Opinion

Home Opinion Page 39

Amanda Head: Liberals and Their Lies on the 4th of July!

0

Liberals just can’t help themselves…

Watch Amanda explain the controversy below:

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

Judge Again Blocks Biden From Violating 1st Amendment

0
Gavel via Wikimedia Commons Image

ANALYSIS – Even when presented with overwhelming evidence that Team Biden colluded intimately with Big Tech social media companies to censor conservative Americans, the White House doubled down on violating the 1st Amendment. 

As I wrote last week, on July 4th a federal judge blocked “federal agencies from communicating with Big Tech firms to censor posts.”

This, after a lawsuit against the Biden administration by three Republican state Attorney Generals (AGs).

According to the judge, Terry A. Doughty, the AGs “have produced evidence of a massive effort by Defendants, from the White House to federal agencies, to suppress speech based on its content.” 

“If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States history,” Doughty wrote in his preliminary injunction against more than 40 administration officials. 

“In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the federal government, and particularly the defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech.”

Please note – ‘disinformation’ is any information the left and Team Biden don’t like.

This is serious constitutional stuff. One would think the White House might say, “ok, we overstepped a bit.”

But not Team Biden.

Using the Orwellian doublespeak, the left always uses to hide the truth, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: “We are going to continue to promote responsible actions.” 

She added: “That is something that we’re going to continue to do to make sure we protect public health and make sure there is safety and security.”

Using similar verbiage, the Department of Justice announced later that same day that it would appeal the decision, to protect public health, safety, and security.

Basically, Team Biden said, we don’t care, we want to keep violating the Constitution and censoring our opponents. And we are going to request an emergency order from the judge to do it.

The Daily Caller reported:

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and Louisiana Attorney General Jeffrey Landry opposed the Biden administration’s attempt to stop the injunction in a court filing Sunday, writing the administration was essentially asking to “continue violating the First Amendment.”

“In essence, Defendants argue that the injunction should be stayed because it might interfere with the Government’s ability to continue working with social-media companies to censor Americans’ core political speech on the basis of viewpoint,” they wrote in the court filing. “In other words, the Government seeks a stay of the injunction so that it can continue violating the First Amendment.”

Thankfully, on Monday the same federal judge blocked Biden again, denying the administration’s attempt to pause the injunction. 

The Washington Post reported that Judge Doughty noted again that the plaintiffs (the state AGs) would likely succeed in proving the government colluded with social media companies “to engage in viewpoint-based suppression of protected free speech.”

Responding to the hysteria surrounding his initial injunction, Doughty also wrote:

Although this Preliminary Injunction involves numerous agencies, it is not as broad as it appears. “It only prohibits something the Defendants have no legal right to do—contacting social media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner, the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms. 

Rejecting the administration’s argument that the order could chill law enforcement activity to protect national security, the judge added that It also contains numerous exceptions for communications related to criminal activity, explicit dangers to national security, and foreign election interference.

Meanwhile, this important battle will continue as the AGs’ lawsuit works its way through the legal system.

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

Trump Indicted Again – This One Could Be Serious

3
Photo via Gage Skidmore Flickr

ANALYSIS – Donald Trump has been wrongly persecuted since he was elected president in 2016. From the 4-year long Hillary Clinton-manufactured ‘Russia collusion’ hoax, to corrupt investigations, to ‘deep state ‘resistance’ within his administration, to a partisan impeachment — no president has been so unfairly hounded in U.S. history.

And now, we have the multiple indictments against him, including the ones for poor bookkeeping in the Stormy Daniels nonsense, and the “I can’t remember exactly when it happened, but Trump raped me 30 years ago” case of E. Jean Carrol.

We have seen a lot of proverbial ‘stuff’ thrown at this Republican leader. Most of it stinks of political persecution. Few of it has stuck. And I have defended him through much of it.

But the latest federal criminal indictments are different. Yes, they are, of course, politicized. 

The Department of Justice (DoJ) under the thumb of a president from the other party, and an opponent in the next election, accusing an ex-president of federal crimes, can’t be anything but political.

And that will hold a lot of sway, especially with Republican voters.

Still, these latest indictments are far more serious and dangerous for Trump.

I have previously argued that Trump brought the Mar-a-Lago classified documents charges onto himself. 

In part he did this by not turning over the sensitive materials when requested, by bragging about having them, by claiming he declassified them, and by jerking federal investigators around for 18 months.

Trump basically dared them to come after him. And they obliged. First by raiding his Mar-a-Lago home. Then, by indicting him.

