According to sources responding to The Daily Caller, Nellie Ohr and James Baker are refusing to willingly testify to the joint House Oversight and Judiciary committee chaired by Bob Goodlatte.   Nellie’s husband Bruce Ohr, a current DOJ official, previously testified to the committee; however Nellie Ohr is not in government and may have to be subpoenaed if Chairman Goodlatte wants her testimony. She was originally schedule to appear tomorrow.

UPDATE – “The Committee continues to seek the testimony of Nellie Ohr and Jim Baker and will compel their testimony if necessary.”

Nellie Ohr was a FusionGPS employee and a bridge of contact between FusionGPS and Christopher Steele.  There are strong indications Nellie Ohr may have actually authored a considerable portion of the Steele Dossier for use by the FBI.  In prior testimony FusionGPS founder, Glenn Simpson, was less than forthcoming about Nellie Ohr’s engagements; and generally misled -direct and by omission- both the Senate and House intelligence committees about Mrs. Ohr.
Additionally, The Daily Caller is reporting that former FBI Chief Legal Counsel James Baker is also refusing to cooperate.  Mr. Baker was removed from his position in December 2017, and left the FBI May 4th, 2018, after spending five months in employment limbo.
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I’ve probably reviewed thousands of congressional letters, and intelligence committee letters from oversight, along with even more executive agency responses.  In fact, CTH has shared hundreds of outlines covering granular details within many of the internal memos and correspondences.  However, I have never seen anything like this before.
The combination of arrogance, hubris and desperation within a letter (pdf here) from the four Democrats on the intelligence oversight Gang of Eight, is palpable even in text format.
Legislative branch members: Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff and Mark Warner write a letter today to Director  of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and FBI Director Christopher Wray, demanding the executive branch cabinet members withhold information from the White House.
Perhaps more stunningly, and extra-constitutionally (meaning outside the framework of constitutional separation of power), within the jaw-dropping letter the four Democrats outline previous verbal conversations and current agreements with Coats, Rosenstein and Wray where the Cabinet officers agreed to keep information away from the White House Chief Executive, the President.
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Beyond the narrative engineering, NBC’s Ken Dilanian is reporting from his mutually aligned sources inside the DOJ and FBI.  The basic outline is the embed officials within the DOJ, FBI and larger intelligence community, are not happy about the White House declassification directive.  Why would they be?….
These are the same DOJ and FBI officials who, without justification, redacted the Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text messages.

First, the article:

WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence officials, blindsided by President Donald Trump’s order that they make public highly sensitive files in the Russia investigation, are hoping the White House will allow them to conduct a formal declassification review and damage assessment before they are forced to release the documents, current and former officials tell NBC News.
Senior executives at the FBI, Justice Department and Office of the Director of National intelligence were scrambling Tuesday to respond after being taken by surprise by a White House press release Monday directing them to release classified material they had previously determined should not be made public. (more)

The biggest mistake people make is not accepting the influence of the worker-bee career officials, operating under the leadership structure, within the bureaucracy.
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Special counsel Robert Mueller really, really, r.e.a.l.l.y doesn’t want to sentence former National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn for lying prior to the release of the of the unredacted text messages and the IG Report on FISA abuse.
Nothing would be more devastating for Mueller’s political objectives than to sentence General Flynn – and then have the nature of an entrapment scheme exposed.  Hence yet another incredulous delay (this is the fifth delay):

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Many column inches and media discussions surround the recently released “NEW” text messages and emails attributed to FBI Agent Peter Strzok.  “NEW” revelations that show how the FBI was coordinating a “media leak strategy”; which essentially further evidences the level of corruption within the DOJ and FBI & weaponization for political motives.

However, there is a particular pattern and familiarity to these releases for those who follow the Administrative State, aka “Deep State”, within Washington DC closely.  According to Sean Hannity (Friday broadcast) next week there will be several thousand more of these “NEW” messages released. [Up to 50,000]
Amid these latest developments is where we find the all-too-familiar pattern. Where exactly were these “NEW” emails for the past sixteen months? Who is releasing these “NEW” messages? Why? And why now?
According to Joe diGenova, there’s a seated grand jury ready to pounce on Andrew McCabe, James Comey, Rod Rosenstein, Peter Strzok and all the corrupt elements associated within “spygate” and “fisa-gate”.   As the diGenova story is told, former FBI chief legal counsel James Baker has “turned states evidence”, and is now testifying to the grand scheme, etc. Exposing all those who participated. (Prompted – Just Hit Play)
https://youtu.be/KQDSdTM3kus?t=4m57s
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Perhaps diGenova is right; perhaps all of those wonderful things are about to happen.  However, I’m of a generally more cynical disposition after years of following these creeps.  I hope diGenova is correct, but I fear he is fraught with misplaced optimism and/or bad information.  Here’s why:
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Lee Smith has an excellent article for Real Clear Investigations where he outlines two strategic phases of the media and FBI/DOJ officials collaborating to create, and later defend, the ‘Trump Russia Narrative’.   It is well worth reading:

[Via Lee Smith] … RCI has found that the anti-Trump leaks fall into two broad categories, or phases. Initially the leaking was an offensive operation aimed at disrupting Trump’s agenda, especially through leaks alleging connections between his campaign and the Russians. Its early successes included leaks of highly classified material that led to the firing of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions from overseeing that probe.

