Month: January 2024

Authored by Julie Kelly via RealClear Investigations,

In a fiery exchange last month, CNN anchorwoman Abby Phillip told GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy that there was “no evidence” to support his claim that federal agents abetted protesters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Ramaswamy shot back that the FBI conspicuously has never denied that law enforcement agents were on duty in the crowd. He argued that federal officials have repeatedly “lied” to the American people about not only that investigation but one that has gotten much less attention: the alleged failed plot to kidnap and kill Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan in 2020.

“It was entrapment,” Ramaswamy said. “FBI agents putting them up to a kidnapping plot that we were told was true but wasn’t.”

His zeroing in on the Michigan case highlighted an uncharacteristic development in contemporary politics, where progressives vigorously defend law enforcement power while conservatives view it with deep suspicion. Further, Ramaswamy’s linking of Jan. 6 and the Whitmer plot resonated with many on the right who want similarities between the two episodes exposed to the general public, especially the FBI’s reliance on informants and other paid operatives.

On Oct. 8, 2020, Whitmer announced the shocking arrests of several men accused of planning to kidnap and possibly assassinate her. The case produced alarming headlines just weeks before Election Day; Democrats, including Whitmer, used news of the plot to blame Trump for inciting violence.

Joe Biden commended the FBI for thwarting the abduction plan and, in a written statement issued the same day, claimed that “there is a through line from President Trump’s dog whistles and tolerance of hate, vengeance, and lawlessness to plots such as this one.” Biden continued that line of attack during campaign speeches in Michigan, a swing state that voted for Trump in 2016, and one Biden needed to capture to win the presidency.

In the years since the election, the national press has given little attention to the case since the initial arrests, even though court documents have recast the episode as something more sinister. Instead of a heroic effort by the FBI to safeguard the country from domestic terrorists, it now appears to have been a broad conspiracy by law enforcement to entrap American citizens who held unpopular political views.

The FBI’s tactics were first exposed by BuzzFeed in July 2021, when reporters Ken Bensinger and Jessica Garrison disclosed startling details based on court filings as the matter headed to trial. They found that the number of FBI confidential human sources involved in the scheme was equal to the number of defendants.

“An examination of the case by BuzzFeed News also reveals that some of those informants, acting under the direction of the FBI, played a far larger role than has previously been reported,” they wrote. “Working in secret, they did more than just passively observe and report on the actions of the suspects. Instead, they had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception. The extent of their involvement raises questions as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them.”

Six men ranging in age from 22 to 44 – Adam Fox, Barry Croft Jr., Brandon Caserta, Daniel Harris, Ty Garbin, and Kaleb Franks – faced federal charges of conspiring to kidnap and use a weapon of mass destruction. Eight others faced state charges. BuzzFeed recreated much of the defendants’ movements between March and October 2020, including attendance at “field training” exercises and the surveillance of Whitmer’s properties.

While BuzzFeed offered the first account of the entrapment operation, further reporting by RealClearInvestigations, along with details revealed in court filings and trial proceedings, make the operation sound like something out of a Hollywood script. It features secretive cash payouts; drug- and booze-fueled parties; a convicted wife-beating FBI investigator; a career felon revealed as a longtime FBI asset and later accused of acting as a “double agent”; and a dramatic takedown scene at the end.

Public defenders representing the accused have identified at least 12 FBI informants and three undercover FBI agents managed by FBI officials in numerous field offices responsible for framing the men.

“In this Case, the undisputed evidence … establishes that government agents and informants concocted, hatched, and pushed this ‘kidnapping plan’ from the beginning, doing so against defendants who explicitly repudiated the plan,” defense lawyers wrote in a Dec. 25, 2021 motion. “When the government was faced with evidence showing that the defendants had no interest in a kidnapping plot, it refused to accept failure and continued to push its plan.”

At the center of the action was the FBI’s ringleader, Dan Chappel, 34 years old at the time, an Iraq war veteran and contract truck driver for the U.S. Postal Service. Chappel, the official story goes, joined a group called the “Wolverine Watchmen” in early 2020 to burnish his firearms skills. Members generally interacted on social media. The government claimed Chappel became alarmed at alleged online chatter about killing police and took his concerns to a friend in law enforcement in March 2020.

A week later, the FBI hired Chappel as an informant.

Over the course of the next seven months, Chappel “ingratiated” himself with the men, as one defense attorney described his method, with his eye particularly on Fox, 37, the reported mastermind of the plot. While the media portrayed Fox as a military leader prepping an army of “white supremacists” to overthrow state governments across the country, he was, in reality, a homeless man living in the dilapidated basement of a vacuum repair shop without running water or a toilet in a Grand Rapids strip mall. One co-defendant referred to him as “Captain Autism.”

Fox’s lawyer, Christopher Gibbons, said Chappel took on a “father figure” role to his fatherless and destitute client. Fox and Chappel exchanged thousands of texts. Chappel drove Fox, who did not own a car, to various meetups and staged events while recording every moment to preserve as evidence against him. On at least three occasions, according to testimony offered at trial, Chappel offered Fox a prepaid credit card authorized by the FBI with a $5,000 limit to help him buy guns and ammunition; Fox, despite being broke, declined each time.

