Happy Sunday, all! And if we don’t get the chance beforehand: Happy Thanksgiving!
Just remember, as George W. Bush used to say: “You live in America. You already won the lottery.”
For all its faults — plenty to be thankful for.
And speaking of faults — Chris kicks us off with a pretty shocking rundown of one category.
Here we go.
Once again, we are waiting with bated breath for the outcome of a corruption investigation. Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to U.S. government officials and possibly intelligence agencies foreign and domestic may be made public. As we get closer to some sort of release of documents, the American people are finally hoping to see some accountability on this scandal.
Manage your expectations.
We have been down this road before. It seems like making allegations of corruption and misconduct is the most common pastime of our federal politicians. Republicans accuse Democrats, Democrats accuse Republicans, Independents accuse everyone. One after another we get introduced to a new outrage. Most of the allegations, like Hunter Biden’s financial dealings, seem legitimate; some, like Russiagate, turn out to be scandals unto themselves. It appears that corrupt practices are a way of life inside the Beltway.
What has come of all these allegations? Nothing. No accountability. No transparency. No significant charges (Gold Bar Bob Menendez excepted — both sides wanted him gone), and a few firings. And it’s not like these are specious allegations - many seem like obvious signs of corruption. Talk to anyone paying attention and if they’re honest, they will agree.
There has been no accountability for everything from contractor corruption in Afghanistan, to Nancy Pelosi’s insider trading. I made a list – and it is long.
Just off the top of my head, here are the corruption scandals that have come to nothing over the past 20 years.
· Massive contractor fraud in Afghanistan. The US spent an estimated $1 trillion in that country, with nothing to show for it but a failed puppet state, a few dozen low level bribery arrests, and over $1 billion in gear left for the Taliban.
· Pentagon Audits. Now they are saying that they may be able to pass an audit by 2028. No rush, guys! And we’ll believe it when we see it.
· Nancy and Paul Pelosi’s stock trades are clearly insider trading, but there isn’t even an investigation. And she’s not the only Congress member doing it.
· In 2020 several US congresspeople sold off stocks after receiving a briefing on COVID 19 – no one was ever prosecuted.
· Donald Trump’s companies received multiple foreign contracts while he was president – those investigations were dropped in 2021. And Trump’s questionable pardon-palooza continues.
· The Biden Crime Family was taking millions in fake loans and straight cash from both foreign and domestic sources in what seemed like influence peddling. Hunter got convicted of filling out a firearm purchase form incorrectly – not exactly the accountability we were looking for. Especially for a guy who bragged he was doing deals with “the f*cking spy chief of China” (you know — our main global rival).
· Trump’s Alleged Collusion with Russia seemed like it was going to sink the President before he even took office. The whole thing was a manufactured farce, lies sworn to by Adam Schiff.
· The Mueller Investigation – Remember how excited the left was to hear what Meuller had to say? You’re not supposed to. Instead we got bumbling gibberish from a man past his prime. He is rumored to be now living in a memory care facility.
· The Crossfire Hurricane Scam – So far nothing doing here despite the appearance that the intelligence community tried to take down a President – could anything be more serious than that? John Durham got one low level, meaningless conviction out of his whole case. Let’s see what happens with John Brennan.
· Trump’s Multiple Criminal Cases – Only the stupidest one was adjudicated – and that should be overturned. Was he guilty of the others, and did prosecutors collude with the White House to “get Trump”? We’ll likely never know.
· Hillary Clinton’s Private Server and its Destruction – A coverup at the highest levels. This woman can never be president. She’s not to be trusted.
· FISA Court Abuses – One arrest and the investigation disappeared. And the lawyer who was arrested pled to a misdemeanor and got his license back.
· The Clinton Foundation – The Secretary of State and former President appeared to be accepting money in exchange for influence — see “Clinton Cash.”
· Trump Impeachments – Nothing came from those. But it sure wasted plenty of government time and resources.
