Deadly light rail stabbing in Charlotte grows political under national spotlight.
“National”? They needn’t worry, the New York Postreports,
Horror video of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska’s slaughter on Charlotte train is met with deafening silence from Dem leaders, media.
The Post reports,
But in the wake of the monstrous killing, which took place on Aug. 22, mainstream outlets and politicians have largely stayed silent.
Charlotte’s Dem mayor even thanked publications that chose to keep the video from the public.
I did a Google search on “Charlotte stabbing,” and other than the Post, Newsweek and right-leaning U.K. outlets (Daily Mail, Sun, and Telegraph) were shown with stories in the past 24 hours.
But Republicans are pouncing in the world of the Observer,
The fatal stabbing of a Ukrainian refugee at a South End light rail station in Charlotte is becoming politicized and has drawn national attention — including from Republicans — after the release of a graphic video.
The real outrage is not the unprovoked murder of a public-transit passenger, it’s that the wrong people are noticing. The Observer tells me that crime is down in the Queen City and the only problem is Republican agitation.
As for the accused, DeCarlos Brown, Jr.,
Brown has been arrested multiple times since 2011, according to court records. Charges have included felony larceny, robbery with a dangerous weapon, and communicating threats. Almost all charges were dropped, The Charlotte Obsever [sic] previously reported.
A strain of thought has gainedpopularityin progressive circles that’s fairly summarized by thispost on X: “If there’s a Nazi at the table and ten other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with eleven Nazis.” The principle is that some views are so abhorrent that failing to challenge them on any given occasion is tantamount to accepting them.
This line of thinking should raise an uncomfortable question for Israel bashers. What does it mean when a sitting member of Congress speaks at a conference attended by hundreds of terrorism sympathizers?
The question isn’t rhetorical. Michigan representative Rashida Tlaib appeared at the People’s Conference for Palestine, which took place over the last few days of August in Detroit. Despite its anodyne name, the event was no routine political gathering. My Manhattan Institute colleagueStu Smithhas documented the conference’s many shocking moments.
Richmond, California, mayor Eduardo Martinez set the tone by comparing Hamas, a U.S. designated terrorist organization, to a righteous child confronting a bully: “If Palestine were a schoolyard playground, I would be a Palestinian. And that part of me that couldn’t endure the abuse anymore would be Hamas.” Even before leading the October 7 atrocities and taking hostages (many of whom remain in captivity today), Hamas operated as a kleptocratic dictatorship. The organization has made life unbearable for ordinary Gazans by stealing aid, using resources to build terror infrastructure, and waging eternal war against Israel rather than governing.
Yet when Martinez alluded to Hamas’s violence against Israel by way of analogy, the conference crowd erupted in cheers. He wasn’t alone: Raja Abdulhaq, founder of the Islamic Jihad-linked Quds News Network, echoed the love for those who “push back against American hegemony” in the Middle East, “groups like Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Palestine.”
The applause was just as loud when moderators introduced Omar Assaf as a “freed political prisoner.” Assaf is allegedly a former member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine—until 1999 a U.S.-designated terrorist organization—and regularly criticizes the Palestinian Authority for being too conciliatory toward Israel, even as the PA continues its “pay-for-slay” program underwriting terrorism.
The crowd offered similar applause for Mumia Abu-Jamal, a convicted cop-killer who recorded a message from prison and was introduced as one of the movement’s great “teachers, guides, and reminders.”
Other speakers pushed boundaries further. Nidal Jboor, a Michigan physician and activist, called for Israeli, American, and European leaders to be “taken out” and “neutralized” for supporting Israel’s post-October 7 response.
A smiling Thaer Ahmad, another doctor, urged the crowd to look into the meaning of the word nidal to understand its “profound meanings and deep connection to [Palestine].” Follow his advice to “look up what nidal means later” and you will see that at one level it simply means “struggle,” but it also refers to the Abu Nidal Organization, a terrorist group responsible for hundreds of casualties, including the 1985 Rome and Vienna airport attacks where terrorists bombed and gunned down civilians at El Al ticket counters.
