Posted originally on CTH on February 13, 2026 | Sundance
Former White House legal counsel/fixer to Barack Obama, and former personal lawyer/fixer of Susan Rice, Kathryn Ruemmler was Chief Legal Counsel for Goldman Sachs for the past six years.
Throughout those jobs and networked professional relationships, Kathryn Ruemmler was also a personal friend and advisor to Jeffrey Epstein.
Yesterday it was reported that Kathryn Ruemmler has resigned from Goldman Sachs.
NEW YORK – Goldman Sachs’s top lawyer, Kathryn Ruemmler, resigned on Thursday in the wake of the Justice Department’s release of emails and other material that revealed her extensive relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier.
Ms. Ruemmler and representatives for Goldman said for years that she had a strictly professional relationship with Mr. Epstein, a convicted sex offender. But emails, text messages and photographs released late last month upended that narrative, leading to Ms. Ruemmler’s sudden resignation, which surprised many inside the firm.
Before joining Goldman in 2020, Ms. Ruemmler was a counselor, confidante and friend to Mr. Epstein, the documents showed. She advised him on how to respond to tough questions about his sex crimes, discussed her dating life, advised him on how to avoid unflattering media scrutiny and addressed him as “sweetie” and “Uncle Jeffrey.”
Mr. Epstein, in turn, provided career advice on her move to Goldman, introduced her to well-known businesspeople and showered her with gifts of spa treatments, high-end travel and Hermes luxury items. In total, Ms. Ruemmler was mentioned in more than 10,000 of the documents released by the Justice Department.
Ms. Ruemmler, in addition to being Goldman’s general counsel since 2021, was a partner and vice chair of its reputational risk committee. She earlier served as White House counsel under President Obama and was a white-collar defense lawyer at Latham & Watkins. (read more)
Newly released email exchanges add fresh details to the relationship between Kathy Ruemmler and Jeffrey Epstein. Ruemmler is a former Obama White House counsel and now one of the highest-paid lawyers in the country as the chief legal officer at Goldman Sachs. CNN's Andrew… pic.twitter.com/niXjxlDWvd
Posted originally on CTH on February 12, 2026 | Sundance
The Obama-Biden administration couldn’t get the votes needed in Congress to amend the Clean Air Act and regulate “greenhouse gases.” So, they both decided to ignore the law and create trillions in regulatory costs on the American people.
As noted by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, “The Trump Admin is proudly following the law, saving $1.3 TRILLION for the American people, lowering new car costs by over $2,400 per vehicle, and getting rid of the climate participation trophy for manufacturers to install Obama Switches that shut vehicles off at red lights and stop signs.” WATCH:
Posted originally on CTH on February 12, 2026 | Sundance
Asst Attorney General Gail Slater was the head of the Antitrust Division of the Dept of Justice. Today she announces she has “left her role.” CNN is reporting that AAG Slater was fired.
Gail Slater was in charge of the antitrust division and a hawk on the mergers and acquisitions of Big Tech and Big Corporate media. As head of the DOJ Antitrust Division, Slater’s view on competition was against the interests of the major Big Tech billionaires and corporate media conglomerates who intersect with them.
Slater was in a position to influence the Warner Brothers-Discovery’s deal to sell the Warner Bros. studio and HBO to Netflix, which Paramount (David Ellison) is trying to stop.
If you have followed the influence of Larry Ellison (Oracle, TikTok) and his son David Ellison (Paramount, CBS) in/around the Trump administration as it relates to Elon Musk (a beneficiary of Ellison), then the timing of Gail Slater’s removal doesn’t look good at all.
Gail Slater came into the administration as a part of the JD Vance network (Peter Thiel, Palantir, etc.), and it looks like that same Vance network stood aside and watched Larry Ellison leverage his position to see her removed.
Slater was a solid MAGA voice in a critical Antitrust position against the interests of Big Tech and Big Corp. However, I said on Christmas Day 2024 – we were likely to be very disappointed by the influence of Big Tech/Big Corp in the White House {SEE HERE}.
