The President's Daily Brief - PDB Situation Report | June 29, 2024: Hezbollah Conflict Looms & ISIS Smuggling Network Exposed

Episode Date: June 29, 2024

In this episode of The PDB Situation Report: We'll begin with the latest indications that Israel is preparing for a full-scale war with Lebanese-based Hezbollah. We'll speak to Bill Roggio from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies about what that conflict might look like. Later, we'll move to the southern border, and reports that the Department of Homeland Security has identified more than 400 migrants who came to the U.S. via a human smuggling network that allegedly has connections with the Islamic State. And we'll close out the show with a look at the release this week of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. Email: [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the PDB Situation Report. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. Let's get briefed. We'll begin today's situation report with the latest indications that Israel is preparing for a full-scale war with Lebanese-based Hezbollah. We'll speak to Bill Rogio from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies about what that conflict might look like. Later, we'll move to the southern border and reports that the Department of Homeland Security, have identified more than 400 migrants who came to the U.S. via a human smuggling network allegedly connected with the Islamic State.

Oh, good. ISIS. And we'll close out the show with a look at the release this week of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. But first, today's situation report, spotlight. Israel's prime minister and president visited their nation's northern border on Wednesday, meeting with military commanders as tensions with the military. Esbalah in Lebanon rise. Now, the border between the two countries has seen daily exchanges of fire between Israeli forces and Iran-backed militants ever since the 7 October attacks. The visit

comes as Israel's government has begun indicating a change in their wartime strategy from prioritizing Hamas fighters in Gaza to Hezbollah militants in the north. In an address earlier this week, Prime Minister Netanyahu said that the intense phase of the war against Hamas, was beginning to wrap up, and that the military was preparing to shift their primary focus to the escalating fighting with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. Critically, Netanyahu stressed that even as the military moves its priorities to Lebanon, operations in Gaza would continue until Hamas was eradicated. Netanyahu said, quote, it doesn't mean that the war is going to end, but the war in its current stage is going to end in Rafah. This is true. We will continue mowing the

grass later," end quote. Interesting way to put it. As we've been regularly discussing on the PDB, fighting along Israel's northern border with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon has intensified in recent weeks, and there's no sign that the escalation will end anytime soon. Hezbollah has been attacking from the North in solidarity with Hamas ever since the brutal seven October attacks by Hamas, which of course kicked off this entire conflict. However, the Hezbollah strikes are increasingly going deeper into Israeli territory.

Officials from the U.S. and Western allies have been voicing concern in recent weeks that the fighting risks devolving into a full-scale war. Air Force General C.Q. Brown, he's the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reiterated those concerns following Netanyahu's speech, saying that the U.S. would have a much harder time defending Israel in a full-blown conflict with Hezbollah due to the short range between Lebanon and Israel. He fears Hezbollah could overwhelm Israel's Iron Dome Air Defense System. He also warned that an all-out war with Hezbollah would likely draw in the group's primary funder,

and we all know that's Iran. Brown said, quote, Hezbollah is more capable than Hamas as far as overall capability, number of rockets and the like. And I would just say I would see Iran being more inclined to provide greater support to Hezbollah. Again, all this could help to broaden the conflict in the region." End quote. Well, he's not wrong.

Despite his remarks, senior U.S. officials have told Israeli leaders that the U.S. is ready to back Israel and offer security assistance in the event of a full-scale war with Hezbollah. Meanwhile, as talks of escalation continues, reports have emerged that Iran has accelerated the smuggling of rockets and other weapons to Hezbollah using the main airport in Lebanon's capital city of Beirut. That's the Rafi Hariri airport. The report suggests Iran is gearing up for a wider conflict in the region through their terrorist proxy. Now, just last week, Israeli leaders warned Hezbollah that if they continued their attacks, they faced the imminent prospect of, quote, all-out war. The warning came after Hezbollah released nine minutes of drone footage

