During an interview on Sunday conducted by Maria Bartiromo with Senator Ron Johnson, ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Senator Johnson revealed that Republicans on his own committee refused to investigate the issues that surfaced from the Hunter Biden laptop, because they were worried about the appearance of politics during a 2020 election year.  Note, that’s an outcome of a Mitch McConnell decision.

Additionally, following revelations from the laptop of Hunter Biden, Senator Johnson outlines that current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken lied to congress when he said he never had any email contact with Hunter Biden.  Emails from Secretary Blinken are on the Biden laptop. WATCH:

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Everything about the process of cutting down energy exploitation, then driving supply side inflation, then raising interest rates to shrink demand (stem inflation) created by a desire to lower economic activity to the scale of diminished energy production, is a game of pretending.

The collateral damage from the rate hikes has been the banking destabilization, which shows the priority of the government officials and central banks to support the climate change agenda.  Into the game of pretending comes the second unavoidable consequence with inflation continuing as a result of the energy policy.

They simply cannot cut energy demand enough to meet the diminished scale of production.  There is no alternative ‘green’ energy system in place to make up the difference. That is the reality.  Now, the fed is scheduled to raise rates again, then begin to debate the collateral damage as they continue the pretending game.

(Via Wall Street Journal) – […] Another quarter-percentage point increase would lift the benchmark federal-funds rate to a 16-year high. The Fed began raising rates from near zero in March 2022.

Fed officials increased rates by a quarter point on March 22 to a range between 4.75% and 5%. That increase occurred with officials just beginning to grapple with the potential fallout of two midsize bank failures in March.

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The topline story from the announcement by JPMorgan Chase [SEE HERE] there are no banking rules/laws in the Biden Fed/Treasury system.

The Dodd-Frank laws are still on the books, but the FDIC decision to insure all deposits, regardless of size, now means those laws, rules and regulations are not required to be followed.  Additionally, as a result of JPMorgan gaining another $100+/- billion in deposit assets, the law(s) surrounding the 10% U.S. deposit maximum, within too big to fail banks, no longer exists. Noted in the announcement, “JPMorgan Chase is assuming all deposits – insured and uninsured.”

JPMorgan is also assuming assets consisting of $173 billion in loans and approximately $30 billion in securities.  The FDIC is going to assume risk (with a risk sharing agreement) for current First Republic Bank mortgage and commercial loans acquired by JPMorgan, guaranteeing JPMorgan a 5-year fed fixed rate on $50 billion in mortgage bonds.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) rule requiring the holding of 1.5% of deposits for all depositors up to $250k in all institutions is now essentially moot.  If the FDIC is guaranteeing all deposits, there’s no way for the insurance corporation to capture or hold $1.5% of all banking deposits.  The law is in conflict with the outcome action of the Fed/Treasury and ultimately the FDIC, ergo the law is nulled by the ignoring of it.

Mohamed El-Erian gives his take below, but seemingly missed the part of the announcement where JPMorgan states, “no systemic risk exception was required” in the deal.  This means the FDIC is completely free-range with the agreement, they are not even trying to justify why they would make a too big to fail bank even bigger. WATCH:

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CTH has been warning about how the multinationals use the false construct of the DC Potemkin Village to keep people distracted from the true power center that is in control of the system of our national government.  Just as Washington DC and the Legislative branch do not write legislation, the DC system does not control the regulations that flow as an outcome of the Executive branch policy.

Behind the Potemkin Village we discover the mechanisms and people who write the laws, construct the rules, and pay for control over the priority and execution of policy.  Corporations are in control of government; the politicians are the faces that keep everyone distracted.  This dynamic was recently highlighted when Senator Lindsey Graham discovered during a television broadcast that he was a sponsor of a bill he didn’t even understand.

The RNC and DNC are two private corporations within this dynamic.  The same funding mechanisms and corporations behind the Potemkin Village are the same funding mechanisms and corporations who fund the RNC and DNC.  This is one big political apparatus that gives the illusion of government, while the corporations exfiltrate the wealth using laws they construct and policies they create.

Earlier this year we warned these same multinational entities would use the “culture war” to enhance the distraction.  This is ‘The Big Trap.’  Earlier today NBC’s Chuck Todd ran the promotional preview for the 2024 deployment.  WATCH (2 minutes):

Prior to the 2012 election and the rise of the Sandra Fluke free birth control narrative, we used to call them social issues; however, the usefulness of cultural wars has morphed into the larger war of wokeism.