Sachin Peddada, a Ph.D. student at UMass–Amherst, summarized the conference’s sentiment: “We live in an evil country,” he said. “We have to destroy the idea of America in our heads, in our neighbors’ heads, in our comrades’ heads.” He encouraged criminal “resistance” against the American “empire,” calling for “action” like Palestine Action UK’s campaign against defense manufacturer Elbit. (The group is proscribed as a terrorist organization in the U.K.) Another unscrupulous activist even called on attendees to “intervene” in—that is, disrupt—American defense production supply chains.
One would expect anyone with pro-Western sympathies to avoid such blatant terrorist sympathizers. Politicians and activists have distanced themselves from far less controversial statements and movements. Even former Missouri representative Cori Bush decided not to attend this conference, apparently at the last minute.
Yet Congresswoman Tlaib not only failed to distance herself from the conference—she also amplified its message from the podium. “Every genocide enabler,” she thundered, “look at this room, mothef-----s. We ain’t going anywhere.” She received a standing ovation. “We are just growing and growing and growing.”
Who are “we”? At a conference where terrorist organizations, criminals, and revolutionary groups were celebrated, Tlaib didn’t merely attend; she explicitly identified herself as part of their movement, even as its spokespeople called for “taking out” Western leaders and supporting America’s sworn enemies.
Tlaib has made clear that she stands with these anti-Western radicals. Who else sits at her table? She and her Democratic colleagues should explain.
Tal Fortgang is a legal policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
"If we hadn’t won this election we would have all been vaxxed to death and censored so no one could hear our dying screams"
- Mike Benz on "X"
That reckoning you’ve heard about lo these many years? It’s here now. We’re in it.
You just can’t see all the moving parts, and if you did, you might not understand how or where they are moving, and what they are fixing to do next. Aside from certain US senators playing their pre-scripted mad scenes for the cameras, a disquieting quiet blankets the swamp like a miasma.
It feels like a long, still moment before some shaking of the earth. Everyone senses it and the guilty must feel it most keenly.
That’s why they are laying low and keeping their traps shut.
Every criminal defense lawyer inside the beltway is burning the midnight oil (and racking up the billable hours, ka-ching). Meanwhile, where are their clients? No longer peddling alibis on MSNBC (MSNOW), at least. I doubt that John Brennan is even in the country. My guess would be he’s cooling his heels in Abu Dhabi, where the extradition protocols with the USA remain comfortably squishy to his advantage. (He reportedly became a Muslim while running the CIA station in Riyadh between 1996-99, just in time for 9-11. . . hmmmm. . . .)
Hillary Clinton has been keeping her pie-hole closed for weeks now while rattling around that big house in Chappaqua, NY, like a BB in a packing crate. Is anyone counting the wine-boxes coming and going from the place? It must be maddening to be HRC — but that new extra edge of prosecution terror would just be larding the lily, considering what Vlad Putin learned about her mental state way back in 2016: deeply unstable. . .diabetic. . . on tranqs. . . often plastered. . . bursts of rage. . . .
Comey and Clapper? No more cute pranks on the beach for Big Jim, 86 on the menacing messages in seashells and putting out Taylor Swift fan-boy Tik-toks. Was that some attempt to not be taken seriously? Like you’re some kind of overgrown, harmless child?
James Clapper, of course, would be voted most likely to flip on his compadres, if such a canvass were taken on Coup island. He was the first to publicly announce his lawyering-up in the Russia collusion affair. He never expected it would come to this, this ordeal of interrogation. . . his “good soldier” self plopped ignominiously in the witness chair. . . the odor of his own fear. . . the proffer (just tell us what really happened). . . the US attorneys appearing to leer at him, his house mortgaged to pay the attorney’s fees. . . what’s a poor boy to do. . . ?
Adam Schiff has gone radio silent. A miracle! Alas, the autopen pardon granted for his J-6 Committee doings apparently does not apply to matters such as mortgage fraud and wire fraud. He realizes with chills and sighs of despair that this ain’t no foolin’ around. People go to jail for these things. . . gulp! His attorney absolutely forbids any televised appeals to his fan-base, as if the glamorati of Rodeo Drive could do anything to stop what’s coming. Too bad Ed Buck and his magic checkbook are no longer around.
