THE NEW YORK TIMES and THE GUARDIAN on Trump's Iran Strike

1) From THE NEW YORK TIMES' 2-28-26 op-ed piece entitled "Trump’s Attack on Iran Is Reckless":

In his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised voters that he would end wars, not start them. Over the past year, he has instead ordered military strikes in seven nations. His appetite for military intervention grows with the eating.

Now he has ordered a new attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran, in cooperation with Israel, and Mr. Trump said it would be much more extensive than the targeted bombing of nuclear facilities in June. Yet he started this war without explaining to the American people and the world why he was doing so. Nor has he involved Congress, which the Constitution grants the sole power to declare war. He instead posted a video at 2:30 a.m. Eastern on Saturday, shortly after bombing began, in which he said that Iran presented “imminent threats” and called for the overthrow of its government. His rationale is dubious, and making his case by video in the middle of the night is unacceptable [...].

Mr. Trump’s approach to Iran is reckless. His goals are ill-defined. He has failed to line up the international and domestic support that would be necessary to maximize the chances of a successful outcome. He has disregarded both domestic and international law for warfare [...].

Mr. Trump is [...] telling the American people and the world that he expects their blind trust. He has not earned that trust.

He instead treats allies with disdain. He lies constantly, including about the results of the June attack on Iran. He has failed to live up to his own promises for solving other crises in Ukraine, Gaza and Venezuela. He has fired senior military leaders for failing to show fealty to his political whims. When his appointees make outrageous mistakes — such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sharing advanced details of a military attack on the Houthis, an Iranian-backed group, on an unsecured group chat — Mr. Trump shields them from accountability. His administration appears to have violated international law by, among other things, disguising a military plane as a civilian plane and shooting two defenseless sailors who survived an initial attack.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

2) From Simon Tisdall's 2-28-26 GUARDIAN op-ed piece entitled "A World on Edge as Trump Bombs Iran and Triggers War in the Middle East. There Was No Need for This":

While there are certain differences, the similarities between Donald Trump’s siege of Iran and George W Bush’s disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq are striking. Both crises fit a wider pattern of ultimately unsuccessful, costly US interventionism dating back to Vietnam – and the 1953 CIA-led Iran coup. Trump promised to avoid foreign adventures. Surprise! He lied. Anyone who believes he has radically changed the way the US engages with the world should review this sordid saga of post-1945 imperial hubris. In this, he’s no different from his predecessors.

Trump is unusual in that his self interest is so evident. Though he said today that he wants “freedom” for the Iranian people, and for Iran to be a place that’s “safe”, he’s no Woodrow Wilson, who justified plunging the US into the first world war in 1917 by saying “the world must be made safe for democracy”. (It transpired Wilson meant democracy in Europe, not in the colonial empires of Africa, the Middle East and Asia.) After attacking Venezuela in January, Trump baldly admitted he just wanted the oil. Yet in other respects, what’s happening now feels very familiar.

Like Bush, Trump manufactured a crisis, founded on falsehood, and effectively cornered himself. He is hostage to self-imposed expectations, having confounded his own false claim to have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities last year. Like Bush and his accomplice, Tony Blair, Trump deliberately inflates the threat. His unsubstantiated State of the Union claim that Tehran’s ballistic missiles could “soon” reach US territory recalls notoriously false US and UK claims about Saddam Hussein’s fabled weapons of mass destruction. Israel’s claim to have mounted “pre-emptive” strikes is misleading, too. There is zero clear evidence Iran was about to attack. On the contrary, it was desperately hoping to preserve the peace after last June’s damaging US-Israeli onslaught [...].

For the second time, Trump has offered negotiations to Iran while obviously planning an attack. It’s now evident this week’s negotiations in Geneva were a charade. Nor is there any sign Trump and Netanyahu, having set out their maximalist objectives, will break off the attacks soon. To do so would suggest failure. Trump wants to be the president who finally avenges US humiliations during the 1979 Iranian revolution, who brings Iran back into the western fold. He also wants a “win” to impress November’s midterm voters – one that revives his poor approval ratings. 

