NEW YORK CITY (September 11, 2022) Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas lays flowers for USSS Master Special Officer Craig Miller and participates in the September 11th Anniversary Commemoration Ceremony at Ground Zero in New York City, NY. (DHS photo by Sydney Phoenix)
ANALYSIS – During Joe Biden’s two-year term in office, the number of illegal migrants swarming into the U.S. has swelled to its highest number in decades.
Many of these illegals have serious criminal records and Team Biden can’t confirm how many or who they are.
So, what does the administration do?
Rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Joe Biden’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Chris Magnus was forced to resign over the weekend by Department of Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas.
While Magnus, an incompetent leftist ideologue, failed miserably as CPB chief, his firing was purely political, making him a scapegoat for Team Biden’s broader border and immigration disaster.
Analysts believe Magnus was forced to resign to avoid him testifying at future GOP-led House committee hearings.
The real villain here is Mayorkas who really needs to go.
As a Senate-confirmed cabinet official, he has been derelict in his constitutional duties to protect the U.S. homeland.
He needs to resign or be impeached by the GOP House next year.
As Senator Ted Cruz,( R-Tx.), told Fox News Digital:
The Biden administration found their fall guy for the chaos at the border. Responsibility for the border crisis lies with Joe Biden and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and real accountability starts with Mayorkas being impeached. Every moment the border continues to remain open only heightens the present humanitarian and national security crisis.
Other GOP lawmakers echoed Cruz’s remarks. Fox News reported:
“The Biden administration has completely failed to protect our borders, and now it’s trying to find a scapegoat,” Burchett said. “Mayorkas should be the one to resign.”
“When Republicans take over the House, we’re gonna bring some rational thought back to our border security operations,” he continued.
Texas Republican Rep. August Pfluger also called on Mayorkas to hit the road, telling Fox News Digital the DHS secretary tried to use Magnus’ departure as a cover-up of his own “failures.”
And Texas congressman Lance Gooden tweeted about Magnus’s resignation: “Accountability would be DHS Secretary Mayorkas joining him.”
Joe Biden's border chief Chris Magnus has resigned.
Accountability would be DHS Secretary Mayorkas joining him.
Now, GOP lawmakers with the House Homeland Security Committee confirmed that Mayorkas cannot guarantee that no convicted criminals are among the roughly two million border crossers and illegal aliens who have entered the U.S. since Joe Biden took office.
During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) grilled Mayorkas over the roughly 1.4 million border crossers and illegal aliens that have been released into American communities since February 2021, as well as the 600,000 illegal aliens who are known to have successfully crossed the southern border in Fiscal Year 2022.
“Now can you answer definitively … that none of the 600,000 individuals who are now in the United States amongst our communities that got away are gang members or criminals?” Cammack.
“Your question highlights precisely why we have sought to prioritize national security and public safety threats in our Immigration and Customs Enforcement apprehension and removal efforts,” Mayorkas said, evading the question.
Breitbart continued:
Mayorkas also did not provide data on how many of the nearly 30,000 convicted criminal illegal aliens apprehended in Fiscal Year 2022 went on to claim asylum after arriving at the southern border.
Cammack pressed Mayorkas on whether criminal records exist for those released into the U.S. under the Biden administration thus far.
“In Fiscal Year 2022, you have now released 1.4 million into the United States and my question to you now is can you guarantee that none of those people have criminal records?” Cammack said, to which Mayorkas did not answer directly.
This failure to respond by Mayorkas, and failure to account for, and confirm the identity and whereabouts of a large number of criminal illegal aliens in the U.S. under his watch, is cause for impeachment.
As Breitbart noted: “In April, Mayorkas failed to guarantee to lawmakers that none of the illegal aliens on the FBI Terrorism Watch List or No-Fly List, apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border at the time, had been released into American communities.”
For all these reasons, and many more, Mayorkas has failed in his constitutional duties and he should be the first Biden cabinet official to go when the GOP takes over Congress in January.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
President Joe Biden hugs his family during the 59th Presidential Inauguration ceremony in Washington, Jan. 20, 2021. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. (DOD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos M. Vazquez II)
In a brutal blow to Hunter Biden, a judge has rejected his sweetheart plea deal. What comes next?
Watch Amanda explain the situation below:
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The top Republican investigators in the House and Senate warn America may face a constitutional crisis, with the Director of the FBI facing possible Contempt of Congress charges for refusing to turn over a government document alleging a foreign national offered a $5 million bribe to then-Vice-President Joe Biden.
Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY) blasted FBI Director Christopher Wray for defying a congressional subpoena for an unclassified record “alleging a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and a foreign national.”
