The Supreme Court seemed divided during oral argument on Feb. 28 over whether it would uphold the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) regulation prohibiting ownership of bump stocks.
That regulation came after the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas where a gunman used bump stock-equipped firearms. It reversed years of ATF interpretations allowing non-mechanical bump stocks, or those without a spring.
In doing so, ATF reinterpreted a post-Prohibition law that banned the use of machine guns. Unlike other gun rights cases, the attorneys in this case—Garland v. Cargill—didn’t talk much about the Second Amendment. Rather, they sought to convince the justices that the phrases “automatically” and “single function of the trigger” within federal law either did or didn’t apply to bump stocks.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote an opinion from 2022 upholding gun rights, peppered the Biden administration with questions focused on teasing out the differences in operating a firearm with or without a bump stock.
Much of the debate focused on whether bump stocks allowed a single trigger pull to initiate a process by which bullets were rapidly released.
Jonathan Mitchell, the New Civil Liberties Alliance attorney arguing for Michael Cargill, repeatedly emphasized that bump stocks only allowed one bullet per trigger pull. He also argued that firing with bump stocks didn’t meet the statutory language of “single function of the trigger” due to grammatical reasons and the fact that bump stock users had to apply pressure to maintain accelerated fire.
Principal Deputy Solicitor General Brian Fletcher and Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson suggested instead that bump stocks allowed users to initiate a process with the bump stock after a single pull of the trigger.
“Once the shooter presses forward to fire the first shot, the bump stock uses the gun’s recoil energy to create a continuous back-and-forth cycle that fires hundreds of shots per minute,” Mr. Fletcher said.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett told Mr. Fletcher that she was “entirely sympathetic to your argument,” stating that “this is functioning like a machinegun would.” She questioned, however, why Congress didn’t pass legislation to cover bump stocks “more clearly.”
The case arose from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which ruled in favor of Mr. Cargill while noting that the legal rule of lenity required they rule against the government when the meaning of a statute was unclear.
NCLA President Mark Chenoweth told The Epoch Times he thought the Court would rule in favor of Mr. Cargill given its textualist composition.
“We have a majority of justices who are textualists, and they‘ll look at the text, and they’ll look at the way that the gun functions, and I think that they will decide that the bump stock is on the outside of the machinegun ban.”
The National Firearms Act
Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh raised concerns about how ATF’s 2018 regulation would apply to people who later owned bump stocks. But most of the questioning focused on how bump stocks operate, the wording of the National Firearms Act, and Congress’ intent in passing the law in 1934.
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The three liberal justices seemed skeptical of Mr. Mitchell’s arguments—particularly Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown-Jackson, who suggested he was asserting an irrelevant distinction for the federal law involved.
Both questioned whether the overall thrust of the 1934 law was intended to prevent use of devices like bump stocks.
“As far as I can tell, the sort of common usage of the word ‘function’ is not its operational design. It’s not the mechanics of the thing. It is what it achieves, what it’s being used for,” Justice Jackson told Mr. Mitchell.
She added that “weapons with bump stocks have triggers that function in the same way. They—through a single, right, pull of the trigger or touch of the trigger, you achieve the same result of automatic fire.”
Mr. Mitchell countered that “a single discharge of the trigger produces only one shot. It doesn’t produce a round of automatic fire. The only way you get to repeated shots with a bump stock equipped rifle is for the shooter himself to continually undertake manual action by thrusting the forestock of the rifle forward with his non-shooting hand.”
Part of the confusion surrounding the statute involves ATF’s contention that “single function of the trigger” under federal law included a “single pull of the trigger.” Both Justice Neil Gorsuch and Mr. Mitchell cast doubt on that interpretation, noting that “function” was a transitive verb.
“People don’t function things,” Justice Gorsuch said. “They may pull things, they may throw things, but they don’t function things.”
Justice Kagan suggested that Mr. Mitchell’s interpretation lacked common sense.
“I view myself as a good textualist,” she said. “I think that that’s the way we should think about statutes. It’s by reading them.”
“But, you know, textualism is not inconsistent with common sense,” she added. “Like, at some point, you have to apply a little bit of common sense to the way you read a statute and understand that what this statute comprehends is a weapon that fires a multitude of shots with a single human action.”
“Whether it’s a continuous pressure on a … conventional machinegun, holding the trigger, or a continuous pressure on one of these devices on the barrel … I can’t understand how anybody could think that those two things should be treated differently.”
Justice Alito asked Mr. Mitchell whether his case was one where “the literal language of the statute had to control even though it’s pretty hard to think that Congress actually meant that to apply in certain situations.”
Potential Congressional Action
Justice Gorsuch indicated he thought Congressional action would have been preferable to an ATF rule interpreting prior legislation. He also asked about former Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) criticizing the use of regulation to ban bump stocks.
Justice Kavanaugh noted that bump stocks didn’t exist around the time of the 1934 law’s passage. He went on to ask Mr. Fletcher: “What’s your explanation, maybe common-sense explanation or some other explanation, for why, when this does become an issue, the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration, Senator Feinstein, all say no?”
Outside of the Court, Mr. Cargill told The Epoch Times he thought Congress had authority over the issue but didn’t think it should pass a law regulating bump stocks.
The Epoch Times asked both he and Mr. Mark Chenoweth whether bump stocks were protected by the Second Amendment. “I don’t know,” Mr. Cargill said.
Mr. Chenoweth similarly said he didn’t know about the Second Amendment question and would have to look at how history did or didn’t support bump stocks’ protection under the Constitution.
“We look at this as an abuse of administrative power case, not as a Second Amendment case,” he said. “If Congress had passed this law, we wouldn’t be challenging it.”
Goldman Says Office Tower Prices Must Plunge 50% For Housing Conversion To Make Sense
As office tower vacancies continue to rise nationwide, many of these buildings are becoming economically nonviable workspaces, raising the question of what can be done with millions of square feet of underutilized space. Simultaneously, the US housing market faces a severe shortage, leaving investors and lawmakers to ponder whether underutilized office space can be transformed into multifamily buildings.
Goldman analyst Jan Hatzius uses a discounted cash flow model to show that the current acquisition costs of office towers are still too high for conversion to multifamily buildings, indicating that offices will likely remain underutilized in the medium term.
Hatzius pointed out that the viable point where office tower conversions would make financial sense would be a further price decline of 50%.