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

BALTIMORE SUN on ICE Facilities in Maryland

From Natalie Jones' 2-23-26 BALTIMORE SUN article entitled "Maryland Battles Over ICE Facilities Raise Constitutional Question":

As local governments in Maryland clash with the Trump administration’s plans for new federal immigration facilities, the issue is reviving a long-running constitutional question: When the federal government buys or uses property, does it have to obey state and local zoning and land use laws?

Legal scholars say the short answer is complicated — and multiple disputes now unfolding across Maryland could help determine it.

At the center is a lawsuit filed Monday by Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown seeking to block the Trump administration’s plan to convert an 825,000-square-foot warehouse in Washington County into a 1,500-bed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center. The suit argues the Department of Homeland Security failed to complete required local environmental review before spending $102.4 million to purchase the Williamsport property.

Meanwhile, Baltimore County lawmakers may have passed emergency legislation banning private immigration detention facilities earlier this month, but it doesn’t stop ICE or its legal department from occupying office space in Hunt Valley.

Together, the disputes highlight a fundamental constitutional tension: the supremacy clause — which generally gives federal law priority over conflicting state law — versus traditional local authority over land use [...].

Cori Alonso-Yoder, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, said a federally owned detention center would generally be permissible so long as it does not violate constitutional rights. The Baltimore County law instead targets private actors who might host detention operations.

Federal immigration detention relies heavily on private facilities; a February 2025 analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse found roughly 90% of people held by ICE were housed in privately owned or operated centers.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

Republican QAnon Follower Omar Navarro Sentenced to Four Years in Federal Prison

From Helen Jeong's NBCLosAngeles.com report entitled "Omar Navarro, Ex-congressional Candidate, Gets 4 Years in Prison for Embezzlement":

A former candidate in previous California congressional races was sentenced to federal prison for embezzling nearly $250,000 from his political campaign and spending the money on personal expenses, including trips to Las Vegas.

Omar Navarro, who challenged Rep. Maxine Waters for California’s 43rd Congressional District from 2016 and 22, was sentenced to 48 months in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud last June.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has said after raising millions of dollars during the four election cycles, the 37-year-old defrauded his campaign committee by pocketing some of the money.

Although he knew federal law strictly prohibits the personal use of campaign funds, Navarro funneled campaign cash to himself between July 2017 and February 2021, the DOJ said.

To read Jeong's entire article, click HERE. 

For further information about Omar Navarro, check out my 12-17-23 EVERGREEN REVIEW article entitled "The Silent Civil War: The Radicalization of the Evangelical Right": 

The QAnon movement persisting without Q is exemplified not just by Newmax but also by Omar Navarro (who ran for California’s 43rd congressional district for the fourth time after having served six months in jail for stalking and harassing his ex-girlfriend, fellow Republican politician and QAnon promoter DeAnna Lorraine Tesoriero). Navarro has strategically refrained from mentioning Q since January 6. Here’s an excerpt from Davey Alba’s December 20, 2021 New York Times article entitled “‘Q’ Has Been Quiet, but QAnon Lives On”:

Mr. Navarro said he had stopped posting about QAnon to avoid being barred from the [social media] platforms.

“I’m not dumb,” Mr. Navarro said in an interview. “You have to be politically correct in today’s world to survive on social media.”

He added: “I’m running a campaign for Congress. So I need to focus on issues that matter more, like the economy or business other than” focusing on QAnon.³⁰

Of course, to be more truthful Navarro should have said, "So I need to focus on issues that matter more, like the economy or business or illegally siphoning off campaign funds to myself through my own mother." Navarro's mother, by the way, also pled guilty to embezzlement. Returning to the article...

In a June 27, 2021 Business Insider article entitled “A Trump-loving Insurrectionist and a Convicted Stalker Are Among 36 QAnon Supporters Running for Congress in 2022,” Joshua Zitser and Sophia Ankel write that Navarro still “believes in ‘some things’ that ‘Q’ says, including the human trafficking trope.”³¹ It’s both distressing and amusing that Navarro talks as if the problem of human trafficking was something no human being had ever acknowledged until Q popped up on 4chan. Q’s followers don’t seem to understand (or don’t wish to understand) that the critics of QAnon aren’t saying that human trafficking doesn’t exist. They’re saying that QAnon’s distorted, politically weaponized fantasies about human trafficking do far more harm than good, particularly when they begin to crowd out genuine information about how human trafficking can actually be combated in the real world as opposed to the ineffectual theorizing that occurs among most “digital soldiers” (a phrase first coined by General Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser) in the online LARPing world of QAnon.

