The Trump administration has ended Operation Choke Point, the anti-fraud initiative started under the Obama administration that many Republicans argued was used to target gun retailers and other businesses that Democrats found objectionable.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd told GOP representatives in a Wednesday letter that the long-running program had ended, bringing a conclusion to a chapter in the Obama years that long provoked and angered conservatives who saw Choke Point as an extra-legal crackdown on politically disfavored groups.
"All of the department's bank investigations conducted as part of Operation Chokepoint are now over, the initiative is no longer in effect, and it will not be undertaken again," Boyd wrote in the letter.
The letter was addressed to Jeb Hensarling and Bob Goodlatte, the chairmen of the Financial Services and Judiciary Committees, respectively. Their staffs confirmed they received the letter.
The Republicans had written last week to Attorney General Jeff Sessions for confirmation that the program was over so that businesses that might be targeted could breathe easy.
After the Obama Justice Department began Operation Choke Point in 2013, Hensarling and other conservatives accused them of denying the constitutional rights of businesses like gun dealers and payday lenders by targeting them for scrutiny under the program, cutting off their access to the banking system under the guise of investigating fraud and money laundering.
The GOP said companies were still wary that they could lose access to the banking system, and needed clear guidance from the Trump administration that...
NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick blames racism for his continued unemployment.
And the NAACP, leftist celebrities, and famed retired cop Frank Serpico are rallying to get this “oppressed” multi-millionaire a job. Moreover, they’re calling for a boycott of the NFL until Kaepernick gets signed.
Spike Lee — who directed the film “White Men Can’t Jump” — tweeted an announcement for a forthcoming rally outside the NFL headquarters in New York.
The rally, which is scheduled for August 23, is to protest what race-baiting moonbats consider the NFL’s blackballing of Kaepernick.
In true Hollywood fashion, Spike Lee merely paid lip service to social justice, noting that he doesn’t have...
HELSINKI/TURKU, Finland (Reuters) - Finnish police said on Saturday that an 18-year-old Moroccan man, arrested after a knife rampage that killed two people and wounded eight, appeared to have targeted women and that the spree was being treated as the country's first terrorism-related attack.
The suspect arrested following the attack on Friday after being shot in the leg by police in the city of Turku had arrived in Finland last year, police said. They said they later arrested four other Moroccan men over possible links to him and had issued an international arrest warrant for a sixth Moroccan national.
Finnish broadcaster MTV, citing an unnamed source, said the main suspect had been denied asylum in Finland. The police said only that he had been "part of the asylum process".
The case marks the first suspected terror attack in Finland, where violent crime is relatively rare.
"The suspect's profile is similar to that of several other recent radical Islamist terror attacks that have taken place in Europe," Director Antti Pelttari from the Finnish Security Intelligence Service told a news conference.
The police said they were investigating possible links to Thursday's deadly van attack in the Spanish city of Barcelona.
Both of those killed in the Turku attack, and six of the eight who were wounded, were women, the police said. The two who died were Finns, and an Italian and two Swedish citizens were...
