We hate to start the week with sad news, but over the weekend, we lost some prominent Americans, and we must pay our respects to them.

The family of former Utah Rep. Mia Love announced that she died peacefully Sunday after a years-long battle with brain cancer at the much-too-young age of 49.

https://mediarightnews.com/former-utah-congresswoman-mia-love-passes-away-from-brain-cancer/

The former mayor of Sarasota Springs, she was the first black woman Republican to be elected to Congress, serving from 2015 to 2019. She was a strong advocate for conservative and pro-life values, and could have had a bright future as a Republican leader if she hadn’t been struck down by cancer. We extend our deepest condolences and prayers to her family.

We are also saddened to have to report that American icon George Foreman passed away Friday at 76, surrounded by his loved ones.

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/george-foreman-heavyweight-champion-dead-76

Foreman was one of the greatest examples of both the American ideal of having a “second act” and the Christian ideal of being born again. He started his career as an Olympic gold medal boxer, then became one of the most feared heavyweight champions ever to enter the ring. In 1974, he lost to Muhammad Ali in “The Rumble in the Jungle,” the most famous fight in history. But 20 years later, he staged the greatest comeback in boxing history by defeating Michael Moorer, a boxer 19 years younger, and again becoming heavyweight champion at a record 45 years old.

If his story had ended there, he would have had an amazing legacy. But that was just the beginning. This article from 2023 describes how, at the height of his boxing success, he realized there had to be more to life, and he had a life-changing conversion to Christianity and became a pastor. He said that after that, he devoted himself to evangelism and fighting to let people know about God.

https://www.faithwire.com/2023/04/28/george-foreman-recalls-incredible-conversion-to-faith-in-god-jesus-christ-is-coming-alive-in-me/

Along the way, he also changed from one of the most feared men in America to a “gentle giant,” one of our kindest, funniest and most beloved public figures. He became a famous father and incredibly successful entrepreneur. There are probably many young Americans who know nothing about his boxing career, but who cook their dinners on a George Foreman Grill.

https://www.breitbart.com/sports/2025/03/22/george-foreman-a-champion-who-loved-god-family-and-the-usa/

George Foreman wasn’t just a great American success story, he was two great American success stories. He may have left us, but he will never be forgotten.

We must also pay our last respects to former Wyoming Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, who died on March 14 at 93…

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/longtime-wyoming-republican-senator-alan-simpson-dead-at-93/ar-AA1AWn4z

…And former Massachusetts First Lady Kitty Dukakis, wife of Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, who died Friday at 88 due to complications from dementia. We extend our sympathies and prayers to their families.

https://www.breitbart.com/pre-viral/2025/03/22/kitty-dukakis-wife-of-1988-democrat-presidential-nominee-dies-at-88/

Kenneth Allard

My wife was raised in the Texas Baptist Children's Home, where her parents were caretakers and auxiliary parents for ten other kids besides their own. Betsy's "brothers and sisters" were actually wards of the state, dependent mostly on the kindness of others – but also receiving a steady diet of Christian love in those austere, uplifting surroundings. She still remembers Bobby, an eight-year-old boy who, on his first Sunday at the ranch, was taken to church alongside everyone else in his new family. There was awed silence as the choir took their places up front, a swish of black-robed majesty punctuated by Bobby’s stage-whisper, "WOW, lookit all them judges!" In an instant, the giggles and grins shared between underage inmates showed their common experience as children who had already learned some of life's hardest lessons, in circumstances where courtrooms were far more familiar than choir lofts.

But that was 1950’s Texas. Today in our more enlightened era, President Trump is finding that today’s judges have become the un-ordained ministers of our new civic religion. Somehow, new laws, new interpretations or maybe just law-school revisionism convey upon judicial authorities a litany of new responsibilities. The expanded dispensations include gay rights, transexual liberties, government control over homeschooling and a whole host of thorny issues surrounding parental rights over minor children. Ever since Roe versus Wade a half-century ago, America’s courts have become the preferred battlefield for advocates of social change – often seeking victories denied elsewhere by prevailing political realities. So it is today - as Democrats intent upon resisting Trump’s win last November increasingly shop their cases before sympathetic judges.

As you may have seen this week, the latest engagement on the frontiers of justice brought President Trump into a nasty confrontation with Judge James Boasberg, a well-regarded district court judge in Washington DC. The bizarre case involved two planeloads of illegal immigrant being deported to El Salvador last weekend. Ignoring the well-known axiom that “hard cases make bad law,” the judge was somehow persuaded to issue a turn-around order for both planes; his order was not only unenforceable but also prompted a furious response by President Trump calling for the judge’s impeachment. As NBC News was quick to point out, however,

“The federal judge at odds with the White House over its immigration enforcement…is a bipartisan appointee whose three-decade career in Washington, D.C., has included cases that have favored Trump.” https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/federal-judge-targeted-trump-impeachment-bipartisan-appointee-three-de-rcna196954

Welcome to our brave new world, where even judges with cross-my-heart judicial temperaments wind up in shouting matches with presidents. Everything in Donald Trump’s agenda is aimed at discovering and if possible, reversing at least two decades of judicial excess. Slowly at first but now with increasing speed, we are beginning to reap that long overdue whirlwind. It is as if the zebras referring NFL games were allowed - or even required - to call the penalties on the field, to judge the intent of both plays and players - and even to advance the ball themselves if "fairness" somehow was at issue. Just how long would the NFL exist if such a regime were in-place? A better question: How long can this country endure a regimen of roughly 600 federal judges – spectacularly unqualified in everything except jurisprudence - who are allowed to roam so freely beyond their writ?

It is one thing to have judicial independence, quite another to have three separate but equal branches of government: but something else again to recognize the leavening effects of American history and common sense. Having separated the Government’s powers into those co-equal branches in Articles I and II, the Constitution succinctly outlines in Article III: “The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” It is clear that the three separate branches were to act in accord with the Constitution’s basic objectives, including to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice (and) insure domestic tranquility.”

Rather than lecturing President Trump for his immoderate comments on the poor but plucky persona of Judge Boasberg, Chief Justice Roberts might better concern himself with sweeping up his own porch. Certain judges under his immediate control – even whole circuits sometimes - now find it convenient to put personal or political agendas ahead of their duties to the American people. Isn’t it about time, Mr. Chief Justice, that you called them to account before we are forced to do it for you?

Colonel (Ret.) Kenneth Allard rose from a Vietnam-era draftee to become a West Point professor, Dean of the National War College and NBC News military analyst

Kenneth Allard

If you were appalled by last week's organized insurrection on Capitol Hill by Congressional Democrats, then you are probably apoplectic about this week's organized nonsense at Columbia - now spilling over into Trump Tower. The immediate casus belli: the expulsion of three Columbia students (the first in over 50 years) and the imprisonment by ICE of activist Mahmoud Khalil, easily the most prominent figure in Columbia’s campus unrest. But the fight was truly joined last week when President Trump announced that he was rescinding “$400 million from Columbia University, canceling grants and contracts because of what the government describes as the Ivy League school’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus.” https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/07/us/columbia-university-grants-canceled-trump/index.html

Their common objective from the streets of New York to the halls of Congress: Militant resistance to Donald Trump as well as an upturned middle finger to those uppity, un-woke Americans who so unwisely elected him. Direct control over government spending is the lifeblood of Democratic practice and ideology, no matter how else they spin it. The common tactic: A quasi-religious fervor of Us against Them, with no insult too demeaning, no syllogism too outrageous to be re-purposed into the mob’s tiresome litanies.

All you need to know about Columbia is that some of its faculty “canceled in-person classes on Monday in support of…Khalil, the student activist and foreign national whom the Trump administration moved to deport…The cancellations…put the professors at odds with Columbia’s provost, who emailed “faculty colleagues” Monday morning to issue “a reminder that faculty must meet all scheduled classes.” Perhaps we will learn later if the activists who stealthily infiltrated Trump Tower on Thursday morning before beginning their demonstration were Columbia students with excused class absences– or not even students at all. https://tjvnews.com/2025/03/columbia-professors-cancel-classes-in-solidarity-with-pro-hamas-activist-in-ice-custody/

However, it takes a truly distinguished professor like Charles Lipson, now emeritus from the University of Chicago political science department, to provide the most accurate (and disturbing) assessment of an activist student body, egged on by “illiberal faculty” and largely tolerated by gutless administrators.

“The failure of university leaders to punish these violations is especially troubling. They have a basic duty to keep students and faculty safe, to preserve and nourish a benign environment for teaching, learning and research. They are failing in that basic duty. University trustees, who should hold them accountable, are also failing. Their failure yields a predictable result: still more disruptions going forward. That’s exactly what is happening now.” https://thespectator.com/topic/columbia-university-exemplifies-failure-universities/

As Professor Lipson also points out, add an unjust District Attorney like Alvin Bragg and New Yorkers have a real mess on their hands

So where do we go from here? Perhaps the first step is intellectual: Recognizing that using the campus to poison the minds of our youth is actually our widest and most insidious form of child abuse. Even if we occasionally find ourselves bold enough to denounce “campus indoctrination” (despite the danger of being denounced as reactionaries or worse) do we truly understand the generational risks we’re taking? President Reagan clearly did when he reminded his audiences that we were never more than a generation away from losing our freedom. Isn’t it time we began considering campus reform as a long-term, multi-front, multi-generational war?

The religious overtones of the woke movement remind me of discovering later in life a truth that most of my Christian colleagues still find surprising. Great apostles like Peter and Paul were actually insurgents, spreading Christianity despite Roman persecution, often at great personal risk. With my extensive background in counter-insurgency, I was startled to read in the concluding verses of Paul’s letter to the Philippian church, “All the saints salute you, chiefly they that are of Caesar’s household.” What? How did St. Paul the Insurgent insert himself into the heart of the beast through Christians who somehow managed to become members of Caesar’s household? Philippians 4:22 (KJV)

The same Roman Empire which executed both Paul and Peter became known, roughly 200 years later, as the Holy Roman Empire, although it was often none of those things. But never fail to appreciate Christian insurgency as a world-changing event (an appropriate thought this Easter season :-).

However, if we still value the history of western thought underlying our culture, can we ensure its survival by aggressively defending our educational heritage? And can we fight those battles anew in every state university, alumni committee and board of directors? Most important of all: Before writing any donor checks to our most beloved colleges!

COL (Ret.) Ken Allard was an Army draftee who became a West Point professor, Dean of the National War College and NBC News military analyst.

REVOLVER NEWS has been looking into the fishy “pipe bomb” story ever since the events of January 6, 2021, and we’ve been updating periodically all this time.  For months, we’ve been able to say with 100 percent confidence that the story told by the Biden administration about the alleged placement of pipe bombs near the DNC and RNC headquarters does not hold up, for a number of reasons.  It’s time for those who were involved in activities related to this to face the music.

According to Julie Kelly, THE premiere J6 investigator who literally wrote the book on January 6 (called JANUARY 6; highly recommended), new FBI Director Kash Patel was asked a few weeks ago by Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, to turn over all records related to the J6 pipe bombs, and Patel apparently has done so.

Kelly says of the Deep State, “They’re pretending they are still looking for this individual.  It’s part of the cover-up.  A head fake before J6.  They’re extremely nervous about FBI Director Kash Patel.”

Well, of course they are.  Patel was brought in because he’s all for transparency.  He knows that when you shine a flashlight on the roaches, they run.

https://revolver.news/2025/03/fox-news-exclusive-kash-patel-is-about-to-aggressively-blow-up-the-j6-pipe-bomb-hoax/

FOX NEWS Digital, in an exclusive report, says Patel is “working aggressively” to comply “ahead of schedule” --- the deadline is March 17 --- with requests, “personally asking staff for updates” on when information is sent to the House and Senate.  The documents reportedly come with “minimal redactions.”  So far, the FBI has sent the House Judiciary Committee over 400 pages “on topics the committee had long been seeking,” going back to the Biden information.   

In addition, the FBI turned over materials “related to the bureau’s engagement with social media entities and the now-disbanded Foreign Influence Task Force.”  That should tell you what some of our upcoming stories will be about.

This has to be so refreshing for the Judiciary Committee after years of being stonewalled by FBI Directors James Comey and Chris Wray.  It’s like the sun coming out.  Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, is reportedly receiving similar cooperation and is also expected to receive requested materials ahead of schedule.  Let’s just hope the Old Guard didn’t destroy evidence before the new guys started assembling what they had.

The House Judiciary Committee promises more updates soon.  As for the Senate, when asked to comment on Director Patel’s efforts, Sen. Grassley said, “Praise the Lord.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-director-patel-working-aggressively-comply-congressional-record-requests-ahead-deadlines

Here’s one thing that has never made sense about the “official” story: Vice President-elect Kamala Harris left the Capitol Building that morning for no discernible reason to go to the Democrat National Committee Headquarters, when she was about to make history as the first black woman to be certified (at the Capitol Building) as Vice President of the United States.  And after she allegedly had this brush with death, passing right by a supposedly active pipe bomb and later having to be evacuated, she never spoke of it.      

We’ve had over four years to look at this, and no matter how you slice it, it just does not come out right.  It makes no sense.  There’s much more to this scenario that is untenable as well.

Victoria Taft at PJ MEDIA has just posted a good background piece if you’d like to review the details of the pipe bomb story.  Here’s another mystery, as she describes it: “[The pipe bomber] was seen talking on a cell phone.  Yet the FBI swore that the same cell phone technology used to track down hundreds, if not thousands, of people in Washington DC was now corrupted for this specific bomber on the night of January 5.  That’s as interesting as the Secret Service text messages going missing at that time.”

In January of this year, the FBI’s Washington Field Office Assistant Director in Charge, David Sundberg, acknowledged to ABC NEWS that they’ve had a credibility problem over the past four years but cryptically added that “allegiances can change.”  More detail here…

https://pjmedia.com/victoria-taft/2025/03/11/well-well-wellwe-finally-may-be-getting-to-the-truth-about-the-j6-pipe-bomber-n4937792

So there’s progress on the pipe bomber story.  HOWEVER, after seeing an update on the effort to obtain the Seth Rich files, it’s hard to feel optimistic that we’ll get answers on his death, at least right away.  The meager pages that have been released are reportedly filled with redactions and are only from a two-month period in 2012, leaving attorney Ty Clevenger, who has been working for years to get these, to say, “Lots of things in the Seth Rich indexes don’t pass the smell test.”

“Indexes” refers to the Vaughn Index, which is just a list, NOT the content, of the files, along with the stated reasons for the FBI’s decision to withhold them from the public.  Here, the two reasons given most often for withholding the files were “to protect a person’s personal privacy” (a dead person?), and to not “interfere with law enforcement proceedings and investigations” (on a case this cold?).

Clevenger, acting as attorney for Texas businessman Brian Huddleson, filed a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request in September 2017, hoping to find out whether Rich might have been the real source (as opposed to a Russian “hack,” which was claimed by the DNC but for which there is no evidence) for WikiLeaks’ publication in 2016 of revealing DNC emails.

Julian Assange, publisher of WikiLeaks, made cryptic comments in 2016 that suggested he might have been, though Assange made it clear that WikiLeaks never reveals a source.  He even offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of Rich’s killer.  Of course, Assange might have brought up Rich’s name just to throw curious reporters off the track.  But Rich was the DNC’s “voter expansion data director,” presumably with access to all the material they published.

Recall that in the early morning hours of a July day in 2016, Seth Rich was shot --- several times, if memory serves, including at least twice in the back --- while walking near his home in Washington DC in what police believed was a “botched robbery attempt.”  (It was so botched that nothing at all was taken.)  Speculation on the case was pretty well shut down at the time by threats of litigation, but as no one can really be sued for asking questions, we continued to ask them and still do.

We came across this typical piece from 2022 that takes the report of the murder at face value and dismisses doubts as “conspiracy theory.”  Like many other write-ups, it is in error about one important thing when it says “the authorities found that the Russians were the source of the [DNC] leak.”  That is wrong; even the forensic investigators at CrowdStrike had to admit they’d found no evidence of this.

https://thecinemaholic.com/seth-rich-murder-how-did-he-die-who-killed-him/

Anyway, the FBI turned down Clevenger’s 2017 FOIA request in 2020, so a lawsuit was filed.  This paltry list is still all he’s been able to get. 

A technical expert for the plaintiff says the withholding of certain pieces of material suggests “evidence of coordination and activity the FBI does not want exposed.”  It’s also difficult to create a timeline, as items are not listed in chronological order and many are not dated.  As Clevenger summed it up to CONSORTIUM NEWS, “We will definitely challenge the indexes.  The small number of files in the indexes indicates one of two things:  files have been deleted or files have not yet been accounted for.  Even the files listed in the indexes have been redacted excessively.”

Director Patel, this looks like another cover-up of criminal activity.  Don’t let this stand.

