The Daily Signal - Dems' El Salvador PR Nightmare & New York AG Letitia James' Investigated | April 17, 2025

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

On today’s Top News in 10, we cover: Democrats make special pilgrimages to demand the release of the El Salvadorian illegal immigrant now in the custody of El Salvador. As new reports on his gang affiliation and domestic abuse create a PR nightmare. New York Attorney General Letitia James is faced with a strangely familiar mortgage fraud probe. Subscribe to The Tony Kinnett Cast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tony-kinnett-cast/id1714879044 Keep Up With The Daily Signal Sign up for our email newsletters: https://www.dailysignal.com/email     Subscribe to our other shows:  Problematic Women: https://www.dailysignal.com/problematic-women  The Signal Sitdown: https://www.dailysignal.com/the-signal-sitdown    Follow The Daily Signal:  X: https://x.com/DailySignal  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedailysignal/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheDailySignalNews/  Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@DailySignal  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/DailySignal  Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/TheDailySignal    Thanks for making The Daily Signal Podcast your trusted source for the day’s top news. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and never miss an episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. Democrats make special pilgrimages to demand the release of the El Salvadorian illegal immigrant now in the custody of El Salvador, as new reports on his gang affiliation and domestic abuse create a PR nightmare. And New York Attorney General Letitia James is faced with a strangely familiar mortgage fraud probe. I'm Tony Kennett from the Daily Signals Tony Kinnett cast, syndicated nationally at 7 p.m. Eastern. It is Thursday, April 17th, 2025. This is the Daily Signals, top news in 10. Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland made good on his promise to go down to El Salvador to petition for the release of Kilnor-Abrego-Garcia.

The El Salvador illegal immigrant who came to the United States illegally lived for 15 years, was suspected of MS-13 gang affiliation, was then listed as a likely member of MS-13 by two U.S. court hearings in the last couple of years, and then was deported due to an administrative error back to El Salvador. a little earlier before he was supposed to be deported somewhere else. As a citizen of El Salvador, El Salvador has the right to keep him in custody. Van Hollen went down to El Salvador to petition his release and vlogged the entire thing. I'm here at the airport. I'm about to board my flight for San Salvador.

The goal of this mission is to let the Trump administration, to let the government of El Salvador know that we are going to keep fighting to bring Abrago Garcia home until he returns to his family. I hope to meet with representatives of the government. I hope to have the chance to actually see Kilmar and see what his condition is. But we are going to keep fighting because this is a miscarriage of justice. Once he landed, he then used the opportunity on this particular, again, trip to petition the release of someone who he claimed to be very serious about the condition of to complement U.S. embassies and the staff that work at the various embassies around the world? I just landed at the airport in San Salvador a little while ago. I'm now on route into the city,

looking forward to meeting with the team from the American embassy. And I do want to thank our Foreign Service officers and the whole team at this embassy and embassies around the world for all the good work they do on behalf of our country. I'm proud to co-chair the bipartisan Foreign Service Caucus that stands up for the men and women who are serving our country overseas and at home in the State Department. Axios reported that El Salvador denied a request from Chris Van Hollen to see or speak to whom Axios called his Maryland constituent. That is factually incorrect.

A constituent is an individual who is a citizen of a country who can vote on individuals to represent them or, legislation. So a constituent of a senator in this case would be someone who is able to vote for that senator into office. Garcia being an illegal immigrant means he's not a constituent. This is not the first of a long line of left-leaning media pieces, which are framed in a specific way to insinuate that Garcia is a legal United States resident, that this is his home, that he is supposed to be here when none of those are the case. Representative Alexander Aksio-Cortez on her tours around the country with Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders

on their fight-the- oligarchy experience in Idaho made a series of claims about the Trump administration and about what she expected the Trump administration to do, not just to illegal immigrants, but immigrants and maybe even you could be next. She was mocked for over-emphasizing the accentation on the pronunciation of Kilmar Abrago-Gar-Garcia and El Salvador. And we also demand the return of Kilmar Abrago-Garcia in El Salvador. Even democracy, he must be returned. It is criminal that he is being held abroad. Because we do have power in this moment.

