By: Hadassah Kalatizadeh

Another major retail bankruptcy may be brewing.  

Barneys New York Inc. has been in talks with several lenders about financing its operations to keep the stores open, if it does choose to file for bankruptcy protection.  As reported by Bloomberg News, the company may head to bankruptcy court as early as next week, as per an inside source who did not wish to be identified.  The company is looking to attain a debtor-in-possession loan, through which it could stay open while working out a turnaround plan through Chapter 11 protection.  Talk of a second bankruptcy for the company has been circling since mid-July, though Barneys is still reportedly also contemplating other options. 

Barneys’ advisers have been in discussions with Great American Capital Partners, the Los Angeles based- private equity firm.  The retailer also already spoke to its current lenders: TPG Sixth Street Partners and Wells Fargo & Co., as per the source. It has yet to be determined how many of the chain’s stores, if any, will need to be closed in the turnaround plan. Barneys New York Inc did not comment, nor did the potential lenders. 

“The Barneys New York board and management continue to work constructively and collaboratively with a number of parties and are committed to reaching a mutually agreeable resolution to strengthen our business,” the company said in a statement.

The luxury department store chain was first opened 96 years ago by Barney Pressman.  His son Fred Pressman continued as a family business until the store went bankrupt in 1996.  Many of the chain’s boutiques were closed altogether then, and the rest of the company was sold to various buyers.  Since 2012, the company’s majority has been owned by Perry Capital, the hedge fund manager, which made several acquisitions that year.  Of late, the brick and mortar retailer has been struggling due to rapidly rising rental costs, and reduced cash flow due to competition from online luxury players such as Net- a-Porter and the RealReal.com, which have low overheads.  For example, Barneys’ Madison Avenue store rent will shortly nearly double to $30 million, following an unfavorable arbitration decision, as per CBS News. The company only has about $850 million in sales.

Barneys New York, founded in New York City in 1923, currently operates almost a dozen flagship stores around the U.S. including NYC’s Madison Avenue and Chelsea, Beverly Hills, Chicago, Seattle, Boston, San Francisco and Las Vegas. It also licenses twelve stores in Japan under a franchise agreement.

Responding to weekend mass shootings in the United States, President Trump is vowing “to act with urgent resolve,” explicitly condemning white supremacy and calling for strong background checks for gun purchases.

By: Steve Herman

Trump, however, is not advocating major gun control legislation, disappointing advocates who favor such measures.

Trump made remarks at the White House on Monday, after a pair of mass shootings 13 hours apart in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, in which lone gunmen killed a total of at least 31 people.

“In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” said Trump, noting hatred expressed in a “manifesto” attributed to the young white man being held as the suspect for the early Sunday shooting at a Walmart store in the Texas city on the Mexican border. “These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America.”

Trump also said, “Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart and devours the soul.”

Plans are being made for a visit by the president later in the week to both El Paso and Dayton. A trip he had planned to take Tuesday to Florida has been postponed.

In his early Monday remarks, Trump also focused on mental illness, violence in the media and in video games, warning of “the perils of the internet and social media.”

The U.S. president advocated red flag laws to try to identify those would could potentially commit such mass violence and prevent them from getting their hands on weapons to carry out such crimes.

Trump termed the mass shootings (there have been about 250 in the United States so far this year) “barbaric slaughter” that “are an assault upon our communities, an attack upon our nation and a crime against all of humanity.”

Trump, with Vice President Mike Pence at his side, spoke for just under 10 minutes and did not respond to questions from a group of reporters in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room.

Earlier in the day on Twitter, Trump suggested linking gun legislation to immigration reform.

Congress for years has been unable to reach agreement on immigration reforms, which Trump has pushed to thwart migrants, mostly from Central America, from crossing the southern U.S. border with Mexico. On the issue of gun violence, lawmakers only sporadically have enacted gun policy changes in the face of opposition from gun advocates who draw their authority from the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees Americans the right to own a weapon.

