Freedom House Report Warns of Growing Repression Against Opponents in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua

Daniel Ortega

The US NGO Freedom House warned on Wednesday about the growing use of repressive measures against dissidents. On the island, where more than 50 countries are listed, Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela stand out. The document refers, among other issues, to the restriction of freedom of movement of opponents of these regimes.

According to the organization’s annual report, the coercive measures they use include the withdrawal of nationality, travel bans, withholding of identity documents and denial of consular services. The document, which focuses on “transnational repression,” also highlights that these restrictions are less visible forms of repression compared to the killings and kidnappings that also occur.

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Anti-Immigration Panama Repatriates Illegal Immigrants to South America and U.S. Funds Flights

Jose Raul Mulino

To stem the flow of illegal immigrants, Panama on Tuesday began repatriating illegal immigrants to South America on U.S.-funded flights.

The U.S. coordinated the effort with the new anti-immigration government of Panama led by newly sworn-in President José Raúl Mulino, ADN America reported.

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Non-Profit Launches Investigation into Secret Service Use of DEI Policies

Secret Service

A non-profit organization has started its own investigation into the Secret Service’s use of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices that many have suggested has compromised the quality of the agency’s protection, following the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump last month.

According to Fox News, the investigation is being carried out by the Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF), a Colorado-based non-profit. MSLF’s probe will take a closer look at how DEI has negatively affected the agency’s hiring, retention, and promotion of agents, prioritizing race- and gender-based identity politics over competence.

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Virginia Democrat Who Sparked First Trump Impeachment Faces FEC Complaint over Response to ‘Stolen Valor’ Question

Eugene Vindman

Retired Army Col. Yevegny “Eugene” Vindman, the Democrat nominee for Virginia’s 7th Congressional district, on Thursday was confirmed to be the recipient of a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint over an alleged improper contribution from a political organization that supports his candidacy.

Vindman’s twin brother Alexander is the man who overheard the phone call between former President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that led to the first attempt to impeach Trump. Vindman reportedly took the information about the call from his brother and made a report to White House lawyers.

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ACLU Struggles to Explain Why California’s Conversion Therapy Ban Doesn’t Protect Idaho’s Trans Ban

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Because the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld California outlawing talk therapy for minors with unwanted same-sex attraction, it must likewise uphold Idaho’s ban on invasive and potentially irreversible medical treatments to make gender-confused minors resemble the opposite sex, the Gem State’s outside lawyer told a three-judge panel Thursday.

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New York Court Sides with Crisis Pregnancy Centers on Abortion Reversal Pill in Legal Blow to Letitia James

NY AG

A federal district court in New York ruled Thursday that pro-life pregnancy centers are allowed to promote an abortion pill reversal medication while the suit continues.

Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit in early May against 11 pregnancy centers, claiming the organizations were misleading pregnant women when talking about an abortion reversal medication. The court granted the preliminary order in favor of the National Institute for Family and Life Advocates and Gianna’s House Inc. and Options Care Center’s follow-up suit against James, stating that the First Amendment protects the right for the groups to talk about the abortion reversal pill.

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Judge Finds RFK Jr. Can Bring Censorship Lawsuit Against Biden Admin After Supreme Court Rejects States’ Challenge

RFK Jr. in a courtroom (composite image)

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can continue to pursue his censorship lawsuit against the Biden administration.

The Supreme Court ruled in June that state and individual plaintiffs who alleged the Biden administration violated their First Amendment rights when it pressured social media companies to suppress speech did not have standing to sue. District Court Judge Terry Doughty found Kennedy meets the standard set by the Supreme Court because there is “ample evidence” to show he has been censored in the past at the direction of government actors and “substantial risk” that the censorship will continue.

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Secret Service Agents Placed on Leave After Trump Assassination Attempt

Three weeks ago, Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe angrily pushed back on senators’ calls to immediately fire or discipline key agents directly responsible for the security failures that led to the assassination attempt against former President Trump at last month’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Since that time, Secret Service leaders have placed several members of the Pittsburgh Field Office on administrative leave, according to three sources in the Secret Service community.

