The Defense Of The Republic

All ten living ex-Secretaries of Defense, including Republicans Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Chuck Hagel, Mark Esper, and Jim Mattis, have signed onto an op-ed warning current acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller that the election is over, and that the US military cannot be used for whatever Trump may be planning in the coup department.

The U.S. presidential election, and the time for questioning its results, are over, all 10 living former secretaries of defense wrote in a forceful op-ed published on Sunday.

"Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted," the 10 men from both Republican and Democratic administrations wrote.

"The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived," they said.

The bipartisan group of leaders published the letter in The Washington Post as President Trump continues to deny his election loss to President-elect Joe Biden. On Saturday, during a one-hour phone call, Trump even pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" votes to overturn his defeat.

Former Secretaries of Defense Ashton Carter, Dick Cheney, William Cohen, Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta, William Perry and Donald Rumsfeld signed the opinion piece.

Two Pentagon heads who served under Trump — Jim Mattis and Mark Esper — also signed it. Trump removed Esper in November as part of a major shakeup at the Department of Defense.

The op-ed comes as some Republican lawmakers in Congress plan this week to formally object to the certification of the Nov. 3 presidential election results.

Since the vote, Trump and his attorneys have repeatedly asserted false claims of voter fraud and blamed, without evidence, that his loss to Biden was due to widespread irregularities. But his insistence that the election was stolen has led to some speculation he could somehow use the military to remain in office past Biden's Jan. 20 inauguration.

The 10 signatories made it clear that any effort to involve U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take the country "into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory."

They wrote, "Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic."

Former Defense Secretary Perry, who served under President Bill Clinton, wrote on Twitter that the idea for the statement originated with Cheney, a Republican who served under President George W. Bush as vice president and President George H.W. Bush as secretary of defense.

"Each of us swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We did not swear it to an individual or a party," Perry tweeted, reiterating the op-ed's lines.

 

We're really to this point, folks. 

 

Understand that war criminals like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld wouldn't be saying a word about this if they didn't believe there was a credible chance that Trump would resort to using the US military in a coup d'etat. To me, that means Trump has certainly called them and asked them about the possibility already, and this is their very public response.

Mark Esper signing this means that he believes the threat is real, because, again, he was almost certainly asked to do this. Same with Mad Dog Mattis. Imagine the phone call recorded Saturday by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and do the math from there.

 

Trump isn't fundraising, guys. He's trying to stay in power through whatever means necessary. Just because the coup attempt is ham-handed and obvious doesn't mean that it's not a serious and dangerous one if enough enablers allow it to happen. 

 

Eric Edelman, a former ambassador to Turkey and undersecretary of Defense for George W. Bush who endorsed Biden for president, said he organized the letter after talking to Cheney.

“I talk periodically to Cheney,” Edelman recalled in an interview Sunday. “This summer, when I was starting to get ready to help organize the national security Republicans who endorsed Biden, along with Sean O'Keefe, who was [Cheney’s] secretary of the Navy … I was talking to him about this on and off and expressing my concerns about Trump, much of which he shared.”

“When the David Ignatius piece came out,” Edelman continued, "that was alarming. It was not inconsistent with conversations I had with Esper after he resigned, in term of concerns about what might be going on with this clown car of people that they’ve got over there around Miller.

“When you are a former senior official, people you know are still there, you hear stuff,” he added. “I'd heard things that were eerily similar to what was in the Ignatius column.”

 

I said last month that Trump was gathering civilian Pentagon officials who wanted him to use the Insurrection Act to overturn the election. It's well past time we start taking that seriously.

 

Deadly seriously. 

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

The Trump regime is refusing to recognize Joe Biden's victory, and as such, will not lift a finger to provide the incoming Biden administration with anything far as resources for a smooth transition.

A Trump administration appointee is refusing to sign a letter allowing President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team to formally begin its work this week, in another sign the incumbent president has not acknowledged Biden’s victory and could disrupt the transfer of power.

The administrator of the General Services Administration, the low-profile agency in charge of federal buildings, has a little-known role when a new president is elected: to sign paperwork officially turning over millions of dollars, as well as giving access to government officials, office space and equipment authorized for the taxpayer-funded transition teams of the winner.

It amounts to a formal declaration by the federal government, outside of the media, of the winner of the presidential race.

But by Sunday evening, almost 36 hours after media outlets projected Biden as the winner, GSA Administrator Emily Murphy had written no such letter. And the Trump administration, in keeping with the president’s failure to concede the election, has no immediate plans to sign one. This could lead to the first transition delay in modern history, except in 2000, when the Supreme Court decided a recount dispute between Al Gore and George W. Bush in December.

“An ascertainment has not yet been made,” Pamela Pennington, a spokeswoman for GSA, said in an email, “and its Administrator will continue to abide by, and fulfill, all requirements under the law.”

The GSA statement left experts on federal transitions to wonder when the White House expects the handoff from one administration to the next to begin — when the president has exhausted his legal avenues to fight the results, or the formal vote of the electoral college on Dec. 14? There are 74 days, as of Sunday, till the Biden inauguration on Jan. 20.

“No agency head is going to get out in front of the president on transition issues right now,” said one senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. The official predicted that agency heads will be told not to talk to the Biden team.

