California ‘Anti-Poverty Activist’ And Dem Mega-Donor Pleads Guilty To Massive Carbon-Credit Scam

Luke RosiakAug 22, 2025

Joe Sanberg, a top California Democrat activist who decried the corruption of big Wall Street banks and started a companymarketed as the “cleaner” alternative, actually propped that company up through blatant fraud, he admitted Thursday.

Sanberg and other high-profile Democrats started the carbon-credit platform and onlinebanking app Aspiration Partners Inc., promising to plant treesand not invest in polluting industries. Its motto was “clean rich is the new filthy rich.” It was once a star of the “environmental, social, and governance (ESG)” movement that blended corporate finance with leftist politics, and counted actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey Jr. as investors.

But it was instead a scheme as corrupt as any on Wall Street, with Sanberg concocting fake customers for his tree-planting services to try to dupe investors into a $2 billion valuation, the Department of Justice said. Sanberg faces up to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of wire fraud, according to the Department of Justice.

Sanberg is a key player in California politics, a Gavin Newsom donor who personally spent $11 million backing a ballot initiative to raise the state’s minimum wage to $18 an hour. Voters blocked the initiative by one percentage point in 2024. A 2019 Atlantic story headlined, “Joe Sanberg Dares Trump to Call Him a Socialist,” said “the multimillionaire investor says the Democrats’ progressive agenda is best for jobs and economic growth.”

But “this so-called ‘anti-poverty’ activist has admitted to being nothing more than a self-serving fraudster, by seeking to enrich himself by defrauding lenders and investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars,” according to Bill Essayli, the Acting U.S. Attorney of the Central District of California.

Aspiration was set up to have companies pay it for “carbon credits,” with Aspiration promising to pay third parties to plant trees in Africa that would offset their emissions. But the United States Postal Inspection Service said Sanberg “built a business on a lie to boost the company’s value and line his own pockets.”

The findings raise questions about the broader world of “carbon credits” and whether they amount to one big company paying another big company money in exchange for fantasy indulgences, based more on partisan marketing than any real-world impact.

Sanberg also faces civil Securities and Exchange Commission charges that say he propped up fake customers to bolster his appearance.

“To make it appear as though Aspiration’s business was rapidly growing, Sanberg recruited friends, associates, small businesses, and religious organizationsand presented them to Aspiration as bona fide customers who were fully committed to paying large sums of money” for the tree-planting services,” the SEC charging documents explain.

In reality, they were not going to pay, and Sanberg himself funded initial payments purporting to be from the customers to make them look real….cont

https://www.dailywire.com/news/california-anti-poverty-activist-and-dem-mega-donor-pleads-guilty-to-massive-carbon-credit-scam

DOJ Insider Blows the Whistle on Pay-to-Play Antitrust Corruption

Roger Alford, former number two at the Justice Department Antitrust Division, speaks out. Here’s what was important in what he said.

David DayenAugust 19, 20251/2

Roger Alford testifies during a congressional hearing last year on Capitol Hill in Washington.

I met Roger Alford once, a few months ago at a conference.He’s a no-doubt conservative who served in both Trump administrations, yet he is cursed with having a sense of right and wrong. He was fired a few weeks agofor resisting pay-to-play corruption at the Justice Department, which offended his belief system.Unlike virtually everyone in the Republican Party since Inauguration Day, he’s willing to talk about it.

Alford, now a law professor at Notre Dame, delivered a speech at the Tech Policy Institute Aspen Forum on Monday, and simultaneously released an opinion piece in UnHerd, a well-known forum for populist conservatives. In both,he decried the subordination of the rule of law to a “rule of lobbyists,”confirming a degradation of antitrust under Trump that has been widely reported. In doing so, he made it more likely that the lobbyist cabal and their enablers in the Justice Department, both of whom he singled out by name, would face a judicial tribunal that can expose this broken process.

Here are the top takeaways from Alford’s revelations on Monday, and what it means for those in power and the future of antitrust enforcement:

Playing on betrayal. Some progressives may blanche at Alford’s praise for President Trump’s populist messaging, and insistence that it has been subverted by top DOJ officials selling out to lobbyists. He absolves Attorney General Pam Bondi and her number two Todd Blanche of blame as well.

Setting up a dichotomy between “genuine MAGA reformers and MAGA-In-Name-Only lobbyists” may not sit well. But the audience for these remarks is not anyone reading the Prospect. He is attempting to reach the president and his inner circle by playing on Trump’s demand for total loyalty.

