Chicago’s Inspector General, Deborah Witzburg, has released a damning report detailing a covert stash of luxury gifts, including jewelry, whiskey, and high-end accessories, secretly hoarded by Mayor Brandon Johnson in a City Hall “Gift Room.”

Mayor Johnson and his office have systematically blocked investigators from accessing this trove, blatantly disregarding city laws designed to maintain ethical governance.

According to the report, this secretive cache was uncovered following an undercover operation by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) last June.

The investigators, who were initially denied access to the mayoral gift log, were forced to resort to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which the Mayor’s office also stonewalled.

It was only through an official document request that the Mayor’s Office grudgingly disclosed the existence of the “Gift Room.”

According to the report reviewed by The Gateway Pundit:

On July 9, 2024, OIG—again in an undercover capacity as a member of the public—filed a FOIA request with the Mayor’s Office in which OIG requested a log, list, or records sufficient to show all disclosures filed by or on behalf of Mayor Johnson or former Mayor Lori Lightfoot from February 1, 2022 to March 31, 2024 regarding receipt or reimbursement of: travel expenses for meetings related to a public or governmental educational purpose; gifts given to or accepted on behalf of the City; or hosting, including travel and expenses, entertainment, meals or refreshments furnished in connection with meetings, appearances or public events or ceremonies related to official City business.

OIG also issued a similar request to the City Comptroller for disclosures made by the Mayor’s Office regarding gifts to be added to the City inventory; the Comptroller informed OIG that it held no responsive records.

The Mayor’s Office did not timely respond to OIG’s FOIA request which, pursuant to applicable law, constitutes a denial of the request. On August 14, 2024—over a month after submitting the FOIA request–OIG received a response from the Mayor’s Office in the form of a spreadsheet that detailed gifts accepted on behalf of the City.

The log included, for some but not all gifts: the date received, a brief description, where the gifts were stored, and information about the source of the gift. Notably, a response to the FOIA request OIG submitted as a member of the public came only after OIG also issued a compelled document request to the Mayor’s Office seeking the same information.

OIG received in response to its document request records that matched the records it received in response to its undercover FOIA. Notably, neither log received by OIG lists any reimbursed travel-related expenses.

Of the 380 logged gifts, many are listed with a location designation of “Gift Room.” Those gifts reportedly being stored in the Mayor’s “Gift Room” include:

• “Hugo Boss cuff links” from June 12, 2023
• “Personalized Mont Blanc pen” from June 12, 2023
• “2023 U.S. National Soccer Team Jersey” from June 16, 2023
• “Airpods, tote bag, notepad” from October 3, 2023
• “Gucci Tote bag and crossbody bag” from March 18, 2024
• “Givenchy Bag, Kate Spade Red Purse, Carrucci Size 14 Burgandy Men’s Shoes” from March 19, 2024

The concealment does not stop at denying physical access. The Mayor’s Office, advised by the City’s Department of Law (DOL), persisted in obstructing the OIG from performing an unannounced inspection of the Gift Room.

This action stands in stark violation of the Municipal Code of Chicago, which mandates full cooperation with OIG inquiries.

Block Club Chicago reported:

The report from the Chicago Office of Inspector General, published Wednesday morning, takes aim at an “unwritten arrangement” dating back to 1989 allowing city mayors to skip reporting gifts to the Board of Ethics and instead simply jot them in a public logbook on the fifth floor of City Hall.

But in June a city inspector undercover as a member of the public was denied the gift log and told to file a public records request, which was not fulfilled for over a month, eventually coming back as an incomplete spreadsheet “for some but not all gifts.” The records request was completed only after the inspector general’s office asked for the same information, according to the report.

[…]

In November, city inspectors went up to the fifth floor of City Hall again and asked to go to the gift room, but were met by Chicago police officers and told to wait in the elevator lobby while “multiple senior members of the Mayor’s Office” spoke with the inspector general’s office about the request, according to the report. The inspectors were ultimately denied access that day and told they had to make an appointment.

Eventually, the Department of Law communicated that the Inspector General’s office would not be granted access to the gift room, according to the report.

You can read the report below:

The post Chicago’s Inspector General Drops Bombshell Report on Far-left Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Hidden ‘Gift Room’ Full of Jewelry, Whiskey, and Luxury Goods — Blocked Investigators From Looking At It appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Welcome to The Gateway Pundit’s Week-in-Review with Elijah Schaffer, where he covers the top 5 stories throughout the last 24 hours. 

