Militant group Hezbollah promised to retaliate against Israel after accusing it of detonating pagers across Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least 11 people and wounding nearly 4,000 others who included fighters and Iran’s envoy to Beirut.

Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary condemned the late afternoon detonation of the pagers – handheld devices that Hezbollah and others in Lebanon use to send messages – as an “Israeli aggression”. Hezbollah said Israel would receive “its fair punishment” for the blasts.

The Israeli military, which has been engaged in cross-border fighting with Iran-backed Hezbollah since the start of the Gaza war in October, declined to respond to questions about the detonations.

Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Tuesday that 11 people were killed and 4,000 wounded in the pager explosions, 400 of them critically.

Hezbollah in an earlier statement confirmed the deaths included at least two of its fighters and a little girl.

The pagers exploded in southern Lebanon, the southern suburbs of Beirut known as Dahiyeh and the eastern Bekaa Valley – all Hezbollah strongholds.

In one instance, closed-circuit surveillance video carried by regional broadcasters showed a person paying at a grocery store as what appeared to be a small handheld device placed next to the cashier exploded.

A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the detonation of the pagers was the “biggest security breach” for the group in nearly a year of conflict with Israel.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas, which is waging war with Israel in Gaza, said the pager blasts were an “escalation” that will only lead Israel to “failure and defeat”.

The U.S. State Department said it was too early to say how the pager attacks in Lebanon might impact efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza.

It urged Iran — which with its allies Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and armed groups in Iraq has formed an “Axis of Resistance” against Israeli and U.S. influence — not to take advantage of any incident to raise instability.

Without commenting directly on the explosions in Lebanon, an Israeli military spokesman said the chief of staff, Major General Herzi Halevi, met with senior officers on Tuesday evening to assess the situation. No policy change was announced but “vigilance must continue to be maintained”, he said.

Hezbollah fighters have been using pagers as a low-tech means of communication in the belief they could evade Israeli location tracking, two sources familiar with the group’s operations told Reuters earlier this year. A pager is a wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays messages.

Many injured

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, suffered a “superficial injury” in Tuesday’s pager blasts and was under observation in hospital, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency said. Reuters could not immediately confirm the report.

The casualties included Hezbollah fighters who are the sons of top officials from the armed group, two security sources told Reuters. One of those killed was the son of a Hezbollah member of the Lebanese parliament, Ali Ammar, they said.

“This is not a security targeting of one, two or three people. This is a targeting of an entire nation,” senior Hezbollah official Hussein Khalil said while paying his condolences for Ammar’s son.

Lebanese broadcaster Al Jadeed cited Ammar as promising consequences. “We will deal with the enemy in the language it understands,” he added.

Tuesday’s blasts added to a hefty price paid over the past year by Hezbollah. The group has lost more than 400 fighters in Israeli strikes, including its top commander Fuad Shukr in July. Security sources in Lebanon said two more Hezbollah fighters were killed in an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon on Tuesday.

Earlier on Tuesday, Israel’s domestic security agency said it had foiled a plot by Hezbollah to assassinate a former senior defence official in the coming days.

The Shin Bet agency, which did not name the official, said in a statement it had seized an explosive device attached to a remote detonation system, using a mobile phone and a camera that Hezbollah had planned to operate from Lebanon.

Hezbollah has said it wants to avoid all-out conflict with Israel but that only an end to the Gaza war will stop the cross-border clashes. Gaza ceasefire efforts remain deadlocked after months of talks mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States.

Screaming in pain

More than 1,000 Hezbollah terrorists were seriously injured after their Pager 📟 set exploded simultaneously. It seems Israel hacked their devices and caused this…

Israel never fails to amaze… 🫡https://t.co/gaiNvOhAjD

— Mr Sinha (@MrSinha_) September 17, 2024

After Tuesday’s blasts, a Reuters journalist saw ambulances rushing through the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, amid widespread panic.

At Mount Lebanon Hospital just outside Beirut, a Reuters reporter saw motorcycles rushing to the emergency room and people with bloodied hands screaming in pain.

The head of the Nabatieh public hospital in the south of the country, Hassan Wazni, told Reuters that around 40 wounded people were being treated at his facility. The wounds included injuries to the face, eyes and limbs.

Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel immediately after the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas gunmen on Israel that triggered the Gaza war. Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging fire constantly ever since, while avoiding a major escalation.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced from towns and villages on both sides of the border by the hostilities.

On Tuesday, Israel added to its formal war goals the return of citizens to their homes near the border with Lebanon.

A federal judge has denied Sean “Diddy” Combs’ effort to be free until his trial on sex trafficking and other charges.

In an almost two hour hearing in a New York City courtroom, Magistrate Judge Robyn F. Tarnofsky agreed with the argument put forth by the U.S. Attorney’s office that Combs is a danger to the public and especially potential witness in the detailed case against him. After their client entered a not guilty plea in court earlier this afternoon, defense lawyers pitched a $50 million bond for Combs and in-home detention.

Judge Tarnofsky wasn’t buying it.

After hearing from both sides and taking a brief break to consult with court officials behind closed doors, the judge ordered that Combs be “detained.” While seemingly certain, the order doesn’t entirely end the issue of whether Combs will remain in or out of custody. The defendant can make a Hail Mary appeal to the District Court — though it is unlikely they would overturn Judge Tarnofsky’s decision.

Still, outside the courthouse, Combs’ main attorney Marc Agnifilo said that the defense would be appealing Judge Tarnofsky’s decision to keep his client in custody.

The U.S. Attorney’s office declined comment on the judge’s ruling when contacted by Deadline.

Arrested on September 16 at an upscale Manhattan hotel as the on-going federal probe reached a new inflection point, Combs is charged with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. The allegations in the now-unsealed indictment could see the 54-year-old Grammy winning rapper in prison for the rest of his life, if he’s found guilty.

The prosecutors and defense lawyers may be back in court on the bail appeal within the next day or so.

A conference hearing in the matter in Judge Tarnofsky’s courtroom is set for September 24. No trial date for Combs has been schedule as of yet.

Combs is facing over half a dozen civil suits with claims of sexual assault and more, including a $30 million action by one of the producers of his most recent record The Love Album: Off The Grid.

“Simply put, he is a serial abuser and a serial obstructor,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson bluntly old the court of Combs in the still on-going hearing.

“For decades, SEAN COMBS, a/k/a ‘Puff Daddy,’ a/k/a ‘P. Diddy,’ a/k/a ‘Diddy,’ a/k/a ‘PD,’ a/k/a ‘Love,’ the defendant, abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct,” declares the just-unsealed indictment against the much-accused producer and performer.

“To do so, COMBS relied on the employees, resources, and influence of the multi-faceted business empire that he led and controlled — creating a criminal enterprise whose members and associates engaged in, and attempted to engage in, among other crimes, sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice,” the filing from the U.S. Attorney Damian Williams’ office adds.

In language very similar to the swath of sexual assault and other lawsuits against Combs in the past several months, the indictment alleges that Combs used drugs, violence and career advancement in the music industry to induce and control his victims, entourage and others. The rapper also seemingly used shame and blackmail to keep people from speaking out. “The sensitive, embarrassing and incriminating recordings that he made during Freak Offs as collateral to ensure the continued obedience and silence of the victims,” the unsealed indictment says.

The feds says the “Freak Offs” were “elaborate and produced sex performances that Combs arranged, directed, masturbated during and often electronically recorded.”

Combs is currently awaiting arraignment in a Manhattan courtroom.

The “Love” performer is expected to enter a plea of not guilty, according to his lawyer. “He’s going to fight this with all of his energy and all of his might and the full confidence of his lawyers,” attorney Marc Agnifilo said outside the federal building this morning.

In a detention letter submitted to the court this morning, prosecutors are seeking to keep Combs in custody during the pre-trial process, Williams confirmed this morning.

“The defendant’s long history of violent conduct makes clear that even the most stringent bail conditions will not suffice to ensure the safety of the community,” reads the detention letter to Magistrate Judge Robyn F. Tarnofsky from the U.S. attorney for Southern District of New York.

“The defendant poses an ongoing and significant danger to the community, has repeatedly engaged in obstructive conduct, and presents a serious risk of flight,” the 16-page correspondence goes on to say. “The Government respectfully submits that the defendant cannot meet his burden of overcoming the statutory presumption in favor of detention. There are no conditions of bail that would assure the appearance and compliance of the defendant, or the safety of others. Accordingly, any application for bail should be denied.”

