Special counsel rejects allegations that Hunter Biden's prosecution was politically motivated - Misty Severi

 

by Misty Severi

Weiss' office argued on Monday that multiple judges have already determined that the prosecution was not vindictive, as Hunter Biden previously argued in court filings.

 

Special prosecutor David Weiss speaking to the media in 2024.

Getty Images

Special prosecutor David Weiss, who was tasked with prosecuting first son Hunter Biden, rejected allegations that prosecutions of the first son were politically motivated in a court filing on Monday.

President Joe Biden pardoned his son on Sunday night, and claimed his son was unfairly targeted and prosecuted. The blanket pardon covered crimes committed between 2014 and 2024, and means he cannot be prosecuted or sentenced for his tax charges, his federal gun charge, or any possible crime he committed while on the board of Burisma. 

Weiss' office argued on Monday that multiple judges have already determined that the prosecution was not vindictive, as Hunter Biden previously argued in court filings. The filing did not directly mention the president's comment, per NBC News, but commented that Hunter Biden has tried to dismiss the California tax case eight times already, all of which were denied.

"The defendant argued that the indictment was a product of vindictive and selective prosecution," the filing said. "The Court rejected that claim finding that '[a]s the Court stated at the hearing, Defendant filed his motion without any evidence.' And there was none and never has been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case."

The filing also noted that Hunter Biden made the same claim in regards to the Delaware gun case, which were rejected by the judge overseeing the case, and three panels of appeals courts.

"In total, eleven (11) different Article III judges appointed by six (6) different presidents, including his father, considered and rejected the defendant’s claims, including his claims for selective and vindictive prosecution," the filing said. 

Weiss' office also rejected claims that the indictments should be dismissed, stating that a dismissal would be as if the grand jury's indictment never existed. 

The first son's attorney Abbe Lowell responded on Monday that the judge can dismiss the California case because no judgment had been entered in the case, and Hunter Biden had not been sentenced.

Hunter Biden was expected to be sentenced in the federal gun case on Dec. 12 and in the tax case on Dec. 16.

Misty Severi is an evening news reporter for Just the News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/special-counsel-rejects-allegations-hunter-bidens-prosecution-was-politically

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Hunter Biden's pardon gives Trump the green light on freeing some Jan. 6 defendants - Ben Whedon

 

by Ben Whedon

“No one in the media better complain when J6ers get their pardons now,” said Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. So far, Team Trump has said they would be decided on a case-by-case basis.

 

Hunter Biden, Dec. 13, 2023, Washington, D.C.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter appears to have given President-elect Donald Trump a pretext to follow through on his own pledges to pardon myriad Jan. 6 defendants and to pursue a rigorous overhaul of the Department of Justice.

Despite repeated denials from the White House that he would do so, Biden announced his son’s pardon on Sunday evening, saying he had been unfairly prosecuted and that he believed the DOJ had singled out his son.

“From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,” he said.

The development stunned Democrats, many of whom had adamantly insisted that Biden would not pardon his son and that “no one is above the law” when defending the DOJ prosecutions of Trump. Republicans, however, were not so shocked and some have already suggested that the outgoing commander-in-chief set a precedent for his successor.

“No one in the media better complain when J6ers get their pardons now,” said Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. 

Trump himself linked the DOJ’s handling of Jan. 6 defendants to the Hunter Biden case, asking “[d]oes the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”

His comments followed headlines opining on Trump’s relative silence on the prospect of Jan. 6 pardons. Politico, on Saturday, ran a headline that read “Trump promised Jan. 6 pardons. His post-election silence is making loyalists nervous.”

To be sure, Trump has already indicated he would pardon at least some defendants and the Hunter Biden pardon is more likely to serve as a political cover rather than an impetus for a previously unplanned effort.

Trump press secretary-designate Karoline Leavitt previously said in a statement that “[p]resident Trump will make pardon decisions on a case-by-case basis,” leaving the prospective scope of executive pardons vague. More than 1,500 people have faced charges in connection with the disturbance at the Capitol.

The Supreme Court gives Trump a starting point

Potentially giving Trump an easy avenue to address a large number of pardons is a recent Supreme Court decision limiting the application of a charge that the DOJ used extensively in its prosecutions over the incident.

The nation’s top court in June issued a landmark ruling on the DOJ’s use of obstruction charges to pursue Jan. 6 defendants. Trump himself faced the charge of “obstruction of an official proceeding” in special counsel Jack Smith’s now-defunct election case.

The justices found that the DOJ could apply the charge to those defendants whom they could prove had actually attempted to stop the transmission of electoral college vote certificates and interfere with the process. 

The decision greatly reduced the number of participants in the incident that were eligible to face the charge and, in September, Thomas Robertson became the first defendant to receive a reduced sentence in light of the ruling.

A federal judge in November granted a reduced sentence to Marc Bru, a member of the Proud Boys, dropping one year from his prison time stemming from the obstruction charge. He received a five-year sentence in that instance stemming from other charges.

Courts are waiting for executive action

Trump’s prior pledges to pardon defendants have triggered a wave of requests to delay or otherwise halt proceedings in myriad Jan. 6 cases. Such efforts have met with mixed reactions from the courts, however.

Jan. 6 defendant Jake Lang successfully secured a delay in his case last month, arguing that there was a “high likelihood of a Presidential Pardon or dismissal of the charges by the incoming administration,” according to The New York Post. Lang has spent more time in custody while awaiting trial than any other Jan. 6 defendant.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, the Trump-appointed judge who granted the delay, opined that “[b]lanket pardons for all Jan. 6 defendants or anything close would be beyond frustrating and disappointing, but that’s not my call,” MSNBC reported. Other defendants have made similar pitches to that of Lang, pointing to Trump’s campaign statements and prior exercise of his pardon powers during his term.

"History has shown that President Donald Trump is not shy when it comes to exercising his pardon powers and there is clearly no reason to believe he won't do as he says,” attorneys for defendant Terry Allen argued in a motion.

Some judges have been less willing to accommodate the delay requests, however. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, in early November, rejected a bid from defendants Christopher Carnell and David Bowman to delay their cases in light of “multiple clemency promises,” HuffPost reported at the time.

High-profile figures might be eligible

Trump’s prior pardon statements have generally focused on non-violent offenders, but there were plenty of participants who faced charges for violent conduct. The Trump team’s consideration of pardons on an individual basis seems to make it less likely that such persons could receive them. Some of the event’s most prominent participants, however, could be eligible, though he has not committed to pardoning specific individuals.

Adam Johnson aka the “Podium Guy”, for instance, pleaded guilty to entering and remaining in a restricted building. Johnson went viral for a photograph in which he smiled while carrying then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s podium. He received a 75-day sentence and a $5,000 fine in 2022.

