Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics Re-Posted Mar 27, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

Biden is not competent to be President — plain and simple. During his first press conference, he had cheatsheets and only took questions from journalists who already agreed to never expose the truth. He had photos of all those in the room and the ones who were marked (see New York Post).

He is desperately trying to appear to be competent. No president has ever looked this incompetent and it is the real reason he is not visiting the borders. It is highly debatable if he will ever meet face to face with the heads of state unless they come to the United States.

Here is a photo of his answers. All he is doing is reading the cue cards, and EVERYTHING is scripted. For all those people who hated Trump, I knew what they were doing. Ever since Bush, Jr., the bureaucracy has gained the power to run the country. Those in charge are never elected, and most of the time, we will never even hear their names. I have stated many times that this was never an election of Trump v Biden. This was a coup that was set in motion to take over the United States to impose their will by any means possible. Just as Cheney ran the government as defacto president under Bush, and you don’t see him running around giving speeches, they are loving this power under Biden.

Trump was a hands-on president because he thought he would actually run the country like a corporation. He was naive. The loyalty is never to a president; it is to the swamp. That is why Trump had to go. They did not want any outsider playing in their sandbox. Who is really running the country is debatable. Under Bush, Jr., it was Cheney. This time, it’s not even Harris. We are dealing with the dark forces behind the curtain. After these pictures, you can bet nobody will ever be allowed to take photos from these angles ever again.

Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 27, 2021 | Sundance | 109 Comments

As one of the few people who have engaged in conversation with the lead investigative unit around John Durham I have held a rather unique outlook on this question since August of 2020.

See if you can find him below:

Having met with many of the top-level key DC players (including Durham inc) in the “Spygate” investigation/review or (__fill in_ the blank_with whatever name you need), here’s the ugly truth.  The staff of the legislative bodies have/had no intent to actually facilitate any sunlight upon the FISA, DOJ-FBI corruption that took place over three years.

How do I know that?

Well, first having sat in a room with the legislative staff, top people who actually write the briefs and inform both congressional representatives on House Committees and Senate Committees, including the chiefs-of-staff for the chairs, it was clear they did not even know the information from within their own research when spread over time.  Accepting this reality leads one to a natural conclusion… they don’t know, because they choose not to know… & they choose not to know, because everything is a pantomime for public display.

The system of DC is based on a series of unwritten rules… “You don’t out me, and I will not out you… and that will protect us both.”   These rules cross over both parties to the extent they usually have a common enemy, us.  The staff of Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, Homeland Security Chair Ron Johnson and even the staff of House Oversight Ranking Member Jim Jordan are purposefully and willfully blind.

They choose not to know things; or at least they claim not to know and do an exceptional job of purposeful pretend.

The investigative information that makes up the news cycles amid the investigative right-side of the spectrum is generally compartmented or silo’d.  Within DC all branches and people within them keep information isolated from each-other in order to create and retain plausible deniability.  This permits their leadership to talk a good game on television while nothing is actually accomplished.

It is all part of the game.

They shuffle the shells but there is no pea.

Everybody pretends not to know things…  Think about the purpose of Robert Mueller!

Do you really believe there is not a single entity in Washington DC who did not know the purpose of Robert Mueller was to maintain the attack posture against President Trump and simultaneously cover for the previous surveillance and targeting operations?

Nonsense.   Everybody in Washington DC knew what Mueller-Weissmann were all about, including congress (both houses), the entire intelligence apparatus and every entity in/around politics.   That includes Bill Barr, Rod Rosenstein and  John Durham.

When CTH pointed out this institutional process of nothingness the ‘trusty planners’ did not like the discomfort associated with the reality… I get it… no-one wants to be that cynical, and, quite frankly, at a point in mid/late-2018 the ‘trusty plan’ had evolved into a business model.  However, what we saw with the Boasberg sentence of Kevin Clinesmith (probation only) was directly an outcome of this previously mentioned DC institutional preservation process.

Notice how no-one in the executive branch DOJ, FBI, ODNI, ever criticized Robert Mueller, yet we know to a demonstrable certainty the Mueller special counsel was likely more corrupt than the originating DOJ/FBI corruption the special counsel was protecting. The origin of ‘Spygate’ was bad, but the totality of the cover-up effort in the Mueller-Weissmann special counsel was exponentially worse.  More actual laws and policies within the justice department were broken by Robert Mueller than any preceding corrupt official.

Let me wrap up several points above with one factual example.  The example will highlight: (1) the legislative branch being purposely blind to evidence; (2) the corruption of the special counsel – pay attention to dates; (3) the corruption of the FISA court – contrast against Judge Boasberg today; and (4) the corruption of the executive branch though DOJ, FBI during the entirety of the Trump administration.

♦ Amid a series of documents released by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020 [SEE HERE] there was a rather alarming letter from the DOJ to the FISA Court in July 2018 that pointed out the DC agenda, the “institutional cover-up.” [Link to Letter]

Before getting to the substance of the letter, it’s important to put the release in context. After the FISA Court reviewed the DOJ inspector general report (Dec 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 cited 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 this letter I think you’ll identify the 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.