Even the seeming untouchables, Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Lisa Monaco, Norm Eisen, Mary McCord, Anrew Weissmann, Marc Elias must be listening hard for shoes to drop. They thought they had it made in the shade after 2020. They had the USA on a string, they thought. Home free. The trouble with the smarty-pants way of life is sometimes you out-smart yourself and your pants fall down. But all they can do in this late hour is induce a bunch of federal judges — recently imported from countries where justice means casting goat neckbones across the dusty floor of a mud hut — to gum up every executive action coming out of the White House with a poorly-argued TRO. They might as well be on a U-haul box truck throwing furniture off the back at a fleet of pursuing cop cars.
Mr. Trump is having sport with them now. Their crimes spanning the decade past are being bundled into one big coup case against the country, a color revolution on their own citizens and against “the democracy” that they never stop pretending to tout. If I am perceiving all this correctly, the days and weeks ahead will be as consequential a train of events as ever rolled down the tracks into Union Station, DC.
Looks like it will start this week with Robert F Kennedy, Jr., announcing the suspected culprits in the great autism question. That will rock the pharma industry to the very hairs on its roots. They have been trying since the 1980s to bury that idea that autism comes from anything they do. Next, the nation will have to ask: why did it take Mr. Kennedy only seven months to arrive at a plausible answer to the decades’ long autism mystery? Maybe because it was not such a difficult mystery to solve. Just that nobody wanted to collate and assemble the information. The answer was too ugly. So, they buried it on-purpose.
That set of revelations will segue soon enough into the reveal of facts, data, studies retrieved from the thought-to-be hidden files of the CDC, FDA, and NIH as to just how damaging the Covid-19 vaccinations really were. . . which will lead to answers as to how the various agencies under HHS (and likely the Pentagon, too) conspired to materialize the Covid virus in the first place, and that means the names and titles of actual persons whop did it: the deputy secretaries of this and that, higher-ups, folks in dark NGOs. . . and all that will combine with new information about the supremely messed-up election of 2020, and so on down the long line of the many related, serial coup operations.
It’s one thing to reveal all that information, with its criminal overtone. And it’s another thing to get around to prosecuting it. I doubt you will be disappointed, though. Like I said. We’re in it. It’s happening. It’s roiling under the surface.
Venezuela is preparing for armed struggle in the scenario it comes under attack by the United States, or its sovereignty is threatened, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro warned soon after President Trump escalated the Pentagon's force posture in the southern Caribbean.
"If Venezuela were attacked in any way, it would move into a stage of planned and organized armed struggle by all its people against aggression, whether local, regional, or national, in defense of peace, territorial integrity, sovereignty, and our people," Maduro had said Friday. On Sunday, tens of thousands of more troops were mobilized.
President Trump soon after warned that if Venezuelan jets keep buzzing US warships in regional waters, then they would be shot out of the sky (if deemed a threat to American vessels).
Maduro has confirmed initiation of militia training to involve citizens in the country's national defense efforts - a 'popular mobilization' of sorts. Interestingly, in a televised statement he featured a visual diagram, outlining the current levels of operational readiness within the nation's defense forces, stating that currently a "yellow phase" of integrated defense is active.
The Maduro government on Sunday called up additional troops to deploy in border regions amid the US deployments off Venezuela's coast:
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has ordered more troops in the Guajira region of Zulia state and the Paraguana peninsula in Falcon, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino said, adding that the area constituted "a drug trafficking route".
The military's presence on the island of Nueva Esparta and in the states of Sucre and Delta Amacuro will also be expanded. Some 25,000 troops are set to be deployed, up from the 10,000 which have been deployed in the states of Zulia and Tachira that border Colombia, he said.
Some interesting scenes coming from the Venezuelan coast:
TERROR: Maduro is forcing Venezuelan fisherman to accompany TdA Fentanyl traffickers along their routes serving as human shields. Maduro’s Bolivarian Militia is a violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. pic.twitter.com/PKnXDoduiX
And so it seems Maduro is making an effort to convince Washington that he has the narco-trafficking situation in and around Venezuela fully under control.
