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Biden has a history of constantly being wrong and thus, dangerous.

He hamstrung BIBI and now accuses him of delaying the Hamas war.

He enriched Iran so it was able to finance its surrogates and move faster in developing its nuclear program.

He has done more to poison federal agencies' abilities to protect our nation and the list is endless.

Biden is the worst president to ever occupy the Oval Office and the biggest lying president in my lifetime.

He even makes Nixon look like a saint.

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Who’s Really Prolonging the Gaza War?

Biden blames Israel, but his own policies have dragged out the fighting.

By The Editorial Board

President Biden’s comments about Israel keep getting worse, as an interview released Tuesday in Time magazine shows. Asked if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “prolonging the war for his own political self-preservation,” Mr. Biden answered, “I’m not going to comment on that.” Then comment he did: “There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion.”

Put aside the undermining in wartime of an ally’s elected government, which is as constant from Mr. Biden as it is inappropriate. It would be one thing if he meant that Mr. Netanyahu should have kept more troops in Gaza and invaded Rafah months ago to finish the war. That’s what many Israeli critics argue, and they have a good point. But Mr. Biden opposed all that. He means Mr. Netanyahu should have stopped fighting and accepted a U.S.-brokered defeat.

In damage-control mode, the President tried to walk back his comment later on Tuesday. His remark had played poorly because he’s the one who has slowed Israel at every stage. After Oct. 7, he told Israel to scale down its ground invasion. Then he supported Egypt’s decision to trap Gazans in the war zone. When the Israelis defeated Hamas in northern Gaza, he pressured Israel to “shift to the next phase” by sending most troops home and fighting with less firepower in southern Gaza. Israel did so, and it very slowly won in Khan Younis.

Next, Mr. Biden tried to stop Israel from invading Rafah, insisting wrongly that Israel could never evacuate civilians. He cut off weapons as leverage. Israel eventually invaded Rafah, but with fewer troops to satisfy the President. That means a slower operation.

Mr. Biden’s decision to pressure Israel, while going soft on mediators Egypt and Qatar, has also given Hamas reason to draw out hostage talks and continue the war. As the President acknowledged earlier in his Time interview, Hamas is to blame for the lack of a deal. “Hamas could end this tomorrow,” he said. “The last offer Israel made was very generous,” he added. “Bibi is under enormous pressure on the hostages, and so he’s prepared to do about anything to get the hostages back.”

The latest Israeli hostage offer is evidence of that. Mr. Biden’s criticism of Israel, on the other hand, suggests frustration with his own policy failure.

And:

Biden Goes to Extremes to Appease Tehran

He reportedly has gone so soft as to discourage allies in Europe from pressing their case at the IAEA.

By John Bolton

The world has truly turned upside down when a U.S. president begs America’s allies to have a United Nations agency go easy on a terrorist nuclear proliferator. The Biden administration’s reported pleading on behalf of Iran isn’t merely a tactical error about yet another biodegradable U.N. resolution. It’s a persistent strategic blindness that existentially threatens key U.S. partners and endangers our own peace and security.

Iran’s largely successful effort to conceal critical aspects of its nuclear-weapons complex from scrutiny by the International Atomic Energy Agency and Western intelligence services is nearing culmination. IAEA reports about Iran’s uranium-enrichment program—and Tehran’s disdain for IAEA inspections, extending over two decades—finally have the Europeans worried.

Instead of welcoming this awakening, President Biden is reportedly lobbying European allies to avoid a tough anti-Iran resolution at this week’s quarterly IAEA board of governors meeting. The administration denies it. But limpness on Iran’s nuclear threat fits the Obama-Biden pattern of missing the big picture, before and after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, including cash-for-hostages swaps with Iran as recently as last year.

Mr. Biden has two objectives. The first is to keep gasoline prices low and foreign distractions to a minimum before November’s election. The second is the Obama-Biden obsession with appeasing Iran’s ayatollahs, hoping they will become less medieval and more compliant if treated nicely. Both objectives are misguided, even dangerous.

Election worries about gas prices have also weakened U.S. sanctions against Russia, which are failing because of their contradictory goals. It simply isn’t possible to restrict Russian revenue while keeping U.S. pump prices low. The ayatollahs don’t worry about elections, but they know weakness when they see it, including Mr. Biden’s relaxed enforcement of sanctions on Iranian oil exports.

