On December 31 of last year, a military appeals court reinstated the plea deals of suspected terrorist masterminds involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. The Biden administration appealed the decision and an appeals panel temporarily blocked guilty pleas from being entered, which would have spared Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from the death penalty. Such a decision came on Thursday, with Mohammed's plea deal being scheduled for the following day.
This is not the final ruling, though, and some of the next steps for deciding the process are scheduled for January 22, right after a new Trump administration comes into office, and over 20 years after the attacks took place.
As the Associated Press reported:
A three-judge appeals panel agreed to put on hold Mohammed’s guilty plea scheduled for Friday in a military commission courtroom at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In an unusual move, the Biden administration is pushing to throw out a plea agreement that its own Defense Department had negotiated with Mohammed and two 9/11 co-defendants.
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The appeals panel stressed that its order would hold only as long as it took to more fully consider arguments and that it should not be considered a final ruling.
The court scheduled some of the next steps for Jan. 22, meaning the fight would extend into the Trump administration.
Defense lawyers had worked to wrap up the pleas by President-elect Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. It’s not clear whether Trump would seek to intervene in the military commission’s work.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has led the fight to overturn the politically divisive plea deals, saying a decision on the death penalty in an attack as grave as Sept. 11 should only be made by the defense secretary.
Defense lawyers said in filings that attempts to throw out the agreement is the latest in the government’s two decades of “fitful” and “negligent” mishandling of the case. They say the deal is already in effect and that Austin has no legal authority to throw it out after the fact.
The fight has put the Biden administration at odds with the U.S. military officials it appointed to oversee justice in the attacks.
The deal, negotiated over two years and approved by military prosecutors and the Pentagon’s senior official for Guantanamo in late July, stipulated life sentences without parole for Mohammed and two co-defendants. It also obligates them to answer any lingering questions that families of the victims have about the attacks.
Legal and logistical challenges have bogged down the 9/11 case in the 17 years since charges were filed against Mohammed. The case remains in pretrial hearings, with no trial date set.
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The Justice Department said that if the guilty pleas were accepted, the government would be denied a chance for a public trial and the opportunity to “seek capital punishment against three men charged with a heinous act of mass murder that caused the death of thousands of people and shocked the nation and the world.”
The AP may wish to claim that such a move from the Biden administration is "unusual," but the plans from last summer didn't exactly come off as well coordinated. Their own reporting above highlights how much the Biden administration was in such disarray over the issue.
After there was strong outrage from victims' families and lawmakers, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin needed to step in and revoke the plea deals.
What's left out of the AP report is how incompetent the administration was at handling the situation during that time, including and especially when it comes to White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who was just as unhelpful on this subject as she usually is.
During a press briefing from August 2, hours before Austin revoked the plea deals, Jean-Pierre repeatedly answered questions on the subject by looking down at her binder and emphasizing her claims that they didn't play a role.
REPORTER: The NYC Firefighters Union put out a statement condemning the 9/11 plea deal. Does the administation have a message for them?
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) August 1, 2024
KJP: "Our hearts go out to the families who lost a loved one. We didn’t have a role in this." pic.twitter.com/Z5T2ddoOMj
At that same briefing, White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby emphasized that the plea deal "was orchestrated by an independent military convening authority" and wouldn't speak further on it beyond such a response.
On Thursday night, Tim Sumner, who often pens columns for Townhall, posted to X what the Victim Witness Assistance Program emailed to the 9/11 family community, making clear that the "administrative stay" granted was a "temporary halt."
"The Commission will not hear the entry of pleas for Mr. Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, Mr. bin ‘Attash or Mr. Hawsawi until the D.C. Circuit Court rules on whether the pre-trial agreements were lawfully withdrawn by the Secretary of Defense. The defense response to the petition is due 17 January, and the Government’s reply is due 22 January, with possible oral arguments on the matter to follow," the email also mentioned.
UPDATE: Military Commission Judge will NOT take guilty plea from Khalid Sheikh Mohammad this Friday. Today, the Victim Witness Assistance Program emailed the following to the 9/11 family community:
— America, Amen. Tim Sumner 🇺🇸 (@SgtTim911) January 10, 2025
"The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has granted an “administrative stay” (i.e.… https://t.co/JW63aZxyq4
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