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Agent Who Took Bullet For Reagan Backs Secret Service After WHCA Dinner Chaos

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By Series: Reagan White House Photographs, 1/20/1981 - 1/20/1989Collection: White House Photographic Collection, 1/20/1981 - 1/20/1989 - https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75856639, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=96625804

A Secret Service agent who literally took a bullet for President Ronald Reagan is now defending the agency after the shocking armed breach at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Tim McCarthy — the agent wounded during the 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan — says critics need to cool it.

“I think we need to ratchet down the rhetoric just a little bit and give the Secret Service at the moment quite a bit of credit for doing a hell of a good job,” McCarthy said on NewsNation Live.

That’s no small endorsement.

McCarthy was among the agents protecting Reagan outside the Washington Hilton in March 1981 when would-be assassin John Hinckley Jr. opened fire. Reagan was hit by a bullet that ricocheted off his limousine, piercing his lung and causing massive internal bleeding. McCarthy, along with Press Secretary James Brady and others, was also struck — Brady left permanently disabled.

Now, more than four decades later, McCarthy is weighing in on another high-stakes moment at the very same hotel.

On Saturday night, an armed suspect stormed the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where President Donald Trump was in attendance — sparking panic and fierce backlash online over security failures.

But McCarthy says the system worked.

“This guy really didn’t get too far,” he said. “He ran through the metal detectors… exchanged gunfire… wasn’t even on the same floor… and was tackled by an agent, never got to the stairs.”

Despite viral outrage — and even the suspect himself claiming there was “no damn security” — McCarthy emphasized the layered defense that stopped the threat cold.

“Now, security is in layers,” he explained, detailing how multiple levels of resistance stood between the gunman and the president, including counter-assault teams and SWAT units.

Bottom line: the shooter never got close.

“Security was tested, security responded, and at this point it did pretty well,” McCarthy said.

The Trump White House appears to agree.

Officials praised the Secret Service for quickly evacuating the president, vice president, and cabinet, while Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is set to review protocols going forward.

Still, critics have questioned whether more could have been done — including calls to lock down the entire hotel.

McCarthy dismissed that idea outright.

“Well, try finding a hotel with a ballroom if you’re going to shut the hotel down,” he said. “You’re not going to find one. No one’s going to want to do that.”

He also noted that security included multiple layers — possibly more than the standard three — and that the threat never reached the ballroom floor.

For McCarthy, who lived through one of the darkest days in presidential security history, the verdict is clear:

“So far, based on what I know, I’m pretty satisfied with what the Secret Service did on this occasion.”

The Washington Hilton hotel said is a statement Monday it was following “stringent” Secret Service protocols during Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

“The ​hotel was operating under stringent security ​protocols for the property as directed by the ‌U.S. ⁠Secret Service, which led security,” a hotel spokesperson said in a statement, according to Reuters

The spokesperson reportedly added that the Secret Service coordinated with numerous security teams, including the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) in addition to hotel security. 

This Man Stole Trump’s Tax Returns And Illegally Leaked Them. So Why Is DOJ Letting Him Off Easy?

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Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

A former IRS consultant who stole the tax returns of President Donald Trump and thousands of wealthy individuals, then leaked them to liberal media outlets to campaign for tax hikes, has pleaded guilty to a single count of “unauthorized disclosure of tax return and return information,” despite confessing in court to committing the crime thousands of times.

The decision to charge Charles Littlejohn with a single minor crime, while seeking decades in prison for Trump and many of his supporters, has many claiming it is yet another example of a politicized Justice Department.

Littlejohn faces a maximum of five years in prison, but will almost certainly serve far less than that, if any, time.

Littlejohn used his access to confidential information to steal the tax returns of Trump and wealthy individuals, often saving the electronic files to personal devices like an iPad, then leaking the documents to the New York Times and the liberal activist outlet ProPublica.

The illegal leaks set off a feeding frenzy in the media, who used the illicit disclosures to attack Trump and falsely campaign for tax hikes.

The DOJ’s decision to give Littlejohn a sweetheart plea deal, while targeting Trump supporters with harsh charges, has some in Congress calling out what they see as a biased and two-tier justice system.

“The defendant admitted to making two separate disclosures to two separate news outlets impacting over a thousand taxpayers, and further admitted to impeding or obstructing the investigation — yet the Department of Justice inexplicably only pursued one count of unauthorized disclosure,” the House Committee on Ways and Means Committee fumed in a statement.