Jacob Chansley aka the “QAnon Shaman” was easily the disturbance’s most iconic figure, charging through the Capitol building shirtless while wearing a horned helmet. Chansley pleaded guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding and received a 41-month sentence in November 2021. He secured release in March of 2023.

Ben Whedon

Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/tuehunter-biden-pardon-gives-trump-green-light-jan-6-defendants

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Influential retired FBI leader says agents back Kash Patel as next director: ‘He's the right fix’ - John Solomon

 

by John Solomon

After President Biden pardoned his son because of "politicization" of the FBI, Kash Patel's nomination may very well justify Team Trump's approach to cleaning house at the revered agency that allowed "politics to usurp crime fighting," says a former FBI Special Agent and Supervisor.

 

Kash Patel, Minden, Nev., Oct. 8, 2022

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

As Democrats try to stymie President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for FBI Director, an influential retired bureau supervisor says a large number of agents support Kash Patel for the job because of his national security experience and his vision to replace the law enforcement agency’s leadership who allowed politics to usurp crime fighting.

“This guy is completely and 100% qualified to run that organization. He's what's needed today. He's the right fix,” retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jeff Danik told Just the News in a wide-ranging interview Monday.

While Democrats and news media critics have suggested that Patel was selected to be a loyalist seeking revenge on Trump foes, Danik noted Patel's extensive career experience, which includes stints as a federal public defender, federal prosecutor, counterterrorism director at the National Security Council, senior counsel to the House Intelligence Committee and chief of staff to both the Defense Secretary and the Director of National Intelligence.

“He has the correct balance, in my view, having been there for almost 30 years,” Danik said of Patel. “He has the correct balance of prosecutor, which is what we do. We feed the prosecution tube. Defense attorney, so the other side of that coin. Intelligence, the intelligence agencies, which is a key element to the FBI's either success or failure.

"And then also, I think this is personal, that he's been a victim himself of the system,” Danik said. “And the combination of those things uniquely qualifies him beyond his, you know, substantial accomplishments.”

Those accomplishments, Just the News confirmed, include two major government awards for Patel’s work on national security during the Obama administration.

The recognitions included a 2017 Assistant Attorney General’s award of excellence for Patel’s prosecution of 12 Al-Shabab terrorists who killed 72 and injured dozens more with suicide bombings targeting sports fans watching a 2010 FIFA World Cup soccer match at two locations in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. They also include a Central Intelligence Agency Award for Human Intelligence Gathering for his work combating terrorism in East Africa.

Patel mentioned both awards in a lawsuit he filed against a news media organization back in 2019 and they were confirmed by government officials who spoke to Just the News. 

Cleaning house

Danik’s full-throated endorsement of Patel is significant, since he is a popular figure in the FBI retiree community as an accomplished bureau supervisor in the Miami area known to help and counsel agents currently on the job.

“I talk to agents all the time. I'm constantly involved with helping them, counseling them through tough times, or helping on the job or just after retirement,” Danik said during an interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast. “And there's a large group that are highly, highly supportive of him, of the President-elect, and are willing to help with whatever jobs or tasks are involved in getting behind the scenes."

“When somebody new comes into into an organization, even if they're somewhat familiar with it, there's a lot of complexity involved with these federal bureaucracies. They have really established lots of different little machine gunner nests that need to be known about before you go in,” he added.

You can listed to the full podcast here.

Danik was explicitly supportive of Patel’s oft-stated strategy of “cleaning house” in the upper echelons of the FBI, saying that is where cases involving Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and others have been politicized to the detriment of the nation. 

“The top tier of the FBI has an outsized control over the entire organization, and always has,” Danik said. “And these are about 250 people. So it's this small group of high-ranking bureaucrats that keep access to their club very closed to only certain groups of individuals who are proven to them to be acceptable to them in the club. And it's when these investigations get parked at those levels, is where you can see things go off the rail."

He added that frontline agents often chafe at the interference from headquarters or supervisors. “By and far, the average day to day agent is doing really heroic work, sometimes in a desperate environment that these SES (Senior Executive Service) level agents hoist upon them,” he said.

Democratic record of attacking press freedom

Democrats and their allies in the media have launched a concerted effort to derail Patel’s nomination, among other things taking excerpts of his appearances on conservative podcasts to suggest he will weaponize the FBI against Trump foes and even media reporters.

“You have the makings of, you know, a not-so-slow-motion authoritarian takeover of the United States government,” The Atlantic magazine writer Tom Nichols told MSNBC. Former Assistant FBI Director Frank Figliuzzi even penned an op-ed Monday on MSNBC calling Patel “wholly unqualified” and that “his record shows no devotion to the Constitution, but blind allegiance to Trump.”

Ironically, the Biden and Obama administrations each made efforts to unmask reporters’ sources.

In 2022, the DOJ’s chief watchdog confirmed that the Biden DOJ had issued a grand jury subpoena to confirm phone number of Stephanie Kirchgaessner, The Guardian newspaper’s investigations correspondent. The administration later created new rules to prevent future rummaging through reporters’ phone records.

Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder also approved a subpoena for records from Fox News reporter James Rosen a decade earlier, creating a First Amendment stir. Although not a journalist in the traditional sense, Julian Assange was the target of a grand jury investigation throughout the Obama administration. 

Restore integrity

The Trump transition team signaled Monday it plans to keep the focus on the facts of Patel’s record and Democrats treatment of journalisms rather than the innuendo of pundits.

“Kash Patel is going to deliver on President Trump’s mandate to restore integrity to the FBI and return the agency to its core mission of protecting America. Kash is committed to safeguarding Americans’ First Amendment rights unlike Joe Biden who weaponized the DOJ to target journalists,” Trump transition spokesman Alex Pfeiffer said.

In the meantime, there is one major impediment before Congress can consider Patel to be the next FBI Director: the current holder of the job Christopher Wray needs to either resign or be fired. He has more than two years left on his 10-year term.

Meanwhile, FBI whistleblower Steve Friend, who testified before Congress about alleged weaponization of the bureau for political purposes, also endorsed Patel’s nomination on Monday. Friend received financial help from Patel’s foundation when the FBI stopped paying him. 

“This is not a non partisan organization. We need a paradigm shift. I think Kash Patel is the man to do it,” Friend told the Just the News, No Noise television show.

Friend urged Patel, if confirmed to run the FBI, to end a bonus pay system that rewards supervisors with large payments for hitting certain case quotas, saying the program was perverting agents' commitment to follow the law and evidence so they can earn more money.

"If you meet that metric, then that individual is going to get $30,000 to $50,000," he said. "And the problem philosophically with that is that it turns law enforcement on its head, because the sheriff gets elected in a county to bring the crime down. If he doesn't do that, he loses his job.

But now the FBI is reversing it. They're incentivized to bring the numbers up, because they can then go to Congress and say, look, look at all the good work that we're doing," he explained.