ARTICLE 1:  Border Czar Tom Homan Declares War on Terrorist Cartels Following Rio Grande Firefight Involving Border Patrol Agents

ARTICLE 2:    White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Reveals Drones Flying Over New Jersey Were Authorized by Biden Admin for “Research and Various Other Purposes”

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ARTICLE 3:   JUST IN: President Trump Offering Millions of Federal Workers Buyouts if They Resign by February 6

ARTICLE 4:     Political Earthquake: Trump Fires Biden-Appointed Labor Board Leader Gwynne Wilcox in Latest Shakeup – She Plans to Challenge ‘Unprecedented and Illegal’ Move

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ARTICLE 5:   BREAKING: Biden-Appointed Judge Blocks Trump Federal Spending Freeze

Please leave your opinions / comments on these stories below as Elijah reads every single one and appreciates your perspective.

The post Tom Homan DECLARES WAR on Terrorist Cartels | Elijah Schaffer’s Top 5 (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The Pentagon will investigate former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday.

Secretary Hegseth already revoked Milley’s security detail and security clearance.

Joe Biden pardoned Tony Fauci, General Mark Milley, and the entire J6 Select Committee of liars in his final act as president.

However, a presidential pardon won’t stop the Pentagon from conducting a review of Milley’s conduct to see if he should be demoted.

“Hegseth, whose first day at the Pentagon was Monday, directed the Defense Department’s inspector general to look into “the facts and circumstances” surrounding Milley’s conduct “so that the Secretary may determine whether it is appropriate to reopen his military grade review determination,” Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot said,” NBC News reported.

Hegseth said General Milley’s conduct will be investigated.

“Accountability is back…If you actively undermine the chain of command as General Milley did under the previous Trump administration, we are going to review those actions,” Secretary Hegseth said on Fox News on Wednesday.

WATCH:

SEC. HEGSETH: “Accountability is back…If you actively undermine the chain of command as Gen. Milley did under the previous Trump administration, we are going to review those actions.” pic.twitter.com/g80dcpZGCR

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) January 29, 2025

Steve Bannon recently called on Trump to recall General Mark Milley on day one and put him on active duty. And then begin a court martial proceeding on Milley for aiding and abetting the Chinese Communists, an enemy of the United States.

Mark Milley called China behind President Trump’s back.

According to a new book “Peril” written by Bob Woodward, Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs chairman, told China in a secret phone call that he would give advance warning if the US was ever going to attack.

“In a pair of secret phone calls (Oct. 20 and Jan. 8), Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the PLA, that the U.S. would not strike, according to the new book written by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and national political editor Robert Costa.

On January 8, 2021, the same day Milley reportedly spoke to China in a secret phone call, CNN ran a story claiming Pelosi had gotten assurances from Milley there were safeguards in place in the event President Trump wanted to launch a nuclear weapon.

Pelosi admitted she spoke to Mark Milley in a letter to her Democrat colleagues: “This morning, I spoke to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike. The situation of this unhinged President could not be more dangerous, and we must do everything that we can to protect the American people from his unbalanced assault on our country and our democracy.”

In September 2023, Mark Milley, took a thinly veiled shot at Trump during his farewell ceremony, attended by Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III.

“We don’t take an oath to a king, or queen, or tyrant, or dictator,” Milley declared. “We don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”

“Every soldier, sailor, airman, marine, guardian, and Coast Guardsman, each of us commit our very life to protect and defend that document regardless of personal price,” he added.

WATCH:

JUST IN: Woke Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley appears to slam former President Donald Trump in his retirement speech, calling Trump a “wannabe dictator.”

Milley, who once arguably committed treason by promising China he would alert them of a US attack, also accused Trump of… pic.twitter.com/Rl83P12TQn

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 29, 2023

The post Secretary Hegseth: Pentagon to Investigate Mark Milley’s Conduct After He Undermined Chain of Command in Previous Trump Admin (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Michigan’s unremarkable US Senator, Gary Peters, has announced that at 66 years old, he’s ready to retire. When his term is up in 2026, Peters said won’t be running for office again. “After three terms in the House and two terms in the Senate, I believe now is time for me to write a few more paragraphs in my current chapter and then turn over the reins,” Michigan’s lackluster senator told his constituents in a YouTube video.

