Upcoming shows
Real News

NOW ON AIR
Now On Air

Real News with David Knight

9:00 am 12:00 pm



Maga First News

Upcoming Shows

Join The MAGA Network on Discord

0 0

ACLU Concerned About ICE's Use of License-Plate Database

Immigration agents have been utilizing a massive, privately run database of license plates from vehicles nationwide to track down people who may be in the country illegally, according to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and released Wednesday, The Washington Post reported.

The database contains billions of records on the details of vehicle locations recorded by traffic cameras and scanners used in parking lots and toll roads to monitor the movement of vehicles.

Although police have long used these devices to track criminal suspects and catch traffic offenders, the ACLU said the records they obtained from the Department of Homeland Security via a Freedom of Information Act request reveal an expanding network of surveillance that seems to have few legal limitations.

"The ACLU's grave concerns about the civil liberties risks of license plate readers take on greater urgency as this surveillance information fuels ICE's deportation machine," said Northern California ACLU staff attorney Vasudha Talla in a blog post.

ICE has been able to access driver-location information gathered from businesses in the nation's 50 largest metropolitan areas, the ACLU records show, and thousands of ICE employees have access to the database.

Critics say innocent people are thus subjected to an improper level of government surveillance, because the scanners record license-plate data on every passing car, and not just those owned by suspects.

Making matters worse for civil liberties, police can access years of data without getting permission from a judge, while, for example law enforcement agencies must get warrants to legally use GPs-tracking devices.

Source: NewsMax America

0 0

Trump shakes hands with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un at start of Hanoi summit

President Trump shook hands with North Korea leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam's capital on Wednesday to kick off what is to be the two leaders second summit meeting as part of a deal to end North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

"Kim Jong Un and I will try very hard to work something out on Denuclearization & then making North Korea an Economic Powerhouse," Trump tweeted earlier Wednesday.

Trump has signaled some flexibility on his previous demands that North Korea denuclearize before it sees some relief from crushing U.S. and international sanctions. The two leaders are slated to have what the White House has called a "social dinner" ahead of more formal meetings on Thursday.

TRUMP BLASTS 'DA NANG DICK'

Trump has already met with Vietnamese President Nguyen Phu Trong for the signing of several commercial trade deals affecting the airline industries of their two countries.

GET THE FOX NEWS APP

It was a carnival-like atmosphere on many streets in Hanoi, with vendors hawking T-shirts and other items commemorating the meeting.

Amid the fanfare and flags, however, there was a heavy security presence, underscoring the seriousness of the issues at stake when the leaders finally get down to talking.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

0 0

Nikki Haley Group Takes Aim at Socialism, China Trade Practices

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley on Monday launched a new group whose aim is to promote public policies "that strengthen America's economy, culture, and national security."

Haley, a rising star in the Republican Party and a potential presidential candidate in 2024, left her post two months ago. She recently told The Washington Post she has not decided whether she will run then, but her activities suggest otherwise.

Her group, "Stand for America," endorses "taking a more aggressive approach to China's unfair trade practices" and holding "China's feet to the fire to help get rid of North Korea's nuclear weapons," according to its website.

Haley also in her statement said U.S. "prosperity is challenged by socialist schemes of higher taxes, job-destroying regulations, government-run healthcare, and unsecure borders."

The group will also focus on term limits for members of Congress.

Haley, a former South Carolina governor, has spent nearly 14 years in political office. She also told the Post she is working on a book covering the past five years in public office.

"It will not be a tell-all," a Haley adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the Post. "She is not going to attack people in the administration; it's not a score-settling thing. But she says things the way she thinks them. It'll be her voice."

Source: NewsMax America

0 0

Senate votes against Trump border emergency

In a stunning rebuke, a dozen defecting Republicans joined Senate Democrats to block the national emergency that President Donald Trump declared so he could build his border wall with Mexico. The rejection capped a week of confrontation with the White House as both parties in Congress strained to exert their power in new ways.

The 59-41 tally Thursday, following the Senate's vote a day earlier to end U.S. involvement in the war in Yemen, promised to force Trump into the first vetoes of his presidency. Trump had warned against both actions. Moments after Thursday's vote, the president tweeted a single word of warning: "VETO!"

