Posted originally on The Conservative Tree House on December 21, 2020 by Sundance

Today, Attorney General William Barr announced new charges against a former Libyan intelligence operative, Abu Agela Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi [DOJ Announcement] for his role in building the bomb that killed 270 individuals in the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988.  [Video and Transcript Below]

[Transcript] – On this day 32 years ago, December 21, 1988, at 7:03 p.m. local time, a bomb destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 as it flew 31,000 feet above Lockerbie, Scotland. The massive Boeing 747 plane, known as the “Clipper Maid of the Seas,” exploded and fell to the ground in countless pieces scattered across 840 square miles, nearly the entire width of Scotland.

The explosion killed all 259 people on board—243 passengers and 16 crew members, including 190 Americans. Falling debris claimed the lives of 11 Lockerbie residents on the ground, many of whom were in their homes and had just sat down for dinner.

The Lockerbie bombing remains the deadliest single terrorist attack in the history of the United Kingdom, and the second deadliest terrorist attack for Americans—surpassed only by the 9/11 attacks.

Immediately after the bombing, the FBI partnered with law enforcement agencies from Scotland to investigate. That joint investigation led to the filing of charges in 1991 against two Libyan intelligence officers. The investigation also pointed to another conspirator—a man known by the name “Abu Agela Masud”—but at the time, investigators were unable to identify or locate that suspect.

Joined this morning by Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers … Acting United States Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin … and Kara Weipz, whose brother Rick Monetti was killed on the flight and who now leads a Pan Am Flight 103 advocacy organization, I am pleased to announce that the United States has filed criminal charges against the third conspirator, Abu Agila Muhammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, for his role in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Let there be no mistake: no amount of time or distance will stop the United States, and its partners in Scotland, from pursuing justice in this case.

Well over a third of Americans alive today were not yet born on the day of the Lockerbie bombing or would not have been old enough to remember it. But for those of us who do remember, that tragic event and the iconic images of its aftermath, some of which are displayed here today, are forever seared in our memories.

Passengers and crew aboard the flight came from 21 countries around the world. But by far the largest contingent on that doomed flight were Americans, including a group of 35 study-abroad students from Syracuse University who were on their way home to spend the holidays with their families.

There is no question that the Pan Am 103 attack was aimed at the United States, and this heinous assault lives in infamy in the collective memory of the American people. At Arlington National Cemetery, a cairn of 270 Scottish stones honors “those who lost their lives in this attack against America.” And at Syracuse University, 35 Remembrance Scholarships are awarded each year, with each recipient representing a particular Syracuse student killed aboard the plane.

Following the bombing, many of the victims’ families made an agonizing journey to Scotland to the place where they lost their loved ones. The people of Lockerbie, though devastated themselves, provided around-the-clock hospitality. In an unforgettable gesture, a group of Scottish women meticulously collected clothing from amid the wreckage; washed, ironed, and folded the garments they found; and sent them home to the victims’ family members as a final connection to their loved ones. Sadly, the remains of 17 victims were never identified or found.

From the beginning, the United States and Scotland have been determined to find and hold accountable those who perpetrated the Pan Am 103 attack. As I mentioned, our joint investigation led to the filing of charges in November 1991 in both the United States and Scotland against two Libyan intelligence officers—Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah. Nearly ten years later, in May 2000, a specially established Scottish court convened in The Netherlands to try the two men. In January 2001, Megrahi was convicted on all charges, but Fhimah was acquitted.

The breakthrough that has led to the charges announced today arose when law enforcement learned in 2016 that the third conspirator had been arrested after the collapse of the Qaddafi regime and interviewed by a Libyan law enforcement officer in September 2012. According to the criminal complaint affidavit, Masud built the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 and worked with Megrahi and Fhimah to carry out the plot. The affidavit also alleges that the operation had been ordered by the leadership of Libyan intelligence and that, after the downing of the aircraft, Qaddafi had thanked Masud for the successful attack on the United States. In addition to his involvement in the Lockerbie bombing, Masud was also involved in the 1986 bombing of the LaBelle Discotheque in Berlin, West Germany, which killed two American service members and a Turkish woman. Although Masud remains in Libyan custody, Libyan authorities provided a copy of the interview to law enforcement.

Based on that and other evidence, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the Counterterrorism Section of the National Security Division unsealed a complaint this morning in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia charging Masud with terrorism-related crimes for his role in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. At long last, this man responsible for killing Americans and many others will be subject to justice for his crimes.