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ICE Lost over 32,000 Unaccompanied Minors: DHS Watchdog

ICE cannot assure the children ‘are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor’

The internal watchdog for the Department of Homeland Security has issued a warning that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s handling of unaccompanied migrant children is an “urgent issue.”

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Judge Declines to Dismiss Hunter Biden’s Tax Case over Special Counsel Challenge

A federal judge declined Monday night to dismiss Hunter Biden’s tax case after he challenged special counsel David Weiss’ appointment.

Hunter Biden’s attorneys filed motions in July to dismiss both his tax case in California and his gun case in Delaware due to “lack of jurisdiction,” arguing Weiss’ appointment was unlawful. While Judge Mark Scarsi previously rejected their argument about Weiss, Hunter Biden’s attorneys raised it again after a judge decided to toss former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case after finding special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment unconstitutional.

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SCOTUS Refused to Ban Federal Censorship Pressure; It Could Make Churches Complicit in Abortion

United States Supreme Court

When the Supreme Court reversed a preliminary injunction against several federal agencies and officials in June for “coerc[ing] or significantly encourag[ing]” tech platforms to suppress content, Washington state saw a new way to protect its mandatory abortion coverage in maternity healthcare plans from religious freedom challenges.

Five years into a lawsuit by Cedar Park Assembly of God against SB 6219, which includes criminal penalties up to prison, the Evergreen State argues that insurers won’t necessarily offer abortion-free plans if the court permanently bars it from enforcing surgical- and chemical-abortion coverage against such religious ministries that are opposed to abortion.

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Alvin Bragg’s Office Leaves Door Open for Delaying Trump’s Sentencing

Alvin Bragg and Donald Trump in a courtroom (composite image)

Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is not taking a position on former President Donald Trump’s request to delay his sentencing date in New York, according to a filing sent Friday.

Trump’s attorneys asked Judge Juan Merchan last week to push his sentencing, currently set for Sept. 18, until after the November election. In a filing, Bragg’s office said it would “defer to the Court” on whether a delay is necessary to “allow for orderly appellate litigation,” writing they are “prepared to appear for sentencing on any future date the Court sets.”

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Mentally Ill Woman Prosecuted by Kamala Harris After Surviving Police Shooting Lived in ‘Squalor’ Despite $1 Million Settlement

Teresa Sheehan was shot by two officers at a group home during a mental health crisis with the San Francisco Police Department in 2008, when Vice President Kamala Harris was serving as the District Attorney of San Francisco.

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Grandmas in Chains: Harris Legacy of Pursuing Pro-Life Activists Set Stage for Wider Legal Fight

Heather Idoni

Defending the abortion industry helped define Vice President Kamala Harris as California attorney general, especially a controversial 2016 raid on pro-life activist David Daleiden to seize and suppress undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials who thought they were talking to “laboratory wholesalers” in Daleiden’s sting.

Some of those videos, released years later at a congressional proceeding, show Planned Parenthood tried to preserve fetal tissue to sell for research and avoid prosecution by detaching extremities.

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Coalition of 15 States Sues Biden-Harris Regime over Plan to Force States to Provide Public Benefits to Illegals

A coalition of 15 states have filed suit against the Biden-Harris regime over its new rule that will require states to pay public benefits to illegal immigrants, including healthcare benefits.

The rule, which is set to go into effect on November 1, would force states “to expend limited resources on illegal immigrants,” said Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey in a press release Thursday.

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Hunter Biden’s Ex-Partner Cooperating in Bizarre Murder-for-Hire Prosecution, Court Records Show

Devon Archer, the former Hunter Biden confidant convicted of fraud in January, whose testimony to Congress transformed the congressional impeachment probe into alleged Biden family corruption, also is a cooperating witness in an unrelated federal murder-for-hire prosecution, according to court records.

Archer’s lawyers have used their client’s cooperation in the Vermont murder-for-hire case and the impeachment inquiry in Congress to successfully delay his sentencing last month in a securities fraud case, where he was convicted back in 2018.

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Supreme Court Declines Biden Administration Request to Enforce LGBTQ Title IX Protections

Students Holding Hands

The United States’ Supreme Court on Friday rejected a request from the Biden administration to enforce new protections for LGBTQ students that have been blocked in multiple conservative states.