Via CNN[…] Slater said in her Thursday post on X: “It is with great sadness and abiding hope that I leave my role as AAG for Antitrust today. It was indeed the honor of a lifetime to serve in this role.”
The anti-trust division is expected to play a critical role in assessing Netflix’s Warner Brothers Discovery’s deal to sell the Warner Bros. studio and HBO to Netflix, which Paramount is trying to stop by appealing straight to shareholders with its own bid. (CNN is owned by Warner Brothers Discovery.)
In an NBC interview last week, Trump said, “I’ve decided I shouldn’t be involved. The Justice Department will handle it.” But Paramount CEO David Ellison returned to the White House last week to meet privately with Trump, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. (read more)
There may be something else in the background that we do not understand. However, when former lobbyists and political consultants become key administration officials (Wiles, Bondi) these types of outcomes are possible.
Posted originally on CTH on February 10, 2026 | Sundance
Representative Ilhan Omar is one of the most sanctimonious corrupt Democrats in congress, and she’s loud and proud about it because she understands how to engage in financial fraud safely. Just do what everyone else is doing but do it bigger, that way there’s no way her peers can approach it.
Someone in DC gave House Oversight Chairman James Comer the familiar tap on the shoulder and told him they don’t investigate their own Uniparty tribe. So, Comer drops his planned review of Omar’s corruption and shifts it to the ethics team.
BREAKING: James Comer says the House Ethics Committee will take over the investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar after a massive spike in her net worth was flagged in financial disclosures:
“We’ve been informed in the last few hours that the Ethics Committee is probably going to have… pic.twitter.com/YIO1DkOr91
A game of pretending is needed in order to retain the illusion of the Potemkin Village of DC. A construct manufactured by the power structure that exists behind the puppet show, with the full intention to distract us. Pretending is what gives rise to a Florida governor on a 2022 ‘book tour’ run for a 2024 campaign that everyone denied was going to happen. Pretending is also what kicks the can of accountability away until it can be buried.
Pretending is needed in order to convince the audience Republicans will make a difference, or the black eye doesn’t hurt and look he bought me flowers. Perhaps some reminders and clarifications of the real game inside DC politics are needed. After all, while all these chaff and countermeasures are replaying their familiar tunes, CTH is actually trying to accomplish something by destroying some IC silos.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, hereafter called the House Oversight Committee or HOC, has a very specific function in DC circles that too few understand. Once again, let us be clear while trying to explain decades of false information founded upon arcane legislative outlooks.
Understanding the DC game of Chaff and Countermeasures…. A “Countermeasure” is a measure or action taken to counter or offset a preceding one.
Politically speaking, the deployment of countermeasures is a well-used tactic by professional politicians in Washington DC to counter incoming public inquiry and protect themselves from anger expressed by the electorate. The Republican leadership are very skilled in the management of “chaff” (outrage), and “countermeasures” (the distraction).
Within Washington DC, the HOC has a very specific and unique function. What Fox News is to corporate conservative punditry, so too is the HOC to the same DC system of pretending. The House Oversight Committee is the “Chaff and Countermeasures” committee.
The HOC operates for both parties with the same mission.
The House Oversight Committee was/is created by the House legislative leadership to make money for the party in control of the Chair. When the House Speaker is notified of a DC corruption issue, inside his/her office they will often be heard saying, “give it to oversight.” The intent of that instruction is to give the issue to the HOC, so they can hold hearings, create soundbites and fundraise from the issue.
Making money for the party in control of the Chair is the primary function of the House Oversight Committee. The HOC does not exist to create accountability or oversight; the HOC exists to exploit the issue for fundraising and satiate the base voters of the party in control of the Chair.
The HOC presents the illusion of accountability by constructing soundbites and member performances which are then broadcast on television for appearances to the voting audience. It is essentially theater.
The HOC is a “general oversight’ committee, not a committee of “specific jurisdiction.” Thus, the HOC is the vehicle where Democrats and Republicans publicly display their political initiatives, frame their narratives and then broadcast them on MSNBC, CNN (Democrats) or FOX NEWS (Republicans).
