From 2017 to 2021, Coleman held the chief federal law enforcement officer position for the Western District of Kentucky, overseeing and signing off on plea agreements. One such agreement has raised notable scrutiny:

In the case of Charles J Senters, a Kentucky State Police detective involved in the Eli Marcum murder investigation, glaring missteps were made. Detective Senters mishandled a crime scene by discarding critical evidence —a knife and a telephone wire. He further compromised the investigation by giving a crucial cell phone belonging to the victim to a witness without examining its call log. The detective’s actions were compounded by the false testimony he gave in court about the evidence destruction.

Despite a defendant’s detailed testimony on how the murder was carried out, the magnitude of the cop’s errors were so significant that they led to the dismissal of murder-related charges.  The broader narrative is chilling: Jimmy Benge, a drug kingpin suspecting Marcum of being a federal informant, had commissioned Jerry Sizemore to end Marcum’s life. A brutal murder ensued, with Marcum’s body eventually discarded and burned.

Senters’ indiscretions, notably the destruction of evidence while under a county judge’s order to preserve it, resulted in him being charged with three counts of false material declaration. However, it’s Coleman’s plea agreement for Senters that’s now under the microscope. The deal led to the dismissal of two of Senters’ charges, recommending a mere two years of probation. Absent this deal, Senters would have faced up to 15 years behind bars and a hefty $250,000 fine. While individuals in comparable situations faced jail time and were barred from law enforcement duties, Senters received a lenient sentence and no prohibition from returning to law enforcement.

This case presents a potential vulnerability for Coleman, who has been campaigning on a “tough-on-crime agenda” and previously said “I think when people break our laws and put others in danger, they deserve to be thrown in jail. Coleman faces off against Democratic candidate Pamela Stevenson, a retired Air Force Colonel, J.A.G., and a representative for District 43 in the Kentucky State House.

The post As a Prosecutor, Kentucky AG Candidate office Russell Coleman’s Gave Cushy Plea Deal To Cop Who Destroyed Murder Evidence; Killers Dodged Murder Charges appeared first on American Ledger.

Speaking last month about her experience as an intern working in a television newsroom in 1991, during the period of time when serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s was arrested and information about crimes were publicly disclosed, Dorow said:

“Well, when I was going to college and I had the privilege of doing things like having internships, being in the newsroom, I actually was on the news desk at Channel 12 as an intern when Jeffrey Dahmer hit. And I [had] my eyes were opened wide, even then in 1991 about how liberal the media was. And I said, ‘I don’t want to do this.’”

Dorow did not expand upon exactly which aspect of the news coverage of the serial killer’s capture, arrest, and full revelation of his crimes drove her to this indictment about the media as a whole.

Dorow has previously expressed far-right opinions regarding the acceptance of gay relationships, going as far as to oppose a 2003 Supreme Court ruling decriminalizing homosexual intercourse, indicating that it was among the worst decisions in U.S. Supreme Court history.

Dorow is running in the state’s nonpartisan primary for the Supreme Court seat on Feb. 21st. The top two vote getters will proceed to the general election on April 4.

The post Wisconsin Supreme Court Candidate Dorow Cryptically Says the Jeffrey Dahmer Case Opened Her Eyes To “How Liberal The Media Was” appeared first on American Ledger.

According to a review by American Ledger, unelected Senator Kelly Loeffler has repeatedly supported policies that would disproportionately harm Georgia’s nearly 700,000 veterans. In less than one year in office, Loeffler has supported a complete repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and has opposed fully funding the United States Postal Service that veterans rely on for prescription medication through the VA.

Although nearly 500,000 veterans across the country receive health care because of the Affordable Care Act, Loeffler has opposed the law for years. After being appointed to the Senate, she dodged questions about her support for a lawsuit seeking to overturn the entire ACA, which guarantees health care to tens of millions of Americans, enshrines protections for people with pre-existing conditions, and allows those under the age of 26 to remain on their parents’ insurance plans. According to a recent report using federal Census Bureau data, a repeal or partial rollback of the ACA would leave more vets without coverage and put more strain on the VA health care system.

