Category: Crime

Pro-Criminal Fetterman Puts Convicted Killers on His Senate Campaign Payroll

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One of the great liberal myths of our age is the belief that America’s prisons are full of Wrongly Convicted Black Men. Even in cases where the evidence of guilt is overwhelming, liberals view Systemic Racism is an all-purpose excuse, so that even if he’s caught red-handed and confesses his guilt, no black man is ever really guilty of criminal wrongdoing. In this warped view, every black inmate in America’s prisons is a Victim of Oppression, and therefore — following this Liberal Logic™ to its inescapable conclusion — it is wrong for any black person ever to be arrested, prosecuted or incarcerated. The influence of what we may call the Myth of Universal Black Innocence is obvious in the policies pursued by left-wing district attorneys like Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, Alvin Bragg in New York and George Gascón in LA, as well as in Democrat-controlled states such as Illinois and California that have enacted “reform” policies to turn dangerous criminals loose on the streets.

Democrat soft-on-crime policies also result in lenient treatment of white criminals who get turned loose and become repeat offenders, but that is incidental to the political objective of such policies, which are advocated as a measure of “racial justice” with the intent of ending so-called “mass incarceration” of black criminals. But I digress . . .

I haven’t paid much attention to the Senate campaign in Pennsylvania, or any other Senate campaign, for that matter, because it seems to me that (a) the GOP has a near-certain chance to take back the House majority in the midterms, and (b) winning the Senate would merely be the cherry on top of that result. Also, I wasn’t a huge fan of Trump’s endorsement of Doctor Oz in the Pennsylvania GOP primary, not because of anything particular against Doctor Oz, but just because I would have preferred a candidate with a more typical background, rather than a celebrity with no political record. The more I’ve learned about the Democratic candidate in Pennsylvania, however, the more obvious it seems that conservatives have a duty to rally behind Doctor Oz. Because the Democrat, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, is a very dangerous person, and would certainly be defeated if Pennsylvania voters were fully informed about him.

A few recent headlines about an important controversy:

Fetterman slams Oz demand that
he fire ‘wrongfully convicted’ brothers
who received clemency over 1993 murder
— Business Insider, Sept. 1

Did John Fetterman Hire Convicted
Murderers for Campaign as Dr. Oz Claims?
— Newsweek, Sept. 1

Dr. Oz Demands Fetterman
Fire ‘Convicted Murderers’
— Who Were Granted Clemency
— Politico, Sept. 1

Fetterman accuses Dr Oz
of ‘sad and desperate smear’
with misleading claim he
hired ‘convicted murderers’
— UK Independent, Sept. 2

This is an important controversy, as I say, because it highlights both Fetterman’s policy toward crime and justice issues, as well as his judgment and honest (or lack thereof). The two convicted murderers Fetterman hired on his campaign staff are Lee and Dennis Horton.

Convicted felons Lee and Dennis Horton

Notice the liberal media seek to suggest that the Horton brothers were “wrongfully convicted,” or that, because they were “granted clemency,” somehow their guilt is in doubt. In fact, there is no doubt at all, and it is neither “misleading” nor a “smear” for Oz to call attention to this situation, which speaks volumes about Fetterman’s worldview.

Ann Coulter does an excellent job of dismantling the bogus claim that the Horton brothers were “wrongfully convicted,” a column in which she cites a Pennsylvania appeals court decision issued just last year, rejecting Lee Horton’s claims for relief under the state’s Post-Conviction Relief Act.

Despite repeated appeals, no court has overturned the convictions of Lee and Dennis Horton, and there is absolutely no reason for anyone to believe that they were “wrongfully convicted.” The most recent court ruling points out that the only new “evidence” Lee Horton offered in seeking PCRA relief was a handwritten note by one of the police investigators, previously not included as part of discovery during the proceedings, which could not possibly have affected the outcome of his original trial. But what about this “clemency”? And what about the original crime for which the Hortons were convicted?

