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    Is Biden’s DOJ Out to Get Trump? Or Did Trump Do This to Himself?

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    3
    Photo via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    In an event unprecedented in American history, a former U.S. president, protected by U.S. Secret Service agents, and currently running for president, was booked on federal criminal charges Tuesday by U.S. Marshals at the U.S. federal courthouse in Miami, before being taken to be fingerprinted and processed.

    Donald Trump pled ‘not guilty’ to all charges.

    The charges relate to Trump taking a lot of highly classified documents from the White House after he left office. And once discovered, he gave multiple bizarre reasons for having them.

    According to the indictment, the highly sensitive materials Trump kept included documents about overseas nuclear weapons holdings and various military plans.

    But they are really all about the fact that he refused to turn many of them over for upwards of 18 months. And I have criticized Trump for doing that.

    So, did Hillary Clinton get treated differently? Of course! And is Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) out to get Trump?

    Absolutely! That’s a given.

    But Trump could still have avoided all this had he behaved differently, before and after he got caught. And that’s important too.

    As with Richard Nixon and Watergate, it was about the cover up.

    The 37 charges against Trump include violations of the Espionage Act or the willful retention of national security information as well as one count of “conspiracy to obstruct justice,” one count of “withholding a document or record,” one count of “corruptly concealing a document or record,” one count of “concealing a document in a deferral investigation,” one count of “scheme to conceal” and one count of “false statements and representations.”

    Based on the evidence represented in the indictment, and from his own words and deeds, it seems that he did do most of the things he is accused of, despite the Team Trump calls that this is only a political prosecution.

    I have said before that Trump basically dared the Justice Department to come after him. And I still believe that had Trump simply turned over all the classified materials when they were first requested, this would have likely ended last year without any criminal proceedings.

    But Trump didn’t.

    The FBI then conducted a very showy surprise raid on the ex-president’s Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, on August 8, 2022. That raid, and the documents recovered there, eventually led to the 37-count indictment that now put Trump where he is.

    THE FBI RAID ON MAR-A-LAGO

    Many condemned the FBI raid that launched all this as unprecedented and wrong, including me. I argued that it sent a horrible message to the world and looked highly political. (As does the indictment, arrest, and potential trial).

    Apparently, the FBI had doubts about the raid as well.

    Steven D’Antuono, who left the FBI late last year, explained the FBI-DOJ disagreements over the planning and execution of the Mar-a-Lago search during an interview last week with the House Judiciary Committee.

    While he called the back-and-forth between DOJ and the FBI “an everyday discussion,” he noted that it still created “consternation” among the law enforcement officials, reported Politico.

    According to the interview transcripts reviewed by Politico, D’Antuono said DOJ wanted the FBI to quickly seize the classified documents from Mar-a-Lago, claiming they could fall into the wrong hands. But the FBI’s Washington Field Office team preferred to seek Trump’s permission, through his attorneys, to search the premises.

    The FBI even proposed a plan to surveil Mar-a-Lago in case Trump’s team tried taking any of the disputed papers offsite, according to D’Antuono.

    The FBI “had a plan in place to have surveillance around if we needed to,” he said.

    “Again, no one was there. So, if they brought in — they – meaning the [former] president’s, you know, people — brought in a big box truck, we would see it, right, and we would have the search warrant in hand and be able to act at that point.”

    In the end, DOJ got its way, and they conducted the surprise raid. Fortunately, Trump wasn’t there when it occurred. And that was at least something.

    “I didn’t want the spectacle for obvious reasons of why we’re sitting here today. … It’s a reputational risk, right, and that’s the way I looked at it from the Bureau,” reported Politico.

    Unfortunately, the FBI has still suffered a great deal of reputational risk, as has the DOJ under Biden. This all stinks as political.

    But Trump has played a big part in all this as well.

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

    Biden Trades Russian Arms Dealer for Woke Female Basketball Player – Leaves Male US Marine to Rot

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    10

    ANALYSIS – Can’t say this was unexpected. Joe Biden just traded a convicted Russian arms dealer for a guilty woke basketball player, while leaving an innocent former U.S. Marine to rot in Russian jail. 

    And to make matters worse, Brittney Griner, who pled guilty to having cannabis vape oil in her luggage, was only in Russian jail for a few months while Paul Whelan, who was set-up and falsely convicted of espionage, has been imprisoned in a Russian labor camp for nearly four years.

    Whelan, 52, remains there where he is to continue serving out a 16-year sentence.

    Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout had been serving time in a U.S. federal prison since 2011. 

    It is clear Biden is playing favorites.

    Biden called Griner’s wife earlier this year to assure her of his commitment to securing her release. But no similar call was made to the Whelan family, despite multiple requests from Elizabeth Whelan for a meeting with the president. 