Much more detail here… 

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fbi-redactions-seth-rich-index-leave-no-answers

Patel also should keep in mind that almost half of government managers have said they do not share President Trump’s agenda and would actively work against it.  Since part of his agenda is to clean up the FBI, then presumably some officials still at the FBI might be thwarting him by redacting files, destroying evidence, whatever they thought they needed to do.  Even now, on their way out the door...

https://rumble.com/v6qi6a0-42-of-federal-government-managers-said-they-would-actively-work-to-resist-p.html

We’ve been working hard to fill you in on the many “stop Trump” court cases, but there are over 50 such lawsuits currently in the system.  The eminently helpful Margot Cleveland at THE FEDERALIST has categorized and summarized the most important of these in one handy reference.  For when you have time, this is highly recommended…

https://thefederalist.com/2025/03/10/your-guide-to-the-lawsuits-challenging-a-presidents-power-to-fire-executive-officials/

Here’s one more example of (possible) obstruction:  Now that USAID is essentially ended and the few remaining projects have been folded into the State Department, a senior USAID official reportedly ordered remaining staff to convene at their now-former DC headquarters (which is slated to be emptied and to become the main office for Customs and Border Protection) for an all-day shredding session.  If shredders were unavailable or kaput, they were to use the burn bags.  We have no way of knowing whether there’s anything sinister about this or not, though it must’ve happened fast and the bags were marked “SECRET.” 

However, since the report of this is from POLITICO, blame for this is automatically being placed on the “tumultuous way in which the Trump administration is dismantling the agency.”  If you want a tutorial on how to slant a supposed “news” report, read this one.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/11/usaid-official-tells-remaining-staffers-shred-and-burn-all-your-documents-00224404

For one last bit of Biden-era fakery, here’s a brief video made by Trump adviser Alina Habba after she discovered the TV studio used for Biden’s supposed Oval Office addresses.  That’s right, here’s the real “fake Oval Office.”

https://x.com/ShadowofEzra/status/1899506176536047959 

COMING TOMORROW:  How will the Biden administration’s constant reliance on the autopen affect his Executive Orders, appointments, the bills he signed into law, all of it?  We’re looking closely at that.

Naturally, the big story today is the spectacular performance last night of President Trump during his speech to the joint session of Congress.  It was phenomenal, history in the making.  We’re so proud to support him.  (And, of course, it was delightful to watch the Democrats utterly humiliating themselves, as detailed elsewhere in the newsletter.  At this point, we can only assume that, yes, they really are that stupid.)

But one thing Trump didn’t talk about, likely because it’s in litigation, is his ability, as head of the Executive Branch, to actually run that part of the government, with the authority to hire and fire at will.  Yesterday, we brought you the story of Biden appointee (and longtime, highly partisan Biden family friend and business associate) Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) until Trump fired him soon after taking office.  Dellinger sued to be reinstated, and DC District Judge Amy Berman Jackson so ordered.  The White House has appealed, of course, and this case will almost certainly end up before the Supreme Court, as is no doubt their strategy.

In our story yesterday, we noted that Dellinger had said he was helping some “probationary” employees who had also been terminated but wanted to keep their jobs.  An OSC press release from last Friday referring to six such employees also said that “Dellinger is considering ways to seek relief for a broader group without the need for individual filings with OSC.”  Sure enough, it turns out he’s working on behalf of over 5,000 such employees (!), from the Department of Agriculture alone, that he’s trying to get reinstated.  (Not having to file 5,000 cases individually WOULD save him a lot of work.)  Dellinger argues that these employees cannot be fired “without individualized cause.”

https://osc.gov/News/Pages/25-22-Stay-Request-Probationary-Employees.aspx

How is Trump supposed to reduce the size of the branch of government he oversees if he can’t fire people?

POLITICO refers to the (temporarily) reinstated Dellinger as “a political watchdog for government workers,” which seems like a stretch but apparently is how he now identifies.  And here’s the twist; from their report: “Dellinger’s petition on behalf of the fired USDA workers is now before another bureaucrat whom Trump is trying to remove from office:  Cathy Harris, who heads a government board on workplace grievances.”  That would be the three-member Merit Systems Protection Board.

That’s right, the case of these 5,000 employees whom Trump is trying to remove from their jobs is being heard by another official, a Democrat, whom Trump tried to remove from HER job.  Not kidding.  Think perhaps she might recuse herself from that case?  No?  And how DOES one recuse oneself from a three-member board?  What if the other two members need somebody to break a tie?  Somebody has to think about these things.

If she fails to recuse herself from such cases, it seems to us that that alone might serve as “cause” for her to be removed from the board.  With her own job on the line, she comes to these cases with a tremendous conflict of interest.

Unsurprisingly, late Tuesday evening, the Merit Systems Protection Board ordered a 45-day stay on the firing of those first six employees.

Also on Tuesday, Harris, who had been terminated by Trump on February 10, was granted a permanent injunction that reinstated her as the Biden-appointed chairman of the Merit Systems Protection Board.  She’s baaa-aaack!

The judge who reinstated her is DC District Judge Randolph Contreras, appointed by President Obama in March 2012.  “The President’s attempt to terminate Harris was unlawful,” Contreras wrote.  As the WASHINGTON EXAMINER reports, Judge Contreras said that without documented evidence from Trump to justify her firing, “Harris retains all authority and benefits associated with her role while preventing the administration from installing a replacement.”

Of course, ABC NEWS latched on in their headline to the judge’s ruling that Trump’s firing of Harris was “unlawful.”  Other than that, their report is pretty straightforward, at least for what they do say.  There’s a lot they don’t say, however.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-illegally-removed-member-board-protects-government-employees/story?id=119435326

By the way, if the name “Judge Contreras” is familiar to you, it’s probably because he oversaw numerous January 6 cases.  And if you want to know his mindset, this NBC NEWS report from about a year ago says the judge “expressed concern during [defendant Jeffrey Sabol’s] sentencing hearing...that the former president could trigger another violent attack in the lead-up to or aftermath of the 2024 presidential election.”  Does that give you a hint of his anti-Trump bias?

At the risk of sounding like Paul Harvey, “the rest of the story,” or at least part of it, is included by THE RIGHT SCOOP.  “Even if [Cathy Harris] was confirmed by the Senate,” they say, “she is still a political appointee and all of them serve at the President’s behest.”  The Supreme Court has got to settle this, and, as we said yesterday, the Trump administration has been maneuvering to get the issue before them.

https://therightscoop.com/ugh-breaking-federal-judge-reinstates-biden-appointee-after-trump-fired-her/

As FOX NEWS reports, Harris’ attorneys, in appealing her firing, cited SCOTUS’ 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States that limited a President’s ability to fire certain agency heads.  But some on the Court, they say, have “signaled a willingness to rein in or perhaps overturn that ruling.”  Seems like the time is right.

THE RIGHT SCOOP put it in less lawyerly fashion, but White House attorneys express a similar strategy in court documents: “The American people elected President Trump to run the executive branch.  And President Trump has determined that keeping [Harris] in office no longer serves the interest of the American people.  That democratically accountable choice should be respected.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/federal-judge-reverses-trump-firing-federal-employees-appeal-board-chairwoman

Help Huck PAC elect Republicans from the State House to the halls of Congress. In 2024, $2,007,550 given to 323 candidates. DONATE $5 HERE to keep it going.

We said when Ed Martin was appointed by President Trump to be interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, replacing Biden-appointee Matthew Graves, that this district court would be taking on a very different vibe. And so it already is.

Recall that Graves was the one supervising the January 6 prosecutions in DC. (He’s also the U.S. attorney who would not cooperate with Delaware U.S. attorney-turned-Special-Counsel David Weiss on prosecuting Hunter Biden.)

Martin is transferring numerous prosecutors in the DC office from handling the big cases to dispensing with misdemeanor cases in the DC Superior Court. The reassignment is considered to be a demotion. These are the attorneys who railroaded many Trump supporters to make examples of them. Now, THEY’RE being made examples of.

Remember the sentencing of Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon to four months apiece for contempt of Congress (a charge that seems to have been made only against Republicans)? The two attorneys responsible for those prosecutions, John Crabb and Elizabeth Aloi, are on the list to be reassigned. Then there were the three Proud Boys --- Enrique Tarrio, Joe Biggs and Ethan Nordean --- who received looooong sentences for their supposed roles. Prosecutor Jason McCullough, who helped lead that team, has been reassigned as well. Also, recall the prosecutions of Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers and over a dozen of his allies. Lead prosecutor Kathryn Rokoczy has been reassigned, along with Greg Rosen, who headed the “Capitol Siege Section” (yes, they actually had something called this).

According to Jim Hoft at THE GATEWAY PUNDIT in a report last week, Enrique Tarrio claims that the only evidence the DOJ had against the Proud Boys was a document he knows was written by the FBI. This is his first major interview after being released on Trump’s pardon and has a lot of new information, including serious allegations against our own government. We must add the caveat that we can’t independently verify, but Hoft has been a reliable reporter.

According to Tarrio, the Biden DOJ pressured him to lie in order to “get” President Trump, but he wouldn’t do it, so they sentenced him to an outrageous 22 years in prison. (Note: we’ve seen this over and over, their hardball attempts to get a defendant to “flip” on Trump and just give them...something.) Tarrio says that to be able to indict the Proud Boys, the DOJ implicated them with a document that they themselves authored, called “1776 Returns.” Tarrio claims the DOJ inserted this into the Proud Boys’ chat group to make them seem more militant.

THE GATEWAY PUNDIT has been on top of this story, reporting on the inauthenticity of the “1776 Returns” document a little over a year ago, when Tarrio and four other members of the Proud Boys were still on trial. He’d been charged with seditious conspiracy --- that’s why they were able to give him a 22-years sentence. For when you have time, this is an absolute must-read, even if it is from February 2024.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/government-entrapment-love-interest-proud-boy-enrique-tarrio-sent-incriminating-1776-returns-behest-government-official-january-6th-new-information-reveals/

Also note that material in the “1776 Report” reflects ideas from something we’ve reported about here, the Transition Integrity (“Integrity”) Project. It seems much more likely that it sprang from the mind of, say, John Podesta, though jurors were left to assume it came from the defendants.

Of course, this being a DC courtroom, with a DC judge and DC jury, it didn’t matter where that document came from. It could’ve been pulled out of thin air, or out from under the judge’s robe. Guilty!

To sum up, the Proud Boys’ claim that the FBI planted this document was reported over a year ago, during their trial, but they went to jail anyway. Now Trump has pardoned them and Tarrio can finally speak publicly about it. Thankfully, the prosecutors responsible for this injustice have been demoted. However, if prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in DC actually did falsify evidence, as is claimed, to entrap the Proud Boys, mere demotion is too good for them. They should be under the jail themselves. This might not be the end of the story, and let’s hope it isn’t.

by HUCKABEE writer/researcher Laura Ainsworth

It was such a relief during the presidential campaign last July when Michelle Obama was NOT named as Biden’s replacement on the ticket. As longtime newsletter readers know, that had been my worst fear. I had predicted it for two years, all the while hoping and praying I was wrong. But as recently as the Trump-Biden debate, I was quite sure of this, knowing the Democrats had an iron-clad obligation to choose a black woman and that Kamala was the worst disaster of a presidential candidate in living history. How could the Democrats, pathologically obsessed with winning, pick someone they knew could not win?

It was also obvious that President Biden couldn’t handle even four more weeks on the campaign trail, let alone four more years as President. It was obvious then that Democrats had been covering for him, even though some of them (this means you, Jake Tapper) are only now admitting this in ridiculous books that I hope gather dust, mold and flies on the shelves at Barnes & Noble. I assumed the Democrats were trotting out Biden to debate with Trump in the absolute certainty that he’d crash and burn. Then, of course, they’d install Michelle Obama as the new candidate. The media would go wild, and Obama II would be coronated. She was the only black female who had a chance of winning, and (most importantly) this would also ensure another term for the Obama Machine.

As for Kamala, the Democrat Mob --- I mean, Machine -- would make her one of those offers you can’t refuse

Well, the first part, Biden’s crash-and-burn, happened spectacularly, but the second part, the Michelle coronation, didn’t gel. I was never in my life so happy to be wrong --- it doesn’t happen very often, ha --- but ever since, this chain of events just hasn’t made sense to me. Why would the Democrats have deliberately CHOSEN Kamala? There had to be a puzzle piece we didn’t have.

Then I happened upon a piece from a little over a month ago in AMERICAN THINKER by Jerome Corsi that, if he’s right, explains it. The way he tells it, Michelle, not Kamala, actually was supposed to be the nominee. Looks as though I was right about this. It was all planned.

Corsi’s piece, overall, is about voter fraud, and why this time Democrats apparently didn’t try to rig the top of the ticket but might very well have used ballot fraud to win in some of the down-ballot races. Excellent, highly recommended reading, but the part specifically about Michelle is about seven paragraphs in.

According to his sources, “At the ‘Deep Party’ Central Committee level of the Democrat Party --- at the level of Barack Obama, Klaus Schwab and George Soros, the order went out that Harris needed to lose.” (Recall that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was convinced that after Biden was “induced” (forced?) to withdraw from the race, Michelle Obama would be the nominee, as President Obama’s preference.)

Corsi explains that just under 30 minutes after post-debate Biden withdrew in a social media post on X, he posted again that after deciding “not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” he offered his “full support and endorsement for Kamala [Harris] to be the nominee of our party this year.”

Uh-oh. Recall that almost immediately after this, President Obama (no doubt hotter than a pistol) issued a flowery letter commending Biden for withdrawing but NOT endorsing Kamala. In fact, it didn’t mention Kamala at all. Hilariously, it said, “I believe that Joe Biden’s vision of a generous, prosperous, and united America that provides opportunity for everyone will be on full display at the Democratic Convention in August.” (Note: can’t resist saying that it was the GOP Convention, not the Democrat, that came across as generous, prosperous and united.)

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-statement-biden-drops-out-2024-race/

According to Corsi, it wasn’t supposed to go this way at all. Biden, or someone controlling Biden, brought about this outcome. Biden throwing his support to Kamala was really like throwing a giant wrench into The Machine. All consideration of an alternative presidential candidate was over. As for their big plans for Michelle, this nominee was not to be.

And since Biden’s action of positioning Kamala before Michelle was an “unpardonable offense,” Corsi explains, they weren’t going to help her win. They would let HER crash-and-burn this time. Besides, RNC Chairman Lara Trump was keeping too close an eye on the presidential election for them to do the kind of rigging they’d need to do.

So, was Biden aware enough to pull the rug out from under the Obamas this deliberately, out of his tremendous distaste for them? Or was it just a blunder by an elderly man with a poor memory? We might not ever know, but either way, this might be the ONE THING we can be eternally grateful to Joe Biden for doing. And I can be grateful to Jerome Corsi for making sense out of this for me.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/01/why_didn_t_the_democrats_steal_the_2024_presidential_election.html

3 Special Elections Are Coming

We weren’t expecting Huck PAC to have to come to the rescue of 3 more races immediately following the 2024 elections, but the Democrats see this as their chance to un-do what the American People overwhelmingly voted for in November. Unlike a normal race, these elections are going to be short, savage and expensive -- and we’re ready to do everything we can to help! Please support Huck PAC with a donation in the amount you can afford. Every dollar helps→

Click here: Donate - Huck PAC

Newly confirmed FBI Director Kash Patel (wow, it felt good to type that) is expected to take on a second big role in the new Trump administration, that of acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).  He could be sworn in as early as next week.

This unusual arrangement is sparking questions about the future of the ATF.  Just days ago, Attorney General Pam Bondi fired ATF Chief Counsel Pamela Hicks after 20 years with the agency, saying the ATF was “targeting gun owners.”  This likely came in response to an E.O. Trump issued earlier this month, directing the Attorney General to review all actions taken by the Biden administration regarding firearms “to assess any ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens.”

Gun Owners of America praised the choice of Patel, saying it was “a major victory for gun owners and constitutional rights advocates nationwide.”  It follows that gun control groups are calling him a “known gun rights extremist.”  Right now, Patel is just serving as the acting head of the agency, but he can still act with authority.  Of course, it’s not known if he’ll get through the confirmation process, but that was also true of his current job as FBI director, and there he is.

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/fbi-director-kash-patel-atf-justice-department/2025/02/23

On Saturday, Patel directed FBI staff not to respond to an email sent out by the Office of Personnel Management --- the one supported by Elon Musk --- saying that federal workers must justify their jobs or resign.  He said that “the FBI would conduct reviews in accordance with FBI procedures.  When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses.  For now, please pause any response.”

This appears to show the operation working as it should, with Patel, as confirmed agency head, taking the reins and deciding how to implement DOGE.  He’s the one with the authority.

https://nypost.com/2025/02/22/us-news/new-fbi-leader-kash-patel-tapped-to-run-atf-as-acting-director/

In another startling personnel decision, former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino has reportedly been tapped to be deputy director of the FBI.  The announcement came Sunday night, in a post on Truth Social by Trump:

“Great news for Law Enforcement and American Justice!  Dan Bongino, a man of incredible love and passion for our Country, has just been named the next DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE FBI, by the man who will be the best ever Director, Kash Patel.”