Part of the effort to keep Combs off the street is rooted in where this feds’ probe might go next.

“A year ago, Sean Combs stood in Times Square and was handed a key to New York City,” exclaimed Williams in a brief press conference Tuesday after the sex-trafficking indictment was unsealed. “Today, he’s been indicted and will face justice in the Southern District of New York. We are not done. This investigation is ongoing, and I encourage anyone with information about this case to come forward and to do it quickly.”

As well as facing time in a federal prison, self-proclaimed billionaire Combs could be looking at a serious financial hit.

The government intends to seize “any and all property, real and personal” and unspecified “sum of money” from the alleged crimes, the indictment states. According to the indictment, the racketeering charges cover crimes that go back as far as 2008. The claims of sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution start with acts committed first in 2009.

After what I’m told by a law enforcement source was “months and months of investigation by coordinating agencies,” Combs’ arrest on September 16 is directly related to the raids that took place in March at the rapper’s Los Angeles and Miami homes. In that vein, the indictment states bluntly that during the raids of Combs’ Florida and California residences — which he labeled as “meritless” and a “witch hunt” — officers found a number of “firearms” and “seized various Freak Off supplies, including narcotics and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant.”

First accused of sexual assault in November by singer and former girlfriend Cassie Ventura, Combs has been the alleged perpetrator of sexual assault and other misconduct against multiple women and men. For months now, he has been the subject of an ongoing federal criminal investigation in New York.

While Combs has denied all accusations, he did settle with Ventura within 24 hours of the filing of her suit. Sources told Deadline at the time that Combs paid Ventura “around $30 million.”

Not that the matter went away as Combs likely hoped. The performer did admit to the severity of his abuse in his relationship with Ventura after security camera footage emerged in May of him brutally assaulting her in a L.A. hotel in 2016. At the time, as it also was revealed that Combs bought the footage for $50,000 the day after the incident, Ventura’s lawyers slammed his apology as “disingenuous.”

Since Ventura’s legal action, the dam has burst on Combs, with even a producer on his most recent album claiming sexual abuse in a $30 million suit.

As recently as last week, Dawn Richard, one of the singers from the MTV series Making the Band, Danity Kane, filed a lawsuit claiming abuse and assault by Combs. Filed Tuesday in a New York federal court, the singer alleged the hip-hop mogul sexually assaulted her, deprived her of food and sleep and refused to pay her fairly over years. As has been cited in almost every one of the cases against Combs, Richard alleges that the mogul threatened to destroy her career if she did not comply with his demands and desires.

Suspicious packages were sent to election officials in at least six states on Monday, but there were no reports that any of the packages contained hazardous material.

Powder-containing packages were sent to secretaries of state and state election offices in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Tennessee, Wyoming and Oklahoma, officials in those states confirmed. The FBI and U.S. Postal Service were investigating. It marked the second time in the past year that suspicious packages were mailed to election officials in multiple state offices.

The latest scare comes as early voting has begun in several states less than two months ahead of the high-stakes elections for president, Senate, Congress and key statehouse offices around the nation, causing disruption in what is already a tense voting season.

Several of the states reported a white powder substance found in envelopes sent to election officials. In most cases, the material was found to be harmless. Oklahoma officials said the material sent to the election office there contained flour. Wyoming officials have not yet said if the material sent there was hazardous.

The packages forced an evacuation in Iowa. Hazmat crews in several states quickly determined the material was harmless.

“We have specific protocols in place for situations such as this,” Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate said in a statement after the evacuation of the six-story Lucas State Office Building in Des Moines. “We immediately reported the incident per our protocols.”

A state office building in Topeka, Kansas, was also evacuated due to suspicious mail sent to both the secretary of state and attorney general, Kansas Highway Patrol spokesperson April M. McCollum said in a statement.

Topeka Fire Department crews found several pieces of mail with an unknown substance on them, though a field test found no hazardous materials, spokesperson Rosie Nichols said. Several employees in both offices had been exposed to it and had their health monitored, she said.

In Oklahoma, the State Election Board received a suspicious envelope in the mail containing a multi-page document and a white, powdery substance, agency spokesperson Misha Mohr said in an email to The Associated Press. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol, which oversees security for the Capitol, secured the envelope. Testing determined the substance was flour, Mohr said.

State workers in an office building next to the Wyoming Capitol in Cheyenne were sent home for the day pending testing of a white substance mailed to the secretary of state’s office.

Suspicious letters were sent to election offices and government buildings in at least six states last November, including the same building in Kansas that received suspicious mail Monday. While some of the letters contained fentanyl, even the suspicious mail that was not toxic delayed the counting of ballots in some local elections.

One of the targeted offices was in Fulton County, Georgia, the largest voting jurisdiction in one of the nation’s most important swing states. Four county election offices in Washington state had to be evacuated as election workers were processing ballots cast, delaying vote-counting.

The letters caused election workers around the country to stock up the overdose reversal medication naloxone.

Election offices across the United States have taken steps to increase the security of their buildings and boost protections for workers amid an onslaught of harassment and threats following the 2020 election and the false claims that it was rigged.

A polarizing political activist has taken to social media to reveal how the FBI visited him at his New Hampshire home after a social media account he helps manage stated: ‘Anyone who murders Kamala Harris would be an American hero.’

Jeremy Kauffman, 40, contributes to the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire’s (LPNH) X account, which published the now-deleted post Sunday at 3am.

Follow-up posts added: ‘The point of the second amendment is to shoot and kill tyrannous politicians’ and ‘encouraging politicians to be shot is legal under the first amendment. It’s part of what makes this country great.’

All of the posts have since been deleted.

Kauffman then posted a video to his personal X account showing FBI agents visiting his home.

Watch:

The FBI visited my house today for free speech acts they knew were not crimes.

You can see the shame on their faces.

This is the Democratic regime manifest. pic.twitter.com/RldC0JWMsx

— Jeremy Kauffman 🦔 (@jeremykauffman) September 16, 2024

‘I’m Agent O’Donnell with the FBI,’ one of the plain-clothes agents is heard saying after being asked to identify himself.

‘Is that sufficient identification? Is there only one Agent O’Donnell in the FBI?’ Kauffman replies.

‘In New Hampshire, yes,’ the agent responds.

‘Your full name, sir? Kauffman again asks.

‘Can you please stop recording?’ the agent asks.

‘No,’ replies Kauffman, before reminding the men of his ‘First Amendment right’.

‘What’s your name, sir?’ he goes on to ask the other agent.

‘Can you stop recording?’ the second agent asks, ignoring Kauffman’s request.

‘Absolutely not,’ the activist shoots back. ‘I’m going to go back inside my house.’

At one point, the agent who identified himself as O’Donnell tells Kauffman: ‘All I want to do is talk to you about a post that was made, and if you happened to be the one who made it.’

Kauffman responds by asking them more about the reason for their visit and their salaries, and accuses them of ‘burning a couple of hundred of dollars an hour just by being here.’

Eventually, the agents leave.

Kauffman, known for his Libertarian views and outspoken criticism of the US government, captioned the clip: ‘The FBI visited my house today for free speech acts they knew were not crimes.

‘You can see the shame on their faces.

This is the Democratic regime manifest.’

The ‘American hero’ post was met with outrage just hours before the encounter, with politicians on both sides of the aisle and observers condemning it.

A spokesperson for the Secret Service said in an email that the agency ‘is aware of the social media post made by the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire,’ and that ‘the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees.’

The New Hampshire Department of Safety, which includes the state police, and the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office, also said their respective agencies were working with federal officials in looking into the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire’s posts.

The party proceeded to delete the initial post from its account Sunday morning, while releasing a statement that said it was only doing so begrudgingly.

‘It’s a shame that even on a ‘free speech’ website that libertarians cannot speak freely,’ a message on the account read, referencing X’s terms of service.

‘Libertarians are truly the most oppressed minority.’

Leaders like State Republican Chairman Chris Ager criticized the post as well, with the New Hampshire politician writing: ‘There is no room for this type of dialogue. Period’

Raymond Buckley, chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, called the post ‘disgusting, dangerous and wrong.’

Kauffman is the cofounder and CEO of LBRY, a blockchain file-sharing system, and also advocated on the Free State Project, a nonprofit centered around the idea of bringing Libertarians to New Hampshire to make the state a domestic stronghold.