“It took less than three hours for the president to back off his call for stronger background check legislation. When he can’t mention guns while talking about gun violence, it shows the president remains prisoner to the gun lobby and the NRA (National Rifle Association),” said the two top Democratic Party lawmakers in Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in a joint statement. “The public must weigh in and demand passage of this legislation for the safety of our children.”

In a statement released immediately after Trump’s speech, former member of Congress Gabby Giffords said the president’s words alone without action will not save lives.

“Today is not the first time this President has stood before the nation in the wake of a mass shooting promising to make the safety of our children and communities a top priority, but so far those promises have all been empty. They’ve been designed to fill a news cycle, not tackle a cycle of violence,” said Giffords, who was shot in the head in 2011 in a supermarket parking lot as she met with her Arizona constituents. “Make no mistake, if Donald Trump was truly serious about addressing America’s gun violence crisis he would demand that the Senate return from their August Recess today and send the background checks bill passed by the House 159 days ago to his desk immediately.” 

Authorities say that in the border city of El Paso, a gunman opened fire at a Walmart store, killing at least 22 people and wounding 26. They are investigating the attack as a possible hate crime and seeking to confirm that the suspect, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, who has been jailed, was the author of an online posting predicting a shooting spree intended to target Hispanics. The man lived in the Dallas area, hundreds of kilometers away from El Paso.

 Trump’s Democratic opponents, including several seeking their party’s nomination to run against him in the 2020 election, have blamed his oft-repeated anti-immigration rhetoric as fostering the hate that contributed to the El Paso mass killing. (VOA News)

Using DCCC as fundraising foil is long-standing tactic for Justice Democrats

By: Todd Shepherd

The political action committee that helped cement the rise of the four Democratic congresswomen who eventually became known as “the Squad” has launched a set of Facebook ads fundraising off the recent diversity fiasco at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

The new ads from the PAC, Justice Democrats, follow recent efforts by the DCCC to hide internal conflicts between the progressive and moderate wings of the party.

“The Democratic Party has attacked progressive leaders in Congress for ‘making the party look bad,'” one of the ads says. “However, just this week, multiple members of the DCCC leadership have resigned over issues of diversity within the DCCC’s ranks.”

The ad is referring to the forced resignation on Monday of DCCC executive director Allison Jaslow, a white, gay veteran who had once been deployed to Iraq. Five other staffers eventually suffered the same fate, mainly due to demands from two Hispanic Texas congressmen who wanted a “person of color” to be made executive director.

The fallout came after reporting from the Washington Free Beacon revealed homophobic and racially charged tweets from a newly hired staffer for minority outreach, Tayhlor Coleman, who is black.

For example, one of those tweets read, “The vending machine at my center only has Mexican snacks and bebidas. I’m hungry but I’m concerned about safety.”

Coleman was not forced out.

After the Free Beacon‘s report, DCCC Chairwoman Rep. Cheri Bustos (D., Ill.) assured some in her caucus that Coleman was soon to be reassigned, but a follow-up report by Politico contradicted those claims.

“Anyone seeking to divide our party and stoke infighting between Democrats at a time when Donald Trump is in the White House is undermining our ability to protect the majority,” DCCC spokesman Jared Smith was quoted as saying in the Politico article.

In early July, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) appealed to all Democrats to smooth out their differences behind closed doors and not through social media, an exhortation widely believed to be aimed at “Squad” members such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.).

Justice Democrats has been waging war with the DCCC over a decision earlier this year, also by Bustos, to blacklist any vendor who did business with a Democratic candidate who was challenging an incumbent in the primary.

Such a policy could have hampered or ruined the now-famous primary challenge from Ocasio-Cortez, in which she upset Joe Crowley, an incumbent and member of Democratic House leadership.

“Even if the DCCC reforms to have more diversity in its ranks, it won’t mean much as they continue to use the DCCC blacklist, which disproportionately harms young progressives and candidates of color from challenging out-of-touch incumbents,” the ad said. “The DCCC won’t fight for new leadership in the party, so we will. Chip in to help elect leaders for the future.”

