Month: February 2021

Far-left rioter John Sullivan received $35,000 each from CNN and NBC for the Jan. 6 footage he recorded of Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt’s shooting death inside the Capitol building.

According to records filed in federal court, the Black Lives Matter militant, who is facing criminal charges by federal authorities for his alleged involvement in the Capitol Hill riot, was awarded $70,000 total from the two left-wing media outlets.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper featured Sullivan on his show in the wake of the riot to present his account as the self-professed heroic reporter who both witnessed and captured the female Air Force veteran’s death.

In addition to the invoices filed by Sullivan’s lawyers from the major broadcasters for rights to air his footage, the defendant also received $5,000 from Left/Right Productions and $2,500 from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Daily Caller reported.

Sullivan’s legal counsel disclosed the payments as part of the 26-year-old Utah native’s argument that he was present at the time to "document and report" the event for journalistic purposes, not to incite or engage in violence.

"Defendant is legitimately self-employed as a documentarian and it is oppressive to require that he not be allowed to continue his primary area of employment for an extended period of time," attorney Steven Kiersh wrote in another court filing, which argued for Sullivan’s continued usage of Facebook and Twitter.

The federal magistrate judge overseeing Sullivan’s case ruled on Tuesday that he can continue to use the digital networks, but that he must cut ties with the group he founded that the Justice Department claims promotes and glorifies violent protests, Politico reported.

Sullivan is accused of knowingly entering a restricted building or grounds without authority, civil disorder, and violent entry or disorderly conduct. He was later hit with an additional charge: obstruction of congressional efforts to count and certify President Joe Biden’s election victory over former President Donald Trump.

The founder of Utah-based extremist group Insurgence USA maintains that he embedded himself among the pro-Trump mob to record the January breach of the Capitol building. But an FBI special agent noted via sworn affidavit that Sullivan even admitted that he has no press credentials. The investigation failed to yield "any connection between Sullivan and any journalistic organizations."

There are recorded examples of Sullivan agitating the crowd. When individuals climbed the wall to reach the plaza just outside the Capitol building’s entrance, Sullivan can be heard shouting on-camera: "You guys are f—ing savage. Let’s go!"

"We did this together. F— yeah! We are all a part of this history," Sullivan stated in video evidence cited by the prosecutors. "Let’s burn this shit down."

At the afternoon hearing related to the defendant’s release conditions, Judge Robin Meriweather split the difference between prosecutors seeking to eliminate Sullivan’s social media presence and the defense lawyer who positioned the restrictions an "oppressive, overbroad" assault on his client’s constitutional rights.

"I am rejecting the broader prohibition on Twitter and Facebook and encrypted social media platforms," Meriweather said, also ordering that Sullivan be taken off of 24-hour location monitoring via GPS.

However, Sullivan will have his internet use monitored by probation officials. He’s still under home detention awaiting possible trial.

After Sullivan was charged, he was released from jail on house arrest under specific conditions despite objections. The prosecution warned during the previous virtual hearing that Sullivan "thrives on chaos," stating that he "uses messaging apps to set up meetings and set up riots."

Federal prosecutor Bryan Reeves pointed at Sullivan’s protest-drawn provocateur persona. "He will pose as different members of organizations, even those that have disavowed him" just to stir trouble, he alleged. Sullivan also had plans to return to Washington for Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, Reeves emphasized.

Sullivan was arrested and charged earlier in July 2020 during an Antifa-Black Lives Matter riot where drivers in Provo were threatened and one was shot.

It was also revealed that the Sullivan was once an Olympic speed skating prospect promoted by Uber. While training, he worked various odd jobs until he began his new stint as an Uber driver. The ride-hailing company featured Sullivan in an article, entitled "Meet John: An Aspiring Speed Skater," linking Sullivan’s self-started GoFundMe page. The campaign raised over $2,500 at the time to fund his journey to Pyeongchang. The since-deleted advertisement described his now-ditched Olympic gold medal dreams.

In January 2018, Sullivan competed in the men’s 500 meter event during the Long Track Speed Skating Olympic Trials at the Pettit National Ice Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Insurgence USA even uploaded footage of the race to YouTube.

His checkered past has burgeoned questions about the self-styled social justice activist’s true motives. Even figures on the political left have questioned Sullivan’s post-siege behavior and condemned his successful attempts to insert himself in the protest community. BLM’s Utah chapter leader Lex Scott insisted to Fox News that the organization does "not want to be associated" with Sullivan.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) released a statement following the news of the passing of conservative radio legend Rush Limbaugh, identifying him as the “greatest of all time” and someone who will never be replaced.