About 4% of the nation’s office buildings could be slated for conversion projects into housing, with the share expected to jump as the office vacancy rate is forecasted to reach 18% in 2033 from about 14% this year.
Many of these nonviable towers are still overvalued and not cheap enough for conversion because of financing costs. Even with San Francisco’s office industry in a meltdown and prices having already tumbled 35% since 2019, these levels are still too high.
Goldman’s definition of a nonviable office tower is that it must be located in a suburban area or central business district and built before 1990 but has not been renovated since 2000. Each tower must have a vacancy rate above 30%.
Based on Goldman’s model, Hatzius’ team suggests “that converting a nonviable office that is priced at the average current level will result in a $164 loss” per square foot, adding, “This means that current office prices would need to fall by that much, to around $154 per [square foot] or by 50%, for the cost to be fully covered by the stream of discounted future revenues.”
With that in mind, a structural downshift in office demand has occurred in recent years because of the widespread adoption of hybrid work, among other factors, including an exodus of cities by companies whose employees no longer feel safe in imploding progressive-controlled metro areas.
Indian refiners are concerned that the latest U.S. sanctions against Russia could further impact their ability to import cheap Russian crude as freight rates are set to rise and dent refining margins, industry sources in India have told Reuters.
The U.S. levied new sanctions against Russia last week, on the second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and in response to the death of opposition politician and anticorruption activist Alexey Navalny.
Among the 500 targets of the new sanctions, the U.S. Treasury and State are targeting Russia’s tanker operator Sovcomflot and more than a dozen crude oil tankers linked to the Russian state firm.
Refiners in India are now concerned that the new sanctions would make it more difficult to have oil shipped from Russia on non-sanctioned vessels, which would raise shipping costs and eat into the refining margins, according to Reuters’ sources.
India will still buy crude from Russia but only if it is sold below the G7 price cap of $60 per barrel and is shipped on non-sanctioned vessels, an Indian government source told Reuters.
Even before the latest U.S. sanctions, Refining margins for India’s biggest state-owned refiners had dropped amid more difficult access to Russian crude and soaring freight rates due to the Red Sea disruption to shipments, analysts and traders told Bloomberg last week.
For most of 2023, Indian refiners enjoyed high refining margins and profits as they imported cheap Russian crude at $20 a barrel and more below international benchmarks.
The decline in refining margins is due to higher costs for Indian refiners because of higher competition for Russian supply in Asia, increased freight costs, and tougher U.S. sanctions enforcement, which has limited India’s access to very low-priced crudes from Russia.
The tougher enforcement of the G7 sanctions and related payment issues have been holding up Indian purchases of some cargoes of Russian crude oil, with tankers previously headed to India turning back eastwards, tanker-tracking data monitored by Bloomberg showed early this year.
“Americans Are Being Lied To About Ukraine” – Tucker Carlson Reflects On Putin, Zelensky, Navalny & Nuclear War
The international attacks on Tucker Carlson, especially from within US mainstream media and NATO-connected circles, have only increased following his hugely controversial eight day visit to Russia earlier this month where he interviewed President Vladimir Putin. Russian state media has even this week claimed authorities uncovered an “assassination plot” – rumored to have been backed by Kiev.
This week the former FOX prime time host was interviewed about his trip and the whole Putin interview experience in three-hour podcast hosted by Lex Fridman. Tucker Carlson revealed more about what motivated him to do the televised Putin segment, and further discussed his personal take on the Russia-Ukraine war and where it could go from here, now having entered its third year. Interestingly, Carlson’s main critique of the war focused not on Putin or the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine, which of course are not under his control or influence, but on the impact to America.
Carlson explained that the West’s escalation of the conflict long ago into a full-blown proxy war has not only resulted in more needless Ukrainian deaths, but it has been devastating for the United States. “I reject the whole premise of the war in Ukraine from the American perspective,” Carlson told Fridman. “There’s a war going on that is wrecking the US economy in a way and at a scale that people do not understand.” He also generally characterized the response of the US political class to the conflict, along with the American public which has uncritically followed, as naive.
Carlson emphasized that what would be a cautiously realist approach was utterly abandoned by Washington from the start, as has been typical of the past decades of US interventionism abroad. “It doesn’t even matter what I want to happen… that’s a distortion of what is happening,” Carlson explained, and pointed to Russia having 100 million more people and more defense industry might “than all of NATO combined.”
He described that a big part of the rationale behind the Putin interview was to bring “more information” to the West so that “people could make their own decisions about whether” escalation of weapons to Kiev and jingoistic rhetoric from Western capitals is a good idea.
Ultimately, he said, Americans are being lied to:
“Just to be clear, I have no plans to move to Russia. I think I would probably be arrested if I moved to Russia. Ed Snowden, who is the most famous openness, transparency, advocate in the world, I would say along with Assange, doesn’t want to live in Russia. He’s had problems with the Putin government. He’s attacked Putin. They don’t like it. I get it. I get it. I’m just saying, what are the lessons for us?
The main lesson is we are being lied to in a way that’s bewildering and very upsetting. I was mad about it all eight days I was there because I feel like I’m better informed than most people because it’s my job to be informed. I’m skeptical of everything and yet I was completely hoodwinked by it.”
Topics highlighted throughout the long-ranging conversion included Carlson’s personal take on being one-on-one with a seemingly “nervous” Putin, the question of ending the war in Ukraine, the role of the CIA and Western intelligence services, the prospect that the crisis could spiral into nuclear confrontation with the West, the Alexei Navalny saga, as well as a foray into the Israel-Palestine conflict near the end. Watch the full Carlson-Fridman interview below…
The following are some key excerpts of Tucker Carlson’s words from the interview, selected by ZeroHedge [emphasis ours]…
* * *
Carlson On Putin. “I want to know who this guy is.”
