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.

Brad Slager at REDSTATE has worked to put together the details on federal spending for POLITICO Pro and other news outlets that have been uncovered by DOGE, what he calls “eye-popping money figures that sometimes defy explanation.” Not all of what has appeared in the news has been accurate, he says, and, of course, we’re all about accuracy here.

Some have reported that all of POLITICO’s funding was coming from USAID, which, of course, is not true. But the payments made to POLITICO Pro, which is POLITICO’s coverage of the “DC” world for supposed “professional journalists” (ha), are, in Slager’s words, “significant sums,” estimated by some to be in the tens of millions of dollars over just the past “handful of years.”

“The scope of these government contracts is the issue,” Slager says, “and the sums paid out reveal a massive dose of revenue for the news outlet courtesy of federal contracts. This places POLITICO in a precarious position regarding objectivity.”

That might explain a lot. Or it might be sort of a chicken-or-the-egg thing.

Read the article for specific examples of what Slager is talking about. This particular news outlet had an exclusive deal within federal agencies. Why? They were raking in an incredible amount of money for these subscriptions, and each year there were price increases. As Slager says, “There is no way this can be considered a healthy matrix for unbiased news reporting to be taking place.”

Well, of course not! In this scenario, bias isn’t a bug; it’s a feature! This story is a must-read, just to see how it relates to the Hunter Biden laptop “Russian disinformation” lie...

https://redstate.com/bradslager/2025/02/06/untangling-some-inappropriate-financial-relationships-with-politico-other-outlets-and-the-federal-govt-n2185300

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.

Mike Huckabee

Yes, there’s more about the Trump administration “sending the Deep State to the outhouse,” as Miranda Devine at the NEW YORK POST colorfully puts it, but first, Rep. Barry Loudermilk’s subcommittee has turned up something new about the FBI’s “investigation” of the so-called pipe bomber from the night of January 5, 2021. Congress, not the FBI, is going to be the one to figure out what was really going on with that; in fact, it appears they’ll solve the case despite the FBI’s hinderances.

Rep. Loudermilk tells JUST THE NEWS that the subcommittee has heard back from all three major cellular carriers that the phone usage data they turned over to the FBI from that area --- the vicinity of the DNC and RNC headquarters --- on that night was “intact.” This directly contradicts what the head of the FBI’s investigation said about the data from one carrier being “corrupted” and not usable to identify the pipe bomb suspect.

Former Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office Steve D’Antuono told the subcommittee in June 2023 in a transcribed interview with the House Judiciary Committee --- the story doesn’t mention whether or not this was under oath --- that the FBI received corrupted data from one of the cell carriers and that it most likely had contained the identity of the pipe bomber. (Darn it!)

D’Antuono said in the interview that they’d done “a complete geofence” --- well, “not complete, because there’s some data that was corrupted by one of the providers, not purposely by them, right. It just --- unusual circumstance that we have corrupted data from one of the providers.”

“And for that day, which is awful because we don’t have that information to search. So could it have been that provider? Yeah, with our luck, you know, with this investigation, it probably was, right?”

Yeah, right, that investigation was just PLAGUED with bad luck! Darn it all! But Loudermilk didn’t let it go at that, and his subcommittee contacted the three major cell carriers directly, “asking them to respond to Mr. D’Antuono’s claim of corrupted data,” he said.

And what do you know? According to Loudermilk, “Every major cell carrier responded and confirmed that they did not provide the FBI corrupted data.”

Not only that, but no cell carrier had ever been notified by the FBI of any problem accessing the data.

Loudermilk’s conclusion: “This contradictory testimony raises some serious questions about the status of the investigation into the pipe bomber and why the case remains unsolved nearly four years later.”

Gee, if all the companies turned over their cellphone data, and it wasn’t corrupted, and they never heard back that it was corrupted, when exactly did it get corrupted? Or did it just...disappear? You’d almost think the FBI didn’t want the evidence that would help them pinpoint and identify that person.

D’Antuono retired from the FBI in late 2022. (This seems to have been a popular time to retire; as we reported yesterday, Tim Thibault, who had pushed for prosecuting Trump, abruptly resigned in 2022 after coming under congressional scrutiny for suspected political bias over the laptop investigation.) D’Antuono’s attorney had not responded to an email query from JUST THE NEWS before they posted their story.

In the fall, Rep. Loudermilk sent a letter to then-FBI Director Christopher Wray demanding to know if D’Antuono’s testimony about the cellphone data had been accurate and if the bureau had ever gone back to that particular cellphone carrier to inform them of the problem and see about getting “a fresh set” of uncorrupted data. In this letter, Loudermilk presented him with six clear, pointed questions that apparently, he never bothered to answer...

https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2024-11/10.16.2024-Letter_from_Chairman_Loudermilk_to_FBI_Director_Wray%5B75%5D.pdf

Now, here’s that piece by Miranda Devine about the house-cleaning going on at the DOJ and FBI. The left is reacting as if this were “retribution,” but, as Byron York says, “it seems kind of a prudent situation for them to be leaving, given what has gone on.” There’s some beautiful understatement...

https://nypost.com/2025/02/02/opinion/trump-is-sending-the-deep-state-to-the-outhouse-as-he-cleans-house-at-the-fbi-and-doj

RELATED: In more news about Deep State “workarounds,” James O’Keefe of O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) has a new expose, not from one of the intel agencies but from the Department of Homeland Security, where some are vowing to “resist” Trump’s orders. Get a load of Brandon Wright, “civil servant.”

An undercover journalist went on a hidden-camera “date” with Wright, a platform services manager for DHS (A GS-14, nicely paid), and recorded him saying that the agency’s career people don’t allow political appointees such as newly appointed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to influence what they do. “I (bleep)-ing hate her,” he said of Noem, in one of a stream of disrespectful and condescending remarks about her.

“The truth is, we don’t let [the Secretaries] get in our way,” he told his date.

“The Secretaries can set the priorities for the department,” he said, “but they can’t actually tell us what to do.” (Oh, really??) He compared the bureaucracy’s structure to the filtration layers in a septic tank, filtering their marching orders.

Have to say, comparing the government bureaucracy to a septic tank is actually one of the most appropriate observations we’ve heard lately.

If we don’t agree with the “priorities,” Wright told his date, “There’s a lot of room for interpretation.” He rationalized this as making the orders more practical and less disruptive.

“The people who are in charge are the permanent civil servants,” he said. “The truth is, we don’t let them get in our way.” Yep, that’s a direct quote.

This “resister” had something in common with the last one captured on O’Keefe’s undercover video: he assumed that if Kamala had won, it would’ve meant “stepping on the gas to get promoted.”

But now, “Trump is picking people that hate us,” Wright said, in a remark that sounds a lot like projection. He said Trump “wants conflict.” No, as he made clear about the California wildfires, he wants the deadwood removed.

After O’Keefe enlightened the DHS about this employee, presumably showing them the video, they provided this in a statement: “Secretary Noem has not seen the video in its entirety. This type of behavior will not be tolerated. This person has been placed on leave and is under investigation...The senior official says the termination of the official is imminent.” It had better be.

Certainly, this employee didn’t have to be a Trump supporter to continue in the job he had, but he did have to respect his superiors and perform the job he was there to do, not “resist” it or even filter it through layer after layer until he found something he was cool with doing. As a “permanent civil servant,” Mr. Wright is Mr. Wrong, and good riddance to him. Of course, judging from his own words, there is much more purging to be done.

https://redstate.com/streiff/2025/02/03/dhs-resistance-leader-burned-in-hidden-camera-video-detailing-how-they-will-fight-kristi-noem-n2185168

Be sure and see the full OMG video…

https://okeefemediagroup.com/we-dont-let-them-get-in-our-way-gs-14-dhs-official-admits-department-will-defy-trump-appointed-secretary-kristi-noems-marching-orders-reveals-ta/

RELATED: Here’s the story of yet another “workaround,” this time by people trying to resist one of President Trump’s J6 pardons.

On Trump’s first day in office, after his announcement that he’d be pardoning more than 1,500 January 6 defendants, Oath Keeper Jeremy Brown was relieved and elated, getting ready to leave the “DC Gulag” and meet his mother and girlfriend waiting outside.

But then he was advised by prison staff that he would not be released after all, due to a Florida conviction on six criminal charges (for weapons found during a J6-related FBI search of his home, an RV and a trailer parked on his property in Tampa) that prosecutors are now maintaining is separate from the January 6 charges even though they came as a result of a search warrant stemming from J6. (This is what’s known as “the fruit of the poisonous tree.”)

Instead of being released, Brown was transported by U.S. Marshals from DC to a detention center in Leitchfield, Kentucky, where he was reportedly kept in extremely rough conditions for 15 days, and from there to a low-security federal prison in Atlanta. (The many stories like this make us wonder how much of this endless moving-around is just pointless make-work for prison staff.)

Brown’s attorney, Carolyn Stewart, notes court filings from prosecutors that relate the weapons charges directly to January 6, so he should be released from prison on the presidential pardon. If the U.S. attorney in Tampa won’t “do the right thing,” she says, she’s calling on the acting U.S. attorney general to order Brown’s release from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

As reported by BLAZE MEDIA, “Brown’s supporters see the government’s refusal to release Brown as ongoing persecution because he refused to spy on the Oath Keepers as an informant and blew the whistle on efforts by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force to recruit him during a December 11, 2020, meeting in Ybor City, Florida.”

