Free Republic

A former Los Angeles Unified School District employee has been charged in what prosecutors described as a pay-to-play scheme that directed more than $22 million in contracts to a single technology company, making it one of the largest money laundering schemes in the district’s history. Officials with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office allege that between 2018 and 2022, 53-year-old Pasadena resident, Hong “Grace” Peng, who worked as a technical project manager for LAUSD, of illegally awarding Innive, a Texas-based tech company, millions of dollars worth of contracts for work on the district’s My Integrated Student Information System (MiSiS)....

Even while faced with a Russian invasion of their nation, some elements in the Ukrainian government were plotting to help the Biden re-election campaign — with U.S. taxpayer money. That was the gist of an explosive article Thursday from the Washington-based website Just the News, citing a declassified intelligence report. And Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is reportedly on the case. The Just the News report was authored by website founder John Solomon, a veteran, highly respected D.C. journalist, and Just the News chief investigative correspondent Jeff Dunleavy. It claimed that U.S. intelligence intercepts had revealed that personnel in...

U.S. INTERCEPTED UKRAINE MESSAGES OF PLOT TO ROUTE MONEY TO BIDEN CAMPAIGN “The United States government, the National Security Agency, intercepted conversations of President Zelensky's government in Ukraine in 2022...conspiring with federal workers at the USAID to come up with a plan to take $200 million dollars of USAID money, that is your money folks, taxpayer money, route it through a series of transactions, move it into the United States, and launder it into Joe Biden's 2024 campaign and the Democratic National Committee.” - 2 min video https://x.com/realamvoice/status/2037292005105996157?

U.S. intelligence intercepted Ukrainian government communications discussing a plot to route hundreds of millions of American tax dollars earmarked for clean energy in the war-torn country and move them to the United States to enrich then-President Joe Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee, according to a declassified intelligence report summarizing the intercepts that was obtained by Just the News. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently learned of the intercepts and has asked the U.S. Agency for International Development officials to scour for records to see if the plot actually was carried out and whether a criminal...

Iran, Turkey, and Venezuela's Super Facilitator: Who Is Slex Saab? On June 12, Alex Nain Saab Morán, a Colombian businessman of Lebanese  descent, was arrested at Amílcar Cabral International airport in Cape Verde. This was a huge blow to the Maduro regime’s illicit networks, as Saab is a key facilitator, involved in alleged corrupt dealings and money laundering in Venezuela since 2004.  His arrest was made after years of investigations on behalf of the U.S. and Colombia to uncover a myriad of shell companies that Saab; his business partner, Alvaro Pulido Vargas; and family members set up. Considered a fugitive in Colombia,...

At present, 33 countries and two territories allow birthright citizenship out of 194 nations on the planet, meaning, it's not exactly a common phenomenon by global standards.AdvertisementThis hasn't stopped the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and some NGO they're politically aligned with from wading into another policy argument, calling President Trump's executive order banning birthright citizenship to illegal aliens 'immoral,' speaking as a 'friend of the court' as the case on birthright citizenship goes to the Supreme Court. The document is here.According to Sahara Reporters:AdvertisementThe United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has launched a legal offensive against President Donald...

A new state bill aims to shield certain information about California’s High-Speed Rail project from the public. Supporters say it’s about protecting sensitive records, but critics think it puts the brakes on transparency. ... [O]pponents...say the project is too costly. They note the state has already spent about $15 billion on it over the last decade and a half, while the total cost projections for the full project have ballooned from the original $45 billion estimate presented to voters in 2008 to anywhere between $88 billion-$128 billion today. Inside California Politics Correspondent Eytan Wallace reports a new state bill would...

A powerful committee chaired by socialist wannabe LA mayor Nithya Raman has voted to hand over $6.6 million to a radical activist group that’s previously sued the City. Los Angeles City Council’s Housing and Homeless Committee greenlit more than $177 million in homeless spending contracts – including the fresh multi-million-dollar payday for Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, better known as SAJE. They want the LAPD abolished, the 2028 Olympics to be cancelled and to freeze rent. The $6.6 million in funding given to the SAJE comes despite the group having sued the City of Los Angeles over approvals for...

BREAKING: Two former FL teacher’s union leaders sentenced after pleading guilty to a fraud scheme where they stole millions of dollars from teachers Union President Teresa Brady was sentenced to 27 months in prison while VP Ruby George received 1 year ABOLISH TEACHERS UNIONS

[Catholic Caucus] Pope Francis ‘secret decrees’ undermined defendants’ rights in Cdl. Becciu trial, lawyers sayDefense attorneys told Vatican judges that unpublished papal decrees unlawfully expanded prosecutorial powers and violated Cdl. Angelo Becciu’s fundamental rights under Vatican law.Defense lawyers have told the Vatican appeals tribunal that “secret decrees” issued by Pope Francis unlawfully expanded prosecutorial powers and undermined the fundamental rights of defendants in Cardinal Angelo Becciu’s trial.On Tuesday, during the resumption of the appeals phase of the Vatican’s so-called trial of the century, defense attorneys for Becciu and eight co-defendants argued before the Vatican City State Tribunal that four confidential...

