Category: News Scan

Monica Cannon-Grant a prominent Black Lives Matter organizer in Boston has been indicted along with her husband for skimming at least $185,000 in donations to their non-profit.  Yaron Steinbuch and Bruce Golding of the New York Post report that in 2020 Cannon-Grant was named by the Boston Globe as one of the “Bostonians of the Year,” as a BLM activist and for her non-profit Violence in Boston.   The lengthy federal indictment alleges Cannon-Grant and her husband engaged in three different fraud schemes: lying on a mortgage application, defrauding donors and illicitly collecting approximately $1 million in pandemic-related unemployment benefits.  According to Fox News, prosecutors also allege that Cannon-Grant told both the state attorney general’s office and the IRS that she took no salary from her nonprofit while paying herself $2,788 a week beginning in October 2020.   Her attorney, Robert Goldstein told reporters he is confident that she will be vindicated.

As the national election nears, police in cities across the country are preparing for the possibility of rioting and violence.  Mark Berman of the Washington Post reports that “with the anxiety and toxicity across the country” many fear that the election could give way to potential violence.   The article cites police officials in Las Vegas, Chicago, New York,  Madison, Wis., Phoenix, Portland, Los Angeles, D.C., Charlotte, and Miami-Dade which are ramping up for violence following next Tuesday’s vote.   Business owners in many cities are boarding up their store fronts in anticipation of a continuation of the earlier rioting following the death of George Floyd, by groups angry with the outcome of the election.

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A person living in San Francisco is almost three times more likely to die from a drug overdose than from Covid 19, according to this story by Heather Knight from The San Francisco Chronicle.  The city medical examiner handles roughly 2 drug overdose deaths per day, and the 468 who had died so far this year already exceeds the 441 deaths for all of 2019.  The city’s Covid 19 deaths currently total 123.   As the reporter notes, “We’re a city that freaks out about a jogger running past without a mask, but doesn’t blink at someone injecting themselves in the neck on a Tenderloin sidewalk.”  Over 2/3 of the overdoses have been from Fentanyl.

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The poster boy for junk justice in New York City is Angel Rivera, a habitual criminal who has repeatedly attacked New York police officers and gained immediate release each time over the summer. Joe Marino and Dean Balsamini of the New York Post, report that in early June, Rivera was released after being charged with using a stolen credit card and threatening to shoot a man during an altercation. In July Rivera was arrested and released for assault after attacking police who were attempting to clear protesters at a major  intersection near Columbus Park. In September he was arrested again and released for headbutting an officer during another protest.

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The Federal Drug Enforcement Administration seized the largest cache of methamphetamine in history earlier this month.  The Mercury News reports that the drug, along with large quantities of heroin, fentanyl and cocaine were found in two stash houses  rural Riverside County, CA. and at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry a few miles south of downtown San Diego.  The drugs confiscated from the two locations are estimated to have a combined wholesale value of $25 million, with enough meth to dose every inhabitant in the United States.

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The co-founder of Black Lives Matter has announced the formation of a political action committee (PAC) which will focus on the elections of county sheriffs and district attorneys.   Maya King of Politico reports that group will announce a slate of preferred candidates ahead of the upcoming November 3 election.  While the mainstream media likes to portray BLM as a disorganized grassroots movement, this fiction does not square with the well-coordinated and equipped protests that have been launched  simultaneously in cities across the country over the past five months or the group’s bank account.

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A federal district judge in San Francisco has ruled that it is unlawful for the Internal Revenue Service to deny federal coronavirus Cares Act stimulus checks to criminals serving time in state prison.  Evan Symon of the California Globe reports that Judge Phyllis Hamilton announced that the Treasury Department and the IRS have until the end of October to send the checks or the court will most likely order them sent.  The ruling stems from a class action lawsuit brought by inmates and inmate families.  The government said that it will appeal the ruling.

In a divided ruling announced Friday, a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the President’s use of emergency powers to appropriate military construction funds to build the border wall is illegal.  Celine Castronuovo of the Hill reports that ruling also lifted a stay put in place by the district court to allow construction to continue while the government appealed.

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