Authorities have reportedly opened an investigation into the death of Obama-era Department of Homeland Security (DHS) whistleblower Philip Haney, who was was found dead in his California home on Friday.
&#8220;On February 21, 2020 at approximately 1012 hours, deputies and detectives responded to the area of Highway 124 and Highway 16 in Plymouth to the report of a male subject on the ground with a gunshot wound,&#8221; the Amador County Sheriff&#8217;s Office said in a statement. &#8220;Upon their arrival, they located and identified 66-year-old Philip Haney, who was deceased and appeared to have suffered a single, self-inflicted gunshot wound. A firearm was located next to Haney and his vehicle. This investigation is active and ongoing. No further details will be released at this time.&#8221;
Fox News <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/dhs-whistleblower-philip-haney-found-dead-police-say">reported</a>:
<blockquote>He was an outspoken <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/268282-dhs-ordered-me-to-scrub-records-of-muslims-with-terror" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">critic</a> of the Obama administration, specifically its handling of radical Jihadist elements and Islamic terrorism.
Haney, who retired in 2015, studied Arabic culture and language while working as a scientist in the Middle East before becoming a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 as a Customs &amp; Border Protection (CBP) agriculture officer.
After serving as an armed CBP officer, he was promoted to its Advanced Targeting Team. He specialized in Islamic theology and the strategy and tactics of the global Islamic movement.</blockquote>
Fox News contributor Sarah Carter responded by suggesting that Haney had been murdered, &#8220;Somebody I deeply respected and considered a friend Phil Haney – a DHS whistleblower during the Obama Admin was apparently killed yesterday in Southern California. Pray for his family and pray they find the person who murdered him. Still trying to get confirmation on details.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Somebody I deeply respected and considered a friend Phil Haney &#8211; a DHS whistleblower during the Obama Admin was apparently killed yesterday in Southern California. Pray for his family and pray they find the person who murdered him. Still trying to get confirmation on details
&mdash; Sara A. Carter (@SaraCarterDC) <a href="https://twitter.com/SaraCarterDC/status/1231249584925630464?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 22, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Haney was known for blowing the whistle on the Obama administration, claiming that the administration shut down a program that could have prevented Islamic terrorist attacks that were carried out on U.S. soil.
In 2015, Haney told then-Fox News host Megyn Kelly that his work could have prevented the 2015 Islamic terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California.
“The network of individuals that we work with were tied to a large group called Tablighi Jamaat, part of a larger group called Deobandi,&#8221; Haney said. &#8220;We had thousands of organizations or individuals in the database and we tracked them as they moved in and out of the United States on the visa waiver program. That’s what first brought the group to our attention.&#8221;
&#8220;And as we developed the case and started putting the pieces in place, we gain more and more evidence of their activities,&#8221; Haney continued, adding that the mosque of one of the terrorists behind the attack was allegedly connected to the organization that he was investigating.
Haney told Kelly that had the Obama administration not shut down the investigation, which was years in the making, would have likely flagged the terrorists who carried out the attack.
<iframe title="Whistleblower Says He Could Have Prevented CA Attack If Gov&#039;t Didn&#039;t Cut Funding" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bClwr4osp50?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
In 2016, following the Islamic terrorist attack on the Orlando Pulse nightclub, which at the time was the largest mass shooting in U.S. history, Haney told Fox News&#8217; Sean Hannity that he believed that the Obama administration&#8217;s decision to shut down his investigation likely prevented DHS from stopping the terrorist attack.
<iframe title="DHS whistleblower speaks out about jihad in America" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ea6pt13Jp5Q?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Philip Haney

Homeland Security Whistleblower From Obama Era Found Dead

Obama Administration

Suicide

Terrorism

whistleblower

After the unveiling of President Donald Trump’s proposed peace plan in the Middle East, numerous Senate Democrats took time out of their busy schedule to lecture him about Middle East politics. <a href="https://www.vanhollen.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Van%20Hollen%20Letter%20MidEast%20Peace%20Plan.pdf">The letter they wrote</a> is historically ignorant and dangerous, which is compounded by the fact that it was signed by three leading current presidential candidates; Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).
“Dear President Trump,” the letter begins, “We write to express our profound concern regarding your decision to release a one-sided Israeli-Palestinian plan forged without any Palestinian involvement or support.”
Right off the bat, Senate Democrats ignore the fact that the Palestinians have been invited to the negotiations on numerous occasions. The most prominent one was June 2019, when there was a U.S.-led peace conference in Bahrain that was boycotted by the Palestinians. They thought that a boycott would stop the conference, but Jared Kushner, the point-man for the Trump administration in this process, pushed forward.
Trump&#8217;s peace plan would ultimately give the Palestinians a state, as well as funds to help get that state up and running. The 1947 U.N. partition plan, which the Arab world outright rejected in choosing instead to declare all-out war on the nascent Jewish state, did not include $50 billion. In fact, the world mostly stood by and watched while the Jewish state was attacked from every direction.
Senate Democrats&#8217; letter espouses significant falsehoods, claiming that this plan “paves the way for full or partial Israeli annexation of the West Bank.” But there has never been much support for a call to fully annex Judea and Samaria, as that would include giving citizenship to millions of Palestinian-Arabs — many of whom call for the destruction of the state of Israel.
Senate Democrats also, un-ironically, claim that this plan “undermine[s] existing U.S. policy regarding the unilateral annexation of Crimea, eastern Ukraine.” In case the Democrats forgot, Russia invaded Crimea when the Obama administration withheld crucial military aid to the Ukranians. That was not a defensive war; it was an attack by Russia. Comparing that act with Israel winning territory in the 1967 Six-Day War, which was a defensive war, is patently insane. Additionally, Russia immediately annexed Crimea, whereas Israel limited its annexation to the city of Jerusalem — the eternal capital of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hill-the-jewish-nation">Jewish nation</a>. Contrast that to 1948, when Jordan took over that same territory, annexed it, and left the Palestinian people in refugee camps to linger and suffer until Israel militarily defeated Jordan in 1967&#8217;s defensive conflict.
Senate Democrats also conveniently ignore the last 73 years of history when they claim that “this proposal violates the Palestinians’ right to self-determination.” The Palestinians could have asserted their right to self-determination any time from 1947 through today. They can declare a state and nobody will mind. In fact, many Israelis would welcome it. In 2000, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to Yasser Arafat the Gaza Strip, 95% of the West Bank, 5% of Israel, half of Jerusalem (including the Temple Mount), and Israeli citizenship for 50,000 Palestinians. Arafat walked away without a counteroffer and instead <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-vox-lies-about-israel-again">launched the Second Intifada</a>. Democrats ignore that the Palestinians could have exercised their “right to self-determination.” Instead, they are choosing to stay as they are.
The Democrats complain about the proposed borders, referring to it as a “disconnected series of Palestinian islets.&#8221; They claim that this “would betray the vision of a sovereign Palestinian state.” Again, Palestinians could have had a say in this process. They chose not to. Additionally, the only “vision” that the Palestinians have of a Palestinian state is one that encompasses all of Israel and does not include any Jews.
The Democrats then have the audacity to accuse President Trump of interfering in the upcoming Israeli election, claiming that the timing “raises disturbing questions about [Trump&#8217;s] intention to intervene in the Israeli election process.” This accusation is audacious for multiple reasons. First, the Democratic Party at-large is currently in the middle of an impeachment of President Trump that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrat-impeachment-manager-admits-that-impeachment-is-about-2020-election">Democrats themselves claim</a> is intended to prevent him from winning re-election. Second, this is the third Israeli election in the last year, so this wouldn’t affect much of anything. Third, Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s chief political rival, endorsed this plan and <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/gantz-says-hell-bring-trump-peace-plan-before-knesset-for-vote-next-week/">is bringing it up for a parliamentary vote</a>. Finally, it is ironic that Senate Democrats are accusing Trump of interfering with Israeli elections when <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/236565-netanyahu-pollster-obama-role-in-election-larger-than-reported">Obama did that</a> in 2015 — and nobody cared.
Democrats continue their letter with their old and tiresome “President Trump isn’t a normal president” routine. “Your administration has already reversed decades of bipartisan U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” it reads. “Previous presidents of both parties successfully maintained the respect of both Israelis and Palestinians for the United States’ role as a credible player in difficult negotiations.” But policies that haven’t worked for 50 years should be changed. Democrats think that if they try the same thing over and over — that &#8220;thing&#8221; being caving to terrorists — there will be different results. That is the definition of insanity. Trump’s only change from the standard “two-state solution” is that it recognizes the fact that Israel is the only actor that actually wants peace.
The Democrats are making the same mistakes with the Palestinians that they did with the Iranians: The assumption that everyone wants the same thing. They do not. Palestinian leadership wants to destroy Israel. Democrats either don’t know that, or simply don’t care.
 
Moshe Hill is a political analyst and a Chovevei Zion Fellow. His work can be found on <a href="https://www.ahillwithaview.com">aHillwithaView.com</a>, <a href="https://facebook.com/aHillwithaView">facebook.com/aHillwithaView</a>, and on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/TheMoHill">@TheMoHill</a>.

President Trump Meets With Israeli PM Netanyahu At The White House

HILL: Senate Democrats’ Response To Trump’s Peace Plan Is Historically Ignorant

Amy Klobuchar

Benjamin Netanyahu

Bernie Sanders

Democratic Party

Donald Trump

Elizabeth Warren

Foreign Policy

Israel

Jared Kushner

Middle East

In response to The New York Times reporting on the leaked manuscript from former National Security Advisor John Bolton&#8217;s upcoming book about his time working for President Trump, Bolton&#8217;s former chief of staff wrote a <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/ambassador-bolton-withdraw-your-book-fred-fleitz">scathing op-ed for Fox News</a> that denounced the book for setting a &#8220;dangerous precedent&#8221; while demanding he withdraw it from publication until after the 2020 election.
&#8220;It was crushing to read weekend press reports that my friend and former boss John Bolton plans to publish a tell-all book on his time as President Trump’s National Security Advisor,&#8221; Fred Fleitz begins in the lengthy op-ed. &#8220;The book reportedly will be published in March 2020. Given the importance of protecting a president’s confidential discussions with his senior advisers, I strongly disagree with Bolton’s decision to release the book before the November presidential election and call on him to withdraw it from the publisher immediately.&#8221;
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/critics-hammer-bolton-after-book-pre-order-goes-live-following-leaked-manuscript-published-by-nyt">reported</a> by The Daily Wire&#8217;s Ryan Saavedra on Sunday, the Times wrote that Bolton alleges in his book that President Trump told him to freeze the $391 million in military aid to Ukraine until officials agreed to investigate Joe Biden&#8217;s corruption and 2016 election meddling.
Though Fleitz commends John Bolton for his service after knowing him for 30 years, praising his work in the State Department and in the Trump administration, he ultimately feels that Bolton&#8217;s book undermines executive privilege and will ultimately discourage future presidents from discussing important matters of foreign policy in confidence.
&#8220;Presidents must be able to candidly consult with their advisers without worrying they will leak these discussions to the press or obtain high-dollar book contracts to publish them,&#8221; Fleitz says in the op-ed. &#8220;A book by a former national security advisor ahead of a president’s reelection bid may set a dangerous precedent since it could discourage future presidents from seeking advice from expert advisers on sensitive national security matters.&#8221;
&#8220;This is why executive privilege exists: To allow the president and other senior officials to keep certain communications and internal deliberations private if disclosing them would disrupt the functions or decision-making processes of the executive branch,&#8221; he continues.
Not only does Fleitz slam Bolton for seeking to publish the book in the first place, he also takes issue with Bolton&#8217;s decision to submit it for review with the National Security Council (NSC) despite knowing how prone the agency is for leaks.
&#8220;It also is inexplicable how such a sensitive manuscript could be sent to the NSC in the middle of the impeachment process,&#8221; he argues. &#8220;Under such circumstances, a leak of the manuscript was all but certain. If a manuscript of this sensitivity was to be published at all, this should happen after the election, not in the spring of 2020,  I don’t understand the need for a former national security advisor to publish a tell-all book critical of a president he served, especially during a presidential reelection campaign that will determine the fate of the country.&#8221;
Fleitz concludes his op-ed by referencing former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who chose to publish his book “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War&#8221; that was critical of the Obama administration only after the 2012 election. In fact, Gates waited until January of 2014 to publish it.
&#8220;Gates established a principled precedent on how senior advisers to presidents should write about their experiences,&#8221; concludes Fleitz. &#8220;Given Ambassador Bolton’s long and distinguished record of government service, I believe it is vital that he follow this precedent.&#8221;

