Trump’s Purge of the FBI Is [NOT!!! - M.N.] Complete!!! - M.N. - Wednesday June 19th, 2019 at 10:14 AM | The FBI Stupidity embodied, emblemized and exemplified; if only, later, just scapegoated, crashed in all respects, paraded and "escorted out" of the "hallow FBI halls of Power" or, more correctly, just its shiny and empty, hollowed out ILLUSIONS OF POWER. And counterproductive and sick illusions and delusions at that, I would add. - M.N.
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The FBI Stupidity embodied, emblemized and exemplified; if only, later, just scapegoated, crashed in all respects, paraded and "escorted out" of the "hallow FBI halls of Power" or, more correctly, just its shiny and empty, hollowed out ILLUSIONS OF POWER. And counterproductive and sick illusions and delusions at that, I would add. - M.N.
"No matter what some in the media might tell you, it is not impossible to fire government officials if there is a valid basis for doing so. When it comes to the FBI, that task is far easier because—with very limited exceptions that likely do not apply to Strzok—FBI officials are effectively “at-will” employees. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which governs the disciplinary due process system for the entire U.S. government, specifically excludes the bureau—as well as several other agencies within the intelligence community—from its statutory scope. In effect, FBI officials receive whatever internal due process the agency decides to provide to them out of a matter of discretion...
With the firing of Peter Strzok, the president’s purge of senior FBI leadership who helped launch that investigation is now complete. For those wondering whether Trump would allow the bureau to do its job without political interference from the White House, I think we have our answer."
M.N.: This PURGE should not be based on the whims and desires of the President whose legitimacy is reasonably questioned by many, but on the entirely different sets of criteria, the main of which is the professional competence, and Mr. Strzok does not appear to satisfy these criteria.
Strzok - Storozhok - Storozh - in translation of this name from its Slavic (Slovakian) roots, means "the little guard, the guardian". Strzok was not a good guardian, and he was not a smart guardian. The similar questions can be raised about all Counterintelligence leaders in the Obama's FBI, but (!!!) probably with some notable and valuable exceptions who continue their service at this time, in the unusually difficult circumstances, the best they can, and the best they see fit.
Changes in the organisational structure and directions are not the easy tasks, especially in the Counterintelligence field. Very vital, very difficult, very complex field to work in. It belongs to the seasoned, experienced, dedicated professionals, who are the exceptions by their nature. Apparently, it is quite competitive field, and the elements of the "natural selection" are the part of this process. The elements of the "unnatural selection", the attempts at the hostile subversion, infiltration, and penetration - that's where the real and invisible (because it was made invisible) dangers are.
In fact, it looks like the whole US Counterintelligence Service was ruined and disabled during the Obama Administration, and this incontrovertible FACT (the proof is in the pudding, as I said earlier) might have something to do with Obama's micromanaged choices of its leaders. This has to be investigated, researched, and prevented as the lessons for the future Presidencies, if this type of study is realistic, feasible, and possible.
The U.S. Counterintelligence Service does appear to be a problem, and quite possibly, the deliberate problem, created and perpetuated by adversaries, "friends", and "frenemies". Und ziz iz complex-Z und complicated. Zi.
Solution: Investigate Und PURGE!
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
With the odd firing of Peter Strzok, the president has cleansed the bureau of the men who started the Russia investigation. This is not normal.
By BRADLEY P. MOSS
Bradley P. Moss is a partner at the Washington, D.C. Law Office of Mark S. Zaid, P.C., where he has represented countless individuals (including whistleblowers) serving within the intelligence community, and is also the deputy executive director of the James Madison Project, through which he has represented media outlets such as Politico, Gawker, Daily Caller, and the Daily Beast in FOIA lawsuits against the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations.
The announcement Monday morning that former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok had been fired likely brings to a conclusion the personnel debate within the bureau regarding the behaviors of certain high-profile officials during the 2016 campaign cycle. Agent Strzok—a counterintelligence expert with particular expertise on Russia—played a significant role not only in parts of the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email server but also—in his role as deputy assistant director of the Counterintelligence Division—in the initiation of the still-ongoing probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. He also committed the serious political sin of exchanging private text messages (at least some on a government phone) with Lisa Page, an FBI attorney with whom he was having an affair, in which the two officials expressed their severe distaste for President Trump personally (as well as other candidates). Like former Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe before him, Agent Strzok was terminated in the midst of a highly politicized environment in which the president of the United States has repeatedly attacked FBI officials by name and denounced the probe of his campaign as a “witch hunt.”
