International
Trump receives no jail, fine, or probation in New York hush money case

From LifeSiteNews
‘The Radical Democrats have lost another pathetic, unAmerican Witch Hunt,’ Donald Trump said, declaring the outcome ‘proves that, as all Legal Scholars and Experts have said, THERE IS NO CASE, THERE WAS NEVER A CASE, and this whole Scam fully deserves to be DISMISSED.’
Returning President Donald Trump will not receive any fine or prison time for his conviction related to “hush money” payments to pornographic performer Stephanie “Stormy Daniels” Clifford, Judge Juan Merchan ruled Friday morning.
In May 2024, a New York jury convicted Trump on 34 counts of allegedly falsifying business records pertaining to a $130,000 payment to Daniels arranged by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen in October 2016, ostensibly for her to keep quiet about an adulterous relationship Trump contends never happened, as well as a related $420,000 Trump paid to Cohen.
Left-wing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Trump over that payment in March 2023, claiming the $130,000 was a campaign expenditure not recorded as such in payments to Cohen listed as “legal expenses” in 2017. Many observers have faulted the prosecution and conviction as politically motivated contortions of both the law and the facts of the case.
During Friday’s hearing, Merchan sentenced Trump to “unconditional discharge,” meaning that he will not face any formal penalty such as prison, fines, or probation, though the judge stressed that the powers of the presidency cannot “erase a jury verdict” or “reduce the seriousness of the crime or justify its commission in any way.”
“The Radical Democrats have lost another pathetic, unAmerican Witch Hunt,” Trump reacted on Truth Social, declaring that the outcome “proves that, as all Legal Scholars and Experts have said, THERE IS NO CASE, THERE WAS NEVER A CASE, and this whole Scam fully deserves to be DISMISSED.”
The day before, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to reject Trump’s request to block sentencing, although the decision proved to be moot, and Merchan had already said he would not give an incoming president jail time.
Final resolution of the hush money case means all four major prosecutions of Trump, which critics framed as politically-motivated lawfare intended to hurt his chances in the 2024 election, are now behind him, following the collapse of two federal cases over his handling of classified documents and potential culpability in the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot, and of a Georgia case over his contesting of the 2020 election results.
COVID-19
Chinese filmmaker sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for documentary about COVID tyranny

From LifeSiteNews
A 33 year-old Chinese filmmaker highlighted the biggest protests China has seen since Tiananmen Square using only film footage. For this crime of ‘provoking trouble,’ he has been sentenced to over three years in prison.
A Chinese filmmaker has been sentenced to three years and six months in prison for creating a documentary about protests against the Chinese government’s heavy-handed COVID-era restrictions.
A Shanghai court sentenced 33-year-old Chen Pinlin, CNN reported, following his conviction for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a charge used to target dissenting Chinese political activists, including journalists.
Pinlin’s apparent crime was his creation of “Urumqi Middle Road,” a film that showed a glimpse of the Chinese government’s tyrannical COVID-19 crackdown and featured ensuing “White Paper” protests, named for white pieces of paper held up by street demonstrators in place of signs, to avoid Chinese Communist Party (CCP) censorship.
The protest movement was sparked by a deadly apartment fire in Urumqi which claimed at least 10 lives, reportedly due to COVID lockdown measures that prevented both the escape of inhabitants and timely rescue efforts. Street vigils cropped up in late November 2022 to remember the deceased, morphing into protests that caught on in several major cities of China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Xi’an.
The protests became an outlet for the indignation and anguish caused by draconian COVID policies country-wide, and called for an end to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s zero-COVID policies, which mandated that citizens be cruelly locked in their own homes for weeks on end. In Shanghai, for example, the government enforced residence confinement in some cases by sealing or padlocking doors.
At the time, China expert Steve Mosher warned that the deadly toll of Shanghai’s ongoing lockdowns would be “much greater” than any potential lives lost due to COVID, and predicted deaths by starvation, strokes and heart attacks.
According to CNN, the White Paper protests, which often directly attacked Xi Jinping, were the largest China had seen since the 1989 student-led Tiananmen Square demonstration. Pinlin’s documentary, still available on YouTube outside of China, includes film footage of White Paper protestors crying, “We want dignity!” “We want the truth!” “We want human rights!”
Masses of protestors also called for Xi Jinping to step down. Some cried for the “removal of traitor Xi Jinping,” and one man can be heard shouting, “Without the Communist Party, there would be a new China!”
The name of the English version of Pinlin’s film is “Not the Foreign Force,” in objection to claims by the CCP that “foreign forces” had fomented protests against the Chinese government.
