Category: Crime

Deranged Canadian Nudist Breaks Into Nancy Pelosi’s SF Mansion and Attacks Her Husband With Hammer

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Say hello to 42-year-old David DePape, who grew up in the town of Powell River, British Columbia (population 13,157), then went to Hawaii before moving to Berkeley, California, with a girlfriend about 20 years ago. By 2008, DePape was associated with a group of nudism activists including Olessia “Gypsy” Taub, who once hosted a public-access TV program called 9/11 Uncensored in which she appeared naked while claiming that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were “an inside job.”

DePape is a drug addict who at one point supported himself by making and selling hemp bracelets. Not exactly your typical Trump voter, but over the past year, his craziness went off in another direction, and he began posting weird online screeds about Jews and COVID-19 and stolen elections and the corrupt “elite,” which explains why MSNBC and all the other liberal media are trying to blame Republicans — !!! — for this kook’s violent rampage early Friday morning:

Investigators were searching for clues into what drove a 42-year-old man to allegedly bludgeon Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer after breaking into the couple’s San Francisco home early Friday morning.
Officials identified the suspect as David DePape, a local man with ties to a nudist movement and whose social media accounts suggest a predilection for far-right conspiracy theories and a fixation on government surveillance.
Paul Pelosi was expected to make a full recovery after undergoing a successful surgery to repair a skull fracture and injuries to his right arm and hands, Nancy Pelosi’s office said in a statement Friday afternoon. DePape, who was arrested at the Pelosi’s home, is in custody after being booked on a long list of charges, including attempted murder. . . .
Relatives of DePape reached by The Chronicle said they were shocked by the allegations, and described a man who was estranged from family members but was not known to be violent.
While the motive was not immediately apparent, DePape’s social media screeds and alleged statements at the Pelosi home — reports citing unnamed sources quoted him as asking “where is Nancy” upon entering the home — swiftly ignited speculation of a politically motivated attack.
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said when officers arrived before 3 a.m. Friday, they found an adult male and Paul Pelosi both holding a hammer. The assailant allegedly pulled the hammer from Pelosi and beat him with it, Scott said.

Oh, “a politically motivated attack” by a Canadian, who may not even have been in the United States legally? By all means, let’s round up all the Canadians and ship them back to the god-forsaken arctic wilderness they came from, because who knows what danger might be posed to public safety by these foreign interlopers? And while we’re at it, we can imprison all the nudists and finally enact the kind of “common-sense hammer safety” laws this country has needed for so long.

But, no, these aren’t the kind of measures being discussed in the mainstream media, who are obsessed with the idea that this Berkeley kook’s attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband must be blamed on Republicans.

Accused Pelosi attacker
David DePape spread QAnon,
other far-right, bigoted conspiracies
— Los Angeles Times

Paul Pelosi’s Alleged Attacker Raged
About ‘Pedos,’ Shared QAnon Beliefs
— Rolling Stone

Man Accused of Attacking Nancy Pelosi’s
Husband Left Trail of Far-Right Hate
— Vice

You get the drift here. Even as I write this, you can be certain that every liberal pundit in the country is hard at work on a 1,500-word think piece about how Republicans have “normalized political violence” — the J6 Capitol riots — and why we need to suppress “misinformation” on social media that causes “stochastic terrorism.” Almost certainly, some of these pundits will connect the criminal actions of David DePape to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, even though there’s no indication that Twitter had anything to do with DePape’s berserk rampage.

Many liberals are as crazy as David DePape in the way they constantly seek to “connect the dots” between things that aren’t actually connected. Their minds are a jumbled mess of conspiracy theories, where “corporate greed,” “Big Oil,” “Christian fundamentalists,” and especially “RAAAAACISM!” are all connected together to explain why any opposition to the Democratic Party still exists in America.

