Blinken and Biden Fold, Pentagon Rejects Poland Offer for United States to Start World War III

Ha-Ha-Ha… Oh, the Biden administration is not happy with Poland. Not happy at all.

Earlier this afternoon, Poland called Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s bluff, over the U.S. claims that Poland was going to send fighter jets into Ukraine.  This followed Sunday’s announcement where Poland said the U.S. State Dept was lying.

Earlier today, Poland said they would give the U.S. the planes if Blinken and Biden wanted to start World War III, but Poland wasn’t going to help the U.S. create a war with Russia.  This put the U.S. in a ‘put up or shut up’ position.  Well, Blinken and Biden just folded, per the Pentagon:

Pentagon – We are now in contact with the Polish government following the statement issued today.  As we have said, the decision about whether to transfer Polish-owned planes to Ukraine is ultimately one for the Polish government.  We will continue consulting with our Allies and partners about our ongoing security assistance to Ukraine, because, in fact, Poland’s proposal shows just some of the complexities this issue presents.

The prospect of fighter jets “at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America” departing from a U.S./NATO base in Germany to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance.  It is simply not clear to us that there is a substantive rationale for it.  We will continue to consult with Poland and our other NATO allies about this issue and the difficult logistical challenges it presents, but we do not believe Poland’s proposal is a tenable one.  (read more)

Well played Team Poland, well played!

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Reject Liz Cheney’s War

The first step to take in returning to peaceful and normal relations with Russia will be to reject the Wyoming Republican’s warmongering.

by Chris Buskirk for American Greatness

After nearly two weeks, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine continues with the Russian military steadily gaining ground and methodically taking control of key assets such as highways, bridges, airports, and power plants. As the Russians advance, they are also encircling and cutting off the main concentrations of the Ukrainian military. If those encirclements are completed, it could get ugly.

It’s into that cauldron that U.S. Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) would plunge the United States. On “Face the Nation” last week Cheney was nothing short of bellicose calling for escalation across the board. 

Cheney wants Biden to expand already sweeping sanctions and seize the Russian Central Bank’s foreign reserves. Weaponizing the dollar and the banking system in this way, she apparently fails to realize, carries with it risks to dollar-supremacy and the global dominance of American financial institutions. As other nations watch America use the dollar and important elements of the international banking infrastructure such as the SWIFT system as weapons, they will realize their own vulnerability and take steps to protect themselves from U.S.-dominated financial systems. China already offers alternatives and Biden’s actions are the best advertising for those systems they could ask for. 

There is also an immediate threat of a trust crisis in the European banking system, which has significant exposure to Russia. This could cause a contagion-effect that negatively impacts American banks and financial markets and through them, the lives of ordinary Americans. Remember what happened in 2008. 

But economic war, which would be bad enough, is not enough for Cheney. When asked, she refused to rule out direct American military intervention with Russia and, in fact, urged deploying American troops close to the Russian border and flooding Ukraine with weapons. Though many Americans favor “arming the Ukranians,” we should learn from rather than repeat past mistakes where we have followed this policy and enabled years-long civil wars as in Libya, Syria, and the former Yugoslavia—to say nothing of Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Americans are generally unaware that there has been ongoing war between Ukraine and ethnic Russians in the Donbass regions of Donetsk and Luhansk since 2014. That war, which already has claimed 14,000 lives, has been carried on in part with American complicity and American weapons. A policy like Cheney’s, which aims to turn all of Ukraine into a long-term, low-intensity, battlefield like the Donbass has been, is cruel in that it can serve only to increase the butcher’s bill paid by ordinary Ukranians. 

Cheney was also surprisingly blasé about the prospect of this regional conflict escalating to the point of nuclear war. Rather than trying to de-escalate the situation, it’s clear that Cheney is more interested in nuclear brinkmanship, which carries with it no potential upside but very significant risk for Americans. 

Cheney even went so far as to say, “We can’t adopt policies like a no first-use nuclear policy.” The problem of nuclear blackmail is significant and occupied the thoughts of serious strategists and statesmen during the Cold War. Alas, people like Cheney are dangerously flippant about the prospect.

That’s in part because she’s highly dogmatic with little apparent concern for the real-world consequences of her policies as long as they scratch her ideological itches. “We’ve been down the road of isolationism before,” Cheney claims. But she’s wrong on two counts. First, America has never been down the “road of isolationism.” The history of America since 1917 has been one of near-constant foreign wars. Second, it’s a false dichotomy, which presents complete withdrawal from world affairs (“isolationism”) as the only possible alternative to the globalist, nation-building, forever-war fiascos for which her family is notorious.

