TV News LIES

A federal judge Monday ordered the U.S. Justice Department to provide a sworn declaration by noon ET Tuesday with details on how planeloads of alleged members of Tren de Aragua were deported despite his order to turn the planes around.

The hearing on Monday centered on whether the government complied with Judge James Boasberg's temporary restraining order, and it included a debate about when exactly the order was issued and where U.S. custody over deportees ends. Also discussed: whether an oral order versus a written order holds the same weight when it comes to restraining government action.

A Brown University medical professor was deported to Lebanon over the weekend despite having a valid US work visa, defying a judge’s order blocking her immediate removal from the country.

Federal prosecutors on Monday alleged that they deported 34-year-old Rasha Alawieh after discovering “sympathetic photos and videos” on her cellphone of prominent figures of Iran-backed Hezbollah. Alawieh told federal agents that she had recently attended the funeral of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, whom she supported from a “religious perspective”, according to Reuters.

The case centering on Alawieh comes as Donald Trump’s second presidential administration has been escalating its immigration policies and targeting universities.

A former pastor of a Texas megachurch – and ex-Donald Trump spiritual adviser – surrendered to Oklahoma authorities on Monday on charges of child sexual abuse.

Robert Preston Morris, 63, turned himself over to officials in Osage county, where he was charged on Thursday with five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child, Phil Bacharach, a spokesperson for the Oklahoma attorney general’s office, told the Associated Press.

Court records show an Osage county judge set a $50,000 bond and ordered Morris to surrender his passport.

Morris is expected to make an initial appearance before a judge at 10am on 9 May, Bacharach said.

Attorney Mack Martin declined to comment on the charges but said he anticipated entering a not guilty plea on Morris’s behalf.

More...

The US defense department webpage celebrating a Black Medal of Honor recipient that was removed and had the letters “DEI” added to the site’s address has been restored – and the letters scrubbed – after an outcry. But defense department officials have continued to argue publicly that it is wrong to say that diversity is a strength, and that it’s essential to dismantle all “diversity, equity and inclusion” efforts.

On Saturday, the Guardian reported that US army Maj Gen Charles Calvin Rogers’s Medal of Honor webpage led to a “404” error message – and that the URL had been changed, with the word “medal” changed to “deimedal”.

Rogers, who died in 1990, served in the Vietnam war, where he was wounded three times while leading the defense of a base. Then president Richard Nixon awarded him the Medal of Honor, the country’s highest military honor, in 1970, making him the highest-ranking African American to receive it, according to the West Virginia military hall of fame.

More...

 

 

The members of the Jan. 6 investigative committee are hitting back at President Trump for his threat to nullify the presidential pardons surrounding their work.

The investigators not only contend that Trump lacks the authority to revoke the preemptive pardons, which were issued in January by former President Biden, but also maintain that their probe was open, thorough and unassailable in its conclusion that Trump was the driving force behind the violent rampage at the U.S. Capitol four years ago.

“Despite their threats to Congresswoman Cheney and the chairman of our committee, Bennie Thompson, no one has committed any kind of infraction in the conduct of the Jan. 6 proceedings, nor in the preparation of our report, and no one has laid a glove on a single factual statement in our report,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who sat on the Jan. 6 panel, told The Hill in an interview. “We are proud of our work documenting the insurrectionary violence and they haven’t contradicted any of our findings.”

“Everything else is political noise,” he added. “The members of the Jan. 6 committee stand by our work.”

More...