Speaking of connections, did you know that researchers have linked frequent cannabis consumption with schizophrenia? Might this be more than coincidentally connected to the case of David DePape? Nobody in the mainstream media is going to make that connection, despite DePape’s known history of drug abuse, because it might distract from the “Blame Republicans” narrative they’re using to frame this incident as a potential game-changer for the midterm elections.

Y’know, I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but excuse me if I question the timing of David DePape’s attack at Pelosi’s mansion. It reminds me of how, just before the 2018 midterms — Oct. 27, almost four years to the day before DePape’s rampage — a guy suddenly decided it was time to go shoot up a Pittsburgh synagogue. So we’ve seen this happen in two consecutive midterms, where a random kook suddenly decides that the last week of October is an excellent time to “strike a blow” for whatever lunatic cause he considers himself to represent. Those who recall the history of MK-ULTRA and COINTELPRO might be inspired to wonder if the use of agents provocateurs by the federal national security apparatus (a/k/a “The Deep State”) could somehow be implicated in this curious pattern. But if you start thinking too hard about this stuff — especially if you’re smoking some high-powered sinsemilla while you’re thinking about it — you might drive yourself completely crazy.

And, as we all know, Crazy People Are Dangerous.

UPDATE: The media “explainers” have been busy galloping ahead with their “Pin-the-Tail on the Republicans” game:

Pelosi attack didn’t happen in a vacuum,
but in an ‘ecosystem’ of misinformation
and extremist views gone mainstream,
experts on far-right groups say

This is an instant classic of the genre — illustrated with a photo of the J6 riot, just in case anybody missed the point — where the reader is given the impression that the only “extremist views” in America are those associated with the “far right” (i.e., Republicans). The “experts” cited include Carolyn Gallaher, a professor at American University and Eric Ward, “senior advisor to Western States Center and expert on extremism,” who delivers this tasty quote:

“It may seem shocking that this incident happened but when you look at the months of political rhetoric by individuals campaigning for office, and the rhetoric from folks like Tucker Carlson on Fox News, you can’t be surprised that someone took this rhetoric and then turned it into an action plan,” Ward told Insider. “This is exactly what we’re seeing and as predictable as the sun rising again.”

As if we know that the suspect was a Fox News viewer, because so many dopehead nudists in Berkeley are big Tucker Carlson fans.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!




 

SOROS-FUNDED PHILLY D.A. BLAMES G.O.P. ‘RACISM’ FOR IMPEACHMENT

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Before we get to the latest news from Pennsylvania, I’d like to begin by congratulating Dana Pico for his success in spotlighting the dangerous lunacy of District Attorney Larry Krasner, who has turned loose so many criminals that “Killadelphia” has well and truly earned its infamy. There are more dangerous cities in America — St. Louis, for example — but none of them are as big as Philadelphia, America’s fourth-largest city, so that when the homicide rate goes up there (and it’s increased 78% since Krasner took office), it’s kind of difficult to ignore the death toll. Of course, the national media have tried to ignore the violence in “Killadelphia,” but Dana kept hammering away and now the floodgates have opened, so that Krasner felt compelled to hold a press conference Friday on the steps of the state capitol where he says Pennsylvania’s GOP-controlled legislature is getting ready to impeach him:

The Pennsylvania House committee looking to impeach Democratic Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner canceled a hearing with the city’s top prosecutor after he requested a public forum.
Krasner still showed up at the state Capitol on Friday morning, condemning the select committee’s investigation and telling reporters that he expects the Republican-controlled chamber will start the impeachment process as early as next week. . . .
Krasner said the committee has no legal grounds for impeachment. Instead, he accused the committee of targeting him for his ideas and policies during a “super-heated election cycle” and attempting to blame large and diverse cities as being “lawless.”
“What we see here is the same old playbook, which is about coded and racist messaging,” Krasner said. “It’s about blaming the biggest city in Pennsylvania with the most diverse population for having the same national struggle that we have with gun violence everywhere.”

