Defense Sec. Austin Revokes Plea Deal for 9/11 Masterminds
The plea deal was met with outrage.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin revoked the plea deal with the 9/11 masterminds.
Austin sent the memo to Susan Escallier, the convening authority for military commissions.
“I have determined that, in light of the significance decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused in the above-referenced case, responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior convening authority under the Military Commissions Act of 2009,” wrote Austin. “Effective immediately, I hereby withdraw your authority in the above-referenced case to enter into a pre-trial agreement and reserve such authority to myself.”
No plea deal means the death penalty is on the table.
The administration reached a deal with Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi that took the death penalty off the table if they agreed to plead guilty to all charges.
The deal supposedly squashed what could have been a 12-18 month trial. The government supposedly faced “the possibility of the military judge throwing out confessions that were key to the government’s case.”
Austin was not in the country when the team made the plea deal.
Austin did not return until after prosecutors told the victims’ families about the plea deal.
From The New York Times:
A senior Pentagon official said that the decision was the secretary’s alone, and that the White House had no involvement. The official said Mr. Austin had never supported a plea deal and wanted the military commission trials to proceed.
Mr. Austin’s action was met with disbelief by lawyers at Guantánamo Bay who were preparing for a hearing, possibly as soon as Wednesday, for the judge in the case, Col. Matthew N. McCall, to question Mr. Mohammed about whether he understood and voluntarily agreed with the plea.
“If the secretary of defense issued such an order, I am respectfully and profoundly disappointed that after all of these years the government still has not learned the lessons of this case, and the mischief that results from disregarding due process and fair play,” said Gary D. Sowards, Mr. Mohammed’s lead defense counsel.
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Comments
Well, I didn’t see that one coming.
It’s to his credit that he did this.
These people deserved to be hanged.
Obama inserted David Plouffe to run Harris’s campaign today. My guess is Plouffe ordered Austin to retreat because the plea deal is bad for politics.
It’s the only reasonable explanation for Lloyd Austin, of all people, doing the right thing.
Agreed. Election year polling and bad PR drove the reversal.
I wouldn’t give Austin too much credit. As with everything else that the vile Dhimmi-crats do, I suspect that the wretched Austin’s plea deal revocation — the deal which never should have been made in the first place, obviously — is motivated by nothing other than self-serving political consideration, to avoid damaging crone-harlot, Harris’s, campaign. Austin received his marching orders from Obama, or, some other Dhimmi-crat on high.
The only credit he deserves is that he did what he was told.
To be fair to the administration, they weren’t sure if Austin was in the office that week having an named medical issue.
They thought he’d never find out.
Seriously, to his credit he put distance between himself and this pile of….bovine scat.
Austin is a political POS and even he was bright enough to see the political damage this would do to Harris. Trump and the Republicans would have beat this drum to November
I’m amazed that Austin could find the time to deal with this issue, given his preoccupation with rooting out alleged “white rage,” in the DoD.
It’s interesting that Trump didn’t do one single damn thing to hang these terrorists when he was President. Why the hell didn’t he do anything?
Please spell out, in DETAIL, just exactly Trump could have (legally) done.
The stink of the plea was so rank even the Administration could not defend it… send in the clowns
CYAMoFoFJB
“This should be the beginning of the end of the Guantánamo Bay detention center,” said one Amnesty International campaigner.
Responding to the news, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)—which has represented and advocated for Guantánamo detainees—said that “these plea agreements are a substantial step toward ending military commissions and the extralegal nightmare of Guantánamo“
Thanks for sharing that.
The “nightmare” was on 9/11, and Gitmo is the holding location for the animals that perpetrated that nightmare.
Not a lawyer, but a career military officer with experience in a number of high profile Article 32 investigations, a couple being potentially capital cases. Both of those cases were resolved by plea agreement, agreements that were never offered without pre-approval from SecDef, and they weren’t nearly as notable as this case, obviously.
Is it possible that the convening authority and subordinate JAGs at Gitmo ventured WAY off the reservation? Maybe.. While it’s true the most liberal, arguably activist officers in uniformed service are in the JAG corps, I’m still HUGELY skeptical this wasn’t approved before it was ever offered and only now walked back because it was a political explosion, particularly to Harris. There’s definitely a story here that likely won’t be told until the tell-all books are written years or decades from now. I’ll really fascinated to hear commentary from retired JAGs/historians about the potential novelty of this. Has a plea agreement approved by a convening authority ever been rejected by SecDef, particularly outside the scope of a hot war, like WWII? Doubtful.
I expected when I heard about the deal that this was a deliberate effort by the regime to show favor to Muslims for deliberate political reasons, and that hints were passed down what was wanted [and granted eventually]. Now, as you say, the uproar was too great so the lower ranks are going to be thrown under the bus.
Subotai Bahadur
Yes, this is the Harris people flip flopping after feeling the unpopularity of their decision. Subordinates will pay for it.
As we say in the military: “Shit rolls down hill.”
Some JAG Lieutenant Colonel will face the music for this flag level decision. Even though a BG was relieved.
“…a deliberate effort by the regime to show favor to Muslims,”
As Ilhan Omar said: “Somebody did something. So what?”
As an everyday citizen of these United States, with no legal experience or expertise, all I can say is….why the hell are these bastards still alive almost 23 years after the fact?