Chappel, known as “Big Dan” to the group, created encrypted chats and gave real-time access to his FBI handlers working out of the Detroit FBI field office as the farfetched plan unfolded.

Informants and targets mulled over how to blow up a bridge outside Whitmer’s summer cottage; kill her security detail; take her to a nearby boat launch; and either abandon her in the middle of Lake Michigan or bring her across the lake to Wisconsin to stand a “citizen’s trial” over her COVID-19 lockdown policies. One discussion involved the implausible use of a military helicopter.

From appearances, a demonstration at the Michigan state Capitol in Lansing on April 30, 2020 might well have been a law enforcement dress rehearsal for Jan. 6. Chappel traveled to the event with three members of the Watchmen later held on state charges. Some protesters were clad in military gear and carried firearms but could not enter the building. When Chappel told his FBI handler what was happening, the FBI ordered the Michigan State Police to stand down and allow protesters inside. News photographers captured the moment when protesters “stormed” the Michigan Capitol and called out for Whitmer, resulting in the same sort of optics produced on Jan. 6.

The incident took on greater significance when it was revealed that Steven D’Antuono, head of the Detroit FBI field office during the Whitmer caper, was promoted to head up the Washington, D.C., FBI field office three months before the events of Jan. 6.

In exchange for his work, the FBI paid Chappel at least $54,000 in cash. Part of that haul included an envelope, handed over by his primary FBI handler in December 2020, filled with $23,000 in cash as payment for a mission accomplished. (Department of Justice policy requires informants to be paid in cash.). The bureau also supplied Chappel with other personal items, such as a laptop computer and tires for his car.  Chappel also used a rented SUV, again funded by the FBI, to drive his targets to various locations as part of the trap.

Other informants were involved, too. A longtime FBI source named Steve Robeson, from Wisconsin,  organized a “militia” meeting in Ohio in June 2020 and pressured the government’s targets, including Fox and Croft, to attend as he wore a wire to record what was said during the event.

Robeson arranged other events throughout the summer including at his remote property in Cambria, Wisconsin. He constructed a so-called “kill house” for the men to practice shooting. At one point, Robeson suggested the exercises could be used to “storm” a state Capitol building or governor’s residence. Robeson is a convicted felon several times over, including on charges of sex with a minor, with a rap sheet spanning at least nine states. He was paid roughly $20,000 for his involvement in the Whitmer caper. Prosecutors later accused him of acting as a “double agent” for allegedly tipping off one of the defendants that his arrest was imminent.

At least two other informants were tasked with managing Croft, who had been under FBI surveillance since 2019 for his “extremist” views, according to documents.

It was later revealed that the informants, including Chappel, violated FBI protocol by getting drunk and high on drugs with their targets numerous times, sleeping in the same hotel, and suggesting ways to advance the kidnapping plan. At one point, Chappel took an oath to join a separate group called the “Three Percent Patriot Militia” group – one fabricated by the FBI – then convinced Fox to become the head of the Michigan chapter, all in an effort have the men believe Chappel was part of a nonexistent “militia” movement.

Defense lawyer Gibbons described the ruse during the April 2022 trial as “free money, free bombs, daily contact for months, fake militia, build up vulnerable adult with a fake militia and a title of commanding officer, send him a federal agent to join his militia.”

More behind-the-scenes machinations were disclosed when the defense uncovered hundreds of communications between the agents and informants that showed how they guided the plot every step of the way. One text suggests that the FBI and Chappel attempted to lure a disabled Vietnam War veteran named “Frank” into initiating a similar plan against Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam. “Mission is to kill the governor specifically,” Chappel’s FBI handler texted him in August 2020.

Despite the FBI’s best efforts, the group of so-called kidnappers started to disband by August 2020. Chappel asked his handlers how to “put more pressure” on the individuals so no one would break off. To rally the increasingly uninterested group that month, Chappel proposed firing live rounds into Whitmer’s cottage and the residences of other governors, then sending the shell casings to news reporters. “Look at you bringing people together,” one of Chappel’s FBI handlers texted to him after he successfully kept the group intact.

Even that wasn’t enough to solidify a kidnapping scheme so, according to numerous exchanges between the FBI assets and trial testimony from one cooperating witness, the FBI ran another undercover agent into the plot in September 2020 to tempt the men into trying to purchase bomb-making material. During a get-together in mid-September, an FBI undercover agent known as “Red” showed the group a video of a Chevy Tahoe being blown up as a way to demonstrate his credentials.

The video had been produced by the FBI.

At the same get-together, several FBI informants and “Red” took their targets on a reconnaissance mission to stake out Whitmer’s vacation cottage, the scene of the alleged prospective crime. It was the second time Chappel drove Fox to the property. (The governor and her staff were in communication with authorities for months as the entrapment scheme was under way; the FBI installed pole cameras and 3D devices around her property to record any activity to be used as evidence.)

Chappel also drove the men to the location of the FBI arrest point in Ypsilanti, Mich., on Oct. 7, 2020, under a ruse to meet “Red,” who promised to sell them military-style garb, not explosive materials. Members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, whose missions include “high-risk arrests,” were there waiting.