The actual documentation issued by the FBI outlining the basis or bases for Strzok’s termination has not been made public, and it will no doubt remain private unless Strzok himself permits its publication. Even from the information that is publicly available, however, we can reasonably surmise what were the likely bases for terminating Strzok’s employment. Those bases presumably revolved around misuse of government property, specifically with respect to using a government phone to communicate with Page in a manner that would conceal their personal relationship from their respective spouses. It is also possible, albeit unlikely, that the content of the text messages—and particularly their inflammatory verbiage—would have been cited as raising at least the appearance of impropriety that had cast doubt on Strzok’s trustworthiness and good judgment in how he had performed his duties.
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Indeed, there was no doubt a viable—although arguably attenuated—policy justification supporting Strzok’s firing. Having represented government employees at the FBI and across the intelligence community in similar disciplinary proceedings for 11 years, however, I can tell you that the manner in which this particular saga came to a conclusion was in no way consistent with standard FBI practice.
No matter what some in the media might tell you, it is not impossible to fire government officials if there is a valid basis for doing so. When it comes to the FBI, that task is far easier because—with very limited exceptions that likely do not apply to Strzok—FBI officials are effectively “at-will” employees. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which governs the disciplinary due process system for the entire U.S. government, specifically excludes the bureau—as well as several other agencies within the intelligence community—from its statutory scope. In effect, FBI officials receive whatever internal due process the agency decides to provide to them out of a matter of discretion.
What was so unusual in the context of Strzok’s firing, however, was the direct intervention of Deputy Director David Bowdich into the process. Just like in any other FBI disciplinary proceeding, Strzok was initially afforded the right to appeal the proposed termination of his employment to Candace M. Will, the head of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility. I have appeared before Will several times on behalf of FBI clients and I can state from personal experience that she is well-credentialed and compassionate, but ultimately very strict. She is a firm believer in the notion that the FBI has to hold itself to the highest ethical and moral standards and that is often reflected in her determinations. In 11 years of practice, I cannot think of a single time I have ever managed to persuade Will to reverse a proposed termination of an FBI official’s employment.
Nonetheless, according to a statement from Strzok’s attorney, Will chose not to uphold the proposed termination of Strzok’s employment. Instead, she concluded that it was appropriate to instead demote Strzok and suspend him for 60 days. She apparently also concluded that Strzok would be afforded what is known as a “last chance agreement,” which is effectively a written understanding between the agency and the employee that even the slightest instance of misconduct going forward can and will likely result in immediate termination. That Will reached this conclusion is very surprising and, in my professional opinion, speaks to just how thin the case for firing Strzok likely was.
That Deputy Director Bowdich chose to overrule Will is what takes this matter so far outside the ordinary practice of the FBI disciplinary process. I have never seen senior FBI leadership unilaterally and directly intervene in such a manner, whether in my client’s favor or otherwise. If Strzok had not been satisfied with Will’s determination, appealing to Deputy Director Bowdich would not even have been a formal option. His final stage of administrative appeal would have been before the Disciplinary Review Board, which is comprised of three senior FBI officials but to my knowledge does not typically (if ever) include the deputy director.
To be clear: No legal restriction likely prevented Deputy Director Bowdich from directly intervening. After all, Strzok was effectively an “at-will” employee. What is concerning here is the continuous and repeated appearance of political considerations seeping into the traditionally apolitical disciplinary process at the FBI. President Trump made no bones about his distaste for Agent Strzok, just as he similarly publicly criticized Director Comey and Director McCabe prior to their terminations. All three men played or were still playing a role in the investigation into the president’s campaign before they were fired.
With the firing of Peter Strzok, the president’s purge of senior FBI leadership who helped launch that investigation is now complete. For those wondering whether Trump would allow the bureau to do its job without political interference from the White House, I think we have our answer.
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6:29 AM 6/19/2019 - Suspicious death of Mohamed Morsy and portable directed energy weapons
Suspicious death of Mohamed Morsy and portable directed energy weapons
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Suspicious death of Mohamed Morsy and portable directed energy weapons
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Acting secretary of defense, Patrick Shanahan, withdrew from consideration to head the U.S. military on June 18 as reports of domestic violence in his family surfaced. (Reuters)
Acting secretary of defense, Patrick Shanahan, withdrew from consideration to head the U.S. military as reports of domestic violence in his family surfaced. (Reuters)
In the months that he has served as President Trump’s acting secretary of defense, Patrick Shanahan has worked to keep domestic violence incidents within his family private. His wife was arrested after punching him in the face, and his son was arrested after a separate incident in which he hit his mother with a baseball bat. Public disclosure of the nearly decade-old episodes would re-traumatize his young adult children, Shanahan said.