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton Delivers Keynote Address At CSIS Forum

John Bolton’s Former Chief Of Staff Slams Him: ‘Withdraw Your Book,’ ‘Sets A Dangerous Precedent’

2016 election

2020 Election

Impeachment

Joe Biden

John Bolton

New York Times

Robert Gates

State Department

Fox News host Laura Ingraham revealed emails on Wednesday night that connected the alleged Ukrainian whistleblower with a 2016 meeting that the Obama administration held with Ukrainian officials about corruption involving Ukrainian gas company Burisma. The emails also discussed whether the role that 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden&#8217;s son, Hunter Biden, had with the company could complicate any investigation.
&#8220;The chain centers on a request from New York Times reporter Ken Vogel,&#8221; Ingraham began. &#8220;[In] May of 2019, Vogel sends an email to State Department official Kate Schilling about a story he was working on regarding an Obama-era meeting with Ukrainian prosecutors. In his request, Vogel mentions a name who some have reported is the whistleblower. We have not yet confirmed this name, so we are blacking it out for here.&#8221;
Ingraham read the email from Vogel, which stated:
<blockquote>We are going to report that State Department official Elizabeth Zentos attended a meeting on the White House on January 19th, 2016, with Ukrainian prosecutors and embassy officials. The subjects discussed included efforts within the United States government to support prosecutions in the Ukraine and United Kingdom of Burisma holdings and concerns that Hunter Biden’s position with the company could complicate such efforts.</blockquote>
&#8220;On May 1st, State Department official Kate Schilling forwarded Vogel’s email to her colleagues Elizabeth Zentos and George Kent Remember him? He was one of the House Democrats all-star impeachment witnesses,&#8221; Ingraham said. &#8220;According to Schilling’s email, Kent has previously been a source for Vogel — I wonder how many times. Follow up emails reveal the conversation ending on May 3rd when the State Department eventually declined to comment.&#8221;
Ingraham said that her show confirmed the meeting by looking through the archives of the Obama White House visitor logs, which she said showed that the alleged whistleblower &#8220;checked in numerous Ukrainian officials into the White House on January 19th 2016, the day Vogel claimed there was a meeting on the Burisma and Biden.&#8221;
&#8220;Also at the meeting were Ukraine’s lead anti-corruption prosecutor and the head of the anti-corruption bureau, both of whom were there to discuss the complications of Hunter Biden’s sweetheart gig,&#8221; Ingraham continued. &#8220;So what happened to that New York Times story about the 2016 meeting? Pretty hot, don&#8217;t you think? It was never published, we asked Ken Vogel, the reporter, why nothing ever came of it but he didn’t respond.&#8221;
Ingraham then noted the importance of the timeline of events with respect to The New York Times&#8217; looking into the meeting in May 2019.
&#8220;The timing of their request and the subsequent squashing of the story are very interesting. Biden announced his candidacy on April 25th, 2019,&#8221; Ingraham said. &#8220;The exchanges we laid out here occur the following week. Now we have some questions. Number one, why wasn’t the whistleblower concerned about Joe Biden overseeing Ukraine policy while his son was cashing in? Was it only troubling that Trump himself tried to get this thing investigated? Number two, why didn’t this story ever run? Did Biden’s team manage to put it down, fearing blowback from his son Hunter’s dirty dealings?&#8221;
It&#8217;s also worth noting that several weeks after the Obama White House met with Ukrainian officials in January 2016 to discuss Burisma corruption and Hunter Biden, then-Vice President Joe Biden <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/436816-joe-bidens-2020-ukrainian-nightmare-a-closed-probe-is-revived">pressured</a> Ukraine into firing its prosecutor, who was investigating corruption at the company.
WATCH:
<iframe title="Laura Ingraham" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/i7s91dQodwc?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Obama Biden

Laura Ingraham Reveals Emails Tying Alleged Whistleblower To Obama WH Meeting On Burisma Corruption, Hunter Biden

Burisma

Hunter Biden

Laura Ingraham

In March 2003, then-President George W. Bush let a multinational land invasion of Iraq. At the time, ethnically diverse Iraq — one of the sundry Middle East states haphazardly crafted by clueless Europeans in the World War I-era Sykes-Picot Agreement — was run by thuggish Ba&#8217;athist strongman Saddam Hussein. Within weeks, Baghdad was held by U.S.-aligned forces. Less than a year later, Hussein was captured.
But that was deemed woefully insufficient by Bush-era foreign policy hands. Operating under the intellectually hubristic and universal values-ridden guise of a White House &#8220;<a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/freedomagenda/">Freedom Agenda</a>,&#8221; Bush-era foreign policy was not content to engage in Israel Defense Forces-style one-off <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/a-holistic-approach-to-the-middle-east-and-our-national-security/">&#8220;strike and maneuver&#8221;</a> tactical hits against threatening jihadist outfits. Rather, the Bush administration, in tandem with its concurrent nation-building project in the third-world sharia backwater hellhole of Afghanistan, sought a more enduring physical presence in order to help birth a Madisonian republic in the war-torn, ethnically fractious Iraqi desert.
The rest — with the exception of an Obama-era full troop withdrawal between the end of 2011 and our troops&#8217; return in 2014 to fight the ascendant Islamic State Sunni death cult — is, as they say, history. In the year 2020, the U.S. retains a substantial physical military presence in Iraq.
Following the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-the-just-and-proper-strike-of-mastermind-iranian-jihadist-qassem-soleimani">just and proper strike</a> last week of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force terrorist mastermind Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, it is now time for our U.S. troops in Iraq to <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/01/07/offing-soleimani-gives-trump-an-excellent-chance-to-exit-iraq/">come home</a>.
There is simply no longer any compelling strategic reason for the U.S. to retain a troop presence in Iraq, which is increasingly dominated by pro-Iran Shi&#8217;ite militias whose fealty is to no one other than the Quds Force and its mullah overlords. The day has long passed where true American influence in Iraq has been anything other than symbolic; the nation is, at this point, hardly distinguishable from its <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bryen-irans-imperial-overreach">&#8220;Shi&#8217;ite Crescent&#8221;</a> fellow nations of Syria and Lebanon in its status as an Iranian satrapy. It was only a matter of days ago when Iraqi security officials seemed, at best, ambivalent about Soleimani loyalist Shi&#8217;ite radicals storming the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
The true threat in the region to the United States, as it <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bryen-the-dispatch-of-soleimani-and-the-escalation-of-the-war">has been ever since</a> the Islamic Revolution of 1979, is the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-iranian-revolution-forty-years-old-stand-josh-hammer">inherently jihadist</a> regime in Tehran. Non-state Sunni jihadist actors, no matter the alphabet soup under which they organize, utterly pale in comparison. The threat of Sunni Islamist infiltration can largely be stanched by severely limiting entry visas from problematic Islamic nations, massively ramping up immigration <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-border-wall-nice-interior-enforcement-nicer-josh-hammer">interior enforcement</a>, and engaging in occasional ad hoc drone strikes based from the U.S.&#8217;s already-manifold bases across the region. The strike that killed Soleimani, after all, was launched from Al Udeid Air Base in (deeply problematic <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-terror-funding-qatar-once-again-proves-it-is-not-americas-friend">&#8220;ally&#8221;</a>) Qatar.
The issue with leaving large-scale numbers of U.S. military assets, from a hardened realist perspective, is that it is <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/death-iranian-gen-soleimani-long-overdue-justice/">actually counterproductive</a> to our over-arching goal of deterring the Iranian menace. As Daniel Horowitz quite <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/death-iranian-gen-soleimani-long-overdue-justice/">presciently warned</a> even before last night&#8217;s missile launches from Iran into Iraq, &#8220;[c]ontinuing to leave so many assets in Iraq itself will just make us vulnerable to Iran’s attacks and counterattacks in the future.&#8221; And a higher-level goal such as deterring Iran necessarily takes hierarchical primacy over a tactic such as deploying troops to Iraq. As famed Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/19042/should-israel-invade-gaza">once said</a>: First decide on one’s policy, then one’s strategy, and only then one’s tactics.
In taking out Soleimani, the Ayatollah Khameini&#8217;s most trusted servant, the Trump administration clearly communicated to the Tehran mullocracy that America will always zealously guard and defend our national interests, as we carefully demarcate and define them. We no longer need to be involved in the dreadful and feckless task of nation-building. As Lee Smith compellingly <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/01/07/offing-soleimani-gives-trump-an-excellent-chance-to-exit-iraq/">writes</a> today at the New York Post, &#8220;Trump carved out his own exit strategy&#8221; via the Soleimani strike.
Let&#8217;s bring our troops in Iraq home. It will only help, not hinder, our continued efforts to defiantly stand athwart Iran&#8217;s aspirational regional hegemony.

