Actor Alec Baldwin could face charges for discharging a prop gun that resulted in the death of a director of photography on the set of his new movie “Rust,” according to legal experts.
But they cautioned that with key facts around the incident still in doubt, there is more to learn to determine who, if anyone, will face criminal charges.
Halyna Hutchins, 42, who was directing photography for the movie, was killed. Director Joel Souza, 48, was injured in the accident and taken to a nearby hospital.
“There are some circumstances where even a prop gun with a blank can be dangerous if it’s shot within close range,” said Neama Rahmani of the personal injury firm West Coast Trial Lawyers, according to USA Today.
“Let’s say it was loaded with a blank, but Baldwin himself was criminally negligent and shot it from close range, even though it wasn’t a live round. Then he could be held liable,” she said.
“Assuming it was just incompetence or a colossal mistake, that rises to the level of criminal negligence, which would be sufficient for a manslaughter prosecution,” Rahmani said.
Rachel Fiset, managing partner of Los Angeles firm Zweiback, Fiset & Coleman, said the issue goes beyond Baldwin.
“Proper compliance with safety issues on the set will be a large, general question that will be asked that may have a huge impact on any potential legal matters that may come from this case,” she said, USA Today reported.
“And then on the worst side of the scale, you could have potential criminal issues that would range from criminal negligence to intentional acts that may have caused this tragedy.”
Juan Rios, a public information officer for the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office, said Friday that investigators are still trying to determine what the gun contained when it was fired.
“That information is one of the particulars that we’re trying to determine at this point — what kind of projectile was in that firearm,” he said, according to USA Today.
Under the New Mexico law, involuntary manslaughter does not require “specific intent” of wanting someone dead, according to The Wrap. Such a charge would be a fourth-degree felony that could put a guilty person in jail for 18 months and a fine of up to $5,000.
But attorneys said nothing is clear-cut at this point.
“The prosecution would have to show that Mr. Baldwin acted with at least a negligent state of mind when he discharged the prop gun,” criminal defense lawyer Robert J. DeGroot said, according to The Wrap.
“There have been instances of accidents involving prop weapons on sets which have led to deaths or other injuries. Such tragic incidents are foreseeable and should lead crew and cast to follow safety protocols to ensure that any prop gun discharge does not lead to harm.”
Personal injury attorney Miguel Custodio said Baldwin, who was producing “Rust,” faces liability on that score as well as for pulling the trigger, The Wrap reported.
“Liability certainly points to Rust Movie Productions and the prop manager,” Custodio said.
“As the actor, Alec Baldwin has little liability because you’re given something and you’re trusting the prop manager to have checked everything out. Baldwin the producer may bear more responsibility, depending on if he is just an investor or has a more active role in the making of the film, which I suspect he does.”
“It’s also clear that somebody failed her [Hutchins] in the most basic way — to check whether a gun was safe — and may be criminally negligent,” Custodio said. “It’s likely they’ll go after Baldwin the actor, Baldwin the producer, the film company and the prop manager. And remember, director Joel Souza also was injured, and many others on set also are traumatized and affected by this.”
Richard Kaplan, a criminal defense attorney, said the facts will determine who faces what charges, according to The Wrap
“There’s a lot of scenarios I can run in my mind,” Kaplan said. “We don’t have an answer yet on why it was pointed at these two people. Was Alec reckless or were the prop people reckless? That’s what is being investigated and looked at.”
He said he is certain of one thing — there will be lawsuits.
“The family will pursue the civil side, but the question is how much does the family pursue the criminal side,” Kaplan said.
Attorney Jamie White said a lawsuit is expected, The Wrap reported.
“If Baldwin or another person was negligent, a civil suit is almost a no-brainer at this point — a very high likelihood,” White said.
“But the criminal side is going to be very fact-sensitive. Only if someone was recklessly negligent would there be criminal consequences. We see criminal negligence charges when people leave kids in hot cars, when they are recklessly driving. It’s too early to know that this will happen to Baldwin, but it’s not unheard of.”
A walk through some of the legendary economist’s most quotable lines.
ew social scientists are able to distill their thoughts into such punchy lines as Thomas Sowell, the great economist whose ideas are celebrated in Jason L. Riley’s inspiring book Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell. Among Sowell’s many quotable remarks:
“I’ve studiously avoided entanglements with colleges for the past 35 years. The most intolerant place you can be these days is the academic campus.”
“Every educational program will always be a ‘success’ as judged by those who run it.”
“There was a knowledge problem that was inherent in that [Soviet] system. In a nutshell, those with the power didn’t have the knowledge, and those with the knowledge didn’t have the power.”
“Much of what are called ‘social problems’ consists of the fact that intellectuals have theories that do not fit the real world. From this they conclude that it is the real world which is wrong and needs changing.”
“There are a lot of assertions and foregone conclusions that are stated over and over again, but repetition is not a substitute for facts.”
“I, of course, started out on the left and believed a lot of this stuff. The one thing that saved me was that I always thought that facts mattered.”
“I made enough enemies to get me in trouble and enough friends to get me out.”
“An awful lot goes into maintaining the image of blacks. You want to improve the reality, not the image.”
“I never thought that just because I’m black, that made me an authority on race matters. . . . Then I started reading what [the specialists] were saying, and so much of it was rubbish. I thought, ‘Good heavens, it’s time for us amateurs to get into this thing.’”
At Harvard, “smug assumptions were too often treated as substitutes for evidence or logic. . . . I resented attempts by some thoughtless Harvardians to assimilate me, based on the assumption that the supreme honor they could bestow was to allow me to become like them.”
Even “at the height of my Marxism, I read William F. Buckley and Edmund Burke, because I’d gotten in school, particularly in a ninth-grade science class, the idea of evidence, the importance of evidence and the need to test evidence.”
“Intellectuals have romanticized cultures that have left people mired in poverty, ignorance, violence, disease and chaos, while trashing cultures that have led the world in prosperity, education, medical advances and law and order. Intellectuals give people who have the handicap of poverty the further handicap of a sense of victimhood.”
“I saw the obstacles to the advancement of blacks as involving more than discrimination by whites.”
“It annoyed me that we seemed to be constantly seeking validation and acceptance by white people — any white people at all, anywhere.”
“The current pleas for special treatment [of blacks] are a symptom of the attitude that needs changing and such treatment would be a big obstacle to the necessary change.”
“People who have been trying for years to tell others that Negroes are basically no different from anybody else should not themselves lose sight of the fact that Negroes are just like everyone else in wanting something for nothing.”
“I sometimes wonder if those of us who are black ought not to consider declaring some sort of moral amnesty for guilty whites, just so they won’t keep on saying and doing damn fool things that create additional problems.”
“Emphasizing teaching appeals to me, but too often ‘teaching’ means student public relations, and is judged by how happy you keep them rather than how much they learn.”
“It is depressing to hear ideas trumpeted as New! when the underlying reasoning involved was common in the 1840s or the 1790s — and discredited by the 1920s.”