On Tuesday, Trump announced in a tweet that Shanahan would not be going through with the nomination process — which had been delayed by an unusually lengthy FBI background check — “so that he can devote more time to his family.”
Shanahan spoke publicly about the incidents in interviews with The Washington Post on Monday and Tuesday.
Former defense pick tells The Post, “Bad things can happen to good families”
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“Bad things can happen to good families . . . and this is a tragedy, really,” Shanahan said. Dredging up the episode publicly, he said, “will ruin my son’s life.”
In November 2011, Shanahan rushed to defend his then-17-year-old son, William Shanahan, in the days after the teenager brutally beat his mother. The attack had left Patrick Shanahan’s ex-wife unconscious in a pool of blood, her skull fractured and with internal injuries that required surgery, according to court and police records.
Two weeks later, Shanahan sent his ex-wife’s brother a memo arguing that his son had acted in self-defense.
“Use of a baseball bat in self-
defense will likely be viewed as an imbalance of force,” Shanahan wrote. “However, Will’s mother harassed him for nearly three hours before the incident.”
defense will likely be viewed as an imbalance of force,” Shanahan wrote. “However, Will’s mother harassed him for nearly three hours before the incident.”
Details of the incidents have started to emerge in media reports about his nomination, including a USA Today report Tuesday about the punching incident in 2010.
In an hour-long interview Monday night at his apartment in Virginia, Shanahan, who has been responding to questions from The Post about the incidents since January, said he wrote the memo in the hours after his son’s attack, before he knew the full extent of his ex-wife’s injuries. He said that it was to prepare for his son’s initial court appearance and that he never intended for anyone other than his son’s attorneys to read it.
“That document literally was, I sat down with [my son] right away, and being an engineer at an aerospace company, you write down what are all of the mitigating reasons something could have happened. You know, just what’s the list of things that could have happened?” he said.
As he wrote in an ongoing custody battle stemming from their divorce, Shanahan said Monday that he does not believe there can be any justification for an assault with a baseball bat, but he went further in the interview, saying he now regrets writing the passage.
“Quite frankly it’s difficult to relive that moment, and the passage was difficult for me to read. I was wrong to write those three sentences,” Shanahan said.
“I have never believed Will’s attack on his mother was an act of self-defense or justified. I don’t believe violence is appropriate ever, and certainly never any justification for attacking someone with a baseball bat,” he said.
Kimberley Shanahan, who has since changed her name to Kimberley Jordinson, has not responded to repeated efforts by reporters since January to contact her via email, text, phone and social media seeking comment about the incidents.
Patrick Shanahan’s response when his family was split by acts of domestic violence — including steps he took to manage his son’s surrender to police and attempt to keep him out of jail — is detailed in court filings that have not been previously reported. Court records also contain an earlier episode in which both Shanahan and his wife alleged they were assaulted by one another, and she was arrested.
The Defense Department has long struggled with its own responses to domestic violence, and it has faced a fresh wave of criticism since shortly after Shanahan became deputy secretary of defense in July 2017.
In November of that year, an airman who had been court-martialed for assaulting his wife and stepson killed 26 people and wounded 22 others in a Texas church. A Defense Department investigation later faulted the Air Force for repeatedly failing to submit the serviceman’s fingerprints to a civilian database, which it said should have prevented him from purchasing the firearms used in the mass shooting.
Last month, the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General admonished the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, saying they failed for decades to consistently follow policies requiring military police to thoroughly process crime scenes and interview witnesses following allegations of nonsexual domestic abuse. The watchdog said that in 180 of 219 cases it reviewed, the branches failed to submit criminal histories and fingerprints of offending servicemen to civilian authorities.
Shanahan said his personal experience with domestic violence has taught him there are no simple policy prescriptions. He said domestic violence rates in the military will improve only if the services can change the way they talk about the stresses of serving in the armed forces in a more honest and natural way.
“There’s not one size that fits all — I mean, it’s a very complicated issue,” he said. “It’s not as simple as take this training class or apply these resources or, you know, look for these kinds of symptoms. I mean, it’s not that simple. There are all sorts of dimensions, whether it’s mental health or addiction or stress in the home. It’s a very toxic concoction.