I thought he seemed nervous, and I was very surprised by that. And I thought he seemed like someone who’d overthought it a little bit, who had a plan, and I don’t think that’s the right way to go into any interview. My strong sense, having done a lot of them for a long time, is that it’s better to know what you think, to say as much as you can honestly, so you don’t get confused by your own lies, and just to be yourself. And I thought that he went into it like an over-prepared student, and I kept thinking, “Why is he nervous?” But I guess because he thought a lot of people were going to see it…
I mean, I asked him as I usually do the most obvious dumbest question ever, which is, “Why’d you do this?” And he had said in a speech that I think is worth reading. I don’t speak Russian, so I haven’t heard it in the original, but he had said at the moment of the beginning of the war, he had given this address to Russians, in which he explained to the fullest extent we have seen so far why he was doing this. And he said in that speech, “I fear that NATO the West, the United States, the Biden administration will preemptively attack us.” And I thought, “Well, that’s interesting.” I can’t evaluate whether that’s a fear rooted in reality or one rooted in paranoia. But I thought, “Well, that’s an answer right there.”
And so I alluded to that in my question and rather than answering it, he went off on this long from my perspective, kind of tiresome, sort of greatest hits of Russian history. And the implication I thought was, “Well, Ukraine is ours, or Eastern Ukraine is ours already.”…
I want to know who this guy is. I think a western audience, a global audience, has a right to know more about the guy, and so just let him talk. Because I don’t feel like my reputation’s on the line. People have already drawn conclusions about me, I suppose to the extent they have. I’m not interested really in those conclusions anyway, so just let him talk. And so I calmed down and just let him talk. And in retrospect, I thought that was really, really interesting. Whether you agree with it or not, or whether you think it’s relevant to the war in Ukraine or not, that was his answer. And so it’s inherently significant.
American falsehoods & the Ukraine war
I mean, I guess I reject the whole premise of the war in Ukraine from the American perspective, which is a tiny group of dumb people in Washington has decided to do this for reasons they won’t really explain. And you don’t have a role in it at all as an American citizen, as the person who’s paying for it, whose children might be drafted to fight it. To shut up and obey, I just reject that completely. I think, I guess I’m a child of a different era. I’m a child of participatory democracy to some extent, where your opinion as a citizen is not irrelevant. And I guess the level of lying about it was starting to drive me crazy.
The idea that Ukraine would inevitably win this war. Now victory was never, as it never is, defined precisely. Nothing’s ever defined precisely, which is always to tell that there’s deception at the heart of the claim. But Ukraine’s on the verge of winning. Well, I don’t know. I mean, I’m hardly a tactician or military expert. For the fifth time, I’m not an expert on Russia or Ukraine. I just looked at Wikipedia. Russia has a hundred million more people than Ukraine, a hundred million.
It has much deeper industrial capacity, war material capacity than all of NATO combined. For example, Russia is turning out artillery shells, which are significant in a ground war at a ratio of seven to one compared to all NATO countries combined. That’s all of Europe. Russia is producing seven times the artillery shells as all of Europe combined. What? That’s an amazing fact, and it turns out to be a really significant fact. In fact, the significant fact. But if you ask your average person in this country, even a fairly well-informed person of good faith who’s just trying to understand what’s going on, who’s going to win this war? Well, Ukraine’s going to win. They’re on the right side.
…And I raised that question in my previous job, and I was denounced as of course a traitor or something. But okay, great, I’m a traitor. What’s the answer? What’s the answer? [Vic]Toria Nuland, who I know, not dumb, hasn’t helped the US in any way, an architect of the Iraq war, architect of this disaster, one of the people who destroyed the US dollar. Okay, fine, but you’re not stupid. So you’re trying to get a war by acting that way, what’s the other explanation? By the way, NATO didn’t want Ukraine because it didn’t meet the criteria for admission. So why would you say that? Because you want a war, that’s why. And that war has enriched a lot of people to the tune of billions. So I don’t care if I sound like some kind of left-wing conspiracy nut, because I’m neither left-wing nor a conspiracy nut. Tell me how I’m wrong.
On feeling sorry for Zelensky
If I’m a Russian or a Ukrainian, let’s just be sovereign countries now. We’re not run by the U.S. State Department. We’re just our own countries. I believe in sovereignty, okay? So that’s my view. I also want to say one thing about Zelensky. I attacked him before because I was so offended by his cavalier talk about nuclear exchange because it would kill my family. So I’m really offended by that. Anyone who talks that way I’m offended by. But I do feel for Zelensky. I do. He didn’t run for president to have this happen.
I think Zelensky’s been completely misused by the State Department, by Toria Nuland, by our Secretary of State, by the policymakers in the U.S. who’ve used Ukraine as a vessel for their ambitions, their geopolitical ambitions, but also the many American businesses who’ve used Ukraine as a way to fleece the American taxpayer, and then by just independent ghouls like Boris Johnson who are hoping to get rich from interviews on it. The whole thing, Zelensky is at the center of this. He’s not driving history. NATO and the United States is driving history. Putin is driving history. There’s this guy, Zelensky. So I do feel for him, and I think he’s in a perilous place.
The prospect of nuclear war
Well it’s been what, 80 years? Not even 80 years, 79. And so we haven’t had a world war in 79 years. But one nuclear exchange would of course kill more people than all wars in human history combined.
I am counting. Because I think it obviously, it’s completely demonic and everyone pretends like it’s great. Nuclear weapons are evil.
The use of them is evil, and the technology itself is evil. And in my opinion, I mean, it’s like if you can’t, that’s just so obvious. And what I’m saying is I’m not against all technology. I took a shower this morning. It was powered by an electric pump, heated by a water heater. I loved it. I sat in an electric sauna. I’m not against all technology, obviously, but the mindless worship of technology?
The possibility of Russia-Ukraine Peace: Putin “wants a settlement”
He [Putin] wants a settlement, he wants a settlement. He doesn’t want to fight with them rhetorically and he just wants to get this done. He made a bunch of offers at the peace deal. We wouldn’t even know this happened if the Israelis hadn’t told us. I’m so grateful that they did that, that Johnson was dispatched by the State Department to stop it. I mean, I think Boris Johnson is a husk of a man. But imagine if you were Boris Johnson and you spend your whole life with Ukraine flag, “I’m for Ukraine,” and then all those kids died because of what you did, and the lines haven’t really moved. It hasn’t been a victory for Ukraine. It’s not going to be a victory for Ukraine. It’s like, how do you feel about yourself if you did that? I mean, I’ve done a lot of shitty things in my life, I feel bad about them, but I’ve never extended a war for no reason. That’s a pretty grave sin in my opinion.
