Opinion

Home Opinion Page 39

Why is the Government Hiding Records on the Trump Raid?

11

The Biden administration is allegedly illegally concealing records on the unprecedented FBI raid on the home of former President Donald Trump, which comes as Trump leads President Joe Biden in polls ahead of a possible 2024 re-election contest.

The non-profit public interest law firm Judicial Watch announced that, as of March 31, the National Archives has released only 1,276 pages of over 8,000 records on the federal government investigations of allegations Trump illegally retained and handled classified documents. 

“The Biden administration’s National Archives is hiding almost every record it has about its manufactured records dispute with President Trump,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

The released records were secured after Judicial Watch filed an August 2022 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, after the National Archives and Records Administration allegedly unlawfully failed to respond to a February 2022 FOIA request for: 

“All records regarding the referral from NARA to the Department of Justice regarding the records management procedures of former President Donald Trump.  This request includes all related records of communication between any official or employee of NARA and any official or employee of the Department of Justice and/or any other branch, department, agency, or office of the federal government.”

“All records regarding the retrieval of records from President Trump or any individual or entity acting on his behalf by the National Archives and Records Administration. This request includes related records of communication between any official or employee of NARA and President Trump and/or any individual or entity acting on his behalf.”

Judicial Watch claims the released records confirm how “the Biden White House was directly involved in the dispute by initiating ‘special access request’ that advanced an FBI investigation of Trump’s records.”

According to Judicial Watch, Gary Stern, general counsel for the National Archives wrote to his colleagues on August 23, 2022:

And, this evening the Post just published a new story detailing an April 12, email that I sent to the Trump reps concerning the DOJ special access request for the 15 Trump boxes, along with many other details concerning the DOJ request and the overall issue. [Redacted]

“On April 12, an Archives official emailed Philbin [former White House deputy counsel Pat Philbin] and John Eisenberg, another former deputy White House counsel, to tell them the Justice Department, via the Biden White House, had made the request. The email offered the lawyers the opportunity to view the documents as well, but said the documents were too sensitive to be removed from the agency’s secure facility.”

Conservatives expect further releases of documents will show how the investigation and the current Justice Department criminal investigation are driven by concerns Trump will defeat Biden, and do not show any criminal intent or offense.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Trump Will Be A Dictator! – Shriek Panicked Democrats

6
Gage Skidmore Flickr

ANALYSIS – Welcome to the 2024 version of the liberals’ “Russia collusion” hoax. But now they hysterically claim that Donald Trump will abandon the Constitution, destroy democracy and become a dictator.

You know, just like the last time he was president.

This latest Trump demonization is an effort to scare left-wing voters unenthusiastic about reelecting Joe Biden next year.

Democrats believe that Biden stands a better chance against Trump in 2024 if the campaign is a battle for the future of democracy rather than a referendum on Biden’s record.

And this idiotic fear campaign is now in full gear, The New York Times and The Washington Post recently published articles previewing a future Trump dictatorship. The Atlantic will devote its January/February issue to articles predicting Trump’s harmful impact on civil rights, the Justice Department, immigration and more if elected again.

Sadly, these accusations are potentially more dangerous than the fake Russia collusion claims.

Sen. J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican, said on social media that Trump opponents “need to take a chill pill.” He added: “All of these articles calling Trump a dictator, are about one thing: legitimizing illegal and violent conduct as we get closer to the election.”

Meanwhile, let’s ignore for a moment that Biden has done far more than any recent president to shred the Constitution, cancel student loan debt without Congress, target opponents with a weaponized federal government, censor dissident speech in collusion with Big Tech, not to mention persecute his chief political rival and ex-president by criminalizing politics with lawfare.

Trump makes that case often on the campaign trail, notes the Washington Times:

“He’s been weaponizing government against his political opponents like a Third World political tyrant,” Mr. Trump said of the president at a campaign event last weekend in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Biden and his radical left allies like to pose as standing up as allies of democracy. Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy. Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy. It’s him and his people. They’re the wreckers of the American dream. The American dream is dead with them in office.”

Well, it’s hard to top all that undemocratic things Biden has done, but if Trump tries, it will be a reaction to the left’s long-standing control over and abuse of the deep state.

And I as I wrote on November 23, ‘Trump’s Much-Needed ‘Radical’ Second Term Agenda’ will be a very welcome corrective to the decades of leftist penetration and subversion of our institutions.