showing Israeli military and civilian locations inside the country. Shortly after the warning, senior commanders in the IDF announced that the military had approved operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon, increased the readiness level of their troops, and begun relocating resources and troops to the north. Still, Israeli defense minister Yov Ghalant told officials in the Biden administration that they would prefer a diplomatic solution. He added, however, that Israel's military is capable of taking Lebanon, quote, back to the Stone Age in any war with Hezbollah. So, what exactly would, on that cheery note, might I add, what exactly would an all-out war

between Israel and Hezbollah look like? When we come back, we'll toss that question to senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Bill Rogio. We'll be right back. If you're a listener to the PDB, you know there's a lot going on in the world today. That's an understatement. Authoritarian regimes on the march, wars overseas, and political turmoil across the globe. That's why now more than ever, you should support those on the right side of history.

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provides balanced hydration you can enjoy every day. That means no sugar, calories, or carbs, and it's not loaded with sodium. Just delicious plant-based flavors you'll actually look forward to drinking. Shop Ultima on Amazon or in-store at Target and Whole Foods Market. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. Joining me now is Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and editor of FDD's Long War Journal, Bill Rogio. Bill, listen, thanks very much, man.

I appreciate your time. I appreciate you joining us here on the situation. situation report. Always a pleasure. Looking forward to the conversation. Excellent. Excellent. Well, hopefully I won't let you down.

Let's start with two very 30,000 foot level questions here. One is how likely, in your opinion and from your experience is an all-out war up north between the IDF and Hezbollah. And then the next one, this is, there's a lot of playing room here, but what would that look like? I think it's highly likely that we'll see Israel and Hezbo go into a full-scale war. They're currently at war right now. It's just lower intensity than we would expect a full exchange between the two. Israel has over 60,000 citizens displaced.

Any one of these attacks that are occurring daily would have solicited a violent response by Israel prior to October 7th. Now we have multiple attacks like these occurring. daily. This isn't sustainable. Hezbollah is basically dictating the pace, which Israel cannot allow. I think it's just a matter of time. It might be one month. It might be two months. Certainly, the U.S. is doing everything it can to delay this war because it fears a wider regional war, which I also would argue is currently happening. And what would that war look like? Well, I think what you'll see is large exchanges of short, medium and long range rockets and missiles and mortars fired by Lebanon, particularly at the onset.

The Hezbollah is going to use it or lose it. The Israelis will launch an air campaign to begin to try to take out particularly Hezbollah's medium and long range missiles, which can reach Tel Aviv and good retreat. all the way to southern Israel. Those will be primary targets. The Israelis, it's hard to predict what they're willing to do here. I can tell you what I think they need to do here, which is they need to drive about 20 to 25 miles into Lebanon and occupy it. This is horrible, but this is what needs to be done in order to reduce that the short range and some of the more the shorter medium range, and missiles that Hezboa has. They have, it's estimated over 200,000 rockets and missiles in their arsenal. And this is what they will use to terrorize northern Israel.

The Hezbollah will go after civilian targets, military targets. It will launch everything it has as quickly as it has in order to make Israel suffer. And the Israelis will be, I believe primarily via air and going after, again, those medium and long-range missiles. I do believe there will have to be a ground component to this in order to, in order to drive Hezbollah back from that northern border of Israel. It's ironic that the Israelis, you know, 20, almost three decades after abandoning Lebanon, they're in a situation where they're very likely going to have to occupy southern Lebanon in order to reduce that threat to the border. What do you make of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, CQ Brown? He's expressed concern that one of the problems here could be that, and you've touched on it with the number of rockets, number of munitions they've got, he's concerned that the Hezbollah

could essentially overwhelm the Israeli's Iron Dome defense. Absolutely. He's correct, and that is the concern. The Israelis do not have enough launchers. they don't have enough iron dome interceptor missiles in their arsenal to go after that range of Hezbollah missiles. I can't tell you when they'll deplete their stocks, but they will eventually. And this is why the Israelis need to take the initiative and to take out as much of Hezbollah's arsenal as it can before it is launch ready. the you know it's not only is there not enough interceptors available the the cost of i believe it's

somewhere around 50 000 per interceptor you know go ahead and multiply that by 200,000 then go ahead and look at the hit miss ratio which i don't know exactly what it is but let's say it's two to one you'd need 400,000 you know iron dome launchers just to just to intercept them all and And it's just not possible. So and that, and that, by the way, is only if Israel is dealing with attacks from Hezbollah. What happens if Iran launches long range missiles at the same time, Hezbo? What happens if the Houthis way in? It happens if the Iraqi and Syrian militias move equipment to southern Syria and join the fray.

