The Washington Free Beacon reports that two Republican candidates for state office in Minnesota were attacked while out on the campaign trail — and one sustained a serious concussion.
Minnesota state representative Sarah Anderson told the WFB that she was “punched in the arm” after stopping someone she said was destroying GOP lawn signs. The man wheeled on her and attacked, chasing her to her car and only stopping when she threw her car into reverse and fled the scene.
“It was just insane. He was charging at me, saying, ‘Why don’t you go kill yourself?'” Anderson told WFB reporter Bill McMorris. “To have someone physically coming after you and attacking you is just disheartening.”
A second Republican candidate, Shane Mekeland, who is running for state representative, says he was “sucker punched” while speaking to a group of potential constituents at a campaign stop. He was sitting at a high-top table at a local restaurant when a man stepped up and hit him, leaving Mekeland with a concussion that could take four-to-six weeks to heal.
“I was so overtaken by surprise and shock and if this is the new norm, this is not what I signed up for,” he told the WFB.
Mekeland did not say if he knew the party affiliation of the man who assaulted him.
The two assaults occurred just days after a Minnesota Democratic operative took to social media to declare war on Republican candidates, jokingly suggesting that fellow leftists “bring [Republicans] to the guillotine” in a post on Facebook. Rather than firing the staffer, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party suspended the staffer for a week.
Both Anderson and Mekeland believe the Democrats should have taken more decisive action.
A political action committee linked to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) pushed $100,000 to a political action committee primarily financed by liberal billionaire George Soros as part of a campaign led by four activist groups, Federal Election Commission filings show.
The House Majority PAC, a Pelosi-affiliated committee dedicated to electing and preserving Democrats in the House of Representatives, sent a $100,000 check to the Win Justice PAC on Sept. 19, according to the PAC’s newest filings.
The Win Justice federal PAC was created as part of the “Win Justice” campaign that consists of a coalition of four liberal groups—the Center for Community Change Action, Planned Parent Votes, Services Employees International Union (SEIU), and Color of Change—with the intent of pushing infrequent voters to the polls in Florida, Nevada, and Michigan and aiding Democratic politicians in the state.
The Washington Free Beaconreported last week that the Pelosi-affiliated PAC on Sept. 24 had sent $5,000 to Win Justice’s state PAC in Florida, which is registered to an agent in Tallahassee and whose finances are updated frequently. The campaign also launched PACs in Nevada and Michigan.
Win Justice’s federal PAC hauled in a total of $4.6 million—$3 million of which came from Soros—prior to the PACs most recent filings. The remaining amount came from the SEIU’s PAC and two individual donors, including Jennifer Allan-Soros, Soros’s daughter in law.
In addition to Pelosi’s recent $100,000 contribution, the PAC’s newest filings show that Soros added another $2 million on July 20, bringing the financier’s total amount given to the PAC to $5 million this cycle. The PAC has now raised a total of $8.3 million.
Win Justice’s federal PAC is also bankrolled by deep-pocketed Democratic donors S. Donald Sussman, who recently added $1 million, and Hollywood director Steven Spielberg and wife Kate Capshaw, who together gave $100,000 in funding. State Victory Action—a group primarily financed by Soros, Sussman, and Trump impeachment campaign leader Tom Steyer—pushed $200,000 to the PAC. All of those donors have also given to the Florida Win Justice PAC.
The federal PAC has disbursedhundreds of thousands in independent expenditures to help endangered Florida Democratic senator Bill Nelson, according to filings. The PAC also recently spent nearly $200,000 backing Elissa Slotkin, the Democratic nominee in Michigan’s 8th congressional district, and $50,000 on canvassing services in support of Rep. Jacky Rosen, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Nevada, who polls show down by as many as 7 points to Republican incumbent Dean Heller.
The PAC is operated by Deepak Pateriya, the chief of staff at the Center for Community Change. Deepak Bhargava, the executive director of the Center for Community Change, sits on the advisory board of U.S. Programs at Soros’s Open Society Foundations.
Two of the groups involved with the campaign—the Center for Community Change and Color of Change—are approved organizations of the Democracy Alliance, the left’s biggest dark money liberal donor network that was cofounded by Soros.
Gara LaMarche, who worked at Soros’s Open Society Foundations and is now the president of the Democracy Alliance, sits on the advisory council of the Center for Community Change.
Pelosi additionally appeared alongside Soros as a keynote speaker at the Democracy Alliance’s secretive fall investment conference last year in California, where the alliance planned out their next steps of the resistance. Pelosi can be linked to the alliance going as far back as 2013, a confidential memorandum sent to Pelosi that year shows.
