DL Open Thread: Saturday, September 27, 2025
A Very Special Absolute Corruption Edition:
Trump Fired US Attorney For Following The Law:
For 15 years, Michele Beckwith oversaw some of the toughest federal prosecutions in California. She went after transnational terrorists, sex traffickers and the Aryan brotherhood.
She became the acting U.S. attorney in Sacramento this year when her boss, a Biden appointee, stepped down in January.
But her career crumbled in July, she said, after she issued a warning to Gregory Bovino, the California face of President Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The dismissal of Ms. Beckwith appeared to be an early example of how Mr. Trump has fired top federal prosecutors who did not help carry out his political agenda.
Documents reviewed by The New York Times show that the July 15 firing of Ms. Beckwith occurred less than six hours after she told Mr. Bovino, the Border Patrol chief in charge of the Southern California raids, that a court order prevented him from arresting people without probable cause in a vast expanse that stretches from the Oregon border to Bakersfield. She was removed not only from her post as acting U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of California, but from the office altogether.
‘Justice’ Department Goes After Fani Willis:
The Department of Justice has issued a subpoena for records related to the travel history of Fani T. Willis, the Georgia district attorney who charged President Trump in a sweeping election interference case, according to a federal grand jury subpoena reviewed by The New York Times.
The scope of the investigation is not yet clear. Also unclear is whether Ms. Willis is the target of the inquiry and whether she will ultimately face charges. Grand jury proceedings are secretive by law.
But the document reviewed by The Times is an indication that the Justice Department under President Trump may be investigating another one of his old foes. On Thursday, James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, was indicted over the objection of career prosecutors who found insufficient evidence to support the charges.
The Latest ICE Targets: Des Moines Schools Superintendent:
Federal authorities on Friday arrested the superintendent of the Des Moines public school system, saying he is in the country illegally from Guyana and has an outstanding immigration removal order.
Ian Roberts, who has led the 31,000-student system since 2023, was detained after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers approached him in a vehicle and he drove away, authorities said. Officers discovered his abandoned vehicle, and state police helped apprehend him. He was in possession of a loaded handgun, $3,000 in cash and a fixed-blade hunting knife, ICE said in a statement.
“How this illegal alien was hired without work authorization, a final order of removal, and a prior weapons charge is beyond comprehension and should alarm the parents of that school district,” Sam Olson, director of ICE’s St. Paul field office, said in a statement.
Des Moines school officials confirmed Roberts’s arrest at a brief news conference but said they do not have information about why he was detained or what will happen next. They named Matt Smith, one of Roberts’s deputies, as interim superintendent.
“We stand firm with our community, many of whom are feeling sad, outraged and helpless. We understand, as we too are devastated by the news of his detainment,” Smith said. “We will lead with love and care for the dignity of human beings in Des Moines and across our country.”
Lue Yang, Whose Family Aided The United States During Vietnam War:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Yang, 47, a father of six from Clinton County, Michigan, and more than a dozen ethnically Hmong residents in that state in July based on decades-old criminal convictions. A communist nation, Laos has long refused to accept the repatriation of refugees like Yang, whose family fled political persecution in the 1970s after his father aided the United States during the Vietnam War.
But Laos has appeared to change its policy this year under intense pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration, which has begun targeting Hmong refugee communities, mainly clustered in the Upper Midwest, and sending them to Laos, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian nations. Many of the detainees have no recollection of the country where they are being sent to and could face discriminationor physical harm if they are returned, immigrant rights advocates said.
Lo Yang, Lue’s father, who was shot three times while serving in the Laotian army alongside U.S. forces, feels betrayed by the nation he helped half a century ago.
“Before I came to the U.S., I raised my hand and pledged to make a difference here, whether wealthy or not, and that’s how I raised Lue as well,” Lo Yang, 73, said in an interview. He choked up while speaking in his native Lao through an interpreter at a Lansing community center.
“If they know I served in the war, he will be executed — whether it’s the law or the community, they will seek retribution,” he added of the prospect his son could be sent to Laos.