“Casey and I are truly saddened to learn of the passing of fellow Floridian and our friend, Rush Limbaugh,” he said in a statement, adding, “Through hard work, the will to succeed and, yes, talent on loan from God, Rush became the most dominant radio personality in American history.”

Limbaugh, DeSantis said, had an innate ability to connect with listeners “across the fruited plain — the hard-working, God-fearing and patriotic Americans who were and are the subject of derision and ridicule by the legacy media.”

“Rush busted through a media landscape in which a handful of media outlets served up pre-cooked, liberal narratives,” DeSantis observed, lauding Limbaugh for paving the way for the “proliferation of conservative media.”

“Rush was no flash in the pan — he was the dominant force in radio for decades,” DeSantis said, identifying him as the “GOAT — of radio, of conservative media and of inspiring a loyal army of American patriots.”

“We don’t know who will succeed Rush as America’s anchorman, but we do know that nobody will ever replace him,” DeSantis added:

Limbaugh’s wife Kathryn announced her husband’s passing at the beginning of his radio program Wednesday.

“It is with profound sadness I must share with you directly that our beloved Rush, my wonderful husband, passed away this morning due to complications from lung cancer,” Katheryn announced as tributes poured in from notable political figures — from Mark Levin to former President Donald Trump.

Members of a House subcommittee debated legislation on Wednesday that would establish a federal commission to explore reparations for black Americans.

While the topic had been discussed in a 2019 hearing, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties returned to the subject and held a virtual hearing on Wednesday to discuss a bill first introduced in 1989 by the late Rep. John Conyers (D-MI).

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) reintroduced the measure, H.R. 40, in January of this year. The bill has 162 cosponsors, all of whom are Democrats.

“We believe in determination, and we believe in overcoming the many bad balls that we have been thrown; we’ve caught them, and we’ve kept on going. That is not the point of H.R. 40,” Jackson Lee noted in her opening statement. “Now more than ever, the facts and circumstances facing our nation demonstrate the importance of H.R. 40 and the necessity of placing our nation on the path to reparative justice.”

Hilary O. Shelton, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) Washington, DC, office, insisted during his testimony that racial “disparities” are “still very much with us.”

“The issue of slavery is one that did not end with a stroke of Abraham Lincoln’s pen and the Emancipation Proclamation,” Shelton said. “As a matter of fact, many of the residuals of the transatlantic slave trade sadly, as we look at the disparities in data, are still very much with us.”

While Democrats favor the resolution, Republicans on the subcommittee pushed back on the need for reparations. Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT), a black conservative and former NFL star, voiced his concern over reparations, pointing to the success of black Americans in recent history.

“The reality is that black American history is not one of a hapless, hopeless race oppressed by a more powerful white race,” Owens said. “It’s the history of millions of middle and wealthy class black Americans throughout the early 20th century, achieving the American dream.”

Radio star Larry Elder and NFL great Herschel Walker, two conservative black Americans, gave testimony echoing Owens’s remarks.

“‘You give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime,’” Walker said. “Reparations are only feeding someone for a day.” Walker also insisted that racism is “better today than yesterday.”

House Judiciary / YouTube

“My religion teaches togetherness. Reparations teaches separation,” Walker added in his testimony. “Slavery ended over 130 years ago. How can a father ask his son to do prison time for a crime he committed?”

Last October, Walker appeared on Fox News Channel where he pushed back against California legislation that would consider reparations for black people because of slavery, insisting that those who push the legislation are “just pandering for a vote.”

“I’m upset about it because all they are doing is pandering for a vote,” Walker said at the time. “Because let me tell you, why are you paying African-Americans off instead of empowering African-Americans?”

“Despite all of the problems that have been brought up in this committee about racism, about slavery, about Jim Crow, black people have overcome to the point now where only 20 percent of black people are below the federally defined level of poverty. Still too high, but in 1940 that number was 87 percent, and 20 years later that number had been reduced to 47 percent,” Elder said in his testimony.

House Judiciary / YouTube

“Despite all of this racism, all of this prejudice, black people still overcame,” Elder continued. “I also find it ironic we’re having this hearing 13 years after we elected, then reelected the first black president of the United States.”

Under questioning from Owens, Elder noted that “good economic policies work” regardless of race.

House Judiciary / YouTube

“Equal rights and equal results are two very different things,” Elder said. “I think that’s what we’re getting confused about here. Everybody’s entitled to equal rights, but nobody’s entitled to equal results.”

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who was arrested in August after a massive police raid on the offices of his Apple Daily newspaper, was reportedly arrested again on Wednesday and charged with helping 12 people flee from Hong Kong to Taiwan.