Well, the city may be “diverse,” but there is a decidedly monochromatic aspect to the daily bloodshed in “Killadelphia,” where more than 80% of the murders are black criminals shooting black victims. There were an all-time record 562 murders in Philadelphia last year, which means that roughly 450 black people were killed, but according to Krasner, the Republicans who want to end the city’s bloodbath are “racist.”

Whereas the Democrat D.A. who keeps letting criminals out of jail, well, he’s anti-racist, you see. Such is the contorted logic of Larry Krasner’s “social justice” agenda. The results have been disastrous.

Republicans are blasting Pennsylvania’s Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman because a man — exonerated of a murder conviction and released from prison through Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), which Fetterman supports — was allegedly involved in another murder in September.
On Thursday, Fox 29 Philadelphia reported that Jahmir Harris, 32, who was released from prison last year, is wanted for his alleged role in the murder of 50-year-old Charles Gossett in September.
“Prosecutors say Harris was identified by security footage as the driver of a vehicle that two gunman exited before shooting 50-year-old Charles Gossett in the back of the head around 2 a.m.,” Fox 29’s Steve Keeley and Kelly Rule reported. . . .
Harris was convicted of the December 2012 murder of Louis Porter, who was shot in the head in front of his own five-year-old son. He was sentenced to life without parole in 2015 but was exonerated and released through Krasner’s CIU last year, which Fetterman lauded earlier this week . . .

Do you think maybe this “exoneration” was a mistake? Like, maybe Harris actually did commit the murder for which a jury convicted him?

Nor is the case of Jahmir Harris an isolated incident. Over and over again, the criminals charged with murder in Philadelphia turn out to have been let loose in accordance with Krasner’s “social justice” agenda.

Say hello to Yaaseen Bivins, 21, who was convicted in August “of plowing his car into a pregnant woman and killing her unborn baby while drag racing,” but set free on bail while awaiting sentencing. Then in September, according to police, Bivins “shot five teens outside Roxborough High School.” One of the teenagers died: “Homicide Capt. Jason Smith said the teen who was killed — Nicolas Elizalde, 14, of Havertown, Delaware County — appeared to be ‘a totally innocent victim,’ fatally struck in the chest during the hail of gunfire.”

Krasner’s reaction? “Obviously, with hindsight, it is a truly awful situation.” Oh, as if you needed hindsight to realize that turning loose violent criminals is a dangerous idea.

But if you call attention to such horrible incidents, and think that the anti-police/pro-criminal District Attorney should be held accountable for the results of his policy, that means you must be a “racist” Republican!




 

How to Get Yourself Shot

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Say hello to Steven Joaquin “Zhoie” Perez (a/k/a “Furry Potato”), a transgender YouTuber who specializes in “First Amendment audits.”

You may not have heard of this phenomenon: People who record videos in public places — post offices, municipal buildings, etc. — in order to test {“audit,” as they say) the police response. These self-declared “auditors” are deliberately non-cooperative when confronted by law enforcement, refusing to identify themselves and sometimes insulting the officers who usually show up in response to reports of “suspicious behavior.”

“First Amendment auditors” seemed to emerge into the news in 2017 when two Michigan men, James Baker and Brandon Vreeland, showed up armed at the Dearborn police station:

The two men wanted to file a complaint about being pulled over earlier by Dearborn police officers, but also saw it as an opportunity to test the suburban Detroit department to see if its officers “honored” the Constitution and their right to carry guns. . . .
“We audit police to see how well they honor the Constitution and people’s rights,” said Vreeland, who was free after posting $1,500 bond late Sunday night. “We showcase police abuse and abuse of police power in the totalitarian police state that we live in.”

Baker and Vreeland were subsequently sentenced to jail, but the “movement” which they represent has grown. I never heard of this until the other day when I saw a video by a guy named Abiyah Israel who calls his YouTube channel “We the People University.”