More Evidence There’s Some Serious Shit In Those Epstein Files:
Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and former Trump White House advisor Steve Bannon are among those who appeared in partially redacted files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that were released on Friday by Democrats in the House Oversight Committee.
The committee earlier embarked on a probe to evaluate whether the federal government mishandled its case against Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence following a 2022 conviction for recruiting teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein.
President Donald Trump had promised voters on the campaign trail that he would release government documents related to Epstein, who was arrested in the summer of 2019 on sex trafficking charges and died in a New York federal prison, reportedly by suicide, before trial.However, Trump has refused to endorse the release of any Epstein files since returning to the White House in January, and Republicans in Congress have followed his lead, keeping the documents out of the public’s view.
In June, Musk wrote in a post on X, that he thought Trump and his administration were withholding Epstein-related files from the public view in order to protect the president’s reputation.
“Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files,” Musk, who was in the midst of a public spat with the president, wrote at the time. “That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”
The non-existent Department of Justice will certainly not go after Trump.
President Donald Trump’s potential $20 billion financial backstop for his ally, Argentina’s leader Javier Milei, is running into growing opposition from Democrats, Republicans and farm groups over concerns the deal would hurt farmers and use U.S. taxpayer resources to backstop a flailing foreign economy at U.S. taxpayers’ expense.
Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent earlier this week pledged a major economic rescue package for Argentina. Bessent, who has been touting the plans on social media and TV appearances in recent days, says the deal is needed to stabilize the nation’s financial turmoil ahead of October midterm elections that are critical to Milei retaining power and continuing reforms that supporters say will turn around the country’s floundering economy.
No, not Argentina. Trump’s Argentinian soul-mate. Is Milei in the Epstein files as well?
Guess Who Benefits From That TikTok Deal.
The Trump administration recently approached a coalition of U.S. investors set to take over TikTok’s U.S. operations with an ask: Will the group make a payment to the federal government “in the low billions,” according to a person with direct knowledge of the talks.
The response from the investors, which includes tech mogul Larry Ellison, the Murdochs and venture capital heavyweight Andreessen Horowitz, was an unequivocal yes.
Whether it’s the U.S. taking 15% of Nvidia and AMD’s chip sales to China, the federal government securing a “golden share” in U.S. Steel or the Trump administration reportedly seeking an equity stake in Lithium Americas as part of a government loan negotiation, the White House is on a campaign of squeezing businesses with few parallels in modern history.
“At a minimum, this now means there is a tax imposed on every major business transaction,” said Luigi Zingales, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago. “But even worse, businesses will no longer be focused on innovating and creating value and instead the whole game now is rent-seeking. It’s all about ingratiating yourself with Trump.”
Trump has been more direct about defending his administration’s private business interventions, including after Intel agreed to sell a 10% stake of the company to the U.S. government following Trump’s calls for its chief executive to resign.
Extortion by the President is legal. The Supreme Court said so. More on that ‘all-American’ TikTok deal:
In May, the co-founder of a cryptocurrency business with President Donald Trump’s family called World Liberty Financial announced an extraordinary deal. MGX, the United Arab Emirates’ state-backed investment firm, would buy $2 billion of the Trump venture’s “stablecoin” to complete what the giant cryptocurrency exchange Binance said was the largest investment of its kind ever made.
Four months later, MGX was involved in an extraordinary deal of its own. The Emirati firm will own 15 percent of the new U.S. TikTok spin-off negotiated by the Trump White House, according to a person familiar with the deal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal talks. The Trump administration has not disclosed the names of all of the new investors, though Trump claimed Thursday from the Oval Office that the new company would be run by “American investors, American companies.”
Keep in mind–these are merely stories that have surfaced in the past two days, and this is by no means a comprehensive overview of all the corrupt items you could find. You could also research pretty much any two-day period since Trump’s inauguration and find exactly the same levels of corruption.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
What do you want to talk about?
Now that the precedent has been set, I will vote for the Democrat who pledges to prosecute everybody in the Trump administration. Fair’s fair. Oh, and I’m strongly in favor of capital punishment, but only for financial crimes.
Trump Going After Portland. Or, as he calls it, ‘War-ravaged Portland’:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/09/27/trump-military-portland-ice/