patrick.net

Patrick says

I was sorely tested yesterday when news broke of President Trump’s nomination to head the Drug Enforcement Agency: Florida Sheriff Chad Chronister. During the pandemic, Sheriff Chronister arrested Tampa Pastor Dr. Ronald Howard-Browne, who defied Florida’s short lockdown order and held several religious services anyway.

https://nypost.com/2024/12/03/us-news/trump-dea-pick-chad-chronister-withdraws-over-covid-arrest-controversy/

Trump’s DEA pick – who locked up a pastor during COVID-19 pandemic – withdraws from consideration after conservative backlash

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Drug Enforcement Agency announced Tuesday that he will not take the job following conservative backlash to his nomination.

Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister – described by some conservatives as a “COVID tyrant” – bowed out just three days after being selected by Trump to lead the nation’s primary agency for combatting illegal drugs.

Chronister’s record as Hillsborough County sheriff – particularly at the height of the COVID-19 – came under scrutiny soon after his nomination.

On March 30, 2020, Chronister ordered the arrest of Ronald Howard-Browne, the pastor of The River at Tampa Bay Church, for allegedly flouting COVID-19 lockdown orders by holding services at his church.

Good, but not good enough. That fucker must be tried for his crime against that church.

DOGEWontAmountToShit says

Jesus Christ. Do the Republicans want to end up like the Dems??? Their party is in shamble potentially for a decade (D's). There's no Barrack Obama in the bullpen. There was a mandate with the clean sweep. Shut the fuck up and allow these nominations.

I do respect Gaetz backing down, likely to get the Rubio senate seat. That's playing as a team. Republicans better wake up or they're fucked in 2026 at the congressional level.

Patel has prosecuted far more cases than Kamala. He also got a shitload of convictions against spies and terrorists.

And an award... from the Obama admin for his successful high profile national security related prosecutions

Patrick says

During the pandemic, Sheriff Chronister arrested Tampa Pastor Dr. Ronald Howard-Browne, who defied Florida’s short lockdown order and held several religious services anyway.

Sheriff Chronister also enforced a local covid curfew, and ordered punitive policies aimed at coercing unvaccinated deputies under his command to get the shots.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/strategic-withdrawal-wednesday-december

Conservatives are nowhere near ready to forgive public servants who, though they may only have been doing their duty and following the law, they still revealed much too much enthusiasm for pandemic authoritarianism. Like it or not, good or bad, the pandemic was, is, and forever will be a kind of litmus test. It’s partly an ideological test, but it’s mostly a test of character.

Chronister’s career evidenced all the hallmarks of a woke, lifelong Democrat who recently switched parties out of bare political calculus, so he could not pass an ideological test. In the final analysis, though, Sheriff Chronister failed the character test. It wasn’t just the pastor he arrested. Chronister exuberantly embraced all the obscene, anti-scientific, dictatorial tools supplied by the federal government and corporate media. He’s never apologized or even claimed to have changed his viewpoint. ...

This story is important, not because Trump’s transition team withdrew a bad candidate and smartly yielded to quiet conservative pressure. Rather, this story is a morality tale about accountability and justice over people’s decisions during covid, with a side dish about how transformative social media has become, since Chronister’s offensive covid record would have been concealed by corporate media just a few years ago.

There’s zero appetite to let things go, forgive and forget, or Move On. The absence of any official accountability for pandemic excesses has created an abhorrent vacuum of intense frustration that nature has filled with a vast, informal army of volunteer enforcers, both individuals and conservative groups. It’s a kind of unorganized covid reconciliation movement.

For example, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association opposed Chronister’s nomination, saying it was “shocked and dismayed” by his selection because of his enforcement of covid mandates. Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and others tweeted their concerns about Chronister, calling him competely disqualified.

This is only a tiny drop of justice when we are owed gallons and gallons of it.

The plandemic crimes against humanity must not go unpunished.

DOGEWontAmountToShit says

That woman is a special kind of stupid. Next she'll be comparing dicks to eggplants. 🤡

Beware of Joni Ernst.

She had an affair with a soldier under her command and tried to cover it up (emails exist in divorce court records). So she's a shit leader.