But things went downhill for the government after that. Richard Trask, one of the main FBI investigators on the case, who signed the complaint against the federal defendants, was criminally charged in July 2021 for brutally assaulting his wife after a swingers’ party in Kalamazoo. Police body cam video showed a partly clothed, bloody, and apparently intoxicated Trask talking with police during his arrest. Reporters also found profane anti-Trump posts on Trask’s social media account.

Trask was removed from the case and fired by the FBI in September 2021.

Prosecutors removed Chappel’s two primary FBI handlers, Henrik Impola and Jayson Chambers, from the government’s witness list after defense attorneys accused Impola of committing perjury in a previous case and discovered that Chambers was moonlighting as head of a security firm on the side and posting inside information about the pending arrests on social media as a way to attract business.

Robeson and his wife, Kimberly,  were charged with fraud  in December 2021 for convincing a couple to purchase a used SUV and donate it to the Robesons’ nonexistent charity, a crime committed while Robeson was working the Whitmer plot.

Robeson also was charged separately with illegally purchasing a firearm as a felon; he threatened to plead his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, so he also was not called as a witness.

By the time the federal case went to trial in western Michigan in March 2022, Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks had accepted plea offers and planned to testify against their remaining four co-defendants: Fox, Croft, Harris, and Caserta.

Judge Robert Jonker allowed the defense to raise the entrapment issue but only after the government presented its case. That plan, however, did not last beyond the first day as defense attorneys struggled during opening remarks to explain their clients’ behavior without mentioning the key role of FBI informants and agents. Jonker suspended his own order – at which point the FBI essentially went on trial.

The trial lasted four weeks. Prosecutors insisted the defendants were solely responsible for conceiving the plan but the defense argued the group’s activities amounted to little more than “crazy, stoned talk.” Chappel took the stand for the prosecution but his testimony appeared to backfire as his central role in the plot came into view. He also admitted he became an informant to pad his resume in hopes of pursuing a job in law enforcement.

During closing arguments, the four defense attorneys emphasized the FBI’s misconduct while asking the jury for not-guilty verdicts.

“[This] is unacceptable in America,” Gibbons said during closing arguments on April 1. “That’s not how it works. They don’t make terrorists so we can arrest them.”

On April 8, 2022, after nearly four days of deliberation, the jury found Caserta and Harris not guilty on all charges; after 18 months behind bars, both men went free.

The jury, however, could not reach a unanimous verdict for Fox and Croft, resulting in a mistrial.

It was a shocking blow to the government. In what the Justice Department considered its biggest domestic terror case over the past few decades (until Jan. 6), prosecutors did not yet have a single conviction – an outcome practically unheard of for a department with a more than 90% conviction rate. “It felt so good, I was so happy. We did it, we beat them. We got justice,” Caserta told me in a post-trial interview in 2022.

Prosecutors immediately announced they would retry Fox and Croft. A different version of Judge Jonker appeared on the bench in August 2022; the trial was marked by open hostilities between the judge and defense attorneys.

At one point, Jonker took the rare step of setting a time limit for cross-examination of a key government witness. He also refused to allow defense attorneys to interview a juror suspected of bias against the defendants based on comments he had made to co-workers during jury selection and his affiliation with Black Lives Matter. Jonker repeatedly admonished both lawyers in front of the jury, accusing counsel of causing jurors to “tune out” and rushing them through important lines of questioning. Over objections by the defense, Jonker kept the man on the jury. He became the foreman.

Croft and Fox were convicted on August 23, 2022 of conspiring to kidnap and use a weapon of mass destruction, and are serving out multi-year sentences in supermax prisons reserved for the country’s worst criminals.

They are now appealing their convictions. In an August 2023 brief, Croft’s new appellate attorney, Timothy Sweeney, wrote: “It is staggering the extent to which the FBI and its agents/informants used excessive pressure, exploited the anger from COVID lockdowns and destructive summer riots, and manipulated emotional issues among vulnerable and excitable citizens. This included: nearly constant real-time monitoring of FBI’s communications with Fox, plus thousands of government-initiated texts/chats; the deployment of multiple paid agents/informants who sought to elicit and encourage extremist and violent behavior; and the FBI’s instigating, planning, promoting, and conducting of nearly all key events.”

In response, the government wrote in a December 2023 motion that “there was no evidence that government agents or informants suggested the plot or offered more than opportunity and facilities.”

Sweeney and Fox’s new appellate attorney, Steven Nolder,  further accused Jonker of severely hamstringing the defense by refusing to admit into evidence the hundreds of messages that showed extensive communication between FBI agents and informants as they advanced the plot. Jonker, in both trials, denied defense motions to allow the jury to see the communications.

“These communications – constituted relevant evidence of the shocking degree to which Chambers, Chappel, and the other FBI agents/informants orchestrated this scam and generally engaged in incessant and oppressive inducement,” Sweeney wrote.

A recent verdict for the last three defendants charged in the Michigan state case may add weight to the appeal. An Antrim County jury in September 2023 found Willam Null, his brother Michael Null, and their co-defendant Eric Molitor not guilty of providing material support to an act of terror and illegally possessing firearms.

