Posted originally on Aug 15, 2025 by Martin Armstrong |
The US Treasury Department is extremely desperate for any morsel it can find to put toward the $36.7 trillion national debt. Is Donald Trump asking Americans to Venmo or PayPal the US government cash to pay down the national debt? Not quite, as the Treasury has a long-standing program called “Gifts to Reduce the Public Debt” that asks Americans to donate their personal funds toward government spending.
Trump introduced the option to pay through online platforms such as PayPal or Venmo; however, the program began decades ago in 1996. The Pay.gov website also accepts bank transfers, debit or credit cards. You could probably offer your first-born as payment as the Treasury is indeed that desperate.
Some Americans are indeed voluntarily giving the government money. In fact, the initiative has collected $67 million since it began in 1996 and the coffers are growing a mere $120,000 per month since 2020. The rest of us are involuntarily providing the government with money through taxation without representation.
Obviously, the charitable contributions are a complete joke and could not account for even a day of interest on the national debt. Still, the options exist and those who believe that taxes deserve to rise should willingly hand over their money to the government while the rest of us attempt to navigate our finances amid the volatile conditions the government has created. They will continue to collect more taxes rather than curtail spending involuntarily, yet they will never collect enough.
Some consider donating to the lost cause that is the US government as a tax deductible charitable contribution. The US government, the largest economy on the planet, does not need charity. The US government needs to curtail its reckless spending and hold politicians responsible for their endless waste.
Posted originally on CTH on August 14, 2025 | Sundance
FBI Director Kash Patel appears on broadcast with Sean Hannity to discuss his goals and objectives with the ongoing information releases from the FBI, “The Transparency Initiative.”
Take your emotion out of it. Take your feelings out of it. Do not project anything onto it. Imagine yourself hearing and reviewing this for the first time. Watch and listen carefully to it. Your intuition will not be wrong. WATCH:
BREAKING: Kash Patel just made the rare appearance on Fox and HOLY CRAP! He's uncovered the largest scandal in American history!
No wonder these corrupt crooks in DC are sweating!
"I was blown away, but sadly, it's come to be expected in this town when corrupt bureaucrats… pic.twitter.com/7xWoOdMqgZ
FBI Director Kash Patel promises MAX ACCOUNTABILITY for those who manufactured IC hoaxes to destroy President Trump 🔥🔥
"We are educating the American public as we build through this transparency initiative. And where the investigation goes, I can assure you of this: We will… pic.twitter.com/cBb1wy6aTI
What you are witnessing is a performance. This is performative, not substantive.
It sounds simplistic, but the #1 easiest *tell* is the venue, Sean ‘tick-tock’ Hannity. The #2 and #3 are the references to Trey Gowdy et al. The chaff and countermeasures process.
Kash Patel says, “we are building a case for the American public“… There it is.
Accept things as they are, not as we would wish them to be. Do not project onto it.
There’s the defined “accountability” outcome Kash Patel and Pam Bondi are delivering.
It’s okay. Sunlight is a good goal, exposure is a good goal, but moderate expectations and do not expect to see any indictments. They “are building a case for the American public,” not a jury.
If they were building a case for a jury, they wouldn’t be on television talking about building their case.
Posted originally on CTH on August 14, 2025 | Sundance
I am writing this outline because we have many new readers and also to keep everyone on the same page, so to speak.
There is a reason why information held within an administrative agency, within a silo, is called an “equity.” The information has ownership exclusive to the originating agency or silo. A known equity of a specific silo.
EXAMPLE of an “FBI equity” and how it is handled below:
An “equity” is information with ownership belonging to a specific agency or silo. Only the agency head can declassify information within their silo. Ex. The head of the FBI cannot declassify or release the “equity” of the CIA. The head of the CIA can declassify an equity of the CIA, and the FBI head can declassify the equity of the FBI.