Even then, Trump can only achieve so much.

As The Washington Times reported:

Republican Party strategist John Feehery, a partner at EFB Advocacy in Washington, said Democrats and media outlets are raising fears of a Trump dictatorship because “they think he is going to win and they are completely panicked.”

“I don’t know how somebody who doesn’t have functional control over the military or the intelligence community could possibly be a dictator,” he said. “[Democrats] don’t have deep faith in our constitutional framework, so they are projecting that lack of faith into Trump. I think it is ridiculous.”

But sometimes Trump, or his associates, don’t help.

Kash Patel, a top deputy in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under Trump, said this week that he and other Trump allies would seek payback against “deep state” actors and media members in a second Trump term.

The Washington Times noted:

“The one thing we learned in the Trump administration, the first go-round, is we’ve got to put in [government] all American patriots, top to bottom,” Mr. Patel told podcast host Steve Bannon. “And we’ve got them for law enforcement. We got them for intel collection, we got them for offensive operations. We got them for DOD, CIA, everywhere. We will follow the facts and the law and go to courts of law and correct these justices and lawyers who have been prosecuting these cases based on politics. … We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media.

“Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. This is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators.”

However, when asked during a televised town hall whether he plans to become a dictator, Trump laughed.

“No, no, no – other than Day One,” he said. “We’re closing the border, and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.”

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Amanda Head: Dodgers Host Christian Faith Event!

0

We had to see this for ourselves! Los Angeles Dodgers hosted a Christian faith event at the ballpark…

See how the night went:

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Anti-Woke ‘Radical Libertarian’ Wins Argentine Election, Trump Plans Visit

3
Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

ANALYSIS – In another extremely positive political development overseas, a ‘far-right’ populist, better called an anti-woke radical libertarian, has won the presidency in Argentina.

The leftist-hating, free market advocate, Javier Milei, hopes to shake up South America’s highly statist second-largest economy and its extreme socialist politics.

While Argentina and the U.S. are very different political animals, and former President Trump and Milei don’t share similar views on a lot of things, Trump congratulated Milei on his landslide victory, saying he would “Make Argentina Great Again!”

According to a statement by Milei’s press office after the two spoke on Thursday, Trump will also visit Buenos Aires to meet with the Argentine president-elect.

One thing they do have in common is their hatred of the left and love of incendiary language (read to the end).

A hundred years ago Argentina was one of the six wealthiest countries in the world, but thanks to the socialism of Juan and Evita Perón, and their Peronist party, the beautiful country has dropped to a dismal to 66th place, below Mexico and just above Russia.

Milei, who leads the country’s La Libertad Avanza (Liberty Advances) party, won the presidential run-off with some 56% of the vote, well ahead of left-leaning Peronist Economy Minister Sergio Massa’s 44%. Milei will take office Dec. 10.

The self-described anarcho-capitalist is pledging economic shock therapy, by among other things, slashing bloated government spending, shuttering the central bank, and ditching the thoroughly devalued peso for the U.S. dollar.

These potentially painful reforms resonated with voters angry at the economic malaise. Still, as Fortune noted, Milei’s “party controls only a handful of seats in congress, and policies like dollarization would be an incredibly complex undertaking even with broad political support.”

Meanwhile, many “investors think Milei is the best shot at salvaging the economy after years of market pain.”

Fortune added:

While Milei gained attention for quirks that were atypical for a potential head of state — his unusual hairdo, love of his cloned dogs and a penchant for campaigning with a chainsaw — he won fans among investors for his promise to usher in a business-friendly era for Argentina. Economic growth is elusive, the peso has lost more than 90% of its value in four years, and around 40% of the population lives in poverty.

John Fund writes in National Review:

Milei, a free-market economist, is an ally of both the U.S. and Israel and a sworn adversary of China and Latin American leftists. His plan to dollarize the Argentine economy will blunt China’s effort to undermine the U.S. currency. As analyst Juan P. Villasmil puts it: “Argentina’s economy is the second most powerful in South America, so having it led by an openly pro-US leader in a continent filled with socialists isn’t bad news.”

Milei describes himself as an Austrian economist, but there is also some Chicago School influence. He named two of his dogs after Milton Friedman and Robert Lucas, and a third after Murray Rothbard.

Elon Musk and other U.S. business leaders are already looking forward to an open and more free Argentine economy. Milei has a strong team of advisers from free market think tanks and has forged an alliance with establishment conservative parties to help him govern.