He had a failed bid for the New Hampshire Senate in 2022 as a Libertarian, and in an interview that year with New Hampshire Public Radio, he detailed how he wants a government with ‘less democracy.’

‘I don’t want these people in California and New York voting on my life in New Hampshire. And I’m an open Free Stater,’ he told the interviewer.

‘I believe [New Hampshire is] the most libertarian place in the country,’ he added.

‘And I want to be able to live with people who share my values. And it’s okay if we disagree, but, you know, people should be able to live.’

In 2018, he joined the nonprofit’s board of directors. In September of last year, he was removed for racially insensitive posts online.

In 2021, he took over the LPNH X account, which added in its statement Monday: ‘We would never advocate for the assassination of a tyrannical President. That’s illegal

‘We were merely acknowledging how some members would react to one.’

The incident came after the second failed attention on Donald Trump at his golf course in Palm Springs, where a suspect, identified as Ryan Wesley Routh, was arrested.

More than two hours into Republican former President Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial launch event on X Monday night, the team behind the Trump family’s new crypto project finally unveiled a key detail: Who can buy the forthcoming tokens it plans to release, and how shares of the project will be allotted.

For over a month, the former president and his family have been pumping up the endeavor with vague descriptions, promising that it will do many things at once.

Lofty goals set by those involved in the project on Monday night’s X space suggest that World Liberty Financial will be a sort of crypto banking platform, where the general public will be encouraged to borrow, lend and invest in crypto.

There will also be an accompanying token called WLFI, founders said Monday.

The equity structure for these tokens will be that 20% of the project’s tokens are allotted to the founding team, which includes the Trumps, 17% of tokens are set aside for user rewards, and the remaining 63% of the coins will be made available for the public to purchase, said founder Zak Folkman.

There will be no pre-sales or early buy ins, Folkman added.

An earlier leaked draft of an internal project outline had the founders’ share at 70%, sparking concerns that the project would be little more than a get-rich-quick scheme.

The token will be a Reg D token offering, which follows the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Regulation D — a provision that makes it possible for a company to raise capital without first registering their securities with the commission so long as certain conditions are met.

These were themes that Trump covered in a conversation format early on in the more than two hour event, as he spoke about the perceived hostility of the Securities and Exchange Commission towards the digital currency industry.

Several high profile figures in the industry take issue with SEC Chair Gary Gensler, claiming that he is regulating the industry through enforcement actions, rather than via rules.

Over the course of Trump’s 40-minute fireside chat at the top of the more than two hour livestream, he talked about how he “wasn’t overly interested” in crypto initially.

But that changed, he said, when sales of his Trump trademarked nonfungible token collections were paid for with crypto. “I think my children opened my eyes more than anything else.”

“Crypto is one of those things we have to do,” Trump said near the end of his remarks. “Whether we like it or not, we have to do it.”

Monday’s event came at an unprecedented moment for Trump’s presidential campaign.

On Sunday afternoon at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump and his longtime friend and political donor, Steve Witkoff, were between the fifth and sixth holes on the course when gunshots were fired. The FBI has characterized the incident as an apparent assassination attempt on the former president.

Witkoff is a longtime friend of Trump’s. He’s also part of the small group of World Liberty Financial founders.

Witkoff was seated to Trump’s right during Monday night’s livestream, and described how he brought the Trump family together with two crypto entrepreneurs to get the project started.

“My son introduced me to two partners, Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, who are exceptionally bright people …These guys are as smart as any currency traders I’ve ever met. And they began talking to me about decentralized finance, which means frictionless finance, and why it made sense for people. And about the forgotten, who can’t get credit out there,” Witkoff said.

“As I began to understand that, I said, ‘Who would understand this better than the Trump family?’ And we had a meeting initially with Eric, Don Jr., and the president and his counsel. And we said, ‘Let’s go pursue it.’ We’ve been on it for close to nine months,” said Witkoff.

As Witkoff spoke, the parallels between World Liberty Financial and Trump’s other recent venture, Trump Media & Technology Group
, were inescapable.

In Trump Media’s case, two former cast members from Trump’s NBC hit reality show “The Apprentice” approached Trump in 2021 with an idea for a new, conservative social media platform.

Three and a half years later, Trump Media’s publicly traded stock has boosted Trump’s net worth by billions of dollars, and Truth Social is his social platform of choice.

Alongside Trump and Witkoff, founders of World Liberty Financial include Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Barron Trump, as well as Witkoff’s son, Zach Witkoff.

A copy of an early internal report, known as a white paper and obtained by CoinDesk, listed Barron as “Chief DeFi Visionary,” Eric and Donald Jr. as “Web3 Ambassadors,” and Trump Sr. as “Chief Crypto Advocate.”

But while the Trumps will receive compensation from the project, the platform itself is “not owned, managed, operated or sold” by members of the Trump family.

Witkoff, a real estate investor, and Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, are the two people calling the shots at World Liberty Financial, according to a person familiar with the project. Both are new to the crypto industry.

Until Monday, much of what the public knew about World Liberty was based on interviews Trump’s sons had given to the press over the past month, as well as a leaked white paper that served as a sort of crypto project manifesto, and conversations with insiders.

Anyone who wanted material details of the platform, including the white paper, was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement, according to a person familiar with the project.

World Liberty Financial represents the latest step in Donald Trump’s evolving political and personal relationship with the crypto industry.

Some visible figures in crypto have cozied up to Trump during the 2024 election cycle, lending their cash and endorsements to the Republican nominee for president.

At the same time, Trump has adopted increasingly bullish talking points about crypto on the campaign trail. This culminated in his delivery of a keynote address in July at the biggest bitcoin event of the year in Nashville, Tennessee.

Some of these supporters however, have also said they are concerned that Trump’s foray into crypto himself could jeopardize his rapport with the sector more broadly, especially if the launch doesn’t go as planned.

Founders offered scant details on Monday about any future timelines for the project, saying only that new information will be shared on official social media channels, and warning fans not to fall for scams.

While Americans were hyper-fixated on the 20,000 Haitians the Biden-Harris administration dumped into Springfield, Ohio, through an expanded Temporary Protected Status program for migrants from the collapsed Caribbean nation, former President Trump shifted the conversation during a campaign rally last week to Charleroi, Pennsylvania.

Watch:

PRESIDENT TRUMP: “The small 4,000 person town of Charleroi, Pennsylvania has experienced a 2,000% increase in the population of Haitian migrants under Kamala Harris — the schools are scrambling to hire translators for the influx of students who don’t speak English, costing local… pic.twitter.com/jvlP19ANL0

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 12, 2024

Ahead of Trump spotlighting the Haitian surge in the tiny blue-collar town of Charleroi during a rally last week in Arizona, we cited the think tank America 2100, which first revealed that the town’s population of Haitian migrants exploded by 2,000% over the past two years.

It isn’t just Springfield. It’s happening everywhere.

In Charleroi, Pennsylvania—a low-income town of just 4,000—the immigrant population has increased by 2,000% over the past two years. And it’s almost all Haitians.

Here’s what one Charleroi councilman told us today: pic.twitter.com/Wkwv56Tnw5

— America 2100 (@America_2100) September 11, 2024

Several downtown residents spoke with us about the ongoing migrant surge. They said when the national media began covering the situation in Springfield — they thought, “Wait a minute”—the same migrant influx orchestrated by the Biden-Harris administration was happening across their town.

We spoke with one employee at a local shop, and we will keep his name anonymous for fear of retribution by local officials or the federal government. He provided us with helpful insight into the Haitian crisis in Charleroi.

He said at least half of the town’s population is now Haitian, noting the influx began to become noticeable under the Biden-Harris’ first term, adding there was just a recent surge in new Haitians. Many of these migrants are beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status.

As far as what is visible by residents, they explained the primary reason the Haitians were dumped into the town was because of Fourth Street Foods, a food manufacturer that produces quality frozen food products for the processed foods industrial complex. These foods end up being sold in major retail stores throughout the US.

Let’s remind readers in March, we penned a note titled “How Shadowy Network Of NGOs Supplies Mega-Corporations With Migrants To Exploit Cheap Labor,” which is possibly how this entire scheme is being operated. The federal government alone can’t possibly plan shelter and transportation arrangements for the migrants.