 

So again, this isn't just mean-spirited or petty. This is active sabotage, and it will result in thousands of additional deaths as the pandemic rages across the country this winter and the incoming Biden team can't get started, because the regime is already letting a thousand Americans die a day from COVID-19 and still refuses to activate any federal resources whatsoever.

And speaking of petty, Trump's house cleaning is now under way as he puts acting cabinet officials in place to execute whatever vile garbage he has in mind in the last 70 days of his reign, and it should worry all of us that he's starting with the Pentagon.

President Trump on Monday announced he had fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper, a move that comes days after Joe Biden was projected to have won the presidential race.

"I am pleased to announce that Christopher C. Miller, the highly respected Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (unanimously confirmed by the Senate), will be Acting Secretary of Defense, effective immediately," Trump said in a series of tweets. "Chris will do a GREAT job! Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service."

Trump and Esper have had a rocky relationship since the summer’s nationwide racial justice protests. During the height of the protests, Trump threatened to deploy active-duty troops to quell the demonstrations. Esper responded by holding a press conference at the Pentagon announcing his opposition to deploying troops.

Esper’s public split reportedly angered Trump so much that he had to be talked out of firing the Defense secretary then.

Earlier Thursday, NBC News reported that Esper had prepared a letter of resignation, and Politico reported that while Esper was expected to resign soon, the uncertainty of the election had put his plans on the back burner.

Trump replacing the Secretary of Defense with the Pentagon's top counterterrorism official is a really, really big clue as to what's coming next, guys.

 

And finally, Mitch McConnell made it official as the GOP Senate gets back to confirming more Trump federal judges: Joe who? Never heard of him. 

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the top Republican in Congress, on Monday threw his support behind President Trump’s refusal to concede the election, declining to recognize President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory as he argued Mr. Trump was “100 percent within his rights” to challenge the outcome.

Even as he celebrated the success of incumbent Republican senators who won re-election and the winnowing of Democrats’ House majority, Mr. McConnell, the majority leader, treated the outcome of the presidential election as uncertain, and hammered Democrats for calling on Mr. Trump to accept the results.

“President Trump is 100 percent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options,” the Kentucky Republican said, delivering his first comments since Mr. Biden was declared the winner. “Let’s not have any lectures about how the president should immediately, cheerfully accept preliminary election results from the same characters who just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election.”

Mr. McConnell did not contradict Mr. Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen from him, instead endorsing the president’s vow to pursue a bevy of lawsuits in key swing states aimed at handing him a victory. He said that “this process will reach its resolution” and that the nation’s legal and political system “will resolve any recounts or litigation.”

Following him on the floor, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said flatly that “Joe Biden won this election fair and square.” He called Mr. Trump’s claims “extremely dangerous, extremely poisonous to our democracy” and warned Republican leaders not to give it oxygen.

“Republican leaders must unequivocally condemn the president’s rhetoric and work to ensure the peaceful transfer of power,” Mr. Schumer said.

Yet none have done so, and only a handful of Republican senators have acknowledged Mr. Biden’s victory.

There will be no concessions from Trump, from McConnell, or from any Republican. There will be no bipartisanship, only self-serving treacle from Collins, Murkowski, and Romney when it suits them, and nothing that doesn't.

 

But of course, that's the plan.  Always was.

You all knew that, of course.

Retribution Execution, Con't

A Trump second term means the replacement of much of his cabinet with yes men who will aid the republic's transition to a fascist autocratic police state, starting with law enforcement, intelligence services, and the military.

If President Trump wins re-election, he'll move to immediately fire FBI Director Christopher Wray and also expects to replace CIA Director Gina Haspel and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, two people who've discussed these officials' fates with the president tell Axios.

The big picture: The list of planned replacements is much longer, but these are Trump's priorities, starting with Wray. Wray and Haspel are despised and distrusted almost universally in Trump's inner circle. He would have fired both already, one official said, if not for the political headaches of acting before Nov. 3.

Why it matters: A win, no matter the margin, will embolden Trump to ax anyone he sees as constraining him from enacting desired policies or going after perceived enemies. Trump last week signed an executive order that set off alarm bells as a means to politicize the civil service. An administration official said the order "is a really big deal" that would make it easier for presidents to get rid of career government officials. 

There could be shake-ups across other departments. The president has never been impressed with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, for example. But that doesn't carry the urgency of replacing Wray or Haspel. The nature of top intelligence and law enforcement posts has traditionally carried an expectation for a higher degree of independence and separation from politics.

Be smart: While Trump has also privately vented about Attorney General Bill Barr, he hasn't made any formal plans to replace him, an official said. Trump is furious that Barr isn't releasing before the election what Trump hoped would be a bombshell report by U.S. Attorney John Durham on the Obama administration's handling of the Trump-Russia investigation. 

Durham's investigation has yet to produce any high-profile indictments of Obama-era officials as Trump had hoped. "The attorney general wants to finish the work that he's been involved in since day one," a senior administration official told Axios.

Behind the scenes: "The view of Haspel in the West Wing is that she still sees her job as manipulating people and outcomes, the way she must have when she was working assets in the field," one source with direct knowledge of the internal conversations told Axios. "It's bred a lot of suspicion of her motives." 

Trump is also increasingly frustrated with Haspel for opposing the declassification of documents that would help the Justice Department's Durham report. A source familiar with conversations at the CIA says, "Since the beginning of DNI's push to declassify documents, and how strongly she feels about protecting sources connected to those materials, there have been rumblings around the agency that the director plans to depart the CIA regardless of who wins the election.”

