Feds Descend on Minneapolis to Pursue Right-Wing Fraud Theory

Federal agents returned to Minneapolis to raid day cares early on Tuesday morning.

“Today the FBI with federal, state and local law enforcement is involved in court-authorized law enforcement activity as part of an ongoing fraud investigation,” said a Justice Department spokesperson. About 20 childcare centers were targeted, but no one was arrested, according to reporting from CBS News. Sources told Fox News that the targets were Somali-linked.

At least a dozen agents showed up at the Mini Childcare Center, one of the many day cares that right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley harassed while attempting to prove that Somali Americans were running an elaborate fraud scheme, a flimsy theory meant to target a minority population. It was picked up by the Trump administration nonetheless, with the president escalating his hateful rhetoric about how Somalis don’t belong in the country and slandering Somali American Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar in the process. None of the day cares Shirley harassed have been found fraudulent.

Even still, federal agents are back just months after 2,000 of them flooded the streets of Minneapolis in Operation Metro Surge—killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti and abusing and detaining thousands of immigrants. Like Shirley, they left empty-handed after descending upon a day care at 6 a.m. this morning.

The president is losing his grip over his proposed White House ballroom.

The Justice Department filed a bizarre legal motion Monday, taking on a tone—and punctuation—more akin to one of Donald Trump’s sprawling social media rants than a formal court document from the top law enforcement institution in the country.

Over the span of seven pages, the supposedly independent agency spewed insults at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which refused Monday to drop its lawsuit to halt construction of the proposed 90,000-square-foot White House addition.

In the legal filing, the DOJ calls the nonprofit “FAKE,” frames the organization’s attorney as “the lawyer for Barack Hussein Obama,” and accuses its staff of suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

But it also places an odd and unusual emphasis on the ballroom, insisting that its immediate construction is a national security necessity due to the attack Saturday at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

“The fact that an assassin came mere seconds from shooting the President—along with his family, the bulk of his Cabinet, his senior staff, and the Washington press corps—lays bare that D.C. does not have a secure space for large high-profile events, or one able to ‘accommodate an event with the line of succession for the U.S. government,’” argued the Justice Department. “What he did on Saturday night could not have taken place in this new and highly secure facility!”

The notice continued that “as this weekend painfully confirms, all current and future Presidents need a secure large-event space now.”

The agency did not specify how the ballroom would offer better security than the Washington Hilton hotel, which also depends on the Secret Service to run its security operation for the annual press gathering.

The Connecticut Avenue hotel has several amenities that make it a favorite for executive branch functions, including a special entrance for the president as well as a dedicated holding room behind the stage that comes with a presidential seal embedded into the floor. The hotel’s event space can also hold more than 2,600 guests—and is  significantly larger than the proposed ballroom.

Yet the DOJ filing further claims that, since the attack, the ballroom has received support from a “bipartisan chorus of legislators”—a vast overstatement that almost singularly refers to Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman, who has deferred to the MAGA agenda on several occasions.

The filing, signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, repeats the White House’s rhetoric that construction of the razed East Wing replacement would be “free of charge to the American Taxpayer.”

“Who could ever object to that?” the filing reads.

But it would not be free. Trump has repeatedly pledged that the space would be entirely funded by private donors, but as of this week has pushed Congress to sign a $400 million check for the ballroom’s construction. Several Republicans have backed the strategy, led by South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. Graham has claimed that the cost would be offset to taxpayers by leaning on national park user fees and custom fees.

Senator Lindsey Graham spiraled after he was faced with a simple question about his clueless campaigning for a new White House ballroom.

During a news conference Monday, a reporter asked the South Carolina Republican why he felt the failed attack on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner indicated the need for a White House ballroom at all. Especially considering that the WHCD was a “private event at a private location for a private organization,” and welcomed “twice as many guests as the White House ballroom would hold.”

“So, why do you find it appropriate to link these two events so closely?” the reporter asked.

“Well, I find it appropriate if you’re gonna have the president of the United States, the vice president of the United States, the speaker of the House, and half the Cabinet in the room, the room matters,” Graham said. “And the idea that you can’t do this in the ballroom will be up to the Correspondents’ Association.”

