Tag Archives: #DrainTheSwamp

Aug 28 2022

Lots of FBI Officials Work at Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 27, 2022 | Sundance

The suspicions surrounding Jack’s Magic Coffee shop are not new.  {Go Deep} Indeed, the recent whistleblower claims of data insecurity seem to align with the overall theme that U.S. government interest are more than a little deeply involved in the domestic surveillance system known as Twitter specifically, and big social media in general.

In the latest datapoint assembly, a solid dive by MintPressNews into the number of former FBI officials working at Twitter, shows just how enmeshed the federal police are with the social media platform.  The scale is really quite remarkable. [SEE HERE]

Big picture – the number of FBI officials working for Twitter indicates some strong connective tissue behind both enterprises.

[MintPressNews] – […] The FBI is generally known as a domestic security and intelligence force. However, it has recently expanded its remit into cyberspace. “The FBI’s investigative authority is the broadest of all federal law enforcement agencies,” the “About” section of its website informs readers. “The FBI has divided its investigations into a number of programs, such as domestic and international terrorism, foreign counterintelligence [and] cyber crime,” it adds. (read more)

How would it damage the U.S. government if claims about the Chinese government having access to all user data on TikTok, are shown to be identical to the U.S. government having access to all user data on Twitter?

Let that question settle in for a few moments, because that is exactly what I have been alleging since, well, 2011, when the U.S. State Dept first collaborated with Twitter in a joint public-private partnership to use the platform as a communication tool exploiting the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt, Libya and beyond.

The issue of Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop is an issue of financial viability.  The business model of Twitter just doesn’t exist as a free social media discussion platform while running the ultra-expensive data processing system needed for millions of simultaneous users.  A global chat that requires exponential database responses as an outcome of simultaneous users is just ridiculously expensive. {Go Deep} However, if the computing system and massive database were being subsidized by the U.S. government, then the viability of the ‘free coffee‘ business model makes sense.

“Cloud computing is one of the core components of the strategy to help the IC discover, access and share critical information in an era of seemingly infinite data.” … “A test scenario described by GAO in its June 2013 bid protest opinion suggests the CIA sought to compare how the solutions presented by IBM and Amazon Web Services (AWS) could crunch massive data sets, commonly referred to as big data.” … “Solutions had to provide a “hosting environment for applications which process vast amounts of information in parallel on large clusters (thousands of nodes) of commodity hardware” using a platform called MapReduce. Through MapReduce, clusters were provisioned for computation and segmentation. Test runs assumed clusters were large enough to process 100 terabytes of raw input data. AWS’ solution received superior marks from CIA procurement officials”… (MORE)

The integration between Twitter and the United States Intelligence Community has been hiding in plain sight:

July 26, 2021, (Reuters) – A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias, the group told Reuters.

Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so has largely consisted of content from Islamist extremist organizations such as Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos – often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence – and other publications and links flagged by U.N. initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes, adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.

The firms, which include Twitter (TWTR.N) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube, share “hashes,” unique numerical representations of original pieces of content that have been removed from their services. Other platforms use these to identify the same content on their own sites in order to review or remove it. (more)

A shared hashing protocol is a form of data system integration.

The databases of the identified social media platforms appear to be integrated with the U.S. intelligence system.  This relationship makes the U.S government a stakeholder in the financial sustainability of the enterprise(s).  Thus, a collaborative effort to subsidize the underlying data processing fits the mutual benefit scenario.

Aug 28 2022

Nikki Haley Charter Club Donors Leaked, Wall Street Hedge Funds, Multinationals and Affluent Democrats are Top Donors


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 27, 2022 | Sundance

For a deep dive into the financial construct Nikki Haley put together {Go Here} reference the CTH archives from November 2019, when she registered the Stand For America SuperPAC.  For an overall summary of what she has been doing {GO HERE} and see the internal citations assembled a few weeks ago.  Haley’s superpac donor files have been leaked and the funding pattern is similar to Ron DeSantis, only Nikki Haley has more rich democrats.

There is little doubt the people around Nikki Haley have been positioning her for a 2024 presidential run for approximately three years.

Ms. Haley is following the traditional GOPe map that all republican candidates follow; including the assembly of donations to fund her political ambitions.

Ironically, in late 2019 CTH noted she was registering her financial mechanisms from New York.  Snarkily, we pointed out the location.

It is the New York location of her financial enterprise that has now become her problem.  Someone in New York government leaked the tax filings from her SuperPAC to Politico.  The irony here is a little funny.

The filing is for the year immediately following the creation of the PAC, 2019/2020, filed in 2021.  This list does not include recent donors. Ms Haley’s lawyers tried to block the release of her donor names by Politico.  It didn’t work.  Politico lawyers fired back that her donors are a matter of high public interest.  That’s how the information comes out.

Amid Haley’s charter financial backers are familiar billionaire political class names, including hedge fund managers Paul Singer and David McCormick. The major donors also include multinational billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller, along with Miriam Adelson and her late husband, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.

Donor club members also include Pete Ricketts and Scott Bessent, very rich multinational businessmen with a history of influencing republican politics.  Also, there are some very well-known democrats like Vivek and Lakshmi Garipalli, who are charter members of almost every major Democrat candidate – but also gave Haley $1 million.

(POLITICO) – Many of the GOP’s biggest donors are among those who funneled anonymous contributions to former U.N ambassador Nikki Haley’s nonprofit as she lays the groundwork for a prospective 2024 presidential bid, according to previously unreported tax documents obtained by POLITICO.