Back to Omar:

“I do believe that there’s human trafficking going on right now. I do believe that Hollywood has participated in some of this with pedophilia and it’s something obviously we can’t ignore,” [Navarro] said.

Navarro, who has gone viral multiple times on Twitter for his far-right and homophobic views, has previously pushed the debunked Pizzagate theory [from which QAnon is a direct outgrowth]. He told Insider: “I feel like there are certain things going on. There’s something shady in that pizza shop” [i.e., Comet Ping Pong in Washington, D.C.].

The Californian also defended using the popular QAnon slogan WWG1WGA (“Where we go one, we go all”) in a tweet posted on October 3, 2020, saying he ended up deleting it because he didn’t want Twitter to ban him.

“I always have to worry about my free speech and what I say on Twitter,” he said.³²

As we can see from the above comments, the social media ban on QAnon content did not prevent people like Navarro from believing in political disinformation; it simply encouraged them to find better and more efficient ways to hide their beliefs while still spreading (and acting on) that disinformation. It made identifying those responsible for spreading the disinformation a thousand times more difficult. Rather than stopping bad ideas, censorship inevitably serves as both a shield and an amplifier for those ideas.

It's interesting to note that, according to THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, Trump confidant Roger Stone served as Navarro's campaign advisor back in 2017, the same year QAnon got its start on 4chan.

If you'd like to read the entirety of "The Silent Civil War," then click HERE. 

IT'S TWIN PEAKS DAY ONCE AGAIN!

 Since it's Twin Peaks Day once again, I'd like to take this opportunity to suggest that if you're a Twin Peaks fan, you might very well enjoy the wonderfully strange tales in my collection, CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES... 

PRAISE FOR CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES: 

"The stories in Cryptopolis feel like the bloody, star-filled lovechildren of Burroughs and Delany, with each tale ostensibly one part of a greater whole; abstract limbs and organs tethered together by strained flesh. Cryptopolis will take readers on a hallucinogenic journey through worlds fractured by time and place—slipping through liminal dimensions with seamless abandon to unveil unsettling illusions and heartbreaking realities—and totally worth the trip."

--Philip Fracassi, author of Boys in the Valley

 

"If you're tired of the same wines and you're curious about the vintage only just whispered about, have a deep draught of Robert Guffey's Cryptopolis. You don't have to descend with Fortunato to the deepest cellars to find this bottle of Amontillado. Here it is! If Poe collaborated with Robert Anton Wilson...if Borges had a lovechild with Lovecraft, which was subsequently adopted by Kafka...you might get Cryptopolis. I think too that Clark Ashton Smith would admire this collection. Written with the obsessive precision of a mysterious staircase descending into the abyss, Cryptopolis will take you to strange epiphanies..."  

 

--John Shirley, author of The Feverish Stars

 

"Once upon a time, weird and speculative fiction had an underground full of stories that were not written as calling cards or as film treatments or as extended internet memes. Guffey's tales resist genre gentrification; they move into your mind to turn it into a punk house squat!" 

--Nick Mamatas, author of Move Under Ground and The Second Shooter

 

"Cryptopolis, a collection of interconnected and cleverly interwoven short stories, is simply beautiful, while at the same time exceedingly surreal."

--Christine Morgan, author of Spermjackers from Hell and Nympho Shark Fuck Frenzy  

 

 "In Cryptopolis & Other Stories, Guffey's free-ranging intellect meshes wonderfully with his command of the language."

 

--John Oakes, author of The Fast

 

"Guffey brings together 25 horror shorts that swing wildly between terrifying mindtrips and gritty realism. Throughout, Guffey’s blunt prose lends a sense of normalcy to the fantastic as his cast of losers from all walks of life face the cruelties of their existence—sexual violence, drugs, war, parenthood, and poverty [...]. Though not for the faint of heart, this bizarre and over-the-top collection is sure to thrill devotees of weird fiction."

--Publishers Weekly   

"Cryptopolis may end up being a gateway drug into Robert Guffey’s work. I don’t use that term spuriously. So many of Guffey’s stories in Cryptopolis have a hard-bitten edge and gritty feel to them that I could see him crafting a metatext about an author whose books are physically addictive. Across the collection’s twenty-five stories and vignettes, Guffey displays a range of interests and foci with such depth and heart that I wouldn’t be surprised if he became one of my favorite modern writers [...].