In case you didn’t know the 50-year-old Bongino’s extensive and varied background, Trump goes on: “Dan has a Master’s Degree in Psychology from C.U.N.Y., and an MBA from Penn State.  He was a member of the New York Police Department (New York’s Finest!), a highly respected Special Agent with the United States Secret Service, and is now one of the most successful Podcasters in the Country, something he is willing and prepared to give up in order to serve.”  He later credited Dan’s wife, Paula, and their two daughters “who truly love their dad.”

“Working with our great new Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and Director Patel, Fairness, Justice, Law, and Order will be brought back to America, and quickly.  Congratulations, Dan!”

We’ll wait for Bongino to comment on Monday about the future of his radio show and podcast and then weigh in on Tuesday.  In the meantime, here’s a report from RADIO INSIGHT saying he does plan to exit his show.

https://radioinsight.com/headlines/295200/dan-bongino-to-exit-westwood-one-show-for-fbi/

As Paula Bolyard reports in PJ MEDIA, Bongino’s appointment “will surely strike fear in the hearts of Deep State operatives.”  With good reason.

https://pjmedia.com/paula-bolyard/2025/02/23/breaking-trump-announces-new-fbi-dep-directorand-heads-are-exploding-n4937264

Patel’s post-swearing-in speech might have a lot to do with that.  And to the media, he said, “You’ve written everything that’s fake, malicious, slanderous and defamatory.  Keep it coming --- bring it on.  But leave the men and women, the FBI, out of it.  They deserve better.”

Speaking of fake, malicious, slanderous and defamatory, former CIA Director, Russia Hoaxer and MSNBC contributor John Brennan is “very concerned” about Kash Patel leading the FBI, which is a really good sign.

https://pjmedia.com/benbartee/2025/02/24/watch-deep-state-capo-john-brennan-sweat-im-on-kash-patels-enemy-list-n4937267

Watch Patel’s full speech here…

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/02/21/boom-kash-patel-is-already-making-huge-changes-at-the-fbi-n4937220

Following his speech, he ordered the transfer of about 1,500 agents and staff from the Washington DC headquarters to field offices in high-crime areas around the country, where they can presumably fight actual crime rather than hunt down every last Trump supporter who was in DC on January 6.

Five hundred of these agents are being sent to Huntsville, Alabama, an outpost which is seen as “exile” by DC agents.

There’s no word in this story about what these reassignments mean for the huge new headquarters that’s planned for Greenbelt, Maryland, near DC.  But Patel has commented before that he wanted the current headquarters emptied out and turned into “a museum to the Deep State.”  That quip seems to reflect a desire to disperse agents throughout the country, not concentrate 7,500 of them in a luxurious new facility near DC.

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/02/21/boom-kash-patel-is-already-making-huge-changes-at-the-fbi-n4937220

This was a long-term plan; the facility would take an estimated ten years to build.  At the link, here’s what was being said about the project a year ago.  At that time, Congress had appropriated $845 million for a project that, even then, had ballooned in estimated cost to $4.5 billion (at a time when the government has an abundance of empty office space in DC.) If DOGE has recommendations about that expenditure, one would assume they’ll align with Kash Patel’s.

New FBI headquarters will take more than a decade to build, as agency struggles with ‘obsolete’ space

Kenneth Allard

Watching our national dialogue over the last month reminds me of serving in West Germany at the height of the Cold War. U.S. Army Europe was then an institution beset with racism, indiscipline, and chronic shortages of everything except drugs and alcohol. During the Yom Kippur War of 1973, our most critical munitions were airlifted to Israel as emergency reinforcements; meanwhile we faced our Russian counterparts across a zone of confrontation that increasingly approximated wartime. Somehow that crisis passed without overt hostilities: But as an impressionable junior officer, I often wondered when, how or even if these matters would ever be set right.

For different reasons, I wonder those same things today, listening to alleged national leaders - who really should know better - opining about Elon Musk as an unelected strongman intent on monopolizing power to enrich himself and his billionaire friends. Since an appalling number of these folks are Democratic senators and congressmen, one wonders if they recall their high-school civics classes about the basic structure of our government. Remember those quaint half-forgotten lessons about electing a President through the Electoral College and then allowing his closest advisors to be chosen with the Advice and Consent of the Senate? Well, then please explain the sheer idiocy of demonstrators taking to the streets and charging Donald Trump with new illegalities and even plane crashes! Haven’t we heard these same absurdities before, entered during various pleadings before the Superior Democratic Courts of Lawfare and Civil Injustice?

The irony is that Messrs. Trump & Musk are merely conducting a long overdue audit of such books, documents, archives and other records by which your government ensures the bottom-line integrity of the vast sums spent on behalf of We the People. One can almost hear sundry Democrats frantically raising points of order to insist that such responsibilities are limited solely to the oversight committees of Congress. Wanna bet? In fact, both the Executive and Legislative branches routinely empanel blue-ribbon panels, like the special commission on defense procurement headed by David Packard in the 1980’s. Since Elon Musk as head of DOGE is similarly appointed under the direct authority of President Trump, what’s the big deal?

It is part of the Washington mystique that special bodies like the Packard Commission and DOGE seldom succeed on their first attempt at solving intractable governmental problems. Not many years after the Packard Commission adjourned, I found myself dragooned into serving as staff director for a Congressionally-appointed panel charged with reforming the nation’s defense procurement laws. Our first task proved especially daunting: Exactly how many laws affected defense procurement? Shockingly, it turned out that the Section of Law appointing our panel and the number of laws under our jurisdiction both equaled 800! Pity those poor procurement creatures trying to do their best but having to contend with 800 laws? How could they finish the day without violating several statues – and God only knew how many “implementing regulations” (on average, at least 3 regs for each one of our 800 laws).

Our completed report took over two years, several squads of lawyers and the incisive leadership of the experts heading our panel (e.g., Whit Peters, senior partner at Williams and Connolly and later 17^th Secretary of the Air Force). But one of my main tasks was illustrating the need for reform; specifically, why this large body of laws had been passed individually but without ever being assessed for their overall strategic value as integral components of the nation’s defenses. Our best case emerged in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, when the Air Force needed to procure commercial radio receivers. Although the manufacturer of that unit was Motorola, the only branch of Motorola allowed to sell to the government (with its 800 laws and countless regs) was Motorola Government Systems. Naturally, both elements of the corporation were carefully walled off from one another – thus creating an impasse as war drew nearer each day.

Some suggested seeking waiver authority from Congress, at best a long and difficult process. At the last possible moment, a USAF Lieutenant Colonel came up with the inspired solution that was quickly seized upon by his profoundly relieved superiors. The Japanese Government was persuaded to purchase the Motorola commercial radio receivers, to donate them to the Air Force and then to write-off the cost as part of Japan’s contribution to the Desert Storm war effort!

Bottom Lines:

· ***When allies are required to act as rescuers from your self-imposed procurement nightmares, then wider reforms are essential.

· **** Donald & Elon: Go for broke, you guys!

COL (Ret.) Kenneth Allard is a former draftee who became a West Point professor, Dean of the National War College and NBC News military analyst.

Mike Huckabee

Last week, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole delayed the deadline for federal workers to accept President Trump’s generous buyout offer --- which about 65,000 employees have already accepted --- until he could hear arguments from both sides. On Wednesday, he reinstated the President’s offer, ruling the government unions who had filed a lawsuit to block the program lacked legal standing and that his court lacks the jurisdiction to even rule on the matter.

https://thenationalpulse.com/2025/02/12/breaking-federal-judge-reinstates-president-trumps-buyout-offer-to-federal-workers/

Of course, most of the federal judges rushing to block Trump’s agenda also lack legal standing to do so, but they’re doing it anyway. That’s why it’s important to get these cases to the Supreme Court or to have the GOP Congress clarify the laws they’re twisting as soon as possible. Ann Coulter, who is an attorney, has a good column on this judicial overreach in which, as she puts it, judges who represent an unelected 1/2000^th of one of three branches of government are trying to seize the powers of the only nationally-elected official in Washington.

https://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2025/02/12/columnistsanncoulter20250212if-it-please-the-court-who-the-hell-asked-you-n2652136

She also offers some reminders of the Democrats’ extremely situational principles, which allows them to switch on a dime from “the Constitution is outdated trash that should be shredded if it holds back progress” to “Trump is violating the Constitution, it’s the end of the world, impeach him!”

Kenneth Allard

President Trump’s actions on Monday to Make America Great Again probably invited some unkind thoughts from the Long Gray Line. The old grads may have noted that our 45^th and 47^th President graduated from a high school equivalency course at the neighboring New York Military Academy (where fictional mobster Tony Soprano dispatched his wastrel son AJ) rather than the elite environs of West Point, where Mr. Trump summarily fired its august Board of Visitors. In the best spirit of inter-service comity, he also dismissed similar boards at the Naval Academy, the Air Force Academy and even the Coast Guard Academy.

In case you were wondering why, President Trump promptly posted the answer on social media. “Our Service Academies have been infiltrated by Woke Leftist Ideologues over the last four years…We will have the strongest Military in History, and that begins by appointing new individuals to these Boards. We must make the Military Academies GREAT AGAIN!”

While academy boards of visitors have seldom been considered as hotbeds of revolutionary sentiment, the well-informed military journal Stars and Stripes pointed out, “Historically, the president appoints six members to each board for three-year terms, while the speaker of the House selects four, the vice president selects three and the House and Senate armed services committees choose one each. (But) In 2021, Biden dismissed 18 Trump-appointed members of the boards, six each at West Point, the Air Force Academy and the Naval Academy.”

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2025-02-11/trump-fires-service-academy-boards-16795113.html

Just like the Army-Navy Game, turnabout is often fair play at the service academies, including sometimes heavy-handed control over their highly prestigious appointments. So two weeks into his new term, Trump undoes what Biden put in place: What’s the big deal? Well, just last week, the New York Times reported that, “The U.S. Military Academy…has ordered 12 officially sanctioned clubs for women and ethnic or racial groups to shut down immediately…(The) academy’s deputy commandant, Chad R. Foster, said that the clubs were being disbanded “in accordance with recent presidential executive orders, department of defense guidance and department of the Army guidance.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/us/west-point-clubs-women-minorities.html

While it is impossible to know just how far Mr. Trump intends to push his post-DEI agenda, there is clearly something to be said for his efforts to rebuild American defenses in the face of growing international challenges. Our Army is much too small by any objective measure: but so too are the Navy and the Air Force, all three services confronting the common dilemma of aging capital fleets. As Elon Musk may shortly tell us as well, that common nightmare includes an industrial base and procurement system which may have to be rebuilt from scratch, probably under desperate time constraints. Surrounded by desperation on so many fronts, maybe it is time for President Trump to try his hand at re-creating the bipartisan consensus on defense that sustained us throughout the Cold War.

If so, then maybe West Point offers a way to begin. As a former Vietnam-era draftee, I never thought my military career would lead me there. But a mid-1970’s West Point cheating scandal serendipitously opened a coveted faculty position. Against very long odds, I was encouraged to attempt another dream: this one for an Army-sponsored graduate program at Harvard. I eventually completed my doctorate and arrived at West Point with a formidable education but still a non-grad, i.e, someone who had not himself been a cadet.

Shortly thereafter, the academy’s leadership decided that “non-grad” had a pejorative ring, settling on a new title: Graduates of Other Fine Institutions. It worked well until someone noticed the new acronym of GOOFIES! But being a GOOFIE didn’t stop me from directing an inter-disciplinary, inter-department course, or from re-organizing and running its principal guest-speakers program (e.g, Rev. Benjamin Hooks, James Michener and Alex Haley); or coaching the Cadet Model UN Club to several inter-collegiate championships). In short: my academy experience taught me the value of collegial, cooperative, servant-leadership, where you followed the Doctrine of No Suprises and the leadership had your back, GOOFIES or grads alike!

My former faculty colleague, COL (Ret.) Fred Black, is a distinguished soldier appointed by President Obama to sit on the Board of Visitors. Working with both Trump and Obama appointees, he remembers, “I can’t recall any friction at all. The Presidential appointees were all tied to USMA and asked the leadership tough questions. We also attended more meetings than the congressional members.”

With the West Point model in mind, Mr. President, I respectfully suggest that you follow a similar strategy in restoring a warrior culture understood better there than anywhere else!

COL (Ret.) Ken Allard is a former member of the West Point faculty, Dean of the National War College and NBC News military analyst.

Kenneth Allard

Just three weeks into his second administration, President Donald Trump is the gift that keeps on giving. Tuning into Fox to check on Gaza, I was surprised –but then delighted – to see Mr. Trump sitting at the desk he favors for signing executive orders. But now he was surrounded by an ecstatic crowd of female athletes, cheering as their president signed an executive order forbidding male athletes from competing in women’s sports. Hallelujah! No more of those insane arguments about how female athletes simply needed to be more tolerant of their male counterparts exposing their junk two lockers away! And smiling bravely as their medals - painstakingly earned through years of effort - were handed to smirking males who until recently were boys team mediocrities.

But in due course, Gaza returned as a succession of foreign policy analysts struggled to explain Mr. Trump’s shocking outburst during his recent press conference with Israeli President Netanyahu. Their universal refrain: How could Mr. Trump have been so unwise, so far removed from any cognitive restraint, as to suggest the need to bulldoze Gaza out of existence, turning it into a seaside resort under US military protection? What possible authorities gave him the right to do that? While they hemmed and hawed, none of those analysts were sufficiently adept to wonder how this Trumpian outburst would affect the latest renascence in Army recruiting. Reportedly as many as 350 prospective soldiers enlisted each day in December, 2024.

How would this relief from Woke stack up against a deployment to sandy, sunny Gaza, where insanity is even more prevalent than fleas?

Although I give Mr. Trump full marks for saying outrageous things that routinely defy convention, I don’t think this “suggestion” was really serious. Mr. Trump is commendably reluctant to assign American soldiers to one of history’s most notorious killing grounds. For example, wasn’t Gaza the hometown of Goliath of Gath? In more modern times, didn’t both the Ottoman and British empires consider the “Trucial States” of Palestine especially troublesome “possessions?” During high-level discussions in Egypt and Jordan, I heard fear and loathing of the Palestinians, even though all sides acknowledged that conventional thinking and the status quo are the Middle East’s deadliest enemies. So if you’re unwilling to create Gaz-Vegas-on-the-Med, then what is your plan for bringing peace to the region? Remember that Mr. Trump also moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem and brought about the Abraham Accords. So what correspondingly bold plans are you prepared to offer?

While others debated war and peace, official Washington was roiled over the fate of USAID. Writing in Christianity Today, Emily Belz spun a piteous tale: “Projects in 130 countries…ground to a halt. Staff on the ground, many with Christian organizations, were adapting to new information by the hour…Halted projects were addressing famine, lack of electricity in rural health facilities, and malaria outbreaks.” https://www.christianitytoday.com/2025/02/usaid-shutdown-musk-rubio-trump/

The blame for the chaos was hurled at Secretary of State Marco Rubio, DOGE Chief Elon Musk and, of course, Donnald Trump for attempting to slash government spending in a country roughly 36 trillion in debt. A group of Congressional Democrats came painfully close to advocating violence while calling upon their colleagues to resist Trump’s efforts to reign in USAID. Undeterred, Rep. Nancy Mace closely questioned witnesses appearing before her committee about dubious USAID expenditures: DEI, LGBTQ and even male circumcision studies, some costing millions of dollars. https://mace.house.gov/media/blog-post/rep-nancy-mace-questions-witnesses-over-usaid-corrupt-spending-during-oversight

During my 30 years in Washington, USAID was always a problem agency. Since its 1961 founding, President Kennedy invoked our moral, economic and political obligations to help less developed nations. But were we more interested in fostering economic development, promoting American big business, or even conducting discreet counter-insurgency against local Marxist movements? Pre-dating the current controversies, one of the most useful studies is “Aid for Profit: The Dark History of USAID” by Saheli Khastagir. He calls, the “Bipartisan disaster of modern foreign aid policy,” as a convincing label for American business grown too big, systematically exploiting developmental resources in poor countries that will eventually run dry. Because of this dichotomy, “USAID is not only failing to help developing countries, it is helping big corporations further consolidate their power.” https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/03/aid-for-profit-the-dark-history-of-usaid

Andrew Natsios, former USAID head under President George W. Bush, indignantly told CNN’s Jake Tapper that USAID’s “Career people do what they’re told,” moving left during Democratic administrations and right while under Republican supervision. https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/06/world/video/fast-andrew-natsios-usaid-trump-musk-lead-ldn-digvid

Together with the agency’s uncertain record, its inconstancy of purpose suggests exactly why the current review of USAID is long, long overdue.

COL (Ret. Ken Allard is a former West Point professor, Dean of the National War College and military analyst with NBC News

With the left automatically opposing all of President Trump’s policies --- if only because they’re HIS --- it should surprise no one that they continue to devise “workarounds” to keep him from implementing his directives. This goes for leftists both inside and outside of government.

For example, there’s the President’s executive order calling for the release of the CIA’s still-classified assassination documents. Think the CIA is just going to roll over? As longtime JFK assassination investigator Jefferson Morley told Tucker Carlson in a recent interview (subscription-only), “There are some very clear benchmarks to figure out ‘is this working or not?’ Are people holding up the process and obstructing the President’s wishes, or are they...really going along? The proof is in the pudding.”