Neither Joe Biden, nor Mike Pence did these things when they were found to have classified materials in their possession. They just turned them over.

Note – Trump was not charged for any materials he did return earlier in the process. He could have avoided the entire legal ordeal had he just returned all the classified documents, instead of hiding them in bathrooms.

Those charges carry real jail time; if they stick, and a Florida jury convicts him. Those are two big ‘ifs.’

But Donald Trump now faces new criminal charges for the fourth time in five months, arising from efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

In total, Trump faces 78 criminal counts. Any one of them can land the ex-president in federal prison. 

The federal crimes with which Justice Department prosecutors have now charged the former president involve three conspiracies; conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct certification of the Electoral College vote and Conspiracy Against Rights.

Trump was also charged with obstruction. All can carry prison time if convicted.

Conspiracy to Defraud the United States makes it a crime for two or more people to “conspire either to commit any offence against the United States or to defraud the United States” or any federal agency and for one of them to perform some action that would affect the object of the conspiracy, which carries a fine or maximum prison sentence of five years if convicted.

Obstruction of an Official Proceeding criminalizes “obstructing, influencing, or impeding any official proceeding” or attempting to do so, which is punishable by a fine or up to 20 years in prison.

Obstruction charges relate to Trump’s alleged attempts to block Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote. The January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol building postponed the vote count.

According to the New York Times, he isn’t the only charged in these conspiracies:

The indictment identified six individuals as co-conspirators in Trump’s effort to overturn the election, but none of those people were charged Tuesday. Though the alleged co-conspirators were not named, the descriptions correspond to a cabal of Trump lawyers who embraced increasingly fringe strategies as Trump’s bid to remain in power faltered. They include Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell.

Trump is scheduled to appear in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Thursday afternoon for an initial court appearance before a magistrate judge. 

He is expected to plead not guilty.

However, unlike the classified materials case in Florida, where a Trump appointed judge is in charge, this time Trump’s case has been initially ‘randomly’ assigned to U.S. District Court Tanya Chutkan, an Obama-appointed judge who has been among the harshest critics of Jan. 6 defendants.

She appears anything but fair-minded.

As I said, political, or not – these indictments could be very serious.

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

Tucker Carlson Jan 6 Exposé – Partly True and Also Kinda Dumb

20
Photo via Gage Skidmore Flickr

ANALYSISTucker Carlson’s misguided attempt to use cherry-picked moments of the newly released video of Jan. 6 to argue that nothing bad happened at the Capitol that day, is horribly timed and very dumb. 

As I wrote the day after I personally observed events at the Capitol that day, January 6 was neither a deadly coup, insurrection nor peaceful guided tours of the Capitol. 

It was a mixture of some of those things, none of those things, and everything in between.

And Tucker would have been far more effective, and credible had he used the video to show that the Left’s Jan. 6 narrative was incomplete, distorted, and totally one-sided, rather than trying to say it was totally false.

Because the truth is that Jan 6 was like the story of the blind men and the elephant, each one grasping one part of the animal, like the leg, tail, or trunk, and describing the giant beast as something totally different.

On Jan. 6 what began as a massive peaceful rally of tens of thousands of pro-Trump protesters, soon degraded when smaller elements (a few hundred) of the much larger peaceful crowd broke off and did conduct a violent attack on parts of the Capitol.

Hundreds more just stupidly followed the initial ‘attack mob’ inside.

In the first group, some had military training, used stack formations, and were very organized and intent on forcefully breaching the building. 

While none were found with, or used firearms, during the riot, there was violence with sticks, flagpoles, and pepper spray.

I called these violent rioters, thugs, and criminals.

They were similar to the violent BLM rioters who had violently attacked police at the White House in the summer of 2020 or besieged the Portland Federal Courthouse for months.

On Jan. 6 police officers were similarly attacked and beaten, and the Capitol was ultimately breached unlawfully.

Inside, one non-violent protester, Ashley Babbitt, an Air Force security forces veteran, was shot by a Capitol Police Officer. Likely, unjustly. 

She was the only person killed during the riot.

All this occurred in the span of just a few hours.

But the Capitol complex is massive, and what was happening violently on one end was not being replicated at other parts of the Capitol. 

As much of the Tucker video showed truthfully, in many places and entrances, Capitol Police had allowed protesters inside, in some cases escorted them around. 

In other cases, the police simply stood by as the ‘tourist’ protesters milled around and took selfies or acted stupidly.

