U.S. District in Texas, Judge Reed O’Connor (Fort Worth) has agreed with a coalition of 19 states that Obamacare is structurally unconstitutional without an enforced federal mandate that requires individual participation. (full ruling pdf below)

Absent the enforcement of the individual mandate, Judge O’Conner ruled it was impossible for the Obamacare law to remain.  Texas and the 19 state coalition successfully argued they’ve been harmed by an increase in the number of people on state-funded insurance rolls.
The plaintiffs argued: when Congress repealed the tax penalty last year for the individual mandate; they eliminated the U.S. Supreme Court’s prior rationale for finding the ACA constitutional in 2012. The Texas judge agreed.
Judge O’Conner found it is clear the individual mandate is the linchpin of the law “without marching through every nook and cranny of the ACA’s 900-plus pages. The court must find the individual mandate inseverable from the ACA,” he said. “To find otherwise would be to introduce an entirely new regulatory scheme never intended by Congress or signed by the president.”
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Joe diGenova appears on Fox News with Tucker Carlson to discuss the case against Michael Flynn and calls out the specifics behind the fraud.

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Byron York and Jonathan Turley also have a reaction to today’s Mueller filings below.
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Forget the unmentioned brutally obvious political motives and intents behind the operation against Donald Trump for a moment; and focus on the collective Obama activity as if they actually believed the claims they have since presented…
The counterintelligence investigation into candidate, president-elect, and president Donald Trump was predicated on the Obama’s intelligence community believing that campaign officials were colluding, conspiring and otherwise coordinating to take over the office of the presidency, with help from a foreign government.  So why wouldn’t the intelligence services of the United States government conduct wiretaps and full blown surveillance upon that incoming administration?

The John Brennan CIA presented a classified electronic communication, “ec”, origination memo (we are not allowed to see) to ODNI (Clapper) and FBI (Comey); who then opened a full-blown counterintelligence operation against officials within the Trump campaign.
We know this operation was political, but again, ignore that aspect and just look at the issues, details and activity while accepting -at face value- their demonstrably dubious claims.
Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn provided the opening for operational surveillance of the Trump team. We can argue about how they were framed in that regard; however, it is factual that FISA-Title-One surveillance is all encompassing.
The target is validated and defined by the FBI as “an agent of a foreign government”. This legal distinction permits full surveillance: electronic, physical, the works.  Everything is on the table, no limits or boundaries.
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The curious case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn gets even more curious as Robert Mueller doesn’t deliver the FBI notes (FD-302) from the January 2017 interview of Flynn, as requested by Judge Emmet Sullivan, and instead submits notes from an internal July 19th, 2017, interview with FBI agent Peter Strzok.
The filing by the special counsel team (full pdf below) is a must read.
The special counsel begins their filing by criticizing the approach taken by the Flynn defense in the defense sentencing memo; and attempts to validate/justify their charges against the accused.   The details in their response to the judge’s request tell quite a story.

The attachments are very interesting.  They begin with notes by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe outlining the contacts with Michael Flynn prior to the FBI interview on January 24, 2017.  McCabe did not inform main justice, Sally Yates, until after FBI agents were dispatched.  The documents reveal Yates was not happy with McCabe’s decision.
FBI agent Peter Strzok and agent Joe Pientka were sent to the White House to interview Flynn only a few minutes after McCabe called Flynn. There was obviously a plan in place.
From the second attachment we discover that agent Strzok did all the questioning and agent Pientka took all the notes (screen-grab below).  Those FD-302 interview notes, written by Pientka on January 24th, 2017, are part of the what Judge Sullivan ordered to be submitted.  However, those notes are not included in the responsive Mueller filing.
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Tick-tock-bombshell club member John Solomon drops an explosive statement on Sean Hannity.  Oddly, there’s a factual part of his statement CTH agrees with; and a structural part of the background that is almost certain never to reach sunlight.  First, the substance:

(Transcript) […] “In May of 2017 there was a document identified to a small number of people in the United States government. It’s in the possession of the Defense Intelligence Agency.  For eighteen months there’s been an effort to resist declassifying that document; I know that that document contains extraordinary exculpatory information about General Flynn. I don’t believe the president has ever been told about the existence of this document.  One lawmaker discovered it, but was thwarted by the Defense Intelligence Agency in his efforts to disclose it. I think we should all ask for that declassification; get that out; it may enlighten the judge; it will certainly enlighten the American public.”