Well, the U.S. government’s not allowing negotiations. So that for me is the most upsetting part. It’s like in the end, what Russia does, I’m not implicated in that. What Ukraine does, I’m not implicated in that. I’m not Russian or Ukrainian. I’m an American who grew up really believing in my country. I’m supporting my country through my tax dollars. It’s like I really care about what the U.S. government does because they’re doing it in my name, and I care a lot because I’m American. We are the impediment to peace, which is another way of saying we are responsible for all these innocent people getting dragooned out of public parks in Kiev and sent to go die. What? That is not good. I’m ashamed of it.
On the Alexey Navalny saga
Well, it’s awful. I mean, imagine dying in prison. I’ve thought about it a lot. I’ve known a lot of people in prison a lot, including some very good friends of mine. So I felt instantly sad about it. From a geopolitical perspective, I don’t know any more than that. And I laugh at and sort of resent, but mostly find amusing the claims by American politicians, who really are the dumbest politicians in the world actually, “This happened and here’s what it means.” And it’s like, “Actually as a factual matter, we don’t know what happened. We don’t know what happened.” We have no freaking idea what happened. We can say, and I did say, and I will say again, I don’t think you should put opposition figures in prison. I really don’t. I don’t, period. It happens a lot around the world, happens in this country, as you know, and I’m against all of it.
But do we know how we died? The short answer? No, we don’t. Now, if I had to guess, I would say killing Navalny during the Munich Security Conference in the middle of a debate over $60 billion in Ukraine funding, maybe the Russians are dumb. I didn’t get that vibe at all. I don’t see it. But maybe they killed him. I mean, they certainly put him in prison, which I’m against. But here’s what I do know is that we don’t know. And so when Chuck Schumer stands up and… Joe Biden reads some card in front of him with lines about Navalny, it’s like, I’m allowed to laugh at that because it’s absurd. You don’t know.
An interesting CIA anecdote
I was like, live in foreign countries, see history happen. I’m for that. I applied to the Operations Directorate. They turned me down on the basis of drug use actually. True. But anyway, whatever. I was unsuited for it so I’m glad they turned me down. But the point is I didn’t see CIA as a threat, partly because I was bathing in propaganda about CIA and I didn’t really understand what it was and didn’t want to know. But second, because my impression at the time was it was outwardly focused. It was focused on our enemies. I don’t have a problem with that as much. The fact that CIA is playing in domestic politics and actually has for a long time, was involved in the Kennedy assassination, that’s not speculation. That’s a fact. And I confirmed that from someone who had read their documents that are still not public, it’s shocking.
You can’t have that. And the reason I’m so mad is I really believe in the idea of representative government. Acknowledging its imperfections, but I should have some say, I live here, I’m a citizen. I pay all your freaking taxes. So the fact that they would be tampering with American democracy is so outrageous to me. And I don’t know why Morning Joe is not outraged. This parade of dummies, highly credentialed dummies they have on Morning Joe every day. That doesn’t bother them at all. How could that not bother you? Why is only Glenn Greenwald mad about it? I mean, it’s confirmed. It’s not like a fever dream. It’s real. They played in the last election domestically, and I guess it shows how dumb I am because they’ve been doing that for many years. I mean, the guy who took out Mosaddegh lived on my street. One of the Roosevelt’s, CIA officer.
Carlson on the Israel-Palestine conflict
I mean, it’s not a topic that I get into a lot because I’m a non-expert and because I’m not… Unlike every other American, I’m not emotionally invested in other countries just in general. I mean, I admire them or not, and I love visiting them. I love Jerusalem, probably my favorite city in the world, but I don’t have an emotional attachment to it. So maybe I’ve got more clarity. I don’t know, maybe less. Here’s my view. I believe in sovereignty as mentioned, and I think each country has to make decisions based on its own interest, but also with reference to its own capabilities and its own long-term interest.
And it’s very unwise for… I’m not a huge fan of treaties. Some are fine, too many bad. But I think US aid, military aid to Israel and the implied security guarantees, some explicit, but many implied, security guarantees of the United States to Israel probably haven’t helped Israel that much long-term. It’s a rich country with a highly capable population. Like every other country, it’s probably best if it makes its decisions based on what it can do by itself. So I would definitely be concerned if I lived in Israel because I think fair or unfair-
But now it’s not possible. If you had a coalition of countries against Israel, I know Israel has nuclear weapons and has a capable military and all that and the backing of the United States, but it’s a small country, I think I’d be very worried. So there’s that. I don’t see any advantage to the United States. I mean, I think it’s important for each country to make its own decisions.
* * *
This week there’s been a curious story to emerge in Russian state media sources involving a bizarre ‘assassination plot’ linked to Kiev, which allegedly was supposed to target Carlson while he was in Russia. Interestingly, the allegations have been picked up in major Indian media outlets, among some other international outlets, though it warrants a high degree of skepticism…
A man has been arrested by security services here in Moscow for plotting an assassination attempt on Tucker Carlson
The man is from Podolsk and says he was acting on instructions from Ukraines SBU. He claims he was promised $4,000 for “successfully completing the task” (bombing… pic.twitter.com/SCDSKGgeHS
Some leftists have now moved on to hysterically claim that hijacking planes is a legitimate form of protest.
No, this isn’t the Babylon Bee.
The controversy started when Mohammed El-Kurd, a pro-Palestine writer based in Jerusalem, posted on X.
“You can’t protest peacefully. You can’t boycott. You can’t hunger strike. You can’t hijack planes. You can’t block traffic. You can’t throw Molotovs. You can’t self-immolate. You can’t heckle politicians. You can’t march. You can’t riot. You can’t dissent. You just can’t be.”
You can’t protest peacefully. You can’t boycott. You can’t hunger strike. You can’t hijack planes. You can’t block traffic. You can’t throw Molotovs. You can’t self-immolate. You can’t heckle politicians. You can’t march. You can’t riot. You can’t dissent. You just can’t be.
El-Kurd immediately got ‘community noted’ as it was explained to him that hijacking planes and throwing fire bombs is a from of terrorism, not protest.
However, despite being utterly roasted and potentially opening himself up to legal ramifications, El-Kurd didn’t delete the tweet.
His insistence that hijacking planes should be treated as a reasonable form of protest was the echoed by another leftist who describes himself as a “19 y/o white western Maoist”.
Reminder that plane hijackings used to be perfectly normal and were mostly non-violent. 9/11 was an outlier and the first of its kind https://t.co/g27lKzCXSw
“Reminder that plane hijackings used to be perfectly normal and were mostly non-violent. 9/11 was an outlier and the first of its kind,” posted a user called Rosedark.