It was the armed robbery of a Philadelphia bar:

The evidence adduced at trial established that on May 31, 1993, [Lee Horton], his brother Dennis Horton (“Dennis”), and a coconspirator Robert Leaf (“Leaf”) robbed Filito’s Bar located at 5th and Hunting Park Avenue. During the course of the robbery, Dennis, who was brandishing a rifle, shot Samuel Alemo multiple times. He later died from his gunshot wounds. Dennis also shot Luz Archella and her daughter Luz Martinez, injuring both. After leaving the bar, the three men fled in a blue automobile. A passerby was able to supply a description of the vehicle and a partial license plate number. A radio call was sent out, which included a description of the three assailants, their vehicle, and the last four digits of the license plate. A police officer observed the vehicle a short time later only a mile from the crime scene and placed [Horton] and his companions under arrest. Police recovered a .22 caliber semi-automatic rifle from the backseat of the car as well as a black pellet gun under the front passenger seat. Ballistics testing identified the rifle as the same weapon used during the robbery at Filito’s. [Horton], Dennis, and Leaf were taken to the hospital where Martinez and her daughter, as well as another bar patron Miguel DeJesus, identified them as the robbers. . . .
The evidence shows that [Horton] entered the bar with Leaf and Dennis, who were both armed. [Lee Horton] took money from a bar patron while Leaf held a gun to the patron’s head. [Horton] remained present when Dennis opened fire on two other bar patrons and murdered Alemo. He then fled the bar together with Leaf and Dennis, and was arrested with them a short time later. . . . Regardless who opened fire, [Horton] remains liable as an accomplice for any resulting deaths as well as any other crimes committed that night at Filito’s bar during the robbery.

This is the law in most states on capital murder: If you participate in a crime, such as a robbery, that results in someone being killed, you can be charged with murder even if you didn’t pull the trigger, and even if the person who got killed was one of your accomplices. One reason the law is this way is because, when two or more perpetrators are involved in a crime that ends in homicide, it can be difficult to determine which of the criminals did the fatal deed. If Moe, Larry and Curly decide to rob a bank, and a teller gets shot to death in the process, cops may not be able to figure out which one of the Three Stooges pulled the trigger, and Moe might be pointing the finger at Curly or Larry, both of whom insist that it was really Moe that did the killing; however, insofar as all three were involved in the robbery-turned-murder, all of them are equally liable under the capital murder law. Interestingly, in the Horton brothers’ case, while Dennis and Lee were both convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, their accomplice Ryan Leaf was convicted of third-degree murder and only sentenced to “a term of years,” eventually being released in 2008. Nobody knows where Ryan Leaf is now, but the fact that he had already gotten out of prison was widely cited last year as an argument for releasing the Horton brothers. Among other things, such an argument seeks to void the findings of the jury and the judgment of the prosecutors, who were certainly more familiar with the facts of the case in 1993 than any of the liberal journalists or “activist” types running their mouths about the case in 2022. Regardless of why Leaf was sentenced to less time than the Horton brothers, no reasonable person would find this a reason to believe the Hortons were “wrongfully convicted” or that their life sentences were unjust. A man was killed and two women were wounded in this robbery, and unless you’re the kind of liberal idiot that thinks it’s OK to let murderers go with a slap on the wrist, life in prison is an entirely justifiable sentence in such a case.

Care to guess what kind of idiot John Fetterman is?

The Pennsylvania Board of Pardons meets four times a year to consider the ever-growing pile of applications for a pardon or a commutation submitted by inmates at state prisons across the Commonwealth. There are five people on the board: the lieutenant governor, the state attorney general (Josh Shapiro), and three other members with relevant expertise picked by the governor and approved by the state Senate. Votes on cases involving death sentences and life imprisonment must be unanimous; otherwise, recommendations for a pardon/commutation (the conferring of which ultimately lies with the governor) are denied.
With Fetterman at the helm, the board has been wading through the huge backlog of applications at a determined clip. Shocked and shaken by the overwhelming majority of elderly Black faces among the 5,400 inmates currently serving life sentences in Pennsylvania’s state prisons, Fetterman has made it his mission to shift the emphasis from cruelty to compassion. “We’re making it all about second chances, about redemption and forgiveness and completing the circle,” he says. “People think the face of life in prison is Hannibal Lecter, but sometimes it’s the face of Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption.”

This is from a May 2021 Philadelphia magazine profile and, sweet holy jeebus, are you kidding me with this Shawshank Redemption crap? I mean, really? Hollywood dramas are the basis of your decision-making as chairman of the state Board of Pardons? But wait, there’s more from the Philadelphia magazine profile:

Two people Fetterman deemed worthy of a second chance are Lee and Dennis Horton, brothers from North Philadelphia who, until their release in February, had served 27 years of life sentences as accessories to a murder they maintain they had no part in. In one of the many cruel ironies of the U.S. justice system, the man who confessed to committing the murder was released in 2008.