Two years into the Trump era, a defecting dozen Republicans, pushed along by Democrats, showed a willingness to take that political risk. Twelve GOP senators, including the party's 2012 presidential nominee, Mitt Romney of Utah, joined the dissent over the emergency declaration order that would enable the president to seize for the wall billions of dollars Congress intended elsewhere.

"The Senate's waking up a little bit to our responsibilities," said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who said the chamber had become "a little lazy" as an equal branch of government. "I think the value of these last few weeks is to remind the Senate of our constitutional place."

Many senators said the vote was not necessarily a rejection of the president or the wall, but protections against future presidents -- namely a Democrat who might want to declare an emergency on climate change, gun control or any number of other issues.

"This is constitutional question, it's a question about the balance of power that is core to our constitution," Romney said. "This is not about the president," he added. "The president can certainly express his views as he has and individual senators can express theirs."

Thursday's vote was the first direct challenge to the 1976 National Emergencies Act, just as Wednesday's on Yemen was the first time Congress invoked the decades-old War Powers Act to try to rein in a president. Seven Republicans joined Democrats in halting U.S. backing for the Saudi Arabia-led coalition in the aftermath of the kingdom's role in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Even though there's not likely to be enough numbers to override a veto, the votes nevertheless sent a message from Capitol Hill.

"Today's votes cap a week of something the American people haven't seen enough of in the last two years," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, "both parties in the United States Congress standing up to Donald Trump."

The result is a role-reversal for Republicans who have been reluctant to take on Trump, bracing against his high-profile tweets and public attacks of reprimand. But now they are facing challenges from voters — in some states where senators face stiff elections -- who are expecting more from Congress.

Centrist Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins, who's among those most vulnerable in 2020, said she's sure the president "will not be happy with my vote. But I'm a United States senator and I feel my job is to stand up for the Constitution, so let the chips fall where they may."

Trump's grip on the party, though, remains strong and the White House made it clear that Republicans resisting Trump could face political consequences. Ahead of the voting, Trump framed the issue as with-him-or-against-him on border security, a powerful argument with many.

"A vote for today's resolution by Republican Senators is a vote for Nancy Pelosi, Crime, and the Open Border Democrats!" Trump tweeted. "Don't vote with Pelosi!" he said in another, referring to the speaker of the House.

A White House official said Trump won't forget when senators who oppose him want him to attend fundraisers or provide other help. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on internal deliberations.

"I don't think anybody's sending the president a message," said Jim Risch of Idaho, the GOP chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He blamed the media for "reaching" to view every action "through the prism of the presidency, and that isn't necessarily the way it works here."

Trump brought on the challenge months ago when he all but dared Congress not to give him the $5.7 billion he was demanding to build the U.S.-Mexico wall or risk a federal government shutdown.

Congress declined and the result was the longest shutdown in U.S. history. Against the advice of GOP leaders, Trump invoked the national emergency declaration last month, allowing him to try to tap some $3.6 billion for the wall by shuffling money from military projects, and that drew outrage from many lawmakers. Trump had campaigned for president promising Mexico would pay for the wall.

The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse, and lawmakers seethed as they worried about losing money for military projects that had already been approved for bases at home and abroad. The Democratic-led House swiftly voted to terminate Trump's order.

Senate Republicans spent weeks trying to avoid this outcome, up until the night before the vote, in a script that was familiar -- up until the gavel.

The most promising was an effort from Sen. Mike Lee of Utah for legislation that would impose limits on future presidential actions. That would give senators some solace as they allowed Trump's order to stand. GOP senators huddled with Vice President Mike Pence and seemed optimistic the White House might support their plan. Then Trump called Lee in the middle of a private Republican lunch meeting and, in the time it took the senator to step out of the room to take the call, it was over. Trump was opposed.

Lee and other senators were peeling off against the president. In a last-ditch effort the night before the vote, Lindsey Graham and other senators dashed to the White House to try once again for Trump's support to broker an alternative plan. Trump was frustrated by their arrival. They mostly failed.

Trump did tweet ahead of the vote that he would be willing to consider legislation to adjust the 1976 law at some later time.

That was enough of a signal for GOP Sen. Thom Tillis, who faces a potentially tough re-election in North Carolina, to flip his vote, according to a person unauthorized to discuss the private thinking and granted anonymity.

Tillis had been one of the first senators to say he would oppose the declaration, writing in a Washington Post opinion column last month that there'd be "no intellectual honesty" in backing Trump after his repeated objections about executive overreach by President Barack Obama. But on Thursday, he did.