Depending on the issues at hand, the HOC committee members are generally those performance actors best known to the audience of both parties. This is not accidental; this is by design. Again, for emphasis, I am only talking about the HOC, a “generalized oversight” committee. Only this specific committee has this specific mission.
A hot button topic enters the committee ecosphere. Specifically trained staffers and performance artists, uniquely qualified to put on theatrical productions (both parties), are then deployed to assist the representatives in creating the soundbites that hopefully will go viral and assist them with fundraising and opportunities to say, “here’s what we are doing.” Outlining this construct is not an exhibition in cynicism; this is the reality of what the HOC is designed and created to do.
When you see the HOC performing at their best, you will see lots of soundbites created.
The Chair of the HOC is always part of the House Speaker’s close inner circle. From that association you will discover by training, by habit, and by consequence, the HOC framework is developed to sustain the process itself as an end result. The questioning is the sum total of all accountabilities. The performance is the interview; the conversation is the point; the smoke is the fire.
Oversight, in the HOC framework of narrative creation, has evolved into reveling in the endless process (a fundraising proposition) and, as a consequence, it completely ignores the end point, misses the bottom line, doesn’t actually SEE the subject matter, and never actually applies accountability toward what might be discovered. This is why you end up with high blood pressure, frustrated with the questions not asked, and throwing bricks at the screen or monitors when viewing.
The point of HOC hearings is to create what are now described as “viral moments” that can be used to generate money.
The second, and lesser objective, is to give the illusion of accountability while not actually ever holding anyone or anything accountable. See prior HOC reference points like Fast and Furious, IRS targeting, Benghazi, the Twitter File review or the Joe/Hunter Biden crime syndicate investigation.
If you watch the HOC through the prism of expecting some form of accountability for the violations of law, you will be frustrated and disappointed. However, if you watch the HOC through the prism of how well the members will do at raising money from their performances, then you can evaluate the effectiveness – the proverbial winning and losing.
The HOC is designed by House leadership to perform the same basic function for both Democrats and Republicans. The HOC committee assignments are selected based on the theatrical skills of each representative. This is not to say the motives of the members are sullied or impure, it is simply to point out the motive of the committee itself is to generate fundraising from the skillsets of the members on the committee.
Once you fully grasp what the intent of the House Oversight Committee is about, and once you drop the expectation that any accountability in oversight is the intent, then you can watch the performances through the entertainment prism of partisan politics and genuinely enjoy them – or hate them.
The HOC is called the “Chaff and Countermeasures” Committee, because that’s essentially what the committee does. It gives the appearance of targeting, steering the target to a controlled destination, and then distracting the audience from the outcome of accountability.
If sunlight is achieved, meaning the Mainstream Media cannot ignore the issue as presented and questioned, and if the general public become more familiar with the controversial subject matter or topic at hand, and if the party of the Chair can fundraise from the issue, then the committee has succeeded. However, if you are looking for something to change as an outcome of any HOC investigation or hearing, you will be perpetually disappointed.
There seems to be a willful blindness on the part of the American people, a chosen refusal to acknowledge the implications of the unAmerican and unConstititional behaviors, actions and outcomes we are being served on a daily basis. It can no longer be presumed to be a matter of “I can’t see what’s happening”, because a whole lot of normal Americans really are clean and articulate.
“I can’t see it” just doesn’t cut it.
NONSENSE! Most people can see it. Most are just choosing to reconcile the irreconcilable because it is more comforting to ignore the truth of it. Just be honest, for many people avoidance has become a survival mechanism.
It’s more along the lines of “I see what’s happening, but it’s scary and complicated and confusing, and if I admit that I see it, I will become responsible in a way that I am not if I keep pretending I can’t see it or hear it or maybe I don’t understand it.”
Cue the audio visual. Do you remember the Awan Brothers scandal?
The political system in Washington DC has become so massive it is now capable of protecting itself. Any attempt to reduce the influence, scope or size of the system is considered a risk. The system is, in essence, protecting itself. Deep State is self-aware. NOTE 07:43 (just hit play)
Whether it’s John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy or Mike Johnson, leadership’s Lucy has unlimited footballs.
