Hegseth Launches Chilling Charlie Kirk Witch Hunt at Pentagon

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a witch hunt of 300 of his own employees to suppress any statements about Charlie Kirk he didn’t like. 

The Washington Post has reported that 128 military members and 158 nonuniformed personnel—including 27 Defense Department civilians— have been “aggressively hunted” since Kirk’s assassination on September 10. Two of the nonuniformed were “removed from employment,” and three service members received “nonjudicial punishment.” Five former DOD employees have also been placed under investigation.

These free speech restrictions align with the administration’s broader rhetoric that anyone who acknowledges the often racist and hateful things Kirk said is anti-American. They also feed into the frantic, paranoid mania that the high-strung Hegseth is reportedly experiencing.   

“We WILL NOT tolerate those who celebrate or mock the assassination of a fellow American at the Department of War,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote on X in September. “It’s a violation of the oath, it’s conduct unbecoming, it’s a betrayal of the Americans they’ve sworn to protect & dangerously incompatible with military service.”

The Post also reported that Hegseth last year made light of Representative Nancy Pelosi’s husband being beaten with a hammer in 2022. Hegseth says the situations are not comparable. 

The man who endlessly laments the so-called “war on warriors” is now trying (and mostly failing) to punish those warriors for offering their opinions on the killing of a public figure. Meanwhile, the president demonizes the entire political left wing for doing the same thing. This administration has no right to speak on free speech. 

Members of the Justice Department team prosecuting former FBI Director James Comey are so green that they don’t actually know what they’re supposed to do with the case.

The former FBI chief was charged last month with lying to Congress regarding his testimony to Senator Ted Cruz in a 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Comey has maintained his innocence and denied any wrongdoing. He could face a maximum of five years in prison if convicted.

Going against the grain of official statements by FBI leadership, Donald Trump has all but admitted that he was behind Comey’s indictment. But in order to make the case happen, certain people needed to be pushed out of the way and replaced. That included the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, whose replacement was handpicked by the president himself: White House aide Lindsey Halligan.

Ignoring protocol, Halligan has moved full steam ahead on prosecutions under the banner of Trump’s approval, despite the fact that she still needs to be confirmed by the Senate. (In fact, Trump has just two Senate-confirmed U.S. attorneys in place.)

Halligan’s team is even less familiar with the former FBI director’s case. Halligan was reportedly “silent” during court proceedings Wednesday, while the two attorneys she recruited from the Eastern District of North Carolina agreed to a timeline on Comey’s terms. Their rationale, as recalled by MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin, was telling.

“Why? ‘Because we’re trying to give the defendant all the time he needs to prepare for trial,’” Rubin told the network Wednesday night, speaking from the perspective of Halligan’s team. “But also there’s a substantial amount of discovery in this case, your honor, including classified materials.”

“That’s a very, very nice, thinly disguised way of saying, ‘We’re brand new to this and we got to get our arms around it, too, because guess what? We’re not the ones who investigated this case. We’re not the ones who charged this case,’” Rubin continued. “‘And we got to learn what it is that we’re supposed to do here by some point in January.’”

Comey, who worked as a longtime federal prosecutor and even served as the assistant U.S. attorney in charge of the office prosecuting him now, has already challenged Halligan’s appointment.

“If Halligan was named as an interim U.S. attorney, Comey has an argument that she is not legally serving because the law does not permit successive appointments of interim U.S. attorneys by the attorney general,” Nina Mendelson, professor of law at University of Michigan, told CNN.

President Donald Trump got caught trying to make the peace deal between Israel and Hamas all about him.

During a roundtable discussion Wednesday with right-wing influencers to discuss antifascist resistance to Trump’s reign, Secretary of State Marco Rubio attempted to pass a note to the president. 

The Daily Beast reported that Trump appeared to read the note before motioning Rubio over. The secretary whispered in the president’s ear and then returned to his seat. Trump answered a few more questions, before informing the pitiable right-wing shills he’d assembled to discuss antifa that he had to go “solve some problems in the Middle East.” Rubio took remaining questions on his behalf.

Evan Vucci, AP’s chief photographer in Washington, snapped a photograph of the note and posted it on X. “Very close. We need you to approve a Truth Social post so you can announce deal first,” the note said. 

Two hours later, after a lengthy call with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and nepo-hire Jared Kushner to review his social media post, Trump announced a deal between Israel and Hamas.

