Amid ongoing fears that Iranian forces could target foreign oil tankers and commercial ships in the Persian Gulf area, the US Navy has sent a guided-missile submarine armed with Tomahawk missiles to waters near the Middle East, a Pentagon spokesman said Saturday. 

The nuclear-powered submarine which is currently en route is based out of Kings Bay, Georgia. The US Navy acknowledged that it passed through the Suez Canal this week, with 5th Fleet spokesman Cmdr. Timothy Hawkins describing that “It is capable of carrying up to 154 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles and is deployed to U.S. 5th Fleet to help ensure regional maritime security and stability.”

It remains rare that the US Navy would publicly disclose the location or deployment of submarines wherever they are globally. Likely the submarine could patrol the vital Strait of Hormuz waterway, frequented by international oil tankers, which also has a heavy IRGC Navy presence given some of it comprises Iranian territorial waters near the coast.

The Associated Press notes that “The U.S. Navy has also reported a series of tense encounters at sea with Iranian forces that it said were being recklessly aggressive.”

But this new submarine deployment could also be part of US muscle-flexing as both Russia and China have been increasing their naval presence in the gulf.

Just last month, Russia, China and Iran held multiple days of joint drills in the Gulf of Oman, dubbed “Security Belt 2023”. Additionally, this past week saw a Russian warship dock at a Saudi Arabian port for the first time in a decade. 

“Russian combat ship entered Saudi Arabian port for the first time in 10 years,” – Russian MoD

The Russian frigate “Admiral Gorshkov” of the Northern Fleet armed with hypersonic weapons entered at the port of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. pic.twitter.com/04gTUc1le7

— Trollstoy (@Trollstoy88) April 5, 2023

All of this is also happening against the backdrop of the recent China-brokered détente and normalization of ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which the US administration has admitted caught the White House off guard. 

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

The price of gold is once again testing its all-time highs as both individuals and institutions flee the chaos of our times toward safety. What John Maynard Keynes decried as the “barbarous relic” just keeps coming back. The worse government policies become, and the more deranged and dysfunctional the Federal Reserve is revealed to be, the more people are turning to time-tested monetary truth.

In a sense, the price of gold can often work as a barometer of confidence in the central managers. The higher it goes, the less trust in the system there truly is. For a century, the elites have wanted gold to disappear from the subject of money. But it keeps not happening.

Like clockwork, there is renewed interest even in the old gold standard. According to Yahoo finance:

“Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV)—joined by Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ)—introduced H.R. 2435, the Gold Standard Restoration Act, to facilitate the repegging of the volatile Federal Reserve note to a fixed weight of gold bullion.Upon passage of H.R. 2435, the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve are given 24 months to publicly disclose all gold holdings and gold transactions, after which time the Federal Reserve note dollar would be formally repegged to a fixed weight of gold at its then-market price.”

The timing is more brilliant than it appears. The dollar as the international reserve currency—which it has been since 1944—is newly under threat. China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil, with other nations joining, have all agreed to work toward independence from the dollar. This is because the Biden administration has so heavily politicized its use as a reserve currency, even going so far as outright confiscation of assets owned by Russians. U.S. policy is using the dollar as a weapon, and it should come as no surprise that many nations don’t like that.

There is the additional and very real threat, too, of a Central Bank Digital Currency in which the Biden administration has shown great interest.

This would permit a massive invasion by the government and its monetary oligarchs into our private lives and permit new levels of population control that will make the Bill of Rights a dead letter.

If there were ever a time to push for a new gold standard, it is now. At the same time, it should have happened 43 years ago when the Reagan administration had the chance to do so. This might have been the key to preserving newly restored American freedoms rather than allowing the central bank to preside over the wreckage of this country.

The presidential campaign of 1980 was a turning point for the United States, away from the economic malaise of a highly regulated industrial sector with a dollar rapidly declining in value, toward deregulation and sounder money. Looking back, the dramatic policy turn of the Reagan presidency prepared the groundwork for decades of prosperity. It built a capital base so strong that it seemed nothing could wreck it.