In fact, America’s historic foreign policy, the policy of the founders that persisted right up until Woodrow Wilson took America to war in Europe, was one of neutrality and friendship to the extent that it was up to us. We would strongly defend our country and our people but otherwise America avoided the foreign entanglements that George Washington warned us against in his Farewell Address. President James Monroe (guided by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams) advised that American policy should be “not to interfere in the internal concerns of any of its powers; to consider the government de facto as the legitimate government for us; to cultivate friendly relations with it . . .”

But American policy in the modern era—especially after the end of the Cold War—has abandoned our historic commitments to neutrality, self-defense, and trade, choosing instead an interventionist posture full of police actions, low-intensity conflicts, guerilla wars, civil wars, no-fly zones, pacification campaigns, and large-scale invasions. For two generations, the Cheneys have been leading practitioners of American interventionism, with disastrous consequences for America and for the countries that have the misfortune of getting in their crosshairs. 

It’s time to stop listening to Liz Cheney and people like her and let wiser counsel prevail. With regard to Russia, Angelo Codevilla argues in a forthcoming book on the foreign policy of John Quincy Adams, that our policy “produced a mess of appeasement, provocation, insult, and enmity without much of an international point on either side—another lesson in the consequences of incompetence mixed with self-indulgence at the highest levels.”

Yet Codevilla also offered a way forward for relations between the United States and Russia: 

From the founding of our Republic until the 1917 Bolshevik coup, Russia loomed small in U.S. foreign policy, and vice versa because the interactions between the two countries’ geopolitical and economic interests were few and compatible. Given that these fundamentals have not changed, we should expect that the two countries’ policies may gradually return to that long normal. But, for both countries, transcending the intervening century’s habits will not be easy.

The first step is to reject Liz Cheney’s war.

X22, On the Fringe, and more-March 8th

 

Evening. Here's tonight's news:

Ukraine, Realpolitik, and the West’s Failure

The onus is on the United States, the only so-called responsible superpower, to calmly negotiate with Putin on behalf of his innocent, weak victims.

by Ilana Mercer for American Greatness

The hypocrisy and sanctimony playing out over the corporate media outlets about Putin’s savagery is galling. For example, on February 28, Sean Hannity proclaimed that a murdering thug of a leader who invades a sovereign country and kills innocent people needs to know that he will be forthrightly removed. Mark Esper, Trump’s defense secretary, concurred. “For the sake of what is decent in the world,” seconded Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.) Putin must be taken out. 

Putin is savage alright, and his is a war of aggression. But how dare we? 

Remember that little Iraqi boy with a charred torso? Uncle Sam did that.

What about this armless Iraqi child and thousands like him?

Did Putin maim him? No; an American-dropped dumb bomb did.  

Look at little Shakira, a Pakistani tot “burned beyond recognition by a U.S. drone and left for dead in a trashcan.” 

There were thousands of these children, every bit as precious as Ukraine’s. 

If Putin belongs in the Hague’s International Court of Justice, so do Genghis Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice and their countless accomplices. 

America is still the undisputed leader in attacking sovereign nations and killing their kids. Russia’s foreign meddling since the early 1990s is insignificant by comparison. 

Nevertheless, it is always asserted, never argued, that the difference between, say, a Putin invasion and an American one is that the latter is conducted by good people for good causes. Alas, the broken children we’ve shown you, now adults, have not regrown their limbs. 

Iraq has been destroyed for good. Not counting the number of refugees displaced internally or exiled, children orphaned, women widowed, people plunged into permanent poverty, birth defects and environmental contamination—between 183,535 and 206,107 Iraqis were killed directly due to the American invasion. This estimation is a most conservative one. 

Likewise, Libya is now a failed state with a vibrant slave trade. Who can argue with such a record of moral superiority? 

Another insult to our intelligence is to have to endure conga lines of cretins expatiating on foreign policy when we still have Pat Buchanan. He has borne witness to the events of history that have shaped the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, has chronicled  the run-up to this war of aggression, and repeatedly and futilely counseled us how to avoid it.

We were warned. Surround Russia with NATO members, refuse to negotiate in good faith, and Putin will go to war. Yet, the stance on both sides of the Atlantic has been dismissive, even contemptuous, of Putin’s reasonable, long-standing security concerns. Writes Buchanan:

When Russia’s Vladimir Putin demanded that the U.S. rule out Ukraine as a future member of the NATO alliance, the U.S. archly replied: NATO has an open-door policy. Any nation, including Ukraine, may apply for membership and be admitted. We’re not changing that.

Certainly, the United States has remained wedded to an ever-accreting, ever-inclusive, open-door, liberal vision of NATO membership. What for? Cui bono?

