Bob Goodlatte is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee; and also the lead chairman (w/ Gowdy) of the joint House Oversight and Judiciary Committee that is conducting the interviews of witnesses for the investigation into corruption by the FBI and DOJ.   The joint committee has interviewed: Bill Priestap, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Bruce Ohr; no transcripts released (likely to avoid coordinated testimony).
In this morning’s interview with Maria Bartiromo Chairman Goodlatte discusses the need to interview Nellie Ohr and Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson voluntarily or by subpoena.  Again, note the oft-repeated “sources and methods” declassification issue.

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Think about it.  What were the sources/methods for the Steele Dossier?  What were the sources/methods for the FISA application?  It’s the sources and methods that were/are corrupt. Declassification is futile without un-redacting the sources and methods.
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The 2018 Mid-Term elections are sixty days away. Today, September 7th, if traditional institutional protocols are followed, is the technical end of any opportunity for FBI and DOJ to publicly release any investigative material that would influence the political landscape.

While it is unknown if Special Counsel Robert Mueller will follow the customary tradition within the 60 day window, it is virtually guaranteed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions will.   This means that any (presumed to exist) investigations that can collaterally damage the 2018 election -for either party- will be put on hold until after November 6th.  The investigation activity may be running in the background, but there will be no public action.
Any ongoing investigations -if any- will likely continue; however, the public release of any information from within the institutions of the DOJ and/or FBI will not happen.  There’s no written rule about this, just a general custom and protocol.  If this custom is followed we should not anticipate any public releases that would support indictments or accountability toward former political officials and/or politicians participating therein.
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Today is likely to be a very busy news day.  President Trump will appear on Fox and Friends at the same time the Bureau of Labor and Statistics releases the August jobs report. RESULTS: Total employment increased by 201,000 in August, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.9 percent (data here)
Additionally, there’s the congressional requests (legislative branch) for President Trump (executive branch) to declassify redacted portions of the DOJ/FBI FISA application.  So it is worthwhile discussing the “declassification conundrum” beginning with this interview:

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The congressional request is for President Trump to declassify and release the Carter Page FISA applications (including specifically pages 10-12 and 17-34 and relevant footnotes), all of the Bruce Ohr 302s and other relevant documents, including exculpatory evidence regarding Carter Page and others, that were presented to the Gang of Eight, but not presented to the FISA Court.
At first glance it appears to be a simple request right? However, it is anything but simple for a lot of reasons.
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Whoa Nellie… Ding, Ding, Ding…

Within the massive assembly of documents, emails, text messages, congressional testimony and portions of media reports a clear timeline emerged.  Part of that timeline was based on the fact that certain events had to have taken place -at specific times- in order to reconcile the downstream activity.
From that circumstantial timeline CTH was able to assemble a graphic to help understand how corrupt DOJ and FBI officials had to have used information from Fusion-GPS, Nellie Ohr and Christopher Steele; passed on to Bruce Ohr in the DOJ; then delivered to Peter Strzok (FBI) for exploitation eventually culminating in the October 21st, 2016, Title-1 FISA warrant against U.S. Person Carter Page.
The key point of the graphic, which ran counter to all MSM reporting, was a trail of circumstantial evidence showing Bruce Ohr had to have been in contact with Christopher Steele much earlier than anyone realized.  SEE BELOW:

Thankfully, and finally, a new report today from John Solomon backs up this timeline with the first-hand testimony of DOJ Official Bruce Ohr.

Solomon – […] For much of the past year, many in Congress have labored under the notion that Ohr, then the No. 4 Department of Justice (DOJ) official, began assisting the FBI’s probe into Russia election collusion only after Trump won the 2016 election.

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The sketchy story of the jihadist training compound in New Mexico takes yet another weird turn today.  A New Mexico judge dismissed all charges against three suspects tied to a compound where alleged Muslim extremists reportedly trained children to be school shooters.

New Mexico – District Judge Emilio Chavez on Wednesday dismissed charges against three of the five defendants, ruling that authorities violated the state’s “10-day rule.”
Child abuse charges against Lucas Morton, Subhannah Wahhaj and Hujrah Wahhaj were dropped because prosecutors missed the 10-day limit for an evidentiary hearing to establish probable cause.

