Many people have wondered why Lt. Gen Michael Flynn took the guilty plea; indeed, even his trial judge, Emmet Sullivan, posed curious questions about the agreement.  Yesterday, in a very smart move on behalf of her client, defense Attorney Sidney Powell informed the court why Mike Flynn took the guilty plea on November 30th, 2017.
Background – As part of ongoing proceedings and consideration Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan had requested a status update about the ongoing cooperation of Michael Flynn in the trial of his former business partner Bijan Rafiekian.   On September 24th Federal Judge Anthony J Trenga nullified the jury verdict against Rafiekian and tossed the case.
Flynn’s lawyer, Sidney Powell, now files a motion to update trial judge Emmet Sullivan. However, in a smart legal move, and using the jury nullification within the status report, Powell also outlined the reason why her client took a guilty plea (pdf link):

As highlighted, Michael Flynn -under pressure from Mueller’s prosecutors- signed a plea to avoid his son, Mike Flynn Jr., being indicted/accused.  As we suspected General Flynn signed a plea deal to avoid seeing his son charged with a fabricated FARA violation.
It is a smart strategy for Flynn’s defense to inform Judge Sullivan -now- of the undue pressure and threat from Mueller’s assigned prosecutor Brandon Van Grack.
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Senator Lindsey Graham played a round of golf with President Trump last Saturday.
Curiously on Monday night, Sean Hannity asked Graham if he believed the U.K., Italy and Australia participated in a covert scheme with U.S. intelligence to subvert U.S. laws and target the Trump campaign?   Graham’s response was a little surprising:

[03:30]…”I don’t know, but I know we’re going to find out about that in two weeks.”

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….In 2016 a branch of the United States government (Legislative) was attempting a soft-coup against the leader of another branch of government (Executive); by using the Senate Intelligence Committee and designated corrupt agents within the executive branch cabinet… In 2019 the effort shifted to the House Intelligence Committee…

During the 2016 effort to weaponize the institutions of government against the outside candidacy of Donald Trump, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) was headed by Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein. After the 2016 election Senator Feinstein abdicated her vice-chair position to Senator Mark Warner in January 2017.
While the SSCI was engaged in their part of the 2016 effort Vice-Chair Feinstein’s lead staffer was a man named Daniel Jones.
Dan Jones was the contact point between the SSCI and Fusion-GPS.
After the election, and after Feinstein abdicated, Dan Jones left the committee to continue paying Fusion-GPS (Glenn Simpson) for ongoing efforts toward the impeachment insurance policy angle.
Senator Feinstein left because she didn’t want to deal with the consequences of a President Trump, IF he discovered the SSCI involvement. Dan Jones left because with a Trump presidency the SSCI, now co-chaired by Senator Mark Warner, needed arms-length plausible deniability amid their 2017 operations to continue the removal effort (soft coup).
The blueprint for this plausible deniability process, and ongoing soft-coup effort, first surfaces with Dan Jones appearing in the 2017 text messages between Senator Warner and the liaison for Christopher Steele, lawyer and lobbyist Adam Waldman:
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Methinks Mr. Atkinson doth protest too much.  Prior to the current “whistle-blower complaint” the Intelligence Community Inspector General did not accept Urgent Concern whistle-blower claims without first hand knowledge.  However, the ICIG revised the protocol in August 2019 to accept a CIA complaint against President Donald Trump.
Today the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, Michael Atkinson, presented a four-page justification explaining why the IC changed the Urgent Concern rules to allow the CIA to target President Trump with anonymous complaints based on hearsay:
[scribd id=428170378 key=key-F008IZYmYVgk3cSYV6uR mode=scroll]
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The IGIC revision was made at the same time HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff was tweeting in August about President Trump, Rudy Giuliani and holding back funding pending assistance with political opponents.  Note the Date: (link)
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Chopper Pressers are the best pressers.  The remarks from President Trump on May 24th, 2019, are directly appropriate to revisit today:

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[Transcript – May 24th, 2019] – Q Mr. President, are you ordering (inaudible) investigation into James Comey and McCabe?
THE PRESIDENT: So, we want to be very transparent. So, as you know, I declassified everything. Everything they want. I put it under the auspices of the Attorney General. He’s going to be in charge of it. He’s a great gentleman and a highly respected man.
So everything that they need is declassified, and they’ll be able to see how this hoax — how the hoax or witch hunt started and why it started. It was a — an attempted coup or an attempted takedown of the President of the United States. It should never, ever happen to anybody else. So it’s very important.
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Attorney General Bill Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham must be right over the target.  The Washington Post (via allies in Lawfare) is quick to the typeset to assist the collective effort.  However, there’s good news therein.  Obviously WaPo and The Times (via journolist-type cooperation) divided up the narrative angles.
Based on the severity of “small group” risk exposure, it must be assumed the halls of Main Justice in Washington DC are filled with corrupt allies for the administrative state.

One only needs to read a few paragraphs to see the corrupt Lawfare Main Justice “sources” (ie. embeds still operating) are urgently leaking details of the Durham/Barr investigation. (emphasis mine):

(Washington Post) Attorney General William P. Barr has held private meetings overseas with foreign intelligence officials seeking their help in a Justice Department inquiry that President Trump hopes will discredit U.S. intelligence agencies’ examination of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the matter.

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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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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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Today in a court filing, surrounding a FOIA case seeking access to the fully unredacted Carter Page FISA application, the DOJ clarified the position of the DOJ as it pertains to President Trump’s May 2019 declassification authority. (pdf available here)
The DOJ highlights that President Trump did not order AG William Barr to declassify anything.  Instead, according to the official position of the DOJ, President Trump “delegated authority” to the Attorney General to determine *if* anything should be declassified:

[Source – pdf]

Whether AG Bill Barr does actually declassify anything is open to debate.  The current odds remain slightly less than 50/50; however, those odds could diminish significantly if the impeachment effort is successful.
The current priority for the Dept. of Justice does not appear to be highlighting internal corruption that targeted President Trump.  The current institutional priority appears to be protecting Rod Rosenstein.  However, we should have a better idea exactly where this will all end when we see the IG Report on potential FISA abuses against Carter Page.
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48 Hours after the Trump-Zelenskyy phone call transcript has been made public, and 24 hours after the “whistleblower’ complaint is made public, Things are now becoming much more clear… The whistleblower complaint is the “Schiff Dossier.”
After the 2018 mid-terms, and in preparation for the House “impeachment” strategy, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler hired Lawfare Group members to become committee staff.
Chairman Schiff hired former SDNY U.S. Attorney Daniel Goldman (link), and Chairman Nadler hired  Obama Administration lawyer Norm Eisen and criminal defense attorney Barry Berke (link), all are within the Lawfare network.  You probably saw Berke questioning former Trump campaign chairman Corey Lewandowski.
It now looks like the Lawfare network constructed the Schiff Dossier, and handed it to allied CIA operative Michael Barry to file as a formal IC complaint.  This process is almost identical to the Fusion-GPS/Lawfare network handing the Steele Dossier to the FBI to use as the evidence for the 2016/2017 Russia conspiracy.
While Devin Nunes cannot describe the specifics of what I just outlined, he explains the process in the bigger picture.  WATCH:

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