Sorry, Gary, but we’re just not buying it…

When the Gateway Pundit broke the biggest voter fraud story from the 2020 election, the names of US Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) and then-presidential candidate Joe Biden appeared at the top of the Michigan State Police report.  The Democrat candidates were the top funders of the dirty group who is allegedly still under investigation by the FBI. Curiously, both Joe Biden and Gary Peters campaigns paid the same exact amount, $242,133 each, to GBI Strategies.

Residents in the state of Michigan were shocked when Gary Peters was re-elected to his senate seat in 2020 by a razor thin margin against his very popular Republican opponent, who is now a United States Congressman, John James.

Almost 3 years after he was “re-elected,” the Gateway Pundit discovered a Michigan State Police report that revealed Gary Peters paid almost a quarter of a million dollars to GBI Strategies, a group that was under investigation by the Michigan State Police, Muskegon Police Department, the MI Attorney General’s office and the MI Secretary of State’s office for turning in between 8,000-10,000 potentially fraudulent voter registrations to a clerk in Muskegon.

While doing work in Michigan, GBI Strategies referred to themselves as “Empower Michigan.”  Later in our investigation, we discovered that GBI Strategies/Empower Michigan’s work was not limited to Muskegon. The now-defunct group was sending fake voter registrations in packages to clerks across the state of Michigan from the Staybridge Hotel in Auburn Hills motel and from their headquarters in Southfield, MI. When the Michigan State Police raided their Southfield office, they discovered untraceable pre-paid cards they used to pay their employees, burner phones used by their employees and a cache of guns in a Pelican case in the office, which included semi-automatic rifles with silencers and modified pistols. The investigation was later taken over by the FBI, as they claimed the voter fraud organization was also operating in multiple states. The police reports we obtained and the clips from the FOIA’d videotaped interviews by the MI AG’s office of the primary suspect confirm they were indeed working in several states, including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Florida.

MI AG Dana Nessel, one of Gary Peters’ biggest fans, never mentioned anything to the media about the investigation and certainly never mentioned that Senator Gary Peters and then-presidential candidate Joe Biden were the only two names of customers who paid GBI Strategies for their “work” in the MSP report.

Today, in a post on “X,” AG Nessel, who hid the GBI Strategies investigation and kept Senator Peters name out of the media after it was discovered that his campaign was one of their top customers, thanked Peters for his service.

.@SenGaryPeters has served our state and nation well; as a Reserve Officer in the US Navy, city councilman, state legislator and US Senator. His storied career has delivered for Michiganders at all levels of government and those contributions won’t be forgotten. pic.twitter.com/3pgoibB8h8

— Dana Nessel (@dananessel) January 29, 2025

In 2022, Peters was chosen as the chair of the DSCC (Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee), whose primary function is to fundraise and spend money to help Democrat Senate candidates win races. In 2020, the DSCC gave a whopping $2.1 million to GBI Strategies, more than any other candidate or organization.

Curiously, in 2022, under the direction of the new DSCC Chair, Senator Gary Peters, and while the FBI was investigating GBI Strategies, the DSCC was again, the top customer for GBI Strategies, paying them a whopping $626,872 for their “work?” From the evidence we’ve compiled on the now-defunct voter registration group, they had all but wiped out any online trace of the organization or their owner, Gary Bell by 2022. So what was Gary Peters paying them for?

While GBI Strategies managed to pull down over $600K from the DSCC, it appears that the bulk of their spending, under the leadership of Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) in 2022, went to another “voter registration” group by the name of OTG Strategies.  We haven’t been able to find any ties to OTG and GBI or its former owner, Gary Bell,  but it’s worth noting that OTG Strategies, like GBI Strategies, doesn’t appear to have any online footprint. Nevertheless, according to Open Secrets, the DSCC, under Peters leadership, paid OTG Strategies an astounding $19.5 MILLION for their services.

In 2024, it appears that the DNC took over as the top customer of OTG Strategies, paying them a whopping $20.3 million for their services, while the DSCC paid them $2.3 million.

Despite massive spending by the DSCC, under the direction of Senator Gary Peters, Democrats lost control of the Senate. Republicans took 53 seats, while Democrats ended up with 47. In Peters home state, against all odds, the unpopular Democrat Rep. Ellissa Slotkin won the US Senate race, while President Trump won the state of Michigan.