US troops in tank in Baghdad

HAMMER: The Time Is Right For Our Troops In Iraq To Come Home

Al Qaeda

George W. Bush

Iran

Iraq

Iraq War

Islamic State (ISIS)

Qassem Soleimani

This week, President Donald Trump launched a global round of teeth gnashing when he ordered the killing of the greatest terrorist leader in the modern Middle East, Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. Soleimani was unquestionably responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in Iraq and thousands of others throughout the Middle East — mostly Muslim. His global terror network ran from South America to Europe to Africa to Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Soleimani was an unparalleled organizer and a pitiless murderer. His death was richly earned.
But for many in the media and on the domestic and international left, Trump&#8217;s action was precipitously &#8220;provocative.&#8221; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Soleimani&#8217;s killing — which came directly after a Soleimani-approved terror assault on America&#8217;s embassy in Baghdad and amidst reported further plans for escalated terror against American targets — &#8220;disproportionate.&#8221; Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., suggested that Trump, not the Iranians, had &#8220;escalated&#8221; the situation. Former Vice President Joe Biden said that Trump had &#8220;just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox.&#8221;
This reaction has been magnified by the media, many of whom have been speculating about the possibility of all-out war between the United States and Iran. Think pieces have been written about whether the United States will reactivate the draft (spoiler alert: No, we won&#8217;t). Musings have filled the newspapers about the supposed conflagration prompted not by Iranian evil but by Trumpian reactivity.
All of this smacks less of legitimate concern about what comes next than it does of sheer panic that Trump has overturned a decade of American and European appeasement of the Iranian regime. Ben Rhodes, former President Obama&#8217;s deputy national security adviser, architect of the Iran deal and an overt liar who told the American public that Iran was on its way to moderation if only the United States would loosen economic restrictions on the terror state, has placed blame for volatility squarely before Trump. Susan Rice, Obama&#8217;s national security adviser during the Iran deal and another overt liar who told the American public that Islamic terror against our Benghazi embassy was rooted in anger over a YouTube video, soberly informed Americans that &#8220;Americans would be wise to brace for war.&#8221; Biden suggested that in throwing out the Iran deal, Trump had paved the way for war — and, oh, by the way, the Iran deal was &#8220;airtight.&#8221;
This is a deliberate misreading of history designed to absolve the Obama administration of its Iran policy debacle. The administration pursued a policy of strengthening Iran economically — and did so while openly acknowledging that Iran would use that newly gained economic strength to pursue terrorism and ballistic missile testing. In speaking of the sanctions relief given to Iran, then-Secretary of State John Kerry explained in January 2016, &#8220;I think that some of it will end up in the hands of the IRGC or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists.&#8221;
That&#8217;s precisely what happened. In March 2016, then-U.S. Central Command nominee Army Gen. Joseph Votel said that Iran had become &#8220;more aggressive&#8221; since the advent of the nuclear deal. Indeed, Iran has built up Hezbollah in Lebanon, propped up Bashar Assad in Syria, increased its presence in Iraq and bolstered its war in Yemen. In the past few months, Iran and its proxies have attacked shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi oil facilities, an American drone and an American embassy, among other targets. All of this occurred while the Trump administration did little or nothing in response.
Then Trump ordered the killing of Soleimani. Suddenly, we have been informed by dishonest Democrats and their media allies, Iran has gone rogue.
Nonsense. Iran has been rogue for decades. The Iran deal was simply an attempt to whistle past the graveyard with the terror regime — to pay it off long enough so that President Barack Obama could declare the problem handled. This was, after all, the Obama strategy in Crimea and Syria: Declare a red line; run away from it; pretend that pusillanimous inaction is bravery and deterrence provocation.
Trump thought differently. Now Iran has come face to face with the prospect that actions have consequences — and those consequences don&#8217;t involve pallets of cash being shipped over to fund terror organizations that span the globe.

John Kerry meets Javad Zarif

SHAPIRO: Trump’s Iran Policy Isn’t the Problem. Barack Obama’s Was.

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

Nuclear Weapons

Trump Administration

The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under Barack Obama appeared on &#8220;Meet the Press&#8221; Sunday to discuss President Trump&#8217;s decision to take out Iran&#8217;s top military leader, Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, who the Pentagon says was &#8220;actively developing plans&#8221; for more attacks on Americans.
During the interview, former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson torpedoed the Democrats&#8217; talking point about Trump supposedly needing congressional approval to order the strike on Soleimani. Whether or not you agree with the Trump administration&#8217;s description of Soleimani as a terrorist,&#8221; Johnson explained, the president had &#8220;ample domestic legal authority to take him out without additional congressional authorization.&#8221;
&#8220;If you believe everything our government is saying about General Soleimani, he was a lawful military objective and the president, under his constitutional authority as commander-in-chief, had ample domestic legal authority to take him out without additional congressional authorization,&#8221; Johnson told &#8220;Meet the Press&#8221; host Chuck Todd Sunday, as reported by <a href="https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2020/01/05/obamas-dhs-secretary-debunked-dems-claim-congress-needed-to-approve-soleimanis-killing-n2558967">Town Hall</a> (video below). &#8220;Whether he was a terrorist or a general in a military force that was engaged in armed attacks against our people, he was a lawful military objective.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
This morning, Obama DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson debunked Democrats&#39; claim that Congress needed to approve Soleimani strike
Johnson: Soleimani was a &quot;lawful military objective&quot; &amp; the President had &quot;ample domestic legal authority to take him out&quot; <a href="https://t.co/1LUqYAwm9j">pic.twitter.com/1LUqYAwm9j</a>
&mdash; Zach Parkinson (@AZachParkinson) <a href="https://twitter.com/AZachParkinson/status/1213871053266673665?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 5, 2020</a></blockquote>
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The U.S. Department of Defense explained in a statement issued shortly after the airstrike that killed Soleimani that the general was &#8220;actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.&#8221;
&#8220;General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,&#8221; the Defense Department revealed in the statement. &#8220;General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more. He had orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months – including the attack on December 27th – culminating in the death and wounding of additional American and Iraqi personnel. General Soleimani also approved the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that took place this week.&#8221;
After he defended Trump&#8217;s authority to order the strike against the general, Johnson was promptly targeted by the left, including <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/meet-press/meet-press-doesnt-disclose-guest-talking-about-iran-lockheed-martin-board-member">Media Matters</a>, which accused both Johnson and Todd of failing to disclose that the former DHS secretary is now a board member of defense contractor Lockheed Martin – suggesting Johnson is actively attempting to promote war for his self-interest.
&#8220;Jeh Johnson, who was secretary of homeland security under President Barack Obama, appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press to discuss President Donald Trump ordering the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani,&#8221; the Media Matters report reads. &#8220;Neither Johnson nor host Chuck Todd <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-january-5-2020-n1110181">disclosed</a> that Johnson is a board member of defense contractor Lockheed Martin, which reportedly paid him over $300,000 in 2018 alone.&#8221;
The left-wing organization also highlighted a tweet from Popular Information’s Judd Legum calling foul on the omission:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson appeared on Meet The Press and asserted Trump had &quot;ample domestic legal authority to take [Soleimani] out without an additional congressional authorization&quot;
NOT DISCLOSED: Johnson is currently on the board of defense contractor Lockheed Martin <a href="https://t.co/cimTpyolTf">pic.twitter.com/cimTpyolTf</a>
&mdash; Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) <a href="https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1213906520359997440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 5, 2020</a></blockquote>
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In its report on Johnson&#8217;s defense of Trump&#8217;s authority to order the strike, Town Hall cites a document on the &#8220;<a href="https://www.peterson.af.mil/Portals/15/documents/Units/JudgeAdvocate/AFD-160210-019.pdf">Law of Armed Conflict</a>&#8221; released by the Peterson Air Force Base&#8217;s Legal Office, which defines &#8220;military objectives&#8221; as &#8220;any object which by its nature, location, purpose, or use makes an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture, or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.&#8221;
In April 2019, the U.S. Department of State announced that Soleimani was responsible for 17 percent of American deaths during the Iraqi War (2003-2011) as the man in control of all Iranian and Iran-backed operations in the region.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-iraq-votes-to-kick-u-s-out-trump-drops-the-hammer-in-response">Iraq Votes To Kick U.S. Out, Trump Drops The Hammer In Response</a>

Jeh Johnson

WATCH: Obama’s DHS Secretary Debunks Dems’ Claim Trump Didn’t Have Authority To Kill Soleimani; Now He’s Under Fire From Left

On Thursday, in the most audacious and brave move of his presidency, President Trump ordered the killing of Iran’s top terrorist, Qassem Soleimani — a man who was also the top general of the country. Commentators have compared Iran’s loss of Soleimani to the loss of the Defense Secretary, head of the CIA, and the head of the FBI simultaneously. Soleimani was the man closest to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and some speculated that he would succeed Khamenei at some point. Now, he’s been reduced to pulp.
His death makes the world a significantly better and safer place. <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iran-will-avenge-Soleimanis-death-the-question-is-where-and-when-612988?utm_source=Yaakov+Katz&amp;utm_campaign=c7b11d8eaa-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_01_03_01_23&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_0c089b8575-c7b11d8eaa-16250949" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iran-will-avenge-Soleimanis-death-the-question-is-where-and-when-612988?utm_source%3DYaakov%2BKatz%26utm_campaign%3Dc7b11d8eaa-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_01_03_01_23%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_term%3D0_0c089b8575-c7b11d8eaa-16250949&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578158287834000&amp;usg=AFQjCNH1D_DuXBO-ujVVthiipFuzm09yjQ">Soleimani was responsible</a> for the killing of hundreds of American troops in Iraq (by State Department estimates, 17 percent of all Americans killed in Iraq were <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/state-dept-iranian-general-killed-in-u-s-strike-responsible-for-17-of-american-deaths-in-iraq" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.dailywire.com/news/state-dept-iranian-general-killed-in-u-s-strike-responsible-for-17-of-american-deaths-in-iraq&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578158287834000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGmC57GTvuTsNn_ygF-xs1VGMkVjw">Soleimani’s handiwork</a>), the arming of Hezbollah in Lebanon with tens of thousands of rockets, the Houthi terrorism in Yemen, the building of Islamic Jihad, and a bevy of terror plots all around the world, including the latest assault on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Speculation that this represents an “act of war” is utterly baseless — Soleimani is a terrorist who was killed while abroad, in Iraq, planning further acts of terrorism.
Suggestions that the Trump administration is responsible for “escalation” with Iran — after months of Iranian aggression in international waters and in foreign countries, after downing an American drone and attacking an American embassy — are absurd and morally disgusting. When <a href="https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1213096517063589890" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1213096517063589890&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1578158287834000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHFQOr4M0VzRKspGSxP6JLskfuzFw">Nancy Pelosi tweets</a> that it is “disproportionate” to kill a terror leader planning action against Americans and our assets and allies, she’s not just reflecting moral confusion — she’s evidencing moral foolishness of the highest order.
There is a lot to be nervous about here. Is the Soleimani killing part of a broader American strategy with regard to Iran, or a supposed one-off? Has the U.S. hardened its assets on the ground in the Middle East in preparation for Iranian retaliation? Are America’s allies ready for the surge in terrorism that will surely follow, given the Iranian government’s need to show strength in the face of this devastating loss?
With all of that said, it’s obvious that President Trump was attempting to restore a deterrence against Iran that had been completely disintegrated by the Obama administration. History didn’t begin with Trump, and Iranian aggression didn’t start with the end of the Iran nuclear deal. Far from it. Iran has become more powerful and aggressive thanks to the overt planning of the Obama administration.
President Obama’s preferred strategy with Iran was wishful thinking and bribery. The Obama administration openly lied to the American people, claiming that there was a “moderate” faction inside the Iranian government that would be elevated through signing them checks and ushering them into the world economy. That was utter nonsense, as national security aide Ben Rhodes later admitted. The Obama administration engaged in the worst sort of appeasement, guaranteeing billions of dollars in economic growth to a regime dedicated to the destruction of American interests around the world and hell-bent on regional domination.
When Trump entered office, after years of increased Iranian aggression in the region, he pulled out of the bribery arrangement. Iran increased its aggression, including targeting American interests and allies directly. Trump ignored that or responded minimally for years. Then the Iranians attacked an American embassy. That was the final straw, and Soleimani was on the chopping block.
The fact that the Trump administration was unwilling to pay off the world’s worst terror regime, that the terror regime never stopped pursuing terrorism, and that the Trump administration responded — all of that Trump administration action is not only perfectly reasonable, but perfectly moral.
Now the question is what comes next.
Action always comes with risks. The easy move in foreign policy is always to bank on the status quo. After all, you never have to face the downside risk of responsibility by doing nothing. But long-term concerns must be weighed, too. Leaving Osama bin Laden alone for a decade didn’t hurt the Clinton administration much. But it certainly hurt America.
When it comes to international conflict, failing to establish deterrence comes with long-range risks, including the growing power of an aggressive Iranian regime moving steadily toward nuclear weapons and destabilizing or threatening every American ally in the region, as well as Americans abroad. It is true that America can be drawn into wars we don’t want by gradual escalation of conflict (Vietnam, e.g.) — but it’s also true that America can be drawn into far more dangerous conflicts by allowing dangerous enemies to grow, metastasize, and strengthen (Germany, Japan, Soviet Union).
Foreign policy is always a risk-reward and short-term vs. long-term gain calculation. But the world is a better place without Soleimani in it — and it’s simply mythmaking to suggest that Iran was benign until Soleimani’s head was removed from his shoulders.