Only the President and the Director of National Intelligence (Tulsi Gabbard) can reach into any agency (silo), retrieve information then declassify it. The President and the DNI can work together to release information from any silo.
This process is what we are seeing with the releases of information, FBI equities, from FBI Director Kash Patel. These are exclusive equities of the FBI, and can be released (with approval) from the head of the executive, the President.
Then the issue of distribution surfaces. Once an equity is declassified, Patel then has to determine how to make the information public. He could: (a) release it directly from the FBI to the public; (b) release it to the legislative branch for distribution to the public (Grassley or similar): or (c) release it to a media outlet (Solomon), who in turn releases it to the public.
The White House may not want the FBI to release it directly to the public due to the appearance of politics. The legislative option may not want to be the distribution hub due to the appearance of politics. The media outlet may or may not want to release it for their own reasons.
The office of the President may not want the FBI to release the information directly because it can create a problem for the Executive if the material is framed politically. The FBI is a subsidiary of the Executive. The information can look very political if a political appointee is releasing information that is politically explosive in nature.
In the first set of FBI declassification releases, the White House obviously approved of the release and the office of Senator Chuck Grassley was working with Kash Patel to distribute the declassified information, because it pertained to research and investigations they were conducting. The “equity” was beneficial to their interests.
In the current FBI releases by Kash Patel, the exclusive FBI equities are being released to John Solomon for distribution. This approach is because of a pre-existing relationship.
At the same time Director Patel is releasing information from within the specific FBI silo, DNI Tulsi Gabbard is declassifying and releasing information from both her silo (DNI) and other silos (CIA). In the CIA releases, Gabbard is coordinating with the declassification approval of CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
When you understand the silo system and how information is considered an equity of each silo, you start to realize how certain silos cannot operate without the approval of another.
The DOJ cannot use a CIA equity unless the CIA approves. The DOJ cannot use an NSA equity unless the NSA approves. Regardless of how the information is identified, each silo must approve of their equities being released. If they do not approve the only option is for the President to override the silo head and declassify the information himself.
As an outcome of the way our checks and balances have been modified against our interests, the judicial branch has repeatedly deferred to the DOJ around the issue of “national security.” In fact, if the DOJ labels any Lawfare approach as a national security matter the subsequent evidence therein, the NSI (even when not seen) is accepted by the judicial branch without question. The judicial branch defers to the executive on all matters defined by the executive as “national security.”
This is the area of exploit being discussed by Mary McCord in this segment. However, notice there is one apparatus that can supercede the DOJ-NSD’s ability to weaponize Nat Sec Information, that’s the power of the intelligence apparatus. WATCH:
Lawfare coordinator Mary McCord admits that she and another lawfare coordinator, Andrew Weissmann, worked with the DOJ and intelligence losers on what bogus charges to bring against Trump. pic.twitter.com/4jqgetvURZ
McCord notes how she and Andrew Weissmann navigate through the process of using National Security Information (NSI) as they move toward their target; the most common reference is their political opposition, Donald J Trump.
This silo process is also how the DC system protects itself from sunlight.
A whistleblower from the CIA cannot go to the FBI with evidence of corrupt activity and expect the FBI to take action on that evidence without the approval of the CIA. If the CIA whistleblower takes the equity evidence to the FBI and the CIA does not permit the equity evidence to be used, the FBI cannot use it.
Similarly, if a non-silo member of the public connects the dots using information/evidence from multiple silos, the DOJ cannot use that evidence without first requesting approval from each of the silo heads.
Silos only know their own information. Silos do not know the information in other agencies. This was the entire premise of creating the DNI, a super-silo that can cross reference each silos’ equities. Using this power is what I have been outlining for the past several years, and this is what Tulsi Gabbard has been doing for the first time since the DNI office was created.
Alternatively, Kash Patel has selected John Solomon for the release of information exclusive to Kash Patel’s silo. Because the equities do not involve any other silo, this is possible. Solomon doesn’t care if the information release is defined as political, and most of the information is expired old news being repackaged for public consumption.