And then what happens if there's ground operations by these groups? as well. So the Israelis, they can't possibly target or intercept all of these missiles that Hezbo is likely to launch. This is the conundrum that Israel is in. This is what happens when Hezbollah is allowed to arm itself with very little repercussions over the past two decades. Yeah, with the obvious assistance of Iran. But I want to talk to you about that. here just shortly. But prior to that, the Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that, and I think in part because of pressure from the families of the remaining hostages, he said that we're not giving up on

Gaza. That will continue. But it's a shift in focus. So it sounds like he's setting the table to say, we're going to continue our operations in Gaza in some capacity while shifting focus to what could potentially potentially be. be an all-out battle with Hezbollah up north. Talk to me about that. It's a two-front war. And as you've correctly pointed out, there are other proxies who could engage as well. Yeah, this has been a multi-front war for Israel from the get-go. Obviously, you have Hamas and

Palestinian Islamic jihad and other smaller terror groups. You have the northern border, which is on fire daily and you have the west bank we can't forget about that the attacks in the west bank have increased um and i that's one area where i am very concerned about given how the uh palestinians and israelis in the west bank are intermixed in many areas uh then you have the houthis the um which have been attacking shipping but also have launched um ballistic and cruise missiles and drones Pat Israel, now they're doing it to smaller quantities. But this is, this is the problem that Israel faces. This is no, in the past, it used to be a one or two front war.

Now it's, I also neglected to mention the Iraqi and Syrian militias, which can organize either in Syria or can provide support to Hezbollah and Lebanon as well. I did them as a strategic reserve, large numbers and battle-harded fighters. So this is the noose, as I call it, that has been closing on Israel over the last, particularly over the last 15 years. The Israelis have been focused on, you know, or should I say, they've been fighting more of a tit-for-tat type war against Hezbollah and against Hamas. And meanwhile, their enemies have been gathering strength and have been closing in on Israel. This is a major issue. And the Israelis, by dragging out the war in Gaza, by failing to secure the Philadelphia corridor, that is the border with Egypt, that should have been done on October 8th.

That operation should have started. And then they should have done a hammer and anvil approach against Hamas, battalions, started south, or they could have started south and north and met in the middle. But they've been doing this piecemeal, dragging this out, which is complicated the problem with, Hezbollah has allowed Hezbollah. It is emboldened Hezbollah because they're fighting, they're learning and all of the so-called access of resistance to militia that has put together by Iran. And it's emboldened them because they're seeing Israel accepting this increased level of violence against them in the north. And now everyone's weighing in and this just further complicates the problems for Israel.

Yeah. Let's shift here just slightly. Talk to me about the relationship with Iran. Talk to me about Iran's role in all of this. Yeah, Iran is the spider at the center of the web. It has had a very patient and very clever strategy when it comes to Israel as well as the US in the Middle East. Iran wants to drive the US out of the Middle East

so it could focus on defeating Israel, and it spread its influence in the region. You know, if you look at this in the 1980s, around, you know, it helped form Hezbollah. That became its prime proxy. Then it started flirting with the established Palestinian terror groups. That has increased. Then after the U.S. invasion, it started working,

increasing in support of Shia militias in Iraq and built some very, very powerful militias in these areas. These militias are responsible for killing over 600 Americans in Iraq during American presence there and conduct attacks against American servicemen to this day. As the Islamic State gained strength in Syria, the Iraqi militias and Hezbollah moved into Syria as well and expanded their influence there. At the same time, the Houthis were courted by, by that that's the militia in Yemen were reported by the Iranians as well.