The ad buys were smaller than most Facebook campaigns by the PAC, indicating the ads could be market-testing the message. The ads were also launched one day before the news broke that both the chief of staff and communications director for Ocasio-Cortez would be resigning their posts within her congressional office.

The disagreement between the two groups isn’t limited to social media feuds or Facebook fundraising.

The Justice Democrats website shows the PAC is supporting four challengers to incumbent house Democrats in the 2020 cycle and is also backing a candidate running for the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.

Requests for comment to Justice Democrats and the DCCC were not returned. (Washington Free Beacon)

          The antitrust investigation of Facebook continues.

          This week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said it was looking at the social media behemoth’s acquisitions as part of its antitrust investigation. The question a lot of people are asking is: was Facebook simply aiming to buy up potential competitors?

By Howard M. Riell

          What the company is buying – and why – is a large portion of the FTC investigation, according to sources.

          “FTC investigators are examining whether the company and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, purchased technology startups to keep them from challenging Facebook’s empire, the people said, some of whom added that the FTC has begun reaching out to the founders of such companies,” reported The Wall Street Journal. “The tech giant has acquired about 90 companies over roughly the last 15 years, according to data compiled by S&P Global. Among those companies are the photo-sharing app Instagram and the messaging service WhatsApp, which bolstered Facebook as a dominant force in social media and messaging.”

News media across the world have been reporting that FTC is looking specifically at the acquisitions of companies like Instagram and WhatsApp as part of an antitrust investigation. The agency wants to know if Facebook was attempting to wipe out possible competition.

“Facebook confirmed in its latest earnings report an FTC investigation was underway, but didn’t go into much detail beyond it having to do with “the areas of social networking or social media services, digital advertising, and/or mobile or online applications.” The acquisition aspect is reportedly the focus of the investigation. Facebook told Engadget it wouldn’t comment on the report.”

The new investigation comes on the heels of a $5 billion settlement between the FTC and Facebook that was agreed upon on July 24, according to digitaltrends.com. “The historic settlement is a result of violations Facebook made from a previous settlement with the FTC in 2012. As part of last week’s settlement, Facebook is required to designate compliance officers who will be responsible for the new privacy program. The social network will also have to implement an independent privacy committee of Facebook’s board of directors, which will be charged with creating greater accountability.”

The Department of Justice announced a broad antitrust review into Big Tech, most likely including Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google, on July 23, the web site noted. “The department initially provided few details, only saying they would look into, “whether and how market-leading online platforms have achieved market power and are engaging in practices that have reduced competition, stifled innovation, or otherwise harmed consumers.”

Dayton Police say 24-year-old behind Saturday night’s shooting wore a bulletproof vest, mask and hearing protection

By: Ben Ariel

Richard Biehl, the Chief of Police in Dayton, Ohio, said that Connor Betts, the 24-year-old responsible for the shooting overnight Saturday in the city’s entertainment district, wore a bulletproof vest, mask and hearing protection.

Betts carried at least 100 rounds as he opened fire, said Biehl, according to The Associated Press.

The shooter killed his sister and eight others in less than 30 seconds before police fatally shot him, he added.

Biehl said he could not yet answer why Betts carried out the shooting.

He added the .223-caliber rifle Betts used was ordered online from Texas and transferred to Betts at a firearms dealer in the area.

Officials say 31 more people were wounded in the shooting attack, which began a little past 1:00 a.m., either by gunfire or as they fled.

It was the second mass shooting in the US in less than 24 hours.

Hours before the shooting in Dayton, a mass shooting occurred in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, killing 20 and injuring 27.

Responding on Sunday to the two shootings, President Trump told reporters that “hate has no place in our country”. The president, who added that he will have a statement on Monday about the shootings, told reporters he had spoken to the FBI, Attorney General William Barr, and members of Congress about what can be done to prevent such violence.

