An illegal Mexican immigrant working as an Iowa farmhand was convicted Friday of killing college student Mollie Tibbetts, who was knifed to death while jogging in 2018.
Cristhian Bahena Rivera, 26, was found guilty of Tibbetts’ murder two days after he denied fatally stabbing the 20-year-old woman during his trial in Davenport, Iowa.
Bahena Rivera will be sentenced July 15, the judge said Friday. He faces up to life in prison without parole.
The convicted murderer had claimed on the stand Wednesday that two armed mystery men commandeered his car and ordered him to repeatedly drive by the University of Iowa student until they got out of the car and killed her.
He said he discovered the woman’s body in his trunk only after the two men ran off from his car. Bahena Rivera admitted to dumping her body in a cornfield.
“I picked her up, and then I put her in the cornfield,” he testified, adding that he covered Tibbetts’ body with corn stalks because he “didn’t want her to be too exposed to the sun.”
He insisted that he didn’t go to the police because he was “scared” since it wouldn’t have been “seen as good [or] right.”
Cristhian Bahena Rivera listens as his attorney Chad Frese delivers his closing arguments in his murder trial at the Scott County Courthouse in Davenport, Iowa, on May, 27, 2021 AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, Pool, FileCristhian Bahena Rivera points to a TV screen detailing his fatal stabbing of Mollie Tibbetts. The Des Moines Register via AP, PoolMollie Tibbetts is seen during homecoming festivities at BGM High School in her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa, in September 2016. Kim Calderwood via AP
Police investigators said they broke the case about a month after Tibbetts’ disappearance when they tracked down surveillance video that showed a person, apparently the young woman, running in the distance and a Chevy Malibu driving by her soon after.
A deputy in town saw Bahena Rivera driving in the same car the next day. Police then questioned the farmhand, who admitted driving by Tibbetts, then turning around and passing her again because he found her attractive.
Police later found Tibbetts’ DNA in the trunk of Malibu.
Her killing was seized on by President Trump in the lead up to the 2020 election as supposed evidence that America needed harsher immigration policies and a wall on the Mexican border to keep illegal migrants from crossing into the US.
An undated Facebook photo shows Mollie Tibbetts and her father, Rob. FacebookDalton Jack, Mollie Tibbetts’ boyfriend, testifies for a second time during Cristhian Bahena Rivera’s trial in the Scott County Courthouse in Davenport, Iowa, on May 25, 2021. The Des Moines Register via AP
It took the Iowa jury just seven hours to convict the killer.
“This was the verdict that the evidence demanded,” said one of the Poweshiek County prosecutors in the case, Bart Klaver.
Bahena Rivera’s lawyers said they would appeal their client’s conviction based on their long-standing argument that his statements to cops were coerced.
The mass shooter of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) in San Jose, Calif., was said to be not only a “disgruntled employee” but was also facing a disciplinary hearing Wednesday due to alleged racist remarks.
Since 2016, when Customs and Border Protection agents questioned him, authorities knew Samuel Cassidy, 57, and described him as “highly disgruntled.” But he still managed to obtain firearms and explosives and bragged about them to some of his co-workers.
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In 2016, authorities found a black notebook detailing Cassidy’s hatred for his job as a maintenance worker and his colleagues, as well as books on terrorism, Raw Story reported. More recently, some of his co-workers have reported that Cassidy made inappropriate racial remarks.
He was supposed to attend a hearing Wednesday, but he came to work with a duffel bag loaded with two semi-automatic handguns and 11 magazines, according to CBS News.
He killed nine of his colleagues, most of whom are people of color. Before he killed himself, surveillance footage shows that he was searching for others around the station’s campus, a local NBC affiliate reported.
His ex-wife, Cecilia Yolanda Nelms, who is a person of color, told NBC that she recalls times he talked about killing his co-workers during their marriage, which ended in 2004. But she says she didn’t take it seriously.
Nelms said she was stunned to see her former husband on a killing spree.
Local authorities in the San Jose area weren’t notified in 2016 after federal officers detained the man accused of killing nine of his co-workers this week and found him with books about terrorism and writings detailing his hatred of the rail yard where he worked, the Santa Clara County District Attorney told USA TODAY.
The information could have helped local law enforcement and the suspect’s employer potentially mitigate the attack Wednesday that took the lives of nine employees of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) light rail hub in San Jose, District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in an interview.
“The DA’s office was not notified,” Rosen said, adding he wasn’t aware of a single agency in the area that was told this information. “I would like to have known this in 2016.”
Rosen, whose office also helped in the aftermath of the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting two years ago, described the gut-wrenching feeling seeing his community once again suffer through another mass shooting. He detailed a number of potential avenues that local law enforcement and the VTA could have done years ago had federal authorities passed along the information after Samuel Cassidy was detained.
In 2016 — five years before the mass attack — Cassidy was stopped on a trip back from the Philippines by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
A Department of Homeland Security memo from the stop, which was obtained by The Wall Street Journal, includes that an officer found Cassidy had “books about terrorism and fear and manifestos … as well as a black memo book filled with lots of notes about how he hates the VTA.”
The memo doesn’t include why Cassidy was stopped.
Multiple inquiries to the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office and the VTA about their knowledge about Cassidy’s 2016 detainment by federal authorities were not returned. A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman said in a statement the agency was working to improve information being shared with other law enforcement.
“Under the leadership of Secretary Mayorkas, in February, DHS commenced a department-wide review which included efforts to ensure law enforcement personnel have the tools and training to identify behavioral indicators associated with targeted violence and policy to improve information sharing with our partners,” DHS spokeswoman Sarah Peck said in a statement.
Information sharing between agencies has been an issue that has long plagued the law enforcement community but has expanded and increased in recent years, with the federal government implementing a number of programs aimed at increasing communication across jurisdictions. But still, problems persist, including with high-profile incidents from the riot at the U.S. Capitol earlier this year and a tip the FBI got before the 2018 shooting in Parkland, Fla. that was never investigated or passed along to authorities in South Florida.
“There may have been interventions that could have put this individual on a different path,” Rosen said. “And when I say interventions, I mean that quite broadly. I mean, mental health interventions, counseling interventions, and as well as law enforcement interventions, in terms of whether the individual had firearms, and so forth.”