“The current militant rhetoric, self-righteousness and lifestyle are painfully old to me. I have seen the same intonations, the same cadence, the same crowd manipulation techniques . . . and I have seen the same hustling Messiahs driving their Cadillacs and getting their pictures in the paper.
“I can remember one of my roommates in college saying that something I did at Harvard rubbed people the wrong way. I said, ‘You can’t please all the people, all the time.’ He said, ‘You’re not pleasing any of the people, any of the time.’”
“The double standard of grades and degrees is an open secret on many campuses, and it is only a matter of time before it is an open secret among employers as well. The market can be ruthless in devaluing degrees that do not mean what they say. It should be apparent to anyone not blinded by his own nobility that it also devalues the student in his own eyes.”
“Like many other things, black studies can be good as a principle and disastrous as a fetish. It cannot take the place of fundamental intellectual skills or excuse a copping-out from competition with white students.”
“Have been reading James Baldwin lately, and frankly I cannot see what all the shouting is about. It reminds me of a kid I knew in junior high school, who said a few bright things and was black, and therefore was a genius.”
“[James] Baldwin can write with skill and certain poetic insights, but his talents do not include sustained analytical reasoning. He is, in short, well endowed in those areas where there is an oversupply already, and is badly lacking in the things that are needed to make a dent in the race problem. Baldwin gives emotional release to those who feel as he does, but it is hard to imagine that he will change anybody’s mind.”
“One of the curious facts about the classical economists is that most of them were members of minority groups . . . whatever their varying personal fortunes might be, these men were never full-fledged members of the establishment.”
“Having written textbooks on introductory economics — one full of charts and graphs, and the other with neither — I know from experience that the second way is a lot harder to write.”
“The most basic question is not what is best but who shall decide what is best.”
“An intellectual is rewarded not so much for reaching the truth as for demonstrating his own mental ability.”
“The characteristics of the intellectual vision are strikingly similar to the characteristics of totalitarian ideology.”
“More justice for all is a contradiction in terms . . . ‘more’ justice in such a world means more forcible imposition of one particular brand of justice — i.e., less freedom. Perfect justice in this context means perfect tyranny.”
“The reach of national political power into every nook and cranny has proceeded with campaigns for greater ‘social justice.’”
“It’s not up to Machiavelli or Plato or anybody in between to be able to impose their superior wisdom on others. Because the systemic actions in a marketplace make their interventions in many cases superfluous and in other cases positively harmful.”
“I have a lot more confidence in what black people can do, if given the opportunity, than some of the other people seem to have. They seem to think that black people must either be led by the hand or else be handed something directly by the government.”
“The great achievement of the civil rights organizations has been getting the government off the backs of blacks . . . when they tried to get government to play a positive role, so-called, that’s where they’ve not only failed but where they’ve had counterproductive results.”
“What the welfare system and other kinds of government programs are doing is paying people to fail. Insofar as they fail, they receive the money. Insofar as they succeed, even to a moderate extent, the money is taken away.”
“I haven’t been able to find a single country in the world where the policies being advocated for blacks in the United States have lifted any people out of poverty.”
“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
“That Jews earn far higher incomes than Hispanics in the United States might be taken as evidence that anti-Hispanic bias is stronger than anti-Semitism — if one followed the logic of the civil rights vision. But this explanation is considerably weakened by the greater prosperity of Jews than Hispanics in Hispanic countries.”
The “historic significance of the civil rights era was that it completed the American Revolution by making it apply to all people.”
“For many, ‘discrimination’ and ‘racism’ are not partial truths but whole truths, not just things to oppose but explanations to cling to, like a security blanket.”
“Affirmative action calls into question the competency of all blacks by trying to help some blacks.”
“Having been forced by birth to be on the receiving end of discrimination for many years, I cannot find the cleverness to justify discrimination now . . . if I now reduce this issue to a pragmatic question of whose ox is being gored, then what right did I have to be indignant before?”
“When Bill Allen was chairman at U.C.L.A. he violently refused to hire anyone on the basis of ethnic representation — and thereby made it possible for me to come there a year later with my head held up.”
“The moral regeneration of white people might be an interesting project, but I am not sure we have quite that much time to spare.”
“I remember thinking, I hope that in 20 years I won’t have to be one the people out there saying all these things, getting yelled at and screamed at, et cetera, because there will be a bunch of new people and, hopefully, it’ll be more mainstream. That has not happened.”
“Self-respect is the most important thing. Without it, the world’s adulation rings hollow. And with it, even venomous attacks are like water off a duck’s back.”
A US religious organization whose 17 members were kidnapped in Haiti asked supporters on Friday to pray and share stories with the victims’ families of how their faith helped them through difficult times as efforts to recover them entered a sixth day.
Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries issued the statement a day after a video was released showing the leader of the 400 Mawozo gang threatening to kill those abducted if his demands are not met. Haitian officials have said the gang is seeking a $1 million ransom per person, although they said it wasn’t clear if that includes the five children in the group, the youngest being 8 months old.
“You may wonder why our workers chose to live in a difficult and dangerous context, despite the apparent risks,” the organization said. “Before leaving for Haiti, our workers who are now being held hostage expressed a desire to faithfully serve God in Haiti.”
The FBI is helping Haitian authorities recover the 16 Americans and one Canadian. A local human rights group said their Haitian driver also was kidnapped.
“Pray that their commitment to God could become even stronger during this difficult experience,” Christian Aid Ministries said.
The video posted on social media shows 400 Mawozo leader Wilson Joseph dressed in a blue suit, carrying a blue hat and wearing a large cross around his neck.
“I swear by thunder that if I don’t get what I’m asking for, I will put a bullet in the heads of these Americans,” he said in the video.
He also threatened Prime Minister Ariel Henry and Haiti’s national police chief as he spoke in front of the open coffins that apparently held several members of his gang who were recently killed.
“You guys make me cry. I cry water. But I’m going to make you guys cry blood,” he said.
An aerial view of Christian Aid Ministries headquarters in Titanyen, Haiti, on Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021.
At the White House on Friday, US press secretary Jen Psaki sidestepped questions about whether the Biden administration would look to halt deportations of Haitians to their home country or consider adding a US military presence on the ground in response to the missionaries’ kidnappings.
“We are working around the clock to bring these people home,” she said. “They are US citizens, and there has been targeting over the course of the last few years of US citizens in Haiti and other countries too … for kidnapping for ransom. That is one of the reasons that the State Department issued the warning they did in August about the risk of kidnapping for ransom.”
Psaki spoke a day after a couple hundred protestors shut down one neighborhood in Haiti’s capital to decry the country’s deepening insecurity and lack of fuel blamed on gangs, with some demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
The streets of Port-au-Prince were largely quiet and empty on Friday, although hundreds of supporters of Jimmy Cherizier, leader of “G9 Family and Allies,” a federation of nine gangs, marched through the seaside slum of Cité Soleil.
