From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Nicole Silverio

Authorities revealed new disturbing details Thursday about the illegal migrant accused of burning a woman alive on a New York City subway.

Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, a 33-year-old foreign national from Guatemala, is facing first and second degree murder and arson charges over the death of a woman set ablaze on the F train in Brooklyn on Sunday. A new criminal complaint alleges that Zapeta-Calil set the woman’s clothes on fire with a lighter and intentionally fanned the flames by waving a shirt around her, according to CBS News.

The victim has yet to be identified, though a medical examiner’s office concluded that she died from smoke inhalation and from severe burns, CBS News reported. Authorities said the suspect did not know or have any interactions with the unidentified woman, who is referred to as Jane Doe, before the incident.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson Jeff Carter confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation Tuesday that the suspect is an illegal migrant who had previously been deported from the U.S. Carter said that border officials encountered Zapeta-Calil in Sonoita, Arizona, on June 1, 2018, and removed him from the U.S. back to Guatemala on June 7, 2018.

Police officers who were on patrol on the upper level began to investigate after they sensed smoke, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said during a Sunday press conference. As they approached the scene, officers found the woman in the train car completely engulfed in flames, and immediately rushed to put the fire out as soon as they could.

Bodycam footage found that Zapeta-Calil stayed at the scene and watched the events unfold as he kept a lighter in his pocket. Witnesses later identified the suspect to authorities, leading to his arrest.

During the press conference, the police commissioner referred to the incident as “one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit.”

Zepeta-Calil appeared in court for his arraignment Tuesday and is due back in court Friday, according to CBS News.

From LifeSiteNews

By Bob Unruh

Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley warned that preemptive pardons ‘would do precisely what Biden suggests that he is deterring: create a dangerous immunity for presidents and their allies in committing criminal abuses.’

An expert who not only has testified before Congress on the U.S. Constitution but has represented members in court cases is warning about Joe Biden’s speculated agenda to deliver to his friend and supporters preemptive pardons.

It is Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and author of The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, who wrote, “After years of lying to the American people about the influence-peddling scandal and promising not to consider a pardon for his son, Biden would end his legacy with the ultimate dishonesty: converting pardons into virtual party favors.”

There has been much speculation about those preemptive pardons from Biden, who lied about allowing juries and courts to determine the outcomes of son Hunter’s criminal gun and tax cases, flip-flopped and pardoned him.

Hunter Biden could have been ordered to jail for years for his felony gun convictions and his guilty pleas to felony tax charges.

However, Joe Biden handed him a get-out-of-jail free card, then followed up with hundreds and hundreds more commutations and pardons to a long list of those with criminal convictions.

The activity triggered a rash of speculation about those preemptive pardons, and Turley explains what’s going on.

“Democrats are worried about the collapsing narrative that President-elect Donald Trump will destroy democracy, end future elections, and conduct sweeping arrests of everyone from journalists to homosexuals. That narrative, of course, ignores that we have a constitutional system of overlapping protections that has blocked such abuses for over two centuries.”

Thus, the talk of preemptive pardons, but Turley said it wouldn’t work out.

“Ironically, preemptive pardons would do precisely what Biden suggests that he is deterring: create a dangerous immunity for presidents and their allies in committing criminal abuses,” he said.

He noted if Biden delivers those pardons, “he would fundamentally change the use of presidential pardons by granting ‘prospective’ or ‘preemptive’ pardons to political allies. Despite repeated denials of President-elect Donald Trump that he is seeking retaliation against opponents and his statements that he wants ‘success [to be] my revenge,’ Democratic politicians and pundits have called for up to thousands of such pardons.”

He explained there’s politics all over the scheme.

“After many liberals predicted the imminent collapse of democracy and that opponents would be rounded up in mass by the Trump Administration, they are now contemplating the nightmare that democracy might survive and that there will be no mass arrests,” he wrote. “The next best thing to a convenient collapse of democracy is a claim that Biden’s series of preemptive pardons averted it. It is enough to preserve the narrative in the face of a stable constitutional system.”

But there will be a cost to such a “political stunt,” he said.

“Preemptive pardons could become the norm as presidents pardon whole categories of allies and even themselves to foreclose federal prosecutions. … It will give presidents cover to wipe away any threat of prosecution for friends, donors, and associates. This can include self-pardons issued as implied condemnations of their political opponents. It could easily become the final act of every president to pardon himself and all of the members of his Administration.

“We would then have an effective immunity rule for outgoing parties in American politics.”

He noted that in the past, Bill Clinton pardoned both family members and political donors.

“Yet, despite that history, no president has seen fit to go as far as where Biden appears to be heading,” he said. Promoters of the plan, he said, “would prefer to fundamentally change the use of the pardon power to maintain an apocalyptic narrative that was clearly rejected by the public in this election. If you cannot prove the existence of the widely touted Trump enemies list, a Biden pardon list is the next best thing.”

Reprinted with permission from the WND News Center.