As for Wray, whose expected firing was first reported by The Daily Beast, Trump is angry his second FBI chief didn't launch a formal investigation into Hunter Biden's foreign business connections — and didn't purge more officials Trump believes abused power to investigate his 2016 campaign's ties to Russia. 

Trump also grew incensed when Wray testified in September that the FBI has not seen widespread election fraud, including with mail-in ballots. A senior FBI official tells Axios: "Major law enforcement associations representing current and former FBI agents as well as police and sheriff's departments across the country have consistently expressed their full support of Director Wray's leadership of the Bureau."

Trump soured on Esper over the summer when the Defense secretary rebuffed the idea of sending active-duty military into the streets to deal with racial justice protests and distanced himself from the clearing of Lafayette Square for a photo op at St. John's church. 

Trump indicated to Axios then that he "really wasn't focused on" firing Esper. One senior official cautioned that others who want the Pentagon job could be driving speculation to undercut Esper. But one source, who discussed options with Trump, told Axios he urged the president to wait until post-election to replace him. Chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement that Esper "has always been and remains committed to doing what is best for the military and the Nation.”

 

Both Trump and Bill Barr will have free reign to start arresting Democrats in a second term, especially if Mitch McConnell keeps control of the Senate.  The decent to fascism will come quickly should Trump prevail in the election.

For the first time, I think Biden will win, he's held on to a big lead for long enough and there's just too many battleground states for Trump to play defense in right now for him to win them all like he did in 2016, when he was on offense, and Biden's leads in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania continue to be statistically significant, and Biden is above 50% in all three states.  That's all he needs to pick up from 2016 in order to top 270 electoral votes, and the odds are he'll win at least one or two of the other six battleground states (GA, TX, OH, NC, AZ, and FL) on top of those three.

Trump is running out of time to win this, but if he does, America is absolutely out of time.

We're done as a free nation if Trump wins.

I implore you to vote if you haven't already.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

The Russian bounty scandal story just got a whole hell of a lot worse for Donald Trump.

United States intelligence officers and Special Operations forces in Afghanistan alerted their superiors as early as January to a suspected Russian plot to pay bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops in Afghanistan, according to officials briefed on the matter. 

The crucial information that led the spies and commandos to focus on the bounties included the recovery of a large amount of American cash from a raid on a Taliban outpost that prompted suspicions. Interrogations of captured militants and criminals played a central role in making the intelligence community confident in its assessment that the Russians had offered and paid bounties in 2019, another official has said. 

Armed with this information, military and intelligence officials have been reviewing American and other coalition combat casualties since early last year to determine whether any were victims of the plot. Four Americans were killed in combat in early 2020, but the Taliban have not attacked American positions since a February agreement to end the long-running war in Afghanistan. 

The emerging details added to the picture of the classified intelligence assessment, which The New York Times reported on Friday was briefed to President Trump and discussed by the White House’s National Security Council at an interagency meeting in late March. The Trump administration had yet to act against the Russians, the officials said.

January.  The Pentagon knew since January.  The White House lies that "Trump was never briefed" fell apart instantly over the weekend, but now Republicans are starting to bail on Trump over this.

Republicans in Congress demanded more information from the Trump administration about what happened and how the White House planned to respond. 

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking House Republican, said in a Twitter message on Sunday: “If reporting about Russian bounties on U.S. forces is true, the White House must explain: 1. Why weren’t the president or vice president briefed? Was the info in the PDB? 2. Who did know and when? 3. What has been done in response to protect our forces & hold Putin accountable?” 

Multiple Republicans retweeted Ms. Cheney’s post. Representative Daniel Crenshaw, Republican of Texas and a former Navy SEAL, amplified her message, tweeting, “We need answers.” 

On CNN, Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, said that the reported Russian actions “would be consistent with the Russian practice over the last few years of doing its best secretly to try to undermine Western government, including the United States.”

Trump called the story a hoax on Twitter on Sunday.  That won't fly this time. Even your FOX News loving relatives understand "The Russians paid bounties to the Taliban to kill our troops in Afghanistan and Trump did nothing."  And even if Trump really wasn't briefed, he's still doing nothing.

Ms. Pelosi said that if the president had not, in fact, been briefed, then the country should be concerned that his administration was afraid to share with him information regarding Russia. 

Ms. Pelosi said that the episode underscored Mr. Trump’s accommodating stance toward Russia and that with him, “all roads lead to Putin.” 

“This is as bad as it gets, and yet the president will not confront the Russians on this score, denies being briefed,” she said. “Whether he is or not, his administration knows, and some of our allies who work with us in Afghanistan have been briefed and accept this report.”

The Washington Post not only confirms the Times story, but finds that "several" US troops were killed as a direct result of these bounty payments.

Russian bounties offered to Taliban-linked militants to kill coalition forces in Afghanistan are believed to have resulted in the deaths of several U.S. service members, according to intelligence gleaned from U.S. military interrogations of captured militants in recent months.

Several people familiar with the matter said it was unclear exactly how many Americans or coalition troops from other countries may have been killed or targeted under the program. U.S. forces in Afghanistan suffered a total of 10 deaths from hostile gunfire or improvised bombs in 2018, and 16 in 2019. Two have been killed this year. In each of those years, several service members were also killed by what are known as “green on blue” hostile incidents by members of Afghan security forces, which are sometimes believed to have been infiltrated by the Taliban.