Community notes stepped in again to remind him that, “Even before 9/11 plane hijackings were very violent and resulted in hundreds of fatalities. More than 400 fatalities were connected to plane hijackings just in the 1980s and 1990s.”
What’s the world coming to when you can’t even…hijack a plane?
Both users were on the receiving end of some very forthright and in some cases hilarious responses.
“EVERYBODY PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK THIS IS A PLANE HIJACKING!”
“Oh my God oh my God please don’t hurt me”
“Wow. Yikes. Racist much? This is a peaceful perfectly normal plane hijacking in support of ending of the genocide in Palestine. IE non-violent. Have a normal one” https://t.co/NsSE0yMzyUpic.twitter.com/kkSj03Rwhp
“EVERYBODY PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK THIS IS A PLANE HIJACKING!”
“Oh my God oh my God please don’t hurt me”
“Wow. Yikes. Racist much? This is a peaceful perfectly normal plane hijacking in support of ending of the genocide in Palestine. IE non-violent. Have a normal one” https://t.co/NsSE0yMzyUpic.twitter.com/kkSj03Rwhp
I bet all the passengers on those hijacked planes would wholeheartedly agree. Those people just minding their own business with their families probably loved it.
“19 y/o white western Maoist” It would be more direct to say “anime porn obessed loser that can not make it in the real world and has zero self esteem” but to be fair that is a little wordy.
Yeah … sure 👍🏼 hijackings are peaceful protest and perfectly normal
TWA Flight 847 (June 1985)**: This Trans World Airlines flight was hijacked by Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad members during its flight from Athens to Rome. During the ordeal, U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem was…
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In Blow To Special Counsel Smith, SCOTUS Agrees To Hear Trump Immunity Appeal
The Supreme Court granted certiorari of former President Donald Trump’s presidential immunity claim in the federal criminal case charging him for actions on Jan. 6, 2021.
The presidential immunity defense has stalled the case for nearly three months and will miss the originally scheduled March 4 trial date.
The high court’s decision automatically stays lower courts from moving forward in the case.
As Catherine Yang reports at The Epoch Times, the court also granted special counsel Jack Smith’s request that President Trump’s petition for a stay be treated as a petition for review.
“The case will be set for oral argument during the week of April 22,” the order reads.
The parties have been instructed to limit arguments to the question:
“Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”
The Supreme Court’s framing combines the various questions the former president and special counsel had presented to the court.
Prosecutors argued that presidents enjoy no immunity from criminal prosecution, while defense attorneys argued that official acts of a president during his tenure are protected by presidential immunity.
Read the full one-page order from SCOTUS below:
President Trump had originally filed a motion to dismiss the case based on presidential immunity last year.
When U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected the motion in December, the defense took the case to appeals court, putting the pretrial schedule in limbo.
A federal appeals court panel rejected this defense on Feb. 6, and in an atypical order withheld its mandate on the condition that President Trump take his case to the Supreme Court by Feb. 12.
Normally, the appellants would be allowed to petition for a rehearing with the whole bench of the appeals court, which might have drawn out the process for a few more months. The appeals panels expressly ordered that a rehearing petition would not stay the case.
President Trump’s attorneys then asked the high court to stay all lower court proceedings in a petition to the Chief Justice, and prosecutors responded by asking that the Supreme Court reject the petition for a stay.
Prosecutors had argued the court was unlikely to grant certiorari, as they declined to hear this same case last year when the special counsel petitioned the high court last year when the motion was appealed.
They also asked the court to schedule a hearing in March if it did grant certiorari, or review of a lower court’s actions.
The Supreme Court has dismissed the application for a stay as moot because granting certiorari would effectively halt lower court proceedings.
“Without expressing a view on the merits, this Court directs the Court of Appeals to continue withholding issuance of the mandate until the sending down of the judgment of this Court,” the new order reads.
President Trump’s briefs and any amicus curiae briefs need to be filed by March 19, and prosecutors have until April 8 to respond. President Trump can then file a reply brief by April 15, and arguments will be heard the week of April 22. A specific date for the hearing was not set.
This is the second case President Trump has brought before the Supreme Court this year.
The high court is also set to rule on whether President Trump is eligible to appear on the ballot after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled he was disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, finding the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol breach an “insurrection.”
Jonathan Turley said on X that“the order setting argument on immunity for April 22 is a blow to Smith on the calendar.”
“Rather than granting a stay, it has constructively created such a stay by scheduling the argument. Keep in mind, even if Smith prevails, pre-trial work must wait for the return of the mandate…
…Even if the Court issues a decision before June in favor of the government, the trial court must hash out discovery and other motions. That would push the trial closer to the November election in tension with existing DOJ policies.”
Epoch Times’ Catherine Tang notes that the concept of presidential immunity was defined by the Supreme Court in a 1982 case where a fired military contractor sued former President Richard Nixon after he lost his job.
The high court ruled a president’s immunity from civil suit was “absolute” and that it extended to the “outer perimeter” of his office.
President Trump’s attorneys argue that his actions on Jan. 6 were part of his official duties as president, pointing to his record of taking election integrity seriously.
Prosecutors argue that President Trump has no immunity in this case because it is a criminal case.
The Supreme Court has never addressed whether presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution, making the issue untested legal territory.
President Trump’s attorneys say that to open presidents up to criminal prosecution in this way will only invite partisan retaliation by opposing administrations and opens up former presidents to prosecution for official acts.
They argued in court filings that criminal prosecutions have never been pursued against presidents in or out of office because it was understood to “dimish” the office the way a civil suit would. They added that the court has said that the proper redress would be through impeachment.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, argue that no criminal prosecutions have been brought against other presidents because Jan. 6 was unique, but a case could have been brought against President Nixon, who was pardoned.
Below is my column in the New York Post on the closed door deposition of Hunter Biden. After years of conflicting and evasive responses on these corruption allegations, Hunter Biden is now faced with a moment of truth.
In 2016, Hunter Biden and his father Joe Biden gave an interview in which he declared “The single best thing is, family comes first.” In a gushing account, Salon warned readers that the interview “will make you want to be a Biden.” That may not be so true today as Hunter faces hours of questioning about his family’s alleged corruption and influence peddling. It is likely that he will again put “family first” but there are obvious penalties if he puts family before the facts in this corruption scandal.
