Attorney General William Barr quietly took the oath of office in the oval office today with Chief Justice John Roberts administering and officiating the swearing in. [link]

With the introduction of a fully empowered and confirmed U.S. Attorney General there is likely to be a great deal of speculation about how AG Barr will interact with the seditious conspiracy scandal known collectively as ‘spygate’.
No doubt the tick-tock-boom club will sell more books with declarations of soon to be announced indictments, grand juries, etc. However, as with all political horse trading in DC, the reality of accountability usually falls far away from headline predictions.
Attorney General Barr will be navigating a myriad of high-powered political interests through his office at the Justice Department.
If we presume William Barr is not intending to cover-up for the gross misconduct of the DOJ and FBI, which is a considerable presumption, it will be worth watching how the two camps, Team Obama and Team Clinton, react to the shifted DOJ landscape.
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In the second segment of the Jim Jordan interview with Maria Bartiromo the discussion turns to the issues surrounding the corrupt FBI/DOJ investigation; how DOJ deputy Bruce Ohr remained at the center of activity; and the ongoing purpose of the Mueller probe: to hide all the previous corrupt activity and continue investigating Trump.

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Within the discussion Jim Jordan talks about the importance of Bruce Ohr as a bridge between Fusion-GPS/Glenn Simpson/Nellie Ohr/Chris Steele to the corrupt elements within the FBI headed by Andrew McCabe.
Last year we noted a letter between Senator Chuck Grassley and DAG Rod Rosenstein (Page 5, footnote #5) that outlines the FBI interviews of twice demoted DOJ Deputy Bruce Ohr:
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The sound of sad trombones echos through the halls of media networks today as a year of speculation, surrounding contacts between Don Trump Jr. and ‘blocked phone records’ before and after the oft-emphasized Trump Tower meeting, ends with congress identifying two long-time Trump friends and a major nothing-burger.
Three phone calls by Donald Trump Jr. to blocked numbers in June 2016 fueled rampant media speculation that DJT-Jr. was coordinating with his father, Candidate Trump, over the substance of the Trump Tower meeting, before and after it took place.
SSCI Vice-Chairman Mark Warner and HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff both sold a suspicion narrative that candidate Donald Trump and Trump-Jr. were organizing, coordinating and colluding with “Russians”.   Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his primary investigative asset Andrew Weissmann fueled the Russian Conspiracy speculation with targeted leaks to allies in the media.  However, the truth comes out; and it is boring:

VIA ABC NEWS – Investigators on the Senate Intelligence Committee have learned the identities of three blocked phone calls with Donald Trump Jr just before and after the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016, three sources familiar with the calls told ABC News.
The calls to blocked numbers, which came on June 6, and after the meeting on June 9, were between Trump Jr.’s cell phone and two family friends — NASCAR CEO Brian France and real estate developer Howard Lorber, according to the sources.

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The widely held view of the process is/was that Rod Rosenstein selected Robert Mueller as special counsel, and following that selection Mueller created his team.  The perspective from CTH research is slightly different.
CTH believes that following the firing of FBI Director James Comey, the FBI Chief Legal Counsel, Jim Baker and FBI Deputy Director, Andrew McCabe; together with the corrupt small group that was involved in the prior year’s counterintelligence investigation; reacted to Comey’s firing by pressuring Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint their preferred person, Robert Mueller.
Within this internal debate (May 2017); at the time this construct was being argued; is when the famous comment from Rosenstein originates: “what do you want me to do, wear a wire?”  The corrupt FBI investigative crew; having initiated and continued “Crossfire Hurricane”; including people from the DOJ-NSD side (Ohr, Weissmann, etc) were pressuring Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel….. but not just any special counsel.. Baker and McCabe had the person pre-selected.  That person was Robert Mueller.
Obviously we can see the reason for this FBI/DOJ crew to need a special counsel. As career corruptocrats they were operating from a mindset of mitigating risk to themselves and continuing to advance on the objective to attack the executive office through their investigative schemes. The key point here is subtle but very significant. Robert Mueller didn’t select his team, the corrupt team selected him.

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While reading a great article by Mollie Hemmingway at The Federalist, something stands out that might lend a cautious amount of optimism toward ongoing ‘spygate’ investigative inquiries and accountability.  There are two distinct differences in the Bruce Ohr testimony as compared to all others released or revealed so far.
The known list of witnesses questioned by the joint House Judiciary and Oversight committees includes: James Comey, Andrew McCabe, James Baker, Lisa Page, Bill Priestap, Peter Strzok, and Bruce Ohr.

Until the release of the Ohr transcript all prior reports and leaks of witness testimony have been from the FBI side of ‘spygate’. Bruce Ohr is the first witness from the Main Justice (DOJ) side of the issue.
Within the released witness transcripts, lawyers from the FBI were interceding in the testimony and instructing witness not to answer questions; and/or blocking statements from the witness to the questioners.  This pattern exists in Comey, McCabe, Baker, Page, Priestap and Strzok statements.  However, there is a stark difference, a much more fulsome set of answers, obvious in the testimony from Bruce Ohr.  Example:
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Anastasia Vashukevich (27) is the Belarusian woman connected to Oleg Deripaska who was being held in a prison in Thailand under charges of recruiting women to act as prostitutes and escorts.  [Backstory]  Her name surfaced early in 2018 when CNN claimed she had dirt on Trump and “tapes” of some sort relating to Deripaska and his activities with contacts around the 2016 election.  [More Backstory]
While the outlandish aspects to the storyline pushed by initial media appeared ridiculous; there was something about Ms. Vashukevich’s connections to the larger Deripaska story that also appeared valid.  Ms. Vashukevich has been held in Thailand for almost a year.
Last week the Thai government agreed to release Ms. Vashukevich.  Today she was en route to Belarus when she was intercepted in Moscow:

MOSCOW — A model from Belarus who claimed to have recordings shedding light on the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia was detained at a Moscow airport Thursday on prostitution allegations, the police said.

