[FOX] New York state Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher suggested this week that aggressive prosecution of theft of items like soap and toothpaste was wrongheaded, saying the "true crime is that there is such incredible wealth disparity in this city that there are people who can be thrown in jail simply for having a biological need."
Guy to the left sayin'
"Yeah, I'll use some soap, Honey"
#1
As a judge, I could see going lightly on, IF the person is caught grabbing a few simple basic food items to eat, is truly homeless, or a parent that has tried avenues of assistance/support and is on a long growing wait list.
Its the A-holes stealing $100's worth of Beauty Supplies, Liquor, TV's, power tools, $100+ sneakers, other re-sellable items. Those I'd slap with serious Jail time and a 2 years of weekend supervised community service on release.
Question why does the DC Swamp continue to send or spend $$ Billions overseas every week, given the growing number of US Citizens just trying to live day to day? and I not talking about baby mamas and SNAP bandits that have made a career out of public assistance. But the ones that got kicked in the A$$ due to no fault of their own.
#2
There are plenty of places that provide necessities to poor people. That is not the type of theft that is actually happening in cities. It’s organized shoplifting gangs that include an apparatus to distribute the stolen items. Not every shoplifter is part of a gang, but the people that are filling up carts with merchandise to steal are the problem whether they distribute through an organization or sell the items themselves. Also the people that line bags with foil or that stuff items into their coats are not down on their luck. They would likely make more money at a legitimate job, but their real paying job is the welfare system.
The Assemblywoman knows all this. She is mischarecterizing what is going on because she is dishonest.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
08/17/2026 9:49 Comments ||
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#3
Some how we had the same basic needs 40, 50, 100 years ago but never had the problem we have today. "Social" justice and bail reform however are concurrent with the increased level of shoplifting that require the removal of items to behind glass doors.
[CollegeFix] It turns out that a controversial University of Chicago professor arrested last year for alleged felony aggravated battery on a police officer is the sister of Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for a U.S. Senate seat in Michigan.
Eman Abdelhadi, an assistant professor focused on religion, gender, identity, and demography, is El-Sayed’s maternal half-sister, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
"A self-described ’Queer Muslim’ [Lesbians Aren't Killed as Often as Gays in Sharia countries] and ’community organizer’ who uses the pronouns ’she/they,’ she has been at the center of far-left protests on campus," the Beacon reported.
Abdelhadi, a signatory to an open letter pledging "solidarity" with the "Palestinian resistance" shortly after the October 7, 2023 slaughter of over a thousand Israelis by Hamas, she has been the focus of several College Fix reports over the last year.
In October, due to her aggressive actions at an anti-ICE protest, Abdelhadi was arrested and charged with two counts of aggravated battery, a felony, and two counts of obstructing the peace, a misdemeanor, according to information from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.
So Eman Abdelhadi, who is Abdul El-Sayed’s sister… wants to abolish the United States as a nation, do away with the economy and eradicate money completely.
Bill Maher: “A few weeks ago, a liberal Democrat named Melissa Chaudhry running for Congress in Seattle was asked, ‘Why, among the many liberal causes listed on her website, LGBT rights was conspicuously absent?’ Because she said, ‘a lot of Muslims do not feel that way,… pic.twitter.com/E00WpglSWl
[JTN /ht AOSHQ] Even with a Guest Appearance by Jack Smith(!)
The newly declassified investigation files also show that the FBI had initially tried to recruit the infamous Fang Fang as a source that could share information on Chinese influence operations targeting public officials in the United States
The FBI developed evidence that a Chinese woman with direct ties to that country’s intelligence service had potentially compromised a Democratic congressman from California with sex, foreign interns and illicit donations while she was being recruited to become a bureau informant a decade ago, according to bombshell memos that expose another threat to America’s political system from Beijing.
The files chronicling the relationship between Rep. Eric Swalwell and the Chinese national Fang Fang — also known by her English name Christine Fang — were declassified by President Donald Trump and released Monday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force as part of a broader effort to unmask foreign threats to U.S. political and election systems.
They show the FBI opened a predicated investigation, which is a formal law enforcement inquiry backed by a factual basis or allegation that indicates a crime or national security threat already exists.
Unlike unpredicated "assessments," a predicated investigation allows agents to use advanced and intrusive methods like electronic surveillance or informants.
