General John Kelly is decorated Marine, a Gold Star Father and on that basis he deserves our respect and gratitude for his service, his sacrifice and the sacrifice of his family.
But the story does not begin and end there, and it never should. We should not grant carte blanche to anyone to go before the Official podium of the President of the United States and allow that person to lie and denigrate another honorable public servant. And in this case it’s just that he lied, it’s that he showed a clear impetus to unfairly presume the worst about someone he clearly doesn’t relate to. That being Rep. Fredericka Wilson, but also Myesha Johnson and also the parents of Sgt. La David T Johnson who had invited Rep. Wilson and all three have agreed with her that they all felt disrespected by the Donald Trump’s words to them in their greatest moment of grief.
By attacking Rep. Wilson, Kelly also attacked a Gold Star family and how they felt about what they have experienced in this scenario, and then continued to attack her falsely, and with coded racist language, even after it he himself made clear that what Wilson had said, was absolutely the truth.
When Kelly was selected to become Trump’s Chief of Staff after being the head of Homeland Security there was much praise, but at the time it seems many of forgot exactly what he had been doing at Homeland Security while he was there.
More undocumented immigrants are being swept up in immigration raids targeting their friends, neighbors and coworkers.
Under the Trump Administration's new enforcement priorities, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are instructed to detain and deport anyone who is in the country illegally, which means even so-called "non-targets" may end up in custody after a raid.
"The biggest change is under the previous Administration, there were a lot of individuals that were not considered amenable to arrest that now, since the change in Administration, our director has said there are not going to be any classes or categories of removable aliens that are exempt," says ICE spokeswoman Danielle Bennett.
In a four-day operation at the end of July, ICE arrested 650 people. Of those, 457 weren't targets of the raid. In other words, a full 70% of the immigrants swept up in this operation were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Again the focus here was the opposite of what Trump had claimed and instead of focusing on actual criminals, immigrants who had been completely law abiding were increasingly targeted.
Of 678 people rounded up in 12 states during raids last week, 74% had been convicted of a crime. That is down from 90% of detained people with criminal records in 2016 under Obama, according to a USA TODAY analysis of more than a dozen federal raids.
For example, during a June 2016 raid conducted in six Midwestern states, 85% of the 324 people arrested had been convicted of crimes. During a raid in those same six states last week, 69% had criminal records.
The point is that this was not by accident or simply an oversight, it was done by design and it was under the specific direction of Gen. John Kelly.
Earlier this month, The Intercept published a cache of internal emails exchanged between Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Texas in February, while the first mass raids of the Trump administration were underway.
The redacted emails, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by students at Vanderbilt University Law School, show that while hundreds of undocumented immigrants were rounded up across the country, DHS officials tried — and largely failed — to engineer a narrative that would substantiate the administration’s claims that the raids were motivated by public safety concerns. In the emails, local ICE officials are ordered to come up with “three egregious cases” of apprehended criminals to highlight to the media.
The February raids — the first in an ongoing series under this administration — led to 680 arrests nationwide, including arrests of dozens of individuals who had no criminal history. In Austin, Texas, where 51 people were arrested, the majority of those arrested had no criminal record.
…
On February 10, as the raids kicked off, an ICE executive in Washington sent a directive to the agency’s chiefs of staff around the country. “Please put together a white paper covering the three most egregious cases,” for each location, the acting chief of staff of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations wrote in the email. “If a location has only one egregious case — then include an extra egregious case from another city.”
So John Kelly is a liar. He specifically directed ICE staff to come up with “egregious cases” of criminals that were apprehended when in fact they were deliberately going out of their way to apprehend many non-egregious non-criminal cases just to make themselves look “tougher” than Barack Obama who had been already deporting a record number of undocumented criminals. Under Kelly agents were to pad their stats by uses “egregious cases” form others cities, which of course would mean double counting and stacking the stats to present the false narrative they wanted to present.
All of this despite the well documented fact that the crime rate for immigrants is only a fraction of the rate for native born citizens.
A study by The Sentencing Project, a criminal justice research and advocacy group, found that "foreign-born residents of the United States commit crime less often than native-born citizens."