The second phase – which began roughly a year into the Trump administration – has been more defensive, pushing back against congressional oversight committees that had uncovered irregularities in the FBI’s investigation of Trump. This phase has been marked by the willingness of press outlets to run stories backing off earlier reported leaks that proved to be deeply misleading – including the roots of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign and the relationship between Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr and the opposition research firm that produced a central document of that probe, the largely discredited “Steele dossier.” Continue reading

Representative Jim Jordan, member of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, appears on Fox News to discuss revelations about how the FBI used the media to support their investigative purposes.  In essence this “Media Leak Strategy” issue lies at the heart of the controversy behind the redacted “Sources and Methods” the FBI continues to hide.
The “sources and methods” within the FBI investigative material (now classified) reflects intentional leaks by the FBI to media, and journalists writing articles to bolster the investigation which were then cited as supportive material to continue the investigation.

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Frustratingly, what no-one seems to mention -during these debates- is how the Inspector General has already outlined the FBI ‘media leak strategy’ when he published his report on FBI conduct. There are two chapters of the IG report dedicated to outlining how grossly negligent FBI officials were collaborating with the media.
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Bob Goodlatte is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee; and also the lead chairman (w/ Gowdy) of the joint House Oversight and Judiciary Committee that is conducting the interviews of witnesses for the investigation into corruption by the FBI and DOJ.   The joint committee has interviewed: Bill Priestap, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Bruce Ohr; no transcripts released (likely to avoid coordinated testimony).
In this morning’s interview with Maria Bartiromo Chairman Goodlatte discusses the need to interview Nellie Ohr and Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson voluntarily or by subpoena.  Again, note the oft-repeated “sources and methods” declassification issue.

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Think about it.  What were the sources/methods for the Steele Dossier?  What were the sources/methods for the FISA application?  It’s the sources and methods that were/are corrupt. Declassification is futile without un-redacting the sources and methods.
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Today is likely to be a very busy news day.  President Trump will appear on Fox and Friends at the same time the Bureau of Labor and Statistics releases the August jobs report. RESULTS: Total employment increased by 201,000 in August, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.9 percent (data here)
Additionally, there’s the congressional requests (legislative branch) for President Trump (executive branch) to declassify redacted portions of the DOJ/FBI FISA application.  So it is worthwhile discussing the “declassification conundrum” beginning with this interview:

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The congressional request is for President Trump to declassify and release the Carter Page FISA applications (including specifically pages 10-12 and 17-34 and relevant footnotes), all of the Bruce Ohr 302s and other relevant documents, including exculpatory evidence regarding Carter Page and others, that were presented to the Gang of Eight, but not presented to the FISA Court.
At first glance it appears to be a simple request right? However, it is anything but simple for a lot of reasons.
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Whoa Nellie… Ding, Ding, Ding…

Within the massive assembly of documents, emails, text messages, congressional testimony and portions of media reports a clear timeline emerged.  Part of that timeline was based on the fact that certain events had to have taken place -at specific times- in order to reconcile the downstream activity.
From that circumstantial timeline CTH was able to assemble a graphic to help understand how corrupt DOJ and FBI officials had to have used information from Fusion-GPS, Nellie Ohr and Christopher Steele; passed on to Bruce Ohr in the DOJ; then delivered to Peter Strzok (FBI) for exploitation eventually culminating in the October 21st, 2016, Title-1 FISA warrant against U.S. Person Carter Page.
The key point of the graphic, which ran counter to all MSM reporting, was a trail of circumstantial evidence showing Bruce Ohr had to have been in contact with Christopher Steele much earlier than anyone realized.  SEE BELOW:

Thankfully, and finally, a new report today from John Solomon backs up this timeline with the first-hand testimony of DOJ Official Bruce Ohr.

Solomon – […] For much of the past year, many in Congress have labored under the notion that Ohr, then the No. 4 Department of Justice (DOJ) official, began assisting the FBI’s probe into Russia election collusion only after Trump won the 2016 election.

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