Haley’s nonprofit policy advocacy group, Stand For America, Inc., has received major donations from people including New York hedge fund manager Paul Singer, investor Stanley Druckenmiller, and Miriam Adelson and her late husband, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, the Internal Revenue Service filings reveal. (read more)

CTH has been warning about Nikki Haley ever since she asked Sarah Palin to help her win the South Carolina Governor’s race, and then stabbed Palin in the back with the most derisive negative commentary thereafter.  Nikki Haley would never have been governor without Sarah Palin; those who know politics know this is absolutely true…. And Nikki Haley is worse than monkeypox.

The Bush clan and professional political cocktail circuit was rebuked in 2016, so we can anticipate their strategy in 2024 will be with those strategic lessons at the forefront.

DeSantis = Closest to MAGA domestically, ergo most valuable to Wall Street for globalist economics.

Noem = MAGA-lite, with a twist of Koch.  Club influencer.  She’s in the race, guaranteed.

[ Watch out for the club to push a DeSantis/Noem ticket.]

Haley = Purebreed Decepticon.  UniParty Establishment favorite. Endorsements from Bush and Cheney likely.

Cruz = Controlled opposition. Useful to draft Haley or Noem into the club lane in exchange for DOJ AG position.

WHAT TO WATCH FIRST – Pay attention to the club meeting this winter (Dec ’22) and the decision on how to line up and modify the 2024 primary election dates by state.  AFTER the dates and sequence are established, then overlay the state delegate changes, if any, from “winner take all” or allocated “proportionally.”  These are club decisions with major ramifications.

The RNC club is a private organization.  They select the rules for the election.

They also knew about the DOJ plan to raid Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, months before the FBI showed up.

Aug 27 2022

Corruption Within the Federal Bureau of Investigation


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 26, 2022 | Sundance 

What Tucker Carlson outlined on his broadcast tonight is not a surprise to anyone here; however, it is good to see the direct accusations presented to millions of Americans.  The FBI is a corrupt politically motivated institution from top to bottom.  WATCH:

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The collapse of institutional credibility has nothing to do with deplorable Americans and everything to do with the FBI’s own conduct.  As noted recently by Senator Chuck Grassley:

“If these allegations are true and accurate, the Justice Department and FBI are – and have been – institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law. Attorney General Garland and Director Wray, simply put, based on the allegations that I’ve received from numerous whistleblowers, you have systemic and existential problems within your agencies.” (LINK)

BACKGROUND on FBI –  As we discovered in January of this year, the FBI was fully aware of the terrorist who was planning to shoot the synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, and yet they did nothing.

The FBI knowledge of the shooter, Malik Faisal Akram, who was known as Faisal Akram was confirmed by The Daily Mail. Akram ranted, prior to his travel to the U.S, that he wished he had died in the 9/11 terror attacks. He was a regular visitor to Pakistan, and reportedly a member of the Tablighi Jamaat group set up to ‘purify’ Islam. To say the U.S. intelligence system knew Faisal Akram would be an understatement.

The FBI was also fully aware of the Boston Marathon bombers, the Tsarnaev brothers, before they executed their plot.  The FBI took no action.

The FBI knew about the San Bernardino terrorists, specifically Tashfeen Malik, and were monitoring her phone calls and communications before her and Syed Farook executed their attack killing 14 people and leaving 22 others seriously injured.  The FBI took no action.

The FBI knew Colorado grocery store shooter Ahmad Alissa before he executed his attack.  The FBI took no action.

The FBI knew in advance of the Pulse Nightclub shooter (Omar Mateen) and were tipped off by the local sheriff. The FBI knew in advance of the San Bernardino Terrorists (Tashfeen Malik). The FBI knew in advance of the Boston Marathon Bombers (the Tsarnaev brothers) tipped off by Russians.  The FBI knew in advance of the Parkland High School shooter (Nikolas Cruz). The FBI knew in advance of the Fort Hood shooter (Nidal Hasan), and the FBI knew in advance of Colorado grocery store shooter Ahmad al-Aliwi Alissa.  The FBI took no action.

The case of the first recorded ISIS attack on U.S. soil was in Garland, Texas in 2015.

The FBI not only knew the shooters (Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi) in advance, BUT the FBI ALSO took the shooters to the venue and were standing only a few yards away when Simpson and Soofi opened fire.  Yes, you read that correctly – the FBI took the terrorists to the event and then watched it unfold.  “An FBI trainer suggested in an interview with “60 Minutes” that, had the attack been bigger, the agency’s numerous ties to the shooter would have led to a congressional investigation.”

Remember, shortly before the 2018 mid-term election, when Ceasar Syoc – a man living in his van – was caught sending “energetic material that can become combustible when subjected to heat or friction”, or what FBI Director Christopher Wray called “not hoax devices”?

Remember how sketchy everything about that was, including the child-like perpetrator telling a judge later that he was trying to walk back his guilty plea, because he was tricked into signing a confession for a crime he did not create.

Or more recently, the goofball plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer that involved 18 suspects, twelve of them actually working for the FBI as the plot was hatched?  And we cannot forget the January 6th. DC protest turned insurrection effort, which is clearly looking like an FBI inspired and coordinated effort; and unlike Syoc, despite the numerous CCTV cameras and resources in the area, they cannot find who placed the pipe-bombs?

Have we forgotten the Atlanta “Olympic Park Bombing”, and the FBI intentionally setting up transparently innocent, Richard Jewel?

Then, there’s the entirety of the FBI conduct in “Spygate”, the demonstrably evident FBI operation to conduct political surveillance against Donald Trump using their investigative authorities; and the downstream consequences of a massive institutional effort to cover up one of the biggest justice department scandals in the history of our nation.   The original effort against Donald Trump used massive resources from the DOJ and FBI.  Heck, the coverup operation using the Mueller/Weissmann special counsel used more than 50 investigative FBI agents alone.