Realpolitik

Indubitably, good-faith negotiations with Putin could have averted the invasion of Ukraine. Instead, the president of the Russian Federation was discounted and demeaned. Now, the failed leaders responsible should be made to eat their words. 

There is something utterly obscene—as rudely shocking as the front-row viewing of the “Shock and Awe” visited on Iraq—about watching the displacement of people and the destruction of innocent lives in real time, on television, without lending a hand.

And I don’t mean a military hand. 

Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy—who is the toast of the town simply because he did not skedaddle from the mess in which he mired his country—to him goes a special award for recklessness. Not fleeing a situation largely of your making does not a hero make. Curiously, we Americans have offered Zelenskyy the coward’s way out, when we ought to have forced him to sit down with his foes. 

The onus is on the United States, the only so-called responsible superpower, to calmly negotiate with Putin on behalf of his innocent, weak victims. Instead, world leaders watch the suffering on TV and bemoan the fate of the sufferers. Both sides are disgraceful failures for having brought us this far. Ditto NATO and the EU. 

This is precisely what Joe Biden should be shamed into doing now: talk to Putin; thrash out a cease-fire, ASAP; haggle for the lives of the population under siege because led by imbeciles. 

Ukrainians, for their part, are tireless and wily lobbyists in Washington, way more cunning than their American counterparts. For all intents and purposes, Zelenskyy, head of the corrupt American client statelet that is Ukraine, had tethered the fate of his country to America, NATO and the EU, constantly trying to bend these feckless entities to his will; too much of a clown to look out for his countrymen’s safety, he instead focused on his own popularity in the West.  

Having sat out the 1967 and ’73 wars in Israeli bomb shelters—I still remember what old-school diplomacy and statesmanship—realpolitik—sounded like. Diplomatic tools like substantive talks, a cease-fire, and an agreement between warring sides, however, have been absent from the repertoire of the two tools, Biden and Zelenskyy. 

Good old realpolitik is what Zelenskyy should have been practicing with his powerful neighbors and historic brethren, the Russians. 

Realpolitik is practical politics, the art of getting along, differences and all, in a real world in which reality, including the differences between people and their political systems, is accepted and dealt with. 

Contrary to proclamations, it is not a moral foreign policy that America practices but a moralistic one. Be like us or we’ll destroy you! Instead of realpolitik, Zelenskyy adopted America’s moralistic, impolitic, uppity manners. It took a war to get Zelenskyy to the negotiating table with Putin, where he ought to have been from the start. 

“Russia, Russia, Russia!”

Lastly, what had to drive the Russian Bear to distraction is the daily demented “Russia, Russia, Russia!” monomania emanating from America. 

The antiquated electrical grid fails. Blame Russia. Birds fall out of the sky. Must be Russia. Americans loathe each other. Russia, again. Democracy is a farce and a failure. Russia. Deplorables won an election. Russia colluded. Deplorables elected a president: a Russian plant. A young and flighty Russian girl, Maria Butina, arrives in the country full of faith in the American system. She flirts with U.S. lawmakers, slips between the sheets with some. “A spy,” we shriek! Jail her! Break the wanton waif! So we did. 

I believe that this dangerous, endless, and mostly baseless barrage of bullying and berating finally helped push Putin over the edge. 

Again, I grew up in Israel in a time when that country was, like Russia, vilified across the world. For the U.N. it was a daily ritual, a morning prayer, to open each session with a vote to condemn Israel’s very existence. With a difference: Israel had the United States. It had the steady support of America. Russia is likeSouth Africa, my birthplace—a friendless pariah. The ostensibly civilized world wishes its demise. 

I can only imagine what Russians must feel when they hear every American TV twit talk non-stop bull’s wool about their country.

COVID Vaccine Bombshells You Probably Missed

When a critical mass of American people realize what has been done to them, there will need to be a reckoning.

Debra Heine reporting for American Greatness

In recent weeks, there have been several stunning revelations concerning the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines—and they are being all but ignored by a corporate media eager to change the subject.

The FDA on Tuesday released a large tranche of Pfizer clinical trials documentsin response to a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request by the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency. The documents show that the company knew people were at risk of experiencing more than 1,000 unique adverse side-effects to the mRNA injections.

Additionally, scientists last week revealed that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine can enter human liver cells and be converted into DNA—something the fact-checkers and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control assured the public could never happen. Scientists also recently discovered that a sequence of genetic material patented by Moderna in 2018 bears a suspicious similarity to the spike protein in Sars-Cov2.

And a new study published on March 2 found that the synthetic mRNA found in the vaccines does not degrade quickly as promised, but continues to produce spike proteins for nearly two weeks.

