A Private Prison Falsified Death Records. ICE Gave Them More Money.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement discovered that GEO Group, the country’s largest private prison company, had falsified the death records of an inmate—but that didn’t stop the federal agency from throwing even more money at them, according to The Intercept. 

On December 6, 2023, Frankline Okpu, a 37-year-old man from Cameroon, died in solitary confinement at the GEO Group’s Moshannon Valley ICE Processing Center in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, after staff members failed to carry out orders from his physician—and then lied about it.

Okpu was placed in solitary confinement after an altercation with a guard, during which he allegedly ingested a synthetic form of cannabis mixed with a tranquilizer. After refusing treatment at the emergency department and the infirmary, Okpu was placed in solitary, and his medical provider ordered that staff members check on him every 15 minutes to ensure his safety.

Surveillance footage reviewed by ICE showed that of the 219 visual inspections GEO staff members were required to perform, 94 inspections, or 42 percent, were not done properly. In 33 inspections, staff members did not look through the window into Okpu’s cell to actually observe him. In 38 inspections, the staff checked on him outside of the required 15-minute timeframe. Twenty-three of the recorded inspections never occurred at all.

When reviewing GEO Group’s death report for Okpu, ICE found that there were several inconsistencies between medical staff’s documentation and surveillance footage from that morning, The Intercept reported.  

On the morning of Okpu’s death, he was scheduled to attend a dentist appointment, but when the resident adviser went to retrieve him, he did not respond. The adviser then relayed to the dental assistant that Okpu had refused treatment, and the dental assistant filled out a refusal form. ICE determined that GEO had “failed to comply” with the requirement to obtain a signed refusal form after attempting to counsel the patient to accept treatment. 

ICE also found that medical staff at the facility failed to conduct a face-to-face encounter just an hour before Okpu was discovered unresponsive—despite claiming to have done so. Medical staff also falsely documented that they’d ensured he’d eaten both breakfast and lunch. ICE did not check to see if he’d had breakfast, and Okpu was found unresponsive when lunch was served at 11:15 a.m. After nurses attempted CPR, he was declared dead at 12:02 p.m. 

Just three months after the death report was reviewed, ICE tossed GEO Group another $4 million, according to The Intercept. In 2023, 43 percent of Geo Group’s top-line revenue, more than $2.4 billion, came from contracts with ICE. Now GEO Group operates 19 facilities for ICE, accounting for $2.6 billion in total revenue in 2025.

All of this was before the Trump administration ramped up detention numbers and cut off detainees’ health care. One can imagine the potential for abuse and neglect has only increased since Okpu’s death. 

Trump administration officials met with racist, Islamophobic, far-right U.K. activist Tommy Robinson—and gave him a tour of the State Department. 

One of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s senior advisers publicly boasted about meeting with Robinson on Wednesday. 

“Honored to have free speech warrior @TRobinsonNewEra at Department of State today,” Joe Rittenhouse wrote on X, including a picture of the two of them. “The World and the West is a better place when we fight for freedom of speech and no one has been on the front lines more than Tommy. Good to see you my friend!”

Robinson also bragged last week about meeting Kari Lake, the Trump-appointed head of Voice of America.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, co-founded the anti-Muslim “English Defence League” and founded the British National Party. He was previously imprisoned for contempt of court after his racist libel of a 15-year-old Syrian boy on his massive social media platform.  

“The Trump administration hosting Tommy Robinson must be a wake-up call,” British Member of Parliament Calum Miller wrote on X. “The government needs to include the US in their inquiry into foreign interference in UK politics. We cannot stand by while the likes of Trump and Musk meddle in our democracy.”

“Yaxley-Lennon is being touted around Washington as a ‘free speech warrior.’ We need to engage this administration on the difference between that and incitement to violence and racial hatred,” British Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Emily Thornberry said. “There should be no place in any democracy for the latter.”

Hillary Clinton was supposed to testify behind closed doors Thursday to the House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. Representative Lauren Boebert and conservative influencer Benny Johnson briefly blew that up.

At noon Thursday, Johnson posted a photo from the hearing on X showing Clinton seated at a table with a quizzical expression on her face. He captioned it with a siren emoji followed by “BREAKING: The first image of Hillary Clinton testifying under oath about Jeffery Epstein to the Republican Oversight Committee.