The acquittals represented another blow to the overall case and a poor showing for the government; of the 10 defendants who went to trial, five were found not guilty and two were convicted after a second trial. Four others pleaded guilty—outcomes that represent a poor showing for both the DOJ and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. Nessel was so infuriated by the acquittals for the Null brothers and Molitor that she publicly criticized jurors as coming from “a very, very right-leaning county (were) seemingly not so concerned about the kidnapping and assassination of the governor.”

Fox and Croft and the DOJ have asked for oral arguments. An appellate court in western Michigan could render a decision by mid-2024. “When I look at what happened in this case,” Croft’s public defender, Joshua Blanchard, said during closing arguments in the April 2022 trial, “I am ashamed of the behavior of the leading law enforcement agency in the United States. This investigation was an embarrassment, and we have to tell them this isn’t how our country operates. This isn’t how our justice system is supposed to work.”

While we keep letting the government tell us that inflation is at 3%, back out in the real world price hikes are staggeringly higher.

Just take one look at Chick-fil-A, for example: the popular fast food chain has hiked its prices a whopping 21% over the last two years, according to a new report from the NY Post. 

In 2022, the chain first raised prices by 15%, the report says. In January 2023, the company then implemented a menu-wide 6% hike in prices, resulting in the average price of its chicken sandwich – which was under $5 in 2021 – to now cost $5.79. 

The report notes that in high cost of living areas, like New York City, the same sandwich is going to run customers $6.99. An 8 piece nuggets, which would cost $5.99 elsewhere and which were also under $5 in 2021, now cost $7.09. 

The Post noted the discrepancy between the real world and the CPI, which showed a 3.1% increase in November. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted a 0.2% monthly rise in the food index for November, a slight decrease from the 0.3% rise in the previous month.

Labor costs are playing a role in driving costs higher, the report says. 

New York saw its minimum wage increase from $15 to $16 in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County as the new year began. This increment is part of a plan, agreed upon last April by Governor Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders, to gradually raise the minimum wage to $17 in these areas and $16 in other parts of the state by 2026.

Twenty-two other states, including California and Connecticut, have also recently raised their minimum wages. California increased its rate to $16, and Connecticut to $15.69. Now, approximately 30 states have minimum wages higher than the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour.

These wage increases have been linked to rising prices, such as the anticipated $15 cost for a McDonald’s Big Mac in states with the wage hikes. Brandon Arnold of the National Taxpayers Union highlighted California’s mandate for a $20 minimum wage in fast food restaurants.

Establishments are “either gonna have to raise prices, start to reduce those labor costs or a combination of both,” Arnold said on Fox. “And that’s not fair to those employees that are getting laid off, nor is it fair to the customers that are all of the sudden paying $12, $15 for a Big Mac.”

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

India’s lower imports of Russian crude oil in recent weeks were the result of unattractive discounts, not because of payment issues amid tougher U.S. sanctions on Russia’s exports, Indian Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Wednesday.  

“There is no payment problem,” Puri told a briefing in New Delhi on Wednesday, as quoted by Bloomberg.

“It is a pure function of price at which our refiners will buy,” he said, adding that India’s priority is to ensure the cheapest price possible for its consumers.

The tougher enforcement of the G7 sanctions and related payment issues have been holding up Indian purchases of some cargoes of Russian crude oil, with tankers previously headed to India now turning back eastwards, tanker-tracking data monitored by Bloomberg showed on Tuesday.

At the end of last year, the United States took a tougher stance on the sanctions against Russia and sanctioned several vessels for violating the G7 price cap of $60 per barrel, above which cargoes cannot use Western insurance and financing. Some of those tankers were already en route to India loaded with Russia’s Sokol grade and departed from the Far Eastern ports in Russia.  

According to the ship-tracking data Bloomberg has compiled, five tankers carrying Sokol were headed to India last month. But now all five – the NS Commander, Sakhalin Island, Krymsk, Nellis, and Liteyny Prospect – are headed away from India and on to the Malacca Strait, suggesting that India wouldn’t be taking those purchases after all.

A sixth tanker, the NS Century, which has been idling off Sri Lanka for months caught up by the sanctions, is still in that area, according to the data.

As of the end of November, India was still considering whether to allow the now-sanctioned tanker carrying Russian oil to approach and dock at one of its ports—a sign that the U.S. clampdown on Russian crude trade could limit India’s ability to buy and import cheaper oil.

While several key figures in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot were sentenced to 12 – 22 years in prison, the man caught on film repeatedly goading protesters to go inside the Capitol, Ray Epps, faces just six months in jail. According to a 29-page sentencing memorandum, which notes “compelling mitigating factors.”

“Although Epps engaged in felonious conduct during the riot on January 6, his case includes a variety of distinctive and compelling mitigating factors, which led the government to exercise its prosecutorial discretion and offer Epps a pre-indictment misdemeanor plea resolution,” wrote DOJ senior trial counsel Michael Gordon in the sentencing memo. 

Epps’ attorney, Edward Ungvarsky, argued that Epps should serve no jail time, and that “right-wing political dramaturges” resulted in Epps being “attacked, defamed, and vilified.”

Oh?

Why was Ray Epps treated as victim by the same people who condemned almost everyone around him as a threat?