An unfulfilled part of the 1980 Republican Party platform—pushed by David Stockman and George Gilder—was an endorsement of a gold standard; that is, the dollar redefined in terms of gold instead of the floating paper nothing it had been since the catastrophic reforms made by Richard Nixon that unleashed a decade of inflation.

That part of the 1980 platform was neglected. As a result of the Nixon reform, and the failure to reverse that disaster, the dollar of Aug. 13, 1971, is now worth about 13 cents.

(Data: Federal Reserve Economic Data [FRED], St. Louis Fed; Chart: Jeffrey A. Tucker)

That is a tragedy. With a gold standard in place, and the end of the Cold War only 8 years away, the United States was perfectly positioned to reestablish itself as the peaceful commercial Republic that it was founded to be rather than the entrenched global empire it became after 1990.

With the seemingly existential threat of Soviet communism out of the way, the United States could have chosen George Washington’s path as he stated in his Farewell Address. “The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations,” he said, “is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.”

Instead of that path, the United States under the first George Bush immediately set out on another imperial crusade for democracy and nation-building. No longer restrained by Cold War calculations and mutually assured destruction, the United States was the winner in the struggle, throwing away its chance for peace and prosperity with wars in Haiti, Panama, and Iraq, stirring up hatreds in faraway lands that a decade later came home in horrifying acts of terrorism on our own soil. A whole region of the world now lies in ruins, and Europe is destabilized with war refugees.

Why did the United States take this course when it so obviously could have been otherwise? The short answer is that it could. And the reason it could was because the Federal Reserve’s paper money regime would pay the bills. Paper money has been the handmaiden of war and empire since the ancient world, and the worst example is the 20th century itself.

It is highly doubtful that there ever would have been a thing called a “world war”—grotesquely called the Great War at the time—had both Europe and the United States not adopted central banks. The monetary math would not have made it possible. They would have chosen diplomacy over war.

The astute economist Benjamin Anderson proved it in his postwar treatise on the subject. It’s true that most currencies in the world back then were backed by gold but the critical service the central banks provided was to become a buyer of last resort of government debt. This became a grave moral hazard back then just as it is today.

But let’s return to 1980. Instead of a gold standard, we got better and wiser money management by the Federal Reserve under Paul Volcker, who wrenched the paper excess out of the system and set the dollar up for decades of relatively low inflation. He did nothing, however, to put an end to policy discretion.

Instead of following through on the gold standard, Reagan appointed a commission to study the issue. We know what that means! Of course the commission was packed with paper-money fans with the gold-standard partisans in the minority. The minority report of that commission remains a genuine classic of monetary analysis. The lead author was none other than Ron Paul, who has been fighting for sound money his entire career.

The case for a gold standard is bound up with the case for a limited government that follows the Constitution and protects the rights of the people. That is precisely the problem that people have with the idea. It would put a hard stop on Federal Reserve monetary discretion. It would also require that the whole of the federal government balance its budget the same way that states have to today. Lacking a central bank with the power to print unto infinity, vast numbers of the debates we have today about federal policy, domestic and foreign, would melt away.

The great flaw in the gold standard, however, is not its logic or virtue but its political and managerial probability. The agenda has always required that the existing managers of the system as it exists also come around to the view that they should have less power and less discretion. It depends fundamentally on the existing monetary oligarchs choosing a path that is good for society rather than themselves. That, sadly, seems quite unlikely.

A path even wiser than a centralized gold standard would be the complete denationalization of money itself. This could happen with a repeal of legal tender laws and a wholesale liberalization of both gold as money and digital money that works like gold such as Bitcoin and its many decentralized cousins. We have the technology to make this happen. What’s missing is the political will.

As in 1980, we are at another turning point. With the dollar as the international reserve currency facing its biggest challenge since World War II, and the domestic value of paper money losing its reliability by the day, we do need dramatic reform. At this stage, we face a choice: more tyranny enabled by the nightmare of a CDBC or monetary deregulation that would allow markets and people to choose their own preferred means of exchange.

And the vicious circular argument to eventual global catastrophe continues…

“The NATO expanders are telling us that Russia’s actions inside its unchanged borders are exactly why we had to expand NATO’s borders. Russia’s reaction to NATO’s expansion enlargement justifies NATO’s enlargement expansion.”