The Lockerbie bombing case holds special significance for me because I was serving as the Acting Attorney General when charges were filed against Megrahi and Fhimah in 1991. I know firsthand the toil, tears, and sweat that have been poured into pursuing justice for the victims of the Lockerbie bombing and their families. And so it is with profound gratitude that I recognize and thank our law enforcement friends in Scotland for their nearly 32-year partnership with us on this case.

I also thank Lord Advocate of Scotland James Wolffe for his continued partnership. There is much work still to be done, and we will not be able to do it without our colleagues in Scotland. We are committed to working arm-in-arm with them as we move forward in this case. I am especially proud of the countless agents and analysts of the FBI who have worked the Pan Am 103 case relentlessly over the decades. Thank you for your dedication and perseverance. And finally, I thank the prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the National Security Division for their many years of hard work and for preparing the charges in this case.

Today, Masud remains in Libyan custody, and we intend to work closely with our Scottish counterparts to use every feasible and appropriate means to ensure that he answers for his part in the Lockerbie bombing. It is my hope that Libyan authorities will allow Masud to be tried for this crime and will provide the support and witnesses necessary to bring him to justice.

Nevertheless, while we will never rest in our efforts to hold Masud accountable, I hope that the families of the lost will find some comfort in the charges filed today. The alleged facts underlying these charges fill important gaps in the historical record and help complete the account of how the bombing was executed and who was responsible. Finding the truth is the first step toward achieving justice.

Much has changed in the more than three decades since Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie. Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing in 2003. Qaddafi and his regime are no more. Libya is no longer at war with America. And while we still face terrorist threats, our terrorist enemies are different, and we are more vigilant. Time, to be sure, marches on, and there is a tendency to think that grief does as well. But even though grief, like memories, may fade, for those who have lost love ones unexpectedly, it never truly fades away.

To the families of those who died in the sky above Lockerbie all those years ago, I know that the small step we take today cannot compensate for the sorrow you feel to this day. But I hope that you will find some measure of solace in knowing that we in the United States Government, on behalf of the American people and in partnership with our counterparts in Scotland, have never relented, and will never relent, in the pursuit of justice for you and your loved ones.

Thank you.

[End Transcript]Share

Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics Re-Posted Dec 20, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

The Trump campaign has filed an emergency motion in the Supreme Court on Sunday to reverse Pennsylvania’s state court rulings that “illegally changed” the state’s mail balloting laws. Therefore, they seek to send the selection of the electors for Pennsylvania to the legislature who has the legal authority to appoint new presidential electors. They asked for an emergency hearing saying that “the outcome of the election for the presidency of the United States hangs in the balance.” They further added:

“Time is plainly of the essence because once candidates have taken office, it will be impossible to repair election results tainted by illegally and belatedly cast or absentee and mail ballots,” the petition states. “The intense national and worldwide attention on the 2020 presidential election only foreshadows the disruption that may well follow if the uncertainty and unfairness shrouding this election are allowed to persist.”

If the Supreme Court does not accept this petition and rule on the merits rather than dancing with the procedure and using illegal “discretion” to simply avoid the entire election, then there is absolutely no reason why the protestors would not surround the Supreme Court for they are condemning the nation to uncertainly and the protests will become bloody and it will NOT be just one group anymore.

If there are no courts to hear disputes, then there is no civilization. In the Declaration of Independence, one of the chief complaints was that the King would charge someone and then to ensure he would be found guilty, he transported you and you were put on trial in London. That is why in the Sixth Amendment, you are to be tried where the crime took place. In the United States, the federal courts violate that principle all the time. They will always charge people in New York despite the fact the alleged crime took place elsewhere. This is why fair trials in the United States DO NOT exist – hence their 99% conviction rate.

If the Supreme Court rejects this petition, they have surrendered the law to “discretion” and that is the end of the United States. The Supreme Court has reduced itself to the status of a hypocrite.

Posted originally on The Conservative tree House on December 20, 2020 by Sundance

Sweet baby Jesus – it’s flipping dejá vu all over again !!

CTH knew Pelosi and UniParty leadership were going to use the 2008/2009 TARP approach to construct the scale of their COVID bail-out package, but we had no idea they were going to use the EXACT SAME amount…  The UniParty is flying high tonight.