The House Majority PAC did not respond to a request for comment on its donation.
via Washington Free Beacon
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Despite being constantly assured by Democrats and most of the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) that voter fraud doesn’t really happen, these nagging stories seem to keep popping up. This one, picked up by CBS News in Dallas, is a doozy. Four women have been charged with felonies in Fort Worth after the discovery that they were intercepting ballots, primarily intended for elderly voters, and filling them out themselves before trying to trick the intended voters into signing them. And it’s not just a few ballots either.
Four women are facing felony charges, accused of being part of what Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office called an organized voter fraud ring in Fort Worth.
The voter fraud charges involve mail-in ballots sent in ahead of the 2016 primary election in Texas. Paxton’s office said the case targeted elderly voters on the north side of Fort Worth…
A grand jury indicted Leticia Sanchez, Leticia Sanchez Tepichin, Maria Solis and Laura Parra on Wednesday.
Paxton’s office said the women harvested votes, by filling out applications for mail-in ballots, with forged signatures. Then they would either “assist” the voter with filling out the ballot, or fill it out themselves, and use deception to get the voter to sign the envelope the ballot would be sent back in.
The Attorney General’s office has been pursuing this case for two years and it’s a major organized crime situation. Known as “harvesters,” these women were part of a group that has been filling out ballots in the hundreds or even the thousands. While four women have been indicted on sixteen counts thus far, the AG is saying that there are more people involved and a lot more incidents. These are just the ones they feel confident they can get convictions on for the time being.
They haven’t released all of the ballots in question to the press yet, but of the ones that were reviewed, they primarily seemed to benefit Democratic candidates. Also, one of the defendants, Leticia Sanchez, was previously linked to Tarrant County Democratic Party Chairwoman Deborah Peoples. Taking those two facts into account, who do you suppose this voter fraud ring was working to benefit? It would be ludicrous to assume that they were randomly filling out ballots for both Republicans and Democrats just for the fun of it.
Also, this is a different species of voter fraud than some previous cases we’ve covered. This wasn’t some confused non-citizen who didn’t understand the system and voted “by mistake.” Nor was this one or two people who went to the wrong precinct or “forgot” they had already voted in another state. If the allegations are proven, we’re talking about an organized ring of people scooping up ballots wholesale and disenfranchising thousands of elderly voters.
But you just keep on telling me how this never happens and efforts to tighten the security of our voting system are just a racist plot.
via Hot Air
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The media provided a spotlight for the mayor of San Juan in Puerto Rico when she assailed President Donald Trump over the government’s hurricane response, but there’s much less coverage of a raid by the FBI on the city government offices. Here’s what happened
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz criticized the president for what she said was a lack of proper government response to Hurricane Maria, but the FBI is investigating allegations that she or other government officials acted improperly when granting ]
FBI spokesperson Carlos Osorio told the Washington Examiner that more than 10 agents, but fewer than 50, raided the municipal offices Tuesday. He called the operation "pretty big" and said it was conducted over several hours. He indicated that the raid was targeting members of the city government, but not the mayor specifically. "We have received allegations that they have been fixing contracts, that they are falsifying documents," Osorio said, "these having to do with federal funds because if not, we would not have any jurisdiction. "They’re not directed at the mayor, but against people that work at the tower," he added. Mayor Cruz tweeted about the raid from her social media account in Spanish. “At this time, members of the FBI are intervening in the Municipal Tower of SJ. My instructions as always are of total collaboration,” Cruz wrote, as translated to English. https://twitter.com/CarmenYulinCruz/status/1052190955619708928
“I have no more information right now," she added. "We all have a duty to work together to clarify this situation."