“We are not involved in kidnapping. We will never be involved in kidnapping,” Cherizier, known as Barbecue, claimed during a speech to supporters.
As they marched, the supporters sang and chanted that G9 is not involved in kidnappings. Some of them were carrying high caliber automatic weapons.
“This is the way they are running the country,” Cherizier, who is implicated in several massacres, said as he pointed to trash lining the streets with his assault weapon.
Amid the worsening insecurity, the prime minister’s office announced late Thursday that Léon Charles had resigned as head of Haiti’s National Police and was replaced by Frantz Elbé. The newspaper Le Nouvelliste said Elbé was director of the police departments of the South East and Nippes and previously served as general security coordinator at the National Palace when Jocelerme Privert was provisional president.
“We would like for public peace to be restored, that we return to normal life and that we regain our way to democracy,” Henry said.
Haitians protest carrying a banner with a message that reads in Creole: “No to kidnappings, no to violence against women ! Long live Christian Aid Ministries,” demanding the release of kidnapped missionaries, in Titanyen, north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021.
Weston Showalter, spokesman for the religious group, has said the families of those kidnapped are from Amish, Mennonite, and other conservative Anabaptist communities in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Ontario, Canada. He read a letter from the families, who weren’t identified by name, in which they said, “God has given our loved ones the unique opportunity to live out our Lord’s command to love your enemies.”
The group invited people to join them in prayer for the kidnappers as well as those kidnapped and expressed gratitude for help from “people that are knowledgeable and experienced in dealing with” such situations.
“Pray for these families,” Showalter said. “They are in a difficult spot.”
The organization later issued a statement saying it would not comment on the video “until those directly involved in obtaining the release of the hostages have determined that comments will not jeopardize the safety and well-being of our staff and family members.”
The gang leader’s death threat added to the already intense concern in and around Holmes County, Ohio, where Christian Aid Ministries is based and which has one of the nation’s largest concentrations of Amish, conservative Mennonite, and related groups. Many members of those groups have supported the organization through donations or by volunteering at its warehouse.
“These kinds of things erase some of the boundaries that exist within our circles,” said Marcus Yoder, executive director of the Amish and Mennonite Heritage Center in Millersburg.
“Many people in the community feel helpless, but they also realize the power of prayer and the power of our historic theology,” he said, including the Anabaptist belief in nonresistance to violence.
The same day that the missionaries were kidnapped, a gang also abducted a Haiti university professor, according to a statement that Haiti’s ombudsman-like Office of Citizen Protection issued on Tuesday. It also noted that a Haitian pastor abducted earlier this month has not been released despite a ransom being paid.
“The criminals … operate with complete impunity, attacking all members of society,” the organization said.
UNICEF said Thursday that 71 women and 30 children have been kidnapped so far this year — surpassing the 59 women and 37 children abducted in all of last year. “They represent one third of the 455 kidnappings reported this year,” the agency said.
“Nowhere is safe for children in Haiti anymore,” Jean Gough, UNICEF regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, said in a statement. “Whether on their way to school, at home or even at church, girls and boys are at risk of being kidnapped anywhere, at any time of the day or night.”
Kidnappers in Haiti usually demand “an exorbitant sum of money” as ransom and “quote unreasonably high amounts, knowing that the family of the hostage will negotiate down,” Dieumeme Noelliste, professor of theological ethics at Denver Seminary, told CT, citing local sources. “Ransoms are normally paid.”
He said while hostages have lost their lives in past kidnappings, in recent incidents gangs “seem to elect not to harm their victims, preferring to wait until a settlement is reached with the hostage’s family and friends.”
Noelliste, who recently advised CT on how Haitian Christians were impacted by the recent earthquake and assassination, has not heard of a “slowdown in missionary activity and presence in Haiti” following the dual crises. Meanwhile, he said, “Haiti has been reeling under this gang violence and the kidnapping problem for months now.
“They have posed violent acts and mayhem even to churches all over the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. Just a couple of weeks ago, they attacked the iconic first Baptist Church of Port-au-Prince which is located a stone’s throw from the presidential palace, killing one of its deacons and taking his wife hostage,” he told CT. “I serve on the board of one of the leading seminaries in Haiti. The gangs have forced the school to flee its 70-year-old campus. They have been occupying it for months.
“But none of this made the news here [in the US]. This week’s attack makes the news because it is perpetrated against US citizens,” he said. “My hope is that this incident will result in the tackling of a problem that has caused so much suffering to the already stressed Haitian people.”
“The kidnapping of 17 Christian volunteers is a high-profile story,” Edner Jeanty, executive director of the Barnabas Christian Leadership Center, told CT. “It is unfortunate that it is also presented as the kidnapping of American citizens, as if American Christian lives mattered more than lives of Haitian Christians or the life of any human being created in the image of God.”
Noelliste also noted the lack of a “prophetic voice” in Haiti.
“The church, by and large, thought that as long as it had the ‘freedom’ to preach a truncated gospel, it could remain quiet from the political domain,” he told CT. “Yes, it did a lot of work in social services, and this did much good. But the so-called apolitical stance allowed injustice and corruption to permeate the structures, the institutions, and the social systems of the country unchecked.
“Now not even what the church thought it had under wrap—the freedom to operate unrestrained in the spiritual domain—is guaranteed. Christians are afraid to go to church because they fear for their lives.”
Associated Press writers Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Aamer Madhani in Washington, D.C., Kantele Franko in Columbus, Ohio, and Peter Smith in Pittsburgh contributed to this report.
Ben Shapiro, the founding editor of The Daily Wire, announced Friday the conservative media outlet has hired former ESPN reporter Allison Williams after she left the network over its parent company’s vaccination mandate.
Williams, a college basketball and football reporter, left ESPN after she was sidelined in September for failing to comply with a rule put in place by The Walt Disney Company requiring all cast members to be inoculated against COVID-19.
In a statement of her own, Williams said she is “thrilled and honored” to join The Daily Wire.
“I am proud to be a part of a company that fights for our rights and I cannot wait to bring agenda-free sports reporting to The Daily Wire’s members and millions of followers,” she said. “Leaving ESPN was one of the most difficult decisions of my career, but it was the right thing to do. I respect people who choose to get the COVID-19 vaccine, but it was not the appropriate medical decision for me at this time. No one should be forced to choose between their livelihood and the freedom to make their own health care choices — it is simply un-American.”
Williams tweeted Friday afternoon she is “beyond excited” to start her new gig.
When one door closes another opens. Beyond excited to collaborate with the Daily Wire to expose the side of these mandates in sports that isn’t being told https://t.co/xshCCUq3ru
The ex-ESPN reporter is forgoing the vaccination after consulting her doctor and a fertility specialist. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it should be noted, has stated all adults — including women trying to become pregnant — should take the shots.