This is a detailed story; go to THE BLAZE for all of it.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/doj-admits-oath-keeper-jeremy-browns-florida-case-related-to-jan-6-court-records-show

RELATED READING: In response to the Trump DOJ’s look at prosecutors who worked on J6 cases (we reported on this yesterday), a senior official at the FBI is saying it’s time to “dig in.” Inevitably, some agents are seeing themselves as victimized, whether they have been or not. “Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own,” says James Dennehy, assistant director at the New York field office, “as good people are being walked out of the FBI and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and FBI policy.”

Sorry if some of them are getting caught in a “crossfire hurricane,” and we hope the good rank-and-file people do remain. But many at the FBI don’t seem to have operated within the law or the policy.

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/fbi-senior-official-says-agency-in-battle-of-our-own-as-trump-targets/

Let’s save some time and kick off today’s USAID discussion with the stipulation that this entity (like ActBlue, which we’ve profiled in the past) sure looks like a giant money laundering apparatus for Democrats. This is why they’re losing their minds, as you’ve seen this week. We already knew there was a gigantic slush fund operating for Democrats and “progressive” causes but didn’t quite know the mechanics of it until now. Thank you, Elon Musk and DOGE, for lifting the curtain.

As Scott Adams observed during his Wednesday podcast, the situation with USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) is somewhat complicated because, of course, they’ve done some spending that most people can agree is good. The idea behind that was to hide the corrupt spending under what could be called “unimpeachable initiatives,” issues that could reasonably be viewed as win-wins for both our country and some other part of the world. But much of the spending --- likely most of it --- “was dedicated to absolutely corrupt behavior, just 100 percent corrupt.”

There are thousands of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) receiving taxpayer money through this financial set-up. And when these groups get money from USAID, there’s just no guarantee of where that money ultimately lands. It might end up being channeled into some unrelated cause, or even some faraway candidate’s coffers. It might end up at a different NGO or spent by groups affiliated with other campaigns.

And their goals are nefarious. As Mike Benz of the Foundation for Freedom Online has noted, USAID has funded NGOs that exist to censor U.S. citizens. In Adams’ words, “Basically, everything you don’t want to happen --- if it’s something you didn’t want, and it was corrupt --- somewhere...it was happening. It’s like this grab-bag of corruption.”

When you see money being channeled into some particular issue, “probably it’s just a way to launder money into something that they really want to do.” Who knows where it goes?

The people pocketing money from this are about “98 percent Democrats,” according to Adams, “which means they’re part of the [anti-Trump] resistance.” (Actually, we would say that NONE of them are real Republicans, though some who purport to be might be affiliated with the Lincoln Project and other such anti-Trump groups --- also part of the resistance.)

“They just did another sting,” Adams said of O’Keefe Media Group, “and got one of the USAID employees to say on [hidden] camera...that they were gonna basically try to burrow in and thwart everything that Trump wants, and just wait him out.”

This sounds very much like the hidden camera video we brought you earlier in the week, which captured a mid-level employee at the Department of Homeland Security saying the politically appointed Secretaries don’t run the agencies; the permanent bureaucracy does.

“Exactly what you thought was going to happen,” Adams said. Employees can do this just by slow-walking Trump’s orders.

“Basically,” he observed, “the bureaucracy says, ‘We’re just gonna thwart you.’” They’re going to pretend they’re going along with the President but quietly use sabotage to oppose him. It’s a practical impossibility to ferret out this deep-level subterfuge, so there’s really only one thing that can be done: SHUT THE WHOLE THING DOWN.

“And that’s what Trump’s gonna do,” Adams said. “Close the whole thing.” Apparently as a preliminary step, it’s been taken in as part of the State Department by newly sworn-in Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Before that, USAID was sort of amorphous, working for the State Department, the Pentagon, the CIA, whoever.

“So,” he continued, “if you didn’t have people who understood that the only way to fix it is to break it, you wouldn’t have leadership.” It’ll have to be messy for a while, and there will be a lot of screaming, but this has to be done. We’ve stocked up on earplugs.

Adams rightly called USAID “the beating heart of most of their [the Democrats’] corruption,” which explains all the screaming.

He went on to cite examples of people “in the Democrat world” who are in a state of unprecedented panic about the exposure of USAID. One said, “This is worse than 9/11 for Democrats. USAID is the primary vessel they used to achieve their political agenda. USAID is and always has been the primary source of funding for their influence-peddling schemes and for their indirect source of income.”

Another: “Based on the reactions within the party, it seems to me that dismantling USAID is Trump’s biggest political victory to date. It was his enemies’ golden goose.”

And, yes, it’s even a bigger bank than George/Alex Soros. Soros is only their SECOND biggest, with USAID providing twice as much funding for the “progressive” prosecutors being bankrolled around the country.

But our challenge with them hiding expenditures within those “unimpeachable initiatives,” Scott said, “is that the thing you have to get rid of is the thing that looks the most like something you’d want to keep, ‘cause that’s where they’re gonna hide the good stuff.” (How can anyone be against, say, AIDS prevention?)

Also, Mike Benz has expressed concern that we’re celebrating too soon, because this is an “octopus” that has long tentacles and will be putting up a huge fight. But we’ll know who is the most corrupt by who takes the lead in the pushback. MSNBC is already hugely vocal in its support of USAID, which should tell you something. Van Jones on CNN, too. In Congress, there’s Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who is so shameless that anyone else who stands up with him on this is inescapably tarred as well. AOC has also been particularly shrill. (Recall the story about the “star search” by progressive Democrat organizations that recruited her for her initial run for Congress; this appears to have been funded at least in part by USAID.)

Scott poses the question --- and let’s hope we’re just talking hypotheticals --- what happens if there’s a vote in Congress about shutting down USAID and some (so-called) “Republicans” don’t vote for that? Well, for one thing, it certainly shows us who’s in favor of continuing this corrupt gravy train. As he says, “There is no way any Republican can be in favor of keeping USAID at this point unless they’re part of the corruption.”

He argues that this is way too serious for Republicans to break ranks. “Trump’s gonna have to put ‘em into retirement or [if they broke laws] into jail,” he says. “But pretty much all of them are breaking some law,” he laughed. With what we know about USAID at this point, he said, anyone who insists on supporting it had better get ready for retirement. “Or at least lawyer-up.” As expensive as that fight will be, he said, “it’ll be the worst decision you ever made in your life.”

…..

It already appears that THE NEW YORK TIMES and POLITICO have been recipients of millions in our tax dollars. We found this out after staffers at POLITICO didn’t receive their paychecks this week. As it turns out, this “payroll issue” emerged after President Trump put a freeze on USAID funding. So, is there a connection?

Enterprising sleuths looking into this found that POLITICO received up to $27 million (by some counts $32 million) from various U.S. agencies during the Biden years. We were completely unaware of this. Why on earth is POLITICO getting money from the U.S. government?

Is it possible they were paid (even indirectly) for pushing the now-infamous “classic earmarks” letter about Hunter’s laptop? Because they sure did. We would bet the NEW YORK POST never got any money from the U.S. government.

It’s amazing how money can be hidden. Another sleuth found this, as reported by SLAY NEWS: “Listed under a ‘disaster emergency fund,’ over half a million dollars was paid by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to POLITICO for ‘37 POLITICO pro subscriptions.’” Elon Musk noticed this himself and commented, “This is odd.”

Even more shocking, THE NEW YORK TIMES received $3.1 in taxpayer funds, while the U.K.’s BBC received $3.2 million. (We assume these figures also are from the Biden years.) Again, why in blazes would these media outlets be receiving money from the U.S. government?

(We’re starting to wonder if fashion magazines were paid NOT to put Melania on their covers.)

Apparently, “legacy” media is being propped up with money from a U.S. government slush fund while conservative opinion media has been targeted by other NGOs for financial starvation and shutdown. (Heck, we already knew that firsthand; that’s why we’re so grateful for your paid subscriptions.)

The piece at SLAY NEWS is a must-read…

https://slaynews.com/news/federal-government-funneled-millions-tax-dollars-leftist-news-outlets-politico-ny-times/

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about this on Wednesday, and assured us that the more than $8 million in taxpayer-subsidized subscriptions to POLITICO “will no longer be happening.”

“The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now,” she said. Don’t miss her full comments on this, here…

https://rumble.com/v6hdgzj-wh-press-sec-karoline-leavitt-responds-to-news-politico-has-been-bankrolled

RELATED: See Mike Shellenberger here (it’s recommended you follow along with the transcript for clarity) on how USAID was involved in the first impeachment of Trump. Never mind that it was highly illegal for them to be involved in this way in our own country.

Recall that the impeachment was supposedly triggered by a CIA analyst-turned-whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella. He had relied on reporting by an “independent” news organization called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which we now learn was operating as an arm of USAID. Read the detailed transcript, and you will see that, as Shellenberger reports, “...it appears that CIA, USAID, and OCCRP were all involved in the impeachment of President Trump in ways similar to the regime change operations that all three organizations engage in abroad. The difference is that it is highly illegal and even treasonous for CIA, USAID, and its contractors and intermediaries, known as ‘cut-outs,’ to interfere in US politics this way.”

More on this soon.