A local reporter posted video of the raid to his social media account. https://twitter.com/GuardiolaTwitt/status/1052189440590921728
Honduras appeared to act quickly on Tuesday after President Donald Trump threatened to cut humanitarian aid to their country over a caravan of migrants who were travelling towards the U.S. "No more money or aid"
After reports indicated that a caravan of more than a thousand migrants from Honduras were travelling to the U.S. border in hopes of obtaining refugee status, the president spoke out against their trek. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1052183647552491521
"The United States has strongly informed the President of Honduras that if the large Caravan of people heading to the U.S. is not stopped and brought back to Honduras, no more money or aid will be given to Honduras, effective immediately!" Trump tweeted on Tuesday. Vice President Mike Pence followed up with his own tweet to explain the actions that were being taken to encourage Honduras to prevent the migrant caravan. "Spoke to President Hernandez of Honduras about the migrant caravan heading to the U.S." Penice tweeted. "Delivered strong message from [the president]: no more aid if caravan is not stopped," he added. "Told him U.S. will not tolerate this blatant disregard for our border & sovereignty." Honduras acts
On Tuesday it was reported that the organizer of the caravan was detained and was going to be deported back to Honduras. The caravan organizer, Bartolo Fuentes, is a former member of the Honduran Congress and was detained by police officers in Guatemala. The Honduran security ministry indicated that Fuentes was detained for violating Guatemala’s immigration rules. A video from the Daily Mail showed the caravan being blocked by riot police from entering in Guatemala, but they relented and the migrants continued their journey. Here’s the video of the riot police blocking the caravan:
Shortly before he was detained, Fuentes said in an interview that they didn’t care what threats Trump was issuing. “What Trump says doesn’t interest us,” Fuentes said. “These people are fleeing. These people are not tourists.”
In the aftermath of recent hurricanes on the United States mainland, President Donald Trump’s administration has worked hard to ensure aid delivery and recovery operations ran smoothly.
Trump did so as well with Puerto Rico, a territory of the U.S. that has, like the individual states do, its own government.
However, there has been a drastic difference between how things have been handled in the mainland versus how they have been handled in Puerto Rico in regard to dealing with hurricanes. There has also been quite a bit of speculation as to why.
A raid of city government offices in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Tuesday by FBI agents probing corruption allegations, as reported by the Washington Examiner, might suggest one reason.
Here is video of the beginning of the raid. According to a Google translation, the tweet reads: “Dozens of FBI agents occupy the 15th floor of the Municipal Tower. This is how the feds arrived this morning.”
One matter that has not been speculation has been how resources were handled after they were sent to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria, which struck the island in September and October 2017.
Many supplies were later discovered not to have been distributed to the people who needed them. In the meantime, some government officials in Puerto Rica took potshots at Trump for not helping them enough when, in fact, he did send plentiful aid.
Some say this points to utter incompetence on the part of officals there, particularly given how the administration handled Hurricane Harvey, which hit Texas in September 2017, Hurricane Florence, which struck North Carolina in September, and is handling the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, which hit mainly Florida and Georgia earlier this month.
Do you believe that the Puerto Rican government is corrupt?
Accusations have also flown that the “corrupt” island government intentionally mishandled aid. According to the Washington Examiner, alleged corruption of Puerto Rican government officials is exactly why the FBI just conducted its raid of San Juan’s Municipal Tower.
According to the Examiner, Carlos Osorio, the FBI spokesman for the U.S. territory, told the newspaper by phone that, “We have received allegations (city officials) have been fixing contracts, that they are falsifying documents – these having to do with federal funds because if not, we would not have any jurisdiction. They’re not directed at the mayor, but against people that work at the tower.”
The Examiner also reported that the allegations — which aren’t related to the storms — came from “a former city worker” and included charges of “tampering with purchase orders and favoritism toward certain vendors.”
According to The Hill, the raid stemmed from an ongoing investigation into “whether the mayor’s office and other city officials had shown favoritism when the city agreed to a contract with the company BR Solutions for $4.7 million over two years.”
Leonel Pereira O’Neill, the owner of the consulting firm BR Solutions, had donated to several political campaigns, including that of San Juan Mayor and vocal Trump critic Carmen Cruz, according to The Hill.
Notably, however, the raid comes just weeks after Trump criticized Puerto Rico officials for blaming him for their own failed handling of Hurricane Maria.
In a Sept. 24 radio interview with Geraldo Rivera, Trump called Cruz’s handling of supplies “disgraceful” and noted that the island’s electrical infrastructure was a “disaster” for years prior to him taking office — and yet he was blamed for the lengthy power outage that followed the hurricane.
Listen to the part of the interview here. It’s worth hearing.
If corruption is identified by the FBI, it is natural to wonder how much further the corruption has gone and how much deeper the investigation will go. If it is found, the claims of corruption playing a role in the mishandling of hurricane aid will certainly be rekindled.
Several news outlets, including the Washington Examiner, have reported that translations of Cruz’s tweets following the raid pledge “total collaboration” and that “If someone has done something wrong, they must be subjected to due process and face the consequences of their actions.”
This is not the first time the FBI has conducted raids in Puerto Rico related to corruption. In 2014 the bureau raided the Doral Bank, Fox News reported at the time, because, “Prominent New Jersey banker Maurice Spagnoletti was gunned down in Puerto Rico and his widow, Marisa, has accused bank officials of conspiring to kill him for uncovering alleged fraud at the Puerto Rico-based institution.”