“The document, an FBI-generated FD-1023 form, allegedly details an arrangement involving an exchange of money for policy decisions. In a new letter to Director Wray, Comer warns that if the FBI fails to produce the record by May 30, 2023, the Oversight Committee will initiate contempt of Congress proceedings,” Grassley reports in a statement.
“The FBI has continued to tie itself in knots to ignore a legitimate subpoena from Congress, which has a constitutional duty of oversight. The Bureau’s developed a serious reputation problem through its spate of failures and overreach, and leadership is doing it no favors by attempting to stiff-arm Congress. The FBI knows exactly what document Chairman Comer and I are seeking, and if they know us at all, they know we will get it, one way or another. If FBI leadership truly cares about protecting the agency’s reputation, they’d cooperate. These needless delays only harm the Bureau,” Grassley said.
“The FBI’s refusal to provide this single document is obstructionist. Whistleblower disclosures that Joe Biden may have been involved in a criminal bribery scheme as Vice President track closely with what we are seeing in our investigation into the Biden family’s influence peddling schemes. Congress and the American people need to know what, if anything, the FBI did to verify the allegations contained within this record. If Director Wray refuses to hand over this unclassified record, the Oversight Committee will begin contempt of Congress proceedings,” Comer said.
“Comer issued a subpoena for the unclassified FBI record on May 3, 2023 with a return date of May 10, 2023. After the FBI failed to produce the record, Oversight Committee counsel have attended two in-person meetings with FBI officials where they again refused to produce the FD-1023 form or offer any reasonable accommodation that would allow the Committee to review the document,” Grassley reports.
On May 16, 2023, Grassley and Comer requested a phone call with Director Wray to discuss the subpoena, but despite repeated requests the FBI has not scheduled a phone call.
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Elvert Barnes, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
ANALYSIS – First, let’s be clear. I was at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as a security contractor for a foreign TV news crew. I witnessed the chaos firsthand and was not happy about it.
I strongly condemned those who violently rioted there in an article the very next day.
In my piece, I even said they should go to jail, just like any other violent rioters.
And they should. But Joe Biden’s DoJ isn’t content with ‘hard time’ for some of these rioters. They want a much longer time.
To also be clear, at the Capitol that day I saw tens of thousands of peaceful protesters before the riot. And saw many ‘rioters’ who weren’t violent.
Meanwhile, I have written about how many peaceful Jan. 6 protesters have been persecuted unfairly, and how harshly many violent rioters have been treated compared to equally violent Black Lives Matter (BLM) rioters.
Some of it is due to the Biden Department of Justice (DoJ) being hyper-political and overzealous, and part of it is the fact that these folks are getting tried and sentenced in the ‘People’s Republic of DC.’
When I first read of the case of Stewart Rhodes, head of the Oath Keepers, I thought he was one of the few who should get serious jail time. He and his gang were part of an organized, violent cadre that went to the Capitol to create violent chaos.
This is why they were charged and convicted of ‘seditious conspiracy’ – the only ones to be found guilty of that serious charge.
But when I heard he had gotten 18 years, I was floored. Child molesters get less time. Repeat violent offenders get less time. Even convicted spies sometimes get less time.
Eighteen years is a lot of time.
Even so, federal prosecutors are not satisfied with the severity of the jail terms delivered by the federal judge overseeing the case.
In the case of Rhodes, they wanted 25 years.
U.S. District Court Judge, and Barack Obama appointee, Amit Mehta sentenced Rhodes, and his colleagues, harshly due what he characterized as a dangerous criminal conspiracy aimed at violently derailing the transfer of presidential power.
But even if you believe these knuckleheads were intent on blocking the certification of the Electoral College vote, their chances of ‘derailing the transfer of presidential power’ two weeks later, on Jan 20, were little to none.
This is why Mehta’s sentences, while harsh, were still less than the prison terms prosecutors recommended and years below an agreed-upon “guidelines range” based upon their charges.
Of the others convicted of seditious conspiracy, Florida Oath Keeper leader Kelly Meggs received a 12-year term instead of the 21 DOJ wanted. Roberto Minuta of New York was sentenced to 4.5 years instead of 17. Joseph Hackett of Florida got a 3.5-year sentence; DOJ sought 12 years.
Ed Vallejo of Arizona was sentenced to 3-years, while DOJ wanted 17. And David Moerschel of Florida was sentenced to three years instead of the 10 DoJ wanted.
All of these are significant sentences in federal prison. A few might be deserved, but Biden’s DoJ isn’t happy with that. They want these folks to suffer even more.