"Affect, the experience of emotional response, seems to be at issue in every one of Guffey’s offerings. From the opening eponymous story (which is the only outright Lovecraftian story in the collection), with its resonances of love as a torturous paralytic, to the last, 'Esthra, Shadows, Glass, Silence,' a parable of alternate lives and lost possibilities, the emotional response drawn from the reader appears to be the crux of every piece. These stories are engines designed to make the reader feel."

--Géza A. G. Reilly, Dead Reckonings

 "If you want a walk on the wild side, and I mean WILD, Robert Guffey’s fiction delivers that and more. It’s as if you’re lying in the grass in a park on a calm summer afternoon, you look up, and a creature you can’t even describe is looking at you. He starts talking in an even voice. But his words are chopping reality to pieces, and when he puts the pieces back together again, and you see the new picture, you feel a need to call the police. But then you realize you’re in a new place where the last people you want to talk to are the cops. What do you do now? You’re on your own. You better have strong resources. Very strong." 

 --Jon Rappoport, author of The Secret Behind Secret Societies

THE GUARDIAN on Austin Martin

From Ed Pilkington's 2-23-26 GUARDIAN article entitled "New Details Emerge About Armed Man Shot and Killed at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago": 

The 21-year-old man who was shot and killed after having entered Donald Trump’s Florida resort on Sunday – while carrying a shotgun – came from a North Carolina family of the president’s supporters and had reportedly become increasingly fixated on the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files.

The focus of the FBI’s investigation into the intrusion attributed to Austin Tucker Martin is tightening on his movements and motives. Martin was confronted by Secret Service agents and a local sheriff’s deputy inside the secure perimeter of Mar-a-Lago and killed after he had raised a shotgun into the shooting position at about 1.30am on Sunday, law enforcement said [...].

The illustrator came from Cameron, North Carolina, where his relatives described him as quiet and generally opposed to guns. Martin’s cousin told the Associated Press that the family was staunchly pro-Trump.

“We are big Trump supporters, all of us,” Braeden Fields said. “Everybody.” He added, though, that Marin tended not to talk about politics.

Fields said Martin would regularly send a portion of his monthly paycheck to charity – and he had difficulty fathoming what authorities say his cousin had done on Sunday.

Martin’s family appear to have become alarmed by his disappearance over the weekend, posting on Facebook that he was missing. A missing person’s report was entered into a national database after the Moore county sheriff’s office in North Carolina received a report from a relative early on Sunday morning...

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

THE INDEPENDENT on South Carolina Mom Who Denied Son Measles Vaccine

From Rhian Lubin's 2-19-26 INDEPENDENT article entitled "Mom of 7-year-old Hospitalized with Brain Swelling from Measles: ‘I Still Wouldn’t Have Given My Son the Vaccine’":

Six weeks ago, Ethan was like most 7-year-olds — spending the weekend riding his new bike or playing Minecraft on his iPad on a rainy day.

“He just learned how to ride, he got the hang of it right away,” Ethan’s dad, Luis, said proudly. “He wanted to go outside because he wanted to jump on his bike…it was an amazing thing for him.”

Instead, since late January, the schoolboy has been confined to a hospital bed with measles encephalitis, a complication that causes swelling and inflammation in the brain. “He's pretty much as if he was paralyzed,” his devastated father, 41, told The Independent in a phone interview from his son’s hospital bedside.

Ethan’s parents decided not to immunize him against measles as they did with his three brothers. Three out of four of them contracted measles. Still, despite Ethan’s ordeal, his mom stands by their decision. “We’re not blaming God for this,” said 35-year-old Kristina. “Yes, it hurts, of course, it hurts. But God has chosen Ethan for a reason. God is doing something, and we're gonna glorify his name regardless.

“And we wouldn't change it any other way,” the mom continued. “If I knew this could be the outcome, I still wouldn't have given my son the vaccine.”

