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    Vice President Biden Flew Son Hunter On Air Force Two To Close Foreign Business Deals

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    3
    President Joe Biden hugs his family during the 59th Presidential Inauguration ceremony in Washington, Jan. 20, 2021. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. (DOD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos M. Vazquez II)

    ANALYSIS – Even as the world obsesses over Donald Trump’s latest legal dangers, the walls are slowly closing in on the Biden crime family. And I don’t use the phrase ‘crime family’ often.

    But it’s becoming increasingly clear that Joe Biden used his time as Vice President as a golden opportunity to unlawfully enrich his entire family, often flying his son Hunter on Air Force Two abroad to seal deals.

    In one well-known instance, VP Biden leveraged a billion dollars in U.S. aid to fire the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the energy firm that employed Hunter.

    In their ongoing investigation into alleged influence peddling involving Biden, members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee have asked the National Archives and Records Administration for unrestricted access to Biden’s travel aboard the vice-presidential jet, known as Air Force Two, and the VP’s official helicopter, known as Marine Two.

    They want to determine whether the trips aided his son Hunter’s shady foreign business deals.

    House GOP investigators believe Biden, while vice president under Barack Obama, used his power and influence to help his family and a group of associates with foreign business deals involving China, Russia, Ukraine and other countries, worth tens of millions of dollars.

    And there is more evidence to back up their beliefs. Last month, Devon Archer, Hunter’s former business partner, told House investigators the foreign deals were secured by selling the Biden “brand,” essentially, Joe Biden’s position as vice president of the United States.

    “Then-Vice President Joe Biden abused Air Force Two by allowing his son to jet set around the world to sell ‘The Brand’ to enrich the Biden family,” said House Oversight Chairman James Comer.

    “This is yet another example of then-Vice President Biden abusing his public office for his family’s financial gain.”

    More specifically, the Washington Times reported that:

    Lawmakers on the Oversight panel said the president’s son Hunter Biden may have traveled to 15 countries with his father while he was vice president and that during that time, Mr. Biden met in Beijing with his son’s business associate, a Chinese national, while he was on official business.

    “Then Vice-President Biden’s misuse of Air Force Two and Marine Two is indicative of yet another way in which the President has abused his various offices of public trust and wasted taxpayer money to benefit his family’s enterprise, which consisted of nothing more than access to Joe Biden himself,” Oversight lawmakers wrote to U.S. Archivist Colleen Shogan.

    House investigators also believe Biden used numerous aliases to hide his participation in his son’s shady deals. The Times added:

    …Comer also is seeking more than 5,000 White House emails that used aliases for then-Vice President Joseph R. Biden. The National Archives said it is awaiting approval from Mr. Biden and former President Barack Obama before handing them over to Mr. Comer, according to an aide to Mr. Comer.

    White House records show that Mr. Biden used the name Robert L. Peters while serving as vice president. Mr. Biden also disguised his name on emails using the pseudonyms Robin Ware and JRB Ware, a play on his middle name and initials paired with his home state of Delaware.

    Critically, investigators noted a May 26, 2016, White House scheduling email sent to VP Biden ahead of a call with the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko that was also inexplicably sent to his ‘private citizen’ son, Hunter. 

    At the same time, the drug-addicted, unqualified Hunter was earning $100,000 a month as a board member of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings, which was under investigation for corruption. The U.S. State Department had said Burisma engaged in bribery.

    And in a typical moment of braggadocio, a clueless Biden senior bragged about it. The New York Post reported:

    In a 2018 interview at the Council on Foreign Relations, Biden bragged that he unilaterally withheld a billion dollars in US aid from the Ukrainians to force them to fire Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin.

    The Ukrainians balked, but Biden gave them an ultimatum: “I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”

    Tough guy, that Biden.

    Biden has claimed he demanded Ukraine fire its equivalent of Attorney General because he was corrupt, but we now know the State Department had found that Ukraine had made great strides in dealing with corruption, and Shokin, specifically, was praised in private correspondence.

    The Post added that Devon Archer’s testimony revealed that Burisma executives made the removal of Shokin a top priority and raised it with their hired gun, Hunter.

    Archer reportedly described how Burisma officials told Hunter of the importance of neutralizing Shokin, and how “a call to Washington” was made in response. The call was of course to Dad.