“The thing that’s probably, like a lot of other issues . . . is having a buddy system of people who really care about you and can intervene,” he said. “What I’ve learned is extremely important.”
President Trump said on June 18 that he did not ask Patrick Shanahan, the acting defense secretary, to withdraw from consideration to be defense secretary. (Reuters)
‘I was seeing stars’
Patrick Shanahan, 56, climbed the ranks at Boeing over more than two decades, becoming vice president and general manager of the corporation’s commercial airplane program in 2008. An exacting, hard-charging executive who worked grueling hours, he earned the sobriquet “Mr. Fix It” for his ability to turn around sputtering projects worth billions of dollars, such as the aerospace giant’s delayed 787 Dreamliner program.
By 2010, Shanahan was earning more than $935,000 annually in salary and bonuses, court records show.
But there was turbulence in Shanahan’s personal life with his wife of 24 years. Shanahan and two of his children interviewed by The Post said Kimberley Shanahan was growing more erratic. One Thanksgiving, she threw the entire dinner on the floor, saying the family did not appreciate her efforts, they said. A birthday cake his daughter baked for Patrick Shanahan was similarly destroyed, they said.
Things culminated with a physical dispute in August 2010. According to Patrick Shanahan, the incident began when he was lying in bed, following an argument with his wife about their oldest child.
Shanahan said he had his eyes closed, trying to fall asleep, when his wife entered the bedroom and punched him in the face before landing blows to his torso.
“I was seeing stars,” Shanahan said, but he didn’t react, saying he believes that only further enraged his wife.
She then began throwing her husband’s clothes out of a window, according to police and court records, and tried to set them on fire with a propane tank she couldn’t dislodge from a barbecue grill, attempting again later by burning paper towels.
Another physical altercation ensued, with police records indicating that Kimberley Shanahan swung at Patrick Shanahan. She called the police and claimed he punched her in the stomach, an allegation he denies.
When officers arrived, they found him with a bloody nose and scratches on his face, police records show. Authorities charged his wife with domestic violence.
Patrick Shanahan soon filed for divorce and dropped the charges. The file would grow to more than 1,500 pages.
‘It was a hard time to see your son’
Kimberley Shanahan won custody of the children and moved to Florida. Patrick Shanahan remained in Seattle, but the couple’s eldest daughter would soon rejoin him to attend college.
Shortly after midnight on Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2011, Kimberley Shanahan and William got into “a verbal dispute” over her suspicion that the 17-year-old was in a romantic relationship with a 36-year-old woman, according to a police report.
According to police, just after 1:30 a.m., William “shoved and pinned his mother against a bathroom wall” before grabbing a $400 Nike composite baseball bat “to swing at her head,” striking her multiple times.
“I attempted to run away from Will, but as I reached the laundry room, he struck me with the bat in the back of my head,” Kimberley Shanahan wrote in a court filing in the custody case. “The last thing I remember from before I lost consciousness is the impact of the bat, and blood gushing everywhere.”
William, Sarasota police wrote, struck several blows to his mother’s head and torso and left her “to lie in a pool of blood” and then “unplugged the landline phone cord depriving the victim and [the younger brother] the use of 911 to render aid.”
As William fled the home, situated in an exclusive barrier-island development called Bird Key just outside Sarasota, he “tossed a bottle of rubbing alcohol” to his younger brother and told him “you clean her up,” according to the police report.
The younger brother called 911 from a neighbor’s phone, according to police records.
Within hours, William contacted his father, who immediately booked a predawn flight to Florida, according to court records and documents provided by Shanahan.
Kimberley Shanahan was hospitalized early that morning and later required surgery, she wrote in a filing. Among her injuries were a fractured skull and elbow, according to the police report.
While she was in the hospital, authorities began to search for William, according to records released to The Post by Sarasota police.
Police distributed a photo of William to patrol cars on Bird Key. They tried to track the young man’s cellphone, but it appeared to be turned off, police wrote. They canvassed a local park and bridges to the mainland. They searched a local yacht club. But there was no trace of him, according to records.
Patrick Shanahan landed in Florida just before 5 p.m. on Wednesday. He arranged to stay with William in a hotel.
“Mr. Shanahan’s response when he learned of the assault was to book Will a hotel room,” Kimberley Shanahan wrote.
Patrick Shanahan said it’s a bit of a blur.
“It was a hard time to see your son — hopefully you’ll never be in that spot someday,” he said. “I wasn’t hiding. We got a hotel and talked to the attorney, and we just camped out.”