Whether it’s the Awan Brothers, the Huma Abedin laptop, the Clinton’s private servers, the Hunter Biden laptop, the Mark Warner/James Wolfe leak of classified information, the activity of CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella in the impeachment, the many aspects to Mary McCord, or the leaking of the Dobbs decision by Sheldon Snook, all of these things are very public, very visible and very well known. Yet did you see a single satellite truck in front of their house or a microphone in their face asking questions?
Nope. DC runs this game of pretending and all the media play the game.
The fourth estate (media) has long ago collapsed.
Now, the choices are ours.
Personally, I will not pretend, and I know most of you also refuse.
If we keep assembling enough people to stop pretending, then what happens?
Posted originally on CTH on February 9, 2026 | Sundance
The General Counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has written a letter to whistleblower attorney Andrew Bakaj, outline the absurdity of the complaint. Additionally, as noted by the ODNI counsel, “The whistleblower’s rights do not extend to the attorney himself.”
This should put to reset this insufferable IC/Lawfare targeting operation intended to generate an impeachment effort against DNI Tulsi Gabbard.
Factually, Andrew Bakaj has never seen the underlying intelligence report his client generated, nor the TSSCI material intercepted by them. Everything Bakaj has been leaking to the media is a construct of fabrications, falsehoods, smears and lies.
Both the NSA whistleblower and his attorney Andrew Bakaj were counting on the classified intelligence angle to this effort creating the illusion of something that is non-existent, a fabricated narrative that could gain traction. This is the same thing Bakaj did with former CIA whistleblower Eric Ciaramella in order to generate the first Trump impeachment effort. This time, against DNI Tulsi Gabbard, they are failing.
Allison Gill is an ally of the Lawfare network and recently sat down for an interview with NSA whistleblower attorney Andrew Bakaj; the same attorney used by former CIA whistleblower Eric Ciaramella.
This interview appears to be taking place after Bakaj revised his statements to The Guardian forcing them to rewrite the central claim of the leak he provided. The Guardian rewrote their article removing the key claim within the intelligence intercept that a foreign intelligence person was in contact with a person close to President Donald Trump.
The revision now states:
[…] “The Guardian reported earlier on Saturday that the phone conversation was between a person associated with foreign intelligence and a person close to Trump, based on Bakaj’s recollection of the complaint, which he confirmed over multiple calls. However, after publication, Bakaj said he misspoke.
He clarified his understanding of the complaint in a statement: “The NSA picked up a phone call between two members of foreign intelligence involving someone close to the Trump White House,” he said. “The NSA does not monitor individuals without a reason.” {citation}
This is not a small “revision,” it is essentially a rewrite of the central component to the whistleblower complaint. As it is now clarified two foreign people were intercepted talking about a person who knows Donald Trump. This could be any two foreign people gossiping or talking about anyone who is in the orbit of Donald Trump. That explains why intelligence analysts reviewed the NSA intercept, disregarded it and said it is hearsay likely just ‘gossip” according to New York Times reporting.
However, that said, Andrew Bakaj then appears on a podcast with Allison Gill during their effort to put traction to the claims, and Bakaj repeats the false statement. See video at 7:45:
…”So, in the spring of last year there was intelligence that was gathered by an agency that captured, um, activity that was being conducted by someone close to the President.”…
This is the same lie the whistleblower’s attorney Andrew Bakaj told The Guardian; that someone close to the president was a participant in the “activity.” This is demonstrably false through all other reporting.
The complaint alleges two foreign individuals were intercepted talking to each other about a person who Bakaj defines as close to the president, on the subject of Iran.
It could simply be two Germans or Israelis talking about Iran and wondering what Devin Nunes thinks about it.
The entire predicate claim is silly. Foreign officials and foreign intelligence officials talk to each other all the time about Trump and or his people.
This complaint is a fabrication, and the fact that the NSA Whistleblower included the TSSCI material in the complaint, literally outlining who was intercepted talking, is the reason why the complaint could not be shared or circulated without careful guidance by the DNI.
The whistleblower did this on purpose. If the whistleblower wanted to share his complaint with more people, he could have just avoided including the TSSCI aspect.
