Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America. Please take a moment to click the ❤️ and restack this post. The oligarchs’ platforms are trying to keep stories like the ones below from hitting your feeds, and this helps us break through.
The Department of Justice rejected survivors’ calls to appoint a special counsel to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s network of co-conspirators. Pete Hegseth referred a decorated three-star general for criminal prosecution after firing him without explanation. The DOJ is fighting to keep the Ilhan Omar search warrant sealed while refusing to say what she is being investigated for. And ICE paid nearly $500 million for a shuttered Minnesota prison that was valued at $14 million.
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The DOJ said no before the survivors had time to find parking.
Survivors of Epstein traveled to Washington this week to pressure the DOJ to appoint a special counsel to investigate the late convicted sex offender’s co-conspirators and any public officials who helped cover up his crimes. The DOJ declined the request in a written statement to NewsNation that same day.
The survivors’ statement called for an independent attorney to pursue criminal wrongdoing by Epstein’s associates, and determine if officials or institutions enabled the abuse. A special counsel would be outside the normal chain of command at the DOJ and would remove any concerns about conflicts of interest.
House Judiciary Committee Democrats have also urged Attorney General Todd Blanche to appoint a special counsel to investigate Trump’s ties to Epstein. Their statement said the DOJ and FBI efforts to protect the president called for an independent investigation into all of Epstein’s potential accomplices.
Epstein survivor Audra Christiansen, a lifelong Republican, said, “It’s deeply disappointing to see Republican leaders oppose a special counsel.” She added, “Protecting political careers should never come before protecting people from abuse.”
The commander in chief is prosecuting someone he could not identify in a lineup.
Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia, the three-star general fired this week from the Joint Chiefs without explanation, has now been referred to the DOJ for possible criminal prosecution. The Pentagon alleges Sylvia leaked classified information, but has not provided any evidence to support the claim.
Sylvia has denied leaking classified information, but has acknowledged prior contact with journalists, something that has long been seen as normal for a senior officer of his standing. Contact with the news media has been closely monitored under Hegseth, especially after reporters publish unflattering coverage.
When asked what evidence the administration had that the general leaked classified material, Trump seemed to not know who Sylvia is. He responded, “she’s going to have big problems.”
Hegseth fired three political appointees last year, alleging they leaked classified information, but none faced charges after a lengthy investigation. One returned to work for the Trump administration at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Confidential investigations don’t usually start with a motorcade.
The Justice Department is fighting to keep sealed the search warrant it used to raid Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington, D.C., home on October 12. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro argued that releasing the records would jeopardize the investigation, but a warrant only shows what probable cause the government claimed to have, not what it found.
The inquiry is focused on immigration forms Omar’s late father completed on her behalf in the mid-1990s when the family arrived in the U.S. as refugees from Somalia. The Biden DOJ investigated the matter in 2024 and dropped it, citing lack of evidence.
Omar has denied any wrongdoing and said the search is an attempt to go after political opponents and weaponize federal law enforcement. The investigation is moving forward in the last days before the midterms, in which she’s running for reelection.
Fifteen media organizations have filed requests to unseal the warrant. U.S. District Chief Judge James Boasberg gave the DOJ until October 27 to make its case for keeping the records secret.
Nobody has overpaid for an empty building this badly since the Trump Tower appraisal.
ICE paid CoreCivic $495.6 million for a closed prison in Appleton, Minnesota, which the county valued at $14 million. Then it awarded a separate five-year, $536 million contract to CoreCivic to run the facility, making the total deal worth more than a billion dollars.
The prison closed in 2010 and sat vacant for 15 years before ICE bought it. CoreCivic now expects the facility to generate about $75 million in annual revenue.
Between December and April, ICE spent more than $1 billion on 11 vacant properties at 11 to 13 percent over market prices. The agency then turned around and tried to sell seven of them.
CoreCivic also sold two California detention facilities to DHS for $1.5 billion. The two properties were valued by county tax records at a combined total of $336 million, meaning the government paid more than four times their assessed value.
CoreCivic donated $500,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee and its CEO donated $300,000 to Trump’s campaign and the RNC. The company’s stock also nearly doubled after Trump won the 2024 election.
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Ramaswamy Pulls Attack Ad Featuring Opponent’s Estranged Mother After Backlash. Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy, has withdrawn a campaign advertisement in which his Democratic opponent Amy Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, called her daughter a liar. Arthur lost custody of her children after her husband, the children’s stepfather, was indicted on charges of raping Acton when she was a child. Acton said the last time she talked to her mother was when she was 12 and officials removed her from her mother’s care. The ad was taken down following bipartisan backlash that included current Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who called it “deeply disturbing” and asked Ramaswamy to take it down. Acton’s campaign said Ramaswamy took down the ad without apologizing to Acton, her family, or the people of Ohio.
** New Mexico Court Orders Meta to Pay $25 Billion for Deceiving Facebook Users.** A district judge in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in penalties after a jury found the company committed almost 44 million violations of the state’s consumer protection law by misleading users about how it collected and protected their data. The maximum penalty was initially calculated by the court at $219.5 billion before being reduced, and the judgment will accrue 15 percent annual interest until Meta pays in full. New Mexico was the only state to go to trial over its claims against Meta in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, with 46 other states and two territories settling for about $459 million. It was one of the largest single state-led verdicts against a company in American history, Attorney General Raúl Torrez said. Under the New Mexico Constitution, the penalty money will go to education.
Illinois Announces $156 Million Investment in Affordable Housing. Governor JB Pritzker and the Illinois Housing Development Authority announced $156 million in housing investments through the Building Up Illinois Developments initiative, including $103 million in new state funding and $53 million from existing IHDA resources. The money will go toward down payment assistance, student debt relief, affordable housing construction and permanent supportive housing. Illinois is now short about 142,000 housing units and will have to build more than 225,000 in the next five years to meet demand. Housing costs have been cited as one of the main reasons people are leaving the state, particularly working-class Black and Latino families in Chicago.
General Motors Pays $220 Million for Secretly Selling Drivers’ Data. GM will pay $220 million to settle a lawsuit brought by 35 states and Washington, D.C., which accused the automaker of selling drivers’ personal information and driving behavior to data brokers, who then sold it to insurance companies. The data collected through GM’s Smart Driver program included the number of times a person drove, when they started driving and when they stopped, how often they braked or accelerated quickly, and whether they went over the speed limit. GM’s OnStar app incorrectly told more than 370,000 drivers that they weren’t enrolled in the program when they tried to check their enrollment. Some drivers found their insurance rates had gone up with no accidents because of data GM provided without their knowledge.