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Violent Venezuelan Gang Reportedly Attacked Border Crossings As Concerns Mount About More Possible Violence

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Photo by Mani Albrecht U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Public Affairs Visual Communications Division

 

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Jason Hopkins

Tren de Aragua gang members armed with weapons attacked crossings along the Texas-Mexico border, according to an internal memo obtained by the New York Post.

Earlier in December, 20 members of the notorious Venezuelan prison gang attempted to force their way into the country at a border checkpoint near El Paso, Texas, while armed with blades, broken liquor bottles and tire irons, according to a leaked Texas Department of Public Safety memo obtained by the Post. Another attempt to bust into the U.S. is expected on New Year’s Day.

Tren de Aragua has grown more determined to plant members into the country before President-elect Donald Trump assumes office and embarks on an ambitious crackdown of the U.S.-Mexico border and deport criminal illegal migrants en masse, according to Victor Avila, a retired agent for Homeland Security Investigations.

“You’re seeing that violence at the border because they know that it’s going to change in 27 days,” Avila said to the Post. “It’s going to change. It’s going to be different, and they’re going to be sought after.”

A spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The reported attack at the El Paso, Texas, border crossing marks the latest iteration of violence caused by Tren de Aragua, a gruesome migrant gang that originated in a Venezuelan prison in 2013 and has since grown into a robust international crime syndicate. The gang is now believed to be operating in several states and major cities across the country.

The gang is suspected of having completely taken over several apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado, over the past year, despite repeated warnings by the apartment’s owners that their criminal activity was wreaking havoc in the area. Local police suspect that the gang was behind a brutal home invasion in December that involved the abduction and torture of a couple while being held captive in one of the infamous apartment buildings.

The San Antonio Police Department also confirmed that the Tren de Aragua gang members had taken over vacant apartments in the city in October. Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott designated the group as a terrorist organization in September.

“Tren de Aragua gangsters are like cockroaches,” Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw said during the terrorist designation announcement. “They multiply quickly; small intrusions into communities become infestations if not aggressively pursued.”

The Department of Homeland Security reportedly identified more than 600 individuals living in the U.S. that have potential ties to the Venezuelan gang.

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Daily Caller

‘Coming Down Like A Missile’: Former FAA Safety Rep Says Plane in Philadelphia Crash Appeared ‘100% Out of Control’

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Kyle Bailey on “Hannity” discussing Philly plane crash [Screenshot/Fox News/”Hannity”]

 

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Hailey Gomez

Former Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Safety Team representative Kyle Bailey said Friday evening on Fox News that the jet caught on camera crashing in northeastern Philadelphia appeared “100% out of control.”

Around 6:30 p.m. local time, videos surfaced showing a small jet crashing into a neighborhood in northeastern Philadelphia, with images and footage depicting the plane erupting into a fireball. The FAA confirmed the crash in a statement, identifying the aircraft as a Learjet 55 that had been departing from northeastern Philadelphia Airport en route to Springfield-Branson National Airport in Missouri.

On “Hannity,” Fox’s Sean Hannity began discussing the Learjet 55, adding that his pilot friends had described the aircraft as “a sports car in the air.” He then asked Bailey if this type of jet is different from the “average commuter jet.”

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“That’s exactly right, Sean. You have to be ahead of that airplane at all times, or it will get control of you. That plane was doing in excess of 10,000 feet per minute rate of descent, and it didn’t even make it to 2,000 feet after takeoff,” Bailey said. “Right after takeoff, the controller was asking, calling for the airplane to respond. There was no response by the flight crew. There was no communication.”

“The controller was a little bit stumped in trying to make contact with the airplane, and that tells me that the pilot completely was consumed with whatever was going on, and from that rate of descent and from that airplane coming down like a missile, it looked like it could have potentially been at full power,” Bailey added. “It was just coming down there at a rate that really was unbelievable.”

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Bailey went on to say that the explosion was likely massive due to the “large quantity of jet fuel,” adding that he believed there was probably nothing the pilot “could have done” to prevent the incident.

“So from taking off for a flight of the duration of where it was going, that probably was very closely, fully loaded with fuel. So that huge fireball that we saw is the result of a large quantity of jet fuel, and that big, almost like — for lack of a better term — like a nuclear-like explosion is probably the jet fuel reflecting off that cloud base,” Bailey said.

“That’s why it looks a little bit strange, but there is no doubt that the plane was 100% out of control, and there was probably nothing that pilot could have done,” Bailey added. “Not even a 10-second mayday came out of that radio back to the control tower.”

The plane was reportedly on a medical assignment with four crew members and two passengers aboard, according to 6ABC. During a press conference around 8:30 p.m., Democratic Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker could not provide a fatality count. She instead asked residents “for prayers.”

The crash comes just days after a commercial plane collided with a military helicopter near Washington Reagan National Airport on Wednesday evening, killing all involved.

The incident is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and FAA.