Lai, 72, was arrested in August on charges of “colluding with foreign forces,” which is a criminal offense under the “national security” law Beijing imposed on Hong Kong last year. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) portrays Lai as a saboteur working with the United States and other foreign interests to destabilize Hong Kong’s government. At the time of his arrest, he was already facing charges for participating in the massive 2019 Hong Kong protests and illegally attending a Tiananmen Square vigil.

According to Apple Daily, the new charges against Lai accused him of helping 12 fugitives escape from Hong Kong by boat last summer, allegedly in a bid to find refuge in Taiwan. The escapees were caught by the Chinese Coast Guard and held in a mainland prison until they went on trial in December, at which time the ten adult detainees were given jail terms for illegally crossing the border.

At least one of the ten fugitives, 30-year-old democracy activist Andy Li, was charged under the same national security law that has been invoked against Jimmy Lai. Li fled Hong Kong two weeks after he was arrested for participating in the protests and collaborating with the British government. Fearing he would be sentenced to life in prison, he unsuccessfully appealed to the British consulate for protection.

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) said Lai was re-arrested in Stanley Prison on charges of “conspiracy to assist an offender” and “conspiracy to collude with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security.” Originally facing over a decade in prison, Lai could face life in prison if convicted on those charges.

Lai’s legal assistant Chan Tsz-wah was slapped with similar charges and portrayed in a Kowloon courtroom as part of a vast conspiracy against Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China:

Prosecutors said Chan conspired with Lai, the media tycoon’s right-hand man Mark Simon, Li, Lau Cho-dik, and others “to request a foreign country or an institution, organisation or individual outside the mainland, Hong Kong, and Macau … to impose sanctions or blockade or engage in other hostile activities against [Hong Kong] or People’s Republic of China”.

The offence was said to have taken place between last July and Monday, the day Chan was arrested. Simon and Lau are still wanted in connection with the case.

Chan, who was among nine people arrested last October on suspicion of helping the fugitives flee to Taiwan, was also charged with one count of “conspiracy to assist an offender” in connection with Li’s escape attempt.

The SCMP noted the judge presiding over the case, Chief Magistrate Victor So Wai-tak, was “hand-picked by the city’s leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor to handle national security proceedings.” The judge denied Chan’s request for bail, even though bail was granted routinely for non-violent offenses in Hong Kong before the national security law. Lai was denied bail last week. 

Reuters noted Lai is the “most high-profile person to be charged under the new security law,” which may not bode well for him in court.

Talk radio legend Rush Limbaugh understood gun rights and was keenly aware Democrats had politicized those rights in hopes of extending their support from voters around the country.

As a result of the politicization, he suggested gun control became a class issue; one that elites and establishment politicians embraced but were unable to logically explain or defend.

During the January 13, 2015, airing of his show, Limbaugh noted that elites view we the people with disdain. Therefore, when one discusses the rights possessed by “the people.” elites imagine the NASCAR crowd and envision “hayseeds, hicks, [and] people who drive pickups.”

He observed that such elites could not explain why their gun-controlled worldview was better than the vision of the Founding Fathers, nor how government could be trusted to keep us safe.

Limbaugh said, “They (the elites) don’t even know what they’re talking about. You hit them with irrefutable logic on this and all they do is stare at you like you are brain-dead when they don’t have a retort to it.”

Limbaugh’s comments came days after the January 7, 2015, Paris attack. He reacted to that attack by pointing out the gun-free rules that engulf so much of Europe. He then suggested that becoming a liberal is a “gutless” choice and the “easiest thing” to do because it removes any pressure to think for oneself. He bolstered his point about not thinking by noting that a terror attack can happen in Europe where gun control guarantees the criminals will be armed but the victims will not, and, as a liberal, people respond by calling for more gun control in America.

Less than a week after the February 14, 2018, Parkland high school shooting Limbaugh suggested Democrats were focused on politicization of attacks rather than school safety. He claimed Democrats respond to such shootings by going “political” and “[making] tracks for the NRA … and for the gun lobby.”

Roughly a year and a half later, in August 2019, Limbaugh said the politicization of gun rights had brought us to a point where Democrats wanted to point to the danger of mass shootings without doing anything to stop them.

He said, “The Republicans are signaling a willingness to talk to [Democrats]” about gun control but “they don’t want any part of it.” He added, “[The Democrats] don’t want any part to a solution to any of these problems.”

Limbaugh made these comments days after the heinous August 3, 2019, shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and the August 4, 2019, shooting in Dayton, Ohio. He said the issue of guns had become so politicized that Democrats worried it they would inadvertently benefit Trump by supporting his efforts to reduce the number of shootings.