He detailed California’s red-flag laws and his office’s work to temporarily remove firearms from individuals who were believed to be a danger to themselves or others, but noted it was unclear when Cassidy obtained his firearms and whether he owned a gun in 2016. Rosen said his office has filed more than 200 of these types of restraining orders over recent years and said it’s helped stop “dozens of these kinds of instances from happening in our county and saved countless lives.”
“If we had had that information, or local law enforcement had had that information, we would have looked into it,” Rosen said of potentially using the red flag laws on Cassidy. “And that’s just the truth.”
But, Rosen said, his office and the law enforcement community in general is far from perfect and even with the early signals, there’s no way to know whether this could have been avoided.
“We’re not perfect,” he said. “I feel like the standard we have to reach is perfection to stop these, and we’re human beings doing the very best we can. And you know, there’s not a news story written about the dozens of mass shootings that we have averted.”
Rosen’s office took the lead on setting up a family assistance center to help those impacted by the shooting, offering help to the victims, families and those who knew those killed with everything from financial help to counseling. His office is also helping run forensics on the guns and bullets at a crime lab that Rosen jokingly compared to the television show CSI, detailing that his office uploads information about the bullets and firearms into a national database to help find links to other unsolved crimes.
Rosen said his office is still processing Cassidy’s firearms and the shell casings found at the shooting. He added his office does not know when Cassidy purchased his firearms or where they were obtained.
Photos released by the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office Friday showed the assortment of weapons and the thousands of rounds Cassidy had in his home. Authorities also found multiple cans of gasoline, suspected Molotov Cocktails, 12 firearms and about 22,000 rounds.
Rosen said the back-to-back shootings has been like reliving a nightmare for him, his employees and the community at large.
“It’s like you’re reliving another nightmare but you’re like, ‘oh, this isn’t the previous nightmare, it’s a new nightmare.’ And it’s layered on top of what happened two years ago,” he said. “It’s sad and wearying but yet everyone knows we can’t give up. Quite the contrary, it’s now like, ‘Alright, what can we do better and differently to prevent this from happening again.'”
Senate Democrats plan to forge ahead with crafting a massive infrastructure package next month — regardless of whether Republicans get on board — as they push to pass a bill this summer.
Senators will be out of Washington next week for the Memorial Day holiday. When lawmakers return, Democrats aim to write an infrastructure plan that touches on everything from transportation to broadband, utilities and job training.
“As the President continues to discuss infrastructure legislation with Senate Republicans, the committees will hold hearings and continue their work on the Build Back Better agenda — with or without the support of Republican Senators,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in a letter to Democrats on Friday.“We must pass comprehensive jobs and infrastructure legislation this summer.”
President Joe Biden has worked with Senate Republicans to see if they can strike a bipartisan deal to revamp American infrastructure. After the latest back-and-forth in their talks, the sides appear far from an agreement on what should go into a bill and how the government should pay for it.
As the White House and Republicans struggle to reach a consensus, some Democrats have called on their party to try to pass a bill without GOP support. Democrats can do so through the budget reconciliation process, which requires a simple majority vote in the evenly split Senate.
Responding to the offer, White House press secretary Jen Psaki praised “constructive” additions to road, bridge and rail spending. She said the White House “remains concerned” about Republicans’ proposed spending on modernizing railways and transitioning to clean energy, along with the party’s calls to pay for infrastructure with previously passed coronavirus relief funds.
The White House has said it expects nearly all of the aid money to be spent. Redirecting the funds could jeopardize support for small businesses and hospitals, Psaki said.
Despite the lingering differences, the sides expect to continue talks. Biden could meet again with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, the West Virginia Republican leading negotiations with the White House, as soon as next week.
The parties will have to work through two huge disagreements to strike a deal. First, they have disparate visions of what counts as infrastructure.
The White House wants to include programs such as care for elderly and disabled Americans, which it calls vital for putting Americans back to work and boosting the economy. Republicans want to limit the legislation to areas including transportation, broadband and water.
Biden and Republicans could also struggle to find a compromise on how to pay for the infrastructure plan. The president wants to hike the corporate tax rate to at least 25% — and crack down on corporate tax avoidance overseas and individual tax underpayment at home — to offset the spending.
The GOP has said it will not support changes to its 2017 tax cuts as part of an infrastructure bill. The party slashed the corporate rate to 21% from 35%.
It is unclear how much longer talks will go on if Democrats and Republicans cannot strike a deal. On Thursday, Capito said Republicans “continue to negotiate in good faith.”
In his letter, Schumer noted that he was “encouraged” by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee advancing a roughly $300 billion bipartisan surface transportation bill this week.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who previously said he would work to fight Biden’s broader economic agenda, said Thursday that his party would continue to engage with the president.
“We’d like to get an outcome on a significant infrastructure package,” he told CNBC.
Democrats passed Biden’s first big-ticket bill, a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan, without a Republican vote in March.
Mr. Biden has pledged not to raise taxes on people earning less than $400,000 a year. The budget, though, assumes that tax cuts passed by Republicans in 2017 would expire as scheduled at the end of 2025, which would raise taxes on most Americans. On Friday, Biden administration officials said the president would work with Congress before 2025 to ensure people earning less than $400,000 would not face a tax increase.
The budget is both a collection of Mr. Biden’s ambitious economic proposals from his first months in the White House and, on multiple fronts, a repudiation of his predecessor, Donald J. Trump. Where Mr. Trump’s budgets pushed tax cuts, future spending reductions and unfulfilled promises of sustained, accelerated economic growth, Mr. Biden’s promises the dawn of an era of federal taxation and spending previously unseen in the United States outside of times of war or pandemic.
Where Mr. Trump sought to slash more than $1 trillion in federal spending on Medicaid and Obamacare, and rein in spending on Medicare, Mr. Biden’s budget proposes an additional half-trillion in spending for home health workers and federal subsidies for low- and middle-income Americans to buy health insurance.
And while Mr. Trump sought to pull back from government action on climate change, Mr. Biden proposes about $1 trillion on climate-related initiatives, including infrastructure improvements meant to power the nation’s transition to an economy powered less by fossil fuels and more by lower-emission energy sources.