Importantly, Trump has rejected accusations that the US is plotting regime change in Caracas. "We're not talking about that," he told reporters Friday when asked about this scenario.
The US has justified its recent actions, which included last week's military strike on an allegedly drug-laden boat that killed eleven people, by saying that Maduro is in league with the cartels.
President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that European leaders would return to the United States in the coming days to discuss the administration’s ongoing efforts to end the Russia–Ukraine War.
Speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews after a quick visit to New York, Trump said that leaders would be coming to the White House “individually” to meet with him. He didn’t provide specifics on who would be visiting but suggested that the meetings would be held across Monday and Tuesday.
Discussing the ongoing Russia–Ukrainian conflict, Trump said he was “not happy” about the current state of negotiations, Russia, or “anything having to do with that war.”
“I’m not happy. I’m not happy about the whole situation,” he said. He said that the two Eastern European nations were losing, “between Ukraine and Russia, 7,000 soldiers every single week. It’s such a horrible waste of humanity. So no, I am not thrilled with what’s happening.”
Pursuing an end to the conflict—which began with Russia’s invasion of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, and escalated following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine’s mainland in February 2022—was a pillar of Trump’s 2024 campaign.
Speaking to reporters, Trump expressed confidence that the conflict “is going to get settled.”
Since his first term, Trump has sought to negotiate peaceful resolutions to international conflicts. He admitted that he had thought the Eastern European conflict “would have been maybe the easiest one to settle of all. But with war, you never know what you’re getting.”
Nevertheless, Trump reiterated, “I believe we’re going to get it settled.”
Across August, Trump has escalated his efforts to bring an end to the conflict.
On Aug. 16, Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska to discuss an end to the conflict.
Though Putin announced some broad areas of agreement between the two superpowers, no formal agreement was reached.
“There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” Trump said at the time. He added, “We didn’t get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there.”
The two leaders did not mention a cease-fire or other key elements of negotiations, such as security guarantees for Ukraine or further U.S. sanctions on Russia and its supporters.
When later asked what key points the two sides disagreed on, Trump declined to say.
A few days later, Trump hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a contingent of other European leaders at the White House.
At the time, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine was ready to bring an end to the war and wanted a face-to-face meeting with Putin.
He said such meetings are the only way to move forward with the “complicated and painful issues” the discussions will entail.
On an autumn day in 2011,Jeffrey Epstein stepped into JPMorgan Chase’s headquarters at 270 Park Avenue and rode the elevator to the executive floors where the bank’s leaders, including Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, kept their offices. Epstein, who had pleaded guilty to a sex crime in Florida three years earlier, had a message for the bank’s top lawyer, Stephen Cutler:he had “turned over a new leaf,” he said, and powerful friends could vouch for him.“Go talk to Bill Gates about me.”
Key takeaways:
Epstein was connected to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, not just former PM Ehud Barak
He wired 'hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to Russian banks and young Eastern European women'
Accounts for young women were opened without in-person verification (in one case a SSN could not be confirmed)
Jes Staley was constantly running interference for Epstein vs. JPM compliance concerns
At Jes Staley’s urging, compliance spoke with Epstein’s lawyer Ken Starr, who insisted "no crimes" had been committed.
Epstein had accounts at JPM for at least 134 (!) entities
JPMorgan funded/serviced pieces tied to Ghislaine Maxwell (millions, incl. $7.4M for a Sikorsky helicopter) and helped finance MC2, the modeling agency linked to Jean-Luc Brunel.
For more than a decade, JPMorgan Chase processed over $1 billion in transactions for Jeffrey Epstein - including hundreds of millions routed to Russian banks and payments to young Eastern European women, opened at least 134 accounts tied to him and his associates, and even helped move millions to Ghislaine Maxwell - including $7.4 million for a Sikorsky helicopter - while anti–money laundering staff repeatedly flagged large cash withdrawals and wire patterns aligned with known trafficking indicators, according to a new report from the NY Times following a six-year investigation that involved "some 13,000 pages" of legal and financial records. Funny how they sat on this until now - maybe it's related to this, but do read on.