SHAPIRO: Trump Taking Out Soleimani Just Made The World A Better, Safer Place

The world has awoken today a safer and more just place. And the unraveling of former President Barack Obama&#8217;s pro-Iran regional Middle East realignment, which began with President Donald Trump&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-trump-just-shredded-iran-deal-here-are-5-ben-shapiro">thunderous exit</a> from his predecessor&#8217;s pro-ayatollah nuclear capitulation, has now reached its logical conclusion.
The Obama Middle East foreign policy legacy is dead. As is the Islamic Republic of Iran&#8217;s infamous jihadist mastermind, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-trump-responds-to-u-s-military-killing-2-top-iranian-military-leaders-involved-in-terrorists">Qassem Soleimani</a>.
Good riddance to both.
It is difficult to overstate the geopolitical and strategic ramifications of Soleimani&#8217;s long-overdue demise. Aside from Osama bin Laden himself, no leading international jihadist thug has had more American blood on his hands than the decades-long veteran commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force (IRGC-QF) — a U.S.-designated <a href="https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2049534/statement-by-the-department-of-defense/">Foreign Terrorist Organization</a> and umbrella organization overseeing so much regional and global evil, from Iraq to Yemen to <a href="https://ctc.usma.edu/irans-unwavering-support-to-assads-syria/">Syria</a> to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-defund-lebanon-and-do-it-yesterday">Lebanon</a> to Gaza to <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20190109-eu-sanctions-iran-over-assassinations-peoples-mujahedeen-france-bomb-plot">European</a> capitals to our very own <a href="https://mosaicmagazine.com/response/jewish-world/2019/08/the-men-responsible-for-the-amia-bombing-are-known-and-still-at-large/">western</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/man-in-iran-backed-plot-to-kill-saudi-ambassador-gets-25-years/2013/05/30/0435e7a2-c952-11e2-8da7-d274bc611a47_story.html">hemisphere</a>. From <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-defund-lebanon-and-do-it-yesterday">Hezbollah</a> to Hamas to Palestinian Islamic Jihad to Yemeni <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/world/houthis-explain-death-to-america-slogan-reveal-what-will-bring-them-to-peace-talks">Houthi rebels</a> to (contra Iranian <a href="https://twitter.com/JZarif/status/1212946202280579073">propaganda</a>) <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/19/us/politics/us-iran.html">al-Qaeda itself</a>, the extraterritorial tentacles of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-iranian-revolution-forty-years-old-stand-josh-hammer">inherently jihadist</a> Iranian regime are simply ubiquitous.
No nation on Earth funds, sponsors, and exports more genocidal jihad than the Islamic Republic of Iran. And no one has been more responsible for that over the past 20-plus years than Qassem Soleimani. The Hudson Institute&#8217;s Michael Doran is thus correct when he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/trump-iran-suleimani-assassination-baghdad.html">writes</a> today that, &#8220;[t]he killings of Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leaders of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, were certainly meaningful, but they were also largely symbolic.&#8221; By contrast, Doran continues, &#8220;[t]aking out the architect of the Islamic Republic’s decades-long active campaign of violence against the United States and its allies, especially Israel, represents a tectonic shift in Middle Eastern politics.&#8221;
This is <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1212943146512003073">precisely right</a>.
Soleimani, who was designated and sanctioned by the U.N., E.U., and U.S. alike, directly approved <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-now-is-not-the-time-to-go-soft-on-iran">Tuesday&#8217;s U.S. embassy storming</a> in Baghdad by Iranian proxy militia Kataib Hezbollah, and was credibly assessed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as actively planning more <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/pompeo-strike-on-soleimani-disrupted-imminent-attack-saved-hundreds/">&#8220;imminent&#8221;</a> attacks against hard American assets in the Middle East, has been directly active in the mass murder of Americans. He personally oversaw the mass arming of Shiite Iraqi insurgents and it is estimated that the IRGC-QF targeted and killed over 600 Americans in Iraq from 2003–2011. The State Department asserts that this personally amounts to a whopping <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/state-dept-iranian-general-killed-in-u-s-strike-responsible-for-17-of-american-deaths-in-iraq">17% of all </a>deaths of U.S. military personnel during the Iraq War. As Iraq War veteran Jesse Kelly <a href="https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1212916676167122944">tweeted</a>, &#8220;If you’ve been to a VA hospital in recent years and seen a young man missing limbs, there’s a reasonable chance Qasem Soleimani is responsible for it.&#8221;
Qassem Soleimani was a monstrous thug. In addition to the hundreds of Americans killed in Iraq via Iranian-supplied roadside IEDs, Soleimani personally oversaw the jihad-led destabilization of all nations within Tehran&#8217;s coveted <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2019/09/03/the-shiite-crescent-and-regional-disaster/">&#8220;Shiite crescent&#8221;</a> of desired regional hegemony. He likely is responsible, on net, for tens of thousands of deaths. He was a relentless and unceasing foe of Western civilization, more broadly, though he held a special disdain for the mullahs&#8217; &#8220;Little Satan&#8221; of Israel and &#8220;Great Satan&#8221; of the United States.
Totalitarian regimes the world over crave Obama administration-style trepidation and appeasement. Sharks, alas, are always on the prowl for bloodletting weaklings. But it takes righteousness to refuse to be cowed by revanchist thuggery; it takes resolve to stake one&#8217;s ground; and it takes willpower to defend one&#8217;s carefully calibrated <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/death-iranian-gen-soleimani-long-overdue-justice/">strategic interests</a>.
The only travesty here is that Qassem Soleimani was not taken out sooner. The president of the United States deserves kudos for having the courage to execute this strike. America and her allies are today safer and stronger for it. A small portion of justice has been served, and there is no more deserving target of that rough justice than mastermind Iranian jihadist Qassem Soleimani.

HAMMER: The Just And Proper Strike Of Mastermind Iranian Jihadist Qassem Soleimani

Mike Pompeo

Radical Islam

As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/traditional-rabbi-group-blasts-house-democrats-over-false-and-misleading-letter-on-israeli-settlements">reported</a> last month, 106 House Democrats sent a <a href="https://andylevin.house.gov/sites/andylevin.house.gov/files/112119%20Letter%20to%20SecState%20on%20Israeli%20settlements%20FINAL.pdf">scathing letter</a> to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that expressed &#8220;strong disagreement&#8221; with the Trump administration&#8217;s recently promulgated <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-trump-administration-announces-major-policy-shift-toward-israel-no-longer-views-israels-west-bank-settlements-as-violation-of-international-law">legal assertion</a> that so-called Israeli &#8220;settlements&#8221; in the biblical Jewish homeland of Judea and Samaria do not per se violate international law.
The House Democrats&#8217; hysterical letter accused Pompeo of &#8220;ignoring international law&#8221; and &#8220;undermin[ing] America&#8217;s moral standing.&#8221; The congressmen continued: &#8220;If the U.S. unilaterally abandons international and human rights law, we can only expect a more chaotic and brutal twenty-first century for Americans and our allies, including the Israeli people.&#8221;
Conservative Zionists quickly and assertively pushed back against the tendentious missive. The <a href="http://coalitionforjewishvalues.org/">Coalition for Jewish Values</a> (CJV), which identifies as &#8220;the largest rabbinic public policy organization in America,&#8221; wrote its own <a href="https://coalitionforjewishvalues.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/191126-Letter-to-Rep-Levin.pdf">powerful letter</a> that deconstructed the House Democrats&#8217; misleading claims. Frequent Daily Wire contributor and CJV Managing Director <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/author/rabbi-yaakov-menken">Rabbi Yaakov Menken</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/traditional-rabbi-group-blasts-house-democrats-over-false-and-misleading-letter-on-israeli-settlements">told The Daily Wire</a> at the time: &#8220;Word to the wise: If you claim to be pro-Israel, and sign a letter regarding Israel along with Reps. Omar, Tlaib, and Ocasio-Cortez, you’re fooling no one but yourself. It’s amazing to see congressmen telling the administration to ignore Acts of Congress. All the more so when those Acts prevent U.S. tax dollars from being spent to encourage terrorism.&#8221;
Now, as <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Pompeo-slams-Democrats-settlement-fixation-calls-claims-foolish-611116">reported</a> by The Jerusalem Post, Pompeo has powerfully responded himself to the House Democrats&#8217; letter. Pompeo excoriated the Democrats&#8217; letter as &#8220;foolish,&#8221; and he hit the anti-Israel presidency of Barack Obama in no uncertain terms: &#8220;The Obama-Kerry departure from America’s historic support of Israel has done nothing to make peace more attainable.&#8221;
&#8220;While I appreciate your interest in this important issue, I couldn’t disagree more with those two foolish positions,&#8221; Pompeo continued. &#8220;While you are free to fixate on settlements as a barrier to peace, you are simply wrong in referring to that view as being subject to bipartisan agreement.&#8221;
Pompeo then blasted &#8220;the erroneous positions of international law that have gained favor in the past decades&#8221;:
<blockquote>&#8220;We approach the issue pragmatically and diplomatically. But we eschew the erroneous positions of international law that have gained favor in the past decade. … The State Departments’ recent determination that the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se illegal is an important step in the peace process, and we are confident that it creates the right platform for further progress.&#8221;</blockquote>
The full copy of Pompeo&#8217;s letter can be viewed at <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Pompeo-slams-Democrats-settlement-fixation-calls-claims-foolish-611116">the Post</a>, which also quotes U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman as expressing strong agreement with Pompeo&#8217;s letter: &#8220;In his response to the 106 congressmen, Secretary Pompeo lays to rest the criticism that the [Trump a]dministration’s determination with regard to Israeli settlements was contrary to law or inconsistent with bipartisan policy. Indeed, the administration’s decision, in reversing [S]ecretary Kerry’s unfortunate statement in support of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334, restores the United States to its historic and appropriate role in mediating the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.&#8221;
In a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-the-trump-administration-is-absolutely-correct-to-call-israeli-settlements-legal">Daily Wire op-ed</a> last month, I wrote approvingly of the Trump administration&#8217;s recently announced position with respect to Israeli &#8220;settlements.&#8221;