Trump's public support in that tweet also helped bring on board several other Republicans, including Ted Cruz and Ben Sasse, who had been part of the private huddles, the person said.

For some, said Sen. John Thune, the GOP whip, "the emergency declaration was just a bridge too far."

___

Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Jill Colvin, Padmananda Rama and Andrew Taylor in Washington and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed.

Source: Fox News National

0 0

US construction spending up strong 1 percent in January

U.S. construction spending rose a solid 1 percent in February, led by a strong gain in spending on government projects, which hit an all-time high.

The Commerce Department says the February increase followed an even larger 2.5 percent gain in January and a slight 0.2 percent rise in December. The gains pushed total construction to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.32 trillion, the highest level since May.

Residential construction was up 0.7 percent. Government construction jumped 3.8 percent to $303 billion, the highest level on record.

Weakness in home building has been a drag on overall growth, but analysts believe housing construction should rebound this year, helped by lower mortgage rates following the signal by the Federal Reserve that it plans to hold rates steady this year.

Source: Fox News National

0 0

Portugal says Finnish airspace violation was a mistake

The Portuguese Air Force says one of its surveillance planes "inadvertently" strayed into Finland's airspace without permission.

A statement says the P-3 Orion aircraft based in Poland was on a NATO mission over the Baltic Sea on Monday when it made a turn and unintentionally went about 500 meters (yards) into Finnish airspace.

The statement published late Tuesday says the explanation has been sent to Finnish authorities, who initially reported the violation and were investigating what happened.

Portugal is a member of NATO, but Finland is not. The two countries have in the past taken part in joint military exercises.

Source: Fox News World

0 0

Border Patrol official: Caravan-size influx of migrants arriving every week in Rio Grande Valley

A caravan-size influx of migrants is flooding across the border each week in just a single sector, a top Border Patrol official told lawmakers Tuesday -- the latest indicator of the growing migration crisis on the southern border.

“Much media attention has focused on caravans coming across from Central America,” Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Patrol Agent Rodolfo Karisch said at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing. “But the fact is that RGV is receiving caravan-equivalent numbers every seven days.”

TRUMP VISITS SOUTHERN BORDER AMID GROWING CRISIS, DECLARING THAT 'OUR COUNTRY IS FULL'

Karisch said his sector has apprehended people from 50 different countries, including China, Bangladesh, Turkey, Egypt and Romania.

“People are traveling across hemispheres to attempt to illegally enter the U.S., using the same pathways as the Central Americans,” he said.

Karisch noted that Border Patrol has apprehended more families illegally crossing the border in the first five months of fiscal 2019 than during all of fiscal 2018. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehended more than 76,000 migrants across the border in February and said it was on track to apprehend more than 100,000 in March.

In the Rio Grande Valley alone, Karisch said that at current pace, they would have more than 260,000 apprehensions in his sector alone by the end of fiscal 2019. There were 162,000 in RGV last year. He also said that his agents apprehend, on average, 1,000 people a day.

Karisch’s testimony is the latest warning from officials that there is an escalating crisis at the border. President Trump, who declared a national emergency at the border in February, traveled to the border on Friday and repeated his warnings that he is prepared to close the border if Congress and Mexico do not act to close loopholes and stop migrant flows -- though he has indicated such an action is not imminent.

Last week, Obama-era Border Patrol Chief Mark Morgan told senators on Thursday that the U.S. is “experiencing a crisis at the southern border at a magnitude never seen in modern times.”

Karisch on Tuesday gave a similarly dour assessment, saying that in 30 years as an agent, “I have never witnessed the conditions we are currently facing on the southwest border.”

OBAMA'S BORDER CHIEF WARNS CONGRESS: IMMIGRATION CRISIS 'AT A MAGNITUDE NEVER SEEN IN MODERN TIMES'

“This is not a manufactured crisis created by those of us who live and work in the border area. Border Patrol continues to apprehend record numbers of people who purposely violate U.S. immigration laws, we are taken advantage of by gaps in our legal frameworks and that undermine the rule of laws.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Karisch’s remarks come as Trump is shaking up leadership at the Department of Homeland Security, apparently to take a tougher stance on illegal immigration. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned on Sunday and last week Trump abruptly pulled the nomination of Ron Vitiello to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), saying he wanted to go “in a tougher direction.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Trump recently told White House adviser Stephen Miller, one of the White House’s hardliners on immigration, that “you’re in charge” of immigration policy.

