☕️ TRADING MAYORS ☙ Tuesday, May 20, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Trump’s DOJ charges first sitting Congressperson; probes Chicago’s mayor; Bondi empowers locals; DOJ leak clampdown begins; cartoonist’s cancer adds fuel to jab injury debate.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! Your hard-hitting roundup today includes: Trump’s new DOJ files criminal charges against the first sitting Congressperson and you would think the world was ending; DOJ kicks off Civil Rights violations investigation against Chicago’s communist mayor—let’s go!; AG Bondi poised to turn local prosecutors loose to investigate public officials without micromanagement from DC’s political office; change on DOJ leaking policy signals crackdown; and tragic cartoonist cancer story coalesces context around Biden’s oil cancer and other jab injuries.

🪖 C&C ARMY POST 🪖

Today’s roundup is a little on the shorter side, since I am busily preparing for a critical hearing this afternoon in one of our highest-profile cases. I’ll update you about that tomorrow.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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Another “arrest”! Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story headlined, “Rep. McIver Charged With Assault Over Clash Outside Newark ICE Center.”

Ironically, on the same day, Interim US Attorney for New Jersey, Alina Habba, also dropped misdemeanor trespassing charges against Newark Mayor Ras “Raspberry” Baraka, who’d been charged after trying to get himself deported at a local ICE detention center. At the time, he was accompanied by two loud, forceful Representatives of ambiguous gender, including Representative LaMonica McIver, who was clearly there to throw “her” weight around. (For now, I’ll refer to McIver as “her” since the Times did, but I don’t know for sure what her or it’s preferred gender is.)

“You can’t talk to a congresswoman like that,” she tells an ICE agent in one video clip, not at all entitled. She warned them darkly, in a low, growling voice that sounded remarkably like Boris Badanov from Rocky & Bullwinkle: “You will pay!” (Just less of a Russian accent and more of a New Jersey urban dialect, or patois, or whatever they call it.)

Anyway, on May 9th, a noisy group of indignant Democrat lawmakers and friends tried to invade the borders of a brand new ICE Detention facility in Newark. The ‘gang’ included three Democrat Congressmen, Mayor Baraka, and about a dozen of just the most necessary members of their posse. They stridently claimed that their oversight role as members of Congress meant they could enter any federal facility anytime they wanted without notice.

ICE agents objected, explaining they could not enter without an escort (for their own safety) or bring along non-Congressmembers like Mayor Baraka, and asked them to leave.

McIver, Baraka, and the rest of the brave company loudly refused.

What ensued has become a highly contentious “he said-she said” controversy. The Times, fastidiously avoiding choosing sides, described the scene as “a confusing scrum” and a “chaotic scuffle.” But at one point, Miss McIver is clearly visible charging and surging through the ICE officers like an enraged hippopotamus. Except louder.

It’s hard to miss her in the clip, since she is one of the largest objects and practically scatters six grown men like they were bowling pins.

After the group was finally removed, ICE agents gave the three Congressmen (including the two birthing persons) a tour anyway. Nobody in the useless corporate media has ever bothered to ask whether McIver & Co. were there to legitimately oversee the detention facility or just create a mob-like media moment.

In a statement, Interim US Attorney Alina Habba said her office had tried to “work things out” with Rep. McIver, but she remained immovable. Thus, yesterday, “Miss” McIver became a justice-involved individual after the DOJ filed criminal charges for assaulting a federal officer.

Under the relevant statute, Rep. McIver faces up to 8 years and a maximum fine of $250,000.

As for Mayor Raspberry, “After extensive consideration, we have agreed to dismiss Mayor Baraka’s misdemeanor charge of trespass for the sake of moving forward,” Habba said. That’s code for: they found something about the case they didn’t like, or worked something out, or are picking their battle. Either way, they traded up misdemeanor trespassing charges against a kooky mayor for felony assault charges against a sitting Democrat Congressperson.

Democrats were outraged. How dare they, et cetera. Nancy Pelosi’s Twitter account, yesterday:

But was it a legitimate oversight? Anyway, Representative Eric Swalwell, who sued Trump over J6, and served on Trump’s first impeachment trial team, furiously labeled Miss McIver’s arrest as “crossing a red line.” In all-caps:

From her public statements, it is clear that McIver intends to argue that she lacked intent to assault anybody: she was just reacting, or was innocently defending Mayor Baraka, or maybe she had an ecstasy flashback and thought she was in a mosh pit.

But not so fast. Her furious words —“you will pay!”— are evidence of intent, so the DOJ is off to a good start with this one. It’s a thin case against a well-protected defendant, but the case isn’t so thin as to be invisible.

⚖️ Lose a mayor, win a mayor. In a related story, yesterday the Chicago Tribune ran an article headlined, “Justice Department investigating Mayor Brandon Johnson for alleged racially motivated hiring.”

Yesterday, Chicago’s Marxist Mayor Brandon “Let’s Go” Johnson received a letter from Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon saying there is “reasonable cause” to believe the mayor “made hiring decisions solely on the basis of race,” potentially violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In March, Brandon told reporters, “It’s not enough to win the power, you have to protect the power.” Thus, Brandon boasted, “the first thing I did for our people was make sure that I put key black people in positions of power to protect it.”

In a podcast interview two days ago, Brandon bragged even more about how many black people he’d hired into the Mayor’s office. In yesterday’s letter, AAG Dhillon shot back, “Considering these remarks, I have authorized an investigation to determine whether the city of Chicago is engaged in a pattern of practice of discrimination as set forth above,” promising to check into both high-ranking and lower-level jobs.