The files provide significant new details about the long-rumored relationship between Fang and Swalwell, including that:
The FBI initially wanted to investigate the congressman for a bribery scheme in which he exchanged donations from Fang for her planting interns in his office, but eventually decided to narrow the case to seek criminal charges only against Fang for making illegal donations to the California Democrat through conduits.
Swalwell admitted to having sex with Fang, his staff placing Fang’s interns in Congress and not having a strong enough campaign finance system to detect the straw donations she allegedly passed through U.S.-citizen conduits.
The Justice Department declined to prosecute Fang despite strong evidence of the illicit donations after she fled the U.S. as the FBI began interviewing her associates and raided her home. The early steps in the investigation were overseen in part by controversial prosecutor Jack Smith, who would later pursue Donald Trump on criminal charges.
The FBI was recruiting Fang to be a confidential informant through an undercover agent, assigned her the code name Rusty Thumbs, planned to hire her through a cutout company and was still evaluating her suitability as a confidential human source when they discovered her alleged criminal behavior.
The FBI knew early on during the recruitment that Fang was tied to China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), Beijing’s notorious intelligence service. The bureau also identified her parents as MSS agents, knew she was raising money for California Democrats and was willing to use sex as a means of getting ahead in the world of U.S. politics.
Fang Fang’s efforts to influence U.S. politicians were first reported by Axios in 2020. According to the outlet’s comprehensive investigation, U.S. officials believed Fang sought to ingratiate herself with local politicians in the San Francisco Bay Area using campaign fundraising, networking, her charisma, and romantic or sexual relationships. Swalwell was identified as among the most significant targets of Fang.
Swalwell threatened to sue the FBI
Swalwell’s office told Axios at the time that he fully cooperated with the FBI and has reiterated that claim for years. "Rep. Swalwell, long ago, provided information about this person — whom he met more than eight years ago, and whom he hasn’t seen in nearly six years — to the FBI. To protect information that might be classified, he will not participate in your story," Swalwell’s office said in a statement. Swalwell’s interviews with FBI agents, made public as part of the tranche of documents related to the case made public by the White House, confirm the former congressman’s claims that he cooperated with the bureau’s investigation.
Earlier this year, Swalwell threatened to sue the FBI and asked the bureau not to release the files associated with the investigation. Swalwell’s lawyers made his case in a cease and desist letter sent to FBI Director Kash Patel in March.
"The Congressman has never been accused of wrongdoing in that matter and your attempt to release the file is a transparent attempt to smear him and undermine his campaign for Governor of California," attorneys Norm Eisen and Sean Hecker wrote. "Your actions threaten to expose you, others at the FBI, and the FBI itself to significant legal liability."
You can read the declassified Swalwell files below:
File
FBI 56D-SF-4662117 Packet - FINAL - REDACTED 8.14.26.pdf
File
FBI-Chronological 0342-SF-2754538 + 200D-SF-146143 Packet - FINAL REDACTED 8.14.26.pdf
FBI IDENTIFIES FANG AS "ILLEGAL SOURCE OF CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS"
The FBI probe targeting Swalwell and Fang was opened on March 17, 2014, and codenamed "Freshman Fifteen," according to a now-declassified "Interim Authority" memorandum, which was reviewed by FBI headquarters and the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section.
The FBI assessment, which later became a full-fledged investigation, centered on allegations that Swalwell awarded internships at his offices in exchange for campaign contributions. The FBI identified Fang "Christine" Fang, a Chinese national, as the alleged facilitator of this exchange and alleged she employed conduits to route illegal donations.
"Investigation has revealed Fang ’Christine’ Fang, a Chinese foreign national residing in the United States, is the facilitator of a scheme to trade access to Swalwell and internships in his congressional office in return for campaign contributions [...]" the memo reads. The FBI specifically gathered evidence that Fang "used conduits to conceal herself as a prohibited Foreign National source," for illegal campaign contributions "at least twice in 2013 and at least two more times in 2014."
The agents found that the 2013 conduits "trace to Fang herself," making them an "illegal source of campaign contributions."
The objectives of the probe were ultimately to "obtain sufficient evidence to indict and arrest Swalwell and Fang for violations of campaign finance laws and quid pro quo exchanges," the memo adds.
The FBI also caught Fang directly soliciting donations and promising to reimburse the contributor from her own funds, the memos state.
In March 2015, Fang contacted an individual who was also an FBI Confidential Human Source (CHS). She asked the CHS to attend a fundraising event for Swalwell and solicited a contribution.
