You can call it a soft-coup, or you can call it politicization of the DOJ and FBI, but the end result is the same – the intentional effort to manipulate, influence, and ultimately subvert an election for the presidency of the United States.  ~SD

Moments ago a righteously angered President Trump responded to the FBI raids on the office and home of his personal attorney Michael Cohen.  In addition to expressing outrage at Robert Mueller and his team of “small group” political allies, President Trump expressed his disappointment in Attorney General Jeff Sessions for authorizing the ongoing action.

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[Transcript] THE PRESIDENT: So I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys — a good man. And it’s a disgraceful situation. It’s a total witch hunt. I’ve been saying it for a long time. I’ve wanted to keep it down. We’ve given, I believe, over a million pages’ worth of documents to the Special Counsel.

They continue to just go forward. And here we are talking about Syria and we’re talking about a lot of serious things. We’re the greatest fighting force ever. And I have this witch hunt constantly going on for over 12 months now — and actually, much more than that. You could say it was right after I won the nomination, it started.

And it’s a disgrace. It’s, frankly, a real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country, in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for.

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You can call it a soft-coup, or you can call it politicization of the DOJ and FBI, but the end result is the same – the intentional effort to manipulate, influence, and ultimately subvert an election for the presidency of the United States.  ~SD

It is being reported today that Special Counsel Robert Mueller instructed the FBI field office from the Southern District of New York to raid the home and office of President Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen.

[Via New York Times] The F.B.I. on Monday raided the office of President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, seizing records related to several topics including payments to a pornographic-film actress.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan obtained the search warrant after receiving a referral from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, according to Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, who called the search “completely inappropriate and unnecessary.” The search does not appear to be directly related to Mr. Mueller’s investigation, but likely resulted from information he had uncovered and gave to prosecutors in New York.

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Tomorrow Attorney General Jeff Sessions will announce the assignment of U.S. Attorney John Lausch to facilitate the production of documents from the DOJ (Horowitz/Huber) to the House Judiciary Committee, and Chairman Bob Goodlatte.

Mr. Lausch is a Trump appointed U.S. Attorney from outside Washington DC.  John Lausch currently heads the Northern District of Illinois which includes Chicago, and this specific U.S. Attorney has extensive experience in complex cases of conspiracy and political corruption; a key skill-set given the issues within the Horowitz/Huber investigation of potential politicization of the FBI and DOJ offices.

Accepting the OIG report is almost certainly the most complex undertaking of IG Horowitz career; and accepting the multitude of possible angles within each section of the investigative inquiry are so consequential; there’s a strong likelihood the report could come out in stages.

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A very well informed Maria Bartiromo has an interesting interview with Trey Gowdy this morning.  In the first section of the interview Representative Gowdy reveals he has seen some of the originating “electronic communication” (EC) source material that initiated the 2016 counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign.

An interesting aspect to this interview is how much ‘deep-weed’ background information Mrs. Bartiromo is aware of. [Obviously Maria has a direct network to some very specific information.]  WATCH:

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Representative Gowdy seems to using the Mamet Princple in this interview. Gowdy is obviously aware the DOJ cannot, and should not, release all evidence in their custody if some of that evidence outlines the basis for criminal referrals and will be used later by Prosecutor John Huber. So why does he demand access to it, and public release of it?

Gowdy’s presentation is almost enough to make a person wonder if he’s not trying to protect entities that might be at risk from sunlight or prosecution. It couldn’t be that perhaps there were/are 2016 republican political campaigns (*cough* Rubio), and/or uniparty leadership, who were in common-cause alignment with an operation that might eliminate Trump? Wait… wha?

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A few hours ago President Trump tweeted a curiously specific pair of tweets targeting the FBI, DOJ and FISA investigations as it relates to the House Judiciary Committee and Chairman Bob Goodlatte.  Something’s up:

Against the backdrop of the DOJ notifying the House Intelligence and House Senate committees last night of their ability to review the DOJ/FBI submission of the FISA Court application used to target U.S. person Carter Page, the specificity of POTUS Trump’s direction is curious.

As we previously discussed the DOJ allowing expanded congressional oversight over the FISA application, against the backdrop of a previously announced IG review of this specific FISA application, would indicate Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Federal Prosecutor John Huber signed-off on, or perhaps directed, last night’s approval.

