 In a legal filing Thursday night, the Biden administration sided with this man, even though its own office of the director of national intelligence previously wrote, quote, we assess that Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohammed bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, unquote. At issue was a 2020 lawsuit against 37-year-old Mohammed bin Salman or MBS and 28 others in D.C. federal district court, accusing them of, quote, acting in a conspiracy and with premeditation to kidnap, bind, drug, torture, and assassinate Jamal Khashoggi, a resident of the U.S., who wrote for The Washington Post at the time. The 2018 murder took place at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Khashoggi's body was dismembered with a bone saw, one source told The New York Times. His remains were never found. Now, MBS denies ordering the murder, but then candidate Joe Biden did not believe him, saying it shocked him to his very soul and would change how he as president would treat the Saudis. Khashoggi was, in fact, murdered and dismembered, and I believe in the order of the crown prince. And I would make it very clear we were not going to, in fact, sell more weapons to them. We were going to, in fact, make them pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are. But as president, Mr. Biden did decide to sell more weapons to Saudi Arabia, $650 million worth in 2021, and then earlier this year met with and fist bumped MBS. Biden said he brought up the murder in their meeting, but it clearly annoyed him when we in the news media focused on this. I keep talking about something that matters. I've been asked a question that matters. This week, the Biden Justice Department says it sided with MBS against the lawsuit because MBS is now prime minister, quote, the sitting head of government and accordingly is immune from this suit per precedent and international law. But that promotion to prime minister by his father, King Solomon, who would normally hold that title. That promotion came last month, just a few days before the Biden administration was supposed to weigh in on this immunity issue. As Fred Ryan, the Washington Post's publisher and CEO noted in a statement Friday, quote, while legitimate heads of government should be protected against frivolous lawsuits, the Saudis decision to make MBS prime minister was a cynical, calculated effort to manipulate the law and shield him from accountability. Ryan says Biden was essentially, quote, granting a license to kill to one of the world's most egregious human rights abusers who was responsible for the cold-blooded murder of Jamal Khashoggi, unquote. It is worth noting, though the court did invite the Biden administration to weigh in on this issue of immunity, the Biden administration did not have to do so. They could have stayed silent. The U.S. has a long and shameful history when it comes to American presidents going along with Saudi human rights abuses, because they control so much of the fossil fuels to which our country is so addicted. But there's only one politician who promised he would be different, who pledged that he would make this thug a pariah, who made his stark morality on this one man such a vivid campaign issue, and that's Joe Biden. You just listened to a very powerful rebuke of the Biden administration after they decided to kowtow to the murderous Saudi Arabian regime. And I don't usually say this, but good job, Jake Tapper. You actually crushed it there. And this gets even more embarrassing for Joe Biden when you consider the fact that, according to the Wall Street Journal's Middle East bureau chief, Michael Amman, Mohammed bin Salman privately mocked Biden and made fun of his gaffes and even questioned his mental acuity. And yet the Biden administration literally lets him get away with murder. Refusing to do even the bare minimum, just staying out and letting Khashoggi's family potentially seek justice legally or not selling weapons to Saudi Arabia. None of us are advocating that we go to war with Saudi Arabia. That's not what we're asking, but we're simply calling for the bare minimum so we don't further embolden this murderous regime. But we won't stop doing that, even though Biden said he wouldn't sell weapons to Saudi Arabia. He's doing that because, well, they're used defensively and not offensively, which is something that you can prove. And given how Saudi Arabia has used our weapons and training to do a genocide in Yemen, I'd argue that I don't believe what the Biden administration is selling us. As the Washington Post reports, as global attention focused on Russia's invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, the Saudi-led coalition carried out more than 150 airstrikes on civilian targets in Yemen, including homes, hospitals, and communication towers, according to the Yemen data project. It was the latest uptick in bombing during a grinding and often overlooked civil war that has appended the lives of Yemeni civilians for the better part of a decade and spawned one of the world's most severe humanitarian crises. Hundreds of thousands have died from the fighting or its indirect consequences, such as