The comments of President Joe Biden on Friday left many of us surprised, if not stunned, when he appeared to announce a finding to the ongoing investigation into allegations that mounted Border patrol officers whipped or “strapped” Haitian migrants trying to enter the country. During the Trump Administration, many of us correctly chastised the President for crossing the line in discussing ongoing Justice Department investigations and calling for particular resolutions. The response to this inappropriate statement is more muted from the media but it should be no less concerning. Biden’s statements are clearly prejudicial to the investigation of the incident and should be corrected in the interests of a fair process for all involved.
If agents whipped migrants, they could not only lose their jobs but face criminal charges.
Many in the media, including on National Public Radio, have already reported as fact that the Border patrol agents were “whipping” migrants in the now familiar pictures. However, critics and agents have objected that the media is using still pictures and not the video that shows agents using their long reins to control the horses who were jittery near the water’s edge with people around them. The photographer himself says that the still photos are misleading and that he did not see any agent whipping any migrant.
Nevertheless, the call for an investigation was the right move particularly after Democratic leaders and Vice President Kamala Harris objected to the images as reminiscent the abuse of slavery.
Biden however announced both findings as well as the intended punishment before the investigation reached any conclusions:
“To see people treated like they did, horses barely running over, people being strapped – it’s outrageous. I promise you, those people will pay. There will be an investigation underway now and there will be consequences. There will be consequences.”
Presidents long resisted pressure to get them to comment on pending cases or investigations to avoid charges of undue influence or bias in the results. This is one such case. It was wrong for Biden to say what he did in promising punishment for agents before any investigation is complete. It sends a message to investigators about the expected conclusions of their work. It also suggests that a finding of no whipping or wrongdoing would contradict the President and would not be supported by the White House. That could present serious career issues for investigators. It is unfair to the agents. It is unfair to the investigators and it undermines the integrity of the investigation.
It seems to me that there are two separate issues here. The most discussed is whether migrants were in fact whipped or “strapped.” Biden stated that they were indeed strapped, but many are now saying that that was not in fact true. The investigation will hopefully establish the truth, but now investigators may be concerns about embarrassing the President with any contrary finding.
The second issue is whether it is wise or appropriate to use mounted officers to block migrants. Most cities use mounted units to control crowds. People are more reluctant to confront a horse in comparison to an officer on foot. Police insist that the benefits of mounted units have been proven repeatedly and most countries deploy them to bar entry or control crowds.
Moreover, border agents maintain that horses are still the best way to traverse parts of the difficult terrain of the Southern border. Yet, they also can create dangerous moments like this one on the water’s edge for tired and unstable individuals seeking to enter. That is why the investigation is a useful step.
You cannot promise agents a fair and unbiased investigation when the President has already declared that they strapped migrants and will be punished. That is why Biden’s comments were clearly inappropriate and he should publicly withdraw them in the interests of preserving a fair process for all involved in this controversy.
Plausible but not in evidence. The border agents neither “whipped” nor “strapped”, but holding their horse’s reins in one hand, attempted to catch fleeing illegal aliens… suspects with the other.
Even if I hadn’t read dozens of accounts of this incident, I would bet the farm that the agents were innocent based just on the slave-mongering and race-baiting bluster of the usual big mouths on the left. Waters, Sharpton, Tlaib, Omar, AOC, Pressley and Harris — who were silent when it was only Hispanics crossing the border — can always be counted on to malign law enforcement of any type. They are doing to the border agents what they have been doing to the police for over a year. The Democratic Party is alienating Independents, Hispanics (the left wasn’t interested in the border until black Haitians started crossing), and, hopefully, most sane Americans. From Democrats, all we get are lies, phony hysterics, fake moral outrage, and scapegoating. Throwing the little guy under the bus to save their own arses seems to be the #1 MO of the Democratic Party. Oh, and just a footnote: this isn’t the first time Biden prejudiced an official decision…he did the same thing before the Chauvin trial when he called for the “right verdict.”
With respect, lawyers, politicians, consultants and bureaucrats talk process (it protects them). In the real world results is what matters. If politics were the real world Xiden and his clown family would be in GITMO for life.
Yep. Dr. Fauxi would be in prison too.
