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A federal judge has voided the court-martial conviction of former Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who left his post in Afghanistan in 2009 and was then captured and held by the Taliban for five years. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton on Tuesday issued a 63-page ruling granting summary judgment in favor of Bergdahl, who was convicted after pleading guilty in 2017 to charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. Walton argued that Bergdahl was denied a fair trial because the military judge who presided over the court martial, Jeffrey Nance, failed to disclose that he had applied to the executive...

Four top members of the Taliban's new interim government are former Guantanamo Bay prisoners who were freed by the Obama administration in a prisoner exchange for Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl. The four new officials were members of the hardline 'Guantanamo Five' who were traded to free Bergdahl from the Taliban-aligned Haqqani network in 2014. The Taliban on Tuesday announced the appointment of Acting Director of Intelligence Abdul Haq Wasiq, Acting Minister of Borders and Tribal Affairs Norullah Noori, Deputy Defense Minister Mohammad Fazl, and Acting Minister of Information and Culture Khairullah Khairkhah. The four men, who also took part in...

Blinken and Psaki said prisoners posed no threat When President Barack Obama struck a deal with the Taliban in 2014 to free several high-ranking terrorists being held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, his defenders argued their release would do little to harm U.S. national security. Now, four of those terrorists are serving in senior roles in Afghanistan's newly formed Taliban government. The Obama-era deal's prominent defenders include officials now serving in senior posts in the Biden administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House press secretary Jen Psaki. They claimed there was no indication these terrorists, known...

Former President Barack Obama didn’t listen to Pentagon officials when they told him Taliban mullah Khairullah Khairkhwa was too dangerous to release. Instead, he freed the group that came to be known as the ‘Gitmo five’ — Khairkhwa alongside four of his buddies — from the Guantanamo Bay prison in 2014 in exchange for a U.S. soldier who deserted his post. Obama all but guaranteed that Khairkhwa and the four other men would be sent to Qatar, where their movements would be restricted and where they could do no harm. As it turns out, the Taliban isn’t as trustworthy as...

Taliban leader was freed from Guantanamo in 2014 swap by Obama When then-President Barack Obama released five Taliban commanders from the Guantanamo Bay prison in exchange for an American deserter in 2014, he assured a wary public the dangerous enemy combatants would be transferred to Qatar and kept from causing any trouble in Afghanistan. In fact, they were left free to engineer Sunday’s sacking of Kabul. Soon after gaining their freedom, some of the notorious Taliban Five pledged to return to fight Americans in Afghanistan and made contacts with active Taliban militants there. But the Obama-Biden administration turned a blind...

Obama gave $5 billion and the ‘Taliban 5’ for deserter Bowe Burgdahl. These terrorists were instrumental in the overthrow of Afghanistan the New York Post reports: The mastermind of the regime change is former detainee Khairkhwa, the Taliban mullah whom Obama released from Gitmo even though the Pentagon classified him as too dangerous to release. Earlier this year, Khairkhwa assured the administration that the Taliban would not launch a spring military offensive if Biden committed to removing all remaining American troops. He also promised not to retaliate against any Afghans who worked with the US military or the US-backed government...

It was one of the worst trades in history, even worse than Nolan Ryan for Jim Fregosi or Kobe Bryant for Vlade Divac: Back in 2014, Barack Obama traded five Taliban commanders for one American who, we were led to believe, had been captured by the Taliban. Obama did all he could to make the swap seem noble: He said at the time that the recovery of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was “a reminder of America’s unwavering commitment to leave no man or woman in uniform behind on the battlefield,” and the five Taliban jihadis were sent to Qatar, where they...

Today, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) reintroduced the American Forces Going Home After Noble (AFGHAN) Service Act to end America’s longest war and provide bonuses to those who have deployed in support of the Global War on Terrorism. This legislation also empowers America to redirect the savings from ending nation-building in Afghanistan to the country’s needs at home. The United States has been at war in Afghanistan since October 2001, where it has cost $2 trillion. We completed our mission long ago, Osama Bin Laden was killed in 2011, and Al Qaeda is all but eliminated from Afghanistan. Meanwhile, there...

Well, he’s back, folks. Bowe Bergdahl wants to appeal his desertion conviction because—you guessed it—Donald Trump is no longer president. Bergdahl claims the former president’s rhetoric prevented him from having a fair trial. The case stems back when Bergdahl abandoned his post in Afghanistan 12 years ago, which led to his capture by the Taliban. They held him for five years. Katie covered this fiasco of a story, noting that six US servicemen were killed trying to look for him. He was released in 2014 in a prisoner exchange, where we got this deserter for the price of releasing five...

Former Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl filed a lawsuit last week alleging President Donald Trump and the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) caused “undue command influence” in his 2017 court-martial case in which he pleaded guilty on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy.Bergdahl’s lawsuit, filed in the Washington D.C. federal court, accuses Trump and McCain of unduly influencing his case and further alleges the judge presiding over his original case had a duty to disclose that he was seeking a “lucrative job” with the Trump-era Department of Justice. Bergdahl’s lawsuit seeks to overturn his 2017 conviction, for which he...

