Escheat Is For Es-Cheaters. Delaware Way insiders don’t want you to know about its Unclaimed Property slush fund:
A member of Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer’s administration expressed reluctance to openly give her views on the state’s unclaimed property program at the first meeting of a legislative taskforce last week.
Open government advocates and those familiar with Delaware’s unclaimed property program said they’re concerned those in the industry might prefer fewer public conversations about the program because of all of the revenue going into the state coffers and its third-party vendors.
When asked about the legal justification for her request under Delaware’s Freedom of Information Act, a spokesperson for Patibanda-Sanchez said in an email that they had “no response.”
“You just can’t arbitrarily say, ‘I want to go into executive session,’” said John Flaherty, spokesperson for the Delaware Coalition for Open Government. “You have to cite exactly what section of the law triggers the executive session request. I think she needs to maybe bone up on the open meeting law.”
Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend, who co-chairs the task force, said previous administrations also tried to prevent public discussions of the program’s inner workings, such as during Gov. Jack Markell’s tenure, when a similar legislative taskforce met in 2014.
“I fondly recall in 2013 being approached in the hallway downstairs,” Townsend said. “One could even maybe say accosted by representatives of the office of the governor who thought that this should not be a topic that was looked at for a variety of reasons that one could very fairly say apply even now.”
Still, a spokesperson for Townsend, who is working on a bill to increase government transparency, said the task force could legally go behind closed doors to discuss pending or potential litigation. The law says that is only allowed when an open meeting would have an adverse effect on the litigation position of the public body.
Flaherty said Townsend needs to defend the public’s right to know if he is serious about revamping FOIA.
Delaware’s unclaimed property revenue has the reputation of being a “slush fund” or “piggy bank” because some of those dollars have been diverted for other uses, with the Meyer administration and previous governors using the money and declining to answer questions about it.
State lawmakers approved raising the amount of unclaimed property revenue that goes into the general fund from $554 million to $614 million for fiscal year 2027.
The official purpose of the state’s unclaimed property program is to reunite orphaned financial instruments from across the country with their owners. But because Delaware is the incorporation destination for millions of businesses, the First State takes in more than its share of unclaimed property, relative to size and population, and adds it to its general revenue fund.
This ‘FOIA-reform’ bill is beginning to look more and more like incremental change masquerading as real reform. You know, while keeping the fiscal gimmickry the state relies on far away from prying eyes. Prove me wrong.
How Todd Blanche Groomed Ghislaine Maxwell To Trumpwash Her Testimony. Lest you still have doubts that Trump was involved with Epstein’s crimes:
Attorney General Todd Blanche’s July 2025 interviews with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell were reportedly a calculated effort to steer public blowback from the Epstein files away from Donald Trump.
House Judiciary Committee Democrats released a 50-page report on Monday accusing the Trump administration of a vast cover-up of the president’s involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal sex schemes. The report cites the experiences of 11 women, FBI records, and documents released through the Epstein Files Transparency Act. But one detail in the sprawling investigation hinted at an explicit attempt by Blanche to keep Maxwell from implicating the president in Epstein’s crimes.
Blanche notably did not ask Maxwell any questions about a certain Jane Doe, despite the fact that she was on the FBI’s radar for alleging that Trump attempted to orally rape her and subsequently punched her in the head when she was 14 years old.
At one point in the interview, Blanche vaguely mentioned testimony that alleged Epstein and Trump were involved with a 14-year-old, asking if Maxwell recalled “any obviously under-18 women coming to give him a massage?”
Maxwell volunteered that she believed Blanche was “talking about Jane.” But Blanche didn’t bite, instead responding simply, “yeah”—evidence that he was aware of the victim’s accusations.
As soon as Maxwell began to address Jane’s claims, Blanche “cut her off and instructed her not to share specifics,” according to the report. At other points, Blanche interrupted Maxwell to redirect her attention away from Jane’s allegations, arguing that he didn’t want to “get into … he said, she said.”
“Absolutely, not. I’m not—I don’t want to go there either,” Maxwell responded, adding, “I’m not going to do that.”
