If Senator Lindsey Graham is correct – tomorrow the DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz will release a much anticipated review, looking into how the FBI and DOJ used an application to the FISA court to investigate the Trump campaign. There are wide-ranging opinions about what exactly this report may, or may not, outline.

The IG review has been ongoing for 21 months.  This report is anticipated to be a culmination of that investigative effort.  The ‘tick-tock club’ of Sean Hannity, Sara Carter, John Solomon and various Fox pundits have promised the report will be the most devastating outline of gross FBI and DOJ misconduct in the history of IG review.
Additionally, a network of financially dependent social media voices, book writers, podcast pundits and Q-theorists collectively known as the ‘trusty plan group’, have predicted criminal indictments, wide-scale arrests and a shock to the DC system that will fracture the foundation of the administrative state and simultaneously drain the swamp.
Meanwhile the Lawfare group has been the most visible advocacy network for the current and former DOJ and FBI officials who participated in setting up and using the FISA surveillance system now under IG review.   The Lawfare group has stated the IG report will exonerate all of their pre and post election activity; validate the justification for their predicate efforts; and leave the ‘tick-tockers’ and ‘trusty planners’ having to reconcile to their stunned audiences how they interpreted all the data so incredibly wrong.
A review of the last three IG reports which brush up against the same DOJ and FBI network: (1) IG review Clinton email/FBI conduct; (2) IG review of McCabe/media leaks; and (3) IG review of James Comey conduct; shows the IG report on FISA is likely to come down somewhere in the middle.  ie. mistakes were made; poor judgements were evident; some unprofessional conduct was found; some lack of candor was identified; department policies were not followed; but no direct evidence of intentional wrongdoing was attributable to a coordinated political effort.
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Planning for impeachment right after the 2018 mid-term election, HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff hired former SDNY U.S. Attorney Daniel Goldman (link).  You probably saw Goldman doing the questioning for Schiff during the first public impeachment hearing.  Around the same time in 2018 Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler hired Obama Administration lawyer Norm Eisen and criminal defense attorney Barry Berke (link).

In addition to changing the House rules to align with the plan, the impeachment process we have been witnessing for two months was mapped-out in the congressional lame-duck session between November 2018 and January 2019.   Today Chairman Nadler announces who will present the impeachment file during the House hearing on Monday:

(Source Link – pdf)

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HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes discusses his review of phone records, and how the mysteriously collected phone data that Chariman Schiff put into his impeachment report doesn’t match with his own review.

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Chopper pressers are the best pressers. Earlier today President Trump paused to deliver remarks on current events to the press pool as he departed the White House for a trip to Florida.  [Video and Transcript Below]

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[Transcript] – THE PRESIDENT: Hello, everybody. That’s a very bright sun. Beautiful day in Washington.
I will say that we’ve had tremendous reports coming out of the economy — it’s been incredible — and numbers like we haven’t seen before. And we have the strongest economy in the world: 266,000 jobs; you can add another 40 [thousand] to that. It’s about 300,000 jobs. Very importantly, it’s 50- or 55,000 manufacturing jobs. We’re the envy of the world. Our economy is the envy of the world, and we’re going to keep it that way. So that’s very important.
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While the U.S. calls Xiyue Wang a “scholar” and Iran calls Massoud Soleimani a “scientist“, it’s likely both were not exactly forthcoming as as they presented themselves to the professional networks within each host nation.
Just my cynical opinion [nudge, nudge – wink, wink – say no more, say no more]…

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A Princeton scholar held for three years in Iran on widely criticized espionage charges was freed Saturday as part of a prisoner exchange that saw America release a detained Iranian scientist, a rare diplomatic breakthrough between Tehran and Washington after months of tensions.

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China controls North Korea; essentially as a proxy province.  As a result Beijing controls the messaging from the DPRK.  Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping is the captor and North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un is the captive – it’s essentially a hostage dynamic.  The historic objective has been to use DPRK aggression as a hedge against the west.
Predictably there was going to come a moment when Chairman Xi realized the trade negotiations by his adversary, President Trump, were a hall of mirrors.  The U.S. President has played China by using their own panda-mask strategy against them.

President Trump achieved his goal when no-one was paying attention. The goal was a decoupling from China on economic terms.  Strategic decoupling has been underway for over a year.   There is no actual intent to reach a trade deal with China where the U.S. drops the tariffs and returns to holding hands with a happy panda playing by new rules. This fictional narrative is a figment of fantasy being sold by a financial media that cannot fathom a U.S. President would be so bold as to just walk away from China.
For almost three years U.S. President Trump has been working on two connected objectives: (1) removing the threat posed by North Korea by severing the ability of Beijing to use the proxy province as a weapon (Kim is hostage to China); and (2) deconstructing the growing economic influence of China.
Both issues are directly connected to U.S. national security; and both issues are being approached by President Trump through the use of economic leverage to achieve national security results.
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President Trump responds to today’s deadline set by House Democrats for the White House to say whether it would participate in the impeachment proceedings:

In summary:

“Nuts!”

Following a possible terrorist shooting early this morning at Pensacola Naval Air Station, six Saudi nationals have been arrested.  Three of them were reported to have been filming the shooting. The shooter was armed with a handgun and was killed by sheriff’s deputies responding to the dawn incident at NAS Pensacola.

(Via Daily Mail) – Six Saudi nationals have been arrested after an Air Force trainee – also from Saudi Arabia – opened fire at a naval base in Florida, killing three people and injuring eight.
The men were detained near the scene of the shooting, which took place at Naval Air Station in Pensacola early Friday morning. It is currently unclear why they have been taken into custody.
Three of the six Saudis were seen filming the entire incident as it unfolded, a source told The New York Times on Friday evening.

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Following a visit to Mexico by U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, earlier today President Trump announced he was putting a “temporary hold” on the designation of Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations.

It looks like President Donald Trump has once again created a significant amount of leverage for Mexican President Lopez-Obrador to continue working with the Trump administration on a variety of security (border and immigration) and economic (USMCA) aspects.
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Shortly after 6pm this evening Supreme Court Justice Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg put a prior 2nd Circuit ruling on hold until next Friday, December 13, at 5 p.m.

President Trump went to the Supreme Court after the House Financial Services and Intelligence Committees issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Capital One seeking President Trump’s tax records. In his request to the court [Read Here] Trump asked SCOTUS to block the subpoenas on the ground they go beyond the committees’ powers.
Justice Ginsburg’s order tonight gives the justices time to rule on Trump’s request for a longer stay of the lower court’s decision while he files a petition for review. Ginsburg ordered the House of Representatives to file a response to Trump’s request by 11 a.m. on Wednesday, December 11.
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