Throughout this process, the MSM regards all declassified information against their interests to be political constructs, easily ignored. Trump as head of the executive is framed as releasing information against his political opposition.
Also understand, each legislative committee or sub-committee within congress (legislative branch) is its own independent silo. The HPSCI doesn’t know what the SSCI is doing, and vice-versa. Additionally, each agency within the executive branch is its own independent silo. There are also silos within the judicial branch, and within each federal court within the judicial branch – including the FISA Court.
Each silo is its own compartment of information holding exclusive equities.
This DC system has been weaponized over time to create the complicated mess that currently exists.
Keep all of this in mind, as you look at the information outflow and distribution network.
Posted originally on Aug 14, 2025 by Martin Armstrong |
President Donald Trump has threatened Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell with a “major lawsuit.” Could the sitting president sue the head of the central bank that acts independently of the Fed? It depends on the context as there are two issues—interest rates and the Federal Reserve headquarters operation.
The Federal Open Market Committee, the voting branch of the Federal Reserve, is protected by sovereign-immunity. The only exception would be a congressional waiver which simply would never happen. The plaintiff would need to present clear statutory cause of action and a waiver of immunity. Coercing the independent branch of the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates is not cause for legal action and would be dismissed immediately.
As for the new Federal Reserve headquarters, Trump could attempt to file an injunction claim against mismanagement or fraud, and would once again need a clear cause of action and a waiver of sovereign immunity.
The Federal Reserve operates on a self-funding mechanism, allegedly, using revenue it generates from interest on government securities and other services such as payment processing. Yet, that interest is generated from public funds. However, the Federal Reserve does not need approval from Congress to finance internal costs as it manages to bypass the federal budget. Powell has documented justification for the rising cost of the project, and there is no evidence of fraud or mismanagement. Congress would never consent to a waiver of sovereign immunity. The legal system would immediately overturn the claim as there is no actionable legal violation, especially against Powell personally.
The plaintiff, Trump, could attempt to pursue a private civil case against Powell, but again, that would also be immediately dismissed as the Fed chair has not attacked Trump, defrauded the government, or manipulated rates for political reasons. The prospect of suing the chairman of the central bank is absolutely absurd and a clear overreach of federal power. The Federal Reserve MUST have the ability to act independently of political pressure.
Now, the Supreme Court once ruled that the branches of the fed are “creatures of the Federal Reserve Act,” and fall under federal jurisdiction. The Supreme Court’s Cooper v. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond (1984) regarded discrimination claims against a regional branch under Title VII and 42 U.S.C. § 1981. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) accused the bank of violating the Civil Rights Act.
The legal reasoning behind the Supreme Court’s decision in Cooper v. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond centered on the principle of res judicata (claim preclusion) and how it applies to class action lawsuits, which is different than Trump v. Powell. The Court examined whether the judgment in the prior class action suit, which found no widespread discrimination, barred individual class members who had opted out from pursuing their own separate discrimination claims. the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the employees had the right to bring their individual claims against the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, permitting individual employees to proceed with individual lawsuits. Again, this is a separate matter that was not a direct lawsuit against the Federal Reserve for monetary policy decisions.
The majority of cases filed against the Fed involved employment issues. Vannoy v. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond in 2016 accused the same branch of violating the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The central bank granted Vannoy medical leave, but he claimed he was not properly notified of his FMLA rights and returned to work early to avoid losing his job, which actually led to his termination. The case went to a higher court and ultimately allowed Vannoy to file his claim of FMLA interference. Again, these cases are based on employment at the Fed rather than policy or against an individual member of the central bank.
There have been lawsuits over policy, such as cases against the Fed’s stress tests in 2024, and challenges to emergency lending programs during financial crises. It is rare for the court to rule against the Fed, but it has happened. In 2011, the Fed was sued for the “swipe fees” regulation (Regulation II) that capped the fees banks could charge merchants. The court ruled that the Fed did not have the authority to issue a uniform cap when Congress required issuer and transaction-specific regulations.
