Major updates in the Butler shooting as investigators uncover a strange link between the attacker and the man accused of targeting Charlie Kirk.
A federal judge has dealt prosecutors in the Comey case a m.ajor setback.
President Trump launches a direct plan to cut prices while Chicago schools get caught blowing taxpayer money on luxury trips.
Epstein files face new pressure for full release.
Snapshots and Notes
New Evidence About Thomas Crooks
Miranda Devine…
This guy, Thomas Crooks, was interested in this furry site, spent a lot of time there, had various images that he liked and reposted, and also gave his pronouns as they/them.
But I think the more important part is what the comments, his online comments from, he was very young, I mean, 15, 16, 17, show us about how he became increasingly violent and sort of radicalised against Democrats.
He was pro-Trump.
And then in January of 2020, he flipped 180 degrees.
Something happened to make him become rabidly anti-Trump.
Even more puzzling was that after living his life online, he totally disappeared from the internet starting in August 2020… only to ‘surface’ in July 2024 when he killed Corey Comperatore and grazed President Trump, and was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper.
Along with Crooks having a fixation on ‘furries’, so didn’t Charlie Kirk’s supposed assassin (we are still believing he was a pansy, the angle from which he was shooting doesn’t jive with the angle of the bullet trajectory).
July 2024…
There were over 700 comments posted from this account.
Some of these comments, if ultimately attributable to the shooter, appear to reflect anti-Semitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence and are described as extreme in nature.
Per Miranda Devine at the New York Post, that’s only half the story, literally.
Mirands reports that the FBI left out an entire section of Crook’s online activity from January to August of 2020, when he went from aggressively pro-Trump to aggressively anti-Trump.
And then, suddenly, he went completely silent across more than 10 social media platforms.
The deputy director, giving testimony at the time, didn’t mention any of this.
Miranda Devine:
It’s inexplicable that Paula Bate would give only that first part of the trajectory for the would-be Trump assassin.
And, you know, it just led Congress and led the public to think something different about Thomas Crooks than was the reality.
I don’t understand why Paula Bate would do that, and I think it would be good if Congress could bring him back and ask him why.
I think the president and people close to him are understandably frustrated, unsatisfied, and I think the public is unsatisfied.
The Epstein Files
And now Senator Ron Johnson subpoenaed the FBI under Kash Patel for Crook’s autopsy, forensic evidence, and a stack of documents.
We’ll see where that goes; whatever the case, the American people deserve transparency.
President Trump, with a plot twist, is now urging Republicans to vote yes on releasing them because he’s finally saying,
“Let’s take that political pawn off the Democrats’ chessboard.”
Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to schedule a vote that’ll happen hopefully this week.
It should pass the House, but whether or not Senator John Thune will bring it to the floor remains to be seen.
Democrats, meanwhile, they’re sprinting in circles now that Pam Bondi is investigating Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, and a few others who’d really prefer not to be in the same sentence as Epstein.
Their response? Oh, this is just a stalling tactic, which is rich coming from the people who turn stalling into an Olympic sport.
Chris Coons weighed in…
My gut hunch is that Attorney General Bondi, having just been ordered on social media by the president to open an investigation into a series of high-profile Democrats, will promptly say, “Oh, no, no, there’s an ongoing investigation. We can’t disclose any of this.”
And the president will back that up.
If the investigation were surrounding Donald Trump, we all know the Democrats would tell us we need to be patient and let the investigation play out.
Now, a top aide for Bill Clinton responded to the email dump we saw last week by writing…
Then there’s Chuck Schumer, who was asked why Democrats didn’t release the Epstein files during the Biden administration.
Olympic-level dodgeball, anyone?
Reporter: It’s a question that’s out there, “Why wouldn’t they have been released the last four years when President Biden was in office?”
Schumer: Well, that’s the question every American is asking. Not every American, but so many Americans are asking. What the hell is he hiding? Why doesn’t he want them released? When you don’t want something like this released, when even a whole lot of Republicans are calling for the release, his own party members, people ask the question, what’s he hiding? It’s got to be answered by releasing the files.
Next Up, James Comey
There’s breaking news in the James Comey saga.
A federal judge just dealt prosecutors a major setback in Comey’s case, ordering them to hand over all secret grand jury records to his legal team.
And he also called out a disturbing pattern of what he said was investigative missteps.
A federal judge late this morning tore into the DOJ and interim U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan, arguing that she made improper comments to grand jurors that could harm Mr. Comey’s rights as guaranteed to all defendants in the American justice system.
Sandra, his case is set to go to trial in January. His team, though, is trying to get the entire thing thrown out, and DOJ is standing behind Lindsey Halligan.
While the judge has now ordered the government to turn over all grand jury audio and sealed materials to Comey’s defense by the end of today.
Comey’s already challenging the case on multiple fronts, including claims of an illegal appointment and vindictive prosecution.
And while Comey fights to see another day outside of a courthouse, Adam Schiff is still trying to convince the American people that Biden’s DOJ wasn’t weaponized.
I listen in the Judiciary Committee to a lot of my colleagues across the aisle, rail with just the most righteous indignation about the horrible weaponization of the Justice Department under that well-known partisan Merrick Garland.