And Milei is a firebrand and fighter much like Trump. Expect him to take a wrecking ball to the socialists. The UK’s Express quoted Milei as saying:

“You can’t give s**t leftards an inch. All collectivists, all kinds of collectivists. […] They are s**t!

“If you think differently from them they will kill you. This is the point. You can’t give s**t leftists an inch, if you give them an inch they will use it to destroy you.

“You can’t negotiate with leftards. You don’t negotiate with trash because they will end you!

Milei added: “And since they can’t beat us with real arguments, they just use the repressive apparatus of the state with loads of taxpayer money to destroy us and yet they’re still losing!”

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Democrat Congresswoman and Senate Candidate Signs Nondisclosure Agreement with Chinese Company

5

A Michigan Democrat congresswoman, now running for a seat in the U.S. Senate, is refusing to explain why she signed a non-disclosure agreement with a Communist Chinese “green energy” company.

Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin has refused to answer questions from the media as to why she signed a hush agreement with the Chinese corporation Gotion to hold closed-door meetings about a proposed electric vehicle battery plant the company is building in Big Rapids.

The plant is not located in her district, and it would appear there would be no sensitive information or corporate trade secrets that could be gleaned from a public tour, drawing speculation from some as to why she was there and what was discussed.

“When it was time for a Michigan voice to speak on the national security threats from the CCP emanating from companies based in the PRC and protect the State of Michigan, Congresswoman Slotkin, and her staff needed to ask for an NDA, never took a position, and said nothing,” former Michigan congressman and U.S. Ambassador Peter Hoekstra tells Fox News Digital.

Fox News reports Hoekstra and fellow former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Cella have raised the alarm on Gotion’s proposed facility and similar projects involving other Communist Chinese companies across Michigan and the United States.

“Congresswoman Slotkin is a former CIA analyst and Defense Department official who knows that state and local officials were warned by our intelligence agencies not to sign deals with PRC-based companies with ties to the CCP,” Cella tells Fox News.

Fox News reports that according to its parent company’s corporate bylaws, Gotion is required to “carry out Party activities in accordance with the Constitution of the Communist Party of China.”

The pair are asking the Justice Department to investigate whether Gotion is engaging in illegal foreign lobbying of U.S. officials.  Under federal law, anyone lobbying a member of Congress on behalf of a foreign government or company must register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent.  It does not appear Gotion has filed such a registration.

Despite the jobs it brings to an economically-stressed area, many local residents oppose the plant, citing the company’s demand officials sign non-disclosure agreements to meet with what is essentially a Communist Chinese government agent.

“The township’s concerns have all been surrounded by the lack of information given to them to make an educated decision surrounded by NDAs signed by multiple different organizations including the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and our local economic development corporation and The Right Place which is working for Gotion to bring it here,” Penny Currie, the treasurer of Big Rapids Charter Township, tells Fox News.

“That is one of our main concerns and is why we haven’t been able to move forward with a decision of any kind,” she says.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Amanda Head: Drag Star Spews Hate About Traditional Families

2

If you’re in search of a New Years resolution let it be to stop inadvertently supporting the left’s wild attacks on the family.

It’s time to fight back and this is one easy step you can take to dismantle the radical left.

Watch Amanda break down the latest controversy below.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Trump’s Much-Needed ‘Radical’ Second Term Agenda

3
Gage Skidmore Flickr

ANALYSIS – Former President Donald Trump is thinking bigly. In his bid to return to the Oval Office, Trump and his allies have promised a sweeping transformation of the federal government.

And while the left and their mass media puppets decry these plans as radical, they are mostly a much-needed corrective after four years of truly extreme and disastrous Biden policies.

If he returns to the White House in 2024, Trump is planning to root­ out polit­ical foes (dismantle the hyper political and leftist ‘deep state’), deport millions of illegal migrants who have invaded the U.S. under Joe Biden, slap tar­iffs on imports and scal­e back involvement in over­seas wars.

I’m hoping that the last pledge doesn’t mean misguided global retreats, but instead ‘recalibrating’ to force NATO allies to do more in Europe, while we focus on China, for example.

And though no longer talking about a ‘wall,’ Trump says he would “fully secure” the southern border, ending mass unskilled illegal immigration through Mexico.

Trump’s allies are also working on executive orders and studying the Constitution in anticipation of legal challenges.

