Trump Comes Running to His Buddy’s Rescue Over IRS Audit

Donald Trump may be trying to shield his old buddy Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, from being audited by the Internal Revenue Service, The Washington Post reported Thursday. 

David Eisner, a senior presidential appointee at the U.S. Department of Treasury, wrote to senior staff at the IRS that Lindell, a “friend of the president,” was “concerned he may have been inappropriately targeted” after receiving his second audit in as many years, according to two people familiar with the request and records reviewed by the Post.  

Eisner’s inquiry was then referred to the Treasury inspector general for tax administration. 

Nina Olson, who served as the national taxpayer advocate from 2001 to 2019, told the Post the request from the Trump official was “so inappropriate.”

“In my 18 years as the national taxpayer advocate with over 4 million cases that came into the Taxpayer Advocate Service, in that time with taxpayers experiencing significant problems with the IRS, I have never had a Treasury official write me about a case,” she said.

Lindell claimed that the Treasury had “misconstrued” his request and claimed he had been trying to ask about an employee retention credit he’d received from the IRS. He said he’d already emailed the agency weeks ago and been referred to the Treasury. 

Lindell, a former millionaire, spent months after the 2020 presidential election pushing theories about a grand conspiracy between electronic voting companies to keep Trump out of the White House. Lindell is facing a series of expensive lawsuits for not only allegedly defaming these companies but attempting to profit from his conspiracies. 

During a hearing in U.S. District Court Wednesday, Lindell refused to pay the more than $50,000 he owes to Smartmatic, after filing a frivolous counterclaim against the electronic voting company he smeared. The MyPillow CEO insisted that he couldn’t pay because his company was already $70 million in debt and was already paying garnishments to the IRS.  

“I’m in ruins,” he claimed, tearfully. 

Some of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s allies are claiming measles is actually a government bioweapon. Don’t worry, they have a hundred-dollar cure for it.

Wired reported Thursday that Mikki Willis, a notorious Covid-19 conspiracy theorist, said the virus is being used to strategically target Mennonite communities, a group at the center of the recent measles outbreak in Texas that killed two unvaccinated children. Willis has long been a supporter of Kennedy, whose anti-vaccination group Children’s Health Defense helped fund Willis’s conspiracy documentary Plandemic.

“I’m not going to be careful by calling it a virus,” Willis said, in a measles webinar hosted last week by his supplement company, Rebel Lion. “I’m going to call it what it is, and that is a bioweapon, and my belief after interviewing these families is that this has been manipulated and targeted towards a community that is a threat because of their natural way of living.”

To be clear, measles is not a bioweapon, it’s a disease that’s been around since the ninth century.

Rebel Lion is selling a measles-prevention protocol online for hundreds of dollars, which includes a supplement called Fierce Immunity Capsules, which costs $50 a bottle, Wired reported. Rebel Lion claims the capsule ingredients were manufactured with AI technology.

The U.S. has seen more than 700 measles cases this year, 561 of which occurred in Texas. Amid a flurry of vaccine misinformation from anti-vax influencers and Kennedy himself, cases among unvaccinated children are skyrocketing. Some anti-vax influencers claim measles poses no threat to human health; others have gone so far as to claim the measles, mumps, and rubella, or MMR, vaccine is fatal.

Since being confirmed as the secretary of health and human services, Kennedy has spread doubt about the vaccine’s safety, instead advising people to take vitamin A, which is toxic in high quantities. Then, earlier this month, he said the MMR vaccine was the most effective way to stop the measles’ spread, a long-awaited but confusing admission from the lifelong vaccine skeptic.

“The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine,” Kennedy wrote on X.

To add to the confusion, hours later, he praised anti-vax doctor Richard Bartlett, whom he called an “extraordinary healer” for providing unproven measles treatments such as the steroid budesonide and the antibiotic clarithromycin.

Bartlett participated in Rebel Lion’s webinar last week and touted the Fierce Immunity capsules as a legitimate defense against the deadly disease, snatching the opportunity to capitalize on the country’s public health crisis and the fear that comes with it.

A U.S. citizen was arrested for entering the state of Florida as an “unauthorized alien” under a state law that shouldn’t have been enforced in the first place.

Juan Carlos Lopez Gomez was set to remain in jail for 48 hours under an ICE hold, according to the Florida Phoenix. His mother and a community advocate presented his birth certificate and Social Security card during a hearing in Leon County, but the judge said that she had no authority to release him due to the court’s jurisdiction.

Lopez Gomez was released Thursday evening after his story received media attention and protesters gathered at the Leon County jail where he was being held.

Lopez Gomez, 21, was born in Georgia. According to court records, he was assigned a judge as well as a public defender. He appears to have been arrested and charged under an “anti-immigration” law passed in Florida two months ago, despite the fact that the law is currently under a temporary restraining order and isn’t supposed to be enforced.

It was only a matter of time before Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts swept up an American citizen, and it happened to be aided by local authorities in Florida. Before Trump was even sworn in as president, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pledged his cooperation with the Trump administration’s attempts to deport as many immigrants as possible.

