Jake Ponders 'n'at

NPR has this Associated Press story:

David Rush was arrested and charged with criminal theft of public money last week, according to federal court filings in Virginia, where he lives.

No, that's not the man's house; it's just a photo of a house in Northern Virginia.

From November to March, Rush requested and received a "significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses," according to an affidavit from an FBI agent investigating the case. ...

Federal officials searched his home on May 18 and seized more than 300 gold bars with an estimated value of more than $40 million, according to the affidavit. They also seized roughly $2 million in U.S. currency and some 35 luxury watches, many of them Rolexes. Rush was arrested the next day, the FBI said.

by Aram Roston

The company has previously won awards in state and local prison systems, but the new contract with the Bureau of Prisons marks the first time it is doing business with the federal government. On its website, the Texas-based company says that prisoners’ phone calls “represent the world’s largest concentration of criminally-minded activity – all on recorded lines, all legally accessible”.

Broidy is a longtime businessman, Republican backer and pro-Israel philanthropist. His 2020 guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, for secretly lobbying Trump’s White House on behalf of Chinese and Malaysian interests, came 11 years after a separate New York state criminal conviction for paying off state officials to get business for his investment company.

The Bureau of Prisons told the Guardian that LEO was one of six companies that responded to a solicitation for the contract. There is no evidence that Broidy’s past links to Trump helped earn his company the big contract. LEO’s statement said “Mr Broidy played no role in the competitive bidding process or its award”.

by Tom Dreisbach May 26, 2026

The Trump administration has mass-deleted information about prosecutions tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, including cases of defendants who assaulted police officers. The removals mark the latest phase of President Trump's effort to rewrite the history of the violent riot.

Justice Department news releases that detailed guilty pleas, jury verdicts and prison sentences abruptly disappeared from government websites last week.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

On social media, the Justice Department defended the move, saying, "We are proud to reverse the DOJ's weaponization under the Biden administration. We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes. This includes stripping DOJ's website of partisan propaganda."

A review by NPR found that the deleted material included information about some of the most serious assaults on law enforcement that occurred that day. NPR maintains the most complete database and visual archive of the Jan. 6 prosecutions.

Ah, the good life.

by Peter Beaumont

“If the U.S. government counterterrorism enterprise hadn’t jumped the shark before, it certainly has now,” said [Brian] Finucane. “The administration has repurposed the terrorism framing and applied it not only to alleged narcos but also perceived domestic political opponents — as we saw with the way the administration baselessly smeared Renee Good and Alex Pretti as ‘terrorists’ after gunning them down. The whole situation would be much funnier if the Trump administration wasn’t currently engaged in a lawless killing spree under the guise of ‘counterterrorism.’”

(Brian Finucane is a "senior adviser for the U.S. Program at the International Crisis Group.")

So if the Orange Menace doesn't like you disagreeing with him, you're a terrorist. Just typing that sentence could be considered terrorism! If you're reading this you're a terrorist, even if you don't agree. If you do agree, watch your back, 'cause you're definitely a terrorist.