Donald Trump wants to crush The Swamp. The leaks, the sneaks, and the secrets are all there. Our writers, David Gardner, Farrah Tomazin, and Sarah Ewall-Wice, are sifting through the ooze so you don’t have to. Don’t miss out.
In this week’s news from the ooze: Melania Trump, Miranda Devine, Lt. General William Jones, R.C. Maxwell, Kash Patel, Don Lamothe, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, Laura Loomer, Michael and Susan Dell, Pete Hegseth, Todd Starnes, Cam Digby, Karoline Leavitt, Sarah Beckstrom, and Andrew Wolfe.
The Washington Shooter and a Deadly Offer He Could Not Refuse
The former Afghan fighter who killed one National Guard member and left a second critically injured just two blocks from the White House may have been blackmailed into carrying out the shooting, The Swamp has learned.
U.S. intelligence is investigating information that a Taliban hit squad threatened to murder Rahmanullah Lakanwal’s family in Afghanistan unless he opened fire on American troops in the nation’s capital.
Donald Trump and his MAGA acolytes, including FBI Director Kash Patel, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and “War” Secretary Pete Hegseth, have described the 29-year-old married father-of-five as a “monster” and a “terrorist” and insisted he would likely face the death penalty.
But investigators are asking themselves why a man who was vetted by two administrations, and with no criminal record and no history of extremism, should drive across the country on an apparent suicide mission to shoot at heavily armed U.S. military personnel with a revolver.
One line of inquiry they are seriously pursuing, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation, is that Lakanwal was made an offer he could not refuse. Either he accepted the mission, or his family in Afghanistan would be beaten, murdered, and possibly beheaded.
Lakanwal was a member of the Afghan Scorpion Forces working closely with the CIA as a GPS tracking specialist. He helped the U.S. military escape from Kabul in the shambolic retreat from Afghanistan in August 2021. Between August 14 and 30, more than 123,000 people were airlifted from Kabul Airport. The Afghan fighter joined one of the last flights because he served the United States and due to the danger he would be in if he were left behind.
About 700 Scorpion Forces members are understood to be detained in Afghanistan because they worked with America and its allies.
In the five years since the U.S. evacuation, a Taliban military unit—called Yarmouk 60—has devoted itself to tracking down, and, in some instances, killing Afghans who worked with the West.
Earlier this year, a member of the “Afghan Triples,” an elite special forces unit that was set up, trained, and funded by the U.K. to combat the Taliban, managed to leave the country and get to Germany, hoping his family could follow on later. In retaliation, Yarmouk 60 killed his wife and father and four of his children, including two little girls who were beheaded, the source told The Swamp.
“It is by no means our only line of inquiry,” said an intelligence source who has worked closely with the authorities trying to help Afghans with a target on their backs because of their work with the West. “People in this country have no idea about the level of stress these people are under. Most of them have families back home, and if the Taliban cannot get to them, they are making it very clear that they will go after their families.”
Lakanwal was said to be worried about money and concerned that the Trump administration would block his Green Card application and force him to return home. Trump has blamed the Biden administration for allowing Lakanwal into the country, but it was Trump’s own administration which granted him asylum in April 2025.
Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died in the attack last Wednesday. Her colleague, Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, was critically injured and remains hospitalized. Lakanwal was also wounded in the shootout and is under armed guard in the hospital. He has been charged with first degree murder and his attorney indicated he would plead not guilty. The Pentagon has been contacted for comment.
Who Gives a F*** About the White House Christmas Decor?
It’s the time of year the Christmas decorations come down from the attic, and you decide that you really, really must buy some new ones … next year. One would have thought Melania Trump could send her staff down to Michaels to get some new baubles. Then again, the First Lady is famously ambivalent toward the festive season. Remember when she was surreptitiously recorded in 2018, saying, “Who gives a f–k about the Christmas stuff and decorations?” Perhaps that’s why she dug out her old Xmas trimmings from 2018, including white balls emblazoned with “BE BEST,” and recycled them for this year’s display.
A Presidential Plug No Longer Holds Water
Has the Trump bump turned into a Trump slump? On November 28 at 2:30 AM, President Trump took to Truth Social to deliver an important message: “Twilight’s Last Gleaming, Can America Be Saved” (YES!), by the Great Todd Starnes. A fantastic NEW BOOK. Get it now!!! President DJT.” Now ”Twilight’s Last Gleaming” dropped in March, 2024 so it’s not a “NEW BOOK.” In fact, the NewsMax host has published another book since then so it’s not even Todd Starnes’s LATEST BOOK. Although Trump’s shill-y post racked up 18.8K likes and 3.61K retruths, followers did not exactly heed his call to race to Jeff Bezos’s Amazon to “GET IT NOW!!!” The sales rank of Starnes’ book spiked on the first day to around 17,000 which translates, per an online Amazon book sales calculator, to a one-day sale of 16 books. By November 30, that number had in fact fallen to around 24,000 which translates to a sale of 12 books. The ebook ranking was far worse, hovering around 150K or ONE book sold in the past day. Starnes set up shop at NewsMax after being let go from Fox News in 2019 after he suggested that Democrats do not worship the God of Christianity. “Apparently,” Starnes mused, “the god they worship is the pagan god of the Old Testament, Moloch, who allowed for child sacrifice.” And speaking of child sacrifice, why won’t Trump release the unredacted Epstein files?
And Speaking of Amazon…
Olivia Nuzzi (pronounced “newsy” according to former lover Keith Olbermann) added book author to her resume as American Canto hit the shelves. Maybe fans are rushing to their local book stores to purchase the memoir, but over at Amazon at 2:17 PM on her pub date, Nuzzi’s hardcover has a sales rank of #12,763 and a nearly identical kindle rank of #12,338. It appears that former Nuzzi fiance Ryan Lizza’s work is done.