This is how laziness functions as a servant to bias in journalism. Any reporter diligent enough to look up the court records on the case against the Horton brothers could see that this tale is false. According to witnesses and victims (to say nothing of the jury’s verdict and the various courts that repeatedly rejected Lee Horton’s appeals), it was not Ryan Leaf, but Dennis Horton who shot the three victims. The reporter who wrote this feature profile about Fetterman simply repeats what he was told by the Hortons, without having bothered to check the facts for himself. There is no “cruel irony” to why the Hortons were still behind bars; they were both guilty, but never once have they acknowledged their guilt. Returning to the Philadelphia profile:

By all accounts, the Horton brothers were model prisoners, counseling fellow inmates struggling with incarceration, teaching yoga, convincing their peers to act in and build props for productions of plays they wrote about atonement and restorative justice.
Two wardens and assorted deputies, not to mention the state secretary of corrections, advocated for their release at a Board of Pardons hearing in December of 2020. When it came time to vote on the Horton brothers’ request for a commutation, Fetterman wept openly as the other board members voted “yes”; when his turn came, he was too overcome with emotion to speak. AG Josh Shapiro, who’s locked horns with Fetterman in the past over whom to let out and whom to keep in, answered for him: “I’m a yes, and I think the lieutenant governor is a yes as well,” he said over Zoom. The Horton brothers were watching all of this go down from the warden’s office at SCI Chester, where they were incarcerated.
“This is a man who supported us with everything he had in him; he was all in, emotionally, physically,” Dennis Horton told me back in April, just a few weeks after he and his brother were released from prison. “He gave what he had to help free us from the clutches of a life sentence.”
“He saved our lives, because life in Pennsylvania means you die in prison — they call it ‘death by incarceration,’” said Lee. “When he broke down, I was taken aback, because you don’t expect a guy that big to be that emotional.”
“Especially with all those tattoos on him,” Dennis chimed in. Since their release, the Horton brothers have been hired by Fetterman’s U.S. Senate campaign to coordinate voter outreach in Philadelphia.

Perhaps “outreach” to the family of their victims? See, that’s the magician’s trick in this kind of story, where liberal journalists portray criminals as victims, while — abracadbra! — making the real victims disappear. But they should never be forgotten:

The victim’s brother, Reinaldo Alamo, 62, said he opposes clemency for the Hortons. “They took a human life, and they don’t deserve to be out in society,” he said. . . .
Attempts to locate Leaf and witnesses from the 1993 trial were unsuccessful.
To Reinaldo Alamo, it was and remains an open-and-shut case, given the brothers were caught with the weapon an hour after the murder. He won’t be speaking at the hearing, but submitted a letter noting his opposition.
“When I heard this it put me in a state of depression,” Alamo said of the commutation hearing. “To think of … the turmoil they caused my family, the pain and suffering that it did to my mother.”

John Fetterman doesn’t care about the suffering of crime victims.

That’s what this controversy is really about. Democrats have become the pro-criminal party, advocating policies that ensure violence criminals are turned loose to commit more crimes, and Democrats like John Fetterman are absolutely indifferent to the impact that these policies have on innocent law-abiding citizens. You must be some kind of racist if you think murderers should be sentenced to life in prison, and even if your own brother gets killed by these monsters, well, tough luck!

Whether or not Republicans win a Senate majority in November, and without regard to what we may otherwise think of Doctor Oz’s candidacy, it seems to me that conservatives have an obligation to do everything in our power to stop John Fetterman from being elected.

Click Here to Support
DR. MEHMET OZ FOR U.S. SENATE

Do all you can. Innocent lives are on the line.




 

Suspect In Memphis Woman’s Murder Began His Criminal Career at Age 11

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Well, his first arrest was at age 11, although he might have been perpetrating felonies ever since he learned to walk:

The Tennessee man charged in the abduction and murder of a woman who vanished Friday as she was jogging in Memphis has a lengthy juvenile criminal record that dates to 1995, when he was 11 years old, court documents reveal.
Cleotha Abston has been charged with various crimes every year from 1995 to 2000, when he was sentenced to 24 years in prison for kidnapping a Memphis lawyer, according to documents obtained by NBC News.
Just two years after he was released in 2020, Abston, 38, is now charged with the death of Eliza Fletcher.
Listed in the documents are multiple offenses, including convictions for a rape charge from 1998, when he was 14, and a kidnapping charge from 2000, when he was 16.
Felicia Hogan, a spokesperson for Shelby County Juvenile Court, said in a statement Wednesday that the court found that Abston “committed rape when he was 14 years old.” She did not provide further details.
“Because of the severity of the crime, the statute says this offense information is releasable even though at the time Abston was a juvenile,” Hogan said. “There is no information being released on when, to whom or where this rape happened. The rest of his juvenile record is sealed and there are no other records to be released.” . . .
Tennessee Lt. Gov. Randy McNally said Tuesday that had Abston remained in jail for the full 24 years [for the 2000 kidnapping], Fletcher would still be alive.
“It is simply disgraceful that this individual did not serve his full sentence for his previous crimes,” McNally tweeted.

