He May Have Pulled The Trigger, But Charlie Kirk’s Suspected Killer Didn’t ‘Act Alone’
The alleged 'radicalized' assassin did not get to this moment on his own. Investigation details show a young man steeped in leftist dogma.The alleged 'radicalized' assassin did not get to this moment on his own. Investigation details show a young man steeped in leftist dogma.Epstein victims speak out! Will PREDATORS finally be revealed?
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has released over 33,000 pages of Epstein-related records that were provided by the U.S. Department of Justice — but Americans have been conditioned to wonder if this is real transparency or just D.C. political theater.
The same uncertainty applies to apparent meetings taking place behind closed doors that may be uncovering more information about the predators involved.
“Speaker Mike Johnson and Oversight Chairman James Comer actually quietly pulled something together that you almost never see. It’s been a rare bipartisan closed-door meeting,” BlazeTV host Jill Savage explains on “Blaze News: The Mandate.”
“They had six women who survived Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse, and for at least two of them, it was the first time that they had ever spoken out,” she says, noting that Johnson called the meeting both “heartbreaking” and “infuriating.”
According to Johnson, some of the women had been “groomed” for over 30 years.
“There’s so much that’s happening behind closed doors, and we still just don’t know. Are we going to get the transparency that we want, or is this more of the actual political theater?” Savage asks.
“There’s not much new, but what is new is that, you know, we’re told that these women have provided names of additional persons of interest, so that is interesting. Who are those people? Will that come out? Will we talk about that? I don’t know,” BlazeTV host Matthew Peterson says.
“We also have about a thousand pages ... that are new, flight logs from him flying out of the country. But what we don’t have so far is actual names, and that’s what most people want,” he continues.
Blaze media senior politics editor and D.C. correspondent Christopher Bedford isn’t too pleased with how long it’s taken for them to interview these women in the first place.
“It’s the kind of attention that Congress probably should have paid to this from the very beginning, which is bringing in victims, having closed-door meetings, which, you know, are more serious than open-door meetings,” Bedford says.
“Open-door meetings are theater for MSNBC, CNN, and Fox,” he continues. “They’re not real. There aren’t real questions. It’s just, ‘Let me see how many points I can get. Let me see how many points I can put on the board.’ … But closed-door sessions are much more serious.”
Want more from 'Blaze News: The Mandate'?
To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
Whistleblower alleges widespread manipulation of DC crime stats, fueling Oversight Committee probe
A whistleblower has reportedly come forward to confirm claims that the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., has been manipulating crime data, a scandal that has led the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to launch its own investigation.
In August, President Donald Trump initiated a federal surge on D.C. streets, citing high crime rates despite the MPD reporting a decline.
'The Committee has obtained credible, alarming information that MPD leadership falsified crime data to deceptively show a decline in violent crime in the District.'
While Trump faces backlash from critics for taking matters into his own hands, a scandal is unfolding regarding whether the police department manipulated the data to make it appear as though crime rates have been declining.
The D.C. Police Union has long accused the MPD of manipulating crime data. Following the union's allegations, the department placed Police Commander Michael Pulliam on paid administrative leave in May. The department is investigating the claims.
"When our members respond to the scene of a felony offense where there is a victim reporting that a felony occurred, inevitably there will be a lieutenant or a captain that will show up on that scene and direct those members to take a report for a lesser offense," Gregg Pemberton, the chairman of the D.C. Police Union, previously explained to WRC-TV.
"So instead of taking a report for a shooting or a stabbing or a carjacking, they will order that officer to take a report for a theft or an injured person to the hospital or a felony assault, which is not the same type of classification," Pemberton added.
RELATED: DC police commander under investigation for allegedly manipulating crime stats
The allegations of underreported crime trace back to 2020 when MPD Sergeant Charlotte Djossou shared internal documents from two cases with WUSA.
The first case involved an alleged assault in which a man was accused of slashing a woman's face and neck with an unknown object. While the alleged attack could have been classified as an "assault with a dangerous weapon," it was instead recorded as a "simple assault." The first offense is a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, while the second offense is a misdemeanor, carrying a maximum sentence of six months in jail.
The second case involved an incident where a man was accused of putting a knife to the neck of his partner. This also could have been classified as a felony assault; instead, it was reported as a misdemeanor "simple assault."
The cases were not prosecuted, according to WUSA.
"It's not OK to lie to the community about what's going on around them," Djossou told the news outlet during her 2020 interview. "That's what I saw happening."