Mike Davis, a former Senate Judiciary Committee lawyer who shepherded nominations for years, vowed Monday to use his nonprofit group the Article III Project to push senators to vote for Patel's confirmation. He also called on Wray to step aside voluntarily and not force Trump to fire him.

“Not only will there be a political humiliation, there will be a legal humiliation because the Supreme Court of the United States will definitely hold that the President of the United States has the constitutional power under Article II to fire the FBI director,” Davis told the Just the News, No Noise TV show.

John Solomon

Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/influential-retired-fbi-leader-says-agents-back-kash-patel-next

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Turkey Unleashes Jihadist Terror on Syria - Uzay Bulut

 

by Uzay Bulut

The capture of Aleppo by Turkey-backed, Al-Qaeda-affiliated forces is terrifying news for Kurds, Yazidis, Christians and everyone else whom jihadists perceive as their prey. If one is celebrating the advance of these Islamists invading parts of Syria, one is celebrating the advance of bloodthirsty jihadists who want to establish an Islamic caliphate and would happily slaughter anyone who stood in their way.

 

• The government of Turkey has supported jihadists in Syria since the beginning of the civil war in 2011. Turkey has allowed Islamists to use the Turkish territory to cross the border to Syria to join terrorist organizations there.

• Turkey has been targeting the US allies against ISIS through military incursions such as the 2018 "Operation Olive Branch" and 2019 "Operation Peace Spring."

• In June 2020, HTS began replacing the Syrian pound with the Turkish lira, indexing the prices of goods to the lira. The Turkish government, through its massive economic support to the group, thereby became a lifeline for the jihadist HTS.

• The capture of Aleppo by Turkey-backed, Al-Qaeda-affiliated forces is terrifying news for Kurds, Yazidis, Christians and everyone else whom jihadists perceive as their prey. If one is celebrating the advance of these Islamists invading parts of Syria, one is celebrating the advance of bloodthirsty jihadists who want to establish an Islamic caliphate and would happily slaughter anyone who stood in their way.

Turkey is unleashing another gruesome jihad in Syria. The city of Aleppo is now effectively under the control of Turkish-backed jihadist groups. Tens of thousands of Christians, Kurds and other minorities are in danger of extermination. Videos of jihadists abducting Kurdish women have also surfaced on social media. Pictured: Turkish-backed jihadists patrol in central Aleppo on November 30, 2024. (Photo by Muhammad Haj Kadour/AFP via Getty Images)

Turkey is unleashing another gruesome jihad in Syria.

On November 27, jihadist terror groups -- led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Organization for the Liberation of the Levant; HTS) -- launched a coordinated attack on Aleppo Governorate in northwestern Syria, cut off the main highway from Damascus to Aleppo, captured and killed dozens of Syrian Army soldiers, promised mass executions and beheadings "in front of TV cameras," and seized control of a military base and several villages.

Meanwhile, the jihadists posted videos on social media showing them capturing several training aircraft in the Kuweires Air Base near Aleppo.

The city of Aleppo is now effectively under the control of jihadist groups. Tens of thousands of Christians, Kurds and other minorities are in danger of extermination. Videos of jihadists abducting Kurdish women have also surfaced on social media.

The X account "Babak Taghvaee - The Crisis Watch" reported:

"These painful scenes are reminiscent of the horror of October 7 in Israel. Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists of Turkey, have captured hundreds of Kurdish women in Tall Rafaat, Syria. They are already threatening to sell them as sex slaves. The exact thing they did to Yazidi women in 2014."

The X account Nioh Berg noted:

'Whether it's jihadists in Gaza or in Syria, they all have one morbid thing in common:

"Taking sex slaves."

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, part of an alliance of terrorist groups active in Syria and with links to the Islamic State (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda, was formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, and served as Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria. The organization is a jihadist group that upholds Sharia law, occupies Syria's Idlib area and cooperates with the Turkish military and Turkish-backed groups in Syria. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, was also involved in HTS's formation.

In 2018, the US State Department added HTS to the Jabhat al-Nusra's existing designation as a foreign terrorist organization.

The Turkish media reports that the jihadist group named "Syrian National Army" (SNA), which calls its ongoing onslaught against Aleppo "Operation Dawn of Freedom," took control of Kuweires Air Base, as well as three villages and a hill in Tel Rifaat, cutting off the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces' supply line between Tel Rifaat and Manbij.

Turkey, since the SNA was officially established in 2017 under its auspices, provides funding, training and military support to it. The SNA was previously called the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Basically, it is a coalition of armed Islamist groups operating in Syria.

Nadine Maenza, the Former Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), posted on X:

""MISSING FROM MEDIA REPORTS ON ALEPPO: 'Rebels' taking city are NOT Freedom Fighters but Turkish-backed Islamists with same ideology as ISIS that target Yazidis, Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities.

"The USCIRF reports they 'target religious minorities, especially Yazidis, for rape, assassination, kidnapping for ransom, confiscation of property, and desecration of cemeteries and places of worship.'

USCIRF Factsheet says Hay's Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) 'remains a potent source of a Salafi-jihadism that restricts the religious freedom of non-conforming Sunni Muslims and threatens the property, safety, and existence of religious minority groups such as Alawites, Christians, and Druze.' They also report 'torture, forced disappearance, rape and other sexual violence, and killing in detention.'

"Expect the same horrific crimes from these Turkish-backed Islamist militias (including HTS) that we have seen from them in other parts of Syria. They learned from the international response to ISIS to not make an immediate public display of this violence.

".... [A]reas under government control are also horrible as they endure 'egregious human rights abuses such as arbitrary detention and torture, enforced disappearance.' The one bright spot in Syria? The Northeast. Read about how they built self-governance that protects religious freedom with half the leaders being women."

Aleppo and its surrounding areas are home to several ethnic and religious minorities such as Kurds, Christians and Druze. A jihadist takeover means either outright massacres or enslavement for these communities. Reports from the ground show jihadists have started kidnapping Kurdish women. The terrorists are heard telling the kidnapped women: "You are pigs, enemies of Allah. Cover your hair!"

The X account "Greco-Levantines WorldWide" reported:

"This is how Turkish-backed rebels are treating Kurdish women in Aleppo. If this is how they treat Muslim women who don't wear a headscarf, what can be expected for Christian women?"

Meanwhile, the jihadist forces are advancing. Mazloum Abdi, leader of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said his forces are "coordinating with all relevant parties in Syria" to safely evacuate the people of Tal Rifaat and Shahba to Rojava (an area in Syria controlled by Kurdish forces) after attacks by Turkish-backed jihadists disrupted the SDF's corridor.