Amid these new discoveries, the medical establishment won’t stop pushing the genetic vaccines that have failed to stop the coronavirus.

The COVID pandemic now plays second fiddle to the Russia-Ukraine war in the media, but the virus continues to rage through highly vaccinated countries, afflicting the triple-vaxxed most of all.

“Hong Kong hospitals can’t keep up with the deaths amid an Omicron surge,” reads a recent New York Times headline. “Dead bodies are piling up on gurneys in hospital hallways as Hong Kong’s health system is overloaded by its biggest Covid-19 outbreak of the pandemic.”

In the United Kingdom, only 394 vaccine-free persons died in weeks 5-8 of 2022, compared to the 3,527 who were vaccinated, according to the UK Health Security Agency. This means unvaccinated Brits only comprised 10 percent of all COVID deaths during those weeks.

In the face of failure, tyrannical medical policies continue to disrupt our lives, including the military mandate, the CMS mandate, the blocking of early treatments, and the appalling push to inject children with the ineffective experimental vaccines.

Here’s a partial list of potential vaccine injuries the medical establishment is subjecting us to, as chronicled in Pfizer’s clinical trial documents.

Via Children’s Health Defense:

The list includes acute kidney injury, acute flaccid myelitis, anti-sperm antibody positive, brain stem embolism, brain stem thrombosis, cardiac arrest, cardiac failure, cardiac ventricular thrombosis, cardiogenic shock, central nervous system vasculitis, death neonatal, deep vein thrombosis, encephalitis brain stem, encephalitis hemorrhagic, frontal lobe epilepsy, foaming at mouth, epileptic psychosis, facial paralysis, fetal distress syndrome, gastrointestinal amyloidosis, generalized tonic-clonic seizure, Hashimoto’s encephalopathy, hepatic vascular thrombosis, herpes zoster reactivation, immune-mediated hepatitis, interstitial lung disease, jugular vein embolism, juvenile myoclonic epilepsy, liver injury, low birth weight, multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, myocarditis, neonatal seizure, pancreatitis, pneumonia, stillbirth, tachycardia, temporal lobe epilepsy, testicular autoimmunity, thrombotic cerebral infarction, Type 1 diabetes mellitus, venous thrombosis neonatal, and vertebral artery thrombosis among 1,246 other medical conditions following vaccination.

It’s no wonder Pfizer wanted to hide the data for 75 years.

“This is a bombshell,” said Children’s Health Defense (CHD) president and general counsel Mary Holland. “At least now we know why the FDA and Pfizer wanted to keep this data under wraps for 75 years. These findings should put an immediate end to the Pfizer COVID vaccines. The potential for serious harm is very clear, and those injured by the vaccines are prohibited from suing Pfizer for damages.”

Another bombshell from Current Issues of Molecular Biology helps explain why the messenger RNA shots are so dangerous.

The Swedish study, released last week, found that the mRNA from Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is able to enter human liver cells and can be converted into DNA, as reported by the Epoch Times.

The researchers found that when the mRNA vaccine enters the human liver cells, it triggers the cell’s DNA, which is inside the nucleus, to increase the production of the LINE-1 gene expression to make mRNA.

The mRNA then leaves the nucleus and enters the cell’s cytoplasm, where it translates into LINE-1 protein. A segment of the protein called the open reading frame-1, or ORF-1, then goes back into the nucleus, where it attaches to the vaccine’s mRNA and reverse transcribes into spike DNA.

Reverse transcription is when DNA is made from RNA, whereas the normal transcription process involves a portion of the DNA serving as a template to make an mRNA molecule inside the nucleus.

“In this study we present evidence that COVID-19 mRNA vaccine BNT162b2 is able to enter the human liver cell line Huh7 in vitro,” the researchers wrote.  “BNT162b2 mRNA is reverse transcribed intracellularly into DNA as fast as 6 [hours] after BNT162b2 exposure.”

BNT162b2 is another name for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine that is marketed under the brand name Comirnaty.

The entire process reportedly takes place quickly within six hours, so after only one shot of the Pfizer vaccine,  DNA of affected cells can be permanently altered.

Mathematician Igor Chudov noted on his Substack that this is something that wasn’t supposed to happen: “For over a year, our trusted ‘health experts and fact checkers’ kept telling us the opposite.”

The CDC also denied that the vaccines can alter DNA in a post on its website titled: “Myths and Facts about COVID-19 Vaccines”: “The genetic material delivered by mRNA vaccines never enters the nucleus of your cells.”

Another bombshell story the media has ignored is a recent scientific discovery that casts new suspicions on what the heck was going on in the Wuhan Lab.

Scientists have found a unique sequence of genetic material patented by Moderna in 2018 in the virus’ spike protein.