"The commanders and the captains get promoted, and they get awards, when the crime stats are low," she remarked.
Djossou filed a lawsuit against the MPD, claiming that she had faced retaliation for disclosing the alleged underreporting to her supervisors. The lawsuit was settled in June.
Djossou stated that reporters have contacted her since, but she "can't talk to them until I retire" because she is "still a sergeant with the Metropolitan Police Department."
RELATED: Fact-check: Legacy media’s bogus defense of DC’s safe-streets narrative crumbles under scrutiny
The Oversight Committee announced on August 25 that it launched an investigation into allegations of manipulated crime stats, revealing that a whistleblower had come forward.
According to the whistleblower, the manipulation was "widespread," directed by "senior MPD officials," and potentially impacts all seven patrol districts.
The Oversight Committee sent a letter to the MPD the same day, requesting information to aid its investigation, including the unredacted settlement agreement between the MPD and Djossou.
The committee has requested transcribed interviews with Pulliam and the current MPD commanders for all seven districts.
"Building on President Trump's successful efforts to restore law and order in the District of Columbia, the House Oversight Committee is carrying out its constitutional duty to oversee D.C. affairs and ensure our nation's capital is safe for all Americans," Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) told Blaze News.
"The Committee has obtained credible, alarming information that MPD leadership falsified crime data to deceptively show a decline in violent crime in the District. MPD has a duty under federal law to accurately report crime to the public, and the Committee is now taking action to investigate these allegations and ensure the safety of D.C. residents and visitors is never compromised," Comer stated.
The MPD did not respond to a request for comment from WUSA.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Jasmine Crockett tries to kill story portraying her as 'brusque,' self-absorbed, and frustrating to her fellow Dems
A weekend profile piece on Democratic firebrand Jasmine Crockett revealed some unflattering details about the Texas representative.
On Sunday, the Atlantic published an article titled "A Democrat for the Trump Era," a piece about Crockett's "style of politics."
'Does that cause headaches for other members? 100 percent.'
The article, written by Elaine Godfrey, claimed that the representative's "coarser" technique is a matched response to the "insult-comedy-style attacks" that the Republican Party has "embraced under Trump," highlighting that multiple polls revealed Democratic voters are seeking "a fighter."
However, the Atlantic's piece did not fully portray Crockett positively, describing her at one point as "brusque" and effectively depicting her as a self-absorbed politician who continues to frustrate her Democratic colleagues.
According to the article, Crockett cited her social media following as a key reason she should have been selected by her fellow lawmakers to lead the House Oversight Committee.
"It's like, there's one clear person in the race that has the largest social-media following," Crockett told the Atlantic.
Crockett reportedly "complained" that Congressional Black Caucus members were planning on throwing their support behind a representative who was not a member.
RELATED: July shows strong signs of a coming and violent Democratic implosion
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) ultimately grabbed the top spot, beating out three other opponents by securing 33 votes. Crockett landed in last place with only six votes.
The representative also told the news outlet that a May clip of her speaking out about Immigration and Customs Enforcement during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing racked up over 797,000 views.
"I know this because she told me," Godfrey wrote.
The Atlantic stated that Crockett "monitors social-media engagement like a day trader checks her portfolio," noting that her phone's lock screen "is a headshot of herself."
During her campaign for the Oversight Committee position, Crockett reportedly joined a virtual meeting to pitch her candidacy, but afterward, she admitted to being unsure which committee she had just gotten off the call with.
"It was a virtual meeting of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, she'd explained to me beforehand. But then, after the call, she wasn't sure. 'CAPAC is the Asian caucus, right?' she asked. 'Yes,' the aide confirmed. 'That would've been bad,' Crockett said with a laugh," the Atlantic reported.
RELATED: Jasmine Crockett somehow makes the Texas flood tragedy all about herself
Senior staffers told the news outlet that other Democratic lawmakers view Crockett as "undisciplined but are reluctant to criticize her publicly."
One of the staffers told Godfrey that Crockett "likes to talk," adding that she can sometimes be "a loose cannon."
"Does that cause headaches for other members? 100 percent," the staffer remarked.
The Atlantic reported that several days before the article was scheduled to publish, Crockett called to pull the plug on the piece, claiming she was unhappy that the outlet had contacted other lawmakers.
"As for her colleagues, four days before this story was published, Crockett called me to express frustration that I had reached out to so many House members without telling her first. She was, she told me, 'shutting down the profile and revoking all permissions,'" the outlet wrote.
