Free Republic

That’s not constituent service. A Minnesota state senator was arrested early Monday on suspicion of first-degree burglary — hundreds of miles from her home turf. Nicole Mitchell, a 49-year-old first-term Democrat who reps the Twin Cities suburbs of Woodbury and Maplewood, was taken into custody after a homeowner called police in Detroit Lakes — 220 miles to the northwest — to report an intruder, according to local reports. Mitchell, a former TV and radio meteorologist and a commander in the Air National Guard, was booked into the Becker County Jail, where she remained as of Monday afternoon, according to online...

“Nobody” should go to jail for “smoking weed,” Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday, despite having prosecuted nearly 2,000 cases of marijuana possession, cultivation, or sale as California’s attorney general. Harris’s public flip-flop is likely due to the politics of a difficult reelection campaign in which the Biden-Harris ticket is losing to former President Donald Trump in 75 percent of 2024 swing states, polling shows. Harris condemned prosecuting those who smoke flowers while speaking at a roundtable event about cannabis reform with musician Fat Joe and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D).

A Black Lives Matter activist, who was instrumental in organising the infamous protest that saw the statue of Sir Edward Colston torn down and thrown in the Bristol Harbour, has been jailed for fraud after using donations intended for a children’s charity on herself. Xahra Saleem, born Yvonne Maina, a founding member of the BLM offshoot All Black Lives Bristol activist group, has been jailed for two and a half years after being found guilty of stealing £32,344 in charitable donations to a local children’s group, Changing Your Mindset, which had planned to use the money to fund a trip...

This week a court sentenced Joshua and Kelly Ziminski to 20 months in prison for burglary and robbery with threat of force charges that they pleaded guilty to in May. Other charges were dropped in exchange for a plea deal, according to Fox 6. In the heat of the 2020 riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Joshua Ziminski fired a "warning shot" just before Kyle Rittenhouse shot three men in self-defense. Ziminski was out of bail for his involvement in the riots when he and his wife went on the crime spree that earned them 7 felony charges.

An ex-Marine who spent time in jail for participating in the far-right white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally has been arrested in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Tyler Bradley Dykes was arrested Monday after pleading guilty earlier this year to carrying a flaming tiki torch at the 2017 rally with the intent to intimidate and serving several months in prison, according to Virginia court records. On Jan. 6, photo and video evidence showed Dykes wearing a gray puffer jacket, a gray gaitor and a tan Adidas baseball hat; the rioter was referred to by...

George Conway, an attorney and prominent critic of former President Trump. said early Tuesday that it would be “kind of fitting” for Trump to go to jail over “something so stupid and pointless” as keeping classified documents from the White House. “Of all the things that this man has done … this documents case is probably the easiest, shortest, simplest, and yet carries the most severe likely penalties of any of the cases, any of the legal issues that he’s ever faced,” Conway said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “Now, people will say, you know, in a just world, he would...

Robert Philip Hanssen, who received payments of $1.4 million in cash and diamonds for the information he gave the Soviet Union and Russia, has died at the age of 79, the Federal Bureau of Prisons announced Monday. Hanssen had been in custody at Colorado’s USP Florence ADMAX since July 17, 2002. In 2001, he pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage and conspiracy in exchange for the government not seeking the death penalty. He was sentenced to life in prison...

Adult film star Stormy Daniels said former President Trump should be sent to prison if he is convicted in the other cases in which he is being investigated but not for the case involving her. Daniels told broadcaster Piers Morgan in an interview that Trump should “absolutely” be incarcerated if he is found guilty in the other legal cases he is facing, arguing that him not going to prison would open “the door for other people to think they can get away with doing that and worse.” “Specific to my case, I don’t think that his crimes against me are...

A Los Angeles man who has spent the last five months detained in a Venezuela prison is calling on the Biden administration to help secure his release and urging the president not to forget about him. “No one should be abandoned at the time of their greatest need and when they’re most vulnerable,” Eyvin Hernandez, who was arrested in Venezuela on March 31, told the Associated Press in a jailhouse recording earlier this month. “However, I don’t feel like my government feels that way about me.” Hernandez was arrested along the Colombia-Venezuela border days before he was scheduled to return...

Rep. Liz Cheney, one of two GOP lawmakers on the House select committee investigating last year’s Capitol riot, slammed former House Speaker Newt Gingrich after he suggested that members of the panel could face legal consequences if Republicans take control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

On Friday’s “Fox News Primetime,” Fox Nation host Lara Logan stated that the generals responsible for the Afghanistan debacle aren’t taking responsibility, but are holding Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller responsible by “jailing him for speaking the truth.” Logan said, “So, what they’re really doing is jailing him for speaking the truth. And I listened to the parents, and I want them to know and I want everyone in America to know that I stand 100% with their son. Because he did something that everyone in America has been waiting for for years, Brian.” She added, “And what we’re seeing now...

