Tag: assassinations

When Presidents Kill

Sometime before he withdrew from the presidential race, President Joe Biden secretly reaffirmed his own self-willed and self-created authority to kill persons in other countries, so long as the CIA and its military counterparts have “near certainty” that the target of the homicide is a member of a terrorist organization. That standard was concocted by the George W. Bush administration in 2002.

There is no “near certainty” standard in the law, as the phrase is oxymoronic and defies a rational definition – like “nearly pregnant.”

Just as one is either pregnant or not, one is either certain or not. There is no “near” there.

Yet, the creation of this standard underscores the lamentable absence of the rule of law in government today. The Biden administration and its three immediate predecessors have all deployed drones to kill persons who were not engaged in acts of violence at the time of their killing, irrespective of the near certainty of their membership in any organizations.

“Terrorist” cannot be a standard for extrajudicial murder because it is subjective. To King George III, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were terrorists. To the poor folks in Libya and Syria, to the popularly elected governments toppled by CIA-inspired violence in Iran in 1953 and in Ukraine in 2014, to the innocents tortured by the CIA at black sites around the world, the CIA is a terrorist organization.

The presidential use of drones to kill persons overseas began in 2002 with Bush-ordered targeted killings. It continued under President Barack Obama – who even killed Americans overseas. The rules for killing were made up by each president. They were relaxed under President Donald Trump, who gave CIA senior personnel and military commanders the authority to kill without his express approval for each killing. Trump’s folks infamously murdered an Iranian general and his companions on their way to lunch with Iraqi generals to negotiate peace between the two countries.

The Biden administration quietly took back the Trump grants of authority so that today only the president can authorize targeted killing. Yet, there is no moral, constitutional or legal authority for these killings. But presidents of both political parties do it anyway.

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The Beijing Declaration: Quest for Middle East Peace After the Haniyeh Assassination

In just two years, China has facilitated a breakthrough deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran; and Fatah and Hamas. Over time, that could pave the way to peace in the Middle East, after decades of unwarranted violence – including the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

On July 23, 14 Palestinian factions including rivals Hamas and Fatah agreed to end their divisions and form an interim national unity government, thanks to Beijing’s intermediation (Figure 1).

After a breakthrough deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, it is China’s second major contribution to peace in the Middle East. In the past, Egypt and other Arab countries have tried but failed to reconcile the two leading factions.

The Beijing meeting took place in tandem with efforts by international mediators to achieve a ceasefire deal in Israel’s Gaza War, in which nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed and some 2 million people displaced, with the International Criminal Court considering charging Israeli leaders for genocide. And United States cannot avoid complicity in this catastrophe, due to continued massive American military aid and financing, which has made it possible.

Thanks to the Beijing Declaration, Palestinians are now in a position to heal and unify their ranks, if the national unity government prevails. That is seen as a threat by the Netanyahu war cabinet, which is perhaps one reason why the political leader of Hamas Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated just days after the Beijing agreement.

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Trump: Best Evidence of a Second Shooter, a Deep State Sniper?

Two weeks have passed and so much has already been written about the Trump assassination attempt which took place in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday July 13, 2024.

The first shots were heard early in the evening at approximately 6:11 pm.

Accounts from different parties have emerged regarding the event.

At this point, the prevailing narrative is that there was a sole shooter, namely Thomas Matthew Crooks.

The abundance of information and speculation surrounding the historic event inevitably adds to the fog of war – if we can borrow that calque.

Fog of war is usually a phrase that is used to describe military operations, but it also serves in the context of information warfare. The following website describes the use of the phrase quite well [with emphasis added]:

“Military operations depend heavily on communications and intelligence to be successful. When one or both of these elements becomes compromised, the result is often called the fog of war. This phrase encompasses all of the confusions and miscalculations that can occur during an actual combat situation. There is also a political version, in which public opinion can be swayed by misinformation or ambiguous reporting of the facts.”

This “political version” which has an objective to sway public opinion by [infusing] misinformation to create “ambiguous reporting of the facts” certainly applies to our examination of the matter at hand.

In addition, one of many purposes of this fog serves to add confusion and to obfuscate.

Moreover, copious amounts of noise is continuously added to the mix which additionally serves to becloud the truth.

Therefore, in this post I have chosen to focus on one key aspect of the assassination attempt, namely that there appears to exist credible evidence which indicates that there was a second shooter.

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Lead Secret Service Agent Called Off Security from Building Roof Before Sniper Shot President Trump – And She Is Still Deciding Security and Advance Teams at Rallies

Jesse Watters on Wednesday night revealed that the top Secret Service official who blew the security at the Trump Butler rally is still calling the shots and approving advance teams at Trump rallies. The female agent is still calling the shots at the Trump rallies despite failing in her one job – to keep the President safe and secure in public.

It appears that there is no accountability in the US government today. You can even fail a security detail and get the former president shot in the head and keep your job.

And we still do not know her name or the names of the other officials who set up the situation that allowed President Trump and others to be shot, despite knowing the situation was not secure.

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Bombshell: New Trump Assassination Video Blows Secret Service Narrative Out of the Water

Newly released video footage appears to disprove testimony given by the Secret Service about not being able to spot Thomas Matthew Crooks on the roof before he fired at former President Donald Trump.

Obtained by Fox News, the video gives a new point of view from where James Copenhaver, one of the victims was seated. He was shot twice. 