Mr. Biden also seeks to expand the government safety net in an effort to help Americans — particularly women of all races and men of color — work and earn more, rather than relying on corporate America to funnel higher wages to workers.
The budget reflected investments in the middle class “and the pathways to the middle class,” the acting director of the White House budget office, Shalanda Young, told reporters.
Congress will decide how much, if any, of Mr. Biden’s proposals to write into law. The president has a narrow window of opportunity to push them through. Democrats control the House and the Senate by slim margins. Republicans have balked at Mr. Biden’s plans to raise taxes on high earners and corporations and at much of his spending agenda, though some Senate Republicans are negotiating with the president over a potential deal to invest in physical infrastructure, like roads and bridges.
Senate Republicans have blocked a plan to establish an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The proposal would have created a body modeled on the one established to investigate the 9/11 attacks.
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Senate Republicans have blocked a plan to establish an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The proposal would have created a body modeled on the one established to investigate the 9/11 attacks.
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Bipartisan legislation to establish an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has failed in the Senate as Republicans staged their first filibuster since President Biden took office to block the plan.
The final vote was 54-35, but Republicans withheld the votes necessary to bring the bill up for debate. Just six GOP senators joined with the Democrats on Friday, leaving the measure short of the 60 votes needed to proceed.
The proposed commission was modeled on the one established to investigate the 9/11 attacks — with 10 commissioners, five Democrats and five Republicans, who would have subpoena powers. A Democratic chair and Republican vice chair would have had to approve all subpoenas, with a final report due at the end of the year.
The House approved the measure 252-175 last week, with 35 Republicans joining all Democrats in support of the plan.
But Senate Republicans, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, were deeply skeptical of the commission in the days leading up to the vote. McConnell has dismissed the proposal as a “purely political exercise,” given that two Senate committees are already looking into the events of Jan. 6. In remarks from the Senate floor Thursday, McConnell called into question how much more a commission would be able to unearth.
“I do not believe the additional, extraneous commission that Democratic leaders want would uncover crucial new facts or promote healing,” the Kentucky Republican said. “Frankly, I do not believe it is even designed to.”
Others, such as Senate Minority Whip John Thune, have voiced concern about a commission distracting from the party’s message heading into the 2022 midterm elections. “A lot of our members … want to be moving forward,” the South Dakota Republican told CNN last week. “Anything that gets us rehashing the 2020 elections is, I think, a day lost.”
Former President Donald Trump has been another vocal critic and has attacked the effort to create the panel as a “Democrat trap.” Had the commission moved forward, Trump likely would have been called to testify over his role in inciting the insurrection and his administration’s response to the attack.
In remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., belittled Republican arguments about the political implications of a Jan. 6 commission.
“I’m sorry if an independent commission to study an attack on our democracy isn’t a Republican ad maker’s idea of a good time,” Schumer said. “This is too important, too important. We cannot let the big lie fester. We cannot let faith in our elections continue to erode. We must get at the truth and restore Americans’ confidence in this beautiful, noble ongoing experiment in democracy.”
The lack of sufficient Republican support came despite a last-minute push by Maine’s Susan Collins, one of the most moderate Republicans in the Senate, to rally support within the GOP caucus.
“I want to see a commission. We need a commission. There are a lot of unanswered questions,” Collins told reporters Wednesday.
U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Gladys Sicknick, the mother of late Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, arrive for a meeting Thursday with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., to press for a Jan. 6 commission.
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U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Gladys Sicknick, the mother of late Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, arrive for a meeting Thursday with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., to press for a Jan. 6 commission.
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The push for a commission included an appeal by Gladys Sicknick, the mother of fallen U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who fought to fend off the mob that breached the Capitol complex on Jan. 6 and died one day later.
Gladys Sicknick traveled to Capitol Hill on Thursday to lobby Republican holdouts personally. In a statement to Politico on Wednesday, she said that not having a commission to investigate the attack would be “a slap in the faces of all the officers who did their jobs that day.”
Asked why she wanted to see a commission established, Sicknick told NPR, “Because my son is dead, and I want to know why.”
The Washington, D.C., medical examiner said last month that Brian Sicknick died from a series of strokes, but the Capitol Police still consider his death one that came in the line of duty. The officer is one of five people who died either during the attack or shortly afterward.
Among those who met with Gladys Sicknick was Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who supported the commission.Speaking with reporters Thursday, Murkowski said Republicans needed to avoid “making a decision for the short-term political gain at the expense of understanding and acknowledging what was in front of us on Jan. 6.”
She continued: “Is that really what this is about, that everything is just one election cycle after another?”
It’s not clear where Congress goes from here. Both the Rules and the Homeland Security committees in the Senate have investigations underway looking at the response to the insurrection by police and the National Guard, but neither are focused on the events leading to the incitement of the attack.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., could move to form a select committee to conduct an investigation but would likely face difficulty finding any Republican support.
NPR’s Claudia Grisales contributed to this report.
“He wasn’t even supposed to be at work, he was supposed to work at home,” Leonard Megia said.
Paul left for work early, skipping breakfast with his father.
As news broke of an active shooter in San Jose with multiple fatalities, Leonard watched the tragedy unfold on television and then tried to call his son.
“And I call his phone — no answer. His work phone was cut off. I was hoping, you know, he was just one of the injured. He was not,” Megia said.
Paul was born in the Philippines and emigrated to the U.S. as a toddler. The 42-year-old started his VTA career as a bus operator trainee, eventually working his way up to assistant superintendent.
“He tried his best to make his family live the American dream. He’s a good son, you know. He does the right thing, you know? You can’t say anything bad about him. I’m gonna miss him,” Leonard Megia said.
Paul Megia is survived by his three children, Nate, Gavin and Avery and his wife Nicole, who released this statement:
“Paul was a wonderful husband & father who was full of love, jokes, energy for life and always up for new adventures. I treasure all our memories. God took you too soon & I would do anything to have one last hug & goodbye. I will miss having my best friend by my side. I love you always.”