The Michigan Court of Appeals ordered the release of a Black 15-year-old who was detained for failing to complete schoolwork during the pandemic, a case that had drawn nationwide attention and scrutiny. Detroit News reports that the court overturned a previous ruling that said the teen violated her probation by missing homework. The court blasted the previous ruling, calling it "callous" and ordered the teen, known only as Grace, to be immediately released to her mother's custody. A report by ProPublica earlier this month first shed light on Grace's case, as it noted that she was on probation for fighting...

It doesn’t come as a shock but it is ridiculous in the extreme. A Dallas County Texas salon owner has been sentenced to a week in jail for defying the order to keep her business closed. “I couldn’t feed my family and my stylists couldn’t feed their families” Ms. Shelly Luther testified. The court didn’t care. The stakes are escalating daily as economic desperation takes over and the oppressive hand of the authoritarian government officials refuse to loosen their grip on their new found power over the population. Confrontation is likely to get much worse quickly. TEXAS – A Dallas...

An accused, six-time bank robber who’s become the face of all that’s wrong with New York’s new bail-reform law is now finally in jail - thanks to federal prosecutors, who have seized control of his case and done what no state judge was free to do. Gerod Woodberry turned himself in at the Manhattan Criminal Court building on Centre Street around 4 p.m., Friday - 18 days after his alleged spree began. “I’m Woodberry,” he told a court worker. “I’m the one that’s been robbing banks.” The feds promptly scooped him up, arguing that Woodberry, 42, had been arrested, then...

An Ohio man charged after writing on Facebook that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez "should be shot" told police he was "very proud" that he did it. Timothy James Ireland, 41, was indicted in Toledo for making interstate threats against AOC in addition to separate counts of being felon and fugitive in possession of a firearm, the US attorney's office in Ohio announced on Friday. Officials say a concerned citizen reached out to U.S. Capitol Police on July 23 to warn of the threatening Facebook post, which they later confirmed was written by Ireland. "She should be shot. Can't fire me, my employer...

Recently, the YPG and other authorities in Northern Syria have announced that they want countries whose citizens joined ISIS to take back their foreign fighters who are currently imprisoned by YPG forces there. Nuri Mahmoud, who is the YPG spokesman, discusses the situation and the international community's responsibilitiy.  The interview was conducted by Ronahi Elik, Berivan Botan, and Dr. Thoreau Redcrow with the Kevok Foundation. How many total prisoners of ISIS does the YPG/J or SDF currently hold? The number of ISIS prisoners in our hands numbers around 900 men. Along with these are approximately 500 ISIS wives and more than...

The FBI arrested New Mexico Amalia compound residents on Friday on federal firearms and conspiracy charges, according to a statement by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of New Mexico. The arrests came just two days after Judge Emilio Chavez dismissed child abuse charges against three of the five on a timing technicality. Prosecutors had missed the deadline for an evidentiary hearing to establish probable cause under New Mexico’s “10-day rule,” as Fox News and other outlets reported. Earlier this month, police raided the ramshackle dessert dwelling in search of 3-year-old Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj,...

Andrew Craig Brunson is a pastor from NC who, for the past twenty-three years, has lived in Turkey with his wife and three children.  He was the pastor of the Izmir Diriliş (the Resurrection) Church, a small evangelical Presbyterian congregation in Izmir with about twenty-five members. When he arrived home on October 7, 2016 he found a written summons to report with his passport to a local police station. Pastor Brunson assumed the summons was related to his routine application for a renewal of his residence visa so he reported to the Izmir police that same day. The police informed him that...

Tommy Robinson, a British activist and journalist, has been arrested outside a Leeds courtroom for livestreaming information about a Muslim gang on trial for raping and grooming hundreds of victims, some as young as eleven. Robinson was taken immediately to prison.The ongoing trial regards the heinous rape of children as reported by the UK Metro News: "Twenty-six men and two women appeared before a judge at Leeds Crown Court charged with offenses including rape, trafficking, sexual activity with a child, child neglect, child abduction, supplying drugs and making of indecent images of children."Hundreds of children were allegedly raped and the defendants are...

The veil of secrecy shrouding the detention of Osman Kavala, a tireless and generous supporter of civil society in Turkey, has yet to be lifted since his detention at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport on Oct. 18. But the slander campaign against the prominent businessman and philanthropist is continuing full blast. Aydin Unal, a columnist for the pro-government Yeni Safak, likened Kavala to Fethullah Gulen, the Pennsylvania-based imam who is accused of seeking to violently overthrow Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “It is quite clear that Kavala, just like Fethullah Gulen, is one of the baby-faced, masked as peace-loving, humanitarian-seeming tools collected...