The doctrine being promoted — i.e., that you don’t have to cooperate with law enforcement when, for example, they ask to see identification — reminded me of so-called “sovereign citizens.” And as it turns out, I’m not the only one who sees this resemblance:

[C]ritics, including domestic terrorism experts, say the tactics are intimidating — sometimes downright scary — and that the “auditors” seem intent on inciting authorities. And they fear that it’s just a matter of time before one of the encounters turns violent.
“I am definitely concerned,” said Bob Paudert, former police chief of West Memphis, Ark., whose son and another officer were gunned down by anti-government sovereign citizens during a traffic stop in 2010. “These are the same tactics the sovereign citizens use. The language they use, going into city office buildings, refusing to give their names but demanding you give yours, videotaping everybody.
“They’re harassing city employees and government employees, and they’ve got no legitimate reason for being there other than just to film. They’re trying to provoke these people to make an arrest or hit them or whatever. The problem is, the employees don’t know how to handle it. They’re not sure what to do.”
Sovereign citizens believe the government is corrupt and out of control; therefore, they do not recognize local, state or federal authority or tax systems. Not all are violent, but in recent years they have come to be considered a top domestic terrorism threat by the FBI and other government agencies.

The “auditors” deny any connection to “sovereign citizens,” but their apparent intent to provoke confrontation with law enforcement is dangerous. Certainly, I value my First Amendment rights as much as any American, but I also value not getting shot by cops. Which brings us to the case of Steven Joaquin “Zhoie” Perez:

[In February 2019], Perez got into an altercation that provoked a security guard at a Los Angeles synagogue to fire a shot that grazed her leg.
It was a bizarre cultural clash between a social media provocateur and a community on edge since the Pittsburgh synagogue mass shooting in October and rising incidents of anti-Semitism.
Perez filmed for 40 minutes outside the gates of the Etz Jacob Congregation/Ohel Chana High School building in the Fairfax District. As the security guard grew angrier, he filmed Perez in return, then pulled out his handgun.
“Get away from the door,” the guard said in one of two videos Perez posted to her “Furry Potato Live” YouTube channel. “You try one more time and I shoot you.”
The gun fired, and Perez repeatedly shouted that he shot her in the leg.
Police arrested the guard, Edduin Zelayagrunfeld on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. He could not be reached for comment Friday.
Perez was treated for her injury and gave a news conference later.
She is a self-proclaimed “1st Amendment auditor” — a phenomenon that started in the last two years. According to Brian Levin, director of Cal State San Bernardino’s Center on Hate and Extremism, the “audits” usually involve people provoking police or others near sensitive locations who might challenge their right to assemble or film in a public space.

Prosecutors declined to file charges against the security guard, perhaps because if you’re hired to guard a synagogue, you get a lot of leeway when dealing with suspicious strangers:

Videos that Perez posted to her YouTube channel, where she is better known as “Furry Potato,” show the guard repeatedly telling Perez to leave the area and constantly moving his hand toward his firearm, even though she is standing on a public sidewalk.
At one point in the video, Zelayagrunfeld threatens to shoot Perez if she does not move away from an entrance. The guard appears to have his weapon pointed toward the ground when a gunshot is heard in the video.
Before the shooting, Zelayagrunfeld had asked school staff to move students to a safe location, triggering a lockdown, according to the memo filed by the district attorney’s office. Taken together with recent surges in anti-Semitic hate crimes and the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh roughly four months earlier, prosecutors believed the guard’s “perception of Perez’s behavior as dangerous was reasonable.”
“Perez went to a Jewish school, and place of worship, dressed in all black and with a backpack secured to her body by a harness,” the document read. “As Zelaya told detectives, Perez’s backpack could have contained a bomb, and her attire could have concealed a firearm or other deadly weapon.”

See what I mean? The guard’s actions were “reasonable,” considering the circumstances. Perez is lucky to have been only grazed by a bullet.

