The story of an obviously unstable ground service agent at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is terribly sad. According to most accounts 29-year-old Richard Russell stole a turboprop jet for just under an hour before eventually crashing and killing himself 30 miles away. There were no other passengers on board.

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While another phase of the White House remodel is underway, President Trump conducts national business from his residence in Bedminster, New Jersey.

[Transcript] Bedminister, New Jersey – THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much, everybody, for being here in Bedminster. We’ve had a lot of work. We’ve done a lot of work. They’re renovating the White House. It’s a long-term project, and they approved it years ago. And I said, well, I guess this would be a good place to be in the meantime. So they’re doing a lot of work at the White House. I miss it. I would like to be there. But this is a good way of doing it.
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In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the Donald Trump Administration and Presidency.

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

President Trump Twitter @POTUS / Vice President Pence Twitter @VP

Sarah H Sanders Twitter @SHSanders45

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

Representative Mark Meadows has announced on twitter that DOJ official Bruce Ohr has been scheduled to testify on August 28th, this month.

According to additional details provided to the Daily Caller, Ohr will testify to the same joint committee that previously heard testimony from Lisa Page.  The joint committee is a blend of House Oversight (Trey Gowdy, Chairman) and House Judiciary (Bob Goodlatte, Chairman).  If the same process is used, Chairman Goodlatte will determine which committee members will conduct the questioning.
The August 28th Bruce Ohr testimony will be closed; however, it is possible another open hearing may be held at another date.  In recent days a great deal of information has surfaced from communication between Bruce Ohr and participants in the 2016 FBI/DOJ and Fusion GPS operation against candidate Donald Trump. John Solomon –SEE HERE–  Sara Carter –SEE HERE– Byron York –SEE HERE– and Chuck Ross –SEE HERE– have each written articles about the issues surrounding Bruce Ohr.

Earlier today U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer messaged a warm birthday greeting to Mexican Foreign Secretary Louis Videgaray during ongoing negotiations between the U.S. and Mexican trade teams (video below).

Canada is FUBAR. No-one quite knows how FUBAR Canada is, because no-one has  followed the brilliant Wolverine crew closely enough to spot the strategy.
At the strategic direction of President Trump; and it is a really brilliant workaround strategy; the U.S. and Mexican teams are approaching the current NAFTA negotiations from a position of bilateral trade.   Trade watchers, Wall Street experts, financial pundits and the entire media apparatus are missing what Team USA are doing right in front of their faces…. they’ve obviously never followed or studied Trump’s out of the box problem solving when it comes to complex deals.
I won’t rehash the NAFTA flaws; familiar CTH readers know them well.  However, the bottom line is NAFTA is NOT, repeat N.O.T being renegotiated. I was going to remain silent, but I think it’s safe, Lighthizer is close enough to a deal to explain what’s happening.
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The original Glenn Simpson conflict was actually noted on February 2nd, 2018, when HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes released the House memo outlining the conflicting statements between Glenn Simpson’s testimony, Christopher Steele, and the evidence of Bruce Ohr notes reviewed by congressional investigators.  However, until recently the public never had the actual Ohr notes.

Using the recently released Ohr documentary evidence Daily Caller journalist Chuck Ross now draws attention to the conflict:

(Via Daily Caller) Newly released Department of Justice records appear to conflict with testimony that Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson gave to Congress in 2017 about the timeline of his interactions with top DOJ official Bruce Ohr.
Simpson claimed in testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Nov. 14 that he did not have contact with any FBI or DOJ officials regarding the infamous Steele dossier until after the 2016 election. But Ohr’s emails, which have been provided to Congress, show that he and Simpson were in contact as early as August 2016.

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Interestingly, anyone who has followed Turkish geopolitics closely will likely note a confrontation on ideology was bound to happen.  The triggering event has become the Turkish imprisonment of American Pastor Andrew Brunson.
Turkey has always been a tenuous NATO ally.  The totalitarian behavior of Turksih President Recep Erdogan has generally been antithetical to freedom and U.S. interests.  There have been many examples of sketchy Turkish interests in the past decade – SEE HERE – including Erdogan’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and providing safe-harbor for the exiled Brotherhood leadership.

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey on Friday “implored” U.S. President Donald Trump to return to the negotiating table on tariffs, saying the trade rift between the NATO allies should be resolved through dialogue.

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In the past several days a name has resurfaced, only this time with some more attention than in prior reports.  The name is Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire who is likely much more of a central figure than previously explained.

Byron York recently outlined new documents showing the communication between Trump Dossier author Christopher Steele and DOJ official Bruce Ohr.  Within the early 2016 discussions, Chris Steele appeared to be advocating to Bruce Ohr on behalf of Oleg Deripaska who was banned from travel into the U.S. by the State Department.

(Byron York) Emails in 2016 between former British spy Christopher Steele and Justice Department official Bruce Ohr suggest Steele was deeply concerned about the legal status of a Putin-linked Russian oligarch, and at times seemed to be advocating on the oligarch’s behalf, in the same time period Steele worked on collecting the Russia-related allegations against Donald Trump that came to be known as the Trump dossier. The emails show Steele and Ohr were in frequent contact, that they intermingled talk about Steele’s research and the oligarch’s affairs, and that Glenn Simpson, head of the dirt-digging group Fusion GPS that hired Steele to compile the dossier, was also part of the ongoing conversation. (more)

I strongly urge you to read the York article because I’m going to expand on the Deripaska angle from the context of the reader understanding it.
From the emails it appears Steele and Ohr were discussing Deripaska during a period of February to May (ish) of 2016.  This is important context moving forward because this was the period during the presidential primary candidacy of Donald Trump as the GOP nominee was solidified; Trump won.   This is also the period when we know that “contractors” with the FBI were doing unauthorized searches of the NSA and FBI database for opposition research…. this connects to Fusion GPS.
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In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the Donald Trump Administration and Presidency.

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

President Trump Twitter @POTUS / Vice President Pence Twitter @VP

Sarah H Sanders Twitter @SHSanders45