On Sunday, Brandon gloated that his staff was now 45% Black, 25% Brown, 8% Asian and 30% (lower case) white. After seeing the letter yesterday, his office issued corrected figures: 34% Black, 24% Hispanic, 30% white and 7% Asian. Were you lying then, Brandon, or are you lying now?

⚖️ Rounding out today’s accountability trifecta, on Sunday the Washington Post ran an intriguing story headlined, “Trump Justice Dept. considers removing key check on lawmaker prosecutions.” The “key check” is a Biden-era rule that forbids Attorneys General from investigating public officials for corruption without first getting permission from the DC field office. You can guess how often that happens.

According to leakers (“three people familiar with the proposal”), federal prosecutors across the country may soon be able to indict members of Congress without pre-approval from “lawyers in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section,” or PIN, which is safely settled in Washington, DC where politicians can keep a wary eye on them.

Even better, under the new plan, FBI investigators and prosecutors would also be freed from having to ‘consult’ with the section’s attorneys “during key steps of probes into public officials.” In other words, even when the DC office did green-light an indictment, it still micromanaged the whole investigation.

Currently, the DOJ’s manual requires that PIN’s attorneys must approve —not just be consulted on— any charges against members of Congress. It doesn’t happen often, to say the least.

WaPo, probably intentionally, missed the painfully obvious point: a special oversight privilege for public officials provides them with a special tier of justice that other Americans do not enjoy. WaPo whined that the Public Integrity Section’s role was to “ensure that cases against public officials are legally sound and not politically motivated.”

But … what about us? Wouldn’t it be better and fairer to ensure that cases against all Americans are legally sound and not politically motivated, and not just public officials?

The ironically named Public Integrity office has already “dramatically shrunk” during the Trump administration, plunging from around 30 prosecutors by the end of the Biden administration to fewer than five today. One was fired, some rage-quit over the dismissal of the DOJ’s case against New York’s Democrat Mayor Eric Adams, while others have been “detailed to different sections in the department,” such as the division of Indian Affairs. In Trump’s first week in office, he fired PIN Director Corey Amundson.

It sure makes you think. Say you were planning to initiate wide-scale investigations into members of Congress, maybe for NGO abuse, insider trading, or general self-enrichment. This kind of thing would probably be your first move. Just saying.

⚖️ On Friday, WaPo reported another highly suggestive change in DOJ policy, under the headline “Reporters’ phone records could again be searched, Justice Dept. says” Last week, Bondi rescinded a Biden-era policy preventing investigators from searching reporters’ phone records to find leakers.

“This (leaking) conduct is illegal and wrong and it must stop,” Bondi wrote in an internal memo, which, farcically, was promptly leaked to WaPo. “This Justice Department will not tolerate unauthorized disclosures that undermine President Trump’s policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people,” she wrote.

Unlike the proposed PIN plan, though, AG Bondi said she will still personally approve all attempts to question or arrest journalists. So reporters still get to enjoy their own justice tier. Still, overall, it was significant progress.

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Yesterday’s news included one very sad announcement. The Times of India ran the story headlined, “'I expect to die this summer': Cartoonist Scott Adams reveals prostate cancer diagnosis, same as Joe Biden.” From the start of the pandemic, beloved ‘Dilbert’ creator, author, intellectual, and popular conservative commentator Scott Adams, 67, was a massive vaccine fan. He loved the jabs— until one day, he suddenly didn’t. In early 2023, Scott completely changed his mind and issued a remarkable public mea culpa. Maybe now we know why.

CLIP: Scott Adams says the anti-vax people clearly are the winners; they came out the best (3:03).

Scott’s turnaround happened so fast that his whiteboard packed with dense pro-vaccine logic still sat right behind him when it happened. “The thing unvaxxed are not worrying about,” Scott said at the time, “is what I have to worry about, which is: I wonder about that vaccination in five years from now.’” Addressing the unvaccinated, Scott forthrightly admitted, “Well, you won. You won completely. I did not end up in the right place. You should take victory, and I should take defeat. All of my fancy analytics got me to a bad place.”

Two years later, during yesterday’s regular show, Scott told viewers (2:06), “I have the same cancer Joe Biden has. So, I also have prostate cancer, which has also spread to my bones.” Things are, tragically, not going well. “I am always in pain,” he confessed. “I use a walker to get around. And I expect to die this summer.”

Scott added, to be perfectly clear: “the pain is intolerable.”

He didn’t say when he was diagnosed, only that it had been “longer than Biden” and that he “had time to process it.” Nothing lasts forever, he reminded viewers. Nothing.

It was a stark contrast between how the two men, Adams and Biden, both public figures, handled announcing their cancer.

And, before you ask, Scott said he’d tried fenbenzadole and ivermectin.

So, to be clear, we don’t know whether Scott’s cancer first appeared after his jabs, or maybe it was made worse by the shots. Scott himself did not mention the shots yesterday. Maybe now that he’s ripped off the cancer bandage, he’ll provide more detail. I hope he will, but I wouldn’t dare to ask.

Still, it’s hard not to suspect that he went public yesterday after Biden’s big cancer reveal to emphasize the link.

Either way, Scott’s 2023 apology video now feels eerily prescient. Right on the heels of the president who mandated the shots, Scott —with the exact same cancer!— has become the latest celebrity who hawked the shots and now has terminal cancer or another common type of jab injury. Scott’s mistake, as he pointed out in his 2023 video, was trusting the government too much.

We are praying for Scott, his family, and his fans. I pray hardest that he will find his way to an HR-department-free office in Heaven.

Have a terrific Tuesday! I will return tomorrow morning with details about our hearing (pray for success) and a brand-new roundup of all the most essential and informative news you need to go about your day.

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