Still, ever since then, there has been a profound narrative battle pitting those fanatics on the right who said nothing at all happened and the fanatics on the left who claim Jan. 6 was worse than Pearl Harbor or 9/11, and an insurrection that risked the essence of American democracy. 

Sadly, neither side is correct, but only the most extreme one-sided ‘insurrection’ narrative was put forward by the left and last Congress’ Democratic-run Jan. 6 committee, and repeated daily by the partisan, anti-Trump media.

The insurrection narrative was pushed by cherry-picked videos and photos of the same short-lived Capitol violence from different views and angles, repeated in a nearly constant loop for the most distorted and dramatic effect possible.

But now Tucker has done the same.

As Politico reported:

Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger wrote in an internal message to officers that Carlson’s Monday night primetime program “conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video” to incorrectly portray the violent assault as more akin to a peaceful protest. He added that Carlson’s “commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before or during these less tense moments.”

And many Republican leaders agreed.

The timing is also horrible.

As Politico reported:

It’s definitely stupid to keep talking about this … So what is the purpose of continuing to bring it up unless you’re trying to feed Democrat narratives even further?” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said in an interview, noting the videos didn’t show “anything we don’t already know.”

“I don’t really have a problem with making it all public. But if your message is then to try and convince people that nothing bad happened, then it’s just gonna make us look silly.”

So how should we view the events of the January 6 riot accurately and fairly?

Probably the best description was provided by Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) when he said he has “a hard time with all of it.”

He added that Jan. 6 “was not a peaceful protest. It was not an insurrection. It was a riot that should have never happened. And a lot of people share the blame for that. The truth is always messier than any narrative.”

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.”

‘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 Admin. Caught Spying On Trump Supporters’ EventBrite GoFundMe Pages

0
Image via Pixabay free images.

In a disturbing expansion of the Biden White House’s illicit monitoring of political dissidents, federal authorities quietly sent letters to the operators of crowdfunding sites asking for private financial information on pages that used terms associated with Republicans, conservatism and former President Donald Trump.

In response, and to determine the extent of Biden administration’s wrongdoing, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has sent his own letter to Eventbrite and GoFundMe “requesting documents and communications between federal agencies, including the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).”

A statement from the Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government announced they are “conducting oversight of financial surveillance of American citizens, including the tracking and monitoring of private financial records in coordination with federal law enforcement.”

According to the Judiciary Committee:

The federal government, through FinCEN, urged large financial institutions to comb through their customers’ private transactions and report charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression. The Committee and Select Subcommittee have uncovered how the FBI worked with Bank of America to gather private financial data of Americans. Congress has an important interest in protecting Americans’ privacy and First Amendment activity. Documents obtained by the Committee and Select Subcommittee raise the prospect that Eventbrite and GoFundMe may have been in communication with FinCEN or other federal law-enforcement agencies about activity on Eventbrite and GoFundMe’s platform. 

Excerpts of the letter to Eventbrite read:

“The Committee and Select Subcommittee have obtained documents showing that following the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) distributed materials to financial institutions that, among other things, outlined the ‘typologies’ of various persons of interest and provided financial institutions with suggested search terms and Merchant Category Codes (MCCs) for identifying transactions on behalf of federal law enforcement, ostensibly to aid in investigations. These materials included a document recommending that financial institutions ‘search Zelle payment messages’ using  generic terms like ‘TRUMP,’ ‘MAGA,’ ‘America First,’ ‘PELOSI,’ ‘PENCE,’ ‘SCHUMER,’ as well as a document reflecting a ‘prior FinCEN analysis’ of ‘Lone Actor/Homegrown Violent Extremism Indicators.’ According to this analysis, FinCEN warned financial institutions of ‘extremism’ indicators that include ‘transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets, for travel to areas with no apparent purpose,’ or ‘the purchase of books (including religious texts) and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views.’ In other words, the federal government, through FinCEN, urged large financial institutions to comb through their customers’ private transactions and report charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression.

“In addition, the Committee and Select Subcommittee have obtained documents showing that on January 18, 2021, FinCEN emailed financial institutions a list of ‘crowdfunding sites’ that included Eventbrite, GoFundMe, and Anedot, among others, and explained how financial institutions could use a ‘transaction reference’ to identify customers making certain transactions on crowdfunding sites. For example, in the email, FinCEN alerted financial institutions to customers’ use of Eventbrite, noting that ‘people have been observed using this site to post an event and sell tickets including bus tickets to the demonstrations.’ FinCEN noted how ‘Card Purchase[s]’ to events are findable using ‘the transaction reference ‘EB [the EVENT] with the phone number’ and detailed how individuals who purchased tickets to events in support of President Trump could be identified using the transaction reference, ‘EB MARCH FOR TR 801413720.’ FinCEN also provided a second method for identifying individuals using transaction references, writing: ‘[y]ou may see a Card Purchase with the transaction reference in the following format . . . [a Message or like a cause or candidate] with the phone number in the following format . . . .’ 

