'Joey Chestnut faces off against rival Takeru Kobayashi in the ultimate wiener-takes-all competition'

The man was subsequently arrested

Those claiming that the Hunter Biden conviction proves our justice system has not been weaponized and that Donald Trump and others who have been claiming that to be the case (The Heritage Foundation included) are mistaken couldn’t be more wrong. Examples abound of a weaponized—or if you prefer, politicized—justice system. Hunter’s Conviction in Perspective Biden was convicted of illegally possessing a gun as a drug user and lying on a federal form about his illegal drug usage.       This was a simple, cut-and-dry case from the start. The jury did the only rational thing based on the overwhelming evidence against him. Biden’s entire defense was an attempt at jury nullification because of his last name and where he was being tried; it didn’t work. Here’s the problem: As simple a case as this was, it was an epic struggle just to get it to trial. In a nutshell, he was convicted in spite of the warped, weaponized criminal justice system. Therein lies the tip of the (problematic) iceberg.  Refusing to Follow the Evidence Special Counsel David Weiss wanted to drop the whole prosecution against Biden but was shamed into proceeding because of the IRS whistleblowers who bravely came forward and testified under oath before Congress about the shenanigans and subterfuge going on within the Justice Department to tank the case.  Even after the whistleblowers testified, Weiss tried to get a federal judge to approve a sweetheart deal with Biden that amounted to a slap on the wrist for three serious felonies. That deal collapsed when the federal judge asked simple questions about the unorthodox deal that the prosecutors couldn’t answer to the judge’s satisfaction. The prosecution withdrew the deal, the defense objected, and the parties grudgingly took the case to trial a year later.  Garland’s Reluctance Attorney General Merrick Garland only appointed Weiss as special counsel after he was publicly backed into a corner over his refusal to do anything about Biden’s misdeeds. And he certainly picked the right lawyer to manipulate the investigation and prosecution to give as much cover and protection as possible to Biden and the Biden family, including President Joe Biden. Prosecutorial Incompetence or Political Cover? Weiss, who is supposed to be a cracker jack prosecutor, allowed the statute of limitations to run out on some of the most serious criminal tax charges that could have been asserted against Biden. Why? For some charges that were about to expire, Weiss got the defense to agree to a tolling agreement, which stopped the clock from expiring. But then he let the tolling agreement expire! What reasonable explanation is there for that?  And why did his team tip off Biden’s attorneys about places where potentially incriminating evidence was hidden in Delaware and in a storage unit, rather than executing search warrants as the investigating agents recommended? Competent prosecutors don’t allow statutes of limitation to run out; don’t voluntarily allow tolling agreements to lapse; and they certainly don’t tip off defense attorneys like Weiss did.  Those same investigators were told by Weiss’ team that they could not ask any questions of prospective witnesses about Joe Biden and other family members. Why not? Aren’t professional investigators supposed to follow the facts no matter where they lead? One very plausible explanation is that Weiss didn’t want to pursue any potential leads that could damage the president and reveal his involvement as the “Big Guy” in Hunter Biden’s nefarious, international, moneymaking schemes. That money, according to published reports, was funneled and secreted through a series of shell companies and involved, at least in part, selling Hunter Biden’s access to then-Vice President Joe Biden and other government officials to foreign companies, including companies connected with the communist government in China, an avowed enemy of the U.S.  Isn’t that the kind of evidence that a federal prosecutor should pursue with gusto? Of course, it is, but that didn’t happen. Why not? A Bridge Too FARA? Why didn’t Weiss and his team fully investigate or indict Hunter Biden for violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act, also known as FARA, 22 U.S.C. §611?  FARA is a criminal statute that requires agents acting on behalf of foreign principals (which include foreign governments and corporations) who lobby or otherwise engage in political activities for that principal (particularly lobbying U.S. federal officials), to register with the Justice Department. It is the statute that was used against former Trump 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort by the DOJ.  