“Throughout our family planning with our doctor, as well as a fertility specialist, I had decided not to receive the COVID-19 vaccine at this time while my husband and I try for our second child,” Williams previously explained. “This was a deeply difficult decision to make and it’s not something I take lightly. I understand vaccines have been essential in the effort to end this pandemic; however, taking the vaccine at this time is not in my best interest.”
Williams, who has been with ESPN since March 2011, said last week she was denied her request for accommodation by the sports network and The Walt Disney Company and “will be separated from the company.”
“I also want people to know who support these mandates that I fight for you,” she explained. “Because if this is the direction we take our country, there will come a time when the government or corporations mandate you to get something that does not align with your values. Power given is seldom returned. And when that day comes, I want you to at least know that we fought, and we tried.”
Several social media users have praised The Daily Wire for hiring Williams.
“Great to see this,” replied journalist Rav Arora. “Creating new opportunities and building new bridges is the only path forward when our institutions are in decline and failing to protect and serve the people.”
Writer Samuel Sey, known for his criticism of critical race theory, wrote, “You guys weren’t kidding when you said you’re committed to changing the culture. Incredible stuff. The future looks bright at The Daily Wire.”
Traders temporarily paused trading in the stock of SPAC business Digital World Acquisition Corp. on Thursday after its price surged on abnormally large trading volume following reports of a merger that would establish former President Donald Trump’s proposed social media platform.
Digital World Acquisition was the most actively traded stock on the Fidelity platform on Thursday, and it was also the most actively traded stock on the consolidated tape of New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq listings, according to the Fidelity platform.
On Fidelity’s platform, buy orders for $DWAC — a so-called special purpose acquisition company that was formed to generate cash in the public markets in order to acquire private companies — exceeded sell orders by a factor of nearly three to one.
According to FactSet, more than 210 million shares of $DWAC had already changed hands by the time the trading day began just two hours earlier.
Compared to this, SPY, the exchange-traded fund that tracks the S&P 500, had only transacted approximately 12 million shares around the same time period.
At its session high, the company’s stock price had risen over 190% percent to over $29 per share.
In a press release Wednesday night, Trump’s new company Trump Media & Technology Group said it and DWAC “have entered into a definitive merger agreement, providing for a business combination that will result in Trump Media & Technology Group becoming a publicly listed company, subject to regulatory and stockholder approval.”
The president also announced the launch of the “TRUTH Social” network, which he claims would “stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech.”
Since early this year, Trump has been barred from using the social media platforms Twitter and Facebook.
Donald Trump had been a compulsive Twitter user before the ban, sending out many tweets each day during his administration, and had been barred from doing so. The restriction has made it difficult for President Donald Trump.
The president’s company stated in a press statement issued Wednesday night that its “mission is to create a rival to the liberal media consortium and fight back against the “Big Tech” companies of Silicon Valley, which have used their unilateral power to silence opposing voices in America.”
President Donald Trump’s re-election effort against Vice President Joe Biden ended in defeat in late 2020, prompting the formation of Digital World Acquisition.
Following the close of trading Thursday, the ticker DWAC was among the top 10 most mentioned stocks on Reddit’s WallStreetBets chatroom, surpassing even the mentions of the meme stock GameStop, according to alternative research source Quiver Quantitative.
That could be a clue that individual investors who were engaged on social media platforms were a driving force behind the surge in the SPAC stock price.
A press release issued Wednesday stated that the proposed merger values Trump Media & Technology Group “at an initial enterprise value of $875 million, with a potential additional earnout of $825 million in additional shares (at the valuation they are granted), for a cumulative valuation of up to $1.7 billion, depending on how the stock price performs after the business combination.”
“Trump Media & Technology Group’s growth plans initially will be funded by DWAC’s cash in trust of $293 Million (assuming no redemptions),” according to the release.
Trump’s new firm does not have any officials, employees, or operations, according to a corporate summary published by Trump.
As a substitute, the 22-page slide show has various visuals demonstrating how many followers Trump had on Twitter before he was suspended, as well as claims that the new company will compete with both Disney+ and Netflix, among others.
According to the news release, Patrick Orlando, CEO of DWAC, stated, “Digital World was formed to create public shareholder value and we believe that TMTG is one of the most promising business combination partners to fulfill that purpose.”
“Given the total addressable market and President Trump’s large following, we believe the TMTG opportunity has the potential to create significant shareholder value,” Orlando said.
According to the press release, “TMTG intends to launch a subscription video on demand service” called TMTG+.
“TMTG+ will feature ‘non-woke’ entertainment programming, news, podcasts, and more,” the release said.
The indictment of Hillary Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann for allegedly lying to the FBI sheds new light on the pivotal role of Democratic operatives in the Russiagate affair. The emerging picture shows Sussmann and his Perkins Coie colleague Marc Elias, the chief counsel for Clinton’s 2016 campaign, proceeding on parallel, coordinated tracks to solicit and spread disinformation tying Donald Trump to the Kremlin.
In a detailed charging document last month, Special Counsel John Durham accused Sussmann of concealing his work for the Clinton campaign while trying to sell the FBI on the false claim of a secret Trump backchannel to Russia’s Alfa Bank.
But Sussmann’s alleged false statement to the FBI in September 2016 wasn’t all. Just months before, he helped generate an even more consequential Russia allegation that he also brought to the FBI. In April of that year, Sussmann hired CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that publicly triggered the Russiagate saga by lodging the still unproven claim that Russia was behind the hack of Democratic National Committee emails released by WikiLeaks.
At the time, CrowdStrike was not the only Clinton campaign contractor focusing on Russia. Just days before Sussmann hired CrowdStrike in April, his partner Elias retained the opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump and the Kremlin.
These two Clinton campaign contractors, working directly for two Clinton campaign attorneys, would go on to play highly consequential roles in the ensuing multi-year Russia investigation.
Working secretly for the Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS planted Trump-Russia conspiracy theories in the FBI and US media via its subcontractor, former British spy Christopher Steele. The FBI used the Fusion GPS’s now debunked “Steele dossier” for investigative leads and multiple surveillance applications putatively targeting Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.
CrowdStrike, reporting to Sussmann, also proved critical to the FBI’s work. Rather than examine the DNC servers for itself, the FBI relied on CrowdStrike’s forensics as mediated by Sussmann.
The FBI’s odd relationship with the two Democratic Party contractors gave Sussmann and Elias unprecedented influence over a high-stakes national security scandal that upended U.S. politics and ensnared their political opponents. By hiring CrowdStrike and Fusion GPS, the Perkins Coie lawyers helped define the Trump-Russia narrative and impact the flow of information to the highest reaches of U.S. intelligence agencies.
The established Trump-Russia timeline and the public record, including overlooked sworn testimony, congressional and Justice Department reports, as well as news accounts from the principal recipients of government leaks in the affair, the Washington Post and the New York Times, help to fill in the picture.
‘We Need to Tell the American Public’
In late April 20216, after being informed by Graham Wilson, a Perkins Coie colleague, that the DNC server had been breached, Michael Sussmann immediately turned to CrowdStrike. As Sussmann recalled in December 2017 testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the cyber firm was hired based on his “recommendation.”
