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DETROIT (AP) - Half of Detroit’s eight mayoral candidates have been convicted of felony crimes involving drugs, assault or weapons. Three of the contenders on next Tuesday’s primary ballot were charged with gun crimes, and two of them were charged for assault with intent to commit murder, a Detroit News analysis shows . Some of the offenses date back decades. The most recent was in 2008. Political consultant Greg Bowens says there are candidates in every election cycle with past hardships. “ Black marks on your record show you have lived a little and have overcome some challenges,” Bowens said....

The House Democrat IT staffer who was arrested last week for bank fraud, was reportedly liquidating assets, even on the day of his arrest. According to The Daily Caller, Imran Awan, the 37-year-old congressional aide who was caught trying to flee the country to Pakistan, and his wife accepted the offer of one home that had the asking price of $618,000 and listed another property for $200,000, both on July 24, the same day he was nabbed at Dulles International Airport by the FBI, U.S. Capitol Police, and Customs and Border Protection. This follows other strange activity, including wiring $300,000...

This raises questions. The obvious one is: Why? Wasserman Schultz’s explanation is that the Capitol police would not show her the evidence against him. She therefore assumed he might be victims of anti-Muslim profiling. Only after Awan was arrested at Dulles Airport and accused of bank fraud was Wasserman Schultz willing to drop her assumption that he was a victim, and fire him. Wasserman Schultz’s explanation rings hollow. According to Rosiak, all other House members who employed Awan or members of his family fired them after the February revelations. This includes Andre Carson of Indiana, who is Muslim. Carson has...

In Washington, it’s never about what they tell you it’s about. So take this to the bank: The case of Imran Awan, Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s mysterious Pakistani IT guy, is not about bank fraud. [Snip] Awan and his family cabal of fraudsters had access for years to the e-mails and other electronic files of members of the House’s Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees. It turns out they were accessing members’ computers without their knowledge, transferring files to remote servers, and stealing computer equipment — including hard drives that Awan & Co. smashed to bits of bytes before making tracks. [Snip]...

"I asked a group of very sophisticated conservative leaders... I don't understand why the House and Senate Republicans are not investigating the real corruption of the Clinton Foundation... Their answer was there are a lot of Republicans who are afraid of the Clintons."

The White House called Thursday for a thorough investigation related to the arrest of an IT staffer for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz who remained on the job and with congressional computer access for about five months after FBI began investigating him for fraud. “I do think it is something we should fully look into and there should be a thorough investigation,” said White House press secretary Sarah Sanders. Mrs. Wasserman Schultz, former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, fired the staffer, Pakistan-born Imran Awan, after he was arrested Monday at Dulles Airport outside Washington trying to flee the country. The...

[snip] The Department of Housing and Urban Development spent over $500,000 on apartments for people who "did not exist," ...and paid the complex $1.8 million between January 2013 and December 2015. [snip]..."Beverly Place's owner did not administer its project-based Section 8 program in accordance with HUD regulations," the inspector general said. "Specifically, the owner billed HUD for at least 97 tenants who did not exist or whose income eligibility was either falsified or unsupported." The inspector general noted that "nonexistent tenants" were ghost tenants

The National Security Agency and FBI violated specific civil liberty protections during the Obama administration by improperly searching and disseminating raw intelligence on Americans or failing to promptly delete unauthorized intercepts, according to newly declassified memos that provide some of the richest detail to date on the spy agencies’ ability to obey their own rules. The memos reviewed by The Hill were publicly released on July 11 through Freedom of Information Act litigation by the American Civil Liberties Union. They detail specific violations that the NSA or FBI disclosed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or the Justice Department's national...

A group of House conservatives has filed an amendment asking the Justice Department for information related to former FBI Director James Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton email case. The amendment, first reported by the Washington Post, demands information on "leaks by James B. Comey," on "the propriety and consequence of immunity deals given to possible Hillary Clinton co-conspirators" and Comey's decision to "usurp the authority of then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch in his unusual announcement that criminal charges would not be brought against" Clinton.

RNC Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel urged Americans to pay attention to a scandal involving a Rep. Wasserman Schultz staffer smashing hard drives and trying to flee the country. As uncovered by The Daily Caller News Foundation’s investigative team, FBI agents recently seized smashed hard drives from the home of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s IT administrator. Imran Awan has repeatedly tried to retrieve the smashed drives, and on Monday night, he was arrested at Dulles Airport for bank fraud while trying to flee the country to Pakistan. McDaniel decried the fact that the story has been largely ignored by...

