Opinion

Home Opinion Page 39

Ex-Capitol Police Chief: J6 Riot Not False Flag, But Allowed to Happen

4
Elvert Barnes, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – From the beginning, conspiracies surrounded the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021. Stunned conservatives couldn’t believe Republicans caused that mayhem. Some called it a deliberate false flag operation by the feds to entrap innocent Trump supporters and launch a massive witch hunt. 

Both last two things did occur.

Meanwhile, the Democrats and media called the afternoon event an attempted coup and later more steadily ‘the insurrection.’

It was neither. But it also wasn’t a well-orchestrated false flag operation. The truth is just as bad but less planned.

I was at the Capitol on Jan 6 as a security contractor for a foreign TV news crew, and I condemned the violence the next day. I wrote that the, at times, violent riot wasn’t a coup, or an insurrection but the violence was criminal behavior, and should be punished.

I also noted that the rioters all appeared to be passionate Trump supporters, and not likely a false flag operation by the feds, or ANTIFA infiltrators.

Since then, I have defended many of the peaceful protesters unfairly caught up in the FBI dragnet and harshly charged for minor nonviolent crimes. 

I have also written about the large number of undercover police and federal agents and their informants since identified at the Capitol that day. And I have noted how the Democrats in charge of the House and Senate that day refused National Guard support, as did the Democrat mayor of DC.

At least until it was too late.

Now, former Capitol Hill Police Chief Steven Sund has added his insight into the events. And he claims that it seems as if they wanted something to happen.

Sund resigned from his post shortly after the riots. He had been chief of the Capitol Police since 2019 and had served as a police officer for more than 30 years in total.

Newsmax reported on his untelevised interview with Tucker Carlson taped before Carlson was fired from Fox News:

“Everything appears to be a cover-up,” Sund told Carlson. “I’m not a conspiracy theorist … but when you look at the information and intelligence they had, the military had, it’s all watered down. I’m not getting intelligence, I’m denied any support from National Guard in advance. I’m denied National Guard while we’re under attack, for 71 minutes …”

… “Could there possibly be actually … they kind of wanted something to happen? It’s not a far stretch to begin to think that. It’s sad when you start putting everything together and thinking about the way this played out … what was their end goal?”

Sund told Carlson he believes that Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had intelligence of what was coming on Jan. 6 but failed to communicate it and subsequently covered it up.

“If I was allowed to do my job as the chief we wouldn’t be here; this didn’t have to happen,” he said.

Carlson also said on Russel Brand’s podcast that Sund told him:  ‘Oh yeah, that crowd was filled with federal agents.’

This all fits neatly with much of what I have noted previously. But while I blamed Democrat leaders for holding back needed support to defend the Capitol for other political reasons, Sund seems to believe they held it back because they started hoping for a big chaotic show they could then turn into a political circus.

And the chaos ensued, and so did their circus.

Sadly, Donald Trump and some of his supporters fell for the trap.

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

Amanda Head: Polls Change In Wake Of Potential Trump Arrest News

12

Support for Donald Trump is surging after news broke that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg plans to indict the former president this week.

Watch Amanda explain the latest developments below:

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

Congress May Blow Lid Off Backroom Deal For Trump Tax Return Leaker

1

Americans may soon learn why the man who stole the confidential financial information of 18,000 taxpayers got the lightest possible criminal sentence from the Biden administration after leaking the tax returns of one of those people – President Donald Trump.

U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) announced in a statement he has “sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi requesting information about the prosecution of Charles Littlejohn, the former IRS contractor who leaked the tax returns of President and Trump and thousands of others to ProPublica and the New York Times.”

“During Littlejohn’s sentencing, Biden-Harris Justice Department prosecutors stated that the scope and scale his unauthorized disclosure was unparalleled in the IRS’s history yet allowed Littlejohn to plead guilty to only one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax information, resulting in only a five-year prison sentence, three years’ supervised release, and a $5,000 fine,” the statement explains.

“It remains unclear why the Biden-Harris Justice Department chose to allow him to plead guilty to only a single felony count,” the statement notes.

