN, is accused of leaking several confidential suspicious activity reports to a journalist. (Alexandria Sheriff’s Office)
An unidentified, higher-ranking Treasury colleague was cited in court papers as a co-conspirator with Edwards, but was not charged. That person, identified only as an “associate director” at FinCEN to whom Edwards reported, exchanged more than 300 messages with a reporter via an encrypted messaging application.
Edwards saved thousands of SARs, “along with thousands of other files containing sensitive government information,” to a government-provided flash drive, prosecutors said. She transmitted the SARs to the reporter by “taking photographs of them and texting the photographs” using an encrypted application, according to charging documents, which said Edwards eventually confessed to doing so. FBI agents obtained a pen register and trap and trace order for Edwards’ cellphone during their investigation.
The files were allegedly saved to a folder on the flash drive with the file path “Debacle\Emails\Asshat.”
“Edwards is not known to be involved in any official FinCEN project or task bearing these file titles or code names,” federal authorities said.
The flash drive contained not only SARs, but also “highly sensitive material relating to Russia, Iran, and the terrorist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” prosecutors said.
During her interviews with FBI agents, Edwards initially denied any contact with the news media, and called herself a “whistleblower” who saved the SARs for “record-keeping,” according to the criminal complaint. Prosecutors said Edwards had previously filed an unrelated whistleblower complaint, and had been in touch with congressional staffers regarding that complaint.
The journalist’s name Edwards allegedly spoke with was not disclosed in court papers. But the documents list about a dozen stories published by Buzzfeed News over the past year-and-a half, including an article headlined, “GOP Operative Made ‘Suspicious’ Cash Withdrawals During Pursuit of Clinton Emails.” Another article was titled, “These 13 Wire Transfers Are A Focus of the FBI Probe Into Paul Manafort.”
The most recent Buzzfeed article cited in the charging documents was published on Monday.
“A review to date, pursuant to a judicially-authorized search warrant executed today, of Edwards’ personal cellphone has revealed that the cellphone contains the substance of many of these communications, including … communications in which Edwards transmitted or described” SARs to a reporter, FBI Special Agent Emily Eckstut wrote in an arrest warrant application submitted Tuesday.
“At the time she was questioned, Edwards was also in possession of a flash drive that appeared to be the same drive on which she saved the SARs,” Eckstut added. A spokesman for Buzzfeed declined to comment.
The case is apparently the first criminal prosecution arising from leaks about individuals targeted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team in the course of its Russia investigation. Manafort was found guilty earlier this year of various bank and tax crimes; his associate, Gates, pleaded guilty.
In a hearing Wednesday afternoon, federal magistrate judge Theresa Buchanan released Edwards, subject to the custody of her parents. She and her parents also signed a $100,000 bond as part of her release. Edwards, who appeared in court wearing street clothes, faces two charges (one for unlawful disclosure and one for conspiring to unlawfully disclose), each one carrying a maximum sentence of five years and a $250,000 fine. She is due back in court Nov. 2.
Edwards is currently on administrative leave at Treasury, FinCen spokesman Steve Hudak said.
Banks must file the suspicious activity reports with the Treasury Department when they spot transactions that raise questions about possible financial misconduct such as money laundering, but federal law strictly limits their disclosure.
“Today’s action demonstrates that those who fail to protect the integrity of government information will be rightfully held accountable.”
— FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney Jr.
Over the summer, senators flagged an apparent leaking problem at the Treasury Department that they said raised “serious” concerns. In a letter sent in June, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, requested that Treasury Department Inspector General Eric Thorson investigate the apparent leak of a confidential request for SARs that Senate investigators had made to the Treasury Department as part of their probe into election interference.
The Senate Judiciary Committee made the confidential request in a letter in September 2017, and the letter was described publicly in media reports the next month.
“If an official at the Treasury Department leaked the letter in an attempt to obstruct a Congressional investigation, that would be a serious matter,” Grassley wrote. “There is some indication this may be a recurring problem. While I do not know if there is any connection, I note that there have been other stories relying on Treasury officials who were unauthorized to speak to the media and detailing another Committee’s requests for SARs relating to its Russia investigation. I also understand that your office has opened an investigation into the apparent leak of SARs related to Michael Cohen to Michael Avenatti.”
Edwards has not been charged in that apparent leak, and there are no indications that she or her unidentified alleged co-conspirator at the Treasury Department were involved in it.
“In her position, Edwards was entrusted with sensitive government information. As we allege here today, Edwards violated that trust when she made several unauthorized disclosures to the media,” FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney Jr. said in a statement. “Today’s action demonstrates that those who fail to protect the integrity of government information will be rightfully held accountable for their behavior.”
Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, where the criminal complaint was filed, said Edwards “betrayed her position of trust by repeatedly disclosing highly sensitive information.” Edwards also sent the reporter internal Treasury Department emails, investigative memos and intelligence assessments, prosecutors allege.
According to court papers, federal investigators obtained a court order to monitor the calls to and from the cellphone of the unnamed associate director who allegedly conspired with Edwards. That monitoring captured the frequency of contacts with the reporter via the encrypted messaging application.
Court papers do not detail the contents of those messages. “Protecting sensitive information is one of our most critical responsibilities, and it is a role that we take very seriously,” said Sigal Mandelker, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
The prosecution is the latest in a series of leak-related prosecutions brought by the Trump administration, which has vowed to combat unauthorized disclosures. Earlier this year, President Trump said that “leakers are traitors and cowards,” and he vowed that “we will find out who they are!”
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
The so-called leaks coming out of the White House are a massive over exaggeration put out by the Fake News Media in order to make us look as bad as possible. With that being said, leakers are traitors and cowards, and we will find out who they are!
Edwards’ arrest comes after a former security director for the Senate Intelligence Committee pleaded guilty to one count of giving a false statement to FBI agents looking into leaks of national security information to several reporters — including one now at the New York Times whom he dated before she joined the paper.
James Wolfe, who served as the Senate panel’s security director, lied to the FBI in December 2017 about contacts he had with three reporters, according to a statement of offense released Monday as part of his guilty plea. He also allegedly lied about giving two reporters non-public information about committee matters. His guilty plea on Monday to one count means that the other two counts against him will be dismissed.
And, just weeks ago, once-secret text messages revealed that anti-Trump ex-FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page had discussed a “media leak strategy” amid the Russia probe. Strzok and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe were both fired for their conduct during that probe.
“I had literally just gone to find this phone to tell you I want to talk to you about media leak strategy with DOJ before you go,” Strzok texted Page on April 10, 2017, according to Meadows, who cited newly produced documents from the Justice Department.
On April 22, Strzok wrote, “article is out! Well done, Page,” and on April 12 he told her that two negative articles about Page’s “namesake” would soon come out, according to Meadows. That was an apparent reference to Carter Page, the former Trump adviser whom the FBI surveilled for months after obtaining a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.
Republicans have charged that the FBI provided misleading or inaccurate information to the FISA court to obtain the warrant. In particular, the FBI incorrectly suggested to the FISA court that a Yahoo News article provided an independent basis to monitor Page, when that article relied on the same source the FBI had cited earlier: ex-spy Christopher Steele, who worked for a firm hired by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Page on Monday announced he was suing the DNC and other entities for allegedly spreading false and defamatory reports about his supposed dealings with Russians.
“There have been so many lies, and look at the damage it did to our democratic systems and our institutions of government back in 2016,” Page told Fox News’ “Hannity” this week. “And I’m just trying to get some justice.”
Kate Linthicum
WDBJ7
KarlaZabs