According to an AP report, Americans did not get a glimpse of the president in the immediate aftermath of the shootings in El Paso and Dayton. Not until Trump and the first lady prepared to fly back to Washington in the late afternoon Sunday did he appear before cameras.

While connecting “hate” and mental illness to the shootings, Trump made no direct mention of gun laws, a factor brought up by Democratic officials and those seeking their party’s nomination to challenge Trump’s reelection next year. He also ignored questions about the anti-immigration language in a manifesto written by the El Paso shooter that mirrors some of his own.

Trump tried to assure Americans he was dealing with the problem and defended his administration in light of criticism following the latest in a string of mass shootings.

“We have done much more than most administrations,” he said, without elaboration. “We have done actually a lot. But perhaps more has to be done.” (INN & AP)

The Kennedy family announces the death of Saoirse Kennedy Hill, the granddaughter of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

By: Sara Rubenstein 

The granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy, Saoirse Kennedy Hill, died on Thursday at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, according to a spokesperson for the Kennedy family.

Although the family’s statement didn’t list the cause of death, it’s believed that Saoirse died from a drug overdose. According to a Fox News report, Hill had written about her problem with depression in a student newspaper in 2016, saying that “someone I knew and loved broke serious sexual boundaries with me,” and wrote she had attempted suicide in the past.

Saoirse was the daughter of Courtney Kennedy Hill, who was one of Robert Kennedy’s 11 children.

“Our hearts are shattered by the loss of our beloved Saoirse,” the family statement said. “Her life was filled with hope, promise and love. She cared deeply about friends and family, especially her mother Courtney, her father Paul, her stepmother Stephanie, and her grandmother Ethel.”

The latest tragedy in the Kennedy family was widely reported with the words “Kennedy curse” in the title of the reports, referring to the multiple tragedies that have struck the famous and powerful family for generations. Many people think that the “Kennedy curse” is just a way of referring to the family’s long series of unfortunate assassinations, accidents, suicides and drug overdoses but some believe that an actual curse did take place.

In the religious Jewish world, some believe that the “Kennedy curse” began when the patriarch of the family, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., refused Rabbi Aharon Kotler’s request to help save Europeans Jews from certain death at the hands of the Nazis. Some say that Rabbi Kotler asked Kennedy to let in a boat full of Jews to the US, the SS St. Louis, and when Kennedy refused, the boat was forced to return to Nazi Europe where all the Jews died. The story goes that not only did Kennedy refuse to help but he was rude to the rabbi and publicly humiliated him. The rabbi subsequently cursed him that his family would suffer from a series of unnatural deaths – “misa meshuna.” A “misa meshuna” is the Talmudic term for an unnatural death – a life cut short due to an accident or other unfortunate event rather than a natural death from old age.

Others argue that Joe Kennedy was well-known for engaging in legal and ruthless business dealing and was tyrannical to his children and unfaithful to his wife. It’s also well-known that Joseph’s son, President John F. Kennedy, was unfaithful to his wife as well and didn’t let the presidency stop him from engaging in multiple affairs and would even bring women along with him on his political trips abroad. Another son, Senator Ted Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident after crashing his car in a river. He failed to summon help until the morning and meanwhile, his female passenger died. Is it possible that the “Kennedy curse” is the natural result of generations of immoral and callous behavior?

What is definitely known is the series of misfortunes that befell the Kennedy family beginning from the World War II era. In 1944, Joseph’s oldest son and namesake, Joseph Kennedy Jr. died in a plane crash on a secret mission during World War II at the age of 29. In 1948, Joseph’s daughter Kathleen was killed in a plane crash at the age of 29. In 1961, Joseph Kennedy suffered a severe stroke which robbed him of his ability to speak but he lived to see the death of two more of his children in his lifetime and the disgrace of his son Ted Kennedy. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, and Ted Kennedy, the only one of his four sons who died a natural death, was publicly disgraced in 1969.

