International
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigns after major backlash over Trump assassination attempt
United Sates Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle testifies before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee during a hearing at the Rayburn House Office Building on July 22, 2024 in Washington, DC.
Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
From LifeSiteNews
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has finally announced she will step down after being roundly slammed by a bipartisan committee during a congressional hearing for her failure to prevent the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has stepped down amid resounding, bipartisan calls for her resignation by congressmen following the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
Three sources confirmed to NBC that Cheatle officially resigned on Tuesday morning. In her letter of resignation, shared by a senior official, Cheatle wrote that she takes “full responsibility for the security lapse.”
“In light of recent events, it is with a heavy heart that I have made the difficult decision to step down as your Director,” she wrote.
President Joe Biden said in a statement following Cheatle’s announcement of her resignation that he will appoint a new head of Secret Service “soon.” He has ordered an “independent review” to investigate the day’s events.
In response to Cheatle’s resignation, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “The Biden/Harris Administration did not properly protect me, and I was forced to take a bullet for Democracy. IT WAS MY GREAT HONOR TO DO SO!”
Her decision comes a day after being grilled under subpoena by Republican and Democrat members of the House Oversight Committee, who ripped her both for the grave Secret Service lapse that allowed Trump to be shot and for her refusal to answer simple questions during the hearing.
The leading Democrat member of the panel, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), accused Cheatle of having “lost the confidence of Congress at a very urgent and tender moment in the history of the country.”
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) slammed Cheatle as “full of s***” and “completely dishonest” for not giving direct answers to questions, including about providing “audio and video recordings” in her possession that were taken the day of the Trump assassination attempt.
“How did a 20-year-old loner with a week’s notice pick the absolute best location to assassinate President Trump when the entire Secret Service missed it?” asked Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas. “Director Cheatle, on your leadership, your agency got outsmarted and outmaneuvered by a 20-year-old. How can we have any confidence that you could stop trained professionals from a nefarious nation state?”
The Secret Service director was unable to provide explanations as to why the roof used by Crooks to shoot at Trump was not secured the day of the shooting and why Trump was allowed to speak on stage while the Secret Service was aware that a suspicious man was present on the grounds that day. At one point, she claimed she did not “have the timeline of how the individual accessed the roof, where they accessed the roof, or how long they were on the roof.”
She said, however, that all the security resources requested “for that day” were provided.
Cheatle resisted calls to resign prior to Tuesday, with a Secret Service spokesperson declaring last week that she had no intention to resign even after mounting calls for her to step down.
Critics across the board have described the security breach at Trump’s Pennsylvania campaign rally as a “catastrophic failure” of the Secret Service. Video footage emerged online of attendees from the Trump rally alerting police to the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, positioned on a roof toward the rally stage, highlighting one of many security failures that day to prevent the assassination attempt. One man present that day told the BBC he was “pointing” at the gunman on the roof for two or three minutes.
Counter-snipers fatally shot Crooks after one of his shots grazed the former president’s right ear, bloodying him. However, Crooks killed a rally attendee, identified as 50-year old Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief. Two other Pennsylvania residents were shot, but are reportedly in stable condition.
International
Telegram founder Pavel Durov criticizes French authorities in first statement after his arrest
From LifeSiteNews
The Telegram CEO implied that French authorities had not tried to reach out to him before his arrest and stressed that if a government was dissatisfied with how an internet service operates, it should start legal action against the company instead of arresting its owner.
Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov criticized French authorities for his surprising arrest in Paris.
In his first public statement after being released from jail on bail, Durov said that he was questioned by French police for four days and he “was told I may be personally responsible for other people’s illegal use of Telegram, because the French authorities didn’t receive responses from Telegram.”
The Telegram founder said that his arrest was “surprising for several reasons” because Telegram employs a representative that replies to legal requests from the EU and French authorities “had numerous ways to reach me to request assistance,” implying that they had not tried to reach out to him before his arrest.
Moreover, he stressed that if a government was dissatisfied with how an internet service like Telegram operates in its country, it should start legal action against the company instead of arresting its owner.
“Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a simplistic approach,” Durov wrote. “Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools.”