As CNN reported:

The goal is to have executive orders prepared – on everything from immigration to the removal of government protections for civil servants – for Trump to sign on day one of a potential second administration.

Meanwhile, ‘Project 2025’, a significant effort run by the conservative Heritage Foundation, has brought many of these groups together to “pave the way for an effective conservative administration.”

Trump’s plan includes asserting more White House control over the Department of Justice (DOJ), which he says he would use to pursue his relentlessly weaponized persecutors, plus reigning in the increasingly politicized FBI and Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

The former president has also promised to issue pardons to “a large portion” of the nonviolent rioters jailed after the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. Too many of them have received obscenely long sentences for minor, nonviolent crimes.

And he isn’t giving Biden a pass. CNN noted:

“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Trump also said in June after his arraignment in Florida.

“I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”

One of Trump’s more sweeping, and welcome, proposals is ‘Agenda 47’: The large-scale arrest, detention, and mass deportation of illegal immigrants. Trump also plans to end automatic citizenship for children born to illegal migrants.

Additionally, Trump vows to revive many of his effective first-term immigration policies to restrict both legal and illegal immigration – including reinstating and expanding a travel ban on predominantly-Muslim countries.

He has also vowed to designate deadly Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) and to impose the death penalty at the federal level on drug dealers and human traffickers.

But there’s more. As Barrons reported:

Trump says he would also deploy the National Guard “to restore law and order” in liberal cities and would investigate “radical Marxist prosecutors” refusing to punish disorder.

Trump has weighed in on most of the so-called “culture war” issues that polarize Americans, from abortion, transgender rights and gun control to the teaching of America’s racist history.

The candidate says he would crack down on doctors providing gender-affirming care to minors and “pink haired communists” pushing critical race theory or “inappropriate” political material in schools.

Trump would also create a new tax credit, he said, to reimburse teachers for concealed carry firearms and training…

While some of these plans do hold the potential for abuse, the current system is already being abused in an unprecedented manner. 

To quote the Joker played by Jack Nicholson in the 1989 Batman movie: “this town needs an enema.” And Trump may be the one providing it.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

NYT, Scientists and Journalists’ Failed Miserably on C*VID Lab Leak Story: National Security Experts

1
Haxorjoe, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – Thankfully the pressure continues to build on the establishment media and scientific community for its massive failure and cover-up of the C*VID-19 lab leak origin theory. 

From day one of the C*VID outbreak in Wuhan, China, I argued that it would be dereliction of duty for any intelligence analyst worth his/her salt, or any journalist or expert, to ignore the elephant in the room – that there was a rare Chinese government Level 4 Biosafety Lab (BSL-4) within a few miles of the alleged ground zero for the virus.

Compounding this fact with the understanding that China has a robust bioweapons research effort, and shoddy safety protocols at the relatively new lab in Wuhan, it should have been a no-brainer, everyone should have been all over this scenario.

But sure enough, for partisan, ideological, and just plain stupid, reasons the establishment mob quickly dismissed that possibility outright, calling it a conspiracy theory and even worse, racist. 

Many of these players wanted to stay on the good side of China, some had vested interests in keeping a lid on it, others instinctively rebuked anything President Trump proposed, and others simply wanted to obsessively focus on how Trump was allegedly failing on COVID rather than on where this deadly virus originated.

Meanwhile, Big Tech social media platforms openly censored any views, including mine on LinkedIn, that simply reported on and explored the facts and available intelligence on the Wuhan lab and its potential relation to C*VID.

Over time however, this subpar reporting, and the massive effort bordering on a conspiracy to suppress the truth on C*VID’s origins, began to crumble.

The June 9 World Health Organization Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens report, and various other serious investigations, concluded that deliberate human involvement, or at least human error, may ultimately have been at the root of the pandemic that has killed over 15 million people worldwide.

In December, reports The Blaze, Republicans on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence also concluded in their interim report that it was “plausible” that Ch*nese military researchers possessed the C*VID-19 virus “as part of bioweapons research” prior to its release into the world as a consequence of a safety incident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Many of the obtuse big media outlets, colluding with Big Tech, and the misguided science experts have begun to retract and recant. Some even quietly admitting they may have been wrong on the lab leak origin theory.

But that isn’t enough. Far from it.

As reported by The Blaze:

A group of national security experts published a letter this week denouncing those in the mainstream media who downplayed, ignored, or outright denied the possibility that the C*VID-19 virus originated in a Chinese c*mmunist l*b in Wuhan.