Once you understand the thing in the White House and his handlers, Obama, Rice and Jarrett’s job is to destroy America from within, it all makes sense. Only life’s loser go into politics.
No. It is now incumbent upon everyone who feels called to save the country from these nut jobs to throw their hat in the political ring starting at their local level. All politics is local. Take back the school boards, city councils, state houses. Take your kids out of government ‘public’ schools. And keep going.
Wake-up says:
“Only life’s losers go into politics.” You can that again. Trump.
Meanwhile back in Haiti, Haitian secret police, the Tonton Macoutes operate discretely by detaining persons of interest……Never to be seen or heard from again.
They are responsible for unknown numbers of murders and rapes in Haiti. Political opponents often disappeared overnight, or were sometimes attacked in broad daylight.
We have seen the left go to extreme lengths, including viscous lies such as against Kavanaugh, but this may be the worst thing I have ever seen. The way Biden and the left, including their media allies, is trying to make the issue about the border “the treatment of the Haitians, is the most sickening display of using people as cannon fodder to gain the upper hand. This president is attacking his own men in an attempt to change the subject and it is really maddening.
Notice how the moment the left, including the media, went all in on the “whip” lie the Biden team managed to quietly go to the border and ship 12,000 illegals around OUR COUNTRY where they will remain forever. Then in about three years the left will say, “hey, these people have been here so long, they should be voting citizens”. They are throwing away the nation for their own power.
HullBobby says:
“They are throwing away the nation for their own power.”
I’m glad you weren’t around when America took in hordes of penniless Jews from Bessarabia escaping Pogroms.
America didn’t always take Jews and they limited their immigration and still do. America actually decided who they would let in based on health and disposition. You are too engrossed in your own egotism that you don’t seem to remember what happened at Ellis Island, which is where most of those Jews were first in contact with the land known as America. If a Jew were to have landed illegally he would have been searched for and deported.
Legal immigration is fine. Illegal immigration is not. You have a mindset that should immediately end up in a waste basket.
When Trump commended in investigations and his preferred outcome, JT and you all said it was just fine because of the unitary executive. Now Biden does it and you say it is wrong? I am beginning to think that you might be a partisan.
Did he really? Professor Turley is nothing if not consistent. Methinks thou doth protest too much
The more than 50,000 ballots flagged by auditors for more investigation involved concerns ranging from people voting from addresses from which they had already moved to residents voting twice. The total in question was nearly five times the 10,400 vote margin that separated the two presidential candidates, giving Donald Trump’s troops fresh reason to call for more scrutiny….
Nearly half of the votes flagged as suspicious — 23,344 — fell into a category called “ballots cast from individuals who had moved prior to the election.” …
The final review also flagged a large anomaly in which there were 9,041 more ballots shown as returned in the official early voting file from individuals than were shown in the records of ballots that were mailed out. “In most of these inst …
ances an individual was sent one ballot but had two ballots received on different dates,” the auditors noted, saying possible explanations ranged from data entry errors to fraud. …
Cybersecurity professional Ben Cotton said an anonymous user accessed the internet on one of the county’s computers that holds election data. Around the exact same time, files were purged from the system without any notice from the county.
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/arizona-audit-flags-thousands-suspect-ballots-kicking-issue-states?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter
Try to stay on point!
Hullbobby, I forgot to include the OT. The reason for that posting and others like it is because on previous threads statements were made on that exact subject. If I remember where, I try and place such a statement on those pages, but I don’t always remember which one would suffice. It is not atypical for people to place OT information.
SM: Thanks for the update. I figured there was more to the audit report than what the Left reported yesterday. Now I know.
What an idiot. Can the Border Patrol strike and walk off the job, en masse, in protest? I wish they would.
President Biden will never admit he was wrong the way he smeared those agents on the front lines of the humanitarian disaster and lawbreaking he is intentionally allowing. Biden and his lackeys will double-down, and punch down, every time.
Biden is not smart. He is a corrupt, lazy politician who has never faced the fire. He freely dishes it out, but he cannot take it.
Biden believes he should not be questioned, and clearly loses his sh*t on the rare occasion someone in the press even gently presses him. Mean Angry Grandpa lashes out. Oops! Where did Grandpa Empathy go??
“Good old working class Joey from Scranton” is his schtick he’s been running on people for 50 years. It’s all a lie.