This is a moment that has been building for years. After committing open contempt of Congress with a sensational press conference outside of Congress, Hunter is facing a target-rich environment for investigators who have detailed millions that allegedly went to him and his family members from foreign sources in China, Russia, Ukraine, and other countries.
Hunter will have the difficult task of maintaining two seemingly conflicting narratives. On one hand, he has claimed that he was given millions due to his skills and knowledge. On the other hand, he has repeatedly dismissed embarrassing evidence or his lack of memory as the result of being in the throes of addiction…for years. The spins seem to whip wildly between “Hunter the globe-trotting business genius” and “Hunter the blacked out junkie.”
There are dozens of questions concerning “loans” and transfers to Hunter that will be explored over a full day of questioning. However, five basic questions should be priorities for investigator assuming that Hunter does not simply plead the Fifth Amendment to remain silent.
1. Did Joe Biden know about his business dealings?
President Biden has maintained for years, including during the last presidential election, that he had no knowledge of his son’s business dealings. President Biden and the White House continued to repeat his denial from the campaign trail in 2019: “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” These denials have continued even after an audiotape surfaced showing President Biden leaving a message for Hunter specifically discussing coverage of those dealings.
Some of us have written for years that Biden’s denial of knowledge is patently false. Hunter previously contradicted that statement. While Hunter is likely to spin the question as denying his father “did business” with him, he is expected to confirm that he did discuss his dealings with his father, which were referenced in the media for years.
2. The WhatsApp Message.
The addiction defense is likely to be raised quickly as Hunter is confronted with testimony and messages suggesting that he directly used his father to coerce foreign sources to folk over a fortune. The House investigators previously discovered the infamous WhatsApp message:
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”
Hunter is expected to claim that it was the drugs speaking and that his father was not sitting next to him. However, it will also prompt follow up questions about repeated references to his father in messages on meetings, dinners, and influence.
3. The Ukraine Call and Reaching Out to Touch Someone.
Devon Archer reportedly recounted how, in 2015, Mykola Zlochevsky and Vadym Pozharski, two executives of the corrupt Ukrainian energy firm Burisma. Archer testified that there was nothing subtle in their demands. They pressed Hunter to “get help from D.C.” to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating Burisma for corruption. Archer said that Hunter, Zlochevsky and Pozharski stepped away to make the call.
Hunter is again expected to use the addiction defense as being blacked out on the call or its details. However, it will also prompt questions on contacts of Hunter with various administration officials on behalf of clients. The Ukraine call was a direct request for Hunter to, as AT&T once advertised, “to reach out and touch someone.” Those “touches” will be a key to showing that there was not just an offer of influence but deliverables on the promise.
4. The Shokin Controversy.
In March 2016, Biden bragged he told the Ukrainian government that he would unilaterally withhold a billion dollars of aid unless they removed the top prosecutor Viktor Shokin. In an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018, Biden proudly recounted:
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’…Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
Critics allege that Hunter’s Ukrainian clients complained shortly before that ultimatum about Shokin in a meeting with Hunter and Archer. The House is likely to push Hunter on whether he discussed Ukrainian prosecutor with his father and whether his clients were upset with the inquiries by Shokin.
5. Services and Swag.
Hunter will be pressed on his receipt of lavish gifts and expense accounts, including a 3.16-carat diamond estimated to be worth $80,000 from Ye Jianming, chairman of Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC. The question is what services were rendered during such periods. There will also be question of services rendered and the timing of calls and meeting with his father. The House investigators have assembled a time line where major deals or payments were made after his father called into meetings or met with clients. There are emails thanking him for arranging the meetings.
The testimony today could not be more dangerous for Hunter. Any misleading or false claim in the course of this testimony could result in new federal criminal charges. It will be difficult for the Justice Department to run interference on false testimony in an investigation into corruption and special dealing. In other words, time’s up. In this case, the family cannot come before the facts: the family is the fact that is at issue before Congress.
“I’m Ringing The Alarm Bell, Because Flood Of Illegals Is Crushing The Country!”
Ahead of President Biden’s visit to the southern border on Thursday, with former President Trump planning to visit simultaneously to slam the radicals in the White House for sparking the worst migrant invasion this nation has ever seen, a new graphic released by Bloomberg shows the locations of where illegals have ended up after being bussed through the nation via a shadowy network of taxpayer-funded non-governmental organizations.
The latest figure from the US Customs and Border Protection shows a whopping 7.3 million illegals have flooded this nation under Biden’s first term.
It was already evident that illegals were being transported by bus to major Democratic cities such as New York City, Detroit, Los Angeles, Denver, and other urban centers. Now, according to Bloomberg data based on immigration court records, the cities listed above are, in fact, where these folks are being shipped:
Much of the angst around the impact of newly arrived migrants to the US has focused on the biggest cities in New York, Illinois and Colorado, and immigration court records suggest that those states are indeed among the most affected by the surge. The data also signal that Texas and Florida, which have long complained about the costs of absorbing newcomers, are still among the top destinations of migrants.
The number of migrants listing an address in Illinois for their immigration court cases jumped nine-fold in 2023 compared with just two years earlier; the increase was 7-fold in Colorado and five times in New York—bigger than the increases seen in Texas and Florida. The data also suggest that New York state saw the highest number of migrant arrivals in 2023 on a per capita basis: 1 per 100 residents of the state. New Jersey and Florida were next at 0.9. Texas and Colorado had 0.8, and Illinois ranked eighth at 0.6.
The invasion is happening at such a grand scale that Elon Musk posted on X Tuesday night: “I am ringing the alarm bell, because the flood of illegals is crushing the country!”
Dams are bursting all over the country.
America is only 4% of Earth’s population. If only 1% of the rest of Earth moves here, that would crush all essential services.
I am ringing the alarm bell, because the flood of illegals is crushing the country! https://t.co/1FoEUsTAw9
Tragically, NYC is on a downward spiral. With unchecked migrant influx, rampant mental illness, and soaring crime rates, the city is bracing for even tougher times. It’s a harsh reality, but one we can’t ignore. pic.twitter.com/eHaLMi25s2
15-year-old migrant (Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa), suspected of shooting a tourist and firing at a police officer during a failed robbery in Times Square, was arrested by the US Marshals Joint Regional Fugitive Task Force.