In fairness, as the story explains, it isn’t as if Abston was the beneficiary of some kind of Soros-funded liberal policy. He had served more than 500 days in jail prior to being sentenced, and all Tennessee prison inmates are eligible to “earn” up to a 15% reduction in their sentences. So subtracting the previous “time served” prior to sentencing and then adding in his “earned time” as an inmate, there wasn’t anything unusual about the length of Abston’s sentence.

When I first mentioned this case Sunday, Eliza Fletcher still hadn’t been found, but Monday afternoon a body was found in an abandoned duplex, and Tuesday officials confirmed that it was Fletcher, the heiress to a billion-dollar fortune who chose to work as a kindergarten teacher.

By all accounts, Eliza Fletcher was a wonderful human being, whereas the guy who killed her . . . Well, I guess I forgot to mention that Cleotha Abston’s brother Mario is a convicted felon who was busted with drugs and a pistol, and his father, Cleo Henderson, “is currently in prison for second-degree murder and is scheduled for release in 2044.” So everybody in the entire family is a criminal, it would seem.

There’s no “moral to the story” here. It’s just one of the very best people getting killed by one of the very worst. Not much to add.




 

The Symbolism of Philadelphia

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Joe Biden gave a speech last week in which he gave lip service to things that Democrats don’t actually believe in, e.g., the Constitution and the rule of law, as a pretext to accuse Republicans — all 74 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump — of being a “threat to our democracy.”

Biden spoke in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, a gesture by which he attempted to identify himself as defending the founding principles of America when, in fact, he and his party are against those principles and are doing everything in their power to destroy America.

Biden does not deceive us. It is Democrats, not Republicans, who spent the summer of 2020 tearing down statues of our nation’s Founding Fathers. It is Democrats, not Republicans, who have denounced the Electoral College as undemocratic, just as it is Democrats, not Republicans, who endanger Supreme Court justices whose rulings they don’t like. Everything good about America, Democrats seek to destroy, and everything bad in America (e.g., drug dealers, cop killers, perverts in public libraries and junkies defecating on city streets) Democrats defend.

The symbolism of choosing Philadelphia as the site of last week’s speech was perhaps more fitting than Biden realized, because Philadelphia is a city that Democrats have absolutely ruined. The per-capita murder rate in Philadelphia is higher than Chicago’s. Now notorious as “Killadelphia,” the city’s population has declined by about 400,000 people since 1960. In 1980, Philadelphia was still the fourth-largest city in the United States, behind only New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles; now it’s sixth, having fallen behind Houston and Phoenix. It’s no secret who is leaving: Whereas the population of Philadelphia was 57% white in 1980, the city is now just 34% white. Quality of life has plummeted.

Perhaps nothing is more demonstrative of Philadelphia’s decline, and the role Democrats have played in that decline, than the tenure of Larry Krasner as the city’s district attorney. In 2017, left-wing billionaire George Soros wrote a $1.45 million check to Krasner’s campaign. That helped Krasner beat six other candidates in the Democratic primary and, in a city where Hillary Clinton got 83% of the vote in 2016, winning the Democratic primary is tantamount to election. Krasner got 75% of the vote in November 2017, and he was reelected in 2021 with 69% of the vote. So you can’t say that the people of Philadelphia are innocent in what Krasner has done; they voted to destroy their city by turning criminals loose:

Krasner ran as the anti-police candidate, and has made it his official policy to turn dangerous criminals loose on the streets of Philadelphia. One of the beneficiaries of Krasner’s policies, Maurice Hill, had an extensive criminal record — drug charges, aggravated assault, perjury, fleeing and eluding, escape and weapons offenses — before he engaged in a shootout [in August 2019] in North Philadelphia that wounded six cops. 

 

Maurice Hill was certainly not the only dangerous criminal who benefited from Krasner’s turn-’em-loose policy. In one of the most infamous cases, Krasner turned loose a career criminal, Hassan Elliott, who then committed a murder and, when a SWAT team came to arrest him, shot to death a veteran policeman in March 2019. Joe Biden says Republican voters are a threat to democracy, but what about Hassan Elliott?