Sooner or later, one of these “auditors” is likely to be a lot less lucky. Generally speaking, if a cop is going to shoot you, he’ll keep pulling the trigger until the magazine’s empty. Your “rights” don’t do you much good after you bleed to death. Your family might get a lawsuit settlement payoff, but you won’t be around to spend that money.




 

The $250,000,000 Scandal That’s Wrecking Minnesota Democrats

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There haven’t been many public polls in the Minnesota governor’s race, but Republican challenger Scott Jensen is within striking distance of Democrat incumbent Gov. Tim Walz, who is now dealing with fallout from what federal prosecutors call “the largest pandemic relief fraud scheme charged to date”:

The Department of Justice announced today federal criminal charges against 47 defendants for their alleged roles in a $250 million fraud scheme that exploited a federally-funded child nutrition program during the COVID-19 pandemic. . . .
“This was a brazen scheme of staggering proportions,” said U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger for the District of Minnesota. “These defendants exploited a program designed to provide nutritious food to needy children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, they prioritized their own greed, stealing more than a quarter of a billion dollars in federal funds to purchase luxury cars, houses, jewelry, and coastal resort property abroad. I commend the work of the skilled investigators and prosecutors who unraveled the lies, deception, and mountains of false documentation to bring this complex case to light.”
The 47 defendants are charged across six separate indictments and three criminal informations with charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, and bribery.
As outlined in the charging documents, the defendants devised and carried out a massive scheme to defraud the Federal Child Nutrition Program. The defendants obtained, misappropriated, and laundered millions of dollars in program funds that were intended as reimbursements for the cost of serving meals to children. The defendants exploited changes in the program intended to ensure underserved children received adequate nutrition during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than feed children, the defendants enriched themselves by fraudulently misappropriating millions of dollars in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds.

The question is now being asked: What did Tim Walz know, and when did he know it? And his answers so far seem kind of shaky.

No one has claimed that Walz personally benefited from this fraudulent scheme, but rather that his administration failed to properly supervise the expenditure of federal funds through this “child nutrition” program run by the non-profit Feeding Our Future:

Aimee Bock’s organization was keeping a low profile as it handled millions in government money when the video appeared on Facebook in January.
It purportedly showed one of Bock’s employees receiving an astonishing wedding present: an ornamental cart, laden with so much gold that guests gathered around to see it up close.
Abdihakim Nur, a Somali activist and blogger who shot the video, said he heard the gold came from food vendors who were getting rich off the money they collected through Bock’s nonprofit, Feeding Our Future.
Nur was appalled, and his video created a stir in the Somali community.
“We cannot close our eyes to such corruption which will put our entire community’s name in the news as fraudsters and criminals when we only have a few bad apples,” Nur posted.
Five days later, the FBI raided Bock’s home and a sprawling government investigation went public.

Well done, Mr. Nur! Because, if you read the indictment, here are the names of the 47 people charged in this criminal scheme:

  • Aimee Marie Bock
  • Abdikerm Abdelahi Eidleh
  • Salim Ahmed Said
  • Abdulkadir Nur Salah
  • Ahmed Sharif Omar-Hashim
  • Abdi Nur Salah
  • Abdihakim Ali Ahmed
  • Ahmed Mohamed Artan
  • Abdikadir Ainanshe Mohamud
  • Abdinasir Mahamed Abshir
  • Asad Mohamed Abshir
  • Hamdi Hussein Omar
  • Ahmed Abdullahi Ghedi
  • Abdirahman Mohamud Ahmed
  • Abdiaziz Shafii Farah
  • Mohamed Jama Ismail
  • Mahad Ibrahim
  • Abdimajid Mohamed Nur
  • Said Shafii Farah
  • Abdiwahab Maalim Aftin
  • Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff
  • Hayat Mohamed Nur
  • Qamar Ahmed Hassan
  • Sahra Mohamed Nur
  • Abdiwahab Ahmed Mohamud
  • Filsan Mumin Hassan
  • Guhaad Hashi Said
  • Abdullahe Nur Jesow
  • Abdul Abubakar Ali
  • Yusuf Bashir Ali
  • Haji Osman Salad
  • Fahad Nur
  • Anab Artan Awad
  • Sharmarke Issa
  • Farhiya Mohamud
  • Liban Yasin Alishire
  • Ahmed Yasin Ali
  • Khadar Jigre Adan
  • Sharmake Jama
  • Ayan Jama
  • Asha Jama
  • Fartun Jama
  • Mustafa Jama
  • Zamzam Jama
  • Bekam Addissu Merdassa
  • Hadith Yusuf Ahmed
  • Hanna Marekegn

