Category: Opinion

Earlier this month two Los Angeles County deputies were ambushed and shot while sitting in their patrol car and a suspect has finally been taken into custody for the crime.

The man being accused of the shooting is Dante Lee Murray, 36. He is being charged with attempted murder.

Murray was taken into custody after a long standoff three days after he shot the deputies however the events leading up to his arrest were unrelated to the near-fatal shooting.

The two young deputies where were shot in the face and head while sitting in their patrol car near Compton Metro Station. They both immediately underwent surgery and have since been released from the hospital. 

Murray had been suspected of gang ties and at the time of his arrest, he was charged with one felony count carjacking second-degree robbery and assault with a semi-automatic firearm. The charges also include allegations of associations with a criminal street gang and discharging a rifle inflicting great bodily injury.

The senseless shooting was caught on surveillance video and shows the suspect in dark clothes walking up the pathway near Compton’s Blue Line Station and approaching the park patrol vehicle. The person in the video was then seen walking right up to the passenger side window of the vehicle when he raised his gun, open fire, and ran back the way he came.

Several moments later the passenger door of the patrol vehicle can be seen opening and a deputy stumbles out with their hand on their head. Then the driver side door opens and one of the wounded deputies says, “ Compton pax deputies down.”

One of the deputies managed to help her partner out of the cruiser to hide behind a concrete pillar in case the attacker returned. She was able to apply a tourniquet to her partner’s arm to stop the bleeding.

LA County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said of the attack, “They became victims of a violent crime for one reason – they were doing their job and they were wearing a badge,” and added that the charges could be amended if there is evidence that the attack was done to benefit a gang.

It is Villanueva’s belief hate you towards police officers is growing and there are “people who have such a deep-seated hatred against law enforcement that they’re just willing to kill anybody unprovoked.”

An attorney for alleged Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse has announced plans to sue Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden and his campaign for libel on his client’s behalf due to Biden sharing a video on social media that appears to suggest the teen is a white supremacist.

Rittenhouse’s civil attorney, Lin Wood, confirmed his intention to sue the former vice president directly following Biden posting the clip to Twitter.

There’s no other way to put it: the President of the United States refused to disavow white supremacists on the debate stage last night. pic.twitter.com/Q3VZTW1vUV

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 30, 2020

At the time the tweet had gained 48,000 shares and nearly 150,000 likes.  the post references President Trump’s response to a question during Tuesday night’s presidential debate when moderator Chris Wallace asked the president if he would be willing “to condemn white supremacist and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities.” 

Wallace continued his question saying the nation had seen violence in cities such as Kenosha and Portland which you can see in the video but the footage then cuts to an image of Rittenhouse who is accused murdering two people after confronting demonstrators during protests in the Wisconsin city last month.

Rittenhouse’s has legal team maintains that the teenager was defending himself when he fired his weapon that day. According to one of the teen’s criminal attorneys, Rittenhouse had tried to offer medical assistance to Injured people before he was “accosted by multiple rioters,” causing him to open fire.

On behalf of Kyle Rittenhouse, I shall sue @JoeBiden & Biden/Harris Campaign for libel.

I am partisan in 20/20 supporting @realDonaldTrump.

I am non-partisan trial lawyer who aggressively pursues truth to achieve justice.

Put in your hearing aid, Joe. You will hear footsteps.

— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) September 30, 2020

After Biden’s video was posted Wood declared his intention to sue and demanded a retraction. He wrote in a tweet that the former vice president “falsely accused a 17-year-old boy and prejudiced Kyle’s legal rights.”

Formal demand for public retraction is being prepared for Biden/Harris Campaign on behalf of Kyle Rittenhouse.

I also hereby demand that @JoeBiden immediately retract his false accusation that Kyle is a white supremacist & militia member responsible for violence in Kenosha. pic.twitter.com/GrZyE8nI7Z

— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) September 30, 2020

The Anti-Defamation League previously told CBS News it had reviewed Rittenhouse’s social media activity and found no evidence that he was associated with any extremist movements.

Wood would later add that he brought in two additional attorneys to his legal team “in pursuing libel case for Kyle Rittenhouse against Joe Biden and his campaign.”