Mr. Biden’s greater mistake is refusing to acknowledge Iran’s “ring of fire” strategy to intimidate Israel and achieve regional hegemony over the oil-producing monarchies and other inconvenient Arab states. The foundational muscle for achieving these quasi-imperial aspirations is Iran’s nuclear program, precisely the issue at the IAEA. Starting in his 2020 campaign, Mr. Biden repeatedly alienated Gulf Arabs, especially Saudi Arabia, which felt particularly threatened by his zeal to rejoin the failed 2015 nuclear deal. Mr. Biden’s willingness to exclude Israel and the Arabs from negotiations with Tehran, as Mr. Obama did, convinced Arab governments that Washington was again hopelessly feckless. Israel concurred.

Arab leaders privately see the need to eliminate Tehran’s terrorist proxies. Saying so publicly, however—even quietly—requires political cover, which Washington has failed to provide. The Biden administration could have sought to destroy, not merely inhibit, the Iran-backed Houthis’ capacity to close shipping routes in the Suez Canal and Red Sea. Since the U.S. failed to do so, rising prices from higher shipping costs increase the risk of a de facto Iran-Houthi veto over freedom of the seas. Not surprisingly, Iran now threatens to blockade Israel itself.

Mr. Biden decided to concentrate world attention on Gaza rather than on Iran as the puppet-master. Doing so has helped obscure that Gaza is only one component of the larger ring-of-fire threat. Many Israelis, including several members of the war cabinet, have long focused on the close-to-home threat of Palestinian terrorists rather than the existential threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. This joint failure enabled Tehran’s propaganda to outmatch Jerusalem’s, leaving the false impression of a moral equivalence.

Had the U.S. and Israel explained the barbarity of Oct. 7 in such broader strategic terms, they would necessarily have concentrated attention on Iran’s coming succession crisis. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is old and ailing. President Ebrahim Raisi’s still-unexplained demise has already launched a succession struggle that could transform Iran. The U.S. and its allies should help the Iranian opposition fracture the Islamic Revolution at the top. Instead, Mr. Biden, who couldn’t conceive of overthrowing the ayatollahs, has dispatched envoys to beg Iran not to stir things up further before November.

Sending Tehran what diplomats call a “strong message” from the IAEA isn’t much, but treating Iran as if it calls the shots is far worse. Praying that Mr. Biden wakes up to reality may be the world’s only hope.

Mr. Bolton served as White House national security adviser, 2018-19, and ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-06. He is author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.”

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https://twitchy.com/samj/2024/06/05/things-just-got-a-whole-lot-worse-for-liz-cheney-and-the-entire-j6-committee-n2396992

Everything Pelosi touches, like with Biden, she hijacks the truth, so she can prevent American from learning what actually happened. Her goal is to destroy the GOP. No wonder Americans distrust government.

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Judge Cannon fires away.

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Judge Cannon Expands Hearing on Validity of Trump Special Counsel

Outside experts will present arguments to the federal judge.

Friends Read Free

By Zachary Stieber

The federal judge overseeing one of the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump has made the unusual decision to open up an upcoming hearing to outside parties as she considers whether special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was valid.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, an appointee of President Trump, said on June 4 that three outside experts will be able to make their cases for up to 30 minutes each during the hearing, which is slated to take place in federal court in Florida on June 21.

“I’m looking forward to the opportunity to help Judge Cannon understand more fully why Jack Smith has no authority to prosecute President Trump, and to answer any questions she may have about the legal analysis we have offered on behalf of (among others) two respected former U.S. attorneys general,” Gene Schaerr, one of the experts, told The Epoch Times in an email.

President Trump alleges that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Mr. Smith is illegal because he was not working for the federal government when the appointment was made.

“The Appointments Clause does not permit the attorney general to appoint, without Senate confirmation, a private citizen and like-minded political ally to wield the prosecutorial power of the United States. As such, Jack Smith lacks the authority to prosecute this action,” Christopher Kise, one of the former president’s attorneys, wrote in a motion to the court.

Government lawyers say those arguments are wrong, as does Matthew Seligman, a former clerk to U.S.