Although it is widely believed that CrowdStrike worked for the DNC, the firm in fact was retained by Sussmann and his Clinton campaign law firm. As CrowdStrike CEO Shawn Henry told the House committee, his contract was not with the DNC, but instead “with Michael Sussmann from Perkins Coie.”
And it was Sussmann who controlled what the FBI was allowed to see. After bringing CrowdStrike on board, Sussmann pushed aggressively to publicize the firm’s conclusion that Russian government hackers had attacked the DNC server, according to a December 2016 account in the New York Times.
“Within a day, CrowdStrike confirmed that the intrusion had originated in Russia,” the Times reported, citing Sussmann’s recollection. Sussmann and DNC executives had their first formal meeting with senior FBI officials in June 2016, where they encouraged the bureau to publicly endorse CrowdStrike’s findings:
Among the early requests at that meeting, according to participants: that the federal government make a quick “attribution” formally blaming actors with ties to Russian government for the attack to make clear that it was not routine hacking but foreign espionage.
“You have a presidential election underway here and you know that the Russians have hacked into the D.N.C.,” Mr. Sussmann said, recalling the message to the F.B.I. “We need to tell the American public that. And soon.”
But the FBI was not ready to point the finger at Russia. As the Senate Intelligence Committee later reported, “CrowdStrike still had not provided the FBI with forensic images nor an unredacted copy of their [CrowdStrike’s] report.”
Instead of waiting for the FBI, the DNC went public with the Russian hacking allegation on its own. On June 14, 2016, the Washington Post broke the news that CrowdStrike was accusing Russian hackers of infiltrating the DNC’s computer network and stealing data. Sussmann and Henry were quoted as sources. According to the Times’ account, the DNC approached the Post “on Mr. Sussmann’s advice.”
The Washington Post’s June 2016 story, generated by Sussmann, was the opening public salvo in the Russiagate saga.
But it was not until nearly four years later that the public learned that CrowdStrike was not as confident about the Russian hacking allegation that it had publicly lodged. In December 2017 testimony that was declassified only in May 2020, Henry admitted that his firm was akin to a bank examiner who believes the vault has been robbed – but has no proof of how. CrowdStrike, Henry disclosed, “did not have concrete evidence” that alleged Russian hackers removed any data from the DNC servers.
“There’s circumstantial evidence, but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated,” Henry told the House Intelligence Committee. “There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in this case it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left.”
Read in retrospect, public statements from U.S. intelligence officials indicate that they knew of this crucial gap early on, and used qualified language to gloss it over.
A joint FBI-DHS report in December 2016 – the first time the US government attempted to present evidence that Russia hacked the DNC – describes the alleged Russian hacking effort as “likely leading to the exfiltration of information” from Democratic Party networks. (Emphasis added.)
The report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller of April 2019, which found no Trump-Russia collusion, likewise stated that Russian intelligence “appears to have compressed and exfiltrated over 70 gigabytes of data” and “appear to have stolen thousands of emails and attachments” from Democratic Party servers. (Emphasis added.)
These qualifiers – “likely” and “appear” – signaled that U.S. intelligence officials lacked concrete evidence for their Russian hacking claims, a major evidentiary hole confirmed by Henry’s buried testimony.
CrowdStrike’s admission that it lacked evidence of exfiltration was not its first such embarrassment. Just months after it accused Russia of hacking the DNC in June 2016, CrowdStrike was forced to retract a similar accusation that Russia had hacked the Ukrainian military. The firm’s debunked Ukrainian allegation was based on it claiming to have identified the same malware in Ukraine that it had found inside the DNC server.
Conflicting Accounts on DNC Server Access
The FBI relied on CrowdStrike’s forensics of the DNC servers, but both sides have given conflicting accounts as to why. The FBI claims that the DNC denied it direct access to its computer network, while the DNC claims that the FBI never sought such access. Once again, Sussmann was in the middle of this, and his sworn testimony is at odds with other accounts.
In their December 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, both Sussmann and CrowdStrike’s Henry claimed that the FBI did not try to conduct its own independent investigation of the DNC servers.
“I recall offering, or asking or offering to the FBI to come on premises, and they were not interested in coming on premises at the time,” Sussmann said. Instead, he recalled, “we told them they could have access to everything that CrowdStrike was developing in the course of its investigation.” Asked directly if the FBI sought access to the DNC servers, Sussmann replied: “No, they did not.” He then added: “Excuse me, not to my knowledge.”
Henry also told the committee that he was “not aware” of the FBI ever asking for access to the server or being denied it.
In 2017 congressional testimony, however, then-FBI Director James Comey recalled that the FBI made “multiple requests at different levels,” to access the DNC servers, but was denied. Asked why FBI access was rejected, Comey replied: “I don’t know for sure.” According to Comey, the FBI would have preferred direct access to the server, but “ultimately it was agreed to… [CrowdStrike] would share with us what they saw.”
And while Sussmann testified that Perkins Coie offered the FBI “access to everything that CrowdStrike was developing,” FBI officials and federal prosecutors tell a different story.
According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, CrowdStrike delivered a draft report to the FBI on Aug. 31, 2016 that an unidentified FBI official described as “heavily redacted.” James Trainor, then-assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, told the committee that he was “frustrated” with the CrowdStrike report and “doubted its completeness” because “outside counsel” – i.e. Sussmann – “had reviewed it.”
According to Trainor, the DNC’s cooperation was “moderate” overall and “slow and laborious in many respects.” Trainor singled out the fact that Perkins Coie – and specifically, Sussmann – “scrubbed” the CrowdStrike information before it was delivered to the FBI, resulting in a “stripped-down version” that was “not optimal.”
In court filings during the prosecution of Trump associate Roger Stone, the Justice Department revealed that Sussmann, as the DNC’s attorney, submitted three CrowdStrike reports to the FBI in draft, redacted form. According to prosecutor Jessie Liu, the government “does not possess” CrowdStrike’s unredacted reports.
It instead relied on Sussmann’s assurances “that the redacted material concerned steps taken to remediate the attack and to harden the DNC and DCCC systems against future attack,” and that “no redacted information concerned the attribution of the attack to Russian actors.”
In short, the FBI failed to conduct its own examination of the DNC server, and instead relied on CrowdStrike’s forensics. It also allowed Sussmann – now indicted for lying as part of an effort to spread the Russiagate conspiracy theory – to decide what it could and could not see in CrowdStrike’s reports on Russian hacking. The government also took Sussmann’s word that the redacted information did not concern “the attribution of the attack to Russian actors.”
CrowdStrike’s reports on the DNC server breach have never been publicly released. RealClearInvestigations has sought to obtain them under the Freedom of Information Act, but that request remains pending.
One source, who was able to review some of the redacted CrowdStrike reports and requested anonymity because this person is not authorized to publicly discuss them, said that they were unconvincing. “My impression was that CrowdStrike was trying very, very hard to make a case that this was Russia,” the source told RCI. “Their case, to me, was weak.”