From the time-frame disclosed we can reasonably infer what this document is; at least what background surrounds it.
♦“In May of 2017”… The document is likely part of an intelligence product that was produced for President Obama’s Daily Briefing (PDB), and contains unmasking information (likely done by Susan Rice) on Michael Flynn as a surveillance target.
♦“One Lawmaker discovered it”… You might remember way back in March 2017 when HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes was taken to the White House SCIF by then white house official Ezra Cohen-Watnick; and that began a series of cascading events.
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Today there was a much hyped congressional hearing, spearheaded by sub-committee chairman Mark Meadows, into issues surrounding the Clinton Foundation and the possibility of IRS tax avoidance schemes. The backstory is of particular importance because the hearing is being framed by the ‘tick-tock-boom club‘ as something it was not.

There is a policy within the IRS that any person can report fraudulent tax filings, or the lack thereof, by any American taxpayer – toward any individual or group that is avoiding the payment of taxes. The IRS has a process to receive “tips” and claims from anyone to their investigative unit.  If the tip ends up in the IRS being able to secure missing tax payments, the tipster can get a percentage reward based on the amount of the taxes the IRS can recover.  The reward percentage is from 10% to 30% of the recovered amount.
Mr. Lawrence W. Doyle and Mr. John Moynihan, are the proprietors of a firm called MDA Analytics.  They are two ‘tipsters’, financial bounty hunters, calling themselves ‘whistle-blowers’, who have researched the Clinton Foundation and informed the IRS that based on their research the foundation owes back taxes.  They duo are hopeful to receive an IRS award based on their estimation of missing tax payments of between $400 million and $2.5 billion. In addition to their patriotic duty, this is the financial motivation behind Mr. Doyle and Mr. Moynihan.
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Another Inspector General Michael Horowitz report; ..another exercise in futility.

The DOJ Office of Inspector General has filed a 35-page report (full pdf below) outlining the issues with recovery of text messages from devices belonging to FBI attorney Lisa Page and FBI agent Peter Strzok.
Page and Strzok transferred to the special counsel team when Robert Mueller took over the counterintelligence investigation, ie. “muh Russia”.  Within the report the IG notes that after the special counsels office was notified of the biased text messaging identified by Strzok and Page; and after Mueller removed them from the investigative team; the phones issued to Ms. Page and Mr. Strzok were reset removing any communication during their time on the special counsel team from discovery.  Here’s the pertinent part:
The full IG report is below.
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According to DOJ filings: “Tallahassee, Florida City Commissioner Scott Charles Maddox, 50, and Tallahassee political consultant Janice Paige Carter-Smith, 53, both of Tallahassee, have been indicted in a 44-count indictment for conspiring to operate a racketeering enterprise that engaged in acts of bank fraud, extortion, honest services fraud and bribery.”  Both were arrested yesterday.

The issues around the three-year investigation surfaced in the Florida Governors race when Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum was running for governor.  Part of the sting operation discovered Mayor Gillum taking trips with lobbyists and accepting perks from undercover FBI agents.  Outgoing governor Rick Scott has suspended Maddox.

Scott Maddox and Paige Carter-Smith, once power players in Tallahassee’s political scene, shuffled into a federal courtroom on Wednesday, their legs in shackles, to answer charges they shook down city vendors for bribes and pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars.  – Read More

[DOJ Press Announcement Here] – [Story Via Orlando Sentinel Here]

Interesting, very interesting.  As noted in the Flynn sentencing memo last night there were some curiously framed explanations of events surrounding his FBI inquisition.
Now Judge Emmet Sullivan wants expanded information, and wishes to see the actual notes (FD-302) that were mentioned by Flynn; and Judge Sullivan is directing the special counsel to provide all documents created by the FBI surrounding the Flynn interview:

(Source Link)

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Did you get your yellow vest yet?  The recently elected New York Attorney General, Letitia James, makes a public declaration that she intends to fully weaponize her office to target the Trump family.
On the bright side, democrats can no longer claim their preferred approach of weaponizing their offices for direct targeting of their political opposition as a “right-wing conspiracy theory”; they are specifically outlining their intent to do exactly that.

New York – New York Attorney Gen.-elect Letitia James says she plans to launch sweeping investigations into President Donald Trump, his family and “anyone” in his circle who may have violated the law once she settles into her new job next month.

“We will use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well,” James, a Democrat, told NBC News in her first extensive interview since she was elected last month.

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