The government of Turkey has supported jihadists in Syria since the beginning of the civil war in 2011. Turkey has allowed Islamists to use the Turkish territory to cross the border to Syria to join terrorist organizations there. The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point reports on other Syria-related jihad activities in Turkey:

"According to Israel's military intelligence chief in January 2014, al-Qa'ida-linked groups allegedly have at least three bases in Turkey. A report in al-Monitor suggested that, prior to 2013, alleged fighters were thought to stay at specific hotels, such as the Ottoman and Narin hotels, in the Turkish city of Antakya. In July 2012, a six-minute video titled Turkish Mujahidin Who Are Conducting Jihad in Syria, released by a Syrian opposition organization, showed a group of fighters apparently located in Syria speaking in Turkish and calling for Muslims to fight Syrian government forces.

"One foreign fighter is known as 'Yilmaz,' a Dutch-Turkish former soldier providing firearms training to jihadists."

Turkey has also occupied parts of northern Syria, including Afrin and Idlib, through local jihadist groups. The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) -- which forms an integral part of the US-led fight against ISIS but which the Turkish government lists as a "terrorist organization" -- took control of Afrin after Syrian government forces withdrew from the city in 2012. De facto autonomous Kurdish rule was then declared. In 2015, a US-allied group, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), of which the YPG is a member, was formed.

Turkey has targeted US allies in Syria through military incursions such as the 2018 "Operation Olive Branch" and 2019 "Operation Peace Spring."

"Operation Olive Branch," in Afrin, began on January 20, 2018, and concluded on March 18, 2018, with the defeat of the YPG at the hands of the Turkish military and its Islamist auxiliaries. Turkey's Islamist allies in Afrin have since committed many crimes against civilians, especially Christians, Yazidis and Kurds. These crimes include extortion, detention, abduction, rape, torture and murder. Investigative journalist Jonathan Spyer has documented some of these crimes. "[US] State Department, UN and NGO reports cite a pattern of grave human rights violations, assaults and targeting of women," he wrote.

The US State Department's "2020 Country Report on Human Rights Practices: Syria" stated:

"ISIS and armed opposition forces such as the Turkish-backed SNA [Syrian National Army], reportedly arrested, detained, tortured, killed, and otherwise abused numerous Kurdish activists and individuals as well as members of the SDF during the year. The COI [Country of Origin Information] reported a consistent, discernible pattern of abuses by SNA forces against Kurdish residents in Afrin and Ras al-Ayn, including "[c]ases of detentions, killings, beatings, and abductions, in addition to widespread looting and appropriation of civilian homes.

"The COI, STJ [Syrians for Truth and Justice], the Violations Documentation Center (VDC), and other monitors documented a trend of TSO [the Turkey-supported opposition] kidnappings of women in Afrin, where some women remained missing for years."

The government of Turkey is the power behind Al-Qaeda affiliates in Idlib such as the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies:

"In May 2018, the group [HTS] was added to the State Department's existing designation of its predecessor, the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). Today, HTS can be thought of as a relatively localized Syrian terrorist organization, which retains a Salafi-jihadist ideology despite its public split from al-Qaeda in 2017."

A 2021 study by the Middle East Institute details how Turkey and HTS are together occupying and exploiting parts of northwest Syria:

"The most significant shift in HTS economic policy occurred in July 2017, when the group took over the Bab al-Hawa crossing, one of the biggest sources of revenue in NW [north-west] Syria and a particularly strategic acquisition in terms of the relationship with Turkey."

In January 2018, the Watad Petroleum Company was formed in HTS-occupied northwest Syria, and granted exclusive rights to import oil derivatives and gas from Turkey into the area. In June 2020, HTS began replacing the Syrian pound with the Turkish lira, indexing the prices of goods to the lira. The Turkish government, through its massive economic support to the group, thereby became a lifeline for the jihadist HTS.

The capture of Aleppo by Turkey-backed, Al-Qaeda-affiliated forces is terrifying news for Kurds, Yazidis, Christians and everyone else whom jihadists perceive as their prey. If one is celebrating the advance of these Islamists invading parts of Syria, one is celebrating the advance of bloodthirsty jihadists who want to establish an Islamic caliphate and would happily slaughter anyone who stood in their way.

Although the first urgent priority of the civilized world should be to eliminate these jihadists, the next goal should be to ensure a democratic federal state, or autonomous regions in parts of Syria that would be ruled and defended by Kurds, Christians and Yazidis together.

Until Christians and other minorities in Syria have autonomy and are armed, they will be vulnerable to the assaults of Islamic extremists. For peace and stability in Syria, self-rule for Christians and Kurds is a must.

Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute. She is also a senior researcher at the African Jewish Alliance.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21178/syria-jihadist-terror-turkey

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Trump Needs to Make an Example of General Milley - Christopher Roach

 

by Christopher Roach

Mark Milley should be recalled to service, court-martialed, punished, and publicly dishonored in order to prevent a resurgence of the corrosive principle of leftist military partisanship.

 

 

In dealing with his enemies in the Deep State, President Trump could follow one of two paths. One would be the path of peace, reconciliation, and forgiveness. This would certainly be easier in the short term and also garner approval from insiders and the media. Alternatively, he could seek to clean house and punish the worst and most insubordinate offenders from his first term.

Which path Trump should take all depends on whether one believes the last eight years were normal partisan squabbles or if one believes that something monumental happened: the obstruction of democratic self-government by a technocratic Deep State.

I believe it is the latter for reasons I have explained before at length. In short, Trump was not allowed to govern, nor treated as other presidents were during his first term. The problem began before Trump, as entrenched bureaucratic interests have worked quietly to control more cooperative and less independent presidents, like Barack Obama and Joe Biden. But the resistance to Trump reflected a mature, ideological, and increasingly self-conscious managerial class that believed they were entitled to rule without regard to electoral results.

Trump was a threat to business as usual. Thus, a cabal of intelligence agencies cooperated to stop him from making changes to foreign policy or scrutinizing the outsized military-industrial complex. Contrary to the media’s dire pronouncements, these insiders were the real threat to democracy and self-government.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, was one of the worst offenders. As documented in Bob Woodward’s book Peril, Milley spent a lot of time after the 2020 election caballing with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and reassuring her that the military would resist certain orders from President Trump.

He met with the small group of officers who control our strategic nuclear forces and demanded they pledge to get his approval before executing any launch orders, even though, as head of the Joint Chiefs, he is merely an advisor and is statutorily excluded from the chain of command.

Finally, and most controversially, he was telling his counterpart in China that he would let them know if an attack or other action was coming from the United States. He defended this as normal “deconfliction” communications, but these secret talks took place without authorization from either the Secretary of Defense or the president.

All of Milley’s actions took place after he earlier joined with a group of retired officers to impede Trump’s use of the military to stop nationwide riots around June of 2020. Milley sent out an implied message to the troops suggesting that they could ignore any order to deploy, even though active-duty troops have been used in such a capacity repeatedly, including during the 1992 L.A. Riots. 

As he reminded the whole nation by using the term “white rage,” Milley is typical of the new class of liberal senior officers who take part in the culture wars, cleave to one-half of the partisan divide, and act like they are beyond the control of the president whom they serve when they disagree with his politics.