“Ways and Means Committee Republicans have pushed federal investigators for years to get to the bottom of who stole and leaked the taxpayer information of thousands of Americans – including those of former President Donald Trump. Finally, the thief has been identified, charged, and now has pled guilty to this unprecedented crime,” said Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.).

“Unfortunately, the Department of Justice elected to charge only one count despite the more than a thousand disclosures he admitted to in open court. To restore trust in the justice system and the IRS – and to deter future thefts – there need to be significant consequences for this type of illegal, politically motivated activity,” Smith added.

Famous Navy Seal Now De-transitioning – Says He Was Manipulated

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Katy Blackwood, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Former decorated Navy SEAL Chris Beck, who publicly announced his transition to look like a woman in 2013, has now said that this was a life-shattering mistake, and he is de-transitioning back to his biologically male gender.

Beck, who started going by the name Kirsten, was a poster child of the trans movement and was used aggressively by them to promote and impose their radical agenda in the U.S. military.

Beck earlier served in the Navy SEALs for 20 years, going on 13 deployments, including with the famed SEAL Team Six.

According to his speaker bio, he was awarded over 50 citations and medals, including the Bronze Star with valor and the Purple Heart.

But now Beck calls the trans movement a ‘cult’ that used, manipulated, and propagandized him into making this radical life change.

He is also speaking out to warn about the devastating effect of the trans agenda on children.

Beck made his explosive comments during an interview with political commentator Robby Starbuck. 

Starbuck tweeted that “Navy SEAL Chris Beck came out in 2013 as transgender. @andersoncooper did a special on @cnn about it. His story was used as propaganda to allow trans people in the military and to popularize the issue. Now Chris is ready to expose the truth.”

The Daily Caller reported:

He [Beck]told Starbuck that he is “not transgender” and used his confusion as an example of why psychologists should not “push their agenda” onto children. Beck claimed in the interview that it took a one hour long meeting at the Department of Veterans Affairs for him to be recommended hormones, which he has now been off for seven years. He went on to break down the effects of the hormones used for the gender transition on his body.

Beck was turned into a national figure when he came out as transgender in a 2013 CNN interview with Anderson Cooper. The interview came after he co-wrote the book “Warrior Princess” with psychologist Anne Speckhard. The book detailed him coming out as transgender. He warned viewers in the interview not to believe anything CNN said about him because he claims they “used [him]” and “destroyed [his] life” over the past decade.

Beck is also extremely concerned about the trans movement’s damaging effects on children.

The Blaze notes:

Beck explained the dangers of medical professionals’ “automatic acceptance” of children who have self-diagnosed themselves as transgender. He added that doctors should require “a minimum number of sessions” before allowing children to undergo life-altering hormone therapy treatment or gender-mutilating surgeries.

“There’s a lot of complications with these surgeries,” Beck noted. “And that’s a part that they don’t really talk about.”

Beck told Starbuck that he came on the podcast to take “full responsibility” for promoting gender ideology and stated that, at the time, he was “naive.” He explained that he is concerned that children are “being talked into this.”

“I don’t want this to continue, and I don’t want these kids to get hurt,” Beck stated.

And this a growing concern, especially as Team Biden is pushing to have taxpayer-funded transition surgeries for kids.

The Christian Post reports:

The United States Department of Health and Human Services says that taxpayer funds should be used to cover the cost of body mutilating “gender transition” surgeries for minors. In written responses to Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said that the Biden administration supports using taxpayer dollars to cover the costs of elective body-deforming surgeries on youth, such as mastectomies and vaginoplasties. His responses were submitted Tuesday to the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor.

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

Amanda Head: CNN Stabs Biden!

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Is the mainstream media finally waking up? Not so fast…

However, tensions between the press and the Biden administration are definitely heating up after what has been widely regarded as a friendly relationship…

Let Amanda explain the rising feud below:

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

Trump Dominates GOP Presidential Rivals as Biden Approval Tanking

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Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

ANALYSIS – Even as the indictments pile up, or maybe because of them, a new national NBC News poll finds former President Donald Trump expanding his national lead in the Republican presidential nominating contest to 43 points over his nearest rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Trump leads the first-choice field with 59% of national Republican primary voters. In comparison, Ron DeSantis gets support from 16% — followed by former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley at 7% and former Vice President Mike Pence at 4%.

The poll also includes an all-time high disapproval of Joe Biden’s job performance. Fewer than 4 in 10 voters (37%) approve of his handling of the economy. This is huge.

As NBC News reported

Deeper inside those numbers, Biden is underwater among voters between the ages of 18 and 34 (46% of them approve of his job performance), all women (46%), Latinos (43%) and independents (36%).