In the big picture, keeping the voting base distracted from the economic expansion of multinational globalism, the corporate ‘masters of the universe’ (ie. the Big Club within both parties), need to keep pushing wokeism and anti-wokeism as a political strategy.  The cultural issues are useful tools to keep control of an alignment of voters.  It has always been thus, and even more important now that people are starting to realize the expansion of the rust belt.

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Gary Cohn is connected to the banking and finance industry, well connected.  In this interview with Face The Nation earlier today, Cohn is discussing the current status of First Republic Bank, another big player in the California banking system that is about to collapse.  Cohn notes something at the 1:15 mark that just seems obvious yet is undiscussed in most outlines of the FRB discussion.

Six weeks ago, in an effort organized by the FDIC, $30 billion was pushed into FRB by eleven larger banks to stabilize it.  However, the only thing that infusion of capital did was allow institutional depositors time and ability to withdraw their funds. A complete racket.  Once the at-risk group exits, suddenly the collapse is back on the tee.  WATCH:

[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: We want to turn now to Gary Cohn, who is the vice chairman of IBM, former Goldman Sachs president and a former Trump administration top economic adviser. Good morning to you. Lots of titles, Gary, Lots of experience. That’s why we like having you here. I want to ask you about what’s happening with First Republic. It’s been under pressure. We know they’ve been looking for a buyer, the FDIC, the government is looking to arrange, moving it into government control and then maybe selling it. What are you hearing about how this would roll out?

GARY COHN: Margaret, thanks for having me. I think you’re portraying the situation as we find ourselves again on a weekend. As we closed business of Friday, the FDIC was in a process of looking for acquirers or bidders for the assets over the course of the weekend. I think the FDIC has asked potentially three banks for their final bids for the entire bank. The FDIC would prefer to sell the bank in its entirety than the pieces. What will most likely happen is the FDIC will seize control and then simultaneously resell the asset to the successful bidder. I think that will happen sometime later this afternoon before the markets open in Asia this evening.

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Despite no one knowing ‘how’ Jeffrey Epstein actually made his money, one of the great mysteries amid a labyrinth of rabbit hole mysteries, the network of government officials and high-profile names who associated with and met Epstein has never been fully outlined or absorbed.

Other than a few random and specific names that surface from time-to-time, the lack of media curiosity into the bigger context of the Epstein story has always been somewhat perplexing.  One would ordinarily think the opportunity for a Pulitzer might entice an intrepid media outlet to do a lengthy dive into the matrix of Epstein; alas, no effort toward that objective ever surfaced.

Today, another fragment in the story seemingly finds its way to the surface as the Wall Street Journal outlines a list of names that were not included in the “black book” story, but nonetheless were intertwined with Epstein *after* his first conviction as a sex offender [STORY HERE].

Two of the names within documents, schedules and calendars attributed to the Epstein life include current CIA Director Bill Burns and former White House lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler.  In addition to being the White House legal counsel, Ms. Ruemmer was also the foundation lawyer for Bill and Hillary Clinton as well as the personal lawyer for Susan Rice.

(Wall St Journal) – The nation’s spy chief, a longtime college president and top women in finance. The circle of people who associated with Jeffrey Epstein years after he was a convicted sex offender is wider than previously reported, according to a trove of documents that include his schedules.

William Burns, director of the Central Intelligence Agency since 2021, had three meetings scheduled with Epstein in 2014, when he was deputy secretary of state, the documents show. They first met in Washington and then Mr. Burns visited Epstein’s townhouse in Manhattan.

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As Florida Governor Ron DeSantis finishes up his long-scheduled foreign policy tour, he finishes the trip on a down note in London, England.  Apparently, the political and business leaders were unimpressed by the diminutive stature of the Top-Gov and had lots of uncomplimentary things to say about him.

Meanwhile, on the domestic front, the most recent Trump -vs- DeSantis poll shows another slip for the DeSantis brand managers, despite the considerable lifts they put in his shoes to assist the optics.  President Trump now leads Ron DeSantis 62% to 16% in polling, a 46-point advantage {link}.

Governor DeSantis is scheduled to arrive back in Florida this week as the consultants organize bill signing ceremonies for legislation completed during his absence.  The bills will include a change to the Florida election laws permitting Ron to start officially campaigning for president instead of pretending not to run.  The ‘official’ announcement, which appears to have been planned for several years, is scheduled for mid-May next month.