Emerging from two years of relative silence, former House Speaker Paul Ryan joined the fight against Donald Trump on Thursday, urging fellow conservatives to reject the former president’s divisive politics and those Republican leaders who emulate him.
Ryan made his remarks during an evening address at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. He was critical of both Republicans and Democrats, though he saved his sharpest barbs for Trump, who is by most measures the leader of the modern-day Republican Party.
“It was horrifying to see a presidency come to such a dishonorable and disgraceful end,” Ryan said, referring to the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol that Trump inspired on Jan. 6.
“Once again, we conservatives find ourselves at a crossroads,” Ryan continued. “And here’s the reality that we have to face: If the conservative cause depends on the populist appeal of one personality, or on second-rate imitations, then we’re not going anywhere. Voters looking for Republican leaders want to see independence and mettle. They will not be impressed by the sight of yes-men and flatterers flocking to Mar-a-Lago.”
It’s unclear how much impact Ryan’s words will have in the broader fight for the future of the GOP, if any. Ryan, the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee, was among the most respected Republicans in the nation’s capital before Trump’s rise, but two years out of office, his open contempt for Trump is not in line with the vast majority of Republican voters and elected officials.
A tiny but growing group of anti-Trump Republicans has struggled to steer the party in a new direction, even as Trump continues to promote the same false claims — that he would have won the 2020 election if not for mass voter fraud — that inspired the Capitol insurrection. At the same time, Trump is openly contemplating another presidential run in 2024.
One of Trump’s most vocal allies on Capitol Hill, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., lashed out at Ryan on Twitter ahead of the speech.
“It really is amazing that Paul Ryan, who is the reason the GOP lost the House in 2018, is going to come out today and blame Trump for the problems in the GOP,” she said, adding a shot at another Trump critic, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. “Paul, the problem is you and your pal Liz.”
Ryan spoke Thursday as the opening speaker for the Reagan library’s “Time for Choosing” series, which will later feature 2024 Republican presidential prospects such as former Vice President Mike Pence, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Those close to Ryan, 51, do not expect him to run for public office again, but they suggest he is paying close attention and remains concerned about the future of the party. The Wisconsin Republican also sits on the board of Fox Corp., which owns Fox News.
In his remarks, Ryan described President Joe Biden’s agenda as “more leftist than any president in my lifetime” and warned of exploding federal spending under the Democrats who control Washington. He lamented the GOP’s interest in culture wars and “identity politics” at the expense of conservative principles.
“Culture matters, absolutely yes, but our party must be defined by more than a tussle over the latest grievance or perceived slight,” he said. “We must not let them take priority over solutions — grounded in principle — to improve people’s lives.”
The Republican Party has an opportunity to win elections and address critical policy challenges, as long as they don’t get in their own way, Ryan continued.
“If we fail this test, it will be because the progressive left will have won by default,” he said. “It will be because the conservative cause … lost its way and followed the left into the trap of identity politics, defining itself by resentments instead of by ideals. It will be because we mistake reactionary skirmishes in the culture wars with a coherent agenda. It will be because we gave too much allegiance to one passing political figure and weren’t loyal enough to our principles.”
WASHINGTON – After weeks of touting the benefits of President Joe Biden’s proposed spending increases, the White House will lay out on Friday the effects on the federal debt of his first budget plan.
The plan is already giving fodder for critics, after the New York Times reported Thursday that, by 2024, debt would be larger as a share of the economy than it was during World War II.
The National Republican Congressional Committee also said it’s no surprise the proposal is being released on the Friday before a holiday weekend, when the public is less likely to be paying attention to the news.
Progressives rushed to Biden’s defense.
Debt was already on pace to reach high levels, but the nation was not on pace to meet public needs on economic security for families, climate change and other areas, tweeted Seth Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
Hanlon, who was an economic special assistant to former President Barack Obama, said there’s no reason to believe that the faster debt growth under Biden’s plan would have a meaningful economic effect.
“And definitely not in relation to the (positive) effects of the policy changes,” he said in an interview.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday declined to confirm the $6 trillion budget figure first reported by the New York Times and followed by the Washington Post.
Psaki also said people should remember that Biden “inherited” $3 trillion in spending passed during the last year of the Trump administration to address the COVID-19 pandemic.
After Biden took office, Democrats approved another $1.9 trillion in coronavirus relief spending.
Biden has since proposed spending $4.1 trillion on infrastructure, education and safety net programs for families through what he’s calling his American Jobs and American Families plans. He wants to pay for those packages through higher taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans.
It was a reversal of priorities from former President Donald Trump’s budget proposals, which slashed domestic programs and asked Congress for much higher military spending.
Biden, in April, said he would be requesting a nominal increase for the Pentagon while asking for big boosts in spending on education, housing, public health, the environment and more. The administration argues that past “disinvestment” in those areas have hurt the nation’s ability to combat climate change, rebuild the economy and address racial inequities.
Friday’s fuller budget proposal will present the overall fiscal picture, including mandatory spending levels on programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, major drivers of federal spending growth.
It will also show how his tax and spending plans would affect the nation’s finances over the next decade.
Under Trump, debt rose relative to the size of the economy even before the 2020 coronavirus spending kicked in.
An aging population, rising health care costs, compounding interest – as well as tax revenues falling short of spending commitments – were the primary drivers of rising debt before the virus, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a nonpartisan organization focused on the country’s long-term fiscal challenges.
While Biden would offset his American Families and American Jobs plans through higher taxes, the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget argues that’s not good enough.
The fiscal watchdog group said that the ten-year budget outlook should include a plan to address the structural deficits that predate the massive spending related to the coronavirus pandemic.
Republicans were already getting ready to pounce on the budget imbalance.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., recently asked the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to calculate how much deficits would increase if Biden’s plans are not paid for. CBO estimated that the already-passed coronavirus relief package along with Biden’s new proposals would increase deficits by 48% without offsets.
Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., this week said Biden’s plans add up to too much red ink.
“We have a lot of challenges in front of us that the government needs to deal with, but none of them are World War II,” he said.
Biden is negotiating with a group of GOP senators on the infrastructure component of his plans but both sides reject the other’s proposal for how to pay for it.
Biden’s full budget proposal must also go through Congress, where Democrats have only a thin majority.