Ding, Dong, Dell… You Read It Here First
As revealed in The Swamp back in April, Donald Trump is pressing ahead with his plan to give $1,000 to every baby born while he is president, helped, no doubt, by Tuesday’s announcement that tech billionaire Michael Dell, 60, and his wife, Susan, (age unavailable but estimated at 56) will put $250 into investment accounts for 25 million children at a cost to them of $6.25 billion. Details of the plan are still being worked out, but the federal government will create a $1,000 “Trump Account” for babies born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028. If you’re worried about the Dell’s four kids taking a hit to their inheritance, keep in mind that Forbes pegs Michael Dell’s fortune at $148 billion. The kids will be fine.
What Miranda Learned from Hunter
The New York Post’s Miranda Devine has started a MAGA civil war with an article revealing a 115-page report flaming Kash Patel and Dan Bongino as unfit to lead the FBI because they are social media-thirsty, paranoid, status-obsessed clowns running a circus. Her Monday article in the Post quotes a report from a group she calls “A National Alliance of Retired and Active-Duty FBI Special Agents and Analysts.” Who could this group, which an enraged Bongino has dubbed “the deep state,” be? It may be that only Devine herself knows—and she certainly isn’t naming names. The “Alliance’s” other three public appearances were (1) in October 2023, in a 112-page report complaining about DEI at the FBI; (2) in July 2024 with a 229-page report complaining about then FBI boss Chris Wray; (3) and in October 2024 endorsing Trump. Each time, their findings were announced by Devine via Twitter and in the pages of the NY Post. Nobody else appears to have ever spoken to the “Alliance.”
Devine is hardly known for her intense scrutiny of MAGA figures; her biggest calling card until now had been her book Laptop From Hell about Hunter Biden and his electronic trail of wrecked lives, drugs, prostitutes and (at least in MAGA’s view) corruption. What is clear is that she and her “Alliance” have learned some techniques from Hunter’s security failures. Their reports are only available on the document site Scribd where they have been uploaded by someone with the account “NYP” and carefully scrubbed of any metadata. The other documents uploaded by the account can all be found in stories by Devine. Now if only there was an anti-deep state journalist who could blow open this mystery…
My Lai Lesson to Donald Trump and His Claims of Treason
Donald Trump and his Secretary of Warrior may like to check their military histories under My Lai to see what happens when troops carry out an illegal order. On March 16, 1968, American soldiers from Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, Americal Division, entered the village of My Lai in Vietnam. “This is what you’ve been waiting for—search and destroy—and you’ve got it,” the men were told by their superior officers. And the killing began. By the time the smoke had cleared, more than 300 unarmed men, women and children were dead.
In the awful aftermath, as full details of the massacre emerged, the U.S. top brass deemed it necessary to better educate service members about the military legal system. Lt. General William Jones, commander of the Fleet Marine Force in the Pacific, sent a letter on August 15, 1972, along with a booklet to the Marines as an attempt to provide a “ready reference on the legal system for the individual Marine,” and urged those under his command to ask questions.
The booklet was disseminated after the height of the Vietnam War but months before the U.S. withdrawal the following year. Chapter Six focused on the legality of orders. It outlined that obedience to orders is a “fundamental concept” of the Marine Corps, but noted “the order given must be a legal one.”
“1. Am I required to obey legal orders? A. No, you are not,” it states in bold. “2. Suppose someone gives me an illegal order, I obey it, and I am subsequently charged with an offense because of my obeying that illegal order? Can I use obedience to orders as a valid defense to the charge? A. No, you cannot. Since you are not required to obey an illegal order, your compliance with it is not a defense.”
But the guidance to Marines stationed in the Pacific (FMFPAC) did not stop there.
“3. How can I tell if an order is legal or illegal? A. It’s not as hard as it sounds. Most of the cases wherein this issue has been raised involved killings of humans under circumstances such that compliance with the order to kill would clearly be murder. If you rely on common sense and judgement, you should be all right.”
The specific example in the booklet of one such illegal order given to Marines was shooting a prisoner who was subdued or did not pose an immediate threat.
“4. What should I do if I receive an order which I consider to be illegal? A. Advise the individual giving the order that you consider the order to be illegal and that you are not going to comply for that reason.”
So why was it so wrong for six Democratic Party lawmakers to urge troops not to obey unlawful orders?
More to the point, should Admiral Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley have followed the order reportedly given by Pete Hegseth to leave no one alive in the narco boat strike in the Caribbean on September 2?
Sharing the Post at the Pentagon
And speaking of Pete, the MAGA Pentagon Propagandists, sorry, the, eh, Pentagon Press Corps, has officially moved in after the longtime national security reporters got the boot for not sucking up enough. The fake press corps is already disseminating questionable content. Laura Loomer posted a photo claiming she was now occupying the former Washington Post desk. But so did two other journalists, RedState’s R.C. Maxwell and Cam Higby, of Fearless Media, who signed away their journalistic ethics for a (shiny MAGA red) press pass.
It appears they all have a secret crush on Dan Lamothe, although only Loomer was actually sitting at the Post veteran’s old desk. The other two couldn’t even get that right. “By my count, I’ve got at least two or three desks left at the Pentagon. Lost count,” Lamothe posted on X, along with photos of his admirers. “Y’all are going to have to work this one out for yourselves,” he added. We guess that’s what happens when the new occupants spend more energy dunking on proper reporters rather than raising questions about, say, potential war crimes.
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