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But those were not the biggest pieces of news regarding Garcia yesterday. The Department of Justice released two sets of files concerning earlier information about Garcia in the United States, which cast a bit of doubt on the claim that Garcia had no involvement whatsoever with MS-13, and he was just a great upstanding family man who was on the way to pick up his kids after a day at school. One of these document filings include a series of court documents in which Garcia's wife sought a domestic violence restraining order against him, claiming that he punched her, scratched her, ripped off her shirt, among other kinds of harm. The wife claimed to have videos and photographic evidence of the kinds of abuse that she alleges that Garcia made against her.

The biggest bombshell concerning MS-13 came from the Prince George's County Police Gang Unit in Maryland in 2019, which determined that Garcia was an MS-13 gang member with detailed contacts to other members. He also admitted that he was in the United States illegally after his arrest. This is creating a bit of a PR nightmare for many Democrats who are already on uncertain ground, given the lack of guidance concerning tariff policy, economic policy, response to the Trump administration so far in these few short months since Trump has taken office. Yesterday, James Carvel, the left-wing strategist as well as the architect of the Bill Clinton campaign victory, advised Democrats to go all in on the Garcia strategy and then made a rather awkward comparison.

People say, well, should we really fight on this surface? Should we fight more ordinary people? And this we should fight out. You can't pivot to an economic hit. So wait a minute. This is why we think we are country. and they do this to him. It's an old saying. First they came for, you know, whatever and then what happened. And they came for me. You know why you remember that saying? Because there's wisdom in it.

There's real wisdom in it. And history has taught us that. And first they came for him and then we're going to say, no, right, dad. We've got to keep fighting this. I think this is worthy of being at a top. agenda of things that we're going to fight over is get this guy back home. Of course, while Carville suggested that everyone should be able to remember this poem because of its wisdom, he doesn't seem to be able to remember this particular poem. We do actually have this poem.

This is a poem talking about the individuals who over time were taken by the Nazis in the 1930s. Again, given the indifference to specific groups because you weren't a part of them, the original poem goes, first of all they came to take the gypsies and I was happy because they pilfered. Then they came to take the Jews and I said nothing because they were unpleasant to me. Then they came to take the homosexuals and I was relieved because they were annoying me. Then they came to take the communists and I said nothing because I was not a communist. One day they came to take me and there was nobody left to protest. That poem is by Bertolt Brecht, inspired by Emil Gustav Friedrich Martin Niemaller.

It's a famous poem about the Holocaust and how it took Germany incrementally through society. Carvel's explanation in this case that the arrest and the removal of an individual suspected to be an MS-13 gang member with credible evidence that he, in fact, was a member of MS-13. Additionally, being an illegal immigrant and a citizen of El Salvador, as a comparison to the Holocaust of the Jewish people during World War II, is a rather interesting choice to be sure. And New York Attorney General Letitia James is in hot water over a mortgage fraud probe, which is only getting worse. The Attorney General, who of course infamously declared that no one is above the law when she ran on targeting Donald Trump during her run for office, was hit

with this federal criminal referral for instances of the alleged mortgage fraud on Tuesday, according to letters from the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The FHFFHFRA. The FD, director William Pult sent the missive to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy A.G. Todd Blanche, alleging that James had falsified records to get home loans for a property in Virginia that she claimed was her principal residence in 2023, while she was still serving as a New York state prosecutor. This is according to a write-up from the New York Post. According to the letter, Miss James was the sitting Attorney General of New York

and is required by law to have her primary residence in the state of New York. even though her mortgage applications list her intent to have the Norfolk Virginia property as her primary home. This means that by listing a secondary property that the Attorney General of New York would have been able to get a lower mortgage rate and therefore save a little bit of money by allegedly committing this fraud and listing a different property as her primary address. Attorney General James, however, is keeping her spirits up. Here was her official response just yesterday. My mission is clear. I'm focused.

I'm prepared. I'm ready. I've been trained by the best. I went to Howard University. Check the description below and make sure you're subscribed to the Tony Kinnettcast. And join us later this evening at 7 p.m. Eastern, where we take a look at the developing events in the Middle East and a possible policy shift regarding President Trump, Israel, Iran,

and a new wave of actions regarding its nuclear policy. program. I'm Tony Kinnett, and this has been The Daily Signals Top News in 10. Take care.