Migrants doing their thing in Brooklyn (NYC). They steal a scooter and then chases the person to beat him up 👀 pic.twitter.com/p21wL9jV2r
— Crazy Society (Fights, Crazy, Funny, Viral Videos) (@CrazySocietynow) February 20, 2024
The latest shitshow is a migrant who murdered a 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley on the University of Georgia campus last week. Left-leaning corporate media has been hush-hush about this as well as the Biden administration.
Laken Riley, who was tragically murdered by an illegal immigrant, is trending thanks to 𝕏 users who refuse to let her be forgotten. pic.twitter.com/UZglyUcdxC
A new Gallup poll shows Americans are becoming increasingly angered by Biden’s migrant crisis. About 28% of respondents said immigration is the top issue in the US. This is up from 20% the month before.
The border crisis is an epic disaster for Democrats ahead of the November elections.
Just how bad? Well, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Monday night at a community meeting that the city’s sanctuary laws need to be reversed to deport the illegals. This is a significant shift after the progressive mayor first welcomed unvetted illegals with welcoming arms.
Wow.
NYC Mayor Eric Adams is calling for NYC’s sanctuary city law to be changed so that criminal illegal aliens can be deported.
Meanwhile, Democrats are quickly losing the black vote to Republicans because the Biden administration is prioritizing illegals over their own citizens.
Among other things, Biden ushering in millions of illegals is disproportionately hurting Black communities
Also, riddle us this: Why are Biden elites gunning for World War III in Ukraine with Russia while flooding the US with millions of unvetted illegals?
You have an invasion of 10 million illegal alien invaders, and migrant crime is out of control. The people who are being destroyed are the Black and Hispanic working class in this country. – Steve Bannon.
Solar energy’s appetite for vast amounts of land has prompted the Biden administration to propose designating as much as 55 million acres of public lands as potential sites for industrial-scale solar farms.
That’s an area larger than 36 states and similar in size to Idaho or Minnesota.
An updated initiative by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), called the Western Solar Plan, proposes six alternatives for solar development.
In the most aggressive of these scenarios, 55 million acres across 11 Western states would be made available for solar energy. The least aggressive alternative would designate 8 million acres for that purpose.
The BLM’s “preferred alternative” falls halfway between the two, setting aside 22 million acres for solar development.
In total, the BLM manages 162 million acres of public land designated as “multi-use.” These multiple uses include farming, ranching, hunting and fishing, hiking and camping, drilling, and mining—and more recently, wind and solar installations and transmission lines to connect them to the grid.
The BLM, a division of the Department of the Interior, states that, in order to carry out the Biden administration’s goal of generating 25 gigawatts (GW) of electricity from wind and solar on public lands by 2025—and generating 100 percent “renewable” electricity by 2035—solar panels would need to be sited on 700,000 acres of public land.
More than 3 million solar panels are required to produce 1 GW of electricity, according to the Department of Energy. One GW can power 500,000 to 750,000 homes on average, assuming a constant supply of energy generation and use.
“The Interior Department’s work … is crucial to achieving the Biden–Harris administration’s goal of a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035,” Laura Daniel-Davis, acting deputy secretary of the Interior, said in a Jan. 17 statement.
“And this updated solar roadmap will help us get there in more states and on more lands across the West,” she said.
“Our public lands are playing a critical role in the clean energy transition.”
The states targeted for solar development include Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. This initiative is part of a wider effort to satiate the demand for land from solar companies.
The sheer scope of the BLM plan—designating tens of millions of acres for solar development when the agency says 700,000 acres would suffice to meet Biden administration goals—is a red flag for many communities.
Dylan Hoyt, the planning program manager in the Utah Public Lands policy coordinating office, calls it “bad optics.”
“When I say bad optics, I mean when you tell me that I have 17,000 acres in Utah that’s set aside for solar, and now we’re going to jump to 3.7 or 1.5 million,” he told The Epoch Times.
“That looks terrible.”
Environmental groups and advocates for wind and solar energy applauded the plan. The Wilderness Society issued a statement that “in the face of climate pressure and the injustices of our current fossil fuel-based energy system, a rapid transition to a renewable energy economy is necessary.”
The Los Angeles Times published a supportive op-ed that stated: “Biden’s Western solar plan sounds scary, but it’s better than climate change.”
The article mentions Robert Moses, New York’s mid-20th-century unelected Parks and Recreation Commissioner, who was responsible for enormous urban planning projects including parks, bridges, and highways that crisscrossed the state.
Among Mr. Moses’s more notorious mega-projects were highway systems such as the Cross Bronx Expressway that ran through urban communities and turned once-vibrant neighborhoods into slums.
Some who are on the receiving end of the BLM’s solar plan say that, despite assurances from environmental groups, they remain concerned about the scale of this government development project and the amount of land that it would consume.
“They say we have to protect the environment, but they’re OK with destroying the environment to save it,” Gabriella Hoffman, policy analyst and host of the “District of Conservation” podcast, told The Epoch Times. “It makes no sense if you’re a conservationist.”
A report by The Nature Conservancy, published in May 2023, states that reaching the goal of net-zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2050 by using wind and solar would require more than 250,000 square miles, or 160 million acres, of land, which is an area about the size of the state of Texas.
Some communities that find themselves in the path of the wind and solar industries say this is too high a price to pay for an uncertain benefit. Energy analyst Robert Bryce keeps a database of more than 600 local communities that have opposed wind and solar installations across the United States to date.
“This idea that we can save the environment by carpeting the rural landscape with oceans of solar panels and forests of wind turbines—it boggles the mind how climate activists can justify this,” he told The Epoch Times.
To subdue local resistance, some states, most recently Michigan, are writing new laws that prevent local communities from blocking wind and solar projects. However, some in the Western states say they still expect significant pushback to the BLM plan.
“It’s definitely going to impact wildlife,” Mr. Hoyt said. And not only an impact on species that live in the designated solar zones but also on those that migrate through them.
“There’s definitely going to be conflicts with ranchers, there could be conflicts with access to public lands depending on where it’s built, and there could be potential conflicts with the mining industry,” he said.
“States didn’t really have a say in the goals in the first place, which I think is disconcerting because the states represent the citizens.”
One of the prime target states for solar development is Nevada, both because of the amount of sunlight it receives and because of its proximity to California and Las Vegas, with their ever-expanding demands for electricity.