“No need to turn up hearing aide, Joe,” he warned. “You can easily hear footsteps of army for justice coming to visit you.”

President Trump did not hold back when attacking Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden over his son Hunte’rs foreign business dealings and things got heated.

The Exchange started after Biden criticized the Trump administration for their economic policy toward China. President Trump fired back with claims that Hunter Biden had partaken and wrongdoing while serving on the board of BHR, a Private Equity Firm supported by stakeholders with close ties to the Chinese government as well as a board member of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings.

It was rumored that Hunter Biden had leveraged his father’s position in the Obama administration to gain influence in his business dealings.

“China ate your lunch, Joe,” said the president. “And no wonder, your son goes in and he takes out billions of dollars, he takes out billions of dollars to manage. He makes millions of dollars.”

“And while we’re at it,” he added, “why is it, just out of curiosity, the mayor of Moscow’s wife gave your son $3.5 million. What did he do to deserve it? What did he do with Burisma?”

Biden responded, “None of that is true” and added that Trump’s claims regarding alleged business-related wrongdoing on his son’s part had been “totally discredited.”

“My son did nothing wrong at Burisma,” Biden argued. “He doesn’t want to let me answer because he knows I have the truth. His position has been totally, thoroughly discredited — by the media, by our allies, by the World Bank, by everyone.”

Biden was referring to an 87-page interim report released by the Senate Homeland Security and Finance committees that detailed their investigation into Hunter Biden to work with Burisma. 

It is noted in the report that “officials within the Obama administration ignored the glaring warning signs when the vice president’s son joined the board of a company owned by a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch.” 

The report also included claims that Hunter Biden “received a $3.5 million in a wire transfer” sent from the former mayor of Moscow’s wife. Of course, Democrats deny the claim is accurate

President Trump brought up Hunter Biden again later in the debate saying, “He didn’t have a job until you became vice president. Once you became vice president he made a fortune in Ukraine, in China, in Moscow, and various other places. He made a fortune and he didn’t have a job.”

President Trump is honored to receive his third 2020 Nobel Peace Prize nomination this month from a group of Australian law professors .

Australian legal scholar David Flint told Sky News Australia, “What he has done with the Trump Doctrine is that he has decided he would no longer have America involved in endless wars, wars which achieve nothing but the killing of thousands of Young Americans and enormous debts imposed on America.”

Flint praised President Trump’s role in facilitating a piece agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

“What Trump did is he went ahead and negotiated against all advice, but he did it with common sense,” Flint said. “He negotiated directly with the Arab states concerned and Israel and brought them together.”

Flint added, “He’s also been the first American president to work out how to make America energy independent of the Middle East.”

Trump’s first nomination for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize came from a Norwegian Parliament member and was for his role in the United Arab Emirates-Israel peace deal. Just a few days later the president was nominated again by a Swedish Parliament member after he helped secure a deal for normalized economic relations between Serbia and Kosovo.

“It’s a great honor to be nominated, and I know it has tremendous significance,”Trump told White House correspondent Fox News Radio John Decker. “I just think it’s a great thing for our country. It shows that we’re trying to make peace, not war all the time.”

The winner for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on October 9th.

Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris has a habit of avoiding the press. Recently she faced renewed scrutiny when she quickly left the stage without taking questions after a speech in which she criticized President Trump for his efforts to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat before the election.

Besides her role as Joe Biden’s running mate, Harris is also a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and will have an opportunity to directly question Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett in any confirmation hearing that would take place prior to November 3rd.

The event, which took place in North Carolina’s Shaw University, a historically black college, was closed to the general public and attended only by news reporters.

Harris’s speech was heavily criticized by the research wing of the Republican National Committee for ripping the GOP’s plan to move forward with the nomination so close to an election.

“We will not give up, and we will not give in,” Harris said in her speech. “We will not let the infection that President Trump has injected into the presidency and into Congress, that has paralyzed our politics and pitted Americans against each other, spread to the United States.”

President Trump nominated Barrett Saturday for the Supreme Court seat and in her speech, Harris warned that Barrett’s presents to the Supreme Court would endanger former President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. 

