Who was the officer that originally made the plea deal, and without any white house involvement or even heads up it seems on what would obviously be an attention attracting action? With the general proximity to the election and after all this time they’ve been kicked top, timing feels deliberate to try to cause a difficult public moment for the administration?
Who is this person that approved the pleas originally and what’s their background?
Feels like news outlets intentionally focused on “plea deal” phrase alone, which many will likely immediately process as “release” instead of saying a firm guilty verdict that secures life in prison over the death penalty (especially reactive, vocal, co-opted 9/11 victims rights groups with a parlance of trump flags on their trucks)
so timing feels either just like a dumb mistake when you could have pushed to after election with motions I imagine, fear that dems wouldn’t win the election and a new trump admin would execute or a very progressive prosecutor that is too idealistic defiantly trying to make this a front and center election issue, even if it could have toured into a perceived trump strength for swing voters.
Thanks for providing this update. You added some sources and data that I didn’t know, and your last point clearly articulates the set of likely causes of this misstep.
When I first became aware of this story my gut-reaction was “I fucking hate unforced errors like this!”; I’m now very curious why this happened the way it did. Mind you, in the grand scheme of things I suspect this is nothing more than a fleeting political blip.
Who was the officer that originally made the plea deal, and without any white house involvement or even heads up it seems on what would obviously be an attention attracting action? With the general proximity to the election and after all this time they’ve been kicked top, timing feels deliberate to try to cause a difficult public moment for the administration?
Who is this person that approved the pleas originally and what’s their background?
It is mentioned in this article.
Sorry, was late, I missed that. Thanks
Okay, so a lot of layers here, but a few things stand out…
She was a retired Army lawyer that studied at Berkeley. Austin appointed her to replace trump appointee of year ago - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/24/us/politics/guantanamo-war-court-appointment.html
trump appointee had been instructed to seek pleas.
ACLU is on her side - https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-statement-on-defense-secretary-austin-revoking-plea-deal-for-9-11-defendants
Feels like news outlets intentionally focused on “plea deal” phrase alone, which many will likely immediately process as “release” instead of saying a firm guilty verdict that secures life in prison over the death penalty (especially reactive, vocal, co-opted 9/11 victims rights groups with a parlance of trump flags on their trucks)
so timing feels either just like a dumb mistake when you could have pushed to after election with motions I imagine, fear that dems wouldn’t win the election and a new trump admin would execute or a very progressive prosecutor that is too idealistic defiantly trying to make this a front and center election issue, even if it could have toured into a perceived trump strength for swing voters.
Thanks for providing this update. You added some sources and data that I didn’t know, and your last point clearly articulates the set of likely causes of this misstep.
When I first became aware of this story my gut-reaction was “I fucking hate unforced errors like this!”; I’m now very curious why this happened the way it did. Mind you, in the grand scheme of things I suspect this is nothing more than a fleeting political blip.