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

THE GUARDIAN on Dawson Maloney

From Roque Planas' 2-20-26 GUARDIAN article entitled "FBI and Las Vegas Police Investigate Suspected Case of Terrorism":

A 23-year-old man drove from New York to a Las Vegas suburb and crashed a rented Nissan Sentra through a gate and into a pile of heavy wire reels at a power substation before shooting himself in the head, local police said on Friday, describing the incident as a suspected act of terrorism.

The suspect, Dawson Noah Maloney, died of the self-inflicted shotgun wound, the Las Vegas sheriff, Kevin McMahill, said at a press conference on Friday. He was wearing soft body armor when police discovered him.

“There is no ongoing threat at this time,” he added.

Police initially heard about the incident in Boulder City when it was reported as a suicide.

Police discovered in the car two shotguns, an AR-style pistol, several magazines loaded with .223 ammunition, a box of shotgun shells, two flame-throwers, a crowbar, a hatchet and a cellphone.

In Maloney’s hotel room, police found material for making explosives, including thermite, ammonium nitrate, magnesium ribbon, metal pipes and gasoline. They also recovered several books “related to extremist ideologies, including right- and leftwing extremism, environmental extremism, white supremacy and anti-government ideology,” McMahill said.

“Given the location and the materials discovered, this incident was treated as a terrorism-related event,” McMahill said.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

Adam Gorightly and Christopher Graybill on THE FARM!

Adam Gorightly and Christopher Graybill continue their podcast odyssey on Steven Snider's THE FARM! In this 2-16-26 episode, Gorightly and Graybill discuss the genesis of their new documentary, SAUCERS, SPOOKS AND KOOKS (based on Gorightly's 2021 book of the same name). You can listen to the entire episode by clicking right HERE.

Here are just some of the topics discussed during the interview...

Paul Bennewitz, Bennewitz affair, Kirkland Air Force Base, UFOs, Myrna Hansen, tin foil, cattle mutilations, Richard Doty, Bill Moore, Moore's links to Russia, Moore's contacts with the US security services, underground bases, Dulce, Tal Levesque, Bennewitz's computer, J. Allen Hynek, the Majestic 12 hoax, Prior of Sion hoax, similarities between MJ-12 and PoS hoaxes, Holy Blood Holy Grail, Serpo, UFO Cover Up? Live, To the Stars Academy (TTSA), were Doty's actions against Bennewitz sanctioned by the Air Force, Russia, the role of counterintelligence in Ufology, non-lethal weapons, was Bennewitz targeted with non-lethal weapons, similarities between Bennewitz and Robert Guffey's account in Chameleo, the role of The X-Files in popularizing these tropes, Jacques Vallee, why Vallee will be regarded as a pivotal figure to future generations, Bill Cooper, the Cooper-ization of Ufology and parapolitics, are the Delta Force ready for a rematch with the Grays?

As I've mentioned before, I highly recommend purchasing Gorightly and Graybill's documentary--and not just because I'm in it! Gorightly and Graybill do a tremendous job of making a complex, disjointed, nonlinear, decades-spanning tale of dubious aliens and international intrigue surprisingly lucid. You can order the film by clicking right HERE.

*DEPT. OF SEXUALLY DEVIANT REPUBLICANS DEPT.*

NEWS FLASH: Republican Mayor Wayne Dingus of Butler, Ohio has been charged with voyeurism after having been caught on camera sniffing an underage girl’s underwear. Here's an excerpt from Madeline Harden and Jordan Gartner's 2-20-26 WHSV.com report entitled "Mayor Charged with Voyeurism After Allegedly Sniffing Teen Girl’s Underwear":

A mayor in Ohio is facing two counts of voyeurism after he was allegedly caught on camera sniffing a teen girl’s underwear.

Records show that on Jan. 13, a Richland County Sheriff’s Office sergeant was contacted by children’s services after authorities were “sent a video showing an adult male going through [a child’s] bedroom, picking up her underwear and smelling it.”

The following day, a Richland County Sheriff’s deputy and a Richland County Children’s Services representative went to the reported victim’s high school to speak with her about what happened.

According to the records report, she told officials she was suspicious that Butler Mayor Wesley Dingus had been going into her bedroom, so she purchased a small video camera to set up there.

Authorities said the girl told them she received a notification on her phone that motion was detected in her bedroom about 15 minutes after she left for school that day.

When she checked the footage later, she said the footage showed Dingus entering her room and smelling her underwear.

