Conservative radio and television host Mark Levin said The Tennessee Star’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy deserves a “salute” for being the first media outlet in the nation earlier this year to report on the 2022 traffic stop of Kilmar Abrego Garcia on I-40 by Tennessee Highway Patrol officers.
“I want to salute Michael Patrick Leahy with The Tennessee Star, the CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Star News Digital Media. He’s the one that really first broke this issue, or certainly saw it and reported on it relating to this human trafficking. So he deserves a salute, which he’ll never get except from me,” Levin said during Friday’s episode of The Mark Levin Show.
In April, The Star was the first to report that Abrego Garcia was suspected of being engaged in human trafficking by Tennessee Highway Patrol officers who detained him during the 2022 traffic stop in Putnam County.
Body camera footage from the scene obtained by The Star revealed that officers discussed their suspicion that Abrego Garcia was hauling the nine other passengers in the vehicle “for money” during the traffic stop of the vehicle he was driving – a 2001 Chevrolet Suburban with an added row of seats.
Abrego Garcia was let go from the scene at the time after the “Biden-era” Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) requested that the Tennessee Highway Patrol release him and the nine other male Hispanic passengers – none of whom possessed any kind of identification or luggage – in the vehicle.
On Friday, Abrego Garcia landed at Nashville International Airport (BNA) after being released from the CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador and appeared in a Nashville courtroom while handcuffed and shackled to face charges in response to a grand jury indictment that accuses him of completing more than 100 trips while smuggling illegal aliens throughout the country.
Abrego Garcia’s grand jury indictment, which was quietly filed on May 21 and unsealed on Friday, details how he allegedly completed over 100 smuggling trips across the U.S., primarily transporting illegal aliens, including minors and members of the violent MS-13 gang.
The ten-page indictment claims that smuggling was Abrego Garcia’s full-time occupation and accuses him of abusing women and children during transport, soliciting explicit material from a minor, and being linked to the murder of a rival gang member’s mother.
Abrego Garcia was also suspected of trafficking firearms and narcotics.
He is charged with one count of Conspiracy to Transport Aliens and another count of Unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens.
His next court appearance in Nashville is scheduled for Friday, June 13 at 10:00 a.m.
While Democrats celebrated Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. and widely ignored the charges he faces, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said she anticipates that Abrego Garcia “will be returned to his home country of El Salvador” upon completion of the sentence he is given if convicted on the charges laid out in the grand jury indictment.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Mark Levin” by The Mark Levin Show.
Will the Democrats apologize to America for painting Garcia as an innocent victim of government overreach after he’s convicted? Will Senator Van Hollen apologize for wasting taxpayer money visiting Garcia in El Salvador? I doubt it.