Aside from the date the important part of the first page is the motive for sending it. The DOJ is telling the FISA 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.

In essence, in July 2018 the DOJ (now with Mueller in place) 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.

Two more big misstatements within the July 2018 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 (Weissmann) is putting the FBI in the crosshairs and claiming they, the special counsel, 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 was true (it wasn’t), well, the FBI was completely off-the-rails and rogue.

CTH did not buy the DOJ-NSD spin.

Why?

The reason is simple, the DOJ was claiming in the July 2018 letter the predication was still valid… if the DOJ-NSD (Mueller team) 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 raised more questions than any other; and yet no-one, not a single investigative body, asked questions about it…

Why?…

Because the letter itself was prima-facie evidence of lies directly from the special counsel of Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann.  No-one in the executive branch, legislative branch or even judicial branch wanted to highlight the corruption of the special counsel.

Here’s the Full Letter. I strongly suggest everyone read the 14-pages slowly. If you know the background, this letter is infuriating…  AND keep in mind, every single staff member in the House and Senate (those investigating the issue) said they never saw it.

That’s how badly broken the system of justice, and the system of checks-and-balances in Washington DC, really is.  What we are seeing now in the blatant targeting, silencing, and outright in-your-face behavior is a downstream result of the system knowing everyone is too far gone…. they have nothing to fear now.

Chris Wray is still FBI Director, Merrick Garland is now Attorney General; Lisa Monaco is Deputy AG and… wait for it…. John Carlin is back inside the DOJ as the lead asst to Monaco in Main Justice.  Carlin previously lied to the FISA court, and the court is well aware that John Carlin lied to them; unquestionably knowledgeable, yet the Biden administration is confident in their fearlessness such that they would reinstall him.

‘nuf said.

Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 26, 2021 | Sundance | 93 Comments

President Trump called-in to Laura Ingraham to express his overall view of the Joe Biden press fiasco that took place on Thursday afternoon.   The president reacted to Bidens’ attempt to take credit for the COVID vaccine rollout as well as the Biden-created crisis at the southern U.S. border.

The Biden border crisis is a result of a leftist administration undoing the agreements made between President Trump and Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel Lopez-Obrador (aka AMLO).   President Trump remarked on the acuity of the current White House occupant and drew a contrast between the way the media gives softball questions to their ideological compatriot.   As President Trump notes: “everyone can see it.”

Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 26, 2021 | Sundance | 71 Comments

Many people are unaware the essential framework for the 2020 election fraud took place in only seven counties which were each heavily controlled by Democrat operatives.  Clark County (NV), Pittsburgh and Philadelphia (PA), Wayne County (MI), Maricopa County (AZ), Madison (WI) and Fulton County, Georgia.   These populous counties were all that was needed in states were the election was tightly manipulated by political operatives.

In Georgia’s Fulton County the chain of custody documents from “Drop Box” locations still have not been produced despite the Governor signing new legislation to combat voter fraud.   In total there are over 404,000 ballots that were counted in the election without chain-of-custody certifications.  The margin in GA was only 12,000 votes.

GEORGIA – Four months after the November 3, 2020 presidential election, state and county officials in Georgia have failed to produce chain of custody documents for an estimated 404,691 vote by mail absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes and subsequently delivered to county registrars for counting.

As of March 3, only 56 of Georgia’s 159 counties have provided ballot transfer form data to The Georgia Star News. The number of absentee by mail ballots delivered to registrars in those 56 counties total only 195,309, or 32.5 percent, of the estimated 600,000 absentee vote by mail ballots deposited in drop boxes and delivered to county registrars and counted in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.

In other words, there is no chain of custody for 67.5 percent – an estimated 404,691 – of the estimated 600,000 absentee vote by mail ballots deposited in drop boxes and delivered to county registrars and counted in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.

The 2020 presidential election outcome in Georgia was decided by fewer than 12,000 votes – about three percent of the 404,000 absentee vote by mail ballots deposited in drop boxes and delivered to county registrars where they were counted.

Georgia county officials have made little progress in the two months since The Star News reported on January 3 that 28 counties had provided ballot transform forms documenting 140,628 vote by mail ballots deposited in drop boxes. (read more)

Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 26, 2021 | Sundance | 139 Comments

This is a specific example that needs to be drilled down quickly so that people with only a cursory interest in politics can understand how it impacts them.  Biden’s $1400 stimulus checks are useless, literally wiped-out, when compared with the increase in gasoline prices already in place as part of the Biden energy policy.

Gas prices have already jumped $1/gal in most areas as a result of Biden killing the oil production energy sector.  Factor in the increased transportation costs for goods and services, including the costs associated with deliveries of home meals, Uber rides, products delivered, airline charges; and the gas price increase hits the family checkbook far beyond the $1400 provided for stimulus.

