Trump Assassination


 

The bottom line is this: The Appointments Clause is a critical constitutional restriction stemming from the separation of powers, and it gives Congress a considered role in determining the propriety of vesting appointment power for inferior officers. The Special Counsel’s position effectively usurps that important legislative authority, transferring it to a Head of Department, and in the process threatening the structural liberty inherent in the separation of powers. If the political branches wish to grant the Attorney General power to appoint Special Counsel Smith to investigate and prosecute this action with the full powers of a United States Attorney, there is a valid means by which to do so. He can be appointed and confirmed through the default method prescribed in the Appointments Clause, as Congress has directed for United States Attorneys throughout American history … or Congress can authorize his appointment through enactment of positive statutory law consistent with the Appointments Clause.

We have several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits related to the prosecutorial abuses targeting Trump

In February 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice asked a federal court to allow the agency to keep secret the names of top staffers working in Jack Smith’s office targeting Trump and other Americans.

Secret Service agents and officers are privately questioning the hiring process and whether the agency had adequately screened Herczeg’s background. Some also wonder whether her hire was part of a diversity, equity, and inclusion push in response to years of staff shortages that may have required the agency to lower its once-strict employment standards and physical performance to reach quotas for female agents and officers.

All records related to a reported incident at Joint Base Andrews in which a Secret Service agent was involved in an altercation with colleagues on or about April 23, 2024, including but not limited to incident reports, Vice Presidential protective detail agents’ emails and text messages, and emails and text messages of the following USSS officials: Director Kimberly Cheatle, Deputy Dir. Ronald Rowe, Chief Operating Officer Cynthia Radway, Asst. Dir. Michael Plati, Asst. Dir. Brian Lambert, Chief Human, Capital Officer Denise Walker Hall, Asst. Dir. David Smith, Asst. Dir. Miltom Wilson, Uniformed Division Chief Michael Buck, Chief Counsel Thomas Huse, and Chief of Communications Anthony Guglielmi.

All SF-50s, SF-52s, training completion forms, and disciplinary records of Secret Service Agent Michelle Herczeg.

All USSS and DHS policy documents related to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the hiring, employment, training and discipline of Secret Service agents.

Aside from the outright failure of 23 Illinois counties to remove registrants who fail to respond to Confirmation Notices [as required by NVRA], the complaint also listed counties who lack data that is crucial to list maintenance efforts under the NVRA. Again relying on Defendants’ own admissions to the EAC [Election Assistance Commission], the complaint notes that 34 counties could only report “Data not available” regarding Confirmation Notice removals, and 19 of these reported the same thing for death removals. In addition, 29 counties reported “Data not available” regarding the number of Confirmation Notices sent, and 22 counties said the same thing about the number of inactive registrations. In all, “[f]ifty-two of 108 Illinois jurisdictions failed to report any data to the EAC in one or more of the crucial data categories identified above.” For her part, Defendant Matthews confirmed that she “does not have access to local election authorities’ list maintenance records.” Apparently, no one in Illinois has access to this data.

1. Defendants have failed to implement the NVRA’s required “general program that makes a reasonable effort” to remove voters who have moved or died;

2. Defendant Matthews, who is Illinois’ chief State election official…has failed in her duty to coordinate state responsibilities under the Act; and

3. Defendants have failed to retain and provide to Plaintiffs NVRA-related records they are required to provide. The support for these allegations derives primarily from Defendants’ own admissions, in response to a survey conducted every two years by the federal Election Assistance Commission as it prepares a mandatory report to Congress, and in their correspondence with Plaintiffs.

The federal agency created after 9/11 to protect the nation’s transportation system has no idea how aviation security was impacted when it plucked Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) agents from their critical duties to help with the Mexican border crisis. FAMS operates under the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and in the last few years the agency has forced the highly trained aviation security specialists to assist Customs and Border Protection (CBP) with the onslaught of illegal immigrants entering the country under Biden’s disastrous open border policies. The deployments outraged air marshals around the country and led to accusations of fraud, waste, and abuse of authority by TSA and FAMS leadership for unlawfully sending assets to the southern border to perform duties unrelated to transportation. FAMS is charged with protecting commercial passenger flights by deterring and countering the risk of terrorist activity, a mission impossible to fulfill from the southwest border.

When the highly trained law enforcement agents were reassigned to babysit the influx of illegal immigrants the Air Marshal National Council, which represents thousands of officers nationwide, filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General and requested that the watchdog investigate the questionable deployment of TSA assets to El Paso, Laredo and McAllen Texas, San Diego California and Tucson and Yuma Arizona. The council pointed out that the air marshals were assigned to perform hospital watch, transportation duties, law enforcement searches, welfare checks and entry control, which have no relation to TSA’s core mission of transportation security. The first recent wave of air marshals—45 officers and two supervisors—was dispatched to El Paso and Yuma on October 30, 2022, for 21-day rotations. More were assigned later to other busy locations overrun with migrants.

The TSA admits it does not know the operational impacts that the air marshal border deployments had on transportation security. “TSA cannot assure deployments did not impact FAMS’ mission to mitigate potential risks and threats to our Nation’s transportation system,” according to a DHS report issued days ago thanks to the Air Marshal National Council’s request to probe the matter. The agency did not bother to establish baseline quantifiable and measurable goals from which it could measure the effectiveness of its primary operations while air marshals were assigned to assist CBP at the southwest border, the 17-page report says. TSA incurred approximately $45 million in travel and payroll costs, but the agency was eventually reimbursed by CBP, which also operates under DHS.

Under the agreement with CBP, air marshals played the role of “immigration officers,” to perform the following duties: Escorting migrants from the point of apprehension to processing, between various Border Patrol Sector facilities, or to another entity with jurisdiction over post-processing custody; escorting migrants to and from local health providers and hospitals; conducting searches, including pat downs, and placing or removing handcuffs or restraint devices on migrants in custody before they are transported; securing CBP facilities, including detention cells, and authorizing access to various entry controlled points; escorting migrants between processing checkpoints within the facility; assisting with staffing the unaccompanied female housing facility; observing migrants in holding areas to assess their safety and well-being while awaiting processing or transportation.

Perhaps to discourage more Mexican border deployments, the DHS IG report, which has large redactions to protect sensitive information, stresses that FAMS is a risk and intelligence-based federal law enforcement organization. “TSA employs approximately [redacted] air marshals to assess, address, and mitigate potential risks and threats to our Nation’s transportation system,” the DHS watchdog writes, stating the obvious. “In addition to providing in-flight security, air marshals carry out a variety of other law enforcement–related functions.” Babysitting illegal immigrants is most certainly not one of them. FAMS was created in 1961 as a small force of only 18 “sky marshals” to counter airplane hijackers. After the 2001 terrorist attacks the force grew tremendously and plays a major role in protecting the nation’s civil aviation system.

Until next week...