“It’s great that a President has committed to this,” he said. “It’s amazing that no President has committed in this way before.” Morley is one of those who, while not a Trump supporter, definitely wants to see him succeed on this front.

But he sees “pitfalls ahead,” as “this is not something that can be done with the stroke of a pen,” even though much is possible. The secret agencies are extremely powerful, he emphasized, and he sees loopholes they can exploit even in Trump’s order to come up with a declassification plan. For example, he anticipates a possible interpretation that the CIA director can still overrule any decision on declassification. (Note of optimism: that’s John Ratcliffe, so such decisions fall to him.)

“The agencies cannot have final control over the release of this material,” Morley said. “They’ve been resisting full disclosure since the day Kennedy died --- that’s the day that the CIA’s lies began.” They started lying about Lee Harvey Oswald, he said, “within hours” of JFK’s murder.

Their decades of lying, he said, won’t stop “just because President Trump said something on a piece of paper.” They successfully dodged the 1992 law requiring disclosure, and if they could get away with that, they’ll certainly do whatever they can now to thwart President Trump. It could be that they see the release of certain information as more damaging to them than the sight of them flouting this order.

So, gotta watch ‘em like hawks and make sure it happens. Morley is looking for the production of specific “key documents” (details at link). If we monitor the process, he advised, that should tell us whether or not they’re serious about complying.

Another example of “workarounds” (also known as sabotage): In the firehose of news during the past couple of weeks, you might not have seen this recent undercover video from James O’Keefe and his O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) of a consultant at the Defense Department, a “special advisor” to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who bragged about secret meetings with retired military officials to orchestrate a resistance against Trump.

This is Jamie Mannina, telling his “date” that he had become a special agent for the FBI to be a “spy hunter” after Trump won in 2016. His assessment of Trump is that he’s “a sociopathic narcissist who is only interested in advancing his name, his wealth and his fame.” He was, he said, “in conversation with a couple of retired generals to try and explore what we can do.” These were 1, 2, 3-star generals, he told her.

When asked about Gen. Mark Milley, he said Milley was his former boss but “doesn’t know me.” He doubted Milley was involved in “something like this,” although “he’s around.”

He mentioned that since last spring, he’d been working with a nonprofit called National Security Leaders for America, trying to defeat Trump, “to explain to the American people the national security consequences of another Trump presidency.” They published a large number of op-eds under generals’ names in newspapers around the country --- ghostwritten largely by him, he claimed, “working day and night.” (Presumably, since Trump won in spite of his round-the-clock effort, he now has more time to date.)

To clear out this TDS-infected garbage, new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has his work cut out for him. (The video was made before Hegseth’s confirmation; Mannina has plenty of nasty things to say about him here.) Since the video of this “special advisor” was made public, he’s been fired. But this just shows how deeply embedded the saboteurs are, and how potentially difficult they will be to root out.

One clue in this case: Mannina met Hillary Clinton when he was in college, went to work for her and “followed her” to the State Department, which is still infested with her cronies. He’d been hoping to advance his career even farther, he said, and anticipated receiving a “pretty big job” if Kamala won. A lesson in how Washington works, in case anyone didn’t know.

https://www.wnd.com/2025/01/keep-it-between-us-watch-as-deep-stater-plots-resistance-to-president-trump-and-then-gets-fired/

As for FBI ‘workarounds,” we know the best way to counter these is going to be with a no-nonsense director like Kash Patel. Elsewhere in the newsletter, we have a rundown of how his confirmation hearing went today. (Democrats revealed themselves to be extremely hostile and afraid of him, which is a good sign as long as he still has the votes for confirmation.) But it seems appropriate here to offer Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy’s entertaining and 100 percent accurate assessment of the FBI’s problems and the proper way to deal with them. Patel gets the answers right. This is a great history lesson, too; don’t miss it...

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2025/01/30/sen-kennedy-fun-moments-at-patel-hearing-n2185002

Regarding immigration reform, we already know there will be countless “workarounds.” Here’s one at the university level, where, as legal analyst Jonathan Turley says, “the federal government and local and educational authorities are on a collision course over immigration policies.”

You’ve no doubt heard Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker, who is determined to be the loudest voice of resistance on the deportation issue coming from “sanctuary” states and cities. Various college and university presidents have spoken up, too, but Turley cites in particular a plan by the Los Rios Community College District in (surprise) California.

On Tuesday, they sent out an email intended to allay the fear “widespread through the undocumented and ally communities about their safety and the safety of their families and loved ones.”

(Note: it’s unclear who the “ally” communities are, but one assumes they’re all the other left-wing interest groups, such as LGBTQIA++++++, who are not affected in any way by deportation policies but whom the left always mobilizes for the Cause Of The Day.)

After Trump won, Los Rios published eight commitments in what they call their “Compact in Support of Undocumented and DACA Students and Employees.” One of these promises is to conceal a student or employee’s immigration status. (AKA, “accessory to committing a federal crime” and “committing a federal crime.”)

Turley cites a couple of Supreme Court rulings that might have bearing on this. In Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc., they ruled unanimously that the federal government could withhold funding from schools if they barred military recruiters from interviewing students, based on the 1982 Solomon Amendment. (NOTE: We don’t typically link to Wikipedia, particularly for anything political, but this entry does explain how federal grants to universities can be denied.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Amendment

Rumsfeld v. FAIR later challenged the Solomon Amendment on free speech grounds, but SCOTUS ruled unanimously, as John Roberts wrote for the majority, that “The Solomon Amendment neither limits what law schools may say nor requires them to say anything...As a general matter, the Solomon Amendment regulates conduct, not speech. It affects what law schools must do --- afford equal access to military recruiters --- not what they may or may not say.” Schools could still be denied funds.

So, if schools must allow military recruiters on campus to maintain their government funding, one would think they must allow immigration officials there, too. Universities, particularly state institutions who depend on that funding, will have to decide if this is really the hill they want to die on.

https://jonathanturley.org/2025/01/30/universities-announce-plans-to-defy-federal-immigration-enforcement/

If you have time, REDSTATE has more commentary on Turley’s piece.

https://redstate.com/mike_miller/2025/01/30/as-universities-vow-to-defy-trumps-immigration-enforcement-jonathan-turley-goes-bottom-line-n2185005

Finally, corporations announcing publicly that they’re ending so-called “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) programs might be quietly doing “workarounds,” too.

On January 24, as if to sort-of signal their move away from DEI, Target Stores issued a press release announcing their “Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer,” Kiera Fernandez, would now go by the title of “Chief Community Impact and Equity Officer.” (Okay...) The memo Fernandez sent to her staff about the change included this bit of vapid corporate babble:

“Many years of data, insights, listening and learning have been shaping this next chapter in our strategy, and as a retailer that serves millions of consumers every day, we understand the importance of staying in step with the evolving external landscape, now and in the future --- all in service of driving Target’s growth and winning together.”

Who wrote that, Kamala Harris? Meanwhile, Target is retaining every one of its DEI hires, at every level of the organization. It appears they’re merely soft-pedaling their DEI, rebranding it. In other words, this looks like just another workaround; time will tell if they really have abandoned gender craziness and the racist, discriminatory practices of DEI.

We typically don’t call for boycotts here; be advised that this article at THE FEDERALIST does. You be the judge on where you want to shop, but do remain skeptical that Target and other corporate entities have dropped DEI. This might be as much of an illusion as that created by a “tuckable” swimsuit.

https://thefederalist.com/2025/01/30/targets-press-releases-show-its-lying-about-ditching-dei/

GREAT WEEKEND READING: We brought you a story earlier this week concerning the federal government’s improper use of legislation to charge January 6 defendants with “interfering with an official proceeding” when all they did was step inside the Capitol building. Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin has opened an investigation into who decided to do this and why. I think we all have a good idea why.

For when you have time, investigative reporter Julie Kelly has a superb in-depth piece on this. She goes into the origin of that law, what it’s actually supposed to cover, and shows how wildly inappropriate it was for then-U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves --- he’s gone now, hooray! --- to charge hundreds of J6 defendants with violating it. The Supreme Court mercifully reversed this last summer. Martin called these cases “a great failure of our office.”

This was the type of prosecution that led 37-year-old Matthew Perna to hang himself rather than face trial.

Martin will have a preliminary report soon. It can’t come soon enough.

Speaking of people who think they know better how to use our money than we do, two top security officials at USAID (the US Agency for International Development) refused to allow officials from Elon Musk’s DOGE to access systems at the agency to audit it. Musk tweeted that USAID is “a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America” and “a criminal organization. Time for it to die.” Late Saturday, the Trump White House put those two obstructionist officials on leave.

https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2025/02/02/usaid-officials-lock-doge-out-of-the-building-trump-delivers-the-find-out-response-n2185111

That story has numerous links explaining how USAID plays Santa Claus to the world with our money, including the recent grant of $15 million for condoms and contraceptives to Gaza. They’re asking for $42.8 billion in this year’s budget. But they might not get it because it’s possible that as of this morning, USAID might be deader than vaudeville.

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2025/02/03/just-like-that-usaid-is-dead-n3799424

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/02/03/usaid-staffers-told-to-stay-home-after-musk-said-trump-agreed-to-shutter-it/

And courtesy of Instapundit, a couple of stories noting that less than 10% of our foreign aid dollars flowing through USAID actually reach the communities they’re supposed to be helping… and an analysis of some NGOs that get funding from USAID found that they are basically “a retirement home for many key political appointees”…

https://instapundit.com/700023/

Related Tweet of the Day: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (whom nobody elected to bankrupt Spirit airlines’ stockholders, but there you go) tweeted that nobody elected Elon Musk to access people’s personal information and shut down government funding. Actually, Trump promised he would do exactly that and got elected on it. And Matt Whitlock offered this response on X:

“Nobody elected the staff that operated Joe Biden like an animatronic puppet for the last 4 years while he wrecked the country so I'm not sure the ‘nobody elected Elon’ criticism really has legs.”

https://x.com/mattdizwhitlock/status/1886220751830765940

And speaking of squandering our money: As of September 2024, the US has allocated nearly $183 billion to Ukraine’s war effort against Russia. However, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy told an interviewer, “We received just over 75 [billion dollars]…But when they say that Ukraine, during the war, received 200 billion to support the army, etc., this is not true. I don’t know where all this money is.” He claims they’ve never received it.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/02/watch-i-dont-know-where-all-this-money/

Yesterday, in a round-up of stories related to Trump’s pardons of the January 6 prisoners --- mostly about the shameful resistance to this order by some in law enforcement --- we brought you the tragic story of Matthew Huttle of Hobart, Indiana, who was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop.  He had been pardoned by President Trump just days earlier. 

Some of what you see in the news about this will be dependable, but much of it probably won’t be, especially what you encounter online.  It’ll take a while to get the all-important bodycam footage (if there IS bodycam footage, and there had better be) and investigative reports, but in the meantime, we’re combing the news to find out what we can.  You know how we operate:  some version of the 72-hour rule is in force, to make sure we have something right before we report it.

It was around 4:45 PM on Monday that Matthew Huttle, 42, was pulled over on Indiana State Road 14 in Jasper County, Indiana, which is in the northwestern part of the state within an hour’s drive south of Gary.  As THE BLAZE reported on Tuesday, the reason for the stop was “unclear.”

The deputy apparently attempted to place him under arrest --- it’s not known why --- but, according to a statement from the Indiana State Police (ISP), “the suspect resisted” and “an altercation took place between the suspect and the officer.”  The officer drew his service weapon and fatally wounded him.

In an update from the story we had yesterday, the ISP have said that Huttle had a firearm “in his possession.”  That does not necessarily mean he was brandishing it in any way, just that it was there in the car.  (In fact, one would think that if he HAD been brandishing it, that would have been included in the report.)

Matthew and his uncle Dale Huttle were among the approximately 1,500 January 6 defendants who had just received pardons from President Trump.  According to his defense attorney, as reported in THE BLAZE, Matthew wasn’t necessary even political, not a “true believer.”  He was arrested in November 2022 after he allegedly entered the Capitol building, walked down several hallways and paid a visit to “multiple” offices.  He spent 16 whole minutes inside the building, recording it on video.

In 2023, he pleaded guilty to just one misdemeanor charge of entering a restricted building, the kind of charge that should never have been brought.  He was sentenced to six months in federal prison plus a year of supervised release.

So, to clarify, he hadn’t JUST been released from prison, as the original story we saw had implied.  The WASHINGTON POST reports that he was released in July of last year.  So he was already out but did still have to report to a parole officer, at least until he got the pardon from President Trump, which would have put an end to his supervised release.

It was Dale, his uncle, who faced the more serious charges; he was accused of assaulting police officers.  As THE BLAZE reports, “an archived version of a DOJ statement of facts includes images showing Dale Huttle carrying an American flag tied to a flagpole and tussling with cops over the flagpole.”  In a DOJ press release, he’s quoted as saying, “I’m not ashamed of being there.  It was our duty as patriots.  I put myself on the line to defend the country.  And I have, I have no regrets.  I will not say I’m sorry.”

Dale agreed to a plea deal that led to his being sentenced to 30 months in prison plus two years of supervised release.  So, apparently, Dale was still in prison when his nephew was killed.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/j6-defendant-shot-killed-by-law-enforcement-days-after-trump-pardoned-him

Matthew, the deceased, had previously served time for a traffic-related offense, according to the NEW YORK POST.  In fact, according to the POST, “His defense attorney at the time said in a court filing he went to the rally because he thought it would be a historic moment and he had nothing better to do after getting out of jail for a driving offense.”

Defense attorney Andrew Hemmer said at the time, “He is not a true believer in any political cause.”  (Not that his political beliefs should have mattered to his guilt or innocence, but you know how these cases were viewed.)

The Indiana State Police have taken the lead on this investigation, so now we have to wait for them to be forthcoming.  According to the NEW YORK POST, they’ve expressed condolences to Huttle’s family but have not revealed anything else about the shooting, including the reason he was pulled over in the first place and why he was being arrested.

https://nypost.com/2025/01/27/us-news/matthew-huttle-who-clinched-pardon-from-trump-shot-dead-by-deputy-in-indiana/

Until bodycam footage is released, we simply can’t say what happened that led to the shooting.  USA TODAY reports that “while trying to arrest Huttle, police say he resisted and began struggling with the deputy.”  They also say that police did NOT say he wielded his weapon or “where exactly it was found.”  They also offered no details about the gun itself.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2025/01/28/matthew-huttle-indiana-jan-6-rioter-shot-killed-pardoned-trump/77989659007/?tbref=hp

Here’s the news release from the Indiana State Police.  As they say here, “The investigation is ongoing, and no further information can be released.”  So we’ll leave it here for now, as we await more.

http://pages.subscription.in.gov/Share.aspx

RELATED J6 STORY:  If you’d really like to get into the weeds on the legal manipulations used to charge January 6 defendants, REDSTATE has a great article about how Biden DOJ prosecutors disregarded a series of Supreme Court decisions between 2005 and 2021 to charge them with  “obstructing Congress” when they entered the Capitol the day of vote certification.

On Monday, the Interim U.S. Attorney for DC, Ed Martin, announced that his office would, as reported in REDSTATE, “undertake a review of the decision-making that led to the charging of hundreds of January 6 protesters with ‘obstructing Congress’ in violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1512 (c).”  This law, stemming from the Enron/Arthur Anderson litigation, had been created to plug a “hole” in another law having to do with the destruction of client records, expanding it to allow prosecution of a defendant whose own “corrupt acts” interfered with an official proceeding.  This could add 20 years to a prison sentence.

The Biden DOJ used this statute against many nonviolent J6 defendants who had done nothing more than simply step inside the Capitol.  They hadn’t interfered with ANYTHING.  (You know, pretty much like the late Matthew Huttle.)

U.S. Attorney Martin is going to be looking at where --- and WHOM --- the reasoning for this abuse of the law came from.  Leading up to it, the Supreme Court had repeatedly struck down criminal convictions by the DOJ because of overly expansive uses of statutes in the area of “obstruction of justice.”  But that didn’t stop them from using their “novel legal theory” to go after the J6 defendants.  When the U.S. attorney finds out whose brilliant idea this was, he needs to fire them immediately, if they haven’t already been fired.

https://redstate.com/shipwreckedcrew/2025/01/28/who-was-responsible-for-using-an-inapplicable-felony-charge-against-j6-defendants-n2184921

RELATED READING:  Investigative reporter Julie Kelly has a good wrap-up of President Trump’s first week, including pardoning the J6-ers and shutting down that prosecution.  There was no reason to wait for Pam Bondi’s confirmation as U.S. Attorney General to get started with this.  As Kelly writes, “...if Democrats had hoped postponing Bondi’s confirmation would delay the Trump administration’s carpet bombing of the Department of Justice, they are once again mistaken.”