Add to that charge and the increases in electricity prices, together with the increase in product costs that are based on petroleum (rubber, plastics, containers etc), and you can see how the increased cost of Biden’s ridiculous energy policy hits families even harder.  But wait…. it gets worse…. If that were already not enough of a problem, Biden is now proposing a mileage tax on top of a gasoline tax increase that will hit the middle class much harder. [SEE Video at 01:30]

The middle-class commutes to work much more than all other sectors.  Any increase in gas prices, gasoline taxes or mileage taxes hits the blue-collar worker at a disproportionate rate.  A proposal to install a mileage tax does nothing but add another cost onto the American middle-class.

This is an issue of leftist policy, as the far-left now move to push their climate change agenda and simultaneously push federal infrastructure spending.  Of course, in order to keep advancing their severe leftist agenda, the democrats have to pretend not to know things.

(Via The Hill) […] Biden said during his first solo press conference on Thursday that he will announce the $3 trillion proposal on Friday in Pittsburgh.

The next day, his Transportation head said a mileage tax could be one way to help pay for the plan.

“I think that shows a lot of promise,” Buttigieg said. “If we believe in that so-called user-pays principle, the idea that part of how we pay for roads is you pay based on how much you drive.”

“The gas tax used to be the obvious way to do it; it’s not anymore,” he continued. “So, a so-called vehicle miles traveled tax or a mileage tax, whatever you want to call it, could be the way to do it.”  (read more)

Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 26, 2021 | Sundance | 405 Comments

[Bumped by Request /SD]

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is now getting ready to hire public companies, individual contractors outside government, to scour public data and social media in order to provide information for the new “domestic terror watch lists.”  From the description it appears DHS is going to pay “big tech” (Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, etc.), via contracts, to hire and organize internal monitoring teams to assist the government by sending information on citizens they deem “dangerous.”

Gee, what could possibly go wrong with this?…

NBC is reporting on these new developments as the U.S. intelligence apparatus is preparing to go live with the assembly of lists of Americans who “could be” potential threats to the government; and need to be watched.

However, even NBC is beginning to realize the consequences: “DHS planning to expand relationships with companies that scour public data for intelligence and to better harness the vast trove of data it already collects on Americans. The department is also contemplating changes to its terrorist watch listing process.”

Here’s the article:

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security, created after the 9/11 attacks to protect the country from international terrorism, is moving toward a sweeping set of policy changes aimed at detecting and stopping what intelligence officials say is now a top threat to the homeland: domestic violent extremism.

Two senior Biden administration officials told NBC News that DHS, whose intelligence division did not publish a warning of potential violence before the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, is seeking to improve its ability to collect and analyze data about domestic terrorism — including the sorts of public social media posts that threatened a potential attack on the Capitol, but were not deemed “actionable” by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.

DHS is planning to expand its relationships with companies that scour public data for intelligence, one of the senior officials said, and also to better harness the vast trove of data it already collects on Americans, including travel and commercial data through Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service and other DHS components. (read more)

Expand your thinking to what was initiated with the COVID model for “contact tracing” and you can quickly see how physical proximity to a rogue dissident, a person with wrong thoughts – aka a domestic extremist, can result in you being labeled along with that dissident…. and you are on the list. Then overlay the efforts of Big Tech to assist the administrative state with an electronic trail of your habits, contacts, phone calls, text messages and internet patterns…. and you are on the list.

Remind yourself what FBI “contractors’ with access to the NSA database already did in their quest for political opposition research and surveillance {Go Deep}. Then overlay all of the above and you get an alarming picture that is not something to dispatch.

Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 26, 2021 | Sundance | 20 Comments

Border Patrol Union President Brandon Judd describes what it was like for GOP senators to visit the border crisis and how the Mexican cartel smugglers were laughing at the inept politicians who can do nothing to stop their activity.  Quite a stunning interview:

Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 26, 2021 | Sundance | 58 Comments

A contingent of Republican senators traveled to Texas on Thursday for a tour of the border region to understand the scale of the problem currently facing Border Patrol.  After a night and early day visit of the border region the GOP senators gathered to brief the press and answer questions.

Senator Ron Johnson (Wisconsin) was emphatic about the stunning statistics that are now evident.  As Johnson shared during his portion of the briefing, under President Trump the border region was secured and together with agreements with Central American and Mexico the southern border wall was working well to stop illegal alien influx.

However, Joe Biden eliminated all of the agreements and policies that stabilized the border.  Immediately after his installation as head of the executive branch the Biden policies opened a floodgate of illegal alien border crossers.  As many as 6,000 border apprehensions in a single day in the Rio Grande Valley sector.   Stunning statistics.

Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 27, 2021 | Sundance | 22 Comments

Sometimes if you don’t laugh at the absurdity of it all, you’ll explode the blood pressure cuff from sheer annoyance.  Yes, the entire world can see the absurdity of the Biden administration – even if the professional left have to pretend like they cannot see it.

In this interview Mark Steyn accurately outlines the incredible stupidity of it all, and how the compliant media make a mockery of themselves as clapping seals sitting in grand obedience before the naked emperor while they swear an ability to see his beautiful and magnanimous clothing.