– Patrick Armstrong

Source

As Pepe Escobar wrote – before the Russian invasion:

“No one should expect clueless NATO puppets – starting with secretary-general Stoltenberg – to understand the military stakes.

After all, these are the same puppets who have been building up a situation which might ultimately leave Moscow with a single, stark choice: be ready to fight a full scale hot war in Europe – which could become nuclear in a flash.

And ready they are.”

Welcome to NATOstan, Europeans.

Authored by Adam Morrow via The Epoch Times,

Several classified documents detailing United States and NATO plans to assist an upcoming Ukrainian counter-offensive appear to have been leaked online, according to mainstream media reports.

On April 6, the New York Times reported that the documents—which contain sensitive military information—had been posted on Twitter and Telegram and were now being shared on pro-Russia social media accounts.

Asked about the reports on April 7, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said: “We are aware of the reports of social media posts, and the Department [of Defense] is reviewing the matter.”

According to the New York Times article, which cites “senior Biden administration officials” to support its claims, the leaked information includes arms-delivery schedules, troop sizes, and other logistical data.

While it does not contain detailed battle plans, the leaked data represents a “significant breach of American intelligence in the effort to aid Ukraine,” the newspaper asserts.

The article also cites military analysts who claim the documents “appear to have been modified in certain parts from their original format,” raising concerns about their authenticity. 

The Pentagon, for its part, has yet to explicitly confirm the legitimacy of the documents in question.

The reports appear to have prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to convene a meeting with top military advisers to discuss means of preventing the leak of classified information. 

According to an April 7 statement released by his office, meeting participants “focused on measures to prevent the leakage of information regarding the plans of the defense forces of Ukraine.”

Ukrainian servicemen atop a tank, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, near the bombed-out eastern city of Bakhmut, in the eastern Donetsk region, Ukraine, on April 2, 2023. (Violeta Santos Moura/Reuters)

Counter-Offensive Expected

Recent weeks and months have seen Russian forces achieve slow but decisive gains, especially in the eastern Donetsk region. 

But they have also seen growing indications that a Ukrainian counter-offensive—bolstered by Western arms and support—is imminent.

On April 5, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking at NATO headquarters in Brussels, called on allies to remain “focused intensely on the weeks and months ahead … as Ukraine prepares for a counter-offensive, again, to try to retake more of its territory.”

For months, Ukrainian forces have been pinned down in Donetsk’s city of Bakhmut, where they face superior Russian troop numbers and firepower. 

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 16, 2023. (Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo)

Military experts say the fall of Bakhmut, a key transport hub, would likely pave the way for a Russian advance to the north and northwest.

On April 7, the UK Defense Ministry confirmed Ukraine’s tenuous position in the beleaguered city.

“Russia has made further gains and has now highly likely advanced into the town center and has seized the west bank of the Bakhmutka River,” the ministry said in its daily briefing. 

Some indications suggest that the anticipated Ukrainian counter-offensive will attempt to relieve pressure on Bakhmut. Others suggest it will focus on the southern Zaporizhzhia region in hopes of splitting the Russian land corridor to Crimea.  

In any event, the counter-offensive—if it happens—will depend heavily on Western support and badly needed Western arms and equipment.

Last month, Kyiv received several German-made combat tanks from both Germany and Portugal, with more reportedly on the way.

Earlier this week, the Pentagon unveiled a fresh $2.6-billion military assistance package for Kyiv, bringing total U.S. contributions to Ukraine’s war effort to $35.2 billion.

Both Sides Fear ‘Disinformation’ 

Some officials in Kyiv say the leaked documents are part of a Russian disinformation campaign meant to sow confusion before the upcoming counter-offensive.

“These are standard elements of operational games by Russian intelligence,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, said on April 7.

He went on to assert that the leaked information contained “large amounts of fictitious information.” 

“Russia is looking for any way to seize back the initiative and … try to influence the scenarios for Ukraine’s counter-offensive plans,” Podolyak said.

Notably, some pro-Russian sources have also raised the possibility that the leaks were part of a “disinformation campaign”—but by Kyiv and its allies.