Probably not a lot of Trump voters on that list, if you get my drift.

In defending themselves against accusations of administrative negligence, Walz and the state department of education say they tried to cut off payment to Feeding Our Future, but that the non-profit responded with a lawsuit falsely claiming racial discrimination.

Wait a minute — Democrats admitting that false cries of “racism” are used to exploit the system? Wow, it’s a new day in America.

But look at that list of names again. Regardless of the details of how Walz’s administration handled this, do you think the average voter in rural Minnesota can’t add 2+2 and find that the sum is 4?

“Let’s give millions of dollars in taxpayer money to Somalis” — that’s what this “child nutrition” program was really about, and which party do you think this political payola was meant to benefit? The problem was that the corruption was just too blatant, what with the “luxury cars, houses, jewelry, and coastal resort property,” to say nothing of the “ornamental cart laden with gold,” and at some point somebody at Minnesota’s department of education got worried about it. Eventually, they tipped the feds to their concerns and tried to halt the payments to Aimee Bock’s organization, but when this was answered by a racial discrimination lawsuit, they restarted the payments, and the “child nutrition” bonanza continued right up until the feds raided Bock.

The gubernatorial race in Minnesota is very close, and this scandal works entirely to the advantage of Republicans. Furthermore, there’s a toss-up House race in Minnesota’s 2nd District, where GOP challenger Tyler Kistner — who barely lost in 2020 — is trying again to oust Democrat Rep. Angie Craig. Now we learn that Somalis have been looting the taxpayers to the tune of $250 million, and you’ve got to think that scandal doesn’t help the Democrat incumbent in this House campaign.




 

A Death in ‘Killadelphia’

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Everett Beauregard, 23, was just walking down North 35th Street in Philadelphia when he was shot to death by a stranger:

Philadelphia police are searching for a suspect who fatally shot Everett Beauregard, a recent Temple University graduate, on a sidewalk in West Philadelphia at 12:30 a.m. Thursday.
The shooting occurred as Beauregard was walking home from a SEPTA station after a night out with friends. The suspect approached Beauregard from the opposite direction on the 400 block of North 35th Street and fired several shots, police said. One of them struck the Beauregard in the neck, severing his spinal cord.
By the time officers arrived, the gunman was gone and no weapons were found at the scene. Beauregard was taken to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he died.
On Friday, police released surveillance video that shows the suspect in the moments leading up to the shooting. The gunman is seen passing Beauregard before turning around and firing at him. He then is seen fleeing north on 35th Street. Four shots were fired, including one as the man left the scene with Beauregard already on the ground.
“Not a word was spoken between the two prior to the offender shooting Mr. Beauregard in the back,” Philadelphia Police Captain Jason Smith said.
Beauregard, 23, a Chester County native, had graduated from Temple in June and had been working as an operations processor for Wells Fargo in Philadelphia, according to his LinkedIn page. He attended Great Valley High School and had volunteered in local and national politics in recent years, including time spent as an intern for Democratic U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle and state Rep. Kristine Howard.
Surveillance footage first shows the gunman in the area near the shooting at 11:20 p.m. Wednesday, investigators said. He was seen walking around with his right hand in the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt, apparently armed and “looking for trouble,” Smith said.
Police called the shooting an “unprovoked murder,” adding there were no signs of an attempted robbery or an argument.