Take a look at the various firings and reassignments at the “Justice” Department, and it’ll warm your heart.  Haha, it turns out that George Toscas, the official who had pushed hard for the Mar-A-Lago raid in the Trump “classified” documents case, has indeed been reassigned to the unit set up to fight resistance from “sanctuary cities” to Trump’s deportation plans.  We had speculated yesterday that this might be the case.  Good joke on him.  (If he doesn’t quit over this, please just fire him and get it over with.)

Kelly has much more.  This really is the feel-good story of the day.

https://www.declassified.live/p/a-busy-first-week-at-the-trump-doj

Well, here’s another feel-good story.  Can you stand another one?  New CIA Director John Ratcliffe is gearing up for sweeping changes at the agency and plans to turn it into “the ultimate meritocracy.”

https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2025/01/28/ratcliffe-memo-promises-huge-changes-at-the-ciait-will-be-the-ultimate-meritocracy-n2184929

We said yesterday that we would be popping popcorn in anticipation of President Trump’s virtual speech to the wannabe Masters of the Universe at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. We should’ve added melted butter because that was a better show than anything currently in movie theaters.

Trump couldn’t have made it clearer that their dictatorial globalist agenda was dead if he’d shown up with a shovel to bury it personally. In a speech that had a lot of us MAGA supporters leaping out of our Barcaloungers to cheer, Trump informed the wealthy elitists who hate populists and national borders, think they should control the world, and want us commoners to eat bugs, give up our cars and “own nothing and be happy about it” that their leftist, globalist dream is over.

https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2025/01/23/trump-at-davos-n4936288

Some sample quotes:

“The United States has the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we're going to use it. Not only will this reduce the cost of virtually all goods and services, it will make the United States a manufacturing superpower and the world capital of artificial intelligence and crypto.”

“I’ve taken rapid action to reverse each and every one of these radical left policies. In particular, with immigration, crime and inflation. I’ve made it the official policy of the US: there are only two genders!”

“America is also a free nation once again. On day one, I signed an executive order to stop all government censorship. No longer will our government label the speech of our own citizens as misinformation or disinformation, which are the favorite words of censors and those who wish to stop the free exchange of ideas.”

Trump also said the EU treats the US “very unfairly,” blocking our products from their markets and putting heavy taxes on us (even charging big fees to land planes on European soil) while expecting free access to our market, and that’s going to end. He also told NATO nations who pay only 2% of their GDP toward defense to raise it to 5%. And he called out Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan to his face, telling him that the debanking of conservatives is “wrong” and has to stop. BOA rushed out an online statement claiming that they “welcome conservatives” and don’t deny service to anyone based on their political or religious views, then immediately shut off replies.

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2025/01/24/bank-of-america-insists-they-dont-discriminate-against-conservatives-then-turns-off-replies-1518264/

That denial cut no ice with religious and conservative groups who say their banking services were shut off with no explanation, or the 16 Republican state attorneys general who wrote a letter to BOA last April blasting them for that very practice.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-ags-put-major-u-s-bank-noticed-alleged-de-banking-conservatives

Trump’s speech reportedly put a damper on the shell-shocked WEF attendees, who are the oligarchs that Biden seemed okay with letting run the world. However, some observers said they got the feeling from the Q&A that some attendees quietly liked the thought of being able to speak freely again and not toe the wealthy elitists’ line – sort of like the witch’s guards in “The Wizard of Oz” who are happy and relieved when their boss finally gets a bucket of water thrown on her and melts down.

At least one professor on the WEF panel recognized that the “new world order” they all dreamed of had finally arrived, but it wasn’t what they’d planned. He broke the news to them that “Trump won” and their globalist, managerial philosophy has lost. He said, “The European Union, and by and large, its member states, have misread the direction where events were going…Trump has done something no person in the world has ever done before; a dead man, a dead politician has risen. This is the greatest comeback in political history…”

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2025/01/22/world-economic-forum-davos-attendee-admits-trump-won-and-globalists-lost/

He's right: Trump is alive, the dream of control by globalist elites is dead, and we couldn't be happier.

Mike Huckabee

There is nothing in living memory that compares with this.

On January 20, Inauguration Day 2025, Biden signed two waves of blanket pardons for those who might later be connected to federal criminal offenses. (He’d already pardoned son Hunter, in advance of his sentencing.) These included Anthony Fauci (!); retired Gen. Mark Milley; all nine members of the “Select” J6 committee who “investigated” Trump’s alleged role in the January 6 riot and are accused of destroying evidence and collaborating with witnesses; and some members of the Capitol and DC Metro Police who testified before that committee. Biden used the pretext that Trump might exact “revenge” on these people (translation: Trump might dare to impose the rule of law on people who have broken it).

https://www.theblaze.com/news/biden-issues-last-minute-pardons-for-fauci-gen-milley-j6-committee-and-cops

Mike Huckabee

Kenneth Allard

Was it only last week that we arose early, sipped our coffee and watched the Tournament of Roses Parade from sunny, beautiful Pasadena? Didn’t the nation just celebrate that annual event in a magical place typically marked by azure skies and spectacular roses? How did it happen so soon thereafter that every American household was horrified to watch those lush, gentle boulevards being improbably transformed into a fiery, latter-day version of Pompei?

Having been caught amidst Hurricane Katrina, where the gusts screamed at over a hundred miles an hour, I could scarcely imagine how such winds could bring fire rather than rain. Through tears, I prayed for the Angelinos, the heroism of our first responders and where oh where was the National Guard with its Black Hawks and Chinooks?  I remembered being with LTG Russ Honore during Katrina, when he told everyone with ears that the course of wars or natural disasters were primarily determined by logistics, “because if logistics were easy, we’d just call ‘em tactics!”

It was a line good enough to steal, which I did repeatedly throughout my remaining years as an NBC military analyst. But what were the networks now saying about the logistics of fire suppression? While helicopters cannot fly during hurricanes, why had the water hoses and fire hydrants run dry in Pasadena – right down to water’s edge? Where were the tankers and bunker companies? And please, dear Lord, tell me what had become of the fire trucks and their well-organized squads? Without them, one home after another simply exploded in those ongoing, wind-driven fire storms? C’mon guys, get into the fight!

It was easy to remember the smells and the fear marking every face shown on TV. As a young officer, my first home was built along a canyon foot-hill in Sierra Vista, Arizona. An index contour line of 5200 feet ran through my back yard, which had a closeup view of the adjacent Huachuca Mountains, rising dramatically to over ten thousand feet. One Saturday morning, as I left to assume my position as staff duty officer at Fort Huachuca, I casually noted a small smoke trail spiraling the upper slopes of the mountain closest to me. Maybe that was something to check on later in the day because wasn’t the SDO supposed to be the eyes and ears of the command?

Upon arrival, I barely had time to drink a cup of coffee before the phones started to ring, a lot of civilians each of whom thought himself to be in charge. It seemed that an unattended campsite up on the mountain had done what unattended campsites tend to do – “and now, Captain, we have a fire on our hands!” I pointed out that the Huachuca Montains were not located on Federal property but soon an assortment of sheriffs, fire departments and even the Arizona Highway Patrol seemed to think I was heading the Army ‘s response! Fortunately, I took good notes on who wanted what so that my chain of command was kept informed. Later that afternoon, I finally had time to go outside and see how my mountain was doing: I could see my house through binoculars but now it appeared to have a spectacular up-close view of a volcano!

 I returned there early the next morning when my duty was over, watching anxiously. The fire-line seemed headed in my direction but the winds kept shifting. Pondering this uncertain future from my fence-line, I hardly noticed a mountain lion passing nearby; he barely spared me a glance, clearly unimpressed by my shovel. Eventually the fire consumed 24,000 acres before those uncertain winds shifted the fire back on itself - and thankfully spared my house.

It took years before I realized that such “coincidences” may contain deeper meanings. Shortly after my wife Betsy and I were married, two of her dearest friends – Pastor Joe Glenn and his wife Pat – paid us a visit, probably to see for themselves if I was worthy of her hand. Fortunately, we hit it off and stayed in touch as the Glenns took over a small church in the northern California town of Paradise. If that name sounds familiar, it may be because both their church and home were destroyed by a 2018 wildfire just like Pasadena. Describing their narrow escape, Joe’s summation is something I have always treasured. “God is good. Paradise is lost but we are OK…Keep us in your prayers!”  https://christianchronicle.org/paradise-is-lost-but-minister-and-wife-escaped-deadly-wildfire-with-the-clothes-on-our-back/

Great advice, Joe! But Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass, fair warning: You folks have some serious ‘splainin’ to do!

COL (Ret.) Ken Allard is a former West Point faculty member, Dean of the National War College and NBC News military analyst.

Mike Huckabee

By the time you read this on Monday, January 6, 2025, the certification of President Donald Trump’s second-term win is just about to take place, if it hasn’t already happened.  This date, of course, also marks the fourth anniversary of the unfortunate events of January 6, 2021.  There’s plenty to say about both.

The day couldn’t be marked without a commentary from investigative reporter Julie Kelly, who remarks that this is “a plot twist that even the most creative --- or diabolical --- fiction writer would never have imagined.”

For one thing, the still-Vice President Kamala Harris will be presiding.  You have to love that.

As Kelly points out, Kamala herself likened January 6 to December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001, saying these events “remind all who have lived through them where they were...when our democracy came under assault.”

(Speaking of that, Kamala has still had nothing to say about where SHE was on January 6 four years ago, as it was NOT at the Capitol building, to be certified as the first black female elected Vice President, but rather at the DNC headquarters for reasons she’s never made clear.  See “pipe bomb story,” which we’ll get to.)

Kelly notes that the Democrat talking points about January 6 went out before the first protester even entered the Capitol building.  “As the chaos was still unfolding at the Capitol, Joe Biden gave a nationwide address --- he allegedly had planned to talk about the economy at 4 PM, but in yet another fortuitous coincidence for Democrats, Biden quickly pivoted to a lengthy rant about the protest, to denounce the ‘insurrection.’”

Since that day, we’ve been subjected to a nonstop tape-loop of J6 rhetoric.  Trump was impeached --- again.  Anyone who was even in the vicinity that day was forever inked to “domestic terrorism” by the FBI.  The DOJ ended up arresting roughly 1,600 individuals, most of whom had nothing to do with any disturbance.  And they’re still arresting people!

Then there was the January 6 “Select” Committee.  (We always put “Select” in quotation marks because Nancy Pelosi personally and in violation of the rules selected the two so-called Republicans on it, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both of whom thankfully destroyed their own political careers with their disgusting behavior.)   Not only did this committee exist to tell Americans “what to think” about J6 (chairman Bennie Thompson’s words), but it also hid exculpatory evidence and destroyed massive records that were supposed to be turned over to the new Congress.  Shameful.

As Kelly writes, “The exhaustive operation --- the multifaceted lawfare, the Congressional theater, the media fixation --- was supposed to end up with Trump sitting in jail, a final death blow to his political future and the populist movement he created.”  But that was not to be.

Part of the reason was the failure on all fronts of the Biden administration, of course.  But the other part was their stunningly heavy-handed approach to “getting Trump,” as well as his supporters, associates and allies.  It was the DEMOCRATS who rightly came to be seen as the real threat to democracy, not us.

As Kelly observes, “Instead of representing one of the darkest days in history, January 6 to millions of Americans instead embodies the corrupt, bloodthirsty and vengeful nature of the existing government and its media bootlickers, which foreshadowed the sort of banana republic-style rule see in Marxist hellholes, not in the United States.”

So now we’re counting on President Trump to do what is necessary to reform the unelected government bureaucracies that played a role in this.  It’s they who apparently have been running things --- easy with a senile puppet in the Oval Office --- but that has to end NOW.

We’re hoping for some accountability as well.  Special Counsel Jack Smith and prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s office in DC (Matthew Graves, who oversaw the January 6 prosecutions) are reportedly lawyering up, with Smith planning to exit the country and go back to the war crimes court at The Hague.  Liz Cheney is being investigated by a congressional committee and might face scrutiny by Trump’s DOJ.  As we reported last week, Bennie Thompson has even said he’d accept a pre-emptive pardon from President Biden if Biden offers it.  (What do you bet Biden does, along with pardons for everyone who might conceivably need one?  A president who can award “billionaire philanthropist” and real-life Bond villain George Soros the Presidential Medal of Freedom on his way out the door is capable of ANYTHING.)

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who’s on video admitting responsibility for security failures on January 6, went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday to lament the “denial of what happened January 6.”  If anyone is in denial, or who just doesn’t understand what happened and its importance to history, it’s her.

https://www.declassified.live/p/january-6-2025-the-real-insurrection

RELATED:  Speaking of dismantling the unelected bureaucracy, recall that last week we commented on the cutoff of funding (finally!) for the Global Engagement Center, the division of the U.S. State Department dedicated to censoring so-called “disinformation” from news/opinion sites like OURS.  Trump’s new administration is going to have to rededicate itself to this, as the GEC has already rebranded itself and is now the “Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub.”  The GEC’s budget was simply “realigned.”

These people are DRIVEN to stifle dissent, and stopping them will require a stake through the heart.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2025/01/02/trump-will-hold-massive-rally-in-dc-right-before-inauguration-n2649904

To commemorate January 6, THE GATEWAY PUNDIT re-posted a piece that originally ran about a month ago, about the mistreatment in prison of Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, currently serving a 22-YEAR SENTENCE for his “role” in the riot.  (He was one of four Proud Boys convicted of “seditious conspiracy;” Biden’s DOJ had asked for 33 years.)

Tarrio was not even in Washington DC that day.

As Cara Castronuova reports, Tarrio is --- after being moved to 11 different prisons in just 16 weeks --- currently in a rural Mississippi prison where at least there is a lot of Trump support among both inmates and staff, as opposed to “the gulag” in leftist DC.  (By the way, in case you’ve heard that the Proud Boys are some sort of white supremacist group, Tarrio is Afro-Cuban.)  His treatment as described in this article is shockingly inhumane.

The theory is that his isolation and frequent moves, dubbed “diesel therapy,” were done to “keep Tarrio’s mouth shut” in the months leading up to the 2024 election.  When a mainstream media outlet inquired about doing an interview, Tarrio was advised by prison officials not to do it, and that was reportedly when his “road trips” from prison to prison to prison started.  He was reportedly transported, in all, over 3,200 miles, wearing shackles, chains and handcuffs the whole way.  One trip might last as long as 18 hours.  And whenever he arrived at a new prison, he was put into solitary for two weeks, with no time outside at all.

As Castronuova writes, what Tarrio went through “can only be described as the greatest form of torture that one must endure within the U.S. [Bureau of Prisons] system.”  The physical changes wrought by his treatment are likened here to those of Tom Hanks’ character in CASTAWAY.  His beard grew long; he had no showers or decent food for weeks at a time and, in some locations, not even a toothbrush.  Tarrio lost over 40 pounds.

The news of Trump’s win on November 5 was Tarrio’s only hope of a future.  He prayed for Trump to win, and now he’s praying for a presidential pardon, which surely, he will get.  He just wants to return home to Miami and go kayaking in the Florida Keys.

You’ll want to read the full account of what he’s gone through, complete with a map of his “diesel transport.”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/01/exclusive-proud-boys-leader-enrique-tarrio-is-still/

Today, Congress ushers in a new Trump era.  Yes, there will be protests, but at least most congressional Democrats have settled down and are resigned, at least for this moment.  Still, anti-Trump protesters have convened at the Lincoln Memorial to demand he be blocked from becoming the 47^th President because he’s a (sigh) “insurrectionist.”  Good grief. There are your “enemies of democracy.”

Most people are sick of this and want solutions to problems.  As Sarah Arnold at TOWNHALL says, “While the left continues to push its narrative of division and ‘insurrection,’ Trump remains focused on uniting the country, restoring prosperity, and taking on the corrupt political elites who have long been out of touch with the American people.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2025/01/05/four-years-after-jan-6-protests-trump-is-certified-as-the-47th-president-n2649991

(SIDE NOTE:  While Democrat politicians are largely going with the flow today, expect that spirit of cooperation to evaporate with Trump’s inauguration.  Look who Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has appointed to the Senate Judiciary Committee.  This choice is so awful, we’re wondering if the GOP might even bring a vote to disqualify Shifty, considering he was previously censured for lying to the American people.)

https://slaynews.com/news/chuck-schumer-assigns-sen-adam-schiff-to-senate-judiciary-committee/

As we pass the fourth anniversary of the J6 riot, it’s also a good time to note that information is still coming out about the pipe bombs supposedly placed to go off that day.  BLAZE MEDIA has an excellent write-up on the interim joint report just issued by the House Judiciary Committee and the Committee on House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight (the one chaired by Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia).  As you know, just as the House report outlining the many security failures was being released, the FBI happened to release an update of its own, the most significant part of which seems to be that, after four years, they can say the pipe bomber was 5-foot-7.

For when you have time, this is a must-read.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/egregious-security-failures-mar-attempts-to-catch-the-jan-6-pipe-bomber-house-report-says

RELATED:  Even as Trump is certified as the President-elect, some on the left are still doing what they can to put black marks by his name.  Judge Juan Merchan knows he can’t put President Trump in jail, much as he wants to, for those 34 counts of “falsifying business records” (for perfectly legal NDA payments to Stormy Daniels being labeled “legal expenses”), but he’s going through the motions of a sentencing hearing anyway, just so Trump can technically be referred to as a convicted felon.