The challenger must show clear illegal overreach and a blatant disregard for administrative procedures. Jerome Powell has not violated the law by maintaining interest rates or overseeing the creation of the Fed headquarters. Trump’s threats hold no weight as no court would take his claims seriously.
Posted originally on CTH on August 13, 2025 | Sundance
Former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper was always a doofus, sticking his foot in his mouth about all kinds of Intelligence Community stuff. It was his doofusness that led to President Obama keeping him as DNI, while the rest of the IC worked around him (a little funny at the time).
Today, current Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, declassified and released the content of an email exchange between then NSA Director Mike Rogers and DNI Clapper about the bogus nature of the rushed December 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment, that Obama wanted to help frame the Trump-Russia story.
Adm Mike Rogers is telling James Clapper his NSA team was not comfy with manufacturing and spinning intelligence for a political hit job on the incoming administration. Clapper responds to Rogers telling him to get on board, because this level of IC fabrication requires all key elements to be on the same page. Clapper saying the Russian stuff, “is our story, and we’re sticking to it.”
As noted by Tulsi Gabbard: “Newly declassified Top Secret emails sent on December 22, 2016 complying with President Obama’s order to create the manufactured January 2017 ICA about Russia expose how DNI James Clapper demanded the IC fall in line behind the Russia Hoax. Clapper admits that it was a “team sport” that required “compromise on our ‘normal modalities’”.
This release by DNI Tulsi Gabbard is a solid drop of evidence, albeit in hindsight.
In real time in 2016 and 2017, CTH was watching Adm Mike Rogers very closely, because we could tell he was not a willing participant in the overall fraud. In fact, the pressure on him was transparently obvious to anyone paying attention and listening to the actual words from NSA Director Rogers at the time.
It is not coincidental the two most politicized intelligence operatives, John Brennan (CIA) and James Comey (FBI), presented the information along with like-minded political traveler ODNI James Clapper. While Admiral Mike Rogers (NSA) is also included in the report authorship, it is largely overlooked that Rogers only held a “moderate confidence” in the overall report finding. It was only Brennan and Comey who claimed “high confidence” in the overall report content.
We have continually pointed out at the time the report was written it appeared to be entirely political in construct. The intent of the report was to provide source material for the overall Russian conspiracy narrative; and also establish some framework for the White House to take action, vis-a-vis sanctions.
Against the backdrop of the December 2016 sanctions announcement, President Obama’s administration released the Joint Analysis Report claiming it outlined details of Russia’s involvement hacking into targeted political data-base or computer systems during the election.
Except it didn’t
Not even a little.
The “Russian Malicious Cyber Activity – Joint Analysis Report” (full pdf below) was/is pure nonsense. It outlines nothing more than vague and disingenuous typical hacking activity that is no more substantive than any other hacking report on any other foreign actor.
This might as well be a report blaming Nigerian fraud phone solicitors for targeting U.S. phone numbers. Just because you didn’t actually win the Nigerian national lottery doesn’t mean the Nigerian government are targeting you for your portion of the lottery revenue.
The December FBI report was/is, well, quite simply, pure horse-pucky.
What the report does well is using ridiculous technical terminology to describe innocuous common activity. Example: “ATPT29” is Olaf, the round faced chubby guy probably working from his kitchen table; and “ATPT28” is his unemployed socially isolated buddy living in Mom’s basement down the street.
This paragraph below is priceless in it’s humorous and disingenuous gobblespeak:
Both groups have historically targeted government organizations, think tanks, universities, and corporations around the world. APT29 has been observed crafting targeted spearphishing campaigns leveraging web links to a malicious dropper; once executed, the code delivers Remote Access Tools (RATs) and evades detection using a range of techniques.