    And that’s what House investigators are hoping to prove. The Obama-Biden White House call logs, emails, and flight schedules are all part of the mounting evidence against Joe Biden.

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

    By
    Donny Ferguson
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    1
    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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    Jan. 6th Rioters Handed Down Longest Sentences Yet In This Week’s Hearings

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    5
    Ted Eytan from Washington, DC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

    ANALYSIS – Two Proud Boys leaders have been sentenced to more than a decade each in jail after being convicted of the rarely used ‘seditious conspiracy’ charge for storming the Capitol.

    They tried to overturn President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, which they considered fraudulent.

    A federal judge sentenced former far-right Proud Boys leader Joseph Biggs to 17 years in prison and his co-defendant Zachary Rehl to 15 years. (RELATED: Proud Boys Member Who Led Capitol Break-In Sentenced To 10 Years)

    These sentences are much less than the three decades of jail time proposed by prosecutors but still very long prison terms for a few hours of rioting.

    And yes, I understand that the rioting was at the U.S. Capitol and that the certification of the Electoral College vote was in process. I also understand these two guys and the two others convicted on this same charge were intimately involved in organizing what became violent chaos that day.

    I was there, at the Capitol, as an observer with a TV camera crew. And I denounced the violence the next day. It was outrageous.

    I believe any violent rioter who attacked police or media, or anyone else, on Jan. 6 should be put in jail – as should all the BLM rioters who earlier caused $2 billion in damages throughout the country and injured 2,000 cops months earlier.

    But a decade or two behind bars for ‘conspiracy’?

    Biggs and Rehl are the first Proud Boys convicted of the Civil War-era seditious conspiracy charge to be sentenced for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

    The sentences kicked off a series of hearings scheduled for this week and next, where punishment will be meted out against the former chairman of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio (who was not in D.C. on Jan. 6 but was unbelievably arrested earlier for burning a BLM banner!), and two other members of the group.

    All were convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes at a landmark conspiracy trial this spring. But was what they did really as bad as the Biden Justice Department tries to portray?

    As The Guardian noted:

    Seditious conspiracy is a broad statute that concerns attempts to overthrow the government, levy war against it or prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law. It also can be applied in cases where suspects seize any government property and carries up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

    Partly because seditious conspiracy allegations carry so much political weight, prosecutors have generally been hesitant to bring such charges in the past. “Seditious conspiracy charges are rarely used in American jurisprudence,” said Jeffrey Ian Ross, a criminologist and expert on political crime at the University of Baltimore. Prosecutors can be wary of issuing such charges, even in cases that may fall under its broad statute, he added.

    In the only similar case in the 20th century, federal prosecutors secured a seditious conspiracy conviction against Puerto Rican nationalists who stormed the Capitol building in 1954.

    These four armed Puerto Rican independence militants entered the House floor and fired dozens of bullets around the chamber, wounding five legislators.

    The four shooters and co-conspirators were convicted of seditious conspiracy and spent over two decades in jail until Jimmy Carter commuted their sentence in 1979.

    In that case, however, the perpetrators had firearms and used them to try to kill Congressmen. That’s a pretty big difference.

    The last successfully prosecuted seditious conspiracy was in the mid-1990s, when authorities charged Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine Islamist co-conspirators for plotting to bomb the United Nations, the FBI building, and several other landmarks around New York City.

    Again, this was very serious and involved planning mass murder and terrorism.

    There is little or no evidence that any Jan. 6 rioters planned any offensive violence.

    To date, of those charged in relation to Jan. 6, former Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes holds the record with an 18-year sentence, after he was convicted of seditious conspiracy earlier this year.

    The Guardian reported in 2022 that:

    Even Rhodes, who is not believed to have actually stormed the building, is alleged to have plotted to bring weapons to the area and coordinate militia movements.

    In the weeks before the insurrection, Rhodes allegedly purchased tens of thousands of dollars worth of weapons and began communicating to other Oath Keepers in an encrypted group chat. “We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” he messaged days after the presidential election. One Oath Keeper admitted as part of a plea deal last year that he brought an M4 rifle to a Comfort Inn hotel near the Capitol, while Rhodes and others allegedly discussed “quick reaction force” teams that could move into Washington DC with firearms. Once inside the Capitol, prosecutors state in their indictment that one group of Oath Keepers moved in a military “stack” formation and went in search of the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

    And at first glance, this does seem serious.