“I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first Phase of our Peace Plan. This means that ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace. All Parties will be treated fairly!” he wrote on Truth Social. 

Per the terms of the deal, all remaining hostages will be released from Gaza, and scores of Palestinians may be released from Israeli prisons. Israel is reportedly in talks to release as many as 2,000 prisoners. 

It seems clear that Trump wants to be the savior of the Middle East. His 20-point peace plan places himself in charge of the so-called “Board of Peace” that will oversee Gaza’s “redevelopment” and governance. Trump’s group would theoretically run things until the Palestinian Authority implements its own reform plan that satisfies Trump’s standards and “is conducive to attracting investment.” 

It’s more clear than ever that in Trump’s White House, a peace deal is indistinguishable from a P.R. stunt, or a power grab. Trump’s announcement came just two days before this year’s Nobel Peace Prize recipient will be revealed—an honor for which Trump has fiercely lobbied, though still could never deserve.  

A Chicago pastor is suing the Trump administration after ICE agents shot him in the head with pepper balls. 

Last month, Reverend David Black, the senior pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was shot right in the face with a pepper ball by an ICE agent standing on a rooftop above him while he was protesting at the Broadview ICE facility. Black can be seen with his arms spread wide, praying at the masked, armed agents above him, before being shot in the head at least twice and falling to his knees. Black said he could hear ICE laughing at him when it happened.  

The video has now gone viral. 

“I invited them to repentance,” Black told Religion News Service. “I basically offered an altar call. I invited them to come and receive that salvation, and be part of the kingdom that is coming.”

The lawsuit hinges on ICE infringing upon protesters’ First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and religion, as agents have displayed “a pattern of extreme brutality” aimed to “silence the press and civilians.”

Black is not the only clergy member involved in the lawsuit. Unitarian minister Beth Johnson was “fired upon without warning or justification as she and other protesters and clergy members stood on the sidewalk singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ and other traditional songs of protest,” according to the lawsuit. United Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was also shot at with pepper balls. 

It’s obvious in the video that Black—standing out among the crowd in his preacher’s garb—was absolutely a target, and it’s likely that the other faith leaders can say the same. 

The Trump administration accuses Black of trying to “dictate crowd-control policy in ways that would tie the hands of federal law enforcement officers,” while online MAGA has dismissed him as “antifa” for his vocal support of equal rights in Chicago. 

Donald Trump’s reckless social media use could imperil his administration’s already flimsy case against James Comey, the former FBI director and enemy of Trump who was indicted last month on evidently politically motivated charges.

On Wednesday evening, The Wall Street Journal revealed a striking detail about the president’s September 20 Truth Social post ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to make haste in prosecuting Comey and other MAGA enemies, i.e., Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

As many suspected, that message was actually meant to be sent privately to the attorney general.

“Trump believed he had sent Bondi the message directly,” the Journal reports, “and was surprised to learn it was public.” Chagrined, the attorney general called the White House, and Trump provided a balm in a subsequent post praising Bondi.

“The misfire provided a window into how, through command and chaos, Trump has executed a wholesale transformation of the Justice Department,” the Journal reports. It also raises a host of legal troubles for the department’s case against Comey.

As former federal prosecutor Preet Bharara told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki following the revelation, this could pose “a big problem, legally and substantively” for Trump and the DOJ, giving Comey and the others mentioned in the message “viable motions to dismiss indictments.”

Comey’s attorney is reportedly looking to dismiss the case for “vindictive prosecution.” His trial is set for January, but before that, he can file a request to dismiss charges, on the ground that they were brought due to animus rather than legitimate legal reasons. As CNN’s Aaron Blake noted, if the Journal’s reporting is accurate, “it’s not inconceivable that an errant DM from Trump could be a big reason why Comey’s case is dismissed for vindictive prosecution.”

Though motions for vindictive prosecution are rarely successful, Bharara noted that Comey already has a better-than-average case for one, given Trump’s long record of public animosity toward him. What’s more, Bharara notes that the Journal’s reporting strongly suggests that additional communications between Trump and DOJ officials have taken place, which could help further determine the vindictiveness of the prosecution.

If the defense team acquires such messages in discovery, “that’s very, very bad for the prosecution,” he observed. Even worse would be if messages were deleted, which could potentially lead to an “adverse inference,” or the assumption that destroyed evidence would have been unfavorable to whoever destroyed it.

Further, Bharara said, “There is an argument that those communications and the destruction thereof by themselves are a basis to dismiss an indictment.”