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Talk of ‘pre-emptive pardons’ sets the stage for Trump to drain the Washington swamp

Published

1 year ago

14 minute read

President-Elect Donald Trump reacts during his meeting with Prince William, Prince of Wales at the Embassy of the United Kingdom’s Residence on December 7, 2024, in Paris, France

From LifeSiteNews

By Conservative Treehouse

Once you understand how Donald Trump is assembling his White House and once you accept the mission of the DC system to defend itself by isolating a weak spot in the mechanism, then the assembly of cabinet based on loyalty makes sense.

Any time the professional leftists lose anything, they immediately become victims. Whether defeated in the battle of ideas (retreat to safe spaces), defeated in the field of pop culture, or even defeated linguistically through debate (words are violence). Whenever the professional left loses, they immediately become victims. It’s what they do.

The professional political left, newest version from the Chicago spawn of Dohrn/Ayers, has been waging full combat lawfare via a weaponized government for the past 16 years. However, Obama/Plouffe were defeated, “their kind” rose again and won the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

What we see in this “pre-emptive pardon” narrative, is a repeat of the victim narrative. This time the White House discussion boils down to “lawfare agents must be protected from any retaliation for their action.” Pardons presumably provide the mechanism to protect the victims. In the big picture of ideology, this is a continuation of the same mindset.

Politico started the narrative with an outline saying the White House was having an internal debate as to whether Joe Biden should pre-emptively issue pardons to members of the January 6 committee, members who constructed false impeachment accusations, members within the DOJ who fabricated political cases using the special counsel process, or generally people on the political left who supported/facilitated all the aforementioned false attack fronts.

As the narrative is told, all those who supported the attacks against President-Elect Donald Trump and his allies now need to be protected from “retribution.” Inherent in the argument, and within the use of pardons, is the baseline that some form of illegal activity was taking place. Heck, if it wasn’t unlawful conduct, then no pardon would be needed. This is the political catch-22 created by the pre-emptive pardon narrative.

Various congressional people, DOJ insiders, White House liaisons, State Department officials and underling staff are all possible recipients if Joe Biden decides to take this unprecedented approach. However, if you look at the expressed approach indicated by Trump and the assembly of cabinet members who would be in place to carry out such “retribution,” you will not find any indication of intent. Quite the opposite is true.

Trump does not appear to be in alignment with any approach that would lead to legal indictments, arrests, charges or other legal accountability measures.  Beyond the public release of hidden, perhaps classified information that might put sunlight on the previous activity by those who weaponized their offices, there is nothing. Sunlight on prior events, while moving forward to restore functioning law and order, appears to be the most likely approach. From Politico:

… White House officials, however, are carefully weighing the extraordinary step of handing out blanket pardons to those who’ve committed no crimes, both because it could suggest impropriety, only fueling Trump’s criticisms, and because those offered preemptive pardons may reject them.

The deliberations touch on pardoning those currently in office, elected and appointed, as well as former officials who’ve angered Trump and his loyalists.

Those who could face exposure include such members of Congress’ Jan. 6 Committee as Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Trump has previously said Cheney “should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!” Also mentioned by Biden’s aides for a pardon is Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became a lightning rod for criticism from the right during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The West Wing deliberations have been organized by White House counsel Ed Siskel but include a range of other aides, including chief of staff Jeff Zients. The president himself, who was intensely focused on his son’s pardon, has not been brought into the broad.

All outward indications are that Trump wants to create a legacy presidency for the Gen-Z generation (Barron), similar to what was created by Ronald Reagan for the Gen-X generation. Selecting Susie Wiles as chief of staff is the strongest indication of this intent.

The appointments to White House legal counsel positions and main justice legal offices by Trump all appear to have one common denominator: to protect the president. I strongly doubt there will be any effort beyond that.

Big picture

Once you understand what Trump is assembling (the phalanx) and once you accept the mission of the D.C. system to defend itself by isolating a weak spot in the mechanism, then everything from the assembly of the cabinet to the process being discussed makes sense.

Within a phalanx, if one shield drops the entire construct is compromised. The strongest shields need to surround the core with ferocity.

The recent Supreme Court decision affirmed the president of the United States as the unitary, plenary power that controls every mechanism of the executive branch of government, and as long as the president is acting within his “official duty” he holds absolute power and absolute immunity.

Think of each cabinet member as a shield in this political phalanx that surrounds the weapon, Trump.

