Less than 20 miles from the blazing sun, the crashing surf, and the touristy trappings of Waikiki Beach, secluded corners of Pearl Harbor and Marine Corps Base Hawaii on the windward side of Honolulu currently house 345 Federal Emergency Management Agency “guests” whom JAG has accused of worsening last summer’s Lahaina blaze and callously inflicting heinous carnage on locals and tourists alike.
I say this with stubborn certainty, for I had a unique opportunity to witness JAG’s resolve in handling Deep Staters bereft of decency and whose singular, twisted focus centered on depriving the innocent of property, livelihood, and, worse, life. What I saw were not the GITMO or Camp Blaz military tribunals I’ve painstakingly detailed in countless articles, but rather “preliminary hearings” at which a military magistrate hears probable cause and determines whether a detainee or “enemy combatant” gets flown elsewhere to stand trial.
Over several days, I quietly observed the arraignments of five FEMA employees, including Region 9 Administrator Robert J. Fenton, who had been in pretrial custody since October 2023, when U.S. Marines in Maui caught him plotting the gruesome demise of citizens who bore witness to FEMA’s island atrocities: he planned to ferry them offshore and hurl them like chum into the Pacific to attract schools of frenzied tiger sharks.
In an aircraft hangar converted into a makeshift court, Fenton, a bloated wreck of a man, locked in handcuffs and caparisoned in an orange jumpsuit, was instructed by a magistrate to sit silently beside his legal advocate while a JAG prosecutor explained why he ought to stand trial for treason. The prosecutor said that had Fenton’s vision been realized, numberless civilians in Lahaina would have become shark bait. His evidence implicating Fenton included Fenton’s notes and a voice recording of him pitching the “shark bait” program to agency and government officials at FEMA’s Region 9 headquarters in California.
“Sir, we are six months down the road, and to this day, there are still people unaccounted for. It is, therefore, possible and even probable that Robert Fenton, as a regional director of FEMA, did, in fact, carry out his plan to some extent, of which we’re currently unaware. But if he didn’t, he clearly would have, as evidenced by his own voice. We ask that he be held for tribunal,” the prosecutor said to the magistrate.
Neither Fenton nor his legal advocate was allowed to refute the request or present exculpatory evidence; the magistrate said a crime had been committed and that Fenton was most likely the person who committed it, and he ruled that Fenton be transported to GITMO at the earliest opportunity to stand trial, at a time determined by Vice Adm. Darse E. Crandall. A moment later, two Marines escorted Fenton out of the hangar. The 15-minute hearing was cut and dry and devoid of theatricality.
I can not describe all I saw and learned in a single article. As I catch up on other work, I will flesh out a dozen stories detailing what, for better and worse, was a revelational experience. In the meantime, I share thoughts gleaned through conversations with military personnel overseeing the hearings and guarding detainees.
In short, justice isn’t swift; to the contrary, the time between arresting a Deep Stater and bringing him to trial is often a protracted, laborious affair–lasting weeks, months, or, in some instances, years, an eternity that has created enmity and division among the White Hats tasked with bringing closure to the Deep State menace. The conflicts that have arisen from the tardiness of justice can be attributed to two complementary variables: bureaucracy and the Deep State’s hydra-like ability to regenerate to total health from only a scrap of tissue.
“It [the Deep State] refuses to die,” a JAG officer at MCBH told me. “On the record, we’re operating at peak efficiency in getting cases off the books; off the record, we’re exhausted and frustrated because we have 340 in detainment waiting for hearings that aren’t even needed. Want to know why? Every one of them is guilty and should just go straight to GITMO and dealt with. We’ve only processed 150ish cases since August, all FEMA caught in Maui and brought here. I know they’ve also got their hands full at GITMO, but they could work faster. The whole notion originally was that taking out the mains would collapse the entire house of cards, but it hasn’t played out that way. If we scrapped hearings and tribunals and just lined them up for firing squads, you get where I’m going.”
Other officers at MCBH parroted his sentiment and described in nauseating detail how ostensibly clean-cut FEMA agents turn feral in captivity. An agent accused of shooting two Lahaina families had groused about the quality of MCBH’s meals, claiming watery potatoes sickened his stomach. To prove his point, he pulled down his pants, bent over at the waist, spread his buttocks apart with his hands, and sprayed explosive diarrhea on the cell walls as if it were interpretive art.
Outside the holding pens, I rejoined my escort, a polite but gruff Marine Corps captain who had earlier told me he disliked nosy journalists, reporters, and civilian interlopers but had received instructions to extend me “reasonable courtesy,” implying that I, too, could end up on the wrong side of a holding cell’s door if I wandered unaccompanied into restricted areas. He said he distrusted people who asked too many questions. When I asked how many is too many, he said, “Don’t be a dick,” with an almost imperceptible smirk.
I glanced skyward as three helicopters took flight and headed south.
“They’re going to Maui,” my escort said.
“Still fighting there?” I asked.
“It doesn’t end,” he said soberly. “It isn’t as intense as before, but yeah. Biden’s forces land planes in O’ahu and sneak men over there, by helicopter, boat, small planes. We push’em out, eliminate them, catch them, whatever, and they send more, and we send more.”
He spoke as though the conflict were an unwinnable tug-of-war match.
“We’ll show you Monday. You’ll go over with us,” he said matter-of-factly. “And hopefully, make it back with us in the evening.”
I surrendered my visitor badge, and my escort returned my cell phone. I hopped an UBER back to my hotel two blocks off Waikiki Beach, where I grabbed an overpriced burger and fries while awaiting a meeting with “Captain Pete,” a tour boat owner who had come under FEMA gunfire while ferrying displaced Lahaina residents to safer shores last summer.
It was Friday afternoon, and the brilliantly shining sky offered a distant view of Molokai and Maui, reportedly still a warzone. As I stood in paradise squishing sand between my toes, a pitched and possibly endless battle was occurring only 80 miles away.