What’s more, the NBC News poll finds 37% of voters approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, and 41% approve of his handling of foreign policy.

Biden is also taking a big hit for his open borders policy and unprecedented waves of illegal immigration on his watch, as also shown by a recent The Washington Post-ABC News poll. 

Axios noted

“A variety of factors may be at play,” [ABC News’ Gary] Langer writes in his analysis. “Biden’s poor performance ratings, the extent of economic discontent, the immigration crisis and doubts about his age clearly are relevant.”

Axios added: “In the Post-ABC poll, 44% said they’re worse off — the most for any president in the poll since… 1986, ABC News’ Gary Langer said in his poll analysis.”

“In NBC, Biden’s disapproval rating is the highest of his term for that poll.”

NBC News also noted that: “Another 60% have major concerns (45%) or moderate concerns (15%) about Biden’s possible awareness or involvement in the business dealings of his son, Hunter, including alleged financial wrongdoing and corruption.”

“This [NBC] survey is a startling flashing red light for an incumbent party,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies. McInturff conducted the September 15-19 poll with Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt and his team at Hart Research Associates.

“Yes, the numbers for Biden aren’t where he needs them to be,” said Horwitt. However, Trump and Republicans have challenges, such as the GOP front-runner’s unpopularity with the general electorate.

Most polls show that both Trump and Biden have high unfavorability going into a general election.

NBC News reported: “Three-quarters of voters say they’re concerned about President Joe Biden’s age and mental fitness, while nearly two-thirds have concerns about the multiple trials former President Donald Trump faces, a new national NBC News poll finds, casting a gloomy shadow over the upcoming 2024 presidential election.”

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

Walz Family Members Buck VP, Endorse Trump

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The family of vice presidential candidate Tim Walz aren’t fans of his politics…

An image circulating online shows family members of vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz openly supporting former President Trump.

The photo was shared online by former Nebraska Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster. It shows eight people wearing “Nebraska Walz’s (sic) for Trump” T-shirts.

“Tim Walz’s family back in Nebraska wants you to know something…” Herbster wrote on X. 

Family members told Fox News they consider themselves “distant” from Walz and have never met or spoken with him. One person in the photo who wished to remain anonymous said they are supporting Trump because “he supports our values.”  

Trump replied on Truth Social to the image, implying that he plans to “meet” with Jeff Walz, the older brother of the Minnesota governor. 

Leonard Leo Pledges $1 Billion To Combat ‘Liberal Dominance’ In Corporate America, Media

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Image via Pixabay free images

Leonard Leo, a billionaire activist often credited as the architect of the conservative supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court, has announced a $1 billion investment aimed at countering what he calls “liberal dominance” in corporate America, the media and entertainment sectors.

In a rare interview with the Financial Times, Leo detailed his plans through his nonprofit group, the Marble Freedom Trust, which will focus its resources on the private sector. “We need to crush liberal dominance where it’s most insidious,” Leo said, explaining that the initiative will build talent and capital pipelines in industries where he believes left-wing extremism is most pervasive.

Leo also emphasized targeting companies and financial institutions that he claims are influenced by “woke” ideology. “Expect us to increase support for organizations that call out companies and financial institutions that bend to the woke mind virus spread by regulators and NGOs,” he said, vowing that these entities would face consequences for prioritizing “extreme left-wing ideology” over consumers:

Leo has spent more than two decades at the influential Federalist Society, guiding conservative judges into the federal courts and the Supreme Court itself. In 2018, conservative justice Clarence Thomas joked that Leo was the third most important person in the world.

Leo’s efforts culminated under Trump’s presidency, when three Federalist Society-backed judges were appointed to give conservatives on the Supreme Court a 6-3 supermajority, and profound influence over US law. The court has since then ruled to overturn the right to an abortion, among other long-sought rightwing causes.

In 2020, after Trump lost the election, Leo stepped back from running the daily operations of the Federalist Society, while remaining its co-chair.

The following year, Leo founded Marble, with a $1.6bn donation from electronic device manufacturing mogul Barre Seid, to be a counterweight to what he said was “dark money” of the left. He spent about $600mn in its first three years, according to public financial disclosures.

During the interview, Leo identified several potential targets for his campaign, including banks, China-friendly corporations and companies that have institutionalized diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) frameworks, as well as those adhering to environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing principles.

He added that his goal is to find “very leveraged, impactful ways of reintroducing limited constitutional government and a civil society premised on freedom, personal responsibility and the virtues of Western civilization.”