Secretary Of State Pompeo Holds At Press Briefing On Iran At The State Department

Pompeo Blasts House Democrats For ‘Foolish’ Stance On Israeli ‘Settlements’

Palestinians

U.S. House of Representatives

On Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump signaled a deal with congressional Democrats if the U.S. Supreme Court were to rule in his favor concerning the controversial Obama-era DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) immigration program.
&#8220;If Supreme Court remedies with overturn, a deal will be made with Dems for them to stay!” the president said via Twitter regarding DACA.
The Supreme Court will consider the Trump administration&#8217;s decision to end the DACA program, which has been argued to have been <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-judge-rules-trump-must-reinstate-daca-ben-shapiro">unconstitutionally</a> enacted by the Obama administration via executive action.
The program defers deportations of immigrants brought over by their parents at a young age.
In the same tweet where Trump signaled a forthcoming deal, he ripped DACA. &#8220;Many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from &#8216;angels,'&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;Some are very tough, hardened criminals.&#8221;
According to <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/news/new-data-shows-criminal-arrest-histories-daca-requestors">U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services</a>, about 8% of DACA recipients have criminal records:
<blockquote>8-percent of total DACA requestors (59,786 individuals) had arrest records as of the date the systems were queried, which included offenses such as assault and battery, rape, murder, and drunk driving, among others. &#8220;Requestors&#8221; includes individuals approved and denied DACA.</blockquote>
Trump added in the tweet: &#8220;President Obama said he had no legal right to sign order, but would anyway.&#8221;
This is also basically true. As noted by <a href="https://www.heritage.org/immigration/commentary/daca-unconstitutional-obama-admitted">Heritage</a>, Obama repeatedly acknowledged that he could not take such action alone, but did so anyway:
<blockquote>Responding in October 2010 to demands that he implement immigration reforms unilaterally, Obama declared, &#8220;I am not king. I can&#8217;t do these things just by myself.&#8221; In March 2011, he said that with &#8220;respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that&#8217;s just not the case.&#8221; In May 2011, he acknowledged that he couldn&#8217;t &#8220;just bypass Congress and change the (immigration) law myself. &#8230; That&#8217;s not how a democracy works.&#8221;</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from “angels.” Some are very tough, hardened criminals. President Obama said he had no legal right to sign order, but would anyway. If Supreme Court remedies with overturn, a deal will be made with Dems for them to stay!
&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1194219655717642240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 12, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;The Trump administration announced its plan to phase out the program in 2017, only for the federal courts to rule that it could not apply retroactively and that DACA should be restarted in full,&#8221; <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-daca-supreme-court">Fox News</a> reported.
In April 2018, U.S. District Judge John Bates <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/2018/04/24/cfb41578-4816-11e8-8b5a-3b1697adcc2a_story.html?noredirect=on&amp;utm_term=.a5adf4fd5206">ruled</a> that Trump could not legally end DACA, calling the decision to end the program &#8220;arbitrary and capricious because the [Trump administration] failed adequately to explain its conclusion that the program was unlawful.&#8221;
&#8220;So, in other words, if a president takes an executive action, then the subsequent president cannot undo that executive action — even if that original executive action has been declared unconstitutional, at least in part,&#8221; Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-judge-rules-trump-must-reinstate-daca-ben-shapiro">Ben Shapiro</a> explained at the time.
&#8220;This is insanity,&#8221; Shapiro continued, adding, &#8220;Here’s how leftist courts have now ruled: an action that is obviously unconstitutional is no longer unconstitutional when performed by President Obama; undoing that unconstitutional action is unconstitutional if performed by President Trump.&#8221;
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said of the decision at the time: &#8220;Today’s order doesn’t change the Department of Justice’s position on the facts: DACA was implemented unilaterally after Congress declined to extend benefits to this same group of illegal aliens.&#8221;

Michelle Obama, Melania Trump, Donald Trump, Barack Obama

Trump Signals DACA ‘Deal’ With Democrats

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)

Illegal Immigration

Immigration

Judicial Branch

Judiciary

Lawsuit

Supreme Court

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman&#8217;s testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee has started to raise serious questions about his credibility as an alleged expert on Ukraine as the recently released transcript of his testimony contained surprising excerpts.
Vindman, who was born in Ukraine and immigrated to the United States, is supposedly the White House&#8217;s top expert on Ukraine at the National Security Council (NSC), yet transcripts from his testimony showed that he appeared to lack even basic knowledge of recent events inside Ukraine.
During one exchange, Vindman thought that the Obama administration provided lethal military assistance to Ukraine when, in fact, the Obama administration did not.
<blockquote>CHAIRMAN ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): There was a prior shipment of Javelins to Ukraine, wasn&#8217;t there?
VINDMAN: So that was, I believe &#8212; I apologize if the timing is incorrect — under the previous administration, there was a — I&#8217;m aware of the transfer of a fairly significant number of Javelins, yes.</blockquote>
In 2014, it was widely reported that Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko begged the Obama administration for weapons to combat Russian forces and that the Obama administration refused to supply the weapons.
“Blankets and night vision goggles are important, but one cannot win a war with a blanket,” Poroshenko said, according to the <a href="https://apnews.com/3625313d1b54411ea0753387ccbd36b2">Associated Press.</a>
The New Yorker <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/07/28/biden-agenda">reported</a>:
<blockquote>Ukrainian officials had appealed to the United States for military support, but Biden had advised them that it would be minimal, if at all. He told me, “We no longer think in Cold War terms, for several reasons. One, no one is our equal. No one is close. Other than being crazy enough to press a button, there is nothing that Putin can do militarily to fundamentally alter American interests.” The Ukrainians were not pleased. A senior Administration official said, “My read of the looks on their faces was ‘Holy God.’ ”</blockquote>
Washington Examiner Chief political correspondent Byron York noted the perplexing lack of knowledge from Vindman.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Top Ukraine guy at NSC apparently thought Obama administration had provided Javelins to Ukraine. <a href="https://t.co/Gd1830At3K">pic.twitter.com/Gd1830At3K</a>
— Byron York (@ByronYork) <a href="https://twitter.com/ByronYork/status/1193255269918216197?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 9, 2019</a></blockquote>
The large <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/us-announces-sale-anti-tank-missiles-ukraine-russian/story?id=53450406">sale</a> of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine took place under the Trump administration, which also <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/12/20/trump-administration-approves-lethal-arms-sales-to-ukraine/">sold</a> millions of dollars worth of anti-material sniper systems to Ukraine.
During another exchange, Vindman indicated that he knew that Ukrainian gas company Burisma was a company that had a &#8220;problematic history&#8221; but did not want to know more about Hunter Biden&#8217;s involvement with the company when he found out that Biden was Burisma&#8217;s board. Though Vindman said he had no interest in conducting any inquiries into Biden&#8217;s role in the company, he acknowledged that Ukraine certainly has a right to investigate it.
The following exchange took place between Vindman and Steve Castor, a top investigator from Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-OH) office leading the Republicans&#8217; line of questioning:
<blockquote>CASTOR: Are you aware of any of the investigations [Burisma] has been involved with over the last several years?
VINDMAN: I am aware that Burisma does have questionable business dealings. That&#8217;s part of its track record, yes.
CASTOR: Okay. And what questionable business dealings are you aware of?
VINDMAN: I think that&#8217;s more of kind of a generalization. I&#8217;m just aware that it had questionable business dealings, and they were known for that fact. &#8230;  the general answer is I think they have had questionable business dealings.
CASTOR: So money laundering, tax evasion, if they were subject to those investigations, that would comport with your understanding of the company?
VINDMAN: That would comport with my understanding of how business is done in Ukraine.
CASTOR: Okay. In 2014, they undertook an initiative to bring in some additional folks for their board. Are you aware of some of the folks they added to their board in 2014?
VINDMAN: The only individual I&#8217;m aware of, again, after, you know, as it&#8217;s been reported in the press is Mr. Hunter Biden.
CASTOR: Okay. And did you check with any of your authoritative sources in government to learn a little bit more about these issues?
VINDMAN: I did not.
CASTOR: Okay. Even when the narrative started to creep in?
VINDMAN:  I did not. I didn&#8217;t think it was appropriate. He was a U.S. citizen, and I wasn&#8217;t going to ask questions. Frankly, that falls into the law enforcement sphere. I was not going to go and ask about — if there was a question about Burisma, I would — I inquired about it and determined that they had a problematic history, but I did not inquire about a U.S. citizen.
CASTOR: What other inquiries did you make with authoritative sources demanding Burisma?
VINDMAN: I think once I drew my conclusion of the company, I moved on.
&#8230;
CASTOR: Okay. If there was an allegation of wrongdoing by the Burisma board directors, that would be something that the Ukrainians could look into, right?
VINDMAN: I think so. They&#8217;re a sovereign state, they can choose to do that, yes.
CASTOR: So if there&#8217;s an American that is operating in Ukraine as a businessman and they are accused of wrongdoing, the Ukrainians can investigate that?
VINDMAN: Americans are not immune from criminal activity just because they&#8217;re Americans overseas. So, yes, if there&#8217;s a criminal activity, they should, yeah.
CASTOR: Okay. And do you have any knowledge as to why Hunter Biden was asked to join the board?
VINDMAN: I do not.
CASTOR: Did you check with any of your authoritative sources whether he was a corporate governance expert or&#8211;
VINDMAN: Like I said, I didn&#8217;t. He&#8217;s an American citizen. Certainly there is domestic political overtones. I did not think that was appropriate for me to start looking into this particular — I drew my conclusions on Burisma and I moved on.</blockquote>
York again noted the odd implication of what Vindman testified, writing: &#8220;Corrupt Ukrainian company owned by corrupt Ukrainian oligarch hires vice president&#8217;s son and top Ukraine guy on NSC doesn&#8217;t want to know about it.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Corrupt Ukrainian company owned by corrupt Ukrainian oligarch hires vice president&#8217;s son and top Ukraine guy on NSC doesn&#8217;t want to know about it. From Vindman deposition: <a href="https://t.co/yy3QLX0dqd">pic.twitter.com/yy3QLX0dqd</a>
— Byron York (@ByronYork) <a href="https://twitter.com/ByronYork/status/1193533402273787905?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 10, 2019</a></blockquote>

Alexander Vindman

Excerpts From Alexander Vindman’s Testimony To Congress Raises Questions About Credibility