The intelligence was passed up from the U.S. Special Operations forces based in Afghanistan and led to a restricted high-level White House meeting in late March, the people said.

The meeting led to broader discussions about possible responses to the Russian action, ranging from diplomatic expressions of disapproval and warnings, to sanctions, according to two of the people. These people and others who discussed the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity because of its sensitivity.

The disturbing intelligence — which the CIA was tasked with reviewing, and later confirmed — generated disagreement about the appropriate path forward, a senior U.S. official said. The administration’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, preferred confronting the Russians directly about the matter, while some National Security Council officials in charge of Russia were more dismissive of taking immediate action, the official said.

It remained unclear where those discussions have led to date. Verifying such intelligence is a process that can take weeks, typically involving the CIA and the National Security Agency, which captures foreign cellphone and radio communications. Final drafting of any policy options in response would be the responsibility of national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien.

And the Associated Press confirms the story as well: Trump was briefed, discussions and possible solutions were presented, American troops were killed in an incident in 2018 that could have been related to the Russian bounty payments to Taliban militants, and Trump did absolutely nothing as a result.

While Russian meddling in Afghanistan is not a new phenomenon for seasoned U.S. intelligence officials and military commandos, officials said Russian operatives became more aggressive in their desire to contract with the Taliban and members of the Haqqani Network, a militant group that is aligned with the Taliban in Afghanistan and that was designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 2012. Russian operatives are said to have met with Taliban leaders in Doha, Qatar and inside Afghanistan; however, it is not known if the meetings were to discuss bounties.

The officials the AP spoke to said the intelligence community has been investigating an April 2019 attack on an American convoy that killed three U.S. Marines after a car rigged with explosives detonated near their armored vehicles as they were traveling back to Bagram Airfield, the largest U.S. military installation in Afghanistan. Three other U.S. service members were wounded in the attack, along with an Afghan contractor. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter. The officials the AP spoke to also said they were looking closely at insider attacks — sometimes called “green-on-blue” incidents — from 2019 to determine if they are also linked to Russian bounties.

In early 2020, members of the elite Naval Special Warfare Development Group, known to the public as SEAL Team Six, raided a Taliban outpost and recovered roughly $500,000. The recovered funds further solidified the suspicions of the American intelligence community that the Russians had offered money to Taliban militants and other linked associations.

One official said the administration discussed several potential responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step.

As I've said before, the quality of the blackmail that the Russians must have not only on Trump, but the majority of the GOP in Congress right now must be staggering.  Absolutely everyone sat on this story for nearly six months, not a peep.

This one will have legs long into election season.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Yes, Trump nearly fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper last week for not putting troops in America's streets but he was talked out of it.

President Trump reportedly wanted to dismiss Defense Secretary Mark Esper last week over conflicting views on the use of active-duty troops to quell nationwide protests but was talked out of it by advisers and lawmakers.

Officials told The Wall Street Journal that Trump — angry with Esper for not backing his threats to use active-duty forces to quash unrest in Washington, D.C., Minneapolis and other cities — was focused on sacking the Pentagon chief last Wednesday.

But when Trump asked several advisers for their opinions on the matter, he was reportedly counseled to shelve such a plan.

Esper at the same time had started to prepare a letter of resignation, as he was aware of Trump’s anger, but he stopped after aides and other advisers recommended against it, some of the officials told the Journal.

Earlier that day, Esper had said he did not support invoking the Insurrection Act — an 1807 law that allows the president to use the military for domestic law enforcement — over protests following the police killing of George Floyd, unarmed black man, in Minneapolis on May 25. He said such a move should be done only as a “last resort” and that the protests did not warrant such a response.

The stance was a break in messaging from Trump, who had urged governors to deploy National Guard troops to “dominate the streets” and stop any unrest, threatening to dispatch U.S. military forces to states and cities that did not meet his demands.

The Pentagon declined to comment, and the White House failed to respond to requests for comment.

So yes, Trump has no problem with open tyranny.  And eventually, people will stop talking him out of it.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

As Saturday protests around the country get started, it's important to note that the Trump regime is doing everything it can to make the price of protesting too high to pay.

Federal agents on Friday morning released boxes of cloth masks that Black Lives Matter organizers mailed to cities across the county to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 during nationwide demonstrations against police brutality.

Four boxes of the masks were shipped to Washington, St. Louis, New York City and Minneapolis on Wednesday afternoon, and were supposed to arrive in each city by Thursday. But until Friday morning, the boxes of 500 masks apiece that read “stop killing Black people” and “defund police” never left Oakland, California, because they were seized by the government. Federal agents with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service were involved with the seizure.
“These packages were originally set aside for further investigation because there were indications that they contained non-mailable matter,” the U.S. Postal Inspection Service said in a statement to HuffPost on Friday afternoon. “Once Postal Inspectors confirmed the contents of the packages were in fact mailable, they were immediately placed back in the mail stream to be delivered at their intended destinations without further delay.”

The USPIS, responding to a follow-up question about what kind of non-mailable material they suspected the packages contained, said that “specific investigative methods used by Inspectors are sensitive and must remain confidential, but they are effective in helping to locate non-mailable matter of all kinds.”

