Florida prosecutor vows to fight Gov. DeSantis suspension

By Associated Press

August 8, 2022 2:19am Updated

ST. PETERSURG, Fla. — A Florida prosecutor vowed Sunday to fight his suspension from office by Gov. Ron DeSantis over his promise not to enforce the state’s 15-week abortion ban and support for gender transition treatments for minors.

Andrew Warren, a Democrat suspended last week from his twice-elected post as state attorney in Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, said in a Facebook video message and news release Sunday he plans a “vigorous defense” by his legal team but did not give specifics.

“I’m not going down without a fight,” Warren said on the video. “I refuse to let this man trample on your freedoms to speak your mind, to make your own health care decisions, and to have your vote count.”

Warren was suspended Thursday by DeSantis, a Republican seeking re-election in November and potential 2024 presidential candidate, who cited neglect of duty and other alleged violations. The governor contended that’s because Warren signed statements with dozens of other prosecutors nationwide vowing not to pursue criminal cases against people who seek or provide abortions or gender transition treatments.

Warren contended Sunday the governor was essentially seeking to nullify the will of voters in the Tampa area who elected him in 2016 and 2020.

https://nypost.com/2022/08/08/florida-prosecutor-andrew-warren-vows-to-fight-gov-desantis-suspension/

Army vet gets 18 months for stealing $2.1M in military gear from Texas base

By Allie Griffin

August 7, 2022 9:51pm Updated

A US Army veteran who pleaded guilty to stealing $2.1 million worth of military gear from a Texas army base was sentenced to 18 months in prison last Tuesday and ordered to pay more than $1 million in restitution to the Army.

Jessica Elaintrell Smith, 30, was ordered to serve 18 months in prison followed by two years of post-release supervision by US District Judge Drew Tipton during a remote hearing, the Killeen Daily Herald reported.

Smith must also pay nearly $1.3 million to the Army as restitution for her role in the Fort Hood theft, Tipton ruled.

The vet pleaded guilty in April to stealing dozens of Army thermal scopes, radios and night vision goggles from the Texas base. She and two co-conspirators snatched the expensive specialty equipment sometime overnight between June 16 and June 17 of last year, the local outlet reported.

The next day, soldiers at Fort Hood found the locks on 17 shipping containers had been cut and a count of inventory found that a total of 137 items worth about $2.1 million were missing from the containers.

“It was a smash-and-grab,” Assistant US Attorney Joel Stacey Dunn, said on Tuesday, according to the Herald. “They took whatever they could get.”

Smith and her co-conspirators were caught when Army investigators spotted items from the stolen loot for sale on eBay less than two weeks later. The items listed on the resale site had serial numbers that matched the missing equipment.

On April 5, Smith pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the US. A second count she was charged with was dropped as part of the plea agreement, according to the Herald.

The veteran apologized to the government, her Army unit and her family during her sentencing Tuesday, the outlet reported.

“I want a better reality,” Smith said. “I want to do better in life and I’ll never be in this situation again.”

Her lawyer, a court-appointed public defender, said the mom of two got “financially desperate” in trying to provide for her children.

One of Smith’s co-defendants in the case, Nathan Nichols, also pleaded guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced in October. He is expected to share in the responsibility of paying the $1.3 million restitution to the Army, the judge in the case said.

A third co-defendant and fellow Army veteran, Brandon Dominic Brown, pleaded not guilty in November 2021. He will go on trial on Sept. 6 with a grand jury.

https://nypost.com/2022/08/07/army-vet-gets-18-months-for-stealing-2-1m-in-military-gear-from-texas-base/

7 Aug, 2022 13:49

Russia takes out 45,000 tons of NATO ammo – MoD

A depot housing Western-supplied ammunition has been destroyed in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed

The Russian military has taken out a depot in southern Ukraine that stored NATO-supplied ammunition, the Defense Ministry claimed on Sunday.

"In the Voznesensk area of the Nikolaev region an arsenal that stored 45,000 tons of ammunition recently supplied to the Ukrainian Armed Forces by NATO countries has been destroyed,” the ministry stated, adding that Russian forces eliminated five other ammo depots.

Meanwhile, the Russian army conducted strikes on the deployment point of units of Ukraine's 72nd mechanized brigade at an agricultural facility in the Donetsk People’s Republic city of Artemovsk, wiping out up to 130 soldiers and eight transport and armored vehicles, the ministry’s statement read.

Moscow’s forces, the ministry continued, also used high-precision air-based missiles to attack a howitzer battery of Ukraine’s 95th Air Assault Brigade in the village of Dzerzhinsk in the DPR. According to the statement, the strike killed up to 70 service members, destroyed three 2S1 Gvozdika self-propelled guns and four vehicles.

The Russian Defense Ministry noted that faced with high losses, “the regime of [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky is taking measures to make up for the shortage of military personnel” in the Donbass. Kiev, the statement said, has decided to send to the frontline mobilized Ukrainian citizens from a training center, as well as wounded service members who did not have enough time to fully recover.

On Tuesday, Zelensky said that the fighting in Donbass was “hell,” claiming that Kiev’s military remained heavily outgunned and even outnumbered by Russia. He appealed to the US and its allies for even more weapons, in particular the HIMARS rocket launchers.