RELATED: As reported earlier this week, newly confirmed CIA Director John Ratcliffe has offered the ENTIRE WORKFORCE of the CIA a buyout if they want to leave at the end of September this year. Here are the specifics of that deal…

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/02/05/cia-director-john-ratcliffe-undertaking-most-significant-overhaul-cia-workforce-modern-history/

New DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced that she and President Trump had stopped all grant funding for NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that are helping to facilitate illegal immigration. That includes NGOs that claim to be Christian charities but are supporting illegal migrants as they travel to the border and after they cross. The freeze caused howls of outrage from the left with NGOs claiming that they can’t survive and might have to shut down if they lose their government funding.

https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2025/01/29/dhs-secretary-kristi-noem-announces-halting-of-all-ngo-funding-n2184966

This action has shone a spotlight on NGO’s, which many people don’t know about or understand. In fact, the very name “non-governmental organization” seems to imply that they are NOT dependent on government funding. That should be true, but in recent years, these groups have arisen as a kind of “work-around” to the rules, the same way the government pressured social media companies to do the censoring of citizens that they were barred by the First Amendment from doing themselves.

Grants to favored NGOs are used to do things that are politically partisan in nature, hidden under the guise of “humanitarianism.” Thus, we have “non-governmental organizations” taking our tax money from the government to help people violate the immigration laws of the government that’s actually funding them. Noem called it “a shadow government working against our laws.”

Many of these NGOs are not only taking our money to work against our interests, but they are greatly enriching the political cronies who run them.

We don’t know about you, but we could think of better uses for our tax 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.

In case you’ve been wondering what’s going to happen in the new Congress to the congressional committees and their investigations into the January 6 “Select” Committee and other examples of Biden corruption, wonder no more. These will continue, and Liz Cheney’s pardon from President Biden might turn out to be a bit...inconvenient for her.

We’ll get to that later, but first, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced on Wednesday that Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk’s J6 oversight committee, which was actually a subcommittee of the Committee on House Administration, is being replaced in the new Congress by a new committee, which will be a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. Got that? (Simple, really. It’s just being moved from the Administration Committee to the Judiciary Committee, which would seem to make more sense.) The chairman of this new subcommittee will be...(drum roll, please)...Barry Loudermilk!

Speaker Johnson said this: “House Republicans are proud of our work so far in exposing the false narrative peddled by the politically motivated January 6 Select Committee during the 117^th Congress, but there is still more work to be done. We are establishing this Select Subcommittee to continue our efforts to uncover the full truth that is owed to the American people. The composition and other details regarding the Select Subcommittee will be announced soon.”

According to Teri Christoph at REDSTATE, this shift of Loudermilk’s subcommitee to the Judiciary Committee “is likely a result of Biden pardoning all those involved with the nefarious J6 Committee. There are lot of Americans who would like to see true justice exacted here, using all judicial means possible, and this could be a significant step in making that possible.”

Maybe they’ll fumigate the rooms where the J6 “Select” Committee was working. They also should look around to see if any transcripts that co-chairs Cheney and Thompson thought they’d destroyed are still there.

Recall that earlier this month, before pardoning Cheney, Biden presented her with the Presidential Citizens Award, the second highest honor that can be bestowed on a civilian. (Considering how she went after Biden’s political enemies like the shark in JAWS, it’s not hard to see why he would have rewarded her that way.) Speaker Johnson posted on X at the time:

“What a complete joke and utter embarrassment. Biden is foolishly giving an award to members of Congress who intentionally and repeatedly lied to the American people?! The Jan 6 Select Committee manipulated AND destroyed evidence – created a fake, phone narrative all to try and hurt Trump. They even hired a TV producer from the legacy media in a desperate attempt to legitimize what Americans knew was a total hoax and a complete waste of time,” Johnson said.

“...Be assured of this: House Republicans WILL continue our investigation into this corrupt committee and it will be FULLY FUNDED so it can continue next Congress.”

https://x.com/SpeakerJohnson/status/1874976464279326932

The Republicans were already motivated to continue uncovering the truth about that committee, but Biden’s “blanket” pre-emptive pardons, particularly the one for co-chair Liz Cheney, have amplified that to the tenth power. As Rep. Loudermilk posted on X, “I appreciate Speaker Johnson’s commitment to our work, and I am looking forward to working with Chairman Jim Jordan to continue to uncover all the facts and begin the arduous task of making needed reforms to ensure this level of security failure may never happen again.”

Christoph doesn’t really explain it, but of course you know that Liz has a new problem: with her pardon, she no longer risks incriminating herself and thus would have to respond to a subpoena from Loudermilk’s subcommittee and testify truthfully under oath, even about events that implicated her. The Fifth Amendment would not stop that. And so, since Biden had no authority to pardon her or anyone else for things they might do once he was out of office, she might still be headed for the hoosgow if she fails to comply with a subpoena or lies under oath.

https://redstate.com/terichristoph/2025/01/22/house-gop-forms-new-j6-subcommittee-n2184694

According to Mollie Hemingway at THE FEDERALIST, it will take a couple of weeks for them to get the new subcommittee authorized, funded and staffed. She describes in detail all the work Loudermilk’s previous subcommittee did to investigate the events of January 6, also noting that they actually referred Cheney for prosecution over alleged tampering with “star witness” Cassidy Hutchinson, the one who told the tall tale about Trump trying to physically force his driver to go to the Capitol building (presumably so he could stop the proceedings and take over the country!).

Again, Biden’s pardon covers Cheney on those previous lies, but not on lies she tells now to cover up those lies. We know now that Cheney suppressed evidence that President Trump called for 10,000 National Guard troops in advance of the rally --- information that would have RUINED the Democrats’ fake “insurrection” narrative.

https://thefederalist.com/2025/01/22/breaking-j6-investigation-to-move-to-judiciary-committee-to-help-republicans-uncover-fbi-abuses/

Admittedly, not everyone, even among those on the right and center-right, thinks Trump’s broad pardons of the J6 prisoners was a good idea. One is centrist civil libertarian Jonathan Turley, who strongly feels the pardoning of violent offenders was a mistake.

“That is wrong,” he said in his column from Tuesday, “regardless of any excesses in the handling of these cases.” He continues to believe that January 6 was “a desecration of our constitutional process,” not just a rally that got out of hand. (Of course, there’s still the question of whether it had some outside “help” to morph it into a riot --- Loudermilk’s committee is continuing to examine that, as well as the untenable pipe bomb narrative).

We’re not attorneys and have always condemned the violence on that day but must stick to our assertion that these cases were handled SO EGREGIOUSLY, the convictions simply have to be tossed. With the demonstrable, horrific bias of the DC courts, all the cases cried out for a change of venue, which was not granted for even one. If anyone doubts us on the bias of these courtrooms, please read Julie Kelly’s book JANUARY 6.

Also, read Turley’s column; see what you think. It’s rare for us to disagree with him, as he’s such a learned and common-sense attorney, but this time it must be.

https://jonathanturley.org/2025/01/21/trump-pardons-and-commutations-included-violent-offenders-who-assaulted-police-officers/#more-227915

President Trump addressed this issue directly in a must-see interview that aired on Wednesday’s HANNITY. He said they prisoners had already served three years, which “is a long time.” Many had been in solitary confinement, “treated like nobody’s ever been treated…like the worst criminals in history.” Also, “they knew the election was rigged and they were protesting the vote,” which should be allowed. “Most of the people were absolutely innocent,” he said, and they acted out of patriotism. As for the violence, these were “very minor incidents.”

And they’re still trying to indict new people, he said. “This was a political hoax.”

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6367536545112

And if you have time, here’s the full Trump interview with Hannity that aired last night. Part two will air tonight:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-reflects-return-white-house-after-4-years-bidens-agenda-got-just-nick-time

RELATED: Liz Cheney isn’t the only one who faces possible legal jeopardy after being pardoned by President Biden.

We’ve already been told that Dr. Anthony Fauci apparently perjured himself a number of times in talking about his agency’s link to the Wuhan Lab, although his pardon will cover him for that, along with anything going back to 2014, the year the U.S. banned the funding of gain-of-function research. As Sen. Rand Paul told FOX NEWS, “Everything he has been telling us from the very beginning is a lie. We have documented it’s a lie, and it’s a felony to lie to Congress.” But now (as with Cheney), if he testifies again and lies, Biden’s pardon won’t help him.

Sen. Paul has vowed to continue investigating the origin of COVID, and sources are telling REALCLEAR INVESTIGATIONS that House investigators are working on that as well. According to former Senate investigator Jason Foster, who now runs the whistleblower nonprofit Empower Oversight: “They can ask him if he lied before, [re-plow] old ground. And if he lies about any prior lie, he can be prosecuted for that or held in contempt.”

A member of the Trump transition team who spoke on condition of anonymity said, “These pardons will not stop Department of Justice investigations. We expected this and look at it as a predicate to get truth from people who can no longer use the Fifth Amendment. Now we can bring every one of them in front of a grand jury.”