Source: Fox News Politics

NOW ON AIR
Now On Air

Real News with David Knight

9:00 am 12:00 pm



FILE PHOTO: Cases of Pepsi are shown for sale at a store in Carlsbad
FILE PHOTO: Cases of Pepsi are shown for sale at a store in Carlsbad, California, U.S., April 22, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Amit Dave and Mayank Bhardwaj

AHMEDABAD/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – PepsiCo Inc has sued four Indian farmers for cultivating a potato variety that the snack food and drinks maker claims infringes its patent, the company and the growers said on Friday.

Pepsi has sued the farmers for cultivating the FC5 potato variety, exclusively grown for its popular Lay’s potato chips. The FC5 variety has a lower moisture content required to make snacks such as potato chips.

PepsiCo is seeking more than 10 million rupees ($142,840.82) each for alleged patent infringement.

The farmers grow potatoes in the western state of Gujarat, a leading producer of India’s most consumed vegetable.

“We have been growing potatoes for a long time and we didn’t face this problem ever, as we’ve mostly been using the seeds saved from one harvest to plant the next year’s crop,” said Bipin Patel, one of the four farmers sued by Pepsi.

Patel did not say how he came by the PepsiCo variety.

A court in Ahmedabad, the business hub of Gujarat, on Friday agreed to hear the case on June 12, said Anand Yagnik, the lawyer for the farmers.

“In this instance, we took judicial recourse against people who were illegally dealing in our registered variety,” A PepsiCo India spokesman said. “This was done to protect our rights and safeguard the larger interest of farmers that are engaged with us and who are using and benefiting from seeds of our registered variety.”

PepsiCo, which set up its first potato chips plant in India in 1989, supplies the FC5 potato variety to a group of farmers who in turn sell their produce to the company at a fixed price.

The All India Kisan Sabha, or All India Farmers’ Forum, has asked the Indian government to protect the farmers.

The farmers’ forum has also called for a boycott of PepsiCo’s Lay’s chips and the company’s other products.

The Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

PepsiCo is the second major U.S. company in India to face issues over patent infringement.

Stung by a long-standing intellectual property dispute, seed maker Monsanto, which is now owned by German drugmaker Bayer AG, withdrew from some businesses in India over a cotton-seed dispute with farmers, Reuters reported in 2017. (reut.rs/2ncBknn)

(Reporting by Amit Dave in AHMEDABAD and Mayank Bhardwaj in NEW DELHI; Editing by Martin Howell and Louise Heavens)

Source: OANN

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
FILE PHOTO: The Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM) logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the NYSE in New York
FILE PHOTO: The Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM) logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., May 3, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By P.J. Huffstutter and Shradha Singh

CHICAGO/BENGALURU (Reuters) – Archer Daniels Midland Co said on Friday it was considering spinning off its ethanol business after slim biofuel margins and Midwestern floods slammed the U.S. grains merchant’s profit, which tumbled 41 percent in the first quarter.

ADM said it was creating an ethanol subsidiary, which will include dry mills in Columbus, Nebraska; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and Peoria, Illinois.

The ethanol subsidiary will report as an independent segment, the company said, allowing options “which may include, but are not limited to, a potential spin-off of the business to existing ADM shareholders.”

Results were hit by the “bomb cyclone” blizzards that devastated the Midwest and Great Plains this year, causing massive flooding across Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri, washing out rail lines and wreaking havoc in the moving and processing of corn, soybeans and wheat. One-sixth of U.S. ethanol production was halted.

In March, ADM warned Wall Street that flooding and severe winter weather in the U.S. Midwest would reduce its first-quarter operating profit by $50 million to $60 million.

“The first quarter proved more challenging than initially expected,” said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Juan Luciano, with earnings down in its starches, sweeteners and bioproducts unit. Luciano said impacts of the severe weather ultimately “were on the high side of our initial estimates”.

Ongoing problems in the ethanol industry added to the problems and “limited margins and opportunities” for ADM, Luciano said.

The ethanol industry has been in the midst of a historic downswing due to the U.S.-China trade war, excess domestic supply and weak margins.