    But Rhodes claims that despite earlier texts about possible ‘civil war,’ Oath Keepers who entered the Capitol went “totally off mission” and that he was only there to prevent his militia members from getting into trouble.

    He has also stated that the armed ‘reaction force’ in Virginia was there to respond if armed leftist antifa thugs attacked pro-Trump protestors.

    In the largest manhunt in FBI history, more than 1,100 people have been arrested on charges related to the Capitol assault. Of those, 597 defendants have had their cases adjudicated and received sentences. About 366 of them have been given jail time.

    The vast majority of these Jan. 6 defendants, though, accepted plea deals for minor, nonviolent offenses such as trespassing or obstructing an official function. Many of them still got jail sentences totally out of proportion to their alleged crimes.

    And these four got the worst of it.

    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.

    Families of Marines Killed During Afghan Retreat Blast Biden and Milley

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    1
    Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Michael J. McCord provide testimony at a Senate Armed Services Committee budget hearing, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., March 28, 2023. (DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley)

    ANALYSIS – ‘Gold Star’ families of U.S. troops killed in the August 2021 Abbey Gate bombing at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan, are blasting Team Biden excuses over the disastrous retreat. Saturday marked the two-year anniversary of the terrorist attack during Joe Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from the country.

    At least 183 people were killed in the attack, including the 13 U.S. service members (12 Marines and a sailor).

    Shamefully, Biden allowed the Taliban to retake the country almost 20 years to the day of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on Washington, DC, and New York City.

    AND HERE, TWO YEARS AFTER THE AFGHAN COLLAPSE, WE STILL DON’T HAVE ANSWERS, AND NO ONE HAS BEEN HELD ACCOUNTABLE.

    As I wrote about earlier, senior Biden defense officials spent the days before and after the deadly 2021 attack in Kabul obsessing on getting Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to sign off on their Climate Change plan rather than focus on the chaos and death in Afghanistan.

    Now, several of these Gold Star families spoke at a House Foreign Affairs Committee roundtable where they expressed their anger at the Biden administration, including Chairman of the Chiefs Mark Milley, who they blame, in part, for the bombing that killed 13 service members.

    As the hearing was about to commence, Milley released a statement in which he said the U.S. owes Gold Star families “everything.”

    “We owe them transparency, we owe them honesty, we owe them accountability. We owe them the truth about what happened to their loved ones,” Milley said.

    But the families didn’t appear impressed. Instead, they were angry about the “excuses” and misinformation they received.

    Fox News reported on their justified anger and venting. Kelly Barnett, the mother of Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Taylor Hoover, said “I don’t want to hear lies, I don’t want to hear excuses from Joe Biden, from the administration.”

    Hoover’s father, Darin Hoover, called on top Pentagon brass to resign. 

    He poignantly noted: “Today is the date, two years ago, that we received our kids home at Dover. Two years ago today, where we were disrespected with stories of Biden’s son and him looking at his watch. And today, here we sit as their families, begging you two years later, to find these answers.”

    Christy Shamblin, mother-in-law of Marine Corps Sergeant Nicole Gee, who was pictured prominently with an Afghan baby in her arms prior to her death, asked why credible warnings were ignored in the days leading up to the attack.

    Some even accused the Pentagon of giving them ‘made-up stories’ about their loved ones in the aftermath of the attack.

    As Breitbart News reported:

    …[in a Fox interview] Cheryl Rex, whose son, Lance Corporal Dylan Merola, was killed in the Kabul airport attack in 2021 reacted to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley saying that he believes military briefers gave all the information to the families of those killed in the bombing all the information they could by stating that the briefing on her son was completely inaccurate…

    …[When Rex was asked] “Do you believe that all the information was there, or do you agree with other families that it wasn’t about the information, it was about the warnings that were ignored?”

    Rex answered, “Me personally, he did not — the brief report was not correct. They changed my son’s location a couple of times. They were trying to accommodate his wounds that were not even in the right spots of his body according to his autopsy report. He did not — the brief report is nothing [like] what we were actually told… I feel it was made-up stories that they were trying to cover up the wounds.”

    These Gold Star families deserve answers and accountability. And so do the American people.