In 2016, Caribbean Business reported that the FBI raided offices in the city of Toa Baja’s government center. The newspaper noted that “federal sources” had said the “investigation is related to alleged financial crimes and public corruption.”
The pattern of FBI raids related to corruption does not bode well for the people of Puerto Rico. Corruption might be worse than any property damage a storm could ever cause.
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Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum graduated from an Oakland, California-based training school for progressive revolutionaries that has spawned a list of activists who have gone on to become the who’s who of the far-left leadership world, with many taking senior positions at organizations financed by billionaire George Soros.
In scores of cases, graduates of the Rockwood Leadership Institute founded or directed notorious Soros-financed activist groups, such as Black Lives Matter, Media Matters for America, MoveOn.org and the Tides Foundation, one of the nation’s largest funders of progressive groups.
Soros’s own Open Society Foundations sent top staff to Rockwood for training. Notorious radicals Van Jones and Linda Sarsour are among the many famous names listed as alums.
Gillum is listed as a 2012 Rockwood alum. The Florida politician’s involvement with the radical school was not cursory or symbolic. Only five months ago, Gillum boasted in a speech to the Center for Environmental Health that he attended the institute “for about a year and a half.”
In that speech, Gillum talked about getting to know the Center for Environmental Health’s director Michael Green while they both attended Rockwood together. Green is also listed as a 2012 alum along with Gillum.
In 2013, Gillum, then a member of the Tallahassee City Commission, wrote that graduating the program in June of that year was a “major milestone.”
“I will continue to use the tools and methodology in life and as I advance in my career and my role as a member of the City Commission,” he stated.
Gillum’s Rockwood graduating class included such top activists as:
Rashad Robinson, executive director of Color of Change, which was founded by Van Jones, President Obama’s infamous former “green” jobs czar. Jones stepped down from his position after it was exposed that he was a founding organizer for the communist revolutionary group Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM). Soros has financed Color of Change.
Denise Collazo of the Soros-financed radical PICO Network, which in its own terminology says it is “pushing for citizenship, and more, for an estimated 11.3 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.”
Mary Anne Hitt from the radical Sierra Club environmental activist organization.
Nan Aron, president and founder of the Soros-funded Alliance for Justice.
Other notable Rockwood alums are Van Jones; Jodie Evans, co-founder and executive director of Code Pink; several senior employees of Soros’s own Open Society Foundations; and Drummond Pike, founder of the Soros-funded Tides Foundation.
Radical Linda Sarsour is listed as a Rockwood “alum in the news,” as is Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter.
Eric Rodriguez, vice president of the Soros-financed radical open borders group the National Council Of La Raza is also a graduate. As are Ilya Sheyman, executive director of the Soros-funded MoveOn.org, and Matthew Butler, who served as CEO and president of the Soros-funded Media Matters for America.
Also on the alum list is Idelisse Malave, former executive director of the Soros-funded Tides Foundation; David Rosenn of the Soros-funded New Israel Fund, which finances pro-Palestinian organizations; Justin Ruben of the Soros-backed MoveOn.org; Bill Lipton, founder of the Working Families Party, whose own leadership institute says it is “made possible by the Open Society Foundation”; and Pamela Chiang of the Soros-funded Center For Community Change.
Also listed is Adrienne Maree Brown, former executive director of the Tides-funded Ruckus Society. Ruckus provided “direct-action” training and official manuals to Occupy protesters. The group is infamous for helping to spark the 1999 World Trade Organization riots in Seattle.
Besides senior personalities, Rockwood also provides a “short list of foundations who have sent their staff through” its training program, including Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Soros-financed Tides Foundation and the Soros-funded New Israel Fund.
Rockwood is in formal partnership with the Soros-funded Social Transformation Project (STP). STP was founded by Robert Gass who also founded the Rockwood Leadership Program “along with a dedicated group of environmental activists.”
Soros, meanwhile, has directly donated to organizations seeking to get Gillum elected. Days before Gillum’s Aug. 28 primary, Soros joined with billionaire Tom Steyer to lead a group of donors making a $650,000 infusion into Gillum’s coffers.
Soros also contributed to The Collective, a little-known but increasingly influential political organization that says it is seeking to build a “black political power” movement. The Collective reportedly injected nearly $2 million into Gillum’s campaign, funding television and radio ads, get-out-the-vote drives, and playing a key role in helping Gillum defeat his Democratic opponents, some of whom were better-funded and had more statewide name recognition. The group announced plans to continue backing Gillum during the current general election campaign.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program: Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
The Minnesota Democratic Party has suspended a spokesman for calling for violence against Republicans even as two GOP candidates have been assaulted in suspected politically motivated attacks.
