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
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.
In addition to their professional victim approach, the one constant with the Marxist left is their use of projection. They weaponized government, so they anticipate the target of their weaponization efforts, Donald Trump, will return fire in kind. Again, I highly doubt it.
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.
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The FDA old guard criticized the new leadership in a Dec. 3 New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) letter over a higher regulatory bar for vaccines, namely the expectation that most new vaccine approvals will require randomized clinical trials, arguing it could hamper the market.
“Insisting on long, expensive outcomes studies for every updated formulation would delay the arrival of better-matched vaccines when new outbreaks emerge or when additional groups of patients could benefit,” the former commissioners wrote. “Abandoning the existing methods won’t ‘elevate vaccine science’ … It will subject vaccines to a substantially higher and more subjective approval bar.”
But while the former commissioners disclosed their conflicts of interest to the medical journal — per standard practice in scientific publishing — reporters didn’t relay them to the broader public in reports in the Washington Post, STAT News and CNN.
The headlines about a bipartisan rebuke from former occupants of FDA’s highest office give the impression that the Trump administration is contravening established science, but closer inspection reveals a revolving door between pharmaceutical corporations and the agencies overseeing them.
Three of the signatories have received payments totaling $6 million from manufacturers or former manufacturers of COVID vaccines.
Scott Gottlieb has received $2.1 million in cash and stock from his position on the Pfizer board of directors, where he has advised on ethics and regulatory compliance since 2019, according to company filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Stephen Ostroff has received $752,310 from Pfizer in consulting fees since 2020, according to OpenPayments.
Gottlieb and McClellan did not respond to requests for comment. Ostroff could not be reached for comment.
FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Vinay Prasad outlined the higher standards and shared the results of an internal analysis validating 10 reports of children’s deaths following the COVID-19 vaccine in a Nov. 28 memo to staff. He called for introspection and reform at the agency.
The NEJM letter criticizes Prasad for cracking down on a practice called “immunobridging” that infers vaccine efficacy from laboratory tests rather than assessing it through real-world reductions in disease or death. The FDA under the Biden administration expanded COVID vaccines to children using this “immunobridging” technique, extrapolating vaccine efficacy from adults to children based on antibody levels.
Norman Sharpless — who in addition to previously serving as acting FDA commissioner also served as the head of the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute — consults for Tempus, a company that collaborates with COVID vaccine maker BioNTech. He has helped steer $70 million in investments in biotech through a venture capital firm he founded in November 2024. Sharpless also disclosed $26,180 in payments in 2024 from Chugai Pharmaceutical, a Japanese pharmaceutical company that markets mRNA technology among other drugs, on OpenPayments.
“I was grateful for the opportunity to serve as NCI Director and Acting FDA Commissioner in the first Trump Administration, and strongly support many of the things President Trump is trying to do in the current Administration,” Sharpless said in an email.
Margaret Hamburg, another former FDA commissioner and signatory of the NEJM letter, has since 2020 earned $2.8 million as a member of the board of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, which markets RNA interference (RNAi) technology.
Hamburg did not respond to a message on LinkedIn.
Most signatories disclosed income from biotech companies testing experimental cancer treatments. These products could face tighter scrutiny under Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist long wary of rubberstamping pricey oncology drugs — which Prasad points out often cause some toxicity — without plausible evidence of an improvement in quality of life or survival.
The former FDA commissioners disclosed ties to Sermonix Pharmaceuticals Inc.; OncoNano Medicine; incyclix; Nucleus Radiopharma; and N-Power, a contractor that runs oncology clinical trials.
Andrew von Eschenbach, who like Sharpless formerly served both as FDA commissioner and the head of the National Cancer Institute, disclosed stock in HistoSonics, a company with investments from Bezos Expeditions and Thiel Bio seeking FDA approval for ultrasound technology targeted at tumors.
Some FDA commissioners who signed onto the letter opposing changes to vaccine approvals have ties to biotechnology investment firms, namely McClellan, who consults Arsenal Capital; Janet Woodcock, who consults RA Capital Management; and Robert Califf, who owns stock in Population Health Partners.
Califf did not respond to an email requesting comment. Woodcock did not respond to requests for comment sent to two medical research advocacy groups with Woodcock on the board. Eschenbach did not respond to a LinkedIn message.
The two signatories without pharmaceutical ties may find their judgement challenged by the FDA investigation into COVID-19 vaccine deaths, having either implemented or formally defended the Biden administration’s headlong expansion of vaccines and boosters to healthy adults and children.
David Kessler executed Biden’s vaccination policy as chief science officer at the Department of Health and Human Services, helping to secure deals for shotswith Pfizer and Moderna.
Meanwhile Jane Henney chaired a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report published in October 2025 that praised the performance of FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine surveillance during the pandemic — underwritten with CDC funding.
That assessment clashes with that of a Senate report, citing internal documents from FDA, finding that CDC never updated its vaccine surveillance tool “V-Safe” to include cardiac symptoms, despite naming myocarditis as a potential adverse event by October 2020, and that top officials in the Biden administration delayed warning pediatricians and other providers about the risk of myocarditis after their approval in some children in May 2021, months after Israeli health officials first detected it in February 2021. The Senate investigation named Woodcock, a signatory of the NEJM letter, as one of the FDA officials who slow-walked the warning.
The U.S. Department of Justice will not release the entirety of the federal government’s files on sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein by the end of day Friday, failing to fully comply with a mandate from Congress.
DOJ will release several hundred thousand documents, however, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a Fox News interview. He estimated that “several hundred thousand more” will be released “over the next couple of weeks.”
The delay, Blanche explained, is due to the significant number of redactions that the department must complete in order to protect the identifications of witnesses and victims in the files.
By failing to fully comply with a congressional edict, lawmakers would have grounds to impeach or hold U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt of Congress.
Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act on Nov. 18, which President Donald Trump signed into law the next day.
The bill, sponsored by Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.; and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., requires that the U.S. Attorney General “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice” that relate to Epstein and his close associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Any Justice Department official who does not comply with this law will be subject to prosecution for obstruction of justice,” Khanna vowed.
Epstein died in jail awaiting trial in 2019 and Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence.
President Donald Trump, former president Bill Clinton, billionaire businessman Bill Gates, and dozens of other high-profile figures have received intense public scrutiny for their connections with Epstein and Maxwell.