If only DoJ was that zealous with other political crimes, and criminals, Hunter Biden might actually be in jail.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Americans who purchased Bibles, sporting goods or products associated with former President Donald Trump were flagged for surveillance by a federal government spy program, U.S. House investigators reveal.
After the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, FBI officials told banks that Americans who support President Trump or express religious views may be suspected terrorists, and demanded banks report customers whose transactions indicated they may be political conservatives.
Such blanket surveillance is prohibited by the United States Constitution, which requires the federal government to secure a warrant, based on probable cause, specifically naming the person targeted.
“New documents obtained by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government reveal that the federal government flagged terms like “MAGA” and “TRUMP” for financial institutions if Americans used those phrases when completing transactions,” the U.S. House Judiciary Committee revealed in a statement.
“Individuals who shopped at stores like Cabela’s or Dick’s Sporting Goods, or purchased religious texts like a bible, may also have had their transactions flagged. This kind of pervasive financial surveillance, carried out in coordination with and at the request of federal law enforcement, into Americans’ private transactions is alarming and raises serious concerns about the FBI’s respect for fundamental civil liberties,” the Committee stated.
In response, the Committee is demanding senior government officials appear for questioning.
“In light of these revelations, Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has requested transcribed interviews from Peter Sullivan, Senior Private Sector Partner for Outreach in the Strategic Partner Engagement Section of the FBI, and Noah Bishoff, former Director of the Office of Stakeholder Integration and Engagement in the Strategic Operations Division of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN),” the Committee reveals.
Jordan’s letter to Noah Bishoff reads, in part:
“The Committee and Select Subcommittee have obtained documents indicating that following January 6, 2021, FinCEN distributed materials to financial institutions that, among other things, outline the ‘typologies’ of various persons of interest and provide financial institutions with suggested search terms and Merchant Category Codes (MCCs) for identifying transactions on behalf of federal law enforcement. These materials included a document recommending the use of generic terms like ‘TRUMP’ and ‘MAGA’ to ‘search Zelle payment messages’ as well as a ‘prior FinCEN analysis’ of ‘Lone Actor/Homegrown Violent Extremism Indicators.’ According to this analysis, FinCEN warned financial institutions of ‘extremism’ indicators that include ‘transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets, for travel to areas with no apparent purpose,’ or ‘the purchase of books (including religious texts) and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views.’ In other words, FinCEN urged large financial institutions to comb through the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression.
“In addition, the Committee and Select Subcommittee have obtained documents showing that FinCEN distributed slides, prepared by a financial institution, explaining how other financial institutions can use MCC codes to detect customers whose transactions may reflect ‘potential active shooters, [and] who may include dangerous International Terrorists / Domestic Terrorists / Homegrown Violent Extremists (“Lone Wolves”).’ For example, the slides instruct financial institutions to query for transactions using certain MCC codes such as ‘3484: Small Arms,’ ‘5091: Sporting and Recreational Goods and Supplies,’ and the keywords ‘Cabela’s,’ and ‘Dick’s Sporting Goods,’ among several others. Despite these transactions having no apparent criminal nexus—and, in fact, relate to Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights—FinCEN seems to have adopted a characterization of these Americans as potential threat actors. This kind of pervasive financial surveillance, carried out in coordination with and at the request of federal law enforcement, into Americans’ private transactions is alarming and raises serious doubts about FinCEN’s respect for fundamental civil liberties.
“As the former Director of the Office of Stakeholder Integration and Engagement in the Strategic Operations Division, you engaged regularly with financial institutions following the events of January 6, 2021, including the distribution of material about how financial institutions could use private customer information to assist federal law enforcement. As such, your testimony will aid our oversight. In particular, your testimony will help to inform the Committee and Select Subcommittee about federal law enforcement’s mass accumulation and use of Americans’ private information without legal process; FinCEN’s protocols, if any, to safeguard Americans’ privacy and constitutional rights in the receipt and use of such information; and FinCEN’s general engagement with the private sector on law-enforcement matters.”
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Yes, it’s a big deal, that former President Donald Trump has been booked and charged in federal court with 37 counts of violating federal law. And we should be talking about it.
It’s definitely not Watergate, but some of the charges, such as obstruction, are similar to those Richard Nixon faced before he resigned in 1974.
Thirty-one of the counts are for violating the Espionage Act through “willful retention” of classified records. The other six counts include obstruction of justice and false statements stemming from his alleged efforts to impede the investigation.
Meanwhile, the media is conveniently ignoring all of Joe Biden’s brewing scandals, which are far worse; even surpassing Watergate.