Although Special Counsel Durham has recently subpoenaed Perkins Coie for documents, there are no indications that CrowdStrike’s work for the firm is a focus of his inquiry. A CrowdStrike spokesperson told RealClearInvestigations that the company has not heard from Durham’s office.
In response to questions about CrowdStrike, an attorney for Sussmann told RealClearInvestigations: “Mr. Sussmann is not answering questions at this time.”
Henry Struggles, Perkins Coie Intervenes
In addition to revealing a major evidentiary gap regarding alleged Russian hacking, Henry’s December 2017 testimony revealed that Sussmann’s law firm exerted significant influence over the flow of information in CrowdStrike’s handling of it.
Joining Henry at the deposition was Sussmann’s Perkins Coie partner, Graham Wilson, who represented the DNC, and David Lashway, who represented CrowdStrike.
Henry’s acknowledgment that CrowdStrike did not have “concrete evidence” of exfiltration came only after he was interrupted and prodded by his attorneys to correct an initial answer. After claiming that he knew when Russian hackers exfiltrated data from the DNC, Henry offered a sharp correction: “Counsel just reminded me that, as it relates to the DNC, we have indicators that data was exfiltrated. We do not have concrete evidence that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated.”
In another exchange, Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah pressed Henry to explain why the FBI relied on CrowdStrike. “I don’t understand why the FBI wouldn’t lead or at least have some role in investigating the evidence,” Stewart said. “…Could they [the FBI] conduct their own investigation in a thorough fashion without access to the actual hardware?”
Henry struggled to respond to Stewart’s queries, before finally answering: “You’re asking me to speculate. I don’t know the answer.”
At this point, Stewart noted that Henry had been actively consulting with his Perkins Coie attorney. “By the way, you need to pay him [Henry’s attorney] well, because he’s obviously serving you well today as you guys have your conversations back and forth together,” Stewart quipped.
Shortly after that exchange, the attorney present for CrowdStrike, Lashway, stressed that Henry’s testimony was subject to Perkins Coie’s discretion. Henry was discussing “work that was performed at the behest of counsel, Perkins Coie, Mr. Sussmann’s law firm,” Lashway said. Accordingly, he added, “we would turn to Perkins Coie, as counsel to the DNC, to ensure that Mr. Henry can actually answer some of these questions.”
An ‘Extraordinary Coincidence’
The CrowdStrike-Perkins Coie contract, signed in early May 2016, ensured that Sussmann and his firm would oversee the cyber firm’s work product, and subject it to the secrecy of attorney-client privilege.
The Perkins Coie-CrowdStrike contract is similar to the arrangement between the firm and another contractor pivotal to the Trump-Russia investigation, Fusion GPS. In their 2019 book, Fusion GPS founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch wrote that Sussmann’s colleague Elias “wanted it that way for legal reasons: If Fusion’s communications were with a lawyer, they could be considered privileged and kept confidential.”
After being hired in the same month of April, the two firms also lodged their respective Russia-related allegations within days of each other two months later in June. Just six days after CrowdStrike went public with the allegation that Russia had hacked the DNC on June 14, Christopher Steele produced the first report in what come to be known as the Steele dossier.
Over the ensuing months, the two firms and their Democratic clients actively spread their claims to the FBI and media. Steele and Fusion GPS, backed by their Perkins Coie client Elias, shared the fabricated dossier claims with eager FBI agents and credulous journalists, all while hiding that the Clinton campaign and DNC were footing the bill.
After going public with its Russian hacking allegation in June, CrowdStrike had contact with the FBI “over a hundred times in the course of many months,” CEO Henry recalled. This included sharing with the FBI its redacted reports, and providing it with “a couple of actual digital images” of DNC hard drives, out of a total number of “in excess of 10, I think,” Henry testified.
When Wikileaks released stolen DNC emails on the eve of the Democratic convention in July, senior Clinton campaign officials doggedly promoted CrowdStrike’s claim that Russia had hacked them.
In congressional testimony, Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson said that it was an “extraordinary coincidence” that the Russian hacking allegation (by fellow Clinton/Perkins Coie contractor CrowdStrike) overlapped with his firm’s Trump-Russia collusion hunt (while working for Clinton/Perkins Coie).
Coincidence is one possibility. Another is that the roles of Sussman and Elias behind CrowdStrike and Fusion GPS’s highly consequential claims about Russia and the 2016 election could be pillars of the same deception.
Whatever additional scrutiny they may face, it will no longer be as partners at Perkins Coie. Elias, who was also the Democrats’ leading election law attorney opposing Trump challenges to the 2020 vote, resigned in August to launch a new firm, taking 13 colleagues with him. Upon his indictment by Durham three weeks later, Sussmann stepped down as well to focus, he said, on his legal defense.
Almost 60 years will have passed by time the information is released, unless the White House delays it further
The Biden White House has again delayed the release of long-classified documents related to the assassination of 35th President John F. Kennedy.
The push to release the files began during the Trump administration, when President Donald Trump released thousands of previously secret files related to the assassination. At the time, the White House claimed that the national archivist would need further time to complete a review to release additional documents. This review was then apparently stalled by the pandemic, and now Joe Biden has stalled the release further.
According to CBS News, the Biden regime is now saying that the national archivist still needs more time, and a statement attributed to Joe Biden decrees that the documents “shall be withheld from full public disclosure” until at least December 15 of next year.
White House covering up JFK documents in a Friday night news dump sounds about right https://t.co/Z1pd5z0faS
This will be just shy of 60 years, the majority of an average American lifespan, since the iconic president was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
Noting that Congress first moved to make the documents related to Kennedy’s assassination public as far back as 1992, the statement attributed to Biden then notes that “The Act permits the continued postponement” of the files so long as it will “protect against an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”
Naturally, the Biden regime did not elaborate on what danger the information contained on files from more than half a century ago poses to the United States. Instead, the White House statement declares, the complete documents will be withheld until “late 2022.”
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on Friday, November 22. Many have theorized that the official narrative regarding the 35th President’s assassination is false.
In fact, a 2017 survey revealed that the majority of Americans specifically take issue with the claim that the shot that ended President Kennedy’s life was delivered by Lee Harvey Oswald, a single radicalized communist shooter who lived in the Soviet Union for a time.
According to a FiveThirtyEight-SurveyMonkey poll conducted in 2017, the majority of Americans – 61% – believe that more people than Oswald “were involved in a conspiracy” to assassinated President Kennedy. Only a third of Americans believe the government-approved narrative that Oswald assassinated the 35th President without outside help.
13-year-old Maddie de Garay volunteered for the Pfizer vaccine clinical trials. According to her parents, she volunteered to help, but did not expect that she would suffer significant Pfizer vaccine-related injuries.
Maddie’s mother wants to warn other parents that the COVID vaccine is not safe. But Comcast pulled the mother’s ad telling Maddie’s story.