But most of all, she's a Graham crony who will try to give us another F-35 Cronybolt Joint Lobbyist Gateguardian

Another pathway is Desantis with Hegseth as a senior advisor. Desantis gets to plump his record with some Federal Level Secretary experience.

https://babylonbee.com/cleanArticle/patel-ramaswamy-to-celebrate-inauguration-with-traditional-bollywood-ceremony

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/drone-salad-wednesday-december-11

Yesterday, the San Fransisco Chronicle ran a terrific story headlined, “Trump taps culture warrior and S.F. attorney Harmeet Dhillon to lead Office of Civil Rights.” Harmeet was one of the most energetic and effective covid lawyers during the pandemic. We crossed paths a few times, even though between Florida and California, we lived in completely different worlds. Beyond covid, Harmeet helped with Trump’s elections lawsuits, helped run California’s GOP, and much more.

On Monday, Trump announced Harmeet’s nomination in a social media post saying, “Throughout her career, Harmeet has stood up consistently to protect our cherished Civil Liberties, including taking on Big Tech for censoring our Free Speech, representing Christians who were prevented from praying together during COVID, and suing corporations who use woke policies to discriminate against their workers. Harmeet is one of the top Election lawyers in the Country, fighting to ensure that all, and ONLY, legal votes are counted.”

The Libs of BlueSky were appalled, variously calling Harmeet “anti-trans,” an “election denier,” anti-abortion, a “MAGA darling,” and “an existential threat to all civil rights, especially trans rights.” They really dislike that Harmeet represented influential detransitioner Chloe Cole or that Harmeet’s website links other detransitioner lawsuits against fraudster doctors.

Harmeet, an Indian-American, is involved in many high-profile cases, and you probably never even knew it. For instance, she represents Portland anti-antifa investigator reporter Andy Ngo.

Harmeet will replace Biden’s appointee, Kristen Clarke, who is the one responsible for prosecuting all the abortion center protestors under the so-called “FACE Act.” I note, without comment, that the FACE Act can also be used to prosecute people who vandalize pregnancy support centers. Harmeet might want to take a look at that.

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/penn-and-telling-on-themselves

"Nearly 100 former national security officials 'alarmed' at prospect of Gabbard leading intel community"

this is not what it looks like.

no one expects this to affect her hearings.

it's not intended to head off tulsi.

it's a way for 100 guilty people (and by extension other people like them) who were always likely to be investigated for their possible past misdeeds to try to make a case it's political retaliation when people start asking questions about what they got up to and for whom.

see it now that the cups are clear?

this is going to be the go to playbook for the next 4 years:

any investigation into past actions and activities of the people who weaponized state agencies for political or institutional purposes will be cast as trump "using justice and intelligence to attack his political enemies."

it's just the next round of psyop from the people who do psyops for a living, an attempt to frame holding people accountable for their persecution of political enemies as “persecution of political enemies.”

it's inversion and projection.

miss this frame and voila, those who victimized you are the victims here.

Trump can fire anybody he wants, thanks to Sean Spicer | Paul Bedard, Washington Examiner

President-elect Donald Trump is arriving at the White House armed with a legal weapon that will let him fire any of President Joe Biden’s appointees.

Thanks in part to a court fight former Trump White House spokesman Sean Spicer lost over his firing by Biden from a three-year term to the Board of Visitors to the United States Naval Academy, the incoming president will have the legal backing to dump any of Biden’s over 4,000 appointments who try to stick around.

And the best part, Spicer told Secrets, “They’ll have no one to blame but Biden himself.”

The case dates to Sept. 8, 2021, when Biden began to fire Trump allies from the visitor boards at the academies of the Navy, the Air Force, and the Army.

Spicer and others, including Russ Vought (just picked by Trump to head the Office of Management and Budget) and former Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway, were unceremoniously dumped despite several of them having time left on their three-year terms.

Spicer and Vought sued, saying that unlike White House staff or others appointed by a prior president, they couldn’t be fired because of their congressionally mandated terms.

They lost, however, when a judge essentially ruled that the president could fire any presidential appointee, whether they had terms or not. A further effort failed, too.

Spicer said that is exactly what he hoped the courts would do because he wanted to help a future Trump presidency fire Biden’s picks without having its hands tied.

“What no one ever understood was this was not about actually getting back on the board, because my term had been expired for months. It was forcing them to argue in the affirmative that they had the ultimate authority to fire anybody at any time, which they did. And the court accepted that. So the Biden administration is now on record in court, and the court agreed that the president had absolute authority to fire anyone he wants,” Spicer said in an interview.

https://x.com/OwenGregorian/status/1868634158794482111