    Biden’s Lies About Hunter’s Foreign Influence Peddling Are About To Blow Up In His Face

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    6
    President Joe Biden hugs his family during the 59th Presidential Inauguration ceremony in Washington, Jan. 20, 2021. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. (DOD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos M. Vazquez II)

    ANALYSIS – Where there’s smoke there’s fire. And there is a lot of smoke surrounding Joe and Hunter Biden. It is increasingly clear that Joe Biden has repeatedly lied about his involvement in, and knowledge of, his son Hunter’s overseas influence peddling businesses.

    And with Biden’s Department of Justice (DoJ) and FBI dragging their feet with documents requested by congressional investigators, an official impeachment inquiry may be the only way to get to the truth.

    And that official inquiry may be coming very soon.

    Republicans could open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden over ties to his son Hunter’s shady and unethical business entanglements when Congress reconvenes on September 12.

    In the final presidential debate of the 2020 U.S. election between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joseph Biden, moderator Kristen Welker asked Biden: “there have been questions about the work your son has done in China and for a Ukrainian energy company when you were vice president; in retrospect, was anything about those relationships inappropriate or unethical?”

    “Nothing was unethical. My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China,” Biden replied.

    Biden also said he never discussed business with his son.

    Well, to put it in Biden terms, that was all a bunch of malarkey.

    Now, nearly three years later, Hunter has rebutted Joe Biden’s assertions directly. In court testimony in late June, Hunter acknowledged that he had been paid substantial sums in China – the first official confirmation that this was the case.

    This direct contradiction creates a major problem for the White House, and Republicans insist there’s a lot more to find out.

    “A lot of the things the president said about his family’s shady business dealings, we’re proving every day that they’re not true,” Republican James Comer, Chair of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, said.

    An impeachment inquiry is the next logical step to find out what is true.

    The Epoch Times (ET) reported: “House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said that initiating an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden would be a ‘natural step forward.’” This, following unresolved questions from the House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s investigations into the Biden family’s business dealings.

    The speaker said on Monday that the impeachment inquiry could start soon. McCarthy added that an impeachment inquiry would provide Congress “the apex of legal power to get all the information they need” to investigate whether President Biden misused his office to assist family businesses.

    ET continued:

    McCarthy said on Monday that the inquiry was needed to overcome stonewalling of congressional investigators looking for transparency about the Biden family’s business records following testimony from former Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer that President Biden met with son Hunter Biden’s business partners during the time he was vice president, as well as concerns raised by whistleblowers at the IRS regarding Hunter Biden’s tax records.

    The House Oversight and Accountability Committee has so far subpoenaed six different banks, receiving thousands of bank records of businesses and individuals connected to Joe Biden’s family members.

    According to ET:

    Those records showed that more than $20 million in payments from foreign sources have been made to the president’s relatives, including Hunter Biden, and their business associates while Mr. Biden was acting as U.S. vice president from 2009 to 2017.

    Romanian, Chinese, and Russian nationals were among those making payments to the Biden family and their associates. The records also revealed that the funds were funneled through a network of at least 20 shell companies before being transferred to Biden family members.

    An inquiry doesn’t mean the House will impeach Biden. But it does give Republicans far more legal power to force reluctant Biden DoJ bureaucrats and others to come forward with the truth.

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

    CIA Sued Over Role In Hunter Biden Laptop Election Cover-Up

    By
    Donny Ferguson
    -
    3
    The New Headquarters Building (NHB) of the CIA. The Central Intelligence Agency, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    A nonprofit legal watchdog has filed a federal lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency, seeking documents and records over an election-year government effort to cover up reporting seen as damaging to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

    In particular, the group seeks information on the agency’s role in a letter signed by 51 intelligence officials that falsely claimed the Russian government “planted” evidence of criminal activity on a laptop owned by Biden’s middle-aged son Hunter.

    Judicial Watch filed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the CIA for all “communications of the spy agency’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB) regarding an October 19, 2020, email request to review and ‘clear’ a letter signed by 51 former intelligence community officials characterizing the Hunter Biden laptop story as having ‘all the earmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign,’” the group announced.

    “The Deep State CIA, it seems, engaged in election interference and a political operation against the American people to help Joe Biden and hurt Trump,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And now the CIA is ignoring FOIA law to cover up its role in the scandal, censoring and suppressing the Hunter Biden/Joe Biden laptop story just before the presidential election.”

    In October 2020, the New York Post broke a bombshell story revealing that Hunter Biden’s laptop, which he abandoned at a Delaware computer shop, contained photographs of Hunter Biden engaged in drug use and using prostitutes, as well as emails describing what appear to be shady foreign business deals.