Earlier this month, lawyers for the Biden administration also opposed in court shutting down the Dakota Access pipeline, which is carrying about 550,000 barrels of oil daily from North Dakota to Illinois. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe and other activists have fought it for more than five years, contending the pipeline threatens water supplies and sacred sites.
The Biden administration could have decided to halt the pipeline while the Army Corps of Engineers conducts a new court-ordered environmental review, but it opted not to intervene. Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia criticized the administration for its inaction.
A few days later, the Biden administration defended 440 oil and gas leases issued by the Trump administration on federal land in Wyoming that is also the critical habitat of the sage grouse, mule deer and pronghorn. Environmentalists successfully sued the government to stop the leases, arguing that they violated a 2015 agreement that protected that land. But in federal appeals court, the Biden administration defended the decision to allow oil and gas drilling.
Environmental activists, who campaigned to elect Mr. Biden, said this week that they were “baffled” and “disappointed” by the decisions but avoided criticizing the president.
Still, some said they were running out of patience with the distance between Mr. Biden’s climate policies and his actions at a time when scientists say countries need to quickly and sharply cut fossil fuel emissions or risk irreversible damage to the planet.
“These are bad decisions,” said Drew Caputo, a lawyer for the environmental group Earthjustice, which has fought the Trump administration policies that Mr. Biden is now defending. “These actions are carbon bombs.”
The physics of climate change is unforgiving, Mr. Caputo said. To keep global temperatures from rising to dangerously high levels, fossil fuel extraction must stop, he said.
Federal firearms agents had one major target as they swarmed the parking lot of a Texas movie theater hours after a deadly shooting spree in 2019: the shooter’s AR-15-style rifle.
Within hours, they had traced the gun by its serial number – 16020756 – through a West Virginia warehouse of federal gun records to a gun shop called Mulehead Dan’s in Lubbock, Texas, where they knocked on the door.
That door did not lead to a traditional retail store with racks of ammo and gear. It opened into the three-bedroom gray brick ranch home of retiree Danny Delashaw, then 68.
Although the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives inspects fewer than 15% of all firearms dealers each year and rarely revokes licenses, some of those who face the strictest penalties are home-based sellers such as Delashaw, records show. The ATF calls them “kitchen-table” dealers and, based on some estimates, they hold a majority of all gun shop licenses.
These dealers are often targeted by the ATF since they don’t invest in the same inventory tracking and security – treating their business as a hobby – and don’t fight Department of Justice attorneys with the same vigor established chains or stores have displayed in revocation examinations over the past several decades.
In a review by The Trace and USA TODAY of two years of records from ATF inspections, these sellers faced some of the toughest penalties. Of 150 shops that received revocations or warning conferences, the two most serious penalties, 40 were nontraditional sellers.
Home-based sellers run afoul of ATF rules when they don’t record their sales and inventory properly, fail to perform background checks on buyers and sell off premises in places they, by law, should not – everything from parking lots to out-of-state gun shows.
Delashaw operated Mulehead Dan’s as a side business for a decade, selling and transferring firearms. Among his best customers was Marcus Braziel, who bought more than 94 firearms from him over three years. Federal prosecutors in court documents claim Delashaw knew Braziel routinely resold the firearms without subjecting his customers to background checks.
One of those guns became the heart of the rifle Seth Aaron Ator, 36, used to terrorize the West Texas cities of Midland and Odessa before he was shot and killed by police. Ator purchased the firearm privately after being blocked from buying one in 2014 after he failed a background check because a court determined he was mentally unfit.
In 2016, according to ATF records, Braziel purchased the lower receiver, the firing mechanism of the AR-15 that the ATF regulates as a gun. He added the pieces required to make it fire 5.56x45mm ammunition – the stock, barrel, bolt and accessories – before selling it illegally to Ator for $750 on Oct. 8, 2016.
Though Braziel was sentenced to two years in prison in January for selling the weapons without a license, federal prosecutors did not pursue charges against Delashaw. Instead, the ATF quietly asked him to surrender his license during an in-person visit two weeks after the shooting.
Delashaw told ATF investigators he knew Braziel was purchasing, building and selling firearms – and even questioned him about whether that was legal, according to court records. He faces a civil lawsuit brought by the families of Ator’s victims.
Ashley Salazar, right, and Alyssa Baeza, both of Midland, Texas, pray over a memorial to slain postal worker Mary Granados in Odessa on Sept. 2,… Ashley Salazar, right, and Alyssa Baeza, both of Midland, Texas, pray over a memorial to slain postal worker Mary Granados in Odessa on Sept. 2, 2019. The letter carrier was one of seven killed by Seth Aaron Ator, 36, who went on a shooting spree and struck nearly two dozen people with gunfire.Ronald W. Erdrich, Abilene Reporter-News
Kitchen-table dealers are legal if they meet the same basic requirements for a federal firearms license (FFL) as any other dealer: a $200 fee and a photo, fingerprint and background check.
The review of recent inspections found violations across the country, from a dentist in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, cited for failing to keep accurate records to a church pastor for illegally selling guns out of his vehicle in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
In Franklin Park, Illinois, a home-based seller got in trouble for saving his official gun sale records in a Microsoft Word document, easily accessible to anyone on his computer. Facing revocation, another – in Auburn, Pennsylvania – submitted a handwritten compliance plan on a sheet of notebook paper.
One man was sanctioned for paperwork errors while selling rifles out of his financial advising office in Texas, and a prison guard in Washington faced punishment for selling to prohibited sellers and falsifying records.
Home-based sellers boom includes internet transfers
with low licensing fees and minimal barrier to entry to establish a business, kitchen-table dealers boomed throughout the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s even before the proliferation of online sellers. By 1992, the majority of the nation’s 250,000 gun dealers were based in homes or offices, according to the Violence Policy Center, a nonprofit group that advocates for stricter gun regulations.
In 1990, an ATF study of the top sellers of guns linked to Detroit crime scenes found that home-based sellers occupied six of the 10 top spots, including first and second. By 1993, 74% of all dealers operated out of their homes, the agency estimated.