Comcast is complicit in the deadly conspiracy.
Maddie's mom wants to warn other parents that the C-19 Vac was not safe for her daughter in the Pfizer trial. They hid this from us.
Comcast pulled the ad at the last minute. See the ad. Hear more of Maddie's story. Pray for Maddie. Spread the word.
addie’s mother will be testifying at the FDA’s VRBPAC Meeting on Pfizer Data on October 26th.
Here is the ad Maddie’s mother wants to air on national TV that is being blocked.
Concerned Mother Wants to Air TV Ad on Pfizer’s Dangerous Vaccine After Daughter Is Severely and Permanently Damaged — But Comcast Refuses Ad at Last Minute
13-year-old Maddie de Garay volunteered for the Pfizer vaccine clinical trials. According to her parents, she volunteered to help, but did not expect that she would suffer significant Pfizer vaccine-related injuries.
Maddie’s mother wants to warn other parents that the COVID vaccine is not safe. But Comcast pulled the mother’s ad telling Maddie’s story.
Comcast is complicit in the deadly conspiracy.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=gatewaypundit&dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3NwYWNlX2NhcmQiOnsiYnVja2V0Ijoib2ZmIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1452247431530299400&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2021%2F10%2Fconcerned-mother-wants-air-tv-ad-pfizers-dangerous-vaccine-daughter-severely-permanently-damaged-comcast-refuses-ad-last-minute%2F&sessionId=9bcdecf8cd9f073daff1cdfd660dba07771a964e&theme=light&widgetsVersion=f001879%3A1634581029404&width=550px
Maddie’s mother will be testifying at the FDA’s VRBPAC Meeting on Pfizer Data on October 26th.
The public can submit public comments to the FDA for its VRBPAC meeting on Pfizer Data taking place 10/26 for Children ages 5-11. A link to submit a public comment can be found here.
New statistics undercut Gov. Gavin Newsom’s theme of the state “roaring back” from the COVID-19 pandemic.
California added only 47,400 jobs in September, a stubborn statistic that is poking at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s theme of the state “roaring back” from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The California Employment Development Department released its September jobs numbers Friday, showing nonfarm jobs in California’s 11 major industries totaled 16,669,900 in September; a net gain of 47,400 jobs since August. The state also revised August’s data downward to 94,700 jobs month-over-month. The largest net gain was in the service sector, which added 23,300 jobs last month.
At an unemployment rate of 7.5%, California has the highest percentage of unemployed job seekers in the nation, tied with Nevada. The U.S. rate in September was 4.8%.
Unemployment claims shot up last week to 80,700, which was one-third of the nation’s total claims.
Newsom took an optimistic tone despite the slowing jobs numbers
“Our economic recovery continues to make promising progress, with 812,000 new jobs this year and regaining over 63 percent of those jobs we lost to the pandemic,” he said in a release. “As we continue averaging record job creation, our work is more important than ever to get more Californians back on the job and support those hardest hit by the pandemic.”
At its worst, California lost more than 2.7 million jobs amid pandemic-caused business closures in March and April 2020. Since then, the state has regained 1.7 million, or 63.5%.
Treasury plans to adopt a new treaty without a proper Senate vote.
President Biden’s corporate tax-rate increase appears to be dead, but Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen still wants to whack U.S. companies through her global tax deal. And she is planning an end-run around the Constitution to do it.
Ms. Yellen has broken a long bipartisan consensus to sign onto new global tax rules being negotiated at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The deal comes in two “pillars” in the argot. Pillar one introduces a new method for determining which governments get to tax the revenues of the world’s 100 or so largest companies. Pillar two is a global minimum corporate profits tax with a rate of 15%.
Each country will need to implement this agreement in its domestic tax law, which is where Congress comes in. Pillar one is a particular headache for Ms. Yellen. Existing bilateral and multilateral tax treaties specify how governments carve up corporate revenue for tax purposes. The OECD anticipates similar treaties to enshrine the new rules.
But that would require Ms. Yellen to corral 67 Senators to support the OECD tax plan as a treaty, and there’s no chance of that. So Treasury is looking to circumvent the treaty process. One idea is a so-called congressional-executive agreement. This could enshrine the elements of a treaty in U.S. law, but would require support from both chambers, including a filibuster-proof 60 Senate votes.
Or the Administration can try—you knew this was coming—reconciliation. This would allow Democrats to pass the revenue-related parts of pillar one with 50 Senate votes plus the Vice President. This will probably be the Administration’s preferred option.
It’s also by far the worst. The OECD’s version of pillar one includes important provisions such as a dispute-resolution mechanism. This would offer American companies a formal method for contesting foreign tax demands if officials around the world try to stretch the meaning of the OECD deal as they apply it. But since that mechanism doesn’t weigh directly on revenue, Senate rules may bar it from a reconciliation bill. U.S. companies would lose the legal certainty that’s supposed to be the only benefit for them in this deal.
A congressional-executive agreement could include the dispute-resolution provision. But foreign governments that have ratified their own treaties would still have to decide whether to accept this legislative ploy as a treaty equivalent. American companies would have to hope they do, especially when the new text is at odds with existing tax treaties.
Foreign governments, especially in Europe, have been burned before by Democratic Administrations that didn’t submit major international agreements for Senate ratification. The Iran nuclear deal and Paris climate accord come to mind. They might reasonably expect Ms. Yellen to show she can deliver a tax deal that’s more permanent than those agreements turned out to be.
Several of those governments have a stick in the form of the digital-services taxes they’re already imposing on U.S. tech giants such as Facebook and Amazon.
The U.K., Italy and the others are supposed to ditch those taxes once pillar one comes into force. Will they if Ms. Yellen hasn’t delivered a proper treaty?
Either of these non-treaty gimmicks raises the prospect that U.S. companies could get all the tax increases of the OECD deal but none of the legal protection—and still face foreign digital taxes to boot. Dodging proper constitutional procedure always turns out badly.
Haiti Gang Threatens to Kill Kidnapped Missionaries over Million Dollar Ransoms
A US religious organization whose 17 members were kidnapped in Haiti asked supporters on Friday to pray and share stories with the victims’ families of how their faith helped them through difficult times as efforts to recover them entered a sixth day.
Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries issued the statement a day after a video was released showing the leader of the 400 Mawozo gang threatening to kill those abducted if his demands are not met. Haitian officials have said the gang is seeking a $1 million ransom per person, although they said it wasn’t clear if that includes the five children in the group, the youngest being 8 months old.
“You may wonder why our workers chose to live in a difficult and dangerous context, despite the apparent risks,” the organization said. “Before leaving for Haiti, our workers who are now being held hostage expressed a desire to faithfully serve God in Haiti.”
The FBI is helping Haitian authorities recover the 16 Americans and one Canadian. A local human rights group said their Haitian driver also was kidnapped.
“Pray that their commitment to God could become even stronger during this difficult experience,” Christian Aid Ministries said.