And of course, the FBI still had 13 extra agents available to rush to a NASCAR racetrack to investigate a garage door pull-down rope that might have been perceived as a noose; but the serial rape of hundreds of teenage girls, eh, not-so-much effort – even when they are standing in front of the FBI begging for help.

[At this point, I am increasingly convinced by evidence there are elements within the FBI that are enablers involved in sex trafficking, human smuggling, abduction, counterfeiting and money laundering as part of their operational mission.]

The FBI didn’t make a mistake or drop the proverbial ball in the Olympic gymnast case, they intentionally and specifically maintained the sexual exploitation of teenage girls by doing absolutely nothing with the complaints they received.   This is not misconduct, this is purposeful.

Then, as if to apply salt to the open wound of severe FBI politicization…. what did the FBI do with the Hunter Biden laptop?

[Notice I’ve set the issue of the disappearing Huma Abedin/Anthony Weiner laptop –in the known custody of the FBI– over there in the corner, next to missing investigation of the Awan brothers.]

More recently the FBI executed a search warrant on the home and office of Project Veritas and the founder James O’Keefe.  While the raid was taking place a New York Times reporter called O’Keefe to ask him about his thoughts on getting raided. The same New York Times journalist, a few days later, then begins writing about the confidential, attorney-client privileged information illegally retrieved then leaked by the FBI during their raid.

♦My point is this…

What the Federal Security Service (FSB) is to the internal security of the Russian state; so too is the FBI in performing the same function for the U.S. federal government.

The FBI is a U.S. version of the Russian “State Police”; and the FBI is deployed -almost exclusively- to attack domestic enemies of those who control government, while they protect the interests of the U.S. Fourth Branch of Government.  That is the clear and accurate domestic prism to contextualize their perceived mission: “domestic violent extremists pose the greatest threat” to their objective.

Put another way, “We The People”, who fight against government abuse and usurpation, are the FBI’s actual and literal enemy.

Let me be very clear with another brutally obvious example.  Antifa could not exist as an organization, capable to organize and carry out violent attacks against their targets, without the full support of the FBI.   If the FBI wanted to arrest members of Antifa, who are actually conducting violence, they could do it easily – with little effort.

It is the absence of any action by the FBI toward Antifa, that tells us the FBI is enabling that violent extremist behavior to continue.  Once you accept that transparent point of truth, then, you realize the FBI definition of domestic violent extremism is something else entirely.

The FBI is not a law enforcement or investigative division of the U.S. Department of Justice.  The FBI is a political weapon of a larger institution that is now focused almost entirely toward supporting a radical Democrat and left-wing agenda to destroy civil society in the United States.

The current mission of the FBI is to facilitate, preserve and protect the administration of Joe Biden.  Anyone who continues to push the fraudulent “honorable FBI rank and file talking point”, is, at this point in history, willfully and purposefully operating to deceive the American people on behalf of government interests who are intent on destroying us.

It is not a difference of opinion any longer.  Personally, I have lost the ability to sit comfortably or intellectually with anyone who pushes or accepts the ‘mistakes are made‘ nonsense.  The FBI is not making mistakes, they are doing well what is important to them.

To me, it comes down to a simple matter of accepting what is continually staring us in the face.

As you read the media pearl-clutching toward anyone who questions the FBI, never lose sight of the fact that 40 FBI agents were involved in the Mueller-Weissmann probe to investigate the fraudulent construct of Hillary Clinton and crew.  40 agents.

The people within the FBI knew from the outset in early 2017 their investigation was based on nonsense.  The FBI interview with Chris Steele’s primary sub-source, Igor Danchenko, confirmed it was nonsense.

… Yet the FBI continued with a two-year long Mueller investigation; all of it to cover up their own misconduct and criminal wrongdoing in the original targeting of President Trump.

That coverup motive remains today within the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.

It is one long and corrupt continuum.

Every single action now is an attempt to cover up the evidence of their own wrongdoing.

Aug 27 2022

Institutional Corruption, The Direct Evidence Against the FBI that Congressional Oversight Willfully Ignored


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 26, 2022 | Sundance

Amid a series of documents released by the Senate Judiciary Committee in April of 2020 [SEE HERE] there is a rather alarming letter from the DOJ to the FISA Court, dated July of 2018, that highlights a direct and unequivocal institutional cover-up.   [Link to Letter]

Before getting to the substance of the letter, it’s important to put the 2020 release in context.  After the FISA Court reviewed the DOJ inspector general report on the Carter Page FISA application assembly (2019), the FISC ordered the DOJ-NSD to declassify and release documents related to the Carter Page FISA application.

In the cover letter for this specific release to the Senate Judiciary and Senate Intelligence committees, the DOJ, then being run by AG Bill Barr, cites the January 7, 2020, FISA court order:

Keep in mind that prior to this release only the FISA court had seen this letter from the DOJ-National Security Division (DOJ-NSD).  As we walk through the alarming content of the letter, I think you’ll identify the original motive behind the FISC order to release it.

First, the letter in question was sent by the DOJ-NSD to the FISA Court on July 12, 2018.  It is critical to keep the date of the letter in mind as we review the content.  The Weissmann/Mueller team was in full control of Main Justice.

Aside from the date the important part of the first page is the motive for sending it. The DOJ is telling the court in July 2018: based on what they know the FISA application still contains “sufficient predication for the Court to have found probable cause” to approve the application.   The DOJ is defending the Carter Page FISA application as still valid.