Specifically, the virus has the genetic sequence CTCCTCGGCGGGCACGTAG, which is reportedly the mirror image of the  “MSH3” sequence in Moderna’s patent No. 9,587,003.

According to the Daily Mail, the scientists discovered a tiny snippet of code that is identical to part of Moderna’s gene “in SARS-CoV-2’s unique furin cleavage site, the part that makes it so good at infecting people and separates it from other coronaviruses.”

The structure has been one of the focal points of debate about the virus’ origin, with some scientists claiming it could not have been acquired naturally.

The international team of researchers suggest the virus may have mutated to have a furin cleavage site during experiments on human cells in a lab.

They claim there is a one-in-three-trillion chance Moderna’s sequence randomly appeared through natural evolution.

On Substack, Chudov offered a possible explanation for what happened:

The COVID virus was grown (cultured) in cell lines that used the MSH3-mutated cell lines:

Yes, that’s right. Every single one of these patents that contains that 19nt sequence (for which the probability of occurring by random chance is less than 1 in a billion) is from Moderna. [Note the sequence is actually the reverse complement sequence but this is likely a direct result of the cell lines that it occurred in – MSH3_mutated cell lines designed for developing cancer vaccines, the Moderna patent was actually for a mutated MSH3 gene for this purpose]

This sheds some light on lab origin of Sars-Cov-2. Whoever designed it used Moderna-patented genetically modified cell lines containing the complement of CTCCTCGGCGGGCACGTAG, to grow the virus.

Chudov analyzed the gene sequence and made a sinister discovery. Moderna’s patent (by Bancel et al.), he says appears to be about making cancer-causing proteins.

The specific sequence of the MSH3 mutation that we are discussing, is not a random mutation, it is a cancer gene added on purpose. It’s point is to ensure PRODUCTION OF ONCOLOGY RELATED PROTEINS, just like in the patent—the proteins that end up in the spike of the Sars-Cov-2 virus.
It possibly was purposely edited into the Sars-Cov-2 genome, just as HIV genes were edited in, and was not an artifact of accidental and sloppy lab work. Furthermore, CTCCTCGGCGGGCACGTAG is a key part of the spike protein and is present in the key location of the spike protein of the Sars-Cov-2 virus.

Add to this disturbing news, a new paper published in MedRX.com by Timothy Veenstra, Elisha Injeti, Bradley Pauley: “In vitro Characterization of SARS-CoV-2 Protein Translated from the Moderna mRNA-1273 Vaccine.”

The study shows that the mRNA in these genetic vaccines are not degrading rapidly once inside cells and that the Moderna vaccine continues to produce protein up until 12 days after transfection in this in-vitro model, Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of mRNA vaccine technology reported on his Substack.

Remember, natural mRNA degrades usually within 45 minutes and no longer than a few hours. That this synthetic mRNA is not degrading rapidly is extremely worrying. Particularly as we also know that the synthetic mRNA is immunosuppressive.

According to Blaze columnist Daniel Horowitz, all of these stories are the reason why COVID has all but disappeared from headlines.

Between the military data, Israeli survey data, German medical insurance claims, and American life insurance claims, the data is coalescing around a shocking number of injuries that show VAERS reporting was lowballing the degree of injury. Recent reports about the vaccine potentially harming DNA repair and creating bone marrow suppression, and revelations of Moderna having patented a gene sequence several years ago that is now believed to be the driving force behind making the SARS-CoV-2 spike more pathogenic, certainly make any future news cycle focus on COVID less than auspicious for the powers that be.

The truth cannot be suppressed forever, and when a critical mass of American people realize what has been done to them, there will need to be a reckoning.

Ukraine Museums Desperately Working To Preserve Priceless Hunter Biden Paintings

Ukraine Museums Desperately Working To Preserve Priceless Hunter Biden Paintings

KYIV, UKRAINE—As shells have begun exploding in the heart of Kyiv, museums have rushed to protect their most prized, valuable pieces: the original artwork of once-in-a-generation talent Hunter Biden.

"The Louvre may have Van Gogh and the Mona Lisa, but here we have Coke On Coke by Hunter Biden," said museum owner Ivan Rostyslav. "I will never forget when he sold us this piece, he said to me, 'Ivan, I don't know how I got here or where my pants are but can you get me to the airport?' Ha! What an artist he is!"

According to sources, most of the paintings were initially purchased for the Burisma boardroom with the tacit understanding that then-Vice President Joe Biden would look out for Ukraine. Museum owners waged huge bidding wars to acquire the pieces, knowing that beyond the remarkable art, each painting came with the assurance that the United States would have their back.