We try to answer some lingering questions about the one “election-denying-Donald Trump-supporter” the media and the government didn’t seem to hate. pic.twitter.com/1u5dXtSGLv

— Truth In Media (@Truth_InMedia) November 3, 2023

Mitigating factors?

According to the sentencing memorandum, Gordon asserted that Epps “has been the target of a false and widespread conspiracy theory that he was an undercover government agent on January 6.”

Other mitigating factors included Epps calling the FBI on Jan. 8, 2021 to explain his actions two days prior. Further, Gordon listed his cooperation with both the FBI and the now-defunct House Jan. 6 Select Committee (which lost video evidence of their witness interviews), and what the DOJ describes as his efforts to de-escalate tensions between protesters and the police.

“Epps only acted in furtherance of his own misguided belief in the ‘lie’ that the 2020 presidential election had been ‘stolen,'” reads the memorandum. “However, due to the outrage directed at Epps as a result of that false conspiracy theory, he has been forced to sell his business, move to a different state, and live reclusively.“

As the Epoch Times reports further, Epps’ photo was removed from the FBI’s Jan. 6 most-wanted page without explanation.

On Sept. 18, 2023, prosecutors charged Mr. Epps with one count of disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, a petty misdemeanor with a maximum six-month jail term.

On Sept. 21, 2023, Mr. Epps pleaded guilty to the charge. In mere days, the high-profile case was dispatched, a stark contrast to many Jan. 6 prosecutions that have stretched across nearly three years.

Sentencing in the case had been scheduled for Dec. 20, 2023, but Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg granted a continuance until 10 a.m. Jan. 9 at the federal courthouse in Washington D.C.

In his sentencing memo, Mr. Ungvarsky said Mr. Epps’ intention all along was for peaceful protests at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

“Ray Epps understands the serious mistake he made when he joined others to attend the Stop the Steal Rally on January 6, 2021, and to encourage others to walk to the U.S. Capitol to continue to protest,” Mr. Ungvarsky wrote.

“At all times, Mr. Epps’ intent was that the protest would be peaceful and would be done peacefully,” Mr. Ungvarsky said. “Those were his words on January 5, and that was his intent on January 6.”

Late on Jan. 2, Mr. Ungvarsky filed a motion asking to shield under court seal the identifying information of persons mentioned in Mr. Epps’ forthcoming sentencing exhibits.

“For safety concerns, counsel has redacted the names and identifying information of persons who authored or are discussed in exhibits of sentencing letters and memoranda,” Mr. Ungvarsky wrote. “Documented prior harassment and threats provide a specific basis for this request in this case.”

Ray Epps Sentencing Memo by James Lynch

Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Josef McConnell, a tennis coach from Southern California, had been unemployed for a year after the government response to the pandemic destroyed his business. Then, in 2021, a friend told him that there were good-paying jobs to be had in North Dakota’s Bakken oilfield.

He knew nothing of oilfields, never heard of the Bakken Basin, nor, for that matter, could he say much about North Dakota other than he believed the state to be a cold, flat flyover tundra with corn and cows somewhere near Canada that had previously been “100 percent not on my mind.”

Nevertheless, Mr. McConnell said, “I picked up everything and left. It was do-or-die.”

He quickly secured a job laboring at SandPro, a sand, wellhead, and automation management start-up in Berthold, west of Minot. As promised, good-paying jobs were available. As promised, they were muscle jobs, dirty jobs, and long-shift jobs.

He was “cleaning iron, tearing things apart,” disassembling and rebuilding “frack trees’ that cap fracked—hydraulically fractured—oil wells. It was hard, gritty work, 12 hours a day, for weeks at a time in an industrial beehive down the road and across the highway from downtown Berthold, a towering grain elevator looming as its landmark above bald grassy ridges and cottonwood-framed creek beds.

But the money was fantastic and, it dawned on him that “this could be a career, not just a job,” Mr. McConnell said.

“I told myself that if I couldn’t make it through the first winter, this is not for me. I survived. It sucked, but I survived,” he said. “From there on, I tried to learn everything I could. I wanted to know how it worked, what it did. I cross-trained into all the aspects of the business.”

As SandPro grew, Mr. McConnell, 33, was appointed night-shift supervisor. Last December, he ascended to shop manager. In August, he became a homeowner. “I’d never be able to do that in California,” he said.

While the 2006–2014 Bakken Play shale boom is over, and the days when oil rigs were anchored on the prairie like ships on seas of waving wheat are long gone, North Dakota’s oil industry has rebounded from its pandemic-induced slump. A sense of steady has settled in.

Right now, an able-bodied unskilled laborer willing to learn and capable of working long and hard can still land a $115,000 entry-level job with room and board and nearly five months off on an oil rig site or with a growing number of independent contractors and start-up oilfield service companies in western North Dakota.

Right now, the Bakken is where stories like Mr. McConnell’s aren’t stories but invitations. It’s where an Arizona cosmetologist can monitor a rig gate while looking to buy her first home, where a New Jersey geologist can build a company that employs 300 to revive a community where she’s hailed as a hometown hero, where a “disgruntled” airman from Cincinnati can carve a niche and expand it into a broadening entrepreneurial enterprise.