Yes, the phalanx is by construct an offensive fortification used to advance upon the enemy. However, the strength of the phalanx is its ability to be impervious to attack from 360°.

The phalanx advances, inch by inch, against a larger fortification. In the transition team assembly, this is what Trump is putting together.

Hegseth is a key component of the phalanx, the fortification process that puts Trump at the center of the cabinet. Each component of the cabinet protecting the center.

The phalanx is the mechanism to carry the weapon that is President Donald Trump. The D.C. UniParty is looking for a weakness in the phalanx, like a wolf circling a porcupine.

Trump has turned his focus to the “war fighters,” the men and women who carry out the mission objective of the Defense Department. The nomination of Pete Hegseth represents the confrontation of a power struggle that has been decades in making.

The self-serving senators are trying to block Hegseth, while maintaining a position of pretending support for Trump. The DeceptiCon republicans in the Senate are in full circling mode, looking for a weakness to exploit.

The schemes of the conniving Republican senators are transparently visible in the efforts of Senator Joni Ernst, who is circling the phalanx Trump is creating – while simultaneously inserting herself into the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) mission.

Ernst is doing Mitch McConnell’s work, under instruction from John Thune and Mitch. See Ernst with clear eyes.

One does not become unattached to corrupt intent.

Clear eyes!

 

I did not think President-elect Trump had the accurate laser vision for the task.

I was getting concerned.

Then I saw the very specific wording of this:

The McGinley move makes a lot of sense. DOGE and the Office of Management and Budgets (OMB) are going to be joined at the hip. They are going to have to navigate the Impoundment Control Act, challenging the system that places limits on a president’s ability to unilaterally withhold funding.

Inside that legal battle, deciding what DOGE can do without legislative approval, the OMB is going to be the execution part. McGinley will be the legal liaison focused on what technical approaches DOGE/OMB can execute. In essence, can they stop funding XX, thereby eliminating it?

That said, that’s not the important part.

The language Trump is using to describe the role of David A. Warrington, the switched White House counsel, is something entirely new.

Donald Trump says: “to serve as Assistant to the President and Counsel to the President. Dave will lead the Office of White House Counsel and serve as the top attorney in the White House.”

Normally the White House counsel does not represent the interests of the president, the WHC represents the interests of the office.

It would appear to me, at least as I review the details, that Trump is now fully aware how his presidential interests can sometimes conflict with the interests of the White House counsel, and he is making a move to ensure that conflict doesn’t happen.

An example of the conflict I have explained repeatedly in the “declassification of information.”

Not kidding, it is almost as if someone very close to Trump read something I previously outlined, because it came with a serious warning borne out of years of frustration:

In Term-1 the IC message to the WH Counsel was that if Donald Trump declassified any documents, they would use the DOJ (special counsel weapon) to attack the office of the president for “obstructing justice.” The WHC was fraught with fear over what would happen and demanded that POTUS Trump stop trying to declassify information/documents the IC didn’t support.

The way Trump is now portraying the role of the White House counsel is to represent his interests first and foremost, then represent the interests of the office. In a few subtle, and not so subtle ways, this makes sense.

We can tell by the nominations to attorney general, deputy attorney general, and assistant attorney general-national security division, that main justice is already positioned to defend and protect Donald Trump. The people in charge of the silo are all loyalty-first people, aligned in the interests of Trump.

It would appear that Trump is now bringing that same outlook into the White House. The White House counsel aligning in common purpose, with the specific purpose of executing the intentions of President Donald Trump.

I’m glad to see this approach, because as I have repeatedly affirmed, only President Trump (the person) can confront the silo system in Washington, D.C.

That’s why the phalanx makes sense.

Reprinted with permission from Conservative Treehouse.

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Health

All 12 Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated Studies Found the Same Thing: Unvaccinated Children Are Far Healthier

Published on December 25, 2025

By

By Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

I joined Del Bigtree in studio on The HighWire to discuss what the data now make unavoidable: the CDC’s 81-dose hyper-vaccination schedule is driving the modern epidemics of chronic disease and autism.

This was not a philosophical debate or a clash of opinions. We walked through irrefutable, peer-reviewed evidence showing that whenever vaccinated and unvaccinated children are compared directly, the unvaccinated group is far healthier—every single time.

Click here to see the video

Reanalyzing the Largest Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated Birth-Cohort Study Ever Conducted

At the center of our discussion was our peer-reviewed reanalysis of the Henry Ford Health System vaccinated vs. unvaccinated birth-cohort study (Lamerato et al.)—the largest and most rigorous comparison of its kind ever conducted.