LONDON — He hopes to win the hearts and minds of devoted Donald Trump supporters ahead of next year’s U.S. election.

But Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis failed to impress British business chiefs at a high-profile London event Friday, in a tired performance described variously as “horrendous,” “low-wattage” and “like the end of an overseas trip.”

The Florida governor, expected to launch his bid next month to challenge Trump as the Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential race, met with more than 50 representatives of major U.K. firms and business lobbying groups as a part of a four-country “trade mission” ending in London Friday.

For several of those present, however, the statesmanship was lacking.

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In the big picture you might boil down this week’s Neil Oliver monologue to say there’s good and bad, and people need to pick a side.  However, the reality of the details he uses to frame the battle against the “baddies” is a series of current event datapoints the powers that be are likely not going to appreciate.

In his monologue Neil hits on the power behind the Potemkin Village, the multinational corporations behind the scenes, the groups who control the public impressions of politics while orchestrating their next exfiltration of wealth.   Incredibly, Oliver goes into the background of Sudan and Ukraine to outline how the corporations that control government need assistance from the military those government officials control.

Think about the dynamic behind that truth: the corporations that control government need assistance from the military the government controls, because that’s the reality of the thing we are not supposed to talk about.  What that truth outlines is what’s known on these pages as ‘the exfiltration dynamic‘.

Talking about the secret thing is not permitted; yet talk about it he does, in detail, in sunlight.  Oliver is going full Tucker.  WATCH:

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Office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified yesterday that more than 3.4 million search queries into the NSA database took place between Dec. 1st, 2020 and Nov. 30th, 2021, by government officials and/or contractors working on behalf of the federal government. These search queries were based on authorizations related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

[OIG Testimony HERE]

Approximately 30% of those 3.4 million search queries were outside the rules and regulations that govern warrantless searches, what the politically correct government calls “non-compliant searches.”

Additionally, IG Horowitz also admitted that somewhere north of 10,000 federal employees have access to conduct these searches of the NSA database; a database which contains the electronic data of every single American, including emails, text messages, social media posts, instant messages, direct messages, phone calls, geolocation identifiers, purchases by electronic funds, banking records and any keystroke any American person puts into any electronic device for any reason.

If we were in a functioning system of government everything would be stopped right now, and no conversation would be taking place that was not about this issue. This is the total and complete surveillance state being talked about as if we were discussing what’s for dinner.

This is beyond jaw-dropping.

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If you are deep in the political research weeds about the weaponization of government, there is a letter from lawyers representing President Trump to the chair of the House Intel Committee that is very interesting [pdf available here].

The letter is written to HPSCI Chair Mike Turner and copied to the other seven members of the gang-of-eight in the Senate and House.  The letter outlines the details of the documents that became the contested issue between the DOJ-National Security Division (‘NSD’, important distinction), specifically a DOJ-NSD official named Jay Bratt, and the attorney for President Trump, Mr. Evan Corcoran.

The letter is fascinating because it outlines how the process of moving documents from the White House was weaponized by a politically motivated National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”), and the letter also gives fulsome context to the types of “classified materials” that have been insanely over emphasized by media.

[…] “Tim Parlatore and Jim Trusty, two of the undersigned counsel for President Trump, reviewed all 15 boxes at NARA earlier this year and based on that review, it is clear to us what happened. The boxes contain all manner of documents from the White House, are loosely grouped by date, and include newspapers, magazines, notes, letters, and daily schedules. Following its review of the materials, NARA inserted placeholder pages where it had removed documents with classification markings. That allowed Messrs. Parlatore and Trusty to discern what the documents were, as well as what other materials in the boxes were in the proximity of the marked documents when the White House staff packed them. The vast majority of the placeholder inserts refer to briefings for phone calls with foreign leaders that were located near the schedule for those calls.”  (page 3, pdf link)

Additionally, get this part…  despite the standard process that has been in place for the prior four administrations, the NARA refused to participate in the collection of any documents from the White House during the transition phase following the November 2020 election.

The NARA refused to assist in the collection of the Trump records for national archive holding and review, and then the NARA triggered a sequence of events that led to the DOJ using a reference from the NARA, to weaponize a process they refused to engage in.  The NARA refused to do their specialized bureaucratic job, and then the NARA used what they defined as an incomplete job as a reason to refer the outcome to the DOJ.   The details are quite interesting.

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