According to recent reports (which seem accurate) congress has just agreed to the largest bailout and budget combined spending bill in history.  The seriously sketchy COVID “relief” (insert term “bailout”) package is $900 billion, and they are throwing in a $1.4 Trillion omnibus spending bill… This is literally identical to what Pelosi and crew did when Obama was coming into office in 2007.

~ The total combined package is over $2.3 TRILLION ~

(Via Politico) […] House and Senate are now on a glide path to approve the aid package and its partner, a $1.4 trillion bill funding the government through September.

Though the Fed feud dominated the past 48 hours, the crux of the package remains the same: a $300 boost in weekly unemployment benefits, $600 relief checks for adultsand children, more than $300 billion for small business aid and huge pots of money for schools, hospitals and vaccine distribution. (read more)

Butter my buns and call me a biscuit, how can people not see what is going on here?  2020 is an exact replica of 2007 with COVID taking the place of TARP.  And… to top it all off, we have omnibus spending bills replacing the federal budgetary process all over again. FML.

Heck, I’m just going to repeat right here what I already predicted three weeks ago… it has unfolded EXACTLY as we suspected it would… The audacity of the elites who run both wings of the UniParty is jaw-dropping.

[December 5, 2020] The COVID-19 narrative becomes a tool to achieve a variety of objectives … Without COVID as a tool the manufactured process is more difficult. The ‘never let a crisis go to waste‘ strategy includes the creation of a crisis.

Why? – Why all of this effort?… why such extremes?… why would blue state governors willingly destroy their economy?….  Follow the money, it’s always about the money.

The global ideology is worthless without money.   Wall Street’s Rick Santelli knows, he’s watching the second deployment of an identical playbook.

So when your friends ask why, let’s talk about ‘why‘.

The response to the opportunity of the financial crisis of 2007/2008 was all about using the housing market collapse to create a financial mechanism to bail-out Blue Team members.

TARP, Auto-bailouts, QE1, QE2 and the stimulus packages were specifically directed to the controlled crony capitalists who funded the rise of the previous tool, Barack Obama.

In 2008 the orcs were deployed.  Beyond the Wall Street crowd, the SEIU, AFL-CIO, AFSCME, NEA were some of the more visible politically activist beneficiaries.  There was a massive hole in the U.S. economy and all the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds were specifically targeted to ensure the Blue Team did not suffer.

Winners and losers were selected.  Overall Main Street didn’t get a dime.

In 2020, we are seeing the exact same operational execution around COVID-19.  This time the crisis is a virus and the planned primary beneficiaries are the Blue Team states and their collapsing and unstable financial mechanisms.

The American electorate (writ large) would never support targeted taxpayer funded  bailouts to Blue State beneficiaries.  As a consequence, the crisis needs to hit Main Street so that public support for massive bailouts can be accepted.

Nancy Pelosi sets up the proposal, takes the accounting of the Blue Team needs, and sits down with inside party club members to organize the funding mechanisms.

Obviously, all of this big picture outcome is contingent upon successful execution of President Trump’s removal… hence, the firm-reliance on election fraud.  The transparency of the fraud needs to be obfuscated, denied and ridiculed; that’s where the media come in.

Meanwhile, Blue State teams work earnestly to create a worsening financial crisis for the American electorate, the workers and business owners.  Shutting down the economy is part of a coordinated effort.

When do both wings of the UniParty bird most visibly flap in unison?

ANSWER: When they get to the part of the playbook where ‘their tribe’ starts positioning for the trough.

Yes, COVID-19 as a weapon has many benefits… including the purposefully convenient stopping of assemblies, crowds and visible public opposition as the larger schemes are deployed hastily.

BIG TECH steps-in to assist the goal of isolating the electorate by shutting down voices and keeping people isolated from larger community understanding.  Communication lines are cut, as they would be in any war strategy.  Dividing people has many benefits.

As soon as enough pressure is applied to Main Street, the electorate get desperate. There will be an outcry for help and that is where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is waiting in the wings with the previously constructed bailout package that the American people will now be more apt to support.  Opposition voices will be framed as heartless; the media will immediately jump into action; and we go right into that cycle were fearful people do not stop to recognize the financial strategy as it is carried out.

The Blue Team state bailout will come at the top of a massive 2020 COVID federal spending package. As with the previous 2009 spending package, it will be gift-wrapped in paper to appear like Main Street is a beneficiary… However, just like the ARRA, there will be no ‘shovel ready jobs‘ saved or created.  It is all a ruse for a transfer of taxpayer wealth.