Adam Schiff

Ukraine

It&#8217;s proving rather difficult for some in the political world to assign credit where it&#8217;s due on the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Sunday morning, the White House confirmed that al-Baghdadi, one of the world&#8217;s most wanted terrorists, was killed in a daring raid by United States Special Forces &#8212; an operation that has been weeks in planning. In a press conference, President Donald Trump spoke about al-Baghdadi&#8217;s final moments, and hammered home that his administration had made capturing or eliminating al-Baghdadi a top priority.
“He was a sick and depraved man and now he’s gone,” Trump said. “He died like a dog. He died like a coward. The world is a much safer place.”
Defense Department officials echoed Trump on the importance of killing al-Baghdadi, particularly the significance to the Islamic State, which has been occupying border towns in Syria, scrounging for supplies and prominence, after being driven from Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper called the loss of al-Baghdadi a &#8220;major blow&#8221; to ISIS.
But not everyone was as enthusiastic about the demise of a major terrorist leader, whose network once operated in at least 30 countries and who may have been responsible for the death, torture, and enslavement of thousands. Leftists &#8212; and, in particular, members of the media and officials from the Obama Administration &#8212; were rather clipped in their praise.
It took mere minutes for leftists to connect the al-Baghdadi raid to an international Russia-driven conspiracy designed to keep Donald Trump in power.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
OK I get it now. Trump gave Syria to Assad and Putin, and they threw Trump the Baghdadi bone. <a href="https://t.co/Xof37MW1xw">https://t.co/Xof37MW1xw</a>
&mdash; Devin Duke (@sirDukeDevin) <a href="https://twitter.com/sirDukeDevin/status/1188449802041942017?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
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CNBC&#8217;s John Harwood was quick to downplay the significance of al-Baghdadi&#8217;s death, suggesting that Americans won&#8217;t be interested in the demise of a major terrorist leader because they don&#8217;t know al-Baghdadi by name (even though it&#8217;s unlikely Americans have somehow missed out in ISIS).
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
it’s great that Baghdadi is gone. credit to the skill and bravery of US special forces
it’s very unlikely to influence public opinion much since
a) most Americans don’t know who he was
and
b) Trump has claimed over and over that he had already obliterated ISIS
&mdash; John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/1188449549406392321?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
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MSNBC host Alex Witt wondered whether the demise of al-Baghdadi will be the resurrection of al-Baghdadi&#8217;s terrorist empire: &#8220;It might it also incite rage from those who followed him as if there was a lack of respect shown to him, and then, you know, get their blood boiling, if you will.&#8221;
Thankfully, at least for leftists, such a major strategic victory in the global war on terror was no reason to take their eye off the ball.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
It’s an accomplishment by US special forces Baghdadi is dead. Full stop. 
Trump will still be impeached.
&mdash; Steven Beschloss (@StevenBeschloss) <a href="https://twitter.com/StevenBeschloss/status/1188451972732485632?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Obama Administration National Security director James Clapper was the first Obama-era official to actively downplay the victory, claiming on CNN&#8217;s &#8220;State of the Union&#8221; that al-Baghdadi&#8217;s death was immaterial because ISIS is bigger than one man.
&#8220;What is going to be interesting is the extent to which this negatively affects ISIS or does it galvanize ISIS, the remnants of ISIS, which still survives as an ideology and has franchises in other places besides Syria,&#8221; Clapper told host Jake Tapper.
&#8220;ISIS is more than just Baghdadi, as important as he was. 14,000 to 18,000 fighters yet remaining and the franchise are branches in other places — notably, Afghanistan where of course we still have forces. ISIS did participate in losing leadership,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;So they decentralized and groomed people to assume the role. Now, I don’t know that they have anybody would have the symbolic importance of Bagdadi, but I don’t think we can say at this point that we can stop worrying about ISIS.”
The most popular criticism, though, seemed to be reserved for Trump&#8217;s Sunday morning presser, where the president gave a sometimes-gory blow-by-blow of the operation to locate and kill al-Baghdadi, and seemed to take particular glee in the fact that al-Baghdadi killed himself with a suicide vest in an escape tunnel while running scared from the American military.
That&#8217;s just not how we&#8217;re supposed to treat terrorists, Obama Advisor Sam Vinograd told CNN&#8217;s &#8220;Reliable Sources.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
The intelligence community played a key role in the successful raid against Baghdadi, but the President&#39;s engagement with the media post-op indicates he may not be listening to them after the raid&#39;s conclusion. High risk period &#8212; more with <a href="https://twitter.com/brianstelter?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@brianstelter</a>  <a href="https://twitter.com/ReliableSources?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ReliableSources</a> <a href="https://t.co/0VJpGfihdn">pic.twitter.com/0VJpGfihdn</a>
&mdash; Sam Vinograd (@sam_vinograd) <a href="https://twitter.com/sam_vinograd/status/1188486750408204289?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
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And then there&#8217;s Obama&#8217;s Joint Chiefs Vice Chair James Winnefeld, who pre-emptively blamed Trump for whatever spate of radical Islamic violence comes next: &#8220;If you look back at the bin Laden raid, we treated his body with respect that is due under Islam,&#8221; he told CBS&#8217;s &#8220;Face the Nation.&#8221;
Regardless, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi remains dead.

President Trump Makes Statement On The Raid That Killed ISIS Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Leftists, Obama Officials Race To Downplay Al-Baghdadi Death

Syria

After the media spent days speculating that President Donald Trump demanded a “quid pro quo” agreement from Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, only to learn no such agreement was made, the same outlets began pushing the notion that the Trump administration saved the conversation to a different, secret server.
Former national security adviser for the Obama administration, Susan Rice, however, acknowledged during a speaking engagement Friday night that the previous administration also saved transcripts of phone calls with world leaders this way.
“What [the Trump administration] did instead of storing it in the normal system, which is protected and classified, even though there was no classified substance in that actual discussion,” Rice told an audience at the Texas Tribune Festival. “Instead of putting it where it normally resides, they hid it on a very highly sensitive, highly compartmented server that very few people in the U.S. government have access to in order to bury it.”
Rice was then asked how many times the Obama administration saved conversations to the server. Rice responded by saying the administration only saved conversations that were actually of a classified nature.
“It’s rare that a presidential conversation would be classified to that highest level — it’s not impossible, it’s very rare — even when two leaders are discussing classified information,” Rice responded.
Rice still acknowledged that the Obama administration also saved some call transcripts on the server and did not expand on what would make something “legitimately … classified.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/AmbassadorRice?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AmbassadorRice</a>: “Normally there is a full, verbatim transcript” of calls like Trump’s w/ the Ukraine president.
Says he tried to “bury” it on a more secure server, but acknowledges the Obama Admin. sometimes did the same. <a href="https://t.co/B6zZNbZsTG">pic.twitter.com/B6zZNbZsTG</a>
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) <a href="https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1177698665848344576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The Federalist’s David Marcus <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/28/susan-rice-obama-put-call-transcripts-on-top-secret-server-too/">noted</a> that Rice’s contention that the Obama administration also used the server, together with <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/democrats-issue-subpoena-pompeos-ukraine-documents/story?id=65912440">reporting</a> from ABC News that saving conversations with world leaders to the more secure server has been a common practice in the Trump administration every since early 2017, when conversations with leaders from Australia and Mexico were leaked to the press.
“The two calls in early 2017, with leaders from Australia and from Mexico, leaked <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/democrats-issue-subpoena-pompeos-ukraine-documents/story?id=65912440">early in Trump’s administration</a>, and sources said the procedure to store them quickly changed — many calls between the president and world leaders instead were stored in a secure server to avoid leaks,” ABC reported. “The sources who talked to ABC News did caution that it’s unclear if the calls being stored were done so for national security or for political concerns.”
The outlet also reported a source saying that saving the conversations to the more secure server was “basically standard operating procedure.”
“Both of these revelations undermine the theory that in this specific case, some unique and bizarre method was used to hide the transcript and engage in a cover up,” Marcus wrote. “Rather, the Trump administration appears to have been engaging in business as usual.”
That hasn’t stopped media outlets from trying to portray the Trump administration negatively. Reuters, for example, has tried to compare the Trump administration keeping a private conversation from leaking to the press to Hillary Clinton’s bathroom server.
“A computer server haunted Clinton in 2016. Now it may be Trump’s turn,” read <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-whistleblower-server/a-computer-server-haunted-clinton-in-2016-now-it-may-be-trumps-turn-idUSKBN1WB2NE?utm_medium=Social&amp;utm_source=twitter">a headline</a> from the outlet.
One can see how the narrative has shifted in the media to find new reasons to impeach Trump. First, he had demanded some “quid pro quo” from another world leader regarding one of his opponents. When the transcripts showed otherwise, the media <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dishonest-media-leaving-out-what-trumps-favor-from-ukraine-president-actually-was">deceptively edited them</a> to make it look like Trump asked Zelensky to look into former Vice President Joe Biden. After that narrative failed, the media began claiming that saving the conversation to a more secure server was evidence the president was trying to cover up his nefarious deeds.
Now that narrative is bust as well.

Susan Rice

Obama Administration Saved Call Transcripts On Same Secret Server As Trump Administration

Media Bias

President Trump has repeatedly slammed Puerto Rican officials for their handling of the Hurricane Maria relief effort, decrying the unincorporated U.S. territory as &#8220;one of the most corrupt places on earth.&#8221; On Tuesday, the FBI took action to crack down on corruption involving Maria relief, though rather than targeting Puerto Rican leaders, the bureau arrested two former FEMA officials — one of whom held a key position in the Obama administration — and a contractor.
&#8220;Puerto Rico is one of the most corrupt places on earth. Their political system is broken and their politicians are either Incompetent or Corrupt,&#8221; Trump tweeted as Hurricane Dorian picked up steam two weeks ago. &#8220;Congress approved Billions of Dollars last time, more than anyplace else has ever gotten, and it is sent to Crooked Pols. No good!&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">Puerto Rico is one of the most corrupt places on earth. Their political system is broken and their politicians are either Incompetent or Corrupt. Congress approved Billions of Dollars last time, more than anyplace else has ever gotten, and it is sent to Crooked Pols. No good!&#8230;.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1166723477879087104?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 28, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Trump&#8217;s criticism of Puerto Rican officials has been one of his steady themes since the devastating hurricane wreaked havoc on the island in 2017. Amid criticism for his supposedly &#8220;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-storm-dorian/trump-slams-corrupt-puerto-rico-as-hurricane-dorian-skirts-island-idUSKCN1VI0RH">tepid response</a>&#8221; to the disaster, Trump has repeatedly pointed the finger at Puerto Rico&#8217;s leadership, accusing them of botching the relief effort and wasting resources.
On Tuesday, Trump&#8217;s &#8220;corruption&#8221; claims about Hurricane Maria relief efforts were partly affirmed, but the alleged culprits were two former federal officials and a contractor, not Puerto Rican officials.
&#8220;A former top administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was arrested on Tuesday in a major federal corruption investigation that found that the official took bribes from the president of a company that secured $1.8 billion in federal contracts to repair Puerto Rico’s shredded electrical grid after Hurricane Maria,&#8221; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/us/puerto-rico-fema-arrests-corruption.html">The New York Times</a> reported Tuesday.
The most high-profile of the arrests was Ahsha Tribble, FEMA’s former deputy administrator for the region including Puerto Rico who also once served as Homeland Security adviser for the Obama administration. A second former FEMA employee, Jovanda Patterson, who served as deputy chief of staff in Puerto Rico, was also arrested. The third suspect is Donald Keith Ellison, former president of Cobra Acquisitions.
Puerto Rico&#8217;s U.S Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodríguez Vélez revealed Tuesday that Tribble had a &#8220;close personal relationship&#8221; with Ellison, the Times notes. Cobra Acquisitions went on to hire Patterson, according to Vélez.
Prosecutors say Tribble, Patterson and Ellison defrauded the federal government. Ellison allegedly offered Tribble a &#8220;stream of benefits,&#8221; including helping her get an apartment in New York, first-class airplane tickets, hotel stays, and the use of one of his credit cards in exchange for Tribble helping secure a major contract for Ellison&#8217;s company. The indictment alleges that Tribble and Ellison attempted to conceal their special relationship and gifts through various means, including using a disposable cellphone.
&#8220;In return for the gifts, Ms. Tribble is accused of performing official acts to advance Cobra’s interests,&#8221; the Times details. &#8220;For example, according to the indictment, in February 2018, after the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority reported an explosion at a substation in Monacillo, P.R., that left several municipalities without power, Ms. Tribble insisted that the public utility hire Cobra to make repairs or risk not getting reimbursed by FEMA — even though leaders of the utility insisted they could do the same work at a far lower cost.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51620/breaking-results-are-nc-congressional-races-big-james-barrett">Trump Passes ‘Test’ In North Carolina: Republicans Win Both Congressional Seats</a>