The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party has suspended communications staffer William Davis for one week without pay after making a Facebook post joking that Democrats would “bring [Republicans] to the guillotine” on Nov. 7, the day after the midterm elections. Minnesota Republican Party chairman Jennifer Carnahan said the suspension was not enough, calling for his immediate firing in the aftermath of separate attacks against Republican candidates. She said she has been subjected to numerous death threats during her tenure as the state party leader and that death threats are no laughing matter.
“The overt hatred and violence that has become prevalent from many Democrats towards Republicans in recent times is unlawful, unacceptable, and downright scary,” she said in an email. “Yes, we have free speech and the right to peacefully assemble, but these words and actions by the left have gone too far. … He should have been terminated immediately.”
DFL officials did not respond to request for comment.
The suspension came days after Minnesota state representative Sarah Anderson was punched in the arm after spotting a man destroying Republican yard signs. She said the attack left her scared, and her attacker only desisted when she fled to her car and threw it in reverse.
“It was just insane. He was charging at me, saying, ‘Why don’t you go kill yourself?'” Anderson told the Washington Free Beacon. “To have someone physically coming after you and attacking you is just disheartening.”
The Plymouth Police Department investigation into Rep. Anderson’s alleged assault remains ongoing. A spokeswoman confirmed the department had identified a suspect, but declined further comment.
Anderson was not the only GOP candidate attacked. First-time state representative candidate Shane Mekeland suffered a concussion after getting sucker punched while speaking with constituents at a restaurant in Benton County. Mekeland told the Free Beacon he has suffered memory loss—forgetting Rep. Anderson’s name at one point in the interview—and doctors tell him he will have a four-to-six week recovery time ahead of him. He said he was cold cocked while sitting at a high top table at a local eatery and hit his head on the floor.
“I was so overtaken by surprise and shock and if this is the new norm, this is not what I signed up for,” he said.
Benton County Sheriff Troy Heck told the Free Beacon that his department has interviewed the alleged assailant. Investigators are awaiting medical records about the extent of Mekeland’s injuries before referring the case to the local district attorney’s office. He expects those results to come in the next week.
Mekeland said he was disappointed that he had not seen Democrats condemn the attack against him, but was floored to see the party take such a light approach to Davis’s comments.
“He’s a political staffer so you’d think if anybody should know boundaries, I think that’d be it,” he said.
Anderson was equally harsh about the DFL’s response, calling it “incredibly irresponsible.”
“This is exactly what incites people to violence. … It’s why you have somebody who goes and attacks me on Sunday just because we have different political beliefs,” she said.
The alleged assaults have both candidates weighing changes in their approach to campaigning in closing days of the race. Mekeland was unable to leave the house to knock on doors due to his sensitivity to sunlight on Tuesday. He said he and his volunteers will only travel in pairs for the rest of the campaign to ensure they are not alone during such visits, which will limit the ground they cover. Anderson said she has gotten offers from her husband and other volunteers to escort her around the district. She pledged to keep knocking on doors until Election Day.
“I refuse to be bullied and intimidated,” she said. “You can’t let this stop you from reaching out and talking to voters.”
via Washington Free Beacon
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SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras (Reuters) – More than 1,000 people, including families and women carrying babies, set off from Honduras toward the United States on Saturday, days after the United States urged Honduras’ president to halt mass migration.
Recent attempts at group crossings from Central America to the United States have tested U.S. President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” stance on illegal immigration, as people fleeing violence and poverty defy threats of deportation.
“I believe we’ll get to the United States. There’s no work in Honduras, and you live in fear that they’re going to kill you or your children,” said Fanny Barahona, 35, an unemployed teacher who walked with her nine-year-old son and carried a two-year-old daughter.
Some 1,300 people joined the so-called “March of the Migrant,” planning to walk from San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras through Guatemala and into Mexico, organizer Bartolo Fuentes said. Once in Mexico, they plan to request refugee status to remain in the country or a visa to pass through to the U.S. border, he said.
In April, media attention on a similar group of migrants, dubbed a “caravan,” prompted Trump to press for tougher border security and demand such groups be refused entry. Most in the caravan said they were fleeing death threats, extortion and violence from powerful street gangs. […]
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez said U.S. funding was declining, and he called on the United States to reunite migrant children with their parents after Washington’s policy of separating families trying to cross the U.S.-Mexican border put Honduras under “huge pressure.”