The weaponization of COVID is the ongoing crisis that will facilitate the government solutions.  As the American people resist the bait represented by the COVID crisis, those who need to weaponize it will keep turning up the pressure.

That pressure will continue until the American people can no longer take it and will accept the solution.  We are watching deployment of an identical playbook used previously to bail-out Wall Street, Big Banks and political benefactors/beneficiaries in 2009.

• COVID crisis 2020 replaces the housing/banking crisis 2008.
• Pelosi repackages the TARP strategy as a COVID response.
• States are bailed out in 2020 like the Too Big to Fail banks in 2008.
• Union leadership benefit as they did in the 2008 operation.

…And the great reset begins.

Here’s Pelosi and Schumer Bragging About it

That’s the why.

Posted originally on The Conservative tree House on December 20, 2020 by Sundance

House Leader Kevin McCarthy appears with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the issues surrounding democrat House Intel Committee member Eric Swalwell.  As noted within the timeline Swalwell was groomed and influenced by Chinese spies to rise from local San Francisco politics into an eventual presidential bid for the White House.

McCarthy puts some of the issues into a larger context, specifically with Nancy Pelosi and HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff who come from the exact same CA region, and asks if this Beijing influence is why democrats have positioned themselves as China-apologists.

The simple answer is, yes.  The interests of China and the interests of democrats to destroy America-First independence are aligned in common purpose.  America is being “belt-&-roaded” from within… Democrats are taking pay-offs to facilitate.

If Nancy Pelosi was briefed in 2015 (following 2014 mid-term) as a Go8 member, she would have been briefed along with Speaker Paul Ryan and HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes…. Or there was a carve out briefing (not G08 but only Pelosi and Ryan) because it involved the HPSCI committee…. and that’s why Nunes was unaware.  All sketchy.

[Yesterday] If we overlay what we have witnessed and discussed for the past several years as the Trump administration has tackled the China issues head-on, we can see how our nation has approached an inflection point toward Beijing.

Indeed the larger global community is now aware of a vast network of CCP officials that have infiltrated all systems, processes and institutions of western interests.  The panda mask of China has dropped, now we see the true extent of the dragon tentacles.

Recent reporting on the scale of this influence was ignored by U.S. media, in part due to their financial alignment.  Additionally, the aspects of Hunter and Joe Biden engaging for personal affluence with the Chinese government stands as a remarkable example of the cunning nature of Beijing’s strategy.

Senator Dianne Feinstein with a CCP spy in her office for almost three decades.  House Intelligence Committee member Eric Swalwell having a long-term relationship with another Chinese spy amid recent headlines.  Various academic institutions compromised by Chinese operatives and the theft of intellectual property.  The scale of what China was executing is still unknown as more comes forth each day.

Into this mix we now have a more substantive understanding over how China was influencing U.S. politics; and, as we see in the Houston consulate example, how Beijing was fomenting strife in advance of the November 2020 election as part of a larger plan to install and support U.S. politicians aligned with their interests.

America-First is antithetical to the long-term goals and objectives of the communist Chinese regime.  This was always evident in the way Beijing responded to the trade and economic policies of President Donald Trump.

Ultimately the global battle between the Red Dragon (CCP, Beijing) and President Trump is at the root of the concerted effort to remove/defeat him from office.  CTH has discussed this confrontation at length since the first shots were fired.

U.S. President Trump, representing economic nationalism, stood against China and was winning in the economic war despite the interference from Wall Street and U.S. media.

This is why Beijing was so desperate to remove President Trump from office; there are trillions at stake. As a consequence the goals of China and the Democrat party merged into this single and ultimately most important objective.

Posted originally on The Conservative tree house on December 20, 2020 by Sundance

Congressman Devin Nunes appears with Maria Bartiromo to discuss a variety of key issues and provide his hindsight on prior comments.   Nunes outlines the common sense of the election, why Biden was selected by the Obama clan and why Harris was installed as the Obama term-3 operative.  Everything around that outline is concise and accurate.

Additionally, Nunes points out the purposeful weaponization of COVID-19 shutdowns by Blue state/region democrat leadership; the inherent hypocrisy within approaches that make no sense; and how the end goal of their effort to destroy Main Street business is tied to a larger fundamental change objective, increased dependency AND the goal of federal bailouts for overindulgent spending. Again, concise and accurate.

On the Spygate story Nunes points to the recently released text messages from Lisa Page and Peter Strzok and states a criminal referral for the treatment of George Papadopoulos should be forthcoming.