Milley’s bad behavior was particularly egregious because of his role. The Joint Chiefs are supposed to serve as military advisors. They are statutorily excluded from the ordinary chain of command to maintain institutional separation between advisory and command roles. This arrangement is designed to contribute to increased trust and candor between the Joint Chiefs and the president.

Secret talks with partisan opponents of the president, unauthorized back-channel communications to enemies, casual comparisons of the president to Adolf Hitler, and pseudo-idealistic suggestions that troops should disobey the orders they find disagreeable undermine that trust for obvious reasons.

Some have argued this might all be permissible in extremis and as part of the right of service members to resist illegal orders. But too much is made of this right. This defense is only supposed to apply to a very narrow set of self-evidently illegal orders, typically involving war crimes. Whether the government properly approved the use of troops to stop a riot is not such a case. Normally, the military must follow orders without delay. This distinguishes it from slower and less energetic civilian institutions.

There are a great many controversial—but legal—orders. Likely the most controversial would be an order to use nuclear weapons. The protocols on nuclear launch authority give exclusive power to the president to order a launch—a necessary, though admittedly dangerous, power to account for the fast timelines associated with a possible enemy first strike.

Perhaps this authority should be pulled back—I believe it should, particularly for cases of non-retaliatory uses of these weapons—but this was the established policy stretching back to the Cold War. More important, it was firmly established when Milley took it upon himself to undermine Trump’s authority by secretly demanding a loyalty oath from the officers in charge of our nuclear arsenal.

Milley did what he did because he was afraid of his own shadow and convinced himself that Trump was losing it and about to become a dictator. In his supercilious and adolescent phrasing, we were facing a “Reichstag moment.”

The military is not part of the Constitution’s system of checks and balances. The military and the entire executive branch are subordinate to the president. He is their source of authority and is the boss, having attained his authority from an election involving the entire American people.

Once upon a time, liberals worried that a conservative, authoritarian military might thwart a liberal president and his policies. But these fears proved to be completely overblown. The military was, until a decade or so ago, a self-consciously nonpartisan institution. Even as it trended more conservative during the Clinton years, there was no insubordination akin to Milley’s performance.

It turns out that while the country was on the lookout for right-wing military extremists, the military had few defenses from leftist partisanship. Whether classified as treason or mere insubordination, a similarly corrosive performance risks repeating itself during Trump’s second term.

In the immediate aftermath of the election, the left seems to realize it is unwise to resist openly and violently, as they did for much of the Trump administration. But I believe, at the moment, they are merely regrouping and working on a strategy they believe will work.

The military, which retains prestige because it is still perceived as a nonpartisan repository of patriotic rectitude, will likely loom prominently in these plans, just as it did during Trump’s first term. As we know, the military and Milley lost all qualms about using the military domestically when they flooded the zone with armed National Guardsmen to create a Green Zone for Biden’s 2021 Inauguration.

This unhealthy politicization and leftist partisanship among the military’s senior leadership must be stopped. The military should return to its role as a neutral instrument of national power. But this means it must chiefly be controlled by the elected president in the manner he directs. In order to restore healthier civil-military relations, there must be a dramatic and symbolic reset reminding the military and the rest of the country that Trump has full executive powers as president.

In order to accomplish this, Mark Milley should be recalled to service, court-martialed, punished, and publicly dishonored in order to prevent a resurgence of the corrosive principle of leftist military partisanship during Trump’s second term.

***

Christopher Roach is an adjunct fellow of the Center for American Greatness and an attorney in private practice based in Florida. He is a double graduate of the University of Chicago and has previously been published by The Federalist, Takimag, Chronicles, the Washington Legal Foundation, the Marine Corps Gazette, and the Orlando Sentinel. The views presented are solely his own.

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/03/trump-needs-to-make-an-example-of-general-milley/

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How Jerusalem’s inaction fueled the ICC’s anti-Israel agenda - Maurice Hirsch

 

by Maurice Hirsch

How Palestinian manipulation and ICC bias led to arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.

 

RIYAD MANSOUR, permanent Palestinian observer to the UN, addresses the Security Council on the situation in Gaza last month. In 2012, when the Palestinians asked the UN to recognize the ‘State of Palestine,’ Israel should have declared that it was a breach of the Oslo Accords, the writer argues.

(photo credit: BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS)

The decision of the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant is a result of blatant antisemitism on the side of the court, and persistent inaction in Jerusalem.

The actions of the court are clear. To get to this point, the ICC had to adopt a number of problematic steps. First it had to admit an entity – the “State of Palestine” – that is not a real state. Then the court had to act ultra vires and decide on the borders of the nonexistent state. 

The ICC prosecutor then needed to act on the baseless complaints of the Palestinians and adopt the narrative of the terrorists who led the October 7 massacre and their supporters.

Jerusalem was given multiple opportunities to pull the rug from under the process. When the Palestinians asked the United Nations, in 2012, to recognize the “State of Palestine,” Jerusalem should have declared that the move was a fundamental breach of the Oslo Accords, and implemented sanctions against the Palestinian Authority/the Palestine Liberation Organization. When the “State of Palestine” joined the ICC in 2014/2015, Jerusalem had a second chance.

When the Palestinians met on scores of occasions with the ICC prosecutor with the declared goal of opening an investigation against Israel, Jerusalem had a third chance. When the ICC prosecutor announced, in 2020, the opening of the investigation against Israel, Jerusalem had a fourth chance. When the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber decided, in 2021, to ignore history, reality, and the law, Jerusalem had a fifth chance. When the current ICC prosecutor decided to turn the terror narrative into a request to issue arrest warrants, Jerusalem had a sixth chance.

PLO chairman Yasser Arafat (third right) gestures toward prime minister Yitzhak Rabin (third left) as US president Bill Clinton (center) stands between them, after the signing of the Oslo Accords on September 13, 1993. (credit: GARY HERSHORN/REUTERS)

Catastrophic inaction

So what could and should have been done?

As part of the Oslo Accords, Israel agreed to waive billions of shekels of taxes in favor of the PA. As the PA/PLO was breaching the accords, Israel collected over NIS 100 billion on behalf of the PA. The tax income from Israel accounts for no less than 65% of the PA’s total income. Without this income, the PA cannot exist.

In other words, out of every NIS 100 the PA/PLO spent hunting Israel in the ICC, Jerusalem provided NIS 65. Jerusalem literally funded the Palestinian Jew-hunt. As the PA/PLO fundamentally breached the Oslo Accords, Jerusalem acted like an ostrich, shoving its head into the sand.