As you know, this case is filled with reversible error, and on the bright side, once this step is taken, Trump can file his appeal.  But in the meantime, the left gets to call Trump a convicted felon, which they will richly enjoy even though it means nothing to the people who support him and know he was railroaded.  Jonathan Turley explains the nature of the left’s “consolation prize.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/01/03/how-the-trump-team-reacted-to-judge-merchans-sentencing-date-n2649970

Here’s more from the Victory Girls blog.  Of course, Merchan timed this for ten days before Trump’s inauguration…

https://victorygirlsblog.com/merchan-rules-trump-to-be-sentenced-on-january-10-but-no-jail-time/

SEMI-RELATED:  Since some political adversaries are as unhinged as ever, and Trump still has the “old” Secret Service, many of his supporters have expressed concern about his plan to have a victory rally in DC the day before his inauguration.  At least it’s indoors, at Capitol One Arena, rather than in the open air, but still...perhaps he could rethink that?  It might be better --- safer --- to keep the transition of power low-key.  The inauguration the following day is worrisome enough.

Come to think of it, with so much at stake, couldn’t President Trump just be sworn in INSIDE the White House, with lots of big-screen coverage outside?  We’d happily go for that.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2025/01/02/trump-will-hold-massive-rally-in-dc-right-before-inauguration-n2649904

Mike Huckabee

In a particularly in-your-face story, the White House announced on Thursday that President Biden would be awarding Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson and Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, co-chairs of the House “Select” Committee on January 6, the Presidential Citizens Medal, the second highest award that’s given to civilians.  And that’s what he did, in a White House ceremony that very day.

Cheney and Thompson were among a group of 20 whom Biden said had “performed exemplary deeds of service” (right, for him!) and are bonded by “their common decency and commitment to serving others.”

“The country is better because of their dedication and sacrifice.”

In reference to Cheney, Biden said, “Throughout two decades in public service, including as a Congresswoman from Wyoming and Vice Chair of the Committee on the January 6 attack, she has raised her voice --- and reached across the aisle --- to defend our Nation and the ideals we stand for:  Freedom.  Dignity.  And decency.  Her integrity and intrepidness remind us all what is possible if we work together.”

(We’ll pause while you fall to the floor and roll around laughing helplessly. Biden uses the word “decency” a lot, but we do not think he knows what it means.)

Of course, Cheney didn’t just reach across the aisle; she sailed all the way across, and that’s what she was being rewarded for.  President Trump has made much more fitting comments about Cheney --- for example, when he said last month on “Meet the Press” that she and Thompson deserve to go to jail for their work on that committee but that he would not direct his AG or FBI director to go after them.  By all appearances, they tampered with at least one witness (fabulist Cassidy Hutchinson), suppressed exculpatory evidence, and deliberately destroyed records that they were required to turn over to congressional Republicans.  The J6 Committee was a sham, and they were the ones in charge.

Fortunately, the fed-up voters of Wyoming had the final say about Cheney, who couldn’t even win her primary this time around, losing in a landslide to challenger Harriet Hageman.  So Liz can take her award and stuff it...well, into a drawer back home, mercifully far from Washington, DC.

https://dailycaller.com/2025/01/02/joe-biden-january-6-sixth-committee-leaders-presidential-citizens-medal-liz-cheney-bennie-thompson-trump-response/

Yet the DC crowd reveres her for throwing the rules out the window to go after Trump and paint him as an “insurrectionist.”  Oh, yes, she’s in very good standing with them.  In fact, during Thursday’s awards ceremony in the East Room, they gave her a standing ovation.  If you just can’t bring yourself to believe that something this preposterous actually happened, here’s the video; fast-forward to 9:30.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhv9QGV6as0

The uproarious applause and standing O for Cheney were sparked when the announcer said she was being honored for “putting the American people over party.”  Sorry, should have warned you to have your barf bags handy.  This recognition of Cheney and Thompson marks the least deserved awards since President Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize for being born.

Soon after this spectacle, Thompson was also singled out for his own standing O, after being acknowledged for “his lifelong dedication to safeguarding the Constitution.”  Again, not kidding.  He’s the one who, before his committee’s public hearings, said he’d be holding them because “the public needs to know what to think.”

When asked by CNN last month if he would accept a pre-emptive pardon from President Biden, Thompson said, “It’s his prerogative.  If he offers it to me or other members of the committee…I would accept it, but it’s his choice.”

Heck, Biden has commuted the death sentences of vicious murderers, so why not this?  According to sources for NBC NEWS, Biden and his senior aides have discussed issuing pre-emptive pardons “for those who could become targets of Trump in his next administration.”  See, Biden HAS to pardon them!  It’s Trump’s fault, for daring to seek retribution! Or as many other Americans would call it, “justice.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-presidential-citizens-medal-jan-6-liz-cheney-bennie-thompson-rcna186004

Brit Hume has it right, in a post on X: “This is repulsive.  That investigation was done by a committee all of whose members were chosen by Nancy Pelosi, and was produced like a TV show.  There was no cross examination of witnesses.  The media fell for it, but it was utterly one-sided.  A show trial.”

By the way, as Guy Benson posted on X, Bennie Thompson refused to certify George W. Bush’s win in 2004.  Isn’t that an act of insurrection?

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/01/02/did-anyone-catch-what-was-odd-about-liz-cheney-getting-a-presidential-medal-n2649898

Recall that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in violation of the rules establishing the committee,  personally chose the two Republicans on it, Cheney and then-Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, whose work on the committee was so unpopular that he retired ahead of the 2022 election.

Tyler Durden at LIBERTY DAILY offers a good refresher on the allegations of witness tampering against Cheney, as reported by Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk, chairman of the House subcommittee looking into the J6 Committee.  Loudermilk says he’s concluded that “numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney” and called for an investigation by the FBI.

As Durden notes, if Trump’s DOJ pursues Cheney, she’ll undoubtedly invoke immunity under the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution, which protects lawmakers from criminal liability related to their legislative duties.  We shall see how that goes.  It’s probable that she won’t need to, though, as Biden’s likely going to preemptively pardon her, anyway. He might as well, having already debased the pardon power just as he’s debased the honor of receiving this medal.

https://thelibertydaily.com/traitor-joe-award-bennie-thompson-liz-cheney-second/

Of Cheney’s selection for the award, Miranda Devine of the NEW YORK POST said on X, “She should have had enough self-respect to refuse it.”  Well, she doesn’t, though she did look kind of uncomfortable up there.

https://x.com/mirandadevine/status/1874955594559590550

As reported at REDSTATE, the J6 Committee has been accused by congressional colleagues of failing to preserve a massive number of documents --- 1.5 to 2 terabytes’ worth of information --- and deleting over 100 encrypted files, despite then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy demanding they preserve all records.  Fortunately, they were later recovered by a forensics team.

President Biden politicized last year’s awards, too, holding them on January 6 and giving awards to several Capitol Police officers, including a posthumous award for Officer Brian Sicknick, whom the administration falsely maintained had died as a result of injuries that day.  Biden actually said that Sicknick, along with officer William Evans, were killed by insurrectionists.  (As you know, Sicknick died of a stroke, after the riot, and his death was ruled by natural causes.  Evans was killed months later by a follower of the Nation of Islam.)

https://redstate.com/rusty-weiss/2025/01/02/biden-to-bestow-j6-committee-circus-clowns-liz-cheney-bennie-thompson-with-second-highest-civilian-award-n2183844

Well, that’s about all we can stomach about Liz Cheney for one day.  But in case you missed it in Thursday’s newsletter, here’s a very intriguing prediction she made in December 2020, before Trump’s January 6 rally and the vote certification:  that the joint session of Congress that day was likely to be disrupted by a bomb threat and possible evacuation.

Sure enough, on January 6, two pipe bombs were “discovered” very close to the Capitol.  So, where did Liz get her crystal ball?  What did she know back then that we didn’t know?  For when you have time, if you didn’t see it, there’s much more detail here...

https://www.declassified.live/p/liz-cheney-predicted-the-jan-6-bomb

Speaking of the J6 pipe bombs, the committee headed by Barry Loudermilk and Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie has released its report on the events of January 6 and the work of the J6 “Select” Committee, and it’s quite damning about the search for the so-called pipe bomber. 

As Julie Kelly reports, “...the failure to locate the J6 pipe bomber doesn’t add up considering the extensive investigative tools still being used by the FBI to track down and arrest j6 protesters, a caseload now approaching 1,600 individuals.”  If they can find all those people, why can’t they find this person?  Sure seems as though they don’t want to find him.  With so many questions remaining, Kelly’s report is a must-read…

https://www.declassified.live/p/house-report-discloses-new-information

According to THE GATEWAY PUNDIT, the FBI has stopped cooperating with congressional investigators on the pipe bomber case.  For when you have time, theirs is an excellent write-up…

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/01/breaking-bombshell-house-report-reveals-new-information-fbis/

Finally, as David Spunt reported Thursday night on FOX NEWS “Special Report” --- in a segment tellingly called “Whatever happened to…?” --- the FBI has just released “new footage” (huh?) of the hooded pipe bomber suspect.  He’s shown at “approximately 7:54 PM” on January 5, 2021, sitting on the bench outside the DNC headquarters, the location where one of two pipe bombs was “discovered” on January 6, just about the time the vote certification was scheduled to start.

Spunt said that “agents know now the person’s height --- 5-foot-7.”  Are they telling us it’s taken four years to figure out his HEIGHT??

The FBI says it’s assessed over 600 tips, reviewed about 39,000 video files and conducted over 1,000 interviews during the past four years.  They’ve even produced an illustration of the suspect’s Nike shoe, the Air Max Speed Turf.  This seems to be all they’ve got on the mystery guy after FOUR YEARS.  But, hey, the $500,000 reward still stands (and will continue to).

The fact that the FBI is releasing new video now is just bizarre.  Did they time this to distract from Loudermilk’s J6 report?  Here’s the FOX story, but we can’t wait to see what Julie Kelly has to say about it.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/fbi-releases-video-showing-january-2021-pipe-bomb-suspect-planting-device-outside-dnc-rnc-offices-dc

Mike Huckabee

Dale from Illinois shared a memory of when his family asked for no gifts, but got the best gift ever:

“My most memorable Christmas was the one that I asked for no gifts. We didn't decorate or even put up a tree. Seven weeks earlier, we had a new grandson. He was born with heart problems and was airlifted to a hospital in Peoria, Illinois, where they did heart surgery on newborns. He spent the first five weeks of his life in Intensive Care after two open heart surgeries.

My wife and I were so grateful to God for our grandson that we accepted him as our gift. There was nothing that could compete with God's gift of healing. Our grandson made a wonderful Christmas.”

You’ve heard the term, a “hard candy Christmas”? Well, Kathy from Kentucky recalled a Christmas when hard candy would’ve seemed like a luxury. And “not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse” was more than could be hoped for. But somehow, it can end up as a happy memory if you can just keep your sense of humor:

“To start with, it was a Christmas I will never forget. I had married at age fourteen, partly to escape the hand of life I was dealt, with parents neither of (whom) seemed to want me or my siblings. We were shuffled from here to there, staying with family or staying alone many nights by ourselves by the time I was 11 years old.

I had married so young trying to escape and have some kind of normal family. At least that’s what I felt at the time. I was much more mature at age 14 than most 25-year-olds today. It was our second Christmas together and we didn't have very much money, but I was 16 by this time and was expecting our first of four children I would eventually have. I so much wanted to have a Christmas tree and decorate it.

Well, with my meager budget, I felt the old-fashioned way might be my best bet. My tree had a few hand-me-down ornaments that were scratched and tattered. I also managed to buy a pack of the old-fashioned icicles that looked like shredded aluminum foil shavings. In 1973, we didn't have all the new shimmering decorations.

I also took a bag of cranberries and some popcorn and strung it to make a stream of garland. I thought our little hand-cut cedar tree was beautiful. It had taken me all day to string the cranberries and popcorn. I strung them around the tree trying to cut corners so they would cover more area. Finally, the tree was decorated.

That night, I went to bed with a few little presents and a beautiful tree. At the time, we lived in an old house we rented, and there were cracks big enough that you could throw a cat through around the windows. I was used to cold houses and not-so-fine furnishings. At 16, I was doing pretty good, I thought. I just couldn't wait to show my Christmas tree and what a fine job I had done.

I woke up the next morning and walked into our simple little living room to see my tree. My heart sank, I just couldn't believe it. The mice had eaten all my popcorn and several of the cranberries! I was devastated, but after the shock wore off, my husband and I just laughed and laughed 

Even after that, I still put popcorn strings on our tree. Later, my four kids would help. The happiest Christmases I remember were ones when we had very little materially but had generosity in our hearts. 

I have since gone to college with those four kids and am now a retired teacher. The one thing I always tried to teach my kids as well as my students is that it's not how much money you spend, it is about how much love and generosity is in your heart. Money does not make you happy, love does.”

Beth from Texas offered a story whose moral is that anything can become a cherished memory if it’s associated with the joy of Christmas, and I do mean ANYTHING!...

“For many years, my sister (who teaches Kindergarten) and I would deliver any gifts from the Angel tree at K-Mart that had not been picked up by Christmas Eve. Many of the names were ones familiar to my sister, and we loaded up the car and put on our Santa hats and went delivering in everything from snow to rain...this to us was the true meaning of Christmas.

One place we would always stop about half-way through our deliveries was the Beasley Memorial Funeral Home - it had a drive-up viewing window in front!

The first Christmas after K-Mart closed, my sister and I were both at loose ends on Christmas Eve. I drove us over to sit in the driveway of the funeral home so it felt more like Christmas Eve. Happy to say some of our best Christmas Eves were spent sitting in that driveway! Merry Christmas to you!”

Speaking of trees, sometimes the tree itself can be your best Christmas memory. One thing we all learned from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is that it’s not how fancy your tree is that matters, it’s the love it represents.  Vicky from California sent a beautiful story that illustrated that as well as Charles M. Schulz did.

Vicky recalled a time years before, when her young family was desperately poor and struggling to provide Christmas for their three small children.  Her husband brought home a tree, but was so exhausted after working 14 hours, he hadn't noticed it was dead and brown on one side. 

A neighbor tried to help by giving them a little 18-inch, lighted tabletop tree.  Vickie thought it was so small and ugly, she began to cry at the thought that this shrunken thing would be their family's tree.  Just then, her little daughter began to cry, too, and hugged her. But she was crying for a very different reason.

The little girl said in awe, “That is the most beautiful tree I have ever seen. Do we really get to have that as our tree this year?" 

Vicki wrote, “I had a permanent attitude change.  That night, I couldn't stop thanking our Heavenly Father enough for His blessings.”  

Thank you, Vicki. That story puts a new spin on “a little child shall lead them.” 

Finally, Andrea from Texas has a story of a Christmas tree that made Charlie Brown’s sad little tree look good. But just as in the classic “Peanuts” special, all it took was a little love to make it beautiful – and it wasn’t even technically a tree: 

“During the time Carter was president, my mother was working two jobs. We still couldn't afford a Christmas tree. Living in Yuma, Arizona made it hard to find one to cut and use, obviously 

One day my brother and I decided to surprise her before she came home. We found a tumbleweed of good size and made a stand for it. We made a star for the top out of the ‘tree’ out of cardboard, wrapping it in aluminum foil. Having some school glue and some glitter, we took little trinkets and decorated them, attached string and hung (them) on the tumbleweed.

When she came home, she couldn't believe her eyes. That was the prettiest Christmas (weed) tree. Although we didn't have any gifts and not much of anything else, it was one of the happiest Christmases we ever had. We told jokes, and Christmas cheer in our little home was abundant. I was only 13, but ‘til this day, that is one of the most memorable Christmases ever. God Bless and Merry Christmas to All!”

Merry Christmas to you, too, Andrea, and we hope you and your family are still tumbling along!

Mike Huckabee

These past few years have been tough financially for many people, but Anita in New Mexico reminds us that we have survived hard times before:

“In the 1950's, my stepfather suffered a severe illness. Christmas had always been ‘light weight,’ although we didn't know it; there was love to go around and a great dinner.

On Christmas Eve, the doorbell rang and there stood a group of church people, not from our church, with gifts, some wrapped, others were secondhand, but they were new to us!!!! There were more gifts than we had ever seen before, and my mother made sure some went to other homes.

I hadn't experienced such a love of giving before, and it always makes my memories of Christmas special to the point that I enjoy helping where I can and just enjoying the day with my husband with food and remembering exactly what the day is all about.”

These days, we have a phrase, “Random acts of kindness.” Jo from Tennessee shared out an anonymous act of generosity can seem like a miracle to the recipient:

“In May of 1991, my husband died suddenly of a heart attack. I was a ‘stay at home’ mom of three boys, ages 6, 8, and 10. We had $10,000 in life insurance and debt up to our eyeballs. I was so afraid we would wind up homeless that Christmas was out of my mind, until the church secretary called me into her office and gave me an envelope with my name on it.