Mark Jamison, a retired postmaster, told HuffPost that he suspects that an outside law enforcement organization was involved in the investigation, which the U.S. Postal Service Inspection Service denied. The U.S. Postal Service logs mail for law enforcement, and Jamison believes at least one of the organizers who was set to receive a package of masks was of interest to law enforcement.

A spokeswoman for the Movement for Black Lives, which paid for the masks, called the USPIS statement “insufficient and a cause for concern.”

“Cloth masks are mailable items. And they admit clearly that they received faulty intelligence about what was in the packages,” said Chelsea Fuller. “So the question remains: which agency moved to use the Postal Service as a domestic surveillance tool?”

Yes, the Trump regime is now acting like a regime in earnest, complete with secret police under Trump's direct control, exposed by leakers.

A leaked Trump administration document details the federal law enforcement and military personnel squaring off against protesters in Washington, D.C., including a 1,300-strong force currently deployed to the south side of the White House.
Thousands of federal law enforcement and military personnel have been called to Washington to respond to growing demonstrations sparked by the death of George Floyd, an African-American man who was killed by Minneapolis police on May 25, but the Trump administration has so far refused to disclose many of the details about who is policing the nation’s capital.

An internal report obtained by Yahoo News shows which agencies are involved.

The show of force outside the White House is a task force operation that includes U.S. Secret Service, National Guard, Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Park Police, according to the internal Department of Homeland Security report, dated June 4. They aren’t the only ones in town: Border Patrol, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Transportation Security Administration, National Guard, Coast Guard, Federal Protective Service and more have been called in, says the document, which details DHS component deployments to Washington and elsewhere around the country in response to protests over the death of Floyd.
Thousands more — from at least a dozen federal agencies or divisions — have been deployed across the capital region and to cities big and small across the U.S. where peaceful protests have been held or are expected.

Elite SWAT teams from the Border Patrol and sniper-trained units from ICE have also descended upon Washington. TSA’s air marshals arrived too, and three of the agency’s “VIPR teams,” which have previously faced criticism for not coordinating well with local law enforcement. Eight Coast Guard investigators were deputized by the Department of Justice upon arrival in Washington, though it remains unclear how they are being deployed.

You don't deploy snipers against protestors unless your goal is specifically to kill.

And will Mark Esper talk to Congress?  No.

NEW: Defense Sec. Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley won't appear before House Armed Services next week. HASC Chair Adam Smith had requested they testify at a hearing on the military's role in responding to domestic protests. https://t.co/yzgbYTWmDd

— Connor O'Brien (@connorobrienNH) June 5, 2020

It's a regime in reality now, not just a name I've been using for more then three years.

Actually, it was a regime in reality three years ago.

Retribution Execution, Con't

Defense Secretary Mark Esper doesn't have the balls to resign after the catastrophe of Trump saying he'll use the military against Americans on US soil on Monday, but apparently he's at least going to complain about the knife Trump put in his back.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said Wednesday that he does not support using active duty troops to quell the large-scale protests across the United States triggered by the death of George Floyd and those forces should only be used in a law enforcement role as a last resort, comments that came after President Donald Trump recently threatened to deploy the military to enforce order. 

Esper's attempt to distance himself from Trump's view on using the military to restore order went over poorly at the White House, where he was already viewed to be on shaky ground, multiple people familiar with the matter said. 

"The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act," Esper said during a briefing at the Pentagon. 

Esper also addressed the killing of Floyd, calling it a "horrible crime" and said "racism is real in America, and we must all do our very best to recognize it, to confront it, and to eradicate it." 

"The officers on the scene that day should be held accountable for his murder. It is a tragedy that we have seen repeat itself too many times. With great sympathy, I want to extend the deepest of condolences to the family and friends of George Floyd from me and the Department. Racism is real in America, and we must all do our very best to recognize it, to confront it, and to eradicate it," he said.

It's going to be a moot point anyway.  As with Jeff Sessions and Jim Mattis, Trump will simply replace a cabinet member with somebody who will obey him, and Mitch McConnell will rubber stamp the transaction.

Trump and other top officials, including national security adviser Robert O'Brien, are "not happy" with Esper after his Wednesday remarks, three people familiar with the White House's thinking said. 

In the press conference, Esper also distanced himself from a maligned photo-op outside St. John's Church. 

One White House official said aides there did not get a heads up about the content of Esper's remarks, including most notably Esper's decision to publicly break with the President on the use of the military to address unrest in US cities.

The countdown until Esper is replaced begins in earnest, which may slow down Trump for a moment, but as soon as he finds somebody willing to carry out his orders as Acting SecDef, things could get ugly in a New York minute. Look at the havoc Richard Grenell wreaked as Acting DNI in just a couple of months.

Don't feel bad for Esper, however.  He made the decision to work for Donald Trump, and that makes you just as morally repugnant as Trump is, if not more so.

Out Of The Sandbox

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the US are about to sign a peace deal with the Taliban, in a move that could finally lead to the end of the nearly 20-year war in Afghanistan.

After a week-long deal to reduce violence across Afghanistan, the U.S. and the Taliban are set to sign a historic agreement Saturday that would see U.S. troops start to withdraw, according to a statement issued Friday afternoon by President Donald Trump. 