The consequence of importing third-world migrants to replace blue-collar workers in the town crushes native households. Many residents complained that rents are out of control because the migrants exacerbated a housing shortage. Some have left the town for cheaper housing outside city limits.

The picture being painted in Charleroi is part of a much broader labor theme:

How is this not the biggest political talking point right now: since October 2019, native-born US workers have lost 1.4 million jobs; over the same period foreign-born workers have gained 3 million jobs. pic.twitter.com/Z5HVWmQ24C

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 15, 2024

The individual said Haitians are being shuttled to and from the food packaging plants via a complex network of vans. There must be dozens and dozens of these vans, easily spotted while driving down city streets. Several of the vans had a logo with a sign that read ‘The Wellington Agency,’ a staffing company.

Several times during the ride-along with the individual, Haitian drivers nearly hit the vehicle. He noted that one local DMV worker posted on the town’s Facebook page about licenses being handed out to migrants like candy. He said migrants are sparking accidents all over town, which has led to a surge in insurance rates.

One of the biggest takeaways is that open southern borders and other ways to import migrants from third-world countries have not just been done for election purposes that favor Democrats but as a source of low-cost labor to mega-corporations as the great replacement of native-born workers with foreign-born workers plays out. Basically, the federal gov’t and corporate America are selling out blue-collar workers for cheap migrants.

Residents of Charleroi had no say in their beloved town, sold out by local, state, and federal politicians and possibly a network of taxpayer-funded NGOs who facilitated the migrant invasion. Corporate profits are certainly being prioritized over the native residents.

Full video here: https://t.co/XSnt3y0RVM

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 17, 2024

The biggest takeaway is that great replacement is ravaging American blue-collar households while the federal gov’t and their corporate overlords import the third world to the first world just to make more profits.

Reports of shoplifting and vehicle theft increased considerably in Springfield, Ohio, following the arrival of thousands of Haitian refugees, according to data obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation through a records request.

The town, which had a population of 58,622 in 2020, has taken in between 12,000 and 20,000 Haitian refugees over the past three years, marking a population increase of between 20.4% and 34.1%. From 2021 to 2023, Springfield also saw a 51.5% jump in motor vehicle theft reports and a 112.8% spike in reports of shoplifting, data provided by the Springfield Police Division shows.

Springfield residents previously told the DCNF that the influx of Haitians has resulted in an uptick in car accidents, increased housing prices and strained public services. Bryan Heck, Springfield’s city manager, sent a letter to Democratic Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance and Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott in July requesting federal assistance to deal with the pressure migrants had placed on the housing supply.

Inhabitants of the town also told the DCNF that they had observed Haitians engaging in sex acts and other vices in public. The DCNF was unable to verify claims made by the town’s residents about Haitians engaging in public debauchery.

Springfield’s police department declined to comment on the crime data, which does not include information on the immigration status or demographics of offenders.

Springfield had a higher crime rate than the nation at large even before Haitians began moving there in large numbers. In 2019, for instance, the town had a violent crime rate of 493.8 per 100,000 residents, compared to the United States’ rate of 366.7 per 100,000, according to data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The number of motor vehicle thefts reported in Springfield increased from 324 in 2021 to 491 in 2023, according to police data. Shoplifting reports, meanwhile, jumped from 295 cases in 2021 to 628 in 2023.

Large numbers of Haitians began arriving in Springfield to meet the demand for labor after the city’s chamber of commerce successfully attracted new businesses to the city, according to The New York Times. While the migrants have attracted the ire of some residents, many are paying taxes to support the community.

Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has set aside $2.5 million to help Springfield deal with the migrant surge and announced Wednesday that he would deploy the Ohio State Highway Patrol to assist with traffic enforcement in the municipality. The issue of poor driving among refugees became a flashpoint in the community after a Haitian national driving a minivan without a license swerved in front of a school bus in August 2023, killing an 11-year-old boy and injuring roughly a dozen other students.

One Springfield resident, a pastor, told the DCNF that the town had accidents every day as a result of the influx of Haitians. A local towing employee confirmed that there had been an uptick in wrecks.

Police recorded just two reported cases of animal cruelty in 2021 and none in 2022 or 2023, failing to provide evidence for rumors of Haitians stealing and eating residents’ pets. The number of reported murders and assaults in the town went more or less unchanged between 2021 and 2023.

Immigration authorities have had over 7 million encounters with migrants at the southern border since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, according to Customs and Border Protection data. Beyond small towns like Springfield, the large number of migrants entering the country has caused budgetary strains in major cities like New York and Chicago as they attempt to accommodate the new arrivals, Bloomberg reported.

The Biden-Harris administration awarded Haitians Temporary Protected Status for the first time in 2021 and later extended that designation until 2026, protecting them from deportation and allowing them to work legally. The number of people on government benefits also increased considerably as Haitians moved into Springfield, Reuters reported.

As of April, the Biden-Harris administration had flown over 400,000 migrants into the United States, 154,000 of whom originated in Haiti. The administration halted the flight program after an internal report uncovered rampant fraud but has since allowed it to resume.

“We’re tired — help,” one Springfield resident told the DCNF when asked what message he wanted to send to the country. “Send help. Help us fix this.”

Kevin Hart’s plant-based fast-food chain suddenly closed all its locations in the Los Angeles area two years after it opened, with only a message on Instagram about starting a “new chapter.”

In a post last week on social media from the account of Hart House, the vegan fast food chain owned by the 45-year-old comedian, a message read, “A Hartfelt goodbye for now as we start a new chapter,” the New York Post reported.

“Thank you,” it added. “To our team, guests, and community, who helped make the change we all craved.”

The Los Angeles dining guide Eater confirmed the closures with a statement from Hart House’s CEO Andy Hooper.

“The response to the product has been incredible, and we thank our committed team, our customers, and our community partners for helping make the change we all craved, and for their unwavering support of Hart House,” Hooper told the outlet.

However, the CEO did not explain why the fast-food joints closed for good with no warning. All four sites were closed on September 10.

In 2020, the “Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle” star announced plans to open the plant-based eateries after he made a change to a vegan lifestyle, the Post noted.

Two years later, Hart House opened with Hooper, saying at the time, it wanted “to give people a plant-based option” after noticing a lack of vegan choices in the world of fast food, the Hollywood Reporter noted.

Hart added, at the time, “If I can give people a place to have the option that’s placed smack dab in the middle of where your McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A, and Burger King [are], people may see a Hart House and say, ‘I’m going to go plant-based today.”

The menu included “100%” plant-based items like burgers, “chicken” sandwiches and nuggets, salads, tater tots, milkshakes and more, THR noted.

In 2023, Hooper told Eater-after opening their 4th location- “Opening on the corner of Sunset and Highland, across the street from Hollywood High School, adjacent to a Chick-fil-A, a couple 100 yards from an In-N-Out, [and inside] a former McDonald’s building is about as emblematic as you can get of our aspiration to be the future of quick-service restaurants.”

The closures follow others by restaurants in Los Angeles. Just last month, the popular burger joint “Shake Shack” announced it would close five Southern California locations by the end of September.

The announcement comes following the enactment of the state of California’s approval to raise minimum wage to $20, the Post noted.

Sean “Diddy” Combs was arrested Monday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York said.

Combs was arrested at the Park Hyatt hotel on West 57th Street, a representative said. He was caught off-guard by the apprehension, according to a person familiar with the situation, who added he had been living at the hotel for several weeks.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams confirmed in a statement that on Monday evening, federal agents had arrested Combs, based on a sealed indictment filed by the Southern District of New York.

“We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time,” Williams said.

Combs’ attorney Marc Agnifilo expressed disappointment in a statement. He said Combs, 54, had been cooperative with the investigation and “voluntarily relocated to New York last week in anticipation of these charges.”

“Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is a music icon, self-made entrepreneur, loving family man, and proven philanthropist who has spent the last 30 years building an empire, adoring his children, and working to uplift the Black community,” the statement said. “He is an imperfect person but he is not a criminal.”

“These are the acts of an innocent man with nothing to hide, and he looks forward to clearing his name in court,” it added.

It was not immediately clear on what charges Combs, the rapper-turned-music mogul, was arrested.

Combs has faced a wave of lawsuits — one as recent as last week — accusing him of sexual assault and misconduct since November, when former girlfriend Casandra Ventura sued him in federal court, accusing him of years of physical and sexual abuse.

