The latest polls show why liberalism sucks…
It’s unavoidable and now more Americans are sick and tired of Biden’s leadership has resulted in nothing but an epic failure.
Let Amanda break down the latest situation below:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
The same United States Justice Department prosecuting former President Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents ordered the National Archives and Records Administration to recover nine boxes of documents that had been held by Joe Biden – but a federal prosecutor investing whether Biden illegally retained documents appears to have not looked into the matter.
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Committee on the Budget, “sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray, and Special Counsel Robert Hur regarding an apparent ‘significant factual omission’ in the Special Counsel’s report on President Biden’s handling of classified records,” a statement from Johnson announced.
“In March 2023, the senators revealed that the Department of Justice (DOJ) tasked the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to retrieve nine boxes of Biden records from the Boston office of Patrick Moore, one of Biden’s personal counsels. NARA told the senators that it did move the boxes to its facility in Boston on November 9, 2022. It remains unclear whether any of the records in those boxes contained classified information,” the statement reveals.
Many assume the boxes contained classified documents, as the order to retrieve them came from the Justice Department.
The senators wrote, “[o]ddly, Special Counsel Hur’s report did not mention NARA’s retrieval of the nine boxes from Mr. Moore’s office. This apparent omission is significant given that, according to NARA, the Department of Justice requested that NARA recover the boxes. In fact, in March 2023, NARA informed our offices that ‘while NARA has not yet reviewed the contents of the nine boxes, the FBI has.’”
“The senators noted that if the FBI did review the contents of the boxes, it is unclear what was found, if it included any classified information, and ‘whether the FBI informed Special Counsel Hur’s office of its findings,’” Johnson noted.
The senators added, “it is unclear if Special Counsel Hur had any awareness of or reviewed the information contained in these nine boxes. It would be extremely troubling if Special Counsel Hur failed to investigate the contents of these nine boxes particularly given that we first publicly revealed the existence of these specific boxes on March 27, 2023 — nearly one year ago.”
The never-ending drama surrounding Hunter Biden just keeps getting better.
Watch Amanda explain the controversy below:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – BOOM! – The landmark Supreme Court decision against racial and sex discrimination by schools and universities (under the guise of ‘affirmative action’) will also impact corporate ‘diversity’ programs based on the same flawed, discriminatory ideas.
In what has become a major legal development in a growing wave of anti-wokeness, corporations will soon have to reconsider all their – likely illegal – Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts.
While pushed by the increasingly leftist establishment, most of these woke programs have been illegal under U.S. state and federal laws, which explicitly prohibit discrimination by race and gender. But until now the courts let them get away with it.
Now the Supreme Court has made it official. Affirmative action (aka – discriminatory ‘diversity’ efforts) are out.
The court held by that Harvard and University of North Carolina’s (UNC’s) admissions programs violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Students for Fair Admissions, a conservative group, sued Harvard and UNC over their ‘race-conscious’ admissions programs, arguing they intentionally discriminated against Asian American applicants.
In the decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: “Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points.”
He added: “We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.”
Previously, the Supreme Court in the 2003 case of Grutter v. Bollinger, ruled that “the use of an applicant’s race as one factor in an admissions policy of a public educational institution does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment if the policy is narrowly tailored to the compelling interest of promoting a diverse student body.”
This was intended to be a very narrow exception, but soon became far more. And this helped woke corporate America justify its own discriminatory DEI programs.
A 2022 Harvard Business Review 2022 survey, reported by The Epoch Times, showed that more than 60 percent of U.S. companies had a DEI program, which separates employees according to race and gender.
After the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots, major corporations announced explicit race-based hiring and promotion policies.
But now that the 2003 decision has been superseded, they will all need to revisit the legality of their DEI programs. As Kevin Stocklin explains in The Epoch Times:
In an amicus brief regarding the Harvard and UNC case, the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute and attorney Ilya Shapiro argued that “what this Court authorized in Grutter as a temporary, grudging exception to America’s ideals and generally applicable law of Equal Protection … has metastasized into a threat blooming across the legal landscape, the economy, and society as a whole.”
The exceptions granted by the Grutter case were narrowly tailored to government-funded universities’ admissions policies, and were intended to be a temporary remedy that would include “sunset” provisions. But corporations have applied them as a precedent to race-based policies on staffing and training, and expanded them to include new racial goals.