The model, Anastasia Vashukevich, had been deported from Thailand earlier in the day after spending nine months in prison on charges of conspiracy and soliciting prostitution.

She was booked to fly to Minsk, Belarus, but was detained along with three others traveling with her as she changed planes at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, according to her husband and another person traveling with her.

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John Solomon has a well-written article at The Hill outlining the leaked transcript from Bruce Ohr together with his own sources.  The key point Solomon focuses upon is how Bruce Ohr warned DOJ and FBI officials about the political intents and specifics behind the inbound information from Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS.  [Read Here]

(L-R) Christopher Steele – Bruce Ohr – Glenn Simpson

The primary aspect to Ohr’s testimony is how strongly he warned officials at the FBI (Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, James Baker, Peter Strzok, Joe Pientka), and officials in DOJ Main Justice (Andrew Weissmann, Bruce Swartz, Zainab Ahmad), about the political intents and purposes behind the information that eventually became “The Steele Dossier”.
In essence Bruce Ohr told the FBI and Main Justice, right at the outset of their Crossfire Hurricane operation, that Chris Steele’s work product was an assembly of political opposition research specifically paid for by the Hillary Clinton Campaign.
Under all ordinary circumstances this under oath revelation would be a game changer; particularly because two of those in Main Justice who knew about the political construct, Zainab Ahmad and Andrew Weissmann, are currently officials directly on the Robert Mueller probe.  However, in the highly partisan era of Trump-hate, the media will completely ignore the scale of this admission by Bruce Ohr.
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Well, here we are again; another leaked transcript, this time from DOJ Official Bruce Ohr. And as with the prior two transcript leaks, we don’t get the raw information.  So let me first, necessarily, reassert our CTH position on these “leaks”.
Leaking is bad, period; in all directions. Because *leaking* is simply a method, a mechanism, to direct and control the focus of sunlight upon illicit action. Regardless of whether you support or oppose the message within any individual leak; the leak itself does not expose corruption…. only full and unfiltered information can expose corruption.  That means we need the actual raw transcripts to make determinations for ourselves.
As a factual standard for honesty and sunlight, CTH would never describe a transcript where we could not provide the reader with the raw and underlying material.  We have held this standard for many years; most of you know that. The truth has no agenda.

That said, someone is leaking congressional transcripts and a current tug-of-war exists between two opposing narrative engineers.  The heavily promoted New York Times article last Friday, was based on leaks of James Baker Transcripts, from sources who were responding to the leaks from other sources that were given to the Epoch Times.   Each side in the DOJ/FBI corruption story is currently leaking to advance their interests.
Three congressional committees have requested the release of witness transcripts.  HPSCI via Devin Nunes (September 2018); and the joint House Judiciary/Oversight committee (December 2018).  Congressional allies of President Trump (Nunes, Jordan, Meadows and Collins) are being blocked by corrupt cabinet members within the current administration.
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The leak wars have officially begun.  “Caveat emptor” (buyer beware) is the general warning to all interested followers of the story-lines.

In response to leaks of congressional testimony to The Epoch Times (Lisa Page and Andrew McCabe) damaging to the prior narratives of the DOJ and FBI; the opposing side of the political continuum begins leaking transcripts to the New York Times (James Baker) favorable to the DOJ and specifically FBI.  Damn these insufferable leakers, their agendas, and their weaponized political motives; all of them.
CTH suspected this bull sh*t was going to start as soon as we saw the first Lisa Page transcript leak.
As a result we are now reduced to reviewing information through the pre-filter of the media outlet delivering the analysis of the transcript; a process CTH hates with the passion of a thousand supernovas.
The New York Times leak-angle is to justify *why* the FBI contemplated opening an investigation on candidate, president-elect and president Trump . – SEE HERE –  That said, sticking with the Epoch Times leak-angle on Lisa Page testimony for a moment, there is an aspect to the CIA activity of John Brennan which confirms prior suspicions.
Here’s the part that pertains to earlier CTH research on the issue of Brennan, the CIA, and more importantly Fusion-GPS contract employee Nellie Ohr who we confirmed also worked for the CIA:
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In the last 24 hours The Epoch Times has become a conduit for leaked information from inside the joint House congressional committee (Oversight/Judiciary) that was investigating DOJ and FBI corruption. [Two Stories: See Here and See Here]
The joint House committee previously requested approval from the DOJ and FBI for transcripts of all witness testimony to be released.  In response, Deputy FBI Director David Bowditch, citing possible interference with the Mueller investigation, refused to release the transcripts.  However, it appears someone from within the committee, likely Mark Meadows, following a pattern previously exclusive to John Solomon (The Hill), is now leaking those witness transcripts to The Epoch Times.
The leaked transcripts are not being made available; however, articles are being written from those who are reviewing them.  The first is an article by Jeff Carlson about the testimony by former FBI lawyer Lisa Page.  It is a lengthy article and I would urge all who are interested in her testimony to read it: SEE HERE.  There is a wealth of new information that fills in many of the gaps from prior research.

One of the immediately interesting aspects of the Page testimony goes directly to the issue of why the witness transcripts are not being released, and the inherent risk to the small group inside the DOJ and FBI who were coordinating the Clinton and Trump probes.
Lisa Page outlines the people who were at the center of the “small group team” within the FBI (emphasis mine):
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