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner has been held at the Washington Hilton for the last 50 years. No one is arguing that this venue did not face glaring security issues, but that doesn’t mean members of the press should expect Trump—who regularly antagonizes the media—to roll out the red carpet for their yearly dinner. The construction of a White House ballroom would not address security concerns about this event in the slightest.

Still, Graham spoke about the ballroom as if it were the only solution to event planning in our troubled society. He announced he was pushing a bill to use $400 million of public funds (a.k.a. taxpayer dollars) to complete the construction project.

“We’re gonna have to accommodate the times in which we live. There are people out there that are nuts being driven to take up violence as an acceptable outcome in too many people’s opinion,” he said. “So no, we’re gonna build this facility. And I would suggest to the next president: ‘Don’t go to the Hilton!’

“The problem is you don’t have a choice. We’re gonna give people that choice,” he added, meaning the president, his lackeys, and his guests. Graham’s pleading comes as the Department of Justice has moved to squash a lawsuit challenging the massive construction.

It seems that Graham is merely offering his own dramatic reading of the lines fed to every Trump sycophant. Just hours after the shooting, some of the president’s most fervent MAGA supporters were already posting about the urgent need for a ballroom.

Journalist Molly Jong-Fast summed up the sudden ballroom mania on X: “When all you have is a ballroom everything looks like a nail,” she wrote.

Right-wing commentators and conspiracy theorists have expressed doubts about the legitimacy of the attempted assassination at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday. 

“Does anybody else just not care about the White House Correspondent’s Dinner shooting like at all,” said white nationalist and former Trump dinner guest Nick Fuentes. 

“Was this just a coincidence or another staged incident? Hours before the chaos, Karoline Leavitt told America to watch tonight because Donald Trump would bring the heat, and there would be ‘shots fired.’ Then suddenly, real shots were fired near the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” Tucker Carlson posited on his show. “Shots fired? The Secret Service rushes in and they let Trump continue to sit there? And now they’re going to resume the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and Trump still plans to deliver a speech?”

“I’m not saying this was staged to boost Trump’s tanking approval numbers, but it certainly looks odd,” Carlson continued. 

Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist  Alex Jones didn’t seem convinced the shooting was staged, but he still lent some credence to the idea, acknowledging that a lot of people he “really, really, really” respected who were “dead on on every other issue” believed it was. 

Former MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Green also raised questions regarding the alleged shooter’s manifesto. 

“Why does every shooter have a manifesto? Most shooter’s manifestos remain classified so they don’t inspire more would be shooter’s,” she wrote. “Why did they release Cole Allen’s manifesto almost immediately?”

This cloud of doubt on the right surrounding the correspondents’ dinner comes just over a week after Wired reported that a notable section of Trump’s base, including Carlson, believe the 2024 assassination attempt on President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, was fake as well—suggesting eroding trust from those who were once his staunchest supporters. 

Musician Kid Rock reportedly got an AH-64 Apache helicopter ride with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Monday morning.

Ryan Grim of Drop Site posted on X that the musician, whose real name is Robert James Ritchie, flew to Fort Belvoir in northern Virginia on his private jet for the ride. The helicopters usually fly with two pilots, but Ritchie and Hegseth each rode in their own helicopter with one pilot. Apache helicopters aren’t stationed at the military base, raising questions as to where these aircraft came from. A base spokesperson referred questions to Hegseth’s office, according to Grim.

Last month, two Apache helicopters flew over a “No Kings” protest in Nashville, Tennessee, and then performed maneuvers next to Ritchie’s mansion in the suburbs nearby, prompting an investigation and the air crews’ suspension. Days later, Hegseth lifted their suspension and announced that the soldiers would not be punished, posting “Carry on, patriots. 🇺🇸” on X.

Ritchie seems to be hanging out with Cabinet officials a lot these days, having taken part in a bizarre ice bath and workout video with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in February to promote his public health policy. The purpose of the alleged helicopter flights doesn’t seem to be national security, and as of 2022, an Apache helicopter costs $5,171 per hour to operate.

One of the Trump administration’s newest immigration judges said that some women are just a “warm, wet hole.”

Melissa Isaak, an Army veteran and reservist, was hired by the Justice Department on April 8 as a temporary immigration judge. She was permitted to begin hearing cases immediately, according to an announcement from the Executive Office for Immigration Review.