Maxwell tried to independently mention Jane later in the interview but was again shut down by Blanche, who abruptly cut her off to say he didn’t want to “talk about individuals.”
“The whole point of the conversation was not to uncover information but to create a conspiracy of silence and strategically deter Ghislaine Maxwell from sharing information that was not public at the time regarding the relationship between Trump and Epstein,” the report alleges.
Trump is a serial rapist and an abuser of women. His defense attorney, who is now acting Attorney General, is covering for him. Why is this not the lead story everywhere?
Could NYTimes Article Sink Peltola’s Senate Candidacy? The paper surely knew that Rethugs would respond in outsized fashion:
Alaska’s governor on Wednesday night said he was ordering an investigation into whether Mary Peltola’s campaign for Senate should face criminal charges or civil penalties over its role in recruiting candidates to draw votes from the state’s Republican incumbent.
The announcement by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, followed a New York Times report detailing the Peltola campaign’s involvement in recruiting a retiree named Dan J. Sullivan to enter the race against Senator Dan S. Sullivan.
“Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections,” he said in a post on X. “Anyone or any organization found to have broken the law must be held accountable.”
Earlier in the day, President Trump demanded that Ms. Peltola, a Democrat, be removed from the ballot and prosecuted without explaining what crime, if any, was committed.
Here’s the context the Times left out of its original story:
Many Democrats defended the plan by pointing out how commonplace such actions are. Republicans have employed them in a variety of states, including Alaska.
Lauren French, a spokeswoman for the Senate Majority PAC, a Democratic group aligned with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, posted a series of examples of G.O.P. chicanery on X. Her posts included the instance of a super PAC with Republican ties spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in Alaska to prop up Democratic and Green Party candidates in this year’s Senate primary.
In 2024, the Alaska Republican Party participated in a lawsuit arguing to keep on the ballot a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House who was a federal inmate campaigning from a prison in New York.
Which is why the Times should have included this litany of Republican chicanery in its original article. But they didn’t, Rethugs howled with feigned outrage, and a Senate race has been impacted.
Hegseth Fires Another General As Trump Threatens Escalation In Iran:
Earlier this week, the Pentagon’s chief planner, Army Lieutenant General Brett Sylvia, was ousted from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No explanation was given. This comes at an inopportune moment, given that President Trump may be planning to relaunch the war on Iran. Sylvia, the former commander of the 101st Airborne Division, becomes the latest in a long line of senior officers who have been shown the door since Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arrived at the Pentagon almost two years ago.
No replacement for Sylvia was named, and it is unclear who will take over his responsibilities. In the past, the deputy or vice director of the relevant directorate of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would fill the role on a temporary basis until the president nominated a candidate for Senate confirmation. Sylvia is the second person to be pushed out of the job of director of the Directorate for Strategy, Plans, and Policy at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, known inside the military as the J5, in the past year. His predecessor, Army Lieutenant General Joseph McGee, was forced to retire. “Now is not the time when you’d want to lose the J5,” a former Joint Chiefs of Staff official said. “This person would serve as a critical link between the operational force, the department policy, and the White House.”
If the war has gotten bogged down, Hegseth’s campaign of firings at the Pentagon has not. Sylvia is at least the fifth general pushed out or fired this year, each holding key positions within the military. Hegseth forced out General Randy George, chief of staff of the Army, at the height of the U.S. strike campaign in Iran, despite the Army’s role in restocking key munitions, which are now in short supply. That same month, Hegseth removed General David Hodne, the head of the Army’s Transformation and Training Command, and ousted Major General William Green Jr., the head of the Army Chaplain Corps. And in June, Army General Chris “C.D.” Donahue stepped down as the head of U.S. Army Forces in Europe and Africa amid disagreements with Hegseth. Donahue was widely seen as one of the Army’s rising stars—a Delta Force leader who was considered a top candidate for Army chief of staff or even chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In all, at least 26 admirals and generals have stepped down or been pushed out since Hegseth took control of the Pentagon less than two years ago.
What do you want to talk about?
