Representative Jim Jordan discusses his perspectives on the closed-door testimony of former FBI Director James Comey.

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French President Emmanuel Macron may have maneuvered to block the growing uprising, but it’s quite possible he’ll lose his presidency in the process. French police took a much more aggressive posture this weekend.  The violence is disturbing.

In an effort to stop a replay of last week’s violence, French police moved in pre-dawn raids to round up those they identified as leaders of the Yellow Vest protest movement. In the city of Paris over 800 arrests were made by Macron’s forces and the French military were deployed. Overall, throughout France more than 1,400 arrests were made so far.
As the sun set, less organized protests continued as frustrated French set fire to cars, burned barricades and smashed windows in isolated geographic pockets within the city. Police forces were boosted to around 8,000 across Paris, with EU armored vehicles deployed in the city of lights for the first time in modern history. The pictures are stunning.
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Here’s the transcript (full pdf below) of the December 7th, 2018, deposition of former FBI Director James Comey to the joint house committee headed by Trey Gowdy and Bob Goodlatte:
[scribd id=395239462 key=key-mrRcuymxydLx1G9aSbLV mode=scroll]

(Oversight pdf link – scribd pdf link)

This is breaking.  CTH analysis to follow…

An interesting pattern of seemingly disconnected political stories is beginning to show signs of a common continuity.  In the bigger of the big pictures seven words continue to set the baseline: “There are trillions of dollars at stake”.
When the common sense Tea Party movement formed in 2009 and 2010 it contained a monumentally frustrated grassroots electorate, and the scale of the movement caught the professional republican party off-guard. When Donald Trump ran for the office of the presidency he essentially did the same thing; he disrupted the apparatus of the professional republican party.
The difference between those two examples is one was from the bottom up, and the second was from the top down.  However, the commonality in the two forces resulted in the 2016 victory.

It took a few years for the heavily armored old guard of GOP to formulate a plan to retain their control.  In the example of the Tea Party, the republican power structures moved in 2011 through 2014 to co-opt the vulgarian movement and impede their disruptive influence.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was at the forefront of those power moves.  {Go Deep} and {Go Deep}  The basic issue for the GOP was retention of power.
McConnell and crew tamped down the fire.  A few years pass and the issues that spurred the Tea Party movement remained unresolved.  In 2015 Donald Trump taps in to that exact same Tea Party frustration toward the control authority within one-half of the DC UniParty; again, the professional republican apparatus was disrupted.  The movement rebranded and now the MAGA movement wins the presidency.
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President Trump delivers remarks to a national audience of law enforcement during the 2018 Safe Neighborhoods National Conference in Kansas City, Missouri. Interesting nuance within the off-script moments.

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[Transcript] The Westin Kansas City at Crown Center – Kansas City, Missouri – 12:17 P.M. CST – THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. (Applause.) Thank you. I appreciate it very much.
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Former FBI Director James Comey gives a brief press conference following his testimony before a joint congressional committee.  Notably, Comey references the importance of saving the ‘institutions’ (and all the corrupt interests within it) above all other aspects.
When the institutions are corrupt; and the officials within the institutions are corrupt; and there is inquiry into the corrupt activity of the officials within the institutions; then retaining the institutions is the priority.  It’s that simple.  If you take down the institution you run the risk of exposing the corruption…. So anyone associated simply demands another coat of paint.

Additionally, Comey seems to infer that the removal of Jeff Sessions is now part of the Mueller/Rosenstein/Democrat approach to frame obstruction against President Trump.  Quite simply, any action by Trump to expose the previously described corruption is viewed as unlawful obstruction.  That’s their plan, and the approach has worked so far.
Comey is scheduled to return for more testimony on December 17th. Transcripts of today’s hearing should be available soon.
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Within a sentencing memo filed today (full pdf below) the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York recommends “a substantial term of imprisonment” for Michael Cohen, who has pleaded guilty to fraud and tax charges and campaign finance crimes, as well as lying to Congress.
Reading through the memo – the content of cooperation, and the details that surface as a result therein, are entirely different from all previous media claims:

Additionally, special counsel Robert Mueller filed a second memorandum, recommending no additional prison time for Cohen’s guilty plea for lying to Congress, saying it would be “appropriate” for Cohen to serve any sentence in that case concurrently with the sentence in the SDNY case.
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Apparently the institutional protection system was in full force today as current FBI lawyers blocked any questions directed toward former FBI Director James Comey as they related to FBI investigations of Hillary Clinton; applications to the FISA court and the use of the Steele Dossier.  Darryl Issa explains a transcript will show the severity of shielding:

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We shared a discussion thread several months ago about how the media are enmeshed within the story of the DOJ and FBI corruption. The media engagements with the parties swirling around the FBI, DOJ and Clinton-Steele Dossier are so pervasive they cannot reasonably report on any aspect of the story without exposing their own duplicity.
As more and more information surfaces about corrupt DOJ and FBI activity, it’s worth remembering the media’s complicit role.  Here’s an updated review for context:

Michael Isikoff highlighted that level of how enmeshed media is with the story in February when he admitted his reporting was being used by the DOJ and FBI to advance the political objectives of the intelligence community. Additionally, FBI investigator Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page were shown in their text messages to be leaking stories from the Clinton Investigation, the Trump investigation and the Mueller investigation to journalists at Politico, The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. –SEE HERE–
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was busted by the Inspector General leaking stories to the media and then lying about it to INSD and IG investigators. FBI Director James Comey admitted to leaking stories to the New York Times, and even hired his friend Andrew Richman (off-the-books), gave him access to FBI and NSA databases, and then leaked information to Richman along with another friend Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare blog.
Lest we forget, the IG report on how the FBI handled the Clinton investigation revealed that dozens of FBI officials were actually taking bribes from the media for information:

IG REPORT – We identified numerous FBI employees, at all levels of the organization and with no official reason to be in contact with the media, who were nevertheless in frequent contact with reporters. Attached to this report as Attachments E and F are two link charts that reflect the volume of communications that we identified between FBI employees and media representatives in April/May and October 2016. We have profound concerns about the volume and extent of unauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel that we have uncovered during our review.

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OMB Director Mick Mulvaney has been wearing two hats as both head of the Office of Management and Budgets and head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
Democrats went bananas in 2017 when Mulvaney took over the source of their financial black-mail and fundraising scheme constructed by Elizabeth Warren.
Today the senate voted to confirm Mulvaney’s protege’ Kathy Kraninger to replace him.
Democrats are still going bananas.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate voted 50-49 on Thursday to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. consumer watchdog despite opposition from Democrats and consumer groups who say she is unqualified.
Kathy Kraninger will serve as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), replacing acting chief Mick Mulvaney, after Trump signs a declaration approving her five-year term.

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