It had been left for me anonymously and even my name was stenciled on the front, so I could not identify the writing. It contained $100, and I will never forget it. 

My kids are grown and have their own homes now, but that gift made our Christmas easier when we were very sad and will be in my heart forever.”

Thanks, Jo, for sharing that, and we’re glad things are better for your family now. I hope your story encourages others to be generous to strangers in need. What might feel like a small gift to those who give it could be a miracle for those who receive it.

Jerry from Florida also shared a memory of a hard-time Christmas that was made wonderful by the generosity of others:

“My greatest Christmas was when I was five years old. My mother had taken my brother, sister and myself away from an abusive father, and we were on our own. To say we were poor would be an understatement. My mom rented an old house, and she supported us on a waitress’s wages. She refused to accept welfare and told us that as long as we had each other and love that we would make it. We had our own garden and even as small kids worked to help. We had so very little. Quite often, we had to drink powdered milk and eat bread and gravy three times a day. A hot dog was considered a luxury.

Christmas that year looked bleak. We had no money, but it was the happiest time of my life because we had love. Love of family and neighbors. There was one present for each of us kids that Christmas Eve as we went to bed.

On Christmas morning, we all came down to open our present. An unbelievable sight awaited us. We got to the door of the living room and our eyes widened. There were so many toys and presents that you couldn’t even hardly get in the room. Toy trucks!! Bicycles!!! Our joy and surprise were great.

We lived in a small town…Williamsfield, Illinois. Our neighbors knew we had so little. After us kids had gone to bed on Christmas Eve, the knocks on the door started. People from all over town brought things. That is the type of people I had the honor to grow up with. No government. No welfare. Just neighbors helping neighbors by living the Christian values we were all taught.

I think of that Christmas morning so long ago today and still get a smile and a tear. It was the greatest Christmas I ever had.

My mom went on to remarry to a great guy who adopted us. They worked hard to provide us a better life and live the American Dream. Mom went back to college after we were older and at the age of 38 graduated Summa Cum Laude and taught school for years. Today they live comfortably in retirement.

I think of those days and how poor we were, but I also think of the values instilled in me by a loving mother and a great community. Values that taught us about self-reliance and helping your neighbor. These were the greatest lessons learned from my greatest Christmas.”

Thank you, Anita and Jerry, for that reminder of what a difference it makes to have churches and communities that gather together to help those who are in need. We need that more than ever now, if our politicians would just stop waging war on our churches and communities.

Melvin  from Oregon wrote to share memories of a couple of Christmases that were made very special, thanks to a grandfather who never forgot what it was like to be a kid at Christmas.

“Christmas 1944: I am four years old and my dad is still overseas, so mom and I are staying with my grandparents. Christmas eve, it's time for me to hang up my sock. I'm just getting ready to hang it on the mantle when grandpa comes in. He has a giant sock and a big metal wash tub. I ask him what he is doing, and this is what he tells me:

‘I'm going to hang this big old sock up.’ He hangs his sock up then he puts the wash tub under the sock. He shows me that there is a hole in the toe of the sock, and it has a tennis ball in the hole. He then tells me that ‘when Santa comes tonight, he will start putting good stuff in his big old sock, and the tennis ball will fall out.’ Santa will keep stuffing his sock and the presents will fall into the wash tub, and he will get way more stuff than I will in my little old sock.

Well, I'm only four years old, but I know this ain't right. I go running to grandma and tell her that grandpa is going to cheat Santa. Grandma says, ‘Don't worry, because I know that Santa is much smarter than your grandpa is.’ So I go off to bed, but I am not happy.

Christmas morning comes. I run downstairs and see that my grandpa has a sour look on his face. I see my sock has all kinds of good stuff in it. I look at grandpa’s sock, and the wash tub is full. It has an old rubber boot with a big hole in it, a big half-rotten squash, some chunks of coal, an old broken shovel etc., etc. I guess grandma was right after all. Santa is smarter than grandpa.”

The next year, Melvin’s grandpa was still putting creativity into Christmas…

“Christmas 1945.  I am five years old, and we are still staying with my grandparents…My father was in Japan in the Second World War, his two brothers were in the European theater.  All three came home OK. I thank God for that and for all of the men that have gone before.

We are trimming the Christmas tree. Grandpa comes in, and he has all of these walnuts that he has painted silver and put a yarn loop on to hang them with. I think they’re neat, but that’s about it.

Christmas morning, I come down and start opening my presents. Grandpa says, ‘Why don't you open one of those walnuts?’ I say ‘Naw, I got to open my presents’… Well grandpa keeps after me. Finally, I say, ‘Okay!’  So I crack a walnut open, and a penny falls out. Well, NOW I'm opening walnuts!  There's dimes, nickels, and pennies.  When I get done, I have about a dollar fifty, and that’s big money in 1945.

…My grandfather thought enough of me to take the time to cut the walnuts open and take out the meat for grandma to cook with. Then he put a coin in and glued each one back together, just to make a little five-year-old boy happy on Christmas morning.

Sixty-five years later, I don't remember anything else I got that Christmas.  But I remember the walnuts and the love that went into making them. That might be something for young parents to think about... It really is the little things that count the most.” 

Thanks, Melvin, for giving us all something important to remember before we go frantically hunting for whatever the latest “hot” gift is. It’s not so much the gift that we remember years later, but the person who loved us enough to give it to us that matters.    

Mike Huckabee

Melvin from Oregon wrote to share memories of a couple of Christmases that were made very special, thanks to a grandfather who never forgot what it was like to be a kid at Christmas.

“Christmas 1944: I am four years old and my dad is still overseas, so mom and I are staying with my grandparents. Christmas eve, it's time for me to hang up my sock. I'm just getting ready to hang it on the mantle when grandpa comes in. He has a giant sock and a big metal wash tub. I ask him what he is doing, and this is what he tells me:

‘I'm going to hang this big old sock up.’ He hangs his sock up then he puts the wash tub under the sock. He shows me that there is a hole in the toe of the sock, and it has a tennis ball in the hole. He then tells me that ‘when Santa comes tonight, he will start putting good stuff in his big old sock, and the tennis ball will fall out.’ Santa will keep stuffing his sock and the presents will fall into the wash tub, and he will get way more stuff than I will in my little old sock.

Well, I'm only four years old, but I know this ain't right. I go running to grandma and tell her that grandpa is going to cheat Santa. Grandma says, ‘Don't worry, because I know that Santa is much smarter than your grandpa is.’ So I go off to bed, but I am not happy.

Christmas morning comes. I run downstairs and see that my grandpa has a sour look on his face. I see my sock has all kinds of good stuff in it. I look at grandpa’s sock, and the wash tub is full. It has an old rubber boot with a big hole in it, a big half-rotten squash, some chunks of coal, an old broken shovel etc., etc. I guess grandma was right after all. Santa is smarter than grandpa.”

The next year, Melvin’s grandpa was still putting creativity into Christmas…

“Christmas 1945.  I am five years old, and we are still staying with my grandparents…My father was in Japan in the Second World War, his two brothers were in the European theater.  All three came home OK. I thank God for that and for all of the men that have gone before.

We are trimming the Christmas tree. Grandpa comes in, and he has all of these walnuts that he has painted silver and put a yarn loop on to hang them with. I think they’re neat, but that’s about it.

Christmas morning, I come down and start opening my presents. Grandpa says, ‘Why don't you open one of those walnuts?’ I say ‘Naw, I got to open my presents’… Well grandpa keeps after me. Finally, I say, ‘Okay!’  So I crack a walnut open, and a penny falls out. Well, NOW I'm opening walnuts!  There's dimes, nickels, and pennies.  When I get done, I have about a dollar fifty, and that’s big money in 1945.

…My grandfather thought enough of me to take the time to cut the walnuts open and take out the meat for grandma to cook with. Then he put a coin in and glued each one back together, just to make a little five-year-old boy happy on Christmas morning.

Sixty-five years later, I don't remember anything else I got that Christmas.  But I remember the walnuts and the love that went into making them. That might be something for young parents to think about... It really is the little things that count the most.” 

Thanks, Melvin, for giving us all something important to remember before we go frantically hunting for whatever the latest “hot” gift is. It’s not so much the gift that we remember years later, but the person who loved us enough to give it to us that matters.    

Mike Huckabee

This story reminds us that no matter how bad off we think we are, there are others in greater need. And nothing reflects the spirit of Christmas more than someone who gives to others even when they have very little themselves. Dorothy from North Carolina wrote:

“It's been a few years ago now that through an unusual set of circumstances I met a dear Christian lady named Hilda N-----. Hilda had endured many hardships in life…Now, in her later years… she lived in abject poverty with…crippling arthritis. It was Christmas and I had a gift for Hilda. Mark and I were dating at the time and I asked him to go with me to Hilda's humble home… But it wasn't my gift that I've remembered all these years...it was HER gift, given liberally out of her poverty, that I will never forget.

She and I had exchanged gifts, her gift to me a small ceramic bell with a cross at the top from the dollar store. And then came the moment I cherish yet today. She looked at Mark apologetically and reached down into the cushion of the chair…fumbling until she finally retrieved a small, zippered change purse. Her gnarled, misshapen fingers (terribly twisted from the arthritis) moving slowly and with painful effort, she managed to open the purse… Finally, she turned to Mark and, pulling out a folded, crumpled $1.00 bill, she held it out to him.

Her soft, quiet voice and loving manner gave eloquence to the gesture. ‘I didn't know YOU were coming so I didn't have a gift for you. Here’, she handed him the dollar bill, ‘Merry Christmas.’

Tears sprang to my eyes as I knew what a sacrifice was represented in the giving of the dollar bill. Her heart of love and her desire to share the little she had gave her gift more meaning than a purse full of gold.”

Thank you, Dorothy, and Hilda, for reminding us that Christmas isn’t about what we get, it’s about what we give.

Phillis from Arkansas experienced a tough Christmas that truly made her appreciate why it’s more blessed to give than to receive:

“In 1989, my youngest daughter was in the hospital with a ruptured appendix. She was there for 28 days, and the doctor did not expect her to live. I was student teaching, and we were living on my husband's teaching salary of under $20000, and we had two other children. To say the least, money was tight, but we were praising the Lord that He had performed a miracle and our little girl was alive.

I had already told the children that Christmas was going to be very little, because of this money situation. Our church got together and had a money tree for us. They said people gave who never had given to any money tree. They collected over $400 to give to us...

This really humbled us. We had always been the ones to give to money trees, and it was very hard to be given to. It brought to mind that ‘it is more blessed to give than receive.’ We thanked God and the people for all they did to make my kids’ Christmas, but also my prayer was that I never had to be in the position where I had to receive rather than give. God has answered that prayer, and we feel blessed to be able to continue to give to the Lord's work.

That is such a memorable Christmas, because it shows how God's people came together to help their brothers and sister in Christ when there was a need. It continues to touch my heart to remember how much Christ and his people love each other.”

Reed from Texas also recalled a childhood Christmas when someone went above and beyond to make sure the kids had Christmas gifts. Or maybe that was just the real Santa:

“Our Christmas in the 1950's started at around the 10th of December. My mom would send all of us boys, four in all, out to the fields when we lived in the Kentucky countryside to find that perfect Christmas tree. It would be about four-to-five-feet tall. Dragging it back we could feel the magicial season excitement already stirring in our hearts.

With so little at the house all year, the thought of new toys and candy were enough to set the minds of our young souls on fire for the next 15 days and even after Christmas day. That Christmas Eve, after opening our traditional presents to each other (simple gifts, of course), the front door flew open and in walked Santa Claus with his big bag of presents.

Yelling out his best ‘HO HO HO,’ he asked us if we all had been good all year and of course we all answered yes, we had. He then opened his big bag and handed out each a nice toy and then closed his bag and headed to the door, but turned around and said for us to get to bed early and he will return for some more goodies for us to open in the morning on Christmas day. Waving goodbye, he shouted Merry Christmas to us all.

My mom told us for years later that she had no idea who that was and no neighbor would confess it was any of them!! Who was it, well, it was, of course, Santa Claus. Only he would have a key to our front door, right...??”

Finally, speaking of playing Santa, Jeff from Florida shared a hilarious story about both the joys and dangers of playing Santa’s helper:

“Dad had been the Mall Santa enough years that he earned the privilege to be the official Santa for the arrival to mark the beginning of the Holiday season. The Mall wanted to add extra special characters to add to the excitement. Dad asked if a friend and I would be interested, so Frosty and Rudolph were added to the arrival festivities. I was to be Frosty.

Shortly before Santa’s arrival, the three of us, in costume, were held in a secluded location waiting for the arrival signal. I have to admit I was excited and a bit nervous regarding the prospects of playing the part for the children anxiously waiting. When the signal was given, Santa, Frosty and Rudolph entered a large area at the center of the Mall.

In the middle of this area was a large waterfall and pool area near Santa’s chair. A crowd of several hundred children and parents were assembled. Santa was to make his way to his chair at Santa’s Workshop. Frosty and Rudolph were to mingle among the children and assist in forming a line to visit Santa.

The Frosty suit involved a large round fiberglass middle and head, Frosty’s mouth was a black screen through which I was to see and navigate through the crowd. As I maneuvered through the children, they were very excited to see Frosty (and) shake his hand, along with countless hugs. At this time, I had lost sight of Santa and had no idea where Rudolph was. Due to my excitement and the encounters with all the children, I began to lose my sense of direction, adding to my nervousness.

My vision makes it necessary that I wear glasses. Slowly, the heat being generated inside Frosty’s head caused condensation to fog my glasses. It was about this time that I remembered the waterfall and pool. Visions of Frosty falling into the water filled my head, adding to the anxiety and fogging my glasses even more. Since my face was completely encased inside Frosty’s head, I was unable to get to my glasses. I soon learned that if I took a deep breath and blow out of Frosty’s mouth, it would help lessen the fog on my glasses.

However, after taking several breaths and with great effort to exhale out of Frosty’s mouth, I began to get a little lightheaded. And all this time I could feel all the little hands touching and hearing how much they loved Frosty as I blindly wandered among the children. Trying very hard to remain in character and not ruin such a happy time, I realized I had to regain control.

Just then, I realized that I could rub my face against the inside of Frosty’s head and knock my glasses off. This, of course, improved my sense of direction, though still not very clear. I was able to continue Frosty’s journey through the throngs of children without incident and especially avoid falling into the waterfall pool.

Beginning the Holiday season with Santa’s arrival taught me many things that day, most importantly, the joyful rewards of seeing the Christmas spirit in children’s eyes as they got to see the wonder of Santa Claus and hug Frosty the Snowman with his magic hat and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.”

Thanks, Jeff. I hope it also taught you that you’re going to keep playing Frosty, you’d better get contact lenses!

Mike Huckabee

Yesterday, we dared to question the pardoning authority of a President who is clearly not playing with a full deck.  The undercover video recently obtained by James O’Keefe makes it clear that those working with Biden have known how serious his condition was and just kept it quiet (at least until they went out on first dates).

Here’s PJ MEDIA on that video, in case you didn’t see our story, and even if you did…

https://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2024/12/17/okeefes-latest-sting-nsc-officer-says-joe-biden-is-like-dead-n4935190

Biden hasn’t been functioning well for a long time, but only in recent months has this been widely acknowledged, though his party declined to invoke the 25^th Amendment.  Not only has the sitting President pardoned close to 1,500 of his closest friends, but many more are reportedly anticipating blanket pardons along the order of what Hunter Biden received, covering them for whatever they might have done during a set period of time.  This turns the whole pardon authority on its head.

“...Joe is only getting started,” said FOX NEWS’ Sean Hannity Tuesday night.  “How many other Bidens will be pardoned by the time this is all said and done?  Will Joe pardon himself, [with one of] these ‘pre-emptive’ pardons?”  Hannity went on to cite a few confounding examples of Biden’s inexplicable clemency, such as the doctor found guilty of diluting chemotherapy drugs being given to cancer patients (!!!).  Using presidential authority to let this person walk free after what she did is unconscionable.

Just wondering:  How would Joe Biden have liked it if his son Beau’s doctor had done the same thing to Beau during his treatment for brain cancer?  Would that have deserved clemency?

At the time this doctor was sentenced, U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III said, “It’s a very small thing to send this woman to jail for the next 20 years when you compare it to the damage she has done.”  But for some reason, whoever put that piece of paper in front of President Biden for him to sign thought differently, and so this (former?) doctor has a get-out-of-jail-free card.  We’d love to know what Judge Jordan thinks about this.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bidens-clemency-doc-chemotherapy-fraud-scheme-contrasts-longtime-cancer-moonshot-advocacy

Biden also commuted the sentences of two Chinese spies convicted of espionage (WHAT??), as well as the relative of a high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party convicted of possessing over 47,000 images of child porn on his computer.  This was reportedly part of a prisoner swap, an exchange for three Americans who were being held there.

At the time of the sentencing of one of the spies, Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “Today’s sentencing demonstrates the seriousness of those crimes and the Justice Department’s determination to investigate and prosecute efforts by the Chinese government, or any foreign power, to threaten our economic and national security.”

