It is becoming clear the principals connected to the 2016 weaponization of the intelligence apparatus, DOJ and FBI are increasingly concerned about U.S. Attorney John Durham and Attorney General Bill Barr looking at the origins of “Spygate” and the Trump-Russia narrative.  Lawfare and their media outlets are leading their defensive-based offensive.
Remember, Stefan Halper (U.K.), Joseph Mifsud (Italy) and Alexander Downer (Australia) all played a key part in helping CIA Director John Brennan assemble his two-page Electronic Communication (EC) that initiated the FBI to start “Crossfire Hurricane.”

All of the Obama-era officials (specifically those who weaponized government in 2016 to target their political opposition) are using the “IC anonymous whistleblower” approach in an attempt to paint any current inquiry as Trump weaponizing the investigation of their coup effort.  Any effort by President Trump to expose the 2016 misconduct is now spun to be President Trump weaponizing his office to target his political opposition.
The latest visible example of the corrupt team anxiety surfaces via a counter-narrative in a New York Times article claiming President Trump asked Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to assist AG Bill Barr and his 2016 review.

WASHINGTON — President Trump pushed the Australian prime minister during a recent telephone call to help Attorney General William P. Barr gather information for a Justice Department inquiry that Mr. Trump hopes will discredit the Mueller investigation, according to two American officials with knowledge of the call.

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Remember when CBS hid President Obama’s admission about Benghazi being an act of terrorism, and was later exposed for their corrupt political bias?  Well, this is worse.
During a Face The Nation segment today, host Margaret Brennan was trying to refute Rudy Giuliani’s evidence about corruption in Ukraine.  Unfortunately for Brennan, the truth has no agenda.
Margaret Brennan kept interrupting Giuliani and saying CBS had spoken to the Ukraine prosecutor.  Giuliani asked “which one?” Brennan ignored.  Giuliani persisted: “which one?”… “which one?”… which led to Brennan saying “the current one” as she cued-up a pre-planned video segment of a BBC interview with Sergy Lutsenko. [Notice CBS intentionally didn’t put up a chyron during the video snippet] Giuliani started laughing because Lutsenko was the corrupt prosecutor Joe Biden demanded to be installed.
As soon as Giuliani mentioned who Lutsenko was – Brennan was completely eviscerated and she immediately knew it…. The blood drains from her face as she recognizes her credibility was melting away live on camera. She re-positions as the angry resistance, and tries (and fails) to keep the narrative afloat.  Priceless:

Carl Bernstein is an insufferable propagandist for the political left; but sometimes you can get a sense of where things stand by listening to his partisan protestations.  Additionally, Bernstein was at the center of the media effort to engineer the Russia narrative by pushing disinformation from the intelligence apparatus in January 2017.

(L-R) Jake Tapper, Jim Sciutto, Evan Perez and Carl Bernstein.

Bernstein was one of the key media figures constructing and pushing the vast Russian election interference narrative.  He also worked closely with Jake Tapper, Jim Sciutto, and Evan Perez to promote the Steele Dossier as a valid intelligence product. In essence Bernstein is a part of the ‘resistance’ agenda writ large; he travels DC circles accordingly.
In a recent CNN interview, highlighted by the Washington Examiner, Bernstein outlined how his sources are telling him Attorney General William Barr is preparing to deliver “evidence of a deep state conspiracy.”   Accepting the general premise, and culling the accompanying political spin from it, the comments by Bernstein would seem to indicate Bill Barr is indeed investigating the background of the ‘soft-coup’.
Obviously Bernstein is a creature of the DC cocktail circuit; as a result perhaps those who operate in/around the same circles of the administrative state are recognizing their activity in 2016 and 2017 is about to be exposed.  Perhaps this explains the apoplectic responses and sense of urgency from the far-left political class over the past week.
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Back in December 2018 CTH noted the significant House rule changes constructed by Nancy Pelosi for the 116th congress seemed specifically geared toward impeachment. {Go Deep} With the House going into a scheduled calendar recess, those rules are now being used to subvert historic processes and construct the articles of impeachment.
A formal vote to initiate an “impeachment inquiry” is not technically required; however, there has always been a full house vote until now.  The reason not to have a House vote is simple: if the formal process was followed the minority (republicans) would have enforceable rights within it.  Without a vote to initiate, the articles of impeachment can be drawn up without any participation by the minority; and without any input from the executive.  This was always the plan that was visible in Pelosi’s changed House rules.