"Soon, at my direction, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will witness the signing of an agreement with representatives of the Taliban, while Secretary of Defense Mark Esper will issue a joint declaration with the government of Afghanistan. If the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan live up to these commitments, we will have a powerful path forward to end the war in Afghanistan and bring our troops home," Trump said. 

Pompeo is headed now to Doha, Qatar, where the U.S. and the militant group have engaged in talks for over a year and a half and the signing ceremony is expected to take place. At the same time, Esper is expected in that joint statement to reaffirm U.S. support for the Afghan government, long rejected by the Taliban and sidelined from their talks with U.S. negotiators. 

The agreement with the militant group that harbored the al Qaeda operatives responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks comes after over 18 years of war. The Trump administration hopes it is poised to reshape Afghanistan, leading to national peace negotiations and ending any Taliban safe haven for terrorists that threaten the U.S. homeland. But critics warn the Taliban has neither the ability nor perhaps the appetite to carry out their commitments. 

According to Pompeo, the agreement triggers a "conditions-based and phased" U.S. withdrawal and the "commencement" of Afghan negotiations where "all sides of the conflict will sit down together and begin the hard work of reconciliation." U.S. officials say the deal also includes Taliban commitments on counterterrorism, although those details are still unclear. 

"These commitments represent an important step to a lasting peace in a new Afghanistan, free from Al Qaeda, ISIS, and any other terrorist group that would seek to bring us harm," Trump said in his statement. "Ultimately it will be up to the people of Afghanistan to work out their future. We, therefore, urge the Afghan people to seize this opportunity for peace and a new future for their country."

Initially, the U.S. will draw down its troops from 13,000 to 8,600 -- a level that Gen. Scott Miller, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces, has said is still sufficient to carry out their mission. While that draw down is expected to take months, conditions and timelines for further reductions after that are unclear.

If this works out, maybe we'll finally get out of the war that has lasted for three-quarters of my adult life.  The thing is though given the history of both Donald Trump and the Taliban that it's not going to work out at all.   Even a best case scenario at this point is troops in Afghanistan for years.

On top of that, the deal forces the Afghan government to release some 5,000 Taliban prisoners.  Sure is going to go well for Kabul, huh?

That's not worth celebrating just yet, but Trump of course is doing it anyway.

Trump begins coronavirus press conference talking about his surrender to the Taliban in Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/O1ZYzsFG2d

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) February 29, 2020

Once again this is Donald Trump telling us what he plans to do, but acting like it's already been accomplished and that he, Donald Trump, is the smartest man on Earth. 

He's been wrong every other time before.

Last Call For The Drums Of War, Con't

One of the hard and fast rules of this regime is when Trump outright lies to the American people, that reality is whatever Dear Leader says it is, and when you fail in that aspect of covering for him on national TV, it's going to go badly for you, as Defense Secretary Mark Esper is about to find out.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said he "didn't see" specific evidence that top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani was planning attacks on four U.S. embassies, but said he believed such attacks would have occurred.

"The president didn't cite a specific piece of evidence. What he said was he believed," Esper said Sunday on "Face the Nation." "I didn't see one, with regard to four embassies. What I'm saying is that I shared the president's view that probably — my expectation was they were going to go after our embassies. The embassies are the most prominent display of American presence in a country."

The president and his top officials have said the strike that killed Soleimani, the leader of Iran's elite Quds Force, was justified because there was an "imminent" threat to American service members and diplomats. Members of Congress, however, have raised questions as to the nature of the threat following briefings on the strike that the administration conducted with all members of the House and Senate.

Congressional Democrats have argued the intelligence they were presented did not demonstrate there was an "imminent" threat to U.S. personnel in the region, while some Republicans said the Trump administration was justified in killing Soleimani.

Mr. Trump told Fox News in an interview Friday that "it would've been four embassies" that were attacked, seemingly revealing more information about the nature of the threat.

Esper said he agreed that the embassies probably would've been targeted by Soleimani.

"What the president said was he believed that it probably and could've been attacks against additional embassies," he said. "I shared that view. I know other members of the national security team shared that view. That's why I deployed thousands of American paratroopers to the Middle East to reinforce our embassy in Baghdad and other sites throughout the region." 

Intelligence and analysis doesn't matter.  What Trump publicly says he believes matters, and in America in 2020, only that matters.  Trump killed Suliemani because he believed it would help him politically, period.  At some point, somebody on his national security team mentioned embassies and that became the justification after the fact.

House Democratic Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff makes that clear in response to Esper.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, accused President Trump and top administration officials of "fudging" intelligence to justify the strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran's powerful Quds Force.

"When you hear the president out there on Fox, he is fudging the intelligence," Schiff said Sunday on "Face the Nation," referencing an interview the president conducted with Fox News last week. "When you hear the [defense] secretary say, 'Well, that wasn't what the intelligence said, but that's my personal belief,' he is fudging. When Secretary Pompeo was on your show last week and made the claim that the intelligence analysis was that taking Soleimani out would improve our security and leaving him in would make us less safe, that is also fudging. That is not an intelligence conclusion, that's Pompeo's personal opinion."

After three full years of lying to the American people on a daily basis, people don't believe Trump and it's hurting him.

The poll, conducted by Ipsos in partnership with ABC News, using Ipsos' Knowledge Panel, asked Americans about their attitudes on two unfolding challenges for the Trump presidency -- escalating tensions with Iran and the impending impeachment trial in the Senate.

