Former MAGA influencer and Elon Musk Ally Ashley St. Clair has made a series of explosive claims about the American political right, saying she was offered large sums of money to keep quiet and alleging that parts of the MAGA movement operated through coordinated private group chats linked to senior political figures.In an interview with a journalist Mehndi HasanSt. Clair said he was once offered money to promote former US Ambassador Rick Grenell to Secretary of State. He claimed that there are “multiple chats that they deal with”, which he said sometimes include Trump administration officials and Trump family members. Grenell has previously denied involvement in any such efforts.St. Clair also said that after distancing herself from MAGA politics, she faced pressure from people within the movement and said she was offered substantial money to remain silent about her experiences.When asked if he had rejected any financial offers, he said, “I did.”He said, “I am not at liberty to discuss but I have turned down so much money that it is the GDP of a small country.”He also talked about changing his political views, his time at MAGA, and critics’ claims that he changed his position out of personal anger or revenge against Musk.Addressing those claims, he rejected the idea that his views were motivated by revenge or financial gain. “Well, first of all I’m not making any money from this. I’m back in school. I finished my semester with 22 credits and I plan on going to law school. That’s what I want to do. I want to start fighting and making reforms within a system that I believe is causing a lot of harm.”He also said he feared backlash from former MAGA associates. “I knew what the MAGA reaction would be. I was in this cult for almost a decade. I knew exactly how they would respond to me and I was prepared to be ostracized. I was ready to work with it.”During the interview, St. Clair said that he later reconsidered his views after being exposed to different viewpoints and personal experiences. She said her thinking was influenced by conversations with transgender friends and reading historical accounts, including slave narratives.“There were a lot of things. It happened slowly and then all at once,” he said.He also claimed that in conservative circles there was a strong culture of distrust of mainstream media and academic institutions, including incentives to report professors through activist lists.The interview also discussed her relationship with tech billionaire Elon Musk and her legal action against his AI company XAI after he claimed it generated explicit deepfake images of her.

New Delhi: The ED does not require an FIR lodged by any enforcement agency for any scheduled offense to initiate investigation under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).Lifting the stay on ED’s investigation against Cochin Minerals and Rutile Limited (CMRL), a publicly listed company of Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation, the Kerala High Court on Tuesday dismissed a plea by CMRL on the grounds that the ED’s money laundering probe is independent of the existence of a scheduled offence.A day after the Kerala High Court verdict, the ED on Wednesday began searches at nine premises in Thiruvananthapuram, including the residence of former Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan, where he was staying with his daughter Veena, one of the accused who allegedly received Rs 2.8 crore from CMRL without providing any IT services, as claimed.Justice TR Ravi of the Kerala High Court rejected petitioner CMRL’s challenge against the summons issued by the enforcement agency, saying “the issue of summons was only for the purpose of investigation and there is no need to even register an FIR”.Citing the Supreme Court judgment in Vijay Madanlal Chaudhary (supra), Justice Ravi said that “non-filing of FIR in respect of a scheduled offense does not prevent the initiation of inquiry/investigation by the authorities referred to in section 48 of the PMLA for initiating civil action for provisional attachment of property.”The court further observed that “The word ‘investigation’ has been defined in Section 2(n)(a) to include all proceedings taken by the Director or the authorized authority to collect evidence. A reading of the summons issued would show that what has been initiated is merely an investigation.”The judge said, “It is not possible to tell at this stage what will be the outcome of the investigation. As the Supreme Court has already laid down the law that existence of FIR is not a pre-condition for issuing summons under Section 50 of the PML Act, the same has to be followed only by this court.”The court said that the writ petition has been filed prematurely and is not maintainable against the summons issued under Section 50 PMLA. It further said that the exemption under the Income Tax Settlement Mechanism does not bar PMLA proceedings and the powers of the ED are independent of the final report of the SFIO or prosecution.Dismissing the petition, the court said that the subsequent filing of the SFIO prosecution complaint “cured the main objection of the petitioners regarding the absence of the prescribed offence”.