Army soldier Bowe Bergdahl contends President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. John McCain made comments that interfered with his right to a fair trial at Fort Bragg. A military court has agreed to hear the appeal of Bowe Bergdahl, the Army soldier who left his post during a deployment in Afghanistan in 2009 to walk to another American base but got captured by the Taliban and held prisoner for five years. At a court-martial at Fort Bragg in 2017, Bergdahl pleaded guilty to desertion to shirk hazardous duty and to misbehavior before the enemy. He was sentenced to a $10,000...

Retired Army Master Sgt. Mark Allen has died 10 years after he was shot in the head while searching for deserter Pvt. Bowe Bergdahl in Afghanistan. Allen died on Saturday at the age of 46, according to funeral information posted online. He had been unable to walk or speak since he was a sniper shot him in the head in July 2009 while he was looking for Bergdahl, who had walked off his base in Afghanistan and was held by the Taliban for five years, the Walton Tribune reported. At Bergdahl's trial, Allen's wife Shannon testified that it would take...

The White House inadvertently blew the cover of the CIA’s top officer in Kabul during President Obama’s surprise trip to Afghanistan on Sunday. The name of the spy agency’s station chief in Kabul was included on a list provided to news organizations of senior U.S. officials participating in Mr. Obama’s visit with U.S. troops. The White House provided the list that was sent out in a “pool report” by a reporter traveling with the president to thousands of journalists, including foreign media, who receive the reports.

An Army appeals court ruled Tuesday that tweets from President Trump attacking U.S. Army soldier Bowe Berghdahl did not unlawfully influence his trial for desertion, according to CNN. Bergdahl’s attorneys had argued that tweets and public statements from Trump describing their client as “a no-good traitor who should have been executed” unduly influenced the case, and that Bergdahl was entitled to have a court reconsider the case or grant clemency as a result. A three-judge Army Court of Criminal Appeals panel rejected the argument 2-1, according to the network. "Although there was some evidence of unlawful command influence adduced at...

Democratic 2020 presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, in an interview that aired Sunday, said President Trump had slandered American troops by considering pardoning servicemen accused of war crimes -- and said the proposal threatened to undermine the country’s “legal and moral” foundations. “When you serve, you are agreeing to serve the Constitution and uphold the law and, frankly, his idea that being sent to fight makes you automatically into some kind of war criminal is a slander against veterans that could come only from somebody who never served,” the South Bend, Ind., mayor said on ABC News’ “This Week.” Buttigieg, an...

Five jihadis freed from Guantanamo in exchange for Bergdahl now face US as Taliban reps at peace talks Those who warned that these men would return to the jihad were mocked and vilified as “Islamophobes.” “Once Jailed in Guantánamo, 5 Taliban Now Face U.S. at Peace Talks,” by Mujib Mashal, New York Times, March 26, 2019: DOHA, Qatar — When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and toppled the Taliban government, even those who surrendered were treated as terrorists: handcuffed, hooded and shipped to the American detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Now, in a stark demonstration of the...

Democrats are gloating over the sentencing of former Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) last week. He was ordered to serve 10 years in prison for the vague charges of mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. Whenever prosecutors want to get someone who hasn’t actually committed a crime, they use those vague but scary sounding charges. He was also ordered to pay $1,014,718.51 in restitution, to be divided between him and two other co-defendants.What did Stockman actually do to warrant this? He facilitated four donations from two donors totaling $915,000 to two nonprofits he was associated with. One of the nonprofits...

One wonders what Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema and candidate for the Senate seat being vacated by Republican Jeff Flake thinks of the news that the five members of the Taliban, dubbed their “Dream Team”, that President Barack Hussein Obama traded for the traitor and deserter Bowe Bergdahl, have officially returned to the Taliban, their mission once again to kill Americans and, presumably, Arizonans. Let me take a wild guess and suggest that it is doubtful Sinema will express condemnation of and regret for Obama’s move to honor to excuse a traitor and reward an enemy of the United States, an...

KABUL, Afghanistan — Five members of the Afghan Taliban who were freed from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in exchange for captured American Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl have joined the insurgent group’s political office in Qatar, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Tuesday. They will now be among Taliban representatives negotiating for peace in Afghanistan, a sign some negotiators in Kabul say indicates the Taliban’s desire for a peace pact. Others fear the five, all of whom were close to the insurgent group's founder and hard-line leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, bring with them the same ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam...

Quotes: “There is a HJC oversight hearing today where the head of our Civil Division will testify. Likely to get questions on State Department emails,” - Email from Assistant Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik with a warning to Podesta on Hillary’s emails on May 19, 2015, with the subject line, “Heads up. (from Wikileaks) "We found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution - Assistant Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik concluding the IRS did nothing wrong in targeting Tea Party groups. FBI Director James Comey...