Jordan’s letter reads, in part:

“The Committee on the Judiciary is continuing to investigate the unprecedented leak of protected taxpayer information by Charles E. Littlejohn. Despite confessing to leaking ‘thousands of individuals’ and entities’ tax returns’ to ProPublica and the New York Times, the Biden-Harris Administration charged Mr. Littlejohn, a former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) contractor, with only one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax information. Due to the Trump Administration’s commitment to transparency and accountability, the Committee has learned that the scope of Mr. Littlejohn’s leak was much broader than the Biden-Harris Administration had led the public to believe. Accordingly, we respectfully renew our request for documents relating to Mr. Littlejohn’s prosecution.

“During Mr. Littlejohn’s sentencing, Justice Department prosecutors stated that the ‘scope and scale’ of Mr. Littlejohn’s unauthorized disclosure was ‘unparalleled in the IRS’s history.’ They claimed at the time that the data stolen by Mr. Littlejohn included ‘returns’ and ‘return information’ for approximately 18,000 individuals and 73,000 businesses. Yet, the Justice Department under President Biden allowed Mr. Littlejohn to plead guilty to only 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.

“During Mr. Littlejohn’s sentencing, the judge expressed that she was ‘perplexed’ and ‘troubled’ by the overly lenient plea agreement, stating: ‘The fact that [Mr. Littlejohn] is facing one felony count, I have no words for.’

“On February 8, 2024, the Committee wrote to the Biden-Harris Justice Department requesting documents about the Department’s decision to pursue one charge against Mr. Littlejohn despite the severity of his actions. On March 18, 2024, the Biden-Harris Justice Department responded by defending Mr. Littlejohn’s single felony charge and his five-year prison sentence. The Biden-Harris Justice Department failed to produce any substantive or nonpublic information to the Committee.

“After President Trump took office, the IRS disclosed to the Committee that over 405,000 taxpayers were victims of Mr. Littlejohn’s leaks and that ’89 [percent] of the taxpayers [we]re business entities.’ While it is now clear that Mr. Littlejohn’s conduct violated the privacy of hundreds of thousands of American taxpayers, it remains unclear why the Biden-Harris Justice Department chose to allow him to plead guilty to only a single felony count. It appears that the Biden-Harris Justice Department authorized a plea agreement in this case that did not ensure full accountability for criminal conduct that was unprecedented in its scope and scale.”

Pope Francis Appoints Vocal Trump Critic As DC Archbishop In Provocative Leadership Move

3

Pope Francis has named Cardinal Robert McElroy, a known advocate for migrants and outspoken critic of President-elect Donald Trump, as the new Archbishop of Washington, D.C. The decision underscores the pontiff’s preference for church leaders who align with his progressive vision, even as it risks further deepening ideological divisions within the millennia-old Catholic Church.

Cardinal McElroy, recognized as a strong supporter of LGBTQ inclusion and other liberal causes, has consistently aligned with Pope Francis on key social and theological issues. His appointment was announced two weeks before Inauguration Day, conspicuous timing that drew widespread attention given the cardinal’s history of publicly criticizing Trump’s policies on immigration and social justice. This is particularly notable in light of McElroy’s emphasis on synodality (dialogue with one another in the presence of the Spirit of God) and church reform, which have drawn both praise and criticism from Catholic observers.

The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

As Forbes’ Conor Murray reports, the move to elevate McElroy comes as a stark contrast to Trump’s nomination of Brian Burch as ambassador to Vatican City. Burch, a conservative Catholic activist and president of the right-leaning advocacy group CatholicVote, was instrumental in rallying Catholic support for Trump during the 2024 campaign. His organization has frequently clashed with the more progressive stances of Pope Francis and his allies:

McElroy has largely slammed Trump because of his views on immigration, including his promise to conduct mass deportations. McElroy was one of 12 Catholic bishops from California who co-authored a statement last month voicing support for “our migrant brothers and sisters,” acknowledging the “calls for mass deportations and raids on undocumented individuals” have created fear in migrant communities. After Trump’s first election victory in 2016, McElroy called it “unthinkable” that Catholics would “stand by while more than ten percent of our flock is ripped from our midst and deported.” He called Trump’s mass deportation plan an “act of injustice which would stain our national honor” and compared it to Japanese interment and Native American dispossession. McElroy criticized Trump’s plan to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy in 2017 for lacking any “shred of humanity,” stating Jesus Christ was “both a refugee and an immigrant during his journey.”