During his speech last week, Joe Biden didn’t say a word about the perpetrators of criminal violence in “Killadelphia,” nor did he mention how Democrats like Larry Krasner have enabled this bloodshed.

According to the Philadelphia Police Department, there have been 364 homicides in the city so far this year, as of Saturday, which is on pace to break the record 562 homicides the city recorded in 2021.

You didn’t hear a word about this in Joe Biden’s speech last week at Independence Hall for the simple reason that Joe Biden doesn’t care. All he cares about is electing more Democrats, and if the result of electing more Democrats is that hundreds of people get murdered because Democrats are turning loose dangerous criminals, so what?

Labor Day weekend shootings:
12 shot, 5 killed as gun violence
continues across Philadelphia

It’s been less than three days since Joe’s speech, and in that short span, five more corpses have been added to the pile in “Killadelphia.” This is a direct consequence of the policies of the Democratic Party, but according to Joe Biden, it is Republicans who are a “clear and present danger.”

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!




 

Memphis Police Charge Suspect With Kidnapping Billionaire Heiress

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In 2001, when Cleotha “Pookie” Abston was just a teenager, he already had “a long juvenile record of theft and aggravated assault” before he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for kidnapping a man at gunpoint. Now, he’s been charged in what seems to be an even more serious crime:

A 38-year-old man who spent much of his life in prison has been charged with kidnapping teacher Eliza Fletcher, who has still not been found, Memphis Police announced Sunday morning.
The news of Cleotha “Pookie” Abston’s arrest comes a day after investigators revealed they had located a “vehicle of interest” in the abduction of Fletcher, 34, a married mom of two boys whose grandfather was a wealthy philanthropist.
Fletcher was out jogging near the University of Memphis on Friday morning when assailants in an SUV bundled her into the vehicle and drove off.
Abston, 38, was charged with especially aggravated kidnapping and tampering with evidence. He is being held at the Shelby County Jail. . . .
Police said they arrested a second person, apparently a relative of Abston, but do not believe he is connected to Fletcher’s abduction. Instead, Mario Abston, 36, was hit with gun and drug charges.
“Eliza Fletcher has not been located at this time. MPD Investigators and officers, along with our local and federal partners, continue searching for Mrs. Fletcher,” Memphis cops said.
Fletcher graduated from the Hutchinson School in Memphis in 2006 and got a teaching degree from Belmont University. She has been married for eight years.
Her family has offered a $50,000 reward for her safe return. Fletcher’s grandfather ran Orgill, the hardware supply giant started by his family that is now worth over $3.2 billion.

Information from the police affidavit is ominous:

When officers stopped Cleotha Abston, he attempted to flee but was taken into custody.
Investigators then interviewed a person who stated that after the abduction at approximately 7:50 a.m., they saw Cleotha Abston at the home of Mario Abston, in the 1700 block of S. Orleans Street, a report said. . . .
The person stated they saw the suspect cleaning the interior of the GMC Terrain with floor cleaner and stated that he was behaving oddly, an affidavit stated.
The same information was later given by Mario Abston, the suspects brother, who stated that he too saw the suspect cleaning the interior of the car with floor cleaner, records show.
Both the witness and the brother saw the suspect washing his clothes in the sink of the house.
Mario Abston said that it appeared that the suspect was acting very strange.
Cleotha Abston declined to provide investigators with the location of the victim, police said.
The other man who was arrested, Mario Abston, 36, was charged with Possession of a Controlled Substance with Intent to Manufacture and Sell Fentanyl, Possession of a Controlled Substance with Intent to Manufacture and Sell Heroin, and Convicted Felon in Possession of a Firearm During the Commission of a Dangerous Felony, police said.
Police said he is currently not believed to be connected to Fletcher’s abduction.

So it appears that the suspect’s brother Mario is also a convicted felon, but the really scary thing is the report that “Pookie” was apparently trying to conceal evidence related to the crime — blood?

Obviously, the police believe they have enough evidence to convict Cleotha Abston of kidnapping Fletcher, and if she turns up dead — which now seems the likely outcome — there is little doubt they’ll be able to convict Abston of her murder. It will be a death penalty case.




