Anything going on in South Korea today?
Accused DC pipe-bomber Brian Cole Jr.’s face unmasked for first time after arrest in resurfaced photo
Accused DC pipe-bomber Brian Cole Jr.’s face was revealed for the first time since he was busted for allegedly planting explosive devices outside the Republican and Democratic National Committees ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
Cole’s mother shared the smiling picture of him in a blue dress shirt and tie on Instagram for National Son’s Day in September 2024 — more than three years after the alleged attempted bombing.
The Virginia native was busted Thursday morning after FBI investigators descended on his family’s quiet Woodbridge home after the shocking case went cold under the Biden administration.
“Today’s arrest happened because the Trump administration has made this case a priority,” US Attorney Pam Bondi told reporters at a press conference Thursday afternoon.
She stressed that multiple law enforcement agencies spent months combing through evidence to identify a clear lead that allowed the operation to be carried out “safely and successfully.”
“The total lack of movement in this case in our nation’s capital undermined the public trust of our enforcement agencies.”
Bondi added that the evidence the FBI used to track down Cole, 30, was “collecting dust” and wholly disregarded by the Biden administration.
FBI Director Kash Patel, whose agency was at the forefront of the investigation, echoed Bondi’s critiques and alleged that Biden-era officials “refused and failed” to act on the information they’d gathered.
“This is what a focused, disciplined Bureau delivers for the American people,” Patel said.
Cole was charged with the use of an explosive device and attempted malicious destruction by means of explosive materials. Bondi said that additional charges could be tacked on later in the investigation.
The night before the 2020 electoral votes were certified, a man — now believed to be Cole — was seen stalking around Washington, DC, and planting “viable explosive devices” outside the Republican and Democrats’ respective headquarters.
The devices were uncovered the following afternoon, right as Congress was finalizing the votes – and a swarm of Trump supporters were clambering into the US Capitol.
Under the Biden administration, the FBI offered a $500,000 reward for any information leading to an arrest.
The Trump administration renewed the reward offer in early October alongside the release of a new video showing the suspect walking around a residential DC neighborhood the same night the bombs were planted.
Authorities alleged that Cole purchased items from several retailers around northern Virginia, including eight different Home Depots, a Micro Center, Lowes and Walmart. They believe he started building the bombs in 2019.
The bombs themselves were in 8-inch galvanized steel pipes with the ends capped. They were rigged with nine-volt batteries and white kitchen items, feds claimed.
https://nypost.com/2025/12/04/us-news/accused-dc-pipe-bomber-brian-cole-jr-s-face-unmasked-for-first-time-after-arrest-in-resurfaced-photo/
Julie Kelly 🇺🇸
@julie_kelly2
Could be that Brian Cole Jr, who is black, was a BLM supporter. A few of the bomb components were purchased around the same time that George Floyd riots were consuming Washington:
Regardless, there appears to be a race-related reason why Chris Wray buried this investigation.
https://x.com/julie_kelly2/status/1996694494507377120
Mother of J6 Pipe Bomber's Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DAdPvfBuc3Y/
Rare Earth startup backed by Donald Trump Jr.’s firm nabs $620M government contract
Vulcan Elements, a rare-earth magnets startup backed by Donald Trump Jr.’s VC firm 1789 Capital, has secured a $620 million contract from the U.S. Department of Defense, as reported by the Financial Times.
The contract is part of a $1.4 billion partnership with the U.S. government and ReElement Technologies to expand and boost the domestic supply of magnets, according to the company.
Trump Jr. joined 1789 Capital as a partner in 2024. The firm is said to have invested in Vulcan Elements around three months ago, according to Bloomberg. In August, the company announced a $65 million Series A led by Altimeter Capital.
This government contract represents the largest ever made by the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital, the FT reported. This year alone, at least four 1789 companies have received government contracts, FT reported. The firm is also a backer of SpaceX and Anduril, two long-time sellers of tech to the government.
Vulcan denied to FT that Trump Jr. had involvement with the contract negotiations, as did a spokesperson for Trump Jr., who said he “had no involvement in negotiations with the government on behalf of 1789’s portfolio companies.”
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/03/company-backed-by-donald-trump-jr-s-firm-nabs-620m-government-contract/
1989 Joe Biden calls for strike force to kill narcoterrorists in Caribbean waters
MAZE
@mazemoore
-
Joe Biden delivers a televised message from the Democrat party, calling on then President Bush to do more to stop the flow of drugs into the country.