"We were lucky to get our hands on Hooked By Hookers, it's quite a popular piece," said curator Viktor Dankevych as he took the piece down for safe storage in a bomb shelter. "But more importantly, we know it means that President Biden will take care of Ukraine in our time of need. I hear the planes overhead, the air raid sirens, I do not panic. I know the United States will come to help."

At publishing time, sources say all of the Biden paintings have been sold on eBay to Taiwan.

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January 6 Defendant Being Illegally Detained – Locked up More Than 80 Days With No Indictment

Leslie McAdoo Gordon reporting for RedState 

You don’t see this very often in federal court, but one of the January 6 (J6) Defendants, Lucas Denney, is being held illegally. He was arrested in Texas on December 13, 2021, and brought before a federal magistrate, who ordered him detained without bond on a criminal Complaint. It then took six weeks to transfer him to DC, where he is currently being held. He has not appeared before a federal judge in DC since his arrival, although that will change Monday afternoon as a result of his lawyer seeking his release.

Denney’s case involves two distinct, major screwups. The first is that he was not afforded a Preliminary Hearing, to which he is entitled under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and the Constitution. The second is that he has not been indicted by a grand jury within 30 days of his arrest, as required by the federal Speedy Trial Act. Consequently, Denney’s detention has been unlawful since at least late January 2022.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) alleges that Denney participated in the riot on January 6, 2021, in Washington D.C. at the United States Capitol. It charged Denney with five felonies: assaults, civil disorder, and obstructions of an official proceeding, and with seven trespassing misdemeanors. An arrest warrant was issued for him in December 2021 based on a criminal Complaint sworn out by a law enforcement officer, not on an indictment returned by a grand jury.

Denney was arrested on December 13, 2021, in Texas, where he lives, and taken before a federal magistrate there. According to the docket of his case, he appeared before the federal magistrate on December 14, 2021, for what the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure call an “Initial Appearance.” That is just what it sounds like: it’s the first time a judicial officer sees a person after they are arrested.  Its purpose is to make sure the person has been legally arrested. The Constitution requires that the Initial Appearance be held promptly, generally within 48 hours.

The Preliminary Hearing Defect

Once a person is arrested a number of REQUIRED procedures kick in that are set forth in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure or the Speedy Trial Act. At the Initial Appearance, the magistrate must advise the Defendant of certain things and take certain actions. To make sure people see a magistrate promptly as required by the Constitution, the Rules address WHERE the Initial Appearance has to take place.

If the person is arrested in the federal district where the offense took place (which is where the trial will be), the person must be taken to a magistrate in THAT district. We don’t want the government taking defendants someplace else to appear before a magistrate, because that would create an opportunity for abusive treatment.

But if the person is arrested in a federal district OTHER than where the offense took place, the person must be taken to a magistrate in the district where the arrest was made. This is again to preclude procedural gamesmanship, for example: to keep people from being transported for however long “the system” takes to move them before they actually see a judge.

The only exception to this rule is that the person can be taken to “an adjacent” district instead IF that will be faster or if the trial will be in that adjacent district AND the person can be taken there the same day.

So, to return to Denney’s case: He is charged with J6 offenses, so his trial will be in DC. But, like many J6 Defendants, he was arrested where he lives – Texas – so he was taken upon his arrest before a federal magistrate in the Western District of Texas. So far, so good.

At the Initial Appearance, the Texas magistrate reviewed the papers and set a Detention Hearing for three days later – December 17, 2021 – along with a Removal Hearing. The DOJ wanted Denney detained pending trial, and the Detention Hearing is to ensure that there is a lawful basis for doing so.  “Removal” is the term for transferring a person from one federal district to another, in this case from the Western District of Texas to DC. A Removal Hearing ensures that there is a lawful basis for the transfer.

The Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure that deals with these requirements is, “Rule 5. Initial Appearance.”

On December 17, 2021, the Texas magistrate held the Detention and Removal Hearings. He detained Denney on the usual grounds of dangerousness & flight risk, and he denied Denney bond. He confirmed that the DC criminal Complaint existed and pertained to Denney, so he also ordered Denney transferred to DC.

Those steps take care of most of what a magistrate has to do at an Initial Appearance. But Rule 5(c)(3)(C) also says that the magistrate MUST hold a Preliminary Hearing, which is a different proceeding from a Detention Hearing or a Removal Hearing.

A Preliminary Hearing tests whether the government has probable cause to support the criminal charge against the person in the first place. It is a procedural requirement to prevent the government from arresting and holding people based on insufficient evidence or on no charge at all. It generally applies to all cases where the defendant hasn’t yet been indicted by a grand jury. Rule 5.1 lists the exceptions where a Preliminary hearing is not required, and none of those exceptions applies to Denney.