In a 2023 column for America magazine, McElroy urged greater welcoming of divorced and LGBTQ Catholics into the church, stating the church’s “disproportionate” focus on sexual activity as sin “does not lie at the heart” of a Christian’s relationship with God and “should change.” McElroy called it a “demonic mystery of the human soul why so many men and women have a profound and visceral animus toward members of the L.G.B.T. communities.” In a February 2024 speech, McElroy considered the lack of support among Catholics for blessing same-sex marriages to be the result of “enduring animus among far too many toward LGBT persons.” McElroy has also criticized abortion being considered a “de facto litmus test for determining whether a Catholic public official is a faithful Catholic.” McElroy, however, called Biden’s lack of support for anti-abortion legislation an “immense sadness” in a 2021 America magazine column, and called the overturning of Roe v. Wade a “day to give thanks and celebrate.”

Burch, founder and co-president of CatholicVote, was once a Trump skeptic but praised him in 2020 for making a “concerted effort to reach out to Catholics in a way that we haven’t seen in the past.” That year, he authored the pro-Trump book, “A New Catholic Moment: Donald Trump and the Politics of the Common Good.” Burch has slammed Francis for “progressive Catholic cheerleading” and accused him of creating “massive confusion” over his approval of blessing same-sex marriages in 2023.

Also on Monday, Francis appointed Sister Simona Brambilla, an Italian nun, to lead a Vatican office, making her the first woman to lead a major Vatican department. The department, the Dicastery for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, is responsible for religious orders. Francis has long voiced support for greater roles for women in the church, though he has ruled out ordaining women as deacons or priests.

McElroy’s appointment also highlights Pope Francis’ broader engagement with U.S. politics. In 2024, the pontiff made headlines when he urged voters to carefully consider their choices, describing the act of voting as a moral responsibility. During a press conference aboard the papal plane, Francis remarked on the complexities of American politics, advising voters to choose “the lesser evil” when faced with challenging decisions.

While the pope has criticized Trump’s hardline immigration policies, he has also expressed concern over Vice President Kamala Harris‘ unwavering support for abortion rights. Both stances, Francis noted, conflict with the Church’s teachings on the sanctity of life. “One must choose the lesser of two evils,” the pope reiterated. “Who is the lesser of two evils? That lady or that gentleman? I don’t know. Everyone with a conscience should think on this and do it.”

Despite the pontiff’s cultural influence, his impact on American politics was negligible. In the 2024 presidential election, former President Donald Trump secured a notable share of the Catholic vote, surpassing his performance in previous campaigns. According to exit polls conducted by The Washington Post, Trump won the national Catholic vote by a 15-point margin, with 56% supporting him compared to 41% for Vice President Kamala Harris.

This represents a notable shift compared to the 2020 election, where the Catholic electorate was nearly evenly split, with 50% supporting Trump and 49% favoring Joe Biden, a lifelong Catholic.

In the 2016 election, Trump secured 52% of the Catholic vote, while Hillary Clinton received 45%.

The 2024 election also saw variations within the Catholic demographic. Trump’s support among white Catholics increased, with 59% backing him compared to Harris’s 39%, a 20-point margin. This was an improvement over his 15-point lead in 2020.

Marburg79, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Among Latino Catholics, there was a significant shift toward Trump. In 2020, Biden led this group by a substantial margin, but in 2024, Trump’s support increased notably, contributing to his overall gains among Catholic voters.

The appointment of McElroy is likely to spark further debate within the Church, where a widening schism between liberal and conservative leaders continue to grow. However, it also reflects Francis’ commitment to shaping the Church’s leadership in a way that emphasizes his vision for pastoral care and inclusivity, even at the expense of unity.

Yet, in the United States, voting trends strongly suggest that Trump’s campaign strategies—including selecting Senator JD Vance, a Catholic, as his running mate, and making explicit appeals to Catholic voters—resonated with this demographic, contributing to increased GOP support in the 2024 election and possibly beyond.

Article Published With The Permission of American Liberty News.

