The personnel selections of the Trump nationwide safety regime present a key to raised understanding the actions and decision-making of the administration.
UPDATED: 5PM ET, 12/1/2025 Added studies on the Trump admin’s denials and Rep. Ro Khanna’s announcement of a bipartisan Armed Companies Committee into Hegseth’s actions. Updates at finish of submit.
The silly doesn’t simply occur, it’s made to occur.
Let’s concentrate on one named participant at a time and provides a fast abstract of their current antics and clarify how they match into the bigger Trump nationwide safety regime.
Pete Hegseth on the Hook?
Let’s begin with Secretary of Battle Pete Hegseth.
I’ve coated Secretary Pete beforehand in such items as “Amway Oligarchy and Trump’s Prepared Figureheads” from July and October’s “Shutdown, Clampdown, Clownshow or Horror Film?”
Hegseth was nominated and confirmed to function Secretary of Protection, however in September POTUS Trump “first introduced a proposed identify change in early September when he signed an government order that approved Hegseth to undertake the title “secretary of battle” and to make use of “Division of Battle” in official correspondence and public communications.”
NBC studies that making the identify change formally official will presumably price as much as $2 billion and the following steps require the Pentagon to “submit paperwork to the Nationwide Safety Council that may transfer the method ahead to formally and legally present Congress with what it wants to contemplate the identify change.”
Whatever the authorized niceties, Politico studies that the navy industrial foyer is on board with the change, as are most Republicans in congress.
Senator Angus King (I-ME) is a notable maintain out, calling the identify change “yet another usurpation of the ability of Congress.”
With the vital stuff out of the best way, let’s flip our consideration to allegations of battle crimes in opposition to Secretary Pete.
The beneath is in reference to assaults by the U.S. Navy on numerous boats off the Venezuelan coast. We’ve coated that threatened battle many occasions beforehand (see right here and right here).
The Washington Publish broke the story on Friday:
Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, based on two folks with direct information of the operation. “The order was to kill all people,” considered one of them stated.
A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, placing the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a stay drone feed. Because the smoke cleared, they bought a jolt: Two survivors had been clinging to the smoldering wreck.
The Particular Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 assault — the opening salvo within the Trump administration’s battle on suspected drug traffickers within the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to adjust to Hegseth’s directions, two folks acquainted with the matter stated. The 2 males had been blown aside within the water.
Hegseth’s order, which has not been beforehand reported, provides one other dimension to the marketing campaign in opposition to suspected drug traffickers. Some present and former U.S. officers and law-of-war consultants have stated that the Pentagon’s deadly marketing campaign — which has killed greater than 80 folks so far — is illegal and should expose these most immediately concerned to future prosecution.
Sadly for Hegseth, the umbrage on this one is bipartisan, for those who rely former Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner (R-OH) as a Republican, that’s.
Home Speaker Mike Johnson eliminated Turner from the Committee in January when the present Trump nationwide safety regime took energy.
When requested in regards to the alleged “shoot to kill” orders on CBS’ Face the Nation, Turner responded, “Clearly, if that occurred, that may be- be very critical, and I agree that- that- that would- can be an unlawful act.”
Turner additionally clarified that the incident is “utterly exterior of something that has been mentioned with Congress.”
Democratic Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Kelly had been extra emphatic of their condemnations, per the NYT, of what Hegseth is alleged to have accomplished.
Kelly is considered one of six Democratic lawmakers who appeared in a TV advert “urging present navy and intelligence personnel to ‘refuse unlawful orders,’ including, ‘nobody has to hold out orders that violate the regulation or our Structure.’”
Trump’s response to that advert was to accuse the lawmakers of ‘seditious habits,’ a cost that the president stated could possibly be ‘punishable by dying,’ though he later walked again the dying threats.
However that didn’t cease the FBI from reaching out to the seditious six (Sen. Kelly plus Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Reps. Jason Crow of Colorado, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, and Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania) and trying to schedule a very good time to query them.
We’ll come again to Kash Patel and his Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), however let’s stick round coup nation for a bit first.
New Data Emerges About 2020 Venezuelan Coup Try
One of many extra hapless chapters of Trump’s first time period in workplace was the try to put in the nearly unknown nominal Venezuelan opposition chief Juan Guaidó into energy.
New courtroom filings obtained by The Grey Zone point out that “Excessive-ranking Trump officers together with Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, the highest CIA official in Latin America, and a prime NSC advisor appeared to find out about his invasion plot, and should have been concerned in its planning.”