The new federal rule was established under Title IX and was meant to protects students from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The rule was unveiled in April, and took effect in some states in August.

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Texas Files Lawsuit over Rule Pushing Businesses to Adopt ‘Transgender’ Policies

Ken Paxton

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Biden administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) over an allegedly “unlawful” April policy rewrite that changed the definition of discrimination to include “gender identity.”

The EEOC updated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to require both state and private employers to accommodate transgender employees by allowing men in women’s spaces, forcing the use of  “preferred pronouns” and ending sex-specific dress codes. Paxton and the Heritage Foundation are challenging the rewrite, arguing that it violates the Administrative Procedure Act and does not have sufficient standing as the original wording prohibits sex-based discrimination but does not mandate special accommodations for the sexes, according to the lawsuit.

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ICE Finds Peruvian Gang Leader Wanted for 23 Murders After Border Officials Allowed Him into U.S.

ICE Officer

Federal immigration authorities on Wednesday arrested a Peruvian gang leader who is wanted in his home country for nearly two dozen murders.

Gianfranco Torres-Navarro, a 38-year-old Peruvian national who entered the United States unlawfully earlier this year, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Wednesday in Endicott, New York, the agency confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation. The notorious gang leader has since been transported to the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia, New York.

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Man Wrongly Convicted of Murder Under Kamala Harris: ‘I’m Going with Donald Trump’ in 2024

Jamal Trulove

A man who was wrongly convicted of murder in San Francisco when Vice President Kamala Harris was serving as the city’s district attorney, and who later received more than $13 million in a settlement after he was acquitted following six years in prison endorsed former President Donald Trump in his bid for the White House in 2024.

Trulove endorsed Trump in a video posted to YouTube on July 28, explaining that he previously supported the Biden-Harris ticket during the 2020 election in a bid to preserve his entertainment career.

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Analysis: Noncitizens Found on Voter Rolls Across Multiple States

Voters

More than a dozen jurisdictions run by Democrats – including Washington D.C., and several adjacent Maryland municipalities – allow noncitizens to vote in some local elections. San Francisco not only permits noncitizens to vote but appointed one to serve on its Elections Commission.

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ICE Nabs Illegal Migrant Charged with Raping Disabled Child After Release by Sanctuary Authorities

Cory Bernard Alvarez

Federal immigration authorities on Tuesday arrested an illegal migrant who had been charged with raping a disabled child and had previously been released by a sanctuary jurisdiction on low bond.

Deportation officers apprehended Cory Bernard Alvarez, a 26-year-old Haitian national living in the U.S. unlawfully, near his residence in Brockton, Massachusetts, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials confirmed in a press release. Alvarez has been wanted by the agency since he was charged in March for allegedly raping a 15-year-old girl at a migrant housing location in Massachusetts, a state with “sanctuary” policies concerning ICE cooperation.

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Migrant Allegedly Rapes Woman at Knifepoint in Front of Boyfriend: Report

David Davon-Bonilla mugshot in front of a courtroom (composite image)

A migrant previously arrested for sexual assault allegedly raped a woman at knifepoint in New York City on Sunday, while another attacked her boyfriend when he tried to intervene, the New York Post reported.

David Davon-Bonilla, a 24-year-old Nicaraguan migrant, reportedly threw the 46-year-old woman to the ground and held a knife to her throat as he raped her, law-enforcement sources told the NYP. When the woman’s boyfriend attempted to stop the attack, Davon-Bonilla’s alleged accomplice, 37-year-old Mexican migrant Leovando Moreno, reportedly struck him with a pipe.

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Biden-Harris Failed to Remove 90 Percent of Illegal Immigrants Under New ICE Program: Report

House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green, R-Tenn., shared his reaction to a report from the New York Post showing that the Biden-Harris administration has rarely removed illegal immigrants under a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) program.

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Biden Didn’t Disclose Allegedly Free Vacations, yet Pushes for Supreme Court Reform Following Gifts

President Joe Biden has allegedly taken multiple free vacations at the homes of billionaire donors and wealthy businessmen without disclosing them over the years, yet has called for Supreme Court reform after justices have taken trips without reporting them.