The video posted on social media shows 400 Mawozo leader Wilson Joseph dressed in a blue suit, carrying a blue hat and wearing a large cross around his neck.
“I swear by thunder that if I don’t get what I’m asking for, I will put a bullet in the heads of these Americans,” he said in the video.
He also threatened Prime Minister Ariel Henry and Haiti’s national police chief as he spoke in front of the open coffins that apparently held several members of his gang who were recently killed.
“You guys make me cry. I cry water. But I’m going to make you guys cry blood,” he said.
An aerial view of Christian Aid Ministries headquarters in Titanyen, Haiti, on Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021.
At the White House on Friday, US press secretary Jen Psaki sidestepped questions about whether the Biden administration would look to halt deportations of Haitians to their home country or consider adding a US military presence on the ground in response to the missionaries’ kidnappings.
“We are working around the clock to bring these people home,” she said. “They are US citizens, and there has been targeting over the course of the last few years of US citizens in Haiti and other countries too … for kidnapping for ransom. That is one of the reasons that the State Department issued the warning they did in August about the risk of kidnapping for ransom.”
Psaki spoke a day after a couple hundred protestors shut down one neighborhood in Haiti’s capital to decry the country’s deepening insecurity and lack of fuel blamed on gangs, with some demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
The streets of Port-au-Prince were largely quiet and empty on Friday, although hundreds of supporters of Jimmy Cherizier, leader of “G9 Family and Allies,” a federation of nine gangs, marched through the seaside slum of Cité Soleil.
“We are not involved in kidnapping. We will never be involved in kidnapping,” Cherizier, known as Barbecue, claimed during a speech to supporters.
As they marched, the supporters sang and chanted that G9 is not involved in kidnappings. Some of them were carrying high caliber automatic weapons.
“This is the way they are running the country,” Cherizier, who is implicated in several massacres, said as he pointed to trash lining the streets with his assault weapon.
Amid the worsening insecurity, the prime minister’s office announced late Thursday that Léon Charles had resigned as head of Haiti’s National Police and was replaced by Frantz Elbé. The newspaper Le Nouvelliste said Elbé was director of the police departments of the South East and Nippes and previously served as general security coordinator at the National Palace when Jocelerme Privert was provisional president.
“We would like for public peace to be restored, that we return to normal life and that we regain our way to democracy,” Henry said.
Haitians protest carrying a banner with a message that reads in Creole: “No to kidnappings, no to violence against women ! Long live Christian Aid Ministries,” demanding the release of kidnapped missionaries, in Titanyen, north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021.
Weston Showalter, spokesman for the religious group, has said the families of those kidnapped are from Amish, Mennonite, and other conservative Anabaptist communities in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Ontario, Canada. He read a letter from the families, who weren’t identified by name, in which they said, “God has given our loved ones the unique opportunity to live out our Lord’s command to love your enemies.”
The group invited people to join them in prayer for the kidnappers as well as those kidnapped and expressed gratitude for help from “people that are knowledgeable and experienced in dealing with” such situations.
“Pray for these families,” Showalter said. “They are in a difficult spot.”
The organization later issued a statement saying it would not comment on the video “until those directly involved in obtaining the release of the hostages have determined that comments will not jeopardize the safety and well-being of our staff and family members.”
The gang leader’s death threat added to the already intense concern in and around Holmes County, Ohio, where Christian Aid Ministries is based and which has one of the nation’s largest concentrations of Amish, conservative Mennonite, and related groups. Many members of those groups have supported the organization through donations or by volunteering at its warehouse.
“These kinds of things erase some of the boundaries that exist within our circles,” said Marcus Yoder, executive director of the Amish and Mennonite Heritage Center in Millersburg.
“Many people in the community feel helpless, but they also realize the power of prayer and the power of our historic theology,” he said, including the Anabaptist belief in nonresistance to violence.
The same day that the missionaries were kidnapped, a gang also abducted a Haiti university professor, according to a statement that Haiti’s ombudsman-like Office of Citizen Protection issued on Tuesday. It also noted that a Haitian pastor abducted earlier this month has not been released despite a ransom being paid.
“The criminals … operate with complete impunity, attacking all members of society,” the organization said.
UNICEF said Thursday that 71 women and 30 children have been kidnapped so far this year — surpassing the 59 women and 37 children abducted in all of last year. “They represent one third of the 455 kidnappings reported this year,” the agency said.
“Nowhere is safe for children in Haiti anymore,” Jean Gough, UNICEF regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, said in a statement. “Whether on their way to school, at home or even at church, girls and boys are at risk of being kidnapped anywhere, at any time of the day or night.”
Kidnappers in Haiti usually demand “an exorbitant sum of money” as ransom and “quote unreasonably high amounts, knowing that the family of the hostage will negotiate down,” Dieumeme Noelliste, professor of theological ethics at Denver Seminary, told CT, citing local sources. “Ransoms are normally paid.”
He said while hostages have lost their lives in past kidnappings, in recent incidents gangs “seem to elect not to harm their victims, preferring to wait until a settlement is reached with the hostage’s family and friends.”
Noelliste, who recently advised CT on how Haitian Christians were impacted by the recent earthquake and assassination, has not heard of a “slowdown in missionary activity and presence in Haiti” following the dual crises. Meanwhile, he said, “Haiti has been reeling under this gang violence and the kidnapping problem for months now.
“They have posed violent acts and mayhem even to churches all over the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. Just a couple of weeks ago, they attacked the iconic first Baptist Church of Port-au-Prince which is located a stone’s throw from the presidential palace, killing one of its deacons and taking his wife hostage,” he told CT. “I serve on the board of one of the leading seminaries in Haiti. The gangs have forced the school to flee its 70-year-old campus. They have been occupying it for months.
“But none of this made the news here [in the US]. This week’s attack makes the news because it is perpetrated against US citizens,” he said. “My hope is that this incident will result in the tackling of a problem that has caused so much suffering to the already stressed Haitian people.”
“The kidnapping of 17 Christian volunteers is a high-profile story,” Edner Jeanty, executive director of the Barnabas Christian Leadership Center, told CT. “It is unfortunate that it is also presented as the kidnapping of American citizens, as if American Christian lives mattered more than lives of Haitian Christians or the life of any human being created in the image of God.”
Noelliste also noted the lack of a “prophetic voice” in Haiti.
“The church, by and large, thought that as long as it had the ‘freedom’ to preach a truncated gospel, it could remain quiet from the political domain,” he told CT. “Yes, it did a lot of work in social services, and this did much good. But the so-called apolitical stance allowed injustice and corruption to permeate the structures, the institutions, and the social systems of the country unchecked.
“Now not even what the church thought it had under wrap—the freedom to operate unrestrained in the spiritual domain—is guaranteed. Christians are afraid to go to church because they fear for their lives.”
Associated Press writers Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Aamer Madhani in Washington, D.C., Kantele Franko in Columbus, Ohio, and Peter Smith in Pittsburgh contributed to this report.