The FBI agents on the case authored a memo on March 9, 2015 requesting approval for the CHS to "make a bona fide campaign contribution" in order to further the probe. That request was apparently approved. In a "CHS reporting document" dated March 24, 2015, an FBI agent reported that "CHS provided Christine Fang with his credit card number for the $1,000 donation."
In 2014, Fang invited an individual with whom she had a financial relationship to a fundraiser for Swalwell, according to an FBI-302 from June 2015 memorializing an interview with the individual, whose name is redacted. The individual claimed Fang told him he "just needed to bring his checkbook and that FANG would reimburse him for his donation." The individual told investigators that he declined.
Swalwell admits to sexual relationship, placing interns, poor campaign finance checks
In a 2015 interview with the FBI, then-Congressman Swalwell told agents that he first met Fang in 2012, during his first congressional campaign. He admitted to the agents that he had "physical relations with Fang" on multiple occasions, according to the FBI summary. In a subsequent interview in 2016, Swalwell detailed one incident where Fang showed up at his door, after which Swalwell said they "hooked up," according to the interview summary.
In that second interview, Swalwell confirmed that Fang did refer interns to both his campaign and congressional offices. He noted that he and his staff treated Fang’s referrals as coming from the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Associations (APAPA), an important constituent group in his district.
"FANG was unique when it came to interns, because SWALWELL saw FANG as connected to the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Associations (APAPA) and [redacted]," the 2016 interview summary reads.
"SWALWELL viewed anyone that FANG put forward for an internship as coming from APAPA," it adds. "A significant portion of SWALWELL’s constituents are Chinese American and diversity is important."
Swalwell’s statements to the FBI also indicate that he had concerns about some staffers' adherence to campaign finance regulations. In his second interview with the FBI in 2016, Swalwell told agents about a 2014 Las Vegas fundraiser at the Wynn Casino where Swalwell said an individual who appeared to handle the campaign’s finances was told "he needed to get it together when it comes to filing paperwork and reporting requirements. Paperwork was not [redacted] strength," the FBI 302 memorializing the interview reads.
FBI DROPS SWALWELL FROM PROBE, FOCUSES ON FANG
In the early stages of the probe, the FBI team sent regular updates to the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section (PIN), which was then headed by the now-controversial prosecutor Jack Smith. Smith would later lead the Biden administration’s investigations and prosecutions of Trump. PIN oversees investigations and prosecutions that involve federal crimes like bribery of public officials and election crimes, including campaign finance crimes.
Eventually, however, after interviewing Swalwell on multiple occasions, the FBI determined that the investigation had found no violations of federal statutes by the congressman. As a result, the FBI eventually reclassified the probe on February 8, 2017, dropping Swalwell as a subject and focusing the investigation solely on Fang’s alleged violations of campaign finance laws.
In May, the FBI searched Fang’s house, according to an interview with one former intern in Swalwell’s campaign office. The individual, whose name has been redacted, is a Chinese national who was studying political science, presumably at a school in California, according to an FBI-302 form memorializing the interview. The intern told investigators that Fang said the FBI had interviewed her and searched her house.
According to a series of interviews with other colleagues, Fang fled the country and traveled to China around May 2015. One individual, described as an owner of a winery, "assisted Fang financially on several occasions" while she was in the United States, including co-signing leases, for a car and an apartment. This is the same individual Fang offered to reimburse for a donation to Swalwell.
The winery owner said that Fang approached him in late May to say she was returning to China because she had been questioned about the alleged political donation scheme. Oddly, she also reported to the individual that "her parents used to work for the Chinese government in a department akin to the US Secret Service."
After the FBI’s interviews of Fang and her close associates prompted the suspect to return to China, the FBI formally closed the investigation in 2017.
In a closing memo, the FBI noted that its agents found evidence Fang violated several criminal laws related to the illegal donations, including prohibited contributions in the name of another, in excess of statutory limits, and from a foreign national, falsifying and destroying records, engaging in a false statements scheme, engaging in a false writing scheme, international bulk cash smuggling, and acting as an unregistered foreign agent. The memo also noted that Fang had fled and was barred from re-entry by the State Department.
BEFORE PROBE, FBI ATTEMPTED TO RECRUIT FANG
Before the probe was opened into Fang’s alleged illegal activities, the FBI engaged in a months-long effort to recruit her using an undercover bureau employee and a fictitious company. The goal, according to contemporaneous memos, was to turn Fang into an informant on Chinese efforts to conduct influence operations targeting public officials, with whom Fang was close with several.