However, it is within the justification of the application that alarm bells are found. On page six the letter identifies the primary participants behind the FISA redactions:

As you can see: Christopher Steele is noted as “Source #1”.  Glenn Simpson of Fusion-GPS is noted as “identified U.S. person” or “business associate”; and Perkins Coie is the “U.S-based law firm.”

Now things get very interesting.

On page #8 when discussing Christopher Steele’s sub-source, the DOJ notes the FBI found him to be truthful and cooperative.

This is an incredibly misleading statement to the FISA court because what the letter doesn’t say is that 18-months earlier the sub-source, also known in the IG report as the “primary sub-source”, informed the FBI that the material attributed to him in the dossier was essentially junk.

Let’s look at how the IG report frames the primary sub-source, and specifically notice the FBI contact and questioning took place in January 2017 (we now know that date to be January 12, 2017):

Those interviews with Steele’s primary sub-source took place in January, March and May of 2017; and clearly the sub-source debunked the content of the dossier itself.

Those interviews were 18-months, 16-months and 14-months ahead of the July 2018 DOJ letter to the FISC.   The DOJ-NSD says the sub-source was “truthful and cooperative” but the DOJ doesn’t tell the court the content of the truthfulness and cooperation.  Why?

Keep in mind this letter to the court was written by AAG John Demers in July 2018.  Jeff Sessions was Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein was Deputy AG; Christopher Wray was FBI Director, David Bowditch is Deputy, and Dana Boente is FBI chief-legal-counsel.

Why would the DOJ-NSD not be forthcoming with the FISA court about the primary sub-source?  This level of disingenuous withholding of information speaks to an institutional motive.

By July 2018 the DOJ clearly knew the dossier was full of fabrications, yet they withheld that information from the court and said the predicate was still valid.  Why?

It doesn’t take a deep-weeds-walker to identify the DOJ motive.

In July 2018 Robert Mueller’s investigation was at its apex.

This letter justifying the application and claiming the current information would still be a valid predicate therein, speaks to the 2018 DOJ needing to retain the validity of the FISA warrant…. My research suspicion is that the DOJ needed to protect evidence Mueller had already extracted from the fraudulent FISA authority.  That’s the motive.

In July 2018 if the DOJ-NSD had admitted the FISA application and all renewals were fatally flawed Robert Mueller would have needed to withdraw any evidence gathered as a result of its exploitation.  The DOJ in 2018 was protecting Mueller’s poisoned fruit.

If the DOJ had been honest with the court, there’s a strong possibility some, perhaps much, of Mueller evidence gathering would have been invalidated… and cases were pending.  The solution: mislead the court and claim the predication was still valid.

This is not simply a hunch, because that motive also speaks to why the FISC would order the current DOJ to release the letter.

Remember, in December 2019 the FISC received the IG Horowitz report; and they would have immediately noted the disparity between what IG Horowitz outlined about the FBI investigating Steele’s sub-source, as contrast against what the DOJ told them in July 2018.

The DOJ letter is a transparent misrepresentation when compared to the information in the Horowitz report. Hence, the court orders the DOJ to release the July letter so that everyone, including congressional oversight and the public can see the misrepresentation.

The court was misled; now everyone can see it.

The content of that DOJ-NSD letter, and the subsequent disparity, points to an institutional cover-up; and as a consequence the FISC also ordered the DOJ to begin an immediate sequestration effort to find all the evidence from the fraudulent FISA application.  The proverbial fruit from the poisonous tree.

Moving on…

Two more big misstatements within the July letter appear on page #9.  The first is the DOJ claiming that only after the application was filed did they become aware of Christopher Steele working for Fusion-GPS and knowing his intent was to create opposition research for the Hillary Clinton campaign.  See the top of the page.

According to the DOJ-NSD claim the number four ranking official in the DOJ, Bruce Ohr, never told them he was acting as a conduit for Christopher Steele to the FBI.   While that claim is hard to believe, in essence what the DOJ-NSD is saying in that paragraph is that the FBI hoodwinked the DOJ-NSD by not telling them where the information for the FISA application was coming from.  The DOJ, via John Demers, is blaming the FBI.

The second statement, equally as incredulous, is at the bottom of page nine where the DOJ claims they had no idea Bruce Ohr was talking to the FBI throughout the entire time any of the FISA applications were being submitted.  October 2016 through June 2017.

In essence the claim there is that Bruce Ohr was working with the FBI and never told anyone in the DOJ throughout 2016 and all the way past June 29th of 2017.  That denial seems rather unlikely; however, once again the DOJ-NSD is putting the FBI in the crosshairs and claiming they knew nothing about the information pipeline.

Bruce Ohr, whose wife was working for Fusion-GPS and assisting Christopher Steele with information, was interviewed by the FBI over a dozen times as he communicated with Steele and fed his information to the FBI.  Yet the DOJ claims they knew nothing about it.

Again, just keep in mind this claim by the DOJ-NSD is being made in July 2018, six months after Bruce Ohr was demoted twice (December 2017 and January 2018).  If what the DOJ is saying is true, well, the FBI was completely off-the-rails and rogue.

Neither option speaks well about the integrity of either institution; and quite frankly I don’t buy the DOJ-NSD spin.  Why?  The reason is simple, the DOJ is claiming in the letter the predication was still valid… if the DOJ-NSD genuinely didn’t know about the FBI manipulation, they would be informing the court in 2018 the DOJ no longer supported the FISA application due to new information.  They did not do that.  Instead, in July 2018, they specifically told the court the predicate was valid, yet the DOJ-NSD knew it was not.

The last point about the July 2018 letter is perhaps the most jarring.  Again, keep in mind when it was written Chris Wray is FBI Director, David Bowditch is Deputy and Dana Boente is FBI chief legal counsel.

