Senator Ted Cruz appears on Meet The Press to discuss the fiasco of the impeachment effort…. and things immediately go south. Chuck Todd flips though page of Share Blue and Media Matters talking points while attempting to interrupt and knock down arguments put forth by Senator Cruz.
If Senator Lindsey Graham is correct – tomorrow the DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz will release a much anticipated review, looking into how the FBI and DOJ used an application to the FISA court to investigate the Trump campaign. There are wide-ranging opinions about what exactly this report may, or may not, outline.
The IG review has been ongoing for 21 months. This report is anticipated to be a culmination of that investigative effort. The ‘tick-tock club’ of Sean Hannity, Sara Carter, John Solomon and various Fox pundits have promised the report will be the most devastating outline of gross FBI and DOJ misconduct in the history of IG review.
Additionally, a network of financially dependent social media voices, book writers, podcast pundits and Q-theorists collectively known as the ‘trusty plan group’, have predicted criminal indictments, wide-scale arrests and a shock to the DC system that will fracture the foundation of the administrative state and simultaneously drain the swamp.
Meanwhile the Lawfare group has been the most visible advocacy network for the current and former DOJ and FBI officials who participated in setting up and using the FISA surveillance system now under IG review. The Lawfare group has stated the IG report will exonerate all of their pre and post election activity; validate the justification for their predicate efforts; and leave the ‘tick-tockers’ and ‘trusty planners’ having to reconcile to their stunned audiences how they interpreted all the data so incredibly wrong.
A review of the last three IG reports which brush up against the same DOJ and FBI network: (1) IG review Clinton email/FBI conduct; (2) IG review of McCabe/media leaks; and (3) IG review of James Comey conduct; shows the IG report on FISA is likely to come down somewhere in the middle. ie. mistakes were made; poor judgements were evident; some unprofessional conduct was found; some lack of candor was identified; department policies were not followed; but no direct evidence of intentional wrongdoing was attributable to a coordinated political effort. (more…)
Planning for impeachment right after the 2018 mid-term election, HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff hired former SDNY U.S. Attorney Daniel Goldman (link). You probably saw Goldman doing the questioning for Schiff during the first public impeachment hearing. Around the same time in 2018 Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler hired Obama Administration lawyer Norm Eisen and criminal defense attorney Barry Berke (link).
In addition to changing the House rules to align with the plan, the impeachment process we have been witnessing for two months was mapped-out in the congressional lame-duck session between November 2018 and January 2019. Today Chairman Nadler announces who will present the impeachment file during the House hearing on Monday:
HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes discusses his review of phone records, and how the mysteriously collected phone data that Chariman Schiff put into his impeachment report doesn’t match with his own review.
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:
Shortly after 6pm this evening Supreme Court Justice Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg put a prior 2nd Circuit ruling on hold until next Friday, December 13, at 5 p.m.
President Trump went to the Supreme Court after the House Financial Services and Intelligence Committees issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Capital One seeking President Trump’s tax records. In his request to the court [Read Here] Trump asked SCOTUS to block the subpoenas on the ground they go beyond the committees’ powers.
Justice Ginsburg’s order tonight gives the justices time to rule on Trump’s request for a longer stay of the lower court’s decision while he files a petition for review. Ginsburg ordered the House of Representatives to file a response to Trump’s request by 11 a.m. on Wednesday, December 11. (more…)
Elections have consequences. On the same day the U.S. economy reports astoundingly successful jobs growth of 266,000 jobs and a drop in the unemployment rate to 3.5 percent; the Canadian state economic minister reports surprisingly terrible jobs losses of 72,200 jobs and a jump in unemployment from 5.5 to 5.9 percent. The Canadian economy is roughly one-tenth the size of the U.S. So in equivalent terms the results from Canada reflect a comparative loss of 720,000 jobs on the same day the U.S. revises all figures upward to over 300,000 gains. A stunning economic contrast:
OTTAWA (Reuters) – The Canadian job market lost a surprise 71,200 net positions in November while the unemployment rate rose to 5.9%, the highest in more than a year, data showed on Friday, as analysts said a repeat of the weak numbers could force the Bank of Canada to rethink its monetary policy.
Analysts in a Reuters poll had forecast a gain of 10,000 jobs and had predicted the unemployment rate would hold steady at 5.5%. […] November’s numbers followed a weak report in October, when the labor market unexpectedly shed jobs despite a likely boost from hiring related to the federal election.
National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow appears on Fox Business news to discuss the November jobs report, economic growth and the China trade discussions.
Kudlow highlights the primary point that President Trump has reestablished Main Street USA as the primary focus of policy. U.S. companies invested in the U.S. economy are doing exceptionally well and receiving the majority benefit. U.S. multinational companies who are invested overseas are not benefiting as much. Wall St -vs- Main Street.
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Director Kudlow is correct, if the House can ratify the USMCA trade deal, North America will see a massive influx of investment.
In essence Titan Trump is winning the economic battle by: (a) repatriating wealth (trade policy); (b) blocking exfiltration (main street policy); (c) creating new and modern economic alliances based on reciprocity (bilateral deals); and (d) dismantling the post WWII Marshal plan of global trade and one-way tariffs (de-globalization). (more…)
HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes responds to the possibilities of how HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff gained private phone records for use in his impeachment effort.
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One of the possibilities is that Lev Parnas is a foreign national. SDNY gets a subpoena from the FISA court. Rudy Giuliani is in contact with Parnas (1-hop). They then unmask and pull Giuliani’s records and get Nunes and Solomon (2-hops).
The question would then be how did the unmasked information in an active investigation that started in the FISC end up being sent to the House Intel Committee to be disclosed to the public? (more…)
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. (more…)
