When a crew of former Obama administration officials started urging foreign governments to build criminal cases against Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, they exposed just how far the left will go to punish people over policy disputes.
In a May 27 essay for Just Security, the authors argued those strikes could be prosecuted as murder or attempted murder. Their strategy is for foreign officials to “quietly gather evidence,” sit on it while President Donald Trump is in office, and then hit his team with indictments the moment he leaves office.
According to independent journalist Natalie Winters, the essay's authors include former Obama advisers Sarah Harrison, who served as counselor to the secretary of Homeland Security from 2015 to 2017, and Benjamin Farley, a 13-year government veteran who advised the State Department's envoy for closing Guantanamo. Winters described the scheme in her report.
The authors spell out a plan for foreign authorities to prepare cases while Trump remains president: “Officials in Colombia, Ecuador, or other affected States” could “quietly gather evidence” and “wait to issue indictments until Trump is out of office.”
Their argument treats the strikes as murder and explores international warrants and extradition. Even officials avoiding overseas travel would count as a consequence:
Let's be honest here. This idea invites foreign governments to lie in wait for American officials Democrats decide are criminals. The essay explores international warrants and extradition, and it even counts Trump officials’ "self-imposed travel restrictions to avoid arrest" as a victory. They say they'd prefer prosecutions here at home, but they openly treat foreign courts as a backup route, hurdles over evidence and custody notwithstanding.
It would be foolish to dismiss this plan as not worth worrying about. These are no random bloggers or wacko online influencers coming up with this idea. These are people who held real power inside the federal government and likely still have the ear of the Democrat Party's legal establishment.
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And then there's the second Just Security essay. Titled "Getting Serious About Accountability in the United States," it ran Nov. 10, after the midterms, under the names of the outlet's editors, Tess Bridgeman, a former Obama White House lawyer and National Security Council deputy legal adviser, and Ryan Goodman, former special counsel to the Pentagon's general counsel. The pair called for investigations into Trump officials.
American democracy has "been plagued by repeated failures to hold people in leadership positions accountable for gross abuses of power and outright federal crimes," Bridgeman and Goodman wrote. They argued that pardons for past conduct wouldn't protect witnesses from later charges like contempt or perjury.
"Congress would be wise to watch carefully who is pardoned, for which offenses, and ensure that those individuals either tell their truth – creating a valuable public record – or face the consequences, with a particular focus on actors who are most responsible or hold the most influence for egregious wrongdoing," they added.
Look at the trap they're setting.
Democrats can drag pardoned officials before hostile committees, require them to give testimony, and then charge them with perjury or contempt simply because their answers don’t suit them. Add to that the threat of foreign indictments, and the message to every Trump official is absolutely chilling. Serve Donald Trump, and you’re going to spend the rest of your life on the defensive against prosecutors at home and abroad.
Democrats have already said they plan to investigate Hegseth and possibly impeach him once they retake Congress. We know Democrats plan to weaponize the government against Trump and his administration, and now their allies are recruiting foreign governments to finish the job.
Conservatives have warned for years that the Left is trying to criminalize opposition to their agenda. This scheme proves it. A dispute over American military operations becomes a pretext for foreign prosecutions, and a routine change of administration becomes a threat of arrest overseas. By encouraging foreign governments to treat military operations Democrats dislike as crimes, these people are putting targets on the backs of Trump officials doing their jobs.
That should terrify every American, regardless of party.
The left has decided that anything the government does when it is out of power is a criminal act, and if it can’t be criminalized here at home, then making those officials targets abroad is the next best thing.