According to the report, the next day, she also received an alert. This time, the girl said the video showed Dingus entering her room, smelling her worn underwear, and touching his groin area over his clothes.

To read the entire article, click HERE. For further news reports about hypocritical Republicans entangled in criminal scandals involving stalking, rape, and pedophilia, click HERE, HERE, and HERE.

"You don't need to consult Freud to understand that the MAGA/QANON obsession with pedophilia represented not a revulsion at others having sex with children but a revulsion at their own forbidden desire to have sex with children."

--Jeffrey St. Clair, Co-editor of COUNTERPUNCH, 2-20-26 

 "QAnon’s obsession with penny-dreadful tales of Hollywood and Washington 'elites' raping underage children becomes suspicious when seen in such numbers, in post after post after post, in video after video after video. QAnon followers just can’t stop themselves, it seems, from dwelling on this disturbing notion. Some of the Christians who make these videos will even illustrate their outrage with digitally blurred photographs that barely obscure the illegal images. One wonders if 'outrage' accurately describes the emotion they’re experiencing while viewing — and reviewing and re-reviewing — these salacious images."

--Robert Guffey, "The Deep, Twisted Roots of QAnon: From 1940s Sci-fi to 19th-century Anti-Masonic Agitprop," SALON, 8-23-20

Hunter S. Thompson (In Memoriam)

On this day twenty-one years ago, Hunter S. Thompson passed away. In honor of the Good Doctor's memory, I suggest checking out this April 16, 1975 interview in which Thompson discusses the origins of "Gonzo Journalism":

Hunter S. Thompson Interview on Gonzo Journalism (April 16, 1975):

Marjorie Taylor Greene: "Trump ‘Fought the Hardest’ To Block Epstein Files"

From Zachary Leeman's 2-14-26 MEDIAITE article entitled "Marjorie Taylor Greene Warns MAGA Trump ‘Fought the Hardest’ To Block Epstein Files: ‘A Lot of People Have a Hard Time With That’":

Marjorie Taylor Greene pointed to President Donald Trump as the person who “fought the hardest” to block the Epstein files from being released.

Greene joined former InfoWars host Owen Shroyer on his podcast on Friday where she argued Trump’s “biggest political miscalculation” was ever referring to the Epstein files as a “hoax.” Trump repeatedly referred to talk of Epstein files, which are documents related to the case of convicted child sex predator Jeffrey Epstein, as a “Democratic hoax.”

Greene was one of the Republicans to support legislation that forced a release of the files by the Department of Justice. She suggested Attorney General Pam Bondi is still under the direction of the president when it comes to the files and the DOJ’s handling of any potential criminal activity as they continue to release batches of files...

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

Epstein’s Post Mortem

From Iona Cleave's 2-13-26 TELEGRAPH article entitled "I Witnessed Epstein’s Post Mortem. His Death Must Be Reinvestigated":

Jeffrey Epstein’s cause of death should be reinvestigated, a doctor present at the paedophile’s post mortem examination has said.

Dr Michael Baden is unconvinced by the finding of the New York Medical Examiner’s Office that the financier took his own life while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019.

“My opinion is that his death was most likely caused by strangulation pressure rather than hanging,” the pathologist, who was hired by Epstein’s estate, told The Telegraph.

He said: “Given all the information now available, further investigation into the cause and manner of death is warranted.”

Dr Baden did not carry out the post mortem but was present during the examination, acting as an observer on behalf of Epstein’s family.

“At the time that the autopsy was done by the medical examiner, we both agreed that, on the basis of the autopsy report and the information available, more information was needed to determine the cause and manner of death,” Dr Baden said.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

Political Reporter Roger Sollenberger on New Epstein File Revelations

From Roger Sollenberger's 2-15-26 SUBSTACK article entitled "FBI Interviewed Trump Accuser, Epstein Files Show":

The FBI spoke to a victim of Jeffrey Epstein who also accused Donald Trump of sexually and violently assaulting her, according to records in the Justice Department’s publicly searchable Epstein database.

The records don’t show what became of the DOJ’s investigation into the allegations, but the documents indicate the government found her to be a credible accuser. Records elsewhere in the files reveal that a woman with matching biographical details sued Epstein’s estate and won a settlement in 2021.