Alford personally names Bondi’s chief of staff Chad Mizelle and associate attorney general nominee Stanley Woodward as betraying the MAGA realignment of working-class voters by selling merger clearance to the highest bidder, concerns that he says are “not based on conjecture.” Mizelle and Woodward, Alford states, don’t share Bondi’s “commitment to a single tier of justice for all,” instead welcoming MAGA influencer lobbyists like Mike Davis, Arthur Schwartz, and Will Levi into boozy backroom deals for their clients. Specifically, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks paid Davis and Schwartz and Levi $1 million to defuse a merger challenge, and Mizelle and Woodward, perceiving them as MAGA comrades, overruled Antitrust Division chief Gail Slater to settle the case. Alford and Bill Rinner, who was also fired recently, were involved in the HPE negotiations.

Whether you believe Trump and Bondi actually have the best interests of the common man at heart or not (I vociferously don’t), in the context of Alford trying to build a wedge against those figures he sees as corrupt, it’s probably the best rhetorical play he can make.

I should add that the Justice Department is playing the loyalty angle as well: A spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that Alford is “the James Comey of antitrust.”

Tunney Act witness. Alford pointedly refers to the “HPE-Juniper merger scandal,” and urges that Judge Casey Pitts, who is overseeing the case, use the Tunney Act, a 1974 law written to prevent antitrust enforcement from becoming corrupted by big money, to intervene in the settlement. “I hope the court blocks the HPE-Juniper merger. If you knew what I knew, you would hope so too,” Alford said.

But what’s important is the line that comes after: “Someday I may have the opportunity to say more.” While Alford was circumspect on the details in his speech, that line was a tell that Alford would be willing to say what he knows if compelled under oath.

If Judge Pitts initiates a Tunney Act proceeding in the HPE-Juniper case, he can, as Alford notes, “demand extensive discovery and examine the surprising truth of what happened.” That includes documents and witnesses. As Alford concedes, the Tunney Act has not really worked as intended; weakening by the D.C. Circuit Court is a primary cause of that.But this time, you have a top Justice Department official pointing to two other top officials who distorted the legal system. Judge Pitts has an obligation to the public interest to examine that, and a key witness who could give him the necessary information.

https://prospect.org/power/2025-08-19-doj-insider-blows-whistle-pay-to-play-antitrust-corruption/

>>23501467

2/2

Self-enrichment. Davis and Schwartz and Levi have a financial interest in pay-to-play perversion of the justice system. Alford specifically cites “million-dollar success fees” for their service to corporations. But this can only be perpetuated with friends on the inside.

“In my opinion based on regular meetings with him, Chad Mizelle accepts party meetings and makes key decisions depending on whether the request or information comes from a MAGA friend,” Alford claims. That’s a significant charge of corruption. And it leads other companies to learn how the game is played and hire their own lawyers and lobbyists with the home-team MAGA imprimatur to get what they want. From an economic standpoint, anyone seen as a “MAGA friend” can boost their asking price to deliver results for corporations. And Alford notes that ethical lawyers cannot compete with unethical ones, sending them out the door and poisoning the entire system.

Mizelle has his own interest in this. Davis, beyond soliciting favorable treatment for companies, helps conservative judges get federal appointments. Mizelle’s wife Kathryn received one of those appointments, as a district court judge in the Middle District of Florida in 2020. It has been reported that Kathryn Mizelle wants to bump up to the circuit court of appeals, and Davis is well positioned to advise Trump to make that happen. In this way,Mizelle helping Davis get his way for his clients could pay off.

People like Mizelle, Alford says, “consider law enforcement not as binding rules but an opportunity to leverage power and extract concessions. They have, shall we say, a loose relationship with the law.”

A warning on Live Nation. Alford describes a “new normal” where firms hire influence-peddlers to go above the heads of antitrust enforcers, “seeking special favors with warm hugs.” And he pointedly asks which case will be next, and not in a hypothetical way. “Will the same senior DOJ officials ignore the President’s Executive Order just because Live Nation and Ticketmaster have paid a bevy of cozy MAGA friends to roam the halls of the Fifth Floor in defense of their monopoly abuses?”

The executive order being referred to involves “combating unfair practices in the live entertainment market.” Trump cites ticket scalpers and bots as the main problem here, urging enforcers to target them. In fact, just yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission sued ticket resellers for securing thousands of tickets to live events and jacking up the price on the resale market.

But this ignores the root cause of Live Nation using its market power in promotion, venues, and ticketing to charge outrageous fees, shortchange fans and artists, and subvert competition. The Justice Department Antitrust Division has an active lawsuit over this illegal monopolization.And Alford is saying here that Live Nation has hired lobbyists—Mike Davis is reportedly one of them—to get the case dropped.(I didn’t know Davis was a lobbyist)

Making business harder. Alford uses a lot of biblical, moral rhetoric in the speech. But he also has a practical point. Rule by lobbyists is inherently unstable, he says, which actually creates more hazardous terrain for mergers. “I personally have heard lawyers say that the political uncertainty of this Administration is more difficult than the predictable but hostile environment of the Biden Administration,” he says.