This is intelligence community Lawfare in action.
Dear Chairman @SenTomCotton , please call @AndrewBakaj to appear before the Gang of Eight, preferably with his client, play this video, ask him if what he says at the prompt is true? When he says, "no" refer him to the DOJ for prosecution and dismiss the complaint. 👇
In what has become an annual tradition, here’s the full Superbowl Day interview with NBC News’ Tom Llamas and President Donald Trump.
President Trump addresses the ongoing immigration enforcement, the state of the American economy, U.S. tensions with Iran and other topics from the oval office in the White House. The interview was conducted on Wednesday, February 4 and broadcast today. The interview is an hour long. ENJOY:
Posted originally on CTH on February 8, 2026 | Sundance
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Vice-Chairman, Mark Warner, a man of exceptionally dubious intelligence, appears on Face the Nation for a pre-scripted interview with CBS’s Margaret Brennan. The video and transcript are below.
From his position on the SSCI, Senator Warner was one of the key players in the deployment of the Intelligence Community against President Trump’s first term in office, including his background conversations with Chris Steele and his leaking of the Carter Page FISA warrant to promote the Trump-Russia conspiracy claim and stimulate the appointment of a DOJ special counsel.
Within President Trump’s second term in office, Warner’s primary concern is having a Director of National Intelligence (DNI) who doesn’t conform to the goals and objectives of the Fourth Branch of government, the intelligence apparatus. In reality, DNI Tulsi Gabbard appears to be methodically taking apart the intelligence community weaponization system. This, when combined with Gabbard’s review of election integrity issues, has triggered the deep concern of Warner, one of the IC’s primary enablers. WATCH:
[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: Good morning and welcome to ‘Face the Nation.’ We begin this morning with the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Virginia’s Mark Warner. Good to have you here.
SEN. MARK WARNER: Thank you, Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to talk about elections and security. Back on January 28, the FBI went to Fulton County, Georgia and seized ballots and 2020 voting records linked to the presidential election. The Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, then was spotted outside the elections office, and she argued that her presence there had been personally requested by the president of the United States, and she had broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate and analyze intelligence related to election security. What would justify her involvement? Is there any foreign nexus that you have been informed of?
SEN. WARNER: We have not been informed of any foreign nexus. The job of the director of national intelligence is to be outward facing about foreigners, not about Americans, and remember, many of the reforms that were put in place actually took place after the Watergate scandal under President Nixon, where a president was directly involved in certain domestic criminal activities and appeared with the Watergate break-in. And my fear in this case is it almost seems Nixonian. If the president asked Gabbard to show up down in Georgia on a domestic political investigation- first of all, how would he know about the search warrant even being issued? That’s not his job. And then to have the irector of national intelligence down there, which is totally against her rules, unless there is a foreign nexus, and she has not indicated any foreign nexus to us to date.
MARGARET BRENNAN: There’s been no communication with the committee whatsoever on this issue?
SEN. WARNER: We have asked. We then subsequently found that this was not the first time she was involved in domestic activities. She went down and seized some voting machines in Puerto Rico earlier in the year. Again, we had no knowledge of that. And then the question of what she was doing in Georgia. There’s been three or four different stories since it broke. First, she said the president asked, then the president said he didn’t ask her. Then he said it was Pam Bondi, the attorney general. So we don’t have the slightest idea other than the fact that the whole thing stinks to high heaven, and the fact is, Donald Trump cannot get over the fact that he lost Georgia in 2020 that he lost the election in 2020. My fear is now he sees the political winds turning against him, and he’s going to try to interfere in the 2026 election, something a year ago I didn’t think would be possible.
MARGARET BRENNAN: That’s a tremendous statement. But just to clarify here, it was Reuters that first reported that Gabbard went to Puerto Rico back in the spring to seize voting machines. Was Congress informed at all? Did you learn about it in the press?
SEN. WARNER: I believe the first we ever heard about this was from the press itself.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Wow. So the- you’ve laid out that the intelligence agencies usually focus overseas, but the White House is arguing that the director was there for good reason, and that federal law, they argue, assigns a DNI statutory responsibility to lead counter intelligence matters related to election security, election voting system risk, software, voter registration databases. You’re concerned, but are your fellow Republicans on the committee concerned?
