Put this into the geopolitical file labeled: “Things that make other things make sense”…  You only need to watch the first minute and fifteen-seconds of this announcement to see the bigger BIG picture.  WATCH:

[Transcript Snippet] … “This is the first time that the United States has designated a part of another government as an FTO. We’re doing because the Iranian regime’s use of terrorism as a tool of statecraft makes it fundamentally different from any other government. This historic step will deprive the world’s leading state sponsor of terror the financial means to spread misery and death around the world.”

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House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Doug Collins writes a letter to Chairman Jerry Nadler smartly using transparency to call his bluff.  First the letter:

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During a bond hearing today prosecutors say the FBI is still investigating whether a 32-year-old Yujing Zhang, the Chinese woman accused of lying to illegally enter President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, is a spy.
After a search warrant, additional spy tech was found in her hotel room including: $7,500 in one hundred dollar bills; a signal detector device to find hidden cameras; nine USB drives, five SIM cards and an additional cell phone.  Sketchy… all of it.

(Via CBS) A federal prosecutor says a Chinese woman who was arrested for illegally entering President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club had a device to detect hidden cameras in her hotel room when Secret Service agents searched it.
Speaking at Yujing Zhang’s bail hearing Monday in West Palm Beach, Florida, prosecutor Rolando Garcia said agents also found U.S. and Chinese currency in her room, along with nine USB drives and five USB cards. She’s charged with lying to a federal agent and illegal entering.

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A little backstory…  Long-time CTH readers will note we have been recommending since candidate Trump first announced, when Donald Trump won the presidency one of the priorities should be to put the Secret Service back into the U.S. Treasury Department.

The reasoning for our recommendations beginning in 2015 was simple: the scale of opposition to an outsider as President would be off-the-charts.  DHS is a multi-layered matrix of conflicting political interests and career bureaucrats with internal agendas.
The recently visible political bias within the FBI is an example of the same issues likely to exist within another massive bureaucracy of the DHS.  Removing the U.S. Secret Service, and putting them back into Treasury, would give them operational independence and renewed clarity of purpose.  Current structures are just too sketchy.  That said, here’s the latest…
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Every narrative needs a foundation; every investigation, false or genuine, needs a predicate upon which to launch.  Remove the predicate and everything is exposed.
The predicate is the reason why so much effort was put forth by the conspiring Obama administration; and corrupt intelligence officials; and all political operatives; and the entirety of the mainstream media; to drumbeat that “Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 election.”
Without that predicate forming the motive for all subsequent action, the house-of-cards collapses; everything is exposed.
There is no amount of hindsight manipulation that can cover for a fraudulent basis of origination.  This is one of the reasons why voices like Diana West are so important.  Question the underlying assumption and the entire dynamic changes.
By now the intellectually honest reviewers of information all accept there was no effort from the Trump campaign to collude or conspire with ‘Russians’.  That narrative was always false; even Robert Mueller’s team of lawyers and FBI investigators have conceded their inability to substantiate those Trump-Russia assertions.  There never was any ‘there’ there.  All effort was instead trying to set up the obstruction case.
But further back in the narrative construct, those Trump-Russia assertions are predicated on there actually being some grand conspiratorial attempt by Russia to interfere in the 2016 election.  Without a factual basis for that claim, none of the CIA, FBI and DOJ-NSD operations hold any validity.
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According to multiple media reports, with a growing crisis at the U.S-Mexico border, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has resigned and President Trump has just confirmed via tweet:

UPDATE: Resignation letter below
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Diana West discusses her new book “The Red Thread” with Stefan Molyneux in a recent interview.  Mrs West asks why the conspiracy against President Trump took place; and she is one of the few people openly challenging the false narrative about Russia intefering in the 2016 election.  This is a great interview to watch:

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“There was nothing normal about the 2016 presidential election, not when senior U.S. officials were turning the surveillance powers of the federal government — designed to stop terrorist attacks — against the Republican presidential team. These were the ruthless tactics of a Soviet-style police state, not a democratic republic.”
“The Red Thread asks the simple question: Why? What is it that motivated these anti-Trump conspirators from inside and around the Obama administration and Clinton networks to depart so drastically from “politics as usual” to participate in a seditious effort to overturn an election?”
– Book Available Here

House intelligence committee ranking member Devin Nunes appears on Fox New with Maria Bartiromo to outline the current status of his investigative releases.
According to the interview Representative Nunes will be submitting eight criminal referrals to the Dept. of Justice next week.   Five of those referrals are for specific people who participated in the political scheme against candidate, president-elect and President Trump.  The remaining three referrals are not person specific, but rather outlines of “conspiracy”:

• One referral is the conspiracy to intentionally falsifying material to the FISA Court in order to gain a Title-One FISA warrant against U.S. person Carter Page; and by extension the political campaign of Donald Trump.
• A second conspiracy referral targets the intentional manipulation of intelligence information; and a conspiracy to weaponize the intelligence apparatus against a political party and presidential candidate, Donald Trump.
• The third conspiracy referral is less specific and pertains to evidence collected that shows a small group of government officials engaged in “global classified intelligence leaks” to the U.S. media and other entities and/or persons.

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While we do not know the five individuals referenced, it is possible to overlay the three conspiracy referrals against other investigations.
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Acting chief-of-staff Mick Mulvaney appears on Fox News Sunday to discuss current political events in Washington DC.  Topics include resistance effort by House democrats; the ongoing border crisis with Mexico; the House effort to get President Trump’s income taxes from the IRS; and the upcoming release of the Mueller report by Attorney General William Barr, and Healthcare initiatives.

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President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani appears on FtN to rebut the framework put forth by Jerry Nadler.  Toward the end of the combative and argumentative interview a frustrated Margaret Brennan accidentally let’s her bias surface visibly; she didn’t realize she was on camera (screen shot below).

[Transcript] MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re going to turn now to President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani who is here with me. Would you like to respond to the congressman who says he has the right and the committee has the right for all of this information. Do you agree that the public has the right?
RUDY GIULIANI: I- I would like him to get all the information.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Including the things that are protected–
GIULIANI: Everything.
MARGARET BRENNAN: –grand jury material.
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