Biden pardons Mark Milley, Anthony Fauci, J6 committee members

Trump did not make such an attempt, and the matter pretty much died out on his part after he was elected. You need to actually read the email trail and not someone’s opinion as to whether Trump had anything to do with what was contained within them. They do not speak to any demand by Trump to investigate. That request came from the House Judicial Committee Chair Goodlatte (not Trump), to which the Assistance AG responded he would review the allegations. The AG then referenced ii in his letter to the US Attorney of Utah for recommendation (i.e. NOT an investigation, but to review and recommend). I see no mention of Trump, not direction, nothing. And again, Trump, other than saying Clinton should have been prosecuted to the people, never actually pursued it. Furthermore, even though, from a professional perspective on my part, Clinton’s action absolutely did warrant a full up investigation and recommendation for prosecution. I spent 27 years in this space dealing with these exact issues and had I done this, or one of the Generals I advised, we’d have gone to jail. So, in my opinion Trump should have pursued it, and I was disappointed in him when he didn’t. This wasn’t just a private server issue, Clinton, allowed classified information to be stored and disseminated from these servers, she withheld official business from the American people, and she destroyed subpoena identified hard drives. Believe me, I wanted to see her held accountable and she represented many of the real-world challenges I had to face with leadership making demands for technological accommodations they we’re not authorized by higher level policy or the law to have.
Now Biden is a different matter. As I have already stated, Trump had nothing to do with the communications by the DOJ and the House Member. Nothing. Furthermore, from your NBC article, Trump stated he intends to “prosecute scores of people he has declared corrupt.” So, I ask you, who has he done this with? Your same article alluded to Mark Zuckerberg being identified as a potential candidate. Did he? No… now people who applauded Zuckerberg’s interference of free speech and the ability for alternate media sources to present their reports say he’s in league with Trump. As for the pardoned, aren’t you the least bit concerned a President would include not just his son, but his whole family in a pre-emptive fashion? This is simply unprecedented, and it doesn’t even sit well with many Democrats and most independents. Trump certainly had family members getting caught up in the court lawfare spree, did he move to pardon them pre-emptively? No. Let’s also not be so naïve as to not think the others who got their pardons are potentially behind some pretty corruptive allegations. Yes, Biden absolutely was trying to avoid having the truth come out.

You ask about Treason (which has been echoed by many GOP members) on Gen Milley’s part and I have to ask you If you were President in negotiation with a foreign nation and your top General contacted his counterpart to tell them he would advise them of an attack or in advance of an attack, what would you do? Gen Milley should have at a minimum been fired. We don’t know for sure the exact quotes to what he said to his Chinese counterparts, but Gen Milley was certainly acting in a partisan manner using indirect statements to the DoD commanders, implying Trump were a madman getting ready to push the button. These statements weren’t aimed at the Commanders so much as it was to the American people, to make them think Trump was going crazy. It was all BS.

Not only did Biden screw the pooch on Afghanistan, but he betrayed all of us who poured our blood and sweat (and the ultimate sacrifice) into that mission. He also betrayed the Afghan people and the families of the Servicemen and women who were affected by this war. This was highly personal to me and a lot of the people I served with out there. It is the worst decision made by this president and the ripple effects are already in motion with more to come. As for Trump, you are correct in that he too was looking at the same plan. Ultimately, he DID listen to the advisors. But for historical perspective, the reason Afghanistan ultimately failed started with the Obama admin when he decided to pull the advisory mission out, leaving ~10% of them behind and effectively ending the build up of a competent and self-sufficient Afghan Air Force. In the end, and any way you slice it, Trump made the right decision, and was posturing to change the original plan to leave the residual force. That would have kept the air assets in place to support the ANA against the Taliban.

So, yes, one of the worst and I don’t need other top “X” sites to tell me otherwise. I’ve stated this is my opinion and I will consistently maintain that perspective. I really don’t care if other people think otherwise. Immensely bad decisions, I don’t even think he was actually in charge, he spent more time sitting on a beach vacationing than any other President, his hours when “on duty” were obviously managed to be minimal, and his final acts through pardons demonstrates to me there is very likely some significant corruption on his part. We still have yet to see more of the ripple effects from his disaster in office too.

As for Trump’s first term, I am in no way trying to suggest he is near the top ten and al of this remains to be seen as he is still President. So, it really is a moot point to cite the opinions of others to me. At least he followed through on several of the issues that concerned me and achieved some measure of success.