Another study, by the libertarian Cato Institute, compares incarceration rates by migratory status, ethnicity and gender.
"All immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than natives relative to their shares of the population," the Cato study reads.
But John Kelly ordered that his department sweep up not just criminals, but non-criminals and pretend the opposite. That act betrays malice aforethought, it is a clearly bigoted act — even if one were to assume the best case scenario that it was someone how “well intentioned” it clearly was not. The numbers of ICE arrest did rise, but most of this increase was not among those who were known “criminals.”
Between Jan. 22 and April 29, 2017, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) deportation officers administratively arrested 41,318 individuals on civil immigration charges. Between Jan. 24 and April 30, 2016, ERO arrested 30,028.
...
While these data clearly reflect the fact that convicted criminals are an immigration enforcement priority, Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly has made it clear that ICE will no longer exempt any class of individuals from removal proceedings if they are found to be in the country illegally. This is evident by the rise in non-criminal arrests over the same period, which increased from approximately 4,200 in 2016 to more than 10,800 in 2017.
By the numbers overall arrests increased by 11,100, with the non-criminal portion of this 6,600 meaning more than half of the increase in arrests, were from non-criminals.
This is what John Kelly wrought as head of Homeland Security while hyping the narrative that ICE was doing the exact opposite. And one of the things that was intended was to drive a wave of fear through the community of undocumented, even if they are otherwise law abiding.
No going to church, no going to the store. No doctor’s appointments for some, no school for others. No driving, period — not when a broken taillight could deliver the driver to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
It is happening on Staten Island, where fewer day laborers haunt street corners in search of work; in West Phoenix’s Isaac School District, where 13 Latino students have dropped out in the past two weeks; and in the horse country of northern New Jersey, where one of the many undocumented grooms who muck out the stables is thinking of moving back to Honduras.
If deportation has always been a threat on paper for the 11 million people living in the country illegally, it rarely imperiled those who did not commit serious crimes. But with the Trump administration intent on curbing illegal immigration — two memos outlining the federal government’s plans to accelerate deportations were released Tuesday, another step toward making good on one of President Trump’s signature campaign pledges — that threat, for many people, has now begun to distort every movement
There’s another word for this: Terrorism.
Going back even further to Kelly’s military service his commitment to equal rights and justice under the constitutional tenet of “innocent until proven guilty” and 8th Amendment ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” was not exactly absolute.
- As the General in charge of the Guantanamo Bay Detention facility, Kelly publicly criticized efforts to close Guantanamo (Source) and was accused by Obama Administration officials of working to undermine the President’s efforts to close the facility. (Source)
- Opposed and publicly criticized the integration of women into military ground combat units, arguing it would lead to lower standards. (Source)
- Defended the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, such as waterboarding and rectal feeding. Kelly went on to dismiss the criticisms of human rights groups as “foolishness”. (Source)
- Testified in support of an officer caught urinating on talibani corpses. (Source)
- Supports the imprisonment of terror suspects without trial. (Source)
- Criticised by Amnesty International for his “unsafe and inhumane” treatment (Source) of Guantanamo detainees on hunger strike to protest their imprisonment. (Source)
- Supports the war on drugs and opposes legalization or decriminalization of any drugs, including marijuana. (Source)
- A proponent of border security, Kelly believes that “no wall will work by itself” and has warned about the “existential threat” that unchecked migration poses for the nation. (Source)
So when it comes to equal rights for women to serve, human and civil rights for immigrants protected under the 14th Amendments “equal protection clause”, and the rights of Muslims not to be imprisoned without due process, access to habeas corpus, Gen. John Kelly is not exactly a fan.
Oh and one point of fact when it comes to the “existential threat of unchecked migration” — there have been more violent acts that fit the legal definition of “Terrorism” from Right-wing Whites in the years since 9/11 than there have been from Muslims or Immigrants by a factor of two to one.
- From January 2008 to the end of 2016, we identified 63 cases of Islamist domestic terrorism, meaning incidents motivated by a theocratic political ideology espoused by such groups as the Islamic State. The vast majority of these (76 percent) were foiled plots, meaning no attack took place.