Crockett's office did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital or the New York Post.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Jill Biden’s ‘Work Husband’ Pleads The Fifth In Biden White House Cover-Up Probe
Anthony Bernal, former assistant to Biden and senior adviser to the first lady, reportedly dodged question after question in a Wednesday hearing.Neera Tanden and the Biden autopen: Probe progresses with help of Trump-centered poetic justice
Neera Tanden, a prominent fixture in the Democratic establishment who served as director of the Biden White House Domestic Policy Council, appeared before the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday for hours-long, closed-door testimony concerning Biden's cognitive decline while in office, its cover-up, and its alleged exploitation behind the scenes.
Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, Tanden, a former Hillary Clinton aide, stuck with the narrative that Biden was mentally fit during his tenure, her opening statement showed. She also suggested that the controversial use of the autopen — a machine used to affix Biden's signature to a myriad of documents, which critics suspect was abused by unelected individuals to advance radical agendas and to circumvent the will of the American people — was above-board.
Tanden's spin notwithstanding, congressional investigators appear to have made headway on Tuesday thanks in part to some poetic justice.
Shield withdrawn
Despite protest from President Donald Trump and warnings from numerous critics about setting an undesirable precedent, Biden waived executive privilege in October 2021 and directed the National Archives to furnish congressional partisans with Trump-era White House records pertaining to the Jan. 6 protest at the U.S. Capitol.
Biden's counsel noted in a letter that asserting executive privilege was "not in the best interests of the United States."
University of Virginia School of Law professor Saikrishna Prakash, among the legal scholars at the time who understood this move could come back to bite Biden and his advisers, told the Associated Press, "Every time a president does something controversial, it becomes a building block for future presidents."
Trump stacked on this building block this week in the interest of helping along the Oversight Committee's investigation into the autopen scandal.
RELATED: Oversight Project over target: Dems seethe as facade of autopen presidency comes crashing down
Gary Lawkowski, deputy counsel to Trump, noted in a letter Tuesday — which echoed the letter previously penned by Biden's counsel in 2021 — that in light of the "unique and extraordinary nature of the matters under investigation, President Trump has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the national interest, and therefore is not justified, with respect to particular subjects within the purview of the House Oversight Committee."
After highlighting Tanden's assessment of Biden's mental fitness and her knowledge of who exercised executive powers during his tenure, Lawkowski stressed:
The extraordinary events in this matter constitute exceptional circumstances warranting an accommodation to Congress. Evidence that aides to former President Biden concealed information regarding his fitness to exercise the powers of the President — and may have unconstitutionally exercised those powers themselves to aid in their concealment — implicates both Congress' constitutional and legislative powers.
Blaze News reached out to the White House for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Deprived of the shield of executive privilege and thus required to provide lawmakers with "unrestricted testimony," Tanden headed into what she later referred to as a "thorough process."
— (@)
Tanden's admission
The Oversight Project, a government watchdog, revealed in early March that Biden's signature on numerous pardons, executive orders, and other documents of national consequence was likely machine-generated.
The watchdog group also highlighted possible evidence that the autopen was used on some of these documents without Biden's knowledge and while he was absent.
Around the time of the Oversight Project's initial reporting on the autopen, former White House stenographer Mike McCormick told Blaze News that he felt Tanden was a person who could have potentially taken advantage of her position in the White House with regard to the autopen.
RELATED: Don’t let the Biden autopen scandal become just another lame hearing
McCormick, who neither worked in the White House with Biden after 2017 nor personally met Tanden, said she was often praised by the former president as a "super aggressive, very progressive" operative.
"She would be the person," the stenographer continued. "If she came into his White House knowing that [Biden] was debilitated, would she be the kind of person who would take advantage of that? I think she would."
While it remains unclear whether Tanden misused the autopen, McCormick was right on the money regarding her use of it.
After noting that she did not believe that the committee's investigation was a "worthy subject of oversight," Tanden told lawmakers in her opening statement that when serving as Biden's staff secretary, she was "responsible for handling the flow of documents to and from the president" and was "authorized to direct that autopen signatures be affixed to certain categories of documents."
McCormick was contacted for comment after news of the White House counsel's letter to Tanden broke. McCormick explained that Tanden's placement in the White House by Ron Klain, Biden's chief of staff from 2021 to 2023, was a grave mistake.
"[Klain's] decision to put Neera Tanden, an operative's operative, in charge the staff secretary's office is an extraordinary red flag that must be thoroughly investigated," McCormick told Blaze News.