“I hope to explore why, whenever internal conflicts arise in China, foreign forces are always made the scapegoat,” wrote Pinlin. The answer is clear to everyone: the more the government misleads, forgets, and censors, the more we must speak up, remind others, and remember. Only by remembering the ugliness can we strive toward the light. I also hope that China will one day embrace its own light and future.”subscribe to our daily headlines
Chen “has only ever served the public interest by reporting on historical protests against the regime’s abuses and should never have been arrested. We call on democracies to increase pressure on Chinese authorities to ensure that all charges against Chen are dropped,” Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in a statement in March.
illegal immigration
Many Catholics believe Catholic Charities accept ‘blood money’ when they facilitate illegal immigration

U.S. Border Patrol agents prepare to transport immigrants for processing next to the U.S.-Mexico border fence on January 19, 2025, near Sasabe, Arizona.
From LifeSiteNews
By John Cassara
Actions facilitating illegal immigration are committed with ‘full knowledge and deliberate consent,’ and they are even more egregious when the facilitator financially benefits.
The first piece of legislation that President Trump signed into law is the Laken Riley Act. This law mandates the federal detention of illegal immigrants accused of serious crime. The legislation is named after a Georgia nursing student who was sexually assaulted and brutally murdered by a Venezuelan illegal alien who was previously arrested and paroled into the United States during the Biden administration’s “open border” policies.
It is well-documented that illegal immigration is responsible for various forms of human suffering and degradation. Murder, gang violence, human trafficking, sex trafficking, narcotics trafficking, theft, terrorism, organized crime, torture, rape, assault, kidnapping, corruption, money laundering, various forms of fraud, and environmental crime all result from illegal immigration.
Statistics are sterile. Like Laken Riley, each victim has a story. Loved ones are devastated. There are countless heinous and barbaric crimes linked to illegal immigration perpetrated against individuals, families, and communities. Some involve horrendous suffering, torture, and the loss of life.
Crimes against children are particularly abhorrent. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General released a report that the Biden-Harris administration lost track of approximately 300,000 migrant children. Unfortunately, many of these children are undoubtedly trafficked, victims of sexual abuse, and/or are engaged in abusive child labor.
I previously wrote an article for Crisis Magazine discussing illegal immigration and the Catholic Church. I explained that from an investigator’s standpoint the key to solving criminal activity based on greed is to determine who benefits from the crime. In other words, follow the money.
During the Biden years, the U.S. Catholic Church accelerated its entanglement in the “illegal immigration complex.” Various Catholic charities and organizations facilitate the illegal immigration pipeline by providing food, clothing, shelter, transportation, legal services, counseling, and so on.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the charities and organizations it supports promote facilitating illegal immigration as “acts of mercy.”
Perhaps. But there is another way of looking at it. Let’s use an analogy.
The Catholic Church teaches that it is a mortal sin to facilitate a mortal sin. For example, if someone knowingly and willfully assists in facilitating an abortion by providing counseling, shelter, or driving the mother to an abortion clinic, the enabler is guilty of sin. The sin is even more egregious if the facilitator financially benefits. It is blood money.
Similar to the driver who committed a mortal sin by taking the expectant mother to an abortion clinic, the Church’s actions facilitating illegal immigration are committed with “full knowledge and deliberate consent.”
Making the matter even worse, the Church is accepting billions in what could reasonably be labeled blood money.
According to recent numbers obtained from Complicit Clergy, the Biden administration granted Catholic non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and charities nearly $3 billion in immigration-related funding over the past four years. In comparison, Catholic charities received $0.8 billion during the first Trump administration. Since 2009, Catholic Charities and related organizations have received over $5.2 billion tax dollars by providing immigration-related services to the federal government.
The total numbers are undoubtedly much higher. The above only includes money that is clearly earmarked for immigration. For organizations that are not subject to meaningful audits and oversight, money can be moved to and from other programs. The total also does not include money received from state and local sources. And the study only focused on entities that had “Catholic” as an identifier.
Is this blood money? Is the Church responsible?
We deserve straightforward answers. Unfortunately, there is a lack of transparency. We lack specifics about the assistance. This is partially by design. My area of expertise is anti-money laundering. The flow of money to Catholic Charities has many of the elements of the second stage of money laundering which is called “layering” or obfuscating the money trail.
The Biden administration funneling billions of taxpayer money to NGOs to facilitate their open border policies was done for two reasons: 1.) The federal agencies involved did not have the capacity to provide the logistics necessary for such a massive influx of people. 2.) Primarily because of issues of venue, jurisdiction, and NGO non-accountability, the federal money flow was not transparent. I believe it was intentional. The taxpayer money was effectively laundered in order to advance the Biden administration’s open border policies.
