President Trump delivers a video message in concert with a series of public tweets surrounding the ongoing issues with border security funding.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi starts shifting the semantic granules to avoid a political loss. The financing for, and construction of, a see-through fencing system (Trump’s position) is the request of DHS and Border Patrol, and supported by the vast majority of Americans.
Today, Speaker Pelosi starts by claiming no wall will ever be permitted, then garbles her way through a pretzel response by saying “Normandy Barriers” being replaced by “Normandy See-Through Fencing”, is ok. She’s trying to avoid a political loss. Watch:
So far the joint house committee transcripts have been leaked to: John Solomon (The Hill), The Epoch Times, The New York Times, and now The Daily Caller. Someone is trying to get additional traction to these structured transcripts.
The content is also interesting. The only thing we knew previously about the testimony of Nellie Ohr was that she evoked ‘spousal privilege’ during her deposition. However, now the Daily Caller is reporting that Nellie Ohr gave testimony about her research with Fusion GPS, to include doing research on Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr’s travels:
Daily Caller – The wife of a Justice Department official who worked for Fusion GPS during the 2016 campaign told Congress in 2018 that one of her tasks at the opposition research firm was to research President Donald Trump’s children, including their business activities and travel.
Nellie Ohr, a former contractor for Fusion GPS, also told lawmakers during an Oct. 19 deposition that she recalls that Christopher Steele gave her husband, Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, materials from the infamous anti-Trump dossier funded by Democrats.
The background here is that any unilateral declassification by President Trump will end up putting him in opposition to a variety of corrupt interests. As a direct result he will be facing legal action from the legislative branch. With that accepted, here is the most strategic approach.
President Trump informs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, that he wishes to have a full intelligence briefing on the following documents:
The President selects a date for this briefing and informs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, to inform and coordinate with all executive branch lead intelligence officials, who were/are stakeholders in the compartmented intelligence products as described above, of their request be present for the briefing.
Further, all of the compartmented intelligence is to be collectively assembled by the ODNI into one volume of a singular Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB). There are to be eighteen printed copies of the PDB assembled and secured for the briefing.
Additionally, the office of the president informs the ODNI of the executives’ intent to invite for the briefing each member of the Intelligence Community legislative oversight known as the Gang-of-Eight.
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There has been a great deal of debate and consternation surrounding how the Administrative State has boxed in President Trump through the use of the Mueller/Weissman counterintelligence probe, authorized by Rod Rosenstein, where President Trump is a target of the investigation.
A widely held supporter perspective is that President Trump can expose the fraudulent origination of the counterintelligence investigation; of which he is now a target; if he were to declassify a series of documents as requested by congress and allies of his administration. This approach would hopefully remove the sword of Damocles.
Because the issues are very complex, we begin a two-part CTH post to outline the issues and hopefully clarify the situation; as well as outline a possible solution that would minimize the risk. This is part I.
The core issue within the debate surrounds two contradictory reference points: (1) President Trump has ultimate declassification authority. (2) Yes; however, in this example President Trump is also the target of the investigation; so declassification could be viewed by elements within the investigation as ‘obstruction’. Both of these points are true.
Also true is the reality that both laws and politics come into play.
In November 2018 President Trump gave an interview where he discussed the situation as it is visible to him. Democrats and opposition, writ large, are working earnestly to remove him from office. Obviously President Trump is aware:
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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced today he selected Stacey Abrams to deliver the Democrat rebuttal to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address.
Ms. Abrams previously served as Democratic leader of the Georgia state General Assembly and failed in a race for the Georgia Governor losing to Brian Kemp.
Stacy Abrams will likely run for a U.S. Senate Seat from Georgia in 2020. Republican incumbent Senator David Perdue is up for reelection in 2020.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham announced today the postponement of the committee vote on nomination of William Barr for Attorney General by one week, after democrats requested a delay.
Generally, no big deal. Normally, the opposition democrats can call for a week delay. Typically, this stuff happens all the time and is one of those procedural issues no-one pays attention to. However…
Because the spidey-sense political radar is monitoring DC closely; it just so happens that we stood back, looked at the political calendar last night; and predicted this. Check out the alignment of the political planets for next week:
♦On Tuesday Feb 5th, President Trump is now scheduled to deliver his State of the Union address. There is absolutely NO DOUBT before Pelosi invited Trump, the democrats have pre-planned something around the event.
♦On Friday Feb 8th, AAG Matt Whitaker is scheduled to appear in front of the most Machiavellian political mind inside the Democrat apparatus, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (aka “The Penguin”).
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Internal polling and fear of resistance backlash must be significant for the democrats. President Donald Trump accepted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s invitation to deliver his State of the Union speech on Feb. 5, a week later than originally scheduled.
Devin Nunes dropped a bombshell yesterday in an interview with Maria Bartiromo [Video Here]. Many people are overlooking the implications of his speculation; and, more importantly how Nunes statement answers just about every contradictory question people have carried. Including:
In short, Devin Nunes speculated that Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein put the substantive allegations from the Fusion-GPS/Ohr/Steele Dossier into his investigative instructions (full pdf below) that he gave Robert Mueller.
If it is accurate that Rosenstein charged Robert Mueller with investigating the dossier claims; and if Nunes is accurate that the DOJ investigative target, a derivative of the dossier, is Donald Trump; well, everything starts to make a hell of a lot more sense.
If the mandate given to Robert Mueller was to specifically investigate the sitting president of the United States as an active participant, and subsequent target, for a counterintelligence operation, then DAG Rod Rosenstein -and Mueller- would have to hide that mandate from everyone and anyone.
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Last year, when CTH predicted the sequence of events Democrats would utilize for their impeachment strategy (full reference information below), we outlined the specific likelihood, as a telling tripwire, that HPSCI Chairman would target Donald Trump Jr. as the second person within their plan. [Michael Cohen would be first]
Affirming that prediction, today Adam Schiff has an interview with George Stephanopoulos and outlines EXACTLY that roadmap:
STEPHANOPOULOS – “Your colleague on the committee, Congresswoman Jackie Speier, told CNN that she believes that Donald Trump Jr. lied to your committee on at least two occasions. Do you agree?”
SCHIFF – “Well, I’d like the special counsel to have access to Don Jr.’s testimony and determine whether it is evidence of — of false statements,” Schiff replied, adding “I think — and I greatly appreciate the seriousness with which the special counsel takes lying to Congress — so I’ll let Bob Mueller be the judge of that. But one of the first acts, if not the first act, of our committee will be to send all of these transcripts of all the witnesses to Bob Mueller so that he can consider whether additional perjury charges are warranted.”