There is no evidence that Hunter Biden registered as a foreign agent under FARA. Just as the evidence was overwhelming in Hunter’s gun case, the evidence seems quite compelling that Hunter Biden, and potentially other people associated with his various companies, including family members, violated the FARA statute. There Are Examples Galore of Weaponization In contrast to the clear-cut and overwhelming evidence against Hunter Biden of a crime in the gun case, the New York City criminal charges against Trump were completely unprecedented and unorthodox, to say the least. The case was riddled with legal errors, and Trump has at least 10 meritorious issues on appeal to pursue. Keep in mind, the gravamen of the New York case was that Trump tried to suppress a story about an alleged liaison with a woman and using his personal money to do so before he was elected so that voters wouldn’t know the “real” Donald Trump.      The idea that it is a crime for a candidate to try to kill a bad story that might affect his electoral prospects is preposterous.  If that is a viable theory, then Franklin Roosevelt was a criminal when he hid the extent of his disability from the public and how gravely ill he was when he was running for a fourth term.  What about JFK? Was he a criminal for hiding his philandering as well as how disabled he was due to Addison’s disease?     Or Bill Clinton? When he was running for president, he denied that he had an affair with Gennifer Flowers, even though, after he was elected, he admitted in his deposition in the Paula Jones case that he had slept with Flowers. Didn’t he lie on purpose to hide that embarrassing fact from the public to get elected?    Clinton lied under oath (a clear crime) about the nature of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, too, but was never prosecuted for that lie after he left office. And when Clinton was impeached for lying under oath, these same liberals who now applaud the Trump conviction and who swear that the justice system is fair, said the Clinton impeachment was outrageous and that Clinton’s sex life and desire to hide his indiscretion from his wife was nobody’s business and should be off limits. Oh, but when Trump is accused of trying to hide a decade-old sexual indiscretion in 2016—without lying under oath—suddenly, that is a criminal matter and is fair game for a prosecutor to pursue. Now that’s a weaponized justice system!  Want some more examples of the double standard? How about the prosecutions by the Garland Justice Department, where the attorney general just claimed the department was not “politicizing its work” when prosecuting pro-life protesters under the FACE Act, but it hasn’t prosecuted people who firebomb pro-life pregnancy centers? Or national security and intelligence officials (and even Joe Biden) falsely claiming that the information on Hunter Biden’s laptop was likely Russian disinformation, even though the FBI had already verified its authenticity?  What about Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump for possession of classified information when Hillary Clinton got a pass for all of classified documents she had on a server sitting in her house, even though her lawyers destroyed all the evidence? And when Joe Biden also just got a get-out-of-jail free card from Garland for his unlawful possession of classified information in his garage and in a private office? Or how about how Hillary Clinton’s campaign got defensive briefings from the FBI about potential Russian interference in the 2016 election while Trump’s campaign was investigated by a special counsel for two long years in what turned out to be a complete hoax organized by the Clinton campaign? Adding insult to injury, during that investigation, the FBI abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—a powerful tool to investigate foreign agents who pose a severe threat to our national security—to electronically eavesdrop on people connected with the Trump campaign.    How about the fact that the Clinton campaign paid for a completely fictitious document—the infamous Steele Dossier—that was provided to federal agents for the purpose of inducing them to investigate Clinton’s political rival, Trump—a ploy that succeeded? Oh, and what about the fact that the payments for that dossier were labeled as “legal expenses?” Fine, it seems, when Clinton does this, but what about when Trump labels a payment that actually went to his lawyer as “legal expenses”? Throw the book at him! Put him in jail! All of this is Exhibit A in the case for a weaponized criminal justice system.  Hunter Biden, of course, is not running for president, while Donald Trump is. Moreover, the fact that Biden was convicted in a simple gun case where his guilt was proved beyond any doubt by a reluctant prosecutor before 12 jurors proves only one thing: Hunter Biden was guilty, and his paltry case got to trial despite the many efforts—some successful—by the Garland Justice Department to scuttle the entire investigation against him and to insulate any complicity by his father, who is Trump’s political rival for the presidency. The post Here’s Why Hunter’s Conviction Doesn’t Prove the Justice System Isn’t Weaponized appeared first on The Daily Signal.