Ventura, who is best known by her stage name, Cassie, was once signed to Combs’ Bad Boy record label. The two settled her lawsuit a day after it was filed, without disclosing the terms of the settlement. An attorney for Combs said the settlement was not an acknowledgment of wrongdoing. He previously denied the allegations.

Since then, a number of others have sued, including Dawn Richard, who alleged he groped and threatened her when she was employed by him from 2005 to 2012, and that she witnessed him brutally beat Ventura. Combs has vehemently denied the accusations in the lawsuits, saying they were “sickening allegations” from people looking for “a quick payday.”

But in May, after CNN released hotel surveillance video of Combs kicking, punching and throwing Ventura on the floor in a hotel hallway in Los Angeles in 2016, he apologized in a video posted to Instagram in which he said his behavior was “inexcusable” and that he had sought therapy. The video was later removed from his page.

Richard, who was a member of the girl group Danity Kane, which Combs formed on the MTV reality competition “Making the Band,” and later the group Diddy — Dirty Money, sued Combs last week.

An attorney said then that Combs was “shocked and disappointed” by Richard’s lawsuit.

In March, federal investigators searched Combs’ homes in Miami and Los Angeles.

Investigators interviewed several people in relation to allegations of sex trafficking, sexual assault and the solicitation and distribution of illegal narcotics and firearms, a source familiar with the investigation told NBC News in March.

The warrant to search Combs’ properties came from the Southern District of New York, NBC News has reported.

Combs, who has also gone by such names as Puffy, Puffy Daddy and Love, founded Bad Boy in the early 1990s. He is regarded as a trailblazer of hip-hop, fashion and media, having created the Sean John clothing line and launched the Revolt TV channel, which he sold his stake in over the summer.

Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones, a producer on Combs’ most recent album, alleged in a lawsuit in February that Combs made unwanted sexual contact, forced him to hire prostitutes and pressured him to participate in sex acts. Jones said he lived and traveled with Combs from September 2022 to November 2023, during which time he recorded hours of video and audio of Combs, his staff and others “engaging in serious illegal activity.”

His attorneys, Rodney S. Diggs and Tyrone Blackburn, who are also representing other Combs accusers, said Combs’ “long awaited arrest” was “an important step towards justice for all of Mr. Combs’ victims.”

“We leave the criminal aspect of this case in the hands of the people and justice system,” they said Monday night. “As for the civil cases, we await our time for the facts to reveal themselves and seek the justice our clients deserve. We also anticipate more victims coming forward. We knew this was coming. The evidence is very clear and it was only a matter of time.”

After the hotel video of Combs assaulting Ventura was published, Howard University cut ties with him. In June, the school rescinded an honorary degree that was awarded to Combs and disbanded a scholarship program in his name. That same month, Combs honored a request from New York Mayor Eric Adams and returned the key to the city.

This month, Combs listed his home in Los Angeles that was raided in March for $61.5 million.

Chief Justice John Roberts became the target of the latest batch of leaks related to the Supreme Court this week, prompting criticism from center-left commentators about Roberts’s apparent efforts to find consensus on cases involving former President Donald Trump.

Last February, Roberts reportedly sent his eight colleagues a confidential memo critiquing a lower appeals court for failing to “grapple with the most difficult questions altogether” in Trump’s bid to claim presidential immunity against at least some of the 2020 election subversion indictment brought by special counsel Jack Smith, according to the New York Times.

The New York Times piece primarily focused on Roberts going to great lengths to try to secure unanimity on three cases involving Trump: an effort to disqualify him under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause, the immunity case, and a lawsuit that sought to trim the sails of Jan. 6 indictments involving an obstruction statute the Biden Justice Department had applied broadly.

In Trump v. Anderson, the court ruled 9-0, albeit for different reasons, that Trump can remain on the ballot in all 50 states. The justices ruled 6-3 to find that presidents and former presidents maintain some level of immunity from criminal indictments in Trump v. United States, and they also ruled 6-3 to narrow the application of the obstruction statute in Jan. 6 cases in Fischer v. United States.

President Joe Biden’s nominee, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, sided with an opinion that was mostly led by Republican-appointed justices in the Jan. 6 defendant case, while Justice Amy Coney Barrett, appointed by Trump, joined the minority led by Democratic-appointed justices. Only the immunity case saw a true split along ideological lines.

The revelation of a confidential memo authored by Roberts underscores the growing fragility of the court’s internal deliberations and has elevated new criticisms against the court.

John Roberts sounds delusional.
Not insane or hallucinating. But so out of touch, so high on his own supply, so deep in a bubble that Roberts—per this NYT report—thought his awfully reasoned, wildly un-American immunity ruling would be well received by the public and history. pic.twitter.com/IH2vOb6bKw

— Nicholas Grossman (@NGrossman81) September 15, 2024

“John Roberts sounds delusional,” Nicholas Grossman, a professor at the University of Illinois, wrote on X in response to the New York Times story. The comment was in reference to the chief justice’s citation of Alexander Hamilton and confidence that the “arguments would soar above politics” and “stand the test of time,” as the New York Times phrased a summary of the leaked memo.

Mark Paoletta, a friend of Justice Clarence Thomas and an attorney for his wife, Ginni Thomas, told the Washington Examiner there was nothing unusual about seeking consensus in high-profile cases, noting former Chief Justice Earl Warren was “celebrated” for his single opinion written in Brown v. Board of Education.

“Chief Justice Roberts did a magnificent job this past term as chief justice, including building a 9-0 decision on rejecting the partisan, destructive, and unconstitutional efforts to throw President Trump off the ballot, and he is maligned for this superb work,” Paoletta said.

The Supreme Court was already marred by one of the most substantial leaks in its history just two years ago, when a draft opinion signaling the overturning of Roe v. Wade was published more than a month before the decision came down.

Paoletta said the sourcing for the New York Times story, which cited “several people at the court” and “those familiar with the proceedings,” shows a level of complicity from a Left that is not getting its way on key decisions.

“These leaks also demonstrate that the liberals are bent on tearing down the Supreme Court because they are not getting their way,” Paoletta said.

The leaks, once unheard of from such a venerable institution, now expose the deepening vulnerability of the highest court in the land at a time when Democrats are urging voters to turn out for the Nov. 5 election in hopes that they might reshape the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 Republican-appointed majority.

Roberts was not always the subject of left-wing accusations against the high court’s legitimacy. Although he sustained some blowback in the wake of the high court overturning abortion access precedent under Roe, the chief justice was spared from the bulk of left-wing criticism at the time because he did not co-sign Justice Samuel Alito’s decision to upend Roe.

Much of the recent scrutiny of the high court has rather stemmed from what the Left describes as alleged ethical lapses by Thomas and Alito. Earlier this year, Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann Alito, was highlighted in a New York Times piece for her decision to raise an inverted flag days after the Jan. 6 riot in an apparent response to a neighbor’s vulgar yard sign. Now, even President Joe Biden, who was replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris as the candidate to take on Trump this November, has supported term limits and binding ethics rules for justices that critics say could obfuscate the separation of powers among the three branches.

The New York Times suggested in its new report on Roberts that the flag incident led the chief justice to reassign the authorship of opinion in the Jan. 6 obstruction case back to himself after he had tapped Alito to be its lead author.

It was not until just before the 2023 decisions that overturned the use of affirmative action for college admissions that Roberts became a bigger subject of ethics-related scrutiny of the court, particularly over his wife Jane Roberts’s work, in which she recruited some of the legal industry’s best talent to work at ranking law firms.

Legal experts told the Washington Examiner in February last year that Jane Roberts’s work was no different than the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg deciding tax cases while her husband, Martin Ginsburg, was the founder of the Washington, D.C., tax practice for the law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver, and Jacobson.

“This double standard shows how the Democrats weaponize ethics law,” Paoletta said. “They don’t care about ethics, just smearing conservative justices, and most despicably, their spouses.”

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) announced on Monday that the 33 “bomb threats” against schools in Springfield, Ohio, “have all been hoaxes” and have originated from overseas. “None of these had any validity at all,” the governor said. Pressure is now mounting on the establishment press to apologize to former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH).

“At least 33 separate bomb threats, each one of which has been responded to, and each one of whom has been found as a hoax,” DeWine said. “So, 33 threats, 33 hoaxes. I want to make that very, very clear. None of these had any validity at all.”