 

This happened near the campus of Drexel University. There have been 393 homicides in Philadelphia so far this year, but Dana Pico at First Street Journal notes the “white privilege” in this case: Philadelphia media seldom name the murder victims in the city, the vast majority of whom are black. But let a white college graduate get shot and — oh, boy! — that’s big news. Guarantee you that if they catch this perp, he’ll have a lengthy criminal record, having been turned loose by Philadelphia’s Soros-backed DA Larry Krasner. Because “social justice.”




 

Why Isn’t Marilyn Mosby In Prison Yet?

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“Liberal billionaire George Soros realized early on that prosecutors are the gatekeepers to the criminal justice system, and he decided to hand select attorneys who would do his bidding by refusing to prosecute entire categories of crimes, fundamentally ‘reimagining prosecution’ and reverse-engineering the criminal justice system into something unrecognizable in the process. . . . So, when Soros decided back in 2014 to spend millions to fund the election efforts of rogue prosecutors, one of the first people he backed was Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore city.”
— The Daily Signal, Oct. 27, 2020

This morning, I switched my home-office TV to CNN, and caught an interview with Marilyn Mosby. “Holy crap,” I said to myself. “I thought she was already in federal prison.” That’s certainly where she belongs.

Mosby was indicted by a federal grand jury earlier this year on perjury and mortgage fraud charges related to her purchase of two vacation homes in Florida. Her trial has been postponed until next March. She was defeated in her bid to be re-elected to a third term, losing the Democratic primary in July. God only knows whether Baltimore will ever recover from the damage Mosby inflicted on the city since being elected in 2014.

Homicides in the city increased dramatically after Mosby became the state’s attorney for Baltimore, and the crime wave she unleashed has reverberated across Maryland and into neighboring states, for the simple reason that failure to prosecute criminals in the city means they are free to commit crimes in other jurisdictions. Criminals from Baltimore that Mosby turned loose are perpetrating felonies throughout Maryland, as well as in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

In just a few months, Mosby will be out of office (and, one hopes, on her way to federal prison) but she seems determined to inflict maximum damage on her way out the door. After a true-crime podcast raised questions about a 1999 murder case in the city, Mosby decided unilaterally to turn the convicted killer loose:

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby “railroaded” the family of Hae Min Lee by “ramming down their throats” her decision to ask a judge to release Adnan Syed from prison on Monday, this according to their attorney.
Family attorney Steve Kelly blasted Mosby during a CNN interview Tuesday morning, accusing her of blindsiding the family and “completely excluding” them from the process that led to Adnan’s conviction being vacated.
Kelly said Hae’s family felt betrayed and only wanted to know why after 20 years prosecutors changed their minds on who killed Lee. He said the recent motion filed by prosecutors did not spell out their reasoning.
He also said Hae’s family was open to hearing about other suspects, but Mosby never gave them the chance.
As we reported, Adnan walked out of a Baltimore courtroom a free man Monday after serving 23 years of a life sentence for Hae’s 1999 murder. He will be on house arrest as prosecutors determine over the next 30 days whether to try him again or drop the charges.
In 2000, a jury convicted Adnan of strangling Hae in a rage after she broke up with him.
His alleged accomplice testified at trial that he helped Adnan dispose of the body after Adnan confessed to the slaying. Police also used cell phone data to link Adnan to the crime scene. Adnan was 17 at the time he went to prison.
Then, in 2014, Adnan caught a break when the “Serial” Podcast thrust his case back into the spotlight, poking holes in the police probe.
That led Baltimore State’s Attorney, Marilyn Mosby, to reopen the case about a year ago and launch a new investigation, finding that the cell data used to convict Adnan was flawed and the accomplice had offered contradictory statements to police.
What’s more … there were 2 other suspects kept under wraps by the original prosecutors and withheld from the defense lawyers, which is a violation of law.
Mosby has not released the suspects’ names, but one of them allegedly threatened to kill Hae.