Now the Houthis are a militia with the most advanced weaponry, anti-ship ballistic missiles, anti-jip-proves missiles, advanced drones, underwater and above-water drones that they've used effectively to blockade the Red Sea and the Gulf of aid and the U.S. is part of it as well, but they're having trouble as militarily as well, dealing with the goopies. And the Iranians put this all together. They call this the access of resistance. You know, what part of the problem Israel is having here is it's fighting Hamas.

It's fighting Hezbollah. It's fighting Palestinian Islamic jihad. But it's not going after the real leader here or the core of the problem, and that is Iran. Iran has not been made to pay a price for organized. these militias. Iran has built up a sort of a you could call it, you know, plausible deniability. Everyone knows what it's what's happening, how Iran is supporting this. But the international community looks the other way and says, oh, this is an Israel-Palestinian problem. This is an Israel-Hamaz problem. Ultimately, it's an Israel-Iran problem. And Iran pays little to no price

for directing attacks on Israeli soil. And until that changes, you're going to continue to see that news type. Bill Rogio, senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and editor of FDD's Long War Journal. Listen, thank you very much. I really appreciate your time and joining us here on the Situation Report, Bill. Pleasure is mine. Happy to join you again.

Excellent. Thank you, man. All right, coming up next, we'll, examine a troubling report from the Department of Homeland Security about potential ISIS links among migrants crossing our southern border. And we'll discuss that with the Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, Todd Benzman. Are you overwhelmed with back taxes or unfiled returns? Look, with 88,000 newly hired agents, that's 88,000, the IRS has increased enforcement issuing millions of pay-up notices in 2024.

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elixir collection by calvin klein thanks yours too what is rap's standard for anyway. To me, it's the remarkably advanced vehicle. Really? To me, it's the runway approved vehicle for its amazing style. What about remarkably adaptable vehicle because of its versatile cargo space? Or really admired vehicle? Oh, or really awesome vehicle. It really is the recreational activity vehicle. The stylish 2026 Toyota RAP4 Limited. What's your Rav for? Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. Now, we've often talked about the many national security threats from the U.S. southern border, and now federal authorities are giving a serious warning about potential ISIS infiltration. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security revealed on Tuesday

that they found more than 400 migrants inside the U.S., already here, who were brought over the border by a human smuggling network with ties to ISIS. You remember ISIS. These migrants from Central Asia and other regions have been labeled, quote, subjects of concern due to their potential links to ISIS, according to an exclusive NBC report. Now, disturbingly, while authorities have arrested about 150 of these migrants and are keeping an eye on others, they don't know the whereabouts of around 50 of them. These individuals are believed to be spread across 17 states. Well, that narrows it down.

Now, for more on this, let me bring in Todd Benzman. He's the Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and author of America's covert border war, the untold story of the nation's battle to prevent jihadist infiltration. Todd, thank you very much for taking the time and joining us here on the Situation Report. Great to be here. Thank you. Now, let's, I suppose let's start with kind of a top line question here, which is talk about this ISIS connected or the possible links of the smuggling network to ISIS. Well, there's not a whole lot known about that.

It probably involves like several people that are organizing smuggling trips that would probably involve, you know, cartel links and individual indigenous smugglers like in Central America. And then, you know, kind of bringing them all the way through with the ISIS guys picking up the tab. It's probably something like that, but they're not really telling the public much about the ISIS link at all. I'm going to guess that's secret squirrel CIA stuff still. Okay, well, I mean, we know that from past, you know, intelligence gathering over the many years now, that there have been links between Islamic extremists and the cartels, because it's sort of a symbiotic relationship. They're both taking advantage of a porous border, and there's benefits to that for both sides. But I take your point, not a lot of intel just yet, but clearly if they've arrested upwards of 150 of these 400,

then they've got sufficient intelligence to take that action. So I guess what a lot of people are curious about is, you know, to what degree should we be concerned about this? Well, I can tell you that the FBI, and the DHS are extremely concerned about this or they would not be going through the trouble. Remember, just in early June, they arrested eight Tajikistanese nationals in three cities that were brought in, we believe, by the same smuggling organization. That was a multi-state FBI wiretap FISA investigation, full bore. they picked up that these guys were talking about making bombs, and they rolled them up in New York,

Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. And they are probably looking to arrest some more. So they clearly think that some number of the 400 that were brought in by that group might be true blue operatives. And they should worry about that. Just a few years ago, I just wrote about this case of just a few years ago that ISIS in Syria purposefully infiltrated, trained terrorist suicide bombers into Germany and France. And they conducted a whole series of bombings, including the Paris bombings of November 2015. They were there were also Tajikistanis that were brought into Germany just two, three years ago, arrested for plotting to bomb two American military bases and some NATO facilities in Germany. This was in the advanced stages. They rolled them up. That was an ISIS-K attack. They were

in contact with senior ISIS-K people. Tajik's run ISIS-K. More than half of ISIS-K consists of Tajikistanis. We've had at least 2,500 Tajikistanis enter the United States over the southern border. Clearly, some of them were brought in by this group, whoever they are, that seem to be ISIS-K. So that's where the FBI's head is at right now. And the arrests and this news from NBC also should remind us that Christopher Ray, the FBI director, has been shouting from the rooftops, there is an ISIS smuggling organization out there that we're very worried about connected to the border. So this operation, he said that in congressional testimony at least twice. So this operation of tracking down the 400 has probably been going on for at least a year,

months and months, where they're tracking them down one by one by one to make sure that they're not terrorists. And if they can't be sure, I'm hoping that they're deporting them and not just simply releasing them. And that the big question is, did they find anyone who actually was an operative beyond these eight that they've arrested to? So it's a, it's a huge mess. It's a completely legitimate national security story. It's the biggest terrorism-related kind of operation on U.S. soil related to border crossing that I've ever seen. And I wrote the book on this. Right. Now, I mean, you described it accurately, I think, anyway. We're on the same sheet of music that it's a huge mess. Apparently, Secretary Majorchus doesn't actually feel the same way because he had an opportunity to talk about this and decided instead to just say that the reporting wasn't true because it was, it appeared as if he was just wordsmithing the question that came from, I believe it was an MSNBC reporter who said about the 400 ISIS-linked individuals.

when in fact there are 400 individuals who appear to have been brought across by a smuggling network with links or associations to ISIS. So Secretary Mayorkas, rather than going into detail and talking about this, because that would possibly show that the border situation was a problem for the Biden White House, he said it's just not true. I mean, what do you make of that magical effort? I didn't hear him say what wasn't true. There could have been some small smidgell smidgeon thing in the story that wasn't right.

But as far as I know, I checked today, NBC's story is still up. It's not retracted. There's nothing significantly changed in it. They seem to be standing by their story. And I didn't hear a full refutation from my orcas. From your experience, from all the work that you do, I want to shift just slightly, Talk to me about the vetting process. We hear a lot about this.

These individuals were released into the states after determining they weren't on a terrorist watch list and they don't pose a national security threat. So I want to just touch on this idea of how accurate, how in depth, how useful is this essentially due diligence on individuals before they're getting released. Yeah, that's a great question because Majorcas is out there and his lackeys are out there saying our vetting, everybody gets vetted. We have a really thorough, rigorous vetting process. But here's what their vetting process is. Somebody comes in over the border. They give their fingerprints. They take a facial photograph, you know, biometrics, and they run them through U.S. criminal

history databases. And they'll run them through, they'll run them right, looking for past criminal history in the United States. most of them, I think probably all of them, have never been to the United States to commit a crime before. So, of course, they're going to come back clean. Furthermore, a huge number of nationalities are coming from countries that don't cooperate with us on terrorism or criminal history shares or anything else. Like Cuba is not giving us an intel share. Afghanistan is not helping us out there. you know, Venezuela is not helping us out.