APT28 is known for leveraging domains that closely mimic those of targeted organizations and tricking potential victims into entering legitimate credentials. APT28 actors relied heavily on shortened URLs in their spearphishing email campaigns. Once APT28 and APT29 have access to victims, both groups exfiltrate and analyze information to gain intelligence value.
These groups use this information to craft highly targeted spearphishing campaigns. These actors set up operational infrastructure to obfuscate their source infrastructure, host domains and malware for targeting organizations, establish command and control nodes, and harvest credentials and other valuable information from their targets.
(*note the emphasis I placed in the quote) All that nonsense is saying is a general explanation for how hacking, any hacking, is generally carried out. The entire FBI report was nothing more than a generalized, albeit techno-worded, explanation for how Nigerians, Indians, or in this case Russians, attempt to gain your email passwords etc., nothing more.
What was alarming to consider was: A) how far the various radical leftists were willing to go to create a straw man crisis for political benefit; and B) how diminished the executive office of the U.S. presidency actually became amid this level of ridiculous propaganda.
There’s no doubt the intended outcome was to create internal confusion amid the U.S. electorate, and seed a media narrative. There were/are millions of people who bought into these widely discussed fabrications.
Consider the example inside a Yahoo News article showcasing the report:
[…] The US intelligence community has concluded that a hack-and-release of Democratic Party and Clinton staff emails was designed to put Trump — a political neophyte who has praised Putin — into the Oval Office. (link)
There was no evidence the DNC was “hacked” (WikiLeaks claims the information was an inside job of “leaking”), Hillary Clinton blames the Macedonians, and even John Podesta admitted himself he was a victim of an ordinary “phishing” password change scam. Not exactly a “hack” per se’.
Does hacking exist, of course it does. Do hackers exist in every country connected by the internet, of course they do. Do state governments participate in hacking offense and defense, again – yes, of course they do. And yes, the FBI and U.S. intelligence community act purposefully against all participants they can catch.
But what does that intellectual truism have to do with the specific allegation that hostile Russian hackers attempted to gain entry into the DNC or John Podesta? These are two entirely different issues which the Obama administration (Brennan and Comey) attempted to conflate simply for political and ideological purposes.
Here is where we see the overall intended and conflated outcome. Consider the Yaho0 media paragraph above against the headline which accompanied the content:
There’s a reasonable case to be made that all of those previous political players have quite a bit to hide within the construct of the entire narrative. Some like James Comey, and possibly Susan Rice, appear to have violated laws on leaking information and unmasking U.S. citizens within intelligence reports.
Former CIA Director John Brennan has clearly established his own exit from the risk matrix. While former ODNI James Clapper is almost too inept to be held accountable for any of it.
It would be disingenuous in the extreme to ignore that NSA Director Mike Rogers was the least willing and least engaged intelligence leader within the scheme and simultaneously highly political ODNI James Clapper was calling for him to be fired.
Admiral Mike Rogers traveled to Trump Tower (after the election) on November 17th without notifying the White House or Clapper. The next day, November 18th, President-Elect Trump moved the entire Transition Team to his New Jersey country club. Mike Rogers remains the current head of the NSA.
Posted originally on CTH on August 13, 2025 | Sundance
I’m trying to present both sides of what I believe to be a political game being run by Pam Bondi and Kash Patel.
In this interview with Chris Cuomo, journalist Matt Taibbi says current FBI/DOJ officials are telling him they are trying to get big indictments against key Russiagate conspirators. It sounds like Taibbi and Solomon have the same “top level” sources within the DOJ and FBI. WATCH:
My suspicion, based on listening to Taibbi’s knowledge of Russiagate, is that he’s being intentionally misled (ie. played) by his sources. John Solomon is almost certainly a direct participant the FBI/DOJ narrative engineering for institutional self-interest; however, I do not think Taibbi is.
Mr. Matt Taibbi seems to be a true believer in what he is being told.
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This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
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