Their own FBI reports, by three different INSD and IG investigations; had turned up seriously alarming evidence going back to the early 2017 time-frame; the results of which ultimately led to the DC FBI office losing all of their top officials; and knowing the letter itself was full of misleading and false information about FBI knowledge in/around Christopher Steele; this particular sentence is alarming:

“The FBI has reviewed this letter and confirmed its factual accuracy?”

Really?

As we have just shared, the July 2018 letter itself is filled with factual inaccuracies, misstatements and intentional omissions.  So who exactly did the “reviewing”?

This declassification release raises more questions than any other in recent memory.  Not a single person in legislative oversight ever asked these direct questions to FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Here’s the Full Letter.  I strongly suggest everyone read the 14-pages slowly.  If you know the background, this letter is infuriating.

This is the institutional corruption the DOJ and FBI are trying to keep from the public.  This is the type of evidence they are seeking to remove from the custody of Donald Trump.

Aug 27 2022

How Convenient, Biden State Dept Says They Will No Longer Publish List of U.S. Weapons Given or Sold to Foreign Countries


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 26, 2022 | Sundance 

Buried inside Section 5114(b)(4) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 was a repeal of 1994 law that required the U.S. State Department to publish an annual list of arms sales to foreign countries.  The “World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers” report (WMEAT) put sunlight every year on what weapons the U.S. was selling to foreign countries.

Conveniently timed with the $60+ billion aid package to Ukraine, the U.S. State Dept, now says the WMEAT report will not be published any longer.  If a person was to believe the Ukraine arms deals were essentially money laundering operations, well, this announcement by the State Dept. might be interpreted as a way to hide it. [LINK]

State Dept – WMEAT 2021, which the Department of State published in December 2021, is the final edition of World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers (WMEAT). Section 5114(b)(4) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 repealed the 1994 statutory provision that required the Department of State to publish an edition of WMEAT every year. Consistent with this repeal, the Department of State will cease to produce and publish WMEAT.

Copies of all editions of WMEAT dating from 1974 to 2021 remain publicly accessible as Adobe PDF or Excel spreadsheet documents  (LINK)

Aug 27 2022

Three Minutes of Pure Sunlight, The Truth and The Constitution are President Trump’s Weapons


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 26, 2022 | Sundance

Attorney and former Constitutional Law Clerk for Justice Gorsuch, Mike Davis, highlights the reason why the U.S. Dept of Justice and FBI will never allow their fabricated political case against President Trump to ever reach a courtroom.  This is a must watch

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Davis nails everything in that first three minutes, including the background motives of the DOJ, FBI and even congressional oversight authorities like the Senate Select Subcommittee on Intelligence, to desperately fear the evidence held by President Trump in Mar-a-Lago.   All of the events are a massive cover-up effort to retrieve evidence of their own wrongdoing.

CTH knows part of what is in those boxes being discussed because CTH assembled a 4-year, 600-page, brief pointing directly to the location of the agency silos that contained the documents. Essentially a roadmap and specific index showing where the documents are, what they are titled, who is the agency holding them and how it is all connected.

Copies of that brief were distributed to ensure a very visible record was always known.  The truth has no agenda.  Yes, you followed that effort, and I can tell from the activity of the stakeholders discussed, that evidence is a part of the trail Main Justice is trying to quash…. but it’s too late.

[ Declassification Memorandum ]

Aug 27 2022

A Review of the Big Picture and Stakeholder Interests Within FBI Affidavit Justifying Raid on Trump


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 26, 2022 | Sundance

The specific level of GOPe misinformation; a constructed narrative currently advocated by Karl Rove; surrounding the release of the FBI affidavit justifying the raid on President Trump’s home, is very telling.

I’ll have more on that later; suffice to say, it’s clear now the republican wing of the DC UniParty knew the plan all along, and yes, the downstream consequences align with the instructions to the created Trump alternative, Ron DeSantis.  This is all organized.

Review Techno Fog article for the legal perspective on the affidavit [SEE HERE].  From my perspective it becomes important to talk about the bigger picture of what lies behind this entire operation.

First, as to the documents themselves, the general public is clueless about how classified documents exist.  Some even believe classified documents are never copied, which is stunningly false.  All source material is held at the originating agency in its original form.  All versions of documents that are provided to stakeholders in government, including the President are copies.

A well-known example of multiple copies of classified documents -as assembled- is the Daily Presidential Brief.  The president is never given the originating source classified document of anything.   The president, like all other users of classified material, would receive a copy for review. Declassification is done by declassifying the copy and then the declassification directive travels back to the originating agency for them to change the classification status of the original.

We know now, with direct information from both media and the shape of the DOJ/FBI statements, that the documents held by President Trump in his Mar-a-Lago home are documents showing malfeasance and targeting by the DOJ and FBI surrounding the false accusations of a Trump-Russia collusion case.

[Jan 19, 2021 – Presidential Memorandum Declassifying Trump-Russia Documents] In essence, the documents are the evidence behind the Trump targeting operation, and the collusion network between Main Justice and U.S. media.  This should not be a surprise.

As a result, the DOJ/FBI main justice operation from Washington DC was centered around retrieving the evidence of their own corrupt -and generally illegal- activity against Trump.

This motive explains the need for main justice to use the presidential records act, coordinated in concert with the national archives, to justify the document retrieval mission.  Main Justice is trying to throw a bag over the trail of documentary evidence of their own misconduct.  That is the underlying nature of this effort.

President Trump, his advisors and his lawyers, have stated unequivocally that during his administration President Trump declassified the documents in question.  [SEE HERE] He declassified them from the copy he was provided to review.