Shanahan did not visit the hospital where his ex-wife was taken, she later wrote in a custody filing. Instead, over four days that included Thanksgiving, he worked to assemble a defense team and enlist family members and friends to attend an initial hearing to try to persuade a judge to let his son stay out of jail while he fought the charges.
Derek Byrd, head of a well-known Sarasota defense firm hired by Patrick Shanahan to represent his son in the criminal case, said in an interview that the elder Shanahan acted appropriately by not contacting police until his son could consult a defense attorney, a process that was delayed by the Thanksgiving holiday.
Byrd also said that Patrick Shanahan was not aware that police were searching for his son in the days after the attack.
“I don’t think Pat handled that time frame inappropriately,” Byrd said in an interview. “I think he was just doing what a reasonable dad should probably do. I’m sure the timeline looks bad on paper, but he didn’t do anything that I consider out of the ordinary, and he wasn’t hiding Will.”
Byrd said Patrick Shanahan first contacted his firm within a day of arriving in Florida, either Wednesday night or Thursday, which was Thanksgiving. He said a lawyer from the firm could not meet with the Shanahans until Friday morning, after the holiday.
Later on Friday, another attorney from the firm contacted the detective handling the case, Kenneth Halpin.
According to the detective’s report, the attorney said he would arrange for the younger Shanahan to turn himself in — after two more days, on Sunday evening, Nov. 27.
“Detective Halpin trusted us to do that,” Byrd told The Post. “He said, ‘Fine.’ ”
Halpin told The Post that he could not recall the conversation but probably would have cast it differently:
“If someone calls and says they’re going to turn in a suspect on a Sunday night, and he’s already lawyered up with someone who has a reputation like Byrd, for being on TV, what can you do? You can’t force an attorney to turn in his client,” Halpin said, adding: “I’m sure I would have also told him that there’s paper out for him, so they’re still going to snatch him up if he’s found.”
That Sunday night, Patrick Shanahan drove William to a police station to surrender, according to police records and a timeline of events prepared by a Shanahan spokesman.
His mother attended his court appearance the next morning.
“My neighbor took me to the court hearing, and both of us were shocked to see Pat in the courtroom,” she wrote in the filing, saying she had believed until then that he had been in Seattle.
‘He doesn’t believe in violence’
Patrick Shanahan and Byrd came to the hearing prepared to plead for the younger Shanahan to remain out of custody, citing his baseball career at an exclusive youth sports academy and prep school attended by sons and daughters of major league athletes.
“He’s a college baseball prospect. He has dreams. He has a future. His father is an executive of Boeing,” Byrd said, according to an audio recording that the court released to The Post. “If he has to sit in jail for 21 days, not only is that going to traumatize him, he’s not going to finish the semester, probably get kicked off the baseball team . . . everything is going to be over for him.”
Patrick Shanahan also vouched for his son.
“He doesn’t believe in violence,” he told the judge. “I’ve never seen him act aggressively toward his brother or any other family members, so it’s a shock to me what has happened.”
The judge declined to release William Shanahan, calling pictures of the crime scene “horrendous.”
He was initially charged with two felonies, aggravated battery and tampering with a victim, and faced up to 15 years in prison.
In the custody filing is the four-page memo Patrick Shanahan wrote at the time.
It lists “mitigating circumstances” that should be considered in evaluating the alleged assault.
A Shanahan spokesman provided a copy of the email containing the memo retained by Shanahan’s brother-in-law, showing it had been sent on Dec. 8, 2011, two weeks after the attack, and 10 days after Patrick Shanahan was present at the court hearing with his injured ex-wife.
First, Patrick Shanahan wrote, his 17-year-old son had “acted in self-defense.”
“She fueled the situation by berating him repeatedly in his room in a manner that escalated emotionally and physically,” he wrote.
The memo continues, alleging a history of substance abuse, emotional abuse and violent tendencies by Kimberley Shanahan. “Over the last 7+ years I have worked as much as possible, partially out of a desire to avoid inevitable conflicts with Kim,” Shanahan wrote. It casts his ex-wife as the instigator in conflicts with him and their children. “It appears that when I was not around to yell at, she started becoming intensely focused on berating, terrorizing and beat them down emotionally.”
Kimberley Shanahan disputed those characterizations.
“I have always been a very loving and dedicated mom,” she wrote in a court filing responding to the memo, “and I have never emotionally abused any of my children for any period of time.”