“Despite these transactions having no apparent nexus to criminal activity—and, in fact, relate to Americans exercising their First Amendment rights—FinCEN seems to have adopted a characterization of these Americans as potential threat actors. This kind of pervasive financial surveillance, carried out in coordination with federal law enforcement, without legal process, into Americans’ private transactions is alarming and raises serious concerns about the federal government’s potential abuses of Americans’ fundamental civil liberties.”

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

Justice Department Sued For Hidden Documents On Pennsylvania Trump Shooter

1

Americans may know more about the man who attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, after a legal watchdog filed a federal lawsuit for documents being concealed by the Justice Department.

The non-profit public interest law firm Judicial Watch announced in a statement it “filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for all records regarding Thomas Matthew Crooks, who attempted to assassinate President Trump on July 13, 2024.”

“No more delays and excuses, the FBI should release what it has on the man who tried to kill President Trump a full year ago in Butler. Attorney General Pam Bondi should direct a full and immediate records response to this Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Judicial Watch notes it sued after the FBI “failed to respond to a July 24, 2024, FOIA request for:”

All records, including but not limited to, investigative reports, interview summaries (Forms 1023), letterhead memoranda, photos, audio/visual recordings, database inquiries, interagency communications, and any other records, whether contained in the Central Records System or cross-referenced files, related to Thomas Matthew Crooks, born September 20, 2003 in Butler Township, PA and died on July 13, 2024, who attempted the assassination of former President Donald Trump on July 13, 2024.

All records of communication in any form, including but not limited to emails, text messages, encrypted app communications and voice recordings, between FBI officials and/or FBI sources, contractors, and assets on the one hand, and Thomas Matthew Crooks on the other hand.

“On July 13, 2024, then-Republican presidential candidate Trump survived an assassination attempt while speaking at an open-air campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump was shot and wounded in his upper right ear by 20-year-old Crooks, who fired eight rounds from his perch on top of a nearby building,” Judicial Watch explained, adding, “Crooks also killed one audience member, firefighter Corey Comperatore, and critically injured two others. Crooks was shot and killed by the counter sniper team of the United States Secret Service.”

Judicial Watch has been pursuing the information for nearly a year, noting:

In March 2025, Judicial Watch sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for records related to security provided for the July 13, 2024, rally in Butler, PA, during which there was an assassination attempt on President Trump (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:25-cv-00704)).

In September 2004, Judicial Watch sued the Department of Homeland Security for Secret Service and other records regarding potential increased protective services to former President Trump’s security detail prior to the attempt on his life at his July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:24-cv-02495)).

 In August 2024, Judicial Watch obtained records from the district attorney’s office in Butler County, PA, detailing the extensive preparation of local police for the rally at which former President Trump was shot. The preparation included sniper teams, counter assault teams and a quick response force. On August 9, in response to a separate open records request, Judicial Watch obtained bodycam footage of the July 13 assassination events from the Butler Township Police Department.

WATCH: Truck Tries to Crash Through White House Barrier

2
President Joe Biden delivers remarks in National Statuary Hall on the one-year anniversary of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Thursday, January 6, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Cameron Smith)

ALERT – In what appears to be an idiotic attempt to supposedly kill Joe Biden, a 19-year-old man repeatedly rammed a U-Haul truck into the barriers around the White House at Lafayette Park on Monday night. 

To be clear these barriers (or bollards) are designed to stop large vehicles and are a substantial distance from the White House perimeter fence.

There was no mention of explosives or other dangerous materials aboard the truck. Had there been this would be an entirely different story.

Still, the incident prompted the evacuation at The Hay-Adams Hotel on the 800 block of 16th Street.

The driver, Sai Varshith Kandula of Chesterfield, Missouri has reportedly been arrested and charged with multiple crimes, including threatening to kill, kidnap, or inflict harm on the president, vice president or family member.

He was also charged with assault with a dangerous weapon and reckless operation of a motor vehicle.