We should be talking about Biden corruption, not Trump stubbornness.
Many Trump loyalists argue that the Trump indictment proves there is a double standard compared to how Biden is being treated. And I would agree.
The investigation into Hunter Biden should not have taken five years and still be unresolved.
That is an outrage.
And then there are the bribery and foreign influence peddling allegations against Joe Biden himself.
That should be the big story today. Not Trump’s rants on Truth Social about his latest legal woes.
Hillary Clinton was also treated with kid gloves by the Justice Department (DOJ) and FBI, even though she destroyed evidence from hard drives and deleted 30,000 emails, some of which may have contained classified information.
She got off. That was absolutely wrong.
If Republican ex-presidents and current presidential candidates are going to be indicted so should Democrat former Secretaries of State running for president. If not, then we have a partisan, two-tiered justice system.
And I have written about this a lot. But here is where I see things a bit differently.
We are today talking about Donald Trump and his drama, primarily because of Donald Trump. He did this one mostly to himself.
Trump could have avoided this criminal legal battle had he simply turned over all classified materials he had in his possession when asked for them over an 18-month period.
That’s what Joe Biden and former vice president Mike Pence both did when they were discovered to have ‘unknowingly’ kept classified documents after leaving office. They actually turned them over right away.
Did Biden do more than that, we don’t really know yet. But neither have been charged with any crimes.
And Trump was not charged over any materials or records that he returned. Only those he willfully kept.
Trump first made ludicrous claims about the documents, including that he had declassified them, which he hadn’t. And he fought back in court and delayed and delayed until he was forced to finally give 15 boxes of records to the National Archives and Records Administration.
But a lot more remained.
Then he began obstructing and moving the remaining boxes of records, including classified materials at his home in Florida. Despite repeated efforts by the FBI and DOJ to try to get them back, Trump refused.
And like Watergate, the cover-up is what gets you in trouble.
That is why the FBI finally raided Mar-a-Lago in August of last year. It was an unprecedented action, which I condemned at the time.
We have also since learned that the FBI had preferred to continue trying to get Trump’s lawyers to turn over the remaining classified materials and surveil Trump home in case anyone tried to remove materials, but DOJ insisted on the raid.
Maybe the raid could have been (should have been) avoided, but it was legal. And what the raid uncovered was that Trump had hidden a lot of classified materials in numerous unsecure places in his home.
Further investigation showed that Trump also had admitted on tape that he didn’t have the authority to declassify documents after leaving office, and that he hadn’t done so prior to leaving. He also reportedly flashed highly classified plans to attack Iran in front of the faces of uncleared persons visiting him.
None of this is good for Trump or the nation. The classified documents included “defense and weapons capabilities” of the United States and foreign countries.
But none of this would have been a legal issue if Trump simply turned over these extremely sensitive national security materials when requested, or at some point over the 18 months in question.
So, now instead of talking about all of the incredible Biden corruption, we are here again talking about Trump-created drama.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – It is becoming sadly clear that this may be the last generation of any real freedom in America as Generation Z (Gen Z or Zoomers) increasingly supports the surveillance and punishment state. Many are also exhibitionists craving 24-7 attention.
As I wrote about earlier – Gen Z ‘loves Big Brother.’ Big Brother is the term used by George Orwell to describe the totalitarian surveillance state in his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984).
In that piece, I noted a CATO Institute poll that showed 30 percent of people under 30 support allowing the government to install video cameras in our homes to “reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.”
And we can blame a lot of that on the far-l*ft w*ke culture at our colleges and universities.
It’s bad enough that many of this generation is willing to let faceless bureaucrats watch us in our homes, but Zoomers appear willing to go beyond even that. They are the generation of snitches, and punishers, going after anyone they disagree with.
This generation has been taught to equate ‘unapproved’ speech with actual violence, so it makes sense that they’ll do whatever it takes to eliminate it.
Much of this can be traced back to higher education. Our colleges and schools are teaching our kids to be hypersensitive, ideological, w*ke snitches.
After providing various scary examples, including one where a professor used the oft-used term “sacred cow,” and a student filed a complaint that said the student would “not feel safe around him” any longer, Christian Schneider writes in National Review:
…part of the reason Gen Z has an unquenchable thirst for surveillance is what they are being taught at their colleges and universities. All the above examples were reports filed with campus “Bias Response Teams” — programs set up by institutions of higher education that incentivize students to narc on each other for expressing unpopular opinions or engaging in disfavored behavior.