Limbaugh observed that Democrats were putting forth “all this rhetoric about guns and [President Trump] said, ‘Okay, I’ll talk to you about it,’ and he’s doing this with full knowledge that they are not going to take him up on it. He knows they are not serious about it.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.

Venezuelan conservative leader María Corina Machado shared a video this week showing citizens in the country using a garbage truck to transport an injured person to a clinic in lieu of an ambulance.

The video shows a group of people placing a man clearly incapable of walking arriving in front of a clinic in the back of a garbage truck.

“And some come out to ask that we don’t call it a ‘failed state’ because that damages the dialogue,” Machado remarked, referring to the small minority of Venezuelan political elite still seeking talks with socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro. “While our country collapses in the hands of criminals, we have to ask ourselves, who is worse, them, or the ones who want to cohabitate with them?”

Machado, a former lawmaker whom Maduro’s henchmen violently expelled from the National Assembly in 2014, is the leader of the right-wing Vente Venezuela party, which has repeatedly found itself at odds with the leadership of President Juan Guaidó, the socialist leader of the opposition. While constitutionally the president of the country, Guaidó has failed to exercise any of his powers as Maduro has refused to vacate. Most Venezuelans, polling shows, do not consider him their leader.

The video has gone viral in Venezuelan media following Machado’s post but appears to be from 2019. The Venezuelan news organization NTN24 identified the video at the time as being from Portuguesa state and explained that residents used the garbage truck because they had no access to an ambulance or any other emergency vehicle.

The situation is not an unusual one in Venezuela. The Spanish news wire service EFE detailed a similar story in early February of this year of “paramedics” using a pick-up truck to tend to a man who had barely survived being hit by a tow truck. The “paramedics” are part of a vigilante group known as the “Highway Angels” who organized to help victims of the increasingly common traffic accidents in Caracas, in light of the fact that the government does little to help those in need.

Under late dictator Hugo Chávez, Venezuela established a socialist universal healthcare system. Under the Chávez-drafted national constitution, health care is considered a “human right,” but access declined dramatically as the socialist government failed to properly invest in the health sector. Under Maduro, Venezuela rapidly began to run out of basic medications until, by 2016, hospitals were urging patients to bring their own medicine, as they were not stocked. Upwards of 90 percent of the basic medications the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) considers indispensable to functional health care have not been available in Venezuela for years. The list includes items like birth control, antibiotics, painkillers, and advanced drugs for HIV, cancer, and other potentially terminal diseases.

Compounding the unfortunate medical situation is the fact that, for years, the Venezuelan socialist regime has largely failed to properly sanitize locations it is responsible for, from hospitals to public streets. Large piles of garbage have lined the streets of Caracas for years, featuring decaying food and other toxic substances. Starving Venezuelans have notoriously resorted to eating scraps out of these piles of garbage, exposing them to potential infections for which they have no access to antibiotics to fight.

In response to this humanitarian crisis, Maduro has repeatedly denied that anything is wrong and blocked humanitarian groups like Doctors Without Borders from entering the country.

The medical situation has triggered international alarm in light of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, which Venezuela entered 2020 extremely ill-prepared to combat. Maduro has responded to the pandemic with a bizarre quarantine strategy he dubbed “7+7”: for seven days, the nation is forced into a strict lockdown, schools and businesses are closed, and police limit mobility. For the next seven days, all restrictions lift, returning life to normal. There is no evidence that the strategy has benefited Venezuela in any way, and it has more recently been used to allow Maduro to lift lockdowns for holidays like Christmas and Carnaval.

Failing to procure one of the many Chinese coronavirus vaccine candidates currently available, Maduro has also taken to publicizing dubious coronavirus “cures” including “rectal ozone therapy” and the use of a substance he has dubbed “miracle droplets.” International public health experts have actively discouraged the administration of ozone to fight Chinese coronavirus, as the amount necessary to kill the virus is greater than the amount necessary to kill a person. The droplets, meanwhile, have undergone no independent verification process. Facebook recently censored Maduro’s promotion of these “cures,” prompting Maduro to call Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg an “abuser.”

Venezuela claims to have documented only 133,927 cases of Chinese coronavirus and 1,292 deaths attributable to a coronavirus infection nationwide, significantly less than the millions of cases documented in neighboring countries like Brazil and Colombia. International observers have questioned the legitimacy of the Maduro regime’s tallies, particularly in light of the sparse use of PCR testing in the country. A poll by the firm Meganálisis published in October found that 87 percent of Venezuelans told that they had coronavirus did not receive PCR tests, meaning they were not counted towards the official number of cases.

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.