Unfortunately, this course of action is not unique to the ICC. When the Palestinians asked, and succeeded, earlier this year, to upgrade the status of the “State of Palestine” in the UN, Jerusalem failed to act. When the PA/PLO pushed the UN General Assembly to ask the International Court of Justice to provide an advisory opinion attacking Israel, Jerusalem did nothing. When the Palestinians then asked the UNGA to adopt the biased ICJ advisory opinion, thereby, effectively rebirthing, on steroids, the infamous UN resolution comparing Zionism to racism, Jerusalem did nothing.

The abject failure, time after time, to use the substantial financial leverage that Jerusalem holds over the very existence of the PA has now proven to be disastrous, and the Palestinians have registered a substantial success, not only in the ICC but also, and no less importantly, in the court of public opinion.For the ICC, Jerusalem’s inaction could also prove to catastrophic.

The ICC was created to be an international forum that would prosecute the worst offenders. It was created to allay the fears that the punishment of war criminals would be dependent, as had historically been the case, on which side won the war. The neutrality of the court stands at its very core.

The court’s repeated decisions to acquiesce to the Palestinian political weaponization of the court against Israel is a fundamental breach of the court’s raison d’etre.

Already plagued as being another failed, cash sapping international institution, for many years the court was predominantly seen as a forum for the prosecution of rogue African leaders.

Instead of honestly addressing these shortcomings, the ICC decided to double down on its bias, in the thought that hunting the Jewish state would restore some of its legitimacy. In reality, however, the oblique politicization of the court will not improve its image. Rather, it is more likely to signal the last nail in the coffin and death knoll of an institution that could potentially have served a noble goal.

Given the circumstances, Jerusalem must act. Since it is totally unacceptable that Jerusalem continue funding the PA-PLO-ICC Jew-hunt, Jerusalem must inform the PA that until it waives its status in the UN and withdraws from the ICC, both fundamental breaches of the Oslo Accords, it will not see another agora. Palestinian malfeasance must have consequences.

Maurice Hirsch, a reserve IDF lieutenant colonel, is the director of the Initiative for Palestinian Authority Accountability and Reform in the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs and a former director of the Military Prosecution in Judea and Samaria.

Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-831690

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Censorship empire strikes back with UN disinformation declaration, German charges for memes - Greg Piper

 

by Greg Piper

Small Canadian town without a flagpole forced to pay LGBTQ group $15,000 for refusing to announce Pride month, fly rainbow flag.

 

The second Trump administration may presage the significant retrenchment, if not collapse, of what critics call the censorship-industrial complex, a symbiotic and sometimes coercive relationship among the U.S. government, private researchers and Big Tech to suppress disfavored narratives and political movements such as populism.

But the ascendance of former censorship targets into top posts, especially Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary and Jay Bhattacharya as National Institutes of Health director, has not appeared to diminish the appetites of international leaders for further crackdowns on expression that runs afoul of governments.

"United in Peace: Restoring Trust, Reshaping the Future – Reflecting on Two Decades of Dialogue for Humanity" was the theme for the 10th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, a three-day gathering of heads of state, youth, civil society and religious leaders in Cascais, Portugal, last week.

Government leaders unanimously adopted the Cascais Declaration, which binds them to "stress the importance of combatting disinformation, misinformation and hate speech, while strengthening information integrity," without defining any of those terms or laying out methods.

The declaration itself does not appear to be available except through Reclaim the Net, which posted it Sunday. UNAOC's website was not working throughout Monday, and the U.N.'s other public statements don't link the document.

"We must reign [sic] in hate speech and disinformation spreading online," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at the global forum, according to the English transcript.

"Hate-filled frenzies are perpetuating stereotypes and misconceptions," while misinformation and "outright lies are fueling repulsive antisemitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and attacks on minority Christian communities, among others," he continued.

"Unchecked digital platforms and Artificial Intelligence have endowed hate speech with a speed and reach unseen before," and "many times they lead to violence. With the proliferation of deepfakes, the impossible and the unverified become credible in an instant."

He also said Big Tech, advertisers and media "must take responsibility for their role."

The week before, the U.N. and Brazilian government announced a similarly vague "Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change" to gather evidence on "climate disinformation and its impacts" that will be used to “bolster strategic action.” 

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser filed criminal charges against David Bendels, publisher and editor-in-chief of the conservative Deutschland Kurier, for "insult, slander and defamation against people in political life" by posting memes — one an altered photo of Faeser holding a sign that reads "I hate freedom of speech!" in German, the Kurier reported Nov. 20.

The Kurier posted what it called "two penalty orders totalling 480 (!) daily rates against Bendels" by the Bamberg District Court, which international anti-censorship advocacy group Reclaim the Net called a "heavy fine" that could be followed by prison time.

The media organization is aligned with the opposition conservative AfD party, "whose rise in popularity has been accompanied by the government’s explicit or tacit pressure against its members, but also supporters," Reclaim the Net said. 

X owner Elon Musk drew attention to the case by responding to a video by Bendels' colleague Naomi Seibt on Faeser's history of "prosecuting migration critics" and "banning an entire magazine," the heterodox Compact, which Faeser called "a central mouthpiece of the right-wing extremist scene." The Compact ban, later overturned in court, also drew Musk's attention.

Canada's Ontario Human Rights Tribunal fined the small town of Emo and Mayor Harold McQuaker for refusing to announce a message in 2020 – proclaiming June as Pride Month and flying a rainbow flag for a week.

Advocacy group Borderland Pride made the request to Emo, which objected that it doesn't have a flagpole and there was no flag for "straight people" to provide balance, according to the tribunal's Nov. 20 ruling. It ordered the town and McQuaker to pay Borderland Pride $15,000, and McQuaker and another town official to complete a "Human Rights 101" training course.

The global forum's Cascais Declaration says it welcomes the U.N. Rabat Plan of Action on the "prohibition of advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence," also without defining hatred. 

The tacit calls for censorship are lumped in with recognition of "sports diplomacy as a tool for promoting dialogue," support for women as "negotiators, mediators and peacemakers" and protection for religious sites, as well as "the potential use of artificial intelligence as a tool to advance intercultural and interreligious dialogue."

Freedom of expression is mentioned only once, as "interdependent, interrelated and mutually reinforcing" with freedom of belief and religion, which is mentioned repeatedly in the document.

Guterres told the high-level Group of Friends meeting that "as the tide of hatred and intolerance becomes a tsunami, we need even more bold voices and bolder action.” He asked countries to "dig deeper to help replenish the Alliance’s Voluntary Trust Fund." The next global forum takes place in Saudi Arabia in 2026.

The U.N.'s press release puts the Cascais Declaration in the context of "wars in Gaza, Lebanon and beyond" and says it offers "solutions to a current landscape of eroding trust and rising antisemitism, nationalism and online hate."

While the Israel-Palestine conflict is a major focus, the press release puts the blame squarely on Israel, touting remarks by Senegal Prime Minister Aminata Touré: "Is civilization about ‘you kill one of mine, I’ll kill 34.16 of yours,’ which is, so far, the retaliation rate of Israel against the unacceptable, widely condemned attacks of October 2023."