    After news reports about the snub emerged, Biden finally called Elizabeth Whelan in early July.  

    Of course, from day one, the liberal media has been constantly bombarding us with Griner’s sob story in her Russian jail, keeping her issue front and center for maximum PR leverage, while leaving Whelan on the back burner, if at all.

    While we read every minor detail of Griner’s travails, and she was allowed regular access to the outside world, Whelan was held in a cell at the notorious Stalin-era Lefortovo Prison for over a year, where initially he was denied things like toilet paper and soap, and guards threatened, abused and harassed him.

    Whelan also wasn’t allowed to make calls to his parents, his mail was censored, and visits from his lawyers and embassy representatives were extremely limited.

    Recall that Griner, who is a black lesbian, also refused to stand for the national anthem.

    To the left she checks all the super woke boxes.

    Meanwhile, Biden blamed Russia for his failure to include Whelan in the trade.

    “We’ve not forgotten about Paul Whelan,” Biden said Thursday morning. “This was not a choice about which American to bring home. … Sadly, for totally illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul’s case differently than Brittney’s. … We will never give up.”

    Well, that’s patently false. 

    It doesn’t matter what the Russians say or want. It’s Biden’s job to make things happen. It should have been both released for Bout, or no deal. 

    Especially when one who is young and healthy, and had been arrested for drugs, had only been in jail for a few months, and the other one who was falsely accused, is over 50 and been in a labor camp for 4 years.

    However, being gracious, and perhaps in a bid to not alienate Biden, Whelan’s twin brother David Whelan, said Thursday:

    I am so glad that Brittney Griner is on her way home. As the family member of a Russian hostage, I can literally only imagine the joy she will have, being reunited with her loved ones, and in time for the holidays. There is no greater success than for a wrongful detainee to be freed and for them to go home. The Biden administration made the right decision to bring Ms. Griner home, and to make the deal that was possible, rather than waiting for one that wasn’t going to happen.

    But as the Detroit Free Press reports, this wasn’t the message the Whelan’s were sending a few months ago when the U.S. negotiated the release of Trevor Reed, another American wrongfully detained in Russia, in exchange for Russian drug trafficker Konstantin Yaroshenko. 

    At the time, Whelan’s brother David asked: “Is President (Joe) Biden’s failure to bring Paul home an admission that some cases are too hard to solve? Is the administration’s piecemeal approach picking low-hanging fruit? And how does a family know that their loved one’s case is too difficult, a hostage too far out of reach?”

    That last message is the more correct one. Biden clearly favored Griner to please his leftist base, while abandoning Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, to rot in A Russian jail. GAND

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

    Liberal City Hit With Class Action Lawsuit Over Reparations Scheme

    By
    Donny Ferguson
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    2

    A left-wing city council faces a class action lawsuit from concerned citizens over a scheme to give an average $25,000 in financial assistance to citizens based on their skin color.

    The non-profit public interest law firm Judicial Watch announced in a statement a hearing in its “class action civil rights lawsuit filed against Evanston, Illinois, on behalf of six individuals over the city’s reparations program.”

    “To date, Evanston has awarded over $6,350,000 to 254 individuals based on their race. The city must be stopped before it spends even more money on this clearly discriminatory and unconstitutional reparations program,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

    “The court ordered the in-person hearing for oral argument on Evanston’s pending motion to dismiss the lawsuit,” Judicial Watch reports.

    Judicial Watch reports it “filed the lawsuit over the city’s use of race as an eligibility requirement for a reparations program, which makes $25,000 direct cash payments to black residents and descendants of black residents who lived in Evanston between the years 1919 and 1969.”

    According to The New Republic, program will also reportedly give financial assistance to their descendants, who never experienced racism in Evanston.

    Judicial Watch alleges “that the program violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

    In its response to the city’s motion to dismiss, Judicial Watch states:

    [T]he program’s use of a race-based eligibility requirement is presumptively unconstitutional, and remedying societal discrimination is not a compelling government interest. Nor has remedying discrimination from as many as 105 years ago or remedying intergenerational discrimination ever been recognized as a compelling government interest. Among the program’s other fatal flaws is that it uses race as a proxy for discrimination without requiring proof of discrimination. 

    Senator Kennedy’s Latest Book Strikes Back — Politicians Are Stunned [CONTRIBUTE TODAY TO RECEIVE A FREE COPY]

    Amanda Head: The Gloves Are Off!

    By
    Amanda Head
    -
    0

    Nothing will be the same…

    On Thursday, a grand jury voted to indict former President Donald Trump stemming from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s yearslong investigation into Trump’s alleged hush money bribe to porn star Stormy Daniels.