The Rusty Thumbs memos, identified by the codename agents gave Fang, show that the undercover employee met with her on several occasions to get to know her background and aimed to offer Fang a consulting job where she would use her Chinese connections to help the undercover employee’s fictitious business.
According to the memos, Fang was vague about her past in China, refused to elaborate on her parents’ Chinese government jobs and where she went to undergraduate school. However, she bragged about her political activities in the United States, including her work to connect donors to Swalwell’s congressional campaign, they show. Eventually, Fang agreed to work with the fictitious company. On June 14, 2013, she signed a contractor agreement for the consulting gig. That contract is contained in the FBI’s files.
[Just The News] Playboy founder and publisher Hugh Hefner reportedly informed the FBI several times in 2005 that a Playboy Playmate had been sexually trafficked and abused by the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and others, but the FBI didn’t investigate the claim for 15 years, according to court documents.
The Playboy Playmate was Audra Christiansen, who says that Hefner made multiple reports to the FBI, but that the agency didn’t follow up at the time, according to former FBI special agent Jennifer Coffindaffer.
"To wait 15 years to conduct this interview and to actually get down to the nitty gritty ... that is just too long to wait," Coffindaffer told "NewsNation Prime" on Saturday. "Somehow, this got back-burnered, and it should have never happened that it would take so long for this investigation to follow through."
Epstein reportedly committed suicide in a New York jail cell while awaiting court proceedings on federal charges of trafficking minors.
Christiansen’s story suggests that if the FBI had acted on Hefner’s calls, Epstein could have been held to account for his actions long before he was arrested and held awaiting trial. Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to solicitation in Florida for which he received a very lenient and highly criticized work-release jail sentence.
Coffindaffer, a law and justice contributor for NewsNation, said the FBI may have been swamped at that time with other priorities, such as post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism investigations and public corruption cases.
"That was the priority, and, unfortunately, human trafficking wasn’t. I’m not trying to provide some sort of excuse, because there is no excuse, but merely an explanation," she said.
#1
Coffindaffer, a law and justice contributor for NewsNation, said the FBI may have been swamped at that time with other priorities, such as post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism investigations and public corruption cases.
When those that played are the Elite in power and calling the shots. Then little is done to be enforced against the players, other continued deflecting masses attention.
What will be the Media Deflection this week to cover this latest leak of their Sexual and deadly activates?
BTW: How are the people & guards that were on duty when Epstein died doing now?
When those that played are the Elite and are in power calling the shots. Then little is done to enforce the law against those players, other than continued media deflection.
I wonder what deflection will be used this week to cover this latest in a growing list of leaks regarding their sexual, illegal and deadly activates?
BTW: Ever wonder, how those on duty when Epstein died are doing today?
(RB suggestion Edit key for comments not replied to already)
The two former guards, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, had their criminal charges **dismissed in January 2022** after completing a deferred prosecution agreement. As part of the deal, they admitted to falsifying records on the night of Jeffrey Epstein's death, completed **100 hours of community service**, and agreed to cooperate with the Department of Justice Inspector General's review.
While they avoided conviction, Tova Noel remained subject to potential congressional scrutiny; she was **subpoenaed to testify** before the House Oversight Committee in March 2026, though her testimony was postponed. There is no public information in the search context regarding their specific employment or activities as of August 2026.
#6
This reminds me of the BB video of Satan holding a staff meeting and telling the Dems to back off the evil.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
08/17/2026 9:31 Comments ||
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#7
Pretty bad when a pimp is reporting you!
Posted by: chris ||
08/17/2026 10:25 Comments ||
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#8
No surprise. If you fact check the question when Trump turned him in the media says he never did turn him in to the FBI. Its funny how the media is the largest protector of the Epstein, wonder what they have to hide?
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
08/17/2026 10:40 Comments ||
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JD Vance asked Barack Obama ONE hard question about the Obama Presidential Center — and the audience reaction said everything.
In this video, we break down the explosive town hall moment in Chicago where JD Vance confronted Obama with hard numbers:
• The $850 million cost of the Obama Presidential Center
• The controversial $10 lease for 19.3 acres of public land
• Taxpayer-funded infrastructure
• Rising rents and gentrification forcing local families out
• Real stories from South Side residents
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