In addition to opposing the ACA, Loeffler has defended slowdowns in USPS mail service, which hundreds of thousands of veterans rely on for prescription drugs that are provided by the VA. During the summer of 2020, mail slowdowns caused “dangerous delays” in deliveries of prescription medication, putting thousands of American lives at risk. Despite the urgent need for action on behalf of American veterans, Loeffler said the Senate should not have ended its summer recess to come back to work on the issue, even calling the life-threatening mail slowdowns “a fake crisis.”

And while Loeffler was voting to strip health care from hundreds of thousands of veterans, and ignoring critical USPS slowdowns, she did find time to look out for her own interests. Earlier this year, Loeffler sold $20 million in stock after receiving a private Senate briefing on the COVID-19 pandemic, denied the reality of Trump’s loss, and boasted about an endorsement from a famed conspiracy theorist Congresswoman-elect.

Loeffler is on the ballot for the first time as a candidate in the Senate runoff on January 5th against Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock.

The post Appointed Senator Loeffler Votes to Strip Health Care from Veterans appeared first on American Ledger.

According to a review by American Ledger, appointed Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler skipped nearly 30% of her Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearings during her first term in office, including hearings on measures to protect veterans’ health care amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Nearly 700,000 veterans live in the state of Georgia and depend on their representatives to fight for them in the halls of Congress, but Loeffler appears to have played hooky with her responsibility to protect Georgia’s vets.

On June 9, 2020 Loeffler skipped an urgent hearing where representatives from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs sent off a siren that they only had enough PPE equipment to last them for the next 30 days. Without the equipment, thousands of vulnerable veterans and health care providers would be endangered. But Loeffler did not attend, and her reason for skipping the hearing remains unclear, as she was filmed riding the elevator of the Capitol building just a few doors down on the same day.

Furthermore, over the past year, Loeffler has ditched Veterans’ Affairs meetings on addressing issues facing prisoners of war and their families, as well as hearings discussing the health impact of Agent Orange exposure on Vietnam War veterans.

On January 7th, Loeffler is seeking election as United States Senator from Georgia for the first time, and will need the support of many of these veterans whose concerns she has frequently sidelined.

The post Loeffler Skips Out On Veterans Health Care Hearings Amid Deadly Pandemic appeared first on American Ledger.

According to a review by American Ledger, Republican Senator David Perdue repeatedly supported the privatization of Social Security, a policy change that would benefit his Wall Street campaign donors and be a boon to his personal investments.

Between 2015 and 2017, Perdue voted three times to advance legislation that threatened to privatize Social Security and described the program that over 1.8 million Georgians rely on for their retirement as “republic-threatening.” Since entering the Senate in 2014, Perdue has taken over $2 million in campaign contributions from the securities and investment industry, a group that would stand to benefit tremendously from the privatization of Social Security.

Concurrently, Perdue has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in banks and financial services companies every year since being sworn in (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019). As a Senator, Perdue has executed 2,596 stock trades, by far the most in the chamber, including in industries that he oversaw through his committee work and some that benefited tremendously from the COVID-19 pandemic, which he received a confidential briefing about back in January.

Privatizing Social Security has been referred to for decades as the new “cash cow” because it would enable Wall Street firms to rake in profits by charging exorbitant management fees, potentially creating a windfall of billions of dollars for fund managers, investment bankers, and billionaires. Since the 1990s, such corporations have lobbied aggressively for privatization, donating millions to politicians to assert their political influence.

During his brief tenure in elected office, multi-millionaire David Perdue voted to privatize Social Security multiple times, all while taking millions in campaign contributions and investing directly in Wall Street firms, who stand to benefit enormously from privatization. Perdue is up for re-election in the Georgia Senate runoff on January 5th against Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff.

The post Perdue Stands to Personally Profit From His Votes For Social Security Privatization appeared first on American Ledger.