Those statistics drew the attention of the Clinton administration, which suspected many were abusing the license to get wholesale prices on weapons for personal use.
Congress wrapped higher fees and stricter regulations into the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, raising license fees from $30 to $200. That change acted as a deterrent: Within five years, the ATF said, about half of dealers operated out of their homes.
That may have notched back up to 60% last year, according to Brandon Maddox, a South Dakota FFL-holder who helps businesses – including kitchen-table dealers – obtain licenses. Maddox used ATF data merged with postal addresses to reach that estimate.
ATF regulators say they need more money to inspect shops nationwide more frequently, including home-based sellers. Local authorities also play a bigger role in home-based gun shop oversight since they can use zoning to ban commercial activity in many residential neighborhoods.
The internet has contributed to the most recent uptick. Popular online marketplaces such as Armslist and Gunbroker allow dealers to sell to customers but ship firearms to a licensed gun dealer more convenient to the buyer, often a home-based dealer. That dealer is charged with completing the ATF forms and submitting a background check before handing over the weapon.
A home-based gun dealer may maintain little or no regular inventory, making its money from processing internet-sales transfers from out of state. Storage units and other nontraditional structures can even serve as stores.
No rules require firearms to be safely stored at a dealer, although a 2005 law mandates sellers provide some safe storage options to customers, including trigger locks.
Brady, a nonprofit group pushing for an end to gun violence, targeted home-based sellers with lawsuits in the wake of high-profile crime involving guns, Chief Counsel Jonathan Lowy said.
The reports analyzed by The Trace and USA TODAY were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Brady.
Lowy hopes that targeting some small-time buyers will raise wider awareness of the criminal and civil consequences of selling to the wrong buyers.
In Delashaw’s case, it’s unclear what ATF investigators found when they inspected his books because criminal investigators with the U.S. Attorney’s Office made the visit and declined to share details, citing an ongoing investigation. He faces litigation from Brady and the Odessa families that will last long after his last sale.
Delashaw’s attorney in Lubbock, Texas, said he freely turned over his license at the ATF’s request but admitted no wrongdoing.
“Mr. Delashaw was doing this as a hobby, but when the ATF shows up with a badge, you’ll do whatever they say,” Grady Terrill said. “He’s devastated about this. as anyone would be, but it’s hard to blame him for this catastrophic event.”
Lowy hopes to overcome the liability protections afforded to gun dealers and manufacturers under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act with the theory of “negligent entrustment.” He argues that people such as Delashaw have a legal obligation to recognize illegal buyers and resellers such as Braziel to prevent violence.
Joe Vincent, a former supervisor of ATF’s gun crime unit, testifies as an expert in cases involving dealers who sold weapons to criminals. He said the 1968 Gun Control Act granted special responsibility to gun dealers to be the final check before selling a controlled item, as is the case with liquor or pharmaceuticals.
“There’s a tremendous onus on them because they receive a license to be the eyes and ears of the government,” Vincent said. “They’re the final gatekeepers and know what’s going on, so they have a responsibility to stop illegal activity.”
Pastor robbed during sale, loses license
Kitchen-table sellers, like all licensed gun dealers, are required to complete the physical sale of firearms at the address on their license or at in-state gun shows. When they are tempted to complete “off-premises” deals, the consequences can be dire.
Scott Harrop, a pastor at a New Mexico church, operated High Desert Tactical out of his Albuquerque-area home. The shop was investigated by ATF regulators in 2013 for failing to keep its paperwork in order. That inspection resulted in no penalty, despite the violations.
Harrop received even greater scrutiny after an incident in 2015, when a gun sale in a parking lot quickly turned into a robbery. The buyer, Thomas Martinez, pulled out a shotgun and stole nine handguns and Harrop’s Toyota Tacoma.
Martinez went on a drug-fueled rampage in the following days with one of the handguns he had stolen, an FN 5.7 with rifle-style bullets often described as a “cop-killer,” valued at $1,000.
He carjacked two people, including an elderly woman who fought him while police gave chase. In that chase, he dragged a police sergeant, sending him to a hospital.
Martinez was caught, prosecuted and is serving a 27-year prison sentence. Harrop said five of his nine stolen handguns were recovered – several had been used in crimes, including one in California, according to federal records. Four remain missing.
“It’s people and not firearms that are the problem. It’s also a sin problem,” said Harrop, now a senior pastor at a church in Idaho. “There were a couple things I didn’t do correctly on the forms, and that’s on me, and the ATF did exactly what they should.”
ATF regulators say seemingly minor paperwork errors can break crucial links in criminal investigations. Police nationwide rely on the forms filled out at the point of sale by gun dealers.
ATF inspectors said Harrop failed to record the acquisitions of some firearms and the sale or transfer of more than 430 firearms, failed to file special forms for sales of multiple handguns 21 times – involving 52 handguns – and surrendered his license.
After meeting with the ATF and turning over his license, he transferred 98 firearms into his private collection, according to ATF records, a loophole used by many dealers when their licenses are revoked, surrendered or expire.
When asked whether he still had all 98, he bristled. “We’re done,” he said and hung up.
Dentist burglarized, kept guns in unlocked safes
John Peterson operated his dental practice out of a pink clapboard house with white trim in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Up front, people had their teeth cleaned and their cavities filled. In the back and upstairs was an armory with more than 700 firearms.
Peterson operated a gun shop, SEMASS, alongside his dentist business and even combined the two, selling guns to patients. His case shows that strict record-keeping and lax storage can create barriers when law enforcement tries to trace guns used by criminals.
One night in 2015, someone broke into the building on West Center Street and stole at least 11 Colt handguns. Only one has been recovered. It turned up in a basement in September 2020 about 5 miles away, and is in a Brockton police storage locker.
A police investigation found Peterson kept his entire inventory in unlocked safes. An officer responding to the burglary asked why Peterson had such a giant inventory of firearms unsecured. “He shrugged his shoulders and said that he never thought something like this would happen to him and he felt that it was secured just fine,” according to the police report.
Police said Peterson told them most of his gun clients were from his dentistry business, that “while doing work on clients’ teeth, he often talks about his collection with them.”
But police also said the family dentist had befriended a group of strippers from a local club frequented by a violent motorcycle gang.