Reporters from several different outlets question why Harris refuses to address the media and  Trump and members of his campaign are complaining that the press has given both Biden and Harris a free pass from answering questions. 

Last week Fox News pointed out that Harris hasn’t participated in a single formal press conference since being confirmed as Biden’s running mate in AugustAnd has only spoken to friendly outlets such as BET, MSNBC, and CNN.

Sunday morning President Trump posted a tweet demanding that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden take a drug test right before or directly after the presidential debate

The president claims there has been a disturbingly erratic patterns in the former vice president’s debate performance and the only explanation is drug use.  

Of course Trump said he would also take a drug test if Biden agreed.

“I will be strongly demanding a drug test of sleepy Joe Biden prior to, or after, the debate on Tuesday night,” Trump tweeted. “ naturally, I will agree to take one also. His debate performances have been record-setting uneven, to put it mildly. Only drugs could have caused this discrepancy???”

Joe Biden’s campaign team deflected the request by mocking the president for wanting to make his case “in urine.”

Biden’s deputy campaign manager responded to Trump’s comments,Belittling the president and accusing him of trying to steer away focus from the coronavirus pandemic.

“Vice President Biden intends to deliver his debate answers in words. If the president thinks his best case is made in urine he can have at it,” wrote the deputy campaign manager. “We’d expect nothing less from Donald Trump, who pissed away the chance to protect the lives of 200K Americans when he didn’t make a plan to stop COVID-19.”

Trump responded with, “Joe Biden just announced that he will not agree to a Drug Test. Gee, I wonder why?”

The first presidential debate, which is to be moderated by Fox News’ Chris Wallace, is scheduled for Tuesday take place at Case Western University and the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. The 90-minute event will be broken down into six 15-minute-long segments each dedicated to a critical topic.

The topics, chosen by  Wallace, include the upcoming Supreme Court battle, the response to the coronavirus pandemic, the economy, and the civil unrest that has flared up in America’s cities.

President Trump contested a report from The New York Times claiming the president had not paid his federal income taxes for 10 of the past 15 years. He called the story “fake news” and argued that he has paid large federal and state taxes.

Less than an hour after the story broke in the newspaper Trump held a press briefing and said, “It’s fake news, it’s totally made up. Everything was wrong, they are so bad.”

According to the New York Times report, the year President Trump was elected he paid only $750 and taxes to the federal government then $750 his first year in the White House.

Trump’s net worth is rumored to be in the billions and he denied ever paying such a small amount in taxes.

He said, “I’ve paid a lot and I’ve paid a lot of state income taxes too.”

Even before he won the election in 2016 Trump was heavily criticized for not releasing his tax filing. He has always kept his tax filings very private and is the only president in modern times to not release them to the public.

Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump organization also denied accusations from The New York Times that the president paid such a small amount of taxes. He made a statement saying Trump “has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government, including paying millions in personal taxes since announcing his candidacy in 2015.”

“The New York Times’ story is riddled with gross inaccuracies.  Over the past decade the President has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government,” Garten argued. “While we tried to explain this to the Times, they refused to listen and rejected our repeated request that they show us any of the documentation they purport to be relying on to substantiate their claims.”

“Obviously this is just part of the Times’ ongoing smear campaign in the run up to the election,” Garten added.

The New York Times has not released Trump’s tax filings they claimed to have received so they have no real evidence of backing up their story.

After President Trump nominated Federal Appeals Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Supreme Court Senator Josh Hawley sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer demanding Democrats to avoid attacking Barrett’s Catholic faith during the confirmation process.

Hawley specifically mentioned made by Senator Dianne Feinstein about Barrett’s faith during her nomination hearing in 2017 the US court of appeals for the seventh circuit.

Hawley wrote in the letter, “I call on you and every member of the Democratic caucus to publicly reject Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s egregious personal attacks on Judge Barrett’s Christian faith during her previous confirmation hearings and to pledge you will abstain from that kind of anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, anti-faith vitriol in the hearings to come. You owe it to the country.”