“I think it’s a classical disinformation operation being conducted to mislead us; to make us think that they [Ukrainian forces] aren’t ready yet,” Vladimir Rogov, a pro-Moscow official in the Russia-held Zaporizhzhia region, said.

He went on to confirm a “significant buildup” in recent weeks of Ukrainian forces near Zaporizhzhia. 

“Equipment continues to arrive, equipment is ready, and enough [Ukrainian] militants have been trained,” Rogov told Russia’s TASS news agency on April 7. 

The leaked information, he added, could be intended to “make us think an offensive may only be possible after some time—and not within the next few days.”

A Polish deputy agriculture minister has proposed an “anti-bug law” which would require all food products containing insects to be labeled with a special warning.

The move by the member of the ruling conservative party comes amid accusations that if progressive opposition parties win power during this year’s elections, they will push an Orwellian ‘eat the bugs’ campaign to restrict the consumption of traditional meat. The opposition has not formally announced any such plans, according to Notes from Poland.

“Dried mealworm larvae, powdered cricket – these are among the insects that the eurocrats and Rafał Trzaskowski [the opposition mayor of Warsaw] call new food,” said Janusz Kowalski, a deputy agriculture minister, while unveiling the plans in parliament on Thursday. “That is why we, United Poland [Solidarna Polska], have initiated the preparation of legal regulations, following the examples of Hungary and Italy, that will give Polish consumers clear knowledge about food products containing so-called bug additives,” he continued.

“This is an anti-bug law.”

Każdy produkt spożywczy z tzw. dodatkami robaczanymi, powinien być oznaczony. pic.twitter.com/ebO8koX7wf

— Solidarna Polska (@SolidarnaPL) April 6, 2023

Under the proposed law from the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), products containing bugs would be required to include a label on their packaging stating “Warning, this food product contains insect protein.”

“If Rafał Trzaskowski wants to eat mazurek [a traditional Polish Easter cake] make of dried insects, he has the right to do so,” said Kowalski, referring to the opposition mayor. “We, as conservatives, as Poles, definitely prefer normal Polish food, Polish meat, Polish dairy products.”

Polish farmers have backed a proposal for the EU to ban meat-like names – such as “burger” or “sausage” – for vegetarian products. They say it misleads consumers and threatens cultural heritage.

The European Parliament will vote on the amendment this week https://t.co/vwvrJzIxBJ

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) October 18, 2020

More via Notes from Poland;

In January this year, the European Commission approved products made from mealworm larvae and house crickets as safe for consumption. They were not the first insect products approved by Brussels, and the commission emphasised at the time that “nobody will be forced to eat insects”.

Nevertheless, many conservatives in Poland and elsewhere in Europe saw it as part of a push to undermine traditional culinary cultures, especially meat consumption.

Soon after, further controversy was sparked in Poland when the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna newspaper wrote about a report from a group called C40 Cities that recommended cutting meat consumption as part of efforts to reduce emissions.

Warsaw is a member of the C40 group and its mayor, Trzaskowski, has attended and spoken at the organisation’s events. Politicians and media linked with the ruling camp therefore conflated the EU and C40 stories to claim that the Polish opposition want to restrict or ban traditional meat and replace it with insects.

“The opposition want Poles to eat worms,” headlined the main evening news on Polish state TV, a government mouthpiece.

The report showed no examples of the opposition wanting Poles to eat worms (because none exist) pic.twitter.com/2vwxOaPBgP

— Daniel Tilles (@danieltilles1) February 20, 2023

*  *  *

Trzaskowski responded to the accusations by making clear that he has no intention of restricting meat consumption in Warsaw, tweeting: “Please enjoy steaks to your heart’s content.”

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

The single Iranian-Saudi handshake buried trillions of dollars of western divide-and-rule investments across West Asia, and has global leaders rushing to Beijing for global solutions.

The idea that History has an endpoint, as promoted by clueless neoconservatives in the unipolar 1990s, is flawed, as it is in an endless process of renewal. The recent official meeting between Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Beijing marks a territory that was previously deemed unthinkable and which has undoubtedly caused grief for the War Inc. machine.