The allegations and FBI interview are landmark revelations, undermining the White House’s protestations that Trump hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing and showing instead that the U.S. government has been aware of a credible Trump accuser in the Epstein files.

The DOJ included the woman’s allegation in a comprehensive 21-page internal slideshow presentation about the government’s investigations into Epstein and convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as in an internal email chain collecting information for the presentation. Her accusation is one of two about Trump that the FBI’s child sex trafficking and violent crimes task forces noted on the slide, which listed a number of then-nonpublic accusations involving prominent figures.

“[REDACTED] stated Epstein introduced her to Trump who subsequently forced her head down to his exposed penis which she subsequently bit,” the presentation says. “In response, Trump punched her in the head and kicked her out.” The victim would have been “approximately 13-15 years old when this occurred,” according to the presentation. The alleged assault took place in the early-mid 1980s, and the same woman also claimed to be an Epstein victim.

 The second Trump claim on the slide — that Epstein introduced a victim to Trump when she was 14 years old, saying, “This is a good one, right?”, to which Trump agreed — carries immense credibility within the DOJ: That claim, about an incident at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in 1994, came from a key government witness whose testimony at trial helped DOJ prosecutors convict Maxwell, the files reveal.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

NBC News on Child Molester Pardoned By Trump

From Ryan J. Reilly's 2-11-26 NBC News report entitled "Jan. 6 Rioter Pardoned by Trump Is Convicted of Child Molestation":

A Jan. 6 rioter pardoned by President Donald Trump has been convicted of child molestation and other crimes after he tried to use an anticipated payout from the Trump administration to silence one victim, according to a Florida prosecutor's office.

A jury in Hernando County found Andrew Paul Johnson, 45, guilty by of five charges, including molesting a child under 12 and another under 16, as well as lewd and lascivious exhibition and transmitting harmful materials by electronic device to a minor, according to Walter Forgie of the Fifth Judicial Circuit’s state attorney’s office.

Johnson faces life in prison when he is sentenced in March, the state attorney's office said. His defense attorney did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Johnson pleaded guilty in 2024 to nonviolent charges after he entered the U.S. Capitol through a broken window during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot. Court documents say Johnson, who referred to himself as “American Terrorist” and “Proud j6er,” engaged in “disorderly and disruptive conduct” for more than four hours.

He was among more than 1,500 people who were pardoned or had their sentences commuted by Trump after he was re-elected in 2024. It was among his first acts as president.

 

To read the entire article, click HERE.

RAW STORY: "Republican Accuses Kash Patel of Lying to Congress"

From Travis Gettys' 2-10-26 RAW STORY article entitled: "Republican Accuses Kash Patel of Lying to Congress: 'This Is Significant'":

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has accused FBI Director Kash Patel of lying to Congress about the Jeffrey Epstein files.

The Kentucky Republican made the allegation in a social media exchange with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, whom Massie prodded to unredact the names of potential co-conspirators to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

"In response to my posts on X today, DOJ 1) unredacted an FBI file that LABELS two individuals as co-conspirators 2) unredacted a file that lists several men who might be implicated 3) tacitly admitted that Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem was the sender of the torture video," Massie posted.

The Department of Justice unredacted the name of billionaire Les Wexner in a document that Massie said also contained the names of numerous victims, and he said the retail magnate's name already appeared thousands of times in documents that have been released.

Massie said the document directly contradicted testimony that Patel had given to Congress.

"This is significant because Kash Patel testified to Congress that FBI had no evidence of other sex traffickers," Massie added. "This is FBI’s own 2019 document listing [Les] Wexner as coconspirator in child sex trafficking. It wasn’t unredacted until tonight."

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

Christine Morgan Reviews CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES!

Multiple award-winning novelist Christine Morgan has just reviewed my short story collection, CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES. Here's an excerpt:

People often ask “what IS bizarro?” as if there’s a single handy definition, but there isn’t. Indeed, even within the category of bizarro itself, multiple sub-genres thrive, from the sheer comedic wackadoo to the elevated philosophical.

As I write this review, Robert Guffey’s delightfully wackadoo previous work, The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook, recently received the Wonderland Award, yet here I am looking at Cryptopolis, which is well to the other end of the spectrum. Proving, not that proof is necessary, he’s a talented multi-threat who should be watched very closely.

