“Wray’s decision undermined decades of hard work — by Congress, presidents, the Justice Department and the FBI itself — to move it out of a partisan, political framework. The FBI’s highest guiding principle is supposed to be the rule of law — and federal law is clear: The FBI director serves a 10-year-term, a length meant to isolate the role from political winds. Similarly, in federal law, there is a mechanism for removing an FBI director who errs — they can be fired, but only for cause. The role is not meant to be like the CIA director, attorney general or Defense secretary and turn over at noon on Jan. 20 for a new administration; it is, in fact, explicitly designed to NOT do so. Ronald Reagan spent almost all of his presidency with Jimmy Carter’s FBI director; George W. Bush inherited Bill Clinton’s FBI director; Barack Obama, in turn, inherited Bush’s, and Joe Biden will have spent his entire presidency with Wray, Trump’s choice to head the bureau.
Those safeguards and traditions exist because the FBI, in the wrong hands, is incredibly dangerous to American democracy.
The FBI is the most powerful, best resourced, and far-reaching law enforcement agency, not just in the United States, but anywhere in the world. Nothing compares to the sweeping breadth of its investigative powers; the intelligence and information it collects, wittingly and unwittingly, on all manner of Americans, powerful and not, guilty and innocent alike; and the resources and technologies it can bring to bear against anyone in its investigative sights. Even its routine investigations can paralyze and bankrupt businesses, upend lives, careers and families, and destroy reputations — and even do so when it doesn’t bring federal charges at the end. Under J. Edgar Hoover’s half-century reign, he deployed those resources to ruin the lives of civil rights activists and antiwar protesters, harass literary figures such as James Baldwin, blackmail gay people and persecute anyone he didn’t feel was sufficiently patriotic. We’ve spent a half-century as a nation trying to make sure that never happens again — and now Trump is explicitly saying he wants to restart that darkest chapter of the FBI’s history.”
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“let’s be clear about what’s happening here: The only reason Trump wants to change FBI directors is he doesn’t think he can boss, bend and break Wray to his will sufficiently, that Wray would not be personally loyal to him in the way that he has wanted his FBI directors to be — and which, institutionally, they’re explicitly not supposed to be. Every single part of that is a dire warning sign about what’s to come under Trump II and what he and Patel intend to do with the bureau.
Wray had an opportunity to make that a fight — to force Trump to bear the political cost of firing him on invented pretexts, to force the president to be the one who destroyed that guardrail rather than Wray himself. And, instead of upholding that oath to the Constitution, the rule of law and duty to protect the bureau from outside influence, Wray just … capitulated.”
“Trump talks often about using the DOJ to target his political adversaries and people he views as foes. An NPR report on October 22 found that Trump “made more than 100 threats to prosecute or punish perceived enemies.” That includes a threat to, in Trump’s words, “appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family.”
Trump also accused former Rep. Liz Cheney, a prominent Republican critic of the incoming president, of “TREASON” and threatened “TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS.” (Which, if they were to actually happen, would presumably take place in the Defense Department’s legal structure, but could involve some DOJ personnel.)
Trump’s decision to name Gaetz, a staunch loyalist, to lead the Justice Department created considerable alarm. Historically, the White House has obeyed strong norms against interfering with Justice Department prosecutorial decisions, but these norms have no legal force. A Trump loyalist like Gaetz could have torn down this barrier altogether. (If someone like him is confirmed atop the Justice Department, that barrier could still go.)
Trump’s decision to appoint his personal lawyers to top DOJ jobs is equally concerning. Federal lawyers are supposed to represent the interests of the United States, not of any particular politician, while they work for the government. But Trump has selected three people who aren’t simply accustomed to representing his personal interests, but who have also likely collected considerable legal fees from him.
Blanche, Sauer, and Bove’s conventional résumés also mean that, if they use their DOJ posts to pursue Trump’s personal campaign of vengeance, they are likely to be fairly effective in doing so.”
For those following preparations in Syria, this attack was not a surprise! The attacking units appear well-trained and many seem to be mercenaries from many locations, likely paid for by Turkey.