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine says there were 33 bomb threats against Springfield schools that all turned out to be hoaxes and originated from “overseas.”

Where do President Trump and JD Vance go to get their apology from the media who claimed they incited them? pic.twitter.com/NKyhUJZwrz

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 16, 2024

“So, I want to say to the parents in Springfield: These threats have all been hoaxes. None of them have panned out,” DeWine added.

The Ohio governor added that the fake bomb threats have been originating from “overseas,” and he believes “one particular country” is using the recent news out of Springfield as “one more opportunity to mess with the United States.”

“We have people, unfortunately, overseas, who are taking these actions,” DeWine said. “Some of them are coming from one particular country. We think that this is one more opportunity to mess with the United States, and they’re continuing to do that.”

Pressure is now building on the establishment media — who have tried to tie the hoaxes to the Republican ticket — to apologize to Trump and Vance.

So the leftwing media spent the last week playing into the hands of foreign adversaries to weaponize misinformation and hoaxes to falsely smear @realDonaldTrump and @JDVance for inciting violence.

If you have any decency you’ll apologize: @DanaBashCNN @LesterHoltNBC @LinseyDavis https://t.co/bpsIpzGuCU

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) September 16, 2024

“So the leftwing media spent the last week playing into the hands of foreign adversaries to weaponize misinformation and hoaxes to falsely smear @realDonaldTrump and @JDVance for inciting violence,” Donald Trump Jr. reacted. “If you have any decency you’ll apologize: @DanaBashCNN @LesterHoltNBC @LinseyDavis.”

Conservative commentator Greg Price noted that the mainstream media have been telling the public “that JD Vance’s cat memes were responsible for this.”

Gov. Mike DeWine says that all of the bomb threats that were made against Springfield schools were hoaxes and came from overseas.

But we were reliably informed by the media that JD Vance’s cat memes were responsible for thispic.twitter.com/oKf0ri6dyn

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) September 16, 2024

“The media has spent a week weaponizing hoaxes and disinformation, playing directly into the hands of an apparent foreign campaign to interfere in our election and benefit Democrats,” another pointed out. “Every single reporter/outlet engaged in peddling this propaganda should retract and apologize!”

The media has spent a week weaponizing hoaxes and disinformation, playing directly into the hands of an apparent foreign campaign to interfere in our election and benefit Democrats.

Every single reporter/outlet engaged in peddling this propaganda should retract and apologize! https://t.co/1V3ZOjTAUr

— Taylor Budowich (@TayFromCA) September 16, 2024

“NBC, CBS, and CNN spent their Sunday fixating on this as an excuse to ignore the very credible criticisms JD Vance brought up about the horrors of Kamala’s policies,” Kaelan Dorr wrote.

“The media doesn’t care about you, they don’t serve truth, and they owe JD a HUGE apology,” Dorr added.

NBC, CBS, and CNN spent their Sunday fixating on this as an excuse to ignore the very credible criticisms JD Vance brought up about the horrors of Kamala’s policies

The media doesn’t care about you, they don’t serve truth, and they owe JD a HUGE apology.
pic.twitter.com/96Lsl4ohtx

— Kaelan Dorr (@KDORR_USA) September 16, 2024

“The establishment media spent the weekend blaming Trump and Vance’s ‘rhetoric’ for the bomb threats in Springfield, Ohio. Now, as it turns out, the governor says that there were all hoaxes — at least some of which were perpetrated by foreign adversaries,” journalist Christopher Rufo said.

The establishment media spent the weekend blaming Trump and Vance’s “rhetoric” for the bomb threats in Springfield, Ohio. Now, as it turns out, the governor says that there were all hoaxes—at least some of which were perpetrated by foreign adversaries.pic.twitter.com/FvJy1ws82f

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) September 16, 2024

“After a week of the Dem-Media claiming without evidence that President Trump & JD Vance incited bomb threats in Springfield, Mike DeWine just confirmed that these threats were coming from a FOREIGN NATION,” strategist Andrew Surabian declared.

“The entire media starting with @DanaBashCNN owe Trump & JD an apology,” Surabian added.

🚨After a week of the Dem-Media claiming without evidence that President Trump & JD Vance incited bomb threats in Springfield, Mike DeWine just confirmed that these threats were coming from a FOREIGN NATION. The entire media starting with @DanaBashCNN owe Trump & JD an apology. https://t.co/JP0XdugzJl

— Andrew Surabian (@Surabees) September 16, 2024

“When will the media be apologizing to President Trump after claiming he incited them?” another X user asked.

🚨 JUST IN: Ohio Governor Mike DeWine says that all of the bomb threats that were made against Springfield schools were hoaxes and came from “overseas.”

When will the media be apologizing to President Trump after claiming he incited them?pic.twitter.com/SfAz4H57hz

— Proud Elephant 🇺🇸🦅 (@ProudElephantUS) September 16, 2024

“The media has been blaming President Trump for DAYS now. They LIED — once again. When are they going to apologize to Trump?” independent journalist Nick Sortor echoed.

🚨 JUST IN: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine says the “b*mb threats” being called into Springfield, Ohio are originating “overseas”

The media has been blaming President Trump for DAYS now.

They LIED—once again.

When are they going to apologize to Trump? pic.twitter.com/E2uPN9pkvM

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) September 16, 2024

The government’s delivery of roughly 20,000 migrants to Springfield, Ohio, has been a boon for real estate, local employers, auto salesmen, merchants, and the migrants but also an unwanted shock to locals as they try to manage their own community.

Trump and Vance have brought residents’ concerns to light in recent weeks — which included memes about keeping pets safe following one resident claiming that Haitian migrants had been eating geese found in local parks.

After that, the bomb threat hoaxes poured in from overseas, to which the mainstream media reacted by blaming them on Trump and Vance.

David Frum, a prominent “Never Trump” pundit and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, took matters a step further, using the hoaxes as a means to downplay the second assassination attempt against Trump on Sunday.

The FBI received a tip about the alleged, would-be assassin of former President Donald Trump in 2019 for being a felon in possession of a firearm, the federal law enforcement agency confirmed Monday.

Jeffrey Veltri, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Miami Field Office, said Monday during a press conference that the bureau had been tipped off in 2019 about Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, who was arrested Sunday in connection with the attempted assassination of Trump.

Routh was charged Monday with possession of a firearm as a felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

“I can also share with you that he was the subject of a previously closed 2019 tip to the FBI where it was alleged he was a felon in possession of a firearm,” Veltri said Monday.

“In following up on the tip, the alleged complainant was interviewed and did not verify — I repeat, did not verify — providing the initial information. The FBI passed that information to local law enforcement in Honolulu.”

Routh was convicted in Greensboro, N.C., in 2002 for having a weapon of mass death and destruction, according to federal prosecutors.

In 2010, he was convicted of multiple counts of possession of stolen goods.

Routh lived in North Carolina for most of his life before moving to Kaaawa, Hawaii, in 2018.

A woman who authorities say fatally stabbed a 3-year-old boy as he sat in a grocery cart outside an Ohio supermarket and wounded his mother has been found incompetent to stand trial.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John Russo issued the ruling Friday.

He said Bionca Ellis, 33, of Cleveland, will remain hospitalized indefinitely and could eventually stand trial if she improves.

Her bail was set at $5 million shortly after the attack occurred, and her trial had been tentatively scheduled to start Dec. 9.

Authorities have said Ellis was inside the Giant Eagle grocery store on June 3 in the Cleveland suburb of North Olmsted when she saw Julian Wood and his mother, Margot Wood, near the front and followed them into the parking lot.

The mother was about to load her groceries into her vehicle when Ellis ran at them with a knife, stabbing the boy twice, in an attack that took less than five seconds before Ellis walked away.

The boy died at a hospital while Margot Wood was treated at a hospital for a stab wound to her shoulder — a wound prosecutors have said she suffered after trying to pull the boy out of the cart during the attack.

Authorities have not given a motivation for the attack, which they believe was a random incident.

Ellis is being represented by the public defender’s office, which generally does not comment on cases.

“Migrant influencer” Leonel Moreno, who went viral on TikTok for encouraging illegal border crossers to squat in US homes, was ordered deported by an immigration judge — but he likely won’t be kicked out of the country anyway because of a diplomatic row.

An Ohio-based immigration judge ordered the 27-year-old Venezuelan migrant, who also waved around wads of cash on social media and flaunted what he said were US government handouts, to be removed from the US on Sept. 9, according to Homeland Security sources.

