Mark off yet another thing on Joe Biden’s “ability to f**k things up” bingo card. Thanks to plea deals negotiated with 9/11 terrorists currently locked up at Guantánamo Bay, they will all avoid the death penalty.

Yes, you are reading that right. The Biden-Harris administration is giving the 9/11 families a parting gift that no one asked for.

Prosecutors said the deal was meant to bring some “finality and justice” to the case, particularly for the families of nearly 3,000 people who were killed in the attacks in New York City, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field.

The defendants Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi reached the deal in talks with prosecutors across 27 months at Guantánamo and approved on Wednesday by a senior Pentagon official overseeing the war court.

The men have been in U.S. custody since 2003. But the case had become mired in more than a decade of pretrial proceedings that focused on the question of whether their torture in secret C.I.A. prisons had contaminated the evidence against them.

Word of the deal emerged in a letter from war court prosecutors to Sept. 11 family members.

“In exchange for the removal of the death penalty as a possible punishment, these three accused have agreed to plead guilty to all of the charged offenses, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed in the charge sheet,” said the letter, which was signed by Rear Adm. Aaron C. Rugh, the chief prosecutor for military commissions, and three lawyers on his team.

The letter said the men could submit their pleas in open court as early as next week.

Just in case you forgot why these three have been in Gitmo for over 20 years, here’s a quick recap.

Mr. Mohammed, 59, a U.S.-educated engineer and avowed jihadist, was accused of coming up with the idea of hijacking airplanes and flying them into buildings. Prosecutors said he presented Osama bin Laden with the plan in 1996, and then helped train and direct some of the hijackers.

He and Mr. Hawsawi, 55, were captured together in Pakistan in March 2003, and held in secret C.I.A. prisons until their transfer to the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo in September 2006 for an eventual trial. By then, interrogators had held them for years incommunicado and tortured them, including subjecting Mr. Mohammed to 183 rounds of waterboarding, a decision that would stymie years of efforts to put the men on trial.

Mr. bin Attash, who is in his mid-40s, had been described as another deputy in the plot who had helped train some of the hijackers and had carried out missions tasked to him by both Mr. Mohammed and bin Laden.

That this has dragged on for two decades is a travesty all on its own. That it will end with plea deals is even worse, because we have NO IDEA what the terms of the plea deals are!

Admiral Rugh said in his letter that, as part of the deal, Mr. Mohammed and the others had agreed to answer questions from victims’ family members “regarding their roles and reasons for conducting the Sept. 11 attacks.”

Under the process, sometimes known as restorative justice, the family members would submit questions by Sept. 14, and should receive answers by the end of 2024. Mr. Mohammed’s lawyer, Gary D. Sowards, noted that having Mr. Mohammed answer “all questions of how and why 9/11 occurred” was an important portion of the agreement.

And while the assumption is that the plea deal means life imprisonment, that is just an assumption. Again, WE DON’T KNOW WHAT IS IN THE PLEA DEALS.

Kathleen Vigiano, whose New York Police detective husband, Joseph Vigiano, and firefighter brother-in-law, John, were both killed at the World Trade Center, said she was “mostly angry” at the results.

“I really did want the death penalty,” she said. “They did kill 3,000 Americans and people are still dying from post-9/11 cancer.”

Instead, “Now we have to support them for the rest of their lives,” with food, health care and housing. She added that she was concerned that the prisoners might someday be released.

We also don’t know WHERE these three will serve out their sentences. Are they going to stay at Gitmo, or will they be heading to Supermax in Colorado, like Zacarias Moussaoui? Remember, Barack Obama tried to close Gitmo – which never happened – so will Joe Biden move these three 9/11 terrorists in order to speed that process along?

Both the ACLU and Amnesty International are happy about the plea deals. And while it can be acknowledged that the issues of CIA prisons and torture allegations would complicate a trial, and evidence, and confessions, the point is that this never even went to trial. This has been tied up for years in pre-trial hearings, with defense lawyers using taxpayer money to drag all the proceedings out. It’s little wonder that many of the 9/11 families, who have dealt with years of loss and trauma and waiting, are angry.

Michael Burke, one of the family members receiving the government notice of the plea bargain, condemned the long wait for justice, and the outcome.

“It took months or a year at the Nuremberg trials,” said Burke, whose fire captain brother Billy died in the collapse of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. “To me, it always been disgraceful that these guys, 23 years later, have not been convicted and punished for their attacks, or the crime. I never understood how it took so long.”

“I think people would be shocked if you could go back in time and tell the people who just watched the towers go down, ‘Oh, hey, in 23 years, these guys who are responsible for this crime we just witnessed are going to be getting plea deals so they can avoid death and serve life in prison,” he said.

Burke’s brother, New York City fire captain Billy Burke, ordered his men out but remained on the 27th floor of the North Tower with two men who’d stayed behind: a quadriplegic who, because the elevators had gone out, was essentially stuck there in his wheelchair and that man’s friend.

The Biden-Harris administration is announcing this as a fait accompli – there is nothing that can be said or done to stop it. The only thing left to do is to make Kamala Harris wear this decision like an albatross around her neck. There should be ads running right now about how she was “comfortable” with Joe Biden’s decision about Afghanistan, and she should be forced to defend that record against the anguish of the Gold Star Families.

Reporter: “Joe Biden just made a really big decision—Afghanistan—were you the last person in the room?”

Kamala: “Yes.”

Reporter: “And you feel comfortable?”

Kamala: “I do.” https://t.co/6rhLLzzksE

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) July 26, 2024

Kamala Harris is currently getting a full body massage from the media, and not doing sit-down interviews or hard questions. She is being coronated, and the longer she can hide from hard questions, the better. The families of 9/11 victims should demand answers FROM HER. After all, Joe Biden has basically faded away, a meat puppet being propped up as a figurehead in the White House. Kamala Harris has become de facto president, with the benefits of incumbency without the work of one. This administration bears her name, too. Start running ads reminding people what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is guilty of, including his confession to the murder of Daniel Pearl, and ask Kamala Harris if SHE is okay with this plea deal, and WHY. Don’t the 9/11 families deserve the Executive Branch explaining to them why this deal is acceptable?

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Featured image: Guantanamo Bay Camp Justice sign, taken on January 10, 2011 by Petty Officer First Class David P. Coleman, public domain work of the United States Navy