- During the same period, we found that right-wing extremists were behind nearly twice as many incidents: 115. Just over a third of these incidents (35 percent) were foiled plots. The majority were acts of terrorist violence that involved deaths, injuries or damaged property.
- Right-wing extremist terrorism was more often deadly: Nearly a third of incidents involved fatalities, for a total of 79 deaths, while 13 percent of Islamist cases caused fatalities. (The total deaths associated with Islamist incidents were higher, however, reaching 90, largely due to the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas.)
- Incidents related to left-wing ideologies, including ecoterrorism and animal rights, were comparatively rare, with 19 incidents causing seven fatalities – making the shooting attack on Republican members of Congress earlier this month somewhat of an anomaly.
- Nearly half (48 percent) of Islamist incidents in our database were sting operations, more than four times the rate for far-right (12 percent) or far-left (10.5 percent) incidents.
Consequently it’s not an accident that he’s a member of Trump’s team and therefore is it really such a surprise that the other day he defend Trump with this claim?
Well, let me tell you what I told him. Let me tell you what my best friend, Joe Dunford, told me — because he was my casualty officer. He said, Kel, he was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed. He knew what he was getting into by joining that 1 percent. He knew what the possibilities were because we’re at war. And when he died, in the four cases we’re talking about, Niger, and my son’s case in Afghanistan — when he died, he was surrounded by the best men on this Earth: his friends.
That’s what the President tried to say to four families the other day.
However that is simply not what Trump said, he didn’t mention anything about the “1 percent” who provide our protection, he didn't mention being surround by the “best men” — which he actually wasn’t because he was actually alone and not found for 48 hours later.
I was stunned when I came to work yesterday morning, and brokenhearted at what I saw a member of Congress doing. A member of Congress who listened in on a phone call from the President of the United States to a young wife, and in his way tried to express that opinion — that he’s a brave man, a fallen hero, he knew what he was getting himself into because he enlisted. There’s no reason to enlist; he enlisted. And he was where he wanted to be, exactly where he wanted to be, with exactly the people he wanted to be with when his life was taken.
That was the message. That was the message that was transmitted.
But not the message that was received, not by anyone in that car. Trump may have been trying to follow Kelly’s advice, and we know have a good explanation of what he was trying to convey and for once there may not have been any specific ill intent on his part at that time, but the fact is that Trump wasn’t anywhere near as eloquent as Kelly. All he actually said was this:
Geist: [Trump] said “He knew what he signed up for, but I guess it still hurts.” If you could just recap what exactly happened yesterday, you’re in the car with Mss Johnson there, [Trump] calls, it goes up on speaker phone [a choice made by Johnson’s commanding officer who was also present] and what did you hear from the [Trump]?
Wilson: Well exactly what you said, but that’s not the worst part. She was crying the whole time and when she hung up the phone she looked at me and said “He didn’t even remember his name.” That’s the hurting part.
Geist: I think what’s made some headlines, from [Trump] saying that Sgt. Johnson “knew what he was getting into when he signed up” what was the tone and the tenor from [Trump] in those particular comments?
Wilson: He was almost like joking. “Well I guess you knew...” something to the fact “he knew what he was getting into when he signed up, but I guess it hurts anyway” just matter-of-factly. This is what happens, anyone who is signing up for military duty is signing up to die — and that’s the way we interpreted it. It was horrible. It was insensitive. It was absolutely crazy. It was unnecessary. I was livid.
Geist: Was that Sgt. Johnson’s widow read of the call also was she upset by it, or are you speaking for yourself?
Wilson: She was in tears. She was in tears. And she said “he didn’t even remember his name.”
Katy Kur: Congresswoman this conversation has become intensely politicized from [Trump], now do you think you have any qualms about, from your point of view, also politicizing this conversation, is it right speaking out about a conversation between Mrs Johnson and [Trump]?
Wilson: What I’m really concerned about, I wrote a letter to Gen. Mattis about the circumstances surrounding his death, I’m not trying to politicize what [Trump] said, that letter went out long before the conversation. I have a real concern because, I have been fighting Boko Haram for over 3 years in the Congress of the United States ever since they kidnapped 274 school girls from a private school in Nigeria. So “Bring back our Girls” is my project in the Congress, I’ve passed bills I’ve been working with Nigeria, I’ve traveled to the region, and for La David to be from Miami and to be part of my mentoring program since a little boy the “5000 Role Models of Excellence”, and to travel to the area where I have been fighting, and to lose his life? Why my goodness, I was out of my mind.