Moscow has repeatedly warned the West against sending weapons to Kiev, saying it only prolongs the conflict, increases the number of casualties, and will result in long-term consequences.

https://www.rt.com/russia/560405-russia-ukraine-depot-nato-strike/

Cruz Rips Democrat Inflation Reduction Act — ‘A Massive Power Grab’

Trent Baker7 Aug 2022

1:40

In an interview on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) slammed the $700 billion Inflation Reduction Act, a scaled-down iteration of the Build Back Better Act.

Cruz told host Maria Bartiromo that the legislation was “terrible” and a “massive power grab” by the Democrats because it would raise gas prices and double the size of the Internal Revenue Service.

“The Democrats are on the verge of ramming through what really is a terrible bill,” Cruz warned prior to the bill’s passage. “This bill will hammer manufacturing. It will kill manufacturing jobs in this country. It will hammer small businesses. This bill will drive up gas prices. It has billions in new taxes on U.S. oil and gas production. We introduced amendments trying to take those new taxes out, so all the Democrats say they’re worried and want to lower gas prices — they all just voted to raise gas taxes and to raise your price at the pump.”

“This bill creates 87,000 new IRS agents,” he continued. “It doubles the size of the IRS. Those IRS agents are designed to come after you. They’re not designed to come after the billionaires and the big corporations. They’re designed to come after small businesses and working families across this country. TheDemocrats are making the IRS bigger than the Pentagon, plus the Department of State, plus the FBI, plus the Border Patrol combined. The IRS is going to be bigger. This is a massive power grab.”

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2022/08/07/cruz-rips-democrat-inflation-reduction-act-a-massive-power-grab/

Democrats Block Plan Requiring Biden to Keep Title 42 at Southern Border

John Binder7 Aug 2022

Senate Democrats blocked a measure to include in their “Inflation Reduction Act” which required President Joe Biden to preserve the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Title 42 authority at the United States-Mexico border.

In April, CDC officials announced that the Biden administration would end Title 42 authority at the southern border by May 23. The authority, first imposed by former President Trump in March 2020, allows Border Patrol agents to quickly return illegal aliens to Mexico.

The following month, Trump-appointed Judge Robert R. Summerhays ordered Biden to keep Title 42 in place while the issue makes its way through the federal courts. The Biden administration, though, has continued pushing to end Title 42.

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) offered an amendment to the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act — passed on Sunday — that would have required Biden to keep Title 42 in place to help reduce record-breaking illegal immigration levels.

Despite Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Jon Tester (D-MT), Gary Peters (D-MI), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), and Chris Coons (D-DE) all previously claiming they opposed ending Title 42, they voted with all other Senate Democrats to block the amendment.

For months, the Biden administration had prematurely started winding down Title 42.

Without Title 42, Biden officials admit that up to half a million border crossers and illegal aliens — the equivalent of the resident population of Atlanta, Georgia — could arrive at the border every month.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) told Breitbart News that he would expect 30,000 border crossers and illegal aliens every day at the border without Title 42. In April, Breitbart News exclusively reported that up to 6,000 foreign nationals in Tijuana, Mexico, were waiting to rush the border when Title 42 ends.

The Biden administration’s plan for ending Title 42, which Breitbart News reported and published, details “broadscale release mechanisms” that transform the border into a mere checkpoint for foreign nationals arriving every day.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/08/07/democrats-block-plan-requiring-biden-keep-title-42-southern-border/

https://twitter.com/JohnBasham/status/1556030133730959364?s=20&t=UPJYhOMwseSzRIIggXthUQ

>>17224875

Sheriff: Georgia Couple Arrested for Allegedly Using Their Adopted Children to Produce Child Pornography

Ethan Letkeman7 Aug 2022

Two Georgia men were charged for allegedly using their adopted children to produce pornographic material, according to the Walton County Sheriff’s Office (WCSO).

Authorities charged William Dale Zulock, 32, and Zachary Jacoby Zulock, 35, on July 28 with charges pending for aggravated child molestation and sexual exploitation of children. William Zulock also received an additional charge of child molestation, WSB-TV reported.

Detectives initially conducted a search warrant on a home in Loganville on July 27 at approximately 4:00 p.m. after receiving information from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that an individual was allegedly downloading child sex abuse material.

When detectives interviewed the unidentified suspect after the raid, they allegedly discovered that the individual was receiving child pornographic material from another suspect. Furthermore, they allegedly discovered that the other suspect was producing the material with at least one child in the same home they both lived in.

After further investigation, authorities proceeded to raid a home later that day in Oxford, 35 miles east of Atlanta, at 11:30 p.m, where they believed two young children were inside with two adult male suspects, identified as the Zuclock couple.

A child services team also joined the raid with authorities to ensure that the two young children were brought out safely.

“During the execution of the search warrant, evidence that both adult males-the adoptive fathers of the sibling pair residing in the home–were engaging in sexually abusive acts and video documenting this abuse,” the WSCO stated.

Both William and Zachary Zulock were booked into the Walton County Jail early the next morning.

The WSCO noted that the two young boys who were rescued from the home are now safe. The sheriff’s office also noted that the investigation is ongoing.

https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2022/08/07/sheriff-georgia-couple-arrested-for-allegedly-using-their-adopted-children-to-produce-child-pornography/