The following is a partial list of the misfortunes of the Kennedy family:

In 1948, Joseph’s daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Cavendish, was killed in a plane crash at the age of 29.

In 1961, Joseph Kennedy suffered a stroke and lost his ability to speak.

In 1963, John F. Kennedy was assassinated at the age of 46.

In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated at the age of 42.In 1973, Joseph P. Kennedy II was driving a Jeep which crashed and left a passenger paralyzed.

In 1984, David A. Kennedy, Robert’s son, died of a drug overdose at the age of 29.

In 1997, Michael Kennedy, another one of Robert’s sons, died in a skiing accident on a ski slope in Aspen, Colorado at the age of 39. Earlier that year he was accused of having an affair with his children’s 14-year-old baby sitter.

In 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr. was killed in a plane crash together with his wife and sister-in-law.

In 2011, Kara Kennedy, Ted Kennedy’s daughter, died from a heart attack during a workout at a health club at age 51.

In 2012, Mary Richardson Kennedy, the estranged wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was found dead behind a barn on her property in what appeared to be a suicide. (INN)

On Friday evening on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” former Google engineer Kevin Cernekee argued there was political bias within the tech giant.

By: Jeff Poor

Cernekee claimed to have been bullied and ultimately fired for his right-wing beliefs. However, Cernekee said it was his view that Google would attempt to thwart President Donald Trump’s re-election in 2020.

Partial transcript as follows:

CARLSON: How ideological is the management at Google?

CERNEKEE: It’s highly ideological. You can see bias at every level at the organization. One thing that I noticed that just handling routine issues is plagued with bias. Like they will get a report, an email with a liberal reporter complaining about something and they will jump on it and they will fix the issue very, very quickly. In contrast, one thing that I saw when I worked there was if you do a Google search for “Crippled America,” which is Donald Trump’s book you would get results that would show “Mein Kampf” instead of “Crippled America.” And I reported that I filed a bug, I escalated it, I tried to run it up the chain. They took nine months to fix that bug. They just stalled at every opportunity. They assigned it to people who no longer work there. They made every excuse in the book to avoid taking down something that made Donald Trump look bad. And I saw a number of incidents just like that.

CARLSON: Do you think that Google will attempt to influence the election outcome. Attempt to prevent Trump from being re-elected?

CERNEKEE: I do believe so. I think that’s a major threat. They have openly stated that they think 2016 was a mistake. They thought Trump should have lost in 2016. They really want Trump to lose in 2020. That’s their agenda. They have very biased people running every level of the company. They have quite a bit of control over the political process. That’s something we should really worry about.

(Breitbart.com)

Twenty people were killed, 26 were wounded and one suspect was in custody after a mass shooting Saturday at a shopping mall complex in the border town of El Paso, Texas, police said.   

Edited by: JV Staff

Police Chief Greg Allen said the victims ranged in age from 2 to 82, according to local media. Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said three of the dead and six of the wounded were Mexican nationals. 

Law enforcement officials identified the suspect as Patrick Crusius, 21, a white male from Allen, Texas, a northern suburb of Dallas about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) east of El Paso. 

Police said the shooting was being investigated as a hate crime. 

“Right now we have a manifesto from this individual that indicates to some degree it has a nexus to potential hate crime,” Allen said during a news conference Saturday evening.  

A “manifesto,” purportedly written by Crusius, was posted online about an hour before the shooting and included language that complained about the “Hispanic invasion” of Texas. The author of the manifesto wrote that he expected to be killed during the attack. 

NBC News reported that law enforcement officials learned of the extremist manifesto about an hour before the shooting occurred. 

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who traveled to El Paso, told reporters, “We as a state unite in support of these victims and their family members. … We pray that God can be with those who have been harmed in any way and bind up their wounds.” 

Police began receiving calls about 10:39 a.m. local time with multiple reports of a shooting at a Walmart store and the nearby Cielo Vista Mall complex on the east side of the city.  