During the global forum, The Wall Street Journal editorial board accused the U.N. of purging its Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide Alice Wairimu Nderitu for refusing to label Israel's actions in Gaza "genocide," as the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices wants, because the definition requires the "intention of eliminating" an ethnic group.

The U.N. told the Journal that Nderitu was leaving "as her contract is expiring" after four years, which the newspaper called "a political choice" because "U.N. contracts are often renewed when their terms expire." 

Guterres's deputy spokesman, Farhan Haq, told Jewish News Syndicate at a press briefing last week that it's "just false" that Guterres wanted Nderitu gone for her refusal to call Israel's actions genocide. Her departure was "part of the normal course of events" and a one-term advisor "happens all the time."

The New York Post editorial board called on President-elect Trump to withhold U.N. dues until Guterres "and his minions" leave.

Greg Piper

Source: https://justthenews.com/nation/free-speech/censorship-empire-strikes-back-un-disinformation-declaration-german-charges

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ESG firms invested in coal industry they tried to reduce, while reaping big profits, lawsuit alleges - Kevin Killough

 

by Kevin Killough

BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard had substantial investments in all publicly traded coal companies, and used that leverage to reduce production. Smaller producers couldn't increase output, in part due to banks' ESG policies. The three investment firms reaped huge profits.

 

Loading machinery operates at the coal yard in Longkou Port Area, Yantai City, Shandong Province, China, on Nov. 29, 2024.

(Getty Images)

The State of Texas has been a leader in the pushback against environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies, passing some of the first anti-ESG laws in the country. Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton moved to protect the coal industry from what Paxton says is an effort on the part of large investment firms to not only shrink coal companies — but also unfairly profit from them. 

Paxton teamed up with 10 other attorney generals in GOP states to file a lawsuit against BlackRock, State Street Corporation and Vanguard Group, three of the largest investors in the world. The lawsuit alleges that the three asset managers acquired substantial stockholdings in every significant publicly held coal producer in the United States. The defendants shared information, communicated with the management of the coal companies they invested in, and voted with their shares to artificially reduce production and constrain the supply of coal. 

Smaller coal producers, according to the lawsuit, lacked the capacity and financial resources to raise production and sufficiently meet demand in order to capture a market share. Likewise, banks’ ESG policies made it difficult for these competitors to obtain financing to expand their operations.

“Defendants are directly restraining competition between the companies whose shares they have acquired, but their war on competition has consequences for the entire industry,” the lawsuit states. 

Complaint, Doc. 1- States v. BlackRock.pdf

Nefarious effort

Vanguard didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. BlackRock and State Street disputed the attorney generals’ claims. 

A spokesperson for BlackRock said that the firm has invested billions in the Texas energy industries, including coal, and it’s working with the state to attract investments to the state’s power grid, which will improve retirement investments. To claim BlackRock would invest money in companies with the goal of harming them, the spokesperson said, “defies common sense.” 

A spokesperson for State Street called the lawsuit “baseless” and was looking forward to presenting its case in court. State Street, the spokesperson said, works in the long-term financial interests of its investors, and focuses on enhancing shareholder value. "As long-term capital providers, we have a mutual interest in the long-term success of our portfolio companies,” the State Street spokesperson said. 

Travis Deti, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association, told Just the News that, while he wasn’t familiar with Paxton’s complaint, he’s pleased that the attorney generals were standing up for the coal industry. Wyoming produces over 40% of the nation’s coal, and the industry is a key part of the state’s economy. The state’s coal producers will likely dip below 200 million tons produced this year, which will be the lowest since 2023, according to Cowboy State Daily. 

“The whole ESG effort is nefarious, and of course, it’s had its impacts. We applaud the folks bringing the lawsuit, because it's really counterproductive. It certainly hurts the industry. When we're talking about energy, we should go to our most affordable and abundant resources to provide for the energy needs of this country. And this kind of ESG meddling doesn't serve that interest and doesn't serve the American people,” Deti said. 

Immense influence

The three firms named in the suit had large stakes in Peabody Energy and Arch Resources, which together produce over 30% of the nation’s coal. BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard combined had a 30.43% stake in Peabody, and a 34.19% stake in Arch Resources. In the case of the other publicly traded coal companies, the three firms have at least a 25% stake in all but two. 

“Defendants have immense influence over these companies on their own, but collectively Defendants possess a power to coerce management that is all but irresistible. Defendants have used that collective power — by proxy voting and otherwise — to pressure the major coal producers to reduce production of coal, and in particular production of the thermal coal used to generate the electricity that powers American homes and businesses,” the lawsuit claims.  All combined, the three banks have at least $24.5 trillion under management.

The lawsuit also shows that between 2019 and 2022, as production rates declined, the companies saw profits soar. Peabody Energy had a production decline of 34.7% in those three years, but company profits rose 853.9%. Arch Resources production fell 9.4%, but profits increased 469.2%. 

The lawsuit claims that those figures and others demonstrate that the publicly held coal companies weren’t responding to the laws of supply and demand, but to the pressures of ESG directors from the three firms. 

“What happened next was economically predictable: Defendants’ acquisition of shares in the Coal Companies caused a substantial reduction in competition between those firms,” the lawsuit states. 

Emily Arthun, CEO of the American Coal Council, told Just the News, that ESG policies that firms used to push anti-fossil fuel policies came down particularly hard on the coal industry, but for these firms to profit from an industry its shrinking is especially surprising. 

“It’s hypocrisy at its best,” Arthun said. 

Both ends

Energy expert Tom Shepstone wrote on his "Energy Security and Freedom" Substack that the alleged collusion between the three firms impacted consumers. “We all paid more for electricity produced by coal and then paid again as massive subsidies went into solar and wind, giving a whole new meaning to what burning the candle at both ends means and filling the pockets of the BSV Gang of Three [BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard], our modern-day robber barons,” Shepstone wrote. 

The industry has also faced federal pressure attacking both supply and demand. The EPA’s power plant rule that was finalized in April requires carbon capture on all existing and new coal plants, but the agency’s own modeling showed that these technologies wouldn’t be deployed on any new plants and only one existing one through 2055. 

Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, the Bureau of Land Management announced officially it would end all coal leasing in the Powder River Basin. The region stretches across northeast Wyoming and part of Montana, and 43% of the nation’s coal comes from the area. “We’re seeing energy demand rise, and they’re working hard to shut down a very affordable, reliable energy source,” Arthun said. 

During his campaign President-elect Donald Trump had little to say about coal, other than promising to roll back the EPA’s power plant rule. Arthun and Deti said they’re “cautiously optimistic” about how the industry will fare under the new administration. 

“I think we’ll see a lot of collaboration between the industry and the incoming president and Congress,” Arthun said. 