President Trump Speaks At 2019 National Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week Conference

As Trump Slams ‘Corrupt’ Puerto Rico, FBI Arrests FEMA Officials For Hurricane Maria Relief Fraud

Puerto Rico

After President Trump announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would be rounding up illegal aliens convicted of crimes last week, <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=13464">Campus Reform</a>&#8216;s Cabot Phillips wanted to see how students at Georgetown University would respond to the crackdown on criminal illegal immigrants. But instead of presenting students an announcement from Trump for their reactions, Phillips used a statement delivered by then-President Obama back in 2014 touting his administration&#8217;s enforcement of the same policy.
&#8220;We are a nation of laws,&#8221; said Obama in a statement Phillips presented to the students as coming from Trump. &#8220;Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws, and I believe that they must be held accountable, especially those who may be dangerous. That’s why over the past six years deportations of criminals are up 80 percent, and that’s why we’re going to keep focusing on threats to our security.&#8221;
&#8220;I think that policy comes from a place of white American nationalism,&#8221; says one student when Phillips asks for her response to the quote and the policy. &#8220;Donald Trump has kind of like embraced this rhetoric of racism and xenophobia — that is not beneficial to our country at all,&#8221; says another.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t think that that quote really stands true,&#8221; says another student. &#8220;This administration has totally not done anything moral,&#8221; adds another.
&#8220;This was really awful,&#8221; says one incensed student. &#8220;Amnesty does not necessarily mean we&#8217;re losing border security,&#8221; explains another, &#8220;and I think Trump feels that way.&#8221;
&#8220;I think that&#8217;s a bad decision because like the United States should be open to immigrants,&#8221; says yet another student.
One female student cites Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) as an example of the kind of political leader we should look to for promoting immigrants&#8217; rights.
&#8220;Crimes do not nullify your humanity,&#8221; a male student suggests, &#8220;and people are coming here in search of opportunity.&#8221;
After denouncing the &#8220;Trump&#8221; policy as &#8220;com[ing] from a place of white American nationalism&#8221; and yet another example of his &#8220;rhetoric of racism and xenophobia,&#8221; the students were &#8220;surprised&#8221; to learn that the defense of enforcing immigration laws actually came from Obama.
&#8220;It just shows the hypocrisy in politics,&#8221; one student admits. Another student says it is &#8220;quite surprising&#8221; because she &#8220;thought it was the Trump administration that said something like that.&#8221;
&#8220;I didn&#8217;t expect it to be Obama,&#8221; one student states. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know a ton about Obama&#8217;s deportation policies,&#8221; another admits, then adds, &#8220;but I imagine that they were a lot more humane than the ones currently going on.&#8221;
Video below via Campus Reform (h/t <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/news/students-say-this-trump-quote-on-immigration-is-super-racist-but-are-shocked-when-they-discover-it-wasnt-trump-who-said-it-at-all">The Blaze</a>):
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Vj9IxVlLRl0" width="767" height="431" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></div>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49613/watch-ocasio-cortez-gets-jamaican-immigrant-2020-james-barrett">WATCH: Ocasio-Cortez Gets Jamaican Immigrant 2020 Challenger, And She Comes Out Swinging</a>

WATCH: Students Slam Trump Statement On Immigration, Then Learn Obama Said It

Barack Obama

This week, the Democrat House Oversight and Reform Committee tweeted out an announcement of a hearing on &#8220;Kids in Cages: Inhumane Treatment on the Border&#8221; which included a photograph showing rows of immigrant children lying under tinfoil blankets inside fenced detainment cells.
&#8220;Last week, members of our committee visited a detention center at the southern border and discovered grotesque treatment of children,&#8221; the Oversight committee tweeted. &#8220;This week, we are examining the inhumane treatment of the children in these detention centers.&#8221; The &#8220;Kids in Cages&#8221; hearing, the committee announced, would be held at 2 p.m. on Wednesday. The background of the tweet featured the photograph from an immigrant detention center. The initial announcement of the hearing last week contained a similar background photograph.
The <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house-democrats-delete-tweets-showing-migrants-in-cages-when-obama-was-in-office">Washington Examiner</a> published a screenshot of the tweet:
[[{&#8220;fid&#8221;:&#8221;48327&#8243;,&#8221;view_mode&#8221;:&#8221;default&#8221;,&#8221;fields&#8221;:{&#8220;format&#8221;:&#8221;default&#8221;,&#8221;field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]&#8221;:false,&#8221;field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]&#8221;:false},&#8221;type&#8221;:&#8221;media&#8221;,&#8221;field_deltas&#8221;:{&#8220;2&#8221;:{&#8220;format&#8221;:&#8221;default&#8221;,&#8221;field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]&#8221;:false,&#8221;field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]&#8221;:false}},&#8221;attributes&#8221;:{&#8220;class&#8221;:&#8221;media-element file-default&#8221;,&#8221;data-delta&#8221;:&#8221;2&#8243;}}]]
But, as the Examiner reports, the tweets were scrubbed after the Republican House Oversight and Reform Committee forced their Democratic counterparts to finally look at the date of the photograph: 2014, the middle of Barack Obama&#8217;s second term.
&#8220;You all know that’s a picture from 2014, right? Remind us who was President then,&#8221; the Republicans tweeted. They followed that up with an <a href="https://www.apnews.com/a98f26f7c9424b44b7fa927ea1acd4d4">Associated Press fact-check</a>: &#8220;The photos, taken by The Associated Press, were from 2014, during the Obama administration, but were presented by liberal activists as if they showed the effects of Trump’s immigration policy now,&#8221; AP reported in May 2018.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">“The photos, taken by The Associated Press, were from 2014, during the Obama administration, but were presented by liberal activists as if they showed the effects of Trump’s immigration policy now.”<a href="https://t.co/9x3F7VYUTz">https://t.co/9x3F7VYUTz</a>
— Oversight Committee Republicans (@GOPoversight) <a href="https://twitter.com/GOPoversight/status/1148690648318582784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet"></div>
The &#8220;very embarrassing&#8221; goof gave Trump a chance to highlight that the immigration crisis started long before he came into office and the Democrats&#8217; cries of the &#8220;inhumane treatment&#8221; of kids reek of hypocrisy.
&#8220;Democrats had to quickly take down a tweet called &#8216;Kids In Cages, Inhumane Treatment at the Border,&#8217; because the horrible picture used was from the Obama years. Very embarrassing!&#8221; Trump tweeted Thursday morning, citing Fox News morning show &#8220;Fox &amp; Friends.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">Democrats had to quickly take down a tweet called “Kids In Cages, Inhumane Treatment at the Border,” because the horrible picture used was from the Obama years. Very embarrassing! <a href="https://twitter.com/foxandfriends?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@foxandfriends</a>
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1149289425836367872?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 11, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The Examiner notes that Trump&#8217;s campaign has also called out the mistake: &#8220;House Democrats are promoting their &#8216;civil rights&#8217; hearing on &#8216;kids in cages&#8217; and &#8216;inhumane treatment&#8217; with a photo from 2014, when Joe Biden was Vice President. So dishonest!&#8221; the campaign tweeted.
The committee responded to a request for comment from the Examiner by admitting that posting the photo was &#8220;an error&#8221; but insisting that &#8220;there is simply no comparison between the actions of the Obama Administration and the Trump Administrations&#8221; because the Obama administration did not &#8220;separate children from their families&#8221; — except &#8220;in an extremely small number of cases when there was a true danger to the child’s safety,&#8221; that is.
Here is AP&#8217;s full <a href="http://www.apnews.com/a98f26f7c9424b44b7fa927ea1acd4d4">fact-check</a> of the photographs from 2014 that were recirculated in 2018 to criticize President Trump:
<blockquote>The photos, taken by The Associated Press, were from 2014, during the Obama administration, but were presented by liberal activists as if they showed the effects of Trump’s immigration policy now. Villaraigosa, Favreau and some others deleted their tweets when the mistake was pointed out.
They had linked to a June 2014 online story by The Arizona Republic titled “First peek: Immigrant children flood detention center.” The story featured photos taken by AP’s Ross D. Franklin at a center run by the Customs and Border Protection Agency in Nogales, Arizona. One photo shows two unidentified female detainees sleeping in a holding cell. The caption refers to U.S. efforts to process 47,000 unaccompanied children at the Nogales center and another one in Brownsville, Texas.
Many tweets used the hashtag “WhereAreOurChildren,” which grew out of testimony in April by a federal official that the U.S. government had lost track of nearly 1,500 unaccompanied minor children it placed with adult sponsors in the U.S.
Trump tweeted: “Democrats mistakenly tweet 2014 pictures from Obama’s term showing children from the Border in steel cages. They thought it was recent pictures in order to make us look bad, but backfires.”
He is right about the misrepresentation, though it’s not clear that many prominent Democrats jumped on this particular Twitter bandwagon.</blockquote>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49372/ice-set-launch-raids-targeting-thousands-illegal-james-barrett">ICE Set To Launch Raids Targeting Thousands Of Illegal Immigrants</a>

Trump Trolls Democrats After They Post Problematic Pic Of ‘Kids in Cages’