'I think the American people want to know.'
When Ed Martin, the Department of Justice pardon attorney and director of the DOJ's Weaponization Working Group, announced his investigation last month into the questionable "autopen" pardons issued in the final days of the Biden White House, he indicated that a whistleblower had identified three people who controlled access to the autopen.
"They were making money off of it," Martin said.
Martin did not name the three suspects outright and made no reference to Tanden. He did, however, identify several "gatekeepers" who were "dominant characters in the White House," one of whom was Klain, whose office repeatedly hosted George Soros' son Alexander Soros and who returned to the fold last year amid Biden's debate preparation.
Tanden told congressional investigators on Tuesday that as of May 2023, she no longer had "any responsibilities in connection with the use of the autopen."
Tanden further suggested that she had "no experience in the White House that would provide any reason to question [Biden's] command as president," adding that "he was in charge."
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the Oversight Committee, told the Washington Examiner that Tanden was "very forthcoming" and that the committee now has "a lot better understanding of how things worked in the Biden administration."
Next steps
Prior to the transcribed interview on Tuesday, Comer told reporters that Tanden's was the "first of many interviews with people that we believe were involved in the autopen scandal in the Biden administration. We have a lot of questions to ask each witness."
The transcripts will be released once all of the interviews are completed.
"I think the American people want to know. I think there is a huge level of curiosity in the press corps with respect to who was actually calling the shots in the Biden administration," said Comer.
Former deputy assistant to President Donald Trump and former Idaho Solicitor General Theodore Wold underscored the gravity of the matter in his testimony last week before the the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, noting that the "U.S. Constitution vests the executive power in a single person: the president."
Whether signing an executive order, issuing a pardon, or taking any other action permitted him by the Constitution, "the president's signature is itself the protection of democratic principles. When the president signs, he communicates his assent and endorsement of the action he takes," said Wold.
Wold noted that in numerous instances where the autopen was used, there was no indication "that anyone other than staff were making these decisions."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Boston mayor drops $650,000 preparing for sanctuary city hearing: 'Stakes are high'
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu (D) admitted to spending $650,000 in legal fees to prepare her for last week's congressional oversight hearing on sanctuary city policies.
During the six-hour committee hearing on March 5, lawmakers grilled Wu, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston (D), Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D), and New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) over their cities' sanctuary laws.
'Do we need to spend $650,000 of taxpayer funds on a show trial hearing?'
A spokesperson for Wu's office confirmed that the city "expects to pay" up to $650,000 to a law firm for preparation sessions that included the mayor's senior advisers, Cabinet leaders, law department, and Boston Police. For an additional $8,500, Wu brought dozens of her staff members to Washington, D.C., the Boston Herald reported.
Wu's office noted that Cahill Gordon & Reindel, an external law firm, charged the city $950 per hour.
A spokesperson for the legal firm told Boston.com that it "is pleased to represent Mayor Michelle Wu and the city of Boston in this congressional investigation."
During a Tuesday interview on GBH's Boston Public Radio, Wu defended her decision amid scrutiny over the massive legal bill.
She called the committee's investigation "extremely serious."
"As much as it can seem like a sort of show or production when you're watching it, Congress has power, and people who are in the federal government have real power to enact consequences, whether that's on federal funding or whether that is to follow through with some of the threats around prosecution of individual people or the referral to the Department of Justice," Wu said.
"It is money that I very, very much wish we did not have to spend at all, and time from my staff and team that could have gone to much better, much more important things. But, the stakes are high," she stated. "We're still continuing with the document production that has been formally requested."
Wu vowed to continue providing the committee with the requested materials.
"When there was threats to put me in jail, to take away funding, I needed to make sure that I was doing everything possible to represent our city well, to represent the policies with complete accuracy, and having legal representation was a necessary part of that," Wu added.
Josh Kraft, a Democratic mayoral challenger, bashed Wu for spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on legal preparation.
He stated, "Mayor Wu said she's going to DC to defend the city, and I support this. My question is: do we need to spend $650,000 of taxpayer funds on a show trial hearing?"
Kraft told WCVB, "I understand the preparation, but in a time when the city is becoming more and more fiscally vulnerable, I think $650,000 in preparation is a lot of money. If it was me, I would've looked at other more cost-effective measures to prepare for the testimony in D.C., and in addition, I know 12 folks from city hall accompanied the mayor there. I would leave at least probably two-thirds or more back to be in city hall to be responsive to the citizens of Boston."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Today's top stories
www.theblaze.com