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Trump to Sue Justice Department for $100 Million in Damages over Mar-a-Lago Classified Documents Search

Former President Trump is seeking $100 million in damages from the U.S. Justice Department over its handling of the classified documents search at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida.

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Proposal Suggests Fully Funding Veterans Affairs to Avoid Missing October Distributions

Veterans

With a looming deadline to fund benefits to about 7 million veterans in October, and Congress out until Sept. 9, Maine Sen. Susan Collins and six colleagues have filed legislation to get full funding.

A Republican and independent are among the six. Veterans Affairs is facing a deficit of about $15 billion the remainder of this year and next – a deficit larger than the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency, says one senator.

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Illegal Migrant Released into U.S. by Biden Admin Allegedly Committed 22 Crimes in Just Six Months

David Hernandez-Martinez

An illegal migrant from Venezuela allegedly committed at least 22 criminal offenses in the span of just six months and still may not be deported, a report from the House Judiciary Committee revealed Wednesday.

Daniel Hernandez-Martinez was released into the U.S. by the Biden-Harris administration in early 2023 before allegedly committing a slew of crimes, the report found. Despite the array of charges, the Venezuelan migrant — who is a suspected member of the “Tren de Aragua” gang — wasn’t detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) until his seventh run-in with the New York Police Department.

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Butler Township Police Decline to Name Officer Who Claimed to Warn Secret Service of Would-Be Trump Assassin’s Perch, Cite ‘Numerous Investigations’

The Butler Township Police Department (BTPD) on Friday declined to provide The Pennsylvania Daily Star with the name of the police officer who claimed to warn the U.S. Secret Service about the possibility of an assassination attempt in a June 13 bodycam video released by the department Thursday.

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Jack Smith Requests Delay in Trump Case to Assess Impact of Supreme Court’s Presidential Immunity Ruling

Special counsel Jack Smith requested a delay Thursday night in former president Donald Trump’s election interference case.

Prosecutors wrote in a filing that the government is still assessing the impact of the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling and asked for the timeline to be pushed back several weeks. Judge Tanya Chutkan previously scheduled a hearing for Aug. 16, but Smith requested permission to instead file a proposed schedule for pretrial proceedings by the end of the month, effectively delaying any action until September.

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Kamala Harris Sent Agents to Raid Pro-Life Journalist’s Home After She Met with Planned Parenthood, Emails Show

David Daleiden

In March 2016, top Planned Parenthood officials in California eagerly emailed one another about an upcoming meeting with the state’s then-attorney general, Kamala Harris. The meeting carried so much import that the Planned Parenthood officials met with Harris’ staff ahead of time “to discuss prep,” emails reviewed by The Daily Signal show.

About two weeks later, on April 5, 2016, California Department of Justice authorities raided the home of a pro-life journalist in his late 20s—David Daleiden, the head of the Center for Medical Progress, who had recently published videos allegedly showing Planned Parenthood officials gruesomely describing how they extract aborted-baby body parts. Daleiden says the videos prove that Planned Parenthood was selling the aborted baby body parts for profit.

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New Audio-Video From Trump Rally Shows Local Law Enforcement’s Frustration with Secret Service

Newly acquired police body cam video includes audio in which a local police officer moments after the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Trump at a Pennsylvania campaign rally complains about the Secret Service not having cover the rooftop from which the sniper shot.

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FBI Let Suspect in Plot to Kill Trump into U.S. on Parole Despite Terror Ties, Iran Trip, Memos Show

The FBI allowed Asif Raza Merchant, the Pakistani man charged with plotting with Tehran to assassinate Donald Trump and others, to enter the U.S. in April with special permission known as “significant public benefit parole” even though he was flagged on a terrorism watchlist and recently traveled to Iran, according to government documents reviewed by Just the News.

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Judge Chutkan Faces Long Road to Get Trump Case Back on Track After Presidential Immunity Ruling

Judge Chutkan with Donald Trump in courtroom (composite image)

District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan will face challenges getting a Trump case that’s unlikely to proceed to trial before the election — or possibly ever — back on track.