“The rush is over, and now we’re seeing a maturing of the play,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), a 1998 graduate of Dickinson High School who recalls having to—and being able to—stand in the middle of highways to get cellphone reception before the oil boom.

As is typical with a “maturing of the play,” most corporate players have moved on. In their wake, new players have emerged: first-time independent contractors and serial entrepreneurs, many under 40, most building local businesses, buying homes, starting families, and growing communities.

For them, fast money is fine, but sustainable “systemic growth” is preferable, with perfected-in-North-Dakota advances in fracking spurring pioneering innovations in lateral drilling.

“This is a time of great technological advancements,” North Dakota Petroleum Council President Ron Ness said.

The 31 rigs operating in North Dakota in late December were pumping 1.25 million barrels of shale oil per day to nearly 19,000 wells, a per-rig production that is “a vast improvement” over past proficiency benchmarks, he said.

With lateral drilling in the Bakken expected to extend beyond four miles by early 2024, “the timeline to drill wells has been compressed” and “opened up a whole new area of the Bakken than was formerly known,” a shale play “we are going to take this technology to and earn from.”

Post-Boom Boon

Spearheading the Bakken’s post-boom boon are “smaller companies,” Mr. Ness said. “We’ve got so many, typically led by younger people who were working for these larger international service companies, found a niche, and started their own businesses.”

With oil prices expected to hover in the $70-to-$85 per barrel “sweet spot,” demand for North Dakota oil is projected to grow moderately for the foreseeable future.

“It’s better than the boom,” SandPro Vice President Joshua Blackaby said. “You want steady work and that’s where we’re at right now. And one of the distinctive things about what’s going on here now is it’s a lot of small companies, a lot of entrepreneurs.”

According to the North Dakota Job Service, the 31 rigs directly employ 50,000 people with about 35,000 working in field and technical services and about 15,000 toiling directly on sites.

As of mid-December, more than 3,000 oilfield-related jobs were vacant.

For the small farming and ranching prairie towns overwhelmed during the boom, infill ambitions spur new commercial construction, revitalized Main streets, and growing schools, with new homes being purchased by 20- and 30-something-year-olds.

“Building schools, building homes, growing communities rather than tearing them down? I think there’s lots of success stories here,” Mr. Ness said.

“Now, you have an opportunity to grow a life,” Mr. Armstrong said. “That’s a story we are proud to tell.”

For the independent-inclined, there’s ample opportunity for enterprise, Mr. Blackaby said.

“If you have any ambition at all, move to North Dakota,” he said. “There’s so much work to be had here. It’s such a business-friendly state and the opportunities … the sky’s the limit.”

In the Field

Julie Byron, 33, from Tucson, Arizona, is working in a gate shack with two heaters at her feet. Only those on the crew can gain entry to the Hess rig without checking in with her.

A cosmetologist “doing pull-tabs at the Legion,” she’d lived in Williston since 2013 but never considered working in the Bakken until a manager suggested she apply for a job with Neset Consulting Services, a Tioga-based company that provides gate monitors, roustabout crews, field medics, mud-loggers, and geologists for oil rig sites.

Since August, she’s been working seven days on and seven days off in shifts tailored to her needs as a single mother.

It’s fascinating, Ms. Byron said. “This is first time I’m seeing what’s really going on. I said to myself, ‘OK, we’re going to learn this. We’re going to turn this into an opportunity,’” she said. “It’s cool to know the background—the geology, infrastructure, the different jobs—and understand it.”

She is looking to buy a home in 2024. She still works as a cosmetologist and “does pull-tabs at the Legion” during off-weeks.

“It’s just me starting over. I’m still figuring this out at 33 years old,” Ms. Byron said. “Was it worth it? One-hundred percent.”

Ron Budd, 34, delivery services coordinator for Minot-based Creedence Energy Services’ Williston office, moved from Phoenix, Arizona, to North Dakota in 2010 when his stepfather got a job with Haliburton.

“I was pretty young and didn’t really have it figured out. I was just kind of day-by-day, dead-end jobs,” he recalled. “The job I was working before I came up here was at McDonald’s. I thought of it as hard work. Now, not so much.”

Mr. Budd said “financial opportunity” became his “driving force to fully commit” to the oilfield. He no longer works directly in the field, but the commitment has panned out, said the father of two.

“Knowing I could do better for my kids than what I had, knowing that I can have things that no one else in my family has, I buckled down and committed,” Mr. Budd said, noting he has purchased his own home. “Out of my immediate family, I’m the only one that owns a home.”

Read more here…

Vivek Ramaswamy took no shit from a Washington Post reporter this week, whose demand for a ‘woke’ fealty test was completely dismantled by the 2024 GOP candidate.

“You didn’t say you condemn white supremacy,” the reporter snarks.

To which Ramaswamy replied: “I’m not gonna recite some catechism for you,” adding “I’m not pledging allegience to your new religion of modern wokeism, which actually fits the test. I’m not gonna bend the knee to your religion.”

