Following a visit to Mexico by U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, earlier today President Trump announced he was putting a “temporary hold” on the designation of Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations.

It looks like President Donald Trump has once again created a significant amount of leverage for Mexican President Lopez-Obrador to continue working with the Trump administration on a variety of security (border and immigration) and economic (USMCA) aspects.
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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?
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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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House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler has announced the date for the next impeachment hearing.   The date is Monday, December 9th – 2019 It appears from the announcement the HJC hearing will be set up to receive the impeachment recommendation(s) from Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee:

(HJC) The Impeachment Inquiry into President Donald J. Trump: Presentations from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and House Judiciary Committee  (link)

Monday December 9th, is also the same date that IG Horowitz is expected to release the results of the 21-month-long FISA investigation.
Two days later on Wednesday December 11th, Michael Horowitz will be testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee about his investigation…. Therefore we can expect Nadler, Pelosi and Lawfare to schedule another House event for Wednesday Dec. 11th.

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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AT&T provided the call records, likely under subpoena. (link)

Let’s hope Schiff received them under subpoena, because the alternative is much worse. The alternative is a criminal leak from an outside interest.
There’s a particular type of anger that surfaces when you realize the Schiff team who coordinated the origination effort with the CIA whistleblower; and then vehemently hide their coordination; are the same crew simultaneously using the power of their position to subpoena private phone call records from President Trump’s lawyers, members of congress, and journalists.  [See Schiff Report pages 157, 158, 159 – pdf]

Yes, in essence Adam Schiff weaponized his committee authority toward the goal of removing President Trump in an identical way the prior administration intelligence officials, DOJ and FBI weaponized their authority toward removing candidate Trump, president-elect Trump and President Trump.
It is one long continuum of political corruption, weaponization, and fabrication of evidence to achieve a political objective.  It is also disgusting in construct.
This crew doesn’t care one bit how much they have to destroy this country, so long as they can advance a left-wing political agenda based on an unquenchable thirst for power.  I never thought we would see the possibility of a hot civil war in my lifetime.  I was wrong.
The cattle cars are on the horizon, and the full Schiff report pdf is below.
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A Washington Post spin article attempts to defend the DOJ/FBI “small group” 2016 campaign effort by claiming vindication from IG Horowitz and U.S. AG Barr not accepting the finding.   But not so fast…
Before getting to the WaPo narrative construction a little background review is worthwhile; starting with the original investigative purpose of the IG review.  The Horowitz review was initiated to look into how the DOJ and FBI secured a Title-1 FISA surveillance warrant against U.S. person Carter Page:
IG Horowitz was never investigating the predicate claims that initiated the CIA/FBI operation known as “Crossfire Hurricane”.  So how exactly would AG Barr and IG Horowitz be diverging on an aspect to a predicate that Horowitz was never reviewing?
Additionally, IG Horowitz was never tasked or empowered to interview CIA officers who are known to have been at the heart of the pre-July 2016 operation.  Horowitz was/is focused on the DOJ and FBI compliance with legal requirements for the FISA application that was assembled for use in October 2016, and renewed throughout 2017.
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On November 8th of this year Lawfare founder Benjamin Wittes sent a rather curious tweet proclaiming his undying devotion to former FBI lawyer Lisa Page.  At the time it seemed rather odd and out of no-where; but today it makes sense.
At the time of Witte’s tweet Lisa Page would have been scheduling her coming out narrative, and consulting with the DOJ/FBI “beach friend” community for PR advice.  After several weeks of planning and careful roll-out organization, noted by several weeks of contact with mutually aligned journalists, today Ms. Page steps into the spotlight with her introductory article in the Daily Beast, aptly titled: “Lisa Page Speaks“.
Yes, yes, of course Lisa Page says she’s a victim to the horrible President Trump and the exposure of “private affair”, and the exposure of her “political texts and biases” etc. etc.  However, that’s not what is really interesting….
Within the article there’s a very specific and very familiar type of victim narrative construct.
When you read the article it jumps out at you. The victim narrative is from the exact same acting coaches hired by the FBI and used by Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford; it’s a little spooky how both Ms. Ford and Ms. Page could sound so identical, until you realize the same FBI and media people have constructed both victim storyboards.
Ms. Page decries what she has seen happen to her beloved FBI, that as she said “she grew up in“.  Now, if that institutional attachment sounds a little over-the-top considering a grown woman started at the FBI in 2013 and resigned in 2018, well, it helps to remember this is the Public Relations advice from the DC-based FBI committee.
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The White House was given an arbitrary deadline of 5pm tonight (without any background information) for a participation response to a House Judiciary Committee December 4th hearing; at a time when President Trump is attending a NATO summit; for a hearing with unspecified witnesses; and for a hearing with unspecified purposes; and for a hearing with unspecified rules.
The White House responds accordingly (pdf here):

The full five-page letter is below:
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