“To the extent that corporate America has thought that Grutter provided some kind of fig leaf to the illegal discrimination they’ve been engaging in for the last two decades, this would be a really good time for them to rethink that,” Morenoff said. “It never made sense for corporate America to argue that there was a diversity rationale exception to our civil rights laws,” he said.
However, if the Supreme Court decision reverses Grutter or the Johnson executive order, even that questionable pretense would be gone. Rather than standing on thin ice, Morenoff said, “they’re standing on no ice at all.”
This is the next battleground – using this Supreme Court precedent to eliminate discrimination by sex and race from corporate America.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
The former IRS contractor who got a sweetheart plea agreement from the Biden administration after stealing and leaking the private tax information of President Donald Trump, will soon have to answer to Congress.
The House Judiciary Committee reports Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent a letter “requesting that Charles E. Littlejohn, a former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) contractor who leaked tax information belonging to hundreds of thousands of Americans, including President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, appear before the Committee.”
“In February, the IRS informed the Committee that Littlejohn had leaked the private data of more than 400,000 taxpayers—nearly six times higher than the 70,000 figure initially reported by the Biden-Harris IRS,” the Committee reports, noting it “raised concerns related to the Department of Justice’s sweetheart plea deal Littlejohn received, which resulted in a light sentence despite the severity of the data breach.”
Despite pulling off what may be the greatest data theft in IRS history, which the presiding judge called “a threat to our democracy,” and exhibiting little remorse, Biden administration prosecutors allowed Littlejohn to plead guilty to only one minor charge, giving him the lightest possible sentence.
Jordan’s letter reads, in part:
“Since the 118th Congress, the Committee has been conducting oversight into the unprecedented leak of protected taxpayer information by your client, Charles E. Littlejohn. On January 29, 2024, the Department of Justice (DOJ) allowed Mr. Littlejohn, a former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) contractor, to plead guilty to only one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax information for leaking ‘thousands of individuals’ and entities’ tax returns,’ including President Trump’s tax information. Since then, the Committee has obtained information showing that the scope of the leak is much broader than the Biden-Harris Administration led the public to believe—affecting over 400,000 taxpayers. In light of this new information, Mr. Littlejohn’s testimony is critical to the Committee’s oversight efforts and advancement of potential legislative reforms. We therefore respectfully request his testimony.
“In 2017, Mr. Littlejohn applied to work as an IRS contractor with the expressed intention of accessing and disclosing President Trump’s tax returns. Not only did Mr. Littlejohn succeed in obtaining and leaking President Trump’s returns, he also disclosed ‘thousands of Americans’ federal tax returns and other private financial information’ to the New York Times and ProPublica, which together published more than 50 articles relying on the stolen information. Despite the Biden-Garland Justice Department referring to his unauthorized disclosures as ‘unparalleled in the IRS’s history,’ it only charged Mr. Littlejohn with one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax information, which resulted in a five-year prison sentence, three years’ supervised release, and a $5,000 fine. The judge who oversaw Mr. Littlejohn’s sentencing, admitted that she was ‘perplexed’ and ‘troubled’ by the plea agreement.
“After Mr. Littlejohn’s sentencing, the IRS began notifying and assisting affected taxpayers. In May 2024, an IRS spokesman stated, ‘[m]ore than 70,000 people received the initial notice that their information was involved in the breach.’ However, in December 2024, the IRS issued a second wave of notifications to additional taxpayer victims. On February 14, 2025, the IRS disclosed to the Committee that it had ‘mailed notifications to 405,427 taxpayers whose taxpayer information was inappropriately disclosed by Mr. Littlejohn’ and that ’89 [percent] of the[se] taxpayers are business entities.’
“In light of this new disclosure that Mr. Littlejohn leaked hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ information—not just ‘thousands’ as previously suggested—the Biden-Harris Administration’s decision to charge him with just one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax information is even more concerning. The Committee has jurisdiction over criminal law and federal law enforcement pursuant to House Rule X. As such, to develop effective legislation, such as reforms to DOJ procedures governing plea agreements and new statutory limits of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, Mr. Littlejohn’s testimony is necessary.
“Accordingly, we write to request Mr. Littlejohn’s testimony before the Committee on the Judiciary as soon as practicable. Please confirm his appearance before the Committee as soon as possible, but no later than 5:00 p.m. on March 31, 2025. We will also work with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to facilitate his testimony in a timely manner.”
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – ‘Gold Star’ families of U.S. troops killed in the August 2021 Abbey Gate bombing at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan, are blasting Team Biden excuses over the disastrous retreat. Saturday marked the two-year anniversary of the terrorist attack during Joe Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from the country.
