Last night Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired embattled Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. President Trump reacts:
Beyond the thirst for clicks, ratings and perpetual outrage there’s an aspect to the Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Rudolph Contreras story that deserves some attention.
♦First, the DOJ wasn’t withholding anything from congress. The DOJ told congress they (or their staff) could review any of the documents, including Strzok and Page texts, at the DOJ in their totality; as a consequence of the ongoing oversight.
However, if congress -or their staff- wanted to take possession of the documents, they would only be allowed to *remove* redacted copies.
The outrage machine shouts “cover up“, etc.
No. Not quite.
Why?
Because the IG investigative documents, in addition to being part of an internal review, are also evidence within an ongoing criminal investigation. Hence, the earlier statement by AG Jeff Sessions. The statement everyone, sucked-into and/or participating within the outrage machine, loves to ignore.
Again, before grabbing your Sean Hannity branded pitchfork, think.
With a dual track within the IG investigative findings: ¹“internal wrongdoing” and ²“potential criminal conduct”, you realize that evidence collected by the IG -that may have prosecutorial value- will be closely protected by the investigative unit, including the Sessions assigned prosecutor, and not released.
It is not hard to see the “why” when you set aside emotion and ignore the outrage machine.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz recommended a review by the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility. The referral was based on IG Horowitz interviewing McCabe and identifying McCabe was lying about his instructions to FBI Communication Director Michael Kortan leaking to media on his behalf.
Mike Kortan, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok then proceeded to leak to Devlin Barrett (WSJ and WaPo), along with other journalists, with approvals from Andrew McCabe.
After IG Horowitz referred McCabe’s false statements to the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), the OPR investigated and recommended to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and AAG Rod Rosenstein that Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe should be fired. Moments ago Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced McCabe is fired:
U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue is warning President Trump not to take any trade action against China or he will unleash his purchased control agents within congress and financial media to destroy his presidency.
Donohue takes-in hundreds of millions in payments from multinational corporations who hold a vested interest in keeping the U.S. manufacturing economy subservient to China. The U.S. CoC then turns those corporate funds into lobbyist payments to DC politicians for legislative action that benefits their Chinese trade deals. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the #1 lobbyist in DC; there are trillions at stake.
Wall Street’s famous CONservative mouthpieces then take their cues from Donohue and decry any Trump trade policy that might impact their multinational benefactors. They hide behind catch phrases like “free trade”, or “free markets”. However, what they are really hiding is the truth, there is no free market – it is a controlled market. It’s a circle of trade and economic propaganda driven by the most well known guests that appear on Fox News. Ben Shapiro is one such example; there are hundreds more.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The head of the most influential U.S. business lobbying group warned the Trump administration that unilateral tariffs on Chinese goods could lead to a destructive trade war that will hurt American consumers and U.S. economic growth.
For those following the increasingly curious case against General Mike Flynn, events take another unusual turn today. Congressional investigators have shared a set of unredacted text messages between FBI Agent Peter Strzok and his cohort DOJ Attorney Lisa Page which reveal a personal friendship between Agent Strzok and Flynn’s initial presiding judge Rudolph Contreras.
On November 30th, 2017, Mike Flynn signed a guilty plea; ostensibly admitting lying to investigators. The plea was accepted by Judge Rudolph Contreras; who is also a FISA court judge. Six days later, December 7th, 2017, Judge Contreras “was recused” from the case without explanation.
The case was reassigned to DC District Judge Emmet Sullivan. The Contreras recusal always seemed sketchy. The key question was: if the conflict existed on December 7th, wouldn’t that same conflict have existed on November 30th, 2017?
Today questions about the conflict seem to have been answered. Text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page reveal the FBI agent and Judge Contreras were close personal friends. –SEE HERE–
Apparently DOJ lawyer Lisa Page was unaware that “Rudy” was a FISA court judge until July 25th, 2016, when she posited a question to her small group co-conspirator FBI agent Peter Strzok.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes appears on Fox News at Night to discuss the ending of the Trump-Russian investigation and the continuance of the ongoing FISA abuse and FBI/DOJ corruption investigations.
Part of the interview surrounds the new request by Senator Chuck Grassley for a second special counsel. As Nunes notes the Grassley request is almost identical to his own.
The PR Firm for the corrupt U.S. intelligence apparatus known as The Washington Post, runs a story about H.R. McMaster being fired tonight.
The Washington Post quotes “five people with knowledge of the plans”.
Except there’s a problem, there are no plans.
No plans except to entrap staff and intelligence community leakers; likely those five ‘leakers’ are in/around the National Security Council, and they just got caught.
WaPo – President Trump has decided to remove H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser and is actively discussing potential replacements, according to five people with knowledge of the plans, preparing to deliver yet another jolt to the senior ranks of his administration.
A surveillance video released on Thursday shows a sheriff’s deputy assigned to the Parkland, Florida high school staying outside while a former student fatally shot 17 people, according to the sheriff’s office.
The 27-minute video shows Broward County Deputy Sheriff Scot Peterson failing to enter Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where he worked as an armed guard.
The majority of the video shows Deputy Peterson cowering under a stairwell [01:30] between two of the buildings.
Peterson resigned on Feb. 22 rather than face suspension. Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel has said Peterson stayed outside the high school during the attack, instead of going inside to confront the gunman. “The video speaks for itself. His actions were enough to warrant an internal affairs investigation,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement accompanying the video’s release following a judge’s order on Monday.
Interestingly Reuters is continuing the McCabe narrative with an article quoting an unnamed FBI official who urges Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to fire Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. Given the rather expansive wealth of McCabe the angle of preserving his pension seems more than a little odd.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who stepped down in January after criticism from President Donald Trump, met on Thursday with a U.S. Justice Department official in an effort to preserve his pension, according to a source familiar with the matter.
McCabe planned to retire on Sunday with full benefits, but some or all of his pension could be at risk after the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Office of Professional Responsibility recommended firing him for misleading Justice Department investigators about his supervision of probes into Hillary Clinton, Trump’s presidential opponent, said the source, who requested anonymity.
Terrific ‘big picture’ interview and discussion between National Trade Council Director Peter Navarro and CNBC’s Rick Santelli about President Trump’s trade policies, the threat of China, and the future of how our nation will deal with allies and trading partners.
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A perpetual trade deficit is detrimental to our American economy because it is financed with debt. We can buy more than we make because we borrow from trading partners. The trade deficit simply means we purchase more foreign goods, and send more money overseas, than they purchase from us. We then turn around and borrow back the money we just paid.
Another broad concern revolves around national security. A perpetual trade deficit is a statement about the competitiveness of the U.S. economy itself. By purchasing manufactured goods overseas for a long enough period of time, U.S. companies lose the expertise and even the factories to make those products; ex: try finding a pair of shoes made in the America. As the United States loses manufacturing competitiveness, we outsource more jobs, and our total standard of living declines.