 

Grifters Gonna Grift: Lawsuit Accuses BLM Leader of Swindling $10 Million

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BLM was always a criminal enterprise:

The leader of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation has been accused by former colleagues of stealing more than $10 million in donations from the organization for personal use, according to a lawsuit filed in court this week.
Shalomyah Bowers was called in the court filing as a “rogue administrator, a middle man turned usurper” who siphoned contributions to the nonprofit activist group to use as a “personal piggy bank,” according to the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Thursday.
Bowers’ actions led the foundation into investigations by the Internal Revenue Service and various state attorneys general, “blazing a path of irreparable harm to BLM in less than eighteen months,” the suit claims. “While BLM leaders and movement workers were on the street risking their lives, Mr. Bowers remained in his cushy offices devising a scheme of fraud and misrepresentation to break the implied-in-fact contract between donors and BLM.”

(Oh, the courageous rioters, “risking their lives”!)

The suit, filed by Black Lives Matter Grassroots, was light on details of the alleged theft of funds, but delved into the fissures within the network of Black Lives Matter groups, charting changes in leadership and power that left Bowers with tight control of the organization.
Bowers and his group denied all claims of financial misconduct and chastised those suing him for “falling victim to the carceral logic and social violence that fuels the legal system” in taking legal action against him.
“They would rather take the same steps of our white oppressors and utilize the criminal legal system which is propped up by white supremacy (the same system they say they want to dismantle) to solve movement disputes,” the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation’s board of directors said in a joint statement.
Bowers is one of three members of the board.

(If a black man swindles $10 million, it’s “white supremacy” to take him to court, because “social justice,” y’all!)

Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is an administrative organization that raises funds to distribute to Black Lives Matter Grassroots, the umbrella organization for local chapters of the group.
Bowers was hired by Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors in 2020 to help raise and distribute money to groups within the foundation.
Attorney Walter Mosley, representing the plaintiffs in the case, alleges that Bowers instead engaged in self-dealing, giving grants to his own consultant firm and charging exorbitant fees reaching eight figures.
“The lawsuit demands that they return the people’s funds and stop impersonating Black Lives Matter,” Mosley said in a statement.
The lawsuit was announced at a news conference Thursday hosted by Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles co-founder Melina Abdullah, who said that Bowers shut her and other leaders out of the BLM social media accounts in March by changing the passwords. . . .

(Melina Abdullah was born Melina Rachel Reimann. She is half-white. Her grandfather was a Marxist from Germany. Just sayin’ . . .)

Black Lives Matter has come under fiscal scrutiny since 2020, when the group received $90 million in donations amid protests following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.
The organization filed its first public IRS 990 tax form in 2022 and was criticized by some for buying a $6-million Studio City compound.

You have to admire the vagueness of that phrase “criticized by some,” couched in the passive voice. And the “compound” BLM bought in Studio City might more properly be called a mansion, but the Objective Journalists at the L.A. Times are trying to avoid the plain truth, i.e., when these alleged victims of oppression hit that $90 million jackpot, they went on a spending binge that would make a Saudi prince blush.

There were three kinds of people involved in BLM:

1. Cynical hustlers;
2. Dangerous criminals;
and
3. Gullible fools.

The hustlers got rich, the criminals engaged in a spree of vandalism, arson and looting that wreaked billions of dollars in damage, and the gullible fools sent money to BLM to encourage these riots. Excuse me for not sympathizing with the plaintiffs suing Shalomyah Bowers, but where is the evidence that they are better people than he is? Does anyone really think that Melina Abdullah would have been more scrupulous in her financial dealings if she had been in charge of that $90 million?

By the way, the alleged $10 million ripoff by Bowers is just the tip of the massive corrupt iceberg at BLM:

Patrisse Cullors, the former executive director and co-founder of Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, paid a company owned by Damon Turner $969,459 for “live production, design and media,” according to the group’s latest filings with the IRS. Turner’s for-profit company, which sells $145 sweatshirts on its website and solicits donations for “the movement,” received the second-highest payout the group made in fiscal year 2020, which covers July 1, 2020, to June 30, 2021.
A rapper and artist, Turner is the father of Cullors’ young son, and runs a Los Angeles-based entertainment and clothing company called Trap Heals LLC. Turner has been on the receiving end of Cullors’ largesse in the past. In 2019, his company took in $63,500 from Reform LA Jails, a state political action committee controlled by Cullors, to work for criminal justice reform. . . .
The organization also doled out $840,993 to Cullors Protection LLC, a company owned by Patrisse Cullors’ eldest brother, Paul, and set up in July 2020, according to California state records. The cash was doled out for “professional security services,” according to the filings. The Post was unable to establish how much security experience, if any, Paul had before setting up his company. Paul is listed as head of security for Cullors’ personal property and BLMGNF’s $6 million LA headquarters, according to reports.