At least 183 people were killed in the attack, including the 13 U.S. service members (12 Marines and a sailor).
Shamefully, Biden allowed the Taliban to retake the country almost 20 years to the day of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on Washington, DC, and New York City.
AND HERE, TWO YEARS AFTER THE AFGHAN COLLAPSE, WE STILL DON’T HAVE ANSWERS, AND NO ONE HAS BEEN HELD ACCOUNTABLE.
As I wrote about earlier, senior Biden defense officials spent the days before and after the deadly 2021 attack in Kabul obsessing on getting Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to sign off on their Climate Change plan rather than focus on the chaos and death in Afghanistan.
Now, several of these Gold Star families spoke at a House Foreign Affairs Committee roundtable where they expressed their anger at the Biden administration, including Chairman of the Chiefs Mark Milley, who they blame, in part, for the bombing that killed 13 service members.
As the hearing was about to commence, Milley released a statement in which he said the U.S. owes Gold Star families “everything.”
“We owe them transparency, we owe them honesty, we owe them accountability. We owe them the truth about what happened to their loved ones,” Milley said.
But the families didn’t appear impressed. Instead, they were angry about the “excuses” and misinformation they received.
Fox News reported on their justified anger and venting. Kelly Barnett, the mother of Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Taylor Hoover, said “I don’t want to hear lies, I don’t want to hear excuses from Joe Biden, from the administration.”
Hoover’s father, Darin Hoover, called on top Pentagon brass to resign.
He poignantly noted: “Today is the date, two years ago, that we received our kids home at Dover. Two years ago today, where we were disrespected with stories of Biden’s son and him looking at his watch. And today, here we sit as their families, begging you two years later, to find these answers.”
Christy Shamblin, mother-in-law of Marine Corps Sergeant Nicole Gee, who was pictured prominently with an Afghan baby in her arms prior to her death, asked why credible warnings were ignored in the days leading up to the attack.
Some even accused the Pentagon of giving them ‘made-up stories’ about their loved ones in the aftermath of the attack.
As Breitbart News reported:
…[in a Fox interview] Cheryl Rex, whose son, Lance Corporal Dylan Merola, was killed in the Kabul airport attack in 2021 reacted to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley saying that he believes military briefers gave all the information to the families of those killed in the bombing all the information they could by stating that the briefing on her son was completely inaccurate…
…[When Rex was asked] “Do you believe that all the information was there, or do you agree with other families that it wasn’t about the information, it was about the warnings that were ignored?”
Rex answered, “Me personally, he did not — the brief report was not correct. They changed my son’s location a couple of times. They were trying to accommodate his wounds that were not even in the right spots of his body according to his autopsy report. He did not — the brief report is nothing [like] what we were actually told… I feel it was made-up stories that they were trying to cover up the wounds.”
These Gold Star families deserve answers and accountability. And so do the American people.
ANALYSIS – Yes, this was election interference. Under the guise of combating ‘misinformation’ the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) led the effort that colluded with major universities and Big Tech to censor free speech leading up to the 2020 election.
As House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said Monday, according to Newsmax: “This pressure was largely directed in a way that benefited one side of the political aisle: true information posted by Republicans and conservatives was labeled as ‘misinformation’ while false information posted by Democrats and liberals was largely unreported and untouched by the censors.”
How did they do this?
An interim staff report by the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government explained that DHS, so-called disinformation “experts” at universities, Big Tech and others colluded through the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) to monitor and censor Americans’ online speech during the 2020 election.
“The federal government and universities pressured social media companies to censor true information, jokes and political opinions.”
Among the DHS targets was Newsmax, according to a summary of the report, titled “The Weaponization of ‘Disinformation’ Pseudo-experts and Bureaucrats: How the Federal Government Partnered with Universities to Censor Americans’ Free Speech.”
Newsmax reported: “The report revealed how the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Global Engagement Center (GEC) within the State Department coordinated with Stanford University and other entities to create the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) to censor Americans’ speech in the lead-up to the election.”
In a post on X, Jordan wrote, “according to one EIP member, the EIP was created ‘at the request of CISA.’ The head of the EIP also said that EIP was created after ‘working on some monitoring ideas with CISA.'”
Newsmax added:
It [the report] outlines how the EIP was created in the summer of 2020 to provide a way for the federal government “to launder its censorship activities in hopes of bypassing the First Amendment and public scrutiny.”