In addition to calling for more prisons and more cops, Biden said that Democrats want the creation of a strike force to attack drug dealers before they reach our borders.
"Let's go after the drug lords where they live with an international strike force. There must be no safe haven for these narco-terrorists and they must know it."
Times have changed a little.
https://x.com/mazemoore/status/1996308495105196037
Fake People And Phony SSNs Had 100% Success In Getting Obamacare Subsidy, Fraud Investigation Finds
A scathing new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report identified rampant fraud and systemic failures in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace just as Congress is battling over the future of Obamacare’s enhanced premium subsidies.
The report, released Wednesday, revealed that fictitious identities, invalid Social Security numbers, and even deceased individuals were easily approved for taxpayer-funded subsidies. Every single application investigators submitted using fabricated or invalid Social Security numbers in 2024 was approved for coverage.
“Republicans have sounded the alarm on the flawed structural integrity of Obamacare and how Democrats’ failed policies to temporarily prop up the program have exacerbated fraud, hurt patients, increased the burden on American taxpayers,” Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee and one of the members who requested the GAO investigation, said in a statement.
“The concerning findings from GAO’s report further confirm that Republican efforts to strengthen, secure, and sustain our federal health programs are critical and necessary to ensure access to quality health care at prices Americans can afford,” Guthrie added.
The month-long government shutdown that ended just before Thanksgiving stemmed largely from Democrats’ refusal to budge on the expiring Obamacare premium subsidies, which they passed without a single Republican vote in 2021 and set to expire at the end of 2025.
Those subsidies were originally limited to households earning between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level. However, Democrats removed the upper-income cap and increased the subsidy amounts, and in some cases reduced premiums to zero.
Fraud is especially widespread among enrollees reporting incomes between 100% and 150% of the federal poverty level, who qualify for zero-premium plans. Critics say zero-premium plans create opportunities for bad actors to sign up unsuspecting victims without their knowledge.
In nine states, the number of sign-ups at that income level exceeded the number of eligible residents, according to a joint report from the Foundation for Government Accountability and the Paragon Health Institute.
GAO’s undercover investigation found that 100% of the fictitious applications it submitted were approved in late 2024, and 18 out of 20 fake applicants were still receiving subsidized coverage for 2025. ACA marketplaces approved coverage even when no documents were requested, or fake documents were submitted, including those related to the applicants’ citizenship status.
“GAO’s troubling report is the smoking gun that shows how this broken system, shielded by Democrat policies, has led to the federal government shoveling tens of billions of tax dollars to insurance companies through identity fraud and caused health care costs to skyrocket for all Americans,” said Republican Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee.
The government watchdog also uncovered 66,000 Social Security numbers with more than a year’s worth of subsidized coverage in 2024, including one number used for the equivalent of 71 years of coverage — in a single plan year.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which manages the ACA marketplace, does not block new applications using the same Social Security number, according to the report.
Additionally, 58,000 SSNs receiving benefits in 2023 matched Social Security death data, resulting in $94 million in taxpayer-funded subsidies being sent to health insurers on behalf of deceased individuals.
“For years, we were told we could keep our plan, keep our doctor, and premiums would go down. None of it happened,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan said in a statement. “This new report confirms what we already knew: under Obamacare, hardworking Americans saw their premiums skyrocket and their healthcare choices shrink, all while fraud benefited insurance companies.”
CMS did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Democrats, meanwhile, warn that without extending the expanded subsidies, millions of Americans will face steep premium hikes and loss of coverage.
ACA premiums are projected to rise by 20% on average in 2026, but Paragon’s earlier analysis found that the expiring subsidy would account for just 3.3% of those premiums. The group also found that Obamacare plan premiums have grown nearly twice as fast as employer-sponsored plans since the ACA took effect.
https://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2025/12/03/fake-people-and-phony-ssns-had-100-success-in-getting-obamacare-subsidy-fraud-investigation-finds/
Judge Boasberg refuses to testify in Senate hearing
A top office for the federal judiciary declined requests to have two judges facing impeachment threats from conservative lawmakers testify before a Senate committee, according to a letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
U.S. District Court Judges James Boasberg from the District of Columbia and Deborah Boardman from Maryland declined to testify at a Wednesday hearing titled, “Impeachment: Holding Rogue Judges Accountable.”