Overall attitudes about Trump and the consequences of his actions against Iran largely were driven by Independents, a critical target for both parties in electoral politics. The poll showed a majority of Independents, 57%, and all U.S. adults, 56%, disapproving of Trump's handling of the situation with Iran, with 43% of both Independents and U.S. adults approving.

Respondents also were asked about the fallout of the strike against Qassem Soleimani, the second-most-important official in Iran's government behind Ayatollah Khamenei, which marked a major escalation in months of tension between the U.S. and Iran, which launched retaliatory missile strikes on American bases in Iraq.

In the aftermath of the U.S. strike, only 28% of Independents, and 25% of Americans, said they felt more safe, while just over half, 51% of Independents and 52% of U.S. adults, said they felt less safe.
When it comes to attitudes on the conflict with Iran, partisanship drives opinions. An overwhelming 87% of Republicans approved of Trump's handling of Iran, and 54% say they feel safer. Among Democrats, 90% disapproved and 82% felt less safe.

Still, when asked about concerns over the possibility of the United States getting involved in a full-scale war with Iran, Democrats are more united in expressing concern than Republicans.

A net total of 94% of Democrats, and 52% of Republicans, are either very concerned or somewhat concerned about the possibility of entering into another war in the Middle East, compared with 6% of Democrats and 48% of Republicans who said they were not so concerned or not concerned at all.

Iran is not going to save Trump's presidency.

Holidaze: The Drums Of War

The Trump regime has counterattacked targets in Iraq and Syria with missile strikes in response to an attack over the weekend on and Iraqi military base that killed a US military contractor.

The strikes occurred at about 11 a.m. ET on Sunday, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. They stand as the first significant military response in retaliation for attacks by the Shia militia group, known as Kataib Hezbollah, that have injured numerous American military personnel, according to US officials. 

Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman described the strikes against the group as "precision defensive strikes" that "will degrade" the group's ability to conduct future attacks against coalition forces. 

Defense Secretary Mark Esper briefed President Donald Trump Saturday before carrying them out with the President's approval, according to a US official familiar with the strikes. 

At least 25 people were killed in the US airstrikes, according to a statement Sunday from the Popular Mobilization Units, a Tehran-backed Shiite militia also known as the Hashd al-Shaabi. 

Kataib Hezbollah is a group under the Popular Mobilization Units. Jewad Kadum, a PMU official, said in a statement earlier Sunday that the rescue operations were still ongoing as well as the evacuation of the wounded, recovery of the dead bodies and the extinguishing of the fire caused by the airstrikes.

Esper, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, traveled Sunday to Mar-a-Lago to discuss the strikes with Trump. 

Speaking from the President's Florida resort, Pompeo said the US took "decisive action" and said threats against American forces had been ongoing for "weeks and weeks." 

"We will not stand for the Islamic Republican of Iran to take actions that put American men and women in jeopardy," Pompeo said. 

Esper said Sunday's meeting with the President included discussing "other options available" without providing further detail. He added that the US "would take additional actions as necessary to ensure that we act in our own self-defense and we deter further bad behavior from militia groups or from Iran."

Trump very badly wants to get the press off of his impeachment trial, so a nice military escalation in the Middle East seems to be the solution.  Especially given indicted Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's continued troubles, further significant action against Iranian-backed Syrian targets seems pretty likely at this point.

Stay tuned.

Last Call For It's All About Revenge Now, Con't

Donald Trump ordered Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to sink a $10 billion Pentagon IT contract for Amazon over the fact CEO Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, according to a new Mattis biography out on Tuesday.

A new biography of former Defense Secretary James Mattis reports President Donald Trump personally got involved in who would win a major $10 billion contract to provide cloud computing services to the Pentagon, according to the website Task & Purpose, which writes about military issues. 

That hotly contested contract was awarded to Microsoft on Friday evening over Amazon in a months-long battle. 

Task & Purpose reports the new book, "Holding The Line: Inside Trump's Pentagon with Secretary Mattis" by former Mattis speechwriter and communications director Guy Snodgrass recounts that Mattis always tried to translate Trump's demands into ethical outcomes. 

According to Snodgrass' book, Trump called Mattis during summer 2018 and directed him to "screw Amazon" out of the opportunity to bid on the contract. 

Task & Purpose obtained an advanced copy of the book. CNN has not yet seen the book. 

For several years Trump has voiced his displeasure with Amazon and Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. He has accused Amazon of taking advantage of the Postal Service although independent investigations have disagreed with that contention. He also has linked his unfavorable view of Washington Post reporting to Amazon although the Post makes clear it is run separately. 

"Relaying the story to us during Small Group, Mattis said, 'We're not going to do that. This will be done by the book, both legally and ethically,'" Snodgrass wrote according to Task & Purpose. 

The White House did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment.

As the story says the contract was put on hold a few months ago by new Defense Secretary Peter Esper after Mattis resigned at the end of last year, and lo and behold, this week Microsoft won that contract.

I'm not sad to see the obnoxious Bezos take a $10 billion hit considering how awful his corporate empire is.  Maybe his shareholders will sue him over this mess and he'll lose his shirt.  But let's not forget that everything Trump does is driven by revenge, and that he's a criminal mobster at heart.  Mattis wouldn't do what Trump wanted, so he was forced out and Trump found someone who was more than willing to hurt Bezos over his news stories.