For when you have time, there’s a LOT more here about Dr. Fauci’s history of inconsistencies (or as Sen. Paul would say, “lies.”) We’re going to get to the truth about what this was.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2025/01/20/despite_biden_pardon_fauci_still_faces_legal_perils_here_they_are_1085875.html

Finally, Michael Goodwin at the NEW YORK POST has a smoldering opinion piece about the damage Biden’s lies --- and self-serving pardons --- have done to “the truth, the law and the country”, making the case that getting to the bottom of this scandal is a matter of national security.

https://nypost.com/2025/01/21/opinion/michael-goodwin-joe-bidens-corrupt-last-act-as-president-proved-his-family-hustle-always-superseded-the-truth-the-law-and-the-country

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

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any lower than for allegedly-still-President Joe Biden to give Liz Cheney the Presidential Citizens Medal, the staffers who make his decisions shouted, “Hold muh Chardonnay” and found a way to dig the cesspit even deeper. Saturday, Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, formerly the nation’s highest civilian honor, to Russiagate hoax mastermind Hillary Clinton, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards and – you might want to sit down for this one – socialist billionaire George Soros.

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-grants-highest-civilian-honor-george-soros-hillary-clinton-final-days-office/

Soros was described by the White House as a “philanthropist” who has “focused on global initiatives that strengthen democracy, human rights, education, and social justice.” He’s also a huge funder of the Democrat Party, anti-American and anti-Israel radicals, and far-left initiatives like electing DAs who refuse to jail criminals but prosecute people who defend themselves from them.

This medal is supposed to go to “individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States,” but judging from the way Hillary was responsible for the Benghazi massacre and turning Libya into a bloody hellscape; Soros has bankrolled an epidemic of rape, robbery and murder in America’s blue cities; and Planned Parenthood – well, you know what they do for profit – maybe it’s now based on who’s racked up the highest body count. We hope they didn’t give them real Presidential Medals of Freedom, but bitter chocolate ones covered in foil. Otherwise, we can now consider this Medal to be as tarnished and debased as everything else this blighted Administration has touched.

To be honest, our first thought on hearing that Soros was getting that honor was disbelief, followed by asking, “What, were Stalin, Ernst Blofeld and Satan not available?” It’s good to see that VP-elect J.D. Vance had a very similar reaction.

https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/01/05/jd-vance-pol-pot-bidens-medals-n2406145

Rabbi Michael Barclay also has some excellent comments on how the awards are yet another attack on religion by Biden, who claims to be a devout Catholic but has run the most radically pro-abortion Administration in history. As for Soros, he notes that Farley Weiss, the former President of the National Council of Young Israel, wrote, “No one has financed more destructive attacks on Israel and the American Jewish community than Soros.”

https://pjmedia.com/rabbi-michael-barclay/2025/01/04/in-his-last-presidential-act-biden-again-attacks-religion-n4935668

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

Speaking of things that Democrats have allowed to happen, in Queens, New York, on New Years’ Eve, ten people were injured by men who sprayed bullets into a crowd outside a nightclub. But the NYPD said it was not a terrorist attack. We assume it was just a typical night in Alvin Bragg's New York.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/nypd-says-not-terrorist-attack-after-10-shot-outside-nyc-event-space-new-years-day

During our break, New York was also the site of another horrific attack when a man on a subway killed a woman by setting her on fire. He turned out to be a Guatemalan illegal alien who was deported under Trump, came back under Biden, was released into the interior of the US, and was living in a “migrant shelter” at taxpayer expense.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/woman-burned-death-horrific-subway-attack-identified-police

What do all of these horrifying and tragic attacks have in common, whether they are by violent criminals, illegal aliens, foreign terrorists or American citizens radicalized by America’s enemies? They all happened because the people who are entrusted with keeping America safe failed to do their jobs. They let the wrong people in, they let the wrong people out, and they targeted the wrong people for surveillance while ignoring the obvious threats.

A perfect example: Just hours after the New Orleans terrorist attack, pro-Palestinian protesters blocked Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, chanting for “intifada” – i.e., they’re pro-terrorism. But obviously, these people aren’t a threat. The real terrorist threat comes from concerned parents, traditional Catholics, pro-life activists, Trump voters and anyone who came within 300 yards of the Capitol on January 6^th, 2021.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/01/01/hundreds-march-for-intifada-in-nyc-hours-after-terror-attacks-in-new-orleans-las-vegas/

Here’s how bad our federal agencies have gotten at their jobs: The New York Post arrived at the New Orleans terrorist’s home before the FBI did:

https://instapundit.com/693743/

Let’s hope this insanity and incompetence come to a screeching halt on January 20^th, and let’s all pray that there are no more deaths or injuries due to America’s enemies taking advantage of the remaining days of our vacuum of leadership.

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

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

This time of year, one of the many great holiday songs we always hear is the late, great Glen Campbell’s “Christmas Is For Children.” That sentiment was also on the minds of many of my radio listeners whose most treasured memories of Christmas were tied to childhood – either their kids’ childhoods or their own.

Some were of the “Kids Say The Darnedest Things” variety. For instance, Joe from Georgia recalled when his son was 7, their church had a pancake breakfast with a “Happy Birthday Jesus” cake for the kids, and the Lord’s Supper for adults during the Christmas Eve service. His son tugged his sleeve and asked, “Dad, why am I allowed to eat the Lord’s Breakfast but not His supper?”

An eternal theological question, my son!

There's something about the excitement of Christmas that makes children even more hilariously discombobulated. Cleve from New Mexico wrote, "At our house, we always opened our presents on Christmas morning. I remember the first year my daughters were really, really, really looking forward to Christmas. On Christmas Eve morning, they jumped out of bed, ran into the kitchen, and hollered, 'Today's the night we get up in the morning!!'"

Well, they were right: it was!

Dolores from Texas recalled that during the Depression, her parents gave her and her sister Betsy Wetsy dolls, and made a little suitcase and a whole wardrobe for them. Dolores said it was the “best Christmas ever!” The girls were so excited, they didn’t even realize until years later that those were actually their old dolls, all cleaned up. The moral: To a child, a gift doesn’t have to be new…just new to THEM.

Claudine from North Dakota shared this:

“When my kids were little, the church was getting together some toys, gifts and food items for a poor family who had just moved to our area at Christmas time. While looking in the pantry to see what we might have extras of, I asked my children what they would like to give. My daughter - then six years old - went to her room and brought down her Barbie doll complete with Barbie outfits, that she loved to play with. It was her only one. When I said, ‘Oh, honey, you don't have to give your favorite doll’, she said to me, ‘Mommy, if you just give what you don't want, it's not really giving, is it?’”

When you “give till it hurts,” as some people put it, it can actually feel pretty good. Thank you, Claudine, for reminding us that sometimes, parents can learn from children.

BettyJean from California had a favorite childhood Christmas memory that reminds us not to look a gift horse in the mouth. She wrote:

"I was born in 1928 in a small town in Montana. My mother died in 1929... (and) we were very poor...One Christmas my friend, Rex, whose parents had a restaurant in town, gave me a beautifully wrapped present. I was SOOOO EXCITED! Christmas Eve, my brother and I unwrapped our two presents. My brother watched me unwrap mine: a box of candy. And I can still hear him, 70 years later...yelling out, "DAAAAAD! THERE'S A PIECE GONE!!!!!"

I guess that proves little boys haven't really changed much in all these years!

Of course, Christmas is also a time when many of us former children experience the sadness of memories of parents who are no longer with us. I received many stories from people who were rocked by a flood of emotions at something as simple as coming across an old family decoration that their dad made, or the smell of a favorite family dish that mama used to cook. You never know what unlikely things might trigger overwhelming emotions.

For example, Linda from Texas recalled that her grandfather’s last Christmas gift to her dad just before he died was a shirt. He never wore that shirt. But he kept it hanging in his closet for the rest of his life, carefully preserved as a reminder of his dad.

Ellen from Oregon would understand that feeling. Her mother died of a brain tumor that had scrambled her thinking and sometimes made her a little exasperating. Just before Christmas, she made a big production of being driven to the post office to buy Christmas ornament postage stamps. She debated at great length before settling on the design, which she insisted on calling the “Jingle Bell stamps.” The postal clerk put three sheets of stamps in an onionskin envelope for her. Her mom proudly took them home, wrote “Christmas stamps” on the envelope, and displayed them on the windowsill for all to see. It seemed a little silly to Ellen at the time.

One month later, as she and her sisters were cleaning out their late mother’s house, Ellen came across her mom’s beloved Jingle Bells stamps in the onionskin envelope with her handwriting on it. She wrote, “I took them into the bathroom and cried.” She took the envelope with the remaining stamps home with her. Long afterward, when her husband needed a stamp, she opened the stamp drawer, saw them again, and cried again.

She began calling them the “Jingle Bell stamps,” too. There are only three stamps left, and there always will be. Ellen said she could never use them. She wrote:

“It’s almost as if when those stamps are gone, one more thread will be cut…But somehow, I know I will never give up that little onion skin envelope. Whenever I buy stamps, it will always be in sheets, and I will always tuck them into that little onion skin envelope.”

Thank you for sharing that, Ellen. And please know that you are not alone. Many of us treasure things that might seem silly to others, but they hold value beyond gold to us. There’s no reason to be embarrassed about having a reminder of your mom in the stamp drawer. But it’s even better to know that we’ll always have memories of our loved ones who’ve left us tucked safely away in our hearts.

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

Last night, Marine veteran Daniel Penny gave his first post-acquittal interview to Fox News’ Judge Jeanine Pirro. He demolished the false narrative that he’s a racist who targeted and strangled a black man. Penny said, “He was threatening to kill people,” adding:

"I didn't want any attention or praise, and I still don't. The guilt I would've felt if someone did get hurt, if he did do what he was threatening to do, I would never be able to live with myself. And I'll take a million court appearances and people calling me names and people hating me just to keep one of those people from getting hurt, or killed."