However, as noted in the January 20, 2021, memo above from the office of the president, the agencies, specifically the DOJ and FBI, held a motive to not follow through on the declassification order itself.

This conflict between President Trump declassifying the evidence of DOJ and FBI misconduct, and the DOJ and FBI refusing to declassify the evidence – for obvious reasons, is the originating source of the issue.   Inasmuch as the DOJ may attempt to stop Trump by using lawfare against him, ultimately in a court of law this conflict should come out.

In the biggest of big pictures, President Trump has no legal exposure.  However, the FBI and DOJ need to leverage the appearance of illegal conduct in order to continue their ongoing targeting operation, which, as you can clearly see, has a very specific agenda behind it.  Charging Donald Trump with any form of criminal conduct will ultimately fail.

The sunlight upon the background of the conflict is averse to the interests of the officials making the criminal accusations.  The truth has no agenda and the best defense President Trump carries is just that, the truth.

It is important to remember, the presidential records act –the presented pretext for the document conflict– is not a criminal statute.  An FBI raid cannot be predicated on a document conflict between the National Archives and a former president.

The FBI affidavit, which leads to the search warrant and the subsequent raid on Mar-a-Lago, could -by its very nature- only be justified if it related to records the U.S. government deems “classified” and material vital to national security interests.  Hence, DOJ National Security Division involvement, and all of the documents and affidavit are framed around this pretext.

Main Justice could not conduct the operation to retrieve the evidence of their corruption, if they did not shape the operation as an investigation giving the impression that national security was compromised.  The baseline is the ruse.  The predicate behind the retrieval operation is false.

♦ So, what are the DOJ and FBI so desperate to retrieve?

In broad terms there are two sets of documents that intermingle and are directly related. First, documents that highlight the activity of Hillary Clinton’s team in creating the false Trump-Russia conspiracy theory (2015/2016).  Second, documents that highlight the activity of government officials targeting Donald Trump within the same timeframe (Crossfire Hurricane), that continued into 2017, 2018 and 2019 (Robert Mueller).

Think of the two sets of documents as evidence against two teams working in synergy.  Team one (Clinton) was outside government. Team two (DOJ/FBI) was inside government.  The documents pertain to both groups but are also divided.  That helps to explain the wording of the memo above.

The documentary evidence against the outside group (Clinton et al) would also involve government documented evidence as the DOJ/FBI inside group interacted with them.  Notes from interviews, materials provided, FBI 302 summaries of interviews, etc.

We can extract a lot of information on the first sets of evidence from the lawsuit filed by President Trump in March of this year, mostly against the outside actors. [LINK HERE]

The lawsuit was filed against specific persons and most of those persons were interviewed by the FBI as part of the originating investigation.  Within the subjects of the lawsuit we find names and groups including:

Hillary Clinton, Hillary for America Campaign Committee, DNC, DNC Services Corp, Perkins Coie, Michael Sussmann, Marc Elias, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Charles Dolan, Jake Sullivan, John Podesta, Robby Mook, Phillipe Reines as well as Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, Peter Fritsch, Nellie Ohr, Bruce Ohr, Orbis Business Intelligence, Christopher Steele, Igor Danchenko, Neustar Inc., Rodney Joffe, James Comey Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith and Andrew McCabe.

In addition to being named in the lawsuit, many of those names were interviewed by the FBI as part of the origination of the Trump-Russia investigation, and/or part of the ongoing investigation of the Trump-Russia fabrication. Each of those interviews would carry an FD-302 report summarizing the content of the interview, the questions and answers given.

The totality of those 302 documents is a lot of evidence likely consisting of hundreds of pages.

For the government officials on the inside, in addition to 302’s (ex Bruce Ohr) there would be documents of communication between them.

Think about the full unredacted text messages between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok as an example.  The DOJ publicly released over 600 pages of those text messages, and that wasn’t all of them.  The text messages were also redacted, under claims of privacy and national security.  We can assume any version of these text messages declassified by President Trump would not be redacted.  Hence, you go back to the January 20th memo and see the notes about “privacy.”

We also know there are many pages of communication between DOJ lawyer Lisa Page and her boss in the FBI Andrew McCabe.  Almost none of them were ever made public; but they exist.  This internal communication is likely the type of material contained in both the “binder,” left for the DOJ to release, and the boxes at Mar-a-Lago to be used as evidence against the named defendants in the lawsuit.

Bruce Ohr has 302’s and emails relating to his involvement as a conduit between Fusion GPS and the FBI.  Some of those were released in redacted form, and some of them were never released.  Additionally, Nellie Ohr, Bruce’s wife, who worked at Fusion GPS invoked spousal privilege when called to testify before the House committee investigating the issues.  However, it is almost certain the FBI interviewed her so there are likely 302’s on Nellie Ohr.

Chris Steele, Igor Danchenko and Rodney Joffe were also interviewed by the FBI.  Those 302’s were never released.  Presumably John Durham has stakeholder equity in that part of the Trump-Russia hoax, but the documentary evidence prior to January 20, 2021, that exists outside the special counsel could also be records at Mar-a-Lago.

Then we get to the big stuff…. The records and evidence in unredacted and declassified state, that would drive the DOJ-NSD to claim vital national security interests.

The NSA compliance officer notified NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers of unauthorized use of the NSA database by FBI contractors searching U.S. citizens during the 2015/2016 presidential primary.  That 2016 notification is a classified record.

The response from Mike Rogers, and the subsequent documentary evidence of what names were being searched is again a classified record.  The audit logs showing who was doing the searches (which contractors, which agencies and from what offices), as noted by Director Rogers, was preserved.  That is another big-time classified record.