Putting the pieces together, police theorized that the most likely culprits were strippers, their boyfriends or even bouncers from the club, but no charges were filed against Peterson or anyone else.
Massachusetts authorities seized all of Peterson’s weapons, and the ATF revoked his license for failing to accurately record sales. Police said Peterson violated state laws by failing to store his inventory in locked cases.
Peterson died in 2019 at the age of 70.
Contributing: Daniel Nass with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to improving public understanding of gun violence, increasing accountability and identifying solutions.
The team behind the Off Target project
Reporting and analysis: Champe Barton, Allegra Cullen, Brian Freskos, Daniel Nass and Alain Stephens, The Trace. Dan Keemahill, Nick Penzenstadler, Steve Suo, USA TODAY
Editing: Amy Pyle, USA TODAY; Miles Kohrman, Tali Woodward, The Trace
Graphics: Craig Johnson, USA TODAY; Daniel Nass, The Trace
Illustrations and digital design: Andrea Brunty, USA TODAY
Photography: Emily Johnson, Evert Nelson, Chris Powers, USA TODAY
Digital production and development: Chris Amico, Ryan Marx, Annette Meade, Mike Stucka, Reid Williams, USA TODAY
Social media, engagement and promotion: Nicole Gill, Hayley Hoefer, Chrissy Terrell, Katie Vogel, USA TODAY; Gracie McKenzie, The Trace
Prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan sought the special master appointment, citing a precedent from a similar seizure of information from former Trump attorney Michael Cohen in 2019.
The judge declined a request from Giuliani’s lawyers asking that the FBI’s seizures of 18 computers and other devices essentially be reversed and that prosecutors have to proceed instead by subpoenaing information from Giuliani and letting him decide what to produce in response.
Oetken also denied a request from Giuliani’s attorneys for return of information secretly seized from his iCloud account in 2019 and for access to the affidavits the government submitted to get the search warrants. The judge said Giuliani seemed to be trying to gain insight into the government’s investigation of him, but he doesn’t have that right at this stage.
“He is not entitled to a preview of the Government’s evidence in an ongoing investigation before he has been charged with a crime,” wrote Oetken, an appointee of former President Barack Obama. “If Giuliani is charged with a crime, of course, he will be entitled to production of the search warrant affidavits. … But such disclosure is premature at the present stage.”
Giuliani has come under scrutiny by federal prosecutors over his work related to Ukraine in 2019 and 2020 as part of a broader effort to trigger investigations there that could have proven politically damaging to President Joe Biden, who was seen at the time as a strong potential challenger to Trump.
Giuliani has contended that his Ukraine-related efforts were made on behalf of Trump, but prosecutors appear to believe the former New York City mayor may have been trying to influence U.S. government decisions on the behalf of Ukrainian officials or individuals. Giuliani’s lawyers have said prosecutors are investigating potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and a similar criminal law that prohibits acting in the U.S. as an agent of a foreign government without registering.
Oetken also rejected parallel requests from Victoria Toensing, a Washington-area attorney whose phone was seized the same day as the raids on Giuliani and who also worked on matters related to Ukraine. Her phone was returned, but she appeared to be requesting that the government erase the information it took from the device and during an earlier search of her online accounts.
“Lawyers are not immune from searches in criminal investigations,” the judge wrote. “These materials were obtained pursuant to search warrants, based on probable cause, and the Government’s investigation is ongoing. There is nothing improper or unlawful about the Government’s retention of them.”
Both Giuliani and Toensing will be able to review the seized materials as the special master does and make suggestions about what should be kept from investigators as privileged, Oetken said. He did not immediately name someone to act as special master in the case, but asked both sides to give him proposals by June 4.
Fox News correspondent Claudia Cowan joins ‘Special Report’ with the latest on the workplace massacre
The suspect who police say killed 9 people at a San Jose, California, light railyard Wednesday morning was due to attend a disciplinary hearing that day over claims of racist remarks he made on the job about co-workers, according to reports.
Police identified Samuel Cassidy, a maintenance worker, as the man who gunned down his co-workers at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) facility around 6 a.m. Wednesday.
Cassidy appeared to be a “highly disgruntled VTA employee for many years, which may have contributed to why he targeted VTA employees,” the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Thursday. Cassidy had worked at the VTA for nine years.
Five years ago, Cassidy was detained by U.S. customs and border personnel over some suspicious writing in his possession as he returned from a trip to the Philippines.
Authorities found him to be carrying books about terrorism and notes about how much he hated the VTA, according to a Department of Homeland Security memo obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
Customs and Border Protection officials reportedly found a black memo book “filled with lots of notes about how he hates the VTA.” His baggage and electronic media were also inspected, the DHS memo said.
Cassidy allegedly bragged about having guns and explosives, KNTV-TV of San Jose reported, but it was unclear if that information was meant to be part of Wednesday’s Skelly hearing, which was to precede any potential disciple or termination.
Investigators found three 9 mm handguns at the scene and multiple loaded magazines. Cassidy’s ex-wife said he had talked about killing people at work more than a decade ago.
Authorities have given no official motive for the massacre.
Fox News’ Louis Casiano contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON – After weeks of touting the benefits of President Joe Biden’s proposed spending increases, the White House will lay out on Friday the effects on the federal debt of his first budget plan.
The plan is already giving fodder for critics, after the New York Times reported Thursday that, by 2024, debt would be larger as a share of the economy than it was during World War II.
The National Republican Congressional Committee also said it’s no surprise the proposal is being released on the Friday before a holiday weekend, when the public is less likely to be paying attention to the news.
Progressives rushed to Biden’s defense.
Debt was already on pace to reach high levels, but the nation was not on pace to meet public needs on economic security for families, climate change and other areas, tweeted Seth Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
Hanlon, who was an economic special assistant to former President Barack Obama, said there’s no reason to believe that the faster debt growth under Biden’s plan would have a meaningful economic effect.
“And definitely not in relation to the (positive) effects of the policy changes,” he said in an interview.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday declined to confirm the $6 trillion budget figure first reported by the New York Times and followed by the Washington Post.
