A military judge has canceled the Biden administration’s attempt to hand a plea deal to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other terrorists who Biden wanted to give a lighter sentence.
Biden Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had tried to make a plea deal with the terrorists that ran against their previous sentences by allowing them to serve life in prison instead of the death penalty, the Associated Press reported.
Austin had made a deal with Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi.
The plea deals in the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people spurred immediate political blowback by Republican lawmakers and others after they were made public this summer.
Within days, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a brief order saying he was nullifying them. Plea bargains in possible death penalty cases tied to one of the gravest crimes ever carried out on U.S. soil were a momentous step that should only be decided by the defense secretary, Austin said at the time.
The agreements, and Austin’s attempt to reverse them, have made for one of the most fraught episodes in a U.S. prosecution marked by delays and legal difficulties. That includes years of ongoing pretrial hearings to determine the admissibility of statements by the defendants given their years of torture in CIA custody.
The Pentagon is now reviewing the judge’s decision.
But what this shows is that Biden is once again taking major liberties with the law to help terrorists.
What a surprise.
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