In addition, we would have Admiral Rogers writing a mandatory oversight notification to the FISA court detailing what happened.  That’s a big and comprehensive classified record, likely contained in the documents in Mar-a-Lago… and then the goldmine, the fully unredacted 99-page FISA court opinion detailing the substance of the NSA compromise by FBI officials and contractors, including the names, frequency and dates of the illegal surveillance.  That is a major classified document the Deepest Deep State would want to keep hidden.

These are the types of documents within what former ODNI John Ratcliffe called “thousands of pages that were declassified by President Trump,” and given to both John Durham and Main Justice with an expectation of public release when the Durham special counsel probe concluded.

In short, President Trump declassified documents that show how the institutions within the U.S. government targeted him.  However, the institutions that illegally targeted President Trump are the same institutions who control the specific evidence of their unlawful targeting.

These examples of evidence held by President Donald Trump reveals the background of how the DC surveillance state exists.  THAT was/is the national security threat behind the DOJ-NSD search warrant and affidavit.

The risk to the fabric of the U.S. government is why we see lawyers and pundits so confused as they try to figure out the disproportionate response from the DOJ and FBI, toward “simple records”, held by President Trump in Mar-a-Lago.   Very few people can comprehend what has been done since January 2009, and the current state of corruption as it now exists amid all of the agencies and institutions of government.

Barack Obama spent 8 years building out and refining the political surveillance state.  The operators of the institutions have spent the last six years hiding the construct.

President Donald Trump declassified the material then took evidence to Mar-a-Lago.  The people currently in charge of managing the corrupt system, like Merrick Garland, Lisa Monaco, Chris Wray and the Senate allies, are going bananas.  From their DC perspective, Donald Trump is an existential threat.

Given the nature of their opposition, and the underlying motives for their conduct, there is almost nothing they will not do to protect themselves.  However, if you peel away all the layers of lies, manipulations and corruption, what you find at the heart of their conduct is fear.

What do they fear most?…

…..THIS!

People forget, and that’s ok, but prior to the 2015 MAGA movement driven by President Donald J Trump, political rallies filled with tens-of-thousands of people were extremely rare; almost nonexistent.  However, in the era of Donald J Trump the scale of the people paying attention has grown exponentially.  Every speech, every event, every rally is now filled with thousands and thousands of people.

The frequency of it has made us numb to realizing just how extraordinary this is.  But the people in Washington DC are well aware, and that makes President Trump even more dangerous.  Combine that level of support with what they attempted in order to destroy him, and, well, now you start to put context on their effort.

The existence of Trump is a threat, but the existence of a Trump that could expose their corruption…. well, that makes him a level of threat that leads to a raid on his home in Mar-a-Lago.

[Support CTH Here]

Aug 27 2022

Court Releases Heavily Redacted 38-Page FBI Affidavit Used to Justify Raid on President Trump Home


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 26, 2022 | Sundance

U.S. Magistrate Bruce Reinhart accepted the proposal from the U.S. Dept of Justice (DOJ) to release, in heavily redacted form, the underlying affidavit used to justify the search warrant issued by Reinhart to raid President Trump’s home in Florida. The DOJ tailored the redactions and Reinhart accepted the modifications without issue. The affidavit has now been released to the public.   [SEE HERE for Pdf Form]  – Mar-a-Lago Raid Affidavit

We are reviewing the just-released documents and will be providing more analysis shortly.

Aug 27 2022

DeSantis Beats Trump on Fundraising – However, Donor Financials Highlight Corporate Version vs Grassroots Version of The Republican Party


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on August 25, 2022 | Sundance 

A solid dive by Law.Com and Daily Business Review into the background of who is financing Donald Trump versus who is financing Ron DeSantis should help to clarify the nature of the difference between them.

President Trump is funded primarily from massive amounts of small contributions from small donors, the MAGA base.

Governor Ron DeSantis is funded primarily by a small group of exclusive Wall Street corporations, billionaires and hedge fund managers, and almost no small donors.

Essentially, if you are thinking about MAGA populism -vs- corporate republicanism; well, there’s the issue in easiest to understand data form.

Additionally, the new managers of DeSantis have recently noticed the vulnerability and hired firms to try and stimulate small donor amounts in an effort to avoid the jaw dropping difference in average donation.  A strategy deployed by Jeb Bush in 2015.    Pay attention to the names giving large donations to DeSantis and you will see: (a) where the economic policy distinction comes from; and (b) where the RDS branding and consulting image is coming from.

Business Daily Review – Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has raised more money than Donald Trump since the former president left office, relying on deep-pocketed donors rather than the small-dollar contributors he’ll need if he seeks the White House in 2024.

DeSantis … has amassed $142 million from the start of 2021 through Aug. 5 this year from donors such as the hedge fund billionaires Ken Griffin and Paul Tudor Jones.  That tops the $136 million Trump collected over a slightly shorter period.

Unlike Trump, who relies largely on a network of small-dollar donors to fund his postpresidential political operations, DeSantis has raised the bulk of his money from a small number of wealthy donors writing him giant checks. That gives him plenty of money for his reelection effort in Florida, where laws allow unlimited contributions.

But it also raises doubts about the level of grassroots support for DeSantis and suggests he’ll have to widen his fundraising base for any presidential bid because federal rules limit direct contributions to candidates to just $2,900 per donor.

About 500 donors have given $50,000 or more to Friends of Ron DeSantis, his political action committee which under Florida law can accept donations in unlimited amounts, accounting for $88 million of his fundraising haul. His big donors come from finance and real estate, health care and construction and a wide range of other businesses, a Bloomberg analysis of Florida campaign finance filings shows.