This single handshake signifies the burial of trillions of dollars that were spent on dividing and ruling West Asia for over four decades. Additionally, the Global War on Terror (GWOT), the fabricated reality of the new millennium, featured as prime collateral damage in Beijing.

Beijing’s optics as the capital of peace have been imprinted throughout the Global South, as evidenced by a subsequent sideshow where a couple of European leaders, a president, and a Eurocrat, arrived as supplicants to Xi Jinping, asking him to join the NATO line on the war in Ukraine. They were politely dismissed.

Still, the optics were sealed: Beijing had presented a 12-point peace plan for Ukraine that was branded “irrational” by the Washington beltway neocons. The Europeans – hostages of a proxy war imposed by Washington – at least understood that anyone remotely interested in peace needs to go through the ritual of bowing to the new boss in Beijing.

The irrelevance of the JCPOA

Tehran-Riyadh relations, of course, will have a long, rocky way ahead – from activating previous cooperation deals signed in 1998 and 2001 to respecting, in practice, their mutual sovereignty and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.

Everything is far from solved – from the Saudi-led war on Yemen to the frontal clash of Persian Gulf Arab monarchies with Hezbollah and other resistance movements in the Levant. Yet that handshake is the first step leading, for instance, to the Saudi foreign minister’s upcoming trip to Damascus to formally invite President Bashar al-Assad to the Arab League summit in Riyadh next month.

It’s crucial to stress that this Chinese diplomatic coup started way back with Moscow brokering negotiations in Baghdad and Oman; that was a natural development of Russia stepping in to help Iran save Syria from a crossover NATO-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) coalition of vultures.

Then the baton was passed to Beijing, in total diplomatic sync. The drive to permanently bury GWOT and the myriad, nasty ramifications of the US war of terror was an essential part of the calculation; but even more pressing was the necessity to demonstrate how the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iran nuclear deal, had become irrelevant.

Both Russia and China have experienced, inside and out, how the US always manages to torpedo a return to the JCPOA, as it was conceived and signed in 2015. Their task became to convince Riyadh and GCC states that Tehran has no interest in weaponizing nuclear power – and will remain a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Then it was up to Chinese diplomatic finesse to make it quite clear that the Persian Gulf monarchies’ fear of revolutionary Shi’ism is now as counter-productive as Tehran’s dread of being harassed and/or encircled by Salafi-jihadis. It’s as if Beijing had coined a motto: drop these hazy ideologies, and let’s do business.

And business it is, and will be: better yet, mediated by Beijing and implicitly guaranteed by both nuclear superpowers Russia and China.

Hop on the de-dollarization train

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) may exhibit some Soprano-like traits, but he’s no fool: he instantly saw how this Chinese offer morphed beautifully into his domestic modernization plans. A Gulf source in Moscow, familiar with MbS’ rise and consolidation of power, details the crown prince’s drive to appeal to the younger Saudi generation who idolize him. Let girls drive their SUVs, go dancing, let their hair down, work hard, and be part of the “new” Saudi Arabia of Vision 2030: a global tourism and services hub, a sort of Dubai on steroids.

And, crucially, this will also be a Eurasia-integrated Saudi Arabia; future, inevitable member of both the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS+ – just like Iran, which will also be sitting at the same communal tables.

From Beijing’s point of view, this is all about its ambitious, multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). A key BRI connectivity corridor runs from Central Asia to Iran and then beyond, to the Caucasus and/or Turkey. Another one – in search of investment opportunities – runs through the Arabian Sea, the Sea of Oman, and the Persian Gulf, part of the Maritime Silk Road.

Beijing wants to develop BRI projects in both corridors: call it “peaceful modernization” applied to sustainable development. The Chinese always remember how the Ancient Silk Roads plied Persia and parts of Arabia: in this case, we have History Repeating Itself.

A geopolitical revolution

And then comes the Holy Grail: energy. Iran is a prime gas supplier to China, a matter of national security, inextricably linked to their $400 billion-plus strategic partnership deal. And Saudi Arabia is a prime oil supplier. Closer Sino-Saudi relations and interaction in key multipolar organizations such as the SCO and BRICS+ advance the fateful day when the petroyuan will be definitely enshrined.