“This is the first time Hillary has had to answer real questions about Epstein. Clinton does not look happy,” the post said, and credited the photo to Boebert.

That photo was followed by another with a full view of the hearing showing most of the participants, and with Boebert’s name tag visible in the front of the image.

After Clinton and her advisers learned of the posts, the hearing was paused, as Boebert’s photos were unauthorized. The deposition has since resumed, but Clinton asked that press be allowed into the room after the leaked photos, a request that was denied.

Clinton had pushed for public hearings for herself and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, but was turned down earlier this month by Republican Representative James Comer, the committee chair, who said that open hearings are “more for entertainment than substance,” accusing the Clintons of “trying to play the victim card.”

President Trump wasn’t a big fan of the Clintons testifying before Congress. A former president and first lady (and senator and secretary of state) testifying before lawmakers means that it wouldn’t be a big deal if Trump himself gets called to testify about Epstein, a subject Trump is trying desperately to ignore. Trump’s Republican allies may have pushed for the Clintons to answer their questions, but their efforts could put him in a bind.

This story has been updated.

A group of MAGA activists are working with the White House to convince President Trump to declare a national emergency over allegations of Chinese election interference—a move they say would allow him to ban mail-in ballots and voting machines.

Florida attorney and former Trump boarding school classmate Peter Ticktin told The Washington Post he has had “certain coordination” with the White House regarding the 17-page executive order draft that his group wants Trump to sign.

Ticktin’s draft hinges on the debunked claim that China successfully interfered in the 2020 election on behalf of former President Joe Biden. Trump to this day still believes that this election was somehow stolen from him, and now the Chinese government seems to be the next scapegoat.

“Under the Constitution, it’s the legislatures and states that really control how a state conducts its elections, and the president doesn’t have any power to do that,” Ticktin told the Post. “But here we have a situation where the president is aware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes.... That causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it.”

“The stage is largely being set by the revelations coming out of foreign powers being involved in influencing the 2020 election,” said Jerome Corsi, a progenitor of the birtherism claims Trump has made against former President Barack Obama. “If there was a provable foreign intrusion, that would be a national security emergency and the order could be issued under his powers as commander in chief.”

While Trump has already signed an executive order requiring proof of citizenship on voter registration forms and revoking funding from states that accept mail-in ballots, a presidential election emergency has never been challenged in the Supreme Court.

The vice president made a surprising claim on Fox News Wednesday while discussing his new role leading the administration’s so-called “war on fraud.”

“I think it’s unfortunate that nobody has ever tried to take a systematic look at how much fraud there is in the federal government,” JD Vance said.

Sorry, what?

There are some of us old enough to remember Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which purported to investigate claims of fraud, waste, and abuse in the federal government. The agency managed to slash thousands of federal jobs without meaningfully reducing spending—while making it easier for fraudsters to take advantage of Americans. Musk, who was appointed as head of DOGE after donating a whopping $288 million to Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, used his position to boost his many businesses, win big off of Trump’s tariffs, and dismantle the agencies that regulate his companies.

Vance said that there was no way to know a “top-line number” on how much fraud there was, because no one had ever bothered to investigate, but still baselessly claimed that “billions and billions of dollars” in Medicaid funding were being used on undocumented immigrants.

Vance’s so-called “war on fraud” is a thinly veiled excuse to go after Trump’s political opponents and punish blue states—all while the president has already enriched himself to the tune of $1.4 billion at the taxpayer’s expense.

More than a dozen schemes have popped up in Minnesota’s safety net programs in recent years, many of them involving members of the state’s Somali population. It’s worth noting that the government had already investigated federal fraud in Minnesota. During the Biden administration, more than 90 Minnesotans were charged, at least 60 of whom were ultimately convicted. Both red and blue states have participated in benefits abuse, but not everyone has had sweeping federal cuts inflicted on them.

Senior Justice Department prosecutor Colin McDonald told the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday that the recent crackdown on alleged fraud in Minnesota would serve a blueprint for a new DOJ office focused on protecting taxpayer dollars from scams.

Speaking to Fox News later that day, Vance claimed that the entire administration would be enlisted in the war on fraud, and would employ “a whole host of tools that we have that have never been used.”