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Censorship Industrial Complex

‘Don’t Write About The Laptop’: Two Reporters Allege Outlets Killed Stories About Bidens

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Harold Hutchison

“I was covering Biden at the time, and I remember coming to my editor and saying, ‘Hey, we need to write about the Hunter Biden laptop.’ And I was told this came from on high at Politico: Don’t write about the laptop, don’t talk about the laptop, don’t tweet about the laptop.

Two former reporters with Politico accused the outlet of suppressing negative stories about former President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden during the 2020 presidential election in a video clip posted to YouTube Thursday.

Dozens of former intelligence officials signed an October 2020 letter published by Politico that claimed a bombshell New York Post report about emails from a laptop supposedly abandoned by Hunter Biden “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Puck News reporter Tara Palmeri and Axios reporter Marc Caputo discussed the Politico newsroom’s alleged approach to unflattering reports about the Bidens on Palmeri’s podcast, “Somebody’s Gotta Win,” though the outlet has denied their allegations.

“Politico did that terrible, ill-fated headline: 51 intelligence agents, or former intelligence agents, say that the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation, or bore the hallmarks of disinformation. Turns out that story was closer to disinformation because the Hunter Biden laptop appeared to be true,” Caputo told Palmeri, who responded. “But then Facebook also pulled all stories down about the Hunter Biden laptop, and I think Twitter did at the same time, too.”

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Twitter locked multiple accounts, including the New York Post’s and the personal account of then-White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany for sharing the Oct, 14, 2020 report, citing a “hacked materials” policy. Documents released to journalist Michael Shellenberger by Elon Musk show that the FBI contacted Twitter about the potential for leaks involving Hunter Biden prior to the New York Post’s report.

“Correct, they punished The New York Post, that didn’t help. I mean, Politico, my former employer and I knew at the time, didn’t do itself any favors,” said Caputo. “I was covering Biden at the time, and I remember coming to my editor and saying, ‘Hey, we need to write about the Hunter Biden laptop.’ And I was told this came from on high at Politico: Don’t write about the laptop, don’t talk about the laptop, don’t tweet about the laptop. And the only thing Politico wound up writing was that piece that called it disinformation, which charitably could be called misinformation, at the least.”

Palmeri claimed to have experienced difficulty getting a story regarding Hunter Biden’s purchase of a .38-caliber revolver in 2018 published. Hunter Biden was convicted on three felony counts related to buying the gun in June 2024, but received a pardon from his father on Dec. 1.

Biden pardoned five other family members shortly before his term ended.

“Yeah, I mean, I had a hard time — you know I wrote some pretty serious reporting on Hunter Biden, which actually ended up getting him prosecuted — the story on the gun,” Palmeri said, with Caputo responding, “Yeah! And I remember you consulted with me cause you had, you did the original report on the gun and you came to me like, ‘How do I write about this?’ I’m like, ‘Honestly, I don’t know.’”

“Cause it was hard to get it done. I spent three months on it, I went to the laptop shop, and I did all of the reporting in Delaware, and I did all of that. But yeah  it had, it had to be like much, it had to be 100% nailed down. I had everything, you know, the police reports, every, like, you know, I’m a solid reporter. But I do wonder if it could have, if it would have been published a little quicker if it was a different type of story,” Palmeri said. “It was the beginning of his administration, it was a honeymoon period — you know what I mean?”

Caputo recounted that Hunter Biden’s laptop was not the only story regarding the Bidens that was allegedly killed by Politico’s editors.

“Since we’re spilling tea about our former employer, I still have a copy of the story on my external hard drive. In 2019, a rival presidential Democratic campaign of Joe Biden’s gave to me the tax lien — the oppo research — the tax lien on Hunter Biden for the period of time that he worked at Burisma,” Caputo said. “And I wrote what would have been a classic story saying, you know, ‘The former vice president’s son was slapped with a big tax lien for the period of time that he worked for this controversial Ukrainian oil concern, or natural gas concern, which is haunting his father on the campaign trail.’ That story was killed by the editors, and they gave no explanation for that either.”

“We just get called, like, ‘the terrible mainstream media.’ It’s like you don’t understand the process there,” Palmeri said, with Caputo responding, “Well, you also don’t understand the dumb decisions of cowardly editors that are made above us.”

Politico disputed Caputo’s recollections in response to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation and sent a list of references to their past reporting on the Biden family.

“It’s bullshit. During the years referenced, POLITICO journalists lead the way on wide-ranging reporting on the business dealings of Joe Biden’s closest relatives. Ben Schreckinger was probably the top reporter in the country reporting on these matters—he literally wrote the book on it,” a Politico spokesperson told the DCNF. “Through deeply reported coverage—both pre- and post-election—POLITICO provided readers with a nuanced understanding of the dealings of James Biden, Hunter Biden, and other relatives of the president, along with the ethical questions they raised. Notably, POLITICO was the first to confirm that Hunter Biden’s laptop contained genuine material and to report on the gun incident that led to his conviction.”

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