Amongst different issues, the filings additionally expose “a proposal delivered to VP Pence’s workplace included plans to conduct ‘alse flag” operations in Venezuela, unfold hepatitis inside the nation’s navy, and fund the schemes by the “expropriation” of “drug product.”
The American Prospect has extra particulars on that caper:
…a pitch deck obtained in discovery, which was produced for then-Vice President Mike Pence by a gaggle known as “Digital Democracy.” It outlined an in depth 29-page regime change proposal consisting of sabotage plans together with “contamination with hepatitis (A, B and C), influenza, measles and piglet to the social golf equipment the place the highest officers of the narco-regime meet” and “pressured stoppage of private and non-private transport in all kinds” that may culminate within the alternative of the Bolivaran structure with a “easy federalist constitutional textual content that prohibits communism and socialism,” with coaching to start on a North Carolina coaching camp operated by Constellis, previously often known as Blackwater.
That plan by no means bought off the bottom, maybe as a result of it required the Treasury Division to grant the plotters “a Swift clearance passport from the US authorities to switch accounts of the US authorities an approximate quantity of US $14,500,000,000 in property expropriated from the narco-regime and make it out there to Digital Democracy.”
However don’t cry for Elliot Abrams, Argentina or Venezuela or anyplace else, the previous chancer is maintaining busy and nonetheless discovering huge platforms for his obsessive coup d’etat rantings.
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) December 1, 2025
Whether or not or not this iteration of the Trump nationwide safety regime presses ahead with their unhealthy intentions for Venezuela, Trump’s been busy just a bit bit north of there, in Honduras.
Trump Pardons Honduran Narco-Pol
On the finish of November, POTUS Trump posted the information to Fact social that he can be pardoning former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández. He additionally strongly endorsed Nasry “Tito” Asfura, the present normal bearer for Hernández’ right-wing Nationwide Social gathering.
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) December 1, 2025
Hernández was convicted in a New York courtroom in 2024 “of taking bribes throughout his marketing campaign from Joaquín Guzmán, the infamous former chief of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico often known as ‘El Chapo’, and of operating his Central American nation like a narco state.”
Hernández had been sentenced to serve 45 years in American jail.
His brother Juan Antonio Hernández was sentenced to life in jail March 30, 2021 in New York for trafficking tons of cocaine to the USA over 14 years.
Possibly Hernández made an excellent selection in who he employed to foyer on his behalf in Trump’s first time period, as VICE reported on the time:
(Hernández) signed a cope with a Washington lobbying agency known as BGR Group to buttress his picture as a devoted ally and an implacable foe of organized crime.
Though BGR presents itself as a bipartisan agency, it has inextricable ties to the Republican Social gathering. The corporate was co-founded by former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour. Its present group contains distinguished Republicans, equivalent to former Consultant Sean Duffy, a Wisconsin Republican, and Trump Administration State Division spokesperson Heather Nauert, who’s on the agency’s advisory board.
BGR has additionally given greater than $1 million to candidates for federal workplace in every of the final three election cycles, with roughly 90 p.c of its contributions going to Republicans. Rubio is among the many prime beneficiaries of BGR generosity, and he has benefited from the corporate’s largesse all through his profession, together with BGR-hosted fundraisers throughout each his 2010 and 2016 Senate campaigns and his short-lived presidential bid.
Protestors rejoice exterior the US Southern District of New York on March 30, 2021 after Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernandez, brother of the president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez was sentenced to life for drug trafficking.
Instantly after taking up Honduras as a consumer -a contract which earned BGR $660,000 final 12 months – based on mandated disclosures, BGR Group reached out to 11 Congressional staffers. Three of them labored or had labored for Rubio.
Later within the 12 months, BGR lobbied the Growth Finance Company, an arm of the U.S. authorities that connects creating international locations with non-public buyers. And all year long, the corporate tried to enhance the President’s picture by circulating press releases to journalists from dozens of various information shops, together with VICE, detailing the pinnacle of state’s actions. BGR despatched out three completely different press releases in October about Hernández: two a few journey he took to the USA, and one about joint U.S.-Honduras counternarcotics operations.
However Trump is a look-forward-not-back form of man and is presumably completely satisfied that Asfura presently holds a slim lead within the elections with over 60% counted to date.