So, between her baby daddy and her brother, Cullors handed out at least $1.8 million to her family members, and who knows what other corrupt dealings would be unearthed by a thorough investigation of BLM’s finances? But the IRS and the Justice Department are run by Democrats, who certainly are not going to “utilize the criminal legal system which is propped up by white supremacy” to hold these grifters accountable.

The whole thing was a scam from the very beginning.

UPDATE: Oh, I missed this delicious irony:

The lead organizer of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, Dr. Melina Abdullah, accused Joe Biden of capitalizing of the movement’s efforts to defund law enforcement.
Abdullah said Biden “capitalized on our efforts to defund the police, and then tried to condemn the words at the same time,” in an Instagram video from [November 2020]. . . .
“We want to be very clear that as we happily usher out the Trump regime, we will not accept liberal white supremacy in the White House in the form of Joe Biden,” Abdullah said.

Yeah, good luck with your lawsuit, ma’am.




 

‘A Coven of Sexual Predators’

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Well, at least they weren’t Catholic priests:

Multiple cheerleading coaches in South Carolina — including a coach who recently killed himself — sexually abused at least six boys and girls and provided them with drugs and alcohol, a federal lawsuit alleges.
A “coven of sexual predators” surrounded Rockstar Cheer of Greenville for more than a decade, according to one of the lawyers for the alleged victims.
Attorney Bakari Sellers contends that what happened is a result of the same kind of institutional failure seen in the case of Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor who is serving a minimum of 40 years in prison after admitting that he molested some of the nation’s top gymnasts for years.
The lawsuit was filed Thursday by four girls and two boys who said they were abused by Scott Foster and others affiliated with Rockstar gyms. It suggests there could be up to 100 more survivors of the abuse.
“Scott Foster and his allies did their best to intimidate and isolate their targets, making these young people feel alone and somehow responsible. Well, they’re not alone anymore,” attorney Jessica Fickling said in a statement announcing the suit.
Foster, 49, was found dead in his car at a state park on Aug. 22. He shot himself in the head, the Greenville County Coroner’s Office ruled.
“He knew this was going to be a moment when the light was going to be shined on what I think will turn out to be a coven of sexual predators surrounding Rockstar,” said attorney James Bannister.
A number of people either knew Foster was abusing his cheer students and ignored it or did not have rules and procedures in place to stop the abuse, the lawsuit says.
Foster and other coaches not named in the lawsuit had sex with cheer students, sent and asked for explicit photos over social media, gave them alcohol and marijuana at their homes and in hotel rooms at cheer competitions and warned them to not tell anyone about it, according to the lawsuit.
“We have video of Scott Foster on Snapchat with beer bongs drinking with his underage cheerleaders,” Sellers said at a news conference this week.
The suit also names Varsity Brands, which runs cheerleading competitions; the U.S. All Star Federation, which is an organizing and governing body for competitive cheerleading across the country; Bain Capital, which bought Varsity in 2018, and others.
State and federal police are investigating Foster’s Rockstar Cheer and other cheerleading outlets, seizing computers, cellphones and other evidence, Bannister said.

Jeffrey Epstein could not be reached for comment.




 

Another Loser With a ‘Manifesto’

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Say hello to Ethan Miller, 20, of Bend, Oregon, and while you’re at it, go ahead and say good-bye, because he died of a self-inflicted gunshot after shooting up a Safeway supermarket Sunday. He shot four people, two of whom died, after posting a 56-page “manifesto.” Miller ranted about “the government, COVID lockdowns, technology, and women, [and] said in the rambling, oddly punctuated screed that he had an insatiable compulsion to kill”:

“I can’t wait to just send a Bullet into someone’s Brain,” Miller wrote in the first entry, on July 29. “This is going to be the Bloodiest and Most Gruesome Massacre in the History of Massacres! I want Blood, Guts, Brain Matter, and Pieces of Skull & Flesh to Paint the Walls and Floors. Then I wanna End my Life Here in the Most Violent Way Possible. By Eating the Barrel of My Shotgun then Blowing my Head Off & Evacuating my Brain with Buckshot.”