ADM, which had been an ethanol pioneer, signaled to Wall Street in 2016 that it was hunting for options and considering sales of its U.S. dry ethanol mills. Luciano told Reuters this year that offers ADM had received for the mills were too low.

In addition, ADM said it planned to repurpose its corn wet mill in Marshall, Minnesota, to produce higher volumes of food and industrial-grade starches.

Other major traders are alsy trying to distance themselves from struggling ethanol businesses. Louis Dreyfus Company BV spun off its Brazilian sugar and ethanol business Biosev in 2013. Rival Bunge sold its sugar book and has sought a buyer for its Brazilian mills since 2013.

ADM, which makes money trading, processing and transporting crops, such as corn, soybeans and wheat, has been looking to strengthen its core business. Last month it said it would seek voluntary early retirements of some North American employees and cut jobs as part of a restructuring effort.

The company expects to lower 2019 capital spending by 10 percent to between $800 million and $900 million.

Net earnings attributable to the company fell to $233 million, or 41 cents per share, in the three months ended March 31, from $393 million, or 70 cents per share, a year earlier.

Revenue fell to $15.30 billion from $15.53 billion. On an adjusted basis, the company earned 46 cents per share, while analysts on average had estimated 60 cents, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

(Reporting by Shradha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta, Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)

Source: OANN

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
The Slack app logo is seen on a smartphone in this illustration
FILE PHOTO: The Slack app logo is seen on a smartphone in this picture illustration taken September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Slack Technologies Inc, operator of the popular workplace instant-messaging app, reported a loss of $140.7 million in the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2019, the company said on Friday in a regulatory filing ahead of its planned public market debut.

The company said its daily active users exceeded 10 million in the three months ended Jan. 31, 2019.

Slack expects to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “SK”, it said.

The San Francisco-based company is seeking to go public via a direct listing, making it the second big technology company after Spotify Technology SA to bypass the traditional route of listing shares through an initial public offering.

A direct listing is a cheaper way of becoming a public company as the process requires fewer investment banks and therefore lower fees.

In a direct listing, however, a company does not sell any new shares to raise money. Instead, it gives existing shareholders the opportunity to cash out.

Slack is the latest in a string of high-profile technology companies looking to go public this year. Lyft Inc, Pinterest and Zoom Video Communications have completed IPOs so far in 2019.

The company is hoping for a valuation of more than $10 billion in the listing, Reuters had previously reported. Some early investors and employees have been selling the stock at around $28, valuing the company close to $17 billion, Kelly Rodriques, CEO of Forge, a brokerage company, told CNBC on Thursday.

Slack set a placeholder amount of $100 million to indicate the size of the IPO. The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.

Its competitors include Microsoft Teams, a free chat add-on for Microsoft’s Office365 users.

(Reporting By Aparajita Saxena and Joshua Franklin in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler and Anil D’Silva)

Source: OANN

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
FILE PHOTO: Candidate Zelenskiy reacts following the announcement of an exit poll in Ukraine's presidential election in Kiev
FILE PHOTO: Ukrainian presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy reacts following the announcement of the first exit poll in a presidential election at his campaign headquarters in Kiev, Ukraine April 21, 2019. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Matthias Williams

KIEV (Reuters) – Russia’s decision to make it easier for residents of rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine to obtain a Russian passport is meant to test Ukraine’s new leader and the West should not recognize the documents, Lithuania’s foreign minister said on Friday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the order on facilitating passports on Wednesday, three days after comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a political novice, won a landslide victory in Ukraine’s presidential election.

Linas Linkevicius, whose own country also has strained relations with Moscow, told Reuters in an interview that the West should consider imposing new sanctions on Russia.

“This is a blatant violation of international law. And basically also a kind of test to the new (Ukrainian) leadership, which is also a usual game,” Linkevicius said.

“The least we can do (is) we shouldn’t recognize these passports. How to do that technically, it’s another issue to discuss. Also (we need) to look at additional sanctions,” said Linkevicius, whose small Baltic nation is a member of NATO and the European Union.

Western nations imposed sanctions on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and its support for armed separatists battling Kiev’s forces in eastern Ukraine. Some 13,000 people have been killed in that conflict despite a notional ceasefire signed in Minsk in 2015.

Linkevicius, who in Kiev on Friday became the first minister of an EU country since Ukraine’s election to meet President-elect Zelenskiy, said they had discussed the passport issue.