“The EIP targeted Americans across the political spectrum, but especially conservatives,” according to the report’s summary.
The House committee found that EIP, using Stanford, encouraged social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, now known as X, to declare conservative news as “misinformation.”
Newsmax continued: “ EIP used a tactic known as “switchboarding” to refer to removal requests from state and local officials to Facebook, X and other social media sites, the New York Post reported Monday…the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana ruled in September federal officials colluded with Big Tech social media platforms to suppress speech.”
And they didn’t just censor everyday Americans, they also targeted Republican politicians ranging from former President Donald Trump, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to former Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Among the media, the report noted, in addition to Newsmax, this corrupt political effort targeted conservative commentators such as Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, Michelle Malkin and Mollie Hemingway, and “an untold number of everyday Americans of all political affiliations.”
As an added note, I was permanently banned from LinkedIn, where I had a growing following in the tens of thousands, back in 2022.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Vice President JD Vance took aim at the Democratic Party’s likely 2028 presidential contenders during a lighthearted but pointed exchange on Fox News, joking that the party’s “dumbest” candidate is most likely to emerge from the primary.
In an exclusive interview released Wednesday on Jesse Watters Primetime, Watters raised speculation about California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s national ambitions, noting the governor’s frequent media appearances and rumored White House aspirations.
“Gavin Newsom, obviously, is running for president. Have you seen this guy cross his legs? Have you ever seen anyone cross their legs like that?” Watters asked jokingly.
“My legs don’t cross like that, Jesse,” Vance replied with a laugh. “You can interpret that however you want to.”
Watters went on to frame the looming Democratic contest as a showdown between Newsom and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Gavin and Kamala are on a collision course,” Watters said. “Who’s gonna win?”
“The dumbest candidate will probably win,” Vance quipped. “That’s my guess with the Democratic Party.”
Vance argued that the current Democratic bench reflects deeper structural problems within the party, particularly its fixation on identity politics over competence.
“I mean, look, the Democrats have a couple of big issues, and one is that they lean so far into wokeism that they can’t see the obviousness of the fact, which is that Kamala Harris is not qualified to be president of the United States,” Vance said.
“That’s why she got the vice presidential nomination. That’s why she got the presidential nomination. This is who Kamala Harris is.”
Vance contrasted Harris with Newsom, describing the California governor as emblematic of failed progressive governance.
“Now, the flip side is, I think you have an unbelievably corrupt and incompetent governor in Gavin Newsom,” he said. “The fact that those are the two frontrunners just suggests how deeply deranged the Democrat Party is. Let them fight it out. We’ll figure it out.”
While Newsom and Harris dominate early speculation, Democrats face a thin and fractured 2028 field. Other frequently mentioned names include Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—each of whom carries significant liabilities with general-election voters. Many Democrats privately acknowledge that the party lacks a unifying figure with broad national appeal, particularly as voters continue to recoil from progressive economic and cultural policies.
Republicans, by contrast, are positioning themselves as the party of stability, affordability, and public safety heading into the next election cycle.
Watters noted that Democrats are expected to campaign heavily on cost-of-living issues in upcoming elections, a strategy Vance dismissed as deeply hypocritical.
“That’s a pot-meet-kettle situation,” Vance argued, pointing to Democratic-led policies that fueled inflation, higher energy costs, and housing shortages.
He credited the Trump administration with reversing those trends.
“We haven’t even been in office for a year, and you’ve already seen prices start to come down. You’ve seen rents start to come down. You’ve seen groceries leveling off,” Vance said.
“Is there more work to do? Absolutely. But the people who are going to do that work is the Trump administration, is the president of the United States, who is solving the Democrats’ affordability crisis.”
“You don’t give power back to the very people who set the house on fire,” he added. “You give more power to the person who put the fire out.”
When asked whether Democrats would attempt to impeach President Trump again if they regain control of Congress, Vance said such a move would be predictable—and revealing.
“I’m sure he’ll get impeached,” Vance said. “Look, they have nothing to actually run on or govern on.”
“Their entire obsessive focus of that party is they hate Donald Trump,” he continued. “So, if they ever get power, are they going to lower Americans’ taxes? No. Are they going to make your life more affordable? No. Are they going to solve the crime crisis? No.”
“What they’re going to do is they’re going to spend all their time and all of your money trying to get Donald Trump.”
Vance urged voters to focus on results rather than partisan theatrics.
“I think the American people should vote for the people who want to make their life more affordable, who want to make their neighborhoods safer,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to deliver every single day.”