‘Deranged’ Leftist NY Judge Declares Trump Guilty of Fraud Before Trial Begins

15
Gavel via Wikimedia Commons Image

ANALYSIS – In what is only the latest weaponized, partisan legal action against former President Donald Trump, the far-left Democrat New York state attorney Letitia James and her leftist cohort Justice Arthur Engoron have just found Trump guilty of civil fraud before his trial even began.

Never mind that the case is obscene to begin with and should not even exist. And the law it is based on is obscene as well and should not exist either. Andrew McCarthy explains in National Review:

James, an ambitious progressive authoritarian who campaigned for office on a vow to weaponize the Empire State’s legal processes against Trump, decided to package the scraps [of leftover fraud charges no one else could prosecute] into a lengthy civil complaint. After all, she had a secret weapon: New York’s Executive Law 65(12), which empowers an abusive prosecutor to put partisan enemies out of business without having to prove anything. Although this provision purports to outlaw “repeated” and “persistent” “fraud” and/or “illegality,” in reality, as I explained last week in a column for The Messenger:

“The law doesn’t require a showing of harm. The state need not prove the defendant even intended to defraud anyone, much less actually defrauded someone. It need not be established that any creditor or financial institution even relied on the defendant’s misrepresentations, that those misrepresentations were material, or that anyone was actually fooled by them. The state just has to show that a defendant made false claims with enough “persistence” and “repetition” that at least two persons were “affected” — which, whatever it means, is not a synonym for ‘harmed.’”


Claiming Trump significantly overvalued his properties and assets when presenting his company’s financials to banks and lenders and that this somehow “affected” someone, James is seeking at least $250 million in penalties, a ban against Trump and his sons Donald Jr. and Eric from running businesses in New York, and a five-year commercial real estate ban against Trump and the Trump Organization.

The accusations are that Trump inflated the value of assets by $1.9 billion to $3.6 billion annually between 2011 and 2021 to save hundreds of millions on loans and insurance.

This, even though no one has been claimed to have been harmed, and all financial institutions take self-declared valuations like those made by Trump, with a grain of salt when making loans and other major financial decisions.

Bankers and insurance executives have a fiduciary obligation to conduct their own due diligence to determine what they believe are fair market valuations of assets. And they always do.

And as McCarthy further explains, everyone involved knew Trump exaggerated just about everything:

…this was for political consumption and the burnishing of celebrity. In the league of sophisticated financial actors in which Trump plays, where corporate departments are dedicated to valuation analysis because that’s the bread-and-butter of finance, nobody took this nonsense seriously. Indeed, Trump even included a “worthless clause” in his SFCs which, in so many words, warned that they were apt to be, you know, somewhat less than perfectly accurate. Many of the financial institutions that did business with Trump did so for years, and knew exactly the cat they were dealing with. They made loans and indemnified Trump because they knew, based on their own expertise and experience with him, that he was quite wealthy (even if not as wealthy as he claimed) and that he would pay up.

But that didn’t stop Justice Engoron, who ruled preemptively on September 26 that James had proven Trump and his co-defendants fraudulently inflated his assets. 

Engoron, in his ruling, ordered the cancellation of certificates that 10 of Trump’s business entities need to operate some of his marquee properties — including Trump Tower and his golf clubs in New York — and said he would appoint independent receivers to oversee their “dissolution.”

The judge thus essentially imposed the corporate death penalty on Trump’s businesses BEFORE the trial even began.

Trump responded in a post on his Truth Social platform the day of the ruling, calling accusations that he committed fraud “ridiculous and untrue,” and hit back, calling Engoron a “DERANGED” judge.

In this case, I must agree with Trump’s wording. The judge is deranged, but he is also a partisan hack and embarrassment in what is already a highly partisan and embarrassing New York judicial system.

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

Biden’s Wild Shooting Spree (Likely) Blasted 3 Innocent Civilian Balloons With $400k Missiles

0
Joe Biden via Gage Skidmore Flickr

NOT SATIRE – Following Joe Biden’s dismal performance in allowing a giant, high-altitude, Chinese surveillance airship to cross the entire United States for eight days while spying on sensitive nuclear weapons sites, the befuddled POTUS went on a shooting spree.