“These experiences have given Patel a worldview that I think is best defined as paranoid.
Patel believes that foreign enemies — ranging from China to Iran to drug cartels — are doing their best to infiltrate the United States and wreak havoc on its homeland. Only Trump has the strength and the fortitude to stand up against these enemies and defend American allies like Israel.
The Democrats, he believes, do not just disagree with Trump on how to handle these threats: They are actively aligned with America’s enemies.
In one War Room segment, for example, Patel hosted a discredited China “expert” named Gordon Chang to warn that China was “planning an attack on our facilities on our soil.” But it’s worse than that, Chang argued: China had installed Joe Biden as the president of the United States.
“They were actually able to cast the decisive vote in 2020,” Chang told Patel, claiming without evidence that China “poured money into Joe Biden’s campaign” through the Democratic crowdfunding platform ActBlue. Patel’s response was not skepticism but credulity: “I hope people are paying attention.”
But Democrats are not merely unwitting cat’s paws of foreign powers, per Patel: They are nefarious actors aiming to tear down American democracy.
One of Patel’s favorite phrases, one that he uses again and again on Bannon’s show, is “two-tiered system of justice.” In his mind, federal law enforcement employs two distinct standards — one for “the deep state’s” friends and another for its enemies. Its allies, like the Bidens, receive only limited and superficial scrutiny, while its enemies are constantly harassed and persecuted. The four prosecutions of Trump, for Patel, are not legitimate inquiries into wrongdoing and abuses of power, but rather agents of a corrupt system lashing out at the one man who threatens their grip on America.
For this reason, Patel has an enemies list — literally. His book Government Gangsters, which he is constantly hawking on War Room, contains an appendix listing dozens of names that comprise the “executive branch deep state.””
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“he is constantly proposing schemes — like Congress arresting Garland — that amount to efforts to criminalize political disagreements. This includes proposals to investigate prominent Democrats and even prosecute journalists.
“Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you,” he said in a guest appearance on War Room last year.
“Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.””
“South Korea is in the grip of a political crisis after President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on Tuesday — a shocking move that sparked mass protests and drew sharp rebuke from the country’s parliament.
Though Yoon has said he will reverse his declaration, that’s unlikely to end South Korea’s political problems, which go beyond Tuesday’s emergency.
Yoon first made the declaration during a televised announcement on Tuesday night local time, claiming that the opposition party to his government was in the midst of an “insurgency” and “trying to overthrow the free democracy,” likely in reference to the political deadlock between himself and the parliament that has prevented him from enacting his agenda. Despite that ongoing gridlock, the move to declare martial law took Yoon’s political opponents, allies, the South Korean public — and the world — by surprise.
Shortly after Yoon’s declaration, South Korea’s parliament, known as the National Assembly, met to unanimously vote down the martial law decree.
“There is no reason to declare martial law. We cannot let the military rule this country,” opposition leader Lee Jae-myung said Tuesday. “President Yoon Suk Yeol has betrayed the people. President Yoon’s illegal declaration of emergency martial law is null and void.” Martial law typically involves the suspension of civilian government and rule by military decree in a major emergency, such as intense armed conflict.
Despite Yoon’s pledge to lift his declaration, the country is still in limbo; on Wednesday, opposition parties in the National Assembly submitted a motion for Yoon’s impeachment, and a vote could come as soon as Friday. What comes next is unclear.”
Venezuela was almost removed from power, but he survived and then was able to sell more oil thanks to the Americans wanting more oil on the market to counter the scarcity caused by the Ukraine war.
“The United Nations (U.N.) has accused Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuelan government of committing “gross human rights violations” in the wake of July’s disputed presidential election. According to a report.., the regime’s security forces were responsible for killings, forced disappearances, and physical, psychological, and sexual torture.”
There is an alliance of authoritarian countries that include Russia, China, Iran, and Venezuela. They don’t have ideology in common, but they want to maintain authoritarian power over their people. China’s reach doesn’t stay in Asia; they support the autocracy in Venezuela. Russia and Iran also support Venezuela’s dictatorship.