Why did local authorities completely disregard a federal court ruling in order to arrest Lopez Gomez, and then disregard the fact he’s a natural-born U.S. citizen? Is this a mistake, or are they taking their lead from the president, who is currently disregarding a court order from the Supreme Court?

* This piece has been updated to correct the nature of Lopez Gomez’s arrest.

This story has been updated with news of Lopez Gomez’s release.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement took violent steps earlier this week to arrest a Guatemalan man who not only has no criminal record but wasn’t even the target authorities were looking for, according to his lawyer.

Juan Francisco Méndez, a 29-year old Guatemalan immigrant, was arrested without a warrant Monday in New Bedford, Massachusetts—but that’s not the only shady thing about this arrest.

Méndez and his wife, Marilú Domingo Ortiz, were in their car when a pair of armed officers stopped them. In a video shared by The New Bedford Light, the couple told the officers that they were waiting for his lawyer to arrive before speaking with the agents. When Ortiz asked whether they had a warrant for her husband’s arrest, the officers did not respond. When asked if she could leave, they said, “No.”

In a statement, ICE told The New Republic that Méndez “refused to comply with officers’ instructions and resisted apprehension.”

The officers continued to ask Ortiz to roll down her window to speak. After some time, one of the officers, who was wearing a bulletproof vest, violently smashed the back window of Méndez’s car with what appeared to be a pickax.

“They forcibly removed me and my husband,” Ortiz said in Spanish in the video. “They pulled me out of the car violently. They treated me badly too.”

ICE said in its statement that it “concurs with the actions deemed appropriate by the officers on the scene who are trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve the situation in a manner that ensures the success of the operation and prioritizes the safety of our officers.”

By the time Méndez’s immigration lawyer, Ondine Galvez Sniffin, arrived at the scene, it was too late for her to tell the officers they had taken the wrong man.

“They said they were looking for a certain individual, by a different name. And I said that’s not my client,” Sniffin told WBZ-TV CBS Boston. “They said, um, ‘He has prior entries to this country,’ and I said that’s not true. I know my client’s history, and that’s not him.”

Méndez, who has been in the country for two years with no criminal record, is undocumented and awaiting documentation that would solidify his asylum status, according to Sniffin.

New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell said that in detaining Méndez, ICE broke its long-standing practice of alerting city officials before conducting an arrest. The New Bedford Police Department spokesperson confirmed Mitchell’s statement, adding that ICE officers gave the wrong address when they finally did report to the police during the incident.

Mitchell said that communication with ICE has been “inconsistent” since the beginning of Donald Trump’s administration.

“We hear the Trump administration say that they’re prioritizing convicted criminals. I’ll be the first to say I want criminals removed from the streets of New Bedford,” Mitchell told the Light. “But it should matter to everybody if these people are not criminals and they’re being detained because their identity is mistaken, that they are still adjudicating their immigration status and are waiting for a hearing.”

The Light spoke with Méndez Wednesday. “We are not criminals. We are hardworking people who came here to fight for our families and for a better future,” Méndez said from a facility in Dover, New Hampshire. He added that he was being held with 30 or 40 other individuals detained for immigration issues.

Méndez’s arrest comes amid a sharp crackdown on undocumented immigrants by the Trump administration, which has begun carrying out expedited deportations of immigrants the government alleges are gang members who, more often than not, have no criminal history.

The Trump administration may have just revoked an international student’s visa because his church group caught too many fish. 

Suguru Onda, a Ph.D. candidate from Japan studying at Brigham Young University, was notified earlier this month that his student visa was being revoked because he was “identified in criminal records check,” Deseret News reported Wednesday.  

It’s unclear exactly why Onda’s name was flagged in a criminal records check. Other than a couple of speeding tickets, his only run-in with the law was during a fishing trip with his church group in 2019, when he was reported for harvesting more fish than his fishing license allowed. Onda didn’t catch any fish himself, but he was overseeing the group and held responsible for the violation. The charge was later dismissed.

Onda’s attorney, Adam Crayk, believes the fishing incident could’ve led to his name being identified, he told Deseret News. The father of five was not given an explanation for why his visa was being revoked, and the revocation notice itself was vague. 

“Individual identified in criminal records check and/or has had their visa revoked, service record has been terminated,” the notice read.

Before Donald Trump took office and waged war on higher education and the civil liberties of international students, visas were typically revoked for serious offenses and felonies, something a little worse than driving too fast or being in a group that caught too many fish. Since January, at least 901 students across 128 colleges and universities have had their visas revoked, according to a review of data from the Associated Press. 

On Wednesday, an immigration-focused law firm in Atlanta filed a lawsuit against Trump on behalf of 133 foreign students. The filing reveals some of the staggering reasons students believe they’re being targeted (the visas are often revoked without providing a specific reason), which range from expired license plates to speeding tickets. Add the violation of a fishing license to the list.

Onda’s attorney is pursuing various options to keep him in the country, but the aspiring computer scientist told Deseret News he’s already “packing everything” in case he needs to leave abruptly. He joins nearly 1,000 other students doing the same.