First, he ordered the Chinese ‘spy balloon’ to be shot down by one of our most sophisticated stealth aircraft (F-22 Raptor) after the Chinese airship left U.S. airspace near South Carolina.

Then, within a week, Biden had three additional unidentified aerial objects (UAPs) shot down by American jet fighters over Michigan, Alaska and Canada.

One of the sophisticated Sidewinder AIM-9X missiles reportedly missed its target, so to down the spy balloon and three additional UAPs, a total of five Sidewinders were fired.

Each of these state-of-the-art air-to-air missiles made by Raytheon costs between $400,000 and $500,000.

So, the cost to the taxpayer for Biden’s impotent attempt to appear macho was well over $2 million, probably closer to $2.5 million. (RELATED: Hard Blow to Putin – No More Viagra for Russia)

Of course, the perennially weak Team Biden took a huge victory lap over their multiple UAP downings; all the while thumping their chests at how they did this, not Trump.

However, it now turns out that Trump didn’t do it because a) the Pentagon never detected any Chinese spy balloons under his watch.

And b) Trump isn’t as foolish as Biden, as at least one, if not all three of the UAPs Biden had shot down last week, were likely nothing more than hobby clubs’ balloons.

The Blaze reports:

While the government has not confirmed what pilots downed over the Yukon in northern Canada, the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade said one of its balloons is “missing in action.” That balloon was last seen off the coast of Alaska last Saturday morning.

The trajectory of the balloon’s flight tracks with the object that a U.S. Air Force F-22 shot down on Saturday using a AIM-9X Sidewinder missile. Each missile costs more than $400,000.

The Blaze continues by noting that Biden himself appears to admit he went off half-cocked when he confirmed that intelligence officials believe possibly all three of the unidentified flying objects he had blasted from the sky were just civilian balloons.

“The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation, or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research,” Biden said on Thursday.

In fact, The Blaze notes, according to Aviation Week, “descriptions of all three unidentified objects shot down Feb. 10-12 match the shapes, altitudes and payloads of the small pico balloons.”

So, yea, Biden allowed a massive 200-foot Chinese surveillance airship to traverse the entire United States for over a week before going on a wild shooting spree blowing three benign civilian balloons out of the sky.

All in a feeble attempt to retroactively show everyone that he is tough.

Can we say dangerous and unstable POTUS?

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

Declassified Report Points To Fed Cover-Up Of Sonic Weapon Causing ‘Havana Syndrome’

3
David B. Gleason from Chicago, IL, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – It seems like just yesterday that the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) was categorically disavowing claims that ‘Havana Syndrome’ was the result of a directed energy weapon.

Actually, it was a few weeks ago, and I mocked that ridiculous report by comparing it to the same idiotic IC consensus that COVID-19 could not have originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s BSL-4 biolab.

On March 1st, Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), told journalists that most cases of Havana Syndrome were likely attributed to “environmental factors” or “conventional illnesses.”

She added that the idea that the symptoms were caused by a “directed energy weapon” was considered “highly unlikely.”

The IC has even posited nonsensical theories ranging from mass delusion to crickets.

But now, a newly declassified, government-sponsored report says the opposite of the IC’s conclusion – that the syndrome could, in fact, be caused by “electromagnetic energy.”

Can we say: ‘smoking gun’ and cover-up?

The report was compiled by the Intelligence Community Experts Panel on Anomalous Health Incidents (AHIs) at the behest of the federal government seeking answers to the mystery ailment.

For those who need to be refreshed, ‘Havana Syndrome’ is the moniker for the bizarre rash of neurological disorders plaguing over 1,000 U.S. diplomats and spies stationed at our embassies overseas.

This number includes one or two friends of mine.

Those strange symptoms include things like hearing and memory loss, severe headaches, light sensitivity, nausea and a host of other debilitating issues.

The first known cases appeared among officers at the U.S. embassy in Havana in 2016 before spreading worldwide.

While many experts, not to mention the victims themselves, have pushed for answers and been open to the idea that their maladies were caused by some sort of ‘electromagnetic’ or ‘sonic weapon,’ the government kept the findings of this important result secret.

And the report was only declassified now due to a lawsuit filed by the James Madison Project, a non-profit that lobbies against government secrecy.

Salon has published the full (albeit heavily redacted) 153-page report.