Maj Kevin "Mac" McLaughlin -
Re: Trump and Clinton, that's still under investigation/FOIA requests to this day. I think Trump is smart enough to have not created a paper trail beyond his comments in Twitter, and I doubt anything more will be found.
However, based on his public comments, it's reasonable to believe that he probably provided direction in some manner to DoJ on this.
I was aware of the issues with classified on a private server, and classified discussed from a clintonemail.com address. Just trying to keep an already long post a line shorter here and there.

Re: preemptive pardons, no. Given the rhetoric throughout the campaign, even I would have preemptively pardoned relatives in the same situation.
And given the sense of urgency in demanding the FBI hand over the roster and personal info of every FBI agent who investigated the JAN6 riot, I'd say some of these preemptives are completely justified.
For the rest of the names, varying degree of possibility that something will be missed. I think the possibility is very low that Fauci committed any actual crime.

Re: Milley, he was acting on intel that did state China was concerned that an attack was planned. Couple that with a riot in the Capitol building, which suddenly made us look like a third world sh*tshow with first world nukes, who wouldn't be scared? And the SECDEF had the chance to tell him not to make the call when Milley notified him first.
Not the first time a senior general called a counterpart to assuage fears, (ours or theirs).
But it is infrequent enough that we should be genuinely concerned that the Chinese were that genuinely concerned.

Re: Afghanistan, it became personal to me, my whole team and my whole company, when we landed in Kandahar on Xmas Eve, 2001. And we all knew by 2004 or earlier that no amount of time where advisory and support would create a govt and military necessary to counter threats. The concept of govt and nation is alien to their culture. We knew the end would look like this if it was 10, 20 or 30 yrs.
and that is what the CENTCOM CDR and the CJS heard from SF every time they showed up to ask teams over the years.
And the exfil could have been managed much better for our forces, our terps, and countless others deservedly seeking asylum.

So you are echoing speculation or opinion when Trump already completed a 4 year term, where we saw no actions taken to prosecute Hillary. No other significant "political enemies" were ever attacked by Trump's DOJ either. Forgive me as I do not run with the speculation by propagated by the political enemies of Trump. Trump was trying to rally a crowd against the opponents during the election. Is it s good strategy? That's subjective to what you think of dirty politics. I personally am not a fan, as I wanted this one (Hillary) followed through on, but I can't deny he beat the Democrats at their own game (yes, they are absolutely into some of the worst examples of dirty politics). What Trump says he will do when countering opponents and what he will actually do once he's won is something that people who honestly study him (i.e. those who read his book... Which I admittedly only looked at the cliff's notes version), will confirm he is not afraid to get into a street fight with his opponents, but when the fight is done, he can absolutely be gracious to them once they are no longer in the fight (assuming they are willing to reconcile). Just look at several of his opponents on both sides of the political spectrum who have lost to him. Some have even decided to work with him. The others he has essentially ignored unless they present a reoccuring threat to him.

I'm sorry you feel that issuing preemptive pardons to your family is warranted, but in all honesty, one of the reasons I've come to respect Trump even more is because he fought all the bogus cases leveraged against him and refused to quit while maintaining his innocence. This is in turn how I lost even more (as if there was any left) respect for Biden. The man was very obviously corrupt and if one were to switch his name with Trump, the left would be rightfully eviscerating him (as would I). Let's not forget the man lied when he told the American people who would accept the outcome of the courts with regard to his son. Then he not only pardons Hunter, but later adds his family too? I don't point to this because I am hell bent on hurting Biden or the other political figures. I simply want to see justice where there is a clear indicator of crimes having been committed. All Biden did was confirm to most Americans that there was something to the allegations being made. That and he just set a bad precedent for other Presidents to use in the future.

The Jan 6 riot was simply that and nothing more. It should not have happened, those responsible should have been punished in accordance with their crimes (and they were), but somehow the government response went just as overboard as the event itself. Somehow elements within the government enabled this and I don't want the application of justice applied disproportionally based on political leanings. When you look at similar events against federal buildings and the fact that those responsible were barely held accountable, the perception of the federal authorities declines when you look at the political affiliations of each scenario. That said, if there were FBI agents who enabled over the top investigations, allegations, and indictments/punishments against the rioters, they are responsible for that decline and should be removed. No different than when we served in the military and were to openly question Presidential / Congressional authority to conduct military operations for an event we may not agree with, and in turn actively work against the success (or for that matter go far beyond the ROEs for those we agree with but feel the President isn't doing enough). During Trump's 1st term, most of us would cring if he were to try to be aggressive in pushing out his policies, by suggesting the removal of those working against him. Today, I can't blame him for wanting to clean house and I can only hope it is the apolitical folks who remain in place.