· Alejandro Mayorkas Impeachment – The guy refused to uphold the law for 4 years, flooding the country with illegal immigrants. He’s now on the lecture circuit as a hero to progressives.
· Robert Malley – This Iran apologist may have set up a spy ring inside the State Department. The FBI has that investigation in the circular file.
· The Twitter Files – The US federal government, including the CIA and FBI, was clearly violating the First Amendment by suppressing opposing views on COVID and vaccines. No accountability.
· The FBI’s Role in the January 6th Riot – What did they know and where were they?
· The January 6th Committee – A partisan scam that didn’t get to the bottom of anything.
· The Afghanistan Withdrawal – Still waiting to hear who developed that plan and who was held accountable. Maybe we’ll learn from Jake Sullivan’s new podcast, which we’re sure is a bastion of clarity and accountability.
· NSA Domestic Spying – Was this legit or not? We’ll never know.
· Arctic Frost – The FBI was gathering massive — and irrelevant — data on sitting congresspeople. The breadth of this one is stunning.
And of course there’s all the usual financial stuff that always goes on — a sitting Congresswoman allegedly diverting $5 million in FEMA funds to herself and her family, Somalis stealing government money and funding a terrorist group, enormous COVID scams that we’ll never even know about, our government funding the progressive NGO empire through cutouts and diverted funds, BLM ripping off everyone to build luxury compounds for their bosses, etc, etc.
Fooling you has become quite the tradition - a modern day Thanksgiving if you will.
I’m sure that I am missing some serious cases – it’s hard to keep track of them all. Feel free to comment below with additional outrages that I missed. I’ll add them to the story.
Like everyone else, I am eagerly anticipating the outcome of the Epstein file releases. It is good that they are being released, whatever the fallout. I am also eagerly anticipating being disappointed when the whole thing comes to nothing.
If past if prologue… why expect anything different?
We’d like to suggest: Doesn’t the entire federal government need an Office of Professional Ethics?
The NYPD has the Internal Affairs Bureau. Why not Washington?
New York’s Communist Dream Collapsing ALREADY
Having worked financial crimes, I always wonder what it must feel like to believe in a hoax and find out almost immediately that you were conned. I generally am pretty suspicious of everyone – trusting a politician isn’t even in the realm of possibility for me (see above) – so I rarely fall into that trap. But some people are trusting – and anyone who has faith that socialism will work is probably pretty easily duped.
By now Mamdani’s zohranistas must realize that they have been had. The communist utopia of New York seems like it’s going to be dead on arrival, as anyone with a shred of common sense could predict.
First it was the free buses. The despicable, devious, and duplicitous Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, endorsed Mamdani and his ideas — but as soon as the last vote was cast, she announced that the idea of the free bus was going the way of the dodo. It turns out that you need funding to make things “free” (I think it has something to do with physics).
Then, the Mamdani supporters figured that they had a lock on a Mayor who would finally put a leash on the racist, misogynistic, “anti-queer” NYPD. Wellllll…not exactly. Mamdani just promised to re-hire the current commissioner. The one that brought back broken windows and quality of life enforcement. The one who has cops working hard again and enforcing the law — and hire more of them instead of defunding. In fact, it doesn’t seem that there will be a big change in things that the NYPD is enforcing after all. There is no doubt his “Department for Community Safety” is going to be an inconsequential joke. If it exists at all.
This week there was a final, unforgivable, slight to the typical Mamdani supporter. After a campaign of promising to give it to Donald Trump like no one else, Mamdani undeniably instead gave Trump…a big hug. The two got along famously. That’s a far cry from Mamdani campaign promises like this gem: “So hear me, President Trump, when I say this: to get to any of us you will have to go through all of us.” It seems like Mamdani has folded before the cards have even been dealt.
The Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers who supported Mamdani must be lining up at the mental health clinics by now (and whining about their copay). They must have lost their minds when Le Grande Orange (sorry Rusty Staub) said, “some of his ideas are really the same ideas that I have.” That comment from Trump must have broken a few souls out in Brooklyn.