Decades ago, courts threw out college “speech codes,” finding that public universities banning language was impermissible under the First Amendment. So when the internet grew as a tool, schools crafted a workaround: What if, instead of the schools targeting students for unpopular speech, it was the students themselves doing the targeting? And thus a majority of public colleges and universities began crowdsourcing their speech codes.
In fact, bias-response teams are actually worse than the traditional speech codes, which outlawed specific words: The new standard for determining whether speech is forbidden is simply anything that offends someone. Any oversensitive campus resident now has the power to log on and anonymously report a fellow student or professor.
Not to be outdone by its elite competitors, Stanford University implemented its own Orwellian system in which the school offered students a cash bounty if they reported insensitive speech on campus. In April, the school backtracked on the plan after an ensuing episode of national outrage.
You can’t get much more Orwellian than that.
But there is a big added factor in why this generation loves surveillance, “cameras are what young people now seek, hoping to parlay their everyday goings-on into a Kardashian-like media empire.”
Schneider notes that one poll found that nearly one-quarter of Zoomers in the United States planned to be internet ‘influencers,’ making their living creating videos for YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
Apparently, we no longer need doctors, engineers, scientists, or lawyers (well, maybe not so many lawyers).
I don’t know about you, but a nation of empty-headed TikTok influencers scares me almost more than the Orwellian surveillance they like so much.
Schneider adds: “Today’s young people have become both informers and self-exposers. If we’re not careful, their snitch culture will threaten privacy and freedom.”
I would go further. If we aren’t careful, very soon, America, as a free country, will be totally unrecognizable.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – After reportedly imploding earlier Wednesday, Hunter Biden’s sweetheart criminal plea deal then appeared to be ‘back on’ after being revised.
But then the revised deal imploded again when it was blocked by the federal judge overseeing the case.
It now may be on life support.
Prosecutors said in court that Hunter Biden failed to pay between $1.1 million and $1.5 million in taxes when they were due.
Questioning from Judge Maryellen Noreika, a Trump appointee, during Biden’s hearing, uncovered that the Department of Justice (DoJ) and Biden’s legal team were not on the same page regarding the scope of the deal.
Biden’s team believed it was more sweeping than it was intended.
Hunter Biden had been expected to plead guilty to 2017 and 2018 misdemeanor tax charges Wednesday in a Delaware court, in part it seemed, to avoid jail time on a separate felony gun charge.
Under an earlier agreement with federal prosecutors in Delaware, the First Son has entered a pretrial diversion program for the gun charge, which allows defendants to avoid a conviction or prison time.
Noreika said she had “concerns” about the parties seemingly linking the tax plea agreement to resolving a felony gun charge.
However, the deal was then revised.
The new deal was going to cover Biden’s drug use and tax-related conduct from 2014 to 2019 (not just 2017-2018) but would not cover Biden for any other matters or crimes.
This is critical since the GOP-led House Oversight Committee is currently investigating Biden’s shady foreign business dealings and how Joe Biden is connected to the money that came to Hunter from overseas sources including Ukraine and China.
News of the sweetheart deal in June sparked accusations of favorable treatment for the president’s son from Republicans who have accused the younger Biden of a myriad of crimes and improprieties, including influence-peddling abroad.
Under the revised deal the DoJ could now charge Biden in the future for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) since he lobbied on behalf of foreign governments without registering as a Foreign Agent under FARA.
America First Legal (AFL) is suing the DoJ for allegedly failing to require the president’s son to register for FARA during the Obama administration.
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley told CNN that court proceedings today on Biden’s plea deal shows that the deal was always flawed and that additional charges could be coming.
“It’s very telling that the judge intervened here and said basically, ‘No, I’m not going to approve some sweeping blanket deal,’” the Republican from Missouri said. “I mean, that tells you the court has serious concerns about other potential charges here, and also the scope of the deal, which has seemed outrageous from the beginning.”
He added, “This, I think, signals that they’re still very much as potential for prosecution forward.”
Hawley said that Biden should not receive special treatment, as whistleblowers have alleged. “He should be treated like any other person under the law. That’s my view on him.”
But the judge wasn’t satisfied with the revised deal either. “What if it is unconstitutional?” Judge Noreika asked. “I’m trying to exercise due diligence and consideration to make sure we don’t make a misstep.”
The tax charges could carry a sentence of up to 18 months, but Hunter Biden is unlikely to face prison time because he lacks a criminal history and has accepted responsibility for his actions.
As part of the deal, prosecutorsare recommending probation, but ultimately the judge has the sole authority to decide his punishment.
The hearing ended with Biden pleading not guilty ‘for now’ with the judge asking both sides to file additional briefs explaining the plea deal’s legal structure.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.