Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin appeared to reprimand senior Pentagon officials after they reportedly approved plea deals for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two of his accomplices, a major embarrassment for the Biden-Harris administration.
After the Pentagon announced the agreement, which was approved by Biden administration official and retired Army Brigadier General Susan Escalier, Austin released a public memo backing away from the agreement and saying he would now be in charge of the matter.
The Department of Defense released a statement on Friday regarding the cancellation and memorandum of understanding, which read:
Today, Secretary Austin signed a memorandum reserving to himself special authority to enter into pretrial agreements with defendants in the 9/11 Military Commission cases. Additionally, as the senior convening authority, he has also withdrawn from any pretrial agreements signed in those cases. The memorandum can be viewed here: here.
The memorandum was issued directly to Escalier. Said:
I have determined that given the importance of the decision to enter into pretrial agreements with the defendants in the above cases, the responsibility for such decisions should rest with me, as the higher convening authority under the Military Commissions Act of 2009. Effective immediately, I revoke your authority to enter into pretrial agreements in the above cases and reserve that authority to myself. Effective immediately, I exercise my authority to hereby revoke from the three pretrial agreements you signed on July 31, 2024 in the above cases.
Some media outlets described the move as a “firing.” Escalier was not fired, and it’s unclear what Austin knew about the decision beforehand, but it marked an unusually public announcement by the normally reticent defense secretary.
The decision to negotiate plea deals with Mohammed and his co-defendants shocked and confused Americans across the political spectrum.
Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) Said “We have serious concerns about this plea deal… We think it needs to be scrutinised carefully,” the defence said before the plea deal was struck down, according to the Daily Mail.
He added: “Once we fight terrorists and capture them, we need to hold them accountable with punishments that really bring justice to their victims.”
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Republicans slammed the deal, which allows the terrorists responsible for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon to avoid the possibility of the death penalty by pleading guilty to lesser charges and receiving life sentences.
Vice presidential candidate and Marine Corps veteran Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, called the plea deal “a disgrace.”
“So it’s shameful that a plea deal has been made here. They’re negotiating with him but not with a lot of other people who, frankly, deserve mercy from the Department of Justice,” he said.
Vance said his subsequent resignation showed it wasn’t clear who was really in charge of the U.S. government.
“I think this also shows that the right is not talking to the left, in other words, who is actually in charge of the United States government,” he said.
“This is something that requires a president who sits at the head of all the ministries and actually coordinates some of the key decisions of the government,” he said.
“And it confirms what we already know, which is that no one is actually in charge of the US government right now. President Biden is clearly incompetent. So who is doing this? Probably Kamala Harris. It’s suggestive that they were willing to go ahead with this until the political implications were pretty clear,” he said.
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