The Telegram CEO said that “the right balance between privacy and security is not easy” and revealed that Telegram had often been at odds with governments and that if they were not able to find this balance between security and privacy, “we are ready to leave that country.”
“We’ve done it many times,” he recalled. “When Russia demanded we hand over ‘encryption keys’ to enable surveillance, we refused — and Telegram got banned in Russia.”
“When Iran demanded we block channels of peaceful protesters, we refused — and Telegram got banned in Iran.”
“We are prepared to leave markets that aren’t compatible with our principles, because we are not doing this for money. We are driven by the intention to bring good and defend the basic rights of people, particularly in places where these rights are violated.”
Durov said that Telegram is “not some sort of anarchic paradise” like some media outlets claim, rather it does regularly take down channels and post that are “harmful.”
“However, we hear voices saying that it’s not enough,” he said regarding censorship on the platform. “Telegram’s abrupt increase in user count to 950M caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform. That’s why I made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard.”
Durov was arrested on August 24 after his private jet landed at Le Bourget airport just outside of Paris. The billionaire entrepreneur had been under an arrest warrant as part of a police investigation in France into alleged lack of moderation and “criminal activity” on Telegram.
French President Emmanuel Macron denied the charges of Durov’s arrest being politically motivated. However, many have called that into question.
READ: Does anyone believe Emmanuel Macron’s claim that Pavel Durov’s arrest was not political?
While most large social media companies, specifically Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Google (YouTube) and Twitter before Elon Musk’s takeover, censored true information regarding COVID-19, vaccines, LGBT, and other issues in the past years, Telegram remained a mostly censorship-free area for dissidents all over the world.
From LifeSiteNews
Canada is suggesting measures to counteract ‘misinformation’ and promote ‘marginalized’ groups are included in the WHO pandemic treaty, an initiative which experts have warned will undermine national sovereignty.
Canada wants to add misinformation and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) measures to the World Health Organization’s controversial global pandemic treaty.
According to a July summary report from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), Canada is suggesting measures to counteract “misinformation” and promote “marginalized” groups be added to the WHO global pandemic treaty.
“Comprehensive prevention strategies, inclusive surveillance practices, and addressing challenges for marginalized communities are essential for effective pandemic prevention,” it said.
“Data ownership, privacy, inclusivity, race-based data and cultural sensitivity are important issues which could be given greater consideration,” the report continued.
“Data collection can be a challenge, compounded by strained relationships between Indigenous people and the health system, marked by trust deficits and ingrained power differentials,” it claimed.
The report discussed Canada’s participation in the WHO global pandemic treaty. Formally known as the Pandemic Accord, the agreement would give the WHO increased power over Canada and other countries in the event of another “pandemic” or other so-called emergencies.
The PHAC report further discussed the importance of countering so-called “misinformation” in the event of another pandemic.
“Countering misinformation and disinformation is critical to pandemic response efforts, as seen by its impact on vaccination and immunization rates around the world,” the report said.
“Efforts should be made to hold social media platforms accountable for the content they host. However, it is imperative to address misinformation in a manner that respects freedom of speech and expression,” it continued.
However, it seems unlikely that those “countering misinformation” would work to safeguard opinions that differ from the globalist narrative, considering Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s response to the 2022 Freedom Convoy which protested COVID regulations.
In addition to using violent police force to drive the protestors out of Ottawa, the Trudeau government froze the bank accounts of Canadians who donated to the protest.
In addition to potentially suppressing legitimate opinion, Conservative MP Colin Carrie has warned that the treaty could “institutionalize” freedom-throttling COVID “pandemic mistakes.”
Similarly, Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis has repeatedly warned that the new International Health Regulations (IHR) contained in the treaty will compromise Canada’s sovereignty by giving the international organization increased power over Canadians.
Lewis also gave her endorsement of a petition demanding the Liberal government under Trudeau “urgently” withdraw from the United Nations and its WHO subgroup, due to the organizations’ undermining of national “sovereignty” and the “personal autonomy” of citizens.
The petition warned that the “secretly negotiated” amendments could “impose unacceptable, intrusive universal surveillance, violating the rights and freedoms guaranteed in the Canadian Bill of Rights and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
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