From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Mariane Angela

Former State Department official Mike Benz raised serious concerns on Fox News Monday about the events surrounding the shooting in Butler, Pa., asking whether federal law enforcement played a more significant role than originally reported.

It’s been a year since the shooting of President Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, and while investigations have shed light on the incident, several critical questions remain unanswered. During an appearance on “The Will Cain Show,” Benz said he believes the lack of transparency in the case has led to many critical questions remaining unanswered.

“So the question is, if Crooks was cultivated or if he was being monitored or potentially interacted with by federal law enforcement agents who put him onto that? And I think that the total lack of transparency, it’s sort of defying the laws of surveillance state physics,” Benz said. “I think most people believe that if federal law enforcement were to get ahold of their phone, that pretty much everything could be scraped from it. You don’t know if, for example, in this case, he was communicating with a foreign government.”

Benz then raised concerns that the investigation into the Butler shooting could extend beyond the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), suggesting that agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA) might be involved in cracking encrypted communications.

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“This, to me, may go beyond, you know, FBI, DHS. We know that the NSA is able to crack these sorts of things. And so it’s all very strange to me,” Benz said. “But, again, there’s another whistleblower report that I believe Josh Hawley’s whistleblower mentioned, which was that HSI [Homeland Security Investigation] agents kind of mysteriously replaced a fair number of Secret Service agents that day because Secret Service was said to be split between the NATO summit and Jill Biden being away.”

Benz referred to what he called a troubling series of events leading up to the Butler shooting.

“And that Secret Service had denied, I think, about 10 requests for additional security from the Trump campaign prior to the shooting. And so it is just a strange confluence of variables that just do not sit well for the American public,” Benz said. “And I think that there should be a sort of transparency task force so that these specific questions about HSI and the potential recruiting as an informant about the contents of the phone and the like can be answered.”

A report released Sept. 2024 uncovered whistleblower allegations about the Secret Service’s security failures during the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler. The office of Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri published the whistleblower report and revealed previously undisclosed claims about the DHS and Secret Service committing multiple failures.

Whistleblowers allege that the agent in charge of the Butler rally failed a key examination during federal training and was considered “low-caliber.” The report also said that the Secret Service’s intelligence units were absent from the rally, which contributed to communication failures between law enforcement agencies.

Senior U.S. Secret Service officials were aware of a “classified threat” to Trump’s life 10 days before the July 13, 2024 assassination attempt but failed to inform the agents protecting him. A report from the Government Accountability Office said Sunday that the intelligence, presented to Secret Service leadership, never reached the field team due to a “siloed practice for sharing classified information.”

(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/Fox News)

2016 image provided by Misti Leon, left, sits with her mom, Juliana Leon. Misti Leon is suing several oil and gas companies in one of the first wrongful-death claims in the U.S. seeking to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its role in the changing climate.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Jason Isaac

They twist yesterday’s weather into tomorrow’s crisis, peddle apocalyptic forecasts that fizzle, and swap “global warming” for “climate change” whenever the narrative demands. They sound the alarm on a so-called climate emergency — again and again.

Now, the Left has plunged to a new low: weaponizing the courts with a lawsuit in Washington State that marks a brazen, desperate escalation. This isn’t just legal maneuvering—it’s the exploitation of personal tragedy in service of an unpopular anti-energy climate crusade.

Consider the case at the center of a new legal circus: Juliana Leon, 65, tragically died of hyperthermia during a 100-mile drive in a car with broken air conditioning, as a brutal heat wave pushed temperatures to 108 degrees Fahrenheit.

The lawsuit leaps from this heartbreaking event to a sweeping claim: that a single hot day is the direct result of global warming.

The lawsuit preposterously links a very specific hot weather event to theorized global warming. Buckle up—their logic is about to take a wild ride.

Some activist scientists have further speculated that what may be a gradual long-term trend of slight warming thought to be both cyclical and natural, might be possibly exacerbated by the release of greenhouse gases. Some of these releases are the result of volcanic activity while some comes from human activities, including the burning of oil, natural gas and coal.

Grabbing onto that last, unproven thread, the plaintiffs have zeroed in on a handful of energy giants—BP, Chevron, Conoco, Exxon, Phillips 66, Shell, and the Olympic Pipe Company—accusing them of causing Leon’s death. Apparently, these few companies are to blame for the entire planet’s climate, while other oil giants, coal companies, and the billions of consumers who actually use these fuels get a free pass.

Meanwhile, “climate journalists” in the legacy media have ignored key details that will surely surface in court. Leon made her journey in a car with no air conditioning, despite forecasts warning of dangerous heat. She was returning from a doctor’s visit, having just been cleared to eat solid food after recent bariatric surgery.

But let’s be clear: this lawsuit isn’t about truth, justice, or even common sense. It’s lawfare, plain and simple.

Environmental extremists are using the courts to hijack national energy policy, aiming to force through a radical agenda they could never pass in Congress. A courtroom win would mean higher energy prices for everyone, the potential bankruptcy of energy companies, or their takeover by the so-called green industrial complex. For the trial lawyers, these cases are gold mines, with contingency fees that could reach hundreds of millions.

This particular lawsuit was reportedly pitched to Leon’s daughter by the left-leaning Center for Climate Integrity, a group bankrolled by billionaire British national Christopher Hohn through his Children’s Investment Fund Foundation and by the Rockefeller Foundation. It’s yet another meritless claim in the endless list of climate lawsuits that are increasingly being tossed out of courts across the country.

Earlier this year, a Pennsylvania judge threw out a climate nuisance suit against oil producers brought by Bucks County, citing lack of jurisdiction. In New York, Supreme Court Justice Anar Patel dismissed a massive climate lawsuit by New York City, pointing out the city couldn’t claim both public awareness and deception by oil companies in the same breath.

But the Washington State case goes even further, threatening to set a dangerous precedent: if it moves forward, energy companies could face limitless liability for any weather-related injury. Worse, it would give unwarranted credibility to the idea — floated by a leftwing activist before the U.S. Senate — that energy executives could be prosecuted for homicide, a notion that Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz rightly called “moonbeam, wacky theory.”

The courts must keep rejecting these absurd lawfare stunts. More importantly, America’s energy policy should be set by Congress—elected and accountable—not by a single judge in a municipal courtroom.

Jason Isaac is the founder and CEO of the American Energy Institute. He previously served four terms in the Texas House of Representatives.