You can read more and see the interview here:

https://www.foxnews.com/us/daniel-penny-says-he-couldnt-live-guilt-jordan-neely-hurt-subway-passengers

We don’t say this often, but hats’ off to New Yorkers. They deserve credit both for the jurors who refused to buy Alvin Bragg’s racialized, politicized prosecution of Penny, and also for having voted out of office “Squad” member Jamaal Bowman. Bowman took time out from disrupting Congress by setting off false fire alarms to pen an unhinged racist screed about the Penny verdict. It’s being met with the negative reactions it richly deserves.

https://www.westernjournal.com/democratic-congressman-pens-racist-dear-white-people-message-far-gone/

Of course, Bowman isn’t the only leftist trying to rewrite the facts of this case to turn it into a “white supremacist” killing (they conveniently ignore the fact that two minority men helped Penny hold down subway attacker Jordan Neely, who was threatening passengers of various races.) Elizabeth Stauffer at Legal Insurrection has a good article on the actual facts of the case and some of the hyperbolic rhetoric that’s being spewed in an attempt to gin up divisions and racial violence.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/12/daniel-pennys-acquittal-how-the-lefts-focus-on-race-ignores-the-reality-of-the-case/

We also shouldn’t ignore the slanted media outlets like the New York Times that are trying to depict Neely as a “subway rider,” “street performer” or “Michael Jackson impersonator,” leaving out inconvenient details such as that he was a mentally-unbalanced drug addict with a lengthy criminal record who was threatening to kill the other passengers.

https://www.westernjournal.com/new-york-times-slammed-garbage-publication-daniel-penny-acquittal-headline/

So New Yorkers, if you want to keep up your winning streak, here are your next two moves: Vote out Alvin Bragg and cancel your subscriptions to the New York Times.

With unidentified drones hovering over New Jersey (or as that would be known in Texas, “target practice”) and Secret Service documents on the attempted golf course shooting of President Trump still being withheld, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley says it’s time for the acting Secret Service director to hit the road.

Hawley didn’t mention the catch, but we all know: Trump can’t fire acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe until he takes office on January 20. And the whole agency needs an overhaul. In the meantime, every day between now and Inauguration Day (and after), Trump’s life is at incredible risk.

As reported Tuesday by FOX NEWS, the bipartisan Congressional Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump, which investigated both attempts on Trump’s life, confirms the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security has failed yet again, this time to produce documents related to the apparent wannabe Trump assassin who set up camp with an AK-47-style rifle in September on the perimeter of Trump International Golf Course in Florida. The man’s presence there in the bushes was given away only by a flash of light on the muzzle of his gun.

“How is it possible that you have no urgency when you have drones the size of a dining room table flying all over the state of New Jersey and nobody seems to care?” Sean Hannity asked Sen. Hawley on Tuesday night.

Hawley accused the Secret Service of not wanting to cooperate. “They don’t want us to know the facts,” he said. “They’ve stonewalled, they refuse to testify, they refuse to turn over documents…”

He is convinced that Rob Rowe, who was promoted from deputy director after former Director Kim Cheatle’s departure, has got to be relieved from duty.

“I mean, he is not doing his job,” Hawley said. “He endangered the life of the President with his poor response. And for them to stonewall the American people, this many months after not one but two assassination attempts, just like the FBI and the rest are stonewalling us now on these drones over New Jersey --- and who knows where else...that they’re not telling us about? --- it’s time for some accountability at these agencies. It’s time to clean house.”

As for the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, Hawley said they had “whistleblower after whistleblower” come forward to say the Secret Service had failed to secure the buildings, and their claims are confirmed in the House report. It was the same at the golf course, where agents reportedly ignored the protocol of doing a sweep of the perimeter.

“I mean, it’s a miracle Trump is alive,” Sen. Hawley said.

Hannity suggested bringing in Special Forces “to reinforce the good agents that do work for the Secret Service.”

As for the large drones flying over New Jersey, Sen. Hawley said just what we would think, which is to say, “You can’t tell me that they don’t know what that is. I just think they’re not being honest with us. If we don’t know --- if our government really has no idea --- then they’re even more incompetent than I thought.”

“...They need to level with the American people about what’s going on. It’s crazy.”

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6365833152112

The 180-page Task Force report is calling for specific changes to the Secret Service, including possibly moving it from the jurisdiction of Homeland Security, where it has been since DHS was created after 9/11. Before then, it was part of the U.S. Treasury Department, and it still divides its efforts to continue investigating fraud and financial crimes. It also protects foreign dignitaries while they’re in the U.S., with the number of people it’s been tasked with protecting “greatly expanded” in recent years. The Task Force recommends that its array of responsibilities be reviewed so that the agency --- especially during campaign season --- “can prioritize the protection of U.S. leaders and candidates running for office.” Their mission there has to be one of “zero fail.”

One big problem, they say, is that the U.S. General Assembly meets in New York City every September. “The Secret Service’s protective mission is at the core of the agency’s purpose,” they say in their report. “Anything that distracts or diverts resources from the agency’s zero fail mission must be reconsidered.” This year, as it does every four years, the Assembly fell at the height of a presidential election campaign season. (Certainly, this is a factor. We would mention, though, that the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting, which was a total Secret Service disaster and abject humiliation, took place on July 13.)

“Congress, DHS and the USSS [U.S. Secret Service] should jointly consider the protective role the USSS plays for foreign leaders and consider whether such duties can be transferred or abrogated in order to focus on the USSS’s primary duty: to protect the President and other critical U.S. leaders,” the report says.

If you’d like a deep dive, here’s the full, 180-page report.

https://taskforce.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/july13taskforce.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/12-5-2024-Final-Report-Redacted.pdf

Fortunately, once Trump gets back to the White House, he can fire anyone he wants to, and if Biden doesn’t like it, he’ll have no one to blame but himself. You see, Democrats’ way of using the most expedient, right-now strategy to get what they want sometimes comes back to bite them, and that happened after former White House press spokesman Sean Spicer was fired from his position on the Board of Visitors to the United States Naval Academy, even though he had a three-year term. When he challenged his firing in court and lost, that decision gave the incoming President legal backing to fire any of Biden’s over 4,000 appointments, immediately. Ha ha.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-secrets/3254409/trump-can-fire-anybody-he-wants-thanks-to-sean-spicer/

RELATED TRANSITION NEWS: In quite a stunning development, Trump’s pick for FBI director, Kash Patel, confirms that he was one of over three dozen staffers and two members of Congress whose communications were improperly swept up by the DOJ during the so-called “Russia” investigation in 2017. The DOJ obtained phone records without notifying the courts that the search involved members of Congress or congressional staffers. They were also trying to get their hands on emails from reporters at CNN, the WASHINGTON POST, and THE NEW YORK TIMES. This has just come out in a report from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

Also, there is this: “Another former staffer, Jason Foster, previously told JUST THE NEWS that he confirmed that the government successfully asked a federal court to hide its spying on Congress for five consecutive years.” At the time Foster was being spied on, he was chief investigative counsel for Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

We find this story quite ironic considering that Patel, in early 2018 as chief investigator for then-House Intel Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, was the one who discovered the improper surveillance of Carter Page. There was a whole lotta spyin’ goin’ on, and probably still is. That’s one thing Patel is going there to fix.

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/12/10/justice-department-spied-on-incoming-fbi-director-kash-patel-n4934996

As Nunes told FOX NEWS Digital, “The feds spied on Kash during the probe and ran information warfare against him, but Kash helped expose them anyway.”

A new piece from Brooke Singman mentions this revelation and also offers a history lesson on Kash Patel as Trump’s perfect pick to head the FBI. It’s not surprising that there’s panic in the swamp over Patel’s installation there in just a little over a month. They’ll try anything to derail his nomination.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-fbi-pick-kash-patel-instrumental-unraveling-russia-collusion-hoax-former-chairman-says

RELATED: There’s something else that just needs to end, but it won’t at least for now. That’s the state-level lawfare brought by State Attorney General Letitia James in New York and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia. James says she will not drop the civil fraud case against Trump, the one in which no one doing business with Trump had any problem at all. She’s just sent a letter to Trump’s attorneys to that effect.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/new-york-ag-letitia-james-says-she-wont-drop-civil-fraud-case-against-trump

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/new-york-ag-james-wont-drop-454-million-civil-fraud-case-against-trump-office-says-5773877

And Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is reportedly “laying out alternatives” to dismissing the case against Trump on falsifying business records for payments on a non-disclosure agreement with Stormy Daniels.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5032679-bragg-trump-hush-money-conviction/

To wrap this up, here’s an amusing postscript to our commentary from yesterday on the need for accountability for members of the Biden administration who broke laws. It’s a brief video montage of new California Sen. Adam Schiff (we feel for you, sane Californians who didn’t vote for him) speaking about whether outgoing officials should be indicted. The comments are from 2018, 2019 and now 2024.

Note that consistency is not his strong suit.

https://x.com/mazemoore/status/1866613145957175468

The Labor Department reported Wednesday morning that in November, the consumer price index rose 2.7% from 12 months before, while the core inflation rate, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 3.3% from a year before. That’s a 0.3% increase, the fastest rise in prices since March. This marks the second consecutive month of accelerating inflation, and the fastest increase in four months. Wait, we thought Biden had "fixed" inflation!

https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2024/12/11/inflation-accelerated-in-november-rising-2-7-for-the-year/

So Biden and Harris are leaving office the same way they came into it: expanding government regulations, rushing through wasteful spending, defying the will of the people, prosecuting their political opponents and increasing inflation. Meanwhile, the press continues to run “think pieces” about why the Democrats lost.