Rule 5 requires that when a person has an Initial Appearance in a district other than where the offense was allegedly committed, the Preliminary Hearing – if one is required – must also be held in that district – where their Initial Appearance is, NOT in the district where the trial will be. That means that Denny should have had his Preliminary Hearing in Texas, but none was ever scheduled there.

Rule 5.1 also dictates WHEN a Preliminary Hearing must take place – within 14 days of the Initial Appearance. That meant the Preliminary Hearing for Denney had to take place (in Texas) no later than December 29, 2021. The 14-day deadline can be extended under certain circumstances, but the Government didn’t ask for an extension.

The Texas magistrate did not purport to hold a Preliminary Hearing. Indeed, in his Order of Removal & Detention, he says he’s “anticipating” that the Rule 5.1 Preliminary Hearing will be conducted in DC. Why he would think that when the Rules clearly say it should be conducted in Texas is unclear.

The Texas magistrate’s Order also says he’s anticipating the Preliminary Hearing will be held within the required 14 days, but he was apparently none too sure of that because he made a finding of probable cause as to one charge anyway, based on testimony given by the FBI agent at the Detention and Removal Hearing. It appears that the Texas magistrate was concerned Denney would end up being held without any judicial officer making a finding of probable cause within the required 14 days.

The magistrate was wise to be concerned because Denney spent the next 46 days in the federal prison system being “transported” to DC by the Marshal’s Service. On January 31, 2022, federal prosecutors handling the DC cases were notified that Denney had arrived in the DC federal district, after spending six weeks “in transport” from Texas.

Instead of being promptly taken before a federal DC judge, however, or scheduled for a Preliminary Hearing, his case was scheduled on the docket for an “Initial Appearance.” That is absurd, because he had already had his Initial Appearance in Texas, and by January 31, 2022, he had been in federal custody for 50 days.

To make things worse, this “Initial Appearance” was set for March 10th, which would be almost 90 days after his arrest, even though Rule 5 says an Initial Appearance has to be held promptly upon arrest, preferably the same day. Indeed, the Speedy Trial Act says a defendant’s TRIAL has to commence within 100 days of his arrest.

On March 2, Denney’s lawyer filed a motion demanding Denny’s release. He argued that there was a clear violation in Denny’s case of Rule 5.1 – the requirement to conduct a Preliminary Hearing – which meant no judge had ever found probable cause to support the charges. He also pointed out that Denney had not yet been indicted.

This motion triggered an immediate response by the DC federal court. The DC magistrate issued a Minute Order before noon the next day, directing the US Attorney’s Office in DC to respond to the motion by 5 PM that same day (Thursday).

The Government’s response points to the Texas magistrate’s finding of probable cause. They don’t expressly argue that he conducted a Preliminary Hearing under Rule 5.1, (probably because even the magistrate didn’t claim that’s what he was doing), they just mention it. But, they probably will argue at a hearing on the motion that the Texas magistrate’s finding of probable cause satisfied the purpose of a Preliminary Hearing, even if not labeled as such.

Incredibly, however, the Government’s response also argues that because Denney hasn’t had his “Initial Appearance” in DC yet, and since that appearance isn’t scheduled until March 10th, he will get his Preliminary Hearing within 14 days after that. This argument contravenes both the Rules of Criminal Procedure and the Constitution. It is an unbelievable argument for a federal prosecutor to make.

Boiled down, the government argues both that: “He already had his Preliminary Hearing” and “He’s going to get his Preliminary Hearing later this month. Don’t worry about it.” Plus, according to DOJ, Denney gets two “Initial Appearances,” which according to them, conveniently also gives DOJ a do-over on the deadline for conducting a Preliminary Hearing.

Denney’s counsel filed a Reply on Friday morning, insisting that there was no Preliminary Hearing in Texas, which is true because the docket doesn’t show one and the Texas magistrate didn’t call what he did a Preliminary Hearing either. He completely took apart the Government’s arguments. Even on their theory, he points out, since Denney showed up in DC on January 31, it will be 38 days until his “Initial Appearance” on March 10, which Rule 5 says is supposed to happen “without unnecessary delay.”

The DC magistrate, toward the end of the day on Friday, ordered that the Initial Appearance be moved up to the afternoon of Monday, March 7. I suspect the DC magistrate will say at that hearing that the Texas Magistrate’s actions constituted a Preliminary Hearing – in the district where it should have taken place – even if the Texas Magistrate did not call it a Preliminary Hearing or designate it as such on the docket. The Texas magistrate did, in fact, make a probable cause decision. If the DC magistrate concludes there was no Preliminary Hearing in Texas, then he has to decide what to do about that and there are not any easy answers to that question.

