President Trump sits down for a lengthy hour-long interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo. The President discusses coronavirus, the economy, China, trade, Flynn, the election, and much more. 55 minute interview taped yesterday, aired today.
It likely takes a lot of main justice approvals to serve a search warrant for the device of the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). The Chairman of the powerful committee also sits on the congressional oversight team known as the gang-of-eight.
According to the Los Angeles Times the FBI served a search warrant on North Carolina Republican Senator Richard Burr Wednesday. The warrant appears connected to an ongoing investigation on whether or not Burr violated a law that prevents members of Congress from trading insider information they learn from their work. According to the report federal agents seized Burr’s cell phone after they served the warrant at his residence in the Washington DC area.
The sketchy guardian of swamp secrets is retiring at the end of his term so he’s probably just willing to wait out the investigation and negotiate with the DC justice-tier to pay a fine and move on. DC has a totally different set of laws and outcomes than everywhere else. Any fine, and any resulting legal expenses, will likely be paid by a lobbying firm or political interest group who previously contracted with, and received benefit from, Senator Burr.
It’s the way of the swamp.
A few points on the unmasking before Rand Paul response. First, the release today is only what the Obama team did regarding unmasking General Flynn. As Devin Nunes previously outlined, there are many more Trump transition team members who were unmasked as the Obama team conducted surveillance on the incoming administration.
Second, the NSA “reports” are related to actual transcripts, emails and text messages of communication; not just various intelligence interpretations of those communications.
As Senator Rand Paul shares, the effort of the Obama and Biden administration to unmask their political opposition during the transition; and then use widespread distribution and leaks to the media to push a specific one-sided view; is the weaponization of the intelligence apparatus to target political opposition. That’s the major issue:
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Again, a reminder, these reports surround only NSA intercepts. Simultaneous to this there was an ongoing FBI counterintelligence operation using FISA surveillance (Carter Page) and non-fisa targeted FBI surveillance of Michael Flynn.
Senator Grassley sends a letter (pdf here) thanking AG Bill Barr and DNI Richard Grenell for the declassified documents produced so far. With the DOJ deciding to drop the Flynn prosecution Grassley notes there are three more buckets of classified documents he would like to see declassified and presented soon:
(1) The Flynn/Kislyak transcript. (2) The Susan Rice Memo to file. (3) The original and mysteriously missing Flynn 302 authored by FBI agent Joe Pientka. [Grassley Press]
Within the letter Senator Grassley notes he previously requested the release of these documents from former DAG Rod Rosenstein; who refused to submit them and made excuses to congressional oversight.
This is nuts. According to the Los Angeles Times city officials plan to keep the stay-at-home order in place for an additional three months. However, this decision does provide further evidence the deep blue regions plan on maximizing economic damage.
The odd dynamic is…. without a massive local bailout, and funding for the citizens who are on lockdown, how could they possibly even attempt to pull this off? Is this LA plan of action dependent on Pelosi’s brand new scheme for a $3 trillion spending package?
CALIFORNIA – Los Angeles County’s stay-at-home orders will “with all certainty” be extended for the next three months, county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer acknowledged during a Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday.
Ferrer, though she didn’t issue an official order, said that timeline would only change if there was a “dramatic change to the virus and tools at hand.”
Anticipating the first step in the phase-three effort to remove President Trump from office, today at 10am ET Dr. Anthony Fauci will appear before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. CTH anticipates Fauci will position the reopening of the economy as a likely public health catastrophe; thus paving the way for Trump removal 3.0.
In addition to sketchy Fauci, Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers on Disease Control and Prevention, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Health Adm. Brett Giroir and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn are scheduled to appear. However, the pre-planned media narrative will be led by Fauci.
Fox News Livestream – Fox Business Livestream – PBS Livestream Link
It appears we are about to find out if one of my long-standing theories about surveillance of Michael Flynn is correct. Flynn was not “unmasked”, because he was the direct target.
For three years the official media account of how the intelligence community gained the transcript of incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn talking to Ambassador Sergey Kisliyak on December 29th, 2016, surrounded “incidental collection” as a result of contact with an agent of a foreign power.
Meaning the Flynn call was picked up as the U.S. intelligence apparatus was conducting surveillance on Russian Ambassador Kisliyak.
If this version of events were accurate (it’s not), it would fall under FISA-702 collection: the monitoring of a foreign agent (Kislyak) who has contact with a U.S. person (Flynn).
In order to review the identity of the U.S. person, a process called ‘unmasking’, a 702 submission must be made. As NSA Director Rogers said: that submission, the unmasking, leaves a paper/electronic trail. However, I do not think that is what happened, here’s why:
Back in 2017 Senator Lindsey Graham questioned former DAG Sally Yates and former DNI James Clapper. Within the questioning, Sally Yates tipped her hand. There was never an unmasking of Flynn because Flynn was a target; it was not incidental collection. WATCH:
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Sally Yates doesn’t directly say Flynn was a target, but by now we all know he was a target of the FBI investigation. As a result of Flynn being the actual target he would be directly identified within the intelligence documents because the investigation would be about him, and not incidental. But there’s more…
Representatives Jim Jordan and Andy Biggs tear the bark off the Obamagate scandal; including culpable republicans who participated in the DC coup effort.
Appearing with Lou Dobbs on Fox Business, Jim Jordan rips through the timeline early in the interview to expose how it was impossible for all of the activity to be happening without former President Obama being a participant. WATCH:
White House Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro appears for an interview with Maria Bartiromo. As a China hawk Navarro outlines the economic damage from a perspective where China needs to be held accountable.
One of the ways to hold Beijing accountable is to retract all U.S. business interests and decouple from China. The White House is currently using a task-force approach to assemble the background evidence. Once assembled, many people suspect President Trump will initiate very strong policies against China (including tariffs) simultaneously timed with tax incentives for U.S. companies to return manufacturing back to the U.S.
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If you think about the economic vulnerabilities currently carried by China, it is entirely possible for USTR Lighthizer, Secretary Mnuchin, Secretary Ross and Peter Navarro to structure serious financial punishment upon the Red Dragon.
At no time in the past twenty years has Beijing been more vulnerable to an economic adversary. At the same time, there has never been a more strategic economic adversary in the oval office. This is a conspicuously remarkable moment in history.
Why is former President Obama calling forth all his defensive resources now? Why did former national security advisor Susan Rice write her cya letter? Why have republicans in congress not been willing to investigate the true origins of political surveillance? What is the reason for so much anger, desperation and opposition from a variety of interests?
With the release of recent transcripts and the declassification of material from within the IG report, the Carter Page FISA and Flynn documents showing FBI activity, there is a common misconception about why the intelligence apparatus began investigating the Trump campaign in the first place. Why was Donald Trump considered a threat?
In this outline we hope to provide some fully cited deep source material that will explain the origin; and specifically why those inside the Intelligence Community began targeting Trump and using Confidential Human Sources against campaign officials.
During the time-frame of December 2015 through April 2016 the NSA database was being exploited by contractors within the intelligence community doing unauthorized searches.
On March 9, 2016, oversight personnel doing a review of FBI system access were alerted to thousands of unauthorized search queries of specific U.S. persons within the NSA database.
NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was made aware.
Subsequently NSA Director Rogers initiated a full compliance review of the system to identify who was doing the searches; & what searches were being conducted.
On April 18, 2016, following the preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access to the database after he learned FISA-702 “about”(17) and “to/from”(16) search queries were being done without authorization. Thus begins the first discovery of a much bigger background story.