“But do I condemn vicious racial discrimination? Yes I do,” he added. “Am I gonna play your silly game of ‘gotcha’? No I’m not. And frankly this is why people have lost trust.“

Ramaswamy then told her that he knew she was going to go ‘print the headline’ tomorrow: ‘Ramaswamy refuses to condemn white supremacy,’ because you asked a stupid question. The reality is, I condemn vicious racial discrimination in this country. But the kind of vicious and systematic discrimination we see today, is discrimination on the base of race in a very different direction. You wanna know what the best way is to end discrimination is on the basis of race? Stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

“You people have been responsible for dividing this country to a breaking point, creating a projection of national division,” he continued. “And you with your catechism that you try to get politicians to whatever fake headline you’re gonna print on the basis of this conversation tomorrow, that’s what’s dividing this country to a breaking point. Shame on you.”

Watch:

WAPO reporter doubles down: You didn’t say that you condemn white supremacy though.

She immediately regrets it.@VivekGRamaswamy isn’t going to play the game. pic.twitter.com/2NHshriVZa

— Chris Carapezza (@Chris_Carapezza) January 3, 2024

 

Former President Trump on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to overturn a Colorado court’s landmark ruling disqualifying him from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection ban.

“The Colorado Supreme Court has no authority to deny President Trump access to the ballot,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in the petition.

“By doing so, the Colorado Supreme Court has usurped Congressional authority and misinterpreted and misapplied the text of section 3.”

The brief also presents the high court with the question, “Did the Colorado Supreme Court err in ordering President Trump excluded from the 2024 presidential primary ballot?”

As The Hill reports, Trump’s petition asks that the Supreme Court agree to take up the case and immediately reverse the Colorado ruling in a summary decision without oral argument.

“In our system of ‘government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people,’ Colorado’s ruling is not and cannot be correct,” the petition reads.

“This Court should grant certiorari to consider this question of paramount importance, summarily reverse the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling, and return the right to vote for their candidate of choice to the voters.”

The other parties in the case previously agreed the justices should hear the case on an expedited schedule, so a decision may be issued before most states’ primaries, but they did not suggest the high court forgo the step of holding oral arguments.

Trump’s call follows the Colorado Republican Party, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s (the original defendant in the case), and six voters, request that the U.S. Supreme Court review the case on an expedited basis and give American voters a final answer on whether President Trump is eligible as a candidate.

“This Court’s resolution of the matter is important to ensure that all Coloradans’ votes are cast only for candidates who are qualified to hold the office of president,” the brief reads.

“Additionally, the Secretary asks the Court to resolve the question of Trump’s eligibility as expeditiously as possible in light of the upcoming election calendar. This will ensure that, to the greatest extent possible, all Coloradans know whether Trump is eligible to be elected president at the time they cast their ballots.”

The Colorado GOP had presented the Supreme Court with three questions:

1. whether Section 3 applies to presidents,

2. whether Section 3 is self-executing and allows individual states to decide to remove candidates without input from Congress,

3. and whether denying a political party the right to put any candidates it chooses on the primary ballot violates the First Amendment.

The Colorado court had put its ruling on hold until tomorrow (Thursday), so Trump could seek review from the Supreme Court.

If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, the decision will be stayed until after the justices decide the case on the merits.

“The court can’t let state supreme courts make a patchwork of decisions,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, after Colorado’s Dec. 19 ruling.

“The case brings up an important federal constitutional question with time-sensitive consequences. They will need to act, and act quickly.”

And as Trump pushed SCOTUS for an expeditious decision, the former president has captured the endorsements off all senior members of House GOP leadership.

As Jackson Richman reports at The Epoch Times, House GOP Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) has endorsed former President Donald Trump’s comeback bid – the last House GOP leadership holdout to endorse the former president, who dominates the polls.

“[President Joe Biden’s] failed policies have left Minnesotans to grapple with double-digit inflation, higher taxes, and a border crisis that has turned every community into a border community,” he said in a Jan. 3 statement posted on X, formerly Twitter.

“Minnesotans and all Americans deserve better,” Mr. Emmer wrote. “It is time for Republicans to come together in support of a leader who has what it takes to get our country back on track. We stand together to endorse Donald J. Trump for President.”

President Trump has captured the endorsements of all senior members of House GOP leadership: Mr. Emmer, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), and GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.).

So, where do we stand?

Simple:

• If the Supreme Court rejects the case by tomorrow (Jan. 4), President Trump will be removed from the primary ballot.

• If it rejects the case later, President Trump will remain on the Colorado primary ballot but the issues presented will remain open questions.

It’s unlikely the Supreme Court will resolve Trump’s appeal before then, meaning he will likely appear on the primary ballots regardless.

On Jan. 20, county clerks will mail out the ballots to military and oversees voters, and between Feb. 12 and Feb. 16, ballots are mailed to other active registered voters.

The Colorado primary will be held on March 5.

Authored by Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner via Wirepoints.org,

Count on hearing repeatedly this year from Chicago’s leadership that it successfully brought down the city’s murder total by 13% in 2023. Chicago finished the year with 617 homicides, down from 709 in 2022.

That’s 92 fewer murders and good news.