Any further probing of the nothing there Russian conspiracy would make Robert Mueller’s special counsel the biggest political joke of all time. Arkancide Alert? Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’d IT guy, Pakistan-born Imran Awan was arrested on bank fraud charges at Dulles International Airport Tuesday while trying to make his way out of the country. Still on Wasserman Schultz’s payroll, despite being barred from accessing the House’s computer system since February, Awan had worked IT for some 31 other Democrat politicians.

Donald Trump, Jr. appears to be the latest figure in President Donald Trump’s inner circle to be caught in the giant web of the Great Kremlin Conspiracy. Trump the younger said he was promised dirt on Hillary Clinton, but that all he got in his June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer was an earful about dropping the Magnitsky Act, which sanctions Russian officials involved in the death of a Russian lawyer who was killed in detention. If the Trump, Jr. meeting is just another chapter in the Beltway telenovela about Trump selling out America to the Russians through an...

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ wife, Jane Sanders, is crying sexism against the man responsible for an FBI investigation into the allegations she fraudulently obtained a loan for the Vermont college she once oversaw. “I find it incredibly sexist that basically he’s going after my husband by destroying my reputation, and that’s not OK,” Jane Sanders told The Boston Globe. The FBI investigation began in early 2016 after Brady Toensing, a former official for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in Vermont and now a candidate for U.S. attorney in the state, filed a complaint alleging Jane Sanders committed bank fraud. Toensing, according to...

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ claims that an ongoing FBI probe of his wife is based on partisan politics don’t square with the fact that it began under President Obama and appears to closely track Hillary's opposition research. The FBI and U.S. Attorney in Vermont are investigating Jane O’Meara Sanders in a failed $10 million college land deal that she orchestrated. John Podesta, the Clinton team wrote an extensive political opposition memo entitled “Sanders Top Hits-Thematics. Members of the lending agency expressed concern that if O’Meara Sanders was not involved, the loan would not have been approved.” The opposition research also highlighted...

The talking heads at CNN and MSNBC are positively giddy. Aha! A Russia connection. Donald Trump Jr. met with Russians! It's best when they can find a liberal guest to say what they're thinking, and they have plenty from which to choose. Here's a sentence of hyperbole from Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., on CNN: "I think we are seeing an unprecedented amount of contacts, personal, political and financial, that Trump, his family, his team, his business had with Russia prior to the election." The use of the word "unprecedented" displays amnesia, or ignorance, or simply a rewrite of recent American...

Acosta also questioned the president's claim that it was "three or four" intelligence agencies that determined Russia was attempting to influence the 2016 election, not "17 intelligence agencies" as the New York Times erroneously reported. "Where does that number come from?" Acosta wondered about the "three or four" figure.

As the Trump administration looks to clamp down on widespread reports of voter fraud and abuse, some mainly liberal states are pushing back — fearing that Trump is launching a “voter suppression” commission. Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity has asked the states to hand over data from their voter rolls. According to Axios, that includes voter information regarding felony convictions, military status, and voter history. They have set a deadline for the middle of July. However, the outlet reports that the commission is getting pushback from mainly liberal states such as California, Virginia, Connecticut, and Vermont — with...

The train wreck that is the state of Illinois has generated a lot of questions lately, including “Will its government ever pass a budget?”, “Will it ever pay its overdue bills?”, and “Is it possible for a state to go bankrupt?” Looks like we’re about to get some answers to these questions, along with one more: “What happens to the financial markets when people finally realize that Illinois is far from the only impending bankruptcy?” Today’s Wall Street Journal has an anecdote-filled article illustrating what certainly looks like a case of terminal financial mismanagement (How Bad Is the Crisis in...

"I will not provide sensitive voter information to a commission that has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted illegally,” Secretary of State Alex Padilla said.

Complete Headline: Sen. Sanders’ Wife Tried Evicting Disabled Group Home Residents after Closing Shady College Deal Under FBI Probe Amid a deepening federal investigation of Jane Sanders, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders' wife, Judicial Watch has obtained records that paint a rather disturbing personal portrait of a heartless spouse—and longtime political advisor—of the Democratic Socialist candidate for president of the United States. ... The school, Burlington College, was in a small city with the same name in northwestern Vermont. It's a quaint town of about 42,000 that sits on the eastern shoreline of Lake Champlain and prides itself on having "diverse,...