If this is an indication of what’s to come in New York over the next four years, we have one word for it:
Popcorn.
Weekly Podcast: Part II With Tom Speciale
And speaking of John Brennan and the Crossfire Hurricane scam, join us for Part II of our talk with the man who is the only person in America to directly confront the former CIA Director.
Brennan didn’t take it well.
Tom, former military, intelligence officer and current national security consultant, also opines on the real motives behind “Russian Collusion,” the J6 Committee, and the great pipe bomb mystery.
Hear it all from someone who had a front row seat — and who looked like he was about to get punched by Brennan for having the nerve to ask a simple question.
(Click above for the Preview — and HERE for the full thing).
A Murder At Sea: Will It Be Solved?
The death of Anna Kepner, an 18-year old woman whose body was found stuffed under her bunk aboard a cruise ship last week, is raising questions typical of crimes-at-sea: When were authorities notified? Was the crime scene preserved? Is there evidence at the bottom of the sea? And who actually has jurisdiction when someone dies in international waters?
Kepner is, alas, not the first victim of a serious crime at sea. And believe it or not, just 20 years ago, those questions would have been nearly impossible to answer. Cruise-ship crime investigations were so unregulated that cases routinely disappeared into a jurisdictional black hole. But the system in-place today is very different — rebuilt after a string of high-profile failures that forced Congress and the FBI to act.
The Bad Old Days: No Accountability
In the 1990s and early 2000s, cruise lines were effectively their own police departments. When Amy Lynn Bradley vanished in 1998, the FBI wasn’t notified for hours, the ship continued its itinerary, and crucial evidence vanished with every passing port. Witnesses left the ship and vanished. She’s never been found.
Six years later, Merrian Carver disappeared on a Boston-to-Alaska cruise — and ship staff simply never reported it. Her belongings were destroyed and her cabin cleaned before her family even knew she was onboard. She also has never been found.
These failures were catastrophic, but they weren’t unusual. Cruise lines had every incentive to keep crime statistics low and headlines quiet, and they operated under foreign flags that complicated any attempt at accountability.
The Turning Point: George Smith
The 2005 death of newlywed George Smith — a bloodstain on a lifeboat canopy and a cabin cleaned before investigators arrived — finally broke the system open. Witnesses disembarked in multiple countries, surveillance was inconsistently preserved, and authorities scrambled to decide who was even responsible. Congressional hearings were held, and for the first time, lawmakers agreed the industry needed outside oversight.
Finally, in 2010, Congress passed the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act (CVSSA). It required cruise lines to:
Report serious crimes immediately to the FBI
Preserve cabins and surveillance footage at crime scenes
Maintain key-card logs and standardized security equipment
Provide forensic resources, including sexual-assault kits
Publish crime data for public review
Overnight, “let the cruise line handle it” became unacceptable.
The Current Case: Anna Kepner
This modern framework is why the circumstances of Ana Kepner’s death will receive a structured, multi-agency inquiry — not a quiet internal review.
Because the ship called on a U.S. port and the victim is American:
The FBI must be notified without delay.
Kepner’s cabin must be sealed and preserved until federal investigators clear it.
Key-card entries, CCTV footage, and deck logs must be retained.
If foul play is suspected, evidence must be collected according to U.S. forensic standards, not some corporate policy.
So: Was all this done?
Cruise ships all have security officers on them — generally, ex-law enforcement. The measures required by the CVSSA, if followed, will be a big help. Consider:
Is there video footage of those entering her cabin?
Were all potential witnesses interviewed onboard before the left the ship?
Was the crime scene preserved? Has DNA been recovered?
Because Anna was reportedly asphyxiated by “an arm bar” across her neck, leaving two bruises, the DNA issue could prove particularly dispositive. While DNA found at the scene from the reported suspect — Anna’s 16-year-old stepbrother — would likely be explained away as due to Anna and her two brothers sharing one cabin: What if the DNA is recovered from the bruises? How would that contact be explained in light of the fact that the elder stepbrother was reportedly “infatuated” with her, and she apparently did not return those feelings?