China and the UAE have already clinched their first gas deal in yuan. The high-speed de-dollarization train has already left the station. ASEAN is already actively discussing how to bypass the dollar to privilege settlements in local currencies – something unthinkable even a few months ago. The US dollar has already been thrown into a death by a thousand cuts spiral.

And that will be the day when the game reaches a whole new unpredictable level.

The destructive agenda of the neocon leaders in charge of US foreign policy should never be underestimated. They exploited the 9/11 “new Pearl Harbor” pretext to launch a crusade against the lands of Islam in 2001, followed by a NATO proxy war against Russia in 2014. Their ultimate ambition is to wage war against China before 2025.

However, they are now facing a swift geopolitical and geoeconomic revolt of the World’s Heartland – from Russia and China to West Asia, and extrapolating to South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and selected latitudes in Latin America.

The turning point came on 26 February, 2022, when Washington’s neocons – in a glaring display of their shallow intellects – decided to freeze and/or steal the reserves of the only nation on the planet equipped with all the commodities that really matter, and with the necessary nous to unleash a momentous shift to a monetary system not anchored in fiat money.

That was the fateful day when the cabal, identified by journalist Seymour Hersh as responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, actually blew the whistle for the high-speed de-dollarization train to leave the station, led by Russia, China, and now – welcome on board – Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The thesis we presented to readers in December 2020 recommended uranium stocks on the belief that nuclear energy would eventually be incorporated into the ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) framework, as highlighted in our article “Is This The Beginning Of The Next ESG Craze,” is proving to be accurate. 

As per a draft statement cited by The Japan Times, energy and environment ministers of G7 nations are preparing to announce the importance of nuclear power for energy security amidst the global push towards decarbonization.  

The statement, seen Friday, is likely to note that G7 countries welcome Japan’s plan to release treated water from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant into the ocean in a transparent way and in close coordination with the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to the draft.

The announcement could come as soon as the G7 climate, energy, and environment ministers meet in Japan on April 15-16. 

The Times said multiple G7 countries are accelerating their push towards extending the life of nuclear power plants and constructing new ones.

Parliament is currently deliberating legislation that would extend the life of nuclear plants beyond 60 years as the government aims to ensure stable electricity supply and promote decarbonization at the same time.

Britain and France are accelerating construction of new nuclear plants, while the development of a small modular reactor is underway in the United States.

Germany, which is expected to complete the shutdown of all nuclear plants in the country this month, opposes highlighting the importance of nuclear power.

The draft statement also laid out a plan for advanced economies to build small modular reactors and next-generation reactors. 

At the time of our initial recommendation, the majority of uranium stocks were trading at a fraction of their price now. 

The case for nuclear energy becomes even stronger as governments aim to decarbonize their economies within the next decade, as it is impossible to achieve this solely through solar and wind power.

Authored by Eric Felten via RealClear Wire,

If the government had had its way, Eric Munchel and his mother, Lisa Eisenhart, would already have been in jail for two years. Arrested in February 2021 for participating in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, they finally are scheduled to go on trial next week in the Washington courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth.

It won’t be the first time Munchel and Eisenhart will find themselves before Lamberth. He is the judge who declared two years ago that they were far too dangerous to be allowed outside prison walls. Home confinement, enforced with ankle monitors and GPS tracking, Lamberth ruled, would not be sufficient to protect the public from the honky-tonk bartender and his traveling-nurse mother.

Their case, combined with hundreds of others in the Capitol breach, have led to an over-crowded docket, one groaning under the weight of what the Department of Justice has described as the largest criminal case in American history. And it’s only going to get more crowded. The courts may be prosecuting another 1,000 accused of crimes related to the Capitol riot.

Munchel and Eisenhart are an odd pair to be prominent players in the Capitol Hill action-dramedy. Munchel wore his iPhone as a body cam, documenting his actions. Aside from some shouting and some trespass, Eisenhart and Munchel didn’t seem to do much in the way of rioting. Mother and son entered the Capitol through an open door and strolled past police who didn’t tell them to get out. Mother and son wandered the halls of the Congress. They entered the abandoned Senate chamber where Munchel spied the body’s ceremonial gavel. “I want that f—ing gavel!” Munchel declared. But he did nothing to touch, let alone take, the Senate heirloom. The one thing Munchel did take were some white zip-ties that seemed to have been abandoned on a table.

