Look, I don’t especially enjoy watching an old man suffer no matter how endlessly evil he might be, but it’s pretty clear that Mitch McConnell needs to retire.pic.twitter.com/MhgygCRizU
KENTON COUNTY, Ky. (WLWT) — U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made a stop in northern Kentucky Wednesday, where he appeared to have some trouble understanding & speaking with reporters.
McConnell was in northern Kentucky for the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Government Forum in Kenton County.
The Senate Republican leader spoke at the podium for several minutes, touching on topics like the Brent Spence Bridge project.
During the media gaggle following the forum, McConnell appeared to have another episode where he was having a hard time hearing reporters & taking a long pause before aides had to step in to help him out & repeat questions before he was eventually led away.
Last month, the Republican senate leader was speaking at his weekly GOP leadership news conference on Capitol Hill when he stopped mid-sentence & went silent for several seconds.
People near him eventually intervened to ask if he was OK, and he then stepped away from the podium.
SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. (AP) — David Frodsham was a top civilian commander at a U.S. air base in Afghanistan when he “jokingly” asked an IT technician for access to YouPorn, the video-sharing pornographic website.
During his time in the war zone, Frodsham told one woman that he hired her because he “wanted to be surrounded by pretty women,” & routinely called others “honey,” “babe,” & “cougar” before he was ordered home after the military verified multiple allegations of sexual harassment.
When Frodsham returned to his home station in fall 2015, he rejoined the Network Enterprise Technology Command, the Army’s information technology service provider, where he had served as director of personnel for a global command of 15,000 soldiers & civilians.
By spring of the following year, he was arrested in Arizona for leading a child sex abuse ring that included an Army sergeant who was posting child pornography to the internet. Among the victims was one of Frodsham’s adopted sons
Frodsham pleaded guilty to sex abuse charges in 2016 & is serving a 17-year sentence. But records reviewed by the AP show that the U.S. Army & the state of Arizona missed or ignored multiple red flags over more than a decade, which allowed Frodsham to allegedly abuse his adopted son & other children for years, all the while putting national security at risk.
The state permitted Frodsham & his wife, Barbara, to foster, adopt and retain custody of their many children despite nearly 20 complaints & attempted complaints, of abuse, neglect, maltreatment & licensing violations. Meanwhile, the Army gave Frodsham security clearances & sensitive jobs at a time when his illicit sexual practices made him vulnerable to blackmail.
Frodsham, former Sgt. Randall Bischak & a third man not associated with the Army are all serving prison terms for the roles they played in the child sex abuse ring. But the investigation is continuing because Sierra Vista police believe additional men took part.
Now, the criminal investigation is spilling over into civil court, where 2 of Frodsham’s adopted sons have filed separate lawsuits against the state for licensing David & Barbara Frodsham as foster parents in a home where they say they were physically & sexually abused throughout their lives.
A third adopted son is expected to file suit Tuesday in Arizona state court in Cochise County.
WASHINGTON — Police in the nation’s capital on Monday arrested the leader of the Proud Boys, who is accused of burning a Black Lives Matter banner that was torn down from a historic Black church in downtown Washington last month.
Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, 36, was arrested by Metropolitan Police Department officers after he arrived in Washington ahead of protests planned by supporters of President Donald Trump to coincide with the congressional vote expected Wednesday to affirm Joe Biden’s election victory.
Tarrio was taken into custody after a warrant was issued for his arrest for destruction of property, police said. He was also facing a weapons charges after officers found him with two high-capacity firearm magazines when he was arrested.
A pro-Trump rally in December ended in violence as hundreds of Trump supporters, some wearing the signature black and yellow of the Proud Boys, sought out confrontations with a collective of activists and counterprotesters attempting to bar them from Black Lives Matter Plaza, an area near the White House. By nightfall, vandals tore down a Black Lives Matter banner and sign from two historic Black churches in downtown Washington and set the banner ablaze.
Tarrio told The Washington Post he had participated in the burning of the Black Lives Matter banner and said he would plead guilty to destruction of property and pay the church the cost of the banner.
Another video showed men removing a Black Lives Matter sign at the Metropolitan A.M.E. Church.
“We just want to see justice be done,” the Rev. Dr. Lanther Mills, senior pastor at Asbury, said in an interview Monday night.
The church community is “in some ways of course feeling some relief” following the arrest, Mills added. Even so, she said, “we still remain concerned” about the high number of expected protesters in the area.
One of the nation’s largest neo-Nazi groups appears to have an unlikely new leader: a black activist who has vowed to dismantle it.
Court documents filed Thursday suggest James Hart Stern wants to use his new position as director and president of the National Socialist Movement to undermine the Detroit-based group’s defense against a lawsuit.
The NSM is one of several extremist groups sued over bloodshed at a 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Stern’s filing asks a federal court in Virginia to issue a judgment against the group before one of the lawsuits goes to trial.