I’ve heard that said before. If a business has to not only worry about whether their merger is legal but whether they can locate the right fixer to bless whatever they’re doing, regardless of the law, the system becomes harder, not easier, to navigate. It’s not like the Trump administration will decline to harass companies if they follow the law; there’s apparently a “loyalty list” in the White House for companies that are perceived friends or enemies. Alford is right to say that this creates “massive legal and economic uncertainty.”

Seeking change. Alford isn’t out for glory here; he truly thinks that the Justice Department can course-correct and stop giving out preferential treatment in a sale to the wealthy. I don’t really agree with him, but that appears to be his motivation. He has friends back in the Antitrust Division, and he wants them to be able to do their work without interference.

“I am speaking out now because it is still early days in this Administration and I think correcting the problems at the DOJ is still possible, either by political will or judicial decree,” he says, again implicitly citing the Tunney Act as a tool to fight corruption. One way this could end is that the negative publicity from a messy Tunney Act proceeding forces the pay-to-play system back underground. Alford also suggests that his boss, Slater, should report directly to Blanche..

https://prospect.org/power/2025-08-19-doj-insider-blows-whistle-pay-to-play-antitrust-corruption/

Newsom issues URGENT call to action after Texas Republicans score MAJOR victory

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., joins ‘Fox News Live’ to discuss California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s response after Texas Republicans move to update congressional district maps.

5:26

https://youtu.be/Cl7w3-4lRjA

Judge DENIES bond for migrant truck driver after being deemed a flight risk

Fox News’ Madison Scarpino reports on the investigation into an illegal immigrant who reportedly killed multiple people in a Florida crash. Former Acting ICE Director Jonathan Fahey weighs in.

7:49

https://youtu.be/AhoxerlyYUU

Democrat Rep. Al Green Is Fired. His Response Was to Call It Racist.

by Gregory Lyakhov Aug. 23, 2025 3:40 pm

Representative Al Green, who has served Texas’s 9th Congressional District since 2005, will finally leave office.

The Texas Legislature, led by ==Republicans, passed a legal redrawing of congressional maps that effectively eliminates District 9. Green, best known not for legislation•• but for shouting down President Trump during his address to Congress in March 2025, will be removed from office after nearly two decades of loud, ineffective, and divisive politics.

Unsurprisingly, Rep. Al Green called the redistricting racist. But the only racial injustice here is the Democrat Party’s decades-long abuse of district lines to cling to power.

In his angry press release, Green declared that the elimination of his district—along with TX-18, TX-29, and TX-33—was part of a “racist, unconstitutional scheme” led by President Trump’s Justice Department and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Green compared Texas Republicans to segregation-era racists and claimed that the GOP was targeting Black and Hispanic communitiesbecause “they elect people of color.” But that accusation falls apart under even basic scrutiny.

Redistricting is legal. It happens every ten years following the census—but Texas law also allows mid-decade redistricting, something Democrats took advantage of in the 1990s.

When Democrats controlled Texas politics, they created gerrymandered maps that were explicitly race-based. In 1991, under Governor Ann Richards and State Senator Eddie Bernice Johnson, Democrats drew new maps to form majority-Black and majority-Hispanic districts to keep their power intact.

Those maps were so outrageous that they were eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark Bush v. Vera decision of 1996.

In Bush v. Vera, the Court ruled that the Democrat Party’s redistricting had violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The ruling stated that race was the predominant factor in drawing the district lines, which made the maps unconstitutional.

The decision forced Texas to hold thirteen new primary elections in 1996. So when Democrats accuse Republicans of racial gerrymanderingtoday, they’re projecting. They built the system they’re now condemning—only this time, they’re losing.

The modern redistricting efforts led by Texas Republicans are fundamentally different. The maps were drawn based on population fairness, not skin color.

Senator Joan Huffman, chair of the redistricting committee, testified under oath that race was not considered in the process.

The real motivation for the redraw wasn’t racial; rather, it was mathematical.

When Joe Biden was still president of the United States, millions of illegal immigrants entered the country, many settling in cities like Houston and other border areas.

Because Biden’s administration ordered the census to include non-citizens in population counts, districts with massive illegal populations were overrepresented. That undermines the constitutional principle of “one person, one vote.”

When you count illegal immigrants in congressional representation, you give disproportionate power to districts with fewer actual voters. That means some citizens’ votes carry less weight than others.

The redistricting fixed that imbalance by shifting power back to districts with legal residents. Al Green’s district, packed with non-citizen populations, was rightly dissolved.

Republicans used the exact same legal tools Democrats once used to rig the system for themselves—and this time, they did it without violating the Constitution.

(What a shame, and thank the Lord God AlmightyI bet a lot of the Dem members are relieved.)

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/08/democrat-rep-al-green-is-fired-his-response/