SEN. WARNER: Here’s the ironic thing, Margaret, many of the protections for our election system were put in place during the first Trump administration. We set up CISA, the cybersecurity agency, to help work with state and local elections. There was an FBI center set up for foreign malign influence, foreign influence. And then we put into law something called the Foreign Malign Influence Center at the Director of National Intelligence office. All of those entities have been basically disbanded. CISA cut by a third. The FBI center cut back. The ODNI center cut back, which we think is, frankly, counter to the law. But it all- in terms the ODNI has to be involved, of foreign involvement, there has been no evidence of that to date.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Where is Chair Cotton on this, though?
SEN. WARNER: We have jointly been making sure that we get updates on election security, and I think we see more of that to come, because this is critical. And my concern is that when we see artificial intelligence tools and others- it was almost child’s play. What happened in 2016 China, Russia, Iran others could be interfering. We’ve not seen evidence to date. Gabbard, if she’s got any evidence, should have provided it to the Congress. I think this was an effort where Donald Trump can’t get over the fact that he lost Georgia so obsessed. And it begs the question is, what was Gabbard doing there? And it frankly, begs the question is- question is, why was the president even aware of this investigation before the search warrant was issued?
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, we would, we would love to put those questions to the director, and have asked to do so. But now that you are here, can you just button this up for me? Because we’re talking about 2020, and that’s what Fulton County. The focus was about but you also said, you think in 2026 there’s an effort to interfere. What evidence do you have of that?
SEN. WARNER: This was what I’m seeing from the president’s own comments about nationalizing elections and putting Republicans in charge, counter to the constitution. We’ve seen these activities in Georgia, where could there be some effort that suddenly gives him an excuse to try to take some of these federalization efforts we’ve seen ICE. We focused a lot of this activity on ICE in terms of they’re going rogue in Minneapolis. But there is a very real threat, without reforms at ICE, that you could have ICE patrols around polling stations, and people would say, “well, why would that matter?” If they’re all American citizens–
MARGARET BRENNAN: –Noncitizens cannot vote.
SEN. WARNER: –Because we’ve seen ice discriminate against Latinos families. We’ve seen as well mixed families where someone may be legal and others not. And candidly, you don’t need to do a lot to discourage people from voting, and we’ve more recently seen ICE starting to use technology where they can get information about Americans. Recently, there was an individual in Minnesota that got denied a global entry card to get through TSA quicker because he or she appeared at a protest rally. Do we really want ICE having that information?–
MARGARET BRENNAN: Is that what DHS said?
SEN. WARNER: Hypothetically- that was what happened in Minnesota. Hypothetically, if ICE is getting information, and you’ve got an unpaid parking ticket, would you go vote if you’ve got an unpaid parking ticket, thinking that an ICE patrol might be at a polling station, this is uncharted territory, and yet you’ve got the president’s own words, in many ways, raising concerns, because he says, well, gosh, we Republicans ought to take over elections in 15 states.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re going to talk about some of that and the operations at the local level with David Becker, our elections expert ahead in the show, and the immigration reform. But I want to ask you about what’s going on with Director Gabbard, because there was a whistleblower who filed a complaint against her personally and offered to come to Congress to share the information. According to the attorney for this whistleblower, this is about a complaint that two inspectors general, one of them Biden-era, concluded had a non-credible nature. You’ve viewed a redacted version of the complaint as I understand it. Do you accept their conclusions?
SEN. WARNER: Well, first of all, the previous Inspector General, who’d been a long term professional, viewed it as credible. The new–
MARGARET BRENNAN: — Which of the two complaints?