The Speedy Trial Act Defect

However, the Government has an even more significant problem in this case, which Denney’s lawyer raised in another motion he filed on Saturday. Under the Speedy Trial Act, 18 USC 3161, the Government must indict anyone that it arrests within 30 days and that deadline has been blatantly violated in Denney’s case.

The sanction for failing to file an indictment within 30 days of arrest is clear. Section 3162 of the code states that the case must be dismissed. The dismissal is mandatory.

Some time periods can be “excluded” (not counted) for purposes of the 30-day requirement. The allowable reasons for that are identified in Section 3161(h) and can include time for “transport” under section (h)(1)(F). But, under that section, any period of time longer than 10 days for transport is “presumed” unreasonable and therefore not excludable. (This is because we don’t want transport to be used punitively or as part of gamesmanship.)

So, even adding 10 days for the allowable transport time, Denney had to be indicted by January 22, 2022, but he wasn’t. (None of the other reasons for excluding time applies in Denney’s case),

Which means that Denney will have been illegally detained for 44 days as of Monday’s hearing date.

Based on the violation of the Speedy Trial Act, Denney’s counsel has demanded that Denney be released and that his case be outright dismissed. So far, the Government has not filed a response to this motion. Late on Sunday, the Chief Judge of the DC federal court issued an order directing a magistrate to prepare a report and make a recommendation to her concerning the Speedy Trial Act violation.

It is overwhelmingly likely that the courts will agree both to release Denney and that his case must be dismissed.

The DC court will have to decide whether to dismiss Denney’s case with prejudice (meaning it cannot be re-filed) or without prejudice (meaning it can be re-filed), which is more likely. There is a multi-factored test that the magistrate has to apply to figure out which kind of dismissal to enter. Denney’s counsel asks the judge to order his release on Monday and not delay that while the magistrate figures out what kind of dismissal to enter. He correctly points out that the kind of dismissal can be decided later as that decision is not a necessary condition for Denney’s release.

To refile the case, the Government would have to re-charge Denney on a new complaint or bring an actual indictment. But, if Denney is charged again, the Speedy Trial Act requires that the time between his original arrest in December & the day the original case was dismissed be counted toward the deadlines for the new case.

For example, if the DC magistrate dismisses the case on Monday, then 84 days of the 100 under the Speedy Trial Act (30 to indict, plus 70 to trial), will already have run, or 74 if the judge excludes 10 days for the transport.

That means that if – really when – Denney gets arrested again on either a new complaint or an indictment, the Government would have only 26 days until it must start his trial, unless time is extended for other, new reasons. It will be difficult to convince a judge that much more time should be excludable under the statute, so the Government will likely delay recharging Denney until they are better prepared to actually try his case.

In terms of pre-trial detention for a new case, since there will have been a judicial finding that Denney was illegally detained for more than 40 days, the courts will tread lightly before detaining him again, particularly since if he gets arrested in Texas again, there will be the transport delay problem again and that could result in a violation of Denney’s right to a speedy trial date, which would require the case to be dismissed (probably for good this time) again. All in all, Denney is probably looking at more favorable pre-trial detention conditions if a new case is filed.

Denney’s individual circumstances aside, this case constitutes an extremely troubling incident.  Transport with the federal criminal system is notoriously slow. While that is a problem even for convicted offenders, it is an outrage for pre-trial detainees who are presumed innocent. The transport system also hinders the formation of attorney-client relationships, which could address problems of this kind.

And Denney’s case shows that apparently no one at DOJ, either at the U.S. Attorneys’ Office in D.C., at Main Justice, or in the U.S. Marshal’s Service, is paying attention to (or better yet tracking) these outside-of-D.C. pre-trial detention cases to ensure that the detainees are receiving all of the due process protections to which they are entitled and that the constitutional and statutory deadlines are met. Since it is the DOJ J6 prosecution team that is ordering arrests (instead of voluntary surrenders) and demanding detentions and transfers (instead of seeking reasonable conditions for pre-trial release), the failure to comply with the Constitution, the criminal code, and the Rules of Criminal Procedure rests entirely at the feet of the DOJ.

The operative principles and rules for these early proceedings in criminal cases are not obscure, complex, or ambiguous. Competent prosecutors have no excuse for not knowing that Rule 5 requires that the Preliminary Hearing take place in the district where the Initial Appearance occurs, that it must be held within 14 days of that Initial Appearance, that there is no such thing as two “Initial Appearances,” and that the Speedy Trial Act requires an indictment to be filed within 30 days of arrest.

The entire episode is an unmitigated disgrace.