Two dead and two wounded? Definitely not “the Bloodiest and Most Gruesome Massacre in the History of Massacres,” and I’m sure we’ll get an explanation from police for why Miller’s massacre plan was even worse than his prose style. It appears he originally planned to attack a local high school on Sept. 8, but became impatient and attacked the Safeway instead. He was an unpopular creep in high school:

Akela Haverlandt, 21, lived a few houses away from Miller and attended Mountainview High with him. She graduated in 2019, a year before Miller did, but the two had a number of classes together, she said in a phone interview from Florida, where she now resides.
“He would get in tons and tons of fights at school,” Haverlandt told The Daily Beast on Monday. “I think he had this sort of rage. I mean, he was just super aggressive.”
Miller “wasn’t really liked” by others, and didn’t have very many friends, according to Haverlandt.
“People thought he was weird, or rude, or just creepy toward the girls,” she said. “… He would always message me and my friends saying, like, you’re so pretty… Kind of like a weird type of harassment situation. And he would message us and bother the shit out of us.”
One of Miller’s few friends at Mountainview High was a varsity athlete that Haverlandt dated for three years, she said. The former jock, Keenan Harpole, was arrested and charged in April with murder in the shooting death of a 19-year-old woman at Portland State University, where he was matriculating.
When Haverlandt first read Miller’s manifesto on Sunday, which has now been taken offline, she said she found it so disturbing she couldn’t sleep all night. Still, Haverlandt said it came as little surprise that Miller, of all people, would be IDed as the shooter.
“To read [it] was super crazy, but also like, ‘Wow, makes sense,’” she continued. “I wouldn’t think of anybody else in my grade or in that school that… would do that. He was so recognized for being violent, and constantly fighting with kids, and just causing problems.”

There was “little surprise” he was the shooter, because he was “recognized for being violent,” and yet nobody warned anybody.




 

NFL Pre-Season Injury Report

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Rookie running back Brian Robinson Jr.

Professional football is a hard-hitting sport, and every NFL team has suffered its share of pre-season injuries this year. The Carolina Panthers lost quarterback Sam Darnold to an ankle injury in Friday’s game against the Buffalo Bills, New England Patriots rookie wide receiver Tyquan Thornton suffered a broken collarbone, the Los Angeles Rams lost their top draft pick, offensive lineman Logan Bruss, to a serious knee injury, and the Washington Commanders will start the season without rookie running back Brian Robinson Jr., because of gunshot wounds:

Washington Commanders rookie running back Brian Robinson Jr. says his “surgery went well” after he was shot Sunday in Washington, DC, in what police say may have been an attempted robbery or carjacking.
Robinson shared the news in a brief message on his Instagram stories on Monday, writing, “Thanks for the prayers! God is Great!”
Robinson suffered two gunshot wounds to his lower extremities and was taken to a local hospital, Metropolitan Police Department spokesperson Dustin Sternbeck said. The shooting happened in the 1000 block of H Street NE, police said. Two suspects fled the scene and officers recovered a firearm nearby, Sternbeck said.

Robinson was a workhorse for the Alabama Crimson Tide last season, rushing for 1,343 yards on 271 carries and adding 296 yards as a receiver, totaling 16 touchdowns. In the championship playoff semifinals against Cincinnati in the Cotton Bowl, Robinson racked up 204 yards rushing, winning the game MVP trophy. He was apparently going to eat Sunday afternoon at Crab Boss, near world-famous Ben’s Chili Bowl on H Street, when he was accosted by two not-very-bright teenagers. Advice for young hoodlums: If you’re going to rob somebody, a 6-foot-1, 220-pound professional athlete might not be the easiest target:

“What has been reported to us is that [the suspects] may be between 15 and 17 years of age,” [Police Chief Robert] Contee said.
Robinson, 23, had just exited a location in the 1000 block of H Street NE at about 5:30 p.m. Sunday when the two armed teens approached him and tried to rob him, the police chief said.
“Our victim in this case began to struggle with one of the suspects, was able to actually wrestle a firearm away from one of the suspects, and he was shot twice by the second suspect,” he said. . . .
The teens ran from the area — a busy strip with several restaurants — and jumped into a car, which Contee said had been stolen two days earlier. D.C. police believe they found that car in Prince George’s County, in cooperation with county police.
The teens had tried to take Robinson’s Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat, police said Sunday. The white luxury vehicle could be seen still parked on H Street later Sunday.

Brian Robinson worked hard to make it to the NFL, and if some punks think they’re going to steal his $90,000 sports car without a fight, they’ve got another think coming. But it’s a helluva sad day when an NFL player goes on injured reserve because of gunshot wounds.