The January 11 letter addressed to the editors of the Lancet, Nature Medicine, the New York Times, and Time magazine, was signed by forty-three national security experts, including House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas), former Defense Intelligence Agency acting Director David Shedd, former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, and numerous former State Department and National Security Council officials. 

The Blaze continues:

The letter implicates news outlets like the New York Times and scientific journals such as the Lancet in an apparent campaign to censor or displace dissenting voices around the pandemic’s origins.

Not only was journalists’ and editors’ failure to entertain the possibility that the W*han Institute of Vir*logy — controlled by the genocidal Chinese regime and notorious for performing gain-of-function experiments on coronaviruses — a dereliction of duty, it “served to hamper national and international policy discussions about how to mitigate against future pandemics of any origin — natural, accidental, or deliberate.”

Their letter calls for those who intentionally or not helped absolve the Chinese c*mmunist regime of any guilt in originating and spreading the deadly C*VID virus to be held accountable. 

The authors also called on major news organizations “to carry out deeper investigations into the pandemic’s origins, particularly by examining all credible origins hypotheses.”

This is the minimum they should do.

As the letter states, American security and prosperity depend upon “rigorous scientific debate, research, and scholarship, as well as an intrepid and independent news media.”

And all these media outlets, scientific journals, and individual journalists and experts “failed in their duty.”

They should all be called out and shamed publicly, and they should provide the nation, and the world a very public apology.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Amanda Head: Another Trump Indictment

5
Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

The walls are closing in on Donald Trump.

Will the former President have another indictment in the coming weeks over his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021? It’s not looking good.

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he has not been told that he’s being indicted as a special counsel investigation into his handling of classified documents shows signs of wrapping up.

“No one has told me I’m being indicted, and I shouldn’t be because I’ve done NOTHING wrong,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that he has “assumed for years that I am a Target of the WEAPONIZED DOJ & FBI.”

Watch Amanda explain the situation below:

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Trump Is Right To Reject RNC’s Unpatriotic Demand – But He Needs To Go Further

3
Gage Skidmore Flickr

Former President Donald Trump is right: There’s no reason he should sign a GOP loyalty oath in order to participate in the candidates’ debates.

Such oaths, which the Republican National Committee employed in the 2016 presidential primary – only to see the last remaining candidates, including Trump, abandon it – aren’t just signs of a party’s weakness; they are also profoundly silly and even un-American.

Yes, we swear plenty of legally enforceable oaths – in court cases, for example, or declarations on tax forms and other legal documents. But oaths binding candidates to support someone who they’ve campaigned against, throwing elbows, mud and other rhetorical barbs at them for months to convince voters the guy was a bum?

I’ll defer to what Sen. Ted Cruz said of such an oath back in the 2016 presidential primary:

Cruz has dodged the question of whether the pledge still holds by insisting he will be the nominee. Though on Friday, in an apparent reference to Trump, Cruz said, “I don’t make a habit out of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my family.”

We all know that Cruz eventually did support Trump’s candidacy and became one of his biggest defenders in the Senate (which was amusing).

But the oath? Nah. The 2016 primary should have been instructive to party leaders that such commitments are transactional at best and unenforceable in fact. Which brings us to the state parties.

They have been long-time players in loyalty oaths, often attempting to bind voters to the party’s eventual nominees. While such pledges are even sillier and utterly unenforceable, that hasn’t stopped new ones from cropping up this year. Consider the case of Florida‘s pledge:

Christian Ziegler, the chairman of the Florida GOP, said in an email that the loyalty pledge is an effort to “ensure maximum unity” headed into the 2024 general election.

“The days of outlier party grifters – such as Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger – using Republican Party resources to secure a title and then weaponize that title against our own team must end,” Ziegler said, referring to two former House members, who are among Trump’s most vocal GOP critics.

“Contested primaries are part of the process,” he said, “but we must always remember that the Democrats are the true threat to the America we love and we must be unified to defeat every single one of them.”

The true threat to America is noxious oaths that bind us to men rather than pledges or oaths that bind individuals to uphold the law or tell the truth.

You know, like the only oath that should ever matter for a presidential candidate: the one the Constitution requires:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Every other partisan oath is legally dubious, intellectually suspect and, in the end, not worth the paper it’s printed on.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of  Great America News Desk. It first appeared in American Liberty News.