Inside JPMorgan, the debate over whether to keep Epstein as a client had been simmering for years. Epstein was lucrative. His accounts held more than $200 million and generated millions in fees, and he opened doors to wealthy prospects and world leaders. He had helped midwife the bank’s 2004 purchase of Highbridge Capital Management, earning a $15 million payday. Senior bankers credited him with introductions to figures such as Sergey Brin and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sure enough, just as more bank employees were losing patience with Epstein in 2011, he began dangling more goodies. That March, to the pleasant surprise of JPMorgan’s investment bankers in Israel, they were granted an audience with Netanyahu. The bankers informed Staley, who forwarded their email to Epstein with a one-word message: “Thanks.” (The bank spokesman said JPMorgan “neither needed nor sought Epstein’s help for meetings with any government leaders.”) And around that same time, Epstein presented an opportunity that, like the Highbridge deal years earlier, had the potential to be transformative.
This one involved Bill Gates, who had only recently entered Epstein’s orbit. In an apparent effort to ingratiate — and further entangle — himself with his bankers and the Microsoft co-founder, Epstein pitched Erdoes and Staley on creating an enormous investment and charitable fund with something like $100 billion in assets. -NY Times
Compliance leaders urged the bank to "exit" the felon after anti–money laundering personnel flagged a yearslong pattern of large cash withdrawals and constant wires that, in hindsight, matched known indicators of trafficking and other illicit conduct.; instead, top executives overrode objections at least four times, allowed accounts for young women to be opened with scant verification, and paid Epstein directly - the aforementioned $15 million tied to a hedge-fund deal and $9 million in a settlement. Even in 2011, as concerns mounted, internal notes referenced decisions "pending Dimon review," while Jes Staley, a senior executive and Epstein confidant, traded sexually suggestive messages (“Say hi to Snow White”) and shared confidential bank information with the client.
Exact dollar figures and destinations across years:
$1.7M in cash (2004–05) and earlier $175K cash (2003).
$7.4M wired to buy Maxwell’s Sikorsky helicopter.
$50M credit line approved in 2010 even post-plea; ~$212M then at the bank (about half his net worth).
$176M moved to Deutsche Bank after the 2013 exit.
JPM of course regrets everything - calling their relationship with Epstein "a mistake and in hindsight we regret it, but we did not help him commit his heinous crimes," Joseph Evangelisti, a JPMorgan spokesman, said in a statement. "We would never have continued to do business with him if we believed he was engaged in an ongoing sex trafficking operation." The bank has placed much of the blame on Jes Staley, then a rising executive and close confidant of Epstein. "We now know that trust was misplaced," Evangelisti said.
A Client Too Valuable To Lose
Epstein’s ties to JPMorgan reached back to the late 1990s, when then–Chief Executive Sandy Warner met him at 60 Wall Street and urged a lieutenant, Mr. Staley, to do the same. Epstein soon became one of the private bank’s top revenue generators. A 2003 internal report estimated his net worth at $300 million and attributed more than $8 million in fees to him that year.
Even then, there were warning signs. In 2003 alone, he withdrew more than $175,000 in cash. Bank employees recognized the need to report large cash transactions to federal monitors but failed to treat the withdrawals as a signal of deeper risk. In the years that followed, compliance staff repeatedly expressed alarm over Epstein’s wires, cash activity and requests to open accounts for young women with minimal verification. One internal note, describing large transfers to an 18-year-old totaling "about 450,000 since opening," read: “Sugar Daddy!”
Still, influence carried weight. Epstein was prized not only for his personal balances but for the business he brought in. Through his network, which included hedge fund founder Glenn Dubin and a constellation of billionaires and officials, he introduced potential clients and helped shape the bank’s strategy. The Highbridge deal was heralded internally as “probably the most important transaction” of Mr. Staley’s career.
