William Bredderman

REUTERSA man in Arkansas crashed his vehicle into a massage parlor at a local shopping center and engaged a responding SWAT team in a gunfight that led to his shooting and hospitalization, police say.Cops in Conway, outside Little Rock, had warned residents via Facebook to avoid the Lewis Crossing shopping center earlier in the day because its elite team was active at an “incident” at the location. The department later revealed on the same social media account that it had responded to a report that a driver had rammed his vehicle into a Massage Envy franchise at the site.The authorities said that their SWAT and Negotiations team verbally engaged the armed motorist, who had barricaded himself inside, before the man discharged bullets at the officers. They responded in kind and struck him. The man was then taken to a local hospital.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Sylvain GabouryAn Emmy award-winning former New York City local news anchor claims in court that the New York Post’s famous Page Six gossip column “wrecked his brilliant reputation” with “defamatory articles”—and wants the publication to cough up at least $1 million in damages.At the core of ex-broadcaster Ken Rosato’s suit is the allegation that the paper and its reporters knowingly and maliciously published a “false and baseless” article last May claiming that Rosato lost his job at ABC7 over a comment caught on a hot mic, which the paper quoted a source speculating may have been a “racial slur.” The suit, filed Friday in a Manhattan court, particularly quotes a photo caption stating “Ken Rosato was fired immediately after allegedly making a racial slur.”Rosato’s suit acknowledges that the network “dismissed” the veteran TV journalist last May, but noted the reason was undisclosed.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Michelle MarchanteAn “altercation” on the patio of a Miami-area bar sparked a lethal firefight between police and an armed patron early Saturday, according to authorities—who noted that the local department had conducted a mass shooter drill at the same location last year.Local police addressed the press outside the Martini Bar, where they said a dispute around 3:30 a.m. attracted the attention of a security guard, who one of the feuding patrons promptly shot and killed. This set off volleys of bullets between the shooter and two Doral cops working off duty at the watering hole.The patron who allegedly killed the guard lost his life in the gun battle, but one of the officers himself suffered a bullet wound—as did six civilians in the scene, two described as in critical condition.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesThe couple behind a Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-boosting political action committee—and a disastrous scrapped birthday fundraiser for the White House aspirant—are a “trusted” media contact for Ghislaine Maxwell and her producer partner, both former delegates to the Republican National Convention.Daphne Barak and Erbil “Bill” Gunasti and their Fighting 4 One America PAC were supposed to host a celebrity-packed fiesta with Kennedy in January to celebrate his 70th birthday and amass cash for his independent campaign for the White House. But the plans for the shindig swiftly disintegrated as various stars the duo claimed would attend—such as Martin Sheen and Dionne Warwick—denied and denounced the event, and Kennedy himself pulled out. But Barak’s personal Instagram page shows the gathering did go on at a somewhat more modest scale, and with Kennedy himself in attendance and enjoying cake.The only celebrity in the shots, however, was hip-hop legend Louis “Eric B.” Barrier.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesOn Nov. 30, 2023, the day before his expulsion from the House of Representatives, George Santos insisted to reporters that he still enjoyed a warm rapport with all his colleagues from his home state of New York.“They love picking up the phone and texting me,” he told the journalists assembled for a pen-and-pad briefing in an office at the Capitol.All his colleagues, that is, save one.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyAn indicted Chinese businessman pumped millions of ill-gotten dollars into the bank accounts of some of the most influential figures in MAGA World—including former Trump aides Steve Bannon and Jason Miller—according to a raft of documents filed in federal court in February.The materials represent an effort by the court-appointed trustee in the bankruptcy case of Guo Wengui, the self-styled billionaire and anti-Chinese Communist Party crusader, to recover money that Guo allegedly transferred as part of a “fraudulent scheme” to hide wealth from his creditors. Guo has long bankrolled Bannon and Miller’s post-White House endeavors—even as critics accuse the former construction tycoon of serving as a covert double agent for Beijing—and the feds allege he swindled more than $1 billion from China’s dissident diaspora.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty/XThe political action committee that dropped $7 million to promote Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential bid during the Super Bowl has picked its public face—selecting a spokesman forced out of progressive circles over claims of sexual harassment and sexual assault.Federal Election Commission records show the American Values 2024 Super PAC, established to boost the Hyannisport scion’s longshot attempt at the White House, has paid $90,000 to date to Silent Partner Inc., the firm of outcast media consultant Trevor Fitzgibbon. Multiple press releases the committee has put out list Fitzgibbon as its press contact, and both local and national news outlets have quoted him as its spokesman.But missing so far from these citations is the PR man’s past: namely that he lost his former firm, Fitzgibbon Media—which once repped some of the biggest names in liberal politics, from The Intercept to NARAL to the Center for American Progress to MoveOn.org—in 2015 after multiple female employees accused him of groping them and insisting they send him sexy selfies. Authorities in Washington, D.C., ultimately declined to bring charges against Fitzgibbon, leading him to attempt a comeback with a new firm in 2017, only for a host of progressive organizations to sign a letter vowing never to employ him.Read more at The Daily Beast.