Kevin Killough

Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/esg-firms-invested-coal-industry-it-sought-reduce-while-reaping-big-profits

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Trump’s Wild Bunch Is Ready for Action - Frank Miele

 

by Frank Miele

Donald Trump’s proposed second-term Cabinet signals a last-stand effort to upend entrenched bureaucracy and ignite sweeping reforms across justice, health, national security, and the economy.

 

If for no other reason than that it will elicit fear in the hearts of autocracy-phobics, I propose that Donald Trump’s second-term Cabinet be known as “The Wild Bunch.”

The name is best known as the title of Sam Peckinpah’s classic 1969 western featuring a colorful cast of aging outlaws – William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O’Brien, Warren Oates, and Ben Johnson – who give it their all as they battle bounty hunters, the Mexican Federal Army, and the passage of time in order to make their mark while they still have a chance.

Substitute the legacy media and special interests for the bounty hunters and Mexican army, and that about sums up the desperate last-chance mission of the ragtag band Trump has put together to carry out his mandate of meaningful change in a government grown fat and corrupt for the past half-century.

We don’t need to belabor the point. Trump’s appointees aren’t outlaws, but they certainly have the federales worried – the so-called administrative state, the people who have been wearing badges and making the rules. Because this Wild Bunch looks like they mean business. If they get approved, they will be kicking ass and taking names.

It’s a far cry from Trump’s first Cabinet, which he appointed with the permission of the administrative state. The outsider president didn’t know enough yet – or have enough power – to buck the system. He went with consensus choices who, at best, might talk about change but would be hesitant to effect it. Half of them shot Trump in the back; most of the rest were disloyal to his face, along with the congressional power brokers who put up roadblocks to every meaningful reform.

It’s not hard to think of Trump as Pike Bishop, the William Holden character in “The Wild Bunch” who leads what’s left of his gang out of a disastrous gunfight at the beginning of the movie and then plans his next move. At one point, Pike tells his trusted lieutenant, “This is our last go-around, Dutch. This time, we do it right.”

That’s where Trump is now, at age 78, sensing the insufficiency of his first term and wanting to make a real difference the second time around. This time, we do it right.

The president-elect has wasted no time in assembling his team of rabble-rousers. You can break the mayhem down into four discrete buckets – justice, health, national security, and economic overhaul – and it looks like, if he gets his way, Trump’s second term could be historic. Throw in the government reinvention project spearheaded by rogue entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and you are well on your way to the second American revolution. No wonder the political establishment will stop at nothing to crush Trump and his appointees before they can begin the reforms they promised.

The old guard may have celebrated when they took down the proposed appointment of Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general, but they won nothing. Trump’s replacement nominee, former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, will work just as hard as Gaetz to shake up the Department of Justice. As one of Trump’s attorneys in his first impeachment trial, she has intimate knowledge of how the Deep State can aim the full force of the federal bureaucracy on an individual to destroy him or her.

It’s no accident that the Trump transition team has declined FBI background checks on his nominees and appointees. Remember, this is the same FBI that entrapped Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn in the early days of his first administration. Not to mention the FBI that let President Trump be impeached for questioning Joe Biden’s role in Ukrainian corruption, even though the agency was in possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop that would have vindicated Trump if it had been released.

You can bet that Bondi, assisted by Trump’s criminal lawyer Todd Blanche in the role of deputy attorney general, will remove any Justice Department employees who pursue charges against anyone for political purposes. Those days are over.

But that’s just the beginning, and although the Justice Department overhaul may bring the most significant changes immediately, the appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services could result in long-term changes of even greater impact.

Anyone who has noticed the prevalence of advertising for wonder drugs on cable news probably can understand the concern that Big Pharma has an outsized impact on the health narrative being told in mainstream media. Multiply that concern by a dozen when you measure the influence that drug companies have not just on Congress and health regulatory agencies but on the medical industry itself.

Bobby Kennedy has no fear of Big Pharma or the scientific establishment and he is willing to demand accountability for the kinds of policy decisions that led to our disastrous COVID policies four years ago. Is he right about everything? No, but he asks the right questions – questions that until now no one in power has dared to raise.

What about national security? There are problems everywhere, none bigger than China, which has been the missing link in U.S. foreign policy for the past four years. Does President Biden even have a China policy? You would be hard-pressed to find it, unless it is appeasement. No response to the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. No response to the cold war with the Philippines or the creation of Chinese naval bases in the South China Sea. No response to the increasing pressure tactics employed against our crucial trading partner, Taiwan. No response to China cracking down on human rights and free speech in Hong Kong. No response to China’s creation of a spy base in Cuba in violation of the Monroe Doctrine. No response to China’s predatory trade practices using slave labor.

You can expect the silence from the State Department to end when Sen. Marco Rubio is approved by the Senate as the new secretary of state. China is on notice, but other hot spots around the globe will also be addressed by Trump’s national security team, which includes former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence and Rep. Michael Waltz as national security adviser. Trump promised to negotiate a settlement to the frightful war in Ukraine, and by appointing Gen. Keith Kellogg as special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, Trump is signaling that the killing has to end.

National security and the economy overlap in at least two crucial areas – illegal immigration and Trump’s plan to use tariffs as a tool to tame our allies and confound our adversaries. Treasury Secretary-designate Scott Bessent has made it clear that he will work with Trump to use tariffs to reshape the global economy and lessen the national debt.

That will be a key ingredient as Trump’s national security team works to deport the millions of illegals who have developed a dangerous symbiosis with the labor economy. Trump knows we can’t merely overlook the lawbreakers without surrendering our moral superiority, but the trick will be to find economic resources to make whole the industries like agriculture that will need to reinvent themselves with a legal work force.

In the first Trump administration, the response to Trump’s plans for massive change was “Why?” But now the response is “Why not?” As Trump asked black voters in 2016, “What do you have to lose?” Now that question is being posed to the entire nation, which has been sleepwalking toward the abyss for too long. If we don’t solve illegal immigration, the national debt, and the corporate stranglehold on our regulatory agencies and Defense Department, then there won’t be anything left to lose. That’s why nearly 60% of Americans support Trump’s transition, despite the fear-mongering of Rachel Maddow, the New York Times, and Biden’s White House.

In one last parallel between the cinematic “Wild Bunch” and Trump’s political variation, it is worth noting that Trump and his team know exactly what they are getting into. The Deep State isn’t going to take kindly to the president turning off the spigot of easy money for lobbyists, Big Pharma, and the military-industrial complex. But don’t expect Trump to back down.

In a crucial scene in the film, as the outlaws plot their revenge, Ernest Borgnine warns William Holden that “They’ll be waitin’ for us.”

Holden responds: “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Neither would Trump or any of the 77 million deplorables who joined his gang on Nov. 5.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

Frank Miele

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/03/trumps-wild-bunch-is-ready-for-action/

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