Internal Dissent, Repeatedly Overruled
From 2005 to 2011, the bank’s leaders revisited the Epstein question several times. In 2006, after a Florida indictment alleging solicitation from a teenage girl, JPMorgan convened a team to decide whether to exit the client. The bank swiftly jettisoned another customer, the actor Wesley Snipes, when he faced tax charges. It did not do the same with Epstein. Instead, it imposed a narrow restriction - not to “proactively solicit” new investments from him - while continuing to lend and move his money.
Within the bank, even casual exchanges betrayed an awareness of Epstein’s proclivities. "So painful to read," Mary Erdoes, now head of asset and wealth management, emailed upon seeing news of the indictment. Mr. Staley replied that he had met Epstein the prior evening and that Epstein "adamantly denies" involvement with minors. At other moments, the tone turned flippant. Describing a Hamptons fundraiser, Mr. Staley wrote that the age gaps among couples "would have fit in well with Jeffrey," to which Ms. Erdoes replied that people were "laughing about Jeffrey."
By 2008, after Epstein pleaded guilty and registered as a sex offender, pressure mounted to end the relationship. “No one wants him,” one banker wrote. Mr. Cutler, the general counsel, would later say he viewed Epstein as a reputational threat - “This is not an honorable person in any way. He should not be a client.” Yet he did not insist on expulsion, and the matter was not escalated to Mr. Dimon. Epstein remained.
In early 2011, William Langford, head of compliance and a former Treasury official, urged that Epstein be “exited.” He warned that ultrawealthy clients could warp judgment and that patterns in Epstein’s accounts resembled those of trafficking networks.
The bank’s head of compliance, William Langford, was especially alarmed. “No patience for this,” he emailed a colleague. Langford had joined JPMorgan in 2006 after years of policing financial crimes for the Treasury Department. He knew — and had warned colleagues — that companies can be criminally charged for money laundering if they willfully ignored such activities by their clients. He saw ultrawealthy customers as a particular blind spot; all the time that private bankers spent wining and dining these lucrative clients could cloud judgments about their trustworthiness. It looked like that was what was happening with Epstein. One of Langford’s achievements at JPMorgan was the creation of a task force devoted to combating human trafficking. The group noted in a presentation that frequent large cash withdrawals and wire transfers — exactly what employees were seeing in Epstein’s accounts — were totems of such illicit activity.
...
Langford said in a deposition that he started off by quickly explaining the human-trafficking initiative. In that context, how could the bank justify working with someone who had pleaded guilty to a sex crime and was now under investigation for sex trafficking? -NY Times
Mr. Staley pushed back, relaying Epstein’s insistence that allegations would be overturned. Days later, the bank agreed to keep the accounts open.
Money, Access and a Second Chance
Even as internal skepticism grew, Epstein stayed in touch with his former private banker, Justin Nelson, and continued to surface in meetings involving Leon Black, a billionaire client. Staley remained close to Epstein for years, exchanging personal messages and visiting his residences, even as he ascended to run Barclays. In 2019, after Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges and later died by suicide in a Manhattan jail, investigators, journalists and regulators turned anew to his banking relationships.
JPMorgan launched an internal review, code-named Project Jeep, and filed belated suspicious activity reports flagging about 4,700 Epstein transactions totaling more than $1.1 billion. The bank settled civil claims with Epstein’s victims for $290 million and with the U.S. Virgin Islands for $75 million, without admitting wrongdoing. No executives lost their jobs. Mr. Dimon, who testified that he did not recall knowing about Epstein before 2019, remains one of the most powerful figures in American finance.
To Bridgette Carr, a law professor and anti-trafficking expert retained by the Virgin Islands, the case poses a larger question about incentives. JPMorgan, she concluded, enabled Epstein’s crimes. “I am deeply worried here that the ultimate message to other financial institutions is that they can keep serving traffickers,” she said. “It’s still profitable to do that, given the lack of substantial consequences.”
Precipio, Inc., a specialty cancer diagnostics company, announced the termination of its At-The-Market (ATM) instrument with Alliance Global Partners as of September 2, 2025. This decision reflects the company’s improved financial position, marked by the elimination of negative cash flow and increased cash balance, indicating a reduced reliance on such capital-raising tools and a commitment to enhancing shareholder value.