RELATED: Well, there is one difference between Biden’s start and his ending. He’s leaving even less popular than he was when he came in. In fact, a new poll suggests that thanks to his pardon of his son Hunter, by the time he moves out of the White House, his family might be the only Americans who still approve of him.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/12/11/poll-only-two-in-10-americans-approve-of-hunter-bidens-pardon/

Mike Huckabee

Much of the current news coverage is dominated by details about the alleged murderer of United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson. We’re being inundated with information about the suspect’s life, mental state, education, social media posts and potential motives (like this theory by a retired FBI agent that he might have been “triggered” to murder an insurance executive because he was 26, the age when people are kicked off their parents’ insurance under Obamacare.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/obamacare-provision-among-ivy-league-murder-suspects-possible-triggers-ret-fbi-agent

Let’s not forget that 26 was chosen because that was the latest possible age that liberals could pick to designate someone as an “adult,” despite the fact that for generations, 18 has been considered legal adulthood for marrying, joining the military and signing contracts – like buying your own insurance.

If that’s what “triggered” him to commit murder, then it’s just proof that he’s either mentally unstable or a perfect example of an emotion-driven, infantilized, 21^st century leftist, which is not grounds for an insanity defense, although maybe it should be.

Frankly, we don’t care what might have “triggered” him to commit a cold-blooded, execution-style murder. If he’s guilty, he should pay the price. What matters is that an innocent human being is dead, (allegedly) because of his violent, selfish actions. That should be the focus of the news coverage. That and the horrifying reactions from leftists who are trying to rationalize, justify and even celebrate this shocking murder.

From killing “inconvenient” babies in the womb to making the Boston Marathon bomber look like a rock star on the cover of Rolling Stone to cheering for the assassination of Donald Trump to celebrating this pathetic sicko, the left in America is demonstrating that it has lost all regard for the sanctity of human life as well as any basic human decency. “The Daily Show’s” studio audience even booed a mention of his arrest, and they didn’t seem to be booing him.

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2024/12/11/watch-jon-stewarts-daily-show-audience-boos-unitedhealthcare-shooting-suspects-capture/

Even some Democratic Senators don’t seem to have grasped the idea that no matter what you’re upset about, murder is ALWAYS unjustifiable.

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2024/12/10/warren-on-unitedhealth-ceo-slaying-violence-is-wrong-but-you-can-only-push-people-so-far/

They fail to see the irony in denouncing Trump as an “authoritarian” while cheering for the murder of anyone they disagree with, one of the most common actions of the worst authoritarian regimes in history.

So if you’re driven to know every detail about this suspect’s life, like whether he was so angry because his parents didn’t pat him on the head when they tucked in to bed at the age of 25, look elsewhere. We’ll cover the trial, honor the victim and shine a spotlight on the horrifying reactions because that’s where the real news is.

RELATED: Some more recent and historical commentary about the left’s “sick hypocrisy” in claiming to be tolerant and non-violent while celebrating the killing of its opponents.

https://instapundit.com/689466/

ALSO RELATED: More evidence of the pro-violence/anti-Semitic leftist stain on American universities:

https://www.thecollegefix.com/outrageous-columbia-student-group-launches-paper-glorifying-violence-against-israel/

On Monday, Jonathan Turley, one of our go-to legal experts, wrote a column sparked by a comment this weekend by President Trump on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the whole J6 Committee --- the sham House committee chaired by Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson and now-ex Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney --- “should go to jail.” Turley said that with this statement, Trump has undermined his previous statement that he did not plan to be a vengeful President, that success would be his revenge.

First, let it be said that to remark, as Trump did, that someone SHOULD go to jail is not the same thing as actually SENDING them to jail as political prisoners, as Democrats themselves did with a large number of J6 defendants. Do Democrat members of that committee deserve to spend a considerable amount of time as guests of the Graybar Hotel, considering what they did to corruptly shape the narrative of January 6, even to the point of destroying evidence that was supposed to be turned over to the Republicans who now head the oversight committees? Yes, they do deserve it, and Trump is right to say so.

Turley is right, however, to say that Democrats are going to use Trump’s statement, just as they twist everything else he has ever said, to try to justify Biden’s wholesale pardoning of his son and probably a lot of other people who deserve prison time.

Still, we wonder if Turley should say that “there’s no viable criminal case to be made against the J6 Committee members for their investigation or report.” We’re not attorneys but are dismayed that even looking into this strikes Turley as unseemly when he says, “We need to move beyond the rage rhetoric if this country is going to come together to face the tough challenges ahead.” The point needs to be made (so we’ll make it) that this country will not come together if Biden can just pardon all his friends and allies and there are no consequences for anything any of them ever did.

Trump was absolutely right to criticize the committee’s deletion of evidence from their investigation. “Cheney did something that’s inexcusable,” he said, “along with Thompson and the people on the un-select committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps.” Love it.

And he went on: “Cheney was behind it. And so was Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee. For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail.”

Turley did say that he considers “the J6 Committee to be not just a colossal failure but a missed opportunity for a bipartisan look at that tragic day.” And that is true. He also made it clear he supports the continued efforts of House committees to finish their own investigation of security failures that day as well as the records of the J6 Committee. We assume he’s referring to what is left of those records, if there’s anything left after all the deleting.

But Turley’s main point was that “these are ethical and political failings, not criminal violations,” as “politicians routinely distort facts on both sides of scandals, including Presidents Biden, Trump, and Obama.” It’s elections, he said, that remove such people from office, as the election in Wyoming got rid of Liz Cheney.

Sorry, that’s not good enough. As Turley acknowledged, “Cheney’s work on the committee was rife with false claims and the manipulation of evidence.” Yes, politicians make false claims all the time, but it’s that pesky “manipulation of evidence” that should not be let go.

Turley cited Article 1, Section 6, Clause 1 of the Constitution, which states that members of Congress “shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their attendance at the Session of their Respective Houses, and in going to and from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”

What on earth does that have to do with prosecuting someone like Liz Cheney, who is not even in the House any longer, for what she did to hide evidence? Nobody is proposing arresting legislators on the floor of Congress or going and coming from sessions. And this isn’t just “speech or debate” we’re talking about, but active suppression of exculpatory evidence in violation of someone’s rights.

Turley said that “the omissions and unfairness of the process do not constitute crimes.” And when he acknowledges that over a hundred files were allegedly destroyed, and that this does appear to violate the House’s archiving rules, he says “this is not ordinarily a case for criminal prosecution.” Really?? Well, if it’s not, it should be.

He says that “these rules have sufficient room for interpretation to make any such claim difficult to prosecute.” If the committee can just destroy evidence willy-nilly, then there’s something wrong with the rules. Do they not have to follow the LAW about destroying evidence, or do laws not apply to them? We guess we’ll find out.

“Clearly, a false statement to federal investigators or an effort to obstruct an investigation can be separate criminal violations,” Turley wrote, “but there is no indication of such allegations.” There isn’t?? This seems, on its face, to be obstruction of justice.

Turley thinks Trump needs to stop “fueling divisions.” (This is like punching someone 20 times, then the second he finally punches back, saying, “You need to stop this violence.”) He’s right about the damage caused by “rage rhetoric,” but he might be mistaken in arguing that Trump’s statement about J6 Committee members needing to go to jail is giving his critics a political windfall. It might be just the opposite, so why not see how this plays out? If anyone deserves to speak with a little rage after all that has been done to him, it’s President Trump.

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/12/09/no-the-j6-committee-should-not-go-to-jail/

Perhaps Turley’s column was written before Liz Cheney issued a threat to the DOJ on Monday that any move to investigate the now-defunct J6 Committee would be “sanctionable conduct.” Really?? Sanctionable...by whom? Not by her, as she’s not even in Congress any longer, haha. She seems to have mistaken being a former Congress member for being the current Queen of the Universe.

Cheney was triggered by Trump’s statements to rant that he had committed the “worst breach of our Constitution by any President in our nation’s history.” She said he had “attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power.” (Really??) “He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol…” (Again, really??)

Cheney said, “Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”

As Bonchie at REDSTATE comments, “There has STILL never been any evidence presented that Donald Trump intended for anyone to physically attack the Capitol building...Trump did not try to ‘seize power,’ and it has been proven that he requested National Guard troops to be present but was rebuffed.”

It was Cheney herself, along with fellow committee members, who buried the evidence of that.

But when faced with evidence of this, Cheney pulled the same aggressive tactics as the Biden family attorneys are doing. (Notice how they all respond like cornered badgers.) “There is no conceivably appropriate factual or constitutional basis,” she said, “for what Donald Trump is suggesting --- a Justice Department investigation of the work of a congressional committee --- and any lawyer who attempts to pursue that course would quickly find themselves engaged in sanctionable conduct.”

SANCTIONABLE CONDUCT? Again, sanctionable by whom?