So I want answers surrounding his death, I want a complete investigation as to what happened to him. Why was he missing for 48 hours? Why was he in an unarmed car? Why didn’t they have appropriate weapons? Boko Haram is the most dangerous terrorist group in the world, they burn babies and use little girls as suicide bombers.
That’s how this all got started. Right from the top Rep. Wilson actually downplayed Trump’s statement after honestly answering a question that was asked and focused almost immediately on the circumstances leading to the death of all four soldiers in the midst of the terrorism of Boko Haram and the fact that Trump’s State Dept. wrongfully targeted Chad in their latest travel ban prompting them to pull back their soldiers in Niger last week which has sparked a surge among ISIS affiliated fighters in the region.
Rep. Wilson finished her Morning Joe interview by bringing up the GoFundme Page for Sgt. Johnson’s Family — something that Kelly and the White House haven’t mentioned, yet.
She was exactly on the right point from the beginning. And others in the car, including Johnson’s mother, have said exactly that.
Cowanda Jones-Johnson was present when the president called her daughter-in-law, Myeshia Johnson, during the ride to greet the slain serviceman’s body, reported the Washington Post.
The call, which was taken over speaker phone, was overheard by Rep. Frederica Johnson (D-FL) and a county official riding in the car.
“President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband,” Jones-Johnson told the newspaper.
The soldier’s mother declined to elaborate, but she told the newspaper that Wilson’s account of the conversation was accurate.
And then we had this over the top reaction from Kelly.
It stuns me that a member of Congress would have listened in on that conversation.
She was invited, practically a member of the family who was Principle of Sgt. Johnson's fathers elementary school, who invited you to listen in? She wasn’t exactly listening in with a secret microphone and remote transmitter like an outtake from Mission Impossible: Rogue Condolences. Reportedly it was Johnson’s CO who put the phone on speaker.
Absolutely stuns me. And I thought at least that was sacred. You know, when I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor.
But apparently not enough of an honor enough to serve along side men in the military.
That’s obviously not the case anymore as we see from recent cases. Life — the dignity of life — is sacred.
So, he’s a forced birther?
That’s gone. Religion, that seems to be gone as well.
A forced birther that also believes I suppose that religious rights outweigh Human Rights, freedom of choice and free will?’
Gold Star families, I think that left in the convention over the summer.
And who exactly was it that did that again while accusing the Khan family of being supporters of ISIS?
But I just thought — the selfless devotion that brings a man or woman to die on the battlefield, I just thought that that might be sacred.
Yeah, it used to be until the Khan’s were attacked and until Trump used the still grieving family of those that sadly died in the attack on Benghazi in a baseless attack on Hillary Clinton after multiple congressional investigations had completely cleared her of wrong-doing, and also somebody started talking smack about a captured officer “not being a hero.”
And when I listened to this woman and what she was saying, and what she was doing on TV, the only thing I could do to collect my thoughts was to go and walk among the finest men and women on this Earth. And you can always find them because they’re in Arlington National Cemetery. I went over there for an hour-and-a-half, walked among the stones, some of whom I put there because they were doing what I told them to do when they were killed.
I’ll end with this: In October — April, rather, of 2015, I was still on active duty, and I went to the dedication of the new FBI field office in Miami. And it was dedicated to two men who were killed in a firefight in Miami against drug traffickers in 1986 — a guy by the name of Grogan and Duke. Grogan almost retired, 53 years old; Duke, I think less than a year on the job. (Editor’s note: The F.B.I. agent for which the building is named was named Jerry L. Dove, not Duke.)
Yeah, he got the name of one of the officers wrong. Imagine that.
Anyways, they got in a gunfight and they were killed. Three other FBI agents were there, were wounded, and now retired. So we go down — Jim Comey gave an absolutely brilliant memorial speech to those fallen men and to all of the men and women of the FBI who serve our country so well, and law enforcement so well.