Lawyers Urge Lifting of Gag Order After Trump’s Guilty Verdict in New York Criminal Case

Mr. Seligman, one of the outside experts who is being allowed to present to Judge Cannon, said in a recent brief that the Appointments Clause does empower the attorney general to appoint a special counsel like Mr. Smith.

“Mr. Trump apparently concedes that Attorney General Garland could constitutionally appoint special counsel Smith as an inferior officer if Congress had vested him with that power, but he argues that Congress did not do so. But that argument simply ignores the plain text of Section 533, which unambiguously authorizes the attorney general to appoint ‘officials’ like the special counsel to ’prosecute crimes against the United States,'” Mr. Seligman wrote.

The two other outside experts who will be arguing later this month, though, agree with President Trump that Mr. Smith’s appointment was unlawful.

Josh Blackman, a professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, holds the view that because Mr. Smith’s position is temporary, he cannot be an officer of the United States. Instead, Mr. Smith is at most an employee of the government, which means he “cannot exercise the ’significant authority' of a United States attorney,” Mr. Blackman wrote in a brief to the court.

“Were Mr. Smith akin to a line assistant United States attorney, he could exercise prosecutorial powers under the supervision of a United States attorney. But Smith was not granted such a subordinate power. Rather, he was given, and has exercised apex decision-making authority, which is subject only to limited supervision by the attorney general,” Mr. Blackman said. “But unlike a normal United States attorney who can be removed by the president, the special counsel can only be removed under the regulations in certain circumstances by the attorney general—assuming that this appointment was made subject to all of the regulations.”

Mr. Smith may be able to continue in his position, but only if he’s supervised by a U.S. attorney, according to Mr. Blackman.

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“I am grateful that Judge Cannon granted our motion, and I look forward to presenting arguments in court,” Mr. Blackman told The Epoch Times in an email.

Mr. Schaerr, who was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justices Warren Burger and Justice Antonin Scalia, also says Mr. Smith was unlawfully appointed.

Mr. Schaerr will be presenting arguments led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, who served under former President Ronald Reagan and now works at the Heritage Foundation.

Mr. Meese and others said in a filing that Mr. Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause because only Congress can create a federal office and no law authorizes the position he supposedly holds.

While then-Attorney General Janet Reno issued regulations after the expiration of the Ethics in Government Act (EGA) provision that allowed appointments of independent counsel that enabled attorney generals to periodically appoint people to lead an office of special counsel, the regulations are not a law, they said.

“The problem for the government in the case of the Reno regulations and the Smith appointment is that those regulations and the Smith appointment order do not contemplate ’special counsels’ who assist U.S. Attorneys. Instead, they contemplate special counsels who replace U.S. attorneys in specific cases. Smith, for example, was not appointed to assist U.S. attorneys. He was hired as a powerful standalone officer who replaces, rather than assists, the functions of United States Attorneys within the scope of his jurisdiction,” the experts said.

“This is precisely the role that the EGA authorized for independent counsels. But that statute no longer exists, and in the absence of that statute or a similar one, there is no statutory office of special counsel to which Smith could be appointed to function as a stand-in for a U.S. attorney,” they added.

The case against President Trump involves his handling of sensitive materials and his alleged obstruction of investigators searching for those materials. He and his codefendants have pleaded not guilty.

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Consul Update (Edited.)

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Operational Updates

Central Gaza Strip

The IDF has begun a targeted operation in the areas of Bureij and eastern Deir al Balah in the central Gaza Strip. The operation consists of activities both above and below ground. The operation is being conducted on the basis of intelligence indicating the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure above and below ground in the area.

The operation started with a series of aerial strikes on terror targets, including military compounds, weapons storage facilities, and underground infrastructure. During the strikes, several Hamas terrorists were eliminated.

As the strikes were being carried out, IDF troops began a targeted daylight operation to dismantle terrorist infrastructure located several kilometers away from the border with Israel.

In one activity, an IAF fighter jet, directed by the troops, eliminated a sniper operative who was identified operating adjacent to the troops in the area.

In another instance, IDF troops identified a terrorist cell in the area. Shortly afterward, an IAF aircraft struck and eliminated the cell.