The GOP-led Congress would be unlikely to do that, even if they had the authority. Perhaps she means the legal establishment, the state bar associations, as they’ve already acted quite inappropriately to intimidate attorneys who dare to represent President Trump. Recall “Project 65,” which was organized to do exactly the same thing. If that’s what she’s talking about, we predict such tactics will backfire big-time.

https://the65project.com

Bonchie sounds like us when he calls her threats “toothless.” As he says, “the Trump DOJ SHOULD investigate what happened with the January 6th Committee. It should find out how much evidence was altered and destroyed in what was a clear abuse of power and a waste of taxpayer money. That’s what people voted for in November. They didn’t vote for the status quo. They voted for change and accountability.”

And that’s why we non-lawyers have to disagree with Turley on how the J6 Committee misdeeds should be handled. To just let this go is not going to bring the country together, as it will only reinforce the perception (and reality) that Democrat wrongdoers get to skate. Maybe the worst committee members will go to jail and maybe they won’t, but if some do, it will be because they really, really deserve it.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2024/12/09/liz-cheney-threatens-donald-trumps-doj-with-sanctions-if-they-investigate-her-n2182995

Here’s more on the same subject from BREITBART. Wendell Husebo points out that when Trump was asked on “Meet the Press” if he’d actually direct his FBI director and attorney general to send them (Cheney and friends) to jail, he said, “Not at all. I think that they’ll have to look at that...they can do whatever they want.” (Perhaps Jonathan Turley didn’t hear that part.)

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/12/09/liz-cheney-accused-destroying-117-january-6-files-says-she-should-not-go-jail/

RELATED READING: Never mind Trump’s promised pardons of J6 political prisoners; Biden’s DOJ continues throwing people into jail after almost four years. If anything, they’ve accelerated the process. Biden-appointed and soon-to-be-fired (yay!) DC U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves has announced the arrest of at least ten J6 protesters since Election Day (!) and says there is “public interest in the prompt and efficient administration of justice.” He plans to make the most of his last few weeks in his job.

DC judges seem to be using Trump’s upcoming inaugural as a reason to push hard these next several weeks. They’re denying defendants’ requests to postpone sentencing in anticipation of a Trump pardon, and three J6 jury trials are set to begin this week. As Julie Kelly reports, “Judge Amy Berman Jackson recently entered an order allowing prosecutors in her extremely biased courtroom to describe January 6 to jurors as an ‘attack on the Capitol,’ ‘attack on Congress,’ and a ‘riot.’” How are these defendants supposed to get a fair trial?

If you want to know what’s currently going on in DC courts concerning these cases, Kelly’s piece is a must-read.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/12/09/nearly_4_years_later_no_letup_in_jan_6_prosecutions_possible_pardons_or_not

Law professor and Instapundit blogmaster Glenn Reynolds commented on this article, “Something needs to be done about D.C.’s impossibly partisan legal system. Personally, I’m in favor of abolishing ‘home rule’ for DC. Our nation’s capital should be ruled by the nation, not by the apparatchiks who live there.”

https://instapundit.com/689240/

MORE RELATED READING: Don’t miss this piece by Richard Truesdell and Keith Lehmann at AMERICAN GREATNESS, which spares no words about who the real criminal is in the Hunter scandal. Um, that would be his father.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/09/the-real-criminal-here-is-not-hunter-biden

ALSO RELATED: Former Democrat (but still liberal) Ana Kasparian gets that there’s something fishy about Hunter Biden’s “blanket” pardon covering 11 years. She even did the math and figured out that it had to go back that far to cover Hunter’s so-called work on the Burisma board. Gosh, now she’s actually getting suspicious that Hunter might have done something wrong! You know, even puppies open their eyes after no more than two weeks.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2024/12/09/ana-kasparian-remain-in-mexico-was-a-good-policy-n2648200

Just a few days ago, NATIONAL REVIEW ran an unfortunate column by legal analyst Andrew C. McCarthy advising the new Trump 47 administration against using “retributive” lawfare against those who spent years abusing the legal system and violating his rights to damage him politically.  (We linked to his piece, and then to the Julie Kelly commentary that magnificently dismantled it).  But yesterday, NR redeemed itself by posting a related story from James Lynch that shows just how far the FBI went to interfere with the 2020 election by suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story.  We’re not attorneys, but if McCarthy believes these people should be given the kid-glove treatment now, he is just wrong.  They all need the book thrown at them.

As Lynch tells it, we know now that the FBI spent “the better part of a year” working with social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to censor the Hunter laptop story as “Russian disinformation,” withholding information from them that would have told them the laptop was authentic.  As you know, the FBI had been aware of its authenticity ever since they took possession of it in November 2019.  According to FBI whistleblower Gary Shapley, they authenticated its content soon after, obtaining a warrant and retrieving the data from the laptop’s archive.

But they worked harder on misleading social media than we’d even known.  This is the stunning new part, from NR’s story on a bombshell House Judiciary Committee report:

“After authenticating the device, the FBI team on the Hunter Biden (case) briefed the bureau’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) multiple times because of the case’s connection to Ukraine. Months before the laptop story broke, the FITF was aware that the FBI possessed Biden’s laptop, multiple FITF officials testified to the Judiciary Committee, according to the report.”

Many months ago, we reported on the media workshop held before the 2020 election by our intel community for media and social media platforms at the Alpine Institute.  But as Lynch says, the Judiciary investigation found this was just part of the government’s influence, as the FITF met with them over 30 times (!), beginning in early 2020, to “pre-bunk” allegations that the Biden family had peddled influence to profit from the Biden name.    

The FBI declined to comment for NATIONAL REVIEW.  Wouldn’t you know.

According to the report, the FITF gave social media a heads-up about potential “hack-and-leak” operations, in the context of election security and potential foreign influence operations.  In effect, they primed them to accept that the Hunter laptop story, when it came out, would be fake.

“In response,” the report reads, “some platforms even adopted new content moderation policies designed to address hacked materials.”  FBI officials were popping champagne corks. 

According to the Judiciary report, the warnings got quite specific, with the FBI warning “multiple times that a ‘hack-and-leak’ story involving Burisma and Hunter Biden was set to drop in October 2020,” Lynch writes. 

To cite just one example of how social media staffers interpreted this, one from Facebook “predicted” in September 2020 that “We are likely to have in the next few weeks a leak or series of leaks about Biden’s supposed link to Burisma, where we won’t be able to prove they were ‘hacked,’ but where we will have responsible USG [U.S. government] players publicly saying this is part of a foreign influence operation.”

So when Miranda Devine came out with her NEW YORK POST story about the laptop, what were FB and Twitter employees supposed to think of it?  They thought just what the administration wanted them to think, as they’d already been vaccinated against the truth.  Just in case, the FITF had even scheduled meetings with both Facebook and Twitter on October 14, the day Devine’s story broke.

(We would add that the FBI surely had been spying on both Devine and her source Rudy Giuliani.  How else would they have known the exclusive story was going to break?)

Most of the rest of this, you already know.  As the report reads, “The FBI refused to acknowledge that it possessed and had authenticated the laptop.”  It was a big con, which later allowed then-candidate Joe Biden to further con American voters when he denied the laptop was real.  (Of course, the fake “classic earmarks” letter signed by 51 former intel officials also helped him carry off his lie.)

Interestingly, while FB and Twitter reflexively cracked down on the laptop story, Google left it alone, as their own in-house threat analysis found no evidence the laptop was the product of a hack.  Can’t believe we’re saying this, but Google actually deserves a little credit here.

Still, this report from the Judiciary Committee offers even more on the extent to which the FBI tried to interfere in the 2020 election by suppressing real news.  Later on, after Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into “X,” he fired the two executives responsible for censoring the Hunter laptop story.  As reported by NATIONAL REVIEW, Yoel Roth and Vijaya Gadde expressed remorse during testimony last year about their decision to suppress the NY POST’s reporting.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/fbi-spent-a-year-preparing-platforms-to-censor-biden-story-withheld-info-on-laptops-authenticity/

For when you have time, here’s the full report from the House Judiciary Committee on how the CIA was involved in discrediting the Hunter laptop story.  As you know, former deputy CIA Director Mike Morell (who was still under contract to the CIA at the time) coordinated the “classic earmarks” letter.

The committee’s pithy conclusion: “The infamous Hunter Biden statement had all the hallmarks of an intelligence community influence operation.”  How sad that an agency that is supposed to work against our adversaries on foreign soil was turned against American voters.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/fbi-spent-a-year-preparing-platforms-to-censor-biden-story-withheld-info-on-laptops-authenticity/

If the Hunter Biden laptop had been totally buried, we would’ve been none the wiser about the Biden family “business,” casting our ballots in blissful ignorance, just as the left wanted us to.  Yes, Hunter’s dirty mess came out, but President Biden has made sure his son won’t have to pay, at the same time trying to minimize the damage to the rest of the family, including himself.

(Side note: To those urging Trump not to take any action against the Deep State spooks responsible for this, recall that polls showed that if voters had known the laptop was real, Biden would have lost the 2020 election by a wide margin. Therefore, they are directly responsible not only for election interference and all the damage caused by Biden-Harris, but for handing Biden the power to cover up the biggest influence peddling scandal in American history, plus any other crimes his son might have committed over an 11-year period. Still want to let all these accomplices off scot-free?)

On Day 1 of Biden’s presidency, spokesperson Jen Psaki promised his administration would “bring transparency and truth back to the administration.”  Honestly, this makes us think Karine Jean-Pierre gets a bad rap, because that statement from Psaki is just as ludicrous as anything ever uttered by KJP.  The DAILY CALLER’s Katelynn Richardson has a good report on what Protect the Public Trust has to say about this administration’s lack of transparency and disregard of its own ethical promises.

