January 1, Plot Twist: ‘Far-Right’ Air Force Sergeant Charged in Federal Officers Death

This Day in History | 1885

The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York. It was a gift of friendship from the people of France, celebrating a century of friendship since the end of the Revolutionary War.. The statue was shipped across  the Atlantic Ocean in 350 individual pieces packed in more than 200 cases.

Good morning Middle Americans, 

If you want to get a better understanding of just how deep and pervasive the war on cops is now in America. Look no further than Oakland California. A ‘far-right’ Air Force Sergeant has been arrested for the murder and attempted murder, all tied the killing of a federal officer. This also shows why it’s dangerous to focus too much on race as we assess the issue. 

Take for example the murder of retired police leiutenient David Dorn, where a second black suspect has now been arrested for killing the retired black police leitenient in St. Louis.  The tragic irony in that case is that Dorn was trying to protect a black owned business when he was shot dead during a black lives matters protest. 

And with the Far-Right Air Force Sergeant, we have been conditioned to believe that all members of the military are heroes, and an Air Force Sergeant would never shoot and kill a federal officer. According to prosecutors, we all need to think again. 

Also today – we have reports about Tik Tok users trolling Trump by claiming Tulsa rally tickets they’ll never use. And from the unbelievable – but totally predictable category, the fund used to raise money to bail out the rioters in Minneapolis is facing severe scrutiny for not spending enough of their funds on bail. 

Read all about it. 

-Fraser Dixon

‘Far-Right’ Air Force Sergeant Charged in Federal Officer’s Death

(The Guardian) – An air force sergeant already jailed over the ambush killing of a California sheriff’s deputy was charged in connection with the shooting death of a federal security officer outside the US courthouse in Oakland during a night violent protest last month. Officials say the man has ties to the anti-government “boogaloo” movement.

SSgt Steven Carrillo, 32, was charged on Tuesday with murder and attempted murder in the killing of 53-year-old federal officer Dave Patrick Underwood.

Carrillo separately faces state charges in the 6 June ambush and fatal shooting of Santa Cruz county sheriff’s Sgt Damon Gutzwiller and the wounding of four other officers in Ben Lomond, an unincorporated area outside the beachfront city of Santa Cruz, south of San Francisco.

Carrillo, a leader of an elite military security force, had multiple links to the far-right, anti-government “boogaloo” movement, federal prosecutors said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Law enforcement officials said they identified multiple pieces of evidence that linked Carrillo to the developing anti-government extremist movement associated with the term “boogaloo”, an ironic word for “a violent uprising or impending civil war in the United States”.

Law enforcement officials discovered a ballistic vest with a “boogaloo” flag on it in a van they said Carrillo had used, and also alleged that Carrillo had written phrases associated with the movement in his own blood on the hood of a car he hijacked, according to the criminal complaint against Carrillo.

Read more here

Internal Report:CIA Cyber Weapons Stolen in Historic Breach Due to ‘Woefully Lax Security’

(CNN) – The largest theft of data in CIA history happened because a specialized unit within the agency was so focused on building cyber weapons that an employee took advantage of “woefully lax” security and gave secret hacking tools to WikiLeaks, according to an internal report released on Tuesday.

The hacking tools stolen in the breach, which occurred in 2016, came from its clandestine Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI). The amount of data stolen is unknown, the memo said, but could be as much as 34 terabytes of data — the equivalent of 2.2 billion pages of text.

The theft was revealed around a year later, in March 2017, when WikiLeaks published what it claimed was the largest trove of CIA documents, dubbed “Vault 7,” detailing some of the agency’s sophisticated cyber weapons, which was first reported by the Washington Post.

Find out more here

Tik Tok Users Troll Trump Supporters with Rally Tix They’ll Never Use

(Insider) – Trump has publicly said a million people have requested tickets, but it’s unclear how many of those people are trolls.

TikTok users have been making videos encouraging people to register for tickets to his June 20 rally and then not show up. The effort is intended to leave some seats at the venue empty.

“All of those of us that want to see this 19,000 seat auditorium barely filled or completely empty go reserve tickets now and leave him standing alone there on the stage,” Mary Jo Laupp said in a video she posted last week.

Laupp, who previously worked on Pete Buttigieg’s campaign in Iowa, told CNN that she made the appeal after learning that rally was to be held on Juneteenth, a June 19 holiday commemorating the end of slavery. The decision to hold the rally at a site infamous for one of the worst incidents of race violence in US history prompted outrage, and Trump’s campaign ultimately moved it to the following day. 

Read more here

Minnesota Freedom Fund Slammed: Less Than 1% Of Donations Go Towards

(The Daily Wire) – The Minnesota Freedom Fund received backlash Tuesday after admitting that only $200,000 out of the more than $30 million raised by the organization has been used to bail out protesters.

Nationwide protests, some of which escalated into violent riots, began May 25 after the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a police officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes. As of June 8, over 10,000 people had been arrested while protesting, according to The Guardian.

“Without jeopardizing the safety of the folks we bailed out we paid well over $200k in the weeks since the uprising alone,” the group said on Twitter Monday. “We are working on doing more.”

The announcement sparked backlash from people asking where the rest of the money went.

Get the latest here.