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Until today the only people allowed to review the full Title-1 FISA application were Trey Gowdy, Adam Schiff, Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Rep John Ratcliffe.

In an interesting development, the Department of Justice has responded to HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes notifying him the DOJ will allow all members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees full access to review the unredacted FBI/DOJ FISA application used to gain a Title-1 surveillance warrant against U.S. citizen Carter Page.

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According to CNN: ‘Separately, Justice Department spokesman Ian Prior said the department on Monday will supplement its document production to the House Judiciary Committee by producing another 1,000 pages of materials in response to a subpoena issued by committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte.’

This is an interesting development for several reasons:

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Fox News Catherine Herridge reports today, per her FBI investigative sources, it was an investigative interview with FBI Attorney Lisa Page, in July 2017, that contradicted FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and ultimately led to his firing.

That revelation is exactly what we anticipated was the origin to Inspector General Michael Horowitz gaining the text messages between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok.  The issue is actually more stunning than presented.  However, first here’s the report from Herridge (emphasis mine):

Fox News – Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was fired last month for committing three violations of the bureau’s ethics code, an investigative source told Fox News on Thursday.

The violations initially were uncovered by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General and confirmed by the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility. They included lack of candor under oath, lack of candor when not under oath, and the improper disclosure of non-public information to the media about the FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

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It was noted –and reported– yesterday that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes sent a letter (full pdf below) to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Asst. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.  Nunes is demanding un-redacted FBI documents surrounding the origination of the July 2016 counterintelligence operation against candidate Donald Trump, and the FISA application stemming from within the FBI investigation.

The issue(s) surrounding the declassification of the FISA application and subsequent FISA warrant against Carter Page are not new.  The new aspect within the Nunes demand relates to a request for the intelligence community “electronic communication” (EC) that kicked off the initial FBI counterintelligence op.  Within that new line of inquiry the subject of interest is ultimately former CIA Director John Brennan.

However, there are issues here; serious issues. There are VERY valid reasons why the FBI (Wray) and DOJ (Rosenstein) would push back against HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes.  It’s complicated, and we’ll try to unpack.

Begin by noting on page two of the Nunes request, Paragraph #3, something all media writing about the Nunes demand seem to overlook.  Screengrab below:

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Sara Carter has a new ‘exclusive’ report from congressional sources who are sharing new text messages with her surrounding the timeline of the Justice Department’s National Security Division compiling the FISA Title-1 application that was eventually authorized to conduct FBI surveillance on Carter Page and the Trump Campaign.

A note of caution within the story as outlined by Carter, there’s some granular details -subject to interpretation- that she appears to be misconstruing. Additionally, it is important for emphasis to remember the Main Justice side of the scandal stems from rogue officials within the DOJ national Security Division [DOJ-NSD].

According to Carter, Peter Strzok was expressing frustration about the FISA application being challenged. DOJ Attorney Lisa Page, assigned to Andrew McCabe by the DOJ ‘small group’ leadership, was explaining to Strzok who, how and where the slowdown was coming from.

Sara Carter – […] Text messages obtained by investigators reveal that FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and his colleague Lisa Page were discussing the FBI’s difficulty in obtaining the warrant to spy on Carter Page, who worked for a short stint with the Trump campaign. The FBI obtained its first warrant to spy on Page on Oct. 19, 2016, and there would be three subsequent renewals every 90 days for the warrant on Mr. Page.

[…] In one of the September 2016 text message chains, Strzok tells Lisa Page about an argument that occurred with former DOJ prosecutor David Laufman. Laufman, who was then chief of the DOJ’s National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, oversaw the probe into former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, as well as the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. Laufman left the DOJ earlier this year citing personal reasons for leaving his post, according to news reports.

Here’s where Sara Carter gets “BOMBSHELL” sideways:

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Victor Davis Hanson appears on Fox Business with Lou Dobbs for an excellent interview on the topic of DOJ and FBI political corruption.  In the first response from Mr. Hanson he instinctively and accurately outlines the scale of the challenge that was/is faced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Mr. Hanson frames the context of the myriad of issues very well, and as such represents himself as one of the few big-picture-brains who really gets it.  Hanson gets the totality of it… all of it.   Everyone should pay attention to how Hanson is able to look at the specific examples and details, and yet remain at the 30,000/ft level… Rare skill:

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Expanding below:

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