Boasberg, an Obama appointee, has come under fire for approving nondisclosure orders that allowed special counsel Jack Smith to secretly obtain cell phone data for Republican members of Congress. Boardman, a Biden appointee, handed the man who attempted to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh a light sentence around 22 years less than the government’s request in October, citing in part the would-be assassin’s transgender identity.
Having the judges testify could violate judicial ethics and “encroach upon the separation of powers,” Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Judge Robert Conrad wrote in a Nov. 12 letter to Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, chair of the Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights.
“To the extent that you have invited the judges to appear and testify at the hearing about specific matters they have decided or that may be pending before them, Canon 3A(6) of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges provides that a ‘judge should not make public comment on the merits of a matter pending or impending in any court,'” Conrad wrote. “The commentary to this provision explains that the ‘admonition against public comment about the merits of a pending or impending matter continues until the appellate process is complete.’”
“Moreover, notwithstanding the conclusion of a case, it would encroach upon the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary for the judges to appear and testify about their respective deliberative processes in reaching judicial decisions,” the letter continues.
Republican Texas Rep. Brandon Gill introduced articles of impeachment against Boasberg in November. Gill previously introduced articles to impeach Boasberg in March after he ordered the Trump administration to turn around planes carrying alleged Tren de Aragua gang members to El Salvador.
Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy introduced articles of impeachment against Boardman in October.
Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, along with House Judiciary Chair Rep. Jim Jordan, separately sent a letter asking Boasberg to explain his reasoning for approving nondisclosure orders by Dec. 4.
https://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2025/12/02/federal-court-office-declines-request-for-boasberg-to-testify-in-senate-hearing-on-rogue-judges/
Court says Boasberg didn’t know Arctic Frost subpoenas hit lawmakers, Grassley calls that ‘deeply troubling’
Court official suggests Biden DOJ did not notify chief judge that Arctic Frost subpoenas targeted members of Congress.
A top federal court official defended Judge James Boasberg’s gag orders that hid subpoenas related to the FBI's Arctic Frost investigation, saying this week that the chief judge in Washington would likely have been unaware that the subpoenas' intended targets were members of Congress.
The administrative office for the federal courts indicated that the chief judge in D.C. routinely blindly signed gag orders when the Department of Justice requested them, including during Arctic Frost, the investigation that led to former special counsel Jack Smith bringing election charges against President Donald Trump.
The administrative office's director, Robert Conrad Jr., provided the explanation on behalf of Boasberg to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in a letter first obtained by Fox News Digital.
The letter came in response to Grassley, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, demanding an explanation from Boasberg about why he authorized the one-year gag orders, which barred phone companies from telling Republican Congress members that their records were subpoenaed by Smith in 2023.
Conrad said he could not address those specific subpoenas and gag orders, in part because some of the material was sealed, but that he could help the lawmakers "understand relevant practices" in place during Arctic Frost.
The DOJ’s requests for gag orders, also known as non-disclosure orders, "typically do not attach the related subpoena; rather they identify the subject accounts only by a signifier — e.g., a phone number," Conrad wrote. "As a result, [non-disclosure order] applications would not reveal whether a particular phone number belonged to a member of Congress."
Grassley reacted to the latest correspondence from the court by faulting the Biden DOJ for seeking the gag orders from Boasberg without notifying the judge that they pertained to Congress members.
Grassley noted that the DOJ's Public Integrity Section gave Smith's team the green light to subpoena lawmakers' phone records but had also told the prosecutors to be wary of concerns lawmakers could raise about the Constitution's speech or debate clause, which gives Congress members added protections in prosecutorial matters.
"Smith went ahead with the congressional subpoenas anyway, and it appears he and his team didn’t apprise the court of member involvement," Grassley told Fox News Digital. "Smith’s apparent lack of candor is deeply troubling, and he needs to answer for his conduct."
The DOJ revised its policy in response to an inspector general report in 2024 so that prosecutors were required to notify the court if they were seeking a gag order against a Congress member so that judges could take that into consideration when deciding whether to authorize the orders. Smith's subpoenas pre-dated that policy shift.