See how this works? Every convict in prison has some kind of sad tale to tell, and there’s no reason to think Adnan Syed’s story is more credible than any of these other excuses. Claims of prosecutorial misconduct, and assertions that there are other potential suspects, cannot erase the evidence and testimony pointing toward Syed’s guilt. While it is perhaps possible that his conviction will be overturned, this doesn’t justify turning him loose in the meantime — but Mosby turns loose criminals at least as guilty as Sayed on a regular basis, so what’s one more, eh? Besides, it’s good publicity for Mosby in “progressive” circles, and she probably hopes this will help her somehow in her own federal case.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Thomas Hogan at City Journal calls the Syed case “Mosby’s Final Insult to Baltimore,” and has more details about the case.




 

Crazy People Are Dangerous

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Say hello to 51-year-old Missouri resident Jeremy Garnier, who in March 2020 decided it would be a good idea to dress up as comic-book villain The Joker and record a livestream threatening to kill a thousand people. Last week, he was sentenced to 60 days in jail and two years of probation for making terrorist threats. You will perhaps not be surprised to learn that (a) Garnier has a lengthy history of previous crimes (b) which he claims he committed to “in order to support his crack habit.”

Is the world getting crazier, or is it just that now we have social-media that allows people to broadcast their craziness?




 

Las Vegas: Criminal Starts Gunfight; Wounded Female Officer Finishes It

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Say hello to 27-year-old Gabriel Charles and, while you’re at it, go ahead and say good-bye, because this criminal scumbag ceased to be a threat to public safety just a few seconds after he shot a Las Vegas cop.

It was shortly after 1 a.m. Saturday when Officer Tierney Tomburo and her partner pulled over a vehicle for a traffic violation. Three males were in the vehicle, including Charles, the front-seat passenger. Officer Tomburo asked all three of the men to exit the vehicle while she investigated and, just after she asked if any of them had any weapons on them, Charles took off running. Officer Tomburo pursued on foot when suddenly, without warning, Charles turned around and fired one shot from a 9-mm Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol. Officer Tomburo was struck in the pelvis and knocked down, but she was able to grab her own pistol and return fire. She fired four shots, and Charles was fatally wounded. It turned out that, although Charles’ pistol had 14 rounds in the magazine, the gun jammed after he fired the first shot at Officer Tomburo. Assistant Sheriff John McGrath “called the jam a ‘stovepipe’ where the bullet casing doesn’t eject clear from the handgun’s slide”:

“The gun will not fire when it’s like that, but there were 14 additional rounds in the magazine,” he said.

Bodycam shows Charles shooting Officer Tomburo.

A typical amateur error. We may surmise that, after his gun jammed, Charles tried to clear the “stovepipe” — with the intent to shoot Officer Tomburo again — instead of running away. That meant he was standing stock-still right next to the wounded cop, who had a clear target at close range: Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! R.I.P., criminal scumbag.

Assistant Sheriff McGrath said that “if Charles had survived, he would have been facing several charges including attempted murder with a deadly weapon on a protected person, battery with a deadly weapon, resisting with a firearm, and prohibited person in possession of a firearm.” Oh, wait — a “prohibited person”? So what he’s really telling us is, the deceased Gabriel Charles was already a convicted felon. Officially, however, “Investigators are not releasing details on Charles’ criminal history, and leaving that responsibility to the District Attorney’s Office.” Just gonna guess he had a very lengthy record, and should not have been out on the streets to begin with. The whole scene was captured on bodycam video and Officer Tomburo’s voice after she was shot doesn’t sound very heroic, but the results speak for themselves.

Did I mention that Officer Tomburo is only 24? That she had only been a member of the Las Vegas police force for two years?

Basically the whole Las Vegas police force turned out to applaud Officer Tomburo when she was released from the hospital on Monday.