"Rising Democrat Star" Arrested for Covertly Filming Two Political Opponents Having Sex to Blackmail Them

This is the Democrat-Antifa-Media Party.

A Maryland state senator once seen as a rising Democrat star is facing explosive allegations that she conspired to secretly record and blackmail her political critics. Federal prosecutors have charged State Sen. Dalya Attar, her brother Joseph "Yossi" Attar, and Baltimore Police Officer Kalman Finkelstein with conspiracy, extortion, illegal wiretapping, and violations of the Travel Act -- a slate of federal offenses that could bring decades in prison if convicted.

According to a newly unsealed 20-page federal indictment, Attar and her co-defendants allegedly set up hidden cameras disguised as smoke detectors inside an apartment belonging to two of Attar's critics -- one of them a former campaign consultant who had worked on her 2018 campaign but later supported her political rivals. The second target was reportedly in a romantic relationship with the consultant and married to someone else at the time. Prosecutors say the trio not only filmed the pair in bed together but used the footage to intimidate them into silence.

Investigators claim the covert operation was designed to protect Attar's political standing as she eyed re-election and higher office. WhatsApp messages cited in the indictment suggest the senator herself discussed the scheme and its potential leverage. "We have a very easy ... simple way to get her to just shut up and leave us alone," Attar allegedly wrote in one message. "She's worried about her kids' shidduchim." In another message, she added, "I'm not saying we leak this anywhere or ever do that ... but I'm saying we warn her ... 'If you go ahead and screw with me, we're going to leak it.'"

The intimidation campaign allegedly escalated in December 2021, when Joseph Attar met one of the victims at a Baltimore shopping center and issued a chilling threat: "I have hours of footage of you in bed with [Victim 1] ... Go to [Victim 1] and say leave Dalya alone ... or I'll share this video with everyone you know -- every Rabbi in town, your kids, your wife, her daughters." Federal prosecutors say the threats continued into 2022 as Attar's team sought to keep both victims quiet ahead of her re-election effort. To cover their tracks, the indictment alleges, the defendants coordinated through encrypted WhatsApp messages and routinely deleted their communications.

Attar, a Democrat and former Baltimore prosecutor, was first elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 2018 and appointed to the state Senate in January 2025. She had been viewed as an emerging figure within Maryland's Orthodox Jewish community, where she built a reputation as a tough prosecutor and vocal progressive on local issues.

Bonus: Kamala Harris shares the heart-breaking moment when she learned she had lost the presidential race. She said there were 200,000 votes she needed to win that her campaign manager "couldn't find."

She uses the same word -- "find" -- that Fatty Fanny Funstuff claimed proved a criminal intent to order Georgia's election officials to fake the vote. Seems like it's a normal bit of campaign jargon.

Barely related: LA officials told firefighters to ignore a smoldering fire that later reignited the Pallisades inferno.

* Firefighters alerted a battalion chief that areas of a New Year's Day fire in Pacific Palisades, known as the Lachman fire, were still smoldering the next day, according to text messages.

* The firefighters were ordered to pack up and leave anyway, instead of monitoring the burn area for reignitions.

* Federal authorities say the blaze reignited on Jan. 7, destroying thousands of homes and killing 12 people.

Firefighters mopping up a small brush fire that authorities say reignited as the Palisades fire five days later were ordered to leave the original burn scene even though they complained the ground was still smoldering and rocks remained hot to the touch, according to firefighter text messages reviewed by The Times.
To the firefighters' surprise, their battalion chief ordered them to roll up their hoses and pull out of the area on Jan. 2 -- the day after the 8-acre blaze was declared contained -- rather than stay and make sure there were no hidden embers that could spark a new fire, the text messages said.

On the morning of Jan. 7, according to federal authorities, strong winds stoked the remnants of the New Year's Day blaze into the firestorm that killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes in Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Topanga.
In one text message, a firefighter who was at the scene on Jan. 2 wrote that the battalion chief had been told it was a "bad idea" to leave the burn scar unprotected because of the visible signs of smoldering terrain. "And the rest is history," the firefighter wrote in recent weeks.

As we ask every single day: If they were doing this all deliberately, how would their actions look any different?

posted by Ace at 05:20 PM

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