The subpoenas, and the gag orders that kept them concealed, have drawn enormous criticism from the targeted lawmakers, who alleged that the Biden DOJ improperly spied on them over their alleged involvement in attempting to overturn the 2020 election and that Boasberg was complicit in allowing it. Among the top critics is Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who was set to lead a since-postponed hearing Wednesday examining the case for impeaching Boasberg. Impeachment of judges is exceedingly rare and typically has only occurred in response to crimes like corruption and bribery.
Johnson said he remained unsatisfied with Boasberg after the letter from the administrative office.
"Judge Boasberg’s refusal to answer questions from Congress about his approval of unlawful gag orders is an affront to transparency and an obvious attempt to deflect any responsibility for his awareness of or involvement in Jack Smith’s partisan dragnet," Johnson told Fox News Digital. "Judge Boasberg must immediately lift the seal that is apparently preventing him from addressing Congress’ questions and provide the public a full explanation for his actions."
Public documents reveal that as chief judge of the D.C. federal court, Boasberg authorized numerous gag orders that blocked phone companies from telling about a dozen House and Senate lawmakers that Smith had subpoenaed their phone data.
Smith had sought a narrow set of their records, which included details about when calls and messages were placed and with whom the Congress members were communicating. The records did not include the contents of calls and messages. Smith has defended the subpoenas, saying they were in line with department policy and "entirely proper."
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/federal-court-gives-explanation-boasbergs-gag-orders-arctic-frost-subpoenas
Justice Department Sues Six Additional States for Failure to Provide Voter Registration Rolls
WASHINGTON – Today, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced it has filed federal lawsuits against six states — Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington — for failure to produce their statewide voter registration lists upon request.
"Accurate voter rolls are the cornerstone of fair and free elections, and too many states have fallen into a pattern of noncompliance with basic voter roll maintenance," said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. "The Department of Justice will continue filing proactive election integrity litigation until states comply with basic election safeguards."
"Our federal elections laws ensure every American citizen may vote freely and fairly,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. "States that continue to defy federal voting laws interfere with our mission of ensuring that Americans have accurate voter lists as they go to the polls, that every vote counts equally, and that all voters have confidence in election results. At this Department of Justice, we will not stand for this open defiance of federal civil rights laws."
According to the lawsuits, the Attorney General is uniquely charged by Congress with the enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which were designed by Congress to ensure that states have proper and effective voter registration and voter list maintenance programs. The Attorney General also has the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (CRA) at her disposal to demand the production, inspection, and analysis of the statewide voter registration lists.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-six-additional-states-failure-provide-voter-registration-rolls
Bannon’s WarRoom
@Bannons_WarRoom
JOHN SOLOMON: 26 states are about to be forced to clean up their voter rolls, taking off non-citizens, dead people, the triple registrars, all of it.
The '26 election could be fundamentally different for the Democrats, because they won't have their dirty voter rolls!
@jsolomonReports
https://x.com/Bannons_WarRoom/status/1996603652375474253
Jack Smith’s Team Knew They Might Face Legal Challenges For Secretly Seeking Senators’ Phone Records
Special counsel Jack Smith’s team pressed forward with secretly seeking phone records for Republican members of Congress, even after being warned it exposed them to “litigation risk,” internal emails show.
Emails released Tuesday by Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin reveal prosecutors weighing which members of Congress to target with subpoenas as part of the “Arctic Frost” investigation, which became Smith’s 2020 election case against President Donald Trump.
“As you are aware, there is some litigation risk regarding whether compelled disclosure of toll records of a Member’s legislative calls violates the Speech or Debate Clause in the D.C. Circuit,” former head of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section John Keller told prosecutors in a May 2023 email greenlighting the subpoenas.
Smith’s subpoenas for nearly a dozen Republican lawmakers requested “detailed records for inbound and outbound calls, text messages, direct connect, and voicemail messages” between Jan. 4 and Jan. 7, 2021. Smith obtained nondisclosure orders hiding the requests from members, which were approved by Judge James Boasberg, an Obama appointee.
A grand jury subpoena for House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan obtained by the Biden DOJ requested records from a nearly two year time period.
“Even putting aside the government’s potentially meritorious argument that the calls over the relevant period–especially unsolicited incoming calls–would not constitute protected legislative acts, given my understanding of the low likelihood that any of the Members listed below would be charged, the litigation risk should be minimal here,” Keller wrote to prosecutors.