However the Trump Nationwide Safety Regime has a home element as nicely and this week FBI Director Kash Patel is drawing plenty of consideration.
Patel Blasted within the NY Publish
It’s one factor when a Trump official is excoriated on CNN or within the New York Occasions, however when the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Publish runs with an unpleasant headline, that’s a distinct matter completely.
Yesterday’s Miranda Devine column headlined, “Damning report labels FBI ‘rudderless ship’ beneath Kash Patel — with him and Dan Bongino extra involved with constructing ‘private résumés’” can be unhealthy for a extra polished official with a broader base of help, for podcaster-turned-FBI-head Kash Patel, it’s doubtlessly ruinous.
Right here’s a style:
A troubling new report card on the primary six months of Patel’s management concludes he’s “in over his head” and his deputy, Dan Bongino, is “one thing of a clown,” based on the alliance, which in two earlier studies warned about crippling DEI and politicization of the FBI throughout the Biden administration.
The Patel-led FBI is described within the 115-page report as a “rudderless ship” and “all f–ked up.”
…
The report was written within the fashion of an official FBI intelligence evaluation, analyzing studies from 24 FBI sources and sub-sources, and utilizing anecdotes as an example troubling themes.The case of the “medium-sized raid jacket” is one instance.
On Sept. 11, 2025, the day after Kirk was assassinated, Patel flew into Provo, Utah, on the FBI jet however “wouldn’t disembark from the aircraft with out an FBI raid jacket,” based on ALPHA 99, a “extremely revered” supply who has served within the FBI for a number of many years.
“Patel apparently didn’t have his personal FBI raid jacket with him and refused to step from the aircraft with out carrying one,” based on the report.
…
When a jacket belonging to a feminine agent was delivered to Patel on the aircraft, he complained that “two areas on the higher sleeves didn’t have Velcro patches hooked up.”Patel wouldn’t go away the aircraft “till he had two patches to cowl these areas” so “members of an FBI SWAT Crew took patches off their uniforms and ran these patches over to” Patel “on the airport. The patches had been then hooked up to the loaner FBI raid jacket” and Patel “disembarked from the aircraft.”
The report builds on unfavourable headlines garnered by Patel for assigning an elite SWAT-team to guard his girlfriend Alexis Wilkins, a 27-year-old aspiring nation singer and for allegedly misusing a non-public jet to pay visits to Wilkins when she works.
The allegations in opposition to Patel appear fairly minor compared to the potential battle crimes being notched in opposition to Pete Hegseth’s ledger and definitely nothing in comparison with these in opposition to the previous Honduran president.
However for the sake of everybody working within the Trump nationwide safety regime, one hopes the POTUS is maintaining his pardon pen sharp and crammed with ink for any late time period rescues that have to be issued earlier than the entire thing comes a cropper, presuming it does.
UPDATE: 5PM ET, 12/1/2025
The Wall Road Journal studies:
The White Home tried to defuse a rising controversy over an assault on an alleged drug boat in September, saying an admiral who ordered a second strike that’s reported to have killed two survivors had acted legally beneath authority granted him by Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The Sept. 2 strike on the boat within the Caribbean—a part of a unbroken U.S. marketing campaign in opposition to what the administration says is a terrorist drug-trafficking group emanating from Venezuela—was the primary in a collection of such lethal assaults and drew renewed scrutiny over the weekend.
…
President Trump stated Sunday that Hegseth informed him that he didn’t situation the “kill all people” order, however that hasn’t quelled the controversy and has prompted bipartisan calls from Congress for investigations. Trump added that he didn’t know something in regards to the assault sequence and that he believed Hegseth. “Pete stated he didn’t order the dying of these two males,” Trump informed reporters. “And I consider him.” Requested in regards to the survivors being focused, Trump informed reporters, “I wouldn’t have needed that.”On Monday, White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the second strike whereas defending the actions, saying, “Secretary Hegseth approved Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Admiral Bradley labored nicely inside his authority and the regulation, directing the engagement to make sure the boat was destroyed, and the menace to the USA of America was eradicated.”
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) says there’s a main investigation coming:
🚨 Congressman Ro Khanna confirms that they’re about to announce an “unprecedented” bipartisan Armed Companies investigation into Pete Hegseth. pic.twitter.com/iAMjHiXwZu
— Aaron Parnas (@AaronParnas) December 1, 2025