Last week, as the media and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) desperately tried to debate the meaning of &#8220;concentration camps,&#8221; left-wing agitator NowThis News put out a clip ostensibly showing a Trump administration official discussing the finer points of sanitation.
The clip went viral, of course, and was used to attack the Trump administration as uncaring monsters hellbent on abusing children who have been brought into the U.S. illegally by adults. But as A.G. Hamilton <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/what-the-viral-border-patrol-video-leaves-out/">wrote</a> in National Review, the clip does not show what it claims.
&#8220;Indeed, the hearing in the video was related not to actions taken by the Trump administration, but to a challenge of a 2017 <a href="https://www.aila.org/File/Related/14111359v.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ruling</a> that the CBP under the Obama administration had violated the Flores Settlement agreement with its treatment of children in custody,&#8221; Hamilton wrote (emphasis original).
Yet again, we have an instance of the media using something that happened under former President Barack Obama to attack President Donald Trump. Hamilton wrote that the judge in the case seen in the viral video listed &#8220;specific infractions that she felt were in violation of the &#8216;safe and sanitary&#8217; requirement under the Flores agreement.&#8221; The judge then requested that a monitor be appointed at multiple facilities where children were housed to ensure their conditions met the &#8220;safe and sanitary&#8221; requirement.
The Department of Justice attorney in the video, Sarah Fabian, was arguing that items like toothbrushes and beds weren&#8217;t specifically mentioned in the Flores Settlement. As Hamilton wrote, she &#8220;was not arguing that the United States should decline to provide those items to children.&#8221;
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals did not buy her argument. Fabian&#8217;s job is to make such legal arguments, and she has been doing so under multiple administrations. The NowThis News clip deceptively edited her remarks to make her appear callous. The fact that so many &#8220;news&#8221; outlets ran with the angle that a DOJ official &#8211; and thus a Trump administration official &#8211; doesn&#8217;t think children need beds or soap or toothbrushes to be taken care of raises a good question, as Hamilton noted:
<blockquote>
Predictably, the vast majority of the people and the outlets that shared this exchange failed to note that the violations being discussed had occurred during the previous administration, while those who did know failed to ask themselves (and others) why the violations didn&#8217;t receive similar coverage when they were first exposed. Instead, they jumped straight to the conclusion that the federal government, headed up by President Trump, was deliberately inflicting pain on babies. This isn&#8217;t true.
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But, Hamilton wrote, it is also not true that the Obama administration was indifferent toward the care of minors in border facilities. The flood of immigrants has overloaded the system for years, and due to limited resources and additional immigrants &#8211; and the fact that the government can&#8217;t run anything efficiently &#8211; we&#8217;re left with images and videos showing children living in substandard conditions.
This, however, is not the first time the media have blamed the Trump administration for something that happened during the Obama administration. As The Daily Wire&#8217;s Ryan Saavedra <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/32064/5-horrifying-immigration-stories-happened-under-ryan-saavedra">previously reported</a>, the media showed no anger when these issues came up during the previous administration.

That Viral Clip Of DOJ Attorney Arguing Kids Don’t Need Beds Or Toothbrushes To Be ‘Safe And Sanitary’? Here’s The Real Story.

On Thursday, the <a href="https://www.cjr.org/watchdog/doj-ap-phone-records.php">Columbia Journalism Review</a> reported on the results of a Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the Obama Justice Department&#8217;s attempts to crack down on leaks to reporters which reveal that the Obama administration&#8217;s actions against the press &#8220;were broader than previously known.&#8221;
The report &#8212; which begins by warning against the threat the Trump administration poses to the freedom of the press &#8212; presents an alarming picture of the previous administration&#8217;s efforts to surveil the press and track down sources of leaks (h/t <a href="https://hotair.com/archives/2019/05/23/cjr-obama-admin-surveillance-reporters-far-extensive-previously-known/">Ed Morrissey</a>).
CJR&#8217;s report, authored by Ramya Krishnan and Trevor Timm, is based on a highly redacted 59-page <a href="http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6023116-DOJ-Report-on-AP-Subpoenas-Controversy.html">report</a> &#8203;by the Justice Department&#8217;s Office of Professional Responsibility completed Dec. 9, 2014 and obtained via FOIA request by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Freedom of the Press Foundation (where Krishnan and Timm work, respectively).
&#8220;In 2013, the Justice Department launched a brazen attack on press freedom, issuing sweeping subpoenas for the phone records of the Associated Press and several of its reporters and editors as part of a leak investigation,&#8221; the authors report. While those subpoenas have long been understood as &#8220;a massive intrusion into newsgathering operations,&#8221; they note, the recently unearthed 2014 report reveals that the subpoenas targeting AP &#8220;told only part of the story.&#8221;
The Office of Professional Responsibility&#8217;s report on the Obama Justice Department&#8217;s subpoenas of AP phone records reveals that &#8220;the DOJ&#8217;s actions against the AP were broader than previously known, and that the DOJ considered subpoenaing the phone records of other news organizations, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and ABC News,&#8221; the authors explain. The report also reveals &#8220;how narrowly the DOJ interprets the Media Guidelines, the agency&#8217;s internal rules for obtaining reporters&#8217; data.&#8221;
The Obama DOJ&#8217;s targeting of the AP came in response to May 2012 reports containing classified information about the CIA&#8217;s thwarting of a Yemen-based bomb plot. In early 2013, the Deputy Attorney General approved requests by the DOJ to subpoena AP telephone records in an attempt to uncover reporters&#8217; sources, prompting AP to complain that the DOJ had violated the Media Guidelines about how narrowly subpoenas for reporters&#8217; phone records should be drawn.
Though the DOJ defended its broad subpoenas, the Office of Professional Responsibility&#8217;s report reveals that ethics lawyers were troubled enough by the sequence of events to look into it and found that the department&#8217;s handling of the investigation was more expansive than previously known. CJR reports:
<blockquote>
The report, which was submitted to then&#8211;Attorney General Eric Holder in 2013, reveals that the leak probe was broader than previously understood. It reveals, for example, that, while the Justice Department obtained telephone toll records for 21 telephone numbers, the agency in fact issued &#8220;30 subpoenas to obtain telephone toll records for 30 unique telephone numbers.&#8221; The report reveals that those 30 subpoenas were intended to target seven reporters and editors, and covered a period of six weeks spanning April 1, 2012 to May 10, 2012.
The report also shows that, at least at one stage of their investigation, Justice Department attorneys considered subpoenaing the records of The Washington Post, The New York Times, and ABC News. What&#8217;s more, the report strongly suggests that the attorneys went so far as to obtain &#8220;telephone numbers and other contact information&#8221; for reporters and editors at those organizations who had worked on articles about the Yemen bomb plot. The report records, however, that the attorneys ultimately decided against issuing additional subpoenas.
</blockquote>
The Office of Professional Responsibility ultimately attempts to downplay the DOJ&#8217;s actions in ways Krishnan and Timm describe as &#8220;disturbing.&#8221; &#8220;Disturbingly, the report does not come close to explaining why the subpoenas targeted the trunk lines of major AP offices&#8212;lines which could potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the AP&#8217;s newsgathering activities,&#8221; they stress. Instead, the report simply concludes by arguing that even though the DOJ targeted phone records that turned out to be unrelated to their investigation, &#8220;at the time when the subpoenas were sought, investigators had a factual basis for believing that those telephone numbers did relate to [AP] personnel.&#8221;
<a href="http://www.cjr.org/watchdog/doj-ap-phone-records.php">Read the Columbia Journalism Review&#8217;s full report here</a>.

Report: Obama Administration’s Actions Against Press Worse Than Previously Known

Associated Press

Department of Justice

Eric Holder

Freedom of the Press

In his recently updated and expanded book on former President Obama, &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Obama-Call-History-Updated-Expanded/dp/0935112782/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=T95AMDDM7PBC4NZESJMW">Obama: The Call Of History</a>,&#8221; The New York Times&#8217; Chief White House Correspondent <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/peter-baker">Peter Baker</a> addresses several hot-button topics, including why Obama failed to adequately address Russian meddling ahead of the 2016 election and his response to &#8220;buffoonish showman&#8221; Donald Trump shocking the world by defeating Hillary Clinton, a response that involved &#8220;multiple emotional stages.&#8221;
In one of the sections of the book highlighted by <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6985985/Obama-blamed-Hillary-2016-loss-scripted-soulless-campaign.html">The Daily Mail</a> Friday, Baker peels back the curtain on why Obama was so weak in his response to Russian meddling ahead of the election in 2016 &#8212; something for which Trump has hammered Obama amid all the Robert Mueller-debunked &#8220;collusion&#8221; allegations.
&#8220;Anything the Russians did concerning the 2016 Election was done while Obama was President. He was told about it and did nothing! Most importantly, the vote was not affected,&#8221; Trump tweeted last month.
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Anything the Russians did concerning the 2016 Election was done while Obama was President. He was told about it and did nothing! Most importantly, the vote was not affected.
&#8212; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1119019875203153921?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 18, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The reason Obama didn&#8217;t act more decisively and rebuke Russia more directly, says Baker, is that he feared that it might &#8220;escalate&#8221; the Russian interference campaign. This cautious approach, Baker suggests, flows out of Obama&#8217;s &#8220;don&#8217;t do stupid sh**&#8221; foreign policy philosophy, an approach for which Obama has been criticized in the past.
But fearing the escalation of the campaign wasn&#8217;t the only reason Obama didn&#8217;t act more forcefully, says Baker: Obama reportedly once admitted that &#8220;if I speak out more, he&#8217;ll just say it&#8217;s rigged.&#8221;
According to Baker, in one meeting, Obama &#8212; who was convinced like most of the political establishment that Clinton was going to win &#8212; said confidently that Russian President Vladimir Putin had &#8220;backed the wrong horse&#8221; by supposedly helping Trump&#8217;s campaign.
As the Daily Mail notes, it was only after the election, which Trump won in stunning fashion, that Obama finally took action against the Russians as punishment for the meddling his administration had known about for months. Obama&#8217;s decision to expel a bunch of Russian diplomats conveniently fed into the &#8220;collusion&#8221; narrative that had already gotten rolling and which the election&#8217;s loser, Clinton, helped promote.
The Daily Mail also draws attention to another juicy passage in the book which reveals new details about Obama&#8217;s response to Trump&#8217;s upset victory over the woman who was supposed to protect Obama&#8217;s legacy.
Accoring to Baker, Obama watched the Marvel film &#8220;Dr. Strange&#8221; on election night with Michelle and Valerie Jarrett. At one point, Baker writes, Obama received an update on his phone and said, &#8220;Huh. Results in Florida are looking kind of strange.&#8221;
While Michelle went to sleep early, Obama stayed up and witnessed Trump&#8217;s devastating defeat of Clinton, which Baker suggests Obama found unthinkable because he thought there was &#8220;no way Americans would turn on him.&#8221;
According to Baker, Obama phoned Clinton at 1 a.m. and advised her to concede quickly, advice she didn&#8217;t take. In response, she supposedly said, &#8220;I&#8217;m sorry for letting you down.&#8221;
Obama and his team, Baker says, did in fact feel that Clinton had let them down. &#8220;To Obama and his team &#8230; the real blame lay squarely with Clinton. She was the one who could not translate his strong record and healthy economy into a winning message.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46727/bombshell-ukraine-embassy-says-dnc-operative-ryan-saavedra">BOMBSHELL: Ukraine Embassy Says DNC Operative Reached Out For Dirt On Trump In 2016, Report Says</a>

NYT Chief WH Correspondent: Here’s The Real Reason Obama Didn’t Address Russian Meddling In 2016

Hillary Clinton

Russia

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