They might be among the thousand yet to be prosecuted if it hadn’t been for a particular behavior that called attention to them and made them among the earliest targets for arrest. And that wasn’t their time spent in the Capitol, but their time spent talking to a reporter for the Sunday Times (of London). They were featured in the newspaper’s story about the fracas under the headline “Trump’s militias say they are armed and ready to defend their freedoms.” The sub-hed read, “Further violence, and even civil war, is threatened.”

The paper had a photo of Munchel leaping over a railing in the Senate chamber, a fistful of white zip-ties in his hand. Though there was no evidence that Munchel tied or assaulted anyone, the Times suggested the zip-ties showed just how dangerous he was: “These are the restraints typically used by police to detain individuals.” The Sunday Times didn’t claim to know what he was going to do with them, but also didn’t hesitate to imagine the worst: “The photograph led to speculation that the rioters were potentially planning to take hostages.”

Munchel and his mother, Eisenhart, didn’t do themselves any favors indulging in big talk and bravado. When asked by the British newspaper what they hoped to accomplish, Munchel bragged, “It was a kind of flexing of muscles. The point of getting inside the building is to show them that we can and will.”

“This country was founded on revolution,” Eisenhart declared to the reporter. “They’re going to take every legitimate means from us, and we can’t even express ourselves on the internet, we won’t even be able to speak freely, what is America for?” Eisenhart got herself worked up: “I’d rather die as a 57-year-old woman than live under oppression. I’d rather die and would rather fight.” Judge Lamberth would later call that statement “chilling,” and would use it to justify an order putting Eisenhart behind bars indefinitely while she awaited trial.

Munchel and Eisenhart left Washington the day after the riot and made their ways home – Munchel to Tennessee, Eisenhart to Georgia. With the help of the Sunday Times’ coverage and social media, it didn’t take long for them to realize they were prime targets of the massive investigation. In a gesture of cooperation, Eisenhart contacted the FBI and checked to see if police wanted her to surrender.

In February, Munchel and Eisenhart were arrested and brought before a federal magistrate judge in Nashville, Jeffery “Chip” Frensley. He was unpersuaded by the Department of Justice portrayal of mother-and-son rioters as an ongoing insurrectionist threat to the nation. It wasn’t clear to him what their motives and intent were. “The proof on these issues is inconsistent.”

The prosecutors’ intent was perfectly clear. They wanted Munchel and Eisenhart locked up indefinitely until they could be put on trial. The government argued there were no release conditions that would ensure Eisenhart and Munchel wouldn’t pose a danger to the community. Federal prosecutors insisted the two be placed in pretrial detention, which is to say, imprisoned before they were convicted. Nor would there be any limit to how long the defendants would be jailed as they waited for trial, the expectation of a speedy trial notwithstanding

Frensley was not nearly as breathless as the Justice Department’s team. The judge considered it sufficient for Munchel to wait at home for trial. The defendant would not be allowed to travel to Washington; would have to give up his guns, notwithstanding they were licensed; would be required to present himself once a week to “pre-trial services”; and would have an ankle monitor to enforce home detention.

And as for Eisenhart, the worst blot on her permanent record was a citation 20 years ago for driving with a suspended license. Frensley called for Eisenhart to be similarly confined, monitored, and surveilled at home until it was time for her trial. Frensley found that the government had failed to demonstrate either of the elements normally needed to justify holding defendants without bail. Prosecutors had proved neither that she was a threat to the community nor a flight risk.

Nor was Frensley ready to lock Munchel away. Though he had acted with “an absolute disrespect of law enforcement,” Frensley said the video from Munchel’s body cam also showed him “speaking with law enforcement in respectful ways.” The judge said he had “no reason to believe Mr. Munchel is part of an organized, collective action against the government.” In ruling that Munchel be released pending trial, Frensley concluded, “Mr. Munchel does not pose an obvious and clear danger to the safety of this community.”