A man who said he was walking home from his run on the mall videotaped a driver in a U-Haul truck repeatedly ram the barricade at Lafayette Park near the White House.  

“I decided it was time to get the hell out of there” he says

See the video below.

According to a United States Park Police statement, the driver “intentionally crashed into the bollards on the outside of Lafayette Park.”

Ya, that looks about right.

The Secret Service spokesman also tweeted:

Shortly before 10:00 p.m. Monday, Secret Service Uniformed Division officers detained the driver of a box truck after the vehicle collided with security barriers on the north side of Lafayette Square on 16th Street. There were no injuries to any Secret Service or White House personnel and the cause and manner of the crash remain under investigation. 

Seems to me that the cause and manner of the crash are pretty obvious – the guy kept trying to ram through the barricades.

In a follow-up tweet, the spokesman said: “Charges will be filed by the United States Park Police with investigative support from the #SecretService.” 

In the photo below the truck can be seen more clearly after the driver was secured and removed. The bollards can also be more clearly seen.

Meanwhile, is that a swastika flag on the pavement at the police officer’s feet?

The location of the crash is noteworthy since it lies at the south end of 16th St where it is now known as Black Lives Matter (BLM) square. Fox 5 reported:

Had the barriers been breached, two fences providing additional layers of security would have been in-between the driver and the White House. Lafayette Square has long been one of the nation’s most prominent venues for demonstration near the Executive Mansion. The park was closed for nearly a year after federal authorities fenced off the area at the height of nationwide protests over policing following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, but it reopened in May 2021.

What the news outlet doesn’t say is that during those violent BLM riots at Lafayette Park in 2020 numerous officers were injured, cars and property burned, and the thin blue line of police at the park between the rioters and White House fence were almost overrun.

During the height of the rioting on May 31st, President Trump was also briefly rushed to the underground bunker by the Secret Service.

These barriers are designed to stop vehicles, not mobs of angry rioters.

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

Why Secret Service Officers Missed Intruder at Biden Official’s Home

3
The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

ALERT – If you’re reading this on your cell phone, and you are a Secret Service agent or officer on duty, please stop and put away the phone – immediately. 

Otherwise, you can continue reading.

Ok. Now that we got that out of the way, we can inform you of how an intoxicated intruder was able to enter the home of Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor – Jake Sullivan – back in April.

While Sullivan isn’t particularly impressive (and I’m being gracious), he is one of Biden’s top national security officials. By virtue of his position, he is a very big deal.

He has direct access to the president, the White House, and to the nation’s most classified intelligence and national security information.

Terrorists or spies would love to get their hands on some of that stature, or just get into their homes undetected.

And one unidentified person did just that. But how?

Well, sadly the agents protecting Sullivan were distracted, at least in part, because they were using their personal cell phones while on duty.

 A scourge that is affecting most of society.

This is according to an internal investigation by the Secret Service.

The incident at Sullivan’s home occurred in the early morning hours. Sullivan reportedly confronted the intruder inside his home and later told investigators that he believed the person, who was later seen on surveillance video entering and exiting the property, was intoxicated and entered the home by mistake. 

Sullivan made the confused man leave his home and then went outside to tell the agents what happened.

Whether the intruder was really just a drunk nobody, or just pretending to be one, is still to be determined.

Meanwhile, Sullivan and his family were unharmed, but the Secret Service officers won’t be so lucky.

As CNN reported: “A law enforcement official familiar with the internal investigation said the agents on duty that night and their supervisors, are likely to be subject to disciplinary action, including an evaluation of whether they can maintain their federal security clearance, a requirement for their positions.”

So, basically, they could lose their jobs over this. And they probably should.

More importantly, the Secret Service, and all federal law enforcement agencies, and their private security contractors, must enforce rules limiting personal cell phone use while on duty.

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle appears to be doing just that when last week she ordered increased penalties for employees who violate agency policies while on duty, including the use of personal electronic devices on the job.

According to CNN, Cheatle ordered “disciplinary penalties be increased to up to 21-day suspensions, and up to removal for infractions that lead to operational failure. Those include for the use of personal phones or the use of alcohol while on assignments.”

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi stated:

We have zero tolerance for anything that jeopardizes operational success. While human errors may occur, what sets us apart is our unwavering commitment to maintaining very high professional standards and ethics. This includes enhanced penalties for incidents involving alcohol and a strict policy regarding personal cell phone use while on duty.

Well, that’s a start. The Secret Service is our nation’s, and perhaps the world’s, leading dignitary protection agency. It simply can’t allow things like this to happen. 

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