Zelenskiy also raised the possibility of resetting the Minsk ceasefire agreement without giving any concessions to Russia, Linkevicius said.

“DANGEROUS CANCER” OF GRAFT

The minister urged Zelenskiy to deliver on his electoral promise of tackling corruption, which he described as the “most dangerous cancer” facing Ukraine, which hopes one day to join the EU.

Last month, Lithuania’s own relations with Russia came under renewed strain after a Vilnius court found former Soviet defense minister Dmitry Yazov, in absentia, guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in a 1991 crackdown against Lithuania’s pro-independence movement.

Russia branded the verdict “extremely unfriendly and essentially provocative” and opened a probe into the judges involved.

Linkevicius accused Russia of seeking to politicize the judicial process by trying to take revenge on the judges, adding: “This is lamentable.”

(Editing by Gareth Jones)

Source: OANN

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!

A Cook County judge recently called out embattled State Attorney Kim Foxx for upholding a double standard by prosecuting a woman for filing a false police report — but dropping similar charges against embattled “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett.

Foxx has faced intense criticism over her office’s decision to drop a 16-count indictment against Smollett, just weeks after bringing the charges against the high-profile TV star. Foxx’s deal with Smollett, which did not require him to admit guilt, drew ire from the public, the city’s top cop and the former mayor who called it a “whitewash of justice.”

JUSSIE SMOLLETT CHICAGO PROSECUTOR KIM FOXX CHIDED BY NATIONAL ATTORNEYS GROUPS AFTER JUSSIE SMOLLETT CHARGES DROPPED 

Cook County Judge Marc Martin, who was presiding over an unrelated case, chastised Foxx and her office for creating a situation where anyone charged with filing a false report would expect the same leniency her office afforded Smollett.

Candace Clark, 21, is facing one felony count of making a false report. Prosecutors accused her of giving a friend access to her bank account and then telling authorities the money had been stolen. She denies the charges and claims she’s the victim of Foxx’s double standard — something the judge weighed in on.

“Well, Ms. Clark is not a movie star, she doesn’t have a high-price lawyer, although, her lawyer’s very good. And this smells, big time,” Martin said to prosecutors during a recent hearing, Fox 32 reported. “I didn’t create this mess, your office created this mess. And your explanation is unsatisfactory to this court. She’s being treated differently.”

The judge continued, “There’s no publicity on this case. She doesn’t have Mark Geragos as her lawyer or Ron Safer or Judge Brown. It’s not right. And (if) I proceed in this matter, you’re just digging yourselves further in a hole. (If the) press gets a hold of this, it’ll be in a newspaper. Why is Ms. Clark being treated differently than Mr. Smollett?”

Foxx recused herself from the Smollett case in February but continued to oversee the investigation through text messages with her assistant Joseph Magats.

The text messages revealed Foxx called Smollett a “washed up celeb who lied to cops.” They also show she cautioned Magats about throwing the book at Smollett.

“Sooo……I’m recused, but when people accuse us of overcharging cases…16 counts on a class 4 becomes exhibit A,” Foxx wrote to Magats on March 8.

“Pedophile with 4 victims 10 counts. Washed up celeb who lied to cops, 16. On a case eligible for deferred prosecution I think it’s indicative of something we should be looking at generally. Just because we can charge something doesn’t mean we should,” she added, referring to the case of R&B singer R. Kelly, who was indicted on 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in connection with four women, three of whom were underage.

KIM FOXX’S CHIEF ETHICS OFFICER RESIGNS FOLLOWING SMOLLETT CONTROVERSY

President Trump said last month he asked for a federal review of Foxx’s decision to drop the charges against Smollett. He also called the actor “an absolute embarrassment to our country.”

The Smollett case garnered national attention and threatened to tear Chicago apart. It pit the police department and mayor against prosecutors and underscored the idea that wealthy people are somehow above the law.

Smollett told police he was attacked on Jan. 29 around 2 a.m. as he was returning home from a sandwich shop in Chicago. He said two masked men shouted racial and anti-gay slurs, poured bleach on him, beat him and tied a rope around his neck. He claimed they shouted, “This is MAGA country” — a reference to President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.

CLICK HERE FOF THE FOX NEWS APP

After an intense investigation, police said Smollett staged the entire incident to drum up publicity for his career.

Smollett has strongly denied the accusations.

Source: Fox News National

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
Current track

Title

Artist