hunger the United Nations says. The devastating air campaign alone carried out by a Saudi-led coalition has killed almost 24,000 people, a number that includes combatants and nearly 9,000 civilians according to conservative estimates by the armed conflict location and event data project, which monitors war zones around the world. A new analysis by the Washington Post and Security Force Monitor at Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute provides the most complete picture yet of the depth and breadth of U.S. support for the Saudi-led air campaign, revealing that a substantial portion of the air raids were carried out by jets developed, maintained, and sold by U.S. companies and by pilots who were trained by the U.S. military. But yet Joe Biden won't stop selling them weapons, won't stay out of it so that way Khashoggi's family can seek justice, and he has the audacity to fist bump this dictator who is a murderer who makes fun of him behind his back. It is so embarrassing on so many levels, and it's so bad that fellow corporate Democrats like Tim Kaine are calling out Joe Biden. In a press release, Tim Kaine writes, as disappointing as it is that the U.S. has been unwilling to hold MBS to account for the assassination of a U.S. resident journalist last night's announcement by the State Department is even more egregious. The case is a civil suit filed by the friends and family of Khashoggi in the hopes of acquiring even a modicum of justice from the Saudi defendants. The U.S. is not a party to the case. The Saudi defendants have full opportunity to defend their own actions and the federal proceedings. The court offered the administration the option to express an option on the question of whether sovereign immunity doctrines protect MBS from the suit. The administration had no duty to take a proactive position and could have simply refrained from doing so. Instead, it has chosen to take the side of the party that our own intelligence agencies have concluded is responsible for the murder and is standing against family members seeking recompense for this gross injustice. And also something that I don't say very frequently, good job, Tim Kaine. I agree with you. So the Biden administration has done something so egregious that individuals who don't usually call him out and criticize him this sharply are calling him out. That is genuinely beyond reason. And I just I don't know what to say, honestly. I guess the silver lining is that perhaps this will renew calls for Congress to use the War Powers Act to end U.S. complicity with Saudi Arabia's genocide in Yemen. And as Common Dreams explains, in June, 48 bipartisan U.S. lawmakers introduced a War Powers resolution to end the nation's unauthorized involvement in the Saudi-led war. The following month, Senators Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy and Elizabeth Warren proposed a measure in the upper chamber. Interviewed for an intercept article published on Monday, U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar, one of the 48 co-sponsors of the House resolution, asserted that our foreign policy should not be based on a dependence on oil or the geopolitical whims of foreign despots. It should be based on the rule of law and human rights. Yeah, very well said. And let me remind you that last time when Congress passed the War Powers Act to end the U.S. support for Saudi Arabia's genocide in Yemen, it got the Trump's desk and he vetoed it. So we have now another administration refusing to stand up to this murderous dictator. And again, we're asking for the bare minimum here. Stop giving them weapons that you know they're using against innocent civilians. But we can't even get that. Can't get justice for Khashoggi. Can't get justice for the people of Yemen. And it's all because of oil, essentially. It's just so disgusting and beyond the pale, but very predictable for U.S. presidents who have been too afraid to stand up to people who are supposed to be our allies. So it's embarrassing, but it's exactly what we've come to expect from the U.S. Empire who doesn't give a damn about human rights. Hey listen up, before you purchase gift cards for your family members from Netflix or Amazon, why don't you support a streaming service that doesn't exploit their workers? I'm, of course, talking about Means TV, who's having their annual Black Friday sale where you can get one year of Means TV for 50% off by using the code comedy is illegal. For those of you who don't know, Means TV is the world's first worker-owned streaming service featuring anti-capitalist documentaries, shows, news, and independent content creators like myself. Here at Means TV, we don't have some corporate overlord telling us what we can and can't say or do. We own the means of production. The content is ours. We are a democracy and therefore to support us, you're supporting a worker-owned co-op. So if you want to sign up, that's means.tv slash join and enter the code comedy is legal for 50% off of an entire year subscription. Listen, leftist propaganda is the gift that keeps on giving. So by enlightening one of your family members, you could be changing the world potentially.