The original authors relied heavily on Cox proportional hazards models, a time-adjusted approach that can soften absolute disease burden. Even so, nearly all chronic disease outcomes were higher in vaccinated children.

Our reanalysis used direct proportional comparisons, stripping away the smoothing and revealing the full magnitude of the signal.

  • All 22 chronic disease categories favored the unvaccinated cohort when proportional disease burden was examined
  • Cancer incidence was 54% higher in vaccinated children (0.0102 vs. 0.0066)
  • When autism-associated conditions were grouped appropriately—including autism, ADHD, developmental delay, learning disability, speech disorder, neurologic impairment, seizures, and related diagnoses—the vaccinated cohort showed a 549% higher odds of autism-spectrum–associated clinical outcomes

The findings are internally consistent, biologically coherent, and concordant with every prior vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study, all of which show drastically poorer health outcomes among vaccinated children

The 12 Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated Studies Regulators Ignore

In the McCullough Foundation Autism Report, we compiled all 12 vaccinated vs. unvaccinated pediatric studies currently available. These studies span different populations, countries, study designs, and data sources.

Every single one reports the same overall pattern. Across all 12 studies, unvaccinated children consistently exhibit substantially lower rates of chronic disease, including:

  • Autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders
  • ADHD, tics, learning and speech disorders
  • Asthma, allergies, eczema, and autoimmune conditions
  • Chronic ear infections, skin disorders, and gastrointestinal illness

This level of consistency across independent datasets is precisely what epidemiology looks for when assessing causality. It also explains why no federal agency has ever conducted—or endorsed—a fully vaccinated vs. fully unvaccinated safety study.

Flu Shot Failure

We also addressed the persistent failure of seasonal influenza vaccination.

A large Cleveland Clinic cohort study of 53,402 employees followed participants during the 2024–2025 respiratory viral season and found:

  • 82.1% of employees were vaccinated against influenza
  • Vaccinated individuals had a 27% higher adjusted risk of influenza compared with the unvaccinated state (HR 1.27; 95% CI 1.07–1.51; p = 0.007)
  • This corresponded to a negative vaccine effectiveness of −26.9% (95% CI −55.0 to −6.6%), meaning vaccination was associated with increased—not reduced—risk of influenza

When vaccination exposure increases, chronic disease, neurodevelopmental disorders, and inflammatory illness increase with it. When children are unvaccinated, they are measurably healthier across virtually every outcome that matters.

The science needed to confront the chronic disease and autism epidemics already exists. What remains is the willingness to acknowledge it.

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation

Support our mission: mcculloughfnd.org

Please consider following both the McCullough Foundation and my personal account on X (formerly Twitter) for further content.

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espionage

Carney Floor Crossing Raises Counterintelligence Questions aimed at China, Former Senior Mountie Argues

Published on December 25, 2025

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Michael Ma has recently attended events with Chinese consulate officials, leaders of a group called CTCCO, and the Toronto “Hongmen,” where diaspora community leaders and Chinese diplomats advocated Beijing’s push to subordinate Taiwan. These same entities have also appeared alongside Canadian politicians at a “Nanjing” memorial in Toronto.

By Garry Clement

Michael Ma’s meeting with consulate-linked officials proves no wrongdoing—but, Garry Clement writes, the timing and optics highlight vulnerabilities Canada still refuses to treat as a security issue.

I spent years in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police learning a simple rule. You assess risk based on capability, intent, and opportunity — not on hope or assumptions. When those three factors align, ignoring them is negligence.

That framework applies directly to Canada’s relationship with the People’s Republic of China — and to recent political events that deserve far more scrutiny than they have received.

Michael Ma’s crossover to the Liberal Party may be completely legitimate, although numerous observers have noted oddities in the timing, messaging, and execution surrounding Ma’s move, which brings Mark Carney within one seat of majority rule.

There is no evidence of wrongdoing.

But from a law enforcement and national security perspective, that is beside the point. Counterintelligence is not about proving guilt after the fact; it is about identifying vulnerabilities before damage is done — and about recognizing when a situation creates avoidable exposure in a known threat environment.

A constellation of ties and public appearances — reported by The Bureau and the National Post — has fueled questions about Ma’s China-facing judgment and vetting. Those reports describe his engagement with a Chinese-Canadian Conservative network that intervened in party leadership politics by urging Erin O’Toole to resign for his “anti-China” stance after 2021 and later calling for Pierre Poilievre’s ouster — while advancing Beijing-aligned framing on key Canada–China disputes.