Kevin Cameron, Kimberley Shanahan’s brother, said he was not bothered by Patrick Shanahan’s memo because he believed Shanahan wrote it before he had all of the facts about the assault.
“If anything, I believe Pat fully understands and is better equipped to deal with domestic violence than most people,” Cameron wrote in a letter to The Post. “He has seen it. He has lived it. He understands that domestic violence is real and prevalent. He understands that it can impact anyone of any age, gender, race and socioeconomic status.”
‘We moved on’
Kris Roberts, a police officer who assisted in the search for William Shanahan, recalled that after the arrest, his father was a “hindrance” in a follow-up matter, as police investigated whether there had been an inappropriate relationship between the adult woman and William. Under Florida law, William was too young at the time to have had a consenting sexual relationship with the woman. Roberts, a retired detective with the Longboat Key Police Department, said the father, whom she could not remember by name, would not turn over his son’s cellphone.
After the surrender to police, “his father would not talk to me; he wasn’t helping,” Roberts said. “I remember he had a West Coast address, Seattle maybe, and when he left, the son’s cellphone was just gone.” Roberts said she believes Patrick Shanahan took his son’s cellphone back to Seattle with him.
Roberts said that without the cooperation of the father, the investigation fell apart. “We only had one love letter between them, but it didn’t speak to anything sexual,” Roberts said. The adult woman “soon lawyered up, too, and we moved on.”
Byrd, the attorney for William Shanahan; an attorney who represents Patrick Shanahan in Seattle; and a Shanahan spokesman said they were not aware of a formal request for the cellphone.
Prosecutors would go on to charge William as an adult with one felony: aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. He pleaded down to a third-degree felony, and in 2012, a state prosecutor agreed to a “withhold of adjudication,” curtailing the length of the sentence and probation. The post-sentencing maneuver is not recognized outside of Florida, and William’s record could not be sealed or expunged in the state because it involved a violent domestic assault.
William was ordered to spend 18 months at a Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and sentenced to four years’ probation. Both penalties were later reduced.
The following year, in 2013, William enrolled at the University of Washington, according to his LinkedIn page. His father had recently joined the university’s board of regents. The family had other ties to the school. Patrick Shanahan’s father, Michael, had served as police chief for the university for more than two decades.
William graduated last June with a degree in political science, a university spokesman said.
Kimberley Shanahan lost custody of the couple’s youngest child in 2014, when a judge wrote that she had “engaged in abusive use of conflict that is seriously detrimental” to the child. According to multiple accounts, she is now estranged from all three of her children. At his last confirmation hearing, to become deputy secretary of defense in June 2017, all three children were sitting behind Patrick Shanahan.
None of the senators asked him about domestic violence.
Ashley Nguyen in Seattle contributed to this report.
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No notorious prison for him, however. During his various trials, Mr. Mubarak was housed in a cushy military hospital, from where he would be flown to court and theatrically wheeled in on a gurney, his attorney pleading all the while that his client was close to death. Our current military rulers never forgot that Mr. Mubarak — the former head of the Air Force — was one of them. In March 2017, Mr. Mubarak was ultimately released from the military hospital where he had been confined for six years to his home in a Cairo suburb, his only standing conviction on a charge of embezzlement.
Mr. Mubarak was never held accountable for the killing of some 900 people in the 11 days of the uprising, just as Mr. el-Sisi and other senior security personnel are unlikely to ever be held accountable for the massacre, soon after Mr. Morsi’s overthrow, of at least 817 people in just one day, when soldiers and police violently broke up two sit-ins of mostly Muslim Brotherhood supporters, in Cairo on Aug. 14, 2013. To this day, Egypt has not had a reckoning with the massacre, the worst mass killing in a single day in modern Egyptian history. It is as if the powers that turned off Mr. Morsi’s microphone in his soundproof courtroom cage have turned off the national conscience. Egypt’s Western allies, too, arecolluding with Mr. el-Sisi in the collective amnesia.
It speaks volumes to the continued cruelty as well as insecurity of the el-Sisi regime that it forced Mr. Morsi’s family to bury him under heavy security at a Cairo cemetery rather than at the family’s cemetery in the province of Sharqiya. If the death sentence against Mr. Morsi in 2015 was overturned because the regime did not want to make a martyr of him, its cruelty has guaranteed that is exactly what he will become.