SEN. WARNER: The original- I can’t talk about the contents of the complaint. I’m old fashioned. It’s classified, and the complaint is so redacted, it’s hard to get to the bottom up, I got additional questions. My concern- what the director did, is that this information was not relayed to Congress. There is a process, and we didn’t even- we, and I mean, we the Gang of Eight, didn’t even hear about the complaint until November. We only saw it in February, and we’ve got this complete contradiction where the then lawyer for Director Gabbard said she shared the responsibility she had to share this with Congress in June, the legal responsibility. She later stated that she was not aware of her responsibility. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse if you’re the Director of National Intelligence.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, as I understand it, because when it’s deemed non-credible, it is not necessarily an urgent concern that would —
SEN. WARNER : — There was a ruling of urgency by the first inspector general. That was contradicted by the Trump Inspector General, but the process was still ongoing. The fact that this sat out there for 6,7,8 months now, and we are only seeing it now, raises huge concerns in and of itself.
MARGARET BRENNAN
Well, I know you said you will not share what the intercept and the intelligence was about, or the complaint itself, but CBS has been told by a senior intelligence official the whistleblower complaint included reference to an intelligence intercept between two foreign nationals in which they mentioned someone close to President Donald Trump. US intelligence did not verify whether the conversation itself was more than just gossip. Will you be able to speak to the whistleblower? Will you be able to see this underlying intelligence?
SEN. WARNER: My understanding is the whistleblower has been waiting for guidance, legal guidance, on how to approach the committee.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Does the whistleblower still work for the US government?
SEN. WARNER: I don’t have any idea.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Will you be able to view the intelligence, the intercept itself that she’s accused of not sharing?
SEN. WARNER: My question is- we are trying to get both the redactions and the underlying intelligence, and that’s- that is in process. I’m not going to talk to the content itself, but this whole question, remember, this whistleblower came forward in May. It’s now February of the following year, and we’re still asking questions.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Tom Cotton, the chair, says he’s- he’s comfortable with- with the process to date, but on the–
SEN. WARNER: — I’m- I’m not comfortable with the process, the timing, and I can’t make a judgment about the credibility or the veracity, because it’s been so heavily redacted.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, the director is frustrated with you personally and issued this really long blistering statement saying you’ve repeatedly lied to the American people, that the media also lies, and that that she never had the whistleblower complaint in her possession and saw it for the first time two weeks ago. I guess, the actual hard copy. So, do you care to respond to this accusation that you were lying?
SEN. WARNER: I would respond that I do not believe that Director Gabbard is competent for her position. I don’t believe that she is making America safer by not following the rules and procedures on getting whistleblower complaints to the Congress in a timely fashion. I believe she has been totally inappropriate showing up on a domestic criminal investigation in Georgia around voting machines. I think she has not been appropriate or competent in terms of, frankly, cutting back on investigations into foreign malign influence, literally dismembering the foreign line influence center that’s at the Director of National Intelligence, and we are going to agree to disagree about who’s telling the truth, and I believe her own general counsel, who’s now her deputy general counsel, testified this week that he shared with Director Gabbard, in June her legal obligations.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, the NSA has released a statement saying that they are abiding by the law. We do invite Director Gabbard on this program. Before I let you go, I have to ask you about Iran. There have been a number of think tanks who have published photos of what they believe is evidence of Iran reconstituting and rebuilding its nuclear program that the US bombed eight months ago. Are they rebuilding?
SEN. WARNER: When we struck Iranians nuclear capabilities, our military did a great job. It was not totally obliterated. So, that standard that the President himself set and Iran has been indicated in public documents, is trying to reconstitute. What I fear is that we don’t have the ability to bring the full power of pressure against Iran. A few weeks back, when the Iranian people bravely were in the streets, and there might have been a moment, we couldn’t strike, because the aircraft carrier that was usually in the Mediterranean was off the coast of Venezuela, doing the blockade there. On top of that- on top of that as well, we were unable to bring the full force of pressure of our allies in Europe against Iran, because at that very same moment, President Trump was disrupting NATO with his Greenland play. We are stronger when we use our allies, when we have our full military capabilities in region, and that military is getting stretched, as good as we are, as the President gets engaged in activities all over the world.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You support the diplomacy underway now?
SEN. WARNER: I support the diplomacy. Absolutely.
MARGARET BRENNAN: All right. Senator. Mark Warner, thank you for your time today, Face the Nation will be back in one minute. Stay with us.