According to an analysis of economic data since early 2017, jobs in Pennsylvania’s coal, fracking, and steel industries have declined during President Donald Trump’s time in office despite his extensive promises on the 2016 campaign trail to preserve them.

In January 2017, there were 4,900 coal-mining jobs in Pennsylvania. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, that number stood at 4,800 in August 2020 after hitting a 30-year low of 4,500 from April through June 2020 during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

On the campaign trail in September of this year, Trump claimed that there were over 900,000 fracking-related jobs in Pennsylvania, a number that the data showed was wildly exaggerated, by as much as 3,500%. In reality, there are closer to 26,000 fracking jobs in Pennsylvania, a number that has almost certainly declined in response to market prices and ensuing cuts by natural gas companies during Trump’s tenure as president.

The third Pennsylvania industry that Trump promised to bring back was steel, which has been suffering statewide since the 1980s. According to the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, there were about 11,300 jobs in iron and steel mills in January 2017, at the beginning of Trump’s term. Amid the mismanaged pandemic, that number has fallen to 10,000 as of April and remains at that level. Unfortunately, some of Trump’s tariffs on steel have also hurt businesses in Pennsylvania, including Allegheny Technologies Inc., whose CEO said they were “hemorrhaging money” because of Trump’s 25% tariff.

Despite Trump’s extensive promises in 2016 to bring jobs back to Pennsylvania’s coal, fracking, and steel industries, all three have seen job losses during his time in office. Now, as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, escalating to a third peak, the job losses may become more significant with the potential of permanently damaging these industries in Pennsylvania if the pandemic is not brought under control.

The post Under Trump, Pennsylvania’s Fracking, Steel, and Coal Jobs Down appeared first on American Ledger.

According to a review by American Ledger, a political advertisement featuring several Texas Republican congressional candidates used stock footage of a Russian warship and an Israeli military helicopter to promote their campaigns.

Cut by Representative Dan Crenshaw’s campaign, the ad is inspired by a range of action and spy films and features a slate of candidates running for the House of Representatives in Texas: Wesley Hunt (TX-7), August Pfluger (TX-11), Beth Van Duyne (TX-24), Tony Gonzales (TX-23), Genevieve Collins (TX-32), and Crenshaw (TX-2) himself.

The ad’s theme is “Save Texas” and cloaks the candidates in a deluge of American flags and paraphernalia. However, this America-themed ad cuts to stock footage of a destroyer ship and a helicopter, both of which were created by users abroad. The ship was animated in Russia and the helicopter shot is from Israel.

These down ballot Republican candidates are not the only campaign using foreign stock footage to boost their domestic political campaigns. The Trump campaign and its allies have repeatedly made the same mistake, featuring Russian jets on an ad that ran on 9/11, using a Hungarian factory to talk about economic plans, and incorporating Belarusian and Russian actors in an ad about taxes. And at the Republican National Convention, a video promoting President Trump used footage from Russia, Ukraine, Spain, and Thailand.

In 2020, the traditionally Republican-leaning state of Texas is more competitive than it has ever been. All but one of the candidates featured in the “Save Texas” advertisement are in competitive races due to Trump’s increasingly dire numbers in the Lone Star State. Cook Political Report rates their races as follows:

• Texas 32nd – Genevieve Collins – Likely Democratic
• Texas 7th – Wesley Hunt – Likely Democratic
• Texas 23rd – Tony Gonzales – Lean Democratic
• Texas 24th – Beth Van Duyne – Toss-Up
• Texas 2nd – Rep. Dan Crenshaw – Likely Republican

Texas is experiencing unprecedented voter turnout for the 2020 election, with the number of early votes cast already exceeding the number of votes won by candidate Trump in 2016. This trend suggests that after having some of the lowest voter participation of any state, Texas is poised to smash records in November, making every race significantly more competitive.

The post Crenshaw, Texas Republicans Use Russian Stock Footage in Campaign Ad appeared first on American Ledger.