[Catholic Caucus] An Open Letter to US DiocesesThe Annual Appeal was launched in our diocese this weekend, as it has been or will be in many other dioceses, with a sound-tracked video at every Mass and a step-by-step walk-through of the completion of pledge cards. While I sympathize with the committee that came up with that tedious line-by-line approach, it doesn’t wear well on adults.Instead, maybe give us an honest accounting of where our money has gone, the steps taken to protect and report it, and a picture of the accounting best practices that assure us the money is spent...

Cardinal McElroy fans the flamesBy now all responsible public leaders have recognized the need to dial down the rhetoric and de-escalate the confrontations in Minnesota. Yet Cardinal Robert McElroy has joined with several other religious leaders in Washington to rouse passions still further, beyond their already dangerous heights.“The murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti,” the religious leaders’ joint statement begins. Right away that opening statement signals their choice to use inflammatory language. They could have spoken in neutral terms about the “deaths” of those two people. Or “killings” would have been perfectly accurate, and conveyed a better sense of...

Governor Newscum May Be Involved in Dirty Money Laundering Scheme From Mexican Cartels

Secretary of Housing Scott Turner CONFIRMS Democrats were using American taxpayer dollars to pay for homes for illegals - $5 billion dollars in “overpayment errors” - Taxpayers are paying for housing for 30,000 dead people -Government-backed home loans given to non-citizens “We eliminated non-permanent residents' eligibility for FHA insured mortgages. And we are auditing public housing authorities to ensure taxpayer dollars don't support illegal aliens. American dollars should benefit American citizens and American citizens only.” Our Office of the Chief Financial Officer uncovered more than $5 billion in potential payment errors, over 50 billion in total rental assistance for the...

The violence in Minneapolis erupted when the scale of financial fraud was discovered. The administration of President Trump has begun to highlight this non-pretending reality. On the surface it seems like ICE enforcement is the issue; however, in reality Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey have been leading a criminal syndicate, with the entire region engaged in money laundering and financial fraud. State political leadership are involved. The local Minneapolis police are involved; the Minneapolis municipal leaders are involved; a large and dedicated segment of the migrant population is involved; corrupt judges and officers of the courts are involved;...

Maine’s Democrat governor, Janet Mills, is demanding a meeting with President Trump by using the shooting by immigration agents in Minnesota to highlight her anti-ICE stance. Mills posted her “letter” to President Trump on her social media, in which she demanded the federal government stop enforcing federal immigration laws in her state. “In response to Federal agents killing another person in Minnesota, I have requested a meeting with the President of the United States and demanded that his Administration immediately withdraw ICE agents from Maine,” she wrote. She attached her letter to the president, in which decries the “weaponization of...

[Catholic Caucus] Cardinals’ letter against Trump’s foreign policy is a blatant political attackCardinals Cupich, McElroy, and Tobin speak of their concern for ‘religious liberty’ and ‘the right to life’ after years of silence under the Biden administration, even when it spied on Catholics and locked up pro-lifers.By now it shouldn’t be surprising when Catholic clergy counter-signal President Trump. It happened first when Pope Francis attacked him for wanting to build a border wall in 2016. It happened in December of last year when Leo indirectly rebuked him for his peace plan in Ukraine, which he said would “break apart” the...

President Donald Trump’s budget office this week ordered most government agencies to compile data on the federal money that is sent to 14 mostly Democratic-controlled states and the District of Columbia in what it describes as a tool to “reduce the improper and fraudulent use of those funds.” The order comes a week after Trump said he intended to cut off federal funding that goes to states that are home to so-called sanctuary cities that resist his immigration policies. The memo, obtained by The Associated Press, directs federal agencies to submit information by Jan. 28 to the president’s budget office....

Wow, what a photo... The woman who allegedly organized storming a church in Minneapolis, Nekima Armstrong, has been arrested and perp walked. If you are barging into churches screaming at people, you're not a good person.

Nekima Levy Armstrong, one of the organizers of the storming of a Minnesota church to protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Sunday, denied that she and her group tried to "rush" the church on CNN, despite previous comments suggesting otherwise. Armstrong appeared on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" Wednesday when she was asked about whether the Justice Department had contacted her since threatening a crackdown on the protesters. Armstrong said that she had not been contacted by the Justice Department, despite media attention, but that she wanted to "correct" the record on her protest.