In addition to Gary Peters curious ties to the voter registration fraud organization, it’s also interesting that the number one profession listed for top donors to Gary Peters campaigns over the past 5 years is “retired.”

“Smurfs” are a nickname that’s been given to small dollar donors who make repeated donations, sometimes tens of thousands of donations, on the Act Blue donor website. The “smurfs” appear to have been making these donations over a period of a year or sometimes even months. Their repeated small dollar donations are almost always to Democrat candidates running for office or leftist groups who align with the Democrat Party platform. Most of the donors are retired and on a fixed income, many of them, when confronted or asked about the wild number of donations they’ve made, have no idea donations are being made in their name.

In 2023, Texas AG Ken Paxton called for an investigation into the “Smurf” donations on Act Blue – In December 2023, Attorney General Paxton opened an investigation into ActBlue to determine whether the platform’s operations were compliant with all applicable laws. In August 2024, Attorney General Paxton announced that due to the investigation, ActBlue began requiring donors using credit cards to provide “CVV” codes, a common security measure. But this is not a full solution to the problems that Attorney General Paxton’s team has identified on ActBlue. Namely, it appears that straw donations are systematically being made using false identities, through untraceable payment methods.

“Our investigation into ActBlue has uncovered facts indicating that bad actors can illegally interfere in American elections by disguising political donations. It is imperative that the FEC close off the avenues we have identified by which foreign contributions or contributions in excess of legal limits could be unlawfully funneled to political campaigns, bypassing campaign finance regulations and compromising our electoral system,” said Attorney General Paxton. “I am calling on the FEC to immediately begin rulemaking to secure our elections from any criminal actors exploiting these vulnerabilities.”

In March 2024, OMG founder James O’Keefe visited senior citizens who made thousands and even tens of thousands of small amounts of money to leftist organizations and Democrat candidates.

Watch here to see what O’Keefe discovered:

BREAKING: O’Keefe Media Group Uncovers Potential MASSIVE Money Laundering into Political Campaigns #FollowTheMoneypic.twitter.com/MiNS63G2rI

— O’Keefe Media Group (@OKeefeMedia) March 29, 2023

We will do a deeper dive into donations made by “retired” individuals on ACT Blue to Gary Peters campaigns and hope to share the results of our findings soon. In the meantime, given Michigan’s unremarkable Senator Gary Peters penchant for power, we’re going to take a hard pass on his explanation that he just wants to spend more time at home.

The post US Senator From Michigan Who Paid Dirty Voter Fraud Registration Group That’s Still Under Investigation By FBI, Announces Retirement appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

President Trump’s DOJ asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to drop Jack Smith’s classified documents case on Wednesday.

NBC News reported:

The Justice Department on Wednesday moved to drop its appeal of a federal court order dismissing the criminal charges against President Donald Trump’s former co-defendants in the classified documents case, which would effectively end the case.

Then-U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland had cited the pending appeal as the reason why he would not publicly release special counsel Jack Smith’s report on the criminal case he’d brought against Trump, saying it could impact the due process rights of the co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira.

The Justice Department’s motion to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to drop the appeal was filed by Hayden O’Byrne. O’Byrne was named interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida this week, the Miami Herald reported.

Judge Aileen Cannon over the summer dismissed Jack Smith’s classified documents case based on unlawful appointment and funding of the special counsel.

The charges waged against Trump and his co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira were all tossed.

Jack Smith indicted Trump on 37 federal counts in Miami in June 2023 for lawfully storing presidential records at his Mar-a-Lago estate which was protected by Secret Service agents.

Trump was charged with 31 counts under the Espionage Act of willful retention of national defense information and 6 other process crimes stemming from his conversations with his lawyer.

Cannon dismissed Jack Smith’s case based on both unconstitutional elements: The appointment by US Attorney Merrick Garland and the unlimited funding given to Jack Smith – both without the approval of Congress.

Trump’s Justice Department went scorched earth on Monday and fired more than a dozen officials who worked on former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team.

Acting Attorney General James McHenry said Jack Smith’s prosecutors and aides cannot be trusted so he terminated more than a dozen of them.

The names of the fired officials were not released.

The post Trump DOJ Drops Jack Smith’s Classified Documents Case appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.