Decimated as it is, however, the Muslim Brotherhood is unlikely to be able to pull off mass protests in Egypt, where protests became all but impossible under a draconian law passed soon after Mr. el-Sisi came to power. This, too, is what Mr. el-Sisi has achieved: From July 2013, when Mr. Morsi was overthrown, and January 2016, when the Egyptian parliament reconvened, between 16,000 and 41,000 people, most supporters of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood, were reportedly arrested or detained. (Some were liberal or secular activists.) Since then, a spike in death sentences and executions, extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances and a determined effort to wipe out any form of dissent have all but crushed the Brotherhood, as well as most other forms of opposition. Muslim Brotherhood supporters are insisting that Mr. Morsi be eulogized as a martyr at the same time that many state-owned media are reporting on his death without even mentioning that he was once president.
So if Mr. Morsi’s death is to have an impact, he must, once again, be decentered from the story. If a man collapses and dies in a soundproof cage after six years of deliberate and sustained cruelty, what must we hear? Mr. Morsi’s death sentence was overturned, but what was his death in court yesterday but an effective slow-motion fulfillment of that sentence? Mr. el-Sisi has filled Egyptian jails with 60,000 political prisoners. Those who have not already been sentenced under the sharp spike in death sentences since he came to power are subject to illness, torture, and inefficient or denied medical care. How many of them are being slowly executed?
And when will those responsible ever contend with their cruelty from inside a courtroom cage?
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Aerial of the Pentagon, the Department of Defense headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, near Washington DC, with I-395 freeway on the left, and the Air Force Memorial up middle.
Getty Images
The U.S. Department of Defense hit back at Russian officials who have criticized a U.S. plan to deploy more troops to the Middle East.
A Pentagon official told CNBC that the deployment is “not a provocation” and that it’s Russia that “seeks to revise the world order.”
Russia rebuked the U.S. after it announced on Monday a plan to send 1,000 extra troops to the Middle East amid rising tensions with Iran. U.S. relations have deteriorated sharply with Iran since President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from an international nuclear accord with the country, and the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Ostensibly, the decision to deploy more troops to the region comes after it accused Iran of attacking oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman last week, although Iran denies the accusations.
Russia reacted angrily to the U.S.′ plans on Tuesday with officials, including the country’s deputy foreign minister, warning the U.S. that it was tantamount to a “military provocation. ” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged “all sides to show restraint.”
The Pentagon defended its decision to deploy the troops and said it was Russia that sought to destabilize the Middle East.
“This deployment is not a provocation, the additional troops are for defensive purposes to address air, naval, and ground-based threats in the Middle East,” Lt. Col. Carla M. Gleason from the Pentagon’s Europe public affairs unit told CNBC in an email Tuesday.
“Russia seeks to revise the world order and reject the international system that has enabled peace for decades. Russia has sought to exploit chaos and advance its influence, expanding beyond its near abroad. And it has done so with particular focus in the Middle East,” she added.
For the U.S., the Middle East “remains a vitally important region to our national security interests, where the Department (of Defense) strives to maintain a favorable balance of power, deny safe havens to terrorists, and secure critical trade routes and ensure freedom of navigation,” Gleason added.
The U.K., Russia, China, France and Germany brokered the Iran nuclear deal with the U.S. under former president Barack Obama, but it’s looking increasingly fragile as Iran threatens to breach its commitments.
On Monday, it said that it would soon breach limits on how much enriched uranium it can stockpile, according to the 2015 deal.
Officials in Europe, China and Russia said this week that they hoped Iran would not break its commitments to the deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and reaffirmed their willingness to make the deal work.
It’s not the first time the U.S. and Russia have clashed over their foreign policies toward the Middle East in recent years. Both sides have fought in an awkward coalition against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria with the U.S. having supported regime change in Syria while Russia propped up Syrian President Bashar Assad.
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Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman said that the parties of Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko should bite the dust. The prime minister also noted that when he worked under the Poroshenko presidency, "the whole system around was absolutely hostile." In turn, Poroshenko called Groysman’s statement the loss of dignity and common sense. But first things first.
Canary in the coal mine
At the end of May, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman announced his intention to participate in early parliamentary elections, together with his own party, Ukrainian Strategy. It was noted that Groysman will head this party and wants to form a team of young people with experience and state needs. In addition, the current prime minister ruled out the possibility of uniting his party with the political force of Petro Poroshenko European solidarity, adding that such proposals were received from the team of the ex-president.
“I think that we are just different (with Petro Poroshenko) ... I made the decision, I will go on my own, and this decision is final for me,” the then head of the Cabinet of Ministers said.