Article Published With The Permission of American Liberty News.

Did Fauci Lie To Congress? New Investigation May Reveal The Truth.

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National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony S. Fauci. Photo Credit: Fogarty International Center from Bethesda, MD, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

In the wake of revelations that the former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci may have knowingly lied to Congress in sworn testimony, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is asking the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation.

Paul has asked U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Matthew Graves to open an investigation into testimony Fauci made to the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) on May 11, 2021, in which Fauci denied funding research at viral laboratory in China where the COVID-19 virus reportedly originated.

“The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Fauci said under oath in May.

But a month later a June 14, 2023,  Government Accountability Office report concluded the Wuhan Institute of Virology did receieve NIH funding.

There are concerns the COVID-19 virus “may have been genetically engineered because gain-of-function research was taking place in Wuhan before the pandemic,” Paul reports.

Now Paul wants to determine if Fauci’s statements were illegal.

“I warned Dr. Fauci of the criminal implications of lying to Congress and offered him an opportunity to recant his previous statement,” Paul wrote in a letter to Graves. “Dr. Fauci’s testimony is inconsistent with facts that have since come to light.”

“Before Congress, Dr. Fauci denied funding gain-of-function research, to the press he claims to have a dispassionate view on the lab leak hypothesis, and in private he acknowledges gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to his colleagues. His own colleagues have acknowledged Dr. Fauci’s inconsistency. A congressional hearing, however, is not the place for a public servant to play political games – especially when the health and well-being of American citizens is on the line,” Paul writes.

Under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 it is a federal crime to make “any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation” as part of “any investigation or review, conducted pursuant to the authority of any committee, subcommittee, commission or office of the Congress, consistent with applicable rules of the House or Senate.”

The penalty for an offense includes criminal fines and imprisonment of up to five years.

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

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Biden Scheme To Spy On Trump Supporter Bank Accounts Even Wider Than Reported

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Image via Pixabay free images.

Congressional investigators are demanding additional documents and information from financial institutions nationwide amid revelations that a Biden administration operation to spy on millions of bank accounts to identify suspected January 6 rioters was even more widespread than previously reported.

U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent letters to the Chief Executive Officers of Standard Chartered Bank USA, Truist, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo, Western Union, Charles Schwab, Bank of America, Citibank, HSBC Bank, JPMorgan Chase, MUFG Bank, PayPal, and Santander Bank requesting “documents and communications related to the Committee’s investigation of financial surveillance of American citizens, including the disclosure of private financial records to federal authorities without legal process.”

“Documents obtained by the Committee and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government show that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) circulated specific materials to these banks, and the Committee believes that these banking institutions possess information necessary for the investigation,” the Judiciary Committee reports. 

“The Committee previously sent letters to Bank of America, Chase, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo, Citibank, and Truist for its probe into how the FBI worked together with banks to spy on Americans following the events of January 6, 2021, without a warrant,” the Committee reports.

“The Committee also sent a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen demanding all Bank Secrecy Act filings, including Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), that included the tag created to group all SARs related to the events following January 6, 2021,” the Committee adds.

Excerpts of Jordan’s letter to Charles Schwab, for example, read:

“After receiving documents and information from several entities, the Committee and Select Subcommittee learned that the financial surveillance occurring in the United States is much broader than the FBI simply requesting, without any legal process, a list of customers’ transactions from Bank of America. On March 6, 2024, the Committee and Select Subcommittee released an interim staff report detailing its findings to date on how federal law enforcement is using private banks to pry into the private transactions of American customers. That report highlighted how, following January 6, 2021, federal law enforcement commandeered financial institutions’ databases, sought to treat sweeping classes of otherwise lawful transactions as potentially ‘suspicious,’ and profiled Americans using Merchant Category Codes (MCCs), ‘typologies,’ and ‘indicators’ that treated protected political and religious expression as indicative of domestic violent extremism.

“The Committee and Select Subcommittee remain concerned about how and to what extent federal law enforcement and financial institutions continue to spy on Americans by weaponizing backdoor information sharing and casting sprawling classes of transactions, purchase behavior, and protected political or religious expression as potentially ‘suspicious’ or indicative of ‘extremism.'”

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

Amanda Head: Are You on the #TrumpTrain for 2024?

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Donald Trump officially kicked off this third presidential campaign while delivering a speech Tuesday evening from his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Are you all in on Trump 2024 or keeping your options open?

Watch Amanda break it down below.