Speaker Pelosi and Douglas Letter

Keep in mind Speaker Pelosi selected former insider DOJ official Douglas Letter to be the Chief Legal Counsel for the House.  That becomes important when we get to the part about the official full house impeachment vote. The Lawfare group and DNC far-left activists were ecstatic at the selection.  Doug Letter was a deep political operative within the institution of the DOJ who worked diligently to promote the weaponized political values of former democrat administrations.
Speaker Pelosi has authorized the House committees to work together under the umbrella of an “official impeachment inquiry.”  The House Intelligence (Schiff) and Judiciary Committees (Nadler) are currently working together leading this process.
From recent events we can see the framework of Schiff compiling Trump-Ukraine articles and Nadler compiling Trump-Russia articles.  Trump-Ukraine via Schiff will likely focus on a corruption angle; Trump-Russia via Nadler will likely focus on an obstruction angle.
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President Trump’s attorney Jay Sekulow reacts to the “whistleblower” complaint and explains the impact this fraudulent construct is having on the U.S. government.

Republican National Lawyers Association vice president and 2020 Trump advisory council member Harmeet Dhillon discusses the ongoing impeachment talks with Lou Dobbs.

If you have read any of the documents that came from Fusion-GPS, Nellie Ohr and Christopher Steele, you will likely find an amazing amount of similarity to the format and writing in this “whistleblower” complaint.
It was obviously written by a Lawfare member.
The complaint is the same structure as the Steele Dossier.  No direct knowledge; no direct evidence to the claims; second-hand gossip, rumors from people who might have known another person to have overheard something, mixed with prior media reports to narrate a story as told by the author. Here is the complaint:
[scribd id=427562713 key=key-6T7Fy4sGJpb6SmFtAHcq mode=scroll]
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The complaint is based on the July 25th phone call between President Trump and President Zelenskyy of Ukraine.  Here’s the transcript of that call:
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Details are beginning to surface about the deep state Whistleblower complaint.  It is possible in the next few days the 6-page complaint, which utilized media reports to construct the supportive evidence for the phone call accusation against President Trump, will be made public.
That said, within a heavy propaganda report from the New York Times there are details about the Intelligence Community Inspector General that show the tell-tale fingerprints of the ICIG supportive intent (emphasis mine):

[…] Mr. Atkinson, a Trump appointee, nevertheless concluded that the allegations appeared to be credible and identified two layers of concern.

The first involved a possible violation of criminal law. Mr. Trump’s comments to Mr. Zelensky “could be viewed as soliciting a foreign campaign contribution in violation of the campaign-finance laws,” Mr. Atkinson wrote, according to the Justice Department memo. (read more)

Does the “foreign campaign contribution” angle sound familiar?  It should, because that argument was used in the narrative around the Trump Tower meeting with the Russian Lobbyist Natalia Veselnitskaya.  More specifically, just like FARA violations the overused “campaign contribution” narrative belongs to a specific network of characters, Lawfare.
The center of the Lawfare Alliance influence was/is the Department of Justice National Security Division, DOJ-NSD.  It was the DOJ-NSD running the Main Justice side of the 2016 operations to support Operation Crossfire Hurricane and FBI agent Peter Strzok.  It was also the DOJ-NSD where the sketchy legal theories around FARA violations (Sec. 901) originated.
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The political planets are aligned to provide a considerably interesting day today.
If events happen as outlined in recent media reports, the White House will release the transcript of a call (underpinning a hearsay whistleblower complaint) between U.S. President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine (pictured below).
Additionally, the Intelligence Community Inspector General is expected to release research documents from his office showing a concerning political motive behind the hearsay whistleblower; a person who complained about the Trump-Zelenskyy phone call while not actually hearing the call, or reading what the call content was all about.

Exactly when the call transcript and ICIG documents are going to be released is an unknown. President Trump has a 12:10pm bilateral meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.  PM Abe is a very good friend of President Trump and together they have recently agreed to a set of sector specific trade deals; with more stuff in the works.
At 2:15pm things really get interesting, as President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy will be holding their own bilateral meeting at the UNGA.  Media cameras are generally present for a short Q&A at the start of every Bilat, and obviously the #1 topic will be this mysteriously alarming phone call; with an opportunity for President Zelenskyy to address the U.S. political narrative therein.
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Today Nancy Pelosi made an announcement with forethought, optical planning, teleprompter script, and a presentation intended to look serious.  But what she announced was simply a continuation of the status quo wrapped up in newly packaged lingo.
Pelosi stated she was herewith announcing an “official impeachment inquiry“. Everything remains ‘as is’, albeit with enhanced optics and new titles for the narrative engineers.

The Democrat stage managers forgot the trumpets…

Essentially she announced House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler will continue doing what House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler was already doing; only now House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, will start doing what he was doing with a new lingo.
There is not one thing different from today than yesterday, except the optics and new language to help the media hype something that doesn’t exist.   Speaker Pelosi did not announce her intent to hold a house vote to authorize an impeachment investigation; she didn’t even mention the word vote at all.   In essence what Speaker Pelosi has done is just satiate her base of Democrats with the fancy optics of something that doesn’t exist.
What’s the difference from Nadler’s “impeachment inquiry” yesterday, and Pelosi’s “official impeachment inquiry” today?…  Nothing.
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