But what you’re unlikely to hear are five additional facts that would temper any optimism gained from that first fact:

1. Murders across the country fell at record levels in 2023. 

Overall, homicides nationally are expected to drop 13%, about the same as in Chicago. And murders in other big homicide hotspots like Philadelphia, Baltimore and New Orleans fell by 21 to 31%. Most big cities had bigger percentage drops than Chicago did.

Below we lay out the 2023 data for the 10 homicide hubs in 2022, those cities with the largest number of murders in the country in 2022.

2. Chicago’s 617 homicides swamp that of its two big-city peers. 

NYC, which has more than triple Chicago’s population, had just 386 murders in 2023. Los Angeles, with 1.2 million more people than Chicago, had just 328 murders.

Chicago’s 617 homicides led the country for the 12th straight year.

3. Chicago’s murder rate per 100,000 residents, while down slightly in 2023, was the 2nd-highest among the nation’s biggest cities. 

Overall, only Philadelphia had a worse murder rate than Chicago among peer cities with populations greater than 1.5 million.

And when it comes to New York City, Chicago’s murder rate remained 5 times higher. If Chicago had had the same murder rate as NYC’s, Chicago would have experienced only 121 murders in 2023, not 617.

4. Chicago’s 617 murder total in 2023 was still up 23% when compared to pre-covid, pre-George Floyd 2019’s 500 murders.

5. Despite the 13% drop in homicides, Chicago’s major crimes jumped by a total of 16% in 2023. 

Robberies were up 23%. Aggravated batteries, up 6%. Thefts and criminal sexual assaults were both up 3% each. And motor vehicle thefts spiked by 37% to reach a total of nearly 30,000 car thefts. And all that was after major crimes had already jumped 40% between 2022 and 2021.

Overall, 2023 major crimes hit a post-covid record of more than 77,500. That’s 55% higher compared to 2019.

Still leading

Expect all kinds of spin on Chicago’s crime numbers in 2024, especially in anticipation of the Democratic National Convention in August and elections in November. 

It’s why we created the Chicago Weekly Crime Tracker so you can easily see for yourself what’s happening across the city.

Zach Shefska from online automotive marketplace CarEdge revealed a list of the five slowest-selling vehicles currently on the market. 

Notably, four of these vehicles are from Stellantis’ Dodge brand and one from Ford. This trend might be due to several factors, such as consumers balking at 10% interest rates and near-record-high prices or a possible shift in consumer preferences away from some of these models. 

According to Shefska, the slowest-selling vehicle in America is the Dodge Ram 2500 truck, with 784 days of supply. 

#1 RAM 2500

784 days supply
$69,408 average listing price
1,602 actively listed for sale
92 have sold in the last 45 days

The 2500 was impacted by a stop-sale in December* pic.twitter.com/D0sZLms1pJ

— Zach Shefska (@shefska) January 2, 2024

The second vehicle is the Dodge Hornet, with 517 days of supply. 

#2 Dodge Hornet

517 days supply
$39,931 average listing price
10,781 actively listed for sale
939 have sold in the last 45 days pic.twitter.com/1yI1RZszuD

— Zach Shefska (@shefska) January 2, 2024

Third is the Dodge Charger, with 424 days of supply. 

#3 Dodge Charger

424 days supply
$46,687 average listing price
33,463 actively listed for sale
3,549 have sold in the last 45 days pic.twitter.com/SVOvy3Kmn5

— Zach Shefska (@shefska) January 2, 2024

Dodge Challenger is fourth. 

#4 Dodge Challenger

362 days supply
$53,954 average listing price
25,807 actively listed for sale
3,205 have sold in the last 45 days pic.twitter.com/v9bfSIKGue

— Zach Shefska (@shefska) January 2, 2024

And the Ford Mustang Mach-E is fifth. 

The top 5 SLOWEST selling new cars right now

#5 Ford Mustang Mach-E

358 days supply
$57,114 average listing price
25,430 actively listed for sale
3,200 have sold in the last 45 days pic.twitter.com/a4DCD6u2P3

— Zach Shefska (@shefska) January 2, 2024

Shefska didn’t reveal the methodology used to determine the days of supply for each vehicle. However, he mentioned that Ford reached out to him to correct the information regarding Mach-E’s supply, which was initially reported as a 358-day supply but was actually a 132-day supply.

Update: @MartinGunsberg from Ford says their dealers have a 132 days supply of inventory. Thanks for the data, Martin.

The Mach-E might not be one of the slowest selling cars in the United States … check your local dealer’s lot to see. Your mileage may vary! pic.twitter.com/uGaU5hgNjX

— Zach Shefska (@shefska) January 2, 2024

One X user pointed out, “Wow. 4/5ths of the list were made by @Dodge. It’s not looking good for them at all. They desperately need to turn things around with the Charger EV.”

Wow. 4/5ths of the list were made by @Dodge. It’s not looking good for them at all. They desperately need to turn things around with the Charger EV.

— Jennifer Montgomery (@JenMontgomery84) January 2, 2024

While consumer tastes could be why Dodge vehicles and Mach-E aren’t selling, the affordability issue is a much more significant driver. 

“We’ve seen a big reduction in median- and lower-income households” buying new cars, which now “almost exclusively go to the top 20% of income households,” Jonathan Smoke, chief economist for researcher Cox Automotive, told Bloomberg.