Newsom’s office responded to the interview with a digitally altered image of Vance crossing his legs in an exaggerated pose, captioned: “We all know JD copies Daddy.”
ALERT – It has now been confirmed – the Mexican national who murdered five other migrants ‘execution-style’ over a noise complaint is here illegally.
And he was previously deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) three times.
We have been waiting for this shoe to drop, and for the media to ignore or spin away, ever since he was reported as a ‘Mexican national,’ but his immigration status was unknown or went unreported.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott sparked outrage on the Left by simply referring to the five victims of the deadly mass shooting as “illegal immigrants,” which they were.
And as we now know, so is the alleged killer, who also illegally possessed numerous firearms.
You don’t have to be here illegally to commit violent crimes, but when the entire community where these murders occurred consists primarily of illegal immigrants, their immigration status matters.
The drunken gunman, 38-year-old Francisco Oropesa Perez-Torres, was first arrested and removed by ICE in September 2009, but he returned to the U.S. illegally at an unknown time and location.
This is according to an ICE spokesperson who confirmed it to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The killer (who is still on the run three days later) was then arrested and removed by ICE in January 2012 and July 2016.
In 2012 the murder suspect was also sentenced and jailed for driving while intoxicated.
Oropesa went on his murderous rampage Friday evening when neighbor Wilson Garcia asked him to stop shooting his rifle so his baby could sleep.
Oropesa had been drinking when Garcia asked him to stop firing his gun. According to the local Sheriff, Oropesa responded, “I’ll do what I want to in my front yard.
Rene Arevalo Sr., a nearby neighbor, said he heard gunshots around midnight but was unfazed, as gunfire is normal in this mostly migrant neighborhood.
‘It’s a normal thing people do around here, especially on Fridays after work,’ Arevalo said.
‘They get home and start drinking in their backyards and shooting out there.’
A couple of questions I have is – why did this illegal alien have firearms, and why is it considered ‘normal’ for illegal migrants to illegally fire their illegal weapons in their yards?
The New York Times (NYT) reported that Oropesa then allegedly walked to Garcia’s home and fatally shot Garcia’s wife, son, and the three other victims with his AR-15 before fleeing.
Mr. Garcia miraculously escaped.
Most, if not all, of his victims, were also reportedly here illegally from Honduras. The victims included an eight-year-old child, an 18-year-old boy, and three women.
Two of the women were killed while maternally protecting Garcia’s baby and 2-year-old daughter by embracing them and covering them with clothing.
The baby and toddler thankfully survived.
“We do not know where he is,” James Smith, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I. in the Houston area, told reporters at a news conference. “We do not have any tips right now as to where he may be. Right now, we have zero leads.”
More than 200 officers, including state troopers, are looking for Oropesa. Authorities have offered an $80,000 reward for information leading to his capture.
The horrible murders come as U.S. border agents brace for an expected surge of illegal migrants in the coming weeks following the May 11 expiration of Title 42, a pandemic-era rule that granted agents power to turn away migrants for health concerns.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Congress Reveals Stunning New Information on January 6 Attacker
Members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee investigating the federal government’s response to the January 6, 2021 incidents at the U.S. Capitol now reveal that a pair of pipe bombs planted at the Capitol Hill offices of the Republican and Democrat parties may have been a diversion to distract law enforcement from other events.
They also reveal that while the bombs contained live explosives, it does not appear the timers were operable, and the FBI may not even have interviewed the witnesses who discovered them.
In response, Chairmen Thomas Massie (R-KY), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray “revealing new information surrounding the FBI’s investigation into pipe bombs placed near the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Republican National Committee (RNC) on January 5, 2021,” the Judiciary Committee reports.
“On June 7, 2023, the Committee on the Judiciary conducted a transcribed interview of Steven D’Antuono, the former Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI Washington Field Office (WFO),” the Committee announced.
“In that role, Mr. D’Antuono oversaw the WFO’s investigations into the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, including the placement of pipe bombs near the headquarters of the DNC and RNC on January 5, 2021. Mr. D’Antuono’s testimony provided new information about the FBI’s investigation into the pipe bombs and reinforces our concerns about the FBI’s handling of this matter,” the Committee revealed.
In his transcribed interview, Steven D’Antuono “suggested that the FBI could not even determine whether the placement of the pipe bombs was a ‘diversionary’ tactic for the events of January 6,” the Committee also revealed.