Groysman’s Ukrainian Strategy
On June 7, Groysman headed the electoral list of the Ukrainian Strategy party. The top five of the party included four more officials of the Cabinet: three ministers (education - Lilia Grynevych, minister of the Cabinet - Oleksandr Saenko and culture - Yevgen Nishchuk), as well as deputy minister of information policy Emine Dzhepparova. During his speech, the prime minister reminded about his work as a mayor and stressed that he had created his own team because he did not intend to be a member of the others.
“Almost 8.13% of people want Groysman to be the next prime minister. My passage to Rada gives you the opportunity to lead a professional team and be responsible. And then I can qualify for the post of the prime minister,” he said.
The new round of conflict
June 16, Groysman stated that the parties of Petro Poroshenko (Groysman was elected by its lists to the Verkhovna Rada in 2014) and Yulia Tymoshenko (Batkivshchyna) should go the way of the dodo. He also added that in the new Verkhovna Rada should have "new forces", but, according to Groysman, the criterion of "new faces" should not be decisive.
"I see today that Servant of the People party is subjected to high hopes, it was shown by the presidential election. There is Golos party of Svyatoslav Vakarchuk. And there is the Ukrainian Strategy party, which unites professionals today. I can say that my team and I personally will do everything in order to put into practice the dreams and hopes that exist today. I believe that in such unification of views, voices, and practices can be the key to success," PM assured.
Groysman said that when he worked under the Poroshenko’s presidency, “the whole system around was absolutely hostile.” The prime minister also hopes that under President Zelensky, they will be able to unshadow the economy and “clear” the law-enforcement system.
What's next
In response to Groysman’s statements, Yulia Tymoshenko, leader of Batkivshchyna party, said that the Prime Minister "changed his shoes in the air."
“This is ridiculous, but in fact, it’s like a manual on Ukrainian politics. Groysman says that Bloc of Petro Poroshenko and Batkivshchyna are old parties, and cynicism needs to be assessed. Groysman is Poroshenko’s right kidney,” Tymoshenko stated.
Poroshenko did not comment on the statement, at the same time, MP from his party Iryna Gerashchenko spoke on this subject:
"You know, the casting for the future prime minister’s office has begun, although the contest did not seem to have been announced. And some politicians lose their dignity and common sense. Obviously, this does not correspond to European culture and European practice. And it’s a shame to see such a loss of dignity and common sense from politicians of different generations united by the old political culture," said Gerashchenko.
“We will not play these games and we urge our colleagues to draw conclusions,” she added.
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The Israeli Air Force is holding a large-scale multi-day exercise simulating combat action on multiple fronts, the army said Tuesday, with the air force’s F-35s taking part for the first time.
The drill, which began Sunday and ends Wednesday, involves fighter jets, helicopters, cargo planes, drones, air defense units and ground support forces. It simulates simultaneous fighting in the Gaza Strip, Syria and Lebanon.
It includes scenarios involving an enemy armed with advanced technology, such as the Russian S-300 and S-400 missile defense systems; a home front under massive missile attacks; and challenges such as damaged runways and disabled IAF communications centers.
The drill is primarily focused on the northern arena, with threats posed by the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon and Iranian forces in Syria.
An Israeli Air Force F-35 is seen during an air force exercise, June 2019. (IDF Spokesperson)
Forces were also being tested on their ability to carry out strategic bombings while minimizing harm to innocent people in the vicinity.
“We are training at very high intensity with a challenging, thinking enemy that possesses technology beyond what currently exists in the arena,” a senior air force official said.
The official said the new F-35s provided and added value of “lethality and multi-role capabilities…We did not have these capabilities before.”
The IAF has acknowledged receiving from the US-based Lockheed Martin defense contractor at least 14 F-35 fighter jets of the 50 that have been ordered. These are scheduled to be delivered in installments of twos and threes by 2024.
An Israeli Air Force plane is seen during an air force exercise, June 2019. (IDF Spokesperson)
In mid-2018 the IAF announced that it had used the stealth fighter jet in combat, which it said made it the first air force in the world to do so.
The fifth-generation F-35 has been lauded as a “game-changer” by the military, not only for its offensive and stealth capabilities, but for its ability to connect its systems with other aircraft and form an information-sharing network.
Detractors, however, balked at the high price tag for the aircraft: approximately $100 million apiece (Lockheed Martin says the cost is expected to go down as more countries purchase the F-35).
Judah Ari Gross contributed to this report.
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