There were family members there. Some of the children that were there were three or four years old when their dads were killed on that street in Miami-Dade.
Three of the men that survived the fight were there, and gave a rendition of how brave those men were and how they gave their lives.
And a congresswoman stood up, and in the long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, stood up there and all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President Obama, and on that phone call he gave the money — the $20 million — to build the building. And she sat down, and we were stunned. Stunned that she had done it. Even for someone that is that empty a barrel, we were stunned.
But, you know, none of us went to the press and criticized. None of us stood up and were appalled. We just said, O.K., fine.
And thanks to video from that event we now know that Kelly again, lied.
Rep. Wilson didn't take credit for appropriating the money — she was the one had pushed to have the building named after the fallen FBI agents, using the help of Speaker Boehner, and with the help of Senator Nelson — and Senator Rubio — and gave them all credit for pushing the bill forward. She wasn't “grandstanding” she was thankful for the bipartisan help she received and specifically honored the fallen FBI agents personally — and correctly — and the response at the end of her speech wasn’t “Ok, Fine”, there was a standing ovation.
In the wake of Trump’s false claims that “he didn't say what that woman said”, and these despicable lies by Kelly, we’ve had Laura Ingraham call Wilson a “nutbag” liar and both her and ex-Sheriff Clark make fun her penchant for bedazzled cowboy hats, as if Clarke has any room to talk about ostentatious headware, Fox and Friends says Johnson’s widow should be “Grateful for the call, the President isn’t required to make it”, Hannity attacked Wilson as a “national disgrace”, Huckabee-Sanders says that it’s highly inappropriate to debate a “Four Star Marine General”. and then last night we had this amazing exchange on CNN as a Trumpeter accused Bakari Sellers of “Dividing the Nation” by pointing out that Rep. Wilson simply told the truth.
I can understand the reflexive pile on by the Fox “Dear Leader” crowd, but how does a man like Kelly who is that “honest and honorable” get the facts that far wrong? Is that a mistake? Is that incompetence? Frankly, I don't think that Gen. John Kelly is a fool, or that he’s incompetent and leaves the probability that’s he’s a mendacious fracktard. (As in Bastard, not the other word.)
Rep Wilson has responded to all this saying that she feels sorry for Gen Kelly and that Trump is surrounded by White Supremacists in the White House, and with the history of people like Bannon, Gorka and Stephan Miller that’s a fair point.
No one had considered this was also a possibly with Gen. John Kelly.
I think it’s important not to bandy about accusations of racism and xenophobia idly, speculatively or without good cause because it cheapens and lessons the importance and validity of the charge and strengthens the case of racism-deniers who legitimately exclaim “race-baiter” when innocent people are falsely accused.
Trump himself may have simply spoken clumsily, but what has occurred since clearly wasn’t an idle mistake. This was mendacity. This was a deliberate calculated hit job on Wilson intended to insulate Trump by undermining a congressperson they apparently assumed was an “empty barrel” and “easy target” who has a close friend and mentor to various members of the Johnson family for decades — not just ta carpetbagger who showed up the other day to grandstand — has been a pillar to the community, who has been improving the lives of the people in it on a personal intimate level, battling legislatively against Boko Haram, honoring the lives and the sacrifice of fallen FBI agents with class and grace. This was an attempt to tear her down and tear down her decades of good works just to save face for Trump’s clumsy inarticulate moment. That’s disgusting and despicable.
And even as all this has been revealed the one thing we haven’t yet heard from Trump, Huckabee-Sanders or Kelly in this entire mess is : “I’m Sorry.” They haven’t said they’re sorry that Trump’s clumsy words caused more pain for the Johnson family, they haven’t apologized or even acknowledged that they not only smeared Rep. Wilson — they also smeared his widow and others in his family.
And they continue to smear and demean her.
Yeah, and Wilson is the one “politicizing” this? She’s the one who hasn’t taken the high ground?
Gen. John Kelly may be a “Hero” to some yes, but it’s now clear that in order to normalize, rationalize and enable the reflexive vindictiveness of Trump he’s also a repeated Liar, very likely a unindicted War criminal, and very obviously not a champion of civil and human rights. He’s no fool, but it seems almost impossible that he is not also, a bigot.