    Fearing the story could damage Biden’s presidential campaign, social media companies attempted to suppress the sharing of the Post’s reporting.

    The Biden campaign also reached out to intelligence officials, including the CIA and FBI, seeking their help in falsely discrediting the story.

    “In a May 10, 2023, report the House Judiciary Committee revealed that on October 19, 2020, three days before the second presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Democrat candidate Joe Biden, then-Acting CIA Director Michael Morell sent the PCRB the finalized letter for review, calling it a ‘rush job,’ and quickly secured its approval,” Judicial Watch reports.

    Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit after the CIA failed to respond to a May 11, 2023, FOIA request for:

    Records and communications of the Prepublication Classification Review Board, Central Intelligence Agency, including emails, email chains, email attachments, text messages, cables, voice recordings, correspondence, statements, letters, memoranda, reports, presentations, notes, or other form of record, regarding an October 19, 2020, email request to review and “clear” a letter involving the Hunter Biden laptop story potentially having Russian involvement or being a Russian disinformation plot.

    An investigation by the House Judiciary Committee and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence found that the CIA, or a CIA employee, may have helped the Biden campaign find signers for the false letter.

    One former CIA employee, David Cariens, reveals that while speaking with the PCRB in October 2020 to review materials for his memoir, a CIA employee “asked” him to sign the false letter.

    “When the person in charge of reviewing the book called to say it was approved with no changes, I was told about the draft letter,” said Cariens.

    “The person asked me if I would be willing to sign. . . . After hearing the letter’s contents, and the qualifiers in it such as, “We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement . . .’ I agreed to sign,” Cariens said.

    “If accurate, this information raises fundamental concerns about the role of the CIA in helping to falsely discredit allegations about the Biden family in the weeks before the 2020 presidential election,” Judicial Watch notes.

    Another former CIA officer, Marc Polymeropoulos, criticized the CIA’s involvement in his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee in the following exchange:

    Q. Does what [Former CIA official David Cariens] described there, that interaction with the [Prepublication Classification Review Board], sound like a quid pro quo to you?

    A. I can’t comment on this. This is—to me, this is something that the [Prepublication Classification Review Board] in my experience would never engage in something like that. They are just straightforward back and forth in terms of approval. The idea they would have a comment on any other thing that they were working on, that to me is not even close to what I’ve experienced with them.

    Q. Does that concern you?

    A. If it’s true, it would concern me, for sure. But I just—I have a hard time believing that occurred. If it did, that’s incredibly unprofessional.

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

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

    By
    Norman Leahy
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    3
    Gage Skidmore Flickr

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Is Vivek Ramaswamy The GOP’s New Trump ‘Lite’?

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    13
    Vivek Ramaswamy speaking with attendees at the 2022 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona.

    ANALYSIS- Who is this skinny guy with the funny-sounding name? (That was his opening line at the debate). Vivek Ramaswamy wasn’t supposed to be at the center of the first Republican presidential candidate debate in Milwaukee.

    Ron DeSantis was supposed to be the viable GOP alternative to Donald Trump. A two-term governor of the third most populous state in the union, DeSantis, a Navy veteran who served in Iraq, is as conservative as they come.

    And he has a proven track record of fighting the left in Florida – and winning.

    But despite his solid bona fides and resume, DeSantis has a personality problem. He just doesn’t exude charm or confidence, and that’s hurting him – a lot.

    Meanwhile, Ramaswamy the 38-year-old Trump-defending, Cincinnati-born, biotech billionaire (worth at least $950 million), son of Pakistani immigrants, kind of stole the show at the debate.

    According to former FBI agent and body language expert, Joe Navarro: “[Ramaswamy] consistently looked the most comfortable on stage.”

    He was also the most openly and unabashedly pro-Trump. He was the first candidate to raise their hand when asked who would support the former President as the party nominee even if he is convicted on felony charges that he’s facing.

    He has also promised to pardon Trump if elected. But he went even farther than that.

    “President Trump, I believe, was the best president of the 21st century,” Ramaswamy said in a clip from the debate Trump posted on Truth Social.

    And Trump loved it.

    “This answer gave Vivek Ramaswamy a big WIN in the debate because of a thing called TRUTH. Thank you, Vivek!”

