I agree with MTG and Rand Paul the same day
Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) held a news conference on the Capitol steps Wednesday featuring 10 Epstein sex-trafficking survivors. After the 10 made their pleas to have Congress require that the Trump administration release the full Epstein Files, Khanna hugged Greene before she spoke. Not a scene I expected to see.
The Washington Post reports:
Lisa Phillips, a victim of Jeffrey Epstein, said she and other women would be compiling their own “list” of abusers within Epstein’s circle, since a “client list” purported to exist has not been published by the government.
“We know the names. Many of us were abused by them,” she said to cheers and applause at Wednesday’s Capitol Hill rally.
But the names are in the government’s files, the survivors insisted. Let the government release them instead.
Reporters kept asking the survivors why they did not there and then simply name names of men to whom Epstein “farmed out” young girls when he was done with them, as well as names of others close to Epstein and convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
Because rich and powerful men would squash them like bugs, Greene made clear. But not her. She’s protected by the “Speech or Debate” clause.
Can you imagine how terrifying it would be to name names like that? These are some of the richest, most powerful people in the world that could sue these women into poverty and homelessness. Yeah, it’s a scary thing to name names, but I will tell you. I’m not afraid to name names, and so if they want to give me a list, I will walk in that Capitol on the House floor, and I’ll say every damn name that abused these women. I can do that for them, and I’d be proud to do it.
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Will she do it? What limits there are on that clause, or what barriers (or threats) might Donald Trump allies throw at Greene? I don’t know. But good on her. Perhaps the threat alone is enough to persuade House Republicans to sign on to the effort to release the files. Only to die in the Senate? Maybe.
If it’s not himself, who is Trump protecting? It’s not a thing he does.
Now the U.S. just murders people?
The Trump 2.0 administration arrests, imprisons, and deports people without due process of law. It arrests opponents as legal harassment in cases grand juries refuse to prosecute. Now it simply murders people (BBC News):
A strike carried out by US forces on a boat in the Caribbean Sea – which the White House says killed 11 drug traffickers – may have violated international human rights and maritime law, legal experts have told BBC Verify.
President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that US forces destroyed a vessel which he said had departed from Venezuela. He said the boat was operated by the Tren de Aragua cartel and was carrying drugs bound for the US.
US defence officials have so far declined to offer details on the strike, footage of which Trump shared on Truth Social, including what legal authority they relied upon to justify it.
BBC Verify reached out to a range of experts in international and maritime law, with several saying that US may have acted illegally in attacking the vessel.
The US is not a signatory to United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, but the US military’s legal advisors have previously said that the US should “act in a manner consistent with its provisions”.
Under the convention, countries agree not to interfere with vessels operating in international waters. There are limited exceptions to this which allow a state to seize a ship, such as a “hot pursuit” where a vessel is chased from a country’s waters into the high seas.
“Force can be used to stop a boat but generally this should be non-lethal measures,” Prof Luke Moffett of Queens University Belfast said.
Under the Trump-Miller-Hegseth administration, the policy is shoot first and let God sort ’em out. The administration’s actions constituted in Moffett’s assessment an “extrajudicial arbitrary killing” and “a fundamental violation of human rights.”
Under Article 2(4) of the UN charter, countries can resort to force when under attack and deploying their military in self-defence. Trump has previously accused the Tren de Aragua cartel of conducting irregular warfare against the US, and the state department has designated the group as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation.
But Prof Michael Becker of Trinity College Dublin told BBC Verify that the US actions “stretches the meaning of the term beyond its breaking point”.
“The fact that US officials describe the individuals killed by the US strike as narco-terrorists does not transform them into lawful military targets,” he said. “The US is not engaged in an armed conflict with Venezuela or the Tren de Aragua criminal organization.”
“Not only does the strike appear to have violated the prohibition on the use of force, it also runs afoul of the right to life under international human rights law.”
On that matter, I also agree with Sen. Rand Paul (R) of Kentucky, another thing I did not see coming on Wednesday.
“[I]f we accuse somebody of a terrible crime, they still get a trial,” Paul told Newsmax. But yesterday, the Trump administration defenestrated that section of the Constitution and international law as well.
Are you prepared to be declared a terrorist (and a legitimate target) for resisting a fascist regime? Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer now with the International Crisis Group, tells The Atlantic, “As Americans, we should be very concerned that the government is out killing people on specious legal grounds, especially when that could be turned inward.”
The world is upside down (and inside out).
Update: Added quotation from Brian Finucane for emphasis.
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