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After the Michael Cohen guilty plea. his attorney Lanny Davis began pitching a claim that the longtime Trump loyalist/lawyer had information Trump knew of the Russian hacking of Democratic emails ahead of time.
Davis said: “I believe that Mr. Cohen has direct knowledge that would be of interest to Mr. Mueller that suggests -I’m not sure it proves- that Mr. Trump was aware of Russian government agents hacking illegally, committing computer crimes, to the detriment of the candidate who he was running against, Hillary Clinton.”  And the media ate it up, and put Davis on just about every possible TV show imaginable.
However, in an interview with the Washington Post this weekend, Mr Davis not only walked back that claim, he entirely retreated from it:

(Via Washington Post) An attorney for Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, is backing away from confident assertions he made that Cohen has information to share with investigators that shows Trump knew in 2016 of Russian efforts to undermine Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

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It is an inarguable fact that ideologues within the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation used their official positions to conduct a political operation against the candidacy of President Trump. It is also an inarguable fact that DOJ/FBI contractors were exploiting the NSA/FBI database for opposition research as evidenced in the FISA 702(16)(17) abuses admitted by the DOJ and outlined in a FISA ruling by presiding FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer.  There is currently an Office of Inspector General investigation by Michael Horowitz into FISA abuse to discover the scale of the corrupt use.

Major HatTip @JohnWHuber – Today in the Spectator U.K. another sketchy journalist with deep ties to the intelligence apparatus, and specific ties to leaks from former CIA Director John Brennan, outlines that Robert Mueller has “electronic records” showing Michael Cohen travel to Prague:

[…]  The more important question is whether Cohen has even been to Prague. Steele’s dossier claims he did go, in 2016, to meet Russian hackers and Russian intelligence officers. Cohen was asked by The Atlantic magazine about this claim, and about Russia. He responded: ‘I’m telling you emphatically that I’ve not been to Prague, I’ve never been to [the] Czech [Republic], I’ve not been to Russia.’ If my ‘eyewitness’ to the Moscow meeting is telling the truth, then perhaps Cohen was, in the same breath, being misleading about Prague, too — and the whole Russia ‘conspiracy’ starts to unravel. I have spoken to one intelligence source who says Mueller is examining ‘electronic records’ that would place Cohen in Prague. (link)

Michael Cohen has never been to Prague; even Cohen’s anti-Trump lawyer Lanny Davis admits the Cohen claims inside the Steele dossier are nonsense.  CNN, again another anti-Trump voice, confirmed in January Cohen was never in Prague as the dossier claimed.  Quite simply, Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen has never been to Prague.
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Earlier today President Trump tweeted a message to the invisible U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions: “C’mon Jeff, you can do it.”

The evidence of severe DOJ/FBI corruption is visible everywhere. Congress has unearthed it (FISA abuse); the DOJ Inspector General has outlined it (McCabe, Strzok); current FBI investigators have showcased it (SSCI James Wolfe); and yet, Jeff Sessions is entirely absent from doing anything about it….

…”Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting!”…

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The pesky thing about the truth is its figurative ambivalence to any feelings or emotions that surrounds it.  A few counter-intuitive media appearances by Michael Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, highlights this point succinctly.
Chuck Ross at the Daily Caller has been brilliantly monitoring the statements by far-left Clinton sycophant/convenient Cohen lawyer, Lanny Davis. Two big admissions today are toxic to the previously preferred media narrative.
In one interview Lanny Davis tells CNN, per his client, candidate Donald Trump had no knowledge of the Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya.

(Via Daily Caller) […] “So Michael Cohen does not have information that President Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians beforehand or even after?” CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Davis.
“No, he does not,” replied Davis, a longtime Clinton insider who started representing Cohen earlier this summer.

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Released documents show dossier author Christopher Steele and Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr discussing the need to protect “our guy”, January through March 2017.

Who is “Our Guy”?  That would be Oleg Deripaska, the Russian dossier source, and likely employer of Christopher Steele.   The same Oleg Deripaska the FBI went to for help in framing Donald Trump through Paul Manafort in September 2016.

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