    The ever-smiling political newbie Ramaswamy, who seemed to be having a blast on stage, was also the target of many of his GOP rivals.

    As TIME reported:

    Maybe it was Ramaswamy’s consistent and confounding defense of All Things Trump. Maybe it was his smooth talk and culture-war acumen. Maybe it was just the fact that Ramaswamy frankly does not care how things were done before and might just have enough self-made money to go the distance.

    Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie snarled that he had “had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT,” an A.I. battery. He then dismissed Ramaswamy as someone on the same level as a political figure universally loathed in the GOP. “The last person in one of these debates… who stood in the middle of the stage and said, ‘What is a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here?’ was Barack Obama. And I am afraid we are dealing with the same type of amateur standing on the stage tonight,” Christie said.

    But the quick witted Ramaswamy’s riposte to Christie was a zinger: “Give me a hug like you did to Obama, and you’ll help elect me just like you did to Obama. Give me the damn hug, brother.”

    Ramaswamy was referring to the 2012 incident when Christie was accused of “hugging” Obama during his visit in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy which hit days before the 2012 presidential election.

    It’s a claim that Christie has been denying since then, saying: “I didn’t hug him.”

    Photos at the time seem to back up Christie, but the zinger still worked.

    Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN under Trump, and ex-South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, who is of Indian descent, hit Ramaswamy too: “You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows.”

    I would agree with that assessment and believe he has made a few deeply flawed important national security statements – including on Ukraine and Israel.

    But he is super smart and can learn quickly.

    Then Vice President Mike Pence took a Christie-like jab at Ramaswamy, attacking the very same quality that originally helped raise Trump in the GOP base – that he is not a politician.

    “Now it’s not the time for on-the-job training,” retorted Pence. “We don’t need to bring in a rookie. We don’t need to bring in people with no experience.”

    AS TIME noted: “Attacks during debates are the norm but this was different. Ramaswamy’s competitors really don’t like him. Not even a little.”

    However, there is one important GOP rival who seems to like Ramaswamy – Donald Trump. And that could be all that matters.

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

    Tucker, Elon Real Winners Of First GOP Debate Night

    By
    Victoria Churchill
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    2
    Photo via Gage Skidmore Flickr
    The true winners of last night’s debate are former prime-time Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk, owner of X – formerly Twitter. If you’ve spent the last 24-48 hours under a rock – here’s what transpired last night. Eight Republican candidates running to be the next President of the United States took the stage in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to talk about their visions for the future of America – and how they are the proper alternatives not only to the babbling buffoon currently in the White House Joe Biden, but also to America’s 45th President Donald Trump – now running for the office for a third time. The Wisconsin event was moderated, albeit poorly, by Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. Of course, the debate in itself was probably somewhat staged. According to multiple reports, the candidates and their prep camps were given the questions in advance. While the debate was going on in Milwaukee, Tucker Carlson aired an opposing pre-recorded interview with America’s 45th President Donald Trump, who himself is set to be arraigned in a Fulton County, Georgia court on Thursday where he is expected to front up a bail payment of $200,000. (RELATED: Trump Agrees To Release Conditions, Including $200,000 Bond) Tucker Carlson has enacted fully-fledged revenge on his former employer and put millions of dollars in the pockets of a new corporate overlord, Elon Musk. X, formerly Twitter, has been working to position itself as the preeminent alternative to the mainstream media since the Musk buyout earlier this year. By the view numbers still rolling in on the video posted last night, they seem to have succeeded in doing that to a level even Musk himself may have never imagined. As of the writing of this piece, Tucker’s 46-minute long X video has been viewed over 186.4 million times. Mediaite noted the following in a piece published yesterday:
    “The interview, which was taped this week and is dropping to coincide with the debate, is intended as additional salt in the wound for Fox executives wary that a Trump-less event will not bring in the major ratings typically expected from these kinds of nights.”
    Notably, video-sharing platform Rumble which was the the first place to try and pitch itself as the free speech alternative to YouTube partnered with the RNC and probably boosted their own profits last night as well. The Rumble stream of the debate from the GOP’s channel has amassed 1.54 million views. Definitely a respectable number, but making up less than 1% of the views amassed by Carlson on X. For the record the Rumble stream via Roku is how I personally watched the debate, refusing to give my dollars to the Fox News machine. Fox News has yet to officially release numbers on last night’s debate but here are some viewership numbers reported by Mediaite from past presidential debates:
    “In 2015, Fox’s primary debate – with Trump and nine other candidates – drew 24 million viewers, smashing previous records and earning the distinction of being one of the most-watched cable programs ever. Overall, 2016 was a blockbuster year for debate ratings: the 12 Republican primary events averaged 15 million viewers.”
    Even if Fox’s numbers last night were close to their past viewership – which they are not expected to be without Trump – Carlson’s X video dwarfed those numbers as well. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk. This piece is republished with permission from American Liberty News.

