Well, it seems that more than convicted federal Death Row inmates are going to live, thanks to Joe Biden. The 9/11 terrorists, who have been lingering at Guantánamo Bay for over twenty years at this point, are getting their previous plea deals restored.

And this can definitely be chalked up to the incompetence of Joe Biden and Lloyd Austin, and the power that unelected bureaucrats hold even over political appointees – who at least have to be nominally accountable to the president or Congress.

A Pentagon appeals panel on Monday upheld a military judge’s finding that the plea deals in the Sept. 11 case are valid, clearing the way at least for now for a guilty plea hearing next week with the accused mastermind of the attack, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Col. Matthew N. McCall, the judge in the case, had ruled that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III acted too late and beyond the scope of his authority when he rescinded the three deals on Aug. 2, two days after a senior Pentagon appointee had signed them.

Under the pretrial agreements, or PTAs, Mr. Mohammed and two co-defendants agreed to plead guilty to war crimes charges in exchange for life prison sentences rather than face a death-penalty trial. Their case, accusing them of conspiring with the hijackers who killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon, has been mired in pretrial proceedings since 2012.

“We agree with the military judge that the secretary did not have authority to revoke respondents’ existing PTAs because the respondents had started performance of the PTAs,” the three-judge panel wrote in a 21-page decision released Monday night.

So now, the 9/11 terrorists still at Guantánamo Bay – Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi – will get to spend the rest of their miserable lives in prison.

The New York Post editorial board called this what it is – Joe Biden’s last “screw you” to the American people.

On Monday, an appeals court tossed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s move to quash plea deals offered to Khalid Sheik Mohammed and co-conspirators Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi.

Those deals were signed in July by senior defense official and retired Brig. Gen. Susan Escallier, an Austin appointee to the Office of Military Commissions.

Escallier horrified America and the families of 9/11 victims when she OK’d the monstrous agreements; Austin — after publicly, pathetically confessing to have been “surprised” by the move — tried to nix them, prompting a legal tussle that at the moment seems to have been resolved not in favor of justice and America but injustice and her enemies.

The whole episode reeks of cowardice, toadyism to the left and, above all, incompetence at the highest levels.

The idea that Austin would even attempt to fob off a catastrophe like this with mumblings about his surprise amid ineffectual efforts to avert it is absurd.

He’s *secretary of defense* (emphasis in original), not VP of sales at a midsize tractor manufacturing company.

And yes, chief Biden flack Karine Jean-Pierre and national security adviser Jake Sullivan have denied that the White House had any foreknowledge of the ugly deal.

But at this point, how much is their word worth?

Even if they’re telling the truth, no one has any reason to believe them.

Even without direct Oval Office involvement, this is still the administration’s work, complete with its trademark incompetence.

At *best*, this is Biden & Co. bungling literally the most important military prosecution in American history.

And yes, Joe Biden is to blame because he should have fired Lloyd Austin long ago. He should have fired Austin for the failures in Afghanistan – along with Jake Sullivan and Antony Blinken, among others – but Joe Biden refused to acknowledge that Afghanistan WAS a failure, so of course he wasn’t going to FIRE anyone over it. He most definitely should have fired Austin when the man literally disappeared to have prostate cancer surgery and didn’t bother to inform the Deputy Defense Secretary where he had gone, much less his nominal boss, the president of the United States. But apparently, we should feel grateful that Joe Biden even remembered Lloyd Austin’s name on good days.
https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1813781294972829893
And yes, Austin gets to take the blame because he ignored what was happening in Guantánamo Bay – apparently just fine with letting his own appointee create a shitty plea deal – and then trying to back out of it. Apparently, he had the authority to do so – but he didn’t do it IN TIME.
https://twitter.com/JerryDunleavy/status/1874131358555283619
Joe Biden is also to blame because he wants to shut Guantánamo Bay down – and do a thing that even Barack Obama couldn’t do. And if Gitmo is empty, then it can be closed! Biden is acting oh-so-principled when it comes to the death penalty right now – except when it comes to political expediency. There was a reason three of the federal Death Row inmates stayed on Death Row. So here is a pertinent question that the media certainly will not be asking Joe Biden.

One has to ask why Tsarneav was worse than KSM? Can @JoeBiden actually explain this?

— John Sobieski (@Jssobieski) December 31, 2024

The 9/11 victims’ families are still rightfully furious about how this has all happened.

The ruling capped off a five-month, whiplash-inducing saga and came as a blow to victims’ families who have been holding out hope for justice for nearly a quarter-century.

“We are 100 percent against the plea deal. The whole process has been a disaster,” said Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son, Christian, was killed responding to the attacks in NYC told The Post.

Regenhard, a member of 9/11 Parents and Families of Firefighters and World Trade Center victims, added she felt the terrorists “should have been tried at the scene of the crime” in Manhattan federal court, just blocks from Ground Zero.

“Taking the death penalty off the table is deeply disturbing and unjust and unfair. These terrorists were responsible for killing nearly 3,000 people and thousands of others later from the toxic dust from the collapsed buildings,” said Maureen Santora, whose firefighter son, also named Christian, died on 9/11.

“These people are not remorseful. When we first went to Guantanamo Bay, these terrorists turned around to us and said, ‘We’d do it again,’” said Santora, whose husband, Al, is a retired FDNY fire chief.

She said she was gobsmacked by the fact the deals were ever offered in the first place.

“We were not consulted about this plea agreement. If these people aren’t eligible for the death penalty, then who is?”

Others said the terrorists’ plea deals were part and parcel with President Biden’s unprecedented clemency spree, in which he commuted nearly 1,500 sentences in a single day two days before Christmas.

“I’m not surprised. This is part of Biden’s MO. He released murderers and rapists, people on death row. He will do a lot more damage before [Jan.] 20th. It’s crazy that this is still going. The whole country should feel let down,” retired NYPD cop Jim Smith told The Post.

“Biden is pardoning criminals. Terrorists are allowed to live with representation, but who is representing the thousands of people who died on 911,” said Maggie McDonnell-Tiberio, widow of NYPD officer Brian McDonnell, who was killed in the attacks.

“I don’t feel like our government is representing me and the others. I am angry and have lost patience with our justice system. These animals need to be punished. Twenty-three years ago I promised my kids that the people responsible for killing their father and thousands of other innocent people would be punished. When will this happen now?”

NYC PBA President Patrick Hendry told The Post that the review court’s ruling was “another travesty of justice” for 9/11 victims and their families.

“The Defense Department made a serious error in even entertaining these shameful plea agreements. They need to press forward with the appeal in order to fix their mistake and deliver real justice for our hero families who have already suffered too much.”

Austin can appeal this decision, but will he? The Biden administration is limping towards its ignominious end. Joe Biden’s legacy is firmly cemented as the senile dotard of president who commuted the sentences of the worst of the worst, while expunging the sins of his own son. Neither he nor Lloyd Austin will ever serve in government again, and will pay no consequences for their ineptitude and failure – except in the court of public opinion.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi will never be free men, but they will be living men – and that’s more than their victims got. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed gets more mercy than he showed Daniel Pearl before cutting off his head. There’s no justice here – only the stench of failure coming off Joe Biden and Lloyd Austin.

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