And it is so fanciful as to be absurd, but they speak it with what appears to be total conviction.
And I don’t know, maybe they’re better actors than they used to be, or maybe they’ve so internalized the talking points that they persuaded themselves.
In the video, the guy laughing hysterically at Schiff’s absurd gaslighting is Terry Moran.
He was fired by ABC for his unhinged rant about Stephen Miller.
As for Schiff’s claim, anyone paying even half attention knows Merrick Garland’s record.
This is the same DOJ that
labeled concerned parents at school board meetings as domestic terrorists
carried out an unprecedented pre-dawn raid on a former president’s home while slow walking clear evidence of Biden family influence peddling
weaponized the FACE Act against peaceful pro-life protesters
sent a SWAT team to arrest a pro-life father in front of his kids over a minor shoving incident.
coordinated with big tech to censor conservative speech before the election
kept J6 defendants sitting in jail for years on misdemeanor charges while Antifa rioters walked free
Spare us the gaslighting, Schiff…
Lowering Consumer Prices
Meanwhile, while the left continues to spin stories to protect its own interests, the president is actually taking action for everyday Americans, rolling out a new strategy to tackle high prices, starting with your grocery bill.
He is rolling back tariffs on everyday staples...
coffee
spices
fruit
beef
You name it
The move is aimed at easing the sticker shock that many are feeling at the supermarket.
So, how fast will you actually feel the difference? Per Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent…
We inherited this terrible inflation.
We are flattening it out.
So I would expect in the first 2 quarters (January through June 2026), we are going to see the inflation curve bend down and the real income curve substantially accelerate.
And when those two lines cross, Americans are going to feel it.
Meanwhile …
He recently invited top CEOs to the White House for dinner, where they pitched ideas on how to make life more affordable - a real brainstorming session, not one of those Washington meetings where everyone just nods and nothing changes.
He’s rolling back the tariffs, and it looks like this is just the first sign of what he’s willing to do to course-correct and deliver on a campaign promise.
From an economic standpoint, our prices are coming down very substantially on groceries and things.
They’re already at a much lower level than they were with the last administration.
And we worked on it this weekend, and you’re going to see some of the items that were a little bit higher.
They were lower than the last administration, but a little bit higher.
We’re going to have some little price reductions, and in some cases, some pretty good ones.
Refreshing to see a president acknowledge that people are hurting and actually take action.
Compared to the last administration, 4 straight years of policies pushing prices to the breaking point.
And then they told us, “Don’t believe your lying eyes.”
What we’re not going to do is tell the American people that they don’t know how they’re feeling, which is what the Biden administration did.
They said it was a vibe session.
You don’t know how good you have it.
And we are working every day to get these prices down.
Under Biden, groceries climbed a staggering 23%, under Trump, so far, only 1.4%.
Now, with that said, tax cuts are on the way, set to take effect in January.
The Coming Tax Cuts
Remember the big, beautiful bill?
The president’s team says families will finally feel some breathing room as more of their paycheck stays in their pocket.
Chicago Budgetary Abuses
And while families are watching every dollar, some government spending is still entirely out of control.
For example, Chicago Public Schools treated COVID relief funds like their own personal travel budget.
Destinations like Las Vegas, Hawaii, Egypt, and Finland.
They even went on a safari!
Meanwhile, the district is staring at a $700 million budget hole.
How’d they pull it off?
Easy.
They bypassed the approval process and spent more than double the allowed amount.
This is your tax dollars hard at work.
The amount spent on travel in 2021 was $300,000.
It jumped to 3.4 million in 2022, doubled in 2023, and continued to grow in 2024.
The report concludes that more scrutiny was put on whether the expense paperwork was done correctly than on whether the expenses were excessive.
As a result, more than 90% of the traveling employees went over the allowable limits.
Oftentimes, lodging and airfare were double the allowable rate.
One of the reasons the trips were not rejected is that they did not require approval.
Of 15 international trips noted by the inspector general, 12 were never submitted for approval.
Every employee who gamed the system should be shown the door immediately, but they won’t, because the district is already begging for more teachers.
And while they cry out about a staffing crisis, they casually burn through millions that could have actually helped their students.
We do need more special education teachers, but consider that $7.7 million in wasted taxpayer money for balloon rides and viewing giraffes and elephants could have been allocated to hiring 100 of those special education teachers.
These are the questions that we need to be asking.
After the inspector general dropped this bombshell, Chicago Public Schools announced they’re freezing all overnight travel.
Thank you.
They issued a statement that sounds like it was written by ChatGPT with a migraine…
And yet, no apology.
Here’s the actual performance reality…
It’s a wonder we aren’t higher than the 30-percentile in the OECD PISA test.
One of America’s major cities is producing numbers that would make a banana republic blush.
And maybe, just maybe, this has something to do with attendance, as more than 43% of their teachers logged 10 or more absences last school year.
And the students?
They’re skipping out, too.
But sure, let’s keep pretending the teachers’ unions are the ones who need more support.
Rest assured, school choice would address this problem quickly.