Moreno crossed the southern border illegally into Eagle Pass, Texas, on April 23, 2022.

He was released into the country but failed to appear for required check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), leading to his arrest in Columbus, Ohio, in March.

But despite the judge’s decree, a halt on deportation flights to Venezuela could hinder the order.

Earlier this year, President Nicolás Maduro’s administration stopped accepting flights of migrants deported from the US and Mexico in retaliation for Washington reimposing economic sanctions on the South American country, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The US said Caracas had failed to restore democratic order, the outlet explained.

The almost weekly flights from the US to Venezuela came to a halt in late January, US officials told the Journal.

President Nicolás Maduro’s administration followed through on its threats to kill an agreement reached last October for flights to go into the country, after the US reimposed economic sanctions on the country, saying Caracas had failed to restore democratic order, the outlet explained.

There are also no direct commercial flights from the US to Venezuela after the Department of Transportation suspended them in 2019, citing reports of unrest and violence.

Meanwhile, a new wave of migrant crime from the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua has emerged in US cities, including in New York City — where a 19-year-old gangbanger was accused of shooting two NYPD officers in June.

Moreno isn’t linked to the gang, but still, he has used his large social media following to encourage migrants from his home country to “invade abandoned houses” while boasting about the support they could receive from the US government.

“I didn’t cross the Rio Grande to work like a slave,” Moreno said in one Instagram clip while waving around $100 bills.

Moreno also admitted to using his 1-year-old US citizen baby as a prop in his viral posts, one of which was taken at the hospital after his daughter’s birth.

He bragged that he and his wife didn’t pay anything to have their daughter thanks to “Papa Biden.”

Intelligence officials investigating Moreno’s case have also alleged he was a sergeant of the Venezuelan general directorate of military intelligence, according to sources.

He later claimed in court that he was a rank-and-file soldier in the Venezuelan Navy, sources said.

Moreno remains in custody at the Geauga County Jail in Ohio, where he’s been laying low, Geauga County Sheriff Scott Hildenbrand previously told The Post.

The migrant also spoke to The Post from jail in April, where he wailed about being a victim of unjust “persecution.”

“I came here to the United States because of persecution in my country … But they’re doing the same thing to me in the United States – persecuting me,” Moreno moaned.

“It’s all misinformation in the media about me. They’re defaming me. They’re misrepresenting me in the news … I am a good father, a good husband, a good son, a good person, humble, respectful to people who respect me,” he added.

A pre-teen Florida boy was handcuffed and thrown in county lockup after he alleged bragged about his massive cache of weapons and plans to execute a “kill list” at two different schools, a sheriff said.

The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office seized a stockpile of airsoft guns, knives and swords after Carlo “Kingston” Dorelli, 11, showed a video of his armory to classmates and threatened violence, Sheriff Mike Chitwood alleged in a Facebook post.

“He had written a list of names and targets. He says it was all a joke,” Chitwood wrote.

For his “joke,” the sheriff slapped Dorelli with a felony charge for a written threat of a mass shooting and published a video of officers leading the boy into the jailhouse with handcuffs on his wrists and ankles.

They also published his mugshot along with a photo of replica assault rifles, samurai swords and throwing stars displayed on a table, drug-bust style.

The dramatic display came days after Chitwood vowed to “perp-walk” kids who make prank threats amid a flood of bogus tips in the wake of the deadly shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia that left four dead.

“Every time we make an arrest, your kid’s photo is going to be put out there…We’re gonna come and get you. We’re going to put you out for public embarrassment.” Chitwood said in a press conference last week, after Florida authorities received 54 phony tips of impending school shootings in a single night.

As promised. This 11-year-old is charged with making a written threat of a mass shooting at Creekside Middle School or Silver Sands Middle School pic.twitter.com/yIvuvkLgAg

— Mike Chitwood (@SheriffChitwood) September 16, 2024

Florida isn’t the only state inundated with threats to shoot up schools.

On Friday, cops in Foley, Alabama, nabbed two teens for “making a terrorist threat” on social media, according to local police, just days after a school in that town was placed on lockdown when a teacher overheard a student talking about having a weapon.

The same day, a 12-year-old and 15-year-old were arrested in Indianapolis in two different cases of threats against their school district, according to WFYI Indianapolis.

Two 12-year-olds were arrested last week in Texas, where authorities have booked at least ten youngsters for threats of school violence in this school year alone, reported My San Antonio.

Chitwood, at least, has had enough: “For the little bastards out there who think this is funny, ha ha ha, you want to get on social media: You ain’t that smart…You’re getting caught,” he said.

President Trump was golfing with friends when the second attempt to assassinate him on his Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach, FL, took place.

Ryan Wesley Routh was tracked down by police vehicles after he reportedly fled from the scene of the alleged attempt to assassinate President Trump in West Palm Beach, Florida, yesterday.

Routh reportedly dropped the AK-47 he used when US Secret Service agents spotted the end of his rifle poking through the tree line and ran to his car, where he jumped in a vehicle and attempted to flee law enforcement.

Many are questioning how Routh knew that Trump would be golfing on his international golf course , considering it wasn’t on his schedule and was a last-minute decision. During an interview with Fox and Friends, Martin County Sheriff Will Snyder said the “million dollar question” is how Routh knew where Trump was going to be?

“There are only three possible answers: He guessed and got very lucky; he conducted surveillance on Trump and followed him to the golf course, or he had inside information about Trump’s schedule.”

Watch:

Former assistant FBI director says would-be Trump assas*n Ryan Routh may have had inside information on Trump’s schedule.

Trump was playing golf at a private event on his property. pic.twitter.com/exg4BfqktN

— Kacee Allen (@KaceeRAllen) September 16, 2024

The bodycam footage of Ryan Wesley Routh’s arrest has just been released.

In the video below, Ryan Wesley Routh can be seen with arms in the air, and his t-shirt pulled up over his head.

Police can be heard yelling at him, “Keep walking!” as he walks backward into two police officers who place him in handcuffs.

Watch:

Body cam just released of Ryan Wesley Routh’s arrest.
Martin County Sheriff stopped him after he fled from the Trump Golf Course. pic.twitter.com/wp3NATCQi8

— Brian Entin (@BrianEntin) September 16, 2024

Curiously, Ryan Wesley Routh, who is a convicted felon, has not been charged with an attempted assassination on President Trump.

Associated Press reported Routh had been charged with two federal gun crimes during his appearance in federal court today: possessing a firearm despite being a convicted felon and possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

It is unclear why he has not been charged with attempting to assassinate the 45th President despite clear-cut evidence showing he wanted Trump dead. The AP notes it is possible more charges could be levied in the future.

The outlet also noted Routh showed no remorse for his actions and was seen smiling as he spoke with his public defender.

Ryan Wesley Routh, the man named as the suspect in a possible assassination attempt at Donald Trump’s Florida golf club, urged Iran to kill the former president in a book he self-published last year.

In ‘Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,’ he said he had made a terrible mistake in once voting for Trump, whom he described as a ‘buffoon’

‘I must take part of the blame for the retarded child we elected for our next president that ended up being brainless, but I am man enough to say that I misjudged and made a terrible mistake and Iran I apologize,’ he said, after berating the former president for abandoning the nuclear deal with Tehran.

‘You are free to assassinate Trump as well as me for that error in judgment and the dismantling of the deal.

The e-book is still available on Amazon for $2.99.

It offers a look inside the mind of a man committed to finding peace in the world, but with a naive understanding of geopolitics.

His solutions to long-running global conflicts include building a wall around the Afghan capital Kabul and allowing himself to be kidnapped by the North Korean regime.

Routh, 58, was arrested Sunday afternoon.

Authorities said he was armed with an AK-47-style rifle as he stalked the Republican presidential nominee at his West Palm Beach golf course.

He has a prodigious online footprint and was interviewed by multiple news organizations as he tried to recruit foreign fighters from Afghanistan to join the war against Russia in Ukraine.

In the event, most of his work in the war-torn country amounted to putting up flags and joining protests.

His book sets out his views on the war in rambling prose, describing how he landed in Poland before making his way to the border with Ukraine.

He put up his tent in Kyiv’s Independence Square to act as a volunteer coordinator but one day returned to find the police had torn it down.

It includes a photograph of him with chef José Andrés, founder of World Central Kitchen, who delivered thousands of meals to people affected by the war.