Things haven't changed much since the Gilded Age, have they.

Deportation Nation, Con't

As I've been telling you, the Trump regime's "Muslim ban" and cuts in refugee acceptance has been all a test case for ending the vast majority of immigration into the US, and we have now reached that point.

The White House is considering a plan that would keep most refugees who are fleeing war, persecution and famine out of the United States, significantly cutting back a decades-old program, according to current and former administration officials. 

One option that top officials are weighing would cut refugee admissions by half or more, to 10,000 to 15,000 people, but reserve most of those spots for people from a few countries or from groups with special status, such as Iraqis and Afghans who work alongside American troops, diplomats and intelligence operatives abroad. Another option, proposed by a top administration official, would reduce refugee admissions to zero, while leaving the president with the ability to admit some in an emergency. 

Both options would all but end the United States’ status as a leader in accepting refugees from around the world. 

The issue is expected to come to a head on Tuesday, when White House officials plan to convene a high-level meeting to discuss the annual number of refugee admissions for the coming year, as determined by President Trump.

At a time when the number of refugees is at the highest level in recorded history, the United States has abandoned world leadership in resettling vulnerable people in need of protection,” said Eric Schwartz, the president of Refugees International. “The result is a world that is less compassionate and less able to deal with future humanitarian challenges.” 

For two years, Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s top immigration adviser, has used his considerable influence in the West Wing to reduce the refugee ceiling to its lowest levels in history, capping the program at 30,000 this year. That is a more than 70 percent cut from its level when President Barack Obama left office.

The move has been part of Mr. Trump’s broader effort to reduce the number of documented and undocumented immigrants entering the United States, including numerous restrictions on asylum seekers, who, like refugees, are fleeing persecution but cross into the United States over the border with Mexico or Canada. 

Now, Mr. Miller and allies from the White House whom he placed at the Departments of State and Homeland Security are pushing aggressively to shrink the program even further, according to one senior official involved in the discussions and several former officials briefed on them, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail the private deliberations. 

White House officials did not respond to a request for comment. 

John Zadrozny, a top official at United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, made the argument for simply lowering the ceiling to zero, a stance that was first reported by Politico. Others have suggested providing “carveouts” for certain countries or populations, such as the Iraqis and Afghans, whose work on behalf of the American government put both them and their families at risk, making them eligible for special status to come to the United States through the refugee program.

The article goes on to say that Trump's Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, might emerge as the voice of reason.  But former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was a major proponent of admitting refugees, and he's gone.  Stephen Miller is not.  I have little hope that Esper will raise a finger at this point.

The United States is shutting its doors to the world.  The next step will be mass removal of those Miller and his merry band of white supremacists want purged.

An In Defensible Position

Yesterday the GOP-led Senate quietly confirmed Raytheon VP and lobbyist Mark Esper as Defense Secretary, with nary a whimper from Senate Dems...save Elizabeth Warren.

Mark Esper has received enough bipartisan Senate support to be confirmed as the next secretary of defense — the first to permanently serve in that role for seven months.

Esper was President Donald Trump’s second choice after the first, Patrick Shanahan, decided not to seek confirmation due to a sensitive family matter. That opened the door for Esper, previously the Army’s civilian chief and later acting defense secretary, to get the official job.

Esper’s background concerns some people. Although he served as an Army infantryman — giving him a good understanding of everyday soldiering — he later worked as a Raytheon lobbyist for seven years before joining the Pentagon in 2017. That’s potentially problematic as the defense secretary has immense sway over which weapons the Pentagon buys. He may have to recuse himself from any decision related to Raytheon — a major defense firm — vying for contracts.

What’s more, the Trump administration is in the middle of a massive diplomatic spat with Turkey over its decision to buy and use Russian-made missiles instead of Raytheon-made ones.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a top Democratic candidate for president, grilled Esper on his Raytheon past during last week’s Senate Armed Services Committee nomination hearing last week — providing the only truly uncomfortable moment in an otherwise uneventful appearance. Warren wanted Esper to recuse himself from all Raytheon-related matters, but Esper said he didn’t need to after conferring with ethics officials.

And he sailed through 90-8.  Ninety.  To Eight.  If there's one small bonus to all this, it's that Esper has a hard-on for dealing with China and not Iran.

None of that concerned the administration, it seemed, and there may be a few reasons why.

First, Esper was a former classmate of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s at West Point, class of 1986, and Pompeo and Esper reportedly have a friendly relationship. That gives the secretary a likely ally in deliberations on foreign policy against National Security Adviser John Bolton.

Second, Esper has long pushed for the US to take a hardline stance against China. “We may be a little bit late — we are late — coming to the recognition that we are in a strategic competition with China,” he told Reuters in April.

“The issue of China, competition with China, China’s capabilities, is not a new one to me,” said the former combat veteran who served in the first Gulf War. “That is both the foundation and the shaping of my views on these various issues, because I’ve watched this evolution for 20 years now.”

That means Trump now has a like-minded person in the Pentagon when it comes to confronting China, although the president has not shown any appetite for a military fight with that country.

Maybe Esper will stop John Bolton's mustache from taking us to war with Iran, but if newly-minted UK PM Boris Johnson has his way, we'll be joining the Brits very soon in a very stupid war.  Or maybe two if Esper decides China is a threat and convinces Trump as such.