Earlier this afternoon Senate Judiciary Committee Lindsey Graham held a press availability to discuss concerns with the Inspector General report.   Senator Graham outlines three key FBI moments (for him) within the IG report, that highlight demonstrable and intentional misconduct.

1. January 2017 the FBI contacted the Steele Dossier sub-source and was informed the dossier was remarkably unreliable, out of context, and full of “bar talk”.
2. January 2017 the FBI lied. Telling the FISA Court the sub-source validated the dossier as evidence in order to get a renewal; a claim they repeated in April.
3. June 2017 the CIA told FBI Lawyer Kevin Clinesmith that Carter Page was working for them; and then Clinesmith changed that notification so he could submit the last renewal.

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U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr releases the following statement after the release of a 21-month investigative report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz:

HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes appears on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the ongoing background efforts by Chairman Adam Schiff and his staff to use fraud in an effort to construct an illusion of impropriety against him.
Nunes is on the trail of a network of corrupt DC interests, political operatives and politicians who are fabricating evidence to support a non-existent impeachment narrative. As a consequence Nunes is a target of their efforts.

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In the latter part of the interview Nunes discusses the upcoming FISA report from IG Horowitz. A growing concern surrounds the lack of declassification of background documents that have disappeared from the radar. The IG report is one piece of a puzzle, but declassification of hidden documents is more important.
Amid the twists and turns many people have forgotten about the material congress asked President Trump to declassify a year-and-a-half ago. Additionally there has been some material cited that just seemingly slipped away without follow-up. Consider:
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President Trump responds to today’s deadline set by House Democrats for the White House to say whether it would participate in the impeachment proceedings:

In summary:

“Nuts!”

As the House impeachment of President Donald Trump becomes more of a forgone political conclusion it’s worth considering what terms and conditions Senate Leader Mitch McConnell will extract in order to preserve a Trump Presidency.
Most political pundits will not correctly outline the status of the possibilities, because most political pundits are willfully blind to the structure of the McConnell Senate.
First, McConnell doesn’t care about holding a majority position in the Senate.  Whether he is a majority leader or a minority leader doesn’t matter to McConnell. In fact McConnell’s political skill-set does better in the minority than the majority.
The preferred political position for Mitch McConnell is where he has between 45 and 49 republican Senators, and the Democrats hold the Majority with around 55.  Of course with Reid’s retirement, this would now be with Majority leader Chuck Schumer holding office.
Why does McConnell prefer the minority position?
The answer is where you have had to actually follow Mitch McConnell closely to see how he works.   When the Majority has around 52 to 55 seats, they need McConnell to give them 8 to 9 votes to overcome the three-fifths (60 vote) threshold for their legislative needs.  It is in the process of trade and payment for those 8 to 9 votes where McConnell makes more money, and holds more power, than as a sitting Majority Leader.
The 60 vote threshold, and McConnell’s incredible skillset in the minority, is where he shines.  Each of the needed votes to achieve sixty is worth buckets of indulgence to the minority leader.  This is why McConnell never changed the Senate rules for legislative passage.
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With the House calendar extended to December 20th it now appears the full House vote on articles of impeachment will take place within this year. Today, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her instructions to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler to assemble the formal articles of impeachment to be brought to the House floor.

~ Read Speaker Pelosi Announcement HERE ~

Speaker Pelosi did not provide many details; however, Democrats have said they are considering multiple articles of impeachment against Trump including abuse of power, obstruction of justice and obstruction of Congress. The House Judiciary Committee is expected to draw up articles of impeachment as soon as next week.
This is the first time in History that articles of impeachment will be assembled without an official full house vote to initiate the impeachment process. This is also the first impeachment effort without the House attaining recognized judicial enforcement authority.  The vote will take place before the Supreme Court weighs-in on the legal framework for the House effort. The House judicial enforcement authority, not being recognized by the Supreme Court, likely had a strong bearing on the timing.
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The CIA primarily leaks PR spin to the Washington Post.  The FBI primarily leaks PR spin to the New York Times; and the State Dept. primarily leaks PR spin to CNN.  This narrative distribution model is the one constant in an ever changing universe.
Cue the audio visual…  Obviously the prior Washington Post effort to conflate the Durham investigation with the Horowitz investigation didn’t get the desired result.  As a consequence it only took a few days before the Washington Post was back at it (Matt Zapotosky and Devlin Barrett again) to try obfuscation 2.0; this time with Joseph Mifsud.

For three years the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN have sold the FBI claim that Professor Joseph Mifsud was a Russian operative passing information about Clinton’s emails to George Papadopoulos.
That essential point underpins their defense of the predicate for the CIA and FBI to open the July 31st investigation of the Trump campaign.   Again, for three years Joseph Mifsud was sold as a Russian operative; working on behalf of Russian interests.
That “Mifsud is a Russian asset” claim is the fulcrum of Crossfire Hurricane.   Mifsud has to be a Russian asset, or else…  George Papadopoulos talking to Australian Diplomat Alexander Downer about Mifsud is simply political gossip without merit, value or bearing.
The key point is Mifsud has to be a Russian operative in order for all of the downstream FBI activity to be justified.   If Mifsud ain’t Russian, the CIA and FBI have a problem.
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Devin Nunes appeared on Tucker Carlson to discuss the impeachment events of the day.  However, thankfully they also discussed the revelation that HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff randomly started issuing subpoenas for telephone information.  That’s the part I find very troubling.  Notice how the media simply ignores it?  This is a pretty big damn deal.
Under what authority can congress arbitrarily send subpoenas for the private phone records of citizens, journalists, and fellow politicians?  Can Nunes now start sending subpoenas for the phone records of Michael Isikoff around the time of the Flynn phone call leak?… and can congress publish those call records as a part of some possibly inquiry into the leak… and we can cross reference to identify the FBI leaker?….

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Representative Matt Gaetz confronted the jaw-dropping level of political bias and Trump Derangement Syndrome exhibited by Chairman Nadler’s panel of left-wing experts.
With a visible display of righteous indignation Mr. Gaetz dressed down the pompous liberal law professor, Pamela Karlan, and cut right to the heart of the matter with the entire panel.  WATCH:

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Professor Pamela Karlan of Stanford Law School became the pompous face of the academic impeachment panel today when she ridiculed the son of President Trump in an effort to highlight her resistance bona-fides.   Imagine the hate that necessarily exists in the heart of a witness who would rehearse such a line to gain tribal cheer.

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Professor Karlan’s tone-deaf effort is a result of a life in an echo-chamber of far-left liberalism. However, the exhibited hatred did more to support the argument of the impeachment opposition than a thousand hours of granular testimony.  Karlan’s disposition during her diatribe is a case study in Trump Derangement Syndrome.

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