The book sets out some of his own political philosophy.

‘I get so tired of people asking me if I am a Democrat or a Republican as I refuse to be put in a category and I must always answer independent and I think that most intelligence people judge every situation case by case and vote solely on the merit of the candidate and not about parties or groups,’ he writes.

The book is broadly a manifesto for world peace but comes across as deeply naive.

For example he expresses regret that borders remain issues of dispute around the world and that Afghanistan’s brutal Taliban has no desire to behave as a ‘legitimate civilized organization and government.’

The book is crammed with gruesome images of people executed by the Taliban.

He bemoans the decision to leave the country so abruptly, but offers an impractical solution.

‘It is baffling that we could not have done an extremely slow draw down to establish the nation was stable,’ he writes.

‘At bare minimum we should have built a wall around Kabul and sectioned off a part of Afghanistan that could be free and democratic and be able to defend itself and leave the balance to the barbarians and terrorist [sic] to kill one another as they wish.

The world would be a better place if it were run by women, he says.

‘It seems that the totality of the world’s problems revolve around men with massive insecurity and childlike intelligence and behavior,’ he writes.

‘We must get to a place where every leader is always a woman so that we can avoid this testosterone driven insanity and macho bulls***t.’

He runs the rule over other burning international crises.

‘Resolving our issues with North Korea is the simplest challenge on our globe,’ he writes of the nuclear-armed pariah nation.

‘I will gladly volunteer to be kidnapped by North Korea and spend years working with them to show them one by one that Americans are not the enemy.’

Hundreds of social media posts show how his views swung wildly from left to right.

At different times he spoke out in support of democratic socialist Bernie Sanders or Trump himself.

Earlier this year, however, he made clear that he had been turned off by the former president.

‘DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose,’ he wrote on X in April.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) was among the right-wingers to fall for a fake report claiming that an unnamed whistleblower from ABC News—who is fueling accusations of the debate being rigged against President Donald Trump but who hasn’t been confirmed to actually exist—died under suspicious circumstances.

Except the report is entirely untrue and the alleged whistleblower is not dead.

Some skeptics—a significant share of whom are conservatives themselves—continued to cast doubt on the existence of a whistleblower at all, given that the claim traces back to an X account with the name “Black Insurrectionist–I FOLLOW BACK TRUE PATRIOTS.”

That account alleged last week it had an affidavit from an ABC News whistleblower detailing how the outlet purposely gave Vice President Kamala Harris an advantage.

On Sunday, the account released a document that redacted the whistleblower’s name and information as well as the notary stamp. In it, the alleged whistleblower said they worked at ABC News for over 10 years and believed the outlet had become biased against Trump.

The document stated that ABC News agreed to fact-check Trump but not Harris during the debate, provided the Harris campaign sample questions in advance, and agreed not to broach certain topics such as President Joe Biden’s health.

ABC News denied providing Harris advance questions. Linsey Davis, one of the debate moderators, stated that the rigorous fact-checking of Trump was designed to compensate for the CNN debate, in which his “statements were allowed to just hang and not [be] disputed by the candidate Biden, at the time, or the moderators.”

Some Trump supporters touted the document as overwhelming evidence of a rigged debate—while others have cast doubt on the allegations.

“If we can deep-fake a video and voice in 2024, im pretty sure I could make a fake Word document and black out some lines,” replied one account whose bio declares that the user has never voted Democrat. “I’ll believe it when there is a face attached.”

“As much as it pains me to say this I believe it is a hoax,” said another account named “MAGA American,” who added, “I hope I am wrong but it looks fishy as hell.”

But as the whistleblower allegations blew up, another claim began circulating that similarly left MAGA divided about its veracity: that the supposed whistleblower had been killed in a car crash.

“WOW!” captioned one account of the supposed report in a post that was viewed more than three million times.

WOW! pic.twitter.com/BN85bcPt2J

— Jack Straw (@JackStr42679640) September 14, 2024

The fake report got amplified by Greene, who posted on X Sunday that “the ABC whistleblower who claimed Kamala Harris was given debate questions ahead of the debate has died in a car crash according to news reports.”

The “news reports” in question, however, appear to trace back to a blog-style fake news site titled “countylocalnews.”

The so-called report, published by an unnamed author, claims that the whistleblower passed away after a Sept. 13 car accident outside Bethesda, Maryland. The post commends the whistleblower for exposing “a breach of trust that undermined the democratic process” and offers no quotes or named sources.

One pro-Trump user concluded that “this is probably a hoax” because the domain information is hidden and the fake outlet has no contact information of any kind.

“I think this is a hoax to get people to click on the Youtube video’s (which seem to be in each article–history of Kamala Harris),” he theorized. “Or possibly to generate ad revenue from the side bar ads.”

Greene later acknowledged that “this story appears to be false,” but left the original post up.

“We need a serious investigation into the whistleblower’s report that Kamala Harris was given debate questions ahead of time from ABC!” she added.

Critics quickly mocked the car accident claim. One joked, “When an invisible whistleblower is killed by an invisible car in an invisible collision, does it make a sound?”

https://t.co/6PhjK9sC4s pic.twitter.com/a6aSHA0Ob6

— Andrew Donaldson (@four4thefire) September 15, 2024

“The ABC whistleblower who claimed Kamala Harris was given debate questions ahead of the debate has died in a car crash and eaten by immigrants,” quipped someone else.

The son of Ryan Wesley Routh, the suspected gunman in a second assassination attempt on former President Trump, says his father hated Trump but argued he was not a violent person.

Oran Routh told the Daily Mail that his father disliked Trump “as every reasonable person does,” adding that he himself was not a fan. He reportedly expressed disbelief that his father could resort to violence and target the former president, however.

“He’s my dad and all he’s had is couple traffic tickets, as far as I know,” the son said. “That’s crazy. I know my dad and love my dad, but that’s nothing like him.”

“He said he was at the beach, but I thought that meant the outer banks in Hawaii,” he said. “I didn’t ask him for more information because we’ve had a falling out. We’ve grown apart.”

Routh has been living in Hawaii with his longtime girlfriend for multiple years, the Mail reported.

“He’s not a violent person,” Oran added. “He’s a hard worker and a great dad. He’s a great dude, a nice guy and has worked his whole f**king life.”

Authorities said Routh allegedly shoved the muzzle of his rifle through a chain-linked fence about 300 to 500 yards away from Trump while the former president was playing golf.

Routh fled the scene and was quickly apprehended.

Trump was rushed to safety shortly after Secret Service agents fired on Rout. The gunman was lying in wait just one hole away from the former president when he was discovered.

The suspected gunman in an apparent second attempted assassination of former President Trump has been charged with federal gun crimes.

Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, appeared in federal court in West Palm Beach on Monday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Ryon McCabe, court records show.

Routh is accused of possessing a firearm despite being a convicted felon and possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

He allegedly pushed the muzzle of a rifle through the perimeter of Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach on Sunday while the former president was on the course, prompting a Secret Service agent to fire.

Routh then allegedly fled the area, where agents found two bags, a loaded rifle with a scope and other items, according to an affidavit by FBI Special Agent Mark Thomas. When stopped by law enforcement on I-95 in a neighboring county, Routh answered affirmatively that he knew why he was being stopped, the affidavit says.

Further investigation determined that Routh’s cell phone was present along the golf course tree line where the alleged gunman took aim for approximately 12 hours before the incident occurred – and left the area just after the incident.

Trump thanked law enforcement for doing an “incredible job” keeping him safe in a post to Truth Social.

The incident, which the FBI is investigating as an apparent assassination attempt, marked the second attempt on Trump’s life this year.

In July, a lone shooter took aim at Trump during an outdoor campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Trump was bloodied by an apparent shot to the ear, but otherwise unharmed. A rallygoer was killed.

The two charges against Routh carry a combined maximum of 20 years in prison, but additional and more serious charges against Routh are possible as investigators continue to examine the incident. Federal prosecutors have not yet sought an indictment from a grand jury.

The felon-in-possession charge carries a maximum of 10 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine, unless the defendant has previously committed three violent felonies, when a 15-year mandatory minimum kicks in. Routh has multiple past criminal convictions in North Carolina, court records show.

The second charge carries a maximum of five years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.

A public defender appeared with Routh in court, who was shackled and in a blue jumpsuit, according to the Associated Press.