There are numerous media reports about the Senate Intelligence Committee filing a subpoena for additional testimony from Donald Trump Jr.  However, there’s something a little, well, ‘off’ about how the story is being presented…. zero official verification.

Without any verification, and with only vague references to anonymous sourcing, CTH would advise to wait-and-see on this one.  DJT-jr has been used more than once for leak hunting.   The AP Article is HERE.  That said, Trump Jr. did retweet this message:

Dan Bongino appears with Lou Dobbs to discuss the insufferable debate over the word “spies”.  Bongino accurately outlines the issues with current FBI Director Christopher Wray and his institutional motives.

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FBI Director Wray lost all credibility in June of 2018 when he participated in a structured press conference intended to diminish the IG report on the institutional issues with the FBI.   It was then obvious Wray was committed to the institutional cover-up of gross misconduct by former and current DOJ and FBI officials.
At the conclusion of that June 14, 2018, press conference an earlier unscheduled meeting on January 3rd, 2018, between Christopher Wray, Rod Rosenstein and House Speaker Paul Ryan then began to make a lot more sense.
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USTR Robert Lighthizer has filed the official notification with the federal register for the increase in Section 301 tariffs from 10% to 25% effective Friday (full pdf below).  Additionally Reuters has exclusive details of the collapse in U.S-China trade talks.
As most CTH readers are aware, Lighthizer has focused heavily on the enforcement mechanisms within the trade talks. [Previous Bookmark] Apparently, when the 150 page draft agreement was presented to the Chinese politburo, Beijing balked at allowing the U.S. to hold controlling enforcement over the trade agreement terms.

The fallback presentation from Vice-Chairman Liu was: we cannot put the binding enforcement mechanisms in writing, you’ll have to ‘trust us’ to honor the agreement; at which time Lighthizer said no-way.

WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) – The diplomatic cable from Beijing arrived in Washington late on Friday night, with systematic edits to a nearly 150-page draft trade agreement that would blow up months of negotiations between the world’s two largest economies, according to three U.S. government sources and three private sector sources briefed on the talks.
The document was riddled with reversals by China that undermined core U.S. demands, the sources told Reuters.

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I can just picture the The New York Times gathering a team of actuaries, legal accountants, tax historians, advisers and financial consultants around a big executive office table, piled high with reams of papers and spent coffee cups, saying:

“We’ve got him now…. as soon as people understand: fixed asset depreciation schedules; and if the assets were depreciated legally using straight line or diminishing balance; then we move to whole-value equity pick-up, or minority interest accounting; before digging into section 1031 ‘like-kind’ asset exchanges; partnerships (limited or writ large), carried interest loopholes, pass-throughs, net capital losses/gains, seven-year income averaging and the difference between long-term and short-term capital gains”…

…or something.
Seriously, the ‘Trump-taxes’ story has to be the biggest, funniest, most well documented, and most absurd, ongoing snipe hunt in history.  “I was going to support President Trump’s re-election until I saw his depreciated amortization schedule from 1989″… said no-one, like, ever.
Could it be possible John Barron is still pulling this hilarious trick twenty-five years after the New York Times called Donald Trump “The Comeback King“?…
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During the House Judiciary Committee farce debate toward a pre-written impeachment resolution, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan outlines the political motives of House democrats to try and avoid the looming investigation by Attorney General Bill Barr.

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A full contempt vote normally follows the creation of the contempt resolution; which is an outcome of the debate.  However, to showcase just how ridiculous and political the agenda of Nadler has become, the actual contempt resolution was already written – SEE HERE.
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Last night the DOJ informed House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler they would recommend President Trump invoke executive privilege over the Mueller report if Nadler continued in his quest to wrongfully impeach AG William Barr.  Today the White House followed through:

(White House Statement)  “The American people see through Chairman Nadler’s desperate ploy to distract from the President’s historically successful agenda and our booming economy. Neither the White House nor Attorney General Barr will comply with Chairman Nadler’s unlawful and reckless demands.

The Attorney General has been transparent and accommodating throughout this process, including by releasing the no-collusion, no-conspiracy, no-obstruction Mueller Report to the public and offering to testify before the Committee. These attempts to work with the Committee have been flatly rejected. They didn’t like the results of the report, and now they want a redo.

Faced with Chairman Nadler’s blatant abuse of power, and at the Attorney General’s request, the President has no other option than to make a protective assertion of executive privilege.

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A win for the Trump administration in the ongoing effort to stem the influx of migrants crossing the U.S-Mexico border seeking asylum.  The ninth circuit federal appeals court ruled (full pdf below) that the Trump administration can continue returning Central American migrants to Mexico while their requests for asylum in the U.S. are adjudicated.

The Ninth Circuit decision is a victory for the administration.  The ruling stays the effect of a decision last month by a judge who blocked the policy while it was being challenged.

(WSJ) […] The policy, officially named the Migrant Protection Protocols, is more commonly known as “Back to Mexico” or “Remain in Mexico.”
While Tuesday’s court action isn’t a final decision on the merits of the case, the appeals court held that several legal factors favored allowing the Trump administration to administer the policy while the litigation continues.

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Smart move by DOJ lawyers.  The letter below informs Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler the previous report content was provided without assertion of executive privilege; however, if Nadler follows-through with impeachment plan, executive privilege is now enforced and the totality of the report is withdrawn from congress.
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On January 22nd, 2018, eleven months prior to the mid-term election, lawyers from the special counsel’s office told Judge Boasberg in a sealed-courtroom why they needed to keep James Comey’s memos from being released.
Special Counsel Attorney Michael Dreeben informed the court the special counsel was charged with investigating an obstruction case against President Trump from the beginning. President Trump was the target of their investigation from the outset.

The previously sealed court transcript was released today – SEE HERE
Despite Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein and Special Counsel Mueller assuring the President and his lawyers he was not the target of the investigation, they were lying.
As soon as the court was told Trump was the target (hearing January 22, 2018) the court agreed to seal everything relating to the journal of James Comey. [BACKGROUND]

John Solomon has a new article at The Hill centered around this email from State Department official Kathleen Kavalec after her October 11, 2016, interaction with dossier author Christopher Steele.
The substantive point of the article is how the email proves the political motives of Steele two weeks prior to the FBI/DOJ seeking a FISA application using his work product, the dossier.  Despite knowing the bias motive, the FBI/DOJ persisted in using the dossier for a Title-1 FISA warrant against U.S. person Carter Page on October 21, 2016.

A second issue, perhaps more alarming, surrounds: (1) how the current DOJ and FBI kept the email hidden from congressional investigators; and (2) how the current DOJ and FBI have recently redacted the email, highlighting an ongoing institutional cover-up.
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