The government’s lawyers warned that Munchel had become dangerously radicalized and that there was “no reason to think those views will diminish over time.” Indeed, they said, “they may get worse.” 

If it seems Judge Frensley was generous in his interpretation of Munchel and Eisenhart’s behavior, by contrast, the government sought at every turn to make the worst of the defendants’ actions. The video from Munchel’s iPhone shows him shouting at other rioters, “Don’t break sh-t,” and “No vandalizing sh-t …We ain’t no goddamn Antifa, motherf—ers.” He threatened his fellow rioters that he would “break” anyone who committed acts of vandalism.

Lamberth allowed that though Munchel’s threats to “break” any vandals may have been beneficial, “These were not peaceful acts.” According to Lamberth, Munchel’s willingness to threaten violence against vandals “evinces violent behavior.”

But what about those zip-ties with which Munchel and Eisenhart were going to take hostages? Prosecutors admitted, in their brief for Judge Lamberth, that neither mother nor son had brought the zip-ties. They had found them abandoned on a table in a Capitol hallway, and had picked them up.

Munchel’s actions at the Capitol riots were thoroughly documented – by his own smart phone. In his opinion remanding Munchel and Eisenhart to pretrial confinement, Lamberth allowed that the video camera footage showed there was “no evidence indicating that, while inside the Capitol, Munchel or Eisenhart vandalized any property or physically harmed any person.”

The hearing in Judge Frensley’s court was on a Friday. Prosecutors urged the judge to hold the pair over the weekend. The Department of Justice wanted time to have Frensley overruled by the Washington-based judges who had been unsparing in their treatment of accused rioters. Frensley acquiesced. Come Monday, just before Munchel and Eisenhart were to be released, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Beryl A. Howell stayed Judge Frensley’s order that Eisenhart and Munchel be released to home confinement. The case was assigned to Judge Royce Lamberth.

He found it particularly concerning that Eisenhart had used “language of insurrection.” By citing the American revolution, U.S. attorneys argued, Eisenhart had demonstrated “the danger she poses to the community if released.” Lamberth agreed: “As a self-avowed, would-be martyr, she poses a clear danger to our republic.” He took seriously that she was prepared to die for her cause, which made her a “danger to the community.” If she’s willing to die for the MAGA revolution,” Lamberth concluded, “the consequences for disobeying release conditions are unlikely to deter her.”

The judge made the extraordinary determination that there were “no release conditions” that could “ensure that Eisenhart would not pose a danger to the community.” Or at least it would have been extraordinary before it became the norm to keep behind bars those accused of charges related to Jan. 6.

That new norm led to overcrowding at the D.C. jail, where a COVID protocol was instituted in which social distancing was indistinguishable from solitary confinement.

These new norms of hardcore pre-trial jailing also fell afoul of the bedrock principle that one is innocent until proven guilty.

A three-judge appeals court panel sprung Munchel and Eisenhart two years ago in March and sent them home to be monitored in the fashion Judge Frensley had ordered in the first place. Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins wrote the opinion overruling Lamberth’s opinion ordering the mother and son be jailed while awaiting trial. Wilkins made the case not just for avoiding pre-trial detention, but for protecting principles of justice, even those involving – perhaps especially those involving – defendants disliked by the government. Wilkins quoted a legal precedent from a case, U.S. v. Salerno, involving organized crime: “In our society liberty is the norm, and detention prior to trial or without trial is the carefully limited exception.”

In a concurring opinion, Judge Gregory Katsas assessed the threat posed by Munchel and Eisenhart: “Their misconduct was serious, but it hardly threatened to topple the Republic. Nor, for that matter, did it reveal an unmitigable propensity for future violence.

Munchel and Eisenhart will be back in Washington next week. Tuesday morning, jury selection begins. Presiding will be a judge who has already made clear his apocalyptic views of the defendants and the events they participated in.

Eric Felten is an investigative correspondent for RealClearInvestigations, reporting on government corruption. He is a former columnist for the Wall Street Journal and previously a Kennedy Fellow at Harvard University. Felten has been published in Washingtonian, People, National Geographic Traveler, The Weekly Standard, Daily Beast, National Review, Spectator USA, and Reader’s Digest.