Apologists for the Church claim that the illegal immigrants have been “vetted”; they claim it is the government’s responsibility to approve who enters into the country. Once the aliens are admitted, the Church assumes that it has a green light to provide assistance.
That argument is fallacious. Some Catholic NGOs and nonprofits have been accused of assisting in the entry of the illegals. Regarding vetting, I have experience tracing and obtaining foreign national record checks. Simply put, it is impossible to effectively vet over 10 million illegal immigrants, many from failed and/or uncooperative states. Simply put, during the Biden administration, government and NGO due diligence did not happen.
Catholic Charities’ and the USCCB’s position is that they would never knowingly help a criminal alien. That position is also spurious for two reasons.
1.) By definition, illegal aliens are illegal. Every single illegal migrant has broken U.S. immigration law. They are all criminals. Similar to being a “cafeteria Catholic” or picking and choosing what Church teaching is valid, the Church cannot pick and choose what federal law is valid or decide who is a criminal and who is not.
2.) Approximately fifteen million illegal immigrants entered the U.S. under the Biden administration’s open border policies. Approximately 700,000 had criminal records before they even entered the country. Some are known murderers and rapists. Additional illegal immigrants were released from mental institutions and sent into the United States. Individuals on the terror watch list were admitted into the homeland. Chinese nationals of military age who are subservient to the CCP and possibly trained in forms of asymmetric warfare have flooded the country. Outside of Latinos, more Chinese have entered the country than any other ethnic group. There are also large numbers of illegals who committed horrendous crimes (human trafficking, smuggling, sexual predation, etc.) during the migration pipeline. Unknown numbers have committed crimes while in the United States. Many are recruited into criminal gangs. In other words, well over a million and probably many more have been involved with serious criminal and anti-American activity in addition to breaking immigration law. Rules of statistics and probability dictate with certainty that many of these criminal aliens were aided and abetted by Catholic Charities.
The Church has to know the above facts. Willful blindness is not a defense. In other words, there has been “full knowledge and deliberate consent.”
Contrary to what some claim, the illegal immigrants are not innocents. They made a freewill choice of bypassing the long legal pathway for a chance at expedited illegal entry. And as much as the media and the Church are going to emphasize the good that migrants do and put forward sob stories that play on our sympathy, from an enforcement perspective when one mixes illicit with licit the whole becomes tainted.
Similarly, the billions received by the U.S. Catholic Church and its NGOs and charities are also tainted. If nothing else, there is the appearance of impropriety. For example, is there a correlation between the $3 billion the Catholic Church received during the Biden presidency and the Catholic hierarchy refusing to criticize Biden and his policies that, according to George Weigel, could be “properly described, not simply as ‘un-Catholic’ but as anti-Catholic?”
Or is there any correlation between the $5 billion the Church has received from U.S. taxpayers to assist in illegal immigration and the $5 billion that Catholic dioceses and religious orders in the United States have spent in the past 20 years to settle the financial costs of the sex-abuse scandal?
Vice President J.D. Vance, a Catholic, looking at the financial record, said:
And so when the USCCB condemned Trump’s executive orders on immigration, did it have a pecuniary interest in doing so? … I think that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops needs to actually look in the mirror a little bit and recognize that when they receive over $100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants, are they worried about humanitarian concerns? Or are they actually worried about their bottom line? We’re going to enforce immigration law. We’re going to protect the American people.
The Church does not need any more scandals. Nor does she need to jeopardize her direct funding from the laity. Many of us refuse to contribute to the USCCB and Catholic Charities because of the above issues. There are many other worthwhile and non-tainted charities that support the good work of the Church.
The USCCB should get ahead of this issue and end its involvement in the illegal immigration complex before President Trump does it for them.
Reprinted with permission from Crisis Magazine.
-
COVID-192 days ago
Canadian judge orders Purolator to compensate employees fired for refusing COVID shot
-
Business1 day ago
90% of Ukraine news outlets get funding from USAID: new report
-
Business2 days ago
USPS suspends inbound packages from China, Hong Kong
-
DEI22 hours ago
Liberal leadership candidate Mark Carney confirms he will pursue agenda of ‘inclusiveness’
-
Arts2 days ago
Trump’s Hollywood envoys take on Tinseltown’s liberal monopoly
-
Business1 day ago
Canada should match or eclipse Trump’s red-tape cutting plan
-
Business1 day ago
Improve competitiveness, end capital gains tax hike immediately
-
Business18 hours ago
Trump’s FBI questionnaire exposes shocking conspiracy