It’s unforgeable. In the early summer 1942, eight German saboteurs were delivered to the east coast via U-boat in what the Nazis called Operation Pastorius. Fortunately, all eight were arrested quickly, some by happenstance and the rest by one of the saboteurs singing like a bird. Over the next 8-weeks or so, they were all tried, convicted, their appeals heard all the way to the US Supreme (with the case being argued by the sitting US Attorney General). Several of the saboteurs were American citizens. They were given stays of execution by FDR until after the war. The rest were put to death by the 1st week in August 1942, roughly two-months after their mission began…and it was ALL done in secret. The public wouldn’t find out about it for several years, I believe.
Not a single saboteur came even remotely close to fulfilling their mission much less killing or even hurting anyone. But, FDR sure didn’t care.
Unforgivable not unforgeable. Autocorrect is the enemy.
This + 1000000000
“Al-Hawsawi suffered a shredded rectum resulting from sodomization during so-called “rectal hydration” and has had to manually reinsert parts of his anal cavity to defecate.”
Microwaved beef and bean burrito Tuesday is a nightmare.
Targa GTS
agreed … dont think they expected
this much push back ….
and election just a few months away
yeah …
Not a JAG, but a former Army officer with plenty of experience with the UCMJ and MCM. These are uncharted waters to me. Interested in hearing from any JAGs out there as to where this is going.
I hear from a friend that the convening authority, a retired female JAG, was appointed by Austin not even a year ago. Makes me even more skeptical she acted independently of Austin on this. Also curious that they tapped a retired flag officer for this role. I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of something like that. Maybe it’s normal for the Army. Not sure.
Another of Traitor Joe’s junta’s sweetheart plea deals gets nuked by going public. Just imagine all the treasonous crap Traitor Joe’s junta has gotten away with because the public never heard about it.
I hear Biden is getting a party thrown for him by the bank that is doing his 1000th mortgage! It’s quite a milestone.
“Just imagine all the treasonous crap Traitor Joe’s junta has gotten away with because the public never heard about it.”
I’d rather not. It would ruin my day.
Daniel Pearl’s murder on video, and, the 9/11 attacks don’t even enter into the consciousness of the millennials and Gen Z’ers who comprise a huge chunk of the Dhimmi-crats’ ignorant and stupid base. Few of them remember these crimes, and, fewer still are outraged/angered by them.
This is what decades of the vile Dhimmi-crats’ calculated indoctrination of the wretched propaganda conceit positing that Islamofascists, terrorists and Muslim supremacists are alleged “victims,” has wrought. Muslim terrorism is now rationalized and justified as the allegedly righteous expression of “resistance” against western/American/Israeli/Jewish “oppression.”
Don’t worry, Biden/Harris have allowed millions of illegal military aged males into the country, only to be lost in the interior. Many of those are more than likely future terrorists.
Those who don’t know about, or have forgotten about, 9/11 will experience the thrill and enlightenment of a future terrorist attack in their own neighborhood.
Problem is, any 9/11-scale attack is going to harm a lot of people who are aware of the terror threat, criticize the laxity that enables those threats, and don’t need “enlightenment,” on that score. We don’t want to see that kind of event happen.
That said, what galls me is that after the next major Muslim terrorist attack, all of our utterly politically corrupt, biased, compromised and useless intelligence agencies, e.g., NSA, CIA, FBI, et al., will do exactly what they did, post-9/11 — throw their hands in the air, disavow any hints of foreknowledge and claim that there was nothing they could do to prevent the attack.
It’s disgraceful that these vermin are still breathing. They should have been executed years ago.
This flip-flop on the plea deal is just as disgraceful.
Remember when we were told that the adults were back in charge?
Good times, good times.
The defense lawyer doesn’t understand that due process is not violated unless the agreement is finalized before a judge. At that point, it cannot be rescinded. However, it can be revoked any time before that.
This reversal was driven by election polls.
It was a trial balloon.
They want to release them all, but they were testing the waters first.
Per Kamala Harris, “How dare we execute 9/11ers while J6ers still live.”
How did these animals rate a plea deal to begin with? Should have been executed years ago.
I think that the plan was to commute their sentences just before the Election to get the Muslim (terrorist) vote.
Could still be done. Biden could pardon all of them overriding Austin just before the election.
It’s inconceivable to me that Austin would not know this plea was going to be offered. Frankly, I suspect he timed it so he would be out of the country, realizing there would be a backlash.
This was a pander to the Michigan Muslim vote and Obama sticking his thumb in our eyes one more time while he still has a puppet in the White House.
Apparently they weren’t prepared for the magnitude of the outrage and disgust they received.
They should have been, it was entirely predictable.
In a sense it’s a good thing. They know now they can’t act with impunity if they want any chance to install Kamala.
As another already said, I think the plea deal was removed after such public outcry the Harris campaign couldn’t handle such a controversial move.
The resulting word salad to explain this would have broken Camel Toe’s teleprompter.
Good. I ran out of time to comment on the original post about it, so I’ll just write here what I would have written there:
This Saturday’s Torah reading includes Numbers 35:33. “The earth cannot be cleansed of the blood spilled on it, except by the spiller’s blood”. Capital punishment is not only about deterrence, or public safety, it’s also about justice.
The rest of the world may look down their noses at the USA for our “barbaric” practice, but they are the barbarians, since they deny justice even in cases where there is no doubt at all of the person’s guilt, or that they deserve this penalty. Thus, as the Bible says, their lands are corrupted and filthy with the guilt of all the murders that have taken place there and have not been avenged.