That’s just one example of the kind of detail that could be affected by this crime at sea.
In other words, Kepner’s death will not disappear into the oceanic void that once swallowed cases like Bradley’s and Carver’s. The system is still imperfect, but it is far more transparent, far more professional, and far more accountable than it had been.
Still, challenges remain. Because the FBI has jurisdiction, one hopes that Miami Homicide is also attached, as Miami will have much more experience with murder investigations than the FBI has (generally, the FBI doesn’t do murder cases, except in RICO and federal conspiracies).
A state prosecutor, cross-designated to assist in the federal case, would also be a good idea. With this blended family involved — Anna and her stepbrothers were not blood relations — there’s a good chance that family members here will end up as key witnesses. Interviews in such cases need to be handled delicately, as does any trial questioning. And juries often have very mixed feelings about a family member that “flips” on another.
Either way, the case highlights that sometimes, Congress gets it right. The best chance law enforcement has of solving the Anna Kepner murder is the relatively new CVSSA law.
At this stage, that law will be the prism through which the investigation proceeds.
The Chicago Fire
When a woman is set on fire on a Chicago Blue Line train and a Ukrainian refugee has her throat slashed on a Charlotte light-rail car, it stops being just “the urban crime debate” and starts looking like a national-security failure on wheels.
As you have doubtless heard, Chicago prosecutors have charged 50-year-old Lawrence Reed with a federal terrorism offense for attacking a mass-transit system after he allegedly doused a 26-year-old woman with gasoline and lit her on fire on a CTA train. In Charlotte, Decarlos Brown Jr. has been indicted federally after fatally stabbing 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on the LYNX Blue Line; the charges include violence against a mass-transportation system resulting in death.
Notice something? Yes — federal charges, because these crimes occurred on mass transit.
Under 18 U.S.C. § 1992, “terrorist attacks and other violence against railroad carriers and mass transportation systems” are specifically defined as federal crimes, and DHS/CISA formally classifies transit systems as critical infrastructure that the federal government is obligated to protect. So legally, these trains and subways aren’t just local amenities; they’re national assets tied to interstate commerce and homeland security.
And that’s the bridge to presidential authority. The Insurrection Act, now codified at 10 U.S.C. §§ 252–253, lets the President use the armed forces (including a federalized National Guard) without a governor’s consent when “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages” make it impracticable to enforce federal law, or when people are being deprived of their constitutional rights and the state “fails, refuses, or is unable” to protect them.
Historically, presidents used this to send troops to enforce desegregation orders in the South, even over state objections — Eisenhower in Little Rock being the classic example. The same legal logic could be adapted to today’s transit carnage: if DOJ can show that repeated, high-profile attacks on subways and trains are undermining enforcement of federal transit-safety laws, and that local authorities have proven unwilling or unable to safeguard this critical infrastructure, the President can argue that federal law itself is being obstructed.
In that scenario, a re-elected President Trump would have a colorable legal basis to federalize the Guard under Title 10 and deploy them onto subway and train systems in Chicago, Charlotte, or other high-crime cities, even over blue-state governors’ objections.
Politically, would it go nuclear? Probably. But what doesn’t these days. The point is, Trump would be on much firmer legal ground than he is with simply deploying the Guard into the cities to “stop crime” without the Governor’s consent. Legally, the combination of transit as critical infrastructure, federal terrorism and murder charges on these exact systems, and the Insurrection Act’s “enforce the laws” language is the pathway that gets him there.
And when young women are getting lit on fire simply for being on a train… Trump will have the nation behind him on this. Maybe even some of the media.
Although we doubt it.
And finally…
As we said at the top — we’ve plenty to be thankful for in this country.
We wish you a great one!
We can add this one to the list. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/11/24/us/trump-news?smid=nytcore-ios-share