In 2007, Isaak graduated from Barry University School of Law, a low-ranked law school where less than half of recent grads passed the bar exam on their first try. Afterward, she joined the law firm Brock & Stout in Alabama for two years, and in 2009 began her own private practice, self-styled as a “divorce attorney for men,” where she has worked ever since.

She does not have any immigration court experience, but her name was attached to several high-profile, non-divorce cases. Isaak was a defense attorney for three of the January 6 Capitol rioters (she later withdrew from two of the cases), and she also helped Alabama Republican Roy Moore dismiss a defamation suit from a woman who said he molested her when she was 14. That legal saga is still ongoing—an appeals court overturned Moore’s multimillion-dollar win against his accuser late last week.

During an interview with pickup artist Anthony Dream Johnson in 2021, Isaak claimed that “there are two types of women.”

“There are good, solid, valuable women who are major assets to men, if you’re a good woman,” Isaak said. “And then there’s a warm wet hole.”

The following year, she gave a speech on the matter for Johnson’s manosphere convention, 21 Studios’ Make Women Great Again, titled “Divorcing Feminism.”

“If the only thing you have to offer a man is sex, that’s what you are,” Isaak said. “And guess what? Guess who else has a warm, wet hole? Every other woman out there. What a horrible existence.”

She compared that to a “real woman,” a subtype that she said was meant to “catapult a man.”

“We’re powerful women, we are, if we use it in the right way,” Isaak said, specifying the necessity to use that energy for men.

“I’ve had people get offended, and they say, ‘You know, it’s horrible that you say warm, wet hole.’ I mean, well, if you have one and it’s not warm and wet you might want to seek some gynecological intervention,” Isaak said to crickets.

Germany thinks Iran is getting the better of Donald Trump in negotiations.

On Wednesday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told a group of secondary school students in western Germany that “there is a sense that a whole nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, particularly by these so-called Revolutionary Guards,” Bloomberg reports. 

“It is quite obvious that the Americans have absolutely no coherent strategy whatsoever,” Merz said to students in his home district of Marsberg. “And the fundamental problem with these kinds of conflicts is always the same: It is not enough to simply get yourself in—you must also figure out how to get yourself out.”

Merz’s criticism is a bad sign for Trump, who has complained about a lack of support from European powers for his war with Iran. Merz visited Trump last month and seemed to be on good terms with the president at the time, telling the press that “we are on the same page in terms of getting this terrible regime in Iran away.”

“We will talk about the day after, what will happen then, if they are out,” Merz said March 3, less than a week after the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran.

Days later, though, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said the country would not send ships to the region. Last week, Merz said that he and other leaders were not consulted prior to the initial attacks on Iran, adding that he has expressed his concerns to Trump in two separate conversations. 

“If I had known that this would go on for five or six weeks and keep getting worse, I would have made my point to him even more forcefully,” Merz said. Rising fuel prices as a result of the war are affecting economies all around the world, especially Germany, the leading economy in Europe, a point Merz stressed in his remarks. 

“This war against Iran has a direct impact on our economic performance and must therefore be brought to an end as soon as possible,” Merz said.

Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has given it the upper hand in the conflict with the U.S., and the world is noticing that Trump hasn’t produced any results from negotiations in Pakistan. The longer this conflict drags on, the worse it reflects on the president.  

A prominent commercial contractor with government ties built a secluded residence in the New Mexico desert for Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein purchased Zorro Ranch from former Democratic Governor Bruce King in 1993. Then he hired Bradbury Stamm Construction, a company better known for building classified facilities at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Kirtland Air Force Base, to erect him a mansion on the 10,000-acre property. They also built him a sprawling courtyard, a private airstrip with a hangar and helipad, a ranch office, a firehouse, and a seven-bay heated garage.

Bradbury Stamm is the largest industrial commercial contractor in New Mexico, and is not known for constructing private homes, according to journalist and author Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez. Yet they did it anyway. The company’s telephone number was listed under a series of contacts pertaining to Zorro Ranch in Epstein’s personal phone book, according to unredacted pages released by the Justice Department.

Why the company would go out of its way to take on the Zorro Ranch project is not clear, though Valdes-Rodriguez speculates that it could have something to do with Ghislaine Maxwell’s father.