Well, so much for that!

The NEW YORK POST story is a must-read.  (The POST has uncovered a wealth of CCP spying in New York City.)

https://nypost.com/2024/12/13/world-news/biden-pardons-high-ranking-chinese-spies/

Even the “fact”-checkers at NEWSWEEK have confirmed that the story on Biden giving clemency to these three Chinese criminals, two of them spies, is TRUE.  This may or may not be part of a prisoner swap, they say.

https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-joe-biden-pardon-chinese-spies-2000732

Of this transition period, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said, “When you look at the vote of the American people, and you look at how clear the issues were, and some of what’s gone on, it’s not technically treason, but it is certainly a deliberate and willful undermining of the American people --- not undermining Donald Trump; he’s undermining the American people.”

These are the American people who want a border wall built and a tougher relationship with China, he said.  “And I’m watching what I think is a deliberate, and I think malicious and despicable, undermining of the American people.”

“...The Congress right now should be demanding records on every single commutation and pardon,” he continued, “’cause you have some really sick people who Joe Biden released.  I have no idea how they got on the list, and we ought to be able to track down every memo, every single example.  Why would these people, some of whom are pretty sick --- child pornographers, people who are totally corrupt, people who bankrupted small towns --- [have made that list]?  What the American people deserve is the truth, and we ought to be committed to giving [them] the facts.”

Incidentally, Gov. Huckabee appeared on Hannity’s show Tuesday night, along with former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, to talk about the transition and the strategies Biden is using to leave a gigantic mess behind.  Here’s that segment…

 Huckabee: They're underestimating what's coming under Trump - Read Mike's News Analysis - Mike Huckabee

“I think [Biden] underestimates what Donald Trump is gonna do when he gets into office,” the Gov. said.  “...That’s gonna be the beginning on January 20.  And I can’t wait.  It’s just not gonna get here quick enough.”

But that’s precisely the problem right now.  Biden and his puppeteers still have about five weeks in which to do their dirty work.  Much more clemency is likely, because why the heck not?  As for short-circuiting this by invoking the 25^th Amendment, that simply won’t happen when Cabinet members are in as much denial as the current ones are.  A startling new report from REDSTATE reveals that even members of Biden’s own Cabinet, when polled recently by FOX BUSINESS NEWS Digital, continued to stand by statements they have made concerning Biden’s absolute fitness to serve.

https://redstate.com/beckynoble/2024/12/17/biden-cabinet-officials-asked-if-biden-was-fit-to-serve-bizarro-world-ensues-n2183335

This poll was taken even after First Lady Jill Biden, in September, was actually put in charge of a Cabinet meeting.  And you’re aware of the President’s current state if you saw the undercover video obtained by James O’Keefe, in which someone who’s worked with Biden for over a year (probably longer) says everyone at the office knows the President is non-functional.  Staffers and Cabinet members might admit it to each other, but they obviously are NOT going on the record.

Here’s an example of a statement made in September by one of Biden’s Cabinet members, HHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas: 

"As I’ve said before, I come fully prepared for my meetings with President Biden, knowing his questions will be detail-oriented, probing, and exacting. In our exchanges, the President always draws upon our prior conversations and past events in analyzing the issues and reaching his conclusions."  Mayorkas said he had “full confidence” in Biden’s ability.  And on Monday, DHS stated that Mayorkas stands by his comments.

Good grief; they actually expect us to believe this.

“It’s a level of gaslighting rarely seen even in Washington,” says Becky Noble at REDSTATE.  “Once Joe Biden is gone, will anyone finally speak up because they think it’s ‘safe’?”

Yesterday, when we first began to tackle the issue of Biden’s incapacity as he (or someone) commits presidential pardon abuse, we looked for input from an attorney whom we respected.  Today, we have some, from Jonathan Turley.  And he’s very concerned that this idea of “pre-emptive pardons” is going to fundamentally change the nature of presidential power.  Turley --- perhaps because he grew up in the Democrat Party --- has strong insight into what they’re up to now and the damage they could wreak.

Such wholesale pardoning, he says, “will give Presidents cover to wipe away any threat of prosecution for friends, donors and associates.  This can include self-pardons issued as implied condemnations of their political opponents.  It could easily become the final act of every President to pardon himself and all of the members of his administration.  We would then have an effective immunity rule for outgoing parties in American politics. 

“...No President has seen fit to go as far as where Biden appears to be heading,” he says.  It’s uncharted territory.

The Democrats have touted a Trump “enemies list” but can’t prove there really is one, Turley says, so they’re introducing a Biden pardon list in anticipation of Trump’s supposed revenge (which Trump says he’s not doing).  “After years of lying to Americans about the influence peddling scandal and promising not to consider a pardon for his son,” Turley says, “Biden would end his legacy with the ultimate dishonesty: converting pardons into virtual party favors.”

“Joe Biden has become the President that Richard Nixon only imagined.  He would establish with utter clarity that this power is not presidential, but personal and political...and many in the Beltway are waiting to give him a standing ovation.”

Unfortunately, Turley does not get into Biden’s cognitive issues here, the fact of his mental decline.  Is there any way to legally address the validity of these many pardons and commutations --- and the precedent they set for future Presidents --- considering they’ve been signed by, as one investigator kindly put it, “an elderly man with a poor memory”?  And what if it can be determined that most of these came from donors, lobbyists and even global adversaries, set quickly before a vacant-eyed old codger in need of a nap, as a pen is placed in his hand? After all, he has been officially declared by a DOJ special counsel to be too old and incompetent to stand trial on his handling of classified documents, so how is he legally competent to sign pardons that don’t even fit the legal definition of a pardon but of blanket “Get Out Of Jail Free” cards?

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/12/17/the-danger-of-white-knight-pardons-biden-could-fundamentally-change-presidential-power/

Mike Huckabee

“My big issue is that I’m really, really sick and tired of every time I turn around, finding something else that the Democrats have lied about or downplayed or misrepresented along the way.”

That was podcaster Stephen A. Smith, speaking about the latest revelations about January 6.  He had a message to the Democrat Party, saying he was sick of the fact that when the likes of Megyn Kelly and Sean Hannity (and we’d be in that category) had anything to say “about something pertaining to y’all, THEY SEEM RIGHT.”

Well, we ARE right.  We’ve been right over and over and over again.

“They’ve actually made Donald Trump look like HE was right,” Smith said.  Well, yes.  That’s because he was.

https://rumble.com/v5zlzft-stephen-a.-smith-may-finally-be-fully-red-pilled-following-j6-revelation.html

We learned from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s J6 report last week that dozens of FBI informants (but only three “employees” per se) were at the Capitol building on January 6, 2021.  The media have been trying to soften this story as much as they can.  One example:  A headline from THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, quite a Democrat propaganda rag in a predominantly red state, said, “Review finds FBI missteps,” with the subhead, “...Report debunks theory of bureau’s involvement, participation.”

Um, did they READ the report?  But that’s the DMN for you.  (And they ran the AP story; same deal.)  This is why your humble writers choose to use its pages to line their parrots’ cages.

Anyway, back when Mike Lee was asking questions of FBI Director Christopher Wray about FBI involvement in January 6, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney called him a “nutball conspiracy theorist.”  But the report shows he was right to ask.  Long before it came out, but after she posted some J6 video, he responded, “Liz, we’ve seen footage like that a million times.  You made sure we saw that --- and nothing else.  It’s the other stuff --- which you deliberately hid from us --- that we find so upsetting.  Nice try.  PS.  How many of these guys are feds?  (As if you’d ever tell us).”

Well, now we know.

https://twitchy.com/samj/2024/12/15/mike-lee-liz-cheney-n2405223

Word is getting around that one of the FBI confidential human sources (informants) who entered the Capitol on January 6 --- an action for which many people are currently serving jail time --- not only was not prosecuted but also got his travel expenses reimbursed.  He later attended the inauguration, also with his bill footed by Uncle Sam.

As we quoted Michael Stenger, U.S. Senate Sergeant-at-Arms during January 6 (now deceased), “Investigations should be considered as to funding and travel of what appears to be professional agitators.”  You can see him here…

https://twitchy.com/samj/2024/12/12/fbi-connection-to-j6-gets-even-more-damning-n2405097

What, professional agitators working with the FBI?  How shocking!

And, of course, Wray hasn’t left yet.  The WASHINGTON TIMES ran a story about his plan to promote senior employees and somehow delay presumed incoming FBI Director Kash Patel by “three to four months.”

“If Wray succeeds,” the INDEPENDENT SENTINEL reports, “Patel will likely have trouble running the FBI effectively, as Wray’s deep state goons constantly leak and defy orders without repercussions.  This would be great news for dangerous criminals and awful news for law-abiding Americans.”

Patel had better have a plan for dealing with this.  But we have a feeling that, given his experience with these people, he does.  It needs to involve firing a lot of people, even those who just got promoted.  Especially them.

https://www.independentsentinel.com/wrays-insidious-plan-to-damage-kash-patel-from-day-1/

When the J6 report came out, one aspect of it was glaringly missing:  the pipe bomber story.  As Victoria Taft reports in PJ MEDIA, “The radio silence on what we’ve been assured are ‘viable’ pipe bombs planted outside the DNC and near the RNC on J6 continued in the Inspector General’s report when he offered only a few treacly paragraphs on the issue.”  The bombs were quickly dispensed with in just one mention on page 49.

This is looking more and more like a planned diversion (by...who?) to stop the counting of Electoral College votes when it was known Republican senators might be prepared to offer evidence of questionable ballot counting, perhaps even calling for an audit of the election.  Both bombs were “discovered” a very short while before the certification was scheduled to start.

Taft describes how she thinks this plan would have gone:  “All available cops would be sent to the bomb reports, the count would stop, Kamala Harris, the nation’s first woman of color who ascended to the nation’s second most powerful position and could have been killed by a ‘viable’ pipe bomb, would be feted as a woke heroine and survivor.  Joe Biden would officially be declared the winner.  Game over.”

We’ve never learned why VP-elect Kamala Harris --- there’s a name you won’t be hearing very often from now on, except in this context --- left the Capitol building to go to DNC headquarters that day.  Was she ever asked about this (or anything else) for the IG report?  NO.

Turned out, the Democrats didn’t need their pipe bomb story, because they got their riot.

Taft reminds us that all the Secret Service communications from both January 5 and 6 were destroyed in a very conveniently timed cell phone swap.  This happened in spite of four congressional committees ordering them to keep the data.  And even the “geofencing” that was used --- and continues to be used --- to track down J6 rallygoers was “corrupted” in the case of the so-called bomb planter.

Taft concludes that we were promised answers by the IG and got none, certainly about the pipe bombs, which were all but ignored.  Having called the pipe bomb story “the smoking gun” of January 6, investigative reporter Darren Beattie entreats Kash Patel: “As uncomfortable as it is, we will need soon-to-be FBI Director Kash Patel to take the sham pipe bomb story to its final conclusion.  I can hand it to him on a silver platter.”  And he can.

Just a thought:  this is one reason Chris Wray might want to delay Patel’s assumption of the directorship at the FBI. 

https://pjmedia.com/victoria-taft/2024/12/13/the-deafening-silence-over-the-j6-pipe-bombs-n4935107

Taft made the case over the weekend that “FBI agents were everywhere” that day.  She includes an excerpt from the IG report featuring a description of “SWAT teams” responding to the pipe bomb discoveries.  “Are SWAT members for the FBI not AGENTS?” she asks rhetorically.

“So, if we take the IG’s conclusion at face value,” Taft says, “if there were no FBI UNDERCOVER AGENTS there, how come there were so many FBI AGENTS there?  And does the lack of a uniform determine whether entrapment has taken place?”  The IG report seems to have just muddied the water.

https://pjmedia.com/victoria-taft/2024/12/13/the-deafening-silence-over-the-j6-pipe-bombs-n4935107

As outlined in a new report, Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt on January 6 (and was recently promoted to captain), was recommended for termination in 2001 for abandoning his post and lying about it to Internal Affairs.  A source told BLAZE MEDIA investigators that this was one of three disciplinary cases “for which records could not be found when a House oversight subcommittee [this must be Barry Loudermilk’s committee] requested them in early 2024.”

For when you have time, there’s much more here about Byrd’s dicey history with the Capitol Police.  Even after killing an unarmed person, Byrd was helped financially and continued to fail up.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/exclusive-officer-who-killed-ashli-babbitt-abandoned-us-capitol-post-for-card-game-lied-to-investigators-about-it-source-says

Bonchie at REDSTATE takes an even harsher tone. 

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2024/12/13/new-shocking-disgusting-revelations-about-the-uscp-officer-who-shot-and-killed-ashli-babbitt

In this highly recommended piece, John Solomon has more about the favoritism and financial benefits directed towards Byrd, much more than what other officers have received.  Why?

https://justthenews.com/accountability/hldofficer-who-shot-j6-protestor-shown-favoritism-capitol-police-under-political

Last week, the sentencing of one J6 defendant (on the same nonviolent charges that most J6 defendants have pleaded guilty to or been found guilty of), Philip Grillo, got pretty wild, as he and presiding Judge Royce Lamberth exchanged words.

Before handing down the sentence, Judge Lamberth said, “I will do my job as I’m bound by oath to do, and the President will do his.  It’s as simple as that.”  He said the administration of justice is necessary “no matter what the political winds of the day.”  (Not that the political winds had anything to do with this case being in his courtroom in the first place.  For someone who says he doesn’t care about the political winds, he has done his share of politicizing.)

Then Lamberth, true to Julie Kelly’s depiction of him as “one of the cruelest judges,” sentenced Grillo to a year in prison --- to begin IMMEDIATELY --- followed by one year of supervised release. 

But Grillo had the final word.  As he stood there, with the U.S. Marshal taking off his tie and belt and placing him in handcuffs to transport him to prison, he yelled at Lamberth, who was exiting the room, “Trump’s gonna pardon me anyways!” 

https://redstate.com/brutalbrittany/2024/12/13/january-6-defendant-to-notorious-judge-trumps-gonna-pardon-me-anyways-n2183158

And we’re counting the minutes till that.  In the meantime, Jonathan Turley is asking why the FBI informants whom we now know were at the Capitol walked free when nearly 1500 American citizens faced charges, some for just wandering through the Capitol building like tourists.  FOX NEWS’ Martha MacCallum talks with him here; you can also see Tucker Carlson’s revealing interview with former Capitol Hill Police Chief Steven Sund, if you missed that. 

https://revolver.news/2024/12/jonathan-turley-asks-the-million-dollar-question-about-all-those-j6-fbi-informants/

To end on a positive note, President Trump has just named Devin Nunes, former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and current CEO of Truth Social, to lead the Intelligence Advisory Board.  (He will stay on in his position with Truth Social.)  This board, made up of non-government people, “exists to provide an independent source of advice on the effectiveness of the intelligence community’s data and its data acquisition.”

Nunes is up there with Kash Patel as a great choice to help oversee reform of the intel community.  You know the IC can’t stand it, which is a good sign

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/devin-nunes-donald-trump-intelligence-advisory-board/2024

During the season when we hear “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” twice an hour, let’s take a moment to wish a happy 80^th birthday to “Little Miss Dynamite,” Brenda Lee. Brenda’s powerful voice propelled a number of songs to the charts in various genres from country to pop to rockabilly. She’s sold over 100 million records worldwide, and her 1960 hit “I’m Sorry” made her only the second woman to top the Billboard Hot 100 after Connie Francis. Last year, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” hit #1 again, making her the oldest artist ever to top the Billboard charts.

And now, something you won’t find anywhere else. Newsletter reader "opaobie" shares this personal anecdote about Brenda Lee. When his Oklahoma-born wife was a teenager, she saw Brenda at the Grand Ole Opry early in her career and it left a lasting impression:

“They were in the ladies’ restroom, and Brenda Lee accidentally left a (big diamond) ring on the sink after she washed her hands and walked out. My wife picked it up and went out and found her and returned it before she went backstage.

Brenda gave a shout out from the stage as she started her performance to the honest girl who found and returned her ring, proving that all the good things she had heard about ‘Okies’ (were) true...What a thrill for a young teenage girl.”

Just one of many thrills Brenda Lee has given us over the years. Happy Birthday!e

Some liberals have smugly assured the media that Pete Hegseth’s nomination as Defense Secretary is doomed, with one saying he’s like Bruce Willis in “The Sixth Sense” (SPOILER ALERT!): “He’s dead but just doesn’t know it yet.”

Someone forgot to tell that to Hegseth, or to Trump and J.D. Vance, who are doubling down on their support for Hegseth. And after having a second meeting with him – plus getting an earful from constituents – Republican Sen. Joni Ernst now seems to be leaning toward confirming him.

https://redstate.com/smoosieq/2024/12/09/new-ernst-signals-hegseth-vote-following-second-meeting-n2182994

There are a lot of ways in which Trump 2.0 is unlike the Trump who came to DC in 2016 with no experience at dealing with the eels and snakes inhabiting the swamp. He’s wise to their games now, and Democrats need to learn that decades-old sleazy accusations by anonymous sources are no longer a lethal political weapon.