After former President Donald Trump’s presidential immunity appeal brought on a months-long delay in the election interference case prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith, the case finally returned to Chutkan on Friday. Though she wasted no time scheduling a hearing for August 16 and asking both parties to submit a schedule for pretrial proceedings by August 9, legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation that efforts to advance the case will meet continued challenges.

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Commentary: Media Continues to Ignore Kamala Harris’ DNC Pipe Bomb Scare

Confirmation last week by the Department of Homeland Security that Vice President Kamala Harris came within several yards of an explosive device on the afternoon of January 6, 2021 should be one of the hottest stories right now.

The fact that the installed Democratic candidate for president barely escaped an attempt on her life by an alleged MAGA terrorist during what she compares to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor makes for ripe clickbait. Further, her stoicism in the face of such a grave threat—she has never discussed the matter publicly—not just to herself but to her staff and police officers protecting her that day at the DNC is the stuff heroes are made of.

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Commentary: The Reckoning Has Come for K-12 Sex Abuse, and You the Taxpayer Are on the Hook

High School students in the classroom

The teenage female athletes at California’s Pomona High School said they felt special when a handful of coaches there took them under their wing, spending more time with them than others, providing extra encouragement, sharing personal stories and, sometimes, seemingly harmless flirtatious talk.

One track team member was amazed at a Nevada meet when she saw the coaches drinking, smoking marijuana, and sharing the party scene with teammates. But that attention turned to tragedy at a subsequent meet in Las Vegas when a coach brought the 16-year-old to his hotel room, plied her with alcohol, and, she says, raped her.

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Miyares Joins 20 Other AGs in Support of Federal TikTok Ban

Jason Miyares

Republican attorneys general from 21 states, led by the attorneys general of Montana and Virginia, submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia defending the federal law banning TikTok in the U.S.

President Joe Biden signed the legislation into law in April due to concerns that through Chinese-owned parent company Bytedance, the Chinese Communist Party might be able to gain access to users’ private data or influence American youth toward communism. The law threatens to prohibit the app in the U.S. if Bytedance does not sell its shares in the social media company by Jan. 19, 2025.

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Former Secret Service Chief Wanted to Destroy Cocaine Evidence

Kimberly Cheatle

Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and others in top agency leadership positions wanted to destroy the cocaine discovered in the White House last summer, but the Secret Service Forensics Services Division and the Uniformed Division stood firm and rejected the push to dispose of the evidence, according to three sources in the Secret Service community.

Multiple heated confrontations and disagreements over how best to handle the cocaine ensued after a Secret Services Uniformed Division officer found the bag on July 2, 2023, a quiet Sunday while President Biden and his family were at Camp David in Maryland, the sources said.

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Commentary: U.S. Government Still Waffling on 9/11 Plotters

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

This week, we were reminded again of the 9/11 attacks. First, it was reported that U.S. government lawyers and defense counsel reached a plea deal giving life imprisonment to the high-level al Qaeda prisoners that plotted the attacks. While life imprisonment is undoubtedly a serious punishment, 9/11 was a mass murder that cries out for the death penalty. The lack of proportionality to the offense was striking.

Worse, the family members of 9/11 victims were not given any forewarning or a chance to provide input on this decision, even though the government had promised to do so. They instead received an antiseptic letter explaining what happened after the fact.

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Harris Released Illegal Immigrant Charged with Unlicensed Driving as San Francisco DA and He Killed Someone Shortly After

Robert Galo in a courtroom (composite image)

An illegal immigrant that then-San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris released from custody after police caught him driving without a license went on to kill a young law student months later with his car, the Washington Free Beacon reported on Tuesday.

Harris’ office dropped charges against Roberto Galo in June 2010 after he was stopped by police for driving the wrong way down a one-way road and arrested for operating a vehicle without a license, according to the Free Beacon. Months later, in November 2010, he slammed his car into 25-year-old law student Drew Rosenberg after making a left-hand turn at a yellow light, driving his car over his body multiple times in an apparent attempt to escape.

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