“Bradbury Stamm holds classified construction contracts at the New Mexico nuclear weapons labs that Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, Robert Maxwell, penetrated with backdoored spy software on behalf of Israeli military intelligence in the mid-1980s, per publicly available FBI files and the testimony of Rafael Eitan, the Mossad operations chief who ran Maxwell as an asset,” Valdes-Rodriguez wrote. “Bradbury Stamm brings in hundreds of millions each year in contracts.”

Zorro Ranch, located roughly 30 miles south of Santa Fe in the high desert, was rumored to be a hotbed of illicit activity while Epstein held the keys. Some of the notorious child sex offender’s victims, including Virginia Giuffre, claimed they were trafficked at the New Mexico estate.

Emails issued by ranch staffers allege that at least two girls were killed and buried under the building by Epstein’s order, according to documents made public by the Justice Department via the Epstein files. Epstein even contemplated turning the estate into a headquarters for genetic engineering experiments.

The property has since changed hands. In 2023, it was purchased by Donald Huffines, a former Texas state senator now running for comptroller as a self-styled “Trump Republican.” The Huffines family has renamed the site “Rancho San Rafael.”

The Trump administration intervened in a New Mexico investigation at the property in 2019. In February, New Mexico lawmakers voted unanimously to pursue another investigation into Zorro Ranch, creating a bipartisan “truth commission” to examine the site’s history. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez also ordered his office to reopen the criminal investigation into Zorro Ranch, demanding “immediate access to the complete, unredacted federal case file.”

The Department of Justice has reached a second agreement to fork over taxpayer dollars to President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

A brief document filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims Friday stated that the parties had agreed to a settlement “in principle,” but needed more time to finalize the details.

It’s not yet clear how much money Trump intends to hand off to his ally, in addition to the $1.25 million settlement the DOJ agreed to last month.

Friday’s settlement relates to a civil suit Flynn brought against the government, alleging that the U.S. Army had illegally garnished his retirement pay after it found he had accepted compensation from a foreign government source without first seeking approval from the Department of Defense, Lawfare’s Anna Bower wrote on Substack.

Flynn previously alleged he was wrongfully prosecuted for making false statements to federal agents as part of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election—even though he pleaded guilty to lying, twice.

The Trump administration is coming after Jimmy Kimmel—again.

Both President Trump and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday joined the train of hate kicked off by first lady Melania Trump in response to Kimmel’s jokes at a parody White House Correspondent’s Dinner last week.

“Wow, Jimmy Kimmel, who is in no way funny as attested to by his terrible Television Ratings … showed a fake video of the First Lady, Melania, and our son, Barron, like they were actually sitting in his studio, listening to him speak, which they weren’t, and never would be. He then stated, ‘Our First Lady, Melania, is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow,’” Trump wrote Monday on Truth Social. “A day later a lunatic tried entering the ballroom of the White House Correspondents Dinner, loaded up with a shotgun, handgun, and many knives. He was there for a very obvious and sinister reason.

“I appreciate that so many people are incensed by Kimmel’s despicable call to violence, and normally would not be responsive to anything that he said but, this is something far beyond the pale. Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC,” Trump concluded.

Trump, like Melania, is asserting that a joke a comedian told two full days before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner led directly to Cole Allen’s alleged shooting attempt. That assertion is facetious at best—Allen’s supposed manifesto specially referenced Trump’s lack of respect for Christianity, his decision to cut off funding for Ukraine, and the country being led by “a pedophile, rapist, and traitor” as primary grievances for his actions, not some poorly-aged joke from Kimmel of all people.

Leavitt joined in on the pearl-clutching earlier on Monday.

“Who in their right mind says a wife would be glowing over the potential murder of her beloved husband?” she said. “And having experienced what I did with the first lady on Saturday night, I can tell you that she was anything but that. This kind of rhetoric about the president, the first lady, and his supporters is completely deranged, and it’s unbelievable that the American people are consuming it night after night after night.”

The Trump administration is showing all of this concern and disgust over a bad joke that was ultimately nothing more than a joke, not a call to murder. Their boss has made comments much worse—and much more serious—than Kimmel.

This story has been updated.