    Watch Amanda explain the situation below:

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

    FBI Finally Raids Communist China’s Illegal Police Outpost in NYC

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    8

    ANALYSIS – The fight against China’s growing global network of illegal police outposts has finally heated up here in the United States with the FBI raiding the large Chinese station in New York City (NYC).

    This is the mission the FBI should be focused on, rather than raiding pro-life activists or colluding with Big Tech to censor Americans.

    I’ve written about these extraterritorial Chinese police stations several times, highlighting the ones in NYC, as well as those in Canada and Europe.

    Beijing says these outposts aren’t doing any police work, only helping Chinese citizens abroad, but Chinese state media reports that they in fact “collect intelligence” and solve crimes far outside their jurisdiction.

    But they do far more than that. 

    They are accused of conducting illegal surveillance on legal U.S. residents and citizens of Chinese extraction and intimidating, threatening, and coercing them.

    In some cases, they have reportedly even kidnapped people outside of China.

    According to the New York Times (NYT), the FBI raided the suspected Chinese police outpost, hidden in New York City’s Chinatown last fall, seizing materials from one of the secretive operations for the first time.

    The Chinatown outpost was on the third floor of a six-story office building on a busy street. It was raided by FBI counterintelligence agents working on a criminal investigation with the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

    Of course, as the NYT reports, the Chinese Embassy in Washington downplayed the outposts, claiming they are staffed by volunteers who help Chinese nationals perform routine tasks like renewing their Chinese driver’s licenses.

    Despite the official Chinese denials, the NYT reports, “Western officials see the outposts as part of Beijing’s larger drive to keep tabs on Chinese nationals abroad, including dissidents. The most notorious such effort is known as Operation Fox Hunt, in which Chinese officials hunt down fugitives abroad and pressure them to return home.”

    In October, prosecutors in Brooklyn — the same office that searched the New York office — charged seven Chinese nationals with harassing a U.S. resident and his son, pressuring the man to return to China to face criminal charges.

    As reported by the NYT, “It’s outrageous that China thinks it can come to our shores, conduct illegal operations and bend people here in the United States to their will,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in 2020.

    At least 102 such outposts have been documented in 53 countries in recent months by the human rights group Safeguard Defenders. Wray said in November that he’s “very concerned” about the outposts, which he called “police stations.”

    “It’s a long-arm power to show their own citizens inside China that their government is so strong,” said Safeguard Defenders researcher Chen Yen-ting. “We have the power to reach globally, and even if you go out, you’re still under our control.”

    These outposts are ostensibly set up by local Chinese municipalities or regions. At least four Chinese localities — Fuzhou, Qingtian, Nantong and Wenzhou — have reportedly set up dozens of foreign police outposts in Japan, Italy, France, Britain, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and other nations.

    These don’t include the ones in Canada and the U.S.

    Let’s hope the FBI keeps up the pressure on illegal Chinese police activity in the U.S., and the State Department gets involved in controlling any Chinese entities and personnel it has allowed to enter and operate on U.S. soil.

    Communist Chinese influence and subversion in the U.S. is the greatest domestic threat we face, not Americans exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech.

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

    Amanda Head: Joe Biden’s Age Problem

    By
    Amanda Head
    -
    0

    President Joe Biden is 80 years old yet Democrats rush to defend him from any critics…

    Let Amanda explain the latest controversy below:

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

    2023: The Year of War – China Readies to Battle America over Taiwan

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    9
    See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    ANALYSIS – Former Trump National Security Advisor and retired Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster is on a tear with the media, warning the nation of the biggest threats America faces in 2023. 

    Earlier, I wrote about the growing risk that Israel’s new nationalist government led by prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may strike Iran before the end of this year to prevent the Islamist regime from finally getting a nuke.

    In that piece I quoted McMaster as saying: “the chances are quite high of a significant conflict in the Middle East, maybe entailing an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program.”

    An Israeli-Iranian conflict would certainly spread across the Middle East as Iran retaliates directly and asymmetrically, including targeting U.S. bases and interests.

    And now McMaster warns about something most of us already know, but he brings new urgency to the threat – that China is preparing its military for war with the United States war over Taiwan.

    On CBS Face The Nation, McMaster said: “Xi Jinping has made it quite clear, in his statements, that he is going to make, from his perspective, China whole again by subsuming Taiwan.” 

    “And preparations are underway,” he added.

    Earlier, I reported here that the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) had just deployed one of its three aircraft carriers within miles of the U.S. territory of Guam, America’s small but strategic outpost in the Western Pacific.

    This is the closest the Chinese navy has ever sailed a warship of this size to any American territory.

