President Trump delivers a weekly address to the nation focusing on the topic of immigration, and specifically the need to eliminate chain migration and lotteries.

The Latin word Gaudete means rejoice.  Rejoice Sunday, as we prepare for the birth of the Christ Child in our hearts.

Reading 1IS 61:1-2A, 10-11

Please respect the nature and intent of this post. If you are not Christian, pass by, no comment necessary. Absolutely no tolerance will be given to any political or off topic posts. Future posts will be closed to comments or eliminated if we can’t all be respectful. Each week we have had an increasing number of off topic comments. Please don’t make me have to discontinue our Christmas posts for everyone else! Thank you, Menagerie

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 †

People have caught on; it was bound to happen. Back in August 2017 Asst. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein created a special joint task-force within the FBI and DOJ to track down intelligence leakers. The investigative unit was requested by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.
No-one was really paying much attention to it, until recently people started realizing the false media stories were too structured. The stories were fake, but the leaks were real.
Someone was seeding congress with carefully constructed false information and then watching to see where that false information surfaced. This is exactly how you track down leakers.  We previously referenced it as “Black Hat Hunting“.

A few false stories leading the news might be accidental, but the Donald Trump Jr. email date leak, a CNN story, was so specific and so carefully crafted, it became the fake news leak that evidenced a clear strategy going on behind the scenes. CTH has been discussing the likelihood for several weeks, now there’s a bunch of people who have caught on:
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There is widespread opinion that many of the officials enlisted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller are ethically challenged.  Critics point to Mueller team members like DOJ Attorney Andrew Weissman, Jeannie Rhee and Aaron Zebley as specific examples of players within Mueller’s investigative team who have a history of gross ethics violations and also carry jaw-dropping conflicts-of-interest.
Against that backdrop, a report today about conduct by the Mueller team of investigators gains additional levels of concerns.   According to reports, in August 2017 the Mueller team went around the Trump administration in their quest for documents, by directly demanding documents from the General Services Agency (GSA); the entity that hosted the communication network for the Trump transition team.  According to reports, the content of 12 email accounts was handed over to the Special Counsels’ office; consisting of thousands of pages of transition team communication.  Innocuous, ordinary transition stuff, but the method of procurement is jaw-droppingly unethical, possibly illegal.

However, as with all things disclosed and discovered recently, CTH would caution anyone toward weighting favor or disfavor on the underlying issue.  Additionally, I would again remind everyone to look at the timelines on any new information, overlay it against prior information, and consider how the timing of the event(s) -in relation to the whole- might change the first impression.
In this case, the reported action by the SC team took place in August 2017, four or five months ago.  Inside that exact same timeline, on August 16th 2017, FBI Agent Peter Strzok and FBI Attorney Lisa Page were kicked off the Mueller team.  Coincidence? Dunno. Maybe.
Again, don’t get so stuck looking at the granules moving at your feet that you fail to notice the entire landscape around you is shifting.
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Earlier this morning President Trump stopped on the South Lawn prior to getting on Marine-One headed to Camp David.
President Trump is completely on stride now.  The final tax reform product is not quite as good as he originally hoped, but the underlying business side has all the essential elements needed to fuel GDP well beyond 4%.   Titan POTUS is deep in his comfort zone right now, and has gamed out his targeted economic objectives.  Bigly.

Many people are understandably tentative about the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz.  How can this IG, or any IG, really be trusted to root out the rot that lies at the heart of the DC corruption?
Can we trust the IG to target the politicization of the FBI and DOJ, and do so with the righteous indignation necessary to tear out the corruptocrats? After all, what would motivate Inspector General Horowitz to participate in such a righteous endeavor?
How quickly some have forgotten:  DATELINE July, 2015:

WASHINGTON DC – The Obama administration formally announced that inspectors general will have to get permission from their agency heads to gain access to grand jury, wiretap and fair credit information — an action that severely limits the watchdogs’ oversight capabilities, independence and power to uncover fraud.
An opinion, issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, says the Inspector General Act of 1978 — which was written by Congress to create the government watchdogs in order to help maintain integrity within their agencies — does not have the authority to override nondisclosure provisions in other laws, most notably in regard to grand jury, wiretap or fair credit information.

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Merry Christmas.  Well, it appears people -lots of people- are quickly catching on.  As we shared earlier:

“The records IG Horowitz is sharing are details his investigation has uncovered that outline the larger FBI and DOJ collusion against candidate, and possibly President, Donald Trump.

While the partially recused Attorney General Jeff Sessions watches it play out, Asst. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein works as the conduit to ensure those records are provided to congress per request.   Yes, Rosenstein, like Horowitz, is also a white hat.

Their united approach with this information is essentially confirming what CTH has written about for the past several weeks.  There is a clear strategy here with the information that is surfacing for us to absorb.

Each piece of released information outlines the location of a larger piece of information.  Congressional committees just need to keep asking questions, follow the trail of evidence, seek more investigative discovery material, and interview the DOJ and FBI officials named along the way.” (more)

Um,… well,… Cue The Audio Visual – “where are we going?”:

…Giddy up!  Democrats just realized the years-long DOJ Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigation is about to bite them, hard.  We are now entering the political combat zone where congressional democrats will attack the IG, in advance of the pending report.
Ironically, the Inspector General investigation led by Michael Horowitz was originally a lame-duck request (January 12, 2017) by Democrats prior to President Obama leaving office. [OIG Origination pdf HERE] That’s one of the more brilliant aspects towards its value.  The resulting investigation into the politicization of the FBI and DOJ is revealing details of how both departments were corrupted by political operatives friendly to Democrats.  Consequently, their own demanded investigation now becomes a risk.

(OIG Horowitz, AG Jeff Sessions, FBI Director Chris Wray)

As described by Politico: “Judiciary Committee ranking member Jerrold Nadler of New York and two other panel Democrats asked for a full review of DOJ’s decision making that led to Tuesday night’s release of about 375 texts that the FBI officials — Peter Strzok and Lisa Page — sent over a 15-month period during the 2016 presidential campaign.”
Democrats are furious the Strzok/Page text messages were released by DOJ Inspector General Horowitz to the House Committee.  They’re mad because the releases provide evidence of the corruption Jerold Nadler and Democrat leadership want to keep hidden.  However, as we have shared, the Inspector General is releasing some of the evidence collected so that the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees can question FBI and DOJ leadership about the content – and this approach rolls out the much bigger story.
In essence, Inspector General Horowitz is providing the American people with information the Democrats want to keep hidden.  Institutionally, the black hat usurpers, mostly mid-level management and staff within the DOJ and FBI, have been stalling and blocking congressional inquiry into their nefarious, and politically motivated schemes.
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