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Actor Leonardo DiCaprio took the stand and testified in the federal trial of Prakazrel “Pras” Michel, founder of the hip hop band Fugees, and his alleged involvement in a money laundering scheme that included a huge — and illegal — donation to Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. FACT-O-RAMA! Fugees are best known for their cover of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song.”DiCaprio recalled a conversation with Malaysian financier Jho Low, who mentioned that he was looking to donate millions of dollars to the Obama campaign by giving the money to Michel and having him pass it to Obama’s...

Banking is an inherently risky business. It's assets are mostly long term--loans, mortgages, and bonds. It's liabilities are mostly short term--checking and savings deposits. This timing imbalance relies on the faith of its depositors that the bank is sound. This faith can be shaken by the unwise or unlucky decisions made in how the bank invests the money entrusted to it. This past week, the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) suffered a loss of faith. Instead of investing $73 million of its deposits in income earning assets, it gave this money away to Black Lives Matter-related social justice groups. It made...

Beau Biden’s widow and Hunter’s ex-lover Hallie Biden is the “new” family business member who received a $25,000 cash payment on March 27, 2017, from family associate Robinson Walker’s LLC regarding a Chinese venture, the House Oversight Committee revealed Thursday.

On Sunday, former President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to say Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg should be prosecuted after reports emerged that a group he donated millions to, the US Alliance for Election Excellence, recently gave money to an election board in Georgia, despite a ban on such funding after the 2020 election.Trump said, "He cheated on the Election(s). The whole system is RIGGED. Why isn't he being prosecuted? The Democrats only know how to cheat. America isn't going to take it much longer!"Trump's calls for Zuckerberg's prosecution follows a report from Fox News that the...

There is A LOT going on inside this story, and the pair of indictments only scratch the surface.[WaPo – New York Times – ABC News]According to the DOJ, “A former Special Agent in Charge of the FBI New York Counterintelligence Division [Charles F. McGonigal, 54, of New York City] and a former Soviet and Russian diplomat [Sergey Shestakov, 69, of Morris, Connecticut] were arrested Saturday on criminal charges related to their alleged violating and conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and conspiring to commit money laundering and money laundering.Interestingly, there are two sets of indictments. The...

The Communist Party of Vietnam has forced President Nguyen Xuan Phuc to resign to take responsibility for COVID-19 bribery scandals that took place during his term, state media reported Tuesday. The party’s Central Committee decided to relieve him of all duties, including membership of the Politburo and Party Central Committee, and chairmanship of the National Defense and Security Council for the 2021-2026 term, VietNamNews said. The Central Committee commended Phuc for leading Vietnam’s efforts to control the COVID-19 pandemic in the final years of his 2016-2021 term as prime minister, according to state media. However, members said he needed to...

Best of Ron Johnson explaining what crooks the Bidens are, how the FBI, deep state and Dems have tried to smear him, spread dis-information, and interfere in election of 2020, with charts and documents.

LONDON -- Ireland’s Supreme Court has issued a ruling declaring that for the purposes of tax law, the bread served in Subway's hot sandwiches does not actually meet the legal definition of “bread” because of its sugar content and is rather a "confectionary or fancy baked good." The case was brought before the court by Subway franchisee Bookfinders Ltd. which claimed that the bread Subway served qualified as a “staple food,” which, in Ireland, means that the bread would be exempt from value-added tax (VAT), thereby saving Subway money.

Ireland’s highest court isn’t sweet on tax breaks for footlongs. The country’s Supreme Court ruled that the starch used in Subway sandwiches is too sugary to meet the definition of “bread” — a legal distinction that would have saved the firm some dough. In deciding whether to give the fast-food chain a tax break for serving a “staple” food item, the five-judge panel ruled that the bread’s sugar-to-flour content is roughly five times too high to qualify, according to the Irish Independent.

Polls showing that Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY), chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, may be unseated by GOP challenger Assemblyman Mike Lawler inspired President Biden to make an offer of "an open door access to my administration" to Rabbi David Twersky. Twersky is revered by Hasidic Jews in his district who are considered likely to heed the Rabbi's advice and vote for Maloney if he tells them to do so. It might be a tough sell, though. Hassidic Jews in NY went heavily for Trump in the 2020 election. Maloney's support for ending cash bail, which many credit...