Sgt. Robert Gomez, a spokesman with the El Paso Police Department, said most of the shootings occurred at the Walmart, where there were more than 1,000 shoppers and 100 employees. Many families were taking advantage of a sales-tax holiday to shop for back-to-school supplies, officials said. 

“This is unprecedented in El Paso,” Gomez said of the mass shooting and multiple injuries, many of which he said were life-threatening. 

El Paso Mayor Dee Margo told CNN, “This is just a tragedy that I’m having a hard time getting my arms around.” 

Originally, Margo, as well as several witnesses, said there were several shooters involved. But police said they thought there was just one shooter. 

“I can confirm that it is a white male in his 20s,” police spokesman Gomez said. “We believe he’s the sole shooter.” 

 Gomez said an assault-style rifle was used in the shooting. 

 The El Paso shooting was the nation’s 249th mass shooting this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The archive defines a mass shooting as four or more people shot or killed, excluding the gunman, at one location. 

 A White House spokesperson said President Trump, who was spending the weekend at his New Jersey golf club, had been briefed on the shooting and had been in contact with Texas’ governor. 

 Later, Trump tweeted: “Working with State and Local authorities, and Law Enforcement. Spoke to Governor to pledge total support of Federal Government. God be with you all!” (VOA News)

Soros’s Democracy PAC launched in January; also pushed $1.1M into Justice & Public Safety PAC  

By: Joe Schoffstall

Liberal billionaire George Soros poured $5.1 million into a new political action committee that was quietly established earlier this year for the 2020 election cycle, filings show.

In early January, a statement of organization was filed to the Federal Election Commission to establish the Democracy PAC. The filing for the PAC listed Michael Vachon, Soros’s spokesperson, as the PAC’s treasurer.

Now, new semi-annual filings reveal that the financier pushed $100,000 into the Democracy PAC on Feb. 13 and $5,000,000 more into the committee on June 2. Soros is the only donor to the PAC as of June 30. During the first half of the year, the Democracy PAC disbursed $6,620.17 to the Perkins Coie law firm and $600 to NGP Van, a voter database and consulting company.

An individual familiar with the PAC told Politico Wednesday evening that Soros plans to use the entity to fund other liberal groups and organizations. “He has, unlike Tom Steyer or [Michael] Bloomberg, funded things like Senate Majority PAC and Priorities USA and EMILY’s List and Planned Parenthood and expects to continue to do so,” the source told the publication.

Michael Vachon, Soros’s spokesman, did not respond to an inquiry on the PAC by press time.

This marks the first time the billionaire has made large-scale moves for the 2020 election cycle after so far only providing maxed out contributions to Reps. Tom Malinowski (D., N.J) and Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.). A $2,800 contribution was also given to Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s (D., N.H.) campaign.

Soros, however, also cut hefty checks to a PAC that is primarily used to fund efforts where far-left district attorney candidates he backs are seeking office.

Soros deposited $110,000 into the Justice & Public Safety PAC on Feb. 2, according to its mid-year filings. The financier pushed another $975,000 into the PAC’s coffers on April 17.

The Justice & Public Safety PAC’s largest expenditure throughout the first half of the year was $190,000 to Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, who at the time was a candidate for Arlington County commonwealth’s attorney. Tafti ultimately defeated Theo Stamos, the incumbent Democratic prosecutor, by just under 3 points.

Soros also supported Steve Descano, a candidate for Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney, who beat incumbent Democrat Ray Morrogh by just over 2 percentage points. Soros spent more than $1 million backing Tafti and Descana.

The Justice & Public Safety PAC disbursed $70,000 on June 20 to the New York Working Families Party, who was working to elect Tiffany Cabán, a candidate in the Democratic primary for Queens district attorney.

Cabán, who received help from the Democratic Socialists of America and was endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.,N.Y.), declared victory following the June election. Ocasio-Cortez also took a victory lap on Twitter.

Following a recount, which concluded this week, Cabán was declared the loser of the race.