In it, the panel dismisses almost all the other natural purported origins espoused by the IC and others. It refers to Havana Syndrome as a “unique neurosensory syndrome” that is “distinctly unusual” and is “unreported elsewhere in the medical literature.”

While it was still secret, previous news reports said that the panel’s findings supported the theory that electromagnetic energy may have been the cause.

And now we have confirmation.

According to the newly declassified report, at least one plausible culprit, and the most likely, for the range of disorders, may be “pulsed electromagnetic energy.”

It reads: “Electromagnetic energy, particularly pulsed signals in the radio frequency range, plausibly explains the core characteristics, although information gaps exist.”

Attorney Mark Zaid, with the James Madison Project, told Salon that he believed the report clearly showed that the government was hiding something.

Zaid said: “The U.S. government is covering up evidence as to what AHIs are. It is becoming apparent that these events were perpetrated either by foreign actors, or it is an experiment gone horribly wrong.”

While the government has been adamant that no foreign government or adversary is behind ‘Havana Syndrome,’ the feds may be parsing the truth to avoid an even less appealing reality.

What if, as one online commenter posted, “we did this to ourselves. It was some experiment to see if we could ‘cloak,’ for lack of a better term, our embassies from electronic surveillance from the outside. Instead, it backfired and caused damage to our own people.”

Right now, that sounds as likely as anything. And far more plausible than crickets.

It would also open up the government to a whole new world of damage control.

Perhaps this is why it has just been reported by Bloomberg Law that: “The State Department agreed to pay $460K [61% of his original demand] to Mark Lenzi, an engineer who said the government discriminated against him over his Havana Syndrome diagnosis and his public advocacy for victims of the condition.”

As part of the agreement, Bloomberg noted, Lenzi withdrew all claims against the State Department, which denied any liability.

This could be just the beginning in a wave of State Department settlements with victims now that this formerly classified report is partly seeing the light of day.

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

Amanda Head: The Gloves Are Off!

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.

Deep State May Be Forced To Cough Up More Records On Biden Influence Peddling Scheme

1
Joe Biden via Gage Skidmore Flickr

Americans may soon know more about a Biden family business arrangement selling White House access to foreign interests, under a  lawsuit from an ethics watchdog.

The non-profit public interest law firm Judicial Watch reports it may receive more records under a “Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for Biden family records and communications regarding travel and finance transactions, as well as communications between the Bidens and several known business associates.”

“This lawsuit is an opportunity for the Trump team to stop the Deep State’s slow-walking of the release of Biden family corruption records,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

The suit was originally filed in May 2023 “after the National Archives failed to respond to a February 2023 FOIA request.”

This lawsuit previously “forced the release of  records revealing emails sent by Joe Biden using alias accounts during his vice presidency, in which he communicated with family members, including his son Hunter and brother James. The records also showed that in August 2016, Biden approved ending Secret Service protection for both Hunter Biden and Beau Biden’s daughter, Natalie, during a trip to Kosovo,” Judicial Watch reports.

The emails included messages to Jim and Hunter Biden regarding the then-vice president’s schedule and meetings. Some emails showed Joe Biden using the alias: [email protected].

According to Judicial Watch:

The emails also showed that Hunter and Jim Biden accompanied Joe Biden on taxpayer-funded trips; and then-Vice President Biden in December 2009 emailing an aide after he forgot the password to his West Wing computer.

The records showed that Hunter Biden used an email address ([email protected]) from his now-dissolved firm Rosemont Seneca Partners and that James Biden used an email address ([email protected]) tied to his consulting firm Lion Hall, which had been the subject of an FBI bribery investigation in the 1990s.

The lawsuit also forced the release of records showing then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter received a May 26, 2016, email detailing a scheduled “8:45 am prep for a 9 am phone call with Pres Poroshenko,” who was the president of Ukraine. Joe Biden’s email address is the alias [email protected], Hunter Biden’s email account is disclosed as [email protected]. (Hunter Biden was on the board of the controversial Ukrainian firm Burisma at the time.)

Hunter Biden’s Sweetheart Criminal Plea Deal ‘Implodes’ – Twice

2
Gavel via Wikimedia Commons Image

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. 

CNN reported:

“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.