President Biden called a prominent New York rabbi and offered him unfettered access to the White House in exchange for throwing his support behind Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, chair of the Democrat's campaign arm who is locked in a tight race. Tasked with leading Democrats in their fight to keep the House, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) chair and New York Rep. Maloney must now focus on his own race against Republican assemblyman Mike Lawler on Nov. 8. It has turned into a 'toss-up' race, despite Biden carrying the district by 10 points. 'You will have an open door to...

LEARNING MORE FACTS ABOUT THE FALSE TRUMP-RUSSIA-COLLUSION. HERE ARE THE BASICS:The latest: The Trial of Igor Danchenko, Christopher Steele’s source for his dirty dossier against then-candidate Trump.Why is this important? We are learning more on how government employees (FBI, DOJ) worked with a political party (the Democrats) to destroy their political opponents, i.e., Trump and his allies. Most probably, the Democrats and government employees who participated in this scam will get away with it, but at least Americans are going to know how they did it.

Former CA agent helped a man tied to organized crime learn if his associates were under investigation ... A former FBI agent in Northern California who handled national security issues was convicted Tuesday of accepting at least $150,000 in gifts and cash bribes to provide confidential information to a man with organized crime ties, prosecutors said. Babak Broumand, 56, of Lafayette, was found guilty in Los Angeles of conspiracy, bribery of a public official and monetary transactions in property derived from unlawful activity, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement. He could face 15 to 45 years in...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Three weeks before he faced sentencing, the Malaysian defense contractor at the center of one of the biggest bribery investigations in U.S. military history made an escape as stunning and brazen as the case itself: U-Haul trucks were seen at his home in a tony San Diego neighborhood before Leonard Glenn Francis, known as “Fat Leonard,” snipped off his ankle monitor and disappeared. Nearly a dozen U.S. law enforcement agencies were searching for Francis on Tuesday. But officials acknowledged he may already be in Mexico, and possibly on his way back to Asia. ... officers found...

Most of you know her as Nancy Pelosi. When I first met my one-time neighbor, she was daughter to one Mayor of Baltimore, Tommy D’Alesandro, Jr., and sister to Tommy, III, who’d later become Mayor. Some of the stories about her, as she prepares to become Speaker of the House, have mentioned her past, but not honestly. At most, the glowing stories refer to the Baltimore City politics she grew up in as “rough and tumble.” Politics there and then were much more than rough and tumble. They were crooked as a dog’s hind leg. I know. I grew up...

Prince Charles personally accepted suitcases and shopping bags stuffed with millions of dollars’ worth of cash from a controversial Qatari politician between 2011 and 2015, according to an explosive new report. “Everyone felt very uncomfortable about the situation,” a former adviser to the Prince of Wales told the Sunday Times of London. The “only thing we could do was to count the money and make a mutual record of what we’d done,” the source said. “And then call the bank.” Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, the former prime minister of Qatar, bestowed the big bucks on the...

Vice President Harris hauled in nearly half a million dollars in book royalties during her first year in office, ethics disclosure forms show. Harris reported $325,000 in royalty earnings from her 2019 book “The Truths We Hold,” and another $130,000 for her children’s book “Superheroes Are Everywhere,” Bloomberg reported Friday. The cash far outstripped President Biden’s, who reported between $15,001 and $50,000 in royalties for “Promise Me, Dad,” — a heartfelt 2018 memoir about his late son Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015.

BOSTON (AP) — A former chairperson of the Massachusetts tribe whose ancestors aided the Pilgrims goes on trial Tuesday for bribery, extortion and other federal charges related to the tribe’s planned casino project. Cedric Cromwell’s criminal trial opens in U.S. District Court in Boston after being delayed for months by the coronavirus pandemic. Federal prosecutors say Cromwell used his position as chair of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe to extort tens of thousands of dollars in bribes and engaged in a conspiracy to commit bribery. The Cape Cod-based tribe’s casino plan has faced years of legal setbacks, but it got a...

More details are emerging about the four Secret Service employees entangled in an alleged bribery scheme carried out by two men accused of masquerading as Department of Homeland Security law enforcement agents. An affidavit filed Wednesday night in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. revealed that one of the Secret Service agents involved in the bribery scheme was a special agent assigned to First Lady Jill Biden’s protective detail. Another was a Uniformed Division officer at the White House. RealClearPolitics has learned that another Secret Service special agent involved in the alleged bribery is assigned to President Biden’s detail, those...

WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged two men they say were posing as federal agents, giving free apartments and other gifts to U.S. Secret Service agents, including one who worked on the first lady’s security detail. The two men – Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 36 – were taken into custody as more than a dozen FBI agents charged into a luxury apartment building in Southeast Washington on Wednesday evening.