Everything is disconnected until somebody connects it.

On February 9, 2018, the DOJ released a batch of captured text messages between Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-Chairman Mark Warner and the lawyer for Christopher Steele, Adam Waldman.

At the time the texts were released the media narrative surrounded the top-line story that Senator Warner was having back channel discussions to communicate with the author of the now famous Trump dossier, Chris Steele. However, no-one seemed to wonder why these messages were captured, and even more curiously why they were released.

Immediately following the release, SSCI member Marco Rubio, the current acting chairman of the same committee, rushed to defend the covert communication of Vice-Chair Warner.  According to Rubio the vice-chair did previously inform the committee of his intent to contact Steele.  The media quickly used Rubio’s defense to dismiss the controversy.  Nothing to see here… nothing to see here… and that was that.

Except it wasn’t.

Not even close.

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Lou Dobbs knows what is going on here… you can hear it and see it in his lead-in to the interview with Devin Nunes.  Unfortunately, Devin Nunes doesn’t want to call the baby ugly. Here we are, once again stuck in this stupid place where DC pretends the previous CIA, FBI and DOJ officials were not political; while we roll our eyes at them because we know the truth; and we know that they know the truth; but their pretense is supported by a willfully blind media.

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An interesting on-the-fly interview with Mark Meadows on the topics of FISA renewal and the nomination of John Ratcliffe for DNI.  The incoming White House chief-of-staff notes an internal executive debate is still happening about how best to reform the FISA process as it is used upon/against American citizens.
AG Barr, Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham insufferably want a clean renewal.  President Trump, the righteous House team and Senators Paul, Lee and Cruz want far more substantial reform.  Senator Paul has the best proposal which is to force the DOJ, FBI or domestic intelligence apparatus to go before a traditional Title-3 court any time a U.S. citizen is identified as a target for surveillance.  Save FISA for foreign targets.
Additionally, Meadows notes the shift in support for John Ratcliffe as DNI comes as an outcome of SSCI Chairman Richard Burr likely supporting the nomination.  Unspoken, albeit obvious implication: McConnell green-lighted Burr to support Ratcliffe.

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The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) holds confirmation authority over leaders appointed to the intelligence community.  Chairman Burr and Vice-Chairman Warner participated in the IC effort to target and remove President Trump from office.
You might remember recently how Burr and Warner would not support Rep. John Ratcliffe for Director of National intelligence under the auspices of Ratcliffe not having enough “experience” within intelligence operations.  However, those same “experience” concerns were absent when they approved dirty ICIG nominee Michael Atkinson.

Reminding ourselves how ICIG Atkinson manipulated the ‘whistle-blower’ regulations to permit hearsay from CIA operative Eric Ciaramella; and knowing the primary concern of Senator Warner was to cover his own involvement in the soft coup effort in 2017; it is interesting to go back to the 2018 confirmation hearing of Atkinson and review the focus:

Senator Mark Warner […] You’re also aware that this Committee is leading the review into the Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. During this hearing I want to hear assurances from both of you that you will fully cooperate with this review and provide this Committee with all the information requested in a timely fashion.
Mr. Atkinson, as the Inspector General of the Intel Community your job is especially critical because of the nature of the material that they handle every day, whistleblowers within the IC generally can’t go public to expose misbehavior and misuse of official resources. We the Congress and the American people will depend upon you as an independent agent of accountability for the Office of the DNI and, for that matter, for the whole intel community.

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Representative John Ratcliffe is one of only three republican members of congress [the only one remaining (Gowdy, Goodlate gone)] who has seen all of the classified material evidence behind the FISA application and the intelligence abuses in 2016.
In this interview Ratcliffe outlines the scale and scope of the abuses as well as what they mean in the context of corrupt and illegal DOJ and FBI activity. WATCH:

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The takeaway from this interview with Bartiromo is exactly why senators who participated with the intelligence operation to remove and eliminate President Trump blocked Ratcliffe’s nomination to the position of Director of National Intelligence.
The SSCI controls who is allowed to be CIA Director, NSA Director and Director of National Intelligence.  The nominees must pass through this committee.  Senator Burr and Senator Warner are the Chairman and Vice-Chair respectively.  Both blocked Ratcliffe.
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With media reporting that U.S. Attorney John Durham has expanded the timeline and scope of his investigation into U.S. government and intelligence community activity during the 2016 election, there’s an interesting quote from NBC:

…”Justice Department officials have said that Durham has found something significant, and that critics should be careful.”…

The expanded investigative timeline is now into May 2017 when Mueller was appointed special counsel, and would mean all of the preceding (and surrounding) activity leading up to Mueller would be reviewed.   With that carefully in mind….
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.
Feinstein appears to have 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 trail for this plausible deniability process and ongoing soft-coup effort first surfaces with Dan Jones appearing in the early 2017 text messages between Senator Warner and the liaison for Christopher Steele, lawyer and lobbyist Adam Waldman:
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There has been so much we have documented about the corrupt intents of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), that it doesn’t take a deep-weeds political follower to see where this is going.
SSCI Chairman Richard Burr and Vice-Chairman Mark Warner now inject the Senate into the process of advancing Adam Schiff’s Ukrainian “whistleblower” narrative.  In a letter today Burr and Warner write to the attorney representing the “whistleblower”:

(Document Link)

As with the Trump-Russia investigation, Warner and Burr now insert themselves into position in order to advance the Trump-Ukraine investigation.
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Representative John Ratcliffe was/is a key member of the House who has investigated the details of the DOJ and FBI intelligence abuse during the 2016 election.  Factually, Ratcliffe is one of only a few high-clearance House members who had seen all of the unredacted and classified documents associated with the DOJ and FBI activity.
Representative Ratcliffe appears for a discussion with Maria Bartiromo and states his confidence that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe will be indicted for lying to internal investigators.  Additionally, and perhaps more interestingly, Ratcliffe outlines how SSCI Chairman Richard Burr working together with Majority leader Mitch McConnell, blocked his nomination to the Office of Director of National Intelligence.
There are always a few interviews and discussion per month that are more important than the general DC banter.  This is one of those insightful interviews:
https://youtu.be/1qFMj46Yp2c?t=25m24s
Long before most realized how specifically rigged and corrupt the current political system is, CTH was sharing research -very specific examples- highlighting the origin of the most consequential corruption.  Thankfully the election of Donald Trump helped to open many more eyes. People now see what years of ‘Last Refuge‘ discussions were all about.
Years of research indicated the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) was always the epicenter of the DC swamp; where an over-powerful and extra-constitutional group of UniParty senate power brokers gather ‘black files‘ on politicians, lobbyists and government officials for use in leveraging votes, support and changes in behavior for various corporate interests.  This intelligence exploitation is worth BILLIONS.
The potential for John Ratcliffe as ODNI to disrupt those long-constructed exploitation(s) of the intelligence apparatus [writ large] is exactly why he was kept out.
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All of the same deep state actors/manipulators keep surfacing and resurfacing, like a game of whac-a-mole, as sunlight gets closer to revealing their corrupt behavior.
In the most recent example the familiar Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-Chairman Mark Warner pops his head-up to write a letter to the intelligence community telling them to defy the executive branch declassification directive, and turn to democrats in the legislative branch to defend them:

(Via AP) […] Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, in a letter obtained by The Associated Press, said he fears Trump is giving Barr “the right to selectively declassify certain information for purposes of political gain.” He asked that the leaders of the nation’s spy agencies contact lawmakers if Barr’s investigation threatens their work.  (read more)

Laughably, predictably, and certainly not coincidentally, former FBI Director James Comey jumps quick to the typeset and writes a supportive op-ed for the Washinton Post:
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The Michael Cohen testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), headed by Chairman Richard Burr and Vice-Chair Mark Warner [A Sketchy Couple], has been cancelled citing the medical condition of Mr. Cohen:

WASHINGTON – Michael Cohen has postponed his third scheduled congressional testimony, his lawyer said Monday, casting further doubt on the prospect of the former fixer for President Trump returning to Capitol Hill before reporting to prison next month.
“The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has accepted Mr. Cohen’s request for postponement of tomorrow’s hearing due to post-surgery medical needs,” his lawyer, Lanny Davis, said in a statement on Monday. Details of Cohen’s surgery were not immediately clear.

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