Below is footage of the IDF's operational activity in the central Gaza Strip:

Southern Gaza Strip

IDF troops are continuing intelligence-based, targeted operations in the Rafah area.

The troops located weapons and eliminated armed terrorists who operated adjacent to them and posed a threat.

Northern Arena

Overnight, IAF fighter jets struck two Hezbollah launchers in southern Lebanon.

Simultaneously, three Hezbollah military structures were struck in the areas of Odaisseh, Blida, and Markaba. Below is footage of the strikes:

Marking the 57th Anniversay of the Reunification of Jerusalem

Israeli troops reach the the Western Wall in Jerusalem - June 1967

Today is Jerusalem Day. On this day, we mark the 57th Anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, the eternal and undivided capital of the State of Israel.

To learn more about what Jerusalem Day means to Israelis, click HERE. To read more about the reunification of Jerusalem during the Six-Day War, click HERE.

Israeli Leaders Address Hezbollah's Ongoing Attacks

This morning, Prime Minister (PM) Benjamin Netanyahu visited the IDF Gibor base in Kiryat Shmona, where he was briefed by 769th Brigade Commander Avraham Marciano and Northern Command Home Front coordinator Brig. Gen. (Res.) Alon Friedman on the operational situation in the north.

Since Oct. 7th, the north of Israel has suffered near-daily rocket, drone, missile, and UAV attacks launched by the Hezbollah terror organization, leading to the mass displacement of thousands of Israelis.

Commenting on the situation, the PM stated the following: "We said at the start of the war that we would restore security in both the south and the north – and this is what we are doing. Today, I am on the northern border with our heroic fighters and commanders, as well as with our firefighters. Yesterday, the ground burned here and I am pleased that you have extinguished it, but ground also burned in Lebanon. Whoever thinks he can hurt us and we will respond by sitting on our hands is making a big mistake. We are prepared for very intense action in the north. One way or another, we will restore security to the north."

Prior to the PM's tour of the northern border, the Chief of the General Staff of the IDF, LTG. Herzi Halevi, conducted a tour and situational assessment of Israel's northern border yesterday (June 4) with the Israel Fire and Rescue Services.

Echoing the PM's words, LTG. Halevi made the following statement: "We are approaching the point where a decision will have to be made, and the IDF is prepared and very ready for this decision. We have been striking here for eight months and Hezbollah is paying a very, very high price. Hezbollah has increased its attacks in recent days and we are prepared after a very good process of training up to the level of a General Staff exercise to move to an offensive in the north. Strong defense, readiness for an offensive, we are approaching a decision point."

Below is footage of LTG. Halevi's tour of the northern border:

IDF Establishes New Unit to Defend Gaza Envelope from Terror

Earlier this week (Monday, June 3), the IDF held a ceremony for the establishment of the new Gaza Envelope LOTAR Counter-Terrorism unit. The unit was established as part of the lessons learned from military's initial investigations into the Hamas Oct. 7th terror attacks, which saw the wholesale slaughter, rape, mamiming, and abduction of Israeli communities living near the border of Gaza, an area known as the "Gaza Envelope."

The unit's main purpose is to provide a quick and available response to terror incidents in the Gaza Envelope area. It will operate under the command of the IDF's Gaza Division and is tied to the Border Protection Corps and the Chief Infantry and Paratroopers Officer Headquarters.

The unit’s force will consist of reserve soldiers and veterans of elite units who live in the communities near the Gaza Strip or its surroundings. These soldiers will be on standby for activation in the area. The soldiers of the unit will undergo dedicated training and will eventually be trained as skilled soldiers to meet the security challenges posed by the area.

So far, hundreds of soldiers who are in the selection process have applied for the first training session that will be held in the coming weeks.

Commenting on the establishment of LOTAR, the unit's commanding officer, LTC. (res.) A., stated: "The formation of the unit in this period contains within it the essence of the story of the State of Israel: from destruction to revival. The blow we received on October 7th, the regaining of our composure, the social cohesion, the transition to operating and working together, the beginning of rehabilitation and building the future so that it will be a better and safer place. For this reason we have gathered here, in the heart of an area that has been damaged and suffered so much, where we lost our best people, and now we are bringing about the construction of a unit that will serve as a sectoral anchor and a magnet for all those who have the defense of the homeland and the desire to continue contributing to the country."