I said a few days ago, “with DNI Tulsi Gabbard putting strategic pressure from the inside, and We The People putting accountability pressure from the outside, this Deep State intelligence nut just might begin to crack. In fact, I might even argue that cracking is exactly what we are starting to see.”
Today, we see evidence of just that; perhaps even the first signs that John Ratcliffe is on board. Perhaps.
The context here is important. Within the larger administrative state network: CNN is the preferred PR firm of the State Dept.; the CIA use The Washington Post; the FBI use Politico and the New York Times; the DOJ use the New York Times and Wall Street Journal; while the control lawfare embeds within the domestic IC spread their narrative distribution to the NYT, WSJ and Politico depending on the context.
When we see the Washington Post contracting, shrinking or otherwise limited in their activity, we can be confident the feeder system from the CIA is subsequently diminishing. If the CIA was operating at full narrative weapon capacity, the Washington Post newsroom would be bustling. The opposite is also true, although we have not seen much of that until recently. So, that’s the context:
WASHINGTON – Washington Post CEO Will Lewis stepped down from his position on Saturday — throwing the prestigious Jeff Bezos-owned newspaper into further turmoil just days after the publication laid off some 300 staffers. The Washington Post announced that Lewis would be resigning effective immediately.February 8, 2026 | Sundance
He was succeeded by Jeff D’Onofrio, the former Tumblr CEO who joined the newspaper this past June as its chief financial officer. D’Onofrio will assume the role of acting publisher and CEO.
Lewis framed his departure as the culmination of a difficult but necessary transformation, saying “now is the right time for me to step aside” after two years leading The Washington Post. (more)
If we see CNN get sold to David Ellison and Paramount, that will indicate the Marco Rubio operation at the State Dept. has similarly been successful. Though I wouldn’t look too optimistically toward the NYT, Politico or WSJ because the DOJ and FBI leadership are still struggling to get their arms around it.
The diminishment of the Washington Post is a very good sign and should not be downplayed. However, a follow up note of caution always exists because the worst elements of the control state have signaled a shift, moving public opinion operations toward social media platforms and outlets.
The power of the Silicon Valley technocrats has already started enmeshing with the alure of political sway. As traditional media has lost all credibility, control operations need to adapt, modify and shift toward venues where stakeholder equity finds the greatest value. Larry Ellison has prepositioned his assets to be a strategic player in this regard.
Thus, we must not diminish our smile at noticing the cracks in the Intelligence Community, which are also represented in the apoplexy toward Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. So, we should call this Washington Post diminishment another good crack in the nut.
You know the IC narrative is falling apart quickly when even the New York Times paints the background as gossip.
Within the New York Times reporting we discover more of the underlying context for the NSA intercept.
According to the Times, the NSA intercept was of “two foreign nationals” discussing an American person with some relationship to President Trump. The underlying concern was about the conversation they intercepted.
Just pulling out the pertinent:
“a whistle-blower report about an intelligence intercept of a call between two foreign nationals discussing a person close to President Trump” … “It is not clear what country the two foreign nationals were from, but the discussion involved Iran.” … “The identity of the person close to Mr. Trump could not be immediately determined.”
[…] “One official said there was no other intelligence that led officials to think the two officials had been speaking truthfully. Some intelligence analysts concluded the two foreign nationals were either gossiping or deliberately spreading misinformation. As a result of those doubts, Ms. Gabbard moved to restrict the report’s visibility. She also provided the information to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, according to people briefed on the events.
The acting intelligence community’s inspector general [a Biden appointee] cleared Ms. Gabbard of wrongdoing after she responded to questions about her actions.” {source}
Summary: The NSA intercepted two foreign nationals talking about Iran and gossiping about someone close to Trump. The NSA snooper documented the conversation. Intel analysts concluded the two foreign nationals were just gossiping. DNI Gabbard did not put credibility on the issue, but to be safe informed Susie Wiles of the intercept. That’s it.
The NSA snooper then got big mad about the intelligence analysis of the conversation labeling it as gossip and took out their frustration by blaming Tulsi Gabbard for dismissing it.
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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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