    And it is sending a message – Chinese naval forces can get close to U.S. bases as well.

    But there is more. Newsweek also reported on McMaster’s CBS appearance:

    “China has become increasingly aggressive, not only from an economic and financial perspective and a wolf warrior diplomacy perspective, but physically, with its military,” McMaster said. “And what’s really disturbing is, I think, Xi Jinping is preparing the Chinese people for war.”

    He pointed to some of Xi’s speeches, which have taken on a hardline tone in recent months, as evidence that the U.S. should take the threat of war more seriously and “extend our power.” Doing so would also compel allies to invest more in their national defense, which would further serve as a deterrent, he added.

    Newsweek continued:

    McMaster’s warning follows other indications that China may be considering a war over Taiwan. In November, The Guardian reported that Xi told his military to “focus all its energy on fighting” to prepare for a potential war.

    “Focus all [your] energy on fighting, work hard on fighting and improve [your] capability to win,” he reportedly said.

    Welcome to 2023, the year America should be concerned not only with Russia’s war in Ukraine escalating and spreading into NATO Europe and possibly triggering some sort of nuclear incident, but also a war between Israel and Iran that could engulf the entire Middle East.

    And to top it off, this could also be the year we see a major catastrophic war with China over Taiwan.

    Or even worse – we may face all three regional military conflicts at once. Happy New Year!

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

    Amanda Head: DeSantis Is In! Tell Us Your Thoughts!

    By
    Amanda Head
    -
    28

    The showdown between former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has America hooked.

    Have you already made up your mind or are you waiting for a fight?

    Watch Amanda below:

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

    Amanda Head: Pride Summer? Please No!

    By
    Amanda Head
    -
    1

    Is the month of June not enough? Now, the LGBTQ+ group wants the entire summer.

    Will you put your foot down?

    Watch Amanda explain the controversy below:

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

    Chinese Drones May Be Spying All Over DC

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    3
    Ted Eytan from Washington, DC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

    ANALYSIS – We have recently heard a lot about UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) and the newer UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena).

    The Pentagon has even weighed in on their myriad interactions with military pilots and astronauts.

    Some analysts have concluded many of these UAP sightings are simply aerial or space debris. 

    While enemy spy aircraft account for many of the incidents as well.

    In that vein, experts and lawmakers are now raising the alarm over what are likely large numbers of Chinese Communist (Chicom) drones on spy missions over DC.

    This more down-to-earth threat needs to be addressed quickly and forcibly.

    POLITICO reports:

    Hundreds of Chinese-manufactured drones have been detected in restricted airspace over Washington, D.C., in recent months, a trend that national security agencies fear could become a new means for foreign espionage.

    The recreational drones made by Chinese company DJI, which are designed with “geofencing” restrictions to keep them out of sensitive locations, are being manipulated by users with simple workarounds to fly over no-go zones around the nation’s capital.

    …officials say they do not believe the swarms are directed by the Chinese government. Yet the violations by users mark a new turn in the proliferation of relatively cheap but increasingly sophisticated drones that can be used for recreation and commerce.

    Still, lawmakers are concerned.

    …DJI has secured funding from investment entities owned by the Chinese government — a fact that DJI reportedly sought to conceal. And the ease with which recreational users can evade the flight restrictions means that their high-definition cameras or other sensors could also be hacked into for intelligence-gathering.

    POLITICO adds:

    “Any technological product with origins in China or Chinese companies holds a real risk and potential of vulnerability that can be exploited both now and in a time of conflict,” Sen. Marco Rubio, vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, said in an interview about the potential threats posed by foreign-made drones. “They’re manufactured in China or manufactured by a Chinese company, but they’ll put a sticker on it of some non-Chinese company that repackages it so you don’t even know that you’re buying it.

    And the highly restricted airspace above DC is a prime drone target.

    POLITICO continue:

    …data recently shared with Congress highlights more than 100 incursions in a recent 45-day period but the sources requested that specific numbers, locations and frequency not be published for security reasons.

    But it’s not just potential spying. 

    FBI Director Christopher Wray recently warned  that the Bureau has seen within the U.S., attempts to weaponize drones with homemade [improvised explosive devices].”

    So, what can be done?

    In February, GOP U.S. Senator Marco Rubio introduced legislation to add DJI to a Federal Communications Commission list designating it as a national security threat. 

    This would restrict DJI drones’ ability to link to U.S. telecommunications systems.

    This measure was adopted after it was reported that the company sought to conceal its funding by the Chinese government.

    Unfortunately, the bill has been stalled and hasn’t gone anywhere in Congress.

    It’s time to implement this bill and turn it into law.

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

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