Though prosecutors already had some member call records from a subpoena to Rudy Giuliani, they reasoned that seeking their records directly “would allow us to understand who else may have called these Members.”
Prosecutors also considered issuing subpoenas to Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee and Republican Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy, according to emails. They mixed up Sen. Tim Scott with Sen. Rick Scott, mistakenly placing the former on their initial list of targets, per the emails.
“The closer you look, the more brazen Jack Smith’s actions become,” Grassley said in a statement. “These records show Smith and his merry band of partisans operating on a legally weak foundation by intruding on Members of Congress who were involved in core constitutional functions. Ultimately, the Biden DOJ threw the Constitution to the wind in seeking information about my colleagues.”
The Senate deal to end the government shutdown included a provision that would allow lawmakers whose phone records were seized to sue for $500,000 per violation. The House of Representatives voted unanimously to repeal the provision on Nov. 19, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune has defended it.
Smith’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
https://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2025/11/25/jack-smiths-team-knew-they-might-get-sued-for-secretly-seeking-senators-phone-records/
Greg Price
@greg_price11
Sen. Mark Warner: "I think, in many ways, the uniformed military may help save us from this President."
They're now just openly calling for military coups against President Trump.
https://x.com/greg_price11/status/1996248087874896145
18 U.S. Code § 2383 prescribes a fine, imprisonment for not more than ten years, or both, for anyone who incites, sets on foot, assists, engages in, or gives aid or comfort to any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or its laws.
Additionally, a conviction under this statute results in the offender being incapable of holding any office under the United States.
The fine amount is determined under Title 18's general fine provisions, which can reach up to $250,000 for individuals in felony cases, though courts set it based on specifics.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2383
Ernst, Cruz Introduce Bill To Recover Billions From Biden’s Rural Broadband Boondoggle
Republican Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Ted Cruz of Texas introduced legislation on Friday to recover savings from former President Joe Biden’s rural broadband initiative.
The $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program has not started a single project since the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) was signed in 2021 by Biden, drawing Ernst’s attention in a November 2024 letter to former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Tesla CEO Elon Musk outlining up to $2 trillion in savings. Ernst, who chairs the Senate DOGE Caucus, introduced the Recovering Excess Communications Appropriations while Protecting Telecommunications Upgrades, Reinvestment, and Expansion (RECAPTURE) Act after the Trump administration saved roughly $21 billion after making adjustments to the BEAD program.
“Despite the astronomical price tag, Biden’s broadband boondoggle failed to connect a single person to the internet before Trump took over and got the job done for less,” Ernst told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Now that the program is operating more efficiently and at a lower cost, I am proud to introduce my RECAPTURE Act to save the American people billions. Bringing fast and reliable internet to every corner of the country is more important than ever in the digital age, and I am confident that we can do so while racking up big savings.”
“I’m pleased to support Sen. Ernst’ RECAPTURE Act to keep the BEAD program accountable and focused on its core mission of digital connection,” Cruz told the DCNF. “By applying practical rules and unleashing fair competition, the Trump administration is closing the digital divide faster and for half the cost.”
The legislation would mandate that the $21 billion in savings be returned to the United States Treasury and be used for deficit reduction.
The Biden administration included many regulatory hurdles in its plan for the BEAD program, including requirements for partnering internet service providers to participate in environmental initiatives and requiring the use of union workers among other requirements detailed in a 98-page document outlining a 14-step process for awarding the grants.
Ernst has prioritized targeting government waste during her two terms in the Senate. She requested Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy consider yanking $14 billion from transportation projects she described as “boondoggles” in a letter sent Aug. 5, citing a July 30 report describing those that were either five or more years behind schedule or $1 billion over budget.
The chairman of the Senate DOGE Caucus also has addressed “taxpayer-funded union time” (TFUT), which cost taxpayers at least $135 million in fiscal year 2019, according to Ernst. The senator detailed several instances where the system has been abused, including when an employee at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) used TFUT to start a real estate business.
Ernst also has addressed issues with telework by federal employees and unused office space and buildings owned or leased by the federal government.
https://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2025/11/21/exclusive-ernst-cruz-introduce-bill-to-recover-billions-from-biden-boondoggle/
Pray for the surgeon to restore your face properly.