Additionally, Soros’s Justice & Public Safety PAC donated $75,000 to New Virginia Majority, a group that organizes “within Latinx, African American, Asian American Pacific Islander, and youth communities, centering the leadership and demands of working class women of color.” The civic engagement and issue advocacy group claims to have registered more than 200,000 Virginia voters and knocked on more than 1 million doors since 2015.

New filings also show Soros directly contributed $55,000 in April to the Youth Progressive Action Catalyst PAC, a youth-led group that connects young people directly to progressive candidates and campaigns. Soros donated $50,000 in May to the United for Progress PAC, whose primary purpose is to “build community-based political power and influence in the growing Puerto Rican and Latino constituencies in Florida.” (Washington Free Beacon)

It appears that the case of accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein is getting more bizarre as each day passes. According to a July 31st report in the New York Times, Epstein who has been charged with the crime of sex trafficking underage girls, had wanted to impregnate as many girls as possible on his New Mexico ranch in order to disseminate his DNA throughout the human race.    

By: JV Staff  

The Times reported that over the years Epstein had confided to scientists and others about his scheme, according to four people familiar with his thinking, although there is no evidence that it ever came to fruition.

Epstein’s vision reflected his longstanding fascination with what has become known as transhumanism: the science of improving the human population through technologies like genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, according to the Times report.  Critics have likened transhumanism to a modern-day version of eugenics, the discredited field of improving the human race through controlled breeding.

US District Judge Richard Berman doesn’t want that information to leak out in the Epstein case and issued a protective order, Bloomberg reported a few days ago.

The so-called protective order, standard in criminal cases, strictly limits how Epstein’s legal team can handle the information, and bars Epstein from reviewing the evidence outside the presence of his lawyers. It also prohibits anyone involved in the case, including the government, from causing any of the material to be posted online or on social media, Crain’s explained.

Epstein, who had his fortune as a financier was arrested earlier in July in New York City for allegedly sex trafficking underage girls in New York and Florida, TJV reported. Epstein, 66, has been embroiled in allegations of sexual abuse against minors for a number of years. A decade ago, the hedge fund manager received a lenient plea deal after being accused of paying girls for sexual massages in Florida.

Epstein’s exploits have long been a topic of real investigative journalists and alternative media sources for close to a decade. Rarely mentioned by main stream media, his high profile arrest in NY forced Epstein into the spotlight for the general public to soak in. People have been speculating which high profile politicians and celebrities were involved in these perverted and highly illegal activities. Bill Clinton’s name has been at the top of the speculation for years.

With this protective order set in place by Berman, the public is going to have to wait longer to learn the truth.

In other developments s some of the long-time personal pilots Jeffrey Epstein have been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors as investigators scrutinize the convicted sex offender’s travels, according to Washington Examiner.

It isn’t clear which pilots were subpoenaed, what topics the subpoenas cover, and whether any of the pilots are working with investigators already. Epstein, who has homes in New York City, Florida, New Mexico, and the Virgin Islands, was arrested at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey earlier this month when he arrived from Paris, France, where he also has a residence, Washington Examiner explained.

Some of Epstein’s alleged victims have said the logs show they were on Epstein’s so-called “Lolita Express” when they were underage, and that Epstein’s pilots and other employees helped him break the law in the late 1990s and early 2000, Washington Examiner stated.

With Epstein’s legal team poised to begin reviewing prosecutors’ evidence, Berman said that any publication of the materials would “affect the privacy and confidentiality of individuals” and impede the investigation into others who haven’t been charged” Bloomberg reported the judge stating.

On July 23rd it was reported that Epstein may have attempted to kill himself while in jail. Almost instantaneously upon this news being broke the term “Clinton Body count” trended to the top of the online world. Ever since Vince Foster’s alleged suicide, thousands of journalists, and investigators have pondered if the Clinton’s have used their power and intelligence connections to have their political enemies and people with knowledge of possible Clinton wrongdoings killed off.