Psaki also said people should remember that Biden “inherited” $3 trillion in spending passed during the last year of the Trump administration to address the COVID-19 pandemic.
After Biden took office, Democrats approved another $1.9 trillion in coronavirus relief spending.
Biden has since proposed spending $4.1 trillion on infrastructure, education and safety net programs for families through what he’s calling his American Jobs and American Families plans. He wants to pay for those packages through higher taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans.
It was a reversal of priorities from former President Donald Trump’s budget proposals, which slashed domestic programs and asked Congress for much higher military spending.
Biden, in April, said he would be requesting a nominal increase for the Pentagon while asking for big boosts in spending on education, housing, public health, the environment and more. The administration argues that past “disinvestment” in those areas have hurt the nation’s ability to combat climate change, rebuild the economy and address racial inequities.
Friday’s fuller budget proposal will present the overall fiscal picture, including mandatory spending levels on programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, major drivers of federal spending growth.
It will also show how his tax and spending plans would affect the nation’s finances over the next decade.
Under Trump, debt rose relative to the size of the economy even before the 2020 coronavirus spending kicked in.
An aging population, rising health care costs, compounding interest – as well as tax revenues falling short of spending commitments – were the primary drivers of rising debt before the virus, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a nonpartisan organization focused on the country’s long-term fiscal challenges.
While Biden would offset his American Families and American Jobs plans through higher taxes, the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget argues that’s not good enough.
The fiscal watchdog group said that the ten-year budget outlook should include a plan to address the structural deficits that predate the massive spending related to the coronavirus pandemic.
Republicans were already getting ready to pounce on the budget imbalance.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., recently asked the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to calculate how much deficits would increase if Biden’s plans are not paid for. CBO estimated that the already-passed coronavirus relief package along with Biden’s new proposals would increase deficits by 48% without offsets.
Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., this week said Biden’s plans add up to too much red ink.
“We have a lot of challenges in front of us that the government needs to deal with, but none of them are World War II,” he said.
Biden is negotiating with a group of GOP senators on the infrastructure component of his plans but both sides reject the other’s proposal for how to pay for it.
Biden’s full budget proposal must also go through Congress, where Democrats have only a thin majority.
Republican Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has said that she and Republican Florida Representative Matt Gaetz are “taking charge” in a Republican “civil war.”
“Matt and I have teamed up because we refuse to allow Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger or any Trump-hating Republican … we won’t allow the GOP to turn into their party. So we’re taking charge. We’re bringing it to the people,” she said during a recent interview with the Real America’s Voice network.
“We know what the people want,” she continued. “The people overwhelmingly support President Trump as the leader of the Republican Party.”
The “civil war” she referenced likely has two sides. On one side are those like Greene and Gaetz who think that Republican former President Donald Trump and his unapologetic, outspoken style represent the party’s future.
One the other are Republicans—like Representatives Cheney of Wyoming and Kinzinger of Illinois—who reject Trump and his baseless claim that the 2020 election was “stolen.” They see Trump and his claims as dangerous to democracy, alienating to voters and distracting from policy battles.
Republican Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has said that she and Republican Florida Representative Matt Gaetz are “taking charge” in a Republican “civil war.” In this photo, Greene speaks at a February 5, 2021 press conference on Capitol Hill after she lost her House Committees seats for espousing extremist conspiracy theories including one about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton slicing off and wearing a child’s face. Alex Edelman/AFP/Getty
Both Cheney and Kinzinger have accurately said that there’s no proof to back up Trump’s repeated claim that an unprecedented nationwide conspiracy of voting fraud caused him to lose the 2020 election. They have called Trump’s claim “dangerously irresponsible.”
Both also voted to impeach the former president for inciting the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Several insurrectionists have said they were following Trump’s orders to stop Congress from “stealing” the election from him.
Greene and Gaetz, however, have cheered on efforts to re-examine the 2020 election for proof of fraud. The two have begun an “America First” tour starting in Mesa, Arizona, claiming that ballot audits will prove Trump right.
Speaking in Mesa last Friday, they praised the ongoing ballot audit happening in Maricopa County. Though the audit has been called a “joke” by state Republicans, Gaetz and Greene insisted that similar audits will soon occur in other blue states won last November by Democratic President Joe Biden. The two pledged to visit Fulton County, Georgia—another site where Trump alleged voter fraud—as their next tour stop.
In Mesa, Arizona the two denounced Republicans who oppose Trump’s election fraud claims.
“Just because you have an ‘R’ by your name and you say things doesn’t mean you’ll do them when you run the country,” Greene said. “This is why so many people don’t vote. They don’t trust Republicans to do the job.”
In mid-April Gaetz declared himself as a member of the “America First Caucus” launched by Greene. A leaked seven-page document announcing the caucus’ formation said that it championed “uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions.”
‘The Ingraham Angle’ host blast the Biden administration for their lack of urgency with investigating the unknown origins of COVID-19
Fox News host Laura Ingraham ripped the Biden administration after it was confirmed they “quashed” an ongoing investigation into the origins of coronavirus on Thursday’s “The Ingraham Angle,” claiming the Democrats “helped” the Chinese Communist Party by calling ‘legitimate questions’ regarding the virus’ origins “conspiracies.”
INGRAHAM: Fox News confirmed this week that the Biden administration quashed an ongoing investigation into the virus’s origins earlier this year. Now, it had been initiated by the Trump State Department Mike Pompeo, but sources are telling CNN that the evidence for undertaking it supposedly wasn’t solid enough and relied on cherry-picked facts.
If that were true, then why didn’t the Biden administration say as much at the time and then launch its own investigation. Or is a virus that killed more than half a million Americans and cost trillions of dollars suddenly not worth investigating? Not a big enough deal? Or is Biden’s team afraid of what a real investigation and an unbiased review of Intel would actually reveal? Namely that China was culpable and that, as Trump said last spring, the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Instead, while Democrats like Biden let the wet market lie percolate, China denied any role, deflected blame and of course, watched the political fallout hit President Trump. The cold truth is this. The Democrats helped the CCP by calling legitimate questions about COVID’s origins conspiracies. All done to hurt Trump. And they will never live that down because it makes them egregious China enablers.
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