Wait, that sounds like a threat. Oh well; you get the gist. Cryptopolis, a collection of interconnected and cleverly interwoven short stories, is simply beautiful, while at the same time exceedingly surreal.

To read Morgan's entire review, click HERE.

FYI: One of the tales in CRYPTOPOLIS, "Initiation," was recently adapted by StarShipSofa! If you want to hear Doni Nicoll-Duir's evocative reading of "Initiation," click HERE!

And you can hear me talking about the secret origins of CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES on several different podcasts and radio shows including Tarek Al-Ubaidi's CROPfm, Seriah Azkath's WHERE DID THE ROAD GO?, Solaris Blueraven's HYPERSPACE, Matthew Hopewell's THE AP STRANGE SHOW, and Chris Mathieu's FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE NEWS.

PRAISE FOR CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES: 

"The stories in Cryptopolis feel like the bloody, star-filled lovechildren of Burroughs and Delany, with each tale ostensibly one part of a greater whole; abstract limbs and organs tethered together by strained flesh. Cryptopolis will take readers on a hallucinogenic journey through worlds fractured by time and place—slipping through liminal dimensions with seamless abandon to unveil unsettling illusions and heartbreaking realities—and totally worth the trip."

--Philip Fracassi, author of Boys in the Valley

 

"If you're tired of the same wines and you're curious about the vintage only just whispered about, have a deep draught of Robert Guffey's Cryptopolis. You don't have to descend with Fortunato to the deepest cellars to find this bottle of Amontillado. Here it is! If Poe collaborated with Robert Anton Wilson...if Borges had a lovechild with Lovecraft, which was subsequently adopted by Kafka...you might get Cryptopolis. I think too that Clark Ashton Smith would admire this collection. Written with the obsessive precision of a mysterious staircase descending into the abyss, Cryptopolis will take you to strange epiphanies..."  

 

--John Shirley, author of The Feverish Stars

 

"Once upon a time, weird and speculative fiction had an underground full of stories that were not written as calling cards or as film treatments or as extended internet memes. Guffey's tales resist genre gentrification; they move into your mind to turn it into a punk house squat!" 

--Nick Mamatas, author of Move Under Ground and The Second Shooter

 

 "In Cryptopolis & Other Stories, Guffey's free-ranging intellect meshes wonderfully with his command of the language."

 

--John Oakes, author of The Fast

 

"Guffey brings together 25 horror shorts that swing wildly between terrifying mindtrips and gritty realism. Throughout, Guffey’s blunt prose lends a sense of normalcy to the fantastic as his cast of losers from all walks of life face the cruelties of their existence—sexual violence, drugs, war, parenthood, and poverty [...]. Though not for the faint of heart, this bizarre and over-the-top collection is sure to thrill devotees of weird fiction."

--Publishers Weekly   

"Cryptopolis may end up being a gateway drug into Robert Guffey’s work. I don’t use that term spuriously. So many of Guffey’s stories in Cryptopolis have a hard-bitten edge and gritty feel to them that I could see him crafting a metatext about an author whose books are physically addictive. Across the collection’s twenty-five stories and vignettes, Guffey displays a range of interests and foci with such depth and heart that I wouldn’t be surprised if he became one of my favorite modern writers [...].

"Affect, the experience of emotional response, seems to be at issue in every one of Guffey’s offerings. From the opening eponymous story (which is the only outright Lovecraftian story in the collection), with its resonances of love as a torturous paralytic, to the last, 'Esthra, Shadows, Glass, Silence,' a parable of alternate lives and lost possibilities, the emotional response drawn from the reader appears to be the crux of every piece. These stories are engines designed to make the reader feel."

--Géza A. G. Reilly, Dead Reckonings

 "If you want a walk on the wild side, and I mean WILD, Robert Guffey’s fiction delivers that and more. It’s as if you’re lying in the grass in a park on a calm summer afternoon, you look up, and a creature you can’t even describe is looking at you. He starts talking in an even voice. But his words are chopping reality to pieces, and when he puts the pieces back together again, and you see the new picture, you feel a need to call the police. But then you realize you’re in a new place where the last people you want to talk to are the cops. What do you do now? You’re on your own. You better have strong resources. Very strong." 

 --Jon Rappoport, author of The Secret Behind Secret Societies