Haiti probably can't help us out. They probably don't even, they have typewriters there if they have any of those even. So the point I'm trying to make is that the vetting is in, they may run everybody through a database check, but that means nothing in most of these cases. That's the problem. And I'll point one other thing out. One of the eight Tajikistanis that was arrested for terrorism came through the CBP1 app where they you can schedule your illegal entry over a land port of entry.

500,000 foreign nationals have been brought in this way, supposedly with permission. That's not permission. It's legally dubious at best to bring them in that way. But the same program is bringing in, has brought in 888 other Tajik's through the land bridges. and also thousands from other special interest countries, and they all go through that same crappy vetting system, where, you know, I mean, what are you going to do? Call the, I mean, who are you going to call overseas to on a Syrian that you let in,

or Afghans that you let in on this program? No, that's, I think it's, and this is a problem. Look, there's so many layers to this, right? When you talk about trying to do the vetting, first of all, you talk about the tens of thousands of, of Chinese that have come across and many of them through the San Diego sector. No social footprint for the most part, no social media footprint. We certainly don't have the language abilities, right, to start doing a thorough vetting

job to understand who each individual is, as you pointed out absolutely correctly. Many of these governments aren't cooperating. Many of them don't have the infrastructure anyway to access what we would consider to be, relevant databases. So there are so many problems here. And I guess, you know, the concern is when President Biden talks about, well, you know, the Republicans, you know, refused twice to give me more CBP agents, right, CBP officers, and resources. You would imagine that a number of those would just be put on the front line to go ahead and try that it could continue this vetting process, which isn't accomplishing anything anyway. So, and, and, and, and, you would

At the end of the day, where does this go? How do you improve? I know this is a very difficult question, and it's, you know, we don't have time for it, but how do you improve the current system? If they're not going to secure the border, right, then how do you improve the current system that we've got in order to lock things down a little bit better so we don't then spend our time chasing potential terrorists or potential individuals who are linked to ISIS around the country now that we've already let them in?

So I just testified before Congress about a month ago on the Chinese coming through here. And what I told the panel was that the Biden administration reduced the number of interview questions that CBP border patrol agents are supposed to ask each Chinese immigrants from 40 to 5 to make them go through faster. That's the problem. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The first thing is you have to care about your country. And you have to, you have to, you have to do the right thing by your, by the, by your countrymen. And in reducing the number of questions from 40 to five to, to just five so that you could get them through fast.

Like you're, all you care about is just getting them off the border. That's problem number one. Number two is interviews. We, I was in Intel for 10 years, Texas Department of Public Safety, and I was involved in all of this. When special interest aliens, people from countries of Muslim majority countries, 3540, came across maybe three or four thousand a year. The Homeland Security establishment always endeavored under orders and protocol to interview every single one of them in detention before they, let them out of detention to just get a sense of who they are. And if, if you don't find anything okay, but interviews by trained intelligence officers and FBI agents is absolutely necessary and

all powerful in determining whether people are lying to your face or, you know, going through their pocket trash, checking their backstory and all of that. That's what was happening before the Biden administration. Now they've invited. But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, But Todd, I would argue in part, I'm sorry for interrupting, just mindful of your time, but I would argue that that was happening before, but it was happening before because it was much more manageable in terms of the numbers, right? Because we weren't dealing with the large numbers of people that we're dealing with now. Exactly. You are 100% correct. Now we're looking at from 4,000 special interest aliens a year, 80,000 and 100,000. I can tell you that none of that vetting, none of those interviews are happening at all. And even for the Chinese, they've reduced the number.

It's just not happening. They're moving. They're not being detained. All of the programs that I describe in my book, America's Covert Border War, that's what the book is. It describes all the infrastructure that we have that's kept us safe are neutralized, neutered. They're gone. Nobody's doing them. Todd Benzman, Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Listen, I've really enjoyed this. I know our viewers have really enjoyed your insight, your experience. So I wanted to say thanks very much for joining us here on the Situation Report. Thank you. Thank you. Anytime. Well, next up, WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. You remember him. He's home in Australia today.