By contrast, donors who made contributions of less than $200 accounted for $8 million, or just 6%, of his haul. Unlike Trump, who’s raised $74 million or 54% of his total from January 2021 through June 30 from small-dollar donors, DeSantis doesn’t send multiple, daily fundraising pitches to supporters. Recently his campaign went a month without sending a text message to potential donors who signed up to receive them.

His top 500 donors include 10 billionaires, including Citadel’s Griffin, who moved his hedge fund’s headquarters to Miami from Chicago 14 months after giving $5 million. Other contributors include Tudor Jones, the chief executive officer of Tudor Investment Corp., Home Depot Inc. co-founder Bernard Marcus and Thomas Peterffy, the chairman of Interactive Brokers Inc. (read more)

Ron DeSantis has done a great job in Florida, mostly on social impact issues.  However, on a national policy level, specifically on a presidential level for 2024, the donor influence becomes troubling.

Issues around school choice, school boards, woke policy and social issues in general are easier to handle for voters at a local level.  City, county and state representatives, and the elections they come from, are the people and places where voters can make a substantive difference in their own outcome.

As a parent or individual you have the ability to fight back against social and ideological issues at a city, county and state level.   However, when it comes to issues of national economics, international trade policy and national energy policy, those battles happen at the federal level.  That’s where the President of the United States has a major influence.

As examples, the price of gasoline and energy are influenced by the president through regulatory policy.  Similarly, international trade agreements, economic policy and monetary policy, have consequences for domestic investment, economic growth, jobs, employment, wage growth and expanded domestic wealth.

Simply put, the president has a strong impact on the nation, and the people within it, from an economic perspective.

All modern republicans are incapable of executing a policy that is pro-U.S. worker, because every modern republican is a beneficiary of Wall Street, hedge funds and multinational corporate contributions; exactly like those outlined for Ron DeSantis.  As a consequence, economic policy adverse to the interests of Wall Street, Banks, hedge funds and multinational corporations do not come from modern republican politicians.

This dynamic reflects the distinction that made Donald Trump unique.

Unlike traditional republicans, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders both agreed on the problem.  Where they disagreed was the solution.

Donald Trump used domestic economic policy tools like trade tariffs and countervailing duties to change the corporate behavior of the multinationals.  Bernie Sander’s approach is to regulate the corporations and force a behavior change.

Put another way, Bernie wants to change the economic referees, while Trump’s approach is to change the economic rules of the game and let the teams play it.

You might remember a large percentage of Bernie Sanders voters joined team Trump in 2016.  That’s because both teams agreed on the problem within our national economic situation.   The result was MAGA, a massive coalition of working-class voters, based on economics, that cuts through every social distinction of race, color, sex, orientation, etc.  The issue that binds the MAGA voters together is economic policy.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a good governor for Florida, and he should be reelected easily.  However, do not fool yourself into believing the massive coalition of MAGA voters would ever transfer to a corporate republican.  It will not. EVER.

When people ask me who should come in after Trump, my answer is simple….  Show me the economic nationalist.

If there isn’t another one,… well, what does that tell you about the Republican party?

Last point.  Florida republicans have a major blind spot they keep ignoring and DeSantis is very lucky Charlie Crist doesn’t have the resources to exploit it.

Housing costs, rents and homeowners’ insurance in Florida have skyrocketed.  In some places home insurance has tripled just this year; yes, tripled.  Energy costs also increased massively in Florida, in many areas electricity rates have doubled.  Water utility costs in Florida have consistently been the highest in the nation due to the nature of the infrastructure and rapid expansion of the population.  Additionally, property tax costs -even with homestead protections- are a serious issue for lots of voters.

Put those economic issues, all being ignored by the governor’s office – as he campaigns around the country to raise his national profile, on top of high gasoline and food prices and DeSantis is very vulnerable on the way Floridians feel about their economic security.

Focusing on wokeism and social issues is an option when economic issues are not in crisis.  However, focusing on social issues while ignoring the economic pain and crisis, and you find yourself looking detached. aloof and vulnerable to political attack….. Then again, a typical republican.

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The Managing of DeSantis HERE

The Branding of DeSantis HERE

The Selling of DeSantis HERE

Aug 26 2022

US Embezzles an Additional $3 Billion to Ukraine


Armstrong Economics Blog/Corruption Re-Posted Aug 26, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

America has pledged to embezzle (donate) another $3 BILLION into Ukraine. The Associated Press claims that this money will be used for equipment and training Ukrainian troops. Additional NATO countries are also offering additional funds, such as Germany who pledged an additional $500 million to the proxy war. Yet, America is donating more money than any other NATO country to a non-NATO country. How does this benefit American taxpayers? Answer – it does not. It steals resources from our nation as the average American grapples with record-high inflation amid a recession that is expected to worsen into next year.

This is taxation without representation. Joe Biden is not reaching into his personal wallet to funnel money into Ukraine. The defense contractors, US and Ukrainian governments are finding a way to line their pockets with these large “donations.” America has already sent 19 packages of weapons from the Defense Department’s arsenal to Ukraine. So far, the US has sent $10.6 billion to Ukraine to fund what many are calling the new “forever war.”

The last US census stated there were 123.6 million households in the US. At $13.6 billion total, this means that every household in the nation could have donated $110 directly to Ukraine. Zelensky is basking in the funding and fame. He has indicated that he intends to provoke Russia and worsen relations. He originally wanted to protect the Donbas region, but now he also wants Crimea to be fully within Ukraine. There is no winning this war as it has become too profitable for the people behind the curtain.