Yesterday President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting: “Immediate Declassification of Materials Related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation.” [ORDER TEXT HERE]

Within the XO President Trump informs the Attorney General (Pam Bondi) the Director of National Intelligence (Tulsi Gabbard), and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (John Ratcliffe), “I have determined that all of the materials referenced in the Presidential Memorandum of January 19, 2021 (Declassification of Certain Materials Related to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation), are no longer classified.”

However, there’s an important set of qualifiers.

“I have further determined that the material proposed for redaction by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a cover letter dated January 17, 2021, remains classified.

My decision to declassify the materials described above does not extend to materials that must be protected from disclosure pursuant to orders of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and does not require the disclosure of certain personally identifiable information or any other materials that must be protected from disclosure under applicable law.” (link)

Caution is warranted.  Yes, there may be a few new items, perhaps a few redactions removed on previously released items, but essentially this is likely be a rehash of assembled component parts we have already discussed at length.  In essence, this sounds like the Mar-a-Lago ten-inch binder content the FBI was previously trying to get back.

There is also a possibility the FISA Court has ordered some materials related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, sealed by the FISC.  President Trump does not extend his order to these materials.

There is a certain likelihood the CIA holds foreign intelligence equities that tangentially supports the origin of the Crossfire Hurricane targeting.  We already know officials and intelligence operations from the U.K, Australia, Italy and Israel were involved in the 2016 operation against Trump.  President Trump does not extend his order to these materials, because the equity ownership of the classified material rests in the foreign intelligence services.

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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.

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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 †

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National Security Advisor Mike Waltz appears on Fox News with Laura Ingraham to discuss the exploding controversy around a left-wing journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, being included on a Signal chat with members of President Trump’s cabinet.

According to Mike Waltz the name of a contact was mis-attributed to the telephone number of Jeffrey Goldberg.  Waltz thought someone else (¹he will not say who) was in the chat group, but it was actually Goldberg.  Waltz says his team and Elon Musk’s technical team are working through an investigative process to discover how that happened.

As I repeated earlier, the most likely origination of the mis-attribution is the intelligence community, specifically the CIA.  The entire fiasco originates as an operation targeting the Trump administration.  Mike Waltz says he is not a conspiracy theorist, but indicates he too thinks something like this is quite possible. WATCH:

Let me summarize for those new to these performances: (1) The CIA tech team organized the Signal App operation (directory manipulation). That’s how Goldberg got in. (2) Jeffrey Goldberg held the story until the day before the scheduled SSCI hearing. (3) The SSCI uses the hearing to attack the Trump officials at the top of the critical silos.

Why? The CIA group doesn’t like the Trump Ukraine and Trump Russia policy.

[¹We may discover that somehow the name Marco Rubio was attributed to the phone number of Jeffrey Goldberg.  Rubio was reportedly on the chat, but didn’t say anything.]

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President Donald Trump answered several questions from the media during a White House meeting with various ambassadors and nominees for the position of ambassador.

During the media segment, President Trump was questioned about the national security cabinet members use of the Signal app to discuss administration plans to open sea lanes and confront Houthi terrorists. President Trump noted the difficulty of secure communication that would be responsive and fast for the purposes of rapid discussion.

President Trump fully supports National Security Advisor Mike Waltz who is attributed with the problem of originating an inadvertent invitation to a journalist the chat group. Overall, there are several media questions about this specific topic and President Trump seemingly appreciates the line of inquiry but swats away attempt attack his cabinet.

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CIA Director John Ratcliffe outlines how the Signal App is a CIA approved “permissible” tool for encrypted communication, and the app was pre-loaded onto his devices by CIA personnel.  [Moment at 1:15, WATCH]

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President Trump has given remarks supporting National Security Advisor Mike Waltz during an interview with NBC.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump stood by his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, after The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief was accidentally added to a private, high-level chat on the messaging app Signal where military plans were being discussed.

“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump said Tuesday in a phone interview with NBC News.

When asked what he was told about how Goldberg came to be added to the Signal chat, Trump said, “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”

Trump said Goldberg’s presence in the chat had “no impact at all” on the military operation.

The president expressed confidence in his team, saying he was not frustrated by the events leading up to The Atlantic’s story. The situation, Trump said, was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.” (more)

The rest of the DC setup is transparently clear.  (1) Goldberg held the story until the day before a long-scheduled Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. (2) The SSCI then used the hearing to blast the heads of the Trump administration intelligence silos on the issue of “classified” information in the text messages.

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As expected, the Democrats were ready to pounce when Trump intelligence officials appeared before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).  Almost as if their staff had pre-planned a series of questions to ask Tulsi Gabbard and Director John Ratcliffe.

In this heated exchange, Colorado Democrat Senator Mike Bennet goes fully bananas when questioning CIA Director John Ratcliffe. These are not stable people.  WATCH:

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FBI Director Kash Patel, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard are among the witnesses who testify today before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).

The SSCI is the center of the organization silo in Washington DC that permits the Intelligence Community to operate as a fourth branch of government. The hearing today on global and domestic threats was previously scheduled and ‘coincidentally’ now falls on the heels of revelations surrounding a group text chat about Trump administration operations in Yemen.

The hearing is scheduled to begin at 10:00am ET, with livestream links below.  The professional political left will be questioning the three cabinet members and will now focus on the national security threat created by Nat Sec Advisor Mike Waltz.  WATCH BELOW:

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According to Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic [SEE HERE], National Security Advisor Mike Waltz invited him to a group chat on the Signal app, where various Trump administration officials and cabinet members were discussing how to address the Houthi rebels in Yemen in advance of military airstrikes.

The media is having a field day with the story, and it does have multiple angles that will unfold in the next several days and weeks. Some media even claiming the story could take down Mike Waltz and/or Pete Hegseth due to the national security implications in the series of events [Politico Here]. However, I wouldn’t go that far at all.

(left, Mike Waltz – right, Pete Hegseth)

Why Mike Waltz would be texting an invite to Jeffrey Goldberg is an issue for later discussion. Generally, given the nature of these things it is not the principal who sets up the text network, usually a top aide or lead staff, which might indicate Waltz’s wife Julia Nesheiwat was involved [SEE WHY], but let’s put that aside.

Goldberg claims “details of war plans” were discussed in the group chat.  Perhaps so, perhaps not.  This specific part of the story is refuted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.  What was discussed and further shared and outlined by Breitbart News [SEE HERE] is a conversation about the strategic reasoning for the U.S. to directly attack the Houthi rebels in Yemen and reopen the sea lanes into and out of the Suez Canal.

The EU and Egypt are the primary beneficiaries of U.S. involvement toward stopping the Houthi terrorists from targeting ships in the region.  Egypt manages the Suez Canal, and obviously there are some strategic U.S. benefits in the region from helping Egypt deal with the Houthi issue.  Specifically, as President Trump seeks to have Egypt, Saudi Arabia and partners help solve the problem in Gaza.

Additionally, most of the shipping through the region is headed to the European Union through the canal.  Reestablishing safe maritime flow of goods economically assists the EU more than any other region.  Again, a point of leverage for the Trump administration as President Trump confronts the issues of EU support for a Ukraine conflict he is trying to resolve.

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