Stern replaced Jeff Schoep as the group’s leader in January, according to Michigan corporate records. But those records and court documents say nothing about how or why Stern got the position. His feat invited comparisons to the recent Spike Lee movie “BlacKkKlansman” in which a black police officer infiltrates a branch of the Ku Klux Klan.
Neither Stern, who lives in Moreno Valley, California, nor Schoep responded Thursday to emails and calls seeking comment.
Matthew Heimbach, a leading white nationalist figure who briefly served as the NSM’s community outreach director last year, said Schoep and other group leaders have been at odds with rank-and-file members over its direction. Heimbach said some members “essentially want it to remain a politically impotent white supremacist gang” and resisted ideological changes advocated by Schoep.
Heimbach said Schoep’s apparent departure and Stern’s installation as its leader probably spell the end of the group in its current form. Schoep was 21 when he took control of the group in 1994 and renamed it the National Socialist Movement, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“I think it’s kind of a sad obit for one of the longest-running white nationalist organizations,” said Heimbach, who estimates it had about 40 active, dues-paying members last year.
The group has drawn much larger crowds at rallies.
NSM members used to attend rallies and protests in full Nazi uniforms, including at a march in Toledo, Ohio, that sparked a riot in 2005. More recently, Schoep tried to rebrand the group and appeal to a new generation of racists and anti-Semites by getting rid of such overt displays of Nazi symbols.
It appeared that Stern had been trying for at least two years to disrupt the group. A message posted on his website said he would be meeting with Schoep in February 2017 “to sign a proclamation acknowledging the NSM denouncing being a white supremacist group.”
“I have personally targeted eradicating the (Ku Klux Klan) and the National Socialist Movement, which are two organizations here in this country which have all too long been given privileges they don’t deserve,” Stern said in a video posted on his site.
On Wednesday, lawyers for the plaintiffs suing white supremacist groups and movement leaders over the Charlottesville violence asked the court to sanction Schoep. They say he has ignored his obligations to turn over documents and give them access to his electronic devices and social media accounts. They also claim Schoep recently fired his attorney as a stalling tactic.
A federal magistrate judge in Charlottesville ruled last Friday that Stern cannot represent the NSM in the case because he does not appear to be a licensed attorney. That did not deter Stern from filing Thursday’s request for summary judgment against his own group.
“It is the decision of the National Socialist Movement to plead liable to all causes of actions listed in the complaint against it,” he wrote.
Stern served a prison sentence for mail fraud at the same facility as onetime Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen, who was convicted in the “Mississippi Burning” killings of three civil rights workers. Killen died in January 2018.
In 2012, Stern claimed Killen signed over to him power of attorney and ownership of 40 acres of land while they were serving prison terms together. A lawyer for Killen asked a judge to throw out the land transfer and certify that Killen and his family owned the property.
DETROIT — The leader of a Christian militia planned an elaborate, two-part training session for this month and told members it was OK to kill "anyone who might stumble upon the operation," federal prosecutors wrote in a court filing Friday.
Details about the Hutaree's planned training session — to be held during the second and fourth Saturdays in April — were revealed in a 17-page document prosecutors filed in response to a defense motion to free Hutaree leader David Stone while he awaits trial.
It, along with several other government filings over the past week, help paint a fuller picture of the southern Michigan-based group's make-up and activities.
Stone and eight other suspected Hutaree members were arrested after a series of raids across the Midwest late last month and charged with seditious conspiracy, or plotting to levy war against the U.S. The self-proclaimed "Christian warriors" trained in paramilitary techniques in preparation for a battle against the Antichrist.
Friday's filing included a transcript of remarks Stone allegedly made during a January briefing on the planned operation.
According to the filing, Stone told other Hutaree members that "we are going locked and loaded."
"If you're made, somebody comes tripping along, they just happen to see you, we're gonna handle it as a hostile situation," Stone said. "That means you put them on the ground."
Andrew Arena, the head of the FBI in Detroit, has said his office felt compelled to arrest the nine suspects before the April training session because of the potential for violence.
Stone's lawyer, William Swor, said he hadn't seen the latest filing but doesn't see any reason why his client should be jailed.
"The government hasn't proved that he shouldn't be free," Swor said.
Prosecutors claim Stone and the others plotted mass killings of police as a prelude to a larger war against the government. In Friday's filing and others that trickled out over the past week, they described several ways in which Hutaree members considered killing law enforcement personnel.
According to one scenario, they would place a phony 911 call, kill responding police officers, then set off a bomb at the ensuing funeral to kill many more.
In another, Friday's filing said, Hutaree members talked about "torching the homes of police officers and then shooting them and their families as they fled their burning homes."
Swor and other defense attorneys in the case have argued their clients are protected by a right to free speech.
A federal magistrate judge in Detroit has ordered eight of the suspects to remain locked up until trial.
A ninth suspect, Thomas Piatek, of Whiting, Ind., was ordered held by a judge in Indiana but recently transported to Michigan.
Piatek appeared in court Thursday and a not-guilty plea was entered.
U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts has set an April 27 hearing to consider appeals of the detention orders, but the date could change because of a scheduling conflict with one of the prosecutors.
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