“As you will recall,” he added, “Sen. Feinstein, the most senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, told Judge Barrett in her previous hearings that ‘the dogma lives loudly within you,’ a clear and condescending disparagement of Judge Barrett’s Catholicism.”

The member of the Senate Judiciary Committee went on to call out other Democrats like Senator Dick Durbin and Mazie Hirono who made it a point to focus on Barrett’s religion during the hearings.

“Over and over these last four years, your caucus has sought to return to the days of ‘religious tests,’ to exclude people of faith from public office and from the public square,” Hawley continued in the letter. “Your members have attacked and attempted to disqualify nominees by questioning their views on the nature of sin, their beliefs about heaven and hell, their memberships in religious organizations, and the activities of their churches. But our Constitution bans religious tests. Democrats’ offensive and wholly inappropriate attacks must not be repeated in this confirmation process.”

Hawley went on to say that there has been “a long history of anti-Catholic hatred by some in this country” and “a growing tide of anti-religious animus on the left now.”

He said, “ I hope you and your colleagues will not play any further part in it.”

The Missouri Republican referred to such attacks as” disgusting” and said their ”religious bigotry” “has no place in the United States Senate.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has this crazy theory that President Trump will refuse to leave the White House if the election doesn’t go his way. 

The president’s recent comments about there not being a transfer of power but a continuation of one caused Pelosi to go over the edge saying he is trying to “ have the Constitution swallow Clorox.”

Reporters asked Pelosi if she thought the president would accept a peaceful transfer of power. She answered, “ It’s really sad you even have to ask that question.”

A reporter asked President Trump if he was willing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power “ when, lose or draw”  in this election and noted his claim of mail-in ballots causing widespread voter fraud. 

“Dad to see what happens,”  Trump responded. “ You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are  a disaster.”

The reporter pressed the president mentioning the anti-police riots that have raged across American cities over the summer.

“Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation,” Trump declared. “The ballots are out of control. You know it, and you know who knows it better than anyone else? The Democrats know it better than anyone else.”

“We know who he admires. [Vladimir] Putin. Kim Jong-un. [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan,” Pelosi said. “You are not in Russia. He is not in North Korea. He is not in Turkey.”

Pelosi indeed, “He’s trying to have the Constitution of the United States swallow Clorox.”

The house Speaker also quailed the idea that the House of Representatives would implement another round of impeachment charges against the president  saying, “ I don’t think he’s worth the trouble at this point.”

Last week during an appearance on ABC News’ “This Week” Pelosi was asked whether she and fellow house Democrats would move to impeach the president or Attorney General William Barr to block the Senate from acting.

“We have our options. We have arrows in our quiver that I’m not about to discuss right now, but the fact is we have a big challenge in our country,” Pelosi answered. “This president has threatened to not even accept the results of the election.”

Trump and first lady Melania Trump were at the Supreme Court Building to pay their respects to the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

As the couple made their way to the Supreme Court a mob of protesters can be heard booing him and shouting, “vote him out” and “honor her wish” in reference to how Ginsberg allegedly said she wanted to wait until next year’s inauguration for the next Justice to be nominated.

Trump has gone out of his way to be respectful of Ginsburg even holding off on announcing his nomination until after her Memorial ceremonies have concluded.  He also gave words of exceptional praise for the liberal icon upon her passing.

Trump said of the late Supreme Court Justice, “ Today, our nation Mourns the loss of a titan of the law. Renowned for her brilliant mind and her powerful dissents at the Supreme Court, Justice Ginsburg demonstrated that one can disagree without being disagreeable toward one’s colleagues or different points of view.”

Thursday was the second day that Ginsberg’s casket has been displayed at the high court for the public to pay their respects. On the previous day, a private ceremony was held. Fellow justices greeted Ginsberg at the court building as well as former law Clerks

The ceremony was held by Rabbi Loren Holtzblatt, whose husband, Ari Holtzblatt was a clerk for Ginsberg in 2014. 

After two days of lying in Repose at the Supreme Court, Ginsberg’s casket is to be transported to the National Statuary Hall of the United States capitol where she will lie in state on Friday. a ceremony will then be held that morning with only invited guests allowed to attend due to concerns over the coronavirus pandemic.