    Trump Plans to Dramatically Reverse Biden’s Open Border Lunacy

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    0
    Trump at the border wall via Wikimedia Commons

    ANALYSIS – While the left immediately claimed Donald Trump’s immigration plan for his potential second term is ‘draconian,’ and ‘extreme,’ it really isn’t. It’s essentially a needed dramatic reversal to Joe Biden’s extreme open border insanity.

    It’s being referred to as a ‘bolting the hatches’ and ‘bomb the cartels’ strategy. And I’m all for it. 

    Especially since what we have now is total third-world chaos and thoroughly unacceptable for America.

    The New York Post recently reported that Joe Biden has now literally opened the floodgates at the border by welding open 114 gates in Arizona’s border wall near Tucson. 

    The paper noted that in addition to endangered antelope being free to cross:

    …the move is also letting an average of 1,400 migrants from as far away as China casually walk into the country daily — with overwhelmed and outnumbered border agents practically helpless to stop them.

    “We thought the agents were going to tell us something,” one Ecuadorian migrant said. “But we just walked in.”

    The Post added: “Smugglers are capitalizing on the floodgate blunder, driving migrants by the busload to the border and dropping them off as if they were casual tourists.”

    And, unlike the mostly South American migrants who have been stopped crossing illegally into Texas, the immigrants coming to Arizona are from places as far as India, Egypt, and China.

    Rather than the disheveled and exhausted South American migrants at the end of a long and arduous trek across Mexico, the migrants at Tucson now look more like folks on vacation.

    The libertarian-leaning (generally not liberal) Reason outlet was also harshly critical of Trump’s new proposed immigration policies. But when I read their version of what they thought was horrible, I mostly applauded.

    Trump’s plan includes:

    Screening out Marxists as well as Communists – check.

    Screening out potential terrorists from extremist countries – check.

    Ending so-called birthright citizenship so that simply being born here from parents who entered illegally isn’t an option – check.

    Quickly deporting criminal migrants – check.

    Targeting Mexico’s deadly drug cartels as enemy combatants – check.

    Generally making it harder to enter the United States legally (if you are willing to cross Mexico on foot, you can do more paperwork) – check.

    I can easily stand behind every item noted above and below. 

    According to Reason:

    “Trump’s plan would involve waves of harsh new policies — and dust off old ones that rarely have been enforced, if ever,” writes Kight. One policy would “ramp up ideological screening” for would-be legal immigrants. U.S. immigration law already largely bars Communist Party–affiliated people from immigrating, but Trump would reportedly expand that to reject “Marxist” applicants. Another policy would expand the former president’s “Muslim ban” to “block more people from certain countries from entering the U.S.,” notes Axios. Trump’s platform would also include ending birthright citizenship and carrying out quick deportations of criminal migrants under “an obscure section of the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts.”

    Other aspects of the plan would target drug cartels and smuggling. It would label cartels as “‘unlawful enemy combatants’ to allow the U.S. military to target them in Mexico,” Axios reports, the same designation the government has used “to justify long-term detentions of 9/11 suspects at Guantanamo Bay.” It would also authorize the Coast Guard and Navy to form a blockade in U.S. and Latin American waters to halt boats carrying drugs.

    Certain aspects of the plan, if implemented, would likely run into legal challenges. One such aspect is Trump’s reported intent to use the Alien Enemies Act, signed by President John Adams in 1798, “to quickly remove smugglers and migrant criminals…without having to go through legal steps in [Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s] deportation process.” Other policies would put hopeful migrants—and even travelers—through invasive and costly procedures to enter the U.S., such as social media searches and paying bonds to come here.

    Well, after four years of border violence and chaos, and an unprecedented wave of illegal immigrants being practically invited across an open border before being shuttled throughout the country and fed and housed at taxpayer expense, it is time for some cracking down.

    Bolt the hatches and bomb away.

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