The federal government owns 85 percent of Nevada’s land, most of which is desert, but residents dispute the notion that it is devoid of wildlife and say they are concerned about the sheer scale of BLM’s solar plan.
“Nevada is hard-rock mining country,” Andy Rieber, a public lands consultant residing in Nevada, told The Epoch Times, “but the average footprint in Nevada for mining disturbance is less than 1,000 acres.
3rd Pipe Bomb Camera Deliberately Turned Away From DNC Headquarters On J6
Recent and ongoing investigations by Revolver News and the Daily Wireinto the Jan. 6th pipe bombs – and video released in January by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), have raised more questions than answers.
To refresh your memory – as James Howard Kunstler wrote last month;
Mr. Massie arranged to extract previously unseen video from the Capitol Police vaults showing the exceedingly strange behavior of various law-men in the minutes after one of their number reported a pipe-bomb beside a park bench, a few steps away from their parked vehicles, outside the DNC headquarters near the US Capitol building around one o’clock in the afternoon on J6/21, just around the time that a joint session of Congress would commence the entertainment of official complaints and objections to the certification of votes in the 2020 presidential election. Of course, that proceeding was disrupted by events outside and inside the US Capitol, and those many complaints and objections were never registered.
This footage shows the discovery of the pipe bomb at a bench outside the DNC headquarters.
This first clips shows that at approximately 1:05 a man in a backpack approaches a Metro PD SUV and a black Secret Service SUV informing them of the pipe bomb’s presence
Two cars are shown parked blocking the driveway to the basement garage: a white Washington DC Metro Police SUV and a black Secret Service cruiser — because Veep Kamala Harris happened to be in the building at the time.
A man with a backpack, later identified as a plainclothes Capitol Police officer, steps up first to the Metro car, then to the Secret Service cruiser, cueing minutes of slow milling-about by the officers in the two cars.
Eventually several cops dawdle over to the bench to inspect what turns out to be a pipe-bomb planted in plain sight on the ground there.
The video shows no effort to cordon-off the area or to stop cars or pedestrians (children) from entering the scene near the bomb.
Now, the Epoch Times reports that a Capitol Police security camera was turned away from the DNC building during the police response to said bomb.
Security video obtained by the newspaper from Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) showed Camera 8021 that was recording the operations of a bomb robot suddenly panned away from the scene just before 2:21 p.m.
The change in camera view happened 10 minutes before the Capitol Police unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) fired a water cannon to disrupt the pipe bomb for the second time in 20 minutes.
After pointing up for a short time, Camera 8021 panned left to show D Street, then zoomed in various directions until settling on a nondescript parking-lot view for the rest of the day.
A third U.S. Capitol Police security camera Camera 8021—located high on the Fairchild Building—is the third Capitol Police camera discovered to have been deliberately turned away from the unfolding pipe bomb drama during crucial operations of the bomb squad.
Mr. Loudermilk, whose Committee on House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight is investigating the Jan. 6 pipe bombs, said he was concerned by the discovery.
“These revelations are extremely troubling and raise even more important questions about the DNC/RNC pipe bomb investigation,” Mr. Loudermilk told The Epoch Times. “We will continue to rigorously seek answers. The American people deserve full transparency in this critical matter.”
Two pipe bombs were discovered near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6: one in an alley between the Capitol Hill Club and the Republican National Committee building, and the other in the bushes on the southwest side of the DNC building.
Despite a three-year federal investigation and $500,000 in reward money, no arrests have been made.
Two Other Cameras Moved
As The Epoch Times previously reported, Camera 3173—located directly across the street from where the pipe bomb was found at 1:05 p.m.—turned away from the DNC building at 1:29 p.m., before the bomb squad arrived.
Camera 8020—also located on the Fairchild Building—was filming the assemblage of the bomb squad on E Street Southeast when it, too, was directed away at 1:44 p.m. to focus on some distant railroad tracks and a highway overpass for the next 2½ hours.
The Camera 8020 switch came just as the bomb robot turned up Canal Street Southeast headed for the DNC.
Security cameras were controlled and monitored from the Capitol Police Command Center on the seventh floor of police headquarters on D Street Northeast.
An official familiar with police command operations said directing cameras away from a developing crime scene in such a manner is “very, very odd.”
‘You absolutely would be having the camera operators training the cameras and scanning to see if anything else was going on down around the DNC,” the official said. “And you’re not seeing that. You’re seeing what looks like a deliberate move of the cameras to not record anything associated with the pipe bomb.”
Capitol Police camera 4502—mounted on the nearby Capitol power plant—did capture parts of the initial aftermath of the bomb discovery and some of the bomb-robot operations.
The latest development on the DNC pipe bomb only adds to a growing list of questions about the crime scene, how the event was handled, and if the pipe bomb was really a “viable” device, as claimed by the FBI.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) disclosed in late January that the DNC pipe bomb was discovered by a plainclothes Capitol Police officer at 1:05 p.m. on Jan. 6, confirming a report first published on Jan. 17 by Blaze Media. The Epoch Times independently confirmed the report.
Camera 3173 was in a fixed position aimed at the DNC building’s garage, so the officer’s discovery of the nearby pipe bomb doesn’t show on that camera’s video. None of the other Capitol Police cameras that cover the area around the DNC were trained on the building before the bomb discovery, so there is no CCTV video evidence showing how the officer first encountered the bomb.
When the officer walked the short distance from the bomb to a driveway where Secret Service and Metropolitan Police Department sport-utility vehicles sat, the agents inside took more than two minutes to finish their lunch before emerging to investigate, Mr. Massie said.
Former FBI special agent Kyle Seraphin, who worked surveillance in the Jan. 6 pipe bombs case, said his team was told by an FBI briefing agent that the bombs weren’t real.
“Looked very bomb-like,” Mr. Seraphin said on the Jan. 25 episode of his podcast. “Those are the actual words that I remember, ‘Looked very bomb-like.’”
Discovery of the DNC bomb was announced on Capitol Police dispatch at 1:07 p.m., according to audio obtained by The Epoch Times.
Officer 987-Adam: “I’m going to declare a 10-100 at the DNC as well, similar device as was found at the RNC as well. Advising the units on scene what’s going on.”
Dispatch: “Alright, where do you have your device?”