She gives example after example…

https://dailycaller.com/2024/12/03/hunter-biden-pardon-is-just-another-example-of-biden-admins-failure-to-bring-promised-transparency-to-government/

In more backlash from President Biden’s all-inclusive pardon of his son, California Judge Mark Scarsi joins Special Counsel David Weiss and Delaware U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika in less-than-heartfelt acceptance of this move.  Like them, he simply “terminated” the case under his review without actually dismissing it.

This piece at REDSTATE is a must-read, as it includes Judge Scarsi’s scathing comments.  Reading between the lines, he seems disgusted by the President’s complaints about Hunter being treated differently.  The President might be granted the authority to issue a pardon, he says, but, “Nowhere does the Constitution give the President the authority to rewrite history.”  That, and more, here…

https://redstate.com/smoosieq/2024/12/03/a-press-release-is-not-a-pardon-ca-judge-terminates-hunters-tax-case-eviscerates-joes-rationale-n2182776

The Hunter pardon has generated an avalanche of stories and opinions, so let’s run through a few...

John Nolte at BREITBART tells how the swampy media are trying to spin the real story.  For example, the laughable NEW YORK TIMES tries to make you believe that Biden wasn’t lying; he just changed his mind.  Nolte’s piece on this should be used in journalism classes, but it won’t be.

(Note:  we see that more commentators are picking up on the fact that Hunter, now that he’s been pardoned, can no longer hide behind the Fifth Amendment.)

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/12/03/nolte-biden-white-house-conspired-for-months-to-mislead-public-about-hunter-pardon/

Joe Manchin has an idea about who Biden should pardon next, and it’s Donald Trump.  Manchin says it would “balance the scales of justice.”  That’s precisely why it won’t happen.

https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2024/12/03/joe-manchin-has-a-wild-idea-about-who-biden-should-pardon-next-n2182758

HOT AIR has more examples of leftists twisting their tiny brains into mini-pretzels trying to praise Biden for pardoning his son after praising him for NOT pardoning his son.

https://hotair.com/generalissimo/2024/12/02/joe-biden-just-razed-the-democrats-moral-high-ground-n3797515

Okay, now let’s contrast the leniency shown to Hunter with the atrocious treatment of the January 6 protesters, most of whom did nothing more than walk peacefully (“parade”) through the Capitol building (or not even that).

Victims of the weaponized justice system are speaking out, as reported by Catherine Salgado at PJ MEDIA, who quotes our friend Brandon Straka of #WalkAway: “I’m still serving a sentence for standing outside the Capitol for eight minutes.  Meanwhile, Hunter Biden could have murdered someone over the past decade, and nothing’s gonna happen.”

https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2024/12/03/victims-of-weaponized-lawfare-condemn-hunter-pardon-n4934802

Here’s a compelling, must-read rationale for Trump pardoning ALL January 6 defendants, especially in light of the Hunter pardon.  (Scott Adams, in his Tuesday podcast, happened to say this very thing.  Perhaps he had read this.)  We’re talking a blanket pardon for everyone, no matter what they allegedly did, because of the inherent political bias of the prosecutions.  Defendants simply could not get a fair trial when they were labeled “domestic terrorists,” “Insurrectionists” and “enemies of the state.”  Much more, some of it hilarious, at REDSTATE…

https://redstate.com/brutalbrittany/2024/12/02/opinion-why-all-the-january-6-defendants-deserve-a-pardon-n2182592

RELATED:  Speaking of the weaponized “justice” system, let’s get in our Way-Back Machine and take a quick look at Trump’s first sham impeachment.  It’s just been found that a ‘journalistic entity” called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP, formed in 2008), which helped shape the impeachment narrative against President Trump, is primarily funded by...drum roll, please!...U.S. government agencies.

Though we had never heard of it, this is apparently an extremely influential group, operating in over 60 countries and employing over 200 reporters.  They partner with the WASHINGTON POST, THE NEW YORK TIMES and THE GUARDIAN.  The head of the OCCRP says the government never exerted editorial control, but they did “veto top personnel hires, including editorial hires.”  (Why, that would NEVER affect editorial content!)  This report is an eye-opener.

https://trendingpoliticsnews.com/just-in-outlet-linked-to-trump-impeachment-is-majority-funded-by-u-s-bombshell-reveals-mace/

ALSO RELATED:  If you know anyone who thinks Kash Patel is somehow wrong for the job of FBI director, please tell them to listen to John Solomon’s interview with retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jeff Danik, in which Danik enthusiastically endorses Patel and explains why.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/influential-retired-fbi-leader-says-agents-back-kash-patel-next?_nlid=MzqRCunfD6&_nhids=55d4h3q3

Mike Huckabee

Throughout President Biden’s term, we’ve had so many stories that we deemed “shocking but not surprising” that it became a regular category of news stories. And on Sunday night, at the end of a long holiday weekend when most people were in tryptophan comas, Biden dropped the mother of all “shocking but not surprising” stories: he gave his prodigal son Hunter a full pardon. Not just for everything we know he did, but for everything we might find out that he did over an 11-year period (the mind reels at that thought!) It’s not just a presidential pardon, it’s a “Get Out Of Jail Free” platinum card.

https://www.westernjournal.com/breaking-joe-biden-pardons-son-hunter/

The reaction from Republicans was also unsurprising, with Congressional leaders denouncing it as another example of two-tiered justice from the most lawless Administration in history.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/12/02/gop-leaders-slam-liar-and-hypocrite-bidens-outrageous-hunter-pardon-most-lawless-administration-in-history/

But the pardon is no surprise, despite the fact that Biden repeatedly swore he would not interfere with the justice system or the jury verdict by pardoning his son. Recall, he also swore he would return normality to politics, he wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone earning over $200,000 a year, he knew nothing about Hunter’s shady deals and never met with his clients, and that Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation. So why would anyone believe him when he said he wouldn’t pardon Hunter? We can’t wait to hear Karine Jean-Pierre channel Gene Wilder in “Young Frankenstein”: “Don’t you people know a JOKE when you hear one?!”

Of course, with Joe having been found officially too old and feeble to be prosecuted (although not too old and feeble to continue to be President), this means both Hunter and Joe will be safe from any legal consequences for their (alleged!) long-running family influence-peddling racket. This makes it the most successful high-level corruption ring in American history.

Of course, there are other Biden family members who allegedly benefited, but Biden could always pardon them, too, before leaving office. Some are questioning why he chose to do this now instead of at the last minute. Hunter was scheduled to be sentenced in a few weeks, but chances are he wouldn’t have seen the inside of a jail cell before Trump’s inauguration.

Pardoning Hunter now distracts media attention from the Democrats’ manufactured “OUTRAGE!” over Trump’s Cabinet picks and reminds Americans of the powerful stench of Democrat corruption, which only helps Trump and his message of cleaning up the DC swamp (maybe we should call it a sewer.) Perhaps Biden did it as revenge for being thrown overboard by his Party, like his endorsement of Kamala Harris. It also sucks the air out of the Democrats’ bloviating about Trump pardoning January 6^th political prisoners.

Perhaps even better for Trump, in making the sweeping pardon, Biden released a stunningly dishonest statement, claiming poor little Hunter was unfairly targeted by the DOJ for political reasons. In truth, they tried to give him an unprecedented sweetheart deal that was only stopped because the judge read it and was appalled. According to Joe, virtually nobody is actually punished for tax evasion or lying about being a drug addict on gun purchase forms. Really? You try that (WARNING! We’re speaking rhetorically: Do NOT try that!) It is nice of him to admit, though, that not even Democrats take the gun laws they force on us seriously.

Only after Hunter’s crimes became such a hot potato that they were impossible to cover up was the DOJ forced to do its job (which, coincidentally, gave them justification for claiming they were “nonpartisan” as they waged lawfare on Trump and his supporters.)

But in making that self-serving claim that really isn’t true for Hunter, Joe verified that his DOJ is corrupt and unfairly prosecutes people for political reasons. That gives Trump all the ammunition he needs to pardon his supporters who’ve been targeted and to clean out their partisan rats’ nests. Trump made that clear with his reaction to the news on social media:

“Does the pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J6 hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”

https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2024/12/01/trump-reacts-to-hunter-biden-pardons-such-an-abuse-and-miscarriage-of-justice-n2182685

This anti-climax is frustrating for anyone who cares about justice, since all we can ever hope is that some real journalists (i.e., conservative journalists) will eventually put together the full story of this sleazy scheme and make it all public. It’s a twisted and wide-ranging web of corruption. Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene wrote an X post reminding us of all the corrupt members of the “justice” system who turned a blind eye or actively worked to cover it up, and of the fact that the FBI raided Barron Trump’s bedroom but not Hunter Biden’s.

https://thelibertydaily.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-breaks-down-hunter-pardon-warns/

Law professor Jonathan Turley also blasted the pardon, calling it “disgraceful” and “a decision that lives in infamy in presidential politics.” He eviscerated Biden’s rationale for the pardon and said that after all his denials that he would ever do it, this cements his legacy as the “liar-in-chief.”

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/jonathan-turley-joe-bidens-pardon-son-hunter-cements-his-legacy-liar-chief