The National Post has also reported that critics point to Ma’s pro-Beijing community endorsement during his campaign, and his appearance at a Toronto dinner for the Chinese Freemasons — where consular officials used the forum to promote Beijing’s “reunification” agenda for Taiwan. Ma reportedly offered greetings and praised the organization, but did not indicate support for annexation.

Open-source records also show that the same Toronto Chinese Freemasons and leaders Ma has met from a group called CTCCO sponsored and supported Ontario’s “Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day” initiative (Bill 79) — a campaign celebrated in Chinese state and Party-aligned media, alongside public praise from PRC consular officials in Canada.

China Daily reported in 2018 that the Nanjing memorial was jointly sponsored by CTCCO and the Chinese Freemasons of Canada (Toronto), supported by more than $180,000 in community donations.

Photos show that PRC consular officials and Toronto politicians appeared at related Nanjing memorial ceremonies, including Zhao Wei, the alleged undercover Chinese intelligence agent later expelled from Canada after The Globe and Mail exposed Zhao’s alleged targeting of Conservative MP Michael Chong and his family in Hong Kong.

The fact that Michael Ma recently met with some of the controversial pro-Beijing community figures and organizations described above — including leaders from the Hongmen ecosystem and the CTCCO — does not prove any nefarious intent in either his Conservative candidacy or his decision to cross the floor to Mark Carney.

But it does demonstrate something Ottawa keeps avoiding: the PRC’s influence work is often conducted in plain sight, through community-facing institutions, elite access, and “normal” relationship networks — the very channels that create leverage, deniability, and political pressure over time.

Canada’s intelligence community has been clear.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has repeatedly identified the People’s Republic of China as the most active and persistent foreign interference threat facing Canada. These warnings are not abstract. They are rooted in investigations, human intelligence, and allied reporting shared across the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.

At the center of Beijing’s approach is the United Front Work Department — a Chinese Communist Party entity tasked with influencing foreign political systems, cultivating elites, and shaping narratives abroad. In policing terms, it functions as an influence and access network: operating legally where possible, covertly where necessary, and always in service of the Party’s strategic objectives.

What differentiates the People’s Republic of China from most foreign actors is legal compulsion.

Under China’s National Intelligence Law, Chinese citizens and organizations can be compelled to support state intelligence work and to keep that cooperation secret. In practical terms, that creates an inherent vulnerability for democratic societies: coercive leverage — applied through family, travel, business interests, community pressure, and fear.

This does not mean Chinese-Canadians are suspect.

Quite the opposite — many are targets of intimidation themselves. But it does mean the Chinese Communist Party has a mechanism to exert pressure in ways democratic states do not. Ignoring that fact is not tolerance; it is a failure to understand the threat environment.

In the RCMP, we were trained to recognize that foreign interference rarely announces itself. It operates through relationships, access, favors, timing, and silence. It does not require ideological agreement — only opportunity and leverage.

That is why transparency matters. When political figures engage with representatives of an authoritarian state known for interference operations, the burden is not on the public to “prove” concern is justified. The burden is on officials to explain why there is none — and to demonstrate that basic safeguards are in place.

Canada’s allies have already internalized this reality. Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom have all publicly acknowledged and legislated against People’s Republic of China political interference. Their assessments mirror ours. Their conclusions are the same.

In the United States, the Linda Sun case — covered by The Bureau — illustrates, in the U.S. government’s telling, how United Front–style influence can be both deniable and effective: built through diaspora-facing proxies, insider access, and relationship networks that rarely look like classic espionage until the damage is done.

And this is not a niche concern.

Think tanks in both the United States and Canada — as well as allied research communities in the United Kingdom and Europe — have documented the scale and persistence of these political-influence ecosystems. Nicholas Eftimiades, an associate professor at Penn State and a former senior National Security Agency analyst, has estimated multiple hundreds of such entities are active in the United States. How many operate in Canada is the question Ottawa still refuses to treat with urgency — and, if an upcoming U.S. report is any indication, the answer may be staggering.

Canada’s hesitation to address United Front networks is not due to lack of information. It is due to lack of resolve.

From a law enforcement perspective, this is troubling. You do not wait for a successful compromise before tightening security. You act when the indicators are present — especially when your own intelligence agencies are sounding the alarm.

National security is not ideological. It is practical.

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