After a plea agreement with the U.S. government allowed him to go free. I'll have the details on that when we come back. Hey, it's 2024. Well, you knew that. And you would think that at this point in time, we could get our hands on anything at any time, right? But that could not be the case when it comes to medical needs. And that's why, well, we all need to be prepared.

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I wrote a little song to remind you, choice hotels, get you more of the experiences you value. The can be a hotel's got it all. A rooftop ball, have a ball. Bring a date, your squad, or even your mom. Book direct at choiceotails.com. After a 14-year legal fight with authorities in Britain and the U.S., WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has struck a deal with the U.S. Department of Justice allowing him to go free and return to his home country of Australia. Now, the 52-year-old Australian citizen was released from the U.K.'s Belmarsh Maximum Security Jail

in the early hours of Monday and then traveled to the Pacific Island of Saipan. And frankly, when was the last time you heard someone mentioned Sipan? Well, there it is right there. Look at that. Look at that. For all of you who are wondering where a Saipan is, see, the situation reports got you covered. Assange then pled guilty on Wednesday in a U.S. District Court to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defense documents. Assange had been battling extradition to the U.S. for several years, where he faced 18 criminal charges related to the activity of WikiLeaks. Under the deal, made with U.S. authorities, Assange will be sentenced to 62 months of time already served,

officially wrapping up his legal problems with both the U.S. and British governments. Now, as part of the deal, the U.S. government agreed to hold the hearing in the Pacific Islands, as Assange had been adamant that he wanted to avoid stepping on U.S. soil. In a statement on X, WikiLeaks said, quote, this is the result of a global campaign that spanned grassroots organizers, press freedom campaigners, legislators, and leaders from across the political spectrum. WikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions.

As editor-in-chief, Julian paid severely for these principles and for the people's right to know, end quote. So the end of the Assange saga is seen as a major victory by free press advocates who have long been fighting for his release. They claim he was acting as an independent journalist, publishing materials passed along to him that exposed government abuses. As a citizen of Australia, they also argued that the U.S. had no jurisdiction to prosecute him for releasing classified documents. The U.S. government, for its point, has argued, however, that Assange's actions were reckless, and that as publishing of classified documents directly put the lives of U.S. service members, Intel assets, and others at risk. Former Vice President Mike Pence said in a statement on X, quote, Julian Assange endangered the lives of our troops in a time of war

and should have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The Biden administration's plea deal with Assange is a miscarriage of justice and dishonors the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our armed forces and their families, end quote. So, if you'll recall, Assange first exploded onto the public scene, along with his organization WikiLeaks, back in 2010, all those years ago, after releasing some 700,000 classified U.S. military documents and diplomatic cables related to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The release was made with the assistance of Chelsea Manning,

who, when engaging in the theft of classified documents, was known as Bradley Manning, and that's no relation to Peyton or Eli. Manning was a military intelligence analyst, who was later, sentenced to 35 years in a military prison before having his or her or their sentence commuted by President Obama in 2017. WikiLeaks also played a major role in the 2016 presidential election after releasing tens of thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee. Assange was first arrested in the UK back in 2010 under a European arrest warrant related

to sex crime allegations in Sweden. Assange took refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London, and he remained inside there for seven years, making it the world's longest Airbnb stay. While the case in Sweden was eventually dropped, British authorities arrested Assange in 2019 on the steps of the Ecuadorian embassy after they revoked his asylum status. And ever since, he's been fighting extradition to the U.S. For their part, the Biden administration claimed on Monday that it was an independent decision by the Department of Justice and that there was,

absolutely no White House involvement. And that could be interpreted as a blatant effort by the White House to not be seen as responsible for anything. Assange finally returned to his home country of Australia on Wednesday evening. Now, that's all the time we have for the PDB situation report. If you have any questions or comments or humorous jokes, please reach out to me at pdb at thefirsttv.com. And as you've probably heard from talk on the street,

to listen to the podcast of this show ad-free, well, become a premium member of the president's daily brief by visiting PDB Premium.com. It's really that simple. I'm Mike Baker, and you know the drill. Until next time, stay informed. Stay safe. Stay cool.

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