About That Drought - It's Been Raining in Panama

A horrendous story of child rape was closed after a decades-long mystery when police concluded that a convicted child rapist had been murdered by the brother of one his victims. Grand Rapids Police Department Chief Eric Winstrom outlined the details of the murder of Tommie Lee Hill, who died after escaping police twice, at a media briefing on Monday at the Grand Rapids police headquarters. 'If it wasn’t 12-year-old Erma being a brave, amazing 12-year-old, there’s an excellent chance we could be talking double or triple the number of victims.' Hill raped numerous children in the 1960s, according to U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force Officer Joe Garrett. He was sentenced to prison in Terra Haute, Indiana, but that didn't stop his heinous child abuse because his wife would bring his stepdaughters to visit in him in prison, and he would rape them both in the prison yard in 1976 and 1977. Hill was convicted of the horrendous crimes after his stepdaughter Erma Shaw testified against him at the age of 12 years in 1978. She said he had raped her and impregnated her. Although Hill was convicted on Jan. 31, 1979, he was able to escape captivity and flee from justice. “He said he was thirsty and went into the women’s bathroom and then from there escaped authorities during sentencing. He had a getaway car and was gone for the foreseeable future,” Garrett explained. Law enforcement officials had one more opportunity to capture Hill when he was picked up in Mississippi. A paperwork error in that incident allowed him to escape for a second time. Hill had been on the run from justice for decades. The mystery solved In 2017, nearly four decades later, Hill's case was transferred from the FBI to the U.S. Marshall Service, where GRPD Officer Garrett renewed the search for the monster. Garrett said that he used Shaw's genealogy report in order to investigate Hill's whereabouts. A genealogy tip led him to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he knocked on door looking for information with the aid of social media and facial recognition technology. Finally, a tip led them to man who had committed several rapes. “We finally met one contact that gave us a timeline. This gentleman had changed his name to Abdualla Muhammad. He was a serial rapist,” Garrett said. He was able to obtain a photograph of Muhammad and showed them to Shaw, who confirmed that he was the same man who had raped her. Garrett said Hill had been dead for three decades after being killed by a family member of one of his victims. “He was shot in the back of the head, Dec. 4, 1983, by a man named Vernon Phipps after he touched Vernon’s sister,” he explained. "So he got his own level of street justice it seems." Hill had been fingerprinted the day after his death, but Garrett said that no record of the fingerprints populated. Despite the bizarre labyrinthine detour to justice, Garrett said that Hill could have committed far more heinous crimes had it not been for the bravery of a 12-year-old girl. “If it wasn’t 12-year-old Erma being a brave, amazing 12-year-old, there’s an excellent chance we could be talking double or triple the number of victims,” Winstrom said. 'I consider that to be very prophetic.' Shaw also spoke at the media briefing with Garrett and Winstrom. “The fact that Tommie had gotten away for so many years, on my heart, I knew that if he was still alive, he would still be victimizing children," she said. She went on to say that she had written a book about the incident to let people know there was a cash reward of $7k for anyone with information about Hill. And in that book she made a prescient observation about what eventually led police to find his new identity. “What is so unique is on page 75, I said ‘He can change his name, but what he can’t change his DNA.’ And what if he left the evidence many years ago before technology was created that would lead to the capture or the right information about his death?" she asked rhetorically. "So, I consider that to be very prophetic for me to have written that in 2018 as that was definitely part of the catalyst of why we are here today," Shaw concluded. Shaw was asked what she would have said to Hill if she had the chance. “When I was a child, I was weak,” she said. “You were able to take advantage of me. But I’m no longer a victim here. I am triumphant because I’ve overcome this. In many ways, my test, and that’s what you put me through, is my testimony.”Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

A top leader of the El Salvadorian MS-13 crime gang was arrested in Texas after being on the run for three years, according to a statement from the United States Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of New York.Federal prosecutors said that Cesar Humberto Lopez-Larios was arrested by the FBI and Homeland Security on Sunday when he arrived at the George Bush Airport in Houston, Texas. 'MS-13 has spilled so much blood and turned communities into war zones.'Lopez-Larios is allegedly a top leader of the violent criminal gang and was identified as one of the founding members of the "Twelve Apostles of the Devil," although the group has grown to 14 since its inception. "Lopez-Larios is charged with conspiracy to provide and conceal material support to terrorists, conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, conspiracy to finance terrorism, and narco-terrorism conspiracy," read the statement. He is accused of helping operate the criminal organization in El Salvador, Mexico, and the United States along with 13 other co-defendants who ordered acts of violence and murder. “The arrest of Lopez-Larios, who is one of the most senior leaders of MS-13 in the world, is a significant achievement for law enforcement and another crucial step in the dismantling of this international criminal enterprise,” read a statement from U.S. Attorney Breon Peace. “The defendant will soon face a reckoning in a federal courtroom on Long Island where, acting on his orders, MS-13 has spilled so much blood and turned communities into war zones.”Two gang associates remain at large, and officials are offering $20,000 for information leading to their arrest and conviction. MS-13, short for Mara Salvatrucha, was founded by immigrants from El Salvador in the 1980s in Los Angeles, California. Originally, the crime organization helped protect Salvadorian immigrants from other gangs in southern California, but it has spread to Latin America. "MS-13 has committed murders, attempted murders, assaults, kidnappings, drug trafficking, extortion of individuals and businesses, and obstruction of justice, and has sent dues and the proceeds of criminal activity by wire transfer to MS-13 leaders in El Salvador," said the U.S. Attorney's Office. MS-13 gang members have been convicted for horrendously evil crimes in the U.S. In one instance from April 2023, a man with links to the crime gang murdered an Uber Eats driver and dismembered him in Florida. "This is demonic. This individual is, what he did, was demonic," said Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco in a media briefing at the time. Former President Donald Trump has used the terror gang as an example to warn Americans about the threat of unvetted immigration at the southern border. Democrats have accused him of being motivated by racism and claim that he has exaggerated the threat in order to smear immigrants and spark up xenophobic hatred. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

NBC News Reporter Says January 6 Defendant Was Carrying the American Flag 'Alito Style'

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