The video was taken around 6:08 p.m. on July 13, three minutes before Crooks began shooting. A person, presumably Crooks, is seen walking on the roof of the building as Trump is talking.

He was fatally shot by a counter-sniper. There were eight shell casings next to his body.

During his effort to kill Trump, Crooks killed Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former fire chief at the Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Department. He also critically injured Copenhaver, 74, and David Dutch, 57. Dutch was also shot twice, according to sources who know the victims.

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Senator Johnson on FBI Claims of Would-Be Assassin Thomas Crooks: “They’re Trying to Paint This as a MAGA Terrorist Trying to Take Out MAGA President. This Doesn’t Make Sense – You Can’t Trust the FBI”

On Tuesday night Senator Ron Johnson joined Laura Ingraham to discuss the Secret Service and FBI’s tawdry testimony before the Senate committees earlier today.

U.S. Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe and FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate provided updates on the ongoing investigation into the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump and the murder of one Trump supporter in Butler, Pennsylvania.

During the testimony, the FBI shamelessly attempted to link deceased killer Thomas Matthew Crooks, the would-be assassin of former President Donald Trump, to a social media account purportedly filled with anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Despite initial reports that investigators had found no threatening posts on Crooks’ social media accounts, Deputy Director Abbate claimed new evidence had surfaced.

“Something just very recently uncovered that I want to share is a social media account which is believed to be associated with this shooter,” Abbate said.

“Some of these comments, if ultimately attributable to the shooter, appear to reflect anti Semitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence and are described as extreme in nature,” he added.

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Hamas Leader Haniyeh Killed in Tehran, Iran Says

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were killed while in Tehran, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said early July 31.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the killings, but Hamas blamed Israel for the attack, saying Haniyeh was killed during an airstrike on his residence in Tehran. Iran’s state media also blamed Israel for the attack.

Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, was in Tehran for the swearing-in of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad al-Nakhaleh was also in Tehran for the inauguration.

The IRGC said in a statement that the incident is under investigation, state media reported.

Israel has been fighting Hamas in Gaza since the terrorist group launched an attack on border cities in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 civilians and military members as hostages.

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Butler Rally Anomaly: Crooks knew

A recent NYT piece on the Butler Rally shooter reveals that the shooter (T.M. Crooks) knew beforehand that counter-snipers were posted on the second floor of the second building.

This meant that he knew, beforehand, that counter-snipers would be posted behind and above him — able to look out the second-floor window to see what he is up to.

But this behavior is highly irregular for an assassin to take. Any person of average intelligence would have expected to have been “taken out” before even getting a shot off, because of knowing, beforehand, that counter-snipers would be posted behind and above (where they could see).

It’s so inconsistent that you’d never even find it in a movie screenplay.

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Google says it took ‘no manual action’ to hide Trump assassination attempt from search suggestions

Google’s search engine conspicuously left out Donald Trump in autocomplete suggestions for “assassination,” “assassination attempt” and even “president donald” Sunday, drawing criticism from social media users including X owner Elon Musk that it was censoring recent history.

The curious suggestions recalled FBI Director Chris Wray questioning whether a bullet even hit the blood-streaked Republican presidential nominee in the attempted assassination, which the bureau walked back after backlash from conservative lawmakers.

Google quickly responded to a Just the News query on the assassination-specific search suggestions, which were highlighted in multiple posts by Libs of TikTok Sunday and verified by House and Senate lawmakers, at least one state attorney general and Just the News.

Musk noted that the suggested finish for “President Donald” was “Duck,” the Disney character, and “Regan,” President Reagan’s chief of staff Donald Reagan, as of late Sunday. (“Trump” had replaced “Duck” in Google suggestions Monday morning when Just the News checked.)

Even an explicit search for “assassination attempt trump” and “president donald trump” returned no suggestions over a 13-hour period from Sunday to Monday morning.

“These are all screenshots from this morning. Has there been a dramatic increase in Truman biographers in the last two weeks?” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Miss., posted on X, referring to Google’s suggestion to search for the assassination attempt on former President Harry Truman but not former President Trump. “I’ll be making an official inquiry” to Google this week.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, agreed that Congress should investigate Google’s search suggestions.

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FBI Director Wray Uses Trump Assassination Attempt To Criticize Private Messaging

FBI Director Christopher Wray has used a congressional hearing organized after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump to launch another attack against encryption and use that as justification for the state of the investigation.

Appearing before the House Judiciary Committee this week, Wray was supposed to speak about the FBI’s investigation into this extremely serious incident, as well as about what the committee said is “the ongoing politicization” of the agency under his and Attorney-General Merrick Garland’s direction.

But Wray turned it into blaming encrypted apps and services for the pace of the investigation. Quite extraordinarily for a person who is supposed to be highly knowledgeable about security, the FBI chief came across as oblivious to how essential encryption is for people’s online security – from their bank transactions to their communications.

Instead, he complained that it is difficult to break into accounts on encrypted platforms, that is, to break encryption – a situation that the FBI head said has “unfortunately become very commonplace.”

He went on to claim that law enforcement at all levels, federal, state, and local finds it “a real challenge.”

Reports say that the FBI had “early success” in breaking into the phone of the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, using tools provided by Cellebrite. This is an Israeli company that oddly advertises its wares as “accelerating justice.”

Wray did not reveal which platforms host the accounts belonging to Crooks that the FBI says it has trouble accessing but noted that “legal process returns” are awaited to accomplish that goal.

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