Milley is perfectly in his authority to speak with his counterparts in China and to even keep things from deescalating, so long as it is on par with the President's strategy. Not only did it appear that he was not on the same page as the President, but the potentially classified conversations somehow got into the hands of the American people. Milley was playing a dangerous game in some effort to appear less aggressive and to maintain a favorable appearance in the eyes of the American people. This backfired. The Chinese looking at our riot in the Capitol are likely laughing at the fact some of us tried to call it a coup. They very much know what coups look like and this certainly wasn't even close to such a thing. They might be our geopolitical enemy, but they are far from stupid.

As for Afghanistan, I too was there early on at Bagram (early 2002 as it was still in buildup stage), in which I got to observe the state they were in then. I also spent time "deployed" to CENTCOM J5 as well, in between my first and last deployment in country. Fast forward to my advisory days in 2013-14 I saw amazing levels of progress through the years, with the challenges of literacy, corruption, and an older generation of Afghan leaders still hanging on to their control of the nation. The corruption and senior leader mentalities were getting rooted out (slowly I'll admit), and our foresight on the basic educational challenges was unfortunately not addressed until far too late in the game. In the end, we could have maintained the status quo at a minimum, had we kept the residual force in place to continue providing advisory support and air power, with the hopes that in time the Taliban would fade. That effort was hobbled in 2014, shortly after Gen Dunford (ISAF CMR at the time) agreed to and took our recommendations directly to Obama, requesting the next 3-year milestone in training the AAF. Obama ignored the recommendations, pulled the advisory mission out by the end of 2014, and the AAF was effectively rendered useless, aside from some limited ANA Commando insertion, MedEvac and logistical capabilities. They had virtually no combat air operations capabilities, which they depended on from us since day one of our arrival to hold the Taliban at bay. This is all articulated in the after-action reporting by the way. Put simply, you cannot grow an Air Force from nothing, in a couple of decades, without growing the people into it. It required commitment on our part. Commitment which Bush, Obama, and Biden all promised they would provide early on. So, your SF teams may have given the CENTCOM CDR and the CJS one perspective, but I assure you that there were several others. In the end, Biden failed us all here.

he problem with Trump's propensity for "street fights" and with firing up his base with everything they hate, is that the street fights don't really end after the elections, like with every other president, exacerbating the division in the country throughout the administration.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/01/29/how-america-changed-during-donald-trumps-presidency/#fn-24339-2
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/12/08/1-views-of-president-elect-trump-and-his-administration/
By 2019, his misinformation campaign had gone so far that republicans and democarats couldn't even agree on facts
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/10/10/partisan-antipathy-more-intense-more-personal/

And he really knows how to lean into hate to fire up his people:
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/trump-and-racism-what-do-the-data-say/

Yeah, Biden said he would accept the legal outcome for his son and did not.
Shows a lack of character, a problem that voters have been willing to overlook for the sake of their "team" for a few election cycles now.

Seeing a lot of "but Biden did this" in this discussion. I didn't vote for him, and I didn't think he did a good job.

I will say that at least most presidents and candidates are willing to accept the outcome of an election. Even Gore let it go after the last court case was adjudicated.
Trump is going on 5 years now insisting against all evidence that he won 2020.
And he did this so vehemently that we had a violent riot in our Capitol, like some third world cartoon country.

I am sorry you think that the response to 163 counts of using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer was "overboard" reaction.
Some would say that level of violence on federal officers is overboard.
It's certainly unprecedented.
I don't understand why you would think that any amount of investigation to bring those violent criminals to justice would be "over the top".

Do you believe those 147 who were convicted and jailed for attacking federal officers deserved to be pardoned along with those who damaged property or just trespassed?

The Chinese may have been laughing on the outside, but there was real concern about Trump's final days in office:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3151001/china-feared-us-was-trying-provoke-reaction-could-lead-war
and they were concerned our "civil unrest" would spark a new wave of pro-democracy in China:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/24/beijing-capitol-riot-elections-xi-jinping/
which they could probably use.

The ANA got a generation of training and support from us. By 2021, the ANA outnumbered the Taliban by 3 to 1, and were much better armed.
Outside of ANA SOF, there was no amount of time we could have spent there that would not have ended with the conventional ANA soldiers going home when we went home.
The leaders (or warlords and tribal leaders) had no interest in a centralized gov't, ministries, education, services, etc., beyond how they could benefit from pallets of cash.
To that point, the average Afghan has never had an interest in, or even a conceptual understanding of that. Their cultural understanding doesn't go beyond tribes. Hence they had no concept of fighting to defend something beyond their tribe. I don't know if that would change even if we stayed 70+ years like South Korea.