D’Antuono testified:
MASSIE: Are you familiar with the diversion thesis, that these were set up to be a diversion?
D’ANTUONO: Yeah, I’ve heard people say that, but if you watch – I’ve done a lot of media reports. I was trying to get the information out there, tips and stuff like that, right. I will not speculate. I’m not going to speculate on that. I think that’s speculation, at best, when people say that it’s a diversionary tactic. We’ll never know until we find the person that actually did – or persons that actually did it. So I can’t speculate on that. Could it have been? Yes, that’s one theory. Obviously, it’s one theory. But is it the only theory? I don’t – I really don’t know.
MASSIE: It looks like the head Capitol Police [sic] believes it was a diversion.
D’ANTUONO: So Steve Sund, chief of police, yes. I believe he wrote that in his book. Again, it’s pure speculation. There’s no intelligence – look, I ran the investigation for 2 years until I stepped out. We don’t know. We don’t even know the gender at this point as to – we could speculate, and there’s a lot of people that are speculating as to the gender.
MASSIE: How confident are you that the individual depicted in the surveillance footage on January 5th set both of those pipe bombs in place?
D’ANTUONO: So the video that we saw, I feel confident that by the video that we have, that that person planted those.
D’Antuono also testified on the “viability of the pipe bombs, which, according to reporting, were deemed to be ‘inoperable,’” the Committee reports.
“D’Antuono referenced a report from the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, that the pipe bombs were viable, and ‘they could explode, and they could cause harm or death,’” the Committee notes, adding. “D’Antuono also acknowledged that the timer used on the pipe bomb could not have detonated the pipe bomb given the time already elapsed between placement and discovery.”
He testified:
MASSIE: Well, let me ask you this: Do you think it was technically possible for a kitchen timer . . . that has [a] 1-hour duration . . . to detonate a bomb 17 hours later?
D’ANTUONO: No, I don’t. And I saw the same kitchen timer as you. I agree. I don’t know when they were supposed to go off. Maybe they weren’t supposed to go off. We can’t—we don’t know. We honestly don’t know, and that’s some of the pain . . . .
D’Antuono’s testimony “provided additional details about the FBI’s use of geofencing technology to identify the pipe bomb suspect,” the Committee revealed.
He testified:
D’ANTUONO: So the – there’s a lot of phone data that came in. Yes, I’ve seen the same video. I’ve watched the same video. We put out the same video. It looks like a phone. Was it a real phone, a not a real phone, was it a ruse? Was it a – you know, I picked up my phone several times at meetings going, oh, yeah, I got to take this call, and walk out, right. The phone’s not on, right. So was the person just sitting there trying to pretend like they’re on a bench taking a phone call? We don’t know until we find the person, right, and ask them those questions.
We did a complete geofence. We have complete data. Not complete, because there’s some data that was corrupted by one of the providers, not purposely by them, right. It just – unusual circumstance that we have corrupt data from one of the providers. I’m not sure – I can’t remember right now which one. But for that day, which is awful because we don’t have that information to search. So could it have been that provider? Yeah, with our luck, you know, with this investigation it probably was, right. So maybe if we did have that – that data wasn’t corrupted – and it wasn’t purposely corrupted. I don’t want any conspiracy theories, right. To my knowledge, it wasn’t corrupted, you know, but that could have been good information that we don’t have, right. So that is painful for us to not to have that. So we looked at everything.
D’Antuono also testified that he did not definitively know if the FBI had interviewed the individual who discovered the pipe bomb at the DNC.
He testified:
MASSIE: So just to . . . put a fine point on it, you do not know whether they interviewed the person that discovered . . . the [bomb] at the DNC?
D’ANTUONO: I don’t know.
The Committee notes “D’Antuono conceded that it would be ‘investigation 101’ to interview the individuals who discovered the bombs, yet he was unable to confirm whether the FBI had taken this basic investigative step.”
He explained:
MASSIE: So – but the person who found – you either haven’t identified the person who found the second pipe bomb, or did you?
D’ANTUONO: I – honestly, sir, I don’t know the granularity of everything my agents and analysts did in that matter. It’s just – it’s a whole host of stuff that’s going on. As the [Assistant Director in Charge], as like any senior leader, I’m getting briefed on things, and that part never came up, so –
“D’Antuono’s testimony raises concerns about the FBI’s handling of the pipe bomb investigation, more than 890 days following the placement of the pipe bombs. To date, the FBI has failed to respond to the Committee’s requests for a briefing regarding the investigation,” the Committee concludes.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.