Biden is a mean-spirited, thin-skinned, lazy, entitled politician, who could never withstand even a tiny fraction of the press beatings Trump took nearly every day of his administration.
Biden disgusts me. So does his wife, the “doctor.”
The “tired and unstable individuals” carrying takeout boxes? these people were going back and forth across the border to get food and supplies. Quit romanticizing these people.
” It was wrong for Biden to say what he did in promising punishment for agents before any investigation is complete.”
Since when did the Biden Administration or the left care about the truth? They lied and cheated their way to the Presidency and haven’t stopped lying since.
Just listen to their lies regarding Afghanistan and the southern border.
The person responsible for taking the picture, informs all, that the picture is misinterpreted, and the photographer has never seen an officer whip anyone, ever.
There is no investigation needed, or at the most it should already be over and all cleared of accusations.
Using horses to control crowds has proven effective for centuries. To prevent their use, is yet another example of the Obama2.1 administration sabotaging government,to advance an agenda.
The photographer said what you stated, and now US Border Patrols are livid. Why bother working for Biden when he vilifies his subordinates? This creepy Joe is a disgrace
Fox News:
The “temperature of the room” when it came to the disposition of Border Agents was outlined to those who spoke to Fox News.
The outlet describes their pushback.
One agent told Fox News: “Would you go to work and do your best knowing that if you do your boss is going to ‘make you pay’? I’m dumbfounded and don’t know what to say.”
“Is the president threatening to throw us in prison?” one asked.
“I see the administration wants to fry our agents. He just started a war with Border Patrol,” remarked another CBP staffer.
Julio Rosas of Town Hall had another insider’s voice to add in response to Biden’s reaction.
“How can President Biden continue with this false narrative when the photographer who took the photos of the horse patrol unit has already said nobody was whipped? What happened to due process?”
Border Patrol Local 2366 President Jon Anfinsen, which represents Del Rio: “How can President Biden continue with this false narrative when the photographer who took the photos of the horse patrol unit has already said nobody was whipped? What happened to due process?” Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) September 24, 2021
Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council had a lot to say on this week’s incident to Fox News.
“Now that the president of the United States has already said they did wrong, how is an investigator supposed to do a true and honest investigation? Because if that investigator finds they did nothing wrong — and they didn’t do anything wrong — but if that investigator finds they didn’t do anything wrong, how is that investigator’s job going to go?”
And there is video of the same incident where it is 100% clear no one was whipped. These people are unhinged and they are running the country.
The fake news of whipping has already been debunked. The incident does not need to be investigated, despite left’s “reminds me of sytemic racism”. Everything can remind everybody of everything. The leftist philosopher Adorno said that any use of authority such as child rearing “reminds” him of Nazis. Today many anarchists consider parental supervision to be “domination” because the parents are telling the children what to do. We cannot let “reminds me of…” or “I hear the echos of …” or “this event is resonant of..” be automatic justification for investigation. Idiots can hijack any discussion by extremely low standards of evidence like holding reins being mistaken for whips. Note here that Biden’s clueless assertions mean he is deliberately lying for partisan advantage or astonishingly stupid or both. Recall that Biden, Harris and Warren all characterized Michael Brown’s Fergeson shooting as murder by police last year long after the grand jury and justice department had proven that assertion totally false, yet they suffered no consequences for their lie. Apparently with media backing, fake claims cost nothing to those who scream them. That has to change.
Oh such grand theater. America is saddled with a complete senile load as potus. This mean senile load vomits out this rhetoric of lies about federal border patrol agents in tandem with the halfwit stooge VP as she is also vomiting out the boogeyman race card mantra. Deflect , divide and ignore. Symbolism over substance every chance these gummi puppets spew out. The worst political kabuki theater America has suffered under since the obammy tainted reign.
This toad does not care about truth , honor , integrity or reality. Just this week a female US service member was sexually assaulted by a group of unvetted jihadis old senile joe brought back to the US. People just his speed , and now more criminals we have to feed. Thank you Demoratzi party for taking America lower than it’s ever been , thank you and hope you choke on it soon enough !.
“a female US service member was sexually assaulted by a group” — you make it sound like they grabbed a butt cheek like Chris Cuomo. Why not say “gang-raped” like Lara Logan?
The DOD & FB(lie) have yet to release the details…like they would anyway as it contradicts their narrative of oh such good people we vetted !. We don’t know if she got it as bad a Lara Logan. When you bring the cavemen here they still think and act stone age.
“It also suggests that a finding of no whipping or wrongdoing would contradict the President and would not be supported by the White House.”
COVID, flatten the curve, Delta variants, masks, Afghanistan debacle, men falling from planes in Kabul, Saigon vs Kabul, US Border charlie foxtrot, Kamala!!!, lying Jen Psaki, Hunter the artist!!!, Hillary funding an insurrection against a duly elected President prior to Inaugural Day, Russia hoax, Durham indictment and discovery of FBI collusion with Hillary campaign, General Milley undermining US President, assault of the Supreme Court, Democrats spending spree…..you get the picture
No one believes the installed occupant of the White House, but especially US Allies.
Utterances of a senile man.
But still prejudicial.
Double standard of the Lefties is normal for them.
The issue of “whipping” allows them to ignore the abandonment of the border.
Same deflection that so many Lefty posters use on this blog.
THE DEM’s and LEFT and the Media are trying to change the subject around all the Biden Failures including the border. So they are using this incident as their chance to change their BORDER disaster. But, people are so upset, especially in Texas, with the Border Crisis and the illegals that they are not buying it. Al Sharpton went to the border to try to take advantage of the story he was yelled at and told to leave by the Citizens of Del Rio.
Biden words and actions continue to divide this country and his support is dropping like a rock, at this pace he will be in the low 30’s or 20’s by October. Dem’s are setting themselves up for a Major Defeat come 2022. Even the south Texas Border politicians, who are Democrats have stated unless things change they are leaving the Dem’s.
Re: “Biden words and actions continue to divide this country and his support is dropping like a rock, at this pace he will be in the low 30’s or 20’s by October. Dem’s are setting themselves up for a Major Defeat come 2022.”
By now, it should be considered that the leftist Democrats are not necessarily much concerned about prevailing in popularity contests, as their election shenanigans have proven to be an effective remedy for any lack of popular support. Who needs democracy when you have more “scientific” means of guaranteeing election results?
Edo alleges:
“Who needs democracy when you have more “scientific” means of guaranteeing election results?”
You mean, of course, the Democrats will rig the election again, don’t you? Come out and say it. Don’t be shy!
After all, the Arizona audit just proved Trump won Arizona, didn’t it?
Are you Trumpists EVER going to stop lying?
Professor Turley…..there are no “Lines” with Biden or his administration….you have seen them ignore the Constitution and Judicial Findings and have taken then to task over that.
Why do you have any thought they might respect any accepted standard of conduct ever?
We are seeing a despotic regime in action….every day. brings a new low….a new insult to the values held so dear by so many.
People should start reading Russian History, Chinese History, and also study the Taliban to get an understanding of what is actually happening right here in the United States on a daily basis under Democrat administrations.
The parallels are too plain….and too damning to be ignored by anyone with a modicum of commonsense.
Trotsky would be proud of Biden and his controllers….as we are seeing a Communist Takeover of the US Government.
Prove me wrong….I shall wait.
Ralph asks:
“Why do you have any thought they might respect any accepted standard of conduct ever?”
Because Turley does not suffer-unlike you- from BDS (Biden Derangement Syndrome)
Sad.
Biden is a doofus and always has been. As Obama said, “never underestimate Joe’s ability to f*ck something up.”
Problem with Turley is that he is honest and believes in due process. Biden has adopted the tool of every wannabe dictator: the big lie. Say it, spread it, and eventually people will accept it. The truth is an impediment to this goal. Get used to it.
Dennis Bedard … Yes! Under different circumstanes, if the government were honest, an investigation might be warranted. But these are not those circumstances. What we’re seeing now is scapegoating and a set-up. Biden is throwing the border agents under the bus for a few days of media distraction. And the slavish liberal media is aiding and abetting.
Dennis,
If only Biden could be as honest as Trump. Trump told us that the election was rigged